On Wednesday, he made a still bolder bid for the
confidence of the Birmingham Democracy. In it he declared for Caucuses, on condition that Caucuses should let recreant Members, who break their pledges, alone. If the Tory party were not on their guard, they would wake up one day to find that the British Con- stitution had disappeared, and "some pinchbeck American arrangement" bad been substituted in its stead. He defended the Throne,—which no one attacks,—by arguments which every- one agrees with ; and the Lords, by the remarkable assertion that it is the only effectual barrier against one-man power ; whereas, if the Tory Lords would but follow the Tory leader,— which latterly they have prudently refused to do,—they would be the most complete embodiment of one-man power in the British Isles, for no leader in the Commons can do anything in which he is not supported by some of the millions of Great Britain. He delivered an eloquent panegyric on the Church, and then declared that he was absolutely in favour of the enfranchisement of the two millions to whom votes would be
given by the Franchise Bill, and that he had no belief in any of the suggested guarantees and conditions for whittling their enfranchisement away ; nevertheless, he had voted against it, because no Redistribution Bill was included in it. In short, Lord Randolph Churchill proves the sincerity of his desire to. take two long steps, by his positive refusal to take the first.
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