2 MARCH 1867, Page 1

This split is the more important because the Liberals have

closed their ranks once more. At the party meeting held at Mr. Gladstone's on Tuesday, and attended by 300 members, Earl Russell told his followers to accept Mr. Gladstone's lead cordially, Mr. Gladstone announced that the Resolutions would be resisted, and Lord Grosvenor stated that the Adullamites were Liberals still, had no wish to separate themselves from their party, and only desired a real settlement and some guarantees. Lord Gros- venor is not very distinct either in his speech or his explanatory letter to the Times, but unless we mistake him he looks lovingly at household suffrage and the cumulative vote. The reunion, even if not very earnest, restores their heavy majority to the Liberals, and a warning that it would happen probably helped to elicit Lord Derby's remarkable speech to his following at his meet- ing on Monday. There, while announcing that his Cabinet had accepted the plan described by Mr. Disraeli in the evening, he said that his own mind was in favour of a wide suffrage in boroughs checked by some system of pluralities, and that he did not object to 141. of rating as the county qualification. He also informed the party that nothing would ever induce him to take office again, a statement which will greatly increase the power of one or two other men. It is clear that the resistance in the Cabinet must be strong, or the Premier would not give up his own convictions, and it is therefore a disunited CAbinet which proposes a bad Bill in the face of a united Opposition.