The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-08 00:00:00

lation. until the results of ti le census of next year were as-
certained, and thus by a c spice which had been by no
means unusual in the cou xa 3 of that debate, they were met

on the motion for going i nto ►committee, by an amendment
the evident intention .of of hich was to defeat the bill
altogether. (Hear, hear.) The honourable and gal-
lant baronet, however, the n 1 .ember for Ayrshire, could not
be content with that. It w( mid have met his views if the

English bill had beenwith& -awn, but nothing would satisfy
him but the indefinite ad.} ournment of the debate itself.
Well, with regard to the 7 rithdrawal of the two bills, did
the hon. gentleman dou'et t hat if he and other hon. gentle •
men would help them to g o into committe, and to consider
there the details of the English bill, it would be possible to
pass it ? (Cheers and 'atwitter from the Opposition.) The
Irish and Scotch bills were withdrawn because, simply,
there was no time to pass t them. And why was there no
time? That was a gut tstion. he did not stop to answer.
(Derisive laughter from tl ie o,pposition.) Well, they were
told at the same time 1 t there was no enthusiasm in
favour of this bill among- the people. (Cheers from the
Opposition). That was true to a great extent if they
adopted the standard of 1' B 32, and the reason was that the
abuses which culminated in that year were, to a great ex-
tent, swept away by the measure then passed. (Renewed
cheers from the Oppositii m.) A nation did not stir until
it had good and sufficient ground for its doing so, and he
should be sorry to see t' be nation stirring from a sense of
oppression. (Hear, hear...) He was glad that they were
now living in a time wh en they were free to discuss the
question without excite raent, and nothing could inspire
them with greater hope I !or the future than that fact. Let
them, therefore, profit I )3, present tranquillity before they
got into troublous times„ wi'dch even next year might over-
take them. He would orJy now say that he hoped the
house would not think: of committing itself to a motion
destitute of substantial meaning, but consent to do its best
for the satisfactory settlement of the question before it.
(hear, hear.)
Mr. WHITESIDE. said it appeared to him that the
hon. and learned gen' Item= who had just spoken on this
question with the ability which distinguished him, had
affected to misunilerstand the question before the house.
That question w as substantially this—whether the Go •
-vernment, after proposing to Parliament a measure con-
signals .r r.rtf4, and pc.,,-.:4-tiTie the subject to stand
for several, months in that position, were to be allowed to
cause tw o of those bills to disappear, in order to reappear
at another time, and under circumstances which might in-
volve thenecessity of further debate in that house. (Hear.)
The noble lord assured the house some time ago that an
Irish and Scotch bill should be brought in, but now they
.disappeared, and he thought the English bill should dis-
appear also. The hon. member for Lanarkshire wished to
have more members for his county, but if the English bill
- passed that would be impossible. The noble lord at the
head of. the Government, who was one,of the most enthu-
siastic reformers of the ago—(laughter)—could inform him
of that fact. He thought the noble lord had quite enough
to du at the present moment without touching their old
Constitution. He had to keep Russia quiet, to console
Belgium, to lament over Switzerland, and to conciliate or
confront France as the case may be, instead of introducing
-these Reform Bills. No doubt the noble lord was right in
introducing the three bills together; but he wished to know
why it was that course was departed from in the present
ine tance.
Mr. BRIGHT said he did not know that he was wiser
than:anybody else with regard to, the aim of that discus-
sion ; but with regard to its object there could be no mis-
;take. (Cries of "Hear, hear.") They had one amendment
tripping up another. (Hear, hear.) The first was moved
by an hon. member at that (the Ministerial) side of the
house, and proved rather tempting to hon. gentlemen op-
posite ; but having since examined it, they came to the
conclusion that to move the rejection of the bill on such
grounds would be false and injurious, and they therefore
;got up the amendment brought forward that evening.
(Cries of " No, no," from the Opposition.) Last year
the right hon. member for Buckinghamshire proposed a
bill on this subject, and the right hon. gentleman either
thought the question an important one. or he played false
to the house and the country. (Hear, hear.) The right
hon. gentleman thought it so important that he proposed
to add 500,000 electors to the constituency of the United
• Kingdom. He knew that the right hon. gentleman said,
and his supporters repeated, that he did not take these
500,000 electors in a gross lump, as the noble lord proposed
to do by this bill. (Cries of " Hear, hear," from the Op-
position.) The sight hon. gentleman informed the house
-that his plan was to select all the good men everywhere,
cad from these good, intellectual, and reverential and Con-
servative eitiv.ens make up this body of 500,000 men to add
to the present electors. The question which he (Mr.
Bight) would like to ask was this :—Where did these
.500,000 men live? They did not live in housys above £lO
'rental, because they had already the suffrage. They did
not live in houses with a rental between £lO and £6 a-year,
because they would be enfranchised by the bill of the noble
lord . These intelligent gentlemen were not citizens—they
vmre net heads of families ; they were not householders.
.They were not of the number whichthe noble lord intended
to include by his bill, but were to be found, somewhere else,
chaps living in tents, by some ingenious mode of fancy
Itittanehises, which was to pick them out. The right hon.
-gentleman oven stated that he would go further than his
bill proposed, and would reduce the franchise in the
borouglls ; and more than that, he admitted the claims of
the w orking classes to the franchise, and said that he would
them with generosity and sincerity. (Opposition
e.:taeers.) He was glad to hear there was anybody on that
side of the house animated by the same feeling. (Renewed
cheers) More than that, the right hon. gentleman was
understood to have given a distinct pledge to certain mem-
bers of the house, not that he would do just that, but that
Ihe emuld do it in this particular shape, if he was enabled
!leering forward a bill again; that was, if the present Go-
ernment were not able after the general election to dis-
lodge the right hon. gentlemen from office, he would bring
in a bill giving a £lO rental franchise to the counties, and
a£6 rental franchise to the boroughs. (Hear, and cries of
"Oh, oh!")

Mr. DISRAELI was sorry to interrupt the hon. gentle-
Imam while speaking, but his generalargument was founded

won a statement which was entirely fallacious. What

tt.be hon. gentleman had stated with regard to the words
used by him in that house was correct enough, but any-
thing the hon. gentleman had said which he had heard from
hearsay, he (Mr. Disraeli) begged to ray was perfectly un-
founded. (Opposition cheers.) He had never made a state-
ment directly or indirectly at ail inconsistent with what he
lad stated in that house. (Renewed cheers from the Oppo-
tion.) •

Mr. BRIGHT said that if what he had stated was cor-

rect, he should not hold it to be inconsistent with the sen.
timents expressed by the right hon gentleman in the house,
He had his information from speeches which had been de-
livered by members of that house in various parts of the
teountry after the last session of Parliament. (Loud cries
'of " Oh, oh.") He of course would not hold the right hon.,
gentleman to that statement after what had just been We,
—(hear, hear)—but at the same time the house wotild ad-
mit that when members had stated it elsewh.n.e. (No, no,
Name, name, Order, order.) Well, it 'would be very easy
to read extracts from the speectes. (Renewed tieis
of
" Name, name," " Where; w.'aere," from the Opposition.)
lie was willing to take P:ie atatemeptt`f the right hon. gen-
tleman, that there was some mislinderstanding with regard
o it, but if hon members Wished to hear what was said in
one speech tie could easily refer to it. Ina speech made by
the hon. memtoor for Snnderland (Mr. Lindsay) in August
:last year, he stated in the most explicit terms that one of
the considerations on which he had given his support to the
Government of Lord Derby was this—that in regard to Re-
Zorm, the late Government should declare that they were
-prepared to bring in a bill which should :provide for the
borougbs a £6 rental franchise, and for the counties a £lO
rental franchise, and that at least 30 of the smaller boroughs
should be disfrPnchiSed. (Hear, hear, and Oh, oh.) These
were the coo ditions of the hon. member when he gave his
consent to oppose the party move headed by Lord John
Russell .

C4tr tain JERVIS—That statement was contradicted at
tha 'time. (Hear, hear, and a cry from several members on
tly, Opposition, " By Lord Derby.")
Mr. BRIGHT said—Coming on this session, the right
hon. member for Bucks had been himself to a certain point
not inconsistent with this statement, because if the house
would remember the tone and the matter of a speech deli-
vered by the right hon. member on the question, they
would find that his intelligent judgment led him to the
conclusion that it might not be evil to endeavour to settle
the question this session, on the basis proposed by the pre-
sent Government. Did not the right hon. gentleman say
ho should move no amendment on the second reading ?
(hear, hear)—and -farther, he went on to say that he doubted
extremely whethea: he should think it necessary or desirable
to offer any amendments in committee. (Hear, hear.) All
this had been to -him (Mr. Bright) eminently satisfactory,
• because it showed that the man most eminent on the Op-
position side of Cie house, the man most competent to form
an opinion, and, the most far-seeing as to the Views and
wants of the co entry, did not materially differ with her
griJs
eved'ow n
Government on this important subject. Re I
taken anotherto
find that the right hon. gentleman sad
mrse—a course not into which he Is
led by his Party , but' into which he had been cl*: .ad been
"even by the
more violent ( if his
cuinentSupp42r-ters. (Hear.)
looked at the e
positten of the rig: And when he
how clearly:eeatmus,t ,ec‘
—when ho felt At hon.. gentleman
what ought to be
done with regard to this '
the right hon. gf mtlernan was sii"°"ject, he lamented that
-oat able to persuade his fol-
lowers, to a courE e as enlig,htoi
and as sensible as that he
was prepared to take hie iseelhf_. e (Rear hear.) He had la-
mented to see ti at, into. a
the right hon.
n(lftters undertasked
gentleman was
"t° Urind of
brarzeof
with that heaves ed strength."
hon. members o ppos.fte the, if theymfoalnloywodrLth.lle :;„.:13grasureeni
of the right le In. gentle man on
questions they would firLd that they `11"e sec
t
ae,ed
son with the wi shee and the true kterests of more
people.
Be should like to ask ti me attention of the houst4
points. Withaut going ,to the census of 1861 they e Octu a few
that the population of ~he kingdom would be shown by
next census to be 30,000,000, and they all knew yththaet
7,500,000 of those we se men of 21 years and upwards. They
also knew that at p. resent not more than 1,000,000 could
come up to vote, s Ad they kilow.thit CYtni 4g916,94