have not the slightest notion of anything of the kind. It arises, I believe, from the mere wantonness or carelessness of the Government hurrying forward a Bill which they did not intend to bring in, and which they were at last compelled to bring in, contrary to all their declarations. Between Huntingdon, the smallest borough that loses one member, and Newport, the largest, there are seventeen boroughs, nine of them returning one member each and eight returning two, all of which have larger population than Huntingdon, which is allowed to retain one member while they are grouped. The reason I cannot tell, but there stands the anomaly. This grouping of boroughs cannot therefore, I say, be satisfactory to any class of gentlemen. Of course, it is not satisfactory to the small boroughs. They are material out of which other people are to be compensated, and of course no one likes to be included in such a process. But I cannot imagine that it can be satisfactory to gentlemen who call for those measures with a view to remove anomalies and promote equality, and make the Parliament a more accurate representative of the population of the country. It seems to me that everybody must be dissatisfied with such a proceeding as this. The House need not take all these groups as they stand, because any one of them might be remedied in Committee, but the whole principle of the thing is so bad that it is absolutely impossible to deal with it in Committee at all. I have been assuming hitherto that we have good grounds for getting these forty-nine members that are wanted, but that depends entirely upon the use the Government make of them when they have them. What do they do with them? They propose to give out of these forty-nine twenty-five as third members to counties, and four as third members to large towns, and seven to Scotland. I deny that a case is made out in favor of this arrangement. The honorable gentlemen opposite with whom I sympathize so much on this question may not perhaps agree with me on this point. I maintain that it is a mere illusion, as things now stand and looking at these two measures as a whole, to talk of county representation; you must look at the two things together, franchise and redistribution, and you must remember that the counties you give these members to are to become really groups of towns. Every one knows very well where the houses between £14 and £50 are to be found. They are to be found, not in the rural districts, but in the towns. What you are preparing to do for the counties’ members is to make a total change in the nature of their constituency. But under the system proposed the county members would no longer represent a constituency which from its present and peculiar character can easily be worked as a whole. When you lower the franchise as proposed you have taken the power out of the rural districts and given it to small towns, with probably an attorney in each. When you speak of giving a