The tide of political luck has turned in the Bedfordshire
-election, which resulted on Tuesday in the return of the Liberal -candidate, Mr. Bassett, by a majority of 198 over his Con- servative opponent, Colonel Stuart (2,446 to 2,248). It is the .first Bedfordshire election held under the Reform Act of 1867, and as the Conservatives usually returned their candidate at the head of the poll before the Act of 1867, and that Act has, for the most part, very much strengthened the Conservative interest in the counties, Mr. Bassett's chance did not appear very great from the point of view of the general political critic ; moreover, he had done bimself some mischief by an unadvised expression as to holding his seat only for the present,—as a warming-pan, it was supposed, for the Marquis of Tavistock. But Mr. Bassett was a better candidate than the world knew. A Quaker of high religious character and great philanthropy, who opposes strenuously the narrow Non- conformist view of the Education Act, and refuses to agitate against -the English Establishment, Mr. Bassett had, besides the support of the Russells, a very strenuous following in places like Luton, where the Russells are by no means particularly popular. At once a Dissenter and a zealous supporter of the Government, his de-
claration of principles tended to allay all fear that the Government wishes to revolutionise the country. The moral of his success seems indeed to us to be the same as the moral of the great defeat in the North-West Riding, that the country dislikes the Secularist and Anti-State-Church wing of the Liberal party, and will trust the Government only so far as it relies on the support of the Centre,—the Liberals who carried the Education Act.
