The Express.
London, England, 1867-07-16 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 16.

The House of Commons last night sat in judg-
ment upon the labours of seventeen weeks, befcre
sending them up for review to the other branch of
the Legislature. The Representation of the People
Bill, which was read a third time without opposi-
tion, though not without protest from Lord CHAN-
BORNE and Mr. Lowe, Mr. BERESFORD Born, Mr.
BARROW, Mr. GUEST, and Lord Etin'ACE CECIL,
has assumed a shape which, at the commence-
ment of the session, no one anticipated, and which
very few persons, if they could have foreseen it,
would have desired. Its identity with the Bill
which Mr. Disasztt introduced on the 19th of
March is, as Lord CRANDORNE last night urged,
merely nominal: Not a feature remains the same.
The thin partition of a phrase alone divides the
Reform League from the Carlton Club. The ac-
tual franchises of the present Bill will not, we be-
lieve, when supplemented by an equitable measure
of distribution, be found to go beyond the limits
of safe and beneficial reform ; but the principles
on which it is based have no limits at all. Nothing
else could be expected when a great party is
driven to discard its irrational prejudices without
attaining to rational convictions. Forced into a
democratic extension of the suffrage, a Conserva-
tive Government endeavours to neutralize its con-
cession by an oligarchic distribution of seats. Mr.
Dlssaztr's followers exhibit a degree of faith in
their leader which is perfectly touching, in sip-
posing that this security will be more secure than
any of those which have gone before it.
The results thus arrived at, and the process
by which they have been attained, could not
escape the strictures alike of the Reformers
whose principles Mr. DISRAELI has stolen and
the consistent Conservatives whose principles
he has betrayed. Lord CRANBORNE, whom
melancholy appears to have marked for its
own, made himself histrionically the mouth-piece
of the first party, and out of the fulness of his
heart spoke the sentiments of the second. In all
the changes which have converted the Bill of the
18th March into that of the 15th July, what
Mr. GLADSTONE has imperiously enjoined,
Mr. DISRAELI, he says, has obsequiously yielded.
The story of the political inconsistency of his
late colleagues and of his party has been often told;
the extracts which he read from the speeches of Mr.
DISRAELI, Lord STANLEY, Mr. GATHORNE HARDY,
and Sir STAFFORD NORTHCOTE, have often been
quoted before. But Lord CAA-THOR:II went be-
yond these hackneyed materials of political impu-
tation. He spoke of debates last session in the
lobbies ; of means of persuasion there adopted
which could not have been employed in the
light of day ; of an understanding which has been
set aside, and of secret intentions which could
not have been avowed ; and he grounded upon
these a charge against his late colleagues of a be-
trayal of principle without a parallel in history,
and of having framed their political morality
upon the ethics of an adventurer. Mr.
Lowe used similar language with even more
vehemence of personal accusation. Last session,
he said, he was in daily communication with those
who are now members of the Government and of
the party in power ; and he quoted the explicit
declaration of a right honourable gentleman, not
the least among them, against the reduction even
by a sixpence of the occupation franchise in
boroughs. Mr. DISRAELI, it is only fair to add,
disclaims any knowledge of such negotiations. He
knew nothing, it will be remembered, of Colonel
TAYLOR'S bargain this year with Mr. DILLWYN.
The despairing anticipations of both the Member
for Stamford and the Member for Caine who
conceive the working classes as consisting of
men of two types—the Sheffield Trade Unionist
and the old freeman, and their picture of a future,
in which Mr. BROADHEAD, with a red cap upon
his head, shall sit metaphorically upon the
throne of England, can only amaze those
whom they do not weary or alarm. It will be
satisfactory to those admirers of Mr. Lowe who
do not wish to see his great abilities wasted in
vindictive personalities and passionate Jeremiads,
to find that he regards the proper palliation of
democratic evils to lie in the more thorough ap-
plication of democratic principles. Henceforth
he proclaims that he must act in the spirit of the
baptismal injunction to Ctovrs :—" Burn what
"thou haat adored ; adore what thou haat burned."
The redistribution of seats, he says, must be
brought into harmony with the new suffrage. The
House of Lords must be converted from an here-
ditary peerage into something like the United
States Senate, in order that it may become an
efficient second chamber ; the legislative short-
comings of Parliament must be met by dividing
its functions with local assemblies ; education
must be made universal and compulsory, in order
that the sovereign people may, if possible, be
something better than a violent and untaught
rabble. In other words, Mr. Lows is for Ameri-
canising our institutions in order to bring them
into harmony with the democratic basis which
has now been adopted. The spirit of reac-
tion has made him for the future a Reformer. We
accept the sensible conclusion, and do not trouble
ourselves with the irrational reasons. In
One and the same breath Mr. Low z re-
tains his consistency as an anti-reformer,
and enlists himself in a new reforming crusade.
The violent personalities with which his speech
abounded called up Mr. Bandir, in, perhaps,
unnecessary self-vindication, and provoked a