The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-27 00:00:00

(Continued from our first page.)
You will say, " It is true we found many persons of respect-
able means and excellent education, who complained that
they were without suffrage ; we did not attend to their com-
plaint, but where we found persons living in lanes and al-
leys, at a rent which afforded the fair presumption that they
had little property and less education, we conferred our new
franchise exclusively on them. And so we purified and
exalted the constituency I" (Hear.) Sir, let me venture to
give you an illustration of the manner in which the little
Reform Bill will probably work out the amendment of the
representation and purify and exalt the constituency. I
will first assume that the state of the world renders it likely
that for some years to come our party differences will occur
upon questions affecting our foreign relations. Let me sup-
pose some such question on which Parliament has been dis-
solved, some question that shall not trespass on what we
should now call delicate matters. Let us suppose it only a
new quarrel with China. Nothing more likely than that.
Suddenly, then, there appear before your new constituency
in one of those boroughs which the noble lord reserves as
the nursery of rising genius and the refuge of ill-treated
statesmen two dignified and imposing persons, whom that
new constituency do not know from Adam—(laughter)—
but these are rival candidates—Thompson is a rising genius,
Brown an ill-treated statesman ; Thompson supports the
Government—genius that rises generally does support a
Government—(laughter)—Browne sides with the Opposi-
tion—ill-treated statesmen naturally do that. (Renewed
laughter.) They both proceed to canvass Mr. Smith, one
of your new electors, a journeyman plasterer—the hon.
member for Leeds thinks that plasterers are entitled to a
preferential difference—living in a frail tenement much in
need of plaster, and struggling hard to pay off a harrassing
debt of £3. (Laughter, and Hear.) Thompson, who supports
the Government in a naval and military expedition to
Pekin, appeals to Smith's patriotism for the chastisement of
the Chinese barbarians and the prestige of the English name.
Browne condemns that criminal and somewhat costly ex-
pedition, and is eloquent on the rights of humanity and the
inoffensive character of an Oriental but industrious popula-
tion. The more the candidates talk the less interest they
excite in the heart of Smith, one way or the other, for the
affairs of China. In fact his whole mind is absorbed in the
consideration of those £3 which neither of these eloquent
strangers help him to pay. (Laughter.) Now there appears
a third person on the stage, and he whispers to Smith,
" Vote far humanity and Browne ; vote for the preserva-
tion of the Celestial Empire and its countless millions ; and
you shall have 305." Smith indignantly rejects a bribe thus
coarsely offered ; nevertheless it cannot but occur to him that
30s. would half pay off his debt, and, for the first time in his
life, he begins to conceive an interest in the affairs of China.
Now there appears a fourth person, the real _Deus ex Machin a,
a solicitor, or a solicitor's confidential agent, a fellow towns-
man, a man whose word is as good as his bond and he whis-
pers to Smith, "You are an honest man, and not to be bribed ;
I know all your affairs ; you are tormented by that paltry
debt of £3 ; that debt shall never trouble you any further if
you vote for Thompson and your country's glory." (Laugh-
ter.) Well, Smith begins to think of his wife's anxious
face, of his children's scanty supper ; thinks what a blessing
it would be to rise the next morning free from the incubus
of these £3 ; and as he so thinks, can you wonder that he
begins to care no more for the Celestial Empire than the
Celestial Empire cares for him ? (Laughter and cheers.)
The man's heart is tempted, and the elector's vote is bought.
This is the origin of corruption, and such corruption soon
becomes contagious in proportion as you multiply voters to
whose knowledge China is a phantom, and to whose wants £3
are the Indies. (Cheers.) These instances occur now, but will
you tell me that they will not be much more numerous un-
der your new constituency—ay, and on questions far more
vitally important to England than an expedition to Pekin ?
But why more numerous ? Because poverty and debt are
not the staple of your present constituency. But reduce
your franchise to almost the humblest tenements in which
poverty can face debt, and I leave the conjecture of the pro-
bable result to your own indulgent knowledge of human na-
ture. Are we to be told that the ballot would cure this ?
The ballot Why, is there a gentleman old enough to sit
in this house, and pet young enough to believe that if our
friend Smith, who is not a bad man, and who will not
break the promise he has given on a consideration, could
drop into the ballot-box a vete, perhaps against the inclina-
tions of his party, he would not have a conscience still more
placidly resigned to that chastisement of the Celestial Em-
pire and that vindication of his country's glory, by which
thus, quietly, unobtrusively, and without giving offence to
any one, he could pay off his debt of £3, and perhaps by that
vote serve to add /3,000,000 more to the debt of England ?
(Cheers.) The hon. member for Birmingham has a more
speedy and derided cure for this evil. lie would get rid
altogether of these nurseries of rising genius—these asylums
of ill-treated statesmen ; he would have only constituencies
so numerous that they are less likely to be bribed in
detail than bribed wholesale, by some system of direct
taxation which shall reduce the duties on the articles £6
householders consume, or defray all the expenditure neces-
sary to the land they inhabit and the freedom they enjoy,
at the exclusive cost of persons who are better lodged
than themselves. This kind of corruption I hold to
be infinitely more dangerous than the other; for a nation
may continue great and flourishing even though rich can-
didates do bribe poor electors, but the greatest nation in the
world must become bankrupt and ruined if the poor could
carry any system of taxation which embodies a principle
that confiscates the property of the rich. Therefere, thous-11
I am far from saying that a bolder redistribution of seas is
not required for the ultimate settlement of this question, I
say that if that redistribution is to be based on a 16 fran-
chise, without any equipoise, in all the larger urban con-
stituencies substituted for smaller boroughs you will render
the danger of a low franchise immeasurably more formida-
ble, and, though there may be less individual bribery than
among small constituencies, will incur a much greater risk
of that general political corruption which ends either in the
spoliation of property or the loss of freedom. Yet, if yox pass
this bill, the member for Birmingham is quite right in
thinking that an extensive redistribution of seats, which
shall give the same £6 franchise to urban multitudes, must
follow. " Give him," he says, " this £6 borough suffrage,
and he will then fix a lever that shall lift about a hundred
gentlemen round him out of their seats, and launch them
into the abyss of space." (A laugh.) That is the very next
of what he mildly calls " successive steps ;" and, when I
heard him thus inhumanly predict the massacre of the con-
fiding innocents who were then actually grouped around his
very knees, I turned towards those unfortunate gentlemen
with a thrill of superstitious awe at the despondent resigna-
tion with which they seemed to hear the executioner an-
nounce their doom. (Cheers and laughter.) 'Well, then, I
think this change will not make the representative body
wiser nor the constituent b;dy purer. An hon. member
said in the former debates, that " this was an age of pro-
gress," and from that fact he argued that, because we had
railways and steam, therefore we ought to have a £6 con-
stituency. I don't see the sequitur. Steam and railways
are produced by the science of the learned and the capital
of the rich ; and I cannot understand by what principle
of logic I tun to call that a progress which places our lezis •
lation at the mercy of men who are the reverse of learned
and the opposite of rich. (Loud cheers.) The Home Se-
cretary says he supports the bill because the time has come
to snake some further progress in the same direction in
which we made so great an advance in 1831. I agree with
him. But by this bill you do not advance ; you go back to
the direction from which that great reform so resolutely de-
parted, you go back by one long stride towards the old scot
and lot voters, whom the great Reform Bill
originallywcaosstl .t
designed to get rid of,—go back to the very
constituency
which the experience of centuries bad proved to be uvnenc3l7
(Cheers.) It seems to me that we thus engender the
coarsestea
vices of democracy without any of its redeeming grandeur.
Pure democracy, in the classic sense of the word, has con-
ferred on the civilised world too many benefits as well as
warnings not to have its full share of enthusiastic admirers
among the men of cultivated minds and generous hearts.
But for pure democracy you must have the elements that
preserve its honesty and insure its duration, Those ele-
ments are net to be found in old societies with vast deposi-
tories of wealth, of influence, of education ; they belong to
the youth of nations, such as colonies, and when any gen-
tleman cites to us the example of a colony for some demo-
cratic change that he would recommend to the ancient
monarchy of England I can only say that he has not studied
the hornbook of legislation. (Hear.) The acute democrats
of that sublime republic by which we are all unconsciously
instructed whenever we discuss the problems of government,
the acute democrats of Athens were well aware of the truth
I endeavour before it is yet too late to impress upon you ;
they were well .aware that democracy cannot long cc:sexist
with great ineque:lities of wealth and power ; they, there-
fore, began by ostracising the powerful to end by persecut-
ing the rich. (Cheers.) And I cannot forget, since I have
referred to that noble commonwealth, which may almost be
called the England of the ancient world, that one main
cause for the rapid decline and fall of Athens has been
traced by those writers, whose authority the scholars I see
before me will agree to accept, to the adoption of the very
principle you now commend to us—l mean the extension
of the suffrage to the class who are eager for political change
and least accustomed to weigh political consequences.
(Hear.) That extension would have been then justified by
much the same arguments you use now. It could have
been truly said that the extension was not very large in
itacilf; that it still left the whole suffrage small compared
to the wholeof
eventhe male adult population ; that
it did not admit
the majority of the world:lg
classes, for the worklclasses there were chief'
slaves or settlers; it
would
youa dispute
said, " Care you ifor
your own countrymen?
Can f
spute the intelligence cif
any class of Athenians?' and, indeed, the humblest Athe—
nian had facilities for educationth t we can't give to mile
working' men.
All such arguments
would have been vere r
hearto to-day. But ,
Vausible—tey are the argumete
neverthelessh , that extension lacedi ntrive
povert r
and passion a preponderating power over capital atnd know. •
ledge. And the results were soon visible in
a
" successive steps"—in new tarnperings with the suffrage
the same direction, in a plentiful crop of eloquent dense*
qogues outbidding Liberal statesmen ; in a system of direr;
taxation, which was unjust to the rich, and made the rick
e 'Wier indifferent to politics or hostile to liberty; in unwise,
ex %editions called for by a brave and haughty population,
called for them the more willingly because the rich paid
for th cm ; in the destruction of the fleets which had secured
to the A. v.pfland of the ancient world the empire of the seas;