This day week, Lord Harlington delivered a very able address
to his constituents in Rossendale, contending that the last thing that a Liberal committed to "the authorised programme" of 1885 ought to do, would be to postpone the whole of that pro- gramme, as the Liberals now propose to do, till the Irish Question which "blocks the way" has been settled. Moreover, as a Liberal, he objected very mush to the sudden unsettlement by the Nottingham Caucus of the Liberal principles agreed to in 1885, in favour of another quite new Reform Bill to be based on the principle of "One man, one vote." That might be wise or otherwise, but it had never been properly discussed, and was a sudden and disputable extension of the ground taken in 1885. Instead of an enfranchising, it would be in great degree a dis- franchising measure, and it was not founded on any obviously reasonable assumption. If a working man, said Lord Harling- ton, has obtained for himself by the agency of a Building Society a house at Accrington, he would, under the Bill of 1885, be a voter for Accrington. If, then, his work required him to move to Roasendale, he would have a vote as an occupier in the Rossendale Division. He would have property in the one place, and would be a worker in the other place ; why is not his interest in both sufficient to justify his voting in both ? This is a question, at all events, deserving full discussion, and not one to be settled by an arbitrary mucus vote at Nottingham, without any discussion. Lord Harlington objected strongly to such abrupt upsetting of the principles by which the Liberal Party had in 1885 agreed to abide.
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