Mr. Gladstone deprecated as utterly obstructive the revival in a
more exaggerated form of the plea rejected by the House in a milder form, and exhorted Liberal members who might still wish to speak in favour of the Bill to reserve their speeches for the amendment of the Lord Mayor, who proposed to move that the House go into Committee "this day six months." Lord Randolph Churchill called this the application, to the Liberal party at least, of the principle of the Closure in its worst form ; Mr. E. Clarke followed in the same strain, asserting that Mr. Gladstone always described the right opportunity for discussion as being either past or future, as Alice in Wonderland found that there was always "jam to-morrow, or jam yesterday, but never jam to-day." He was very eloquent on the injustice of swamping agricultural labourers with urban votes, but thought nothing of the injustice of keeping both alike without votes,.and, oddly enough, assumed that all the agricultural votes would be Tory and all the urban votes Liberal, though Member after Member has boasted of the number of Tory electors in the great Lancashire towns, and of the danger of subversive principles riding in the new rural constituencies. Mr. Brodrick, by way of obstruction, moved the adjournment of the debate, not be- cause he was forbidden to speak, but because it appeared. to be impossible for him to speak without the fillip of Liberal contradiction ; whereupon Sir W. Harcourt explained that after seven nights' debate practically devoted to the subject of Re- distribution, and after the division taken on it, it was impossible to doubt the purely dilatory character of this debate, and after a hot speech from Mr. Gibson and a reply by the Prime Minister, the adjournment of the debate was negatived by 108 votes to 71.
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