The longer the Liberal Party has considered Lord Cowper's proposal
that the Government should surrender to the demand of the House of Lords, and produce a Redistribution Bill along with the Franchise Bill in the Autumn Session, the more decisively has it been rejected. We do not doubt that Mr. Broad- hurst, M.P., is right in saying that such a step would be fatal to the confidence placed by the great majority of the party in the Government, and that the Government will never give it a moment's consideration. Mr. Heneage, also, M.P. for Great Grimsby, who has never ranked as a Radical, wrote a letter to last Saturday's Times in strong opposition to that proposal. As Mr. Heneage truly says, this is no quarrel between the House of Lords and the Government. On the contrary, it is a case in which a body of Peers numbering less than two-fifths of the whole Peerage have placed the House of Lords in the very posi- tion which the Duke of Wellington declared in 1846 that it was impossible for the House of Lords safely to stand, namely, in opposition to a Bill passed by a majority,—in this case a vast majority,--of the House of Commons, and recommended by the Crown. No more Serious mistake could be made by the Govern- ment than to betray the least weakness on this point, or to show any disposition to accept Lord Cowper's suggestion. It would be regarded, indeed, as a hauling-down of the Liberal flag.
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