the office has not been broken since the dismissal of Manners-Sutton in 1835. John Evelyn Denison was unanimously chosen to succeed Shaw-Lefevre in 1857, Henry Bouverie Brand to succeed Denison in 1872, and Arthur Wellesley Peel to succeed Brand in 1884. The Whigs, or Liberals, were in office on each occasion that the Speakership became vacant by resignation in those years. And the Conservatives, on their return to power, reappointed Denison in 1866, Brand in 1874, and Peel in 1886. The circumstances attending the election of William Court Gully as Speaker gave both to the principle that the Chair is above the strife and the prejudices of Party, and the precedent of its occupant’s continuity of office, an accession of strength which perhaps makes them stable and decisive for all time. Gully had sat in the House as a Liberal for ten years when, on the retirement of Peel in May 1895, he was nominated for the Chair by the Liberal Government. The Unionist Opposition proposed Sir Matthew White Ridley, a highly respected member of their Party, and a man of long and varied experience in parliamentary affairs. On a division Gully was elected by the narrow majority of 11. The voting was: Gully, 285; White Ridley, 274. It was publicly declared at the time that, as the Unionists had disapproved the candidature of Gully, they held themselves free to put a nominee of their own in the Chair should they have a majority in the next new Parliament. A few weeks later the Liberal Government was defeated in the House of Commons, and a dissolution followed. It is the custom to allow the Speaker a walk-over in his constituency at the General Election. But Gully’s seat at Carlisle was on this occasion contested, and his Unionist opponent received from Arthur Balfour, then Leader of the Unionist Party, a letter warmly endorsing his candidature and wishing him success. In his address to the constituents Gully made no reference to politics. As Speaker of the House of Commons, he could have nothing to say to Party controversy. Like his predecessors, he recognized that a Speaker cannot descend into the rough strife of the electoral battle, not even to canvass the electors, without impairing the independence and the dignity of the Chair of the House of Commons. The contest ended in his re-election by a substantial majority.