NEWS OF THE WEEK.
STERD AY week there was a curious scene in both Houses.
TAE
Salisbury assured the House of Lords that theproposal of the Government to ask both Houses to vote a resolution stating that the Franchise Bill had been passed in absolute reliance on the promise of the Government to introduce a Redistribution Bill next session,—referred to by Mr. Gladstone in his speech to the Liberal Party at the Foreign Office,—was communicated to him in a manner which made him believe it to be strictly confidential, .and that he took great pains so to shape his speech as to betray no knowledge of this proposal, which appeared to him to add nothing to the declarations already made. He further stated that he had never used in his reply the sarcastic language attri- buted to him by Mr. Gladstone concerning his reluctance to-dis- cuss Redistribution with a " rope round his neck;" and on both points Lord Cairns subsequently supported him, adding that he would rather have cut off his right hand than have betrayed a negotiation which be understood to be in strict confidence. Lord Granville,—who spoke, however, before Lord Cairns, having ob- tained the permission of the House by the. bare majority of one to be first heard,—read a letter of Mr. Gladstone's, written 'immediately after reading the report of his speech delivered at the Foreign Office, in which Mr. Gladstone stated that he did not say, so far as he could remember, and certainly did not in- tend to say, that Lord Salisbury used the simile of legislating with a rope round his neck in declining the last proposal of the Government, but merely that the reason for which Lord Salisbury found that offer inadequate had, as Mr. Gladstone believed, been formerly put by Lord Salisbury in this lively language. (As a matter of fact, Lord Salisbury's real words were, by the way, " with a pistol at his head," and not " with a halter round his neck.") Lord Granville denied that he had used the words " private and confidential," which were, as every one admitted, not written either on Mr. Gladstone's proposal or on the reply,—but Lord Granville admitted that he did regard his conversation with Lord Cairns as private.
