The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-29 00:00:00

stituency that would be formed under the proposed fran-
cbise, reductions must be made for persons possessing two
or three or more holdings, for tenements rated above the
value, fur tenements held by minors, and for tenements
held by joint tenants. The gentlemen appointed by Go.
verrorent to report on the subject had stated that it %as
impossible t 3 ascertain the number of persons rate.'
above 51. who wee possessed of such leases as would en-
title them to the franchise ; and he thought he was fully
borne out in assuming that not more than one-half would
be entitled to it upon the Government proposition. This
would give one person in every 84 of the population of
Ireland a vote ; and according to the returns laid before
that House in 1832, one person in every 24 possessed the
franchise in England. He disapproved of giving the
landlords the power of regulating the franchise by
granting or withholding leases at pleasure ; it was
most unconstitutional, and, looking to the growing•
indisposition of Irish landlords to grant leases, a rapid di-
minution of the constituency must be the inevitable con-
sequence. The only argument he had heard against the
amendment was, that under its provisions coercion would
be carried to a greater extent than at present ; but the
experience of England and Scotland went to show that
leaseholders were as much exposed to intimidation from
their landlords as tenants-at-will, while the experience of
Ireland proved that such was the indomitable spirit of pa-
triotism in that country, that voters would not be restricted
from an honest and independent exercise of the franchise
by fear; and he challenged the Attorney-General for Ire-
land to show that the tenant-at-will in the rural districts
attached to the towns were one whit less independent in
the exercise of the franchise than the leaseholders of
counties.

Mr. O'CALL AGH AN supported the amendment; he
was convinced that the time was approaching when the
possession of the franchise in Ireland must be based upon
something different from the possession of a lease. He
was astonished at the arguments of the Attorney-General
for Ireland. There were upwards of 5,000 voters in the
several districts attached to Cork, and he could state from
experience that there were no men more independent than
the tenants from year to year. They were not to be inti-
midated. The leaseholder was much more in the land-
lord's power, as be might refuse to renew the lease when
it expired, but the tenant from year to year as he was not
so exposed to loss from his landlord's displeasure, was con-
sequently more independent.
Sir D. J. NORREYS would prefer giving the fran-
chise to a yearly occupation at a higher rating than to a
leasehold occupation at a lower one.
Mr. HUME meant merely to try the principle of lease,
or no lease, by this amendment. The amount of rating
would be matter for after-consideration, he had no objec-
tion to a 5/. rating. The Noble Lord, the Member for
Northumberland, having declined to press the principle, he
was determined to bring it forward.
Mr. WARD considered they were merely fishing for a
franchise. The Noble Lord ( Howiek), in proposing the
occupation franchise the other evening, had never told
them what amount of occupation he intended to propose;
and, as regarded that subject, all authorities seemed op-
posed to each other. Now, what was a Member, who
knew nothing of the subject, to do, but to support that
Bill, which, as had been justly observed by the Hon.
Gentleman opposite, the Government had brought for-
ward on their own responsibility, and which there
was some possibility of carrying, it it could obtain
anything like a united support.—(Loud laughter from
the Opposition benches)—but if every Member brought
forward his own proposition for fixing the franchise, while
the Opposition acted steadily together against suffering
the franchise to be touched, the result must be that the
Bill would be lost.—(Loud Opposition cheers.) It was
was very well for Hon. Gentlemen opposite to cheer, but
they should recollect that there was as ltttle probability of
their being able to carry their own measure for paring
down and crippling the franchise.—( Cheers.) So that
the only result of these discussions would be a great waste
of time.

Mr. HUME did not like the lecture of his Hon. Friend.
—(Cheers from the Conservatives.) It was all very well
to say they should act together, when they knew what to
do. He knew no more of what were the intentions of the
Government than did the man in the moon.—( Cheers and
laughter.) No one knew what they were, and he did not
believe the Government knew themselves.—(Cheers from
the Opposition benches.) One day they brought
down a most admirable Bill, and another day down
came the Noble Lord and proposed most material
alterations in it, and thus they went on changing every
three or four days. He had intended to support the
clause of the Noble Lord the Member for Northumber-
land, and had asked him if he intended to press it—find-
ing he did not intend to de so, he (Mr. Hume) had deter-
mined to bring forward the present amendment. Was it
to be borne that they should say to the people of Ireland,
you have everything to entitle you to the franchise, but if
your landlord refuses you a lease there is no help for you,
' and you shall not have it. If the Noble Secretary for
Ireland had intended to devise a mode far throwing the
whole county representation of Ireland into the hands of
the landowners he could not have hit upon any expedient
more effectual than rendering the possession of a lease ne-
cessary to the acquisition of the franchise. The people
of Ireland had been badly treated. They seemed to think
that Irishmen were beasts and might be trampled on. It
was an insult to them to legislate for them in such a man-
ner. Let them do as the Hon. and Learned Member for
Dublin had so frequently entreated there to do—make the
Union a reality, by putting Irishmen upon the same foot-
ing as Englishmen, and they would soon find that Ireland
would be contented and happy.
Mr. LUCAS said the Hon. Gentleman who had just
sat down had made it a c'aarge against Members on that
side of the House, that they did not act consistently with
regard to this measure. He ( Mr. Lucas) contended that
there was nothing intelligible either to support or to op-
posc.—(Hear, hear.) If the Hon. Gentleman would
show him something tangible upon which to ground his
opposition, it should not be wanting; but he confessed ho
was quite at a loss in the present state of the matter.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL said, the Hon. Gentleman
who had just sat down, and who wanted something tangi-
ble to support or to oppose, was last year one of those who
urged that it was necessary, in order to place the fran-
chise of Ireland upon a sure foundation, and to prevent
eternal disputes in the registration, that they should have a
fixed and definite franchise—mere fixed and more definite
than under the existing late.—( Hear, hear.) Doting the
present Session the Hon. Gentleman had contended that
it would be most unwise to attempt to fix the fran-
chise in any way whatever, and that the true course
to pursue in a plan for the registration of voters was to
leave entirely out of the question the definition of the fran-
chise.—( Hcar, hear.) Whatever differences there might
be on that side of the House, it would not be very diffi-
cult to show that they did not differ more than the Hon.
Gentleman had differed from himself.—( Hear, hear, hear.)
With regard to these particular words of the clause, he
certainly thought it would be better to take the clause as
a whole, and to discuss it upon its general merits, and he
intended fer the present to reserve his opinion as to its ef-
feet. But as a good deal of discussion bad arisen upon it,
he would state what were the difficulties which any Go-
vernment or any individual Member would have to expect
in dolling with the question, and in the next place, what
were the various advantages of 'the various propositions
which had been made. First, then, there was an im-
mense difference in the way in which the term 40s. free-
hold was to be understood as applicable to the two coun-
tries. Trio freehold tenure of this country had been laid
down in various books as compri ing a tenure not less
than a tenure for life; a tenure for a term of years was
not considered a freehold tenure. Though the definition
was the same, the class of persons and the interests o!_
feeted were very different. Amongst the 40s. freeholders in
England they would find small farmers, artizans, and men in
small country towns and villages exercising the trades of
tailors, shoemakers, and various other occupations, who
%%me entirely independent of a landlord. They would also
find persons in the situation of day-labourers, some of them
on the verge of asking fur relief from the parish, yet ma-
king a struggle to preserve their small freehold of 40s.
This was a class of persons, on the whole exceedingly in-
dependent, earning their livelihood by honest and iadus•
trious means, not immediately connected with landlords.
They were very much diffused through the country, and
as it ,had often been held in the family for a long period,
were very proud of this small freehold inheritance. A
freeholder of this class whom he had met with in Devon-
shire, told him that the inheritance bad been in his family
since the time of William the Conqueror. It was, on the
whole, a very independent class of voters, and the franchise
was of a nature easily established. In Ireland there was
only a small number of persons who bad freeholds in inhe-
ritance. When the Right Hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel)
proposed in 1829 to disfranchise the 40s. freeholders, and
it was asked that the freeholds in fee simple should be ex- '
empted from that disfranchisement, it was stated in the first
place that it was not advisable to make any distinction ;
and in the next place, that there were but a small number
of persons—in some counties not more than five or six—
t33l,sost:Aniaettmleemr
exemption. The
eseTraipetion,
propertyand wihoolwreolaualdd bweassaved
for-
merly hold for a long term of years, and that was not con-
sidered in lase as a freehold tenure. The 401 freeholders
did not at all correspond with the sante class .of voters in
England. They were not that numerous
generally dif-
fused, andindependent class of persons who'
had held this
small freehold from generation to generation, to which be
had alluded as forming that class of voters' in England.
Generally speaking,s, the freehold was a freehold for life
and he believed very commonly during the time of the 40;
freeholds they were held for the lives of very old persons
and often could not be reckoned as of more than seven,
years donation. It was obvious that a tenure of that kind was
very different from the tenure which existed in this country.
But then they should also take into account the great difference'which existed between the state of society in England and in
Ireland. The 501. tenants-at-will were generally persons
agreeing in political opinions with their landlords ; there was
at least no great difference of feeling or of interest between
them. Although the landlord might or might not attempt
to coerce the vote of the tenant, there was no great difference
in either case. The state of society was one of harmony and
agreement, rarely interrupted except en great political OCocca-
sions, and as that of the Reform Act. In Ireland it was im-
possible not to be struck with the great diversity of feeling
which prevailed between the great class of great proprietors
and the class of tenants who, under the tenure he had de-
scribed, had been intrusted with the franchise. They had the
one party highly attached to an aristocratical constitution, very
eager to uphold the Protestant Establishment of the Church,
conceiving that the ancient institutions of the country must be
preserved, as that which for them and their fathers has pro-
vided general security, and secured the succession to the Crown
in a Protestant family. They had the class of
persons below them—a very great mass of them at
least, on the other hand deeply attached to the
Roman Catholic religion, holding that they and their
fathers had been injured and insulted by predominance and by
exclusion, and seeking in the exercise'of their political rights,
as far
as possible, to do what they would consider as equalizing
the balance, and to obtain for themselves and the class to which
they belong a very large, and, as they think, a just share of
political power. lie was not stating that the one party or the
other were wrong in these views, or giving any opinion ow the
subject; but he was stating it for the purpose of showing that,
taindifferent feelings, imbued with so different a
going
ta suchd
i fferent
miniiters of religion, and looking to a
political contest and to the representation of that House as the
means of embodying their sentiments, it was impossible but
that the body of proprietors and the body of tenants should
hold different opinions, and wish to exercise the franchise in a