The Duke of Argyll made a very striking speech in
the House of Lords on Tuesday, in reply to the very moderate, but very irrelevant, speech of Lord Redesdale, who wanted to persuade. the Government to do what he well knows they think it suicidal to do,—to introduce their Redistribution Bill in the autumn . Session as well as their Franchise Bill. The Duke of Argyll insisted that the Government had not been defealed, that it had elicited a universal expression that Household Franchise is inevitable in the counties, whether men could feel an en- thusiasm for it as Mr. Gladstone had done, or could feel none, which was his own case. He held that the object which Mr. Gladstone had set before himself in separating the Fran- chise Bill from Redistribution had been virtually achieved. The House of Lords had admitted that the 2,000,000 voters enfran- chised by the Franchise Bill must be admitted ; in other words, the door of the electorate was now ajar, and two millions of persons were visible outside it, gazing eagerly in, persons whom they had all agreed to let in ; it was not possible, therefore, to keep them outside that opening door much longer. The Duke declared that, looking to the moderation of Mr. Glad- stone's sketch of Redistribution, he had perfect confidence in the intentions of Ministers, and thought the over-wrought sus- picions of the Tory Party quite unreasonable. He ended by expressing his profound conviction that the two parties were very fairly well agreed about Reform, and that only artificial . difficulties prevented them from coming to an actual 'agreement. Perhaps so, but the artificial difficulties are of Lord Salisbury's and his colleagues' making, and can only be removed by the surrender of their position.
