25 DECEMBER 1875, Page 2

Poor Sir Hardin g e Giffard is still out in the cold.

Leominster was taken from him, Ipswich would have none of him, and now Huntingdon is more than doubtful, Viscount Iiinchingbrook having preferred his own claim to the seat. He will have to be contented with Shoreham, after all, which Mr. Cave, it is said, is not unwilling to resign, and even in Shoreham there is the ballot. Ipswich, where the engineering interest is strong, is to be con- tested by Mr. Newton, the ablest perhaps of all "working-men " candidates; Mr. T. Clement Cobbold, a brother of the late member, defending the seat from the Conservative side. Horsham has been lost to the Tories, Mr. Hurst, the Liberal, beating Colonel Aldridge bps majority of 13 ; but they have won East Aberdeenshire, where Mr. George Hope, the chosen representative of the tenant-farmers, was beaten by General Sir Alexander -Gordon, by 1,903 against 1,558. That is a great victory for the Tories, and is believed to be due, first, to Mr. Hope's Unitarian ,opinions, and next to his having declared with rigid logic and useless impolicy in favour of abolishing the oath which binds the Sovereign to remain a Protestant. Even the fidelity of Scotchmen to the Liberals could not stand that proposition, utterly abstract as it was.