acres in that county, we cannot but be persuaded that there is “a good time coming” for our friend Mr. Lattimore and the Herts Reformers. At the last election, the lowest of the Protectionist candidates—the quondam Reformer, Sir Bulwer Lytton—had 2,190 votes: the highest of the Liberals had 2,043. It is thus as clear as anything can be that a very little effort will make Hertfordshire for ever safe. It is in the power of any two hundred persons desirous of a good investment to do so at once. Essex, the home of Sir J. Tyrrel and the delight of W. B., we regret to write, is not so easily liberalised. North Essex at present is impregnable. Its squires, as Barry Cornwall ironically writes, “With brains made clear By the irresistible strength of beer,” are beyond salvation: there is no hope for this generation of them. But South Essex is not so hopelessly lost to the people’s cause. It is true that last summer it did unseat Sir E. N. Buxton, and return Sir W. B. Smijth by a majority of 600; but the National has purchased 242 acres in that county, and out of that number can create 1,210 electors. Evidently, then, there is hope for Essex yet. But we need not continue this scrutiny. The people have placed within their hands the very privilege they so much desire. They need not wait for Government to emancipate them; they can emancipate themselves. For instance, the National will put any person desirous of the same in possession of a county qualification for North or South Essex, East or West Kent, Hertfordshire, West Sussex, North Hants, North Lancashire, or Middlesex. If, as some of the knowing ones maintain, we shall soon have a general election, of course the sooner one is put on the register the better. If not, the purchaser can take no harm: he will have his _quid pro quo_; he will have placed his money in that best of all banks, the land, and will have become one of that important class appealed to on certain occasions as the “Electors of the United Kingdom.” Heaven helps those who help themselves. Instead of the people waiting for Government to extend the franchise, they can boldly help themselves. No man deserves the electoral privilege who cannot purchase it by his own industry and self-denial. At the present time, when provisions are cheap, when work is abundant, when wages are high and labour scarce, there is not a man in our streets who may not win the franchise if he has the will. Half the men who brawled in low pot-houses, while their wives and children were starving, over their beer, for the Charter, and nothing but the Charter, if they had stopped at home, and worked and saved their money, might, by this time, have realised the manhood suffrage of which they so idly dreamed; and if, at the next election, the men of progress are beaten, and the friends of class legislation and injustice prevail, it will be because the people were not true to themselves—because they had not