Sir Charles Dilke made a spirited speech to his Chelsea
con- stituents at the Kensington Town Hall on Tuesday. He pointed out that Lord Salisbury had rested his hopes of a speedy Con- servative reaction on the fact that in 1880 the change of some 3,000 votes from Liberal to Conservative would have given the House of Commons a Conservative instead of a Liberal majority,— which may be true, but only because there are still so many small constituencies which have so much more representative power than their magnitude justifies. In point of fact, however, they only voted just as those enormous Liberal majorities voted which were, more or less, thrown away in a party sense, thrown away so far as regarded any impression which the magnitude of these majorities produced on the constitution of the House of Commons. If the popular vote be counted even in 1874,—the year of Conservative victory,—the Conservatives were in a minority, not in a majority ; and in 1880 they were in a minute minority ; so that the "accidental victory" of Liberalism, as Lord Salisbury called it, was a victory which was completely expressive of the popular mind, though in 1874 the victory of Conservatism had been really accidental.
