The Express.
London, England, 1867-07-30 00:00:00

THE REFORM HILL AND THE ['ECUs.

The resolution of Lord Halifax, pointing to no
definite line of action, met last night with a defeat which
the Times thinks was completely deserved. It is much to
be regretted that at a later period of the evening the same
prudence was not exhibited. Lord Cairns persuaded the
lords to raise the qualification of the lodger franchise from
101. to 151. Lord Malmesbury, who had so strenuously
deprecated any difference of opinion between the two
houses on the question of redistribution, assented to the
alteration as a compromise, because in the bill of 1859 a
vote was offered to the tenant, not of unfurnished lodgings
worth 101. a year, but of furnished lodgings worth 201.
This decision, and the subsequent rejection of the
clause reducing the copybold and leasehold property
franchises in counties, exhibit such a spirit of elabo-
rate trifling with the subject of reform as to make
the best friends of the lords apprehensive as to
the wisdom of their future tre►tment of the bill.
The Times, however, continues to urge the government to
extend their redistribution scheme. The mischievous alte-
ration of the lodger franchise has damned its hopes, but it
appeals to the calmer judgment of the government.
Lord Halifax is conailered by the Daily Nam to be
chargeable with the grave error in tactics of endeavouring
to thrust upon opponents an abstract proposition of cen-
sure for the sake of giving effect to details which might
possibly have been acquiesced in had the hostile gene-
ralities been kept out of sight. The eourse which he has
pursued would have abolished, if it had been successful,
whatever chance there may be of enlarging the mi-
nisterial scheme of redistribution. His lordship's speech,
however, was one of the most practical and ju-
dicious which have been delivered in either house
on the question of redistribution of seats, and
Lord Malmesbury testified to the force of Lord Halifax's
arguments by declining to reply to them. Hitherto the
amendments which the peers have adopted have for their
object torestrict and qualify the boon which the government
profess to offer. By the substitution of the plural terns
"poor rates" in the third clause for the singular phrase,
" rate levied for the relief of the poor," a limitation, if we
rightly understand a point which the discussion left some-
what obscure, is imposed on the household qualification in
boroughs. The success of Lord Cairns's motion on the
lodger franchise and on the votes of the young men in the
colleges and halls of Oxford and Cambridge, and of Lord
Harrowby in raising the copyhold qualification are vexa-
tious changes which show the reluctant spirit in which the
lords yield to the disagreeable necessity of reform.
The Post does not take the division on Lord Halifax's
motion to be decisive on the points really at issue, as many
may be inclined in committee to support definitive pro-
posals who would hesitate to endorse an abstract, and, as
many deemed it, an embarrauling resolution.
The argument of the Herald is th►t it is the object of
the bill to give votes to the lower class, but not to give
them supremacy by assigning a preponderance of members
to those places in which the newly enfranchised class pre-
dominate.

The Tele!map% thinks the Commons will scarcely tole-
rate the reactionary alterations which have been made in
the bill through the instrumentality of Lord Cairns, and
the Star denouncer the conduct of the government as a
breach of faith and as wanton trifling with the serious in-
terests of the people.

RATIMAT PINANCT.-PRE-PRETERENCL SHARES.

Though the mere name of pmpreferenoe shares is simply
abominable to many people, they appear to the Times the
simplest and most straightforward, and, therefore, the
most honest way of meeting such a difficulty as
that into which the North British Railway has fallen.
The relief must be in the form of shares, and the question
before the committee on Saturday was whether the shares
should be added to the uppermost stratum of the vast
financial deposit or to the lowest. The company must be
kept above ground, having subsided considerably. The
proposition in behalf of which Mr. Gladstone bad been
invited to speak was to add a top layer of pre-preference
shares, which would probably get floated at a very mode-
rate fixed dividend. This is as simple an operation as filling
up a hole. The counter-proposition was far from simple,
and was equivalent to underpinning an edifice, and at-
tempting to lift it up with an immense effort of mechanical
power. The plan actually adopted by the committee is in
fact a fresh issue of debentures—just now not a welcome
name to small and anxious capitalists. These debentures
are of coarse preferential, and so far stop up the way be-

fore all the repositions me much as any preference steak
scald do.
With regard to the Railway Compass Bill the awly
hope of the Standard fora mitigation of the mischief is in
the characteristic care and caution of the Court of
Chancery. It may be that that court will lay down con-
ditions too stringent for embarrassed railways to comply
with, and that thus the act will become a dead letter—an
event which moat people will devoutly desire. But if it
is to be brought into use at all its effect on the already
abnormally depressed market will be most disastrous. No
shareholder of any clue will feel that he has any security
for his money. Recklessness and fraud will go on more
swimmingly than ever. Charges of all sorts will be heaped
up, and liabilities of all kinds will be incurred, in confident
hope that when the crash comes the pre-preference clause
may be used to set the concern on its legs.
The Telegraph points out that the Lords• committee
have, in the case of the North British Railway, followed
the practice for which Sir M. Pete and his partners have
been denounced. Moved by an appeal from the counsel to
the North British Company, the committee permitted a
clause to be inserted, allowing the issue of debentures to
the amount of 843,0001. on the security of 2,600,00 W. pre-
ference stock, which had been authorised but not raised.
Now it may be in the recollection of the public that one of
the specific charges against the firm of Peto, Betts, and
Crampton, in connexion with the Chatham and Dover
Railway, was the issue of debentures against stock which,
though authorised, was but nominally subscribed. Here,
however, we find a p►rliamentary committee sanctioning
an issue when the stock had not been subscribed even
nominally.