The defeat of the Liberal party will be fully as
great, and perhaps greater, than we anticipated last week. We then sug- gested a maximum majority of fifty as the probable result. At the time we write, the results of about fifty elections are still un- known; but in those known, over 600, the Libeials have gained 31 and lost 91 seats, giving the Conservatives a net gain of 60 seats, making a difference of 120 votes on a division,—from which, if the Liberal majority of 64 at the close of the last Parliament be subtracted, we gather that the Conservative majority, with- out further gains, may be expected already to be 56. It will certainly be over fifty, and may be not short of sixty. The defeat in the counties has been disastrous. All the divisions of Sur- rey, Kent, Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cheshire, Lancashire, Westmoreland, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Wiltshire, Somersetshire, return a solid Conservative vote with- out a single break. Yorkshire, as far as returned, gives five Con- servatives to three Liberals, and no English county but Durham and West Cornwall has a complete Liberal representation, or even returns a majority of Liberals. The number of Liberal Eng- lish county members is indeed at present only twenty-five in all, -while one hundred and twenty-nine Conservatives have been re- turned for English counties. In other words, the English county members are more than five to one Conservatives under the present suffrage. Even Scotland, always Liberal, is less Liberal than before,—and Ireland, if somewhat more so in her own unin- telligible way, is more dependent on Liberalism of a dangerous and separatist kind.
