27 NOVEMBER 1875, Page 2

Mr. Forster also corrected a curious misstatement of the Con-

servative Press, to some extent countenanced by ambiguous words of Lord Hartington's, as to the dependence of the Liberal majority of the late Government on Scotland and Ireland. In point of fact, as Mr. Forster showed, there was after the elections of 1868 a Liberal majority in all three portions of the kingdom, separately. Both in 1865 and in 1868 we had a clear majority in England alone; in the former year it was 36, and in the latter year it was 40. England, though less disposed to Liberal views than Scotland, because less thoroughly educated, is Conservative only by fits and starts, when recoiling from the Liberal spur, and oblivious of that dull, dead-weight Conservative pressure which is the nemesis of a Conservative regime.