The country now sees that, if it had known the truth four years ago, the present Ministry would never have been in existence. The Whigs and Radicals overthrew the Conservative Government in 1859 by means of false statements and false professions. It took some time before the real state of the case could be demonstrated, but gradually it was made plain by the conduct of the Liberals themselves. Slowly but steadily the truth has dawned upon the constituencies: they feel that they were duped by the present occupants of office, and they are now conscious also that they did injustice to the Conservatives. The Whig chiefs who, before they got into office, deemed Parliamentary Reform a matter of such urgency that they promised to hold a special session in November in order to pass a Reform Bill, first delayed to fulfil their promise, and then threw up the matter altogether. The excuse which they plead is, that they found Parliament unfavourable to any further tampering with the constitution. But if Parliament was right, they themselves were condemned; if it were wrong, why did they not dissolve, and appeal to the country? Had they been in earnest, they would have dissolved: but they knew that a dissolution would have been followed by the election of a Parliament still more hostile to them and to their measure. And therefore they chose rather to remain self-condemned, and to be pointed at with the finger of scorn, by the one party as recreants, by the other as impostors, rather than save their honour at least by the sacrifice of office. This tells against them now. The revulsion of public feeling was not, and could not be, immediate—for the duplicity and insincerity of the Ministry only revealed itself by degrees; but it was certain from the first, and has now become overwhelming. The Ministry have come to be regarded with contempt, and every new election is taken advantage of by the constituencies to give expression to their censure. But this is not the whole of the change which the last four years have wrought on the public mind. Alongside of the consciousness of the sins and demerits of the present Ministry, there has arisen the conviction that the principles of the Conservative party are the right ones for the country. The constituencies now feel not only that the present Ministry is a bad one, but that its predecessor was a good one. They have become sensible that, if any Reform Bill were needed at all, the Bill brought forward by Mr Disraeli was the one that best deserved to be adopted. They are now conscious that if any change at all were requisite in the matter of Church-rates, Mr Walpole’s Bill was well deserving of support, and that the measure of total abolition to which the present Ministry have pledged themselves is wholly out of the question. Finally, and for a good while past, the country has come to see that, led away by the misrepresentations of the Whigs, it did gross injustice to the foreign policy of the Conservative Government.