Mr. Lowe's speech on Thursday was the most brilliant of
his efforts, and produced a very groat effect on the House. It seems to ns, however, like all he has done previously, to damage his own cause, by failing to admit the real grievance to be remedied, by greatly under-estimating the working class itself, by greatly over- estimating the class which returns the present members. Mr. Lowe speaks like an advocate fora class which, whatever its merits, has also great defects, and great defects which a fair infusion of working- class constituencies would go far to remedy. He was masterly in dealing with the silly manoeuvre of mutilating reform in order to divide its opponents, shallowly clever in his criticism on Mr. Mill's argument for giving the working man a real representation, both imprudent and unjust in his delineation of the working class, ques- tionable in taste when he preferred so absolutely the pacific and timid caution of a middle-class government to the impulsive policy of popular decrees, impressive in his comments on the danger of an executive directly wielded by a democracy, and exceedingly eloquent in his Tory peroration :—" If with our own rash and inconsiderate bands we pull down the venerable temple of our liberties, then history, though it may tell of other acts as signally disastrous, will have recorded none more wanton or more disgraceful."
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