GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."' Stn,—Your correspondent, "An Englishwoman," asks why the nation cannot do honour to General Gordon without doing injustice to Mr. Gladstone ? This question recalls to my memory a letter, written, I think, by Mdme. Novikoff, which was published about this time last year. Writing from an hotel at Palermo, she related her astonishment at the rejoicing amongst the well-to-do English staying at the hotel when it was reported in the newspapers that Gordon had been killed by the Arabs on the desert journey from Korosko to Abu Mimed. It was explained to her that Gordon's death would damage, perhaps even upset, the Gladstone Government. Now, nobody who lives here in England and has ears and eyes can doubt that we have amongst us plenty of people who are like-minded unto these guests at the Palermo hotel. They have Gordon on their lips, but what weighs upon their hearts is not the catastrophe at Khartoum, but the Franchise and the Seats Bills, the Reform of .the Land Laws, the County Government Bill and the London Corporation Bill. The consciousness that Democracy is fast becoming irresistible has in truth raised to a white heat the political anger and hatred of a very large portion of the upper and comfortable classes. It is much to be hoped, on every ground, that these ignoble feelings may be transitory. But as long as men are in such a frame of mind, even though they should wish to be just, the power of being so
has, for the time, gone out of them.—I am, Sir, &c., X.
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