to his connection as an " arduous 'connection of eighteen
years, and hastened down to canvass South Lancashire, where on Tuesday he made within a few hours two of his most brilliant speeches—one at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on Tuesday afternoon, and one in St. George's Hall, Liverpool, in the evening of the same day. In both he poured out a full stream of answer to Mr. Disraeli's attack of last week on his financial administration. At Manchester Mr. Gladstone rallied "the Coryphmus of the Opposition" on his newly found approbation of the French commercial treaty, reminded him of his repudiation of all the clauses in it most favourable to France, of his objection to the article guaranteeing the free export of English coal, of the objection of his party to admitting French silks without duty, of his wish to insist on the free ex- port of rags from France,—and then asked him where, with such., views, would have been his chance of persuading France to give us great benefits in return for nothing. At Liverpool he spoke of Mr. Disraeli's claim to have reduced the expenditure lower in 1858 than it has ever been since, reminding him, just as we did at the time, that it was the Tory Government which prepared the great estimates of 1859 for the useless " reconstruction" of the navy, and the Tory party which has ever since pressed on Parlia- ment a larger instead of a smaller expenditure,—Sir John Walsh having gone so far as to ask at one time that the navy estimates should be doubled. In reply to the charge that luck had favoured* his Administration, he asked if the panic which led to the loans for fortifications was financial luck, if the dreadful harvest of 1860 was financial luck, if the cotton famine and the American civil war were financial luck. Before Mr. Gladstone had finished his second brilliant speech every one felt his success in South Lancashire to be certain, and on Thursday he was elected, displacing one of the three Conservatives (Mr. Legh) who represented the division in the last Parliament. But even Mr. Gladstone's buoyancy did not save his Liberal colleagues.
