The Press. — London, England, 1858-11-06 00:00:00

• 7 I • .• • t • • rt,6,1 No. 288.—VOL. VI. Vrtss. LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 0, 18 58. REFORM SKETCHES BY JOHN BRIGHT. A FEW days before Mr. BRIGHT was to appear at Birmingham, we asked him, on the subject of Reform, two questions, to which we said that we did not "expect to receive any distinct, straight forward replies." We have not been mistaken in our expectations. Mr. &Goma has left them wholly unnoticed ; but, as we observed at the time, by the mere fact of his leaving them un noticed, "we gain a great deal." For we may now fairly infer from the speech at Birmingham that the object of Mr. BRIGHT, in the kind of Reform which he advocates, is, not to " improve" the constitution of the House of Commons, and to render it more skilful in managing our internal and foreign affairs than it is at present, but to make it the organ of the people—that is, nomi nally speaking their will, however fickle and contradictory that will may be. We say no minally, because in point of fact it would be speaking what their self-seeking leaders would palm off as that will, although, in reality, their own. Mr. BRIGHT is a clever man, but, assuredly, if we are to judge by his speech, he is a very shallow thinker. All his recommendations on the subject of Reform are based on the false, not to say the absurd, principles; (1) that ALL can be rulers ; (2) that the poorest men are more skilled than richer men in the science of government, and are the fittest to elect the persons to discharge its functions. Mr. BRIGHT sets forth a catalogue of measures which the different Governments of this country have carried out in the last few years,— some of which he approves, some of which he condemns; and then he draws this most il logical conclusion,--that, had the representation in Parliament been such as he recommends that it should now be made, all the measures which he approves would have been adopted, and all the measures which he condemns would have been rejected. Now, we are far from contemning that a five-pound householder, or a working man, may not be quite as good a judge of political questions as a ten-pound householder ; but we now not on what possible grounds it can be maintained that they are better judges, and that th ey would have formed totally different opinions on matters of State policy than the ten pound householders. All evidence goes to show that they would have agreed with them. We should be glad to have a list of instances of elec nons, in p o p u l ous b oroughs, where the non electors have been on one side, and the great body of the ten-pound householders on the other. Here and there such a phenomenon may have oc curred, but we are pos i t i ve that it is of very baref occurrence. F or argument, therefore, i t may e airly assumed that there has been a cordial a g re ement between th em . Let us, then, test the soundness of Mr. BRIGHT'S theory by an example. There is nothing like an LATEST EDITION. LONDON, SATURDAY' , NOVIBSB. UNSEMBER 6, STAMPED ....SIXPENCE. TAMPED ..FIVEPENCE. example. Well, then, the one thing that Mr. BRIGHT most vehemently (and, as we think, most justly) denounces, is forcibly intermeddling in the internal affairs of inoffensive, independent States. This interference, since the Parliament was reformed, has, it cannot be denied, been one of the worst characteristics of our foreign policy. Mr. BRIGHT gives a sort of list of the cases in which it has taken place, and one that figures in his list he thus describes We have blockaded " Athens, or the port of Athens, for a claim " which was known to he false." So let it be. But how did Parliament deal with this affair ? It was brought under discussion in the House of Lords by Lord DERRY, and at his suggestion a vote of censure was passed by that House on the pro ceedings of the British forces at Athens. The Whig Government were accordingly in a dilemma—re signation seemed inevitable—when, behold, Mr. ROEBUCK, the member for Sheffield (one of the gentlemen who write letters complimenting Mr. BRIGHT, and regretting his inability to attend at his dinner), rushes to the rescue. The repre sentative of the numerous constituency of Sheffield is the man, par excellence, to move a counter resolution in the Commons, in order to save the Ministry; and, accordingly, Mr. ROEBUCK'S reso lution, approving the proceedings at Athens, was passed by the House of Commons. Can Mr. BRIGHT show that the non-electors of Sheffield, or the non-electors of any other populous borough in the kingdom, stepped forward to support the House of Lords, and to condemn those members who represented the electors, the ten-pound householders, for supporting Mr. ROEBUCK'S resolution ? The resolution involved the con demnation of the all-important principle against forcible interference with the internal affairs of other States, to which Mr. BRIGHT wisely, as we think, attributes such immense importance ; and yet the House of Lords, which affirmed this principle of non-interference, is made by Mr. BRIGHT the object of his sneering vituperation, whilst, with marvellous inconsistency, all his eulogies are bestowed on those parties in the State who were opposed to the principle for which Mr. BRIGHT contends. The great fallacy which pervades the whole of Mr. BRIGHT'S speech is, as we have said, the assumption that a particular class in the com munity is sure to judge more wisely on political questions than all the others ; but the assump tion partakes of absurdity when we find that the selected class is the one which possesses the fewest opportunities for forming a sound opinion. For ourselves, we should be very unwilling to predicate anything of the kind separately, either of the aristocracy, the clergy, the landed gentry, the merchants, the shopkeepers, or the ten-pound householders. So long as human nature is fal lible, so long we are well convinced that all these classes, separately and collectively, will, at times, form erroneous judgments on passing events; but, if we are to believe Mr. BRIGHT, the work ing class, on which the elective franchise has not been conferred, is the class which never would go wrong. Such a belief seems hardly the belief of a rational man, for it is well known that the besetting vice of men of all classes, when they are congregated into masses, is to be guided by impulse, rather than by reason and reflection ; and the more numerous the class, the more easily can they be AO congregated. Applause and dis approbation are notoriously infectious; and men who, in their calmer moments, or in the retire ment of their own homes, would be able to dis- Why did he leave unanswered the second question which we put to him—viz., " How " do you mean to avoid handing_ over to the " populace the representation in Parliament so " as to exclude all other classes in the commu " nity, if in each and every constituency the ' ,i ' ij populace are to be a preponderating majority r e ask the gentlemen of Birmingham, who ap plauded so loudly Mr. BRIGHT'S second oration, whether they mean to be excluded from all share in political power? assured that that would be the mous majority of of the realization presenting numbers. were none then present political influence. who, skilled in mob that they may attain tical power than - cern the mischievous tendency of particular suggestions, will be betrayed into sanctioning and approving them, simply from the influence which the minds of many men, in a body, irre sistibly exercise over the minds of others with whom they may be assembled. If Mr. BRIGHT himself had not been conscious of this, he would hardly have ventured on many of the statements with which he interspersed bis speech. Had he been in an assembly where there were men who would have been free to criticize and reply to what he advanced, is there a sensible man alive who can think that Mr. BRIGHT would not have been ashamed of much of the trumpery that he safely talked, because he was addressing a body of men whom he knew would not allow any single man amongst them to express his disapprobation ? Would he have ever ventured on putting forth that strange jumble of history and anecdote and inference, with respect to Sir ROBERT WAI.POLE, Mr. Fox, and Lord GREY, at the commencement of his speech on Friday night, with which be in sulted the understandings of his hearers, had any of those hearers been an opponent, ready to deal with and to expose his statements? The Hon. Gentleman practised on the credulity of " the men of Birmingham ;" and, bye and bye, when they awake to a consciousness that he so treated them, we question whether they will again give him so cordial a reception as the one which they hays lately accorded to him. Be, however, that as it may, we hail the speech as one of good omen, and likely to be productive of very beneficial results. No impartial person can read it without the conviction that, the speaker, from his inmost soul, detests the whole fabric of the British Constitution. The Crown is evidently as distasteful to him as the Peerage ; and the landed gentry—and the merchant princes—and the clergy, as a body—and the hierarchy especially—are all alike an abomination in his eyes. A member of the most insignificant of sectarian societies, a Quaker in profession, and a Republican on principle, his desire is to pull down every class of society above him to the same level with his own. He would inflame the people (if he could) to be his instruments in the work; and, when it was accomplished, we ash, would he deal, if he had power, with greater consideration for his instruments than other de magogues have dealt with their deluded fol lowers after they have become their masters ? We can only give a conjectural answer to this question, but assuredly Mr. BRIGHT'S language and recommendations are well calculated to arouse the worst suspicions. P They may rest assured that the infallible resul r- those who were'ell iof Mr. BRI ' • ir • ers. We do ,ut •., present who 'D . ': 11 , 1 ,, t , There we mob oratory, k • „ tain to a great 4 „. they po 7 E— •A:114.,