The Press.
London, England, 1856-11-01 00:00:00

SATURDAY,_

trated, whereas it is very thinly diffused among the
agricultural population."
We believe the above a very fair statement of the
Whig-Conservative plea on the subject. Of course
it is glaringly inconsistent with their principles,
and sounds very like the Tory arguments against the
Reform Bill ; but probably it, is all the stronger on
that account. Let me now use my privilege of reply.
In the first place, my dear Whig sir, will you
favour me with your !slight calculation which is to
disprove my arithmetical statement of the case. It
is not very fair to state that you can give such a
calculation, and moreover that it is easy, and yet not
give it in black and white. Besides, the arithmetic
of the case is of the greatest consequence, for it you
can't show an error in my calculations, I tear it will
require even more than the current faith in Whig
incapacity to believe that the nearest approximation
to equity which can be arrived at in England is to
give twice the political power to A which you give to
B, admitting all the while that A and B have pre-
cisely equal rights in the matter. Can no justkr
distribution of political power be effected than that
which gives to the town people the power of return-
ing two members to Parliament in proportion to their
numbers, and to the country people the power of re-
turning only one ? John Bull, optimist though he is
inclined to be now a-days, will not believe that this
is the best possible state of things. Even Dr.
Pangloss would not have the face to make the asser-
tion ; and John has some notions of justice and in-
justice which the doctor did nut possess, and, pro-
found though his admiration may be of the intellect
of the shopkeepers of England, of which he has pain-
ful experience through the injury inflicted on his
ganghouse functions by their ingenious and whole-
sale adulteration, lie will not see his country tenants,
for whose instinctive common sense he has the
highest respect, and to whom he feels grateful for
confining their chemical knowledge to agriculture,
deprived of their rights.
But, not to hurt too much the Conservative feelings
of the Whigs, nor run counter to certain wholesome
prejudices of John Bull of the same kind, for John
has a real dread of theoretical perfection, I beg to
state that I merely want an instalment of justice,
and intend, after all, to leave enough anomaly and
inequality in the representation to satisfy the most
practical f mortals. For, instead of seeking exactly
to square accounts between the agriculturists and
the towns, which would require me to deal with 305
members, which is the number the towns return in
excess of their just proportion, I will be content
with the addition of fifty members to the counties,
and in order not to alter the number of the House
of Commons, let us balance this fifty by substracting
as many from those towns in whose favour the most
glaring electoral partiality is shown.
Let us turn again to our friend the almanac.
We see there that there are in all 1,230,496 electors
and 634 members,—that is to say, on an average, one
member to every 1,800 electors. Here then is an
equitable scale for adjusting the distribution of the
representation of the kingdom : give every 1,890
electors one member, and either disfranchise all
places of smaller constituency, or lump them on to
other places in the neighbourhood until the con-
joined constituencies amount to 1,800. " But this
would be theoretical perfection, and would be revolu-
tionary and impracticable !" I believe it would, so I
have no intentions of going halt so far. It is not
necessary that there should be a third, so just I only
wish to lop off my fifty members for those towns
whose constituencies are most ridiculously under
the I,o9o—the average constituency of the country.
The places returning members are arranged alpha•
betically in the almanac : if their geographical
arrangement was the same, the four first places
would be a good illustration of what we propose to
do. Here they are :

Abingdon, with a constituency of 389, returns 1 member.
Andover, ~ ft 227 „ 2 „
Arundel, $, 186 „ 1 „
--•—

Now, the first county on the list is Anglesea, which
with a constituency of 2,s34—that is to say, three
times as large as these three towns put together—
returns only one member.
Nuw, though these towns are not conterminous,
still each of them is conterminous with other towns,
whose constituencies are not much larger, and with
whom they might be easily grouped, so that, at least,
a saving of two members might be made who could
be added to the county of Anglesea.
That this must be practicable is plain from the
fact that in the alphabetical list the injustice goes
through the alphabet, and is fully as glaring in Y as
in A ; for while the West Riding with its constituency
of 37,212 returns two members, the town of York
with a constituency of 4,291 returns two members
also, from which we infer that one average man of
the city of York is equal in intelligence and in pro-
perty to nine men who happen to reside without the
walls—a curious fact in natural history, instructive of
the advantages of cathedral institutions, and rather