The metropolitan, and indeed, in many parts of the country,
the great suburban counties, alone retain marks of the pro- foundly Tory temper of which so much of the country gave evidence in 1874. Lord Beaconsfield has made a mistake about the residuum. It is not the householder per se who is so pro- foundly Tory, but the householder who lives in houses rated between 212 and 250. In the counties round London,—even East Surrey, which used to be heartily Liberal,—the house- holders rated above 212 are Tories in large majorities. The clerks in Banks, in merchants' offices, in the Civil Service, the great tradespeople, the season-ticket holders, both of London and Liverpool, are as Tory as the London Clubs themselves. In South-West Lancashire we have lost Mr. Rathbone,—a great loss to the party,—through the Conservatism of this class ; and in East and West and Mid Surrey, in the three Essexes, in Middlesex, and, we fear, in the three Kents, we shall not have, more than in 1874, a single Liberal representative. The poor are for the most part Liberal. The rich and highly educated are often Liberal. The mercantile and midway classes, and still more, the half-educated and half-comfortable, are all, strange to say, Tory to the backbone.
