The Press.
London, England, 1857-05-23 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

Emigration on an extensive scale is going on—an emi-
gration that embraces some of the very best of the working
classes, particularly in the rural districts. Already have
four large vessels sailed from Tralee for transatlantic ports
with emigrants, chiefly young farm servants of both sexes,
and two others are announced to leave before the close of
the current month. Besides this emigration direct from
the county-town, people are every week leaving different
parts of Kerry for America via Liverpool. Nor must we
omit to notice in connection with this subject that a diffe-
rent class of emigrants are leaving our county for Aug.
tralia in no small numbers—we refer now to the younger
ions of the more comfortable farmers.

FARMING PROSPECTS are satisfactory.

gat' ad

AN INQUEST was held on Tuesday to inquire into
the death of Captain Brown, of the 2:3rd Welsh
Fusiliers, a member of the Junior United Service
Club, who shot himself with a revolver, at his
lodgings, No. 8, Charles-street, St. James's, on Friday
week. It appeared from the evidence of a medical
gentleman, Dr. Tothill, that since an attack of fever
which he had last month, deceased had seemed not
quite right in his mind. Dr. Tothill bad called for
deceased to take a ride with hire, and was just out•
side the door of the room when the report of the
pistol was heard. Deceased, who had heard him
knock, and called out " Who's there ?" shot himself
the instant after. The jury returned a verdict of
" Temporary insanity."
THE PRISONER BACON, acquitted last week of the
murder of his children, was on Wednesday fully
committed at Stamford, after a preliminary exami-
nation, on the charge of having poisoned his mother
with arsenic in March, 1855. The trial will take
place at the next Lincoln Assizes.
A CASE OF CHILD POISONING has just been dis-
covered near Truro. One Beard and his daughter
have been arrested on the charge of poisoning
with arsenic the daughter's illegitimate child, a
girl of four years of age. The mother admits
having purchased the poison, and says she believes
her father poisoned the child. The woman, it
appears, was anxious to get married to a young man
who was courting her, and who did not want to be
burdened with the little girl : hence the motive for
the crime. The evidence is now being completed.

Cornspon7atntt.

THE NEW REFORM BILL.
Letter HI
TO THE EDITOR OF " THE PRESS."

Sir,—We have now Lord Palmerston's word for it,
that he new Reform Bill will provide for an increase
of the electoral body. Who are to be the " classes
which are to get votes they have not at present," and
under what conditions, if any, the privilege is to be
conceded, are questions which it would well become
every thoughtful man to consider, for on them de-
pends the destiny of England.

In my two former letters I have endeavoured to
trace some of the consequences of an extension of
the electoral body, to be effected by lowering the
property qualification. I have principally, as yet,
directed attention to the effect of such a measure on
taxation ; and taking only for granted the proposition,
that men, when they have power, will work it in con-
formity with what appears to be their interests, I
concluded that the new voters, whom it is statistically
certain will constitute the majority of the electoral
body, will prefer direct taxation by which they would
be altogether exempted, to indirect taxation by
which they are at present forced to pay on an aver-
age thirty per cent. on articles of consumption on
which they expend fully one half their incomes.
I have now to remark that if instead of lowering
the property qualification an educational franchise
was introduced for the purpose of giving votes to
men who have not the present property qualification,
the new voters would also be of this way of thinking.
For in respect of taxation these intellectual prole-
tarians would have precisely the same interest as the
five-pound voters, with superior acuteness in meeting
the arguments of the opposite school of political
economists, and special adaptation to the task of
agitators for compelling the Legislature to submit
to the fiscal revolution.

In considering a new Reform Bill involving an
increase of the electoral body, we are therefore
naturally led to inquire into the political consequences
which would ensue from the substitution of direct in
place of indirect taxation.
In the first place, the governing body would not be
the taxpaying body, and would consequently be re-
lieved from the check which the fact of having indi-
vidually to contribute to the expense of war imposes
on the belligerent tendencies of the ton-pound house-
holders. Under the new system the five-pound or
educational democracy could carry out on a grand
scale the Palmerstonian policy without having to pay
in the slightest degree for tLe luxury of military

glory, and might look forward with considerable
confidence to the emancipation of Poland, to the
independence of Hungary, and to a united Italy,
all to be achieved at the expense of the richer classes
of England. Nor would the thirty or forty years' war
which this policy would entail be without advantage
to the new voters of a more palpable nature. A war
expenditure, so long as it lasts, is of great advantage
to the lower orders. The price of their labour and of
the articles of their production rises, and the Army
and Navy open up avenues to fortune which in time
of peace have hitherto been shut except to the
privileged classes. In the second place, however
pleasant this state of things may be to the new
governing body, it practically amounts to a measure
of confiscation against the upper orders of society.

I do not mean to follow this part of the argument any
further ; but to those who think my conclusions chime-
rical because based on the idea that the income tax
will he perpetuated—an idea which seems a plain con-
tradiction to public opinion—I would answer by
asking what is this public opinion they deem so
conclusive? Can it in the nature of things be any-
thing else than the opinion of those who pay income
tax, exaggerated by the fact that the newspaper
editors and proprietors are subject to the burden ?
And is it possible to conceive that the rest of the
nation can feel any repugnance to an impost from
which they are altogether exempt and which presents
a ready means of procuring them relief from burdens
which they think press unjustly upon them?
These reflections suggest that there are other
questions besides that of taxation upon which our
public opinion may be equally at variance with the
opinion of the great majority of the nation ; but if
we lower the franchise, these latent opinions, which
express the interests—not perhaps the real far-
sighted interests, but the apparent and immediate
interests of the masses—will come to light as
convicticns, which it will be in their power to translate
into facts ; nor will they want the assistance of
leaders from the higher classes or of a demagogic
press to advocate measures which, in the new
Reform era, will constitute the channels of power.—
I am, &c.,

J. A. G.