The Press. — London, England, 1857-04-04 00:00:00

INF ' I I 326 conclusive evidence that a majority of the new House of Commons will be favourable to the principle of some kind of change in the pre sent system of representation. The Minister himself, it is believed, still hesitates. He personally hates Reform. Of that there can be no question. If he sees his way to goieg on without raising this dreaded question, he will resort to any shifts and ex pedients to avoid beine , entangled with it. But he will not allow Lord JOHN RUSSELL or Sir J. tin/owe to press before him on this question, so as to take the lead of the Liberal party out of his hands. He is a practical man. He would not sacrifice one day of office for any principle whatever. He will make no attempt to breast the current, whatever direc tion it may take. On the one side, he has to consider that the number of Liberal members pledged to elec toral reform is greater than in the last Parlia ment, when his Government narrowly escaped defeat on Mr. LOCKE KING's !notion ; and, on the other side, he has to consider that any measure of Reform must be attended with great difficulties, and, if carried, would imme diately necessitate another appeal to the country. Lord GritANVi U.E, in his reply to Lord DERBY on the 16th of March, distinctly stated that the Government were favourable to the prin ciple of Mr. LOCKE Rise's proposed measure, and only opposed it because they found " the bill " to be dran4., , lited in such a shape us not to per " mit the amendments which the Government " thought it expedient to propose." Mr. LOCKE KING himself denies the truth of this repre sentation. His motion was for leave to intro duce a bill, and, as no bill was before the House, the objection of Lord GRANVILLE could not possibly apply. This view of Mr. KING is borne out by what Lord PALMERSTON said in the debate (Feb. 19). He opposed the bill on the just ground that it would entirely destroy that essential and im portant distinction between the county and borough franchise which is coeval in England with the existence of the representative system. We leave Mr. LOCKE KING to settle this point with the Government It is only im- Lortant fOr us to note that the declaration of rd GRANVILLE has led many Liberal mem b3rs to make specific mention of the proposed m asure of the Honourable Member for East S trrey, and to declare that it shall receive tueir strenuous support. Moreover, the mes s ire has some reason to recommend it. Why terould an arbitrary line be drawn about a c' aster of houses, and all houses within that Rue of the yearly value of 101. confer a vote, while all houses of the same value without the line confer no vote at all? The force of the argument becomes much stronger when it is considered that many of these favoured boroughs comprise only two, three, or four hundred voters, who are either venal or sub missive, while thousands on thousands of honest and independent householders exist in all directions around the favoured line. But to the proposed measure of the Hon. Member for East, Surrey there arc two objec tions of the gravest character. The first is that urged by Lord PALMERSTON. It is unquestionably an ancient, fundamental, and vital principle of the English representa tive system that the franchise for counties should be distinct from the franchise for boroughs. The reason is obvious. The knights of the shire arc presumed to represent the land of England, with all interests immediately connected therewith ; while the members for boroughs are presumed to represent the trade, commerce, manufactures, and profes sions of the county. This distinction is enforced by every writer on the British Con stitution. BLACKSTONE writes of it : The counties are represented by knights elected by the proprietors of lands ; and the cities and boroughs are re presented by citizens and burgesses chosen by the mer cantile part or supposed trading interest of the nation. The Chandos clause, in extending the right of voting to the occupiers of lands, rather eon firmed than invalidated the general principle— that the county members should represent the land and its interests. Now, the . proposal of Mr. L OCKE lima would . hjokr ate this principle. It rould 97rs -7. '7' ‘g • • - THE PRESS. give the franchise in counties to all persons occupying 101. houses. in other words, it would turn the counties into huge boroughs, as he himself admits, distinguishable from existing boroughs in no respect save by their wider extent and greater number of vote►s. The franchise would be exactly the same. That is a measure of change so obviously subversive of a fundamental principle of our representative system, that we much doubt whether any Parliament would ever sanc tion it. The objections to it on the ground of detail are not less ttegent than on the ground of principle. The county constituencies, as an able cor respondent in our columns has clearly shown, are, so far as electoral equality is concerned, unjustly treated in not being allotted a fair proportion of members, whether the test be taken of registered electors or of population. In our journal of this day we publish a list of all borough constituencies with their voters, and of all county constituencies with their voters. The result shows that the boroughs of the United Kingdom, with 497,138 electors, return 411 members; while the counties, with 607,579 voters, return only 243 members. In any new Reform Bill it is impossible that this disproportion can be overlooked, or that in common fairness it can be suffered to eon tin ue. Yet what does Mr. LOCKE KING propose ? Why, that the 101. franchise should be intro duced in counties without any addition to the number of county representatives I.Ve have not at hand any data for estimating the increased number of voters which would arise from this change. We imagine we are %%ithin the mark in saying that the present number of county voters would be doubled at least, and this measure of reform would then present the astounding anomaly of 1,200,001) county voters returning only 243 members, while less than half that number of borough electors returned nearly double the number of representatives. 'rhe counties would have one representative to every 5,000 voters, while the boroughs would have one representative to every 1,200 voters. The correspondent to whom we have re ferred has shown that there are twenty-four borough constituencies in England with 10,223 voters returning fifty members, while the West Riding of York, with its 37,213 electors, returns only two members. _._ . Take another instance. In Yorkshire there are three boroughs each returuing two members:— Electors. Knaresborough Richtnnnd Ripon 933 The three Ridings of York, returning exactly the same number of members, comprise more than fifty times us many voters : Electors, East hiding .. North Riding West Riding 37,319 513,170 Mr. LOCKE KING'S motion would double the number of Yorkshire county voters—would make them 112,000, and still would allow them to return no more members than the 935 elec tors of Knaresborough, Richmond, and Ripon. Should all the counties in the kingdom be virtually turned into huge boroughs by the extension throughout them of the borough franchise, is it to be supposed that they would permit the continuance of those small boroughs which at present exist, where, by a line arbitrarily drawn round a limited locality, the votes of two or three hundred favoured electors would neutralise the votes of the thou- sands of electors in the county constituencies surrounding them? To parallel the anomaly which would then exist, we must suppose that in the midst of the city of London, returning four members by 20.000 electors, there existed two little boroughs—say one composed of Walbrook, the other of King-street, Chcapside—each re turning two members. How long would the city submit to such a palpable and insulting disproportion ? SATURDAY, Obviously, if any considerable increase be made to the number of voters, that increase must be tacked on to the borough constituen cies, and not to the county constituencies. In theory there is, and can be, no reason why, as Mr. L limo urges, 101. householders in Reigate should have a vote, and 10/. house holders in Croydon have none. But if this anomaly is to be rectified, it must be done by attaching the new voters to those constituencies to which, from the character of their franchise, and from the limited number of borough elec tors, they naturally belong. The boundaries of boroughs must be so arranged in districts as to include all 101. householders. The areas of boroughs must in the aggregate be cotexten sive with the area of the kingdom. It may not be for the Conservatives to raise the question of Parliamentary Reform, but neither is it for them to defend the Reform Bill of 1832, with all its injustice and par tiality. They should be prepared to deal with the whole question whenever it assumes a practicol shape, and to insist that just princi ples of Parliamentary Reform should not be evaded, merely because it is supposed they might prove favourable to Conservative in terests. LORD JOHN'S DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE. LORD JOHN RUSSELL has thought proper to declare that Conservatives desire to maintain our institutions, and not to improve them ; and Liberals to maintain our institutions, and to improve them. With due deference to the Noble Lord's logical powers, this assertion seems very like absolute nonsense. No man dislikes improvement as such. This is a nal versal law of our nature, to impugn which is just as absurd as to say that two and two sometimes make five, or that two straight lines occasionally inclose a space. No man prefers a valuable watch that only goes pretty well to a valuable watch that keeps exact time. If the works get out of order, he would rather have them mended than not. The only delay that can arise is want of confidence in the watchmaker. He may prefer keeping his London repeater in his pocket to submitting it to the tender mercies of a provincial shop man. A man will often prefer to undergo a slight indisposition than to throw himself into the hands of an ignorant apothecary. The thing is too common to waste words on. The whole question, as far as Lord JOHN'S observa• tion is concerned, turns on the meaning of the word " improvement." Of this there may be hundreds of different versions, and hundreds of Reformers who differ as much from Lord Jons's idea of the word as he professes to differ from the Conservatives. If a Con servative is opposed to the reform of any insti tution, it is only because he thinks the change incompatible with its preservation. But its preservation, according to Lord JOHN, is just as much an object of solicitude to Liberals as to Tories. Wherein, then, do they differ? Clearly not about tl►e end, but the means. And both must admit that he is the wise statesman who perceives which reforms are perilous, and which are not. If Lord JOHN RUSSELL will only vote for such reforms as do not endanger our institutions, he will still continue to vote against extinction of church rates, the abolition of primogeniture, universal suffrage, degradation of the Upper House, and anything, indeed, that will deprive the landed aristocracy of their present ►eight in the Constitution ; for to our mind the aristocratic government as it exists in this country is as much an institution as at. /thing which bears the name. If a man once grants that the preservation of our institutions is the proper object of a statesman, he at once constitutes himself a Conservative ; for clearly he must consider their improvement subordinate to their pre servation. And this we take to be the true distinction between the two classes of poh ticians—those who consider preservation the prior object, and improvement the second; and those who consider improvement the first object, and prese r vation the second. Poli ticians such as Mr. LT-WE KING, Mr. EaliZEI