The two Liberal candidates made public speeches to their electors on the same day that they issued their addresses. Labouchere made his in the British Schools at Brentford, and the points on which he argued were the disestablishment of the Irish Church and the waste of public money. The selection of Lord George Hamilton as the Conservative candidate gave him an opportunity of making some extremely annoying remarks. He referred to him as "a young gentleman who had lately joined the army--an unfledged ensign who was getting on with the goose step and preparing himself for the onerous duties connected with the Horse Guards," and other taunting remarks of a similar nature. The embryo M.P., on November 9, stung to madness by Labouchere's witticisms, boldly announced himself as his opponent in particular. He hotly denied that his father had received annually for many years a large sum of money from {87} the State and then had been made a duke for his kindness in having accepted it. The Conservative meeting at which the young guardsman spoke would have been a decided political success had it not been for the zeal of the gentleman who seconded the vote of confidence. He remarked that, ever since the day when King John had signed the Magna Charta, the people of this country had been indebted to the aristocracy for all the liberties enjoyed in the Empire. Storms of groans and hisses met his well-meant remark, and though the vote of confidence was passed, the show of hands was manifestly against it.[19] But the real interest of the election was centred in the personal quarrel between the Liberal candidates, which resulted in a Tory being returned for Middlesex. They appeared each to be possessed with an ungovernable hatred for the other, which was extremely prejudicial to their cause. The occasion of their public rupture was a dispute over the selection of electioneering agents, and by November 12 the attitude of the belligerents had become so extremely abusive that an important conference of Liberals from all parts of Middlesex had to be convened to consider the disunited state of their interest, more especially as it related to the relative bearing of the candidates towards each other. Whereupon Labouchere and Enfield each addressed a public meeting and gave their separate versions of the quarrel. The delight of the Tories was excessive, and they did all they could to foment the affair. The _Times_ rose to unaccustomed heights of irony in a leading article occasioned by the following not exactly conciliatory letter addressed by Labouchere to its editor: SIR,--In the interests of the party Lord Enfield and I would do well to adjourn the discussion of all personal differences until after the Election. Lord Enfield had distinctly refused to unite before those differences arose; our discussion therefore has nothing to do with our political disunion. {88}