LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. DISRAELI'S BATH LETTER.
[TO THE EDITOR. OF THE "SPECTAT0R.1
Sit,—In one of your articles last Saturday you say, "Now, as everybody knows, the Bath Letter lost the Bath election." I have heard and read this statement so often that, knowing it to be wholly inaccurate, I am induced to write to you, and show that the Bath Letter had about as little to do with the result of the Bath election is with the transit of Venus.
I spoke at a meeting of my supporters in the Guildhall at Bath on MOnday night, October 6. My speech occupied an hour, and I was followed by Lord Grey de Wilton, who rose after nine o'clock, and made known for the first time, by reading it, Mr. Disraeli's letter. There are no newspapers published at Bath on Tuesday, nor (I believe) on Wednesday, and the London papers do not arrive there before half-past ten in the morning. The election took place on the Wednesday, and the great mass of the electors, probably four-fifths of them, had never heard of the letter, much less read it, when they gave their votes. Such are the simple facts. My defeat was due to a very different cause.— [A. letter of this kind read in public on Monday night would be known, at least as regards its principal words, "plundering and blundering," and we think we understood at the time from a Liberal then in Bath, was known, all over Bath on Tuesday, and we have no doubt it actually influenced the polling on Wednesday most seriously.—En. Spectator.]
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