the attitude of Ministers was at once firm and modest. The _Times_ of Wednesday the 7th July thus announced, in its leading article, the commencement of the grand struggle:—“So far as regards the disputed seats, the general election begins this morning, and a few hours will place beyond doubt our probable masters for the next five or six years”—words very exciting to all ardent politicians, and fraught with no little truth. That the editor, when he wrote them, expected the result to be a defeat of Ministers, no one who has read what had been said before, and has been said subsequently, and with increasing bitterness, in the eloquent leading columns of the _Times_, can doubt. The first week was devoted to the English borough elections; and here the opponents of the Government expected a long series of triumphs. It is not consistent with our space or purpose to present a detailed retrospect of the general elections. We shall content ourselves with indicating a few salient points, fraught with _great political significance_ in respect of both persons and places—the sayings and doings of the chief electors and elected. A calm voice from Calne first caught the attentive ear. The Earl of Shelburne, the son and heir of the Marquis of Lansdowne, was re-elected without opposition on Tuesday the 6th July. What said he, on returning thanks for his re-election? That he had “thought it desirable to try the experiment of Free Trade; saw nothing to shake his faith in it—much to confirm it; but had always thought that the change had been very abrupt. There were persons who had been seriously affected by the rapidity of the change, and he should therefore be ready to give his attention to any proposed remedy for their distress.” “He was not a supporter of the present Government, but should offer no factious opposition to them; and although there were other men quite competent to conduct the government of the country, to whom he could more readily give assistance, yet, until those men were established in power, he by no means said, that if the present Government brought forward measures of which he could approve, he would not give them his support. He felt that it was his duty, as their representative, to abstain from all factious opposition to the present Government, until some other Government became possible.” If the Earl of Derby had been one of Lord Shelburne’s auditors, he ought to have been perfectly satisfied with these declarations; yet the speaker has been ever since set down in the daily lists given, in both the Conservative and Liberal newspapers, amongst the opponents of the Government, as though he were one of those certain of being found among the “ayes” on that “want of confidence” motion which a whisper from Sheffield was at the same time telling us would be the first step taken by the triumphant Liberal majority in the new Parliament. Weighing the political considerations likely to sway such a man as Lord Shelburne,