The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

3IR. BRIGHT OX REFORM.

We must pay Mr. Bright thecompliment of say
ing that he appears in some degree to have pro-
fited by his studies on the subject of reform. 'fa
put your ideas into a practical shape, to embody
them in the exact form in which you would have
them adopted by others, induces a habit of mind
which will cut down many sweeping assertions and
retrench many extravagant exaggerations. The
men of Edinburgh have had the advantage of see-
ing Mr. Bright in a much more favourable frame
of mind than the men of Birmingham or Man-
chester. The alteration is so very sudden that we
may well doubt its continuance, but a great altera-
tion there undoubtedly is. Abstract principles of
enormous magnitude, founded on the rights of men
and the immutable fitness of things, sink into
maxims of ordinary practical expediency, and
nothing seems to be so near the heart of the orator
as to get rid of the impression which, with so much
vigour and ability, he has striven to prouiSce•
In his Birmingham speech Mr. Bright said that
" the Reform Bill was so drawn as purposely
exclude from the list of electors the great body of
the working classes of this country;" and in another
place, speaking of the existing allotment of seats,
he says, " The whole thing, as at present arranged
(that is, by the Reform Bill), is a disgraceful fraud,
and ought to be put an end to, and if it be not put
an end to, your representation will remain in
future, as it has been in the past, little better than
a farce." This was plain speaking, and nobody
who heard it or read it could mistake the view
which Mr. Bright entertained of the working of the
Reform Bill. But at Edinburgh he says—" What
we propose to do is to carry out a little further, if
you like a good deal further, the process which was
adopted or undertaken in the bill called the Re-
form Bill of 1832 ;' " and further on he says that
" every plan for Parliamentary Reform, be it car-
ried in 1832 by an enormous uprising of the nation,
or be it proposed by a mixed and coalition Govern-
ment in 1854, has, and must have, precisely the
same object—it must advance upon the same lines,
and it must tend to the same destination," those
lines being, according to the Birmingham speech,
" a representation little better than a farce," and
that destination " a disgraceful fraud."
Again Mr. Bright tells us that he has never sineo
he wrote or spoke on the subject of Reform said a
single syllable on what are called equal electoral
districts, and rebukes Mr. Newdegate, with great
justice, for adopting an ultra-democratic theory in
that respect. We must again go back to Bir-
mingham, and there we find the following pas-
sage :—" I will ask you this simple question—
what is the obvious rule with regard to this (the
allotment of members to electors) which would
recommend itself to every man if it were put to him?
Would he not argue in this way P—The law has
given to certain persons the right to vote. The
law presumes that every person who has the right
to vote is capable of deciding how he should vote.
Every elector, therefore, is in the eye of the law of
the same importance as every other elector. Why,
then, should not every elector in voting for mem-
bers of Parliament vote for the same portion of tha
same Parliament as every other elector votes for
I shall be told that I am not to go to the United.
States of America (where electoral districts exist)
for my illustrations." The words " equal electorsl.
districts" do not certainly occur in this passage,
but no one, we think, can have the slightest doubt
as to its meaning, and we cannot therefore plead
guilty to the charge of wilful misrepresentation if
we have so represented Mr. Bright's programme.
The truth is, we suspect that this principle of elec-
toral equality is much more captivating on its the-
oretical than on its practical side, and that when
Mr. Bright came to apply his own principles to his
bill he became aware that reasons did exist, and
those of insuperable force, why we should not award
to each elector an exactly equal share with every
other elector in returning a member to Parliament.
If so he does quite right in retracting, but not quite
so well in insisting that his December opinions are
the same with those of November, nor yet so well
in taunting us with driving about without chart or
compass because we put the obvious meaning on,
expressions which he now finds it desirable to re-
pudiate. Mr. Bright has undertaken a double task
in this matter of Reform,—to instruct and to legis-
late. All we profess to do is to offer reasonable
criticisms on events as they arise, and if the needle'
ranges all round the horizon, as in Mr. Bright's
Manchester speech, points north at Birmingham
and then south at Edinburgh, it is rather hard to
represent us as having no meaning or opinions of
our own because we are unable entirely to grasp
the meaning and opinions of a speaker who is evi-
dently learning his own lesson while he is affecting
to teach us ours.

The truth is, that Mr. Bright has completely
changed his ground. He set to work to reform our
institutions m November 137 the application of pure
abstractions without qualification or restriction to
the complex institutions of an ancient monarchy.
The suffrage was to be lowered because every man
had a right to a vote. Equal electoral districts
were to be established because every man had a
right to an equal voice in the government. The
Reform Bill was a fraud and a farce. An hereditary
House of Peers could not exist in a free country.
Everything was abstract, clear, logical, and pre-
cise, and, like most abstract reasoners, Mr. Bright
tortured history into the form which he had pre-
viously resolved she ought to present. His method
of treatment was eminently French ; it threw prac-
tical considerations aside, and measured everything
by a metaphysical standard. But this great effort
was not successful. Mr. Bright states, and with
great truth, that there is no single member of the
House of Lords who would support such a measure
as he proposes. This is the truth, but not the
whole truth. What he says of the Peerage is true
of the landed gentry and of the vast majority of the
mercantile and manufacturing classes. They seek
no violent changes, because they experience no
serious grievances which it is in the power of
legislation to redress. No man of note or mark, not
originally committed to the movement, has been
prevailed upon to join it; and, though thousands
naturally congregate to listen to and applaud an
orator of Mr. Bright's undoubted powers, the pro-
cess of conversion seems to be to the last degree
slow and laborious. Very wisely, therefore, Mr.
Bright has discarded his abstract arguments, and
is anxious to build upon something more solid
than the rights of man. He has recovered some
respect for the revolution of 1688, is reconciled to
the Reform Bill of 1832, and is even solicitous that
we should not give too much power to the land, lest
we should shake the stability of that venerable in-
stitution the House of Lords. Mr. Bright is -work-
ing in the same direction as ever, but the ship's
head turned the other way. The wind is foul, and
he is at present reduced to tack backwards and for-
wards between the Scylla of the abstract metaphy-
sical rights on the one side and the Charybdis of
constitutional precedents on the other. We wish
him a safe deliverance from his unfortunate dilem-
ma, and have no doubt that when he has been able
to satisfy him,:elf as to the principles on which, a
Reform Bill should be based he will be able to ex-
plain them to the public with a clearness and con-
sistency which we have hitherto looked for in vain.
If ever he brings forward a bill it will be framed
much more upon the principles developed at Edin-
burgh than upon those set forth in his first oration
at Birmingham,.—Times.