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

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
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