Mr. Milner Gibson made a: tolling: party speech on Thursday
night, but all the hire were mere,party hits, of no intrinsic interest, and the speech was mouthed in the old rhetorical.Parliamentary manner, Mr. Gibson's voice rising and falling in pompous sing- song. His chief point was that in redistributing seats you ought to have regard to wealth, population, and the size of the con- stituency, and that therefore you ought to define the size of the constituencies on which you are to operate before you distribute the seats. Mr. Gibson did not say what is the advantage of reform in distinct measures, what the precise gain of raising false hopes in the minds of constituencies which you are going within a few months to dash. He said that it was needful to exact a clear opinion from the House, without giving it the cover of other excuses, as to the abstract question of. reduction of the franchise ; to which the best answer is, that it is a concrete question, and not an abstract question,—a question which ought not to receive the
same answer in Totnes, or Maldeav or Hannich, which it re- ceives in_Atanchester, Leeds, or Sheffield.
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