The Tory Ministry has recognised the situation, and, it is
understood, will resign at once ; but their followers are still slightly bewildered. They cannot understand that Lord Beaconsfield went to the country on his foreign policy, and that the country has condemned it by a majority unparalleled since 1832. They keep on saying and writing, therefore, that the country approved that policy, and that it must continue, and that no new departure can be taken, as if different men elected by a different party in order to adopt a different course, could descend to a policy of imitation. They could not do it, even if they were following their intellectual superiors, which is the reverse of the fact. All sorts of explanations are offered of the overthrow except the true one, —that from the moment the Secret Agreement appeared, the country began to find out the Ministry. One of the favourite ex- planations is an immense increase of voters on the Register, which is inaccurate, the increase of voters having been 11* per cent., and the increase of hostile voters 25 per cent. ; and another, that the uneducated have crushed the educated, which, considering the comparative education and speeches of the candidates and of the two Cabinets, is a little comic. Taken broadly, the pub- lica.ns have been Tory and the Professors Liberal,—and that is about the relative culture of the two parties.
