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

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 preservation the second. Poli-
ticians such as Mr. LT-WE KING, Mr. EaliZEI

I.'. 411