TRACTS FOR INQUIRERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 m. 
 
 No. II. REFORM ILLUSIONS. 
 
 1832. 1867. 
 
 2 Will. IV. c. 45. HO (f 31 Viet. c. 102. 
 
 LONDON : 
 GROOMBRIDGE & SONS, 5 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 Price Sixpence. 
 1867.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT OF THE WORK, 
 
 UNDER the title of" Tracts for lu^iurcru^' I am proposing to publish 
 a selection from the notes I have been in the habit of making, 
 through many years, on a variety of subjects, Social, Administrative, 
 Scientific, Musical, and Historical ; accompanying them with occa- 
 sional observations on passing events. 
 
 They will be printed in numbers, as a Serial ; with an uniform 
 type, and consecutive paging, to admit of ultimate binding ; but I do 
 not pledge myself to their issue at fixed intervals. In the present 
 state of my health, and as now in the evening of life, I must 
 present myself to the public, not as an editor bound to say something 
 on a given day, but as one intending to speak only when he has 
 something to say which, although he knows it will not always please, 
 he thinks should be said before his final leave-taking. 
 
 As such unavoidable irregularity might lead to a heavier expense 
 for advertising than the undertaking would afford, I must, to avoid it. 
 ask the permission of many to make the work known to them, through 
 the post, by presentation copies ; and I shall be glad to be favoured by 
 letter with the names and addresses of those who may either be 
 willing to receive a circular notice of the appearance of a new num- 
 ber, or permit me to place them, for any limited period, on a private 
 list of subscribers. 
 
 The price of each I shall endeavour to limit to Sixpence ; and, if 
 the case should occur, I shall be happy to meet the views of liberal 
 friends, of ampler means than my own. who may desire reprints 
 of any paper, at a cheaper rate for distribution. 
 
 W. E. IIK'K^ON. 
 Fairseat, Wrotham. 
 Kent.
 
 StacK 
 ftnnex 
 
 00 B A/<$ 
 
 II. 
 
 REFORM ILLUSIONS, 
 
 1832. 1867. 
 
 2 Wai. IV., cap. 45. 30 & 31 Viet. cap. 102. 
 
 LET me be understood. Reform is not an illusion ; but it will not be 
 denied, after recent discussions, there may be many illusions about 
 Reform. In reference to wbich, and to their proper application, the 
 present is a favourable opportunity for a retrospect. 
 
 Reform means " amendment," which we all need ; and as applied 
 generally to the removal of the defects of our social institutions, and 
 of those especially which most interfere with the physical and moral 
 welfare of the masses, " Reform " embraces the worthiest objects of 
 human ambition. But every man who sees the necessity of changes, 
 consequent upon altered states of a population, is not equally a judge 
 of the changes required. It is possible to suppose ourselves correct- 
 ing abuses, when we are only extending them ; and on the part of 
 statesmen, philosophers, and philanthropists, in all ages, this has 
 been, and remains, one of the commonest illusions of mankind. 
 
 5005
 
 If) OBJECT OP GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 From the days of Lycurgus to our own, how many schemes of 
 social regeneration have not been set on foot ; how many experiments 
 in the science of government have not been tried ? Republics of 
 every conceivable pattern ; oligarchical, democratical, hierarchal ; 
 military despotisms, limited monarchies, church and state alliances ; 
 one after another rising, flourishing, fading, and disappearing ! 
 The results in each case widely different, but all generally disappoint- 
 ing. Their history a record of mistakes ; supplying a self-seeking 
 class of politicians, with an apology for indqlence, and their own 
 personal participation in abuses seen to be profitable, and conse- 
 quently therefore assumed to be inevitable ; and leaving even on 
 better minds, an impression somewhat discouraging to patriotic 
 effort ; as when Pope wrote : 
 
 " For forms of government let fools contest ; 
 That which is best administered is best." 
 
 I notice these often quoted lines as embodying, with a profound 
 truth, a verbal fallacy ; for if there be any where a best, or one system 
 of administration better than another, there must have been causes 
 for it ; and the nature of those causes, and the precise difference 
 between one system of administration and another, there can be no 
 folly in discussing. Pope, we may be sure, did not deny this. He 
 meant only to rebuke the partisanship, which overlooks the object 
 for which governments exist. Constitutions are of no value, but as 
 means to an end. The prosperity of states is dependent solely upon 
 the intelligence by which they are guided ; whether as displayed in 
 the councils of Kings, or of Presidents. The form of administra- 
 tion concerns the happiness of a people only so far as it may lead 
 to good, or bad measures of administration ; and, as we cannot have 
 wise measures of administration without wise heads to frame them, 
 the practical question for all of us, in times of revolutionary or reform 
 excitement, is simply, whether the changes brought about or pro- 
 posed by popular leaders, are of a kind to give the direction of affairs 
 to our worthiest and ablest citizens, or to the most mercenary and 
 incapable.
 
 INCIDENTS OF 1830 AND 1831. 17 
 
 This is the question, which if we ask now, we need not wait for 
 the answer soon to be given by events. We may anticipate it from 
 the teachings of the past. 
 
 An old diary brings vividly before me the culminating incidents 
 of the last serious Reform agitation : a generation back. 
 
 1830. 
 
 June 26. Death of George IV. 
 
 July 31. Revolution in France. After three days' fighting in Paris, 
 Charles X. deposed. 
 
 Aug. 5. General election in England. Henry Brougham returned for 
 
 the county of York. 
 9. Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, after assenting to certain 
 
 amendments of the Charter of Louis XVIII., elected, by the 
 
 Chamber of Deputies, Bong of the French. 
 ,, 25. Eevolution in Brussels ; resulting in the separation of Belgium 
 
 from Holland ; joined together by the allied powers in 1815 
 
 as the Kingdom of the Netherlands. 
 Sep. 15. Opening of the Manchester and Liverpool railroad : the first in 
 
 England for the conveyance of passengers. The opening 
 
 marred by a fatal accident to Mr. Huskisson, our Free Trade 
 
 minister.* 
 Nov. 2. Notices of motion by Earl Grey and Henry Brougham, for 
 
 Eeform, met by the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, 
 
 with the declaration, that "the legislature could not be 
 
 improved," and that " the people would be quiet if let alone." 
 9. Threatened riot in the City. Abandonment in consequence of 
 
 the proposed visit of William IV. to dine with the Lord 
 
 Mayor. 
 15. Majority of 29 against the Cabinet of the Duke of Wellington, 
 
 on a question of the Civil List. Followed by resignation of 
 
 Ministers. 
 ,, 22. Earl Grey, First Lord of the Treasury. Henry Brougham 
 
 raised to the Peerage, with the title of Lord Brougham and 
 
 Vaux, and made Lord Chancellor. 
 ,, 29. Insurrection in Poland, crowned with temporary success. 
 
 * A cloud upon an otherwise bright day in my personal history that of 
 rny marriage.
 
 18 KEFOEM INCIDENTS OF 1831.' 
 
 Feb 3. Announcement by Viscount Althorp, that the Cabinet which he 
 represented as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had prepared a 
 Reform Bill. 
 
 Great was the interest this announcement occasioned, and public 
 expectation was wrought up to the highest possible pitch of excite- 
 ment when, on the 1st of March, the Bill alluded to was introduced 
 in the House of Commons by Lord John Eussell. I call to mind 
 its effect on a circle of friends, with whom I was passing the evening 
 of that day. One of them, (William Lawrence, the late Alderman, 
 and father of the present Member,) stood up and read the first pub- 
 lished particulars of the measure, from an early copy of the Globe: 
 " Sixty rotten boroughs to be disfranchised ; forty-seven small 
 boroughs to return each one member instead of two ; representa- 
 tives to be given to all the large towns. In boroughs, all rated 
 householders of 10 per annum to be entitled to vote ; in counties 
 all leaseholders of 50, &c." The measure was so much more liberal 
 than the reader had anticipated, that it seemed to take away his 
 breath. As he concluded, another of our company, the late Rev. 
 Kobert Aspland, rose from his seat, and striking a table near him 
 with the palm of his hand, said solemnly " thank God !" 
 
 How we shook hands and congratulated one other in those days ! 
 the ministerial scheme uniting all sections of Reformers; Hume 
 speaking of it as a measure " far surpassing his most sanguine 
 hopes," and Macaulay describing it as "a great, a glorious, and a 
 comprehensive plan;" and how we determined to rally round " the 
 Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill;" for, as the Bill would 
 unseat, and send in search of new constituencies, no less than 168 
 members, a fierce opposition was to be expected. This was soon 
 shewn. On the 22nd March the second reading was carried by a 
 majority of only 1, (802 against 801); and this majority was con- 
 verted, in Committee, on the night of Thursday, the 20th of April, 
 into a minority of 22. Upon which, the very next day, William 
 IV. went down in person to Westminster, and proroguejd the House ; 
 " to give my people an opportunity of expressing their sense of a 
 great question."
 
 REJOICINGS AND RIOTS. 19 
 
 Ministers had tendered their resignation, with the alternative of 
 an appeal to the country ; and the King, having decided upon sup- 
 porting them, had acted upon his resolve with a promptitude which 
 took the House by surprise, and produced a demonstration of popular 
 enthusiasm rarely witnessed. New writs were issued on the Satur- 
 day, and the following Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were days 
 of a spontaneous general illumination. On Wednesday, indeed, 
 not only was the metropolis a blaze of light, but it was remarked 
 that from the Land's End to John O'Groat's, there was scarcely an 
 obscure hamlet in which lamps* or candles were not exhibited. For 
 had the dissolution not made it certain that now, by an effort, the 
 Reform Bill would be safe ? And did not Reform mean the putting 
 an end to all wrong doing, and the return from Heaven of Astrea, 
 Goddess of Justice, to restore the Golden Age ? 
 
 We are still waiting for Astrea, but the result of the new elections 
 was as triumphant as could have been desired by those who expected 
 it to secure her advent. The new House of Commons, after the 
 re-introduction of the Reform Bill, gave a majority for its second 
 reading (June 24th) of 136. Further difficulties were confined to 
 the resistance of a not very large majority of the Peers, and would 
 not have been serious, had not that resistance led to further out- 
 door demonstrations, which, in the angry state of the public mind, 
 could no longer be restrained within peaceful limits ; and which demon- 
 strations, alarming timid friends of the Monarchy, produced a vacillat- 
 ing policy on the part of the Court. On the rejection of the Bill by 
 the Lords (October 7th, 1831),f riots sprang up at Derby, Notting- 
 ham, and Bristol, on a scale which reminded many then living of 
 the Lord George Gordon Riots in June, 1780, when thirty-six house?, 
 set on fire by the mob, were counted blazing at one time. Bristol 
 
 * My Journal notices, incidentally, the price of illumination lamps rising 
 suddenly to 12s. per dozen, and a neighbour spending upon them, and the 
 oil they required, 80 for his share of the national rejoicing. 
 
 + After a five nights' debate, when 193 Peers divided against 158. 
 Majority, (which included 20 of the Bishops.) 41.
 
 20 INSURRECTIONARY DEMONSTRATIONS. 
 
 was in the power of a similar mob for the two whole days and 
 nights of October 29th and 30th, 1831 ; during which the prisons 
 of the town were broken open with sledge hammers, debtors and 
 criminals released, spirit shops were attacked for drink, and the 
 houses of obnoxious individuals plundered and burnt. In those 
 two days property to the amount of 500,000 was destroyed ; and 
 110 persons were killed and wounded, or otherwise injured. The 
 immediate provocation of this riot was only the entry into the town 
 of an unpopular recorder (Sir Charles Wetherell) ; and the unfavour- 
 able impression it made on the minds of the governing classes was 
 not improved by the news which arrived, three weeks later, that the 
 Trades unions of Lyons had risen in arms (November 21st) to es- 
 tablish a tariff of wages, and after many sanguinary conflicts with 
 the military and national guard, in which between 500 and 600 per- 
 sons were killed, had made themselves masters of the city. An 
 army of 26,000 men, commanded by Marshal Soult, was required 
 to put down this insurrection : the first distinct class insurrection 
 for rights of labour; repeated, (as noticed in my last, p. 11), seven- 
 teen years later, in Paris. 
 
 These disorders, which had arisen naturally out of the then recent 
 revolution of 1830, (for it is the necessary drawback to all advan- 
 tages gained by physical force that those who have succeeded by it 
 for one object, will apply it to another,) had some effect in shaking 
 the faith of English Reformers in the doctrine, recently revived, 
 which was, then, very prevalent, that a little frightening of the 
 Aristocracy does no harm; and projects for an armed organi- 
 sation, corresponding to that of a National Guard, in which Bir- 
 mingham and Manchester had taken the lead, were for a time 
 laid aside. When, however, in May the Eeform Bill was again 
 defeated by the Lords, and Ministers had, in consequence, resigned, 
 popular impatience to try the effect of a rough and violent remedy 
 was again manifested, and helped undoubtedly to render impossible 
 the formation of a new Conservative Cabinet ; which, during an inter- 
 regnum of nine days, Lord Lyndhurst and the Duke of Wellington
 
 ELECTIONS OF 1832 AND 1835. 21 
 
 sought in vain to effect. The Duke then advised the King to 
 restore the Grey Cabinet, withdrawing at the same time his own 
 opposition in the Lords ; and the crisis was at an end. The Reform 
 Bill passed its third reading in the Lords June 4th, 1832: two 
 days before the death, in his 85th year, of Jeremy Bentham; who 
 just lived to be congratulated on the event. 
 
 Congratulated ! But is that the right word ? Do we now pay 
 compliments to each other on the satisfactory state of the National 
 Representation as we then established it ? Have we lately heard of 
 Birmingham and Manchester "marching upon London" to support 
 the principles of the Reform Act, or of their coming up by railroad 
 to denounce them ? 
 
 To denounce them, certainly, as illusory; and illusory they must 
 have been to some extent, inasmuch as the last thing any of us, 
 on the Liberal side, looked for was to see ,the Tories climb again 
 into power by the very scaffolding we were erecting for ourselves ; 
 and to. witness a long succession of Parliaments, each of them, with 
 one exception, containing fewer reform elements than the last of 
 the unreformed Parliaments, which we were then superseding. 
 
 The one exception was the First Reformed Parliament, elected in 
 December, 1832, when 509 supporters of the Grey cabinet were 
 returned, and only 149 of the opposition; a result, shown afterwards 
 to have been the effect only of panic among the Conservatives, who, 
 supposing themselves utterly beaten, had mostly retired from the 
 field; for the election of January, 1835, under the auspices of Sir 
 Robert Peel, when the panic had subsided, and Registration Societies 
 had mastered the position, reduced the total of the Whig and Radical 
 ranks from 509 to 316. A majority of 10, only, was all that Lord 
 John Russell obtained in his second Parliament, on the first division 
 taken as a trial of strength, that of February 9th, 1835, for the 
 choice of Speaker ! One hundred reformers had lost their seats ; 
 seats destined, from that time to the present, not to be fully 
 recovered. 
 
 I call attention to the very striking fact, that excepting the short
 
 22 OUR OLD AND NEW PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 interval of twenty-three months in 1883-4, no such Liberal majori- 
 ties have been seen in the House of Commons as those which were 
 obtained in the last of the unreformed Parliaments. A majority for 
 the Reform Bill, as before observed, of 136, (June 24th, 1881), and 
 of 162, on its third introduction ; the second reading being in the 
 last instance carried (December 12th) by 324 against 162, or 
 exactly two to one. 
 
 These majorities were the result of an appeal to an electoral body 
 believed to have been under 200,000, for the whole of the United 
 Kingdom ! 
 
 The author of the Black Book was then reminding us (p. 601) 
 that the number of electors in England who actually voted at the 
 election of 1830 was estimated at only 87,000, and cheering us at the 
 same time with the assurance (p. 607) that " the Reform Bill would 
 substitute for this oligarchy with selfish and limited interests, a national 
 government responsible to 500,000 electors, every one of whom has 
 an interest in domestic peace, order, and prosperity." Instead of 
 500,000, the several Reform Acts produced a registered body of 
 electors for Great Britain and Ireland, in 1832, of 812,935. The 
 extension was, therefore, considerable; and as in 1866 the number of 
 registered electors had, from the growth of population, further 
 increased to somewhat above 1,850,000, it would surely have 
 been wise to have asked ourselves, before repeating the same kind of 
 experiment, why this large addition of voters so completely failed 
 of ensuring the ends of a true representation that, for thirty years, 
 we have seen the government of this country not in the hands of a 
 fair majority of any shade of opinion, but dependent upon a new 
 oligarchy, composed of small and insignificant sections ; which, in the 
 balancing of parties, by shifting sides at an election, or in the House, 
 has been able to make and unmake hybrid ministries, and play a 
 political game of see-saw with the national interests. 
 
 This is my short reply to comments received on my last paper, 
 sent me by honest men, more hopeful of progress, in the true and 
 proper sense of the word, than I can feel, under the prodigious mis*
 
 MISTAKEN CALCULATIONS. 23 
 
 takes we are now committing. A correspondent, to whom I bow 
 with respect from his rising reputation at the bar, reminds me of 
 many Liberal objects to which I used to be favourable (and am favour- 
 able still), which he thinks would be promoted by almost any kind of 
 reform, which gave a larger basis to the suffrage, although, in other 
 respects, not perfectly satisfactory. He says, " It is useless to dwell 
 upon the deficiencies of the working classes in point of education. 
 They have, at all events, sense enough to discover the men who sin- 
 cerely desire to raise and improve the masses ; and such are the 
 men whom they will elect to Parliament; because popular sympa- 
 thies are even more important than education for forming sound 
 political opinions." 
 
 So, my learned friend, many of us, your senior counsel for Reform, 
 reasoned in 1832 ; and reasoned wrong. Popular sympathies, on 
 their first serious test, were nowhere so infallible as we hoped to 
 find them, in distinguishing the earnest from the plausible ; and often 
 failed us altogether ; declaring not unfrequently against our best 
 men, and showing that the labours of our ablest working adminis- 
 trators had met with slight appreciation from the class they were most 
 to benefit. 
 
 I take from the electoral returns of the period another broad fact, 
 which should be included in my friend's brief when next instructed 
 in this case. At the election of May, 1831, to the last unreformed 
 Parliament, when freeholders alone voted, the whole of the eighty-two 
 County members returned for England were pledged to Reform, 
 with the exception of six. At the next election, the first under the 
 Reform Act, when the number of County members had been raised 
 to 144, and when 50 tenants at will had been made electors, the 
 proportion of Reformers to Conservatives was at once diminished ; 
 standing as 102 against 42 ; and at the election of January, 1835, 
 these numbers were nearly reversed ; giving a decided majority 
 to the old Tory party, which as far as the Counties are concerned, 
 it has ever since maintained. 
 
 This result was partly to be attributed to the introduction of a
 
 24 THE CHANDOS CLAUSE. 
 
 clause in the Reform Bill, on the motion of the Marquis of Chandos, 
 to include, as County voters, 50 tenants at will, with 50 leaseholders. 
 It was resisted by Lord John Russell, on the ground that while a 
 lease represented some kind of ownership, more than equivalent in 
 many cases to a 40s. freehold, a yearly tenancy was not a possession, 
 and therefore not a corresponding guarantee for electoral indepen- 
 dence ; but the clause was carried against him, through the desertion 
 of Hume, Hodges, Grisborne, and many other Liberals, who voted 
 with the Marquis.* It was a grievous error, and they paid for it. 
 Most unmistakably, the popular sympathies of the agricultural mind 
 were not Radical. 
 
 The case of the Boroughs was not precisely similar ; for the Reform 
 Act of 1832, while extending the suffrage, did not lower it. On the 
 contrary, it proceeded some steps in the opposite direction ; abolish- 
 ing the right of making burgesses by gift and purchase, which had 
 been largely abused for election purposes, and disfranchising 
 generally, non-resident freemen ; a large proportion of whom 
 belonged to the poorer class. With a tenderness, however, for 
 vested interests quite at variance with this proceeding, the Act 
 allowed the old fagot voters to retain their privileges, as resident 
 freemen, for themselves, their children and apprentices ; an incon- 
 sistency and weakness of which, it was very early seen, the effect 
 would be deplorable. 
 
 At the contest for Liverpool in 1835, when its constituency had 
 been doubled, (8,167votinginsteadofthe4,401 in!830,)themostopen 
 bribery prevailed ; during the last hour of the election the price of a 
 vote rose from 15 to 25, and, profiting as well by a division in the 
 Reform ranks, the freemen succeeded in placing a Tory (Lord 
 Sandon) at the head of the poll. 
 
 Three years had not then elapsed since we had read in the Black 
 
 18th August 1831 
 
 For the Amendment of the Marquis of Chandos 232 
 
 Against 148 
 
 Majority , . 84
 
 BRIBERY UNDER THE REFORM ACT. 25 
 
 Book, that the Reform Bill, once passed, " would put an end to the 
 perjuries, drunkenness, riots and immoralities of parliamentary 
 elections !" (p. 607.) 
 
 A very little further experience showed us that among our 10 
 householders, admitted to vote with no other test of qualification than 
 the payment for a twelvemonth of a local rate, there was far too 
 large a proportion as unfitted for an honest and intelligent exercise 
 of the suffrage as pauper freemen ; and that in the hap-hazard 
 system we had retained for electoral divisions, (as if the size and 
 distribution of constituencies had been of secondary moment,) there 
 were other elements of danger, all of which together were likely 
 to expose us to the most corrupt influences of the old system ; and 
 even to increase them. 
 
 We have had now placed in our hands the Report of the Com- 
 missioners appointed to inquire into recent corrupt practices at 
 elections in Great Yarmouth, Lancaster, Reigate, and Totnes ; 
 and turning over their four volumes of evidence, I tax my memory 
 in vain for anything more glaring and abominably vicious in the 
 past than belongs to the present. I recall, before the old Reform Act, 
 many electoral abuses, and a generally defective representation, some 
 instances of which had become a world scandal, but not a state of 
 things in which the seeds of electoral demoralisation had been sown 
 so broadcast over the country as we have seen them under the pro- 
 visions of the colourable remedy we applied in 1832. The principle 
 of the old Nomination Boroughs was utterly indefensible ; but it yet 
 had its favourable side, as compared with that of bribe-able ignorance, 
 which we, too largely, accepted in exchange. The Commissioners 
 tell us of two-hundred public-houses opened in Great Yarmouth, at the 
 electionof 1865, and 6,000 broughtdown by one candidate in oyster 
 barrels, and 4,000 by another, to debauch the constituents ; but no 
 man was made the worse by an election for Gatton or Old Sarum, and 
 the members returned for such places were at least upon a par for 
 honesty with any of [our modern oyster-barrel candidates ; and often 
 men of much higher ability. The oyster- barrel candidate being usually
 
 26 LIBERAL ELEMENTS OF OLD PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 the self-constituted judge of his own fitness, while the member for a 
 Nomination Borough had at least the confidence of a large party, 
 and was often selected by that party less on the ground of family 
 connexions than the usefulness of talent. 
 
 The Earl of Chatham, who declared himself in favour of a Reform 
 of the County Representation in 1770, sat originally for Old 
 Sarum: brought in, as plain William Pitt, in 1735, when quite a 
 young man, with only a hundred a year for patrimony, but a 
 high college reputation, to oppose the Tory minister, Sir 
 Robert Walpole. The younger brother of the next Earl, the second 
 William Pitt (who was also a person of narrow means), was, when 
 denouncing, in 1781, the American war, as a war against men "strug- 
 gling in the holy cause of liberty," and supporting Parliamentary 
 Reform, with the help of Charles James Fox, sitting forAppleby, 
 another of the Nomination Boroughs included among the sixty 
 (reduced finally to fifty-six) disfranchised by Schedule A. The cele- 
 brated John Home Tooke sat for Old Sarum in 1801. " Brougham," 
 observes Mr. H. B. Stanton, " entered the Commons through the 
 narrow door of a Nomination Borough, though he left it with the 
 plaudits of the largest constituency in the kingdom. Burke, Romilly, 
 Mackintosh, and other illustrious and liberal names, were indebted 
 to close corporations for their introduction to senatorial fame."* 
 In more open constituencies we had such men as Byng and Sir 
 Francis Burdett returned for Middlesex in 1802; and looking fur- 
 ther back, we see that our old Parliaments, from the days of Hampden, 
 whatever were the anomalies of the representation, never wanted for 
 a good sprinkling of popular leaders, and always contained men of 
 high intellectual reputation, in advance of their time. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind, also, that in the days of Charles James 
 Fox, before the timid had become frightened by the too- sweeping 
 violence of the first French Revolution, neither of the two Houses 
 could be described as altogether unfriendly to democratic exten- 
 sion. Mr. Pitt's motion for Reform in 1782 was lost only by 20, 
 
 * Sketches of Reform and Reformers, p. 166.
 
 CHARACTER OF OUR LATE PARLIAMENTS. 27 
 
 in a House of 302 Members. The American Declaration of In- 
 dependence, July 4th, 1776, was then recent, and its principles 
 had become the political creed of chivalrous members of the French 
 nobility, who had shared in the preceding struggle, and of many 
 Englishmen of rank and fortune. The founders of The Society 
 for Constitutional Information, to support the object of Pitt's motion, 
 were Earl Grey and Major Cartwright; while, the same year, (1782,) 
 the Duke of Richmond was taking the lead in forming another 
 association, called " The Quintuple Alliance, for the promotion of 
 Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage." 
 
 Can we now fairly state that we have in the two Houses a larger 
 body of qualified legislators, genuine friends of the people, than at 
 that epoch ? I think not. No, my friend ; it is a mortifying con- 
 fession, but it is an honest one, the addition of more than a million 
 of voters to our old constituency by the first Reform Act, did not, 
 from the blundering method of that extension, permanently raise 
 the character of the House of Commons. We did not gather grapes 
 of thorns, nor figs of thistles. We did not diminish the general 
 average of the expense of elections, but we largely increased it. We 
 did not shut out from the House place-hunters, private jobbers, and 
 mere party men, but, in a new form, gave them freer entrance 
 than before. We did not secure for legislators a larger number of 
 earnest and thoughtful students of administrative questions, but 
 a smaller number; replacing, sometimes, the few we had, by men as 
 impatient of discussion on " a mere principle," as the most indolent 
 of schoolboys of their first elementary lessons. Men who, instead of 
 proving careful guardians of the public purse, have shown them- 
 selves as favourable to lavish expenditure as any of their predecessors ; 
 who have left untouched all the old abuses of Army and Navy 
 patronage, and more than doubled, in times of peace, the expenses of 
 our Military and Naval establishments( 11,657,487 in 1835, 
 26,179,000 in 1867.*) Who, within the same period, have raised 
 the general burden of taxation from 45, 000,000 to 70,000,000; 
 
 * See Addenda.
 
 28 CHARACTEK OF OUR LATE PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 mitigated only in its effects by the general increase of wealth, 
 and an addition of six millions to the population. Who, instead of 
 improving our Local government to the extent hoped for, have 
 added to its cost, and impaired its efficiency; creating new 
 Boards where old Boards should have heen consolidated ; marring, 
 from the very first, the measures of Municipal and Poor Law Re- 
 form, as originally conceived by their authors ; throwing upon the 
 Poor rates objects largely " unconnected with relief," until the 
 gross amount is again beginning to swallow up rentals (9,448,319 
 in 1864, against 6,973,000 in 1854) ;* and who have to this hour, 
 and chiefly from the poorest of motives, a weakness for " City 
 hospitalities," evaded grappling with what, among the old Corporations, 
 was considered the giant abuse of them all, the Corporation of 
 London. Who, in such matters as the management of our roads, the 
 lighting of towns, and water supply, have surrendered the national 
 interests to a multitude of private Companies set on foot by the share 
 market, and helped to ruin them by an augmentation of 
 preliminary and parliamentary expenses before unheard of ; from 
 which, and the mischievous action of monopolies, the public will 
 have to suffer for generations to come. Who have so legislated for 
 Insolvency as to have left us with no remedy and no punishment for 
 fraudulent debt. Who, on the vital question of National Education, 
 have gone back from the principles of the Commission of 1828, 
 which recommended, and afterwards (in 1831) carried out for Ire- 
 land, " a system of combined literary and separate religious instruc- 
 tion," and have for England, substituted a voluntary Church andDe- 
 nominational Scheme, founded on the principle that " to him that 
 hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance, and from him that 
 hath not shall be taken even that which he hath ; "the practical result 
 being thatout of 13, 838 parishes in England, only 7,137, and those the 
 richest, receive assistance from the Government grants ; while the 6,701 
 unaided poorer parishes, chiefly agricultural, are obliged to contribute 
 (through the taxes) to the funds voted.f Who, with the better example 
 
 * Addenda 2. f Ibid 3.
 
 SUMMARY. 29 
 
 of Scotland before them, have shut their eyes to the fact that the 
 great defect of this scheme is the enlarging of Church patronage, 
 and the strengthening of sectarian distinctions ; with so low a mini- 
 mum of instructional benefit to the people, that to this very 
 day one-third the women of England and one-fourth the men of 
 England are found unable to sign their names to a marriage register!* 
 True it is that many Liberal measures, including measures of 
 a neutral complexion as regards party distinctions, have been passed 
 since the Keform Act of 1832 : (strange it would be if there had 
 been absolutely no progress;) but looking through the whole of 
 them, Poor Law Amendment, Municipal reforms (such as they 
 were), Registration of births, deaths, and marriages, Dissenters 
 Marriage Bill, Penny Postage, Tithe Commutation Act, Improved 
 Charity administration, District Union Schools, Repeal of Corn 
 Laws, Repeal of Taxes on Knowledge, &c., I can discover no one 
 among them that might not have been wrung, with a corresponding 
 amount of agitation, from the Unreformed Parliament of 1831, or of 
 which either the origin or the success can be distinctly traced to the 
 subsequent enfranchisement of the more than a million of occupiers we 
 then added to the register. The Reform Act helped forward those 
 measures just so far only and no farther, that it placed electoral power 
 in the hands of men who understood them ; and it obstructed those 
 measures to the full extent that it threw open the doors of Parliament 
 to public-house and oyster-barrel candidates for admission. Whether 
 on some points the balance of loss and gain may not have been 
 favourable to the Liberal interest is perhaps doubtful, but Educa- 
 tionists, at least, should take warning that it has been notably ad- 
 verse on all Church questions. The right of the State to appoint a 
 Lay Inspector of Primary Schools in connection with the Church of 
 England, when aided by public-money, has been abandoned for Eng- 
 land and Wales. (The present 42 Inspectors of the so-called " National 
 Schools" are all clergymen.) The Irish Church grievance has re- 
 mained exactly as i-t stood in 1835; and no stand against Ecelesias- 
 
 * See Addenda 4.
 
 30 ITALIAN PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 tical encroachments on Civil Liberty, worth speaking of, has been 
 made by our legislators since 1829, when an nnreformed House of 
 Commons, under the ministry of the Duke of Wellington, carried, in 
 the teeth of clerical opposition, the great measure of Catholic 
 Emancipation. 
 
 No my friend, no ; a thousand times no ! If you want a cham- 
 pion of the Protestant right of private judgment, or of collegiate and 
 scholastical emancipation from the odium tJieologicum, it is not to 
 the ranks of the ignorant and dependent you must look for his sup- 
 port. They will be found, more frequently than not, submitting to 
 be used as the tools of his enemies, denouncing and persecuting him 
 perhaps for infidelity ; as in the case of Dr. Priestley, whose house, 
 books, manuscripts, and philosophical apparatus, were destroyed by 
 the populace of Birmingham, in 1791 ; a case of which we were 
 reminded the other day, by the equally disgraceful Popery and No- 
 Popery riots of June 16th and 17th in the same town; and cor- 
 responding with the reactionary influences we have seen in Italy, 
 since the exploits of Garibaldi, in the seizure of Palermo by a 
 monk led Sicilian peasantry ; and in the defeat of Garibaldi and 
 his party of the Left, in the election of March 1867, in Florence, at 
 Bologna, at Milan, and even in eleven out of the twelve colleges of 
 Naples. 
 
 This latter reverse some reformers are trying to persuade them- 
 selves is owing to the new constitution of Italy not being yet 
 sufficiently democratic. Never was there a greater mistake. A 
 distrust of Garibaldi's prudence contributed, but the marked 
 character of his defeat was due to the influence of the priesthood ; 
 which although, in Italy, nil with the educated few, is still over- 
 powering with the many, even among the personal admirers of the 
 
 * The present struggle in Italy is for a more rational disposal of a fund 
 of 80,000,000 sterling, held by the Eoman Catholic clergy, and largely mis- 
 applied. It is mere childishness to suppose, that those who have wielded 
 for centuries this money power, should, aided by ignorance and superstition, 
 have no influence with the multitude.
 
 APPEALS TO IGNOEANT MASSES. 31 
 
 man. The Court of Rome would desire nothing better at the present 
 moment than permission to place on the electoral register the 
 agricultural labouring population of Calabria and the Abruzzi. 
 
 Nothing better than the success of the revolution of Belgium was 
 desired, in 1830, by the Roman Catholic clergy of the latter country, 
 while under the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands ; and 
 its immediate results on the interests of education in Belgium were 
 disastrous. The admirable system of popular instruction, which 
 the Dutch government had inaugurated, was at once abolished. 
 The priesthood, as advocates of " liberty of instruction," recovered 
 the ascendency in the primary schools, and again left them to ruin. 
 The same disaster would overtake our Irish schools, if a mandate 
 from the Pope were to render possible, as it might do, with foreign 
 assistance, at any moment, the success of a Fenian insurrection. Who 
 could assert that the Irish Cottier, such as we see him, would 
 not side with his priest, on any question connected with spiritual 
 instruction, against the best orators of the Reform League ? 
 
 The classical student reads of the ostracism of Aristides the Just, 
 and the English scholar of the Stuarts, recalled by a fickle and mis- 
 guided people, aided by the soldiers of Monk, after the able admin- 
 istration of a Cromwell, to disgrace the country by the most corrupt 
 court, that of Charles II., England had ever seen ; but we have 
 had, in our own time, a significant instance of the kind of response to 
 be expected from direct appeals to ignorant masses, which should 
 suffice at least for all reformers, of the present century, with repub- 
 lican aspirations. I allude to the election for President of the late 
 French Republic, in December 1848 ; within six months, only, of 
 General Cavaignac having become the hero of the middle classes, as 
 the restorer of public order, by his suppression of the sanguinary 
 " Insurrection des ouvrieres" The votes were : 
 
 M. Louis Napoleon 5,534,520 
 
 General Cavaignac 1,448,302 
 
 M. Ledru-Kollin 370,119 
 
 M. Easpail 36,900 
 
 M. Lamartine 17,910 
 
 General Changarnier 4,790 
 
 c
 
 &2 SOURCE OF TYRANNICAL POWER. 
 
 The test was a decisive one, for although, in subsequent French 
 elections, questions have been raised of a tampering with the ballot- 
 box, here there were none. The prefects of the departments were, 
 then, all of Republican appointment ; and the ballot-boxes were there- 
 fore in the hands of the Mends of Cavaignac. He had the support 
 of all the true Liberalism and intelligence of France ; but against 
 him were united the physical-force men of the Trade Unions, the 
 whole body of the Roman Catholic clergy, and a Peasantry so hope- 
 lessly ignorant^ as to believe, in a multitude of cases, that they were 
 voting, not for a stranger, whose good and bad qualities were at that 
 time wholly untried, but for the old Napoleon ; not dead, after all, 
 but alive, and happily returned from St. Helena. 
 
 It is the misfortune of honest Radicalism, in its fervid denuncia- 
 tions of tyrants, to be unconscious of the source of tyrannical power. 
 It does not pause to reflect that a tyrant could not trample on 
 a people without help from the people ; or that he oppresses one 
 section of a community only by the aid of another. As a single 
 individual, a tyrant would be harmless enough; any half-dozen 
 women would be stronger than he ; but behind him is always a 
 hydra-headed monster a multitude ready to do a tyrant's bidding, 
 and to play, each in turn, a tyrant's part. Brutus strikes 
 at Cfesar, forgetting that it was the cheers of Romans that fired 
 Caesar's ambition, and not foreseeing that Romans will avenge hia 
 death. William Tell reserves his second arrow for an Austrian 
 Gesler ; unconscious that in the events to follow, his own country- 
 men will play a leading part as " the mercenary Swiss," hired for 
 the suppression of liberty in other lands. Much has often been said 
 of the folly of the crowned heads of Europe, in ruining themselves 
 and their subjects by immense standing armies, forming now an 
 aggregate of two millions of men. The folly is great, but not so seri- 
 ous as the fact that there are always two millions of men, and more 
 at their back, consenting to be so employed ; men, grumbling some- 
 times at conscriptions, but ready, without a question asked, at the 
 command of a little Corporal, to put a bullet or a bayonet into any
 
 THE NEW REFORM ACT. 35 
 
 Imperialism, with no pretence of popular suffrage about it ; in our free 
 Colonies, in conflicts of races, African, European, Indian, Chinese, 
 and Polynesian, occasioning daily embarrassment ; and in England 
 itself, in a political dead-lock, a Ministry appeared to whom the bright 
 thought had occurred, as a revelation from heaven, that before 
 legislating again for the construction of a new Constitution^ 1 edifice, 
 it would be well to have a little preliminary discussion about its 
 foundations. 
 
 Macaulay's New Zealander will learn from the debates of 1867, 
 how such a proposal, made by Mr. Disraeli, was received; by some 
 as a device to gain time, and by the majority of our 658 statesmen 
 as something so preposterously needless, that a smile, or a shout of 
 ridicule, was its only answer. Democritus, were he now living, 
 would smile or shout in his turn, while Heraclitus would weep, over 
 the abundant demonstration that has since been given of the impos- 
 sibility of any permanent settlement of the Reform question, without 
 a better knowledge of First Principles than prevailed, in and out of 
 Parliament, at the opening of the session. 
 
 Its fruits have been another political compromise ; fairly, and 
 frankly characterised by the Minister driven to it as "a leap in the 
 dark ;" and I pass on, omitting, to avoid prolixity, much that, 
 here, should otherwise be said, to sketch, as briefly as possible, the 
 conditions under which the leap is taken. A leap in the dark it is, 
 not only to Lord Derby, but to most of his usual opponents ; to 
 some of whom, the broad day light that is coming, may bring 
 astonishment, and self-reproach. 
 
 80 (6 31 Viet., cap. 102. 
 
 1. The preamble of the new Act states it to be " expedient to 
 amend the laws relating to the representation of the people;" and 
 its provisions assume, generally, that the way to amend those laws 
 is to extend the Suffrage. 
 
 2. The Suffrage is a share in the National Government, which 
 may, of course, be extended either to right or to wrong parties, and be 
 distributed in right or in wrong proportions. It may be partial or
 
 86 THE NEW REFORM ACT. 
 
 universal, equal or unequal, direct or indirect. Universal Suffrage, as 
 was long ago pointed out by Home Tooke, is one thing, and Equal 
 Universal Suffrage is another. The new Act is an advance, and a 
 very considerable one, towards Direct and Equal Universal Suffrage ; 
 with a view to which it provides for a general lowering of electoral 
 qualifications. 
 
 3. In lowering electoral qualifications the Act sets aside all con- 
 siderations of moral or intellectual fitness for the electoral duty to 
 be discharged. It goes at once down to the class in the lowest state 
 of cultivation, and reduces the highest to the same level. There is 
 to be no recognition of grades of merit as connected with citizenship, 
 so that a vote, or an additional power of voting, might be earned as an 
 honourable distinction. Property is to be dissevered from the fran- 
 chise, or nearly so, and education, experience, character, talent, are 
 not to take its place. A Civil Service examination for India, tasks, 
 in the severest manner, every power of the mind, but those who are 
 to vote for the rulers of India may never have heard of its existence. 
 The Act, it is probable, enfranchises fully half-a-million persons unable 
 to read and write ; and this not by an inadvertence, for it was settled 
 by the House of Commons that reading and writing were not neces- 
 sary to an intelligent electoral act ! The proposal of Lord Lyttleton, 
 (July 30th,) that electors should at least be able to write a hand 
 sufficiently legible for a signature was, in the Upper House, met with 
 a jest about the bad handwriting of noble Lords, and also negatived. 
 The only exception to this legislation in favour of ignorance, (for, 
 in deference to the views of popular leaders all " Fancy Franchises " 
 have been swept away,) is a clause (25) for partially extending the old 
 Parliamentary privileges of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin Uni- 
 versities, and of such of their old graduates as can afford, after 
 leaving, to keep on the rolls by continued payment of heavy 
 College fees, to the London University. " Every man whose 
 name is, for the time being, on the Register of Graduates con- 
 stituting the Convocation" of the latter, will now have the privilege 
 of voting for a member ; but for one member only.
 
 TENEMENT OCCUPANCY. 8? 
 
 4. In reference to property qualifications for the Suffrage, the 
 tendency of the Act is towards their total abolition. The minimum 
 laid down for that stake in the country which every one should 
 possess before he takes part in the administration of its resources, 
 may almost be described as the invisible point of metaphysicians, 
 that which constitutes the ultimate difference between something 
 and nothing. The new Franchise, for Boroughs, is, nominally, House- 
 hold Suffrage ; which, as understood by old reformers, had always 
 a respectable sound; but, as denned by the new Act, should be called 
 simply Occupancy Suffrage; for the holder of a house shut up, 
 (although requiring protection for it, and always liable for some 
 portion of the local burdens,) is not, by the Act, admitted to be 
 a householder ; while it is only by a misnomer that the long rows 
 of miserable two-room tenements and broken down hovels, which 
 disfigure the outskirts of many of our towns can be called " houses." 
 The Act goes out of its way to include all such structures by 
 abolishing (clause 7) the custom (called compounding,) of assessing 
 them iii the name of the owner. " The full rateable value of every 
 dwelling-house, or other separate tenement " is now to be entered in 
 the rate-book, with the name of the occupier, in order that its occu- 
 pier (instead of the owner) may be enfranchised. Every hut, 
 thatched cottage, and mud cabin in any Borough of England and 
 Wales is embraced in the category; and the tub of Diogenes, 
 entered at " its full rateable value," would be a house within the 
 meaning of the Act. 
 
 Recognising and allowing, paternally, for the penury of this class 
 of occupiers, the Act provides that their rate qualification shall be 
 limited to the payment of any poor rate levied during six months. 
 Payment of no other rate or tax is necessary to the vote. An 
 amendment by the Lords which would have involved equal liability 
 to Borough and County rates, was rejected by the Commons. On 
 which the question should have been asked, how, in such case, the 
 right of the Tenement occupier to influence, even remotely, the 
 distribution of Borough and County rate funds, can ever arise ; and
 
 88 THE NEW BEFOBM ACT. 
 
 how, especially, his right can be established to affect by a vote the 
 parliamentary disposal of a house duty, seeing that no house duty 
 is ever levied on tenements. 
 
 The new Act gives no reasons, but enacts that any man, not on 
 the parish, who may have obtained, rent free, from the kindness of 
 neighbours, the twelvemonth's shelter of four walls, assessed perhaps 
 at a value of ten shillings per annum, and can command, towards an 
 election time, the few pence only of a poor rate which could be 
 levied on such premises between January and July, shall be entitled 
 to the franchise. 
 
 To working men of a higher status, living in decent lodgings, the 
 Act refuses the franchise, unless their lodgings, unfurnished, be equal to 
 the value of 10 per annum. It will not therefore escape the notice 
 of societies for the erection of improved dwelling houses for the poor, 
 that the Act is, pro tanto, much less favourable to their objects than 
 to the multiplication of tiled sheds. A cheap Tenement suffrage 
 offers, obviously, over again, the same facilities for the creation of 
 fagot votes as existed in the days of Pocket boroughs. History 
 repeats itself, and we are in the hands of those of whom, although 
 of different parties, it will be said, as of the elder Bourbons, 
 " they had forgotten nothing, and learned nothing." 
 
 5. The Lodger franchise, in Boroughs, often pounds per annum, or 
 four shillings per week, is to be without rate-paying; on the principle 
 that rates are always, more or less, counted in the rent ; a fact, but one 
 which, if supplying a suitable rule for a line of suffrage demarcation, 
 should exempt all classes of tenant voters from the necessity of direct 
 rate-paying. The minimum qualification for a County vote is now 
 reduced to the occupancy, for a year, with rate paying, of any land 
 or tenement of the rateable value of twelve pounds per annum ; that 
 is, of five shillings per week ; or, with rates added, about six 
 shillings per week. 
 
 6. These qualifications are, perhaps, sufficiently low to place on 
 the register a clear numerical majority of the wages class of the 
 population; which, however, if numbers alone did not govern,
 
 EQUAL VOTING. 89 
 
 would not be in itself a ground for uneasiness. That the wages class 
 should have their fair share of political power is not to be denied ; 
 the question for sober consideration is, whether if we transfer to a 
 simple majority of this class the whole political power of the 
 country, we give them their fair share, or more than their fair share. 
 Are we quite prepared to reduce, by a system combining, with 
 extension, equal voting and an equal distribution of voting power, 
 the holders of capital, as well as the possessors of superior knowledge, 
 to simple units ? 
 
 The principle of equal voting, in the case of persons not of equal 
 standing, is that one-sided equality, which no one accepts in his own 
 private business transactions ; which is wholly at variance with the 
 laws of commercial partnership ; and which has never, hitherto, been 
 admitted into the British Constitution without counteracting checks, 
 more or less efficient, but often clumsily applied. The reason four 
 members were given to the City of London, while two only were as- 
 signed to a County, with a much greater population, was that 
 anciently the City was held to represent the greater wealth and in- 
 telligence; a sound reason, although not one for allowing, in- 
 dividually, in these times, the same power of voting to a City 
 waterman, or " 'long shoreman," as to a City banker. 
 
 Mr. J. S. Mill, when he proposed to place all such plurality of 
 voting on a common- sense footing,* was treated as an innovator; so 
 was Mr. Disraeli, when he asked only to qualify his extensions with a 
 dual vote in certain cases ; but the greatest innovators on established 
 customs, the oldest customs of mankind, as affecting property, 
 are those now seeking to do away with a variable suffrage power 
 altogether ; and the precedent they are chiefly following is the 
 comparatively modern one of the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. 
 
 The equal voting powers conferred by the Reform extensions 
 of 1832 were mostly confined to an equal class, the middle 
 class ; but the Municipal Reform Act had to deal with ratepayers 
 of all classes, and it fell unhappily under the influence of men 
 misled by the fallacy which Home Tooke had exposed,! or dishonestly 
 
 * See Addenda, 5. f Ibid 6.
 
 40 THE NEW KEFORM ACT. 
 
 seeking to make political capital by it, the fallacy of the cry that 
 " the poor man's penny is equal to the rich man's pound." Under 
 the provisions therefore of the 5th and 6th Will. IV. c. 76, which all 
 but treats ownership as an offence, penny ratepayers (and by the 
 13 and 14 Viet. c. 99, Small Tenement occupiers, not even paying 
 their penny directly, but only through compounding landlords,) 
 have been permitted to do as they pleased with rich men's pounds, 
 until the condition of many of our new Corporations is known to be 
 worse than that of the old. Bribery at municipal elections, with a view 
 to local jobbing, (as at New York,) is now again the rule rather than 
 the exception,* and to check that fraudulent dealing with Corporate 
 estates through which we have sometimes seen even a Town Hall seized 
 by creditors, an Act has had to be passed (23 Viet. c. 6) to give an 
 optional veto on the proceedings of Town Councils, in matters 
 relating to transfers and mortgages, to the Lords of the Treasury. 
 
 7. The untrustworthiness of our Municipal constituencies, from the 
 preponderance of power given by equal voting to small and tempo- 
 rary interests over larger and fixed interests, is a calamity in itself ; 
 but doubly a misfortune at the present time, as tending to per- 
 petuate that over- centralisation of public business in the House 
 of Commons, which is really the great national grievance for which a 
 change in our social organisation is most required. 
 
 The House of Commons is a body, which with 658 members, 
 undertook, thirty-five years back, to discharge all the legislative 
 duties required for a population of twenty-four millions ; it now 
 undertakes, without any new coadjutors, the same functions for 
 thirty millions ; the theory of the new Act being that, for a General 
 Council, 658 is a perfect number ; which for some reasons of mystery, 
 or magic, peculiar to the wise men of this country, and not certainly 
 derived from those of the East,f should not be changed for a single 
 
 * See Addenda, 7. 
 
 t The Council of Nice was composed of but 318 members ; the number 
 of Abraham's servants, and that contained in the Greek letters for Helios, 
 the Sun.
 
 OVEB CENTRALISATION. 41 
 
 figure, more or less. That it should not be changed for larger 
 figures, while all Parliamentary business is transacted under one 
 roof, is plain enough, since -when the whole 658 are assembled they 
 are seen to form, necessarily, a disorderly crowd; but on the other 
 hand the duties now devolving on this body are overwhelming ; or 
 would be so, if, practically, apart from field-day conflicts, it were 
 anything more than a Registration Court, for work really done by 
 Government clerks. Three Acts of Parliament a day, or 485 for the 
 Session, 122 public, and 863 local, were the measures the House 
 had to get through, in some fashion, in 1866. And why, it may be 
 asked, for such minor objects of legislation, as were embraced by 
 the latter, and might be styled Provincial, should there not be more 
 than one House of Commons, or competent representative body, 
 assembling, (where such matters would be better understood, and 
 could be more fully discussed,) in other centres of activity than the 
 metropolis. 
 
 8. And this leads me to remark that a fundamental error has 
 been committed on all sides by agreeing, in our late discussions, to a 
 dislocation of this question, by dividing it into three parts ; as if a 
 reform of Parliament did not concern the United Kingdom, but 
 only the two provinces of England and Wales. 
 
 The new Reform Act does not include Scotland and Ireland. 
 Separate bills are to be introduced for these provinces, or ancient 
 kingdoms, next Session. So that the battle is not yet half fought 
 out ; for the time is surely past when it can be contended that an 
 Irishman or Scotchman should be treated either as a conquered enemy 
 or as an inferior animal, per se, to an Englishman. Whatever share 
 of suffrage power is to be, in 1869, the privilege of an intelligent 
 and wealthy Englishman should, plainly, be the right of any equally 
 intelligent and wealthy Scotchman or Irishman ; and to the precise 
 extent that we have now given a direct and equal vote with the best 
 in the land to the lowest class of Englishmen, we, next Session, must 
 be prepared to admit the claims of the Scutch Highlander, and the
 
 42 THE NEW REFORM ACT. 
 
 Irish Cottier. The following, in reference to them, shows, approxi- 
 mately, our present position. 
 
 Area in Statute Estimated Popu- Registered 
 
 England and Wales 
 Scotland 
 
 Acres. 
 37,094,400 
 19,738,930 
 
 lation in 1867. 
 21,300,000 
 3,200,000 
 
 Electors. 
 1,100,000 
 105,000 
 
 Members. 
 500 
 53 
 
 Ireland 
 
 19,441,944 
 
 5,600,000 
 
 205,000 
 
 105 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 76,275,274* 30,100,000 1,410,000 658 
 
 If, for our renewed starting point, we take 500 as the proper number 
 of members to represent two-thirds of a population of 30,000,000, 
 then by the laws of arithmetic and every rule of logic, 750, and 
 not 658, is the proper number for the whole; or that required for 
 the United Kingdom. And, so far, the problem of Eepresentation 
 is sufficiently simple. Any child could draw up a Keform Bill, if 
 we are simply to count heads, and not at all trouble ourselves about 
 the limits of localisation and centralisation, or any adjustment of 
 private interests, and abandon altogether the principle of a differen- 
 tial franchise. 
 
 9. The authors of the new Act are not prepared to go quite this 
 length, although making a prodigious stride in that direction ; they 
 are still for retaining differential franchises where wrong reasons 
 can be assigned for them, and refuse them only when asked for on 
 right grounds. The voting power conferred by such a building as 
 the Charing Cross Hotel, is, for a Borough, one with that of a 
 tenement in any mews at the back ; but a difference is recognised 
 between Borough and Borough, and Borough and County; as if 
 Representation concerned places, alone, and not the interest of their 
 inhabitants. 
 
 10. The new Act reduces the suffrage power of fifty-eight small 
 Boroughs, at present returning 116 members, one half; abolishes it 
 altogether (for corruption) in the case of four Boroughs returning 
 
 * Exclusive of British Island, Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey, &c., 1,119,159 
 acres. For further details of Population, see Addenda, 8.
 
 DIFFERENTIAL FRANCHISES. 48 
 
 7 members; and distributes the 65 members thus unseated over 
 certain of the old and other new constituencies. Not so as to do 
 away with disparities, but so as to retain them, on a broader basis ; 
 all constituencies now to comprise greater numbers, but, relatively to 
 each other, to be much the same as before ; some large and some 
 small; some returning one member, others two members, others three 
 members, and the City of London four members. 
 
 The principle of such an arrangement is unintelligible, for what 
 has the franchise of an individual elector to do with h'S choice to 
 live in a crowd or in a solitude ? Will it, now, be an act of 
 greater virtue to reside in the new Borough of Chelsea, which is to 
 return two members, than in Guildford, which is to return but one ? 
 It would seem so ; for if a virtuous elector of Chelsea commit the 
 indiscretion of removing to Guildford he will lose a vote ! 
 
 11. The new Act, to avoid meeting fairly the question of pro- 
 perty qualifications, repeats the blunder of the old Refoim Act, 
 (made innocently, with the object only of excluding nominal burgesses), 
 in restricting the Borough franchise to residents ; however large and 
 bona-fide the interest of the non-resident; and sanctions aga'n the 
 inconsistency of allowing, for counties, the franchise to a 4Cs. 
 freeholder, without any restriction as to residency ; another striking 
 illustration of a differential ^franchise retained on a false basis : 
 and, connected with it, is one still more absurdly wrong-headed. 
 
 12. A landlord millionnaire, if his whole property be derived from 
 ground rents in a single county, has but two votes to represent it, 
 that is, a vote for two members ; but if he, or a less wealthy man, 
 buy up 40s. freeholds in different counties, he is allowed to gain 
 two votes for every county in which he thus becomes interested ; 
 and practically, at the present moment, many county electors hold 
 a plurality of votes in this form, affecting the return of twenty 
 or thirty members. 
 
 18. Disparities of size in constituencies create another kind 
 of differential franchise equally illogical, as tending only to defeat 
 its proper end. Thus the registered electors of Ipswich, returning 
 two members, are at the present moment, 2,118. The registered
 
 44 THE NEW REFORM ACT. ' 
 
 electors of Finsbury, also returning two members, are 25,461. The 
 suffrage power, therefore, of Ipswich, is twelve times greater than that 
 of Finsbury. A difference which could only be justified by the old 
 Sacerdotal theory about Holy places, alluded to, which held it to be more 
 meritorious to live in Jerusalem than Jericho ; or on the assumption that 
 the aggregate intelligence and property of the Ipswich electors is twelve 
 times greater than that of the Finsbury electors. Whether the new 
 Reform Act will make any change in these proportions will depend on 
 the accident of there being possibly more Small Tenement occupiers, 
 and 4s. a week lodgers in one place than the other. If there be no more, 
 and if the constituency of each place should say simply be doubled, at 
 the next general election, the inequality of their respective shares in 
 the Representation will remain the same. The new Act, however, it is 
 probable, will introduce many greater disparities than now prevail 
 between constituency and constituency; small tenements, low rented 
 houses, and houses let in lodgings not being equally scattered over 
 the country. It may be expected that some boroughs will be en- 
 larged but slightly, and others five fold. The electors of Calne 
 are now 174; of Thetford 224; of Knaresborough 272 ; of Wells 
 274 ; and the new average of these and corresponding quiet market 
 towns may, perhaps, not exceed 1,000, while that of others, at present 
 on a par with them, maybe raised to 5,000 or 10,000; and we 
 must not be surprised to see constituencies approaching 100,000. 
 
 14. There will be a limit to this, in the circumstance that a sliding 
 scale of extension is at the same time a sliding scale of indifference. 
 An elector values his privilege when it enables him to act 
 where every vote tells, but when he is obliged to share it with so 
 many thousands that, all voting, the influence of a single vote 
 on the result of an election is quite inappreciable, he is apt very 
 soon to regard the ptivilege as of little account. Under the new 
 Reform Act, therefore, multitudes, duly qualified, will not claim to 
 be placed on the register. This we may be sure of, because, in 
 our largest constituencies, at the present moment, it is rare that 
 more than half the number already placed there can, at contested
 
 DIFFERENTIAL FRANCHISES. 45 
 
 elections, be brought to the poll. And unhappily those who 
 stay away from indifference are not, usually, the persons whose 
 assistance at a poll could, by honest men, be best dispensed with. 
 Electors still more indifferent about voting, but who, as far as 
 a vote itself is concerned-, value the thing for what it will bring, 
 even if it bring nothing more than payment of a beer score, are 
 certain to be at their post ; kept up to it, when necessary, by a 
 professional election agent, who, to refresh his own memory, has all 
 their names alphabetically arranged in his office ledger?, with 
 algebraical signs attached. 
 
 The operation of this law of human nature, in large constituencies, 
 is often to transfer power from the majority to a minority, and that 
 a minority, not composed of the best elements of a community, 
 but of its worst. This is the evil already working in our Metro- 
 politan Boroughs, the mischiefs of which the new Eeform Act must 
 greatly aggravate. Take, for illustration, the case of a silk 
 merchant, and that of some neighbouring publican supported by the 
 prize ring. The silk merchant, finding his individual ehare of the 
 suffrage power now more insignificant than before, will, it is probable, 
 more frequently than before, abstain from voting, or from claiming 
 to vote. Not so the publican ; for a person of his class, whether 
 an honest or a dishonest man, becomes, under the new Act, from 
 his position, as a central point of union for voters having no other, 
 the most influential member of British Society. 
 
 15. A peculiar tendencyinourelectoralarrangementstodiscourage 
 the better class of electors from exercising their privileges, and 
 practically therefore to create a differential suffrage in favour of an 
 inferior class, has long existed, and by the new Act is to continue 
 to exist, in the requirement, for voting, of personal attendance. By 
 the better class of voters I do not mean the wealthiest, but the most 
 active, industrious, and intelligent ; who are, necessarily, the 
 busiest members of a community, and therefore the persons to 
 whom personal attendance at a distance, on a given day, not of their 
 own appointment, is often an impossibility, and always involves a 
 sacrifice. A civil engineer may be wanted in Edinburgh when he
 
 46 THE NEW BEFOKM ACT. 
 
 should be voting in London ; a railway guard on the day of election 
 has to accompany a through train from London to York ; a 
 commercial traveller is thrown out of a gig ; a surgeon from the 
 nearest town, perhaps ten miles off, is summoned to attend him ; 
 judge, jury, counsel, witnesses, are shut up in a Criminal Court 
 from 10 till 6 ; and the whole of these lose their votes; while voters 
 out of work, or out on strike, or fortunately engaged just at that 
 time by " the man in the moon" on moonshine avocations, find per- 
 sonal attendance no inconvenience, and are thus made masters of 
 the situation. 
 
 In 1861 this foolish restriction was relaxed in favour of Oxford, 
 Cambridge, and Dublin Universities by the Act of 24 aud 25 Viet., 
 c. 53, which allows for those bodies the convenience of voting 
 papers ;* and the new Act, therefore, by clause 45, extends the same 
 privilege to the University of London. The clauses, however, 
 introduced by the Lordsf in the original Bill, for allowing voting 
 papers to all who cared to claim them, were disagreed to by the Com- 
 mons^ and to avoid a collision of the two Houses, finally withdrawn. 
 
 They embraced a complicated system of checks, that would 
 practically have been very costly and troublesome in the working, 
 to meet the case of electors not able to read what they sign, or to 
 sign any thing, except with a mark; and the expediency of 
 attempting at all to adapt voting papers to such a difficulty, could 
 not be very clearly made out. We may offer a pen to a man 
 who can write, as we lend a horse to him who can ride; but we 
 
 * For the form of voting paper, see Addenda, 9. 
 
 t August 2nd. On the motion of the Marquis of Salisbury: 
 
 For voting papers ...... 114 
 
 Against 36 
 
 Majority 78 
 
 August 8th. On the question that the House disagree with the Lords' 
 Amendment : 
 
 For 258 
 
 Against 206 
 
 Majority against voting papers. . 52
 
 VOTING PAPERS. 47 
 
 may wisely withhold the pen where it must be guided by the hand 
 of another, as we refuse a horse, even to a friend, whose want of 
 horsemanship might, if we permitted him to mount, cause him to 
 break his neck. 
 
 This is so plain, that the propriety of such distinctions of suffrage 
 as would at least allow, by different forms of voting, the ignorant 
 to remain where they are, and the educated to enjoy the privileges 
 of education, must ultimately be admitted. We tolerate powers of 
 attorney, dock warrants, railway transfers, affidavits affecting pro- 
 perty to any amount, and concerning matters even of life and death, 
 to be enclosed in a letter and transmitted by post ; and we have got 
 so far as to allow a B.A. or an M.A. at the Lakes, to give his 
 opinion on the fitness of Mr. Gladstone to sit in parliament without 
 a special journey to Oxford. The time cannot be distant when we 
 shall sanction the absence from an election of a physician, watching 
 by the bedside of the dying, without subjecting him to the penalty 
 of disfranchisement. 
 
 A great enlargement of the suffrage is itself a reason for dis- 
 pensing with personal attendance at elections, to the full extent that 
 it can be safely done, because, where there is a dense population, 
 personal attendance means the collection of crowds, and crowds 
 collision. This should be especially accepted as a reason in favour of 
 voting papers by all friends of Female Suffrage ; a question which 
 can hardly make serious progress without them. 
 
 1 6. The new Act renews the old suffrage disabilities of the sex. 
 A rich man dies, leaving his estates to his widow. She administers 
 them carefully, pays all rates and taxes upon them, builds schools, 
 founds charities, enlarges churches, but is held to be disqualified 
 by nature from either representing others, or being herself repre- 
 sented. Yet how is this ? The British Constitution knows nothing 
 of the anomaly. A woman sits upon the throne ; women are 
 recognised as parishioners, vote in open vestries, act as overseers; 
 and women, among aboriginal tribes are often found sitting at the 
 Council Board. How is it that in countries blest with what is 
 
 D
 
 48 FEMALE SUFFRAGE. 
 
 called Representative Government woman seems, in this respect, 
 to have lost caste, or to have slipped from her original station of 
 companionship, as the helpmeet of man ? 
 
 The reason is honourable to womanhood. In those softening and 
 
 refining influences which belong to the noblest attributes of mind, 
 
 and which " Auld Nature" found wanting, after " Her 'prentice 
 
 han' fche tried on man," Woman has not failed in her leadership, 
 
 but, in the march of true civilisation, is still in advance of 
 
 her lord. Whether originally taken from his side or not, she 
 
 now shrinks from the Gorilla who would force her back to the banks 
 
 of his native Gaboon. The pubJic, a few years back, saw, not with 
 
 displeasure, but with much satisfaction, Miss Nightingale take her 
 
 place at the head of a military hospital staff; but what if that good 
 
 angel of the Crimean soldier could only have entered upon her 
 
 mission of humanity through the electoral forms insisted upon for 
 
 candidates by the rougher partisans of an exclusively Manhood 
 
 Suffrage ! Who can imagine her meeting, with amiable smiles, a 
 
 canvassing committee at the Red Lion, or Pig and Thistle, or 
 
 escorted by banner men, winding her way through the fustian -jacket 
 
 bearers of knobsticks to gain the planks and sawdust of a fair-booth 
 
 hustings ; and, there, pitching her voice to a scream, and straining it 
 
 till red in the face, after the manner of our Ilyde Park rhetoricians, 
 
 to deliver an addiess, which nobody can hear, from the noise made 
 
 by idlers pelting each other, for amusement, with cabbage stalks, or 
 
 by rioters creating intentional disturbance ? lustinctively every 
 
 woman feels that in such scenes she can take no part. Instinctively 
 
 the public mind revolts against her doing so ; and although prejudice 
 
 against a female suffrage is now beginning somewhat to yield to 
 
 reason,* never shall we see it wholly overcome, and woman consulted, 
 
 * It was satisfactory to see that the minority on Mr. Mill's motion of May 
 20th for omitting the word man, and substituting the word person, was much 
 guater than expected. 
 
 For re!ainiEg the word man 196 
 
 For substituting the word person 73 
 
 Majority against Female Suffrage .... 123
 
 POLLING PLACES. 49 
 
 legislatively, when she should be, on all questions affecting, peculiarly, 
 the interest of her own sex, and often immediately concerning the 
 happiness of both sexes, until the whole machinery of Rowdyism 
 is separated from Representation. 
 
 17. A small step, but a small one only, towards that end, and 
 with the general aim of some partial alleviation of the inconvenience 
 of personal attendance at elections, is made by clauses 34 and 37, 
 which give permission to a returning officer to hire rooms, for polling 
 places, where they can be obtained, (usually only at public houses, ) 
 instead of erecting booths; ar,d direct him to provide for such an 
 increased number " as would enable each voter, as far as practicable, 
 to have a polling place within a convenient distance of his 
 residence." 
 
 An increased number of polling places, with a staff of officers 
 and clerks at each pollirg place, will be a very expensive substitute 
 for voting papers, and their cost out of all proportion to the accom- 
 modation they will afford. A London barrister, on the York Circuit, 
 will derive little advantage from the privilege of polling at the 
 Prince and Feathers, within a stone's-throw of his villa at Dulwich ; 
 and we may assume as a general rule for what an elector may call 
 his residence, because the abode where his wife and children sleep at 
 night, that it is the place of all others in which it is least convenient 
 for him to be present during the day. If we want to find a 
 man, of any activity of mind or body, in what are called business 
 hours, we seek him in his office, his counting house, his shop, his 
 club, his farm, his factory, but not at his private house ; knowing 
 that there, unless laid up from illness, we should certainly not meet 
 with him. A glimmering perception of this fact has led to an 
 extension, in clause 46, of the area of residence for citizens of 
 London from seven miles to twenty -five ; but a City Alderman living 
 at Croydon or HornChurch, will not on that account require more 
 polling places. His most convenient centre will still be Guilihall. 
 
 18. "Residency" and "Occupancy" are terms belonging to an 
 ancient cobweb of ideas, about the objects of an electoral registration,
 
 50 RESIDENCY AND OCCUPANCY. 
 
 which it is high time to sweep from our miiids. A revising barrister 
 ought to be concerned with but two classes of claims: those 
 belonging to personal qualifications, and claims derived from 
 property. If we give a poor man a vote, either because 21 years 
 of age, or for some better reason, as that he may be 45, the head 
 of a family, a superior scholar, or a man who has obtained, for 
 brave and honourable conduct, a Victoria Cross, we do not want to 
 know anything more of his "residence" or "occupancy" than his 
 address on the day of registration. If a soldier or sailor, we know 
 beforehand that he has no fixed place of abode. If we agree that 
 for the protection of capital, the fruits of industry, property 
 should share in the representation, then an electoral register should 
 show what the property in a district is ; distinguishing the owners, 
 as the owners of leases, the owners of freeholds, the owners of 
 stock in trade, owners and joint owners of mines, docks, railways, 
 canals, &c., and giving the names of the agents through whom, 
 when absent, the owners act. Residency, or occupancy is, here, 
 again quite beside the question. A man who sinks a well or builds a 
 factory chimney does not intend to live in either j but wherever he 
 has improved or created a property which can be seized for his 
 debts, he should be held to be sufficiently "abiding" for suffrage 
 purposes; abiding in spirit, if not in the flesh, "for where the 
 treasure is, there will the heart be also." 
 
 19. An element of good, as connected with the question of the 
 proper relations of majorities and minorities, which, if fully carried 
 out, would of itself greatly diminish, if not wholly abate the 
 disorders of elections, was introduced into the new Act, at the last 
 moment. It appears in clause 9, which provides " that where 
 constituencies return three members an individual elector shall vote 
 but for two only."* 
 
 * Moved by Lord Cairns, August 30th, 1867 : 
 
 For the Clause 142 
 
 Against it 51 
 
 91 
 
 See, also, Addenda, 12.
 
 REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES. 51 
 
 The principle is that no representation can be worthy of the name 
 of a National Representation, which does not embrace a proportionate 
 return of all the parties and interests of which a nation may be 
 composed ; opposed, of course, to that cf a mere party leader, whose 
 beau ideal of a House of Commons is that of a body exclusively 
 composed of pledged partisans, with himself at the head. 
 
 A National Council, properly so called, would be a body of honest 
 men meeting to consult, and to decide nothing without consulting ; 
 and it would be composed, as a nation is composed, not of persons 
 wholly of one or of two shades of opinion, but of many different 
 shades ; of minorities, therefore, as well as majorities, and of 
 minorities comprising the views and interests of a third, fifth, and 
 even of a tenth section of a community, with those of its larger 
 sections. If this principle, with that of an rquitable differential 
 suffrage, were so carried out that while a majority of votes would 
 command the greater share of the representation, a tenth portion of 
 them would also insure a tenth share, the present character of our 
 elections would be wholly changed. They would lose that fierce- 
 ness which belongs to every struggle in which the stakes are "all 
 or none." The better class of electors could take part in then 1 , 
 without risk of utter defeat. The corrupt could never win a perfect 
 triumph. 
 
 The best working method for such representation of minorities 
 is a question admitting of much discussion, and this clause of the 
 Lords, bearing upon it, will affect but slight improvement in the 
 general operation of the present measure, but its adoption may be 
 noticed as a sign of progress, of some promise for the future. 
 
 20. Towards that purification of constituencies, which, with the 
 substitution of better elements, instead of a general lowering of 
 qualifications, should now, after the experience we have had, have 
 been the essential feature of a new Reform Act, the present Act 
 offers us " a halfpenny- worth of bread" in the sentence it passes 
 (12) on four constituencies out of our three hundred and seventy- 
 four, those of Totnes, Eeigate, Great Yarmouth, and Lancaster.
 
 52 THE DISFRANCHISED BOROUGHS. 
 
 Certain persons belonging to these Boroughs, named in the Schedules 
 of the several reports of the Commission of Inquiry, as having been 
 guilty of bribery, or receiving bribes, in all 2,035,* are visited 
 with the penalty of disfranchisement, for town and county ; and, so 
 far, so good ; but as there were fair grounds for presuming that 
 others were equally guilty, not to be easily separated from the 
 innocent, our legislators, to make a better show of doing something, 
 have adopted the old device of punishing the innocent and guilty 
 together ; and so have deprived the whole of the inhabitants of these 
 places of their right of suffrage, as far as it affected their Borough 
 franchise. Totnes is a small place, but, for wealth and population 
 Reigate, Great Yarmouth, and Lancaster, stand much above many 
 boroughs permitted under the new Act to return a member. The 
 aggregate population of the four is 64,791 ; their registered electors 
 4,412 ; and no one can believe either that the whole of the 4,412 
 were corrupt,! or that the greater number were worse than the 
 majority of the rest of the 1,350,000 registered electors of Great 
 Britain and Ireland, accustomed to accept from candidates, as 
 commonly believed, 2,000,000 sterling every general election; 
 and yet amongst whom our legislators have been unable to discover 
 spot or speck. 
 
 If the inquiries of the Commissioners had extended from Great 
 Yarmouth to Norwich, would their report have been more flattering 
 to the latter than to the former ? And if they had given us, with 
 the names of the persons bribed in Great Yarmouth, full particulars 
 
 * Addenda, 10. 
 
 t Let me say for Reigate, of which I have some knowledge, that it contained 
 at least one man whose moral worth sbould, alone, have saved it from the injustice 
 of this indiscriminating stigma; Thomas Martin, F.R.C.S., who, after a long 
 life of usefulness, died February 12th, 1867, in his 88th year: a pure minded 
 philanthropist, worthy of a statue ; active and often foremost in every good 
 work; unwearied in well-doing; patient; forgiving : one of the excellent of 
 the earth. I owe to him a debt of gratitude for an example wHch has often 
 helped to strengthen my faith in human nature, when much shaken.
 
 PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS. 53 
 
 of their station in life, as in their report for Lancaster, would it now 
 be satisfactory to learn from the Clerk to the Norwich Board of 
 Guardians, that the new Act has raised the number of assessments ia 
 Norwich, by the abolition of compounding, from 7,158 to 21,270 ? 
 
 Looking at the whole matter, commercially, and with a view 
 solely to professional interests, the new Act may be regarded 
 favourably, as opening a vastly increased field for the industrial 
 activity of solicitors, barristers, surveyors,- secretaries of registration 
 societies, and election agents. The latter esp?cially, now more 
 indispensable than ever, will, if not belonging to the scrupulous, 
 have abundant reason for self-congratulation, and will, at once, be 
 able to dispel the fears of a wealthy client that the judicious 
 application of ten or fifteen thousand pounds, on the eve of a contest, 
 would not give him a better chance of success than another man. 
 They are shrewd enough to perceive, whut the public as yet do not, 
 that in the larger boroughs, with the increased weight given to the 
 mass, the personal influence of the class of electors, usually most 
 inaccessible to canvassers, will, by equal voting, be greatly 
 diminished ; that, as a general rule, the old voters, overwhelmed by 
 the new, will retire from the field ; that a two hundred public house 
 power will therefore be more irresistible than before ; that, in the 
 smaller boroughs, a good business may still be done in the oyster 
 barrel line, or in the discount of promissory notes for insolvent 
 tradesmen ; and that, although the new Act makes fresh provisions 
 against bribery, they will derive no support from public opinion, and 
 will prove but another Irutum fulmen. 
 
 A revolution has taken place in the public ethics, and we must 
 learn to look it in the face. The soundness of the theory which 
 affixes criminality to the sale and purchase of votes is denied. It is 
 asked if, with the knowledge of the fact that Esau wishes to sell his 
 birthright for a mess of pottage, our legislators deliberately, and 
 with their eyes open, give him the power of doing so, why should 
 we treat the exercise of that power, in the helplessness of his folly, 
 as an offence ? Why drive him to the subterfuges that must add
 
 54 THE NEW REFORM ACT. 
 
 to folly the real crimes of hypocrisy and deceit ? Is it of necessary 
 consequence that the elector who accepts money for a Tote must 
 sin against light and knowledge 1 May he not sometimes have a 
 defence unassailable by logic ? Hear it: " Two candidates have 
 applied to me ; a Whig and a Conservative. What the precise 
 difference is between the one and the other, most sincerely, I do not 
 know. Each has asked me to drink his health, and ' the ale is good 
 on both sides.'* Here comes a third, of whom I know as little ; he 
 offers to lend me a five pound note when I want one. This is 
 friendly, and with or without the ballot, I shall owe him a good 
 turn." 
 
 And what is the defence of the briber ? It is that the persons who 
 accept money for the votes would, if it were not offered, still be 
 morally disqualified from choosing a representative on higher grounds ; 
 and that the term bribe is therefore a misnomer for what should more 
 correctly be described as the " black mail," which must be paid by 
 all travellers who fall into the hands of thieves. 
 
 Very sad is the state of a country in which the validity of such 
 a defence must to a large extent be admitted. The criminal classes 
 of England and Wales, levying black mail in its simplest form, are 
 estimated at 145,041.f Of the class that should be included with 
 them, levying black mail through associations of the pattern of the 
 Sheffield Saw-grinders' Union, we can have no returns ; but we now 
 see, from the evidence, that their victims paying it for protection, 
 not against masters, but their own fellows, usurping a right to grant 
 licenses for labour, must embrace a very considerable portion of our 
 wages population. Nine and twenty years ago I stood at the bedside 
 of a peasant in the Infirmary of Sligo,} who showed me his wrist 
 with its sinews severed, slashed to the bone, by a party of reapers, 
 
 * This, on one occasion, was the literal answer of a puzzled Staffordshire 
 elector to the question, " On which side do you rote ?" 
 
 t Addenda, 11. 
 
 I James Doulan, visited September 26th, 1838. Two men held him 
 down, while a third took away his sickle, and with it disabled him for life.
 
 BLACK MAIL. 55 
 
 at whose bidding he had refused to strike ; and now, after we 
 had bugun to believe in the assurance, that in England, at least, 
 Terrorism connected with trade combinations had become extinct, 
 we are startled by the discovery of its renewed development 
 on a more gigantic scale than in former years. 
 
 In the milder form of fees and per centages to servants and 
 others, the payment of black mail, in various disguises, is the sole 
 condition on which a multitude of tradesmen are permitted to exist. 
 Black mail, in various disguises, seats and unseats the members of our 
 Town Councils and Boards of Guardians ; and honest men are sub- 
 mitting to it, not in the interests of corruption, but as a wife submits 
 to collect the ransom for her husband demanded by a captain of 
 banditti : as the only means left of resisting the open plundering 
 of the public by jobbers, turning to their own account the weaknesses 
 of ignorance and great need. 
 
 Do I write this without belief in, or sympathy for, those heroes of 
 the humbler ranks, who have often take part in a Reform movement, 
 and may be doing so at this present moment ? Very far from it. 
 I take from an old portfolio the full length portrait of one of them, 
 upon which, for its speaking expression of conscious rectitude and 
 sturdy independence, I have often looked with pleasure, that of 
 Robert Davies, tinman, of Wakefield ; who, at the election for that 
 borough, in July, 1837, refused a bribe of thirty pounds. But can 
 we honestly say that in the framing of this new Reform Act there 
 has been the slightest aim at distinguishing such men from the 
 common crowd ? Is it not rather true, and ominously true, that its 
 bias is against them, and in favour of the advocates of the very 
 doctrines preached by our ratteners and picketers, those of a 
 general Levelism ? 
 
 A clause in the Act, which postpones its operation for a year, offers 
 us a brief interval for reflection. Some advantage might be taken of 
 it for a remission at least of the more mischievous of its provisions, 
 those relating to the compound householder. But where are the
 
 56 THE NEW REFORM ACT. 
 
 Reform leaders to bid us halt back on a wrong road ? Apathy and 
 despondency have seized upon the middle classes, recklessly resigning 
 themselves to whatever may happen, as if overwhelmed with the 
 gloom of some Stygian Lake, into which they had been thrown. 
 
 The words recall another of my old Reform reminiscences, with 
 which it may be appropriate to conclude. It relates to John Thel- 
 wall, who, with Hardy and Home Tooke, stood his trial for High 
 Treason in 1794 ; a man of rare genius, and, for simple integrity, 
 one of the worthiest of our old pioneers. For several years before 
 his death, which happened in 1834, he had confined himself to 
 teaching the art of elocution, of which he was a master ; and it 
 was my privilege to hear one of his lectures, on that subject, 
 illustrative of Milton. I remember it, partly for the maxim which he 
 took occasion, in speaking of pronunciation, to impress on the 
 young men present, myself amongst the number, that it was better 
 sometimes to be wrong with the educated, than right with the 
 vulgar ; and for the power which, he taught us, might be given to 
 language by a proper expression ; of which, before, I had had but a 
 feeble conception. The effect of his delivery of Satan's address to 
 the fallen angels, was like an electric shock. It sent a thrill through 
 me, which, after forty years, I feel still, as I try to imagine him 
 standing at my side, (would that he were), repeating the same 
 words, as he might now deliver them, in the sense, with some change 
 of circumstances, of their present application : 
 
 "Princes, Potentates, 
 
 Warriors, the flower of heaven once yours, now lost ; 
 If such astonishment as this can seize 
 Eternal spirits ; or have ye chosen this place, 
 After the toil of battle, to repose 
 Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find 
 To slumber here, as in the vales of heaven? 
 Or in this abject posture have ye sworn, 
 To adore the conqueror ? 
 
 Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen !" 
 
 H. 
 September 8th, 1867.
 
 ADDENDA, 
 
 1. Public Expenditure. 
 
 The charges for 1866-7 were : 
 
 Army Services 15,253,000 
 
 Naval Services 10,926,000 
 
 Civil Services 8,203,000 
 
 Revenue Department 5,045,000 
 
 Packet Services 807,000 
 
 40,234,000 
 
 Interest on Debt 26,000,000 
 
 Charges on Consolidated Fund 1,900,000 
 
 68,134,000 
 
 In 1835, according to Porter's Tables, the following were the charges for- 
 
 Army 6,406,143 
 
 Navy 4,099,430 
 
 Ordnance 1,151,914 
 
 11,657,487 
 
 The total expenditure for the same year was 45,669,309. 
 2. Poor Hate for England and Wales. 
 
 Total Expended 
 Date. Population. Total Levied. in Relief anil 
 
 Maintenance of Poor 
 
 1834 14,372,000 8,338,079 6,317,255 
 
 1844 16,410,000 6,847,205 4,976,093 
 
 1854 18,617,000 6,973,220 5,282,853 
 
 1864 20,663,000 9,448,319 6,243,381 
 
 The increase in the total amount of Poor Rate arises principally from 
 " Payments for or towards the County, Hundred or Borough Rate, or Police 
 Rate," which for 1864 were 2,163,290, for 1834 only 691,548. 
 
 Mean number of able-bodied 
 paupers (exclusive of vagrants) 
 
 at one time in receipt of in Price of Wheat. 
 
 and out-door relief. 
 
 1854 135,191 61s. 7d. per Quarter. 
 
 1864 188,422 43s. 2d. 
 
 8. Educational Grants. 
 
 " The Committee of Privy Council print a table corrected up to Decembe r 
 1866, showing the number of parishes in England grouped according to 
 population, which do or do not contain schools aided with annual grants. 
 From this it appears, first, that out of 13,838 parishes in England only 
 7,137, or little more than half, receive aid from the State. 
 
 " The populous parishes can nearly always obtain assistance; it is in the 
 
 small and of course rural parishes, that the great deficiency occurs. Of 
 
 parishes with less than 500 inhabitants, loss than one-eighth are aided. The 
 
 number of the latter receiving grants is 924, the number receiving no grants 
 
 7i 295." Times, July 19th, 1867.
 
 58 ADDENDA. 
 
 4. State of Popular Instruction. 
 
 The annual repoiis of the Begistrar General supply us with ail infallible 
 test of the actual progress of elementary instruction ; of which it is only 
 satisfactory to observe that it is not quite stationary. The Kegistrar observes 
 that " one in three of the young men, and one in two of the young women of 
 England coitid not write their names in the marriage register in 1841 ; while 
 in 1864, but one in four of the men, and one in three of the women signed 
 with marks. 
 
 During the twenty-three years the proportion in every hundred marriages, 
 of marks-men has fallen from 33 to 23 ; of marks-women from 49 to 32. 
 
 Total Marriages Men -who signed Women who signed 
 Date. in -with with 
 
 England. marks. marks. 
 
 122,496 39,954 59,680 
 
 147,914 41,998 58,402 
 
 The relative numbers of the ignorant to the instructed have diminished 
 with the growth of the population, but the absolute numbers of the unedu- 
 cated have undergone no diminution; and these figures, showing averages 
 only, give no accurate idea of the neglected state of some parts of the 
 country. 
 
 The Eegistrar General says (speaking of 1864): "Of 100 men marrying, 
 90 could write their names in Westmoreland, 89 in London, 83 in Northum- 
 berland, 83 in the East Eiding, 81 in the North Eiding, 81 in Htiiits, 81 in 
 Sussex, 80 in Cumberland, 80 in Devon. The proportion thus goes on 
 descending deplorably from county to county until it falls to 63 in Bedford, 
 Hertford, and South Wales, 62 in Stafford, and 58 in Monmouth. The ex- 
 cessive ignorance of the colliers of Staffordshire and Wales is a cause of 
 incalculable evils, among others of explosions, and probably of strikes." 
 
 The Eegistrar contrasts this state of things with that of the counties 
 round Aberdeen, where ninety-seven in every hundred marrying men, and 
 ninety-one in every hundred women, wrote their names ; and remarks 
 (p. xviii.) that " it is difficult to explain a difference so creditable to Scotland 
 in any other way than that, in the general struggle for the Church property 
 at the Eeformation, the people had the good sense to endow the schoolmasters 
 with small stipends, and not to give the whole revenue of the land either to 
 the clergy or to the nobility. Between the ministers and the lords stood 
 the schoolmasters in the presence of the people." 
 
 In England we are making the schoolmaster more and more dependent on 
 the minister, even for bread ; and we lose our best teachers as fast as we gain 
 them by leaving them without a career. A good schoolmaster cannot rise, 
 without himself taking Holy Orders, because all Collegiate or other appoint- 
 ments connected with public instruction of the slightest value above those of a 
 primary school, are allowed to be monopolised by the Clergy. The situation 
 of a Government Inspector of Education (worth about 600 per annum), which 
 for secular objects of instruction, at least, should have been especially reserved 
 as a prize for secular teachers, of experience and merit, is converted into 
 a new kind of Church living. This has arisen from the Government 
 grants being principally distributed through a Society under the direct 
 patronage of the Bench of Bishops, called the National .School Society, and 
 which may now be considered as, de facto, a branch of the Establishment. 
 This Society stipulated as the condition of its co-operation, that all Inspectoi s 
 for Schools in connection with it should be persons approved of by the 
 Archbishops of Canterbury and York. The present total number of 

 
 ADDEND 
 
 Inspectors for Education is 54 ; 8 for 
 of Roman Catholics, and 42 for the sq 
 course, embrace generally with the 
 every body, non-sectarian. Among 
 all are clergymen ; some of them 
 qualifications, but all, as a body, 
 of Sacerdotal Sovereignty whicl 
 with ; and the tendency of whir J5 
 of the contracting operation < ~ry 
 The members of the ClericaJ JLV 
 in all Church formularies^ 
 duties, and are thus very gJ9J 
 to be the best for citizens J| 
 very summer of Reform al 
 bom-hood of Blackheath, \/*> 
 kept out of the suiishinyp + 
 memory the whole of th*w 
 important of their schoo,^' 
 
 No. I. 
 REFORM. 
 
 Sir John Bowring, at a 
 4th) observed : " In (M 
 step till his handwriting 
 Chinese there was not ':;' 
 When Governor of He : 
 nected, with strong re- 
 been brought to him 
 the word candle. H. 
 
 jects of the work Biographical notice of the 
 
 1 iy jeainst the direction given to popular impulses 
 " There is a wk B 
 
 and acknowledgin^upporters of the Reform League Reply to a letter, 
 counted for exactly 
 
 in the communi^ ewS) j n the Star. An account of the Insurrection des 
 equality, it woulf 1 
 
 so greatly outnn'aris of 1848- Remarks upon the alliance of 
 labourer had < 
 
 exercised mincTHMU Union Protectionists. 
 ought to have uH 
 tion requires 
 intellectual 
 or trader, wl 
 power of gui| 
 should have/ 
 accurate, ar 
 The lights on 
 
 WIDGE & SONS, 5 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 6. Equa]~ ' 
 
 Fr'i<-e
 
 58 
 
 4. State of Popular Instruction. 
 
 to on , e . fi . v * pounds, to another five 
 
 _ equal right to his share, but not a 
 
 The annual reports of the Begistrar , 
 
 test of the actual progress of elemental be enforced by an assertion that the 
 
 satisfactory to observe that it is not quite of another man is to that other 
 
 that " one in three of the young men, and any means, for a small all is not 
 
 England could not write their names in tht, A small all may be lost, and 
 
 in 1864, but one in four of the men, and one Teat wisdom be risked for the 
 
 with marks. be little or not at all worth 
 
 During the twenty-three years the proportion didit. But a large all can 
 
 of marks-men has fallen from 33 to 23 ; of marl- Cumulating, perhaps, from 
 
 Total Maniages Men who s. the product of a long life 
 
 Date - _ * n , with nrcuinstances which will 
 
 England. marks. 
 
 1841 122,496 39,954 
 
 18G4 147914 41998 
 
 4/>yi 4My ' 
 
 The relative numbers of the ignorant to the inb ( 
 with the growth of the population, but the absolnt 
 cated have undergone no diminution; and these fi^- 
 only, give no accurate idea of the neglected state 
 country. 
 
 The Eegistrar General says (speaking of 1864) : " 
 90 could write their names in Westmoreland, 89 in I 
 berland, 83 in the East Biding, 81 in the North Bid 
 Sussex, 80 in Cumberland, 80 in Devon. The pro, 
 descending deplorably from county to county until it t 
 Hertford, and South Wales, 62 in Stafford, and 58 in . 
 cessive ignorance of the colliers of Staffordshire and 
 incalculable evils, among others of explosions, and prob. 
 
 The Eegistrar contrasts this state of things with L 
 
 , , 
 
 fast as they acquire it. 
 
 4 that the benefit and 
 
 ibution, should be as 
 
 xii. p. 611. 
 
 universal. But, my 
 
 of the members of a 
 
 3 in the government. 
 
 a y even be advanced 
 
 but from a share in 
 
 ">rrupt practices at 
 Totnes, give us 
 win g illustration 
 
 the abolition 
 by ^ e ng w 
 
 rincipal briber 
 - as . a witness 
 admitted ; who 
 
 round Aberdeen, where ninety-seven in every hundred i. 
 ninety-one in every hundred women, wrote their nan 
 (p. xviii.) that " it is difficult to explain a difference socre* 
 in any other way than that, in the general struggle for thf . 
 at the Eeformation, the people had the good sense to endow . 
 with small stipends, and not to give the whole revenue of t 
 the clergy or to the nobility. Between the ministers and Y no . was . under 
 the schoolmasters in the presence of the people." Iie distribution 
 
 'mcil, but was 
 
 In England we are making the schoolmaster more and mor, 
 the minister, even for bread ; and we lose our best teachers as i 
 them by leaving them without a career. A good schoolmaste 
 without himself taking Holy Orders, because all Collegiate or ot 
 ments connected with public instruction of the slightest value abi ,, 
 primary school, are allowed to be monopolised by the Clergy. T 
 of a Government Inspector of Education (worth about 600 per an 
 for secular objects of instruction, at least, should have been especif 
 as a prize for secular teachers, of experience and merit, is co 
 a new kind of Church living. This has arisen from " 
 grants being principally distributed through a Society 
 patronage of the Bench of Bishops, called the National .Si 
 which may now be considered as, de facto, a branch of the 
 This Society stipulated as the condition of its co-operation, tht. 
 for Schools in connection with it should be persons appro 
 Archbishops of Canterbury and York. The present tot 
 
 _. 
 -" e P r *> 
 
 } _ y o,001, 
 share
 
 TRACTS FOR INQUIRERS 
 
 BY 
 
 m. <&. lithson. 
 
 Xo. I. 
 REFORM. 
 
 CONTENTS: Objects of the work Biographical notice of the 
 author Protest against the direction given to popular impulses 
 by some leading supporters of the Reform League Reply to a letter, 
 typical of their views, in the Star. An account of the Insurrection des 
 Otivriere* in Paris of 1848 Remarks upon the alliance of Free 
 Traders with Trad* Union Protectionists. 
 
 <;ROOMBKII>GE & SONS. :, PATERNOSTER ROW 

 
 UHIV. P CALIF. LIBRABY, LOS AIGELB9 
 
 FORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 ite stamped below.
 
 A 000084133 8