On Thursday Sir Michael Hicks-Beach addressed a large Conservative meeting
in Leigh Park, near Portsmouth, and dilated, as usual, on the monstrous injustice of attributing to the Peers!any wish to resist household franchise in the counties. All they resist is the separation of the Household Franchise Bill from the Redistribution of seats,—in other words, all they resist is the only practicable or conceivable way of carrying a Reform Bill at all under the present conditions of the House of Commons. Sir Michael Beach al90 stated that the pre- sent agitation against the Peers rested on the meanest principle of human nature,—envy of those who are above us. This is a very curious imputation to make even against the Radicals, very few of whom feel the smallest dislike to the House of Lords, if it would only regard the representative House as being in truth the representative House of the English people, which it declines to do. There were also on Thursday two London meetings to denounce the action of the Peers—one in the Caledonian Road, and one in the Tower Hamlets.
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