The constituency to which he addressed his candidature in the autumn of 1867 was the borough of Chelsea, a new Parliamentary division created by the Reform Act of that year. It was of vast extent, embracing Chelsea, Fulham, Hammersmith, Kensal Town, and Kensington. In Chelsea Charles Dilke had his home, and, as representing the Parliamentary borough, he would speak "backed by the vote and voice of 30,000 electors." "I would willingly wait any time," he said in his opening address on November 25th, in the Vestry Hall at Chelsea, "rather than enter the House of Commons a member for some small trumpery constituency." The electors should hear his opinions, "not upon any one subject or upon any two subjects or any three, but as nearly as might be upon all." His speech began with the electoral machinery of democracy--questions of franchise and redistribution. Purity of election he laid down as a necessary condition of reform, and to that end two points must be assured: the removal of election petitions from the House of Commons to a legal tribunal, [Footnote: A Bill with that object was at the time passing through Parliament.] and, secondly, the security of the ballot. Upon the first matter he came perhaps to doubt the new system after he had seen it tried; upon the second he was able to tell his audience from first-hand knowledge that in Australia opposition to the ballot was unknown, and that in Virginia a conquered minority looked to it as their best defence against oppression. From the machinery of Government he passed to its application. Ireland was then the burning question, and Dilke's attitude upon Ireland may be indicated in a sentence. After the Church should have been disestablished, the land system reformed, [Footnote: His views on the Irish Land Question had been stated in _Greater Britain_ (popular edition), p. 209: "Customs and principles of law, the natural growth of the Irish mind and the Irish soil, can be recognized and made the basis of legislation without bringing about the disruption of the Empire. The first Irish question that we shall have to set ourselves to face is that of land. Permanent tenure is as natural to the Irish as free-holding to the English people. All that is needed of our statesmen is that they recognize in legislation that which they cannot but admit in private talk--namely, that there may be essential differences between race and race."] and a wide measure of Parliamentary reform given to Ireland; after they should have passed Fawcett's Bill "for throwing open Trinity College, Dublin, and destroying the last trace of that sectarian spirit which has hitherto been allowed to rule in Ireland" --they might hope "not perhaps for instant quiet in the country, but at least for the gradual growth of a feeling that we have done our duty, and that we may well call upon the Irish to do theirs."