THE ENGLISH ELECTIONS.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 140, 6 February 1886, Page 5

THE ENGLISH ELECTIONS.

Mr Gladstone on the Results.

Ix an address issued by Mr Gladstone to the electors of the county of Midlothian, he said :—": — " On Saturday, the gross Liberal majority, so far as known, was only two. The returns were then, in the main, those of the English boroughs, and they showed —Liberal seats, 108 ; Tory seats, 117. The Tory majority of nine, Buch as it was, could not have existed even with the powerful aids it had derived from the commands of Mr Parnell, the panic of the Church, and the imposture of fair trade, had not folly been pushed in five constituencies having Liberal majorities to the point of handing over the seats to the Tory minorities by dividing the Liberal force under two candidates instead of concentrating it for one. Thus, even at that point, the returns ought to have been — Liberals, 113 ; Tories, 112. Since that time, as I told various audiences on Saturday that it could hardly fail to be, not only have the Scotch and Welch reserves begun to tell, together with the long, headed constituencies of Yorkshire and the North, but the Tories have also found, to their surprise, that there is life in the rural labourer, and that he is manifesting that life by voting for those whose unwearying labour gave him the franchise in despite of the most persistent Tory opposition. Not the outworks of Toryism only, but the citadela have been carried, and Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, as well as Lincoln, Norfolk, and Suffolk, have rebelled on behalf of liberty and justice, and of that reasonable and manly progress which has dona so much for the country during the last half-century, and will do so much for it while supported, as at this moment, by the nation during the next. So the upshot thus far is that the majority, which on Saturday was two, is now forty-eight, and that as it has increased from day to day, it may, and I believe will, increase yet more. Naturally enough there is dismay among the Tories. They ask themselves : How can this be stopped ? They know that but for the imperative orders issued on their behalf by Mr Parnell and his friends, whom^ they were never tired of denouncing as disloyal men, the Liberal majority of forty-eight would at this moment have been near a hundred. But the Parnell alliance, the Church panic, the visionary promises of fair trade, have all spent their force in the towns ; the counties evidently care not for them. The farmers know they do not owe one good law to the Tories. The working men know what they owe to the Tory party, who maintained the Corn Law, stinted their food, kept down their wages, and resisted the enfranchisement of which they are now making such good use. Again I ask, How can the Tories stop that contagion of liberty and justice which is running through the land and touching successively all points of the compass ? Will they publish some manifesto? What new alliance can they form? What new panic can they raise? Is the armoury empty at last? Is their invention quite exhausted? One thing Lord Salisbury cannot do —he cannot attempt a junction with those who are called Moderate Liberals, for he has very lately told ua that two things only are real — Badicalism and Toryism — and that everything between them is a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. Will he then scare the country with some picture of violent Liberalism ? His efforts will be in vain. He cannot get rid of the testimony of a long experience. That experience has shown that it is collective Liberalism, the general sense of Liberals, which has guided the councils of the party from the days of the first Reform Bill until now ; and so it will be still. The result is before the constituencies iv the reforms of fifty years, and last, not least, in the work of the county franchise. It is not the Church, nor the nobles, nor the landlords, nor the rich men, nor the idle and luxurious men that have done the work of tho last few days. It wbb said of Inkerman that it was emphatically tho soldiers battle. I say of thi3 election in the counties that it is emphatically] an,d in a fuller sense than ever it was heretofore, the .people's election,