Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-04-21 00:00:00

the other is local, and affecting your position
more immediately as electors of the Southern
Division of this county. I shall allude, first,
to the great national. principle--the question
of reform. In these days of progress and advancement we
have arrived at last at a most happy period, approximating,
I believe, to the political millennium, when all men have
become reformers (laughter), when no class, however they
may have been once advanced, and however they may retain
to themselves the distinguished appellation of reformers,
can boast of its sole possession, but are deprived of that dis-
tinction by the appearance on the stage of a new class of
reformers under no less a banner than that of Conservative
Reform. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, it is one thing to announce
a principle, and another thing to carry out a principle, and,
therefore, in order to test the soundness of the principles of
this new class of reformers I invite your attention for a short
time to the details of the late Ministerial Reform Bill, the
rejection of which by the House of Commons has led to the
present dissolution of Parliament. It is true that,
in the addresses of our opponents, and certainly in
the very singular, and, no doubt, able production
of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, no single word is said
about the direct cause of the dissolution. (Hear, hear.)
The introduction of the Reform Bill, the long debate which
ensued, and the rejection of it, which caused the House of
Commons to be dissolved—these are not alluded to as the
causes of the dissolution, but, on the contrary, we are told
of the existence of certain factious parties in the House of
Commons.

A Voice : Your party is one of them. (Cries of " order,

order.")
Mr. Cheethain : These parties, we are told, rendered the
Ministry unable to perform their duties. Well, now gen-
tlemen, less of faction, than since the present Ministry
came into office, I have not seen in the House. (Hear, hear.)
Those gentlemen entered office avowedly —admitted by them-
selves and well known by the country—in a minority, and a
large minority in the House. From night to night, and from
bill to bill, they retained their places solely by the patience
and suffrance on the part of men who sat opposite
to them. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) I know that many
Liberals condemned that state of things, and said it was
unconstitutional and prejudicial to the best interests of the
country ; that the independent members of the House of
Commons should not tolerate such a state of things ; but we
said that, when the Ministry of Lord Pahnerston resigned,
those men were called into office by the Queen, and they
then told us that they were prepared, knowing they were
in a minority, to bring in such measures as would obtain
the support of their opponents, and convert that minority
into a majority. (Hear, hear.) We said we were pre-
pared to listen to their measures ; that if they were good,
we would support them, and if bad, reject them. We fol-
lowed that course for nearly twelve months. Ido not
think you will find in the political history of the country
a similar spectacle of forbearance by a powerful opposition.
At length it was brought to a point, by the Ministry
introducing a measnre which the opposition con-
sidered to be totally unfit, to be unsound in
its principle, and damaging in its details to
the best interests of the country. When we reject such a
bill as that, are we to be told that that was the act of a
faction ? (Cheers.) I say that, if that were factious
conduct, then I for one decline the honour of being your
representative—if for the sake of upholding the Ministry.
I care not when that Ministry brings forward a measure
which I conscienteously believe to be prejudicial to the
Interests I represent. If lam not to discharge my duty,
oppose that bill, and, if necessary, unseat that Ministry so
acting, I say I am not any longer fit to represent you.
(Hear, hear, and loud cheers.) I think, however, the best
justification of the course we pursued upon that occasion
will be to show you what was the measure which was pro-
duced by that new class of Reformers who are ranged under
the Conservative banners. (Hear, hear.) What was their
measure of Reform ? In the first place, gentlemen, they
proposed in that bill to deal with a certain class of those
before whom I have now the honour to appear, in a manner
which I think would scarcely meet your approbation, and
which appears to me altogether devoid of any object of
public good, and only promotive of party aims. They
introduced into the bill, as one of its main principles, the
total disfranchisement of all the county voters resident in
the boroughs. By that measure you in the town of Liver-
pool would have been deprived of county votes, to the
extent of some 1,200, and in Manchester not less than
1,500 would thus have been disfranchised.
A Voice : Very proper too. (Cries of order and laughter.)
51r. Cheetham : I think the county voters in boroughs
are a class, perhaps, more independent than any other
portion of the county constituency. (Hear, hear.) They
are not mere occupants of dwellings, but possessors of
property in which they have invested, and by which they
have constitutionally obtained the right of voting. They
are one of the most ancient class of electors which our
constitution recognises ; and to tell me that that is
Reform, which begins by disfranchisment, and the
disfranchisement of such a class appears an act of
absurdity upon the face of it. (Hear, hear, and cheers.)
Then, gentlemen, there is another principle of the bill
which appeared fatal to its consideration. That was the
stern refusal of the bill to reduce the qualification in
boroughs, and thus perpetuating the exclusion of the best-
behaved and most intelligent of our artisans, who ought to
possess the franchise. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Upon
these grounds, gentlemen, these being the two main princi-
ples of the bill, the Opposition declined to enter upon its
consideration in committee, and supported Lord John Rus-
sell in his resolution, which, being carried, decided the fate
of the bill and of the Ministry. But there were in its
details other matters which were equally objectionable. It
said: "While we are disfranchising the voters for counties
in boroughs, we at the same time reduce the £5O qualifica-
tion in counties to £lO rental qualification, and we are,
therefore, extending the franchise." Now, there are two
remarks to be made upon that point. In the first place,
they have no claim to the honour of the reduction. The
House of Commons, upon two previous occasions, passed a
reduction of the county franchise from to £lO, and
they knew that in any new reform bill they must adopt
that decision, or it would be forced upon them. (Cheers.)
But in the adoption of the very decision, what did they do ?
Instead of. assuming that the qualification in counties
should consist partly in a dwelling, and the rest in land,
they took care to have the whole in land, and thus the
owner of a large estate might divide it into £lO holdings,
and create as many faggot votes as he thought fit. (Cheers.)
Well, then, gentlemen, with regard to the boroughs, they
said—" Oh, yes, but we permit the county voter who now
has a freehold in a borough to retain it, and to vote for it
in the borough, and we also permit him, not as the law
now is, compelling an elector of a borough to reside within
seven miles of the boundaries, but to reside in any part
of the kingdom, as the county voter now does," and the
consequence of that would be, that a man of property in
London might obtain a vote in various small boroughs of
the country, and in order to facilitate such a measure of
obtaining votes in the boroughs, the projectors of this
measure invented a system of voting papers, by means of
which members of a club in London might, at their re-
spective desks, sign their names to their voting papers,
send them down to the borough, and overwhelm the
resident electors. (Cheers.) Well, then, gentlemen, they
said they would also revise the boundaries of the boroughs
throughout the kingdom. They said they would send
down commissioners when the bill had been passed, to
examine and see to what extent, and in what direction, the
boundaries of the boroughs might be altered. When I
I came to look over the bill, I found in the schedule of the
act a list of the new boroughs which it was proposed to
create, and there happened to be one of the new boroughs
in a county with the locality of which I had
someacquaintance. I therefore thought that by
examining that district, I should be enabled to test what the

object of the extension of the boundaries was, and in what man-
ner the old boroughs would be dealt with if the bill were
passed, by seeing how the new boroughs were dealt with in the