NEWS OF THE WEEK.
T4ORD KIMBERLEY moved the second reading of the Franchise Bill in the House of Lords on Monday, in -a speech in which he described the scope and object of the Bill, pledged the Ministry, in case of the passing of this Bill, to introduce next Session a Redistribution Bill of a moderate kind such as Mr. Gladstone had described, one which would be traced on the old lines of the Consti- tution, and not make any approach to equal electoral dis- tricts,—which he rather went out of his way to revile,—and pointed out the danger of stimulating revolutionary feeling by rejecting a Bill which could not be described as anything less than a moderate and well-considered measure. Lord Cairns at -once moved the amendment, of which we gave the exact terms last week, declining to pass a Franchise Bill apart from a Re- distribution Bill, and urged once more the old argument that this Bill, by enormously swelling the county constituencies, without giving them any larger proportion of Members, would increase the anomalies of the representative system. He even went so far as to declare that it a Dissolution took place after the passing of this Bill, and before the passing of a Redistribution Bill, the House of Commons elected would be so anomalous as to constitute rather a special Convention than a proper House of Commons. He thought such a Convention might seize power and decline all redistribution,—a very curious hypothesis surely, seeing that the injustice, according to Lord -Cairns, would be, that the representatives of the county eon- 4stitnencies would be far too few, and yet fully conscious of the electoral strength to demand and obtain a great addition to their phalanx.
