The result was at once seen in the changed tone
of the House of Commons on Monday, when the House went into Committee on the Franchise Bill. Mr. J. Lowther rose at once to protest that no negotiations between the leaders of the front benches would satisfy the Conservative Party. They would be satisfied with nothing but a Redistribution Bill which should fully supplement the Franchise Bill, and do full justice to the Conservative view of reform. The talk of backstairs arrangements was idle and misleading; and he protested that Sir Richard Cross's speech on the previous Friday had been grossly misunderstood. Mr. Gladstone rallied Mr. Lowther on his assumption of a sort of reserve power to disavow, even for absent Members like Sir Richard Cross, the meaning which their speeches had appeared to bear to all who were present at their delivery ; and on this Sir Stafford Northcote declared that Sir Richard Cross's overture had been of the nature of an °biter dictum, and that his party would stick to the last to the principle that the Franchise Bill ought not to pass with- out being accompanied by an adequate and satisfactory Redis- bution Bill. In short, the Conservative speeches in the discus- sion of Monday and the following day come to this,—that the Tory party repudiated entirely any disposition to recede from the position of last Session. Colonel Stanley's clause, defer- ring the operation of the Franchise measure till after the passing of a Redistribution measure and Boundaries measure, was rejected by 194 votes, against 109; after which the Franchise Bill passed through Committee.
