MR. GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT.

Colonist, Volume XVII, Issue 1869, 30 January 1875, Page 3

MR. GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT.

A .London telegram bearing date January 16th; gave the following intelligence:—" Mr Gladstone has written to Earl Granville resigning the leadership of the Liberal party in the House of CommonSj but the right hon. gentleman still retains his seat in Parliament." The Melbourne Argus, on this subject says:— ' , ' '

; The ex-Premier and ex-leader of the Opposition leaves no successor. There is no " pony Gladstone" to take his place, as he, when he was called the " pony Peel," stepped into that of his great chief. There is not even a Sidney Herbert among the Lieutenants in the jLiberal army. Lords Granville and Hartineton and Messrs

Forster and Goschen have not exhibited any of the qualifications 'so essential to command. Nor is it lively thai; the' radical section of.the House of Commons would submit to the lead of either of them. '■ Messrs Love and Childers may be regarded- as put of running; /and Mr John Bright, besides that he would be unacceptable to '•'the great families," is falling into the sere and yellow leaf. Then, again, the future leader of the Opposition will have quite as

much to fear from the candid criticism of Mr' Gladstone, as a private member and a political free lance, as from avowed enemies. He will be apt to express himself with the same caustic freedom as Apemantus did at Timon's table. He will be more dangerous, perhaps, to his allies than to his opponents! It would have been more in accordance with

the dramatic fitness of things if bis abdication of command had been accompanied, like that of Charles V., by his retirement to the monastic shades of his Flintshire San Tuste, where he could have meditated on' Homer and 'the Homeric times, while felling timber or planting oaks, and could have apostrophised the stately avenues in the language of Cowper's statesman:— " Ye groves, My patrimonial pleasure and raj pride, Beneath your shades your grey possessor hide ; Eeceive me, languishing for that repose The seryantof the public never knows."