The Sun.
London, England, 1839-10-19 00:00:00

RESPECTABILITY IN ENGLAND
AND FRANCE.

One thing is well worthy of remark in this
French plan of Parliamentary Reform—it is the
contrast between the English and French Reform
Bills in the qualification required for voters.
In England, if we put aside that amiable enthu-
siast, Major Cartwright, and the very unamiable
universal suffrage rabble which he had at his heels,
no one ever thought of any other than a property
qualification for a voter. The question was, whether
it should be a 51., a 101., or a 201. qualification. No
person ever looked beyond that, or asked whether
there were any other distinctions, which were not
entered in the parish rate-books, but which might
point out classes which should, for the public good,
be enrolled as voters. Nay, so strong in England
is this idea that the property of money and houses,
and nothing but property, declares a man's capa-
city and respectability, that the same standard is
applied to jurymen. Sir Isaac Newton would not
have been qualified to sit as a petty juryman had
he lived in a lodging ; but the chandler's-shop-keeper
in the next street, who could not read a letter, and
let out his house in single bed-rooms, would have
been compelled to sit for three days, and decide
upon an involved and intricate question of real
property—if he had been rated at 301. a year to
the poor-rates.
The French proceeded upon a different plan.
They felt that there were two descriptions of
wealth, each of which was of equal importance to
a country—the wealth of money, and the wealth of
intellect. In the formation of their jury they con-
joined these two, and strove to ally the acuteness of
intellect with the solidity and prudence of property.
Their jury list is composed of the three hundred
inhabitants of a department who pay the highest
taxes ; but it is also composed of doctors, licentiates
of the faculties, correspondents of literary societies,
notaries after three years' practice, and all who have
discharged a gratuitous public office. These men
are jurors whether they rent houses and pay direct
taxes, or whether they do not ; and these are the
men who are now proposed to be also made

electors.
This habitual belief in the omnipotence of pounds,
shillings, and pence, is deservedly looked upon as
one of the most unpleasant and vulgar of our national
characteristics. Landseer and Etty would be feted
and admired in France because they are illustrious
professors of an intellectual art : we question very
much whether they do not acquire their chief im-
portance with many of their English acquaintance
from their being able to get a certain number of
hundreds of pounds for each of their pictures.
Southey and Elliott, on the other side of the
Channel, would take rank only in proportion to
public opinion of their genius ; but here the upper
and middle class multitude have a very different
opinion of the rank of the " Corn-law Rhymer" of
Sheffield, and of the Poet Laureat, who, in addition
to a fixed stipend, can get heaven knows how much
for anything that may fall from his pen, whether
it be poetry, or politics, or any other style of fiction.
Of course there are illustrious exceptions to this
general state of things ; but such is the rule—
pounds, shillings, and pence, form the great prin.
ciple of our society, both social and civil.
The necessary consequence of this is to depress
intellect among us, to render living genius ridiculous,
and keep it poor. 'We have always thought Con-
greve right in preferring to be known to his con-
temporaries as a country gentleman, and not as an
author—although he was wrong to expose himself
to the ridicule of Voltaire ; and we are quite sure
that that man spoke the opinion of Robert Boyle's
contemporaries when he sums up his eulogium by
saying he was " the father of chemistry and the
the uncle of the Earl of Orrery." We have never
heard that even German Barons of sixteen quar-

terings found fault with the appointment of Goethe
as a Privy Councillor ; nor do we see it
insisted upon as a possible objection to Thiers,
Guizot, or Barrot, that they are homates de lettres.
With us, however, it is very different. Even the
title and estates of Lord Mulp,rave could not pre-
vent the ridicule of having written a novel from
weighing against him when he made his debut as a
politician—an article in the Keepsake was fastened
upon Lord Morpeth as a fool's cap, which neither
great political acumen, nor great power of public
speaking, could for some time take off. Even at
this moment it is made a decisive objection to Mr.
Macaulay that he can write philosophical essays ele-
gantly ; and the idea of Shiel being a man of sense
or useful information is laughed at, because he has
written a tragedy.—Atlas.