The similitude used in Mr. Gregory and Mr. Disraeli's remark
on the same evening, that the adjournment of the debate had been moved " by an orator of commanding power, but who certainly seldom interferes in a debate without adding some fuel to the fire," may have warned Mr. Bright to be very careful. Certainly, on Monday, he was laboriously moderate, warned the young Peers that it was dangerous for them to com- bine against the people almost with fatherly anxiety for their welfare; and tried to establish as a recommendation of the Bill that it would not add half as many working men to the borough registers as Mr. Gladstone had calculated. He argued for the se- paration of the Franchise from the Seats Bill, on the ground that the former was a measure of long delayed justice to a single class,
the latter a mere question of just arrangement between many classes, suppressed all talk-of the "-leverage" which a franchise eaten anon would give in ease al a dissolution intervening before the Salts Act, and was generally heavy, and at times a little wandering. For example, he urged one argument against the amendment, which properly belonged to Lord Grosvenor and Lord Stanley, that a redistribution of seats might be so managed even in con- nection with universal suffrage as to give the people a worse repre- sentation than they have now. We never heard Mr. -Bright so ineffective.
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