The Sun.
London, England, 1831-03-18 00:00:00

REFORM IN PARLIAMENT.

Mr. BODGES presented petitions from Rochester and
other places in Kent, in favour of the measure proposed by
his Majesty's Ministers.
Mr. BERNAL cordially supported the prayer of these
petitions.
Mr. TWISS—Sir, I rise, not for the purpose of en-
tering into the merits of this petition, but to repel a charge
which has for the last week been daily repeated against
me, that in the original debate on this Bill I spoke of the
middle classes with ridicule ; and though at the earliest
possible moment—that is, when the Noble Lord, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, concluded the speech in
which he misunderstood me as implying such a ridicule—
I distinctly disavowed any expression ar insinuation to any
such effect, yet the charge has been circulated in a most
industrious manner out of doors, and even repeated here,
in a way which, after my itn mediate explanation, I cannot
but think was as unparliamentary as it was calculated to
be injurious. Sir, the classes in whose hands I said, and
still say—not that all franchise would be dangerous, fur
they have much already, but that it would be dangerous
to place this monopoly of franchise—were not those who,
even in the largest phraseology, could be termed the
middle classes of this country. Of the middle classes
I never spoke at all ; the phrase " middle classes "
never passed my lips ; the idea of the middle cl isses
was not even in my mind ; for my argument
related to a totally different order of persons it
was to the predominance of a body far below the middle
class, both in property and intelligence, that I objected ;
and even of this body, as a body, I spoke in no terms of
disrespect ; on the contrary, though I objected to place
the overbearing majority of votes throughout all the town
elections of England in the hands of a single class, and
that the lowest in property and intelligence, and compris-
in!, together with many whose respectability is unques-
tionable, many other very dangerous politicians, yet I
distinctly and more than once repeated, that I meant no
sort of disparagement to the general hulk even of the
lowest rate of voters. I did, and do still, protest
against giving to the inhabitants of houses rated at from
10/. to 20/. (as the printed returns show that this
Bill will give to them, in every, quarter of the king-
dom, except the metropolis) a decisive majority—some-
'what more than three-fifths of the elective power of
all the towns in England. I did objsct to placing this
overbearing force within the immediate sphere—not of
the respectable solicitors of the country—but of inferior
practitioners of the law—the description of persons whom
the Act for Petty Courts would bring into operation
against the more respectable members of the profession. I
did object to increase the franchise of that lowest kind of
shopkeepers, who, whether as out voters or as residents,
have always been found the most open to bribery; but I
did not object, as has been unaccountably represented,
that even the humblest class of my fellow subjects should
enjoy, proportionably with every other interest, its just
share in that elective power. Neither did it enter into my
thoughts to attempt what has been called making merry
at their expence. The absurdity which I endeavoured to
expose, and that in no strain of merriment or levity, was
the absurdity chargeable not upon the voters, but upon
the Bill itself, in making the whole Government of this
country, its Constitution, its legislation, its finance, its
foreign policy, responsible to a majority ; for it is a majo-
rity, composed of the uninformed, however respectable
householders of the manufacturing towns. And as to the
middle classes, to one of which I myself belong—classes
which I never once named, nor even alluded to, but which
I am daily calumniated, as though I had endeavoured to
libel men, who in whatever branch of their various pro-
fessions, or trades, or pursuits, are placed by their cha-
racter and intelligence altogether upon a different level
from that of the indiscriminate multitude now proposed to
be made absolute in all the towns. In a word, as to all
the middle classes, so far from uttering one word of ridi-
cule, I did not even deny their competency for the possession
of political power, although I avow myself unwilling even
for the sake of these valuable electors, to make any exten-
sive alteration in the principle of the existing Constitution.
An Memera presented a petition from Kidder-
minster, in favour of the Ministerial plan of Reform.
Mr. JOHN MARTIN
presented a similar petition from
Tewkesbury., and declared he would feel it his duty to sup-
port tie Bill—the whole Bill—and nothing but the Bill.
Mr. L. KECK, a similar petition from Losghborough,
Harborough, and Castle Donnington.
Mr. EVANS, similar petitions from the borough of Lei-
cester, signed by '704 persons ; and from Nlelton Mowbray
and Seilby, in Leicestershire.
Mr. HUNT presented a petition from a parish in York-
shire, praying fur Reform and vote by ballot. Ile said
he thought it right to state that this petition was agreed
upon before the promulgation of the Ministerial- measure.
He also presented a petition from the Political Union of
Worcester, in favour of the Ministerial plan of Reform.
Also a petition for Reform from Elackley, in the parish
Manchester.

TIMBER DUTIES.
Sir M. S. STEWART rose to present four petitions on
a very important subject, to which he entreated the fa-
vourable consideration of his Majesty's Ministers. These
petitions came from the ship-owners and merchants of Glas-
gow, Port GI tsgow, and Greenock, from the Chamber of
Commerce of Greenock, and from the great body of trades•

men and merchants, depending for subsistence on the
equipment of British shipping in the Clyde. They in
fact represented the whole of the shipping interest of the
west of Scotland employed in the colonial timber trade,
which constituted one half of the whole tonnage of the
Clyde. He thought, therefore, these petitions well entitled
to the attention of this house, and to the deliberate recon-
sideration of the intended alteration of the timber duties
by the Government ; which alteration, if carried into
effect, would most grievously affect the petitioners. The
Hon. Member then stated some of the strong points of the
case, and said that the petitioners, adverting to the irre-
parable injury which must then be inflicted upon the colo-
nial interest, could not forbear the strongest expression of
their grief at the political results which must follow the
measure in question, viz., the abandonment of a very
large tonnage, and consequent annihilation of the property
of the petitioners—the throwing out of employment and
reducing to indigence a large number of valuable efficient
seamen, and the infliction of severe distress upon numerous
classes dependent en the colonial trade in the Clyde. He
therefore trusted this House would, in compliance with the
prayer of these and thousands of other petitions, prevent
any alteration in the rate of duties payable on foreign and
colonial timber.