The Sun.
London, England, 1867-07-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The Reform Bill has now arrived'at that
interesting stage when it is natural to ask how it
will stand, how it will look, and how it will answer
its purpose. These questions, though different in
the matter of the inquiry, are but one as to the
result, for it is necessary the bill should satisfy all
these conditions. It must be well drawn, it must
satisfy the eye, and it must do its work. Strange
as it may seem, and ill as it may accord with the
practical and common-sense character England
specially affects, a regard for appearances is the first
consideration. The argument, in its most critical
passages, has always taken a specious turn, it being
assumed on all sides that as to abstract right there
was none, equality of privilege was out of the ques-
tion, a uniform system a chimera, and that the only
way was to talk over the matter till something was
hit upon likely to give general satisfaction. The one
thing to be avoided was the weakness or want of
finish that invites attack. The Conservatives, above
all, are interested in making the new constitution
of the house a complete defence against further
change, and a practical reply to those who employ,
and even create, a cry for Reform-as the road to
power. For a good many years to come the natural
and proper objection to re-open a difficult subject
will operate in their favour; but if they stand their
ground against every other hostile device the old cry
will be raised. It becomes necessary, therefore, to
anticipate the cry by making the system, if not per-
fect, at least plausible, and capable of a telling, if not
always logical, defence. Moreover, it is an advan-
tage to secure the suffrages of all sides, as the cir-
cumstances must have much altered before the very
builders of the new house can decently insist on the
destruction of their own work, or of the work to
which they have lent a willing hand. Already, as in
reason, this sort of consideration has had full play,
the house having frequently been reminded of what
it had settled and done so far, and how on no account
it ought to depart from its own lines. The bill once
become law, this appeal will for many years be con-
clusive and irresistible, unless it, should present any
extraordinary or unexpected weakness. Where is
this weakness likely to be? We may form some
conjecture from the past. For the greater part of
the period since 1832 the figures of the existing sys-
tem, or its " hard sharp lines," as they have come
to be called, have been under annual challenge and
scrutiny. The county and borough franchises have
tbleic figure,
te7 their defence, the latter not only as to
but to the ratepaying conditions. All
figures are now abandoned iu the borough fran-
chise, and in the coun'y they are so low that we
may safely auticip tte they will not be attacked for
a long time. So far as regards the franchise, it
will be long before a considerable number of candi-
dates, otherwise weighty, find themselves beaten at
the polling booth by the exclusion of respectable
but unqualified supporters. So far the pale of the
Constitution will not be found narrow. But in
this otherwise natural and substantial and deeply-
founded construction there are still several points
of an obtrusively, and to many offensively, artificial
character. All the small boroughs that did return
one member return one still, notwithstanding a
storm of political disfranchisment that has mulcted
a good many boroughs over their heads, and a tem-
pest of judicial disfranchisement that has abolished
four flagrant offenders. The small boroughs have
antiquity in their favour, besides more recondite or
more practical pleas ; but it is easy to foresee that
they will have to behave very well indeed, with al-
most superhuman virtue, and with even more wisdom
than virtue, if they are to hold their own against
inevitable, assault. In their case purity will be almost
as dangerous as the other thing, for the spectacle of
a very minute constituency sitting down to consider
on perfectly disinterested grounds who is the best
man and the soundest politician of several candidates
will look presumptuous, if not ridiculous. Should
these small boroughs do as most of them have done
before, and invite wealthy strangers to break the
chains of local influence, they will find themselves
pursued by the manes of the four disfranchised
boroughs, besides a good many other political ven-
geances and ambitions. The next artificial point,
which has not the prestige of antiquity or even a
show of reason, except a round decimal figure, is
that which defines the boroughs to be deprived of
one seat. This artificial barrier of 10,000 was on
Monday the scene of a conflict, which, earlier in the
Session, might have spread to formidable dimensions.
Four seats were the prizes of the contest, and there
appeared four different batches of candidates. Their
appropriation involved a discussion of the merits and
claims, first, of the four proposed boroughs to which
they were promised in the bill, and whose names
were in its schedule ; secondly, of the four very large
constituencies to which third members had been
promised under a ministerial concession to the wishes
of the house ; thirdly, of the four boroughs just over
the line of 10,000, and only just saved by that figure
from the mass of partial disfranchisement ; fourthly,
of the fourboroughs lowest in the list,and containing,
each of them, a few hundred more than three thou
sand. Nothing could be more pleasant than the
discussion, for the house was in that mood that it
would listen to nobody who was not either very
weighty or very amusing, and several of the borcughs
involved in the controversy have cause to complain
that insult has been added to injury in their case,
if injury there be in their exclusion. But the ques-
tion of stopping at the exact figure of 10,000 will
not always be discussed in so happy a vein, or in
the second week of July, or as the top stone of a
Reform Bill. There must inevitably come occa-
sions when the rivalry between four such parties of
competitors will be somewhat keener, and when the
arguments urged the other day will receive large
accessions from time and changed circumstances.
If our countrymen were really mathematical in
their politics, and admirers of symmetry, as well as
personally ambitious of the franchise, they would
quarrel first -with the anomaly of a good many
boroughs returning one member for five thousand
inhabitants, and other boroughs returning only one
fora hundred thousand or more. But as Parlia-
ment has not made the anomaly, and has, indeed,
mitigated it, public opinion, and even opinion that is
popular rather than public, takes it very easy. It is
otherwise with the figures to which we have alluded,
and which the House already confesses to have been
placed too low. Member after member rises from
the Opposition benches to deliver his conscience on
this point, and to declare that, for his part, he had
rather have put the line at 12,000. Such confes-
sions are too late for any immediate use, but they
show where the ground is open for future assault,
and what is the weakness of this bill. They leave
the question open in older to revive it when oppor-
tunity offers. What that opportunity may be no one
can say, nor, on the other hand, is it possible to say
what will not come. At the date of the last Reform
Act it could hardly have been foreseen that the Con-
servatives would recover their lost ground, and be
broken up on the question of Free Trade, the result
being a close balance between two great aristocratic
parties, requiring the intervention cf a new Reform
Bill to turn the scale. Two contingencies will re-
open the question. If the Liberals should find them-
selves beaten in the House, they will make a fresh
appeal for its reform. On the other hand, if war
come, or employment fail, or other adversity befall
us, then there will be that cry and pressure from
without which latterly we have come to regard as a
thing of the past. It cannot be disguised that the
self-organisation of labour against capital has ac-
quired dimensions and aims beyond the thought of
Pie last age. Will combinations embracing hundreds

of thousands be always content with the laws made
by the representatives of small decayed or decaying
towns, returned by virtue of " hard sharp lines,"
and occupying the place of populous towns, the
seats of flourishing manufactures? We have now
abandoned invidious distinctions in one part of our
representative system, retaining them where they are
vastly more important. In what direction shall we
move on? Will it be in the line of further compro-
mise, or of mathematical symmetry ? Certainly we
have not discarded arithmetic. Figures stand out
in this question with even more than their old pro-
minence; and if it should be thought important to
be well represented in Parliament, there are now a
good many towns, and some millions of people, who
know that with immense arithmetical rights they
are the victims of arithmetical disfranchisement.