The Press. — London, England, 1854-02-18 00:00:00

/7 . / L 7 ---- ie/J t iTtt6,s ~ LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1854. No. 42.—VoL. 11. rtss. LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1858. WE have never ceased to remember, and have taken several occasions to repeat, that the Government of Lord ABERDEEN was pledged to introduce a " LARGE measure " of Parlia mentary Reform. If this statement implied a slur on the sagacity of those by whom the pledge was volunteered, no doubt, if doubt existed, can remain, on the other hand, as to the political discernment which insisted that the pledge would be fulfilled, and that the proposals of the present Cabinet would be put fairly before the country. If it be desirable to obtain early intimation of a design which affects us dangerously, there may be no time so opportune to press for its revelation, and, if no other consideration in tervened, even to stimulate its development, as a season which interposes extraordinary obstacles to its success. That a war is im pending which may delay its completion is an element in the calculation ; and a supreme and direct calamity is not without its inci dental good if it should suspend the infliction of a more insidious evil, and enable us to take timely measure of its dimensions. That Lord ABERDEEN'S Cabinet should be so fatally compromised that it was compelled to toss this brand of discord into the midst of a nation whose unanimity is precious is partly due to obdurate folly and partly to the evil genius of his career. Its exigency will be doubly compensated to us if the brand should only serve, at least in the first instance, to reveal betimes the intentions of the incen diary. On no account, however, would it be pru dent or patriotic, on the ground that it may be indefinitely postponed, to avert our eyes from the attempt which is meditated. The nonchalance with which Lord JOHN RUSSELL unfolded its details mry indicate his own willingness that Manchester should be satis fied with the bare proposal to destroy the Whig aristocracy. The apathy of the House may have been a convenient veil for the re strained aversion of certain of his own follow ers. Even the quietist tones of the leading Organ may have expressed, in addition to an ticipations of war, some furtive tremors of the quondam chiefs of Conservatism, lest their experimental project to abolish it for ever might be pressed forward too rapidly to allow them to recover their senses. All these symp toms may combine to prove that few desire the Reform Bill now. But, in the meantime, it is suspended as a banner to which aspiring revolutionists will crowd, and our demagogues have their permanent cue elaborated by Ministers of State. The English Democrats, as we are told by are " resigned " to the bill as if slier measure than they bad reason IST EDITION.] to anticipate. They, too, are playing their part in the general affectation. The keen politicians of the northern boroughs need no instruction from us as to the effect of this measure if it were passed into a law. The Government are not fairly open to the impu tation of shortcomings from this quarter. They have amply redeemed their pledge,—so amply that this is not only a " large " but the largest measure (certain pm-parliamentary crises excepted) which has ever been levelled at our national institutions. Let no one mistake the purport of our ob servations. There is no occasion for prema ture alarm at the resumption of the privileges of existing constituencies, and the proposal to transfer them to certain others. Sixty-six of such erasures and appropriations need not at first sight disquiet those who have admitted the principle of the schedules in the first Re form Act. It may well be contended by the stanchest of Conservatives that that measure, passed in the height of political excitement, procured an unfair distribution of political power. But the unfairness, tried even by the test of numbers, was against the Conservative elements of the State ; and a redistribution of power may accord with justice, and be required by prudence in behalf of those elements, if they bring sobriety to our councils and stabi lity to our Government. One objection to the present measure, putting aside its scholastic ornaments and minor puerilities, is—it does not redress, but aggravates, this unfairness ; it renders the Conservative constituencies less Conservative, and the Democratic constituen cies more Democratic ; and in the honoured name of Reform it provides for the exclusive gain of the party to whom England, in the remembrance of her past, is reluctant to en trust her future. This is not, however, the chief objection to the measure, if we must look for the test of measures to their prospective consequences. The vitality of the Conservative element in this country (and this which is its glory has been cited as its reproach) has repeatedly de feated its own forebodings of depression. At the same time it has never been crushed and cast aside so helplessly as by a measure which would double the constituencies while de grading the standard of qualification. Yet its prospects, and even existence, are a secondary consideration to the effect of this experiment upon our Parliamentary Constitution. To double, and, at the same time, to degrade, the constituencies—to approximate them to one exclusive standard by disqualifying on the one hand, and flooding them on the other—will render them less amenable to the natural guidance of property, character, station, and intelligence. In place of these it will supply them with platforms, caucuses, and the stand ing machinery of all agitation at once petty and expansive. It will approach them to the condition of those electoral bodies of which the metropolis can furnish examples, where the franchise is so diffused that it has come to be despised by those whose social is out of pro portion to their political importance. It will change the character of the elected with that of the electors, convert the representatives of parties and interests into the delegates of aggregate units, and destroy with its reputa tion the energy of Parliament as an essential constituent of a free Government. At the same time that the influence of Par liament is weakened, it will become less manageable. This is no paradox, but the in PRICE SIXPENCE. ference confinned by all history and all expe rience where a popular estate is converted into a democratic confusion. The salutary conflict which is now maintained within its boundaries will degenerate, as in the United States, into a struggle with the Executive ; and this ten dency has been so far foreseen by the authors of this measure, directed by their Manchester allies to American precedents, that they have provided for the contingency by a scheme, of which even their civil-service reforms may be a part, for rendering Ministers of State inde pendent of their constituents. This, then, is the " large measure" in the length and breadth of its dimensions. This is the lesson which " antiquated imbecility " has learnt from the continental convulsion of '4B. From the spectacle of reeling nations and rocking thrones it has come to doubt and tamper with that privileged Constitution " which statesmen outwatched the stars to " develop and protect," and which, in its grand immunity, was reinaugurated, if we may so speak, by the national pride and true English loyalty of the 10th of April. This is the mode, however, in which the Cabinet comprehends English history and English sentiments. it was worthy of the Coalition—of an accident the offspring of an intrigue—to frame a monu ment which should be at once emblematical of its antecedents, its minute capacities, and its precarious tenure ; and it has found such a device in proposing to change our Constitu tion, with its consolidated renown, to an embryo BUREAUCRACY. CIRCUMSTANCES AND DETAILS OF THE REFORM BILL. NEVER yet was a momentous change in the constitution of any country prefaced by a statement so inconclusive as that of Lord JOHN RUSSELL; and rarely has the threat of revolution been uttered in accents so apathetic. The Minister seemed not to feel, scarcely to con sider, the import of his words. Cold, hesitating, unimpassioned, he delivered the death warrant of the English Constitution in the tones of a clerk reading a document of routine. Of the necessity of any present reform,—of any practical fault in the working of existing arrangements,—he wisely forbore to speak. The principle of farther innovation, in a de mocratic sense, was assumed, not argued. The objection to innovate in time of actual or impending external peril,—an objection first put forth by that tried Liberal, Lord GREY, and understood to be shared by the entire Whig party,—was overruled by a plau sible misquotation of historical precedent The effects of his measure on the representa tion, even so far as the mere numbers of the various electoral bodies were concerned, the Minister declined to predict. He could not, he said, exactly anticipate them. In other words, the Cabinet, having before them a war of which no man foresees the end, rush into a re form of which the proposer cannot foresee the working, for the subversion of a system which the country desires to retain unaltered. It is idle to say that this recklessness is prompted by the over-scrupulous adherence of a single Minister to pledges rashly given. Lord PAL MERSTON did not share in those pledges; nor Lord ABERDEEN : nor yet Air. ULADOTONI. AII their organs, it was a small [LATE