Mr. Bernal Osborne made a very amusing and good-tempered speech
to his audience and would-be constituents at Nottingham, who entertained him at a public dinner on Tuesday evening. He said that however he might have smiled at his own defeat on the hustings, he did not feel it the less for that, or regret it the less in the solitude of his own chamber. His wounds were yet fresh, and if he was able to bear them, it was because he had fallen among Good Samaritans, who had poured in oil and wine. Mr. Osborne denied that the Elections were any fair test of what the people wished, and said they could not be so while the suffrage was regarded as " a perquisite," and not as a sacred trust. Parliamentary government was now for the first time on its trial, and it could not succeed without weeding out Parlia- mentary corruption, and Parliamentary corruption cannot cease without striking at the municipal corruption which is subservient to the ends of the more important elections. It was not the poor who were chiefly to blame, but the rich, and governments them- selves, which reward rich men for fighting expensive county elections, which means spending money corruptly for party pur- poses. The Tory Government, during its short term of office, had bestowed sixteen peerages, indefinite baronetages, and two knighthoods, mostly for services of this sort. There should have been a Suspensory Bill to hinder them from giving bonuses and titles. Lancashire had been carried by the Tories by an alliance between the Pulpit and the Petticoat for the purpose of proclaim- ing the Church in danger. On the whole, Mr. Osborne was more in earnest than usual, and made fewer jokes. Defeat has been a tonic to his political nature, though, like most tonics, rather bitter.
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