The Express.
London, England, 1867-05-23 00:00:00

THE PROOREM OF TM! REFORM MI.

The Times thinks it is not too sanguine in hoping
that the tones of the county franchise may be settled
by the let of June, or even before. The committee
might thus arrive on an early day at the redistribution
clauses, which form, in truth, the only part of the bill now
presenting any very serious difficulty. The amendments
proposed with reference to these clauses are many,
and the debates they must occasion will inevitably
be spirited, and not improbably prolonged ; but
the Times trusts that the ministry will not enter-
tain the insidious suggestion to postpone to
another year the consideration of these clauses alto-
gether. Few things can be conceived mora demoralising
to parliament or to the country than that a half measure
should become law to-day, with the prospect of a second
half next year or the year after. The Proposal, for
altering the government scheme which are of the greatest
practical importance turn upon the method of conferring
additional representatives upon populous counties and
towns. The news is in favour of adding to the re-
presentation of populous counties and boroughs rather
than subdividing them. Meanwhile it is incumbent on
the administration to "massacre the innocents" at

once. When the ground has thus been cleared, the
Reform Bill should receive undivided attention.
The Times and Daily News both address themselves to-
day to the arguments against reform which have been
advanced by Mr. Lowe. The consideration which Mr.
Lowe puts forward of the evils in our existing system, the
Times tarns against him as extinguishing his position—
that there I. no case for reform at all. Too much has been
said about classes in the whole of this controversy. The
plain truth of the matter is that all the private relations of
the working man will be engrafted into our political sys-
tem. He will vote with his muter, hie employer, his
preacher, his society, and possibly sometimes commit the
unpardonable crime of voting as his landlord asks him to
vote.

The reference of Mr. Lowe to American political parties
is asserted by the Doily New to be no happier than his
prophecies about our own political future. The various
parties in United States politics whose names Mr. Lowe
called over as illuitratine popular fickleness by their tem-
porary life and their entire extinction, have only
become extinct because the controversies out of
which they rose have been settled. It is the vice
and weakness of anti-popular government that controver-
sies are not settled and th►t grievances are not removed.
But to Mr. Lowe, the whole anti-slavery struggle, and
other American political discussions, affecting the welfare
of millions of white and coloure‘ people, are a mere
battle of shams. His clever vaticie..ns will remain on
record not onl► as a proof of the visionary apprehensions
and vain fears which characterised the " party of resist-
ance" in the days before reform, but of their contented
ignorance even of contemporary history, and their inability
even to perceive the facts which political progress exhibited
underneath their immediate observation.
The Herald says it is easy for Mr. Lowe to entertain the
House of Commons with an eloquent harangue on the
dangers of democracy and the unwisdom of opening the
floodgates, but no one save him will deny that if the go-
vernment had declined to attempt to legislate upon the
question they would deservedly have been ejected from
office. The Herold then continues to argue that the con.
servatives opposed the government bill of last year, not
because it went too far, but because it did not go far
enough.

The Scotch Reform Bill, as sketched by Mr. Disraeli,
should be, the Daily News says, to English liberals at once
an encouragement and a warning. It shows us what we
may hope to obtain ; it also shows us what we have to
fear. The burgh franchise is fixed very much as we would
have it fixed among ourselves; the county franchise is leas
satisfactorily dealt with. By giving the majority cf the
new members to the counties, and by taking all the small
towns out of the counties and g ouping them for the pur-
pose of borough representation, the conservative leader
secures that of the seven new members two wall be
liberals and five conservatives. The scheme is utterly
unconstitutional, as it throws to she wind' the principle
of our county franchise, namely, the representation of
property wherever situated and by whomsoever permed.
The liberal party must bestir itself, or the system will be
applied to Haglund.
The Tskproph strongly opposes the county portion o'
the Septa Reform Bill, every clause of which it declares