Sir George Bowyer, in a letter sent to Monday's Times,
pro- nounced the rather remarkable opinion that the great Tory crash,—the greatest crash, says Lord Beaconsfield, since the Overend-Gurney business,—was in the main an expression of' the country's dissatisfaction with the bad state of trade, in- creased by the unseasonable surprise of the Dissolution itself. The worthy baronet might almost as well ascribe a spring-tide snch as was hardly ever seen, to the accident of a high wind: running with the flowing tide, and that alone. Mr. George Melly, in his letter to Wednesday's Times, and Mr. Osborne Morgan, in his letter to the Times of Thursday, sufficiently dispose of Sir George Bovvyer's unfortunate guess (inspired evidently by a sincere wish to believe that the foreign policy of the Government was popular, so far as it went). The truth, no. doubt, is that the Dissenters, partly stung by the avowed belief of Lord Beaconsfield that by his Household Suffrage. Bill he had annihilated their political importance, but still more pricked in their consciences by the cynical language of the Pre- mier concerning the Bulgarian massacres, and the more cynical deed of the Afghan war, have come to the front again, and worked with a zeal and a persistency for Mr. Gladstone which have carried all before them. "The burning words," says Mr.. Melly, "of the first Midlothian canvas have been read hy thousands of electors in the remote villages of Leicester- shire, where I spent yesterday, and saw the enthusiasm of the electors as they cheered the portrait of the great orator, hung across a rural lane." Mr. Osborne Morgan bears: the same witness for Wales. The truth is, that an active moral and religious horror of Lord Beaconsfield's policy, has coincided with a wide-spread discontent at the consequences of bad times and worse government.
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