Mr. Gordon has voted with his party on all the great questions that have come before Parliament since he entered the House of Commons. During the last two sessions he was very regular in his attendance to legislative duties, and made several telling speeches on Scotch questions, in which he is, perhaps, better informed than any other man in the House. He is always listened to with respect, if not with admiration, for he exhibits a mastery of details, and a perfect apprehension of the subject in hand, which enables him to speak with effect, when others, who possess greater oratorical powers, would be liable to "put their foot in it." Indeed, Mr. Gordon is not an orator, in any sense of the term. His legal training at the Scotch bar has stunted the development of his rhetorical gifts. In pleading before a judge or a jury he seeks to influence their judgments rather than their hearts, and this tendency is to a greater or less extent characteristic of all good Scotch lawyers, although it is fatal to those nicely rounded periods and soul-stirring appeals to the imagination and emotional faculties, that tell so forcibly upon an English jury. It is disappointing to listen to Mr. Gordon for the first time. His appearance is sufficiently _distingue_, for he is tall of stature, and he has a decidedly intellectual cast of countenance. But when he commences to speak there is an almost painful absence of embellishment or emotional feeling; his language is severely practical and argumentative; but his logic is unimpeachable, and he can summon to his aid no end of hard and dry, albeit telling, facts-- "Chiels that winna ding." During the session of 1868, while he held the office of Lord Advocate, Mr. Gordon passed the Scotch Reform Bill, and it is to his efforts that the Universities of Scotland are indebted for direct Parliamentary representation. It seems, therefore, consistent with the fitness of things that a constituency which he himself had been the means of creating should become his own. To Mr. Gordon we are also indebted for the Titles to Land Act, passed during the session of 1868, by which the whole conveyancing system of Scotland has been consolidated, and placed on a more satisfactory footing. In the same year he succeeded in passing the Writs Registration Bill, which has affected beneficially the whole of the land system of Scotland. A bill for the purpose of amending the Feudal System of Scotland was introduced during the session of 1870, by Mr. Gordon, but although it was hailed with every symptom of approbation and encouragement by the leading men of the country, it had ultimately to be withdrawn. The same fate was reserved for a bill to abolish the feudal system altogether, which was brought in by Mr. Young, the present Lord Advocate of Scotland.