The Resident Magistrates of Lancashire presented a very grateful address
to Lord Derby for the part he had taken as Chairman of the Court of Annual General Sessions for twenty-nine years back. Lord Derby, in acknowledging the compliment, said that had he not been appointed one of the Commissioners who are to deal with the various questions affecting the mutual relations of different County Councils to each other, he should certainly have offered himself as a candidate for the Lancashire County Council; but this, of course, he could not do, as he should have to arbitrate on the relations of the Lancashire County Council to other County Councils. He exhorted the country gentlemen of Lancashire never to forego their interest in local affairs, never to leave those affairs to " carpet-baggers,"—by which he did not mean that men of all classes should not be admitted to the County Councils,—he hoped they would be,—but that men who were disposed to use their part in local affairs mainly as ladders by which to serve their own private interests, should be as much as possible kept out of the County Councils, by the public spirit of the people. That is excellent advice ; but " carpet-baggers " properly mean only strangers who act in this selfish way. We fear that in England the most dangerously selfish of the local managers are not strangers, but unsuccess- ful resident intriguers.
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