14 NOVEMBER 1868, Page 2

Bloodshed is expected at Blackburn during this election, cavalry have

been ordered into the town, and the streets will be watched by mounted police. The Liberal workmen are terribly excited, and the millowners who coerce their hands have been threatened with death. So grave is the aspect of affairs that Mr. Gladstone has written to an elector a letter in which he warns all parties that the House of Commons will lack neither the will nor the power to punish such efforts to coerce electors, and we trust the Liberals will believe him. Any outrage on the millowners will only give the enemy a handle, while a special commission, followed by a sen- tence of temporary disfranchisement of the town, would bring on them that odium from their own party which they so well deserve, and would, moreover, thoroughly defeat the object with which the coercion has been applied.