The result of the election at Aston Manor, which was
declared late on the evening of yesterday week, struck the front Opposition Bench a heavy blow. The Gladstonians had not any substantial hope of a victory, but they did hope to reduce, at all events, the Unionist majority, and to make Mr. Chamberlain tremble for his influence in Birmingham. Never were hopes more bitterly disappointed. The Unionist majority, which was in 1886 only 782, rose to 2,978, or more than three and three-quarter times the majority of 1886, Captain Grice-Hutchinson, the Conservative candidate, polling 5,310 votes, against 2,332 given to Mr. Phipson Beale, the Gladstonian Liberal. The return, when first telegraphed, was hardly credited by either party ; but when it was confirmed, the Gladatonian leaders, in their depression, vanished quietly from the House ; while Mr. Jesse Collings, who rose to speak on the motion for opening the British Museum on Sunday, and to bear testimony to the admirable results of a like policy in Birmingham, was received with loud and long-continued cheering by the Ministerial Benches, the issue being evidently accepted as a strangely dramatic answer to Mr. Gladstone's assertion at Hastings that the Liberal Unionist Party is a miserable " abortion."
