"SIR,--While I am very unwilling to do or say anything that could be construed into interference in any election, I cannot refuse to consider the question you have put to me. Having for many years sat in Parliament with Lord Henley and Mr Gilpin, I have always considered both these gentlemen entitled to respect and confidence as upright and highly intelligent men, cordially attached to the Liberal party.--I remain, Sir, your faithful servant, W. E. GLADSTONE. "I send this answer to you individually, and I should not wish it to be published unless you find that your brother-electors wish to know the purport of it." I confess that I cannot understand the object of the postscript, for it must be manifest to the meanest intelligence that immediately it transpired that an elector had received a communication from Mr Gladstone upon the subject of the representation of the constituency, all the rest would be wild with curiosity "to know the purport of it." As a matter of course, it was read at the next meeting of the Liberal Association, and then reproduced in the public press. In striving to win Lord Henley's seat, Mr Bradlaugh had not only Lord Henley, and Mr Bright, and Mr Gladstone fighting against him, but also Mr Gilpin, whose seat he was most anxious not to imperil. Mr Gilpin, although personally very friendly to my father, felt in honour bound to support his colleague, as he repeatedly stated at meeting after meeting: "Infinitely would he rather go back to London the rejected of Northampton than be the man who had deserted a friend in order to get another in." Nor was this by any means all that he had to contend against; he had actively against him nearly the whole of the press of England and Scotland, and no terms seemed too vile or slander too mean to use to injure him. Of all the newspapers circulating throughout the United Kingdom, there were not more than three or four--of which the _Newcastle Weekly Chronicle_ was one--who dared to say so much as a kindly word of him or of his candidature. In the town of Northampton itself the opposition of the Whigs and the Tories grew so bitter and was carried to such an excess that in October it was found necessary to form a society for the purpose of aiding working men who lost their employment through their support of Mr Bradlaugh.