Lord Hartington, in his speech this day week at Accrington,
stated that, in pointing out some of the difficulties attending a Franchise Bill at Manchester, he had expressly said that he did not suppose them insuperable ; but now he inferred that if he were found to concur in such a Reform Bill RS the country evidently expects, it would be triumphantly asserted that the Whigs had been beaten by the Radical section of the Cabinet. He was entirely indifferent to that accusation. He admitted that the Whigs had never been the leaders in Reform, but he did claim for them that by accepting Reform in time they had always been able to moderate it, and to prevent its being too violent or too abrupt. He passed from that subject to the charge of Sir Richard Cross, that the blunders of the present Administration had been so unparalleled that eleven nights were necessarily expended in discussing them in the debate on the Address. Lord Harting- ton remarked that unparalleled blunders might easily be exposed in a much shorter time ; it was only acts capable of a double interpretation,—of defence as well as of attack,—which needed so very long to expose. He showed that in India the present Administration had saved for public works large sums which the late Administration had recklessly expended on a most unjust and unprofitable war ; and that in Ireland, so far from the present Administration having purchased the support of the disloyal Members by the Arrears Bill, they had alienated the support of those very Members by introducing the Crimes Bill before they introduced that Arrears Bill, which was said to be the purchase-money for an adhesion never received.
