The Pall Mall of Saturday last attributes to our "strange
love of far-fetched explanations" our belief that the English constituencies have been much moved by an impulse against Mr. Bradlaugh which they cannot justify on principle ; and re- marks :—" Imagine Sir Edward Watkin or the Fitswilliams as the product of the impulsiveness of English constituencies !" But we never attributed the action of the deserters to any capricious impulse ; we only attributed that feeling in the consti- tuencies which makes such desertion safe, to capricious impulse ; and it seems to us simply childish to argue that thirteen Liberals would have absented themselves from the division without pairing, and that nine more would have voted against the Government, had not many of them believed, and believed on plausible grounds, that their constituencies would not be gravely displeased by that act of disloyalty to their principles and their party. As Mr. Rowlandson undoubtedly lost his election for the North-West Riding chiefly by the unpopularity of the Liberal view of the Bradlaugh question, why should not the Hon. W. H. W. Fitz william have regarded his seat for the South- West Riding as safe, in spite of his desertion to the Tories on that same question P
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