Mr. Gladstone on Wednesday delivered a speech upon the Ballot
'which, but for the war, would have been an immense event. Ile declared for manhood suffrage. He thought that household -suffrage involved in principle unlimited suffrage. " When we
• have adopted household suffrage, we have, I think, practically -adopted the principle that every man who is not disabled in point -of age, of crime, of poverty, or through some other positive dis- qualification, is politically competent to exercise the suffrage ; and it is a simple question of time and convenience when this suffrage shall be placed in his hands. To draw a distinction between -household suffrage and lodger suffrage, provided the lodger be a person who has a certain permanence in his residential tenure, -would be, in my opinion, wholly impossible ; to draw a distinction between boroughs and counties is, I think, virtually impracticable." Every man, in fact, of full age, not a criminal or a pauper, ought 'to have a vote. It will come t6 that at last, no doubt, though we hope first to educate the people ; but only two months ago that speech would have acted like a shell thrown into the Liberal party. Even now we wish Mr..Gladstone would give us a little light upon the war, and England's duty in it, instead of pressing propositions -which nobody denies, and nobody wants to take out of the region -of abstract thought. Votes for cottagers by and by ; just now we -want &lidera for the Volunteers.
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