The Sun.
London, England, 1854-03-03 00:00:00

POSTPONEMENT OF THE REFORM BILL

(From the Times.)

Preoccupied as the public mind is with the pride,
pomp, and circumstance of war, domestic politics, how-
ever important, have slipped almost entirely out of
sight. At a most inopportune moment, when nothing
was further from the public mind than boroughs and
electoral districts, enfranchisements, disfranchisements,
majorities and minorities, when physical force is alto-
gether in the ascendant, and the distribution of moral
and intellectual forces has no enchantment for the public
mind, Ministers, true to their promise, but not to party
interests, introduced their Reform Bill. It would be
unjust to say that that measure was received with
either disappointment or disapprobation ; on the con-
trary, it has met with all the support that the public
mind has been able to spare time to give it, and those
who love it least have been forced to confess that it
is able, honest, and comprehensive. There lacked
nothing to make the Reform Bill of 1854 as great a suc-
cess in its way as the measure of 1831, except the
absende of competing topics, and the undivided at-
tention of the public. But, unhappily, as we think,
for the people of this country, these elements of suc-
cess have in this instance been wanting. While
Lord John Russell was talking of Arundel and
Harwich, people were thinking of Giurgevo and
Kalafat, and the rights of minorities are swallowed
up in the contemplation of the wrongs of Turkey.
It would be ridiculous to contend that, with whatever
calm approbation the measure may have been received,
it has excited any sensible degree of popular enthusiasm,
or roused those passions which carried through the mea-
of 1832 on the shoulders of the people. In 1831 people
supported the Reform Bill as a means, and the only
means, for attaining the end of good Government. In
1854 that end has been, in a great measure, attained,
and the last session of Parliament is remarkable for
having been the most laborious and the most „useful that
has ever been known in our annals. People may ac-
quiesce in the abstract justice of the Ministerial propo-
sitions ; but there wants that keen sense of injury and
desire of redress which alone can stimulate great masses
of men to take a lively interest in abstract political dis-
quisition. It is of no use considering now whether these
might or might not have been foreseen and avoided.
The bill has been introduced, and the result ought to
surprise no one who has studied the public opinion of
England, and is aware how impossible it is to concen-
trate that opinion on more than one subject at a time,
and how useless to argue against impulses which are
as inscrutable and uncontrollable as the flux and reflux
of the ocean. Neither will it, we should suppose, sur-
prise any one to learn that, in the present state of public
feeling, and with the prospect of a motion to postpone
the bill for the present session, Ministers should
have determined to put off the second reading, at
any rate, till after Easter. They have been faithful to
their engagement, and have laid on the table of the house
a measure honest, well considered, and comprehensive,
dealing with our electoral system as a whole, carrying
a searching and pervading analysis into every part,
fearlessly correcting abuses without reference to party,
respecting the rights of all, and humoring the passions
and selfishness of none. Such a measure must, from
its universality and fairness, make many enemies, and,
until it became the law of the land, materially weaken
the Government by whom it is proposed. In the first
place, there is the large number of members who view
the measure by which the Government seeks to cut
short the existence of the present Parliament as a direct
attack upon a position which has cost them much trouble
and expense to gain, and who are disposed to regard this
and every other measure of the Government with no
favourable eyes. Then there is the phalanx of county
members, reasonably enough terrified at the threat of a
real, instead of a sham representation, and of the wel-
come presence of a ten-pound constituency. Then there
are the representatives of boroughs wholly or partially
disfranchised, who believe themselves bound by honour
to their constituents to resist a measure which, how-
ever beneficial to the public, encounters them in
the shape of political annihilation. Then there are
the metropolitan representatives, angry because Go-
vernment is so unreasonable as to think that Lam-
beth and Marylebone contribute at least their quota
to the expenditure of public time without arming
them with fresh means of annoyance ; and, last of all,
comes the opposition which Government had least right
to expect, and which the country will do well to take
note of—the opposition of such reformers as Mr.
Bright, who view reform exclusively from the Manches-
ter point of view, and, finding nothing which promises
them any very decided political triumph, convert the
virtues of the measure into vices, and repudiate it be-
cause it does not subserve their selfishness or pander to
their ambition. Rather than allow the minority of
Manchester to be represented—rather than save them
from hunting about in Worcestershire and Staffordshire
for exponents of their opinions—rather than admit
within the pale of the constitution persons who, how-
-1
ever wealthy, numerous, and respectable, have the mis-
fortune to differ from him, Mr. Bright will give a new
lease to nomination and corruption, will withhold from
the 101. county householders their franchise, and set all
our hopes of reform on the uncertain hazard of futurity.
In such a state of the public mind and of the House of
Commons, it would be sheer folly to press on a mea-
sure the fate of which every one must see to be already
certain. The very fairness and comprehensiveness of the
bill has united against it men who never united before,
and drawn Tory and Radical into an ill-omened alliance.
These men are eager and earnest, for they fight for what
they believe, in their narrow and short-sighted view of
expediency, to be the interests of their cliques and parties.
On the other hand are ranged those who have no party
object to gain, but whose sole end has been the more
faithful and honest representation of the people. With
the assistance of the people the contest cannot be doubt-
ful for a moment ; without it, no one acquainted with
the constitution of the House of Commons can hesitate
as to the certainty of defeat. It is one of the effects of
the more popular character impressed on the House of
Commons that public opinion is omnipotent within its
walls, but the same constitution has also made the house
unwilling to move in matters of great national concern
without the expression of that public opinion. It is pos-
sible that the precedent of 1832 has been too literally
followed, and that measures which, when combined iis
one bill, can only be carried by a burst of popular en-
thusiasm against the interested opposition they provoke,
might, if embodied in several measures, have triumphed
by force of reason and justice over divided opponents.
But this has not been done. Reform has been intro-
duced in a shape in which nothing but popular enthu-
siasm could carry it, and that enthusiasm has not been
roused. Between the present time and the period to
which the measure is deferred the people of England
will have the opportunity, if they have the inclination,
to address their minds to the question, which now really
rests with them. If they wish to rescue our representa-
tion from the scandal of nominated and corrupted
boroughs, if they wish to deliver the counties from the
degrading servitude in which they are held, if they wish
to extend the franchise while they preserve the constitu-
tion, and show respect for labour without endangering
property, they have nothing to do but to intimate their
will, and the House of Commons, now so indifferent,
will hasten to execute it.