The Express.
London, England, 1851-09-15 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13.

LORD JonN RUMSF.I.T. a day or two since arrived
in town, when probably, or possibly, his attention
was called to certain disquisitions on the subject of
the rule which should guide him in the great mea-
sure of electoral reform. On Saturday appeared an
article in the ministerial Globe, which we reproduce,
and we cannot sac that we peruse it with
much satisfaction. The writer in the Globe chimes
in readily with the opinion that the next extension
of the sulliage should be of a nature to he finally
satisfactory, and so to preclude all future demands.
The people, says the ministerial paper, will agitate
for the suffrage, but will agitate for nothing else,
neither for the ballot. nor shorter parliaments ;
but after such an extension of the suffrage as will
include them, the English commonalty will strive ;
and the policy of the government should be to ap-
pease and satisfy them on this one great point, for
if this he done, they will make very easy terms about
the rest.
Reformers scarcely needed this warning, plain as
it may be, to remain upon the alert, and be from the
first determined to take no instalments that are to
preclude hops of obtaining the sum of liberty that
is fairly due, and that should be honestly and fully
paid. The very first principle of this determination
should he, no extension of the franchise without the
ballot. We are confident that the one concession
without the other would lire fruitless. The lower we
descend in the social and electoral scale, the greater
must he the temptation to sacrifice conviction, and
even the real interest of themselves and fellows, to a
momentary bribe or a powerful threat. In a
country organism! like England, with dependence
for its sorial link, the possession of a vote by the
earlier merely makes it more worth the while of
the employ( rto enslave him. Ireland furnishes us
with a whole history of examples. 'the ballot alone
can save t 1( is the present class of electors from de-
gradation; and the ballot is doubly necessary for
that class fur which the franchise is *demanded, and
to which it cannot long be refused.
Lord Juts, however, the Caohe tells us, has got a
recipe for satisfying the working classes, and ad-
mitting them in appearance to the franchise, without
swamping the electoral lists. This is to introduce the
principle of indirect or double election, by which the
artisans or workmen, who have given some guarantee
of decency and good conduct, may have the liberty
of electing a college of electors, who shall have the
jewer of returning a member to parliament con-
ointly with the other voters of the district.
This scheme of indirect, or of two degrees
at election, let us observe, has always been
the chosen scheme of absolutists, whenever thoy
wanted to cleat people with a show of constitution-
alism, and to deny them the reality. It was the
notable deiiii• of the elder llot.RitoNs, and formed
one of the main pillars of that notable consti-
tution which PiII.IGNAC and CHARLES the TESTI{
fell in l'rwcsia, under the minis-
try of NI istrATFEI. and the putmnage of
Russia, has adopted the same. It is a device by this
time notorious to gut the create de lit create of high
eociety and aristocratic pretension.
There is not one single reason to be given fur i
direct deist ion. beside those absolutist and reactionary
motives w latch English statesmen durst not avow, and
imbed do not feel, except the fact, where
it exists, of the population !sing still in such a
state of i;;ltor.tnee that it is impossible the people
could in the brat instance make a rational or salu-
tary choice. Rut in England at the present coo
meld, with every class, even to the lowest,
alive to their interest, and informed far

beyond the average of even the upper
chimes a century ago, to pretend that Eng-
lislinwn and English earner., already so fur
advanced in the ascent to middle rank MY to have put
money in a savings bank, to flay that they can only
elect Ua it representatives at sissital hand, whilst the
shopkeeper can do it at first hand, this is to suppose
a difference that dues not exist, and to degrade the
working class more than ever by refusing them the
ft.:melds,. altogether.
And the 1.1.4- talks of such a precious scheme as
final, as likely to satisfy, and to preclude all future
agitation. •• It is more comporhensive than Man-
chester proposes." We believe so. Fur Manchester
has shrunk from universal suffrage ; whilst this
is universal suffrage turned to the account of
torvism. 'fake the population of a county, in-
eltidiog every clodhopper; let them nominate
in each district an elector, who can he be
hut the Coiner or the squire of the locality? Leave
it to such a grand jury to elect the member, and what
House of Commons should we have?
A system more reactionary, or a scheme more
puerile, we could not imagine. And the organ which
puts it forward pooh-poohs at the same time house-
hold suffrage. It might in truth pooh-pooh the
ten pound suffrage also; for if indirect election be
established. tlw ten pounder himself will wan be ab-
sorbed by it. If a bill be brought into parliament
by ministers, embodying such a principle of reform
as this. we really think that Lord STANLEY in one
honer. and Mr. DP:u tEI.I in the other, will be found
to seeond it. What Sir J SMEM GRAHAM and Mr.
lit ate may say to it, we leave the public to conjecture.

THE reader whose recollections go back to the
olden time of stage coaching may remember the
Beckhampton Inn, on the great Bath rood, übouteight
miles west of that close borough and old town,
Marlborough, where the two diverging roads to
Bath, the one through Devizes and the other through
Caine and Chippenham, divide, and just where the
traveller enters upon one of the must open and bleak
reaches of the Wiltshire Downs' stood, and probably
still stands, between the two roads, a large square,
brick-built house, roomy, but plain, and bearing
somewhat the aspect of a hostel that had seen better
days. In the front looking eastward was the grand
entrance at the time we refer to, but little used ; and
on either side facing the diverging roads was
a side entrance by which the then rather
considerable traffic arising from coach poseen-
gen made its entrance and exit. An immense range
of stabling far more extensive andotamore substantial
character than was required or commonly used for
the coach horses which "stood" there, was to be seen

at the back of the house; and the whole appearance
of the place reminded one of the habitation of gene-
rations of rich old-fashioned squires, whose means,
talents, and energies had been perseveringly devoted
to horses and hounds. The Beckhampton Inn was at
that time famous for potent ale, and probably, not-
withstanding modern changes, is so still. Winter
travellers, who were about to encounter the sharp
breezes over Cherhill Downs or ltoundwav Rill, as
well as those coining "up the road," who lied passed
those exposed districts, seldom omitted to fortify
or solace themselves with a glass of the strong Wilt-
shire beer, known by the genuine name of Kennett
Ale.

Previous to the termination of the French war
this lieckhampton inn was the place of meeting of a
coursing club called by the same name, at which the
squirearchy of the county were accustomed to as.
semble from time to time for the double purpose of
pursuing hares—there remarkably wild and vigor-
ous—and arranging the political affairs of the county
—then managed in a very mug and comfortable
way by the acted magnates of the county.
here, amidst the discussions on greyhounds and
running horses, the merits of past, present, and pos-
sible members for the county were canvassed; and
whenever a general election was approaching, or •
vacancy in the county representation was impending
or had occurred—for in these good times even squires
would sometimes die—all the minor gentry and
others who followed the lead of the larger landed
roprietors, waited with reverential decorum fur the
decision of the Beckhampton club before they ven-
tured to express any opinion as to the pretensions of
an aspirant to the county representation.
We have beard of many men of independent
means, who from positionaadcircumstances were fully
justified in thinkin star themselves, and mold influence

others, and who habitually ranged themselves as the
adherents of sonic one or other of greater landed
magnates of the county. They would say, " I
always go with Mr. A. or my Lord 8.," as the case
might be, and they followed as implicitly u if they
were his merest dependents. M e remember one
of these gentlemen, originally a man of some pro-
perty, and who had considerably increased it by
farming and by buying and reselling land during
the " high prices," who long after this system had
been broken down was accustomed to promise his
support to actual candidates for the county, subject
to the condition and proviso that cone of the family
of the P.'s, of which he considered himself an ad-
herent, should come forward as a candidate; the
only known representatives of that family being two
lad ladies and an imbecile.
As to tenants' opinions, the magnates of the
Beckhampton Club never thought it needful to go
through the form of referring to it: they informed
'the tenants who had votes through the landlord's
agent for whom they were to vote, and that was
enough.
The late Lord, then Mr. PAUL METHUEN, broke
through this local oliga7hical system, and appealing to
the county. constituencies on what were then deemed
popular opinions, established what was then called
lithe independence of the county. The contests which
oceured in Wiltshire from 1815 to the time of the
Reform Bill prove that there existed in that county
an independent section of the constituency w
could grapple with, and sometimes defeat, the local
landoeraev. And the same thing had occurred
during thiat period in a great many other counties.
Now, however, this has been in a great measure
put an end to by the Chandos clause of the Reform
Bill, which gave every tenant farmer, paying a
rent of &OZ. a year, a county vote. This has eft►
tually swamped the independence of the towns' and
delivered up the county constituencies bound hood
and foot to the landed interest. So far as the
counties are concerned, we have reverted book
substantially to that system which we has,
described as existing in Wiltshire, under the rAyiset
of the Beckhampton Coursing Club. The form is
somewhat different, but the result is the same. In-
stead, as then, of a snug resolution at ajolly drinking
bout, we have now a requisition handed about by
squires' agents, for the signatures of their tenants
and dependents, but which is as much the act, the
expression of the will of the landed interest, as was
the simple word of command of the Wiltshire squires.
Landlordism has, again, the counties in its own
hands. Note, for instance, what has been going on
in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Mr. BROADLEY,
the member fur the Riding, having died, the " 0:111•
servative gentry" meet and agree to invite one ot
their own body to accept the representation of the
Aiding. First one declines, and then another, and
then the juvenile nephew of Sir .Isrros SrBEs,
Mr. EGt.KTON, the son of a Cheshire squire, was
agreed to be invited to lay down his school ooks
and accept the senatorial honour. Whether Mr.
It:Gs:lms could not be made out to have attained
twenty-one, or whether his papa had the good sense
to sec that his son had better learn something of
. .

the world before ho began to legislate for a
nation, we know not, but he too, or some
one on his behalf, declined the protferred scat. Under
these circumstances tho landocracy of the East
Riding have offered their county seat to a son of
Lord FAVERSIRM, one of themselves, who is now
member for East Itetford.

Can there he a greater farce than a county repre-
sentation which may be thus dealt with ? Does any
one suppose that if the people of the East Riding had
any real voice and influence in the election of their
member, they would confine themselves to the cadets
and connexions of their great landed proprietors?
The truth is—and it cannot be too distinctly or loudly
proclaimed, now we are on the eve of a new reform
bill thattherepresentation of the counties is almost
exclusively in the hands of the landed proprietors.
This is an evil which ought to be, nay, must be
corrected; how Lord Jolts ItCSSELL proposes to cor-
rect it, if he does so propose, is a question of vast
interest to the community, and it is one on which
some general expression of opinion ought to take
place before the meeting of parliament.
We have heard a rumour that a part of the pro-
' posed ministerial reform bill will be the abolition of
ids. freehold voters fur counties. Now, this would
not merely cut at the work of count• enfranchise-
ment now being effected by means of freehold land
societies, but would strike off some of the most in-
dependent voters. If there be and• such purpose in-
tended, we do not see what equivalent of popular
element can be offered ; and when we see the de-
graded condition into which the division of counties,
and the giving votes to the dependent tenantry of
the landowners, while the intelligent population of
the towns are for the most part excluded, have re-
duced the county constituencies, we must say it
behoves all who would have a real measure of par-
liamentary reform, and a true and honest representa-
tion of the counties, to take care that the govern-
ment should understand that no scheme for con-
tinuing the actual preponderance of the landed in-
terest will be satisfactory to the people.

iAL