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I do not feel called upon to defend Sir Thomas M'Ilwraith, and I do not deny that during his recent course of procedure he must have appeared anything but a pleasant personage for an English gentleman like Lord Knutsford, trained under an utterly different social and political system, to deal with. "We must, however, as I have said before, take political human nature and our system of government by faction, as we find them. These are, after all, much the same in London and in Brisbane. If Sir Thomas M'Ilwraith does not appear to us to cut a very lofty or consistent figure, what, if we really mean what we are always saying, are we to think of British statesmen in the first rank, like Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt, who have had all the advantages of old-world culture and the loftiest and most ennobling associations from their birth? Sir Thomas, it would appear, has "turned his back upon himself" for the sake of the "Irish vote," which means in his case a new lease of the coveted office of Premier of his colony. But I feel sure that he does not deceive himself or others into the belief that he is acting from any superlatively high or conscientious motives, like Mr. Gladstone, whose whole political career, despite his