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NOTES 
 
 
 
 ON THE 
 
 REFORM BILL 
 
 BY A BARRISTER. 
 
 LONDON: 
 ROAKE AND VARTY, 31, STRAND. 
 
 1831. 
 
LONDON: R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. 
 
NOTES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE REFORM BILL. 
 
 THE BILL proposed by his Majesty's Ministers, for the 
 amendment of the Representation of the people in England and 
 Wales, having now been read in the House of Commons a second 
 time, it has arrived at that stage, in the process of becoming a 
 law, at which it is usually understood that THE PRINCIPLE of 
 a projected measure is to be taken as established, and that 
 the DETAILS alone remain as the subjects of fair and straight- 
 forward discussion. 
 
 This is a useful rule, and it serves very materially, in ordi- 
 nary cases, on the one hand, to discountenance a factious 
 opposition to a recognised principle; and, on the other, to 
 lighten and facilitate the work of legislation, by referring the 
 consideration of different parts of a subject, not indeed to 
 different tribunals, but to the same tribunal at successive 
 times. The majority for the second reading of this Bill was 
 not, indeed, so large as very decisively to ascertain the sense 
 of the House of Commons upon its principle: the ability, 
 experience, and integrity of that assembly were almost equally 
 divided: and the opinion of that single gentleman, by whose 
 unexpected accession this majority was obtained, was not 
 strengthened by more than that privileged share of consistency, 
 disinterestedness, and good faith, which is known to belong to 
 every Member of Parliament. 
 
 It might, therefore, in a common case, and with reference 
 to the conduct of former Ministers, have been a matter of 
 
 M188502 
 
grave consideration with the Government, whether, under 
 the present circumstances, it would be fitting to press this 
 measure any further; whether, in fact, it would be constitu- 
 tional, in that refined and inner sense of the term, with which 
 all English Statesmen since the Revolution are well acquainted, 
 to urge the ulterior prosecution of a Bill, to which THREE 
 
 HUNDRED AND ONE, OUtofsiX HUNDRED AND THREE of the 
 
 Representatives of the People, had declared their determined 
 opposition. This might have been worthy of some considera- 
 tion ; and it is probable that in other times, and with former 
 Ministers, a greater wisdom or an inferior courage would have 
 given a prevailing weight to the consideration. But the pre- 
 sent Government, in confidence, as it should seem, of the 
 goodness of its cause, or of the STRENGTH OF ITS ALLIES, 
 has thought proper to act otherwise: it has learnt to set off 
 the PETITIONS FROM WITHOUT against the VOTES FROM 
 WITHIN, and with a lawful majority of ONE, it intrepidly 
 goes into a Committee. 
 
 Such being the fact, it becomes a question for conside- 
 ration, whether this is a case within the meaning of the 
 rule, or whether it does not constitute an exception which 
 demands a treatment peculiar to itself? Now every measure, 
 the fundamental principle of which can be distinguished and 
 discussed apart from the machinery of its operation, clearly falls 
 within the scope of this convenient provision. If, for ex- 
 ample, the House of Commons were to sanction, upon a second 
 reading, an illegal and iniquitous tax upon the transfer of 
 funded property: or if, in the face of an Act of Parliament, it 
 were to consent to ruin the wine trade of the Cape of Good 
 Hope some years before, according to the pledged faith of the 
 nation, it could lawfully do so : or if it were to abet a measure 
 for checking and impoverishing the Canadas, for destroying 
 one-third of the commercial shipping of the empire, or for 
 subjecting the lives and property of the West India colonists to 
 the action of eight hundred thousand emancipated slaves : in 
 each, and in all of these cases, it would probably be considered 
 that a minority had nothing else to do in a Committee, but to 
 endeavour, by all practicable modifications, to neutralize the 
 injustice, and to mitigate the distress and the misery, which, 
 in some shape or other, the House had resolved to inflict. But if 
 this is so in cases, where the iniquity of the principle is capable 
 
of being contemplated apart from the manner in which it is 
 proposed to carry it into effect, it follows, by implication, that 
 the duty of a Member of Parliament, when in Committee, is 
 just the reverse in the instance of a Bill, the principles of 
 which are actually IDENTICAL WITH, XND ONLY EXIST- 
 ING IN, EVERY ONE OF ITS MINUTEST DETAILS. The 
 
 Ministerial Bill of Reform is precisely a measure of this latter 
 description. It is really and truly based upon no distinguish- 
 able principles whatever ; unless it be said that it has as 
 many principles as it has clauses. It contains an accumulation 
 of EMPIRICAL PROVISIONS, which rest upon no common 
 
 GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY, which restore NO FACT OF HIS- 
 TORY, which embody NO TRUTH OF POLITICS, which are 
 only less absurd than they are dangerous, which are only less 
 impracticable than they are iniquitous, which are as false to 
 their own preamble, as they are treasonable to the Balance of 
 the Estates, which are consistent in nothing but in alteration 
 of that which now is, and in laying a train for the horrible 
 combustion and destruction of all that hereafter shall be. The 
 place for the discussion of SUCH A BILL is properly, and almost 
 exclusively, a Committee of the whole House, in which the 
 nullity of the pretences to general principles, set up by the 
 framers of the measure, may be best exposed by a dissection 
 and comparison of the enactments themselves ; and in which the 
 indefinite and undefinable vastness of the change to be imme- 
 diately made, and the fearful character of the REVOLUTION, 
 which will somewhat more slowly, but as infallibly follow, may 
 be demonstrated from the notorious facts of the case. 
 
 There are THREE PRINCIPLES which stand in relief amongst 
 those by which the Ministers declare themselves to have been 
 guided in the composition of this Bill. These three are, the 
 RESTORATION of the constitutional rights of the people in the 
 election of Representatives; and, as leading lights by the way, 
 a faithful estimate and observance of the amount of the PRO- 
 PERTY and of the POPULATION of the country. That every 
 one of these three is a false pretence ; that neither the letter 
 nor the spirit of the Constitution AT ANY PERIOD OF ITS 
 EXISTENCE, from the union of the Heptarchy to the accession 
 of the present King, will, by this Bill, be RESTORED ; and that, 
 moreover, neither PROPERTY, nor POPULATION, singly or to- 
 getiier, have been taken as foundations for the proposed system 
 
of election and representation, can be demonstrated to the 
 satisfaction of every unprejudiced person. 
 
 Now to show that this measure of Reform is NO restoration 
 of the letter of the Constitution, refer to what page we may ; it 
 is not necessary, and would be here much out of place, to 
 enter into any antiquarian disquisition concerning the origin 
 or character of the elective franchise in Counties or in Boroughs. 
 For, dispute as lawyers may upon this or that date, or upon the 
 precise import of this or that Latin or Norman-French word, 
 one thing is most certain with regard to the County Franchise ; 
 that at no period of our history, in Saxon or in Norman times, 
 before or after the statutes of Henry VI., did any Englishman 
 ever vote at the election of A KNIGHT OF ANY SHIRE, unless 
 that Englishman were a FREEHOLDER OF THE SAME. And one 
 thing is equally certain with regard to the BOROUGH FRAN- 
 CHISE, that let its origin have been what it may Tenure in 
 Ancient Demesne, Tenure in Burgage, Scot and Lot Payment, 
 Pot-walling, or otherwise, one possible mode and criterion of 
 qualification for voting there was, which in no place, under any 
 circumstances, was ever in force, that is, a voting in respect of 
 the possession of a house of the yearly value of 10/. 
 
 But this Bill, though it may infringe the letter, is said to be a 
 renovation of the spirit of the old constitutional system ! Let 
 us examine that point, 
 
 In the reign of Henry VI., a time of turbulence, but of great 
 popular freedom, the county franchise was fixed at the seisin of a 
 freehold of 40s. annual value. According to Bishop Fleetwood, 
 Adam Smith, and other calculators, the 40s. of the early part and 
 middle of the fifteenth century, would be equivalent at least to 40/. 
 of the money of the present day : and though it may be doubted 
 whether 40/. per annum will make a man as independent now 
 as 2/. per annum did then, at least, and at all events a renovator 
 of the spirit of the Constitution might have been expected, by 
 raising the nominal amount, to have restored the real standard 
 of the qualification, from which, in the lapse of nearly four 
 centuries, we have so greatly deviated. But no ! the free- 
 holder is still to vote for his 40s., and to him are to be added 
 copyholders of 10/. per annum, and leaseholders of 50/. per 
 annum. Now it is said, and to a certain extent, and for the 
 purposes of the bill, it is said with truth, that a copyhold 
 interest is equal to a freehold interest; upon which suppo- 
 
sition it would of course follow, that the spirit of the Con- 
 stitution, if it enfranchised a copyholder, would require from 
 him a qualification at least equal in value to that which it 
 required of the freeholder. But in fact and in law, a copy- 
 hold interest, in consequence of its contingent liability to 
 total forfeiture, and other secondary mulcts, is not absolutely 
 equal to the freehold : therefore a higher qualification in value 
 ought to have been demanded, to compensate the comparative 
 inadequacy of the interest. If, however, the standard of 
 value required of the freeholder by the spirit of the old 
 Constitution, as the test of personal independence, were applied 
 to the case of the enfranchised copyholder, the modern quali- 
 fication for the copyholder ought clearly to have been fixed at 
 upwards of 40/. per annum: whilst on the other hand, if it were 
 thought right to abandon the spirit, and to stick to the letter 
 of the Constitution in the case of the freehold qualification, it 
 follows that the framers of this Bill, in assuming the copyhold 
 to be equal to the freehold, had no right to prescribe a higher 
 qualification for copyhold voting than 2/. Take it either way ; 
 if the spirit and meaning of the old and still operating law be 
 regarded, the freehold qualification ought to be raised to 40/., 
 and with it the copyhold qualification, to that sum at least, and 
 in strictness of reasoning, to a higher sum ; but if the letter of 
 the law be preserved, then copyholds of 2/. or 31. ought univer- 
 sally and in strictest consequence to confer a vote. And yet 
 by this Bill, copyholders of 10/. alone are qualified to vote ; a 
 qualification inconsistent both with the letter and with the spirit 
 of the Constitution, and totally irreconcilable with the assump- 
 tion of the Bill itself in the case of the freehold franchise ! 
 
 But after all this, they do fix the leasehold qualification at so 
 high a sum as 50. annual rent ! Now, where is the Principle 
 here ? By the old law, copyholders and leaseholders were con- 
 sidered as possessing too precarious an interest in the land to en- 
 title them to the elective franchise. It is however alleged, and 
 upon the whole truly alleged, that in the present day the interest 
 of copyholders and leaseholders in the land is a responsible in- 
 terest, and such as justifies the committing to its possessors the 
 right of voting : but if so, why is the copyholder to be admitted 
 to this new franchise upon showing 10/. annual value, whilst 
 the leaseholder is still to be shut out, unless he holds for twenty- 
 one years, and at a rent of 50/. per annum ? Is not tenure 
 
8 
 
 by a lease as sure, certain, and indefeasible, as tenure by copy 
 of court-roll ? Is the Lessor enabled to destroy the tenancy 
 more capriciously than the Lord ? Is not the leaseholder for 
 the time being as deeply interested in the land, in its burdens, 
 and in its immunities, as the copyholder or the freeholder 
 himself? No doubt of it. But were it not so, in the case of 
 common leases for a term of years certain, does a tenant right 
 of renewal make no difference in the interest, a right which in 
 law is all but an absolute right, and in practice, especially in 
 the North of England, amounts to the inheritance in lease ? A 
 copyholder for life of 10/. per annum, is to be enfranchised 
 because he has a responsible interest ; and a leaseholder with a 
 tenant right of renewal, which may be settled in strict settlement, 
 and may and generally does last from generation to generation, 
 is to be excluded by these new restorers of the spirit of the Con- 
 stitution, unless such leaseholder pays a rent of five times the 
 amount of the annual value of the copyholder's interest ! This 
 is pretty well, but this is not all. A fifth part of the lease- 
 holders of this country obtain their leases upon the payment of 
 a fine, and hold afterwards at nominal rents, or at least, in 
 thousands of cases, at rents under 50/. ; and many of these leases 
 comprise property worth 1,000. per annum ! All these lease- 
 holders are excluded also, whilst your honest copyholder of 10/. 
 and your still honester freeholder of 2/. a year are admitted 
 into the very recesses of the Constitution ! Upon what Prin- 
 ciple does this exclusion stand ? A man who has paid down 
 thousands of pounds as a fine for a seven or fourteen years' 
 lease of a large property, in the cultivation of which he embarks 
 thousands more, is such a man to be incapacitated as not 
 having a recognizable or responsible stake in the country ; 
 whilst a ploughman with a life estate in an acre or less of land, 
 or who perhaps only marries the woman that has the acre for 
 her dower, is to be upholden as a fit depositary of this impor- 
 tant franchise ! If all this were but the vacillation and the 
 bungling of imbecile men, it might be borne in Christian 
 charity : but when it is so clear, that no man can mistake it, 
 that Ministers had all these circumstances before their eyes, and 
 did not dare to disfranchise the 405. freeholders, because such 
 a measure would be unpopular; and yet scruple not, at the 
 expense of the grossest inconsistency, to curtail and wither the 
 interest of the Gentry, who are the great leaseholders upon fine. 
 
9 
 
 because they thought they might inflict that blow with impu- 
 nity, the common manhood of every English gentleman in the 
 country, who is not nine times bound to the Treasury, must, 
 if there is any such thing as manhood left among us, rise in a 
 just spirit of indignation at this cowardly attempt ! 
 
 So much for the present ; and it is surely quite enough to 
 show that the declaration of the Ministers, that their leading 
 principle was a restoration of the Constitution, is, with regard 
 to the County Franchise, whether we look at the letter or the 
 spirit of the old law, altogether and without any qualification, 
 both positively and negatively, a FALSE PRETENCE. Is it other- 
 wise with regard to the Boroughs ? Let us see. 
 
 That the letter and the forms of the old law of Borough 
 voting are abandoned in this Bill has been already shown : that 
 the spirit and meaning are utterly set at naught is equally true, 
 though it may not be quite so obvious, or altogether so easy 
 to be demonstrated. A word or two of explanation upon this 
 subject. It is a great error in Political Philosophy it is pre- 
 eminently the error of this Bill, to assume that Property, as 
 Property in the abstract, whether with or without reference to 
 Population, constitutes a legitimate basis of the elective or repre- 
 sentative franchise. The true principle is, that UNEQUAL 
 PROPERTY property because and forasmuch as it is unequal, 
 requires, and therefore in the Idea and Theory of every free State 
 pre-supposes, an elective representation for the protection and 
 support of that very inequality. Inequality is a term in the 
 position, by the omission of which, that which otherwise is a 
 profound and pregnant Principle, becomes at once a delusive 
 and pernicious Sophism, destructive of every imaginable form 
 of constitutional government, that rises above the dead level of 
 Democracy. This principle is involved and actualized in the 
 infinite variety of elective franchise prevailing in our boroughs ; 
 by means of the diversity, ductility and expansiveness of which, 
 EVERY SORT OF PROPERTY, as and when the revolutions in 
 Commerce, Manufactures and State Finance, have at any time 
 given birth to new modes and conditions of wealth ; and 
 whether such property were small in amount or obnoxious in 
 kind ; has always had a ready access to that proportionate share 
 of influence in the supreme legislature, which the welfare of the 
 Nation at large demanded. But for this elastic and appliable 
 quality of the Borough franchise, how could those great con- 
 
10 
 
 stituent Interests of the Empire the Colonies, the Shipping, 
 and the Funds, which have, one and all, burst into existence 
 or importance since the last charter granted to a Borough, have 
 ever obtained any protecting representation in Parliament ? 
 It is because to boil a pot in a hired room in one place, to 
 pay church rates in another, to hold a quarter burgage at a 
 threepenny rent here, to marry a freeman's daughter or his 
 widow there, to serve an apprenticeship in A, or to be an 
 alderman in B, and so forth, constitute, in opposite corners 
 of England, a right to the elective franchise; that those forms 
 of property which are in themselves artificial, and rest exclu- 
 sively upon the credit given to them by the integrity of the 
 Nation, and those also which have no natural localities in 
 England, can with certainty find any direct protection in Par- 
 liament against the ever wakeful hostility of their enemies. 
 Moreover, by means of this wise diversity of franchise, the 
 whole body politic, from one extreme to the other, is pre- 
 served in harmony : the vast net-work of property which covers 
 the Empire is rendered sensitive to touch in its narrowest mesh : 
 the entire mass of the population is just so far fused as to pre- 
 vent its breaking into Classes : and it is felt, as a consequence, 
 in England, as it is not felt in France or in the American Union, 
 that though a man by accident of birth or fortune, may not in 
 his own person possess the elective franchise, his fellows in 
 various spots throughout the country do possess it : and that 
 though as a single individual he may not have a vote, neither 
 he nor any grown man in the nation is incapacitated as belong- 
 ing to a particular class. Hence it is that in England, where 
 the inequality and artificial nature of property are more striking 
 and extraordinary than in any other country in Europe, the 
 right to that property has been, and as yet is, beyond all esti- 
 mate, more sacred and sure than elsewhere throughout the world. 
 This was the principle involved, though, perhaps, not con- 
 stantly proposed, in the gradual creation of the English system 
 of Borough franchise. Its complexity of plan has produced 
 simplicity of operation ; its anomaly of particular form has 
 wrought a total harmony of spirit, which we may with a sorrow- 
 ful confidence predict, can never be preserved without it. But 
 what does this Ministerial Bill of Reform propose to do in its 
 promised restoration of the spirit of the old law ? In ignorance, 
 or in contempt of the foregoing Truths, which the best man in 
 
11 
 
 the Government is hereby respectfully challenged to disprove, 
 those very peculiarities of the system, which constituted its 
 chief utility to the state, are to be utterly abolished, and in 
 their place an unbending and empirical qualification of 10/. 
 annual house rent is to be established every where; a quali- 
 fication, in defence of which one argument, and ONE ONLY, has 
 been offered by its proposers " THAT A LINEMUST BE DRAWN 
 SOMEWHERE!" Happy argument! which, if there be truth in 
 Aristotle, would be as good for a qualification at any sum, from 
 a penny to 1,000/. a year ! Fortunate England ! whose wise states- 
 men, in this memorable crisis of her fate, can count as far as 
 ten, and at least preserve their Arithmetic, when so many have 
 forgotten their Philosophy! Be it so : but the question is, will 
 Arithmetic dam the torrent? Will Decimals SAVE us? Will a 
 line of 101. house rent serve as well as the old known system, 
 in giving effective utterance to the voice of those novel, un- 
 territorial, intangible, unpopular., interests ; which, nevertheless, 
 it is a point of life or death to the power and glory of England to 
 cherish or neglect ? Will Ministers undertake to say, that under 
 this proposed change in the Borough franchise, coupled with the 
 proposed changes in the County franchise, will they undertake 
 to say that, under their new system of things, the interests of the 
 Eastern and Western Colonies, the interests of the commercial 
 Ship-owners, the interests of the public Creditor, will have 
 as certain means of procuring to themselves a direct Repre- 
 sentation in Parliament, as now they have ? If Ministers cannot 
 undertake for this ; if they must own that the access which 
 these Interests now possess to Parliament will inevitably be 
 obstructed ; if the very terms of the proposition involve the 
 certainty of such a result; then then (it is the voice of one 
 man only that speaks, but it is the meaning of myriads, at home 
 and abroad, who cannot articulate their fear and their astonish- 
 ment) for Mercy's sake, while it is yet time, let every man 
 whose Heart is not hardened, whose Understanding is not de- 
 praved, by the ferocious sophistry of a demagogic Press, lay 
 to his hand, and check the mad chariot of Ministerial Revo- 
 lution, before it drags the peace of England to the very edge ! 
 
 But now, for the sake of argument, let us wave any further 
 discussion of the propriety of the Principles, (allowing them 
 that honorable but much dishonored name!) upon which the 
 Ministers profess to ground their Plan of Reform : and let us 
 
12 
 
 examine with some attention the nature of the Enactments 
 themselves, their faithfulness to the pretended Principle, and 
 their consistency one with another, and each with all. Even 
 if we objected to the premiss, we might expect from Statesmen 
 a logical conclusion, and from Lawyers a legal definition. Let 
 us see if we get either in this famous Bill! POPULATION and 
 PROPERTY are the twin Stars by which our wise Legislators say 
 that they have steered their ship, although it should seem that 
 much of the voyage has been performed during alternate eclipses 
 of these auspicious lights. For the purpose of displaying some 
 of the aberrations in a practical shape, it will be convenient 
 to print the entire Bill, and to accompany its leading clauses 
 with a few appropriate notes : and should such a dealing with 
 this document be in truth a breach of privileges, which the 
 author respects from his heart, it is humbly hoped that the 
 moderation which permitted one half of the Commons of 
 England to be publicly denounced as " HIRED LACQUIES " with 
 impunity, will not take fire at this innocuous exercise of mere 
 scholastic criticism. The Bill is exactly as follows : 
 
 PREAMBLE OF THE BILL. 
 
 " WHEREAS it is expedient to take effectual measures for 
 correcting divers abuses that have long prevailed in the choice of 
 Members to serve in the Commons House of Parliament, to 
 diminish the expense of Elections, to deprive many inconsiderable 
 places of the right of returning Members, to grant such privilege 
 to large, populous and wealthy towns, to increase the number of 
 Knights of the Shire, and to extend the Elective Franchise to 
 many of His Majesty's subjects who have not heretofore enjoyed the 
 same ; 
 
 BE IT ENACTED, by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by 
 and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and 
 Temporal, and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and 
 by the authority of the same, 
 
 SECT. 1. 
 
 *' THAT the Boroughs enumerated in Schedule (A.) to this Act 
 annexed, shall cease, after the end of this present Parliament, to 
 return Members to serve in Parliament, and that no writ or precept 
 shall be issued or sent to any of the said Boroughs to return Member* 
 to serve in any future Parliament." 
 
SCHEDULE (A). 
 
 BOROUGHS. 
 
 COUNTY. 
 
 BOROUGHS. 
 
 COUNTY. 
 
 ALDBOROUGH . . 
 Aldeburgh . . . 
 
 York. 
 Suffolk. 
 Westmoreland. 
 Wilts. 
 Devonshire. 
 Salop. 
 Surrey. 
 Yorkshire. 
 Cornwall. 
 Northampton. 
 Sussex. 
 Buckinghamshire. 
 Cornwall. 
 Ditto. 
 Norfolk. 
 Dorsetshire. 
 Suffolk. 
 Ditto. 
 Cornwall. 
 Surrey. 
 Ditto. 
 York. 
 Wilts. 
 Northampton. 
 Wilts. 
 Somersetshire. 
 Cornwall. 
 Ditto. 
 Ditto. 
 Wilts. 
 Wilts. 
 
 
 Sussex. 
 Somersetshire. 
 Ditto. 
 Cornwall. 
 Lancashire. 
 Isle of Wight. 
 Devonshire. 
 Suffolk. 
 Hants. 
 Devonshire. 
 Kent. 
 Surrey. 
 Kent. 
 Cornwall. 
 
 Ditto. 
 
 Ditto. 
 
 Wilts. 
 Sussex. 
 Ditto. 
 Hants. 
 Cornwall. 
 Dorsetshire. 
 Bucks. 
 Herefordshire. 
 Hants. 
 Sussex. 
 Oxfordshire. 
 Wilts. 
 I. of Wight, Hants. 
 
 Milborne Port . . 
 Minehead 
 
 Bedwin (Great) . 
 Berealston .... 
 Bishop's Castle . 
 Blechingley 
 Boroughbridge . . 
 
 
 Newton . 
 
 Newtown (Hants) 
 Okehampton . . . 
 Orford 
 
 Petersfield . . 
 
 Brackley 
 
 
 Bramber 
 
 Queenborough . . 
 Reigate . . . 
 
 Buckingham . . 
 Callington .... 
 Cam el ford ..... 
 
 Romney (New) . 
 St. Mawe's 
 St. Michael's oiO 
 Midshall.../ 
 Saltash 
 
 Castle Rising . . 
 Corfe Castle 
 Dunwich ..... . 
 Eye 
 
 Old Sarum 
 Seaford . 
 
 Fowey 
 
 Gatton 
 
 Steyning .... 
 
 Haslemere .... 
 Hedon . ... 
 
 Stockbridge .... 
 Tresronv . 
 
 Heytesbury .... 
 Higham Ferrers 
 Hindon 
 
 Wareham 
 
 
 Weobly 
 
 Ilchester 
 East Looe 
 
 Whitchurch .... 
 Winchelsea .... 
 Woodstock 
 Wootton Bassett 
 Yarmouth 
 
 West Looe .... 
 Lostwithiel 
 Ludgershall .... 
 Malmesbury . . . 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 The PRINCIPLE upon which these sixty Boroughs are to be 
 entirely disfranchised, is this : that places not having 2,000 
 inhabitants ought not to return members to Parliament. Be 
 it so! How is this PRINCIPLE carried into execution? By 
 selecting for condemnation now sixty places which had not 
 the required amount of population ten complete years ago ! 
 So that it comes to pass that, at the very least, nine of these 
 towns that is to say, Great Bedwin, Bishop's Castle, Brackley, 
 Buckingham, Eye, Okehampton, St. Michael's, Wareham, and 
 Wootton Bassett, every one of which, it can be incontestably 
 proved at the bar of the House of Commons, does actually now 
 contain more than 2,000 inhabitant;*-- are to be disfranchised, 
 
14 
 
 expressly and eo nomine, because they do not contain 2,000 
 inhabitants ! In plain English thus : " Whereas it is expedient 
 to deprive all Boroughs not containing 2,000 inhabitants of 
 the right of returning members to Parliament; and whereas 
 Great Bedwin, &c. do, as a matter of fact, actually contain 
 2,000 inhabitants; THEREFORE be it enacted, that after the 
 end of this present Parliament, Great Bedwin, &c. shall cease 
 to send Members," &c. A pretty argal, truly! If a stranger, 
 as the phrase is, should ask a reason for this monstrous incon- 
 sistency, this conclusion directly at war with its true premiss, 
 there is this satisfactory account of the matter to be given, that 
 Ministers were afraid, if they waited a few months more, for 
 the completion of the census of 1831, that they might give 
 occasion to trickery in the returning officers, and, perhaps, be 
 themselves subject to charges of partiality. A tremendous 
 experiment is to be tried upon the representative system of this 
 great nation : changes, the consequences of which are incal- 
 culable, are to be made at once, and for ever: Population is 
 professed as the guide and the rule of the innovators, and then 
 the charters of numerous Boroughs are destroyed, against which 
 no charge of misfeasance is so much as pretended, and the 
 population of which does actually come up to, and exceed the 
 prescribed minimum, simply because it has been thought proper 
 to protect the character of Ministers, by referring entirely to an 
 obsolete census, against the chance of imputations of unfair 
 dealing! Is the character of Ministers, even such great Mini- 
 sters as ours of so much importance as all this? 
 
 Well ! but why is Berealston to be entirely disfranchised, 
 when it appears by the very census of 1821 to contain 2,198 
 inhabitants ? Is not this census to be followed throughout? 
 
 But let it be granted that Ministers were in the right in 
 taking the census of 1821 as the standard of population, and 
 in thereby disfranchising sixty boroughs as not containing 
 2,000 inhabitants ; when, in fact, at the time of their disfran- 
 chisement many of them do contain that number: let this be 
 granted ; and it surely must be conceded also, that if you may 
 go back ten years for so ungracious an act as enfranchisement, 
 you ought in equity and in common good faith to provide for 
 an increase in the next ten years, and in all successive time, 
 for the purpose of preserving or reviving the franchise ! But no ! 
 this is to be a permanent settlement ; this Bill is to set the 
 
15 
 
 question of representation at rest FOR EVER ! Why ? Upon 
 what grounds of justice or consistency ? You take population 
 as a rule, and yet make no provision for the inevitable increase 
 of population ! You disregard all vested rights; you treat all 
 Prescription as a fable, all Charter as a farce ; you take your 
 stand on Population, and you disfranchise A. expressly be- 
 cause it comes short of your qualification, and then go on to 
 exclude it for ever, (for such is your profession !) although you 
 well know that in a very few years A. will exceed the limit of 
 your qualification ! And men can be found who have the 
 effrontery to declare solemnly that they mean and consider this 
 grossly inconsistent, this flagrantly unjust measure to be a 
 PERMANENT SETTLEMENT of the question ! Will this be en- 
 dured ? 
 
 But an objection remains of a much more serious character, 
 and to which, if the law of England is still to be allowed any 
 weight in this awful crisis, the deepest consideration is due. 
 
 And hereupon I humbly, but most solemnly, deny that the 
 House of Commons has any CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY to 
 disfranchise these Boroughs upon a principle of Expediency 
 alone, without delinquencies proved, and without the parties 
 being heard by counsel at the bar. 
 
 And I say that the right to vote in these Boroughs, whether 
 it be in respect of tenure in burgage, or in respect of chartered 
 franchise, is one of those rights and privileges which are the 
 PROPERTY AND INHERITANCE of such Englishmen as for the 
 time being possess them, and that there is no power known to 
 the Constitution by which these rights can lawfully or justly be 
 destroyed, AGAINST THE WILL OF THE SUBJECT, WITHOUT 
 
 COMPENSATION, AND WITHOUT HIS BEING HEARD BY 
 COUNSEL. 
 
 The right to vote in respect of Burgage Tenure may be a 
 TRUST ; but it is such a trust as the Law considers to be coupled 
 with an INTEREST. 
 
 It is an INTEREST, the obstruction of which is a Damnum 
 cum Injuna, for which the Common Law gives' compensation in 
 pecuniary damages. 
 
 Lord Holt, in the case of Ashby v. White, in the King's 
 Bench, I Salk. 19, and afterwards upon writ of error in the 
 House of Lords, where his opinion was supported and esta- 
 blished by a great majority, declared that " in Boroughs they 
 
16 
 
 have a right to vote ratione Burgagii ; and that in Cities and 
 Corporations it is a Personal Inheritance, and vested in the 
 whole corporation : but to be used and exercised by the par- 
 ticular members : and that such a franchise cannot be granted 
 but to a Corporation. And this is not a MINIMUM IN LEGE, 
 but a NOBLE PRIVILEGE, which entitles him to a share in the 
 Government and Legislature." 
 
 If there is no precedent of the House of Commons attempting 
 to disfranchise even a Borough accused of delinquent practices, 
 without hearing the Borough by counsel, HOW can the House 
 of Commons now, with justice, and without violation of the 
 law and usage of Parliament, pass an act for the utter annihi- 
 lation of SIXTY, and the partial disfranchisement of FORTY- 
 EIGHT* Boroughs, the sole delinquency of which is the cominy 
 short of an arbitrary amount of population in 1821, without 
 hearing the interests so affected by counsel ? 
 
 If there is no precedent of the House of Commons attempting 
 to pass an act for pulling down a house, cutting a canal, or 
 opening a road, without hearing counsel, and providing for 
 compensation ; HOW can the House of Commons now destroy 
 rights vested in Corporations, which rights the law declares to 
 be Interests, and for the partial obstruction of the exercise of 
 which, it gives DAMAGES ? 
 
 The case of the disfranchisement of the Irish Forty-shilling 
 Freeholders, if that case should deserve imitation, went upon 
 other grounds, which were openly asserted at the time. Nine- 
 tenths of these Freeholders Roman Catholics accepted the 
 compensation of national Emancipation, for the abstraction of 
 a particular privilege. The disfranchisement of the remaining 
 tenth, who were Protestants, became a necessary peace-offering. 
 But is this a precedent to follow ? 
 
 Hear an authority, whose prejudices will not be suspected 
 on this subject JUNIUS. Letter to Wilkes, 7th Sept. 1771. 
 
 " As to cutting away the rotten Boroughs, I am as much 
 offended as any man at seeing so many of them under the direct 
 influence of the Crown, or at the disposal of private persons; 
 yet I own I have both doubts and apprehensions in regard to 
 the remedy you propose. I shall be charged perhaps with an 
 unusual want of political intrepidity, when I honestly confess 
 
 * Including Weymouth and Meloombe Rpgis. 
 
25 
 
 107. or upwards, is not subjected to the action of the Committee 
 of the Privy Council, under the 22d Section, it is presumed 
 it is considered sufficiently democratic already. 
 
 SECT. 6. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That after the end of this present Par- 
 liament, each of the Places named in Schedule (F.) to this Act 
 annexed, shall have a share in the election of Burgesses to serve in 
 Parliament, for the Shire, Town, or Borough to which such place 
 is annexed in the said Schedule (F.) ; and that every person having 
 the right of voting in any of the said places previously to the 
 passing of this Act, or acquiring such right by virtue of this Act, 
 shall and may give his vote in respect thereof at the place in which 
 he resides, before the Mayor or other chief officer of the place, who 
 shall transmit the poll taken before him to the Returning Officer 
 of the Shire, Town, or Borough to which such place may be 
 joined for the purposes of Election. 
 
 SCHEDULE (F.) 
 
 Places sharing in the Election 
 of Burgesses. 
 
 Shire Town or Principal 
 Borough. 
 
 County in which such 
 Boroughs are situated. 
 
 Holyhead . . 
 
 Beaumaris 
 
 Anglesey 
 
 Aberystwith ) 
 
 
 
 Lampeter, and > 
 
 Cardigan 
 
 Cardian. 
 
 Adpar .... j 
 
 
 
 
 Caet mar then 
 
 Caermarthen 
 
 Pwllheli . } 
 
 
 
 Newin * f 
 
 
 
 
 Caernarvon 
 
 Caernarvon. 
 
 
 
 
 Ruthin ") 
 
 
 
 Holt ( 
 
 Denbigh 
 
 Denbigh 
 
 
 
 
 Rhyddlan . . . 
 
 
 
 Overton j 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Flint 
 
 Flint. 
 
 Holywell | 
 
 
 
 Mold J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Merthyr Tydvil ... I 
 
 Cardiff 
 
 
 Aberdare 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Qy. Nevin Bach 
 
 t Qy. Caergwrle. 
 
26 
 
 SCHEDULE (F.) Continued. 
 
 Places sharing in the Election 
 of Burgesses. 
 
 Shire Town or Principal 
 Borough. 
 
 County in which such 
 Boroughs are situated. 
 
 
 
 
 Welsh Pool 
 
 
 
 Machynleth L 
 
 IVtontfironiery 
 
 Montgomery. 
 
 Llanfylling ... . . 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Narberth A 
 
 
 
 St. David's / 
 
 
 
 
 Haverfordwest . . . . 
 
 Pembroke. 
 
 Milford Haven ) 
 
 
 
 Tenbv . ) 
 
 
 
 WiVnn I 
 
 
 Pembroke. 
 
 
 
 
 Ryador* 
 
 
 
 Kevinleece . > 
 
 Radnor 
 
 Radnor. 
 
 Knucklasf ( 
 
 
 
 Presteigne J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 What a delightful state of confusion will the Welsh Boroughs 
 be thrown into by these alterations ! 
 
 SECT. 7. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That no person shall, after the end of this 
 present Parliament, have the right of voting at the Election of 
 Members to serve for the Town of Caernarvon, in respect of any 
 supposed right of voting in the place called Criccieth. 
 
 SECT. 8. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the Towns of Swansea, Laugharne, 
 Neath, Aberaven, and Ken Fig, shall, after the end of this present 
 Parliament, for the purposes of this Act, be taken as One Borough, 
 and shall return One Member to serve in Parliament ; and no person 
 by reason of any right accruing in any of the places last named 
 shall have any vote in the Election of Members for the Borough of 
 Cardiff; and that the votes shall in such Elections be taken at the 
 town or place within which the persons having the right of voting 
 shall severally reside, by the Mayor or other municipal officer of 
 
 * Qy. Rhayader. 
 
 Is a forest. 
 
27 
 
 such town or place, who shall transmit the poll taken before him to 
 the Portreeve of Swansea, who shall be the returning officer for the 
 said Borough. 
 
 SECT. 9. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the persons described in the 
 column of the said several Schedules (C.) (D.) and (E.) shall be the 
 persons to whom all writs and precepts shall, after the end of this 
 present Parliament, be directed, and shall be the Returning Officers 
 for the Elections of Members to serve in Parliament for the said 
 towns and places." 
 
 Who are to be the returning officers for t\\e parish of Halifax ; 
 the district of Greenwich, Deptford, and Woolwich ; the 
 district of Sunderland and the Wearmouths; the district of 
 Devonport, Stoke Damerell and Stonehouse ; the Tower 
 Hamlets !! (Qy. the Duke of Wellington ?) ; the district of 
 the Finsbury Division, Ossulston Hundred, and parishes of 
 St. Andrew, Holborn, St. George the Martyr, Saffron Hilly 
 Hatton Garden, Ely Rents, (which are not parishes, but 
 parts of St. Andrew's parish) St. Giles in. the Fields, and St. 
 George, Bloomsbury ? 
 
 Who is to embody the majesty of Mary-le-bone, St. Pancras, 
 and Paddington ? and who of Lambeth, Newington, Ber- 
 mondsey, and dear good Redriff? Were but one shred or 
 scion of Captain Lemuel alive ! 
 
 Who is to be the Triton of these minnows ? Why is this 
 kept a secret ? In this great revolution in the face of things 
 it is quite refreshing to see how the humblest officers known to 
 the Constitution are in request with our Ministers. They 
 impound a stray bailiff or constable like a transgressing donkey ; 
 and if he happens to be a High Constable, they take good care 
 of his Highness in print. Now in Blackburn, which Parish 
 is more than twenty miles in length, there are twenty-two Town- 
 ships, and every township hath a Constable, and one is as good 
 as another. Which, O which, shall be raised to the returning 
 throne ? Who is to pay the elevated individual, and who is to 
 have the patronage ? 
 
 There was an odd story in the newspapers a week or two 
 ago. A gentleman living at Kentish Town hud a tumour upon 
 
28 
 
 his nose. He was a middle-aged man, healthy, up to his daily 
 business, and very good looking withal. But he could not 
 rest for his tumour. Some French ladies had quizzed it. It 
 was to no purpose that some old friends, and amongst them 
 one or two medical men, acquainted with his constitution, 
 assured him that the tumour was a trifle, probably not without 
 its use in preserving his general health, and that a violent re- 
 moval might be dangerous. The tumour did not look well, 
 and that was enough to send the gentleman to Sir Astley : 
 " Can you remove this excrescence, Sir ?" " To be sure 1 can," 
 said Cooper; " we can remove any thing with the proper in- 
 struments ; but this is a mere nothing. Do you wish to be rid 
 of it ?" " Yes ! " answered the afflicted man. Sir Astley ope- 
 rated, as he always operates, like a gentleman ; a cut a few 
 tears a little blood the tumour was off> and our friend re- 
 stored to his original beauty. All gratitude to Sir Astley ; 
 greatest of surgeons ! ought to have a patent for removing 
 tumours from noses ! 
 
 When the middle-aged and restored gentleman got home, he 
 feasted his eyes on the mirror. All smooth and symmetrical. 
 He went out ; nothing but congratulations from his French 
 neighbours and the Spanish Refugees. His happiness was com- 
 plete, and his health now permanent. But after a week had 
 passed, some symptoms of inflammation appeared; bleeding 
 prescribed ; much weakened without lowering the fever, till, 
 three days afterwards, he awoke one morning, and, to his horror, 
 found that his whole face was covered with ERYSIPELAS ! 
 
 SECT. 10. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That no person shall be entitled to vote at 
 the Election of a Knight of the Shire to serve in any future Par- 
 liament, in respect of any house by reason of the occupation 
 whereof he or any other person shall be entitled to vote for any 
 City or Borough." 
 
 SECT. 11. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That from and after the end of this present 
 Parliament, every male person of fall age and not subject to any 
 legal incapacity, seised of and in any lands or tenements for an 
 
29 
 
 estate for life, or for any larger estate of at least the yearly value of 
 Ten pounds above reprises, holden by copy of court roll of the lord 
 or lady of any manor, or by any customary tenure, and every 
 person holding lands or tenements by lease for any term not less 
 than years, whereon a yearly rent of not less than 
 
 Fifty pounds shall be reserved, shall have a right to vote in the 
 Election of Knights of the Shire in all future Parliaments ; provided 
 that no leaseholder shall enjoy such right by virtue of any lease 
 renewable every year, or which shall have been renewed within Two 
 years preceding the registration to be made in manner hereinafter 
 directed : Provided always, That nothing herein contained shall 
 take away or in any manner affect the right of voting for Knights 
 of the Shire, at present enjoyed by any person, and which may here- 
 after accrue to any person, according to the laws now in force, in 
 respect to freehold property, rent charges, annuities, or any other 
 right of voting now by law enjoyed in relation to the Election of 
 Knights of the Shire." 
 
 The main subject of this latter clause has been so fully dis- 
 cussed in the preliminary remarks, that it is not necessary to 
 point out a second time the inconsistencies and legal inaccura- 
 cies into which Ministers have fallen ; but will they have the 
 goodness to explain to the public by what ingenious construc- 
 tion it is proposed to reconcile the enactment contained in the 
 tenth section with the express and unqualified provision con- 
 tained in the eleventh section? Which do they mean? To 
 allow County voting for houses in Boroughs, or to destroy it? 
 If the latter, they must alter the provision in the eleventh 
 clause, which in strict terms preserves it. 
 
 SECT. 12. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That after the end of this present Parlia- 
 ment, every person owning or holding any lands or tenements situate 
 within Cities or Towns being counties of themselves, described in 
 Schedule (G.) to this Act annexed (which lands or tenements would, 
 if situated in a county not being a city or town which is a county of 
 itself, entitle the owner or holder thereof to vote) shall be entitled to 
 vote at any Election for the Knights of the Shire named in the said 
 Schedule (G.) respectively." 
 
30 
 
 SCHEDULE (G.) 
 
 COUNTIES of Cities or Towns. 
 
 COUNTIES 
 
 For which the Freeholders, Copy- 
 holders, and Leaseholders 
 are to Vote. 
 
 Bristol 
 
 Canterbury , 
 
 Chester 
 
 Coventry 
 
 Exeter , 
 
 Gloucester 
 
 Kingston-upon-Hull , 
 
 Lichfield 
 
 Newcastle-upon-Ty ne . 
 
 Norwich , 
 
 Nottingham 
 
 Poole , 
 
 Southampton 
 
 Worcester , 
 
 York . 
 
 Somerset. 
 
 Kent. 
 
 Cheshire. 
 
 Warwick. 
 
 Devon. 
 
 Gloucestershire. 
 
 Yorkshire, East Riding. 
 
 Staffordshire. 
 
 Northumberland. 
 
 Norfolk. 
 
 Nottinghamshire. 
 
 Dorset. 
 
 Southampton. 
 
 Worcestershire. 
 
 Yorkshire, North Riding. 
 
 Now for one moment consider the exquisite, the super-subtle 
 absurdity of this precious clause. 
 
 By Sect. 10, no person is to vote in county elections in respect 
 of a house which gives a vote for a Borough ! 
 
 By Sect. 11, every right of voting for Knights of the Shire at 
 present enjoyed by any person, or which may hereafter accrue 
 to any person, according to the LAWS NOW IN FORCE, in re- 
 spect of Freehold Property, Rent Charges, Annuities, or ANY 
 OTHER RIGHT NOW BY LAW ENJOYED in relation to the 
 election of Knights of the Shire, is to remain, and in no manner 
 to be taken away or affected ! ! 
 
 Then, by Sect. 12, in fifteen cities and towns which happen to 
 be what is called counties of themselves, the Freeholders ARE 
 to vote in the counties in which such towns are locally situated ! 
 and the effect will be this ; THAT whilst the Freeholders of 
 Kingston-upon-Hull, and of York will be allowed to augment 
 the immense constituency of Yorkshire, the Freeholders of 
 Manchester and Liverpool will be excluded from any interest 
 in that of Lancashire, of which county they, in fact, constitute 
 the main-stay ! 
 
31 
 
 Is it possible that Passion can so blind the very meanest 
 man in England, that he will consent to be legislated for at this 
 
 rate ! 
 
 SECT. 13. 
 
 " Provided also, and be it hereby Enacted, That no person shall 
 vote for any Member to serve in any future Parliament, in respect 
 of the ownership or possession of any lands or tenements, unless he 
 shall have been seised or possessed thereof for the space of Thirty 
 days at least before the registration (to be made in manner herein- 
 after directed) last before the Election at which he shall claim 
 to vote." 
 
 Tenements. This word will include the house of 23. 
 How will the thirty days here^ and the six months there., agree ? 
 
 Again ; is it intended by this clause to repeal the exceptions 
 contained in the 18th Geo. II. c. 18, 5, in favor of descent, 
 marriage, marriage-settlement, devise, &c. ? If so, why is it 
 not so stated clearly, and some sufficient reason given for 
 changing the well-known principle of the law upon this subject ? 
 
 SECT. 14. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That each of the Counties enumerated in 
 Schedule (H.) to this Act annexed, to be divided in manner here- 
 inafter particularly directed, shall in like manner choose and return 
 Four Knights of the Shire instead of two, to serve in all future 
 Parliaments for the same respectively." 
 
 SCHEDULE (H.) 
 
 COUNTIES TO RETURN EACH FOUR MEMBERS. 
 
 Chester. 
 
 Cornwall. 
 
 Cumberland. 
 
 Derby. 
 
 Devon. 
 
 Durham. 
 
 Essex. 
 
 Gloucester. 
 
 Kent. 
 
 Lancaster. 
 
 Leicester. 
 
 Norfolk. 
 
 Northumberland. 
 
 Northampton. 
 
 Nottingham. 
 
 Salop. 
 
 Somerset. 
 
 Southampton. 
 
 Stafford. 
 
 Suffolk. 
 
 Surrey. 
 
 Sussex. 
 
 Warwick. 
 
 Wilts. 
 
 Worcester. 
 
3-2 
 
 SECT. 15. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That in all future Parliaments there shall be 
 Mix Knights of the Shire instead of four, to serve for the County of 
 York, that is to say, Two Members for each of the Three Ridings of 
 the said County, to be elected in such manner and by the same 
 classes and descriptions of voters, and in respect of the same several 
 rights of voting as if each of the Three Ridings were a county of 
 itself." 
 
 SECT. 16. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That in all future Parliaments there shall 
 be Four Knights of the Shire instead of two, to serve for the County 
 of Lincoln, that is to say, Two for the parts of Lindsey in the said 
 County, and Two for the parts of Holland and the parts of Kesteven 
 in the same County ; and that such Four Members shall be chosen 
 in the same manner and by the same classes and descriptions of 
 voters, and in respect of the same several rights of voting as if the 
 said parts of Lindsey were a separate county, and the said parts of 
 Holland and Kesteven together were also a separate county." 
 
 SECT. 17. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That in like manner all persons now 
 having or who would by virtue of this Act acquire the right of 
 voting in Elections for Knights of the Shire for the County of 
 Southampton, by reason of the ownership or possession of any lands 
 or tenements situate within the Isle of Wight, shall in all future 
 Parliaments cease to vote in such Election for the County at large, 
 in respect of such ownership or possession, and shall be entitled to 
 choose One Member to serve for the Isle of Wight, and that all 
 Elections for the same shall be holden at the town of Newport in the 
 Isle of Wight." 
 
 SECT. 18. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That a Committee of the Lords of His 
 Majesty's Most honorable Privy Council, to be selected and named 
 by His Majesty under His Royal sign manual, shall within Three 
 months of the passing of this Act, inquire into and determine in 
 what manner the said Counties enumerated in Schedule (H.) to this 
 
33 
 
 Act annexed, shall thereafter be divided, for the Election of Knights 
 of the Shire to serve in all future Parliaments ; and shall have the 
 power of uniting and incorporating with any County, or any 
 division of a County to be by them made (for the purposes of 
 Election only) any outlying portions of any other County which 
 may be locally situate within the former, and shall make a report to 
 His Majesty in Council ; and it shall be lawful for His Majesty to 
 issue His Royal Proclamation, making known the determination and 
 report of the said Committee, and such reports shall forthwith be 
 laid before both Houses of Parliament." 
 
 SECT. 19. 
 
 "' And be it Enacted, That the said Committee shall also in their 
 said report determine at what places respectively all Elections of 
 Knights of the Shire to serve in all future Parliaments for the 
 respective divisions of the said Counties, when so divided, shall 
 be holden." 
 
 SECT. 20. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That after such division and incorporation 
 of the said Counties shall have been proclaimed as hereinbefore 
 mentioned, any person claiming and having the right to vote, after 
 the end of this present Parliament, for a Knight of the Shire to 
 serve in Parliament, shall vote only for that division of the said 
 County in which the property in respect of which he claims to vote 
 shall be situate." 
 
 The proposition contained in the first of these clauses is so 
 monstrous, that it has excited the serious disapprobation 
 of the most determined friends of the Bill in general. It is 
 believed, indeed, that Ministers will not pretend to defend it, 
 and therefore it is unnecessary to waste time and labor, when 
 both are precious, in exposing the unconstitutional nature of 
 this unprecedented Commission. But it may just be remarked, 
 that the enactment proposes an absolute impossibility. What ! 
 inquire into and determine in what manner twenty-seven 
 counties, all over England, shall be equally divided; and 
 settle questions of out-lying parcels, in THREE MONTHS! Do 
 the men capable of effecting this yet lie hidden in the Privy 
 Council list ? It may be safely said, that no man in the empire 
 
 E 
 
34 
 
 could do this work fairly, observe, and carefully in less 
 than as many years ! Besides, how are Privy Councillors to be 
 remunerated for this arduous undertaking ? Is the country to 
 pay them with its love or its money ? At least it is worth a 
 thought even from Mr. Hume. 
 
 As to the twentieth clause, is a man, having separate free- 
 holds in each of the proposed divisions of a county, to vote 
 in each division ? If so, and so it stands upon the Bill, in 
 twenty-six counties of England the constituency may, by pos- 
 sibility, be doubled, and in Yorkshire, trebled. 
 
 In fact, these sections, from 14 to 20, leave it in complete 
 obscurity whether the Members are to be elected by the whole 
 County, or by the respective divisions only. 
 
 Sect. 14. Each County in Schedule (H.) is to choose and 
 return four Knights of the Shire, instead of two, to serve 
 for the same, i. e. the Shire. 
 
 Seet. 19. The Knights are to serve for the divisions of the 
 said counties. 
 
 Am I, in short, to have four votes for the four Members for 
 Devon, or am I to have only two votes for the two Members, 
 or even one vote for the one Member for the division in which 
 my freehold lies? If the latter, so far from this Toeing a 
 boon, I am positively injured by having my right to concur in 
 the election of a Representative for all Devonshire cut down 
 to a vote for the South Hams, or the division of Barnstaple, 
 Bridport, &c. 
 
 SECT. 21. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That another Committee of His Majesty's 
 Most honorable Privy Council, to be named by His Majesty under 
 His sign manual, shall inquire into and determine the limits and 
 boundaries of all the Cities and Boroughs in England and Wales 
 having the right of sending Members to Parliament, and shall have 
 power to annex unto and incorporate with any City or Borough, any 
 parish or township locally situated within such City or Borough or 
 thereto adjoining, or any outlying portion of any parish or township 
 which may happen to be locally situate beyond the limits of such 
 City or Borough respectively, and shall on or before the 
 
 next, after the passing of this Act, lay 
 before His Majesty in Council a report of such their determination ; 
 
35 
 
 and it shall be lawful for His Majesty to issue His Royal Procla- 
 mation, making known the said determination and report of the 
 said Committee, from the date of which Proclamation such Cities 
 and Boroughs shall be and remain bounded and limited, annexed 
 and incorporated respectively according to such determination as 
 aforesaid; and the said report shall forthwith be laid before both 
 Houses of Parliament.'' 
 
 If the Commission proposed in the eighteenth section be 
 unconstitutional and impracticable, what shall we say to this 
 second attempt ? Are Ministers seriously aware, that some of 
 the most difficult, the most important questions, touching cor- 
 porate property^ corporate privileges^ and corporate liabilities, 
 that have ever, or can ever, come into the Courts of Westminster 
 Hall, depend entirely upon the legal boundaries of City and 
 Borough precincts ? Nothing can be more unsettled, for 
 example, than the precise limits of London; and will the 
 Government of this country declare in Parliament, upon their 
 responsibility, that they intend that a Committee of the Privy 
 Council shall summarily, without a jury, decide by a judgment 
 upon which no writ of error can be brought, causes of such 
 weight, complexity and interest as those by which the limits of 
 St. Andrew, Holborn, and St. Dunstan in the West, have 
 recently been fixed on the side of Lincoln's Inn ? If it does so 
 intend, then we humbly ask, whether Impeachment has been 
 given up ? To advise the King to name a Committee, most of 
 whom would know nothing of the law, who would proceed 
 compulsorily against all Corporate Towns, would enforce a 
 production of muniments^ and a discovery of grounds of 'title , 
 and would pronounce definitively, and without appeal, upon 
 thousands of questions, in which the rights and the property of 
 chartered bodies and of private persons would be essentially 
 involved, this is a sort of advice which would have been con- 
 sidered in a very serious light by the leaders of the Revolution, 
 and for very much less than a tenth part of which some 
 Ministers have been brought to the block ! But the fact is, 
 the proposition is absurd and impossible of execution ; for it 
 may be confidently assumed that, however short-sighted or 
 passionate the partizans of Ministers may be in their advocacy 
 of this miserable Bill, there would still be so much personal 
 honor and love of justice in gentlemen of the rank of Privy 
 
36 
 
 Councillors, with respect to matters of property between party 
 and party, that not three of them would be found to take upon 
 themselves a jurisdiction, for the honest exercise of which they 
 would know themselves to be utterly unfit ! And perhaps this 
 is all that needs be said upon this subject at present; epecially 
 as Ministers have found that in this point they have gone a 
 little too far ! 
 
 SECT. 22. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the said last-mentioned Committee of 
 the Lords of His Majesty's Most honorable Privy Council, shall, 
 within Three months after the passing of this Act, proceed to annex 
 to such Cities and Boroughs (except those enumerated in Schedule 
 (A.) as now have the privilege of sending Members to Parliament, 
 but do not contain more than three hundred houses, of the yearly 
 value of Ten pounds at least, or rated to the relief of the poor, or to 
 the duty assessed on inhabited houses at Ten pounds by the year at 
 least, any parish or township within which the said City or Borough 
 or any part thereof may lie, or any parish or township adjoining 
 thereto, or any outlying portions of any other parish or township 
 that may be locally situate within such City or Borough, or within 
 such annexed parish or township, parishes or townships, as such 
 Committee may deem convenient (for the purposes of Election only) ; 
 and every such City or Borough shall, jointly with such annexed 
 parish or township, parishes or townships, be a City or Borough for 
 the purpose of electing Members, and return such Member or 
 Members as they may be entitled respectively to return to serve in 
 all future Parliaments ; and the said last-mentioned Committee shall 
 make a report of their determination touching the said annexations 
 to His Majesty in Council, and it shall be lawful for His Majesty to 
 issue His Royal Proclamation, making known the said determination 
 and report of the said Committee, and the said report shall forthwith 
 be laid before both Houses of Parliament." 
 
 The same Committee of Privy Councillors, who are to settle 
 the boundaries of all the corporate towns in England and 
 Wales, as mentioned in the preceding clause, are directed by 
 this clause to proceed, within three months after the passing 
 of the Act (which God forbid!) to exercise a power, which, 
 if possible, is still more arbitrary and unconstitutional. With- 
 out any legal restriction without any rule prescribed by the 
 
37 
 
 Act itself, they are to annex to every remaining corporate town ? 
 not containing more than three hundred houses of 10/. yearly 
 value or rating, any parish or township, or portion of parish or 
 township, situate within or near to such Borough, as to the 
 Committee may seem proper. No limit is fixed to the amount 
 of the annexations ; the Borough may be made up to three 
 hundred, or six hundred houses, just as this extraordinary 
 Committee of Privy Councillors may, without reference, of 
 course, to party influence, absolutely determine ! 
 Now observe and perpend : 
 
 I. There are not less than EIGHTY-FIVE Boroughs (which 
 ore to remain by this Act) which will be incapable of exer- 
 cising any elective franchise, until this Committee of the Privy 
 Council shall have made up the number of their rated houses to 
 three hundred. For this astounding fact, see the Parliamentary 
 Return of this Session, No. 202. 
 
 II. With regard to about one-half of these eighty-five 
 Boroughs, it is a fact that all the rated houses in all the parishes 
 within SEVEN statute miles of each of such Boroughs, are not 
 sufficient to make up the prescribed number of three hundred ; 
 and with respect to some of them no less than twenty-two 
 Parishes, some parts of which will be near forty miles from the 
 Borough itself, must be annexed in order to supply the requi- 
 site amount of constituency. 
 
 III. With regard to three Welsh borough districts; to wit, 
 Beaurnaris, Cardigan, and Radnor, THERE ARE NOT THREE 
 
 HUNDRED RATED HOUSES IN THE WHOLE OF THE COUNTIES 
 IN WHICH THESE BOROUGHS ARE RESPECTIVELY SITU- 
 ATED !! See Return 202. 
 
 If the public be generally aware of the monstrous despotism 
 which this enactment involves, and if it be so blinded by faction 
 as to look upon this outrageous stretch of power with apathy, 
 yet will it endure such inconceivable stupidity and foolery as 
 this ? 
 
 And NOW what has become of your principle of having NO 
 OUT-VOTERS ? And does not this in fact conflict with the 
 whole Principle upon which the Boroughs are to be dis- 
 
38 
 
 franchisee! ? For, if Voters may be added to Population, why 
 may not Population be added to Voters ? 
 
 Perturbatur ibi totum ni corpus, et omnes 
 Commutantur ibi POSITUJLE 
 
 SECT. 23. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That in all Elections for Members to serve 
 in any future Parliament for Cities and Boroughs, every male person 
 of full age, and not subject to any legal incapacity, who shall have 
 occupied for Six months previous to the settlement of the registers 
 which are hereinafter directed to be made, any house within such 
 Cities and Boroughs of the clear yearly value of Ten pounds, or 
 bona fide subject to the yearly rent of Ten pounds, or which shall 
 have been for the same time rated to the relief of the poor, or to the 
 duty assessed upon inhabited houses, at a sum not less than Ten 
 pounds, shall have a right to vote for such Cities and Boroughs : 
 Provided always, That no person who shall not have been duly 
 registered according to the provisions hereinafter contained shall be 
 admitted to vote at such Election : Provided also, That every person 
 now having a right to vote in virtue of any corporate right, shall 
 retain such right for his life, and on being duly registered shall be 
 entitled to vote, provided every such person shall have resided for 
 Six months previous to the time of registration hereinafter directed, 
 within Seven statute miles of the usual place of election within such 
 city or borough ; and provided also, that any person now having a 
 right to vote by reason of OM^ning or occupying any tenement, shall 
 retain such right as long as he owns or occupies the same or any 
 other tenement in the same place, by reason of which ownership or 
 occupation he will have a right of voting by the laws or customs now 
 in force, and shall be allowed to vote, if duly registered, as here- 
 inafter directed." 
 
 This section, coupled with the third section, demands the 
 especial attention and meditation of every one who would fully 
 understand the nature and the extent of the revolution which 
 this Bill, if passed, will effect in the representative system of 
 this country. The reader is requested to consider for a moment 
 the Schedules (C.) and (D.), and to bear in mind that it is pro- 
 
39 
 
 posed to give a vote to every house of 10/. yearly value or rent 
 or rating in each of the places mentioned in those Schedules. 
 Now observe the effect. A few towns shall be taken at 
 random ; the same result will appear from an examination 
 of all. 
 
 . 
 
 Number of Houses of 101. 
 Rent and upwards. 
 
 Houses between 10. and 
 20J. rent. 
 
 Sheffield 
 
 1,556 
 
 1 083 
 
 
 4,177 
 
 2,594 
 
 Halifax 
 
 461 
 
 278 
 
 
 4,561 
 
 2,996 
 
 Tower Hamlets 
 
 26.282 
 4i4 
 
 12,788 
 316 
 
 Dudley * 
 
 437 
 
 306 
 
 
 
 
 The result is, that in these and generally in all the places 
 which are to return members to Parliament, two-thirds of the 
 voters will be persons holding houses from 107. to 201. value; 
 and this proportion nearly agrees with what is observable upon 
 the aggregate number of all the houses rated in England and 
 Wales. Thus there are 378,786 houses in England and Wales 
 rated at 101. and upwards; of these 116,030 are from 101. to 
 15/.; 66,394 from 15/. to 20J. ; and 74,499 from 20/. to 301. ; 
 showing that 256,928, or two-thirds of all the rated houses in 
 England and Wales are in the hands of men rated at less 
 than 30/. per annum. Hence " the majority of voters in every 
 town will belong to the very lowest class of houses, and, con- 
 sequently, the effective Representation of the WHOLE EMPIRE 
 will be thrown into the hands of one single class, and that, too, 
 a very narrow class of the NATION !"* the small Shopkeepers 
 precisely the most dependent race of men in the whole 
 empire! 
 
 But let it be granted that it is expedient in a country such 
 as this, some of the most vital interests of which are purely 
 artificial, others wholly without local connexion with Counties 
 or Boroughs, and others, though most necessary, most sacredly 
 guaranteed, generally unpopular with the lower orders of the 
 community and at a time like this, when the honored and 
 
 * Mr. Croker's Speech. 
 
40 
 
 honoring inter-dependence of a mitigated feudality has almost 
 universally been destroyed under the joint action of a mercenary 
 misuse of landed property, and a perverted poor law, when 
 the stiff, but magnificent robe which shrouds in its folds the 
 eternal distinctions of rich and poor has been rent violently 
 asunder, and the sharp edges of Wealth and Pauperism have 
 been brought into sheer collision ; when the calmest temper, 
 the profoundest thought, the keenest foresight, are cryingly de- 
 manded for the great work of a thorough rectification of the 
 internal economy of the country, and for the preservation of 
 the honor and the integrity of the Empire abroad, let it be 
 granted that in such a society, and at such a time as this, it is 
 expedient to augment tenfold the weight of the Democracy in 
 the House of Commons, we may at least expect that this 
 shall be done upon some principle of equity, which may be 
 clearly distinguished by all, and which may have a tendency 
 to satisfy certainly not to exasperate the very Democracy 
 itself! Now, look at the Bill, and see how reasonably and 
 quitably our Ministers propose to adjust the Representation of 
 the People. 
 
 Existing Boroughs not having 2,000 inhabitants in 1821, are 
 to be annihilated. 
 
 Existing Boroughs having 2,000, and not 4,000 inhabitants 
 in 1821, are to return one member. 
 
 Existing Boroughs having 4,000 inhabitants, and upwards, in 
 1821, are to remain as they are. 
 Now for the new ones! 
 
 Places having 10,000, and not 20,000 inhabitants in 1821, 
 are to have one member. 
 
 Places having 20,000 inhabitants and upwards, are to have 
 two members, and no more. 
 
 Places under 10,000 inhabitants are to have NO member. 
 So that here, a town of 2,000 inhabitants is to have ONE 
 member; there, a town of 9,999 is to have NONE! Here, a 
 town of 4,000 inhabitants is to have TWO members; and there, 
 a town of 9,999 is to have NONE! In this place an old borough, 
 with 4,000 inhabitants, is to have TWO representatives; and in 
 the neighbourhood, a town of 19,999 inhabitants is to have 
 ONE only ! 
 
 Thus Huddersfield and St. Ives ; Maccleyfield and Penryn; 
 Kidderminster and Sudbury; Bolton and Westbury; South 
 
41 
 
 Shields and Evesham, are to be put on the SAME footing! The 
 same footing! And now, in the name of consistency, upon 
 what Principle ? Is it on the Principle of POPULATION, or is 
 it on the Principle of PROPERTY ? Which is the real Amphi- 
 tryon with whom we are to dine? 
 
 And let no man think to stave off the conclusion, by saying 
 that Ministers were bound to show a certain priority or favor 
 to old Boroughs, where such favor did not interfere with their 
 plan of Reform ! It is a FALSE PRETENCE ! It only aggravates 
 their guilt to suppose them to regard any chartered rights as 
 more than mummery ! The charter of Gatton is every whit 
 as indefeasible as the charter of Downton, or the prescription of 
 Calne! When they had resolved to destroy the charters of 
 sixty Boroughs, because these sixty Boroughs came within an 
 arbitrary line of their own irresponsible fixing, when they 
 had set a precedent that even the King's charters were to be 
 no let to a wild inconsistent scheme of change, when the 
 hitherto sacred principle of Chartered Privileges was set at 
 naught for the sake of Expedience, when they had done this, 
 then they were bound, as they meant to justify their audacious 
 counsel to the King upon any ground of justice, by any rule of 
 population or of property, to have gone on, and have fairly 
 given to the population and the property of this nation a fuller 
 and more adequate system of Representation, if THEY COULD. 
 They have most notoriously, most undeniably, done no such 
 thing ; they have created the most monstrous and insufferable 
 inconsistencies ; they have diminished the Representation, and 
 concentered the effective Election in the LOWER CLASSES OF 
 
 THE PEOPLE TO THE VIRTUAL EXCLUSION OF ALL ABOVE 
 THEM ! 
 
 Manchester was not jealous of Gatton ; for Manchester 
 knew that the privileges of Gatton were granted to it at a time 
 when Manchester had not a name, and the member for Gatton 
 was as likely to be the member for and advocate of Manchester 
 as if elected at Manchester itself. But NOW Manchester knows 
 that Malton and Manchester were both on the table together 
 before our Reformers ; that Charters were no longer to be 
 regarded ; that Population and Property were to be taken as 
 guides ; and that, de novo, as a NEW and as a PERMANENT 
 order of things, the Reformers propose to give to Malton and 
 Manchester the same number of representatives ! And this, 
 which is so shocking to REASON, will satisfy the PASSIONS of 
 
 F 
 
42 
 
 the people when the false lull of the moment is over ! Credat 
 Judceus ! 
 
 But, after all, the Reformers dared not disfranchise out and 
 out. They scruple not to annihilate small Boroughs, the resent- 
 ment of which they consider to be insignificant; but they fear 
 to carry their own 10/. qualification into effect to the exclusion 
 of present voters in the large boroughs ! So that for the next 
 twenty, thirty, or forty years to come, we shall have the old 
 corporate right remaining ; the burgage tenant, the potwaller, 
 the apprentice, the daughter's husband, &c., and these inter- 
 mixed and inextricably blended with the new qualifications! 
 Not a single source of dispute extinguished, not a petition 
 abridged, nor a committee the less, within common expectation 
 of living ! The vested rights of the present race of lawyers 
 have been very well consulted, it must be acknowledged ! 
 
 The remaining twenty-four sections of the Act contain almost 
 exclusively the machinery by which it is proposed to carry this 
 measure of Reform into effect. It would be a painful waste 
 of time to expose all the manifold and very manifest, incon- 
 sistencies of these ill-drawn clauses ; the clauses themselves 
 are printed in order to complete the entire Bill in this pamphlet ; 
 but a very few remarks will be made upon them. 
 
 SECT. 24. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the churchwardens and overseers of 
 every parish and township, in part or in whole, situate within, or by 
 virtue of this Act to be annexed to any City or Borough returning 
 or which shall return Members to serve in any future Parliament 
 (except those named in Schedule (A.) shall on or before the 
 
 in the present year, and on or before 
 
 and the 
 
 in each subsequent year, make out an 
 
 alphabetical list of every male person residing within such City or 
 Borough, or annexed parish or township as the case may be, 
 occupying a house of the clear yearly value of Ten pounds, or bona 
 fide subject to the yearly rent of Ten pounds, or rated to the relief 
 of the poor, or to the duty on inhabited houses, at a sum of not less 
 than Ten pounds by the year, and in respect of which all the rents, 
 rates and taxes shall have been paid up to that time ; and another 
 such list, of every male person claiming to vote by virtue -of any 
 
corporate or burgess or any other right existing in such persons at 
 the time of passing this Act, and shall affix such lists to the doors 
 of all churches and chapels in the several townships and parishes 
 situate \vithin the said Cities and Boroughs respectively, on the 
 three Sundays next after they shall have been made respectively in 
 this and every subsequent year." 
 
 SECT. 25. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That on the Monday next following the 
 last of the said three Sundays in the present year, and on the first 
 Monday in the month of November in each succeeding year, the 
 Returning Officer of every City or Borough shall sit in some con- 
 venient public hall or place (having first given Three clear days 
 notice of his sitting, to be affixed on the doors of all the said 
 churches and chapels) for hearing objections to the insertion or 
 omission of names in either of the said lists, and for inquiring into 
 the truth of such objections, and for expunging, retaining or in- 
 serting names according to the best of his judgment." 
 
 Were Dogberry and Verges, then, prophetical ? 
 
 SECT, 26. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the said Returning Officer shall have 
 full power and he is hereby required to retain on the said list all 
 names to which no valid objection shall be made and proved by 
 evidence, and to insert in such list the name of every male person 
 of full age, not subject to any legal incapacity, who shall appear to 
 have been residing for Six months at least within such City or 
 Borough, or such annexed parish or township, and to have either 
 been in the occupation of such house as aforesaid for Six months 
 at the least before the Monday on which the said returning officer 
 shall commence his sittings, or to be entitled in some other right, 
 hereby saved, or not hereby affected, to vote at the Election of 
 Members of Parliament to serve for such City or Borough ; and 
 shall expunge from the said list the name of every person who shall 
 be proved to be a minor under the age of twenty-one years, or 
 incapacitated by any law or statute from voting for Members to serve 
 in Parliament, and of every person who shall be proved not to have 
 been for the time aforesaid the occupier of such house as aforesaid, 
 or not to have made good the payment of all rates, rents and taxes, 
 
44 
 
 or who shall not prove himself entitled in some other right to vote 
 in the Election of Members to serve for such City or Borough ; 
 provided that no person's name shall be expunged without One 
 clear week's notice first given to him or left at his residence ; and 
 no person's name shall be inserted without Three clear weeks notice 
 to the churchwardens and overseers aforesaid, of his claim to have 
 his name inserted, and without such notice being affixed for the 
 Three Sundays preceding the said Monday on the doors of all 
 churches and chapels within the parish wherein such person shall 
 reside." 
 
 SECT. 27. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the Churchwardens and Overseers of 
 every parish and township shall make an alphabetical list of all 
 persons claiming to be entitled, by reason of the ownership or 
 possession of any freehold, leasehold or copyhold or customary lands 
 or tenements situate within such parish or township, to vote in any 
 Election for a Knight of the Shire to serve for the County wherein 
 such parish or township lies, and shall on or before the 
 
 in the present year, and on or before 
 
 the in each succeeding year, 
 
 cause such list to be affixed on the doors of all the churches and 
 chapels within such parish or township, or if there be no church or 
 chapel then to be fixed up in some public and conspicuous situation 
 within the same respectively on the first Three Sundays in the month 
 of September in each year ; and on or before the twenty -fifth day 
 of September in each year shall send such list to the high constable 
 or high constables of the hundred wherein such parish or township 
 lies, who shall forthwith transmit the same to the Clerk of the Peace 
 of the County." 
 
 SECT. 28. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the Judges named in the last Com- 
 mission of assize for each County, immediately after the passing of 
 this Act, and in each succeeding year the Judges of assize for each 
 County when travelling the Summer Circuit, shall nominate and 
 appoint (subject nevertheless to the approbation of the Lord High 
 Chancellor, Lord Keeper or Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal 
 for the time being) a Barrister to revise such lists, and decide upon 
 
15 
 
 all objections to the omission or insertion of the names therein, 
 respectively; and that such Barrister so appointed as aforesaid shall 
 give public notice by advertisement in the County newspapers, that 
 he will make a circuit of the County for which he shall be so 
 nominated and appointed, and of the several times and places at 
 which he will hold courts for that purpose, and he shall hold an open 
 court for that purpose at the times and places so to be announced ; 
 and that such Barrister shall be paid for discharging the duty so 
 cast upon him, out of the at the rate of not more 
 
 than or less than for every 
 
 day that he shall be so employed : Provided always, That no 
 Barrister so nominated and appointed as aforesaid shall be eligible to 
 serve in Parliament for twelve months from the time of such his 
 appointment for the County for which he shall be nominated and 
 appointed." 
 
 SECT. 29. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the said Barrister shall inquire into 
 and determine all such objections as aforesaid, and shall expunge 
 the names of all persons who shall not have owned or held the 
 lands or tenements in respect of which he claims to vote for the 
 space of Thirty days at the least before the first day of holding the 
 said court, or who shall be incapacitated by any law or statute from 
 voting in the Election of Members to serve in Parliament, and shall 
 insert the name of any person who may to the satisfaction of such 
 Barrister prove himself to have owned or held such lands and 
 tenements as may entitle him to a vote in the next ensuing 
 Election, and who shall not be proved incapable by law of voting 
 in the Election of Members to serve in Parliament ; provided that 
 no name shall be expunged or inserted without such notice and 
 publication as is hereinbefore required in respect to the lists to be 
 made for Cities and Boroughs." 
 
 SECT. 30. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That such Returning Officer and such 
 Barrister so holding their respective courts as aforesaid, shall have 
 power to administer an oath to all persons making objection to the 
 insertion or omission of any name in such list as aforesaid, and to 
 all persons objected against, and to all witnesses who may be 
 
46 
 
 tendered on either side, but that the said hearings shall not be 
 attended by counsel ; and that such Returning Officer or Barrister 
 shall, upon the hearing in open court, finally determine upon the 
 validity of such claims and objections, and shall in open court 
 write his initials against the names respectively struck out or 
 inserted, and sign his name to the several lists so settled." 
 
 SECT. 31. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That such lists shall, when so settled and 
 signed, be tacked together and form one list for the County or 
 Division, City or Borough respectively ; and the list so signed by 
 the said Barrister shall be transmitted to the Clerk of the Peace of 
 the County for which he shall have been appointed ; and the list so 
 signed by the said Returning Officer shall be by him kept and 
 handed over at the expiration of his office to the person succeeding 
 him in the same ; and that the Clerk of the Peace and the Returning 
 Officer respectively shall cause copies of the same to be printed at 
 the expense of the County (which shall be delivered to all persons 
 applying, on payment of Sixpence for each copy,) and that such 
 lists shall be the lists of Electors to vote after the end of this present 
 Parliament, in the choice of Knights, Citizens and Burgesses for 
 the several Counties, and division of Counties, Cities and Boroughs 
 for which such lists shall be made respectively at any Election which 
 may be hold en after the said 
 
 day of in the present year, and before the first day 
 
 of December in the next year, and the lists to be made in each 
 succeeding year shall be the lists of the Electors to vote at any 
 Election to be holden after the first day of December in each 
 succeeding year respectively." 
 
 Upon these Clauses this remark is sufficient, that in wanton 
 disregard of the rights and privileges of the subject, they are of 
 a piece with the rest of the Act. First, Churchwardens and 
 Overseers are required to make returns of matters of which 
 they can have no cognizance, and on which they have no 
 power of compelling information. They are required to decide, 
 in the first instance, what is the real value of a tenement, what 
 are the terms or conditions under which leases are holden, 
 who are the persons that have a claim to vote by reason of any 
 corporate or other right, and who have paid their rent and 
 
47 
 
 taxes up to the day of making the return. But the ignorance of 
 the Churchwarden is to be corrected by the Returning Officer, 
 and for that purpose, the Returning Officer of every Borough 
 is hereby empowered to hold once a-year a sort of court, 
 having given three days' notice of the same, in and at which 
 court he is to hear and decide summarily the validity of 
 every man's claim to have a vote for such Borough. We know 
 well enough that there is not a Returning Officer in the kingdom 
 competent to decide, with any show of justice, the questions 
 which must arise, not only whilst all the existing rights con- 
 tinue, but also those on the subject of rateability, which must 
 for ever attend the very qualification proposed by the Bill. In 
 ordinary cases, these questions are raised at solemn elections, 
 and argued by counsel, and decided with the assistance, and by 
 the advice of counsel, and the expense is borne by the candi- 
 date; whereas, it is absurd to suppose that any such expense 
 will be incurred by a single poor voter for his vote, or that 
 Returning Officers, even if the words of the clause do not pro- 
 hibit it, either would, or indeed could, procure the assistance of 
 counsel at their courts, which are to be holden, as it seems, 
 about the same time in every year, in all the Boroughs in 
 England and Wales. Can common constables and such will 
 be many of the Returning Officers under this Bill perform the 
 arduous and critical duty of determining the validity of votes ? 
 Has this matter been considered in a lawyer-like manner? The 
 Clause as to the lists of County Voters is equally objectionable, 
 and involves this additional novelty, that a man, having the 
 requisite qualification in many parishes, will have as many 
 votes for the County as there are Parishes in which he has 
 property. For while he will, of necessity, be returned as 
 a voter by the Churchwarden of each Parish (that is to say, if 
 the Churchwarden ascertain the fact), the Banister is not in- 
 vested with any power to expunge his name, however frequently 
 repeated in the different lists, unless it shall appear that he has 
 not really holden the lands for which he claims to vote, or shall 
 be incapacitated by law from voting at elections. 
 
 SECT. S2. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That in all Elections whatever of Members 
 to serve in any future Parliament, no inquiry shall be permitted at 
 the time of polling, except as to whether the person claiming to 
 
48 
 
 vote be the same whose name appears in such list, and whether 
 such persons shall have previously voted at the same Election, and 
 no such person shall be excluded from voting at any such Election, 
 except by reason of his refusing to take the oaths or make the 
 affirmation required by law." 
 
 If, therefore, a voter duly registered (say) on the 1st of No- 
 vember, sells his freehold the next day, and then an election 
 happens within the year, ten months afterwards, the pur- 
 chaser will have no vote, though fully qualified, and the seller 
 may, if he pleases, without lawful let or impediment, vote him- 
 self; for his name will be the only one registered in respect of 
 the given freehold, and no inquiry is to be permitted at the 
 time of polling, except as to whether the person claiming to 
 vote be the same person whose name appears in such list, &c. 
 Is this intended, or is this mere blundering ? And note, that 
 if this Bill pass, it will be impossible to have a new election 
 within nearly a year; during which time the Crown's preroga- 
 tive of dissolution at pleasure will be practically suspended ! 
 And, what is yet more to be considered, if a demise of the 
 Crown should take place after the passing of this Bill, and 
 before the registration of the new voters under it, what places 
 are to send Members to Parliament, and who are to vote for 
 them, will be questions of equal difficulty, to which this Bill 
 affords no means of giving any answer. 
 
 SECT. 33. 
 
 " Provided nevertheless, and be it further Enacted, That by 
 petition to the House of Commons, complaining of an undue 
 Election or Return of any Knight, Citizen or Burgess, any Petitioner 
 shall be at liberty to question the correctness of the lists which 
 shall have been settled by such Barrister or Returning Officer, and 
 to prove that names were improperly retained, inserted, expunged 
 or omitted at the registration that shall have taken place next before 
 the Election or Return complained of; and the Committee before 
 whom the merits of any such petition shall be tried may inquire into 
 the same, and alter the poll taken at such Election according to the 
 truth of the case, and direct the Return to be amended accordingly ; 
 and in case of corruption, partiality or wilful misconduct, may order 
 such costs to be paid to the Petitioner by such Barrister or Re- 
 turning Officer as such Committee shall think reasonable." 
 
49 
 
 This clause deserves notice from its more than usual inge- 
 nuity. No man is to vote at all whose name does not appear 
 on the list. But after the election has been concluded, the 
 correctness of this list may be questioned before a Committee, 
 and the Committee may be of opinion that names have been 
 improperly expunged by the Barrister ten months before the 
 election. All this is very well; but the remaining task imposed 
 on the Committee is, to say the least of it, new. They are re- 
 quired to alter the poll according to what would have been the 
 votes of men, who, never having been on the list, had no 
 power of tendering a vote for any candidate. They are to 
 decide how a man would have voted if he had had a vote at an 
 election some time since gone by, and they are to decide this 
 without any contemporaneous indication of the supposed 
 Voter's intentions. 
 
 SECT. 34. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the Sheriffs of the Counties directed 
 hereby to be divided, shall fix the several days of Election for 
 Knights of the Shire for the several Parts, Ridings and Divisions of 
 their said respective Counties, and shall preside at the same by 
 themselves or their lawful deputies. 
 
 SECT. 35. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That at all contested Elections of Members 
 to serve in all future Parliaments, except Elections for Counties and 
 Divisions of Counties, the Poll shall commence on the day of nomina- 
 tion, or on the day next following, or at the latest on the Third day ; 
 and that the number of hours during which the polling shall proceed 
 shall on the first day of polling be Seven, and on the second day Eight; 
 and that the Poll shall on no account be kept open later than Four 
 o'clock in the afternoon of such second day ; and the final state of 
 the Poll shall be declared not later than Two o'clock in the afternoon 
 of the Third day after the Poll shall be opened ; and the returning 
 officer or officers shall return the Member or Members to serve in 
 Parliament by virtue of such Election immediately after the final 
 state of the Poll is declared." 
 
 SECT. 36. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That if on the day of Election of a Knight 
 to serve in any future Parliament for any County or Division more 
 
 G 
 
oO 
 
 Candidates shall be proposed for the choice of the Electors than the 
 number of vacancies to be filled up, and a Poll shall be demanded, 
 the polling shall commence at Nine o'clock in the forenoon of the 
 next day but one after the day of Election, in the several places 
 to be appointed as hereinafter directed by the Magistrates for taking 
 Polls ; and the final state of the Poll shall be declared at noon of the 
 Sixth day after the said day of Election." 
 
 Fifteen hours are allowed for the entire polling of all 
 Boroughs or Borough Districts. In the Tower Hamlets there 
 will be upwards of 26,000 voters ; is it possible to take all these 
 votes in such a short time ? Is it not evident that the most 
 noisy and turbulent will exclude all the rest ? Thirty hours 
 also are to be allowed for County Polling. Can this be sufficient ? 
 
 What also is to be the security against the same individual 
 successively voting at the several polling places fixed for the 
 County ? By the Bill, as it now stands, every Voter may, if he 
 please, poll at any one or at all within the County for which he 
 has a Vote. The inquiry which is permitted to be made, as to 
 whether he has previously voted, will be either omitted in 
 the necessary hurry of such an election, or not being required 
 upon oath, will be readily answered in the negative. 
 
 SECT, 37. 
 
 "And be it enacted, That the Justices of the Peace for each 
 > County assembled at the general quarter sessions to be holden next 
 after the passing of this Act, and after such Royal Proclamations 
 as hereinbefore mentioned, making known the Divisions and Incor- 
 porations of the said counties for which, after the passing of this 
 Act, Knights of the Shire shall be elected, to serve in all future Par- 
 liaments, or at some special sessions to be by them appointed, and of 
 which at least there shall be given Ten days public notice, shall con- 
 sider and shall have full power to appoint convenient places within 
 such Counties and Divisions for taking the Poll at all future Elections 
 of Knights of the Shire to serve in Parliament for the said Counties 
 and Divisions respectively, in such manner that no person shall have 
 to travel more than Fifteen miles from the property in respect of 
 which he claims to vote ; provided that no County or Division of a 
 County now entitled or by this Act empowered to send Knights of 
 the Shire to serve in Parliament shall have more than Fifteen places 
 appointed for taking the Poll for the same respectively." 
 
SECT. 38. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the said Justices of the Peace shall 
 have the like authority to appoint different places, at the end of Two 
 years from the first appointment to be made for that purpose, and 
 that a list of the Polling Places to be so appointed shall be lodged 
 with the Clerk of the Peace of each County ; and that the names of 
 such places so appointed shall be inserted on lists to be affixed on 
 the door of the churches and chapels within each County and Divi- 
 sion immediately after they are so made according to the last 
 appointment, and the polling at Election, shall take place according 
 so the list last lodged, in conformity to this Enactment, with the said 
 Clerk of the Peace." 
 
 SECT. 39. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That every Election of Members to serve in 
 all future Parliaments for all Cities and Boroughs in England shall 
 be held, carried on and concluded in some one place, and under the 
 superintendence and control of the same returning officer or officers ; 
 but there shall be appointed for taking the poll at such Elections dif- 
 ferent booths for different parishes, districts or places, so divided and 
 allotted as to the returning officer or officers shall seem most con- 
 venient, of which division and allotment public notice shall be given, 
 so that no greater number than Six hundred shall be required to poll 
 at any one booth." 
 
 SECT. 40. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That, after the end of this present Parliament 
 all Booths to be built for the convenience of taking polls shall be 
 erected by contract with the Candidates, or if they cannot agree, 
 such Booths shall be erected by the Sheriff or other returning officer 
 or officers at the joint and equal expense of the several Candidates ; 
 and that the Clerks employed in taking the poll shall be paid One 
 guinea by the day by each of the Candidates at such Election : 
 Provided always, That if any person shall be proposed without his 
 consent, then the person so proposing him shall be liable to defray 
 his share of the said expenses in like manner as if he had been a 
 candidate." 
 
52 
 
 SECT. 41. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the number of hours during which the 
 Poll for any County or Division, shall be taken on the first day shall 
 be Seven, and on the second day shall be Eight ; and that no Poll 
 shall be kept open later than Four o'clock in the afternoon of the 
 Second day." 
 
 SECT. 42. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That the Poll-clerks, at the close of each 
 day's poll of an Election for any County or Division, shall enclose 
 and seal their several books, and shall in open court deliver them so 
 sealed to the Sheriff or to his deputy presiding at such poll, who 
 shall give a receipt for the same ; and the Sheriff or his deputy who 
 so receives, shall, on the commencement of the poll on the second 
 day, deliver them back so enclosed and sealed to the person from 
 whom he shall have received them ; and on the final close of the 
 poll, the said Sheriff or such his deputy shall keep the said poll- 
 books so unopened until the re -assembling of the court on the /Sixth 
 day, when he shall openly break the seals thereon and cast up the 
 number of votes as they appear on the said several books, and shall 
 openly declare the state of the poll or polls, and shall make procla- 
 mation of the Member or Members chosen." 
 
 SECT. 43. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That so much of an Act passed in the 
 twentieth year of the reign of King George the Third, intituled, 
 " An Act to remove certain difficulties relative to Voters at County 
 Elections," as requires the names of Freeholders to be placed on the 
 land-tax roll, shall be and the same is hereby Repealed ; and all 
 laws, statutes and usages now in force respecting the Election of 
 Members to serve in Parliament for that part of the United Kingdom 
 called England and Wales, shall be and remain and are hereby 
 declared to be and remain in full force, except so far as they are 
 repealed or altered by this Act. 
 
 SECT. 44. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That if any Sheriff, returning officer, 
 barrister or any person whatsoever, shall wilfully contravene or dis- 
 obey the provisions of this Act or any*of them, with respect to any 
 
53 
 
 matter or thing which such Sheriff, returning officer, barrister or 
 other person is hereby required to do, he shall for such his offence 
 be liable to be sued in an action of debt in any of His Majesty's 
 courts of Record at Westminster for the penal sum of 
 
 and the jury before whom such action shall be 
 tried may find their verdict for the full sum of 
 
 or for any less sum not less than 
 
 which the said jury shall think it just that he should pay for such 
 his offence; and the defendant in such action, being convicted, 
 shall pay such penal sum so awarded, with full costs of suit, to any 
 party who may sue for the same, without prejudice however to 
 the right of any party grieved by the same misconduct of such 
 Sheriff, returning officer, barrister or other person, to recover such 
 damages in an action on the case for a false return, or any other 
 grievance, as he may be entitled to at common law or by virtue of 
 any statute now in force." 
 
 SECT. 45. 
 
 " And be it Enacted, That if any person named in any of the 
 lists so as aforesaid required to be made, but who at the time of any 
 Election shall be in the enjoyment of any office now by law dis- 
 qualifying him from giving his vote at the election of Members to 
 serve in Parliament, shall presume to vote at such Election, he shall 
 be liable to all penalties and forfeitures to which he would have 
 been subject for the said offence by any law in force at the time of 
 the passing of this Act, any thing herein contained notwithstanding; 
 and in case of a Petition to the House of Commons, for altering the 
 Return or setting aside the Election in which such person shall 
 have voted, his vote shall be struck off by the Committee, with such 
 costs to be by him paid to any Petitioner as to such Committee 
 shall seem just." 
 
 SECT. 46. 
 
 " And be it Enacted and Provided, That nothing in this Act 
 contained shall extend to or in any wise affect the Election for 
 Members to serve in Parliament for the Universities of Oxford or 
 Cambridge. 
 
54 
 
 SECT. 47. 
 
 l< And be it Enacted, that throughout this Act wherever the 
 words " City or Borough," " Cities or Boroughs" may occur, those 
 words shall extend to and include all towns corporate, cinque ports, 
 districts or places within England and Wales which shall be en- 
 titled, after this Act shall have passed, to return Members to serve 
 in Parliament, other than Counties and divisions of Counties, and 
 also to the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed ; and the words " return- 
 ing officer" shall apply to every person or persons who by virtue of 
 his or their office, either under the present Act or under any former 
 law, custom or statute, has^or have had and shall have the right of 
 returning writs or precepts for the Election of Members to serve in 
 Parliament, by whatever name such person or persons may have 
 been called ; and the words " parish or township" shall extend to 
 every parish, township, vill, hamlet, district or place maintaining 
 its own poor ; and the words " churchwardens and overseers of the 
 poor" shall extend to all overseers of the. poor in the several pa- 
 rishes, townships or chapelries, vills, districts or places, by what- 
 ever name or title they may be called, and whether appointed under 
 the Act for the relief of the Poor passed in the forty-third year of 
 her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, or under any local Act, or according 
 to any peculiar custom," or in any other manner whatever." 
 
 Such is the measure of Parliamentary Reform which his 
 Majesty's Government in its wisdom has thought proper to pro- 
 pose to the House of Commons, and which, according to the 
 Lord Chancellor, the People of England already regard with 
 almost parental tenderness, and ivith every the minutest detail 
 of which they are not only satisfied but delighted. If this be 
 really so, then Heaven have mercy upon this great nation ; for 
 its Rulers are mad, and there is no Vision in the Land ! 
 
 Two moral phenomena of the present crisis will pre-eminently 
 arrest the attention of the future historian and philosopher. 
 The first is, that in this hazardous reconstruction of the most 
 important member of the frame of the Constitution, no one 
 Statesman came forth to explain in what respect the END of all 
 Legislation GOOD GOVERNMENT was to be more expedi- 
 tiously or more certainly secured than by the old system, which 
 had been nearly six hundred years in growing up with the 
 Nation ; and the second is, that the only plain and intelligible 
 
55 
 
 argument used by the reconstructors was, THAT THE PEOPLE 
 
 WOULD NOT Bi: SATISFIED WITHOUT THE CHANGE. In a 
 
 country, all the great political Philosophers of which, More, 
 Bacon, Milton, Harrington, and Sidney, had in all their pro- 
 posed and wished-for developments of the latent Idea of the 
 Constitution constantly kept in view, as their polar Star, the 
 attainment of a government by the Aristocracy the Best and 
 Wisest of the Nation ; and where that solemn declaration of 
 the rights of the subject in 1688, and the change in the royal 
 line consequent thereon, were effected and maintained by a Mi- 
 nority of Patriots against a numerical Majority of the People, 
 who were undoubtedly disaffected to the Revolution, in such 
 a country these two phenomena will hereafter stamp this age 
 and crisis with a peculiar character. By all the great political 
 writers and statesmen of England before the present day, Re- 
 presentation was considered as important only, and in propor- 
 tion, as it was an effectual condition of good government: by 
 the present leaders of public opinion it is regarded as the END, 
 to be attained at any hazard and by any sacrifice. But how 
 can any consistent and prospective plan of foreign or domestic 
 policy be maintained by the Executive Power, unless it can be 
 assured, up to a certain point, of support in Parliament : and 
 how is the Government of the country to be carried on at home 
 and abroad with that unremitting zeal and watchfulness, which 
 the honor and the interest of the Empire imperiously demand, 
 when every ministry must spend half its time and attention in 
 securing a preponderance of votes on each particular measure ? 
 It is even now confessed that the House of Commons is so un- 
 manageable that the real business of government is very 
 seriously impeded ; the most indispensable votes of credit can 
 hardly be carried by Tories or Whigs ; and the Prerogative of 
 the Crown, in the free and lawful exercise of which the glory 
 and the stability of the whole Constitution consist, is checked 
 and crippled at every turn by the coarse jealousy and base 
 thirst for Plebeian Popularity, which even now have begun 
 sensibly to vulgarize the debates of that House ! If such 
 symptoms appear in the green tree, what will it be in the dry ? 
 If such a temper is countenanced now, when the antagonist 
 principles of Conservation and Permanence are still strong, 
 what will the Legislature be when DEMUS shall be all in all ? 
 What is it that this Reformed House of Commons is to effect, 
 
5(5 
 
 which may not be effected by the present House, as safely, as 
 surely, as expeditiously ? The applauded answer is, that with a 
 Reformed House of Commons we should have waged no ruinous 
 Wars, and have incurred no ruinous Debt ! Let the assumption 
 that our Wars and our Debt have been and are ruinous, pass : 
 but to the answer itself, I reply that if there be truth in Philo- 
 sophy, if there be experience in History, we should have had 
 ruinous wars and ruinous debt with, and in exact proportion 
 to, what is called a Reformation of Parliament ! It is the 
 noted remark of Machiavel, that there is this natural and per- 
 petual oscillation in the disposition of the lower and mechanical 
 classes, which form the vast bulk of every people, namely, 
 whilst they enjoy plenty and ease, to be ever ready to join in 
 a wild howl for War, but as soon as ever their gratified 
 passion for War has produced its sure consequences 
 Debt and Taxation then to be clamorous for Retrenchment 
 and Alteration of Government ! Is there in Holy Writ a pas- 
 sage more profoundly true than this ? Which of the wars of 
 England, even the American, has not been a popular war at its 
 commencement ? Which of them in its continuance has not had 
 to struggle with a clamor for peace ? What general of a popular 
 State, from Hannibal to Marlborough, has not wept over plans 
 frustrated, and victories rendered useless by the sordid whine of 
 popular vacillation ? And if that great and celebrated Man, 
 the single Rival (is there falsehood in saying, the single Superior) 
 to Marlborough, whose LIFE it is that yet makes the name of 
 England terrible among the nations; before whose combining 
 head and patient spirit, and dauntless heart, Rajah and Cres- 
 cent, Marshal and Baton, Napoleon and his Fortunes, waned, 
 quailed, sunk : if that Man did wreathe the most righteous 
 and successful sword that England ever drew, with the most glo- 
 rious peace which She ever signed, it was, under God, mainly 
 caused by the unflinching determination of a wise government 
 to resist the cowardly counsels of men, whose pusillanimity 
 was only equalled by their want of any sense of the honor of 
 their Country ! For to provoke where it dares not fight, to 
 incur a debt, and then question the security is no shame to 
 the Multitude ; for Multitudes cannot blush ! 
 
 Have gentlemen heard the story of the owner of a Steam 
 vessel and his Captain ? " Sir," said the captain to the owner, 
 one summer's day, " we must have, if you please, a new 
 
57 
 
 Engine." "A new Engine! and why?" cried the owner, a 
 good deal astonished ; for his vessel was a favorite, and for 
 many years had been the model of all those built in the harbour. 
 " The fact is," said the captain, " we are unanimously of opi- 
 nion I, the mate, the stewards, the men, and the cabin-boys 
 we are all, I say, of opinion that this present Engine will do no 
 longer, and that we must have a new one !" " Well ! captain," 
 remarked the owner, " this is most extraordinary, to be sure ! 
 There are THREE THINGS which a steam-engine in a vessel like 
 ours ought to effect. First, it ought to be so constructed as to 
 cause the maximum, or greatest rate of SAFE, SPEED in the ele- 
 ment in which the vessel is to move. I say safe speed ; because 
 you know very well that if we put on too much Power, although 
 for a little while the vessel will go faster, in the end the resist- 
 ance from the water will be more than equivalent to the added 
 force ; and then, if we were to persist, the waves would rise 
 around us like rocks and dash the boat to pieces. Secondly, 
 the Engine ought to be so strong, and yet so flexible, as to be 
 able to RESIST INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PRESSURE; so 
 that neither the Steam from within, nor the Crew from without 
 should be able to hurt or displace it. Lastly, it ought, above 
 all things, to be MANAGEABLE, and so ordered that, in a 
 squall, or in the night, or upon other such sudden and well- 
 known pinches at sea, we may be able to change the boat's 
 course, or lower her rate, or even stop her dead short at once ! 
 Now will you have the goodness to point out to my satisfaction 
 in what respect my present Engine is deficient in either or in 
 any of these three requisites ?" " Sir," answered the captain, 
 after a pause, " for the matters you speak of, the Engine may be 
 well enough ! but the real truth is, and we are all quite unani- 
 mous about it WE DON'T LIKE THE SHAPE OF THE BOILER ; 
 and what is more, WE CAN'T AWAY WITH THE OIL ! !" 
 
 But the People are unanimous and must be obeyed ! They 
 will take no abatement on their Bill, and it must be paid in 
 full ! They will have Reform, and this Reform, and, so they 
 say now, nothing but this Reform ! And this national tendency 
 cannot be resisted ! 
 
 Are the people of England unanimous in wishing this Bill to 
 become the permanent Law of the Land ? Must Parliament 
 grant that wish, if that wish is founded in ignorance and appa- 
 rently productive of evil to the Well-being of the Nation ? Is it 
 
 H 
 
58 
 
 sound Patriotism to yield to the People, if the People are mis- 
 led, and ask for they know not what ? It is an event of these 
 times more sinistrous than the introduction of this very Bill 
 itself, that such doctrines are now openly maintained. It is no 
 longer the SAFETY, but the WILL of the people that must be the 
 SUPREME LAW ! The House of Commons is no longer to be the 
 Representative of the Interests of the Nation, but the fettered 
 delegate of a particular Class of it. But " we are bound," said 
 Mr. Fox, in 1781, " to promote the true interests of the people 
 in preference to the dearest desires of their hearts ; and the 
 Constitution makes us the sole arbiters of those interests, not- 
 withstanding the imaginary infallibility of the people. Shall 
 we sacrifice our reason, our honor, our conscience, to the 
 
 FEAR OF INCURRING THE POPULAR RESENTMENT? and 
 
 while we are appointed to watch the Hesperian fruit of liberty 
 with a dragon's eye, be ourselves the only slaves of the whole 
 community ? Perhaps I shall be told that nothing but the soul 
 of absurdity could suspect the people of a design against their 
 own happiness. I do not suspect the people of any such 
 design, but I suspect their capacity to judge of their own 
 happiness. I KNOW THEY ARE GENERALLY CREDULOUS, 
 AND GENERALLY UNINFORMED; captivated by appearances, 
 while they neglect the most important essentials, and ALWAYS 
 
 RIDICULOUSLY READY TO BELIEVE THAT THOSE MEN WHO 
 HAVE THE GREATEST REASON, FROM THEIR EXTENSIVE 
 PROPERTY, TO BE ANXIOUS FOR THE PUBLIC SAFETY, ARE 
 ALWAYS CONCERTING MEASURES FOR THE OPPRESSION OF 
 
 THEIR OWN POSTERITY. I stand up for the CONSTITU- 
 TION, NOT for the PEOPLE. If the people attempt to invade 
 the Constitution they are the ENEMIES OF THE NATION. 
 Being therefore convinced that we are to do justice, whether 
 it is agreeable or disagreeable, I am for maintaining the inde- 
 pendency of Parliament, and will not be a REBEL to my KING, 
 to my Country, or my own HEART, for the loudest huzza of an 
 inconsiderate multitude ! " 
 
 And the Lord Chancellor, before he was Lord Chancellor, 
 in 1818, said, "It is a serious and melancholy truth that the 
 ONLY RESULT of yielding to the desire of conciliating popular 
 favor, by proposing measures which discretion does not 
 approve, is that many will be ready to outbid for that applause 
 by still more extravagant concessions' and THE HIGHEST 
 
59 
 
 BIDDER WILL NOT BE THE MOST HONEST AND ENLIGHT- 
 ENED, BUT THE MOST SERVILE AND SUBMISSIVE, THE 
 
 MOST MAD OR DISHONEST !" 
 
 Time was when it passed into a proverb that "great bodies 
 are moved slowly : " but now, the most gigantic bodies are 
 agitated with monstrous rapidity, and the sleepless Press gives 
 a Voice and a Tone, a Swell and a Fall, to the popular Mind, as 
 if it were a summer gale, breathing, as it listed, on the subject 
 chords of a wind-lute. Think of the Ballot ! Not twelve 
 months ago it was so unpopular that scarcely one man in a 
 hundred countenanced it ; it was almost un gentlemanly to have 
 any thing to do with it. Within six months it became so 
 popular, its merits remaining the same, that public meeting 
 after public meeting petitioned for it. They would give every 
 thing for it, and would take nothing without it. A very able 
 writer, Mr. Grote, said twice over, that Reform would be a 
 MOCKERY without it. Now, again, poor Ballot is as unpopular 
 as ever ; its merits remaining the same : even Hunt cannot 
 get a hearing in a Common Hall for it ; and Mr. Grote peti- 
 tions with a grateful heart for a Reform which is without it; 
 that is to say, for a MOCKERY ! a mockery indeed, and a bitter 
 one, but not in the sense of Grotius. 
 
 May not theJJ udgment and Discretion of a body be reasonably 
 suspected by sober men, when we see that same body capable 
 of such frivolous eagerness in such causeless changes ? Yester- 
 day, Ballot could alone save the nation ! To-day, Reform 
 without Ballot, and against Ballot, can alone save it ! In 
 January, all Reform without Ballot is a Mockery and a Fraud ! 
 In December, Reform without Ballot is so far from being a 
 Mockery or a Fraud, that the very mobs of London and Preston 
 have resented even a humble reminiscence of such a position 
 from the lips of their own consistent Demagogues ! As one of 
 them (John Cade), some years ago, said, " Was ever feather so 
 lightly blown to and fro as this multitude?" 
 
 But is it so certain, after ail, that the people will NOT CHANGE 
 AGAIN ? Are the provisions of this Bill so just, liberal and im- 
 partial, that no cause of complaint will remain to the THOUSANDS 
 above the Ten-pound and Twenty-pound Householder, whom 
 it virtually annihilates, and to the MILLIONS below the qualifi- 
 cation, whom as a class it expressly sets at nought? Will men, 
 who see that the old prescriptive privileges have been abolished 
 
60 
 
 in part or altogether, acquiesce in permanent exclusion from a 
 franchise, which they themselves have mainly contributed to 
 procure for others, from whom they are in no respect distin- 
 guished, except by being on the wrong side of a new Popula- 
 tion or Tax-line, for which line no argument can be alleged, 
 except that a line must be drawn somewhere ? Why should 
 not that line be so drawn as to circumscribe every man in the 
 kingdom who has property, however small, a name and con- 
 nexions, however humble ? Why should not that line be so 
 drawn as to give to every freeborn Briton, who is liable to serve 
 the King by land or by sea, a voice in the election of those by 
 whose decisions he may be subjected to burthens and penalties 
 deeply affecting his Life, his Limbs and earthly Honor ? Would 
 not this be quite as reasonable a line to draw as payment of 
 10 a-year for a house ? After granting what is granted by 
 this Bill, have Ministers any good reason (always excepting the 
 4 line somewhere 9 /) for refusing to grant more ? And if they 
 have no reason, will they have POWER ? 
 
 Let us hear Mr. Hunt upon this matter, who boasts to be 
 somewhat exclusively the representative of the people in the 
 House, and " to speak the voice of millions." " I will," says 
 the Honourable Member, " predict one thing ; that if the voters 
 are protected by the ballot, this measure will be productive of 
 a substantial reform, and prove satisfactory. Without that it 
 will be neither ; and it will only in my mind aggravate the evil, 
 and make the representation more corrupt than it is at this 
 hour. In truth and fact the voters will, under this reformed 
 system, require the protection of the ballot to enable them to 
 act freely more than before" Speech, March 2. Again, 
 " This Bill will place a vast proportion of the community, and 
 the most valuable part of it too, the mechanics, who live in 
 small houses and tenements, in a state of political slavery ; for 
 it will exclude them from the right of choosing representatives" 
 Speech, March 4. Yet, say our Ministers, this is a FINAL 
 MEASURE ; they walk hand in hand in goodly fellowship with 
 the member for Preston, who honestly describes himself to be 
 " as thorough-going a radical as ever paced the Strand ; " they 
 are strong in his strength, and rejoice in the light of his coun- 
 tenance ; by his help they hope to be able to accomplish this 
 measure ; and when they have so done, will they be able to 
 refuse him theirs, or will he need it for the accomplishment of 
 his own ? 
 
61 
 
 Buonaparte called us a nation of shopkeepers ; are we to 
 have a GOVERNMENT of shopkeepers as well ? 
 
 If this Bill passes, CAVEAT CREDITOR ! There are advo- 
 cates for an Equitable Adjustment in the House, in the Cabinet, 
 even now. The payers of assessed taxes have it under the 
 hands of a Whig Ministry, that no further retrenchment can 
 be made without violating the public faith. Unless the Debt 
 be touched, the Interest, twenty-eight millions odd, must be 
 annually raised. There is no cure for it but payment, or com- 
 position, or bankruptcy. The Delegates of ten-pound house- 
 holders will soon learn that Taxes cannot be reduced except by 
 letting down Army and Navy, which would be unpopular, or 
 by a breach of contract with the Stock-holder, which would 
 only be dishonest. Between offending their Constituents and 
 offending Justice, such Delegates would not hesitate. 
 
 If this Bill passes, CAVEAT CLERICUS ! Let my Lords the 
 Bishops look to it ! Lord Grey, the first Minister who has 
 dared to do so since the Revolution, has expressly said, that 
 " although he should deprecate the removal of the Protestant, 
 and the setting up of a Romish, Establishment in Ireland, he 
 did not think either event likely to affect the welfare of the 
 country!" Very well! TUA RES AGITUR ! The next side 
 wall is burning. The Irish Church will go FIRST; there is no 
 doubt of that. For two or three days and nights the one-eyed 
 Monster will spare the wise Ulysses, who may flatter or intoxi- 
 cate him ; he will not devour Canterbury or Winchester, till 
 Armagh or Meath be digested. There is comfort in that; it 
 may last our time ! 
 
 The Irish Reform Bill will send about thirty Roman Catho- 
 lic Members to the House of Commons : add to these the 
 English Roman Catholics, the Scotch Presbyterians, the English 
 Dissenters, the Ubiquitarian enemies of any Establishment 
 whatever, and the reduction in the English representation in 
 general : CAN TITHES STAND IT ? 
 
 If this Bill passes, CAVEANT PROCERES ! There are many 
 who think that we shall never be well till " Manchester be plain 
 Mr. Montagu again ; " and there are more who think that " it 
 was never merry world in England, since gentlemen came up ! " 
 That opinion will not lose ground. Hitherto, by an admirable 
 deflexion from the formal theory of the three Estates, each 
 House has, by different but equivalent means, been enabled to 
 
62 
 
 operate mutually on, by operating mutually in, the other ; the 
 independence of the Lords has been preserved by preventing 
 collision with the Commons. The battle of the Peers is fought 
 in the Commons, and not against the Commons. The effective 
 government of the empire is vested in the Lower House : let 
 that undoubted fact be well considered, when, in honest sim- 
 plicity we are told that the Peers may have their House, and 
 the Commons only want their house TO THEMSELVES ! Upon 
 what do the Lords stand ? On Numbers ? their Number is as 
 one to a million! On Property? their Property is as a grain 
 of sea-sand in the balance against the Property of the Commons ! 
 On Law and Prescription ? the wax that has sealed a Lennox, 
 or may seal a Vane, Duke, will melt as easily and as justly, 
 as the wax on the Charters of one hundred and seven Cor- 
 porations ! It was Harrington's profound aphorism, " that 
 the People are often deceived by Names, but never in Things." 
 If one Charter may yield, because Expedience seems to require 
 it, will a Patent be respected when Expedience demands its 
 extinction ? Where lies the difference ? If Gatton has ceased 
 to be of the importance it possessed in the time of Henry VI., 
 and must therefore be disfranchised, how many of our ancient 
 Coronets will bear the application of a similar test? 
 
 If this Bill passes, CAVEAT ! 
 
 Says the Honourable Member for Westminster, sportively 
 
 " ridentem dicere verum 
 
 Quid vetet ?" 
 
 " This is not the time to talk lightly of crowned heads, either 
 dead or alive, as they have enough to do to keep their positions 
 without our endangering them further." March 3. It is even 
 so ; " The Representative of the People, the Voice of Millions" 
 does not talk lightly, but plainly, upon this as upon other sub- 
 jects : " I have often enough protested against the profligate ex- 
 travagance of the family on the throne. It is the profligacy of the 
 last reign, the extravagance of the family on the throne, and the 
 misconduct of this House, which have brought the institutions 
 of the country into disrepute. / would not object to the pass- 
 ing of A Civil List, but I do object to the profligacy of that 
 family, which has brought the institutions of the country into 
 disrepute, and which has encouraged the demoralization of this 
 House. To the situation to which this House and the country 
 
63 
 
 has been brought, the Royal Family, I contend, have mainly 
 contributed." March 2. All this appears even by an un- 
 reformed House to have been listened to without impatience 
 or remonstrance ; when it shall come to be addressed to a 
 House of Ten-pound Delegates, that, like Aaron's rod, shall have 
 swallowed up all other rods, think you that no one will suggest, 
 or that any one will decline to second, a motion for a Search for 
 PRECEDENTS ? 
 
 There is ONE on the Journals of the House of Commons 
 IN POINT! 
 
 " Regem ad SUPPLICIUM !" 
 
 Lastly, if this Bill passes, let THE PEOPLE beware high 
 and low, rich and poor, great and little, one with another! 
 The warning may be in vain; cupidity, credulity, foolhardi- 
 ness, restless discontent, and real pressure, all conspire to blind 
 the eyes and to deafen the ears of this people ; yet there is a 
 good sense at the bottom of the English commonalty, that 
 ought to see through the gross delusion of this Bill. There is 
 no one so low as not to have something to lose by a Revolution ; 
 and remember that none but villains can live by a Revolution. 
 This Bill is the first overt act ! The end may not be yet ; but 
 it will come as surely as it has come to the Madness of France 
 and to the Folly of Belgium ! Countrymen ! You never yet 
 saw Civil War ! You have never seen the streets stream with 
 blood ; brothers armed against brothers, fathers against sons, 
 neighbours against neighbours ! You have only heard of 
 wives and maidens being violated, of children massacred, of 
 murder in open day, of riot lording it over this fair land, and 
 destroying every thing good, great, and beautiful in it ! Be- 
 ware a beginning ! Other nations have felt all this, and you 
 may do so too ! They counted not the cost ! Have you ? Do 
 you know how far you are going ? Do you see the end of your 
 journey? It is one of yourselves the common people who 
 now speaks ; and he knows that his record is true, that the 
 storm which demolishes temple and tower, and levels coronet 
 and crown, will most surely not spare the lowliest cottage in 
 the land ! 
 
 Nos Utinam Vani !" 
 
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