THE DESERTERS FROM " FURTHER REFORM."
THE following paragraph appeared in the Examine;' of last Sunday, in explanation of its argument that the Liberal Members who voted against " further Reform " had no alternative left when it was un- derstood that the Tories had left the House en masse."
" At the end. of the Postscript to our paper of the 20th, a few words were hastily thrown in as to the motives of those stanch RefOrmers who voted against Mr. T. Duncombe's runendment to Lord John Russell's motion of the 15th. We saw that the passage was open to misconstruction, and cancelled it so as to prevent its appearance in our second edition. The misconstruction we apprehended has been put on the passage by the Spectator. No opinion of our own was intended to be expressed, but merely the fact that the Reformers who, though favourable to the extension of the suffrage, voted ag,ainst Mr. T. Duncombe's motion, took this course to prevent a division upon an irrelevant amendment, which might seem to derogate from the effect of a vote of approval of the Irish policy." To make allowances for the errors of haste we are always dis- posed, from the necessities of our own experience. But whilst we my fully admit that the passage in question was the result of haste in the Examiner, we feel quite justified in treating it as a 44 let-out " of treacherous purpose on the part of the actors, and not a mere error in expression or argument by the journalist, when the words unfolded motives of action, and are a key to the conduct of many lip-Liberals. Our contemporary's second edition we did net see : if we had seen it, we should have made no other change in our article of the 27th April than to notice the fact of the
" cancel."
The construction the Examiner puts upon the " cancelled pas- sage," is the argument of Mr. Hoasmme, which we answered at the time. But the Member for Cockermouth, though illogical, was con- sistent—he would not " impair or qualify his vote" under any circumstances : the Examiner makes the " derogation" depend upon the absence or presence of the Tories.
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