The Sun.
London, England, 1848-07-07 00:00:00

when in Yorkshire only York and Scarborough returned
ene Member? Why, in the reign of Henry VII.
there were only 28 boroughs. The wars of the Roses
destroyed them. Did his Honourable Friend wish
to go back to the time when the Crown nominated
all the Members to that House?—(Hear, hear.) And
when his Honourable Friend talked of rallying round pro-
perty, he would ask, what traditionary influences there
were in connexion with it? Was it not well known that
that great writer, the late Mr. Disraeli— (Chee,s)—said it
was the boast of the cavaliers who fought at Edge Hill, that
one troop of their guard possessed more property than the
whole-House of Commons?—(Hear, hear.) But, in spite of
all their property, they were defeated by the middle classes
of the day.—( Hear, hear.) And when his Hon. Friend said
they were not a collective party, as in Sir William Wynd-
hara's day, did he imagine that his own Honourable Friends,
Newdegate and Sibthorp of this day, had any feeling in
common with the Wyndhams of that day ? He was sure
the Honourable Members for Lincoln and Warwickshire
would forgive him for bringing their names into this dis-
cussion—
" The knights are dust, their good swords rust—
Their souls are with the saints, I trust"
—(Hear, hear.) Then there were thecountry gentlemen, and
a good deal was made of them by his Honourable Friend.
Now he (Mr. Osborne) respected the class of country gen-
tlemen, but he had not been able to find that they had ever
been the.leaders of public opinion. Take Hampden. He
was cut by the gentlemen of his day; he positively would
not have been asked out to dinner.—('. laugh). Had the
country gentleman resisted the American war? Were they
not opposed to Catholic emancipation and to the Reform Bill ?
Take the gentry of the present day. As a class they had
been occupied in another place with throwing out a measure
which had for its object the destruction of the last rusty link
of persecution, and the striking off the chains imposed by
bigotry and intolerance upon a long injured race.—(Hear,
hear.) In conclusion, he would say that he was no true
friend to the institutions of this country who looked down
either upon the middle classes or the working classes.—
(Hear, hear.) He believed that the perpetuation of our Go-
vernment, and the real safeguards to our liberty, consisted
in the removal of all shackles upon thought, education, and
religion; and, entertaining these sentiments, he should give
his firm support to the resolutions moved by his Hon. Friend
the Member for Montrose.—(Hear, hear.)

Mr. 'Sergeant TALFOURD said that haring on former
occasions sympathised with and aided in the cause of re-
form, he felt bound on the present occasion to state why
he was not guilty of inconsistency in opposing the motion
of his Hon, Friend. And when he looked back at what
had passed during the last thirty years, when he first en-
tered upon public life, and took an ardent interest in the
cause of progres—when he saw how the power of the aristo-
cracy had been diminished—what great additions had
been made to the popular strength—when he remembered
how the stability of a paper currency had at that time been
maintained by the sanguinary execution of blood-shedding
laws, and how the power or the press had in those days
been visited by the cruel oppressions of bigotry and fear,
and when he saw how immensely the direct influence of
the aristocracy had been/curtailed by the Act of 1832—how
every municipal corporation had been popularised—how free
was the press in these: days, not merely from prosecu-
tions, but even from annoyance ; when he recalled all
these things to mind, he could not think that he
was inconsistent in declining to proceed further
in agitating for organic change, believing that• he
should act more wisely by striving to consolidate our exist-
ing institutions, and to impart to the people that knowledge
which was essential to the exercise of public duties, and that
piety without which knowledge was rather a bane than a
benefit,—(hlinisterial cheers.) Proceeding to examine the
motion before them, he was struck, in the first place, by its
miscellaneous character. It appeared to be a small attempt
to emulate a larger and infinitely nobler scheme. The
People's Charter was a bold plan : this lesser charter seemed
formed upon its model, only to induce the more timid politi-
cians to prefer it. It was developed, as it was arranged, with
little caution. In the original plan there were four proposals;
but the Hon. Member for Montrose had since offered them
a fifth point; as if to show with how little discretion the
whole plan had been arranged, and how little judgment had
been exercised In introducing mighty changes of the whole
scheme of the British Constitution. The Honourable Mem-
ber's first point was the ballot. In his (the Learned Ser-
jeant s) view, there could be little objection to any change in
the mode of voting, which could save the humble elector
from the coercion of power and the temptation of gold.
Looking at the ballot singly, and believing that the defect it
was to remedy existed, if it had been singly proposed he
should have been prepared to give it his support—(Hear,
hear)—believing at the same time that its importance was
greatly exaggerated both by friends and foes —(Cheer-
ing)--and entirely discrediting the notion that there was
efficiency in any mechanical contrivance which could prevent
the greatest act of a ...r man's life from being known.—
(Renewed cheers.) tut the Hon. Gentleman confessed that
if the constituency he proposed to create were left without
this protection, then that the franchise would be rather a
bane than a blessing to them. Why, surely, this was the
greatest condemnation of his scheme Could they be pre-
pared to unsettle the whole system of the nation to establish
a scheme, the sole protection of which was a ballot-box?
—(Hear, hear.) Was that the ark by which the new-
born voters were to be saved from the waters of revolution
which were seeking to engulf them ? Why, he wanted
no bettso confession of the inefficiency of the plan—of its
otter u.elessness for the purposes it sought to realise.—
(Much cheering.) But then came the next point—triennial
Parliaments. Triennial Parliaments would produce so little
practical change that he saw little solid argument either for
or against them. The Charter gave annual Parliaments,
and thiaplan followed at a humble distance. Whether,
like the earth-born giant of old, who, every time he fell in
the struggle, acquired fresh strength' for the contact, they
were to derive renewed energies from each repeated refer-
ence to their constituents, he did not know, but that was
about the only argument that could be used in favour of this
branch of the proposition. But then came the substance of
the Honourable Member's scheme—the extension of the
franchise and the new distribution of the constituencies.
And here he must admit that if the scheme was, as it was
intended to be, a scheme for new electoral districts, then
there would be a terrible consi&ency between the distresses
of the time and this attempt to tear asunder the oldest
political ties and local associations. But having evolved
a cloud of " family petitions" in favour of the plan
the Member for Montrose started back as if at the
sound himself had made, and cried " God forbid that I should
Propose anything of the sort. I have no wish to cut the
country up into parallelograms." But the constituencies
understood this to be a parallelogram project; and that being
50, what must they not think on the one hand of the studied
disguise of the projector, and on the other of the value of the
Petitions?—(Cheers.) Some of the petitioning families
earnestly prayed for " Mr. Hume's motion," which was safe
enough others asked for electoral districts in particular.
What must these worthy families think when they heard of
Mr. Hume having got up to declare that he did not want
electoral districts at all?—(Cheering.) The Hon. Member's
treatment of the suffrage uestion was scarcely any better.
Ems resolution, as set out to the world, was framed to include
householders. He passed over the subsequent introduction
of the word " all."
Mr. HUME—That was a mere error.
Mr. Sergeant TALFOURD quite believed so. But the
public understood the Hon. Member to go for " household
suffrage." If there had been a dinner, though he would
not insinuate that any such festivity had taken place, the
teastwould clearly have been " Horne and Household Suf-
frage." The universal cry was " Hume and Household
Suffrage." The babbling gossip of the air repeated " Hume
and Household Suffrage." But when the Hon. Member
interpretation
clause to explain his plan he introduced an
clause ; and, accustomed as he (Sergeant Talfourd) was to
interpretation clauses, he confessed that this was the strangest
S
he had ever seen. one of them directed that every singu-
lar Should include all the plurals; others that every mascu-
line, was to include all the feminn es ; but this interpretation
for (
clause was still more curious,
said the Learned Ser-
geant) it explained the denemination ‘ household suffrage"
to mean, not every man that holds a house,‘ bnt every house
that holds a man.—(Loud laughter.) Household suffrage
was, no'doubt, an endearing term. It was especially so at
the tea-tables of the family petitioners, but this plan of
household suffrage included not householders
alone, but every
n!an alive in this country, except those who slept under
0917 tents. It was universal suffrage in another shape—
less plain and Undisguised ; and so the family petitions a
second time had evidently prayed for something the Hon.
Member never meant. But the reason lie gave wuast
thes tillwmordores
_edifyingrthan the interpretation.
. I did n
houses? 4 suffrage in my resolution," said the Hon. Gentle-
!o? "because, although the Committee on whose part I
bringforward these resolutions, agreed to the words house-
hold suffrage, they did not agree as to their meaning." A
Curious result of the combined deliberations of the Com-
Mittee. The Hon. Member had done well, however, in
ontltting the words, for the notion of household suffrage
ttihn
edveraliheet
of
existing circumstances of the popular mind, and
the most t conceptions formed of it, was, of all notions,
Hon.
li:issue, and delusive. Having thus touched upon
the question_end s principal propositions, he now came to
settlement of as the contemplated measure intended as a
it were put theforth question, or merely as an instalment ? If
argumest. Hisas a settlement, it was wholly untenable in
nits the suffrage Hon. Friends must know that the more defi-
certain limits, the
made, the more you extended it within
'who still remain e more agitation did you excite among those
tnde of the tenur without those limits. The very infini-
held lessened the" uPen which the elective franchise was
did not exercise it
effect: of their exclusion with those who
cer-
tain degree of bnt once draw the line between a cer-
you would find thosepoverty and the lower degree beyond it, and
line with the fiercest lower degrees assailing this definite
est determination, and keeping up, until
they gained their point, an agitation altogether destruc-
tive of the well-b
him not be eingof the State.—(Hear, hear.) Let
a people prepared takenfoasr advocatingl the principle that, with
Property should be the exercise of their political rights,
Power should rest. 1.1 e sole ground on which political
He well knew that there was a nobler
'wealth than what onsiss in acres or gold; he well knew
that a deep attachmente to country, a lofty patriotism,
a generous pride in the institutions and ancient glories
of his native land, held their existence among the very
humblest classes of Englishmen,i beneath the modest roof
of the peasant asn the palace of the Peer; but
he could not derivew thence the conclusion that these
humbler classes, in their present condition of knowledge,
were fitted to take part. in the legislation of this country, or
to be admitted, even in the wholesale way proposed, to the
election of it
* legislators. To such a proposition the educa-
tion returns said No •
inthteh returns of crime, increasing not
much in number, but'atrocious character of the crimes
reported, said, No; terriblertyh,esais 0 outbreaks which had so dis-
turbed the count
: the conscience of the states-
man, who felt how little had yet been done by him for
the spiritual and secular edu)catizno,:slfd people, emphati-
thheesee that any eorre-
cally said No.—( Hear, heals
sponding increase had takseinnopelacleB3inztthe intellectual aggran-
adli would assent not
disement of the country
withssoion to the to this motion merely, but the
distinction as
fran-
chise of all his fellow-countrymen
to their having or holding houses or simply living in
intellec-
tual ; but he found that no such
Member
diffusion
ad-
tual power had taken place. His Hon. Friend Mi
for Oldham had eloquently cited, in
vancement of knowledge among us, the vast
cheap literature, and the names of several men, such' of
Thomas Cooper and Ebenezer Elliott, who, men of theas
humblest class of life, had distinguished themselves by their
glowing and powerful writings. The facts stated by his Hon.
Friend not merely proved nothing—they indicated nothing
as to the existence of mental power among the masses. In
all ages it had pleased the Creator to bestow the gifts of
genius upon the humblest among men as upon the highest.
It had been so in the Dark Ages—it was so now ; but this
proved nothing as to the general mind of the people, from
among whom these meteors of genius arose. It could scarcely
be said that the mind of Greece, after the Trojan war, was in
a state of intellectual elevation, yet it was that age which pro-
duced those rhapsodies which bad vivified, and embalmed the
truths they narrated, and whose sublime diction had ever
mince been the rule of their art to critics—their inspiration to
Poets. The Hon. Member for Oldham had cited the author
of the " Purgatory of Suicides" as a man, fitted by his
glowing verse, to adorn the Legislature of this country. The
merits of Mr. Thomas Cooper, as a poet, no man better ape
Predated than he (Mr. Sergeant Talfourd) did ; but he