The Chancellor of the Exchequer also addressed his con- stituents
at Pontefract on Monday ; and while ridiculing the fancy calculations of Mr. W. H. Smith and the Conservatives, and indeed all calculations founded on the absurd supposition that one section of the population is uniformly Conservative and another uniformly Liberal, he made a calculation on the supposition that the rural population is three-eighths of Great Britain, and the urban population five-eighths,—which is too favourable to the rural population,—and on the further sup- position that, after the extension of the franchise, the counties and boroughs would return Liberals and Conservatives in the same proportion as in 1880 (though in reality the counties are sure to be Liberalised by household suffrage). The result would be as follows :— Conservative County Members ... ... 121 Conservative Borough Members ... 114 Total Conservative Members ... 231 Liberal County Members ... 85 Liberal Borough Members ... 233 Total Liberal Members ... 318 Yielding for Great Britain a Liberal majority of eighty-seven against seventy-nine at the present moment. In reality, how- ever, as Mr. Childers pointed out, the politics of the voters change with the times, and will always change with the times and with the confidence inspired by particular Ministers.
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