The Express.
London, England, 1867-04-23 00:00:00

LIBERAL MEMBERS AND THE REFORM BILL.

Mr. Dunlop, in a letter to his constituents,
received in Greenock on Saturday morning, intimates his
intention to retire from public life as soon as a dissolu-
tion of parliament shall take place.
Mr. Dillwyn, in a letter to one of his constituents,
says:—" Many thanks for your letter, and for frankly
stating your opinion as to my recent vote, which, how-
ever, I sincerely regret to find is disapproved of by
yourself and some of my constituents. The reason
which induced me to vote against my
all
last
week is, that having been a reformer all my life,
having always, moreover, adopted the motto of ' Mea-
sure,, not men,' and seeing what I considered in
the main to be a good measure of reform frankly offered to
the country by the tories, I could not rightly or consistently
vote for its rejection merely because it was offered by the
tories ; and I knew the real issue joined on Friday last was
' bill or no bill,' as if Gladstone's amendment had been car-
ried the bill would have teen destroyed. As I said, I think the
bill on the whole to be a good bill, and capableof amendment
in committee if liberals are united and in earnest; indeed, I
consider it to be the most liberal concession of popular rights
ever yet offered to the country by any government, and I
prefer its principle to Gladstone's bard line of exclusion
below a certain point. I may say that I diaapproved of
this feature in the last year's reform bill, but as a fair
measure of reform was then offered to the country by the
government of the day, I would not take the responsibi-
lity of throwing any impediment in the way of its becom-
ing law, and voted for it throughout. The same reasons
which influenced me then have decided my course in re-
spect to the present bill."
Ma. Hivaswr.—ln a letter to the Oldham
Chronicle. Mr. Hibbert says :—" As it is possible that the
course which Mr. Platt and I took on last Friday night's
division may be misunderstood by our constituenta, 1 ask
permission to insert a few lines of explanation in your
columns. I did not stay away from the division. I
abstained from voting because, under the peculiar cir-
cumstances in which I was placed, I could not give a
conscientious vote." He did not vote with the govern-
ment because his amendment was not accepted, but adds :
'• My reasons for not voting in favour of Mr. Gladatone's
amendment were twofold. One, because I considered it to
he hostile to the main principle of the bill, viz., personal
rating, And the other, because it was the first of a series of '
amendmenta ending in a proposal for a 5/. rating suffrage.
Though the course which we took might be unusual, I ven-
ture to think that it was a strictly honest one, and in entire
accordance with the views we bad enunciated at the late
reform meeting in Oldham. While on this subject I wish to
explain the nature of my amendment respecting which
there appears to be some misapprehension. My intention
is to place the new compound householder is the same
position as the compounder above 101., and to scoomplish
this I propose to apply the provision of Sir William Clay's
Act. The compounder would then make only one claim to
be rated ; he would tender or psy, not the full, but the
composition rate ; and if he paid that rate, he would be
entitled to deduct the amount from the rent to be paid to
his landlord."

MR. WHALLEY. —Mr. Whalley attended a public
meeting at Peterborough on Thursday evening to de.
fend his vote against Mr. Gladstone's amendment
in the late division. The hon. member said that one reason
why he had lost confidence in Mr. Gladstone was because
the Reform League had shown a want of confidence in him.
Another reason was that Mr. Gladstone did not dissolve
parliament after the defeat last year. From this arose the
extraordinary complications they had gone through, and as
an end they had 04. rating instruction. Fifty members
meeting in the tea-room, at which meeting he was not pre.
sent, at once stopped that, but the same thing was again
tried by the resolutions. This was no mistake on Mr.
Gladstone's part, but one of many proofs that Mr. Glad-
stones " flesh and blood" arguments meant nothing more
than a !V. rating. He had looked upon Mr. Gladstone with
the greatest veneration, but be now felt that they had
been betrayed. He had been told of the danger of saying
this, but he had come for that purpose, and must again
say that the leadership of the liberal party on the
question of reform ought not to be left to Mr. Glad-
stone any longer. A resolution was passed regretting Mr.
Whalley's vote.