The Express.
London, England, 1848-04-11 00:00:00

11.1.011. WATII AT WNDOM BRIDGE.

T.,. 8.
T 6. xossopt—Motto& II .t. pot et MOttoopa, .34 mm. pot I.

LONDON, TUESDAY, APRIL 11.

WE have not waited for the present times of ex-
citement to propose large concessions to the popular
spirit of the day. We have advocated the reform of
the House of Lords, the extension of the suffrage, the
vote by ballot. We have no objection to see the pro-
perty qualification for members of parliament done
away with. Nor do we see why the constituents of a
member of parliament may not pay him a salary in
indemnification for his services, if he needs it. Here are
several points of the charter, which have our support, se-
veral others to which we are indifferent and do not resist.
But neither universal suffrage nor annual parliaments
can we accept ; the former would be legislative, the
latter administrative, anarchy.
We can never admit that the man without either
property, or education, or the skill which commands
an income, has an equal right to influence and direct
the political affairs of the country with the man
possessed of any of the three. Nor can we admit
that the electoral franchise is to be given
without any distinction of qualities or persons.
Twenty per cent. of the male population of London
consist of domestic s_rvants. Give them the elective
franchise, and the masters no longer live in the draw-
ing-room, but in the servant's hall. Nor is this
confined to fashionable quarters in life. The same
revolution would be effected by the people's charter,
not only in great mercantile establishments, but in
the tradesman's aboic. This country has been or-
ganised and develops 11 with a far too great pre-
dominance of the upper classes and a too great
durability of privileges and fortunes, and castes.
To remedy this by leaping from one ex-
treme to the other, and subjecting both upper
and middle classes to the control, the desires and
the political theories of the poor and unprovided
class—this would be neither more nor less than a

massacre—a massacre of wealth, intelligence com-
forts, respectability, of everything that renders life
supportable or dignified, and to end inevitably in a
massacre of life itself. We do not estimate the result
of suddenly decreed universal suffrage in this
country at less. Those who cry for it do
not indeed contemplate such results. They see
it working in America with no disastrous conse-
quences; but American society has safety valves and
peculiarities. Nature's poor-law flourishes there with
large tracts of unappropriated land, and a demand for
labour which no increase of population or emigration
can surmount. The Americium are not driven to
contemplate any social revolution at the expense of
the rich. They possess, what Mr. O'CoNNori and
others declare to be the ultimate end and only ad-
vantage of the charter—the land.
But there are, undeniably, many abuses to be reme-
died in this country, many grievances to be probed
and healed, many inequalities to be done away with.
Our electoral franchise is absurdly limited and distri-
buted. It is maintained by the law in the hands of
thousands of mercenaries and paupers, whilst it is
denied to the intelligent and industrious earner. Our
whole system of election is one of grudges and exclu-
sion. The middle class, both in town and country,
is denied the exercise of its free judgment and will
by the prejudices of landlords and customers; and
the ballot is indispensable to that political emancipation,
which was extended to them in 1831 merely in name.
Household suffrage, as it exists, is a fallacyand a trick.
In two cities of almost equal population, the policy of
landlords, or the nature of the ground and vicinity,
afford ample building extension to the one, deny it to
the other. The result is 12,000 ten pound houses in
the one, and 5,000 similar houses in the other, with
very little difference either in the total of the popula-
tion, or in the number of those, calculated from
respectability and earnings, to be electors.
The door porter of an establishment shall have a vote,
and its first clerk, with two or three hundred a-year,
shall have none, because he is a bachelor, lives in
lodgings, and is a more independent man. This injus-
tice might be remedied by giving the electoral fran-
chise to the occupiers of lodgings, possessed of a cer-
tain value of moveables. The acquisition of property
of any kind should confer a vote, and that vote should
have its worth by a more equable division of electoral
I districts.
The result of the present system is, that
even the skilled labouring classes are not repre-
sented. They have no one to vent their ideas,
and state their complaints in parliament ; 'those
members whom they do nominally return, being
taken by them from some other class, with far
other interests, or other ideas than theirs. No-
thing is so deeply felt by the more enlightened
portion, the chiefs of the operatives, than this. They
cannot make themselves heard. If they publish a
newspaper, it is read merely by their own followers.
If they call a public meeting, their speeches are
burked in the London newspapers. Parliament is
closed against them, or it awes and sends to Coventry
any who even approach their opinions. When we
consider that these foremost ranks of the operative
classes, are amongst the most educated and active
minds of the empire ; that 'they far surpass the
lazier middle classes in their acquirements and
their freedom of thought, we may imagine how deeply
and dangerously they feel their intellectual and poli-
tical helotism. " Let us have an Eight Hours Bill,
in order to devote the evening to the cultivation of
our minds," exclaimed an unshorn operative the other
day at a trades' meeting. The fact is, that whilst
the middle classes are absorbed in the pursuit of
wealth, the skill, d labouring classes have started lathe
pursuit of knowledge. And knowledge is power, we
know, as well as wealth.
Such men and such classes as these we cannot shut
out from the immunities and privileges of the consti-
tution. We must enlist them in it, gratify them with
it. If they are political waifs and orphans, without
the right of citizenship in our institutions, we must
I adopt them, cherish them, and treat them as sons and
as brothers. Nor is it because some rash spirits
clamour in the streets, and create a riot in
their name, that we are for that reason
to ignore their rights, or punish them with exclusion.
On the contrary, let not the lust of keeping order and
maintaining pride preclude the equally noble one of
being generous and lust. And whilst, like the gal-
lant mayor of olden time, we annihilate treason and
riot with the mace of office, let us, as was done in
that remote age, extend the girdle of the constitution,
and take in all that are worthy and well-minded,
without asking if they be rich, to share with them
the active rights and privileges and dignities of
the British citizen.

MR. JORN OCoNNELL moves to-night for leave to
bring in a bill to repeal the legislative union between
Great Britain and Ireland. That such a proposition
will find any considerable number of supporters we
very much doubt. When brought before the house in
1834, by the great leader of the Irish people,
and sustained by all the skilled and versatile eloquence
of which he was the master, there were but four-and-
thirty members willing to vote that the project of