POLITICAL STORIES.

Feilding Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 36, 5 September 1905, Page 4

POLITICAL STORIES.

Mr Balfour'e air of indifference,his languid, uninteresting manner, and his frank disregard of forms and precedents are calculated to exaeperate the most patient Oppositionists, but Mr Balfour at bis worst baa never inspired such fierce personal hatred as that which met Mr Glad stone at certain stages of his career. Mr Lucy, in his latest volume of political reminiscences, recalls an especially striking incident of 1878, when Jingo feeling was running high. •• Mr Gladstone," he says, " was returning to his Beat, having voted against tbe Government on a side issue. Some of the gentlemen of England, perceiving his approach through the glass door of the ' Aye ' lobby, began to howl. The noise brought others to the spot, and there arose, echoing round tbe wondering and, at that moment, empty House of Commons, a yell of execration. Mr Gladstone, startled at the audden outburst, looked up, and saw a crowd of faces pressed against the glass door, mouths open, eyea gleaming with uncontrollable hate. He walked close up and steadfastly re garded tbo yellisg mob. Then, without a word, he turned and pursued his way into the House." Mr Lucy relates one of the great man's own stones, showing the extraordinary methods resorted to in tbe old days in close division. Mr Gladstone had told tbe staff of Punch that Lord Melbourne'^ Government had been defeated actually on the vote of a dying man. " There was a member of the Opposition almost at death's door. He was dead," said Mr Gladstone emphatically, " except that he had just a little breath in bim. The question was, could ha be brought to tne House ? The Whips said he must come, and so they carried him down. He was wheeled in in a batbehair. To this day I never forget tbe look on bis face. His glassy eyas were upturned, his jaws stiff. We, a lot cf young Conservatives, clustered round the door, seeing a bathchair, thought at first they had brought down a corpse, But he voted, and the resolution which turned out Lord Melbourne's Government was carried by a majority of one." Perhaps nothing could better illustrate the change that has come over politics in tbe last half-century. Feeling runs &9 high as ever, and bitterness has not disappeared, but tbe element of callous brutality is bap pily gone for ever.