POLITICAL FEELING IN ENGLAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 262, 28 December 1880, Page 4

POLITICAL FEELING IN ENGLAND.

The London correspondent of the Auckland Herald writes : — The intense political feeling in this country is very curious to a colouiet. The fJlube, e.g., ate not social, but political. You are drawn or repelled, not mainly by the- elegance of tbe rooms or the quality of the cooking, but by the decree of your attachment (o tfce principles represented by Glads'.oae or Be&consfield. The Prees is, of coutse, steeped in political feeling, and many an Englishman regards it as little short of treoson to buy and read a paper which is not of his party. He thus, of set purpose, educates himself to onesided views upon puhlio men and great questions. I am surprised to Bee to how great on extent thia applies to religious meetings. The other day o large meeting was held in Spurgeon'u Tabernacle, which was intended to tako a kindly farewell of four or five Baptist missienaries before their departure. They were supposed to give short addresses about their religious experience and views of their work generally, and then to be counselled and preyed for, and thus sent forth. One of these, however, soon felt his way to politics, and proceeded to denounce English rule in India. There was soon a perfect uproar. The meeting bb a whole, cried out for him Io "go on," though some dissented, and others shouted "time." Twice the chairman made him Bit down, and twice tbe meeting drew him to his feet again. The good things which were to be said by the minister who vftH to address them were blown away by tbe gale] and instead of the solemn winding up which had been arranged for, the people were diernisaed with a hymn and the benediction. Well, the Baptists are known to [be political, but it has generally been affirmed of the Metboilists that they at least were colourless in politics, and "had nothing to do but to save souls.'' I have often heard this, and, in uay innocence, I thought it was so. Last night, however, I was at a very large and very cnthuaiastio Weeleyan Missionary meeting. Three times the meeting reached boiling point in excitement ; but thia was cot in any one case about either the world's Bins, or the world's Saviour; about past triumphs or future prospects in reference to the evangelisation of tbe world; but the three occasions were the simple mention of the Burials Bill the name of John Bright and especially that of Gladstone. '•Yelping fools," I whispered to my next neighbor, though I am not a Tory by any means, but I do tire of seeing politics uppermost everywhere, even in the House of God, and when the theme is tbe world's salvation. There is some wholesome flense in a letter which Ruskin wrote the other day to the Conservative students of the Glasgow University : " What, in the devil's name, have you to do either with Mr Disraeli or Mr Gladstone? You are students of tbe University, and have no more to do with politics than you have with rat-catching." That is the other extreme, pertaps, but it is welcome for. a change*