POLITICAL, SOCIETY, AND LOCAL NOTES.

   Now that we know upon satisfactory evidence that  Roderick MACLEAN has
been the inmate of a lunatic asylum, and is clearly mad, we  may dismiss from
our minds all thought of a possible connection between the  outrage on Thursday
week and any political movement. But though the aspect of a  crime of this
description is thus got rid of, we confess we have very little  sympathy with
those journalists who seem inclined to pooh-pooh the whole affair,  merely
because the would be assassin was insane.

   We venture to say that if the lives of any of these  gentlemen who thus
write at home at ease had been imperilled by a deliberate  shot from a
revolver, they would hardly have taken the matter so coolly as they  do now. It is,
unfortunately, only too certain that a revolver, even when  handled by a
lunatic, is quite capable of putting  an end to life; and if  the Queen had been
killed on Thursday night, we do not know that the calamity to  the country would
have been less because MACLEAN was shown to be undoubtedly  mad.

   Of course she was not killed; but we know on the  authority of the
official Court Circular that she heard the report of the  pistol, and that the
Princess Beatrice actually saw it pointed at the carriage  in which her Majesty and
she were riding. That this is a very unpleasant  experience, even for a
strong man to pass through, is certain. We know what an  effect of an experience of
this kind has been upon persons so robust as Prince  BISMARCK and the Emperor
William; and it is therefore sheer nonsense to talk as  though the ordeal to
which the Queen had to submit was a trifle.