The debate of Thursday was opened by Mr. Raikes, who
spoke with his usual acrimony. He made it a great offence that the Prime Minister was absent, and called the Government a provisional Government and a " headless " Administration. He made the odd remark that the extension of the suffrage had rendered the Legislature "sterile," forgetting Mr. Disraeli's famous indictment against the Government of 1868 for its dangerous activity and energy, in the speech in which he de- scribed that Government as a range of exhausted volcanoes. In point of fact, no Legislature ever was so prolific of great measures as the Legislature which existed from 1868 to 1874. Mr. Raikes expressed his profound respect for the agricultural labourers, but, like Mr. Lowther, declared them quite unfit for the franchise. He loved them as a class, but he would not trust them with representatives on any account. Mr. George Russell replied to him in a speech of great dash and vivacity. He described Mr. Raikes—who is returned by the University of Cambridge—as holding that the narrower the foundations of power the safer was the superstructure, and regarded his speech as the fit utterance of a man who had three times been rejected by working-men constituencies, and who, after the few and evil days of his connection with them, had found refuge in a constituency composed entirely of country clergy- men and non-resident M.A.'s.
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