‘I begin to be very confident that Gladstone will obtain a great majority. The Irish Church would have been a good cry to have appealed to the old constituencies on, but working men neither care about the Irish Church nor any other Church. The election, though satisfactory in a party sense, will, I fear, return a House scarcely superior in character to the last. Few good new men are coming out, and more over-rich manufacturers and iron-masters are standing than ever. Before the next general election after the coming one, the working men will have felt their power and will have learnt, perhaps by bitter experience, that Liberals do not all belong to the same species; in fact a consummate naturalist, like Darwin, would classify Mill and Harvey Lewis as belonging to different and well-defined genera. Something must be done immediately Parliament meets to check election expenses. When last I saw you in Dover Street, I little thought that late that evening the Government would give notice of reversing the clause I passed for throwing necessary election expenses on the rates. [Sidenote: Industry earns Penury.] ‘The shabby tactics of Disraeli have done much to make the country favour the clause. If I am returned I shall embody the clause in a bill and introduce it the first night of the session. I have had no news about Westminster since leaving London, but I cling to the conviction that Mill is safe. I spent a day at Brighton about a fortnight since, and everything there looks as promising as possible. Did you read Hooker’s address to the British Association? Some portions of it were most masterly; the _Spectator_ is, I think, just in its criticism of his sweeping hostility to all metaphysics. When the next essay is written on peasant proprietors, the £26,000,000 which have been subscribed in cash, a great portion of it by French peasants, to the recent loan, will provide a strong argument in favour of cultivation by the owner. I am staying in the midst of what is considered to be one of the most prosperous agricultural districts of England. It would be almost impossible to find a labourer who had saved a sovereign, and not one in a thousand of these labourers will save enough to keep him from the poor rates when old age compels him to cease work. Yet nine Englishmen out of ten think that it is in agriculture that we show our great superiority to the French.’ Cairnes replies with an interesting letter of warm congratulations, in which he deplores bitterly the defeat as candidate for the Liberal party of that ‘exemplar of far-seeing statesmanship, commanding views, and lofty moral purpose,’ Mill, and adds, ‘How the enemies of truth and light will blaspheme!’ [Sidenote: Mill ‘out.’]