The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-02 00:00:00

one.

For copyholds and long leases a £5 instead of
a £lO one.
Besides £2 of direct taxation.
Small boroughs were not to be abolished, but
augmented by additions from the surrounding coun-
ties—all to be made, in fact, what many of them,
like Woodstock, and Midhuret, and Shoreham were
already, very little.counties.
In Ireland the county franchise remained unal-
tered; that of the boroughs was to be reduced from
/.18 to £5.
In ten days more, however, Lord JOHN left office
owing to the hostile vote on the Militia Bill, and
left also his bill to its fate. The short-lived DERBY
Ministry followed; and no more was heard of
Reform till 1854, when- Lord JOHN, serving under
Lord ABERDEEN, and anxious to seem first, while
nominally second, brought forward his third bill on
the 13th of February of that year.
Of this Bill the principal points were :
A schedule A, of nineteen boroughs, with fewer
than 300 electors and 5,000 inhabitants, to be wholly
disfranchised, losing 29 members.
A schedule B, of thirty-three boroughs, contain-
ing less than 500 electors, or 10,000 inhabitants,
losing 33 members.
The 62 seats thus gained were distributed thus—
The West Riding of York and South Lancashire
were, by subdivision, to gain 8 new members.
All counties and towns having more than 100,000
inhabitants were to return 3 instead of 2 members.
This would take 47 members, the counties, of course,
having the larger share (38) of these spoils of the
boroughs.
Birkenhead, Burnley, and Staleybridge were
each to have one member. Kensington and Chelsea
were to return 2. Southwark 1 more. The Inns
of Court 2. The London and Scottish Universities

1 each.
By the absurd minority clause, where a constitu-
ency returned 3 members, no elector could vote for
more than 2.
On the other hand, the Bill abolished the trouble-
some and useless ratepaying clauses.
The county qualification was reduced to £lO.
The general borough franchise was raised from
that of the Bill of 1852 to £6 rating.
Several fancy clauses gave votes both in counties
and boroughs, though most voting under them
would have had votes otherwise. Theywere, firstly
a salary of £lOO a-year paid quarterly; secondly
£lO a-year on dividends ; thirdly, £2 to the income
or assessed taxes; fourthly, graduates of a univer-
sities; fifthly, persons who had £5O a-year in a
savings' bank three years continuously.
Freemen were to cease voting as such after exist-
ing rights were satisfied.
Seats were not to be vacated by accepting office
under Government.
These were the two Whig Bills of the Whig
Lord who has now favoured us with his third, with
which, as he has no doubt carefully compared it, so
it may please some of our readers to compare it
also. We shall now give the sketch of a Radical
and a Tory Bill. It is but fair that we should
compare with what Whigs have previously offered,
what a man of the people and a loader of the
House of Commons' Conservatives have offered
also. The two latter are, however, pretty fresh in
most minds. The Tories having acceded to office
in 1858, by the aid, in great part, of Mr. BRIGHT
and the independent members, on Mr. MILNER
GIBSON'S motion, and. having promised a Reform
Bill in the following" `bring, Mr. BRIGHT com-
menced in the autumn a course of systematic in-
struction for his promising pupils, hoping, we sup-
pose, that political gratitude and political acuteness
would induce them to adopt enough of his proposals
to keep out his Whig persecutors for many a year.
Mr. BRIGHT, while he laid just stress on the
BALLOT, and a lowered franchise, insisted most of
all on a fair redistribution of seats, -without which
he justly held'that it was of little use to lower the
franchise.

His schedule A accordingly disfranchised 56
English boroughs returning 87 members, and nine
Irish boroughs returning nine members, not one of
which has certainly the shadow of a claim to sepa-
rate representation, either on the score of electors,
direct taxes, or .population—Mr. BRIGHT'S three
tests.

Schedule B would deprive thirty-four boroughs
which return two membors each of one member. He
thus had 130 members to dispose of.
He gave 16 of these to as many boroughs which
now return but one member each. Besides three
more to Scotch boroughs.
To 23 boroughs of a population between 54,000
and 127,000 he gave 27 additional members.
To 12 boroughs with a population between 127,000
and 270,000 he gave 24 additional members.
To five boroughs, whose population exceeds
316,000, he gave six members each, or 30 addi-
tional.

To seven new boroughs he gave nine members.
To counties, and divisions of counties, 18 new

members.

To seven Irish counties eight additional members:
With a few additions to Scotland he completed
his re-arrangements, which, after all, allotted 26 of
the members taken from boroughs, to counties.
His franchise was as low as it could well be
placed in the boroughs short of universal suffrage;
in the counties he accepted the £lO qualification.
Onhvealyt3
tilin, e last day of February, 1859, we had the
novelty of
served
aerTvoeil _tllheefpourmrpßosie
Bill.
of lat,sfaloctaidoinn gfigfehatt,uraerse,
it o
probably
The pretty
county
franchise
aNel
nVelilisreelribweamser
reduceded.
to £lO, as in
Lord
et
ixJletottii:loN' sla
the
borough
ociraost B
boundaries
egshioll.
f franchiseborou boroughs
hls.emwaeirneedtoubnealtered,
but
resur-
veyed and extended ; and all voters residing in
boroughs were to have their option of voting for
the borough or for the county, but not to Vote for
both. Probably no clause was so fatal top:sill:1F:
as this. Members could not afford to irritate the
counties, while Mr.
ing these votes. As in Lord
Nvas boroughen t NoTnteersxcflould'
JOHN.S Bill, there were several " fancy franchises."
Disfranchisement was tenderly handled.
Fifteen boroughs only, having two members
each, lost one of them.
In regard to enfranchisement by a further division
of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and dividing Middle-
sex, eight members were to be added to the coun-
ties, and seven to certain new boroughs.

WESTMINSTER BRIDGE.—The first half of this
new bridge was opened for traffic this morning.