Mr. Howorth, M.P. for South Salford, to whose letters the
Times generally gives a special prominence, writes to Thursday's Times a very optimistic letter on the political situation, of which the drift is this,—that the electors in Northwich returned. Mr. Brunner only as representing their unalterable faith in the owner of great salt-mines ; that there has been a small shifting of' electoral opinion due to Sir George Trevelyan's conversion to Home-rule ; that the electoral organisation of the Liberals is reviving from the shock which Mr. Bright's secession at first gave it; and that a good deal of the ill- success of the Conservatives at recent elections is due to the unsatisfied desire for a recast of the Government so as to make it more really representative of the whole party. We cannot agree with Mr. Howorth. We are inclined to hold that the superficial satisfaction which some great Liberals have expressed at Mr. Gladstone's concession of the principle of the retention of the Irish in the supreme Parliament has furnished an excuse,—it is no more, and hardly so much,—to a large number of Liberal Unionists to return to their allegiance. They do not see that while nothing is more easy than to talk of the supremacy of the Parliament at Westminster over subordinate Parliaments, nothing is more difficult than to put it in force, if these subordinate bodies have the local field to themselves, and have an indefinite power of obstruction in the central Legislature as well. And under any scheme yet pro- pounded, they will have both.
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