The delegates of the different Reform Associations assembled at Manchester
on Monday to consider the question of Reform, and on Tuesday attended a mass meeting in the Free-Trade Hall. About five thousand persons were present, and a speech from Mr. W. E. Forster was received with extraordinary enthusiasm. His advice was to avoid producing a Bill, but act on the elec- tions so as to compel the Government to produce one ; to accept any instalment, but to take care that it was not one which could be considered as final. He was sure that there could be no finality until we had arrived at something like taxation and representation being co-extensive. The meeting accepted the advice pretty cordially, but in the course of his speech Mr. Forster had occasion to say "that the revenge enforced upon the rebels by the Americans would be this bitter revenge, that they would no longer be allowed to make slaves of their fellow men," —and the sentence produced a scene, the whole audience rising to their feet in an enthusiasm of applause ;—from which we con- clude that Manchester operatives care a great deal more about the extension of real freedom than the extension of their own voting power.
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