The Sun.
London, England, 1852-03-26 00:00:00

CEYLON.

Lord HOTHAM inquired whether the Secretary of
State for the Colonies would have any objection to lay
on the table the report of the proceedings of the
Finance Committee of the Executive Conned of
Ceylon ?
Sir J. PAKINGTON said the report was now in the
Colonial-office, and he had no objection to its being
laid before the House.
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

Mr. W. WILLIAMS presented a petition from Lam-
beth, signed by 1,641 persons, in favour of Mr. Hume's
motion for Parliamentary reform.
Mr. 'HUME then rose to move for leave to bring in a Bil

to amend the national representation, by extending the
elective franchise in England and Wales, so that every mat
of full age, and not subject to any mental or legal disability,
who shall have been the resident occupier of a house, or of
part of a house as a lodger, for twelve months, and shall
have been duly rated to the poor of that parish for that time,
shall be registered as an elector, and be entitled to vote for
a representative in Parliament. Also, by enacting that
votes shall be taken by ballot, that the duration of Par-
liments shall not exceed three years, and that the
proportion of representatives be made more consis-
tent with the amount of population and property.
He had been placed in considerable difficulty in bringing
forward motions for reform, in consequence of many Hon
Members, who pretended to be reformers, objecting to vote
on any abstract questions. In order to overcome those diffi-
culties, he now proposed to submit to the House a definite
plan, and could not concur in any measure which would not
embrace the points included in his motion. He considered
it necessary to combine with the extension of the suffrage
protection to the voter, so that, if the right of voting should
be extended to him, he should be duly protected in the exer-
cise of that right; for, without such protection, it must be
evident that the vote would not be the vote of the individual,
but the vote of the party who might have power or influence
over him.—(Hear.) If such a tear was only visionary he
should be the last man to propose such a measure, but having
witnessed the painful consequences of the influence exercised
by men in power, and by masters over their workmen, he did
not think it possible that anything like a fair representation
of the people could take place without such protection being
afforded. The object of his motion was twofold. In the first
place, he wished to extend the right of voting, for it was
a right, and not a favour, or a privilege ; and as it was de-
sirable that it should not rest with the voter himself to re-
gister his vote, he proposed to make it the duty of some
public officer to enrol every man who had been resident in a
house, or a portion of a house, as a lodger. He was of opi-
nion that some of the most valuable and intelligent men in
the country were lodgers, and must continue to be so, and the
Bill would contain a provision by which not only every
householder resident for twelve months, but every lodger re-
sident ,for the same period, and rated and liable to pay all
the assessments to the parish, should be placed en the regis-
ter. Another object of the Bill was to limit the duratiro e
ienncef
Parliaments. He had in the course of a longeexsperves at
observed how differently Members conducted tehntm.
Instead
the commencement and at the end of a Yarn
of giving a Member
years, in order.
that
trust should only be granted for three
or control over his co
it
electors might possess some checkll or by mistake, forfeit
duct, in case he should intentionally,
r the principal objects of
a lease of seven years, 139 thought the
the pledges he had given. A
because
osna safely brought,subject,
bat he had brought forward an an-
on the present occasiotn might his Bill, and he thought no rflieonourable Members could object
1 ight be too little or too much; but
street proposition.
of the country.
He forward
circumstances did not
in the present
bring forward any motion it was as complete
the pledge of the I t
he imagined, fro ma poltanionalsasctouyldearbe
a e lsovernme t.
would have introduced some la 11 '
that theyP n which
satisfactory
would have been to the country.
disappointed and But he
h sappyn ea , the country had also been
h
dnted ;and. e was sorry to say that, inste d a of ful-
filling their promises, the late Government were too ready to
recede from reform. One part of their
cer-
tainly have effected an ezten • late plan would
would not have been effectual, 91011 of the suffrage, but it
ballot. He had recently as it did not include the
every one of whom received deputations from 145 dis-
tricts,great extension of the said they should regret to see any
suffrage •
dis-
tribution of Members without a more equal
andprotection to the electors. He
was particularly anxious that the House should express
an opinion on the '
subject of reform, in conse-
quence of a declaration recently made by the Noble Lord
now at the head of the Government. He deeply regretted
the course taken by that Noble Lord, who was once such an
excellent Reformer. He considered the Noble Lord at one
time the best Church Reformer he had ever met with, for at
one fell swoop he levelled ten bishoprics. The Noble Lord,
after supporting Reform for nineteen years, was not only re-
ceding from his former principles, but abusing those who had
not changed their principles as he had done. When he found
any man having recourse to abuse, and making use of nick-
names instead of resorting to reason, it weakened his belief
in that man's intellects and his henesty.—(Hear, hear, and
laughter.) The Noble Lord had done him and some of his
Honourable Friends near him a great injustice by calling them
" demagogues." On looking into Johnson he found the
definition of a demagogue to be " the ringleader of a rabble."
He treated such an appellation with perfect contempt.
He had often been at the head of large numbers of people,
but never at the head of a rabble, and never would be; on
the contrary, he bad done everything in his power to
pacify men who had sometimes met in great numbers
smarting under a sense of great injustice. His Honourable
Friends the Members for Manchester were in the same
category as himself, and no doubt would answer for them-
selves. For himself he would throw back the imputation
on the Noble Lord, and say it was unworthy of him, when
alluding to the meeting in Chesham- place, to say that it was
attended by nothing but demagogues. He now wished par-
ticularly to direct too attention of the Right lionouraide
Gentleman opposite to some of the observations or the Noble
Lord, which were very alarming. The Noble Lord asked,
~ Will you support a Government which will exert itself, i

do not hesitate to say, to afford some opposition, to oppose
some barrier, against that recurrence 01 that continuously
encroaching democratic influence in this country which is
bent on throwing the whole authority of the country norni-
nalle into the haves of the masses, practically into the hands
of demagogues and republicans, who exercise an influence
over those unthinking masses? Will you support a Go-
vermin:n which is determiued to resist that thing, runs and
obnoxious influence, to preserve the influence and
prerogative of toe Crown, tee rights of your Lord-
ships House, and the liuerties of a freely-elected House
of Commune ?" Now, how any man of common sense
could say the House of Commons was freely elected, and
fairly repres rated the opinion of the people, he c uld not
imagine. Toe fact was the very reverse. The Noble Lord
went on to say—" These are the questions on which, when I
go to the country to make my appeal on behalf sit myself
and my colleague, I claim to use the words which the worst
!elute who stands in the prisoner's dock has a right to em-
ploy, but which I do not deem unworthy of the First eli-
Mater of the Crown of the first nation iu the world, and to
say I elect to be tried by God and my country." He
would tell the Noble Lord that he (Mr. Hume) was not one
who wished to put down the institutions of the country.
He had too often stated the estimation in which he bed.
those institutions, and was convinced that if properly acted
upun.they would carry out the great object of good govern-
ment— the happiness of the greatest number. What were
the institutions of which the country was so proud? First,
there was the Queen, the head of the Executive ; then there
WAS the House of Lords, standing perhaps between the
impetuosity of the people, and, it might be, the tyranny
et the Crown. He considered that body to be wisely c,n-
stituted for the benefit of the community at large, and a
barrier against that hasty and inconsiderate legislation which
might be carried on by means of popular agitation, He did
not wish to infringe upon their great and just privileges; but
he wished to confrere the Peers to their legitimate privileges,
and did not like to see them interfere witu the other legisla-
tive chamber. The House of Commons belonged to the
people, but he would ask if there was one man in the House
who would say that. it was a full and fair representation o f
the mass of the people? If nu man had the courage to do
that, teen he would say let the s 3 stem be condemned. BY
the law every man in this country was entitled to election,
but they were not allowed to elect any persons but those pos-
sessing landed estates. In Scotland, however, no such quali-
ficatiou was required, and he aid not see why the same rule
should not be applied to the other parts of the kingdom',
He complained et the interference of men of wealth, of
Peers, with the election of Members of the House of Com-
mons—he complained that the mass of the community were
nut represented, and asked the House to remedy the
grounds
uosf
t."
minds
ati ccomplaintknt.hatdbeb
ewhichepneni
made
exciteduled.
present anomalous state of things, and to remove those
e onl
iseo
himselfmenun cil
considered
dadissatisfaction
d those
thatw
who
i3O
veryt,li
which
iethhueu:revailed. Wise nien ought in times of
wished to prevent any °anger arising from the discontent
peace and
%wetness to remove the causes of discontent eveicte,,T;gte
that no one knew when a storm might arise. Should such
a teeing arise as that which existed in 1842 and 1843, when
a million of artisans were out of employment, much stronger
claims would be brought forward, and the most serious con-
sequences might ensue. He found that in 1792, Lurd Grey
—the then Lurd Grey, nut the present—(A la gh)—wee
commissioned by the so-called Association of the k needs of
the People, consisting of some of the must distinguished Peers
and many of the most estimable men in society, to present a
petition in which the Legislature was asked to grant several
reforms, namely, an extension of the suffrage to all house-
holders, limitation of Parliaments to three years, and
an alteration iu the qualification of Members. The Pe'
titioners stated that at that day the House of Coin-
mous did not fully and fairly represent the people
el England in a manner consistently with what they
believed to be the rights of the people. They complained
that the electoral franchise was so unequally distributed, and
in so many instances ceratnitted to bodies of men of veil
limited numbers, that the majority of the House of Com-
mons was elected by less than io,ooo electors. Now, such was
the nature of the complaints that were made at that day, and
if Hon. Members would refer to the debates they would
find that the very same objections which were alleged at
that time against granting reform were those that were now
urged in certain quarters, and therefore he was very anxious
that the opinions of such men as the Duke of Richmond and
Mr. Lsurbton, which were there stated, should not now be
overlooked. The Duke of Mainland stated that one of the
securities of the House of Commons was that it should
be a representative body freely chosen by the PeePle
themselves, independent of the Crown and of the aristo-
cracy, and amenable at short intervals to the judgment Of
e
the constituents. Mr. Lambton said : " The example and
situation situation of another kingdom are held out to deter us f' e''
;
unovations of any kind. We say that the reforms which we
in view are not innovations our intention
is not le,
destroy but to restore; not to displace but to reinstate, VII"
Constitution on its true basis aria legitimate grounds.'
another occasion the Earl of Chatham declared in the Hens°
of Lords that what he meant by his advocacy of reform was,
to infuse new life into the Constitution; that his reasons i.
favour of Parliamentary reform were grounded on an exPeoe
rience of twenty-six years, which, whether in or 0w... _
office, bad convinced him that the improvement of,t tF...
House of Commons by the restoration ot the rights oftiee
people was the only remedy for that system of corrup w''
....,
which had brought the nation to disgrace and povertY•
(Hear.) In his (Mr. Hume'e) humble opinion the only
means of enabling this country to bear the cornPeli ti
ere
which would come upon it ere long from various quart
_ot
WAS by making that House fully and fairly to represir,
the mass of the people, in order that the eeinunroe7-
at large might acquire an interest in our national P
were
perity by having those rights given to them which 1 - at
now withheld.—(Hear, hear.) The Noble Lord tattle )
tna
the head of her Majesty's Government had stated
other night that he should continue to support the o
exten-
sion of the suffrage to all men who were werteetbete
fit to exercise it. His (Mr. Hume's) answer at the
~ee
had been that he would not accept as a favour what be
rig
mended as a tight, because he considered it to be the ettse
of every free born Englishman to be represented ileseete,
House, and he only drew the line of distinction where!: ye.
absolutely required it. The Noble Lord had very candies
re-
admitted that no injurious results had followed from t
_no
forms which had already taken place, and that all nien:'ere
would give the question a moment's consideration must :t...
rive at the conclusion that those reforms had been of !Lery
most advantage to the country during the extracte: 61f
changes that had been going on upon the continentad
Europe. He (Mr. Hume) did not believe that BugleOUld
would have remained quiet, or that the public peace
been
have been maintained, if the state of the country hadthe the
such in 1848 as the Noble Lord found it in 1831. had, in
contrary, the changes introduced by the Reform
Bill
and that
his opinion, checked the lawless march of democracy The law_
democratic progress could only be evil when it F
less, since the people had as good a claim to ratted
rights as any other class of the community. He regee
_ilia
that the Noble Lord at the head of the Government . should
have by
have concluded his able speech on a recent occasione__,e
saying that no progress could be made by the
slavery
towards obtaining their rights without deuger to other
to every
man that he was not prepared to give the suffrage
were fit
man who had a right to it, but only to those who
worms et.
to exercise it. He (Mr. Hume) would quote the
ma
of
a very high authority with respect to what
the
right®
the people were. Blackstone said that uponseekafor their
the
true
cone-
and genuine principles of liberty every member o
to have a
man who was supposed to be a free agent ought
eopie.
munity, however poor, should have a vote, and that every
voice in the election of the representatives of the poop
Earl
in 1831, and it had received the support of several
that he
Earl Grey and Lord John Russell ha: quoted that authority
in
distinguished names. It was upon such grounds_ t . If a
(Mr. Hume) asked the House to eenceoe those rights.
sense of inustice existed, how could any man rest
one
while the, injustice lasted; and he said that every
fair to all
ought to be ready to extent what was
just. a tion end dis
classes of the people, and thus prevent disaffection
Member!,
content.—( Hear, hear.) In the year .846,
by 1e1,492
forming a majority in that House, were electeder
Alernber.
electors, giving an average of 450 electors for eveteyed
-1- voters,
Thus, one-filth part of the whole of the then registered
nio.ority in_
amounting to 956,000 in number, might electe J
II would not
the House of Commons.— Hear, hear. rest satisfied
e would say
but b
quality between Scotland and England,
him to be so
• did seem to
that the state of the representation
with regard to electors
trouble the House by referring to the lists to show the lee"
w t top roperty, that a
with eeePeF • t Honourable
and population, but also
and he did intrea
great injustice was committed,l
unequal and so inconsistent, not only
desire to carry out the
remove the impediments
and to
institutions of this country,
him in supporting his measure.
to its prosperity, to t
manufacturing country which was not
Members, if they had the
There was not in order to obtain the
competitors,
II ee for the manufacture of the
best possible
marcoduced.that House was the tax-
articles which p
n., of it
country, through which every man ree
ing naechi tribuion to the general stocktin order
vying with its
I
mated his eon et, ...on industry might be wisely managed,
I that those drntia4,
the best possible machines,
according to
they ought t
e all other manufacturers—(Hear)—and that
the example 0 man
done by removing the present inequalities. If
only given their rights,andprotected in the
men were were
exercise of those rights, he would venture to say that they
would exercise them properly. The industrious classes bore
a tenfold proportion of taxation to that borne by the other
' classes of the community, and, therefore, in order to reform
that House, and to enable it to perform its duty to the coun-
try, so as to make the laws and taxation just anuitable!
could only be .
they ought to give the people a share in electing bont and
independent Members. Would any man tell him (Mr'
Hume), looking at the exposure which had recently taken
' who had declared that, if he were put on
a ille-
mittee of Inquiry, he would declare himself
Pe a candidate become a Member of that liconusmes.
gaily elected, that the representation of thet. P
ex.
was, in any degree, fair or just? After
did
that
posure of St. Albans, and knowing as they
lightest pre-
he could not conceive how any one, having the s
he present
the same system existed in at least ninety other boroughs'
tence to be a reformer, could be satisfied with the
an ex-
stat things.—(Hear hear.) Unless they
mined of the
tension of the suffrage ;hey would leave on the
treated,
end
people a conviction that they were unjustlyinB7lp.,
when times of danger came they would not jointheunjust'
and unless the ballot were also given there would
ht be the
port of those institutions which they believed to be
tection for voters.—(Hear, hear.) Whatever tn,
satisfied
result of the division that evening, he was
firmly
xation of
that before long, when they came to revise the taw,
,en the
the country, and to show the unjnst position in .n_la, Hole
11:no Pee
industrious classes were placed, they would appear in old be
better state than that of serfs, and that then there Wv"
ado to
been en. n
reason to regret that more attempts had not
~e crow +
reform the House of Commons. As a friend to the to
to the Peers, and to the House of Commons, neefit of
and to pen reform. His wish was to remove injustice,
see all classes of this country participate in the beers` eet
ofa excitement.
those evils which might arise in times
which he Wad
by moving fur leave to bring in the B
give, notice. begged to
the motion, begg
(Hear, hear, and cheers.) The Hon.illellnefmber concluded
Sir J. WALINISLEY, in seconding
down the
congratulate congratulate his Hon. Friend who had just sat course'
even
earnestness with which he had pursued his
not enlY
' and on the evident progress which he had made,heite)e-ece
in the country, but in that blouse—(
Heariready voted
hundred and twenty Members of which had a did nnt
in favour of his motion. He (Sir J. Walmsley)
eatly in-
doubt that that number would very shortly be g .
time—(Hear)—for the motion itself
was founded frequentlyue
had so Y
The corrupt state of the representation
creased, and he believed it to be merely
seem to be A -
been the subject of discussion that it would
of
__eetiee
most unnecessary
to offer a word in suppor.t, of
.Pe'eyee
the evils of such a e ,
calculated to amend or to mitigate
been ursued 'ttki
tem. But the course which had P weee
the measures od
ieterence to that question, and
Noble Le'
had been recently introduced by the
,e.l, je.tua
the Member for London, induced him (Si
to those
Walmsley) to offer some
observations as
. eby the
a qurest!on.
:co:.
tee'
Noble Lord intro.
great When the oleo-
great majority of the people.
I had taken the opp e ,
uced his Bill, he (Sir J. Willene eY)
world not haVe tee
reforms which be believed to be earnest] desired .
nity to state :Let lie belie-, ee that
Subsequent
quent events le!:
support and confidence of the people.
and he wAs ctl.
to some extent justified that observation,_ .
..
ea kis wi
_ glad to And that the li010"1"2"4 12*4 1132114