The Express.
London, England, 1866-03-17 00:00:00

THE WEEKLY PE AND THE REFORM BILL.

In the opinion of the Examiner the bent thing that
has been said, or that can be said, of the new Franchise Bill
is that whisk a shrewd and cautious Mead dropped quietly
in the hearing of the writer attn. lietseieg to Yr. Gladstone'
speech :—" It will do." All kinds of faults were awe to be
found with the meteor*, no matter what it contained or
what it left out. Had it embraoed questions of re-distribu-
tion or questions of voting, =nye! the gentlemen who were
openly on the look out for any stick to best the dog of a
Reform measure, and who ars Dow mooutiag" stogie-barrelled*
bills, would have been quite as ready to lift up their hands
and oak the gorrernment—" Why caul you do one thing at
a time Is not the affair of the suffrage weighty and big
enough to occupy your beet thoughts and your best hours from
this until Whitsuntide; and what is the need of uking both
houses to sit on tall Michaelmas, as possibly to Candlemas,
this year, to do the rest of what requires to be done, to the
neglecter stoppage of all the other bruinass of the county r
Instaadof this, ministers proposed to proceed stop by step, like
sober and thoughtful mesa. Even worked ky a mere addition
sum the middle classes would still preponderate in the electoral
scale by three to one ; but it never was true that the elec-
tors who live by labour are equally distributed over the
whole, or a half, or a fourth part of the number of
lo-
eoliths and oiremenseriptioes, rural or turban, that said

member@ to parliament. The influence of merest labour
may become more powerful over the representation of par-
ticular spots; but in the Faun proportion will its balance
elsewhere diminish. When, therefore, we talk of one
elector out of every four belonging to the artisan clue it
does not follow, and it never can follow, that one consti-
tuency in four will be liable to be swayed by the distioo-
live feelings or wishes of artisans. If we said one consti-
tuency in ten, it would be nun to the mark. Where, them,
Is the ground for misg:vieg or alarm? But the Examiner
does not believe in the reality of that portion of the go-
vernment returns which or/feel to make a calculation of the
somber of working men in large town constituencies. Oh-
vionely that &relation has been based upon mere guesswork.
We no more believe that there a•e at present 26 per nat
of artisans in the existing borough coostituesudes than we
believe that there are 90 re cent. In small country towns
—where every joiner sad bncksmith and mason is known,
and where the revision of the borough list is • clue sifting
process which takes phi*, every year, it is easy to come at
the accurate proportions; though something even there
may be debateable, according as the line of avocation b
drawn high or low. But in the twenty large boroughs
whose population and whose eleton knish the main
figures of the total estimee, we have neither the sans
precision nor any approach b it. The Examiner concludes
by expressing its content with the bin as the ben bidding
we have had yet—toe only tertian from which it dissents
being the disfranchisement of the craftsmen of the dock-
yard.
The Saturd,ay Review adopts the estimate of Lord
Oranborne that if the workin; ewes were united they
would control, under the new Reform Bill, slightly more iI
than one-third of the emostituncies, but in relents of course
they would break off into sections just as the middle
class would do. sad U we gnome the secnity and ex-
pediency of some manure of the kind and attach any
weight to the arguments f.r giving the working men
a sensible share in the c ntrol of public affairs, the main
proposal of the government does act seem an uoreasonable
one. The Saturday Review, however, loss some potent ob-
*tins to the miner pars of the usbeme, and ft pre-
maids to urge that the Saving, Beak Chinn would
afford opportunities for the corrupt manufacture of votes
sod is unfair as limiting persons to • form of investment
which gives them an exeee 'iag'y low interest. Why
lodgers are to pay 101. sod h-msel o'ders but 71. to get aeon
Mr. Gledstons d'el not explain ; lain' he eves seems to
Woolen that, by an air it maeonvre of empelling them I
to asks as maul claim, their enfrasehisement would
poises no politi nl result. There way be no great oh*. I
bon to the proposal as to copyholi qua ikeition in boroughs
for county votes, but we are without the data by which
to judge of its effect.. The whole schema, which
is confessedly fragmentary, is mermen, only jostillable
en the suppositios that the franchise might be extended
while the present distribution of seats might be sad ought
to be kept as it is. Its results oa constituencies that do
not exist no one CM tali It is idle to think that the ori-
ent parliament, if it passed Mr. Gladstone's bill, would
have any control over the redistribution of sesta. It ceeld
not pass a bill for this purpose before the new voters were
en the register ; and, as the governmentoould then appeal
to the enlarged constituencies, the Oppadtion would
have me alternative but to permit the appeal, or
take the redistribution the government chose to
prworif e*; and a parli.mse, when the Orval-
tion I. pt:sk sed in tit way, hes lost all control I
over affairs. That a redistribution of sees mud follow
an extmecat of the franchise is too obvious to need proof,
for enormous constituencies of thousands on thousands will
not allow themselves to be perpetually thwarted by what
Mr. Bright calls villages in the west of &gland. Practi-
cally, therefore, the proposal of the government comes to
this, that the present parliament shall extend the franchise.
and that another parliament, &acted by a different set of
snore, shall deride whether the principle on which the
present parliament ants is to be maintained. No govern-
meet ever asked • parliament for a greater coecession, and
both their party and the country may justly complain of I
the emeelect of the government in making snob a demand
en parliament.
To the Spectator the Government Ball, so far as it affects
the borough franchise, ellefla to lack three important eases-
tiels,—fint, a principle,—next, an excuse for the purpose-
less increase of the corrupt and dependent class of elector,
in the smaller boroughspari pawl with that of the honest
sad independent clue is the larger borougba,—lastly, •
gureatee that it is sot going to rob a wen in-represented
clue, the massfacturing capitalists, of almost all their I
idnease is Pullman% is order to find room fore totally I
enreterseseted class, instead of bade' from the aspic.
Anus and excessive political inflames of land cue of
the talents which it has abused, and heading it
over to labour, for more fruitful and worthy use.
And yet the Spectator demands reform, and In a mooed
leader preen& to conscd at considerable length that Yr.
Lem and the piety of meths proceed ea s Mutinies.