The Express.
London, England, 1849-08-22 00:00:00

eke tarprefso

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• 141011 WAITS AT LONDON HUIDOE.
Ttoo DA, —lfandeg,l4 aho. pat 4; Agleamla, 34 al4. mot 4.
1....44414—Yar5iag,14.44n. put 4, Aftensou4,3l Ws, past S.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22.

LIABILITY to rates as a measure and test of the elec-
tive franchise presents many recommendations, which
the posses-ion of property of a given yearly value
does not and cannot afford. Proof, in the latter case,
depends generally on the veracity of the party whose
right is in question, and where the accuracy of his
statement is invariably controverted by those who
have avowedly a party aim in frustrating his claim,
This in itself is a prolific root of evil. The corrupting
influence of the notion spreads that everything is fair
in electioneering war. Men who in otter relations of
life would recoil instinctively, either from exaggerating
the amount of their own oossev'ions, or depreciating
those of their neighbours, do not blush to own their com-
plicity in both where party spirit runs high. No
one will contend, we presume, that the periodical re-
currence of such controversies is not hurtful and de.
moralising to the public mind; or that any system
would not be an improvement, which would rendsr
the horsiness of preliminary registration more of a
judicial inquiry and less of a factious struggle.
For what, after all, is the subject in dispute ? Cill
it a right, a privilege, or a trust—it is clearly unfit-
ting and indecent that its concession should be the
object of a technical wrangle, or the sport of profes-
sional chicane. Theories apart, it is plain that the
franchise is conferred for public use and benefit. To
disfranchise any portion of the class cr section of the
community on whom, prima fiscie, the electoral
function has been devolved, is for so Touch to defeat
the intention of the law. Yet this is the object sought
openly and unscrupulously by men of opposite parties
in the Registration Courts; and, as everybody knows,
their conflicting efforts are to a great extent success-
ful. Some are deterred altogether from putting in
their claim ; others from contending for it.
Many of sensitive honour refuse to appear in Tarty
drill, and thereby to yield an implied pledge of sup-
port to whatever candidate the
,Party may adopt.
Many, on the other hand, are " knocked off," as the
slang goes, because it is not known for certain bow
they will vote on the one question of the hour which
engrosses unthinking attention. These are frequently
the very sort of men who upon any rationale of the
suffrage ought to be endowed with the power of giving
a constitutional vote in the choice of those who are to
make our laws. Yet these are just the men who are
most unc.remoniously set aside as doubtfuls" by the
political comlottieri who fight, not for the sake even of
the proftssed cause, but for the credit of winning and
the club pay.
We speak without respect of parties; but we speak
of Wogs that have ceased in some measure to be
scandalous, because they have, unfortunately, come to
las universally notorious and habitual. They are,
nevertheless, replete with acknowledged, and, as we
believe, with wholly unnecessary evil. For their ma-
terial reduction, if not total eradication, it is but
needful that public consideration should be turned to
the source whence they sprig. That source mani-
festly consists in founding the franchise
on the possession or occupancy of lands or
houses worth so much a year, and about
value or title to which all manner of questions may be
vexatiously raised. There are whole volumes filled
with reported oases of this kind,—for the most part
turning upon what plain men would call the emptiest
quibbles ot law, and not one of which assuredly was
in the contemplation of parliament when it enacted
the reform bill of 11332. But the inherent vice of that
vaunted measure lay in the adoption of the erroneous
principle we have alluded to, and the necessary mul-
tiplication of alternatives and diversities of property
and occupancy to which were to be assigned for the
purposes of the act, an equivalent dignity and value.
A 501. tenancy at will was declared to be constitu-
tionally as valuable as a 40 shilling freehold; while
the occupation of a house worth 101. a year
was added to the list of qualifications, at the same
time that the old freedom of cities and boroughs was
retained. Around each of these a jungle of attorney-
, ism has already grown up, dense and impervious to
ordinary skill. If a 111111 is Wither' to trust himself
to a particular faction, and if the faction happen to
have in their pay the most dextrous local agent, why
I then he may get through. Should the agent be of
linferior dexterity, or the faction of inferior strength,
there is no security whatever that the claimant will
attain the legal right which the law affects to bestow.
The substitution of a simple and uniform test of the
franchise, such as liability to the payment of rates,
would at least have the merit of putting an end to
this evil. We sly not that it would cure all evils,
or redress all inequalities. But so long as property
is regarded as an indispensable condition of political
power, it is important to avoid as far as possible un-
certainty and fraud in the demonstration of its per-
sonal cnjo3 meat; and the s7inpler and more uniform
the test which can be prescribed tiie better. House-
hold suffrage as a test is open to numerous cavils. In
the remote and poor agricultural districts of Scotland,
Wales, and Ireland, the privilege would appertain to
the (lechers in huts, having little in common with
the brick dwelling of the industrious inhabitant of
ordinary towns, or the decent cottage of the labourer
in more prosperous localities. And the moment
you define " householder" to mean something different
from " houseowner," with a view to escape too
great a limitation of the franchise, you open a door
to attorney cavils in the registration courts. We are not
now arguing againstthe extension of the right of voting
to any class of our fellow-countrymen; but by all means
let us seek fora clear and intelligible definition of what-
ever franchise is to be conferred; let us have an end
of multiplied forms, and quibbles in the practical
assertion of the right ; let us, in whatever new and
general terms are requisite to designate the most im-
portant thing in our political life as a nation, be care-
, ful to adopt such as all honest men of common un-
derstanding shall agree in the interpretation of.
It is greatly to be desired that whatever change is
made in the law of the elective franchise, should be
made for the United Kingdom as one undivided realm.
Hitherto, in this as in most other matters of moment,
the unions with Ireland and Scotland have been prac-
tically violated, while technically they have been ob-
served. A different system has been assumed to be
indispensable for the three kingdoms, and so long as
the franchise is founded on land tenure, the
diversities that prevail therein seem to jos-
n
is
o imposed the otherb y a hand,
g ecour .t
publicir
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tify the diversities in political privilege. House-
te
el
be
hold suffrage, in counties as well as towns, would
doubtless be a vastly simpler basis, and one more uni-
form in the component regions of which the imperial
whole is made up. But, as we have said, even house-
hold suffrage would imply widely different conditions
in the metropolis and in the outlying districts to the
far north of Scotland, or the socially farther west of
Ireland. Those who refuse to stop at any limit short
of complete or universal suffrage are consistent ; but
those who adopt a limit are not consistent if they
leave their meaning vague and indefinable. Liability
er
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nuisance.

MACAULAY in hie famous third ohapor proves that
in the time of CIIARLE9 11. the whole effe,-Hee charge
of the army, navy, and ordnance, was about seven
hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The non-cf ecti!e
charge, which is now a heavy part of our oblie
burdens, can hardly be said to have then existod.
We do not wish to argue that what was good in the
time of CHABLIS IL must be good in 1849. Our Mae-