The Express.
London, England, 1867-02-07 00:00:00

STRAND.

Tilts Errlrso. il Hs —A (ter which will be pr,whiceit
a Grand Suritwilue, &U Y EAIS KES.—And A SUIT DI:
TW ES: D'

HOLBORN.

Tniq Eva:glad, MY TURN NEXT. Mr. Belmore; Mimes
Foote and Lennox —And FLYING SCUD. Messrs. Neville, Bel-
lmore, Blake. VOlalre, ar. ; Mesdames V. Joseph., C. Saunders,
Dank Foote, friddes, Lennox, Raymond, &c.

BRITANNIA.

THHI EvTvlxo, THE PRINCESS HE THE PEARL ISLAND;
OR, THE THREE EINGDMIS OF PEARL. HOLD, AND
SILVER. NI IN Lame atol Jecoln—lirst-rne Eauturaiinista.
—And THE WIDOW'S FIRESIDE.

RION WATER AT LONDONBRIDOS

Till DAY —Morning. 3h.47M7..:.:AftereoM2, 4h. tot.
To-M•l2ow—Morning, 411. 19m Afternoon. lb. 3.910.

LONDON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7.

THE place assigned to the paragraph on Parlia-
mentary Reform in the Royal Speech correctly re-
presents the position which the question occupies in
the public mind. It has precedence of all other
points of domestic legislation. The extension of
the franchise has been a Parliamentary question
fur nineteen years, and a Cabinet question for
fifteen. The Act of 1839 had not been in opera-
tion for more than sixteen years when a demand
for its amendineut was made by Mr. Hume,
whose proposition of household suffrage seems
likely to be ultimately accepted as common
ground by all sections of the Liberal party. A
scheme which unites the suffrages of men dithering
so widely in temperament and opinion as Sir
ROUN DELL PALMER and Mr. BRIO HT, cannot be
justly stigmatized with the brand of extreme or
merely sectional opinion. It may seem strange
that a demand for a further reform of Parliament
should have followed closely upon the greatest
achievement of the reformed Parliament—we
mean, of course, the repeal of the Corn Laws. But
this measure, like most of those which have lately
been cited in proof of the almost ideal excellencel
and perfect practical operation of our institutions,
was not obtained through the ordinary operation
of our representative system. It was brought to
pass by agencies which had been effectual even
with the unreformed Parliament—the pressure
from without, and the threat or apprehension of
disturbance. The greatest concessions which have
been made to religious freedom in this century,
the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act, and
the removal of Catholic disabilities, were made by
an unreformed House of Commons, for the simple
reason that before, as since, the year 1832 statesmen
and members of Parliament have hesitated to push
resistance to the point at which it challenges
civil conflict or domestic riot. The growing im-
portance and indirect influence of the mercantile
and manufacturing classes enabled Mr. HIMIKIBSON
to commence in 1823 the commercial reforms
which Sir ROBERT PEEL continued, and Mr.
GLADSTONE has all but completed. The increasing
strength of the working classes, and their increas-
ing and alarming violence, brought about the repeal
of the Combination Laws in 1824. On all vital
questions of social, commercial, and ecclesiastical
improvement the reformed Parliament has
simply continued the work of its unre-
formed predecessor, acting under precisely the
same influences, not of reason, but of exterior
compulsion. The Corn Laws were repealed, not
because the House of Commons, and still less the
House of Lords,was intellectually convinced of the
fallacy and mischief of protection ; but because the
agitation of the League could no longer be resisted,
and an lrish famine was close at hand. Tithes
were not commuted in Ireland until a social war
raged through that country, and the gaols were
full of prisoners, while the highways were strewn
with the corpses of rioters and of the police and
soldiery, and scarcely a tithe-proctor could boast
that he had ears to hear. Even then the chief
motive to the commutation seemed to be that the
Protestant clergy, being unable to collect their
dues, were almost starving, and had to be pro-
vided for by a vote of 60,0001. Municipal
Reform wan a mere corollary from Parliamentary
Reform, as the free-trade measures of Lord JOHN
Russett's administration were the consequences
of the repeal of the Corn Laws. The landowners
did not care to protect native shipowners and
colonial sugar-planters when their own monopoly
was gone. Representative institutions were not
granted to tho colonies, nor was transportation
abandoned, until disaffection became dangerous.
All these instances, which might be multiplied,
show that the reasons which were good for Par-
liamentary Reform in 1832 are valid now. Glaring
anomalies exist, unconstitutional influences are
predominant in many boroughs and counties,
large masses of qualified persona are excluded
from the franchise, and great measures of political
justice and social improvement still need to be
forced upon the fears rather than recom-
mended to the reason of the Legislature. The
only difference between the two periods is that
now a somewhat lighter pressure suffices
than was necessary five-and-thirty years ago ;
that the compulsion may be more delicately
veiled, and that resistance stops somewhat shorter
of the point of actual danger than it did in the
days previous to the Reform Act. The needless
cost at which the Corn Laws had been repealed,
and other beneficent changes had been accom-
plished, doubtless led Mr. Hums and his friends
to re-open the yet unclosed subject of Parlia-
mentary Reform ; while the temporary, but now
fast disappearing, indifference of the nation to
political change is the result of the unparalleled
material prosperity of England during the past
twenty years—a material prosperity which is due
not to the wisdom of the reformed Parliament, but
to its fears overcoming its folly.
These facts show the mistake of those politi-
cians who, like Mr. HORNMAN and his friends,
attribute the Reform agitation to the party em-