The. Winchester election resulted in a very much greater victory
for the Unionists than that of 1886. Mr. Moss was elected, after the heaviest poll that Winchester has ever given, by a majority of 515 over Mr. Vanderbyl, the Home-ruler, the Unionist majority in 1886 having been 336, and the Con- servative majority in 1885 (before the Home-rule Question came up) having- been only 171. No doubt the Unionist cause was helped by the extraordinary violence of some of the Radicals, Winchester having been freely supplied, for instance, with suggestions from the Radical head-quarters that Mr. Balfour may very likely have written to the Secretary of the Small-pox Hospital to send over blankets in which small-pox patients had died to Ireland, in the hope of diffusing that frightful disease in the country which he governs. Suggestions so superfluously malignant and wicked as to the animus of a statesman who has shown nothing but hearty good-will to all decent and orderly Irishmen, naturally excited respectable electors, and stirred them up to exertions of no common kind, the result being that Mr. Moss polled 1,364 votes,—much the largest vote which Win-
cheater has ever given to a successful candidate,—against 849 for Mr. Vanderbyl.
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