Mr. Gladstone received this day week a vote of confidence
in his leadership, passed by the Guildford Reform Association, to which he replied by thanking the Association with the paren- thetical remark, " You will have observed the division last night, and it will probably lead you to an altered estimate of any power possessed by me to improve the Reform Bill of the Government. I beg, however, to assure you that my attachment to the great end in view is unaltered." The Times, which had done all in its power to bring about the Government victory, took this note on Wednesday as the text of an article patronizing to Mr. Gladstone, bidding him cheer up, and do his beat to improve the Bill, in spite of any little despondency he may feel at the defeat. " We can assure him that his power is great, even though not omnipo- tent, and the good of the country requires that his power should be exerted." It was only not great enough to "accomplish what was impossible,"—" the impossible" consisting, in the Times' opinion, in the rather humble enterprise of enabling compound householders to vote without giving up the convenience and economy of paying their rates to a middleman,—or rather, per- haps, of succeeding in any proposal which the Times had con- demned.
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