14 SEPTEMBER 1867, Page 3

Ou Tuesday night there was a great Liberal Reform meeting

.at Carlisle, where the speakers, Mr. Edmund Potter, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, &c., exhibited that not perhaps unnatural embarrassment which the Liberal party all over the kingdom feels in treating of the new Reform Act, and which it must be a great enjoyment to Mr. Disraeli to observe. The only party-comfort the Liberals -seem to have is in Lord Derby's candid and modest admission that it is a " leap in the dark" which he as a statesman has 'recommended to his Sovereign ; and of that they make the most. It is easy to criticize Mr. Disraeli's personal morality, but the embarrassment of the situation is the tone in which Liberals should "address their constituents on the result. If they are joyous, it follows that the Tories have deserved gratitude, at least from the people ; if they are doleful, it follows that they don't really trust the new electors,—which in five cases out of ten they don't, and .have no reason to do,—but still it is not a popular tone of mind to display. The general consequence is, that in a political sense they do something very like Mr. Ernest Schulz in his Masks and Faces, when he cries on one side of his face and laughs on the other. Mr. Potter and Sir Wilfrid Lawson rendered this com- posite expression on Tuesday night with considerable success.