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

THE REFORM BILL.-THE THIRD READING.

To the Times, the most remarkable point in a
debate of remarkable power was the prolonged silence of
the Ministers. The fact still remains that the sponsors of
the bill were pledged to oppose the very measure they have
fathered, and had declared unalterable hostility to the
scheme they have since submitted to the House of Com-
mons. If Mr. Disraeli labours under the conviction that
what he proposes to-day is in exact accord with what
he has been saying and dcing for the last dozen
years, it is an egregious instance of self-delusion,
and he must not expect the world to share his belief.
The Times takes the simple fact to be that at the outset of
the session Lord Stanley, Mr. Hardy, and Sir Stafford
Northcote never contemplated the possibility of finding
themselves responsible for such a bill ; but as the session
advanced it became apparent that they must either con-
sent to a measure more democratic than they personally
approved, or produce a renewed and a more turbulent
agitation by withdrawing altogether from further partici-
pation in reform. But while these ministers found them-
selves too late committed to a course from which they
would have recoiled, Mr. Disraeli was indifferent to the
end which chance might beget, and ventures now to boast
that a bill contradicting the professions of 15 years corres-
ponds to the conviction he had always entertained.
The Daily New says that the government and the con-
servative party have accomplished something the very re-
verse of what they bad designed, and have been compelled
by the people, under the leadership of Mr. Gladstone, Mr.
Mill, and Mr. Bright, to fully carry out principles which
they had intended should be practically restrained within
the narrowest scope. The fact which Mr. Disraeli now
states, that in 1859 a rating household suffrage was pro-
posed and discussed in the cabinet of Lord Derby, brands
with insincerity the language habitually used by the lead-
ers of the Tory party since that time, and covers them
with the dishonour they seek to avoid. It also deprives
Mr. Disraeli of the greater part of the credit
which might otherwise be given to him in con-
nexion with the present bill, for it is the popular lead-
ers and the I,l>eral statesmen who have made that mea-
sure of enfranchisement possible in 1867 which was im-
possible in 1859.
The circumstance that the reform bill now passes from
the hands of that house of parliament which created it,
and which is the most deeply interested in its provisions,
affords to the Post conclusive proof that the subject of
parliamentary reform is now completely exhausted, and,
for what we may hope may prove a considerable time, has
been finally disposed of. It is not probable that the House
of Lords will make any important changes in the measure;
it is almost certain that it will not reject it.
What is really the question, the Herald says, is th►t re-
duction of the franchise could not have rosily been resisted.
The mischiefs which may result from the enfranchisement
of so many persons are smaller than those which would
have resulted from an obstinate denial of the claims of the
working classes to a vote.
The Standard is careful to say that the conviction that a
reform bill was inevitable was enforced, not by the riots of
London swell-mobsmen, or by the gigantic assemblages so
easily collected in Manchester and Birmingham, and so
grossly exaggerated in liberal organs ; but by the evidence
afforded in other quarters of the opinion of the best and
moat enlightened portion of the middle and upper-middle
clam--of commercial and profession►l men of high cha-
racter, and well acquainted with the working classes—as
well as of the working men themselves. Compromise is
the vital principle of English constitutional progress ; and
compromise becomes impossible, from the hour when it is
established as a rule of political honour that ► party shall
not originate or espouse a measure partially distasteful to
itself, in order to prevent the eventual passage of use
much more disagreeable by the hands of its adversaries.