The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-17 00:00:00

MB. B HT AT EDINBURGH.

The telegrapl, Ic retort of Mr. Bright's speech at i
Edinburgh, in our columns of yesterday, was avery 1
fair condensaf ion of the whole address, and we do 1,
not think it necessary to produce it in extenso.
We, hOwev, er, give the following as containing the
most. i-atexesting points.
file hon. gentleman, after referring to the ad-
v.nntages conferred by the Reform Act upon the city
of Edinburgh, said—The Reform Act of 1832 was a
great measure. I have never been one who depre-
4-elated it. It was a measure full of great results,
•and the greatest result was this—that it settled for
ever the question whether the people of England
should be contented, and whether their constitution
required that they should be contented, with a
fraudulent and sham constitution—(hear, hear)—
or whether they should have a right to demand
from Parliament that fair and full and real repre-
sentation which I hope we have met here to demand.
(Loud applause) But we have had two other
Reform Bill since this ; but I shall ask your atten-
ti-in for a moment only to the last of them—the
one that was proposed by the Government of which
Lord Aberdeen was Prime Minister, in the year
1854. That bill proposed to carry the action of
the Reform Act still further. It proposed to take
19 burghs, having 1 member, and some 2 members,
but having in all 39 seats, and totally to disfran-
chise them ; and it proposed to take 33 other burghs,
from each of which it proposed to take 1 member
and leave .1 member—thus taking from one class
of burghs 29 members, from the other class 33
members • and, recognising the disfranchising of
the burghs of St. Albans and Sudbury for corrup-
tion, giving 4 more members, it left 66 seats to be
disposed of by the bill; and those 66 seats, the bill
'was intended to enact, should be given to new and
large constituencies throughout the kingdom. Now
I have adverted to those two bills for this object
only—to show you that every plan of Parlia-
mentary reform—be it carried in 1832 by an enor-
mous uprising of the nation, or be it proposed by
a mixed and coalition Government 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—less individual influence,
less of the influence of small classes ; more of that
general influence and power which in every free
country must rest upon the great body of the
people. (Cheers.) Now our object is precisely the
same. We want to carry out the same principle
in giving to a larger number, of our countrymen
votes for members, of Parliament, and in distribut-
ing electoral power—that is, distributing seats and
members to large constituencies, instead of allow-
ing them to remain with very small and inefficient
constituencies. Now, I believe that whenever I
have spoken for the last few weeks—in fact, when.
ever I have spoken on the question at all—this has
been precisely the object which I have had in view.
It is utterly impossible to make it more clear, I
think, by language than I have endeavoured to
make it ; and yet, notwithstanding that, you know
—for I take it for granted that you all read the
newspapers—you know that there is no conceivable
mis-statement or misrepresentation which has not
been set forth to the country with regard to my
opinions and my objects in reference to this great
question ; and it is not because editors of news-
papers don't know better ; they are not like some
men who come on platforms occasionally—and I am
sorry to say even some members of Parliament, who
don't appear to comprehend what their fellow-mem-
bers say—(laughter and cheers)—editors of news-
papers are men of sufficient brains and sufficient
sagacity to comprehend that perfectly ; and I say
that the people have a right to complain of them
when they, knowingly and purposely, misrepresent
me.. (Loud cheers.) It is a fair question to discuss
what should be the parliamentary franchise if we
depart from that which now exists, and which was
established by the Reform Bill. You know that
the prevailing burgh franchise is that which is
given to every man who occupies a house of the
annual rent of £lO within the limits of a burgh.
This franchise, as we all know, excludes some of
what may be called the middle class ; but it ex-
cludes almost altogether the great body of what is
called the working class in this country. (Cheers.)
I do not believe that it is possible to maintain a law
or a clause in an act of Parliament which purposely
shuts out from the enjoyment of political rights
four-fifths or five-sixths of the grown men of the
United Kingdom, and which is obviously directed
against one particular—and that the largest—class
of our countrymen. (Applause.) Now, I propose
to take a different basis—to give a wider franchise;
and I think I shall be able to show you that the
basis is a very rational one, and that the franchise
so given would be a safe one for all purposes of a
good and honest representation. In the bill which
Lord J. Russell proposed to Parliament in 1852, he
offered a franchise fixed upon the basis of a rating
—the rating to the poor—to the amount of £5 per
annum ; and in the bill of 1854, he proposed that
it should be fixed at a £6 annual rating to the
poor, or rather, I believe, it was above £6 ; and,
therefore, if a man was rated to the poor to the ex-
tent of £6 ls., he would be entitled to a vote. Now,
I object to that mode of establishing the franchise,
on this ground, that the mode of rating differs—at
1, differs in Pwl 1 • st ---- •

.east it differs in .v..nglana—in almost every parisu ;
that in some parishes a house, probably of £8 or £9,
is not rated at more than £5 or £6 ; that in some
others a house of £6 or £7 may be rated at £5. But
a franchise establisked upon that basis would be
very unequal in different towns, in different parishes,
and in different districts ; and therefore I think it
is not suited to be the basis of a general franchise
throughout the country. To some extent the same
thing may be said of an annual rent, because we
know that the annual rent of a house in the city of
Glasgow is:very much more—taking the same kind
of house, the same squ yards, are the same comforts
of every kind—than it would be in some of the
small towns and country places of Scotland. I should
prefer that we should say that every man who is
an occupier and who is rated to the relief of the
poor—that that man should be entitled to have his
name put upon the list of electors for members of
Parliament. (Loud cheers.) Now, there is some-
thing simple, broad, and equal in a franchise upon
that-basis. I don't go now into the question of the
time of residence which Parliament would fix—six
months or twelve months, as the case might be ;
but I say that is a basis of the franchise. I believe
that it is impossible to secure one more simple, more
equal, more lust, more justified by experience than
that which I have now proposed. (Applause.). In
Scotland you are in a different position from that
in which we are in England with regard to this
rating franchise • and therefore it may be necessary
for me to state here what I have stated elsewhere,
that throughout England and Wales the whole
franchisz, the whole power of election in parochial
matters, is basis upon this right of being rated, and
upon the basis which I propose. With regard to
the repairs of highways, for example, with regard
to church rates—which I hope we shan't very long
have to vote about at all—(cheers)—with regard
to a variety of matters in which parishes interfere,
every man who is rated can vote. In our poor-
law unions, which are districts comprising
many parishes, the same franchise has been
established by act of Parliament, and in our cor-
porations, our municipal town governments—al-
though you in Edinburgh, and for anything I know,
all over Scotland, merely vote for your town coun-
cillors if you vote for members of Parliament ; in
England it is not so, but all persons who are rated
as householders in the burgas are entitled to vote
for the election of members of their common coun-
cils and their corporations. Well, then, I venture
to say that the experience of the past in our
parishes, in our poor-law unions, in our corpora-
tions, has sufficiently demonstrated that to that
extent at least the people of Englaird—and I doubt
not the people of Scotland and the people of Ireland
—may be fairly and safely entrusted with the right
of electing members of the House of Commons.
(Applause.) I stated the other night at a great
meeting in Manchester that so long ago as sixty
years" back Lord Grey (the late Lord Grey), Mr.
Pox, and many other members of the House of
Commons who supported them, were in favour of
a household franchise. Now, let us for one
moment ask ourselves how much there has been of
increased education and intelligence, of general
improvement, and of an advanced civilisation,
amongst all classes of the people of this country
during that period. Take one particular branch of
inquiry—that of your Sunday school education. I
was talking the other day to a most estimable
gentleman, who spends a great amount of his time
on this particular and most beneficial branch of
voluntary exertion, and he told me that he believed
it could be proved that there were 250,000 Sunday-
school teachers in the country—(cheers)—that they
have under their tuition, and have had for many
years past, almost all the children cf those classes
by whom Sunday schools are being used. I don't
believe that all the statesmen that you have
those of.ficials who set us down
for
knowing nothing about public affairs—l don't be-
lieve that all the efforts they have ever made have
tended so much to the greatness, and the happiness,
and the security, and to the true glory of this coun-
try as have the efforts ofyour Sunday-school teachers.
(Loud cheers.) But let MC let you into one secret. It
is not at all because the ruling class don't think you
intelligent enough that they don't want to give you
the franchise generally. The more intelligent you
become, the more instructed, especially with regard
to public affairs and public finance and foreign
affairs, and all those matters which are included in
the name of government—the more completely fur-
nished you become with regard to all thole
the more they will dread the time when -political

power is universally extended amongst the people.
(Applause.) The illiterate, the depraved, the care-
less--all these can be managed—there are many
means of managing them by cajolery or by force ;
but it is the intelligent, hard-headed, instructed.
thoughtful, resolute citizen that the privileged classes
don't like. (Loud applause.) Well, now for a
moment let us look at our county representation.
The original franchise in the counties—in the
counties of England, for I am not so fully informed
upon the legal peculiarities in the Scottish franchise
as to speak without hesitation upon them—but in
England and Wales the great franchise up to the
Reform Bill was that of the freeholder, and any
man possessing a freehold of the value of 40s. a
year was an elector for the county. (Cheers.) I
have not the smallest doubt that in any measure of
reform proposed by any ministry, or at least car-
ried by any parliament, that 40s. freehold franchise
must necessarily and inevitably be extended.
(Loud applause.) But up to 1832, the time of the
Reform Bill, the county franchise did not admit of
what is called an occupation franchise, and it was
not the author or authors of the Reform Bill who
proposed that change. It was proposed, as you
know, by a member of the House of Commons, now
a member of the House of Peers, and who did it for
the express object of giving increased power to the
.neat proprietors of the soil. If I had been in par-
liament when it was proposed to give the franchise
to every occupier of £5O and upwards, it is most
probable that I should have voted for it. But we
are really indebted, if I may so speak, to the anti-
democratic class, to the privileged class, to the great
territorial proprietors, for the departure from the
original conservative element of county represen-
tation based upon the actual ownership of the land.
Well, now comes the point. Is it time, having
adopted an occupation franchise of £5O and up-
wards—is it time, do you think, to bring it a little
lower ? If there be 200,000 persons in the coun-
ties having occupations of £5O and upwards, and
there be 400,000 lower than £5O, and yet as high
as £lO, does it appear to you safe and reasonabe
that we should abandon the line of £5O occupancy,
and come down at least to as low as 210 occupancy?
(Cheers.) Now there is one point of view in which
I think even the most timid will be reassured with
regard to this matter. A £5O occupancy of a farm
supposes that a man has a farm—varying, of course,
according to the quality of his land and the near-
ness to a market—of perhaps from 20 to 50 acres.
But taking the estimate of the income tax, which
says in England that a farmer's profit is only equal
to one-half his rent, and I think in Scotland that a
farmer'i; profit is only equal to one-third of his
rent, itis clear that, according to the income tax
estimate, a farmer who only pays £5O a year of
rent, and has no other source of income, is not sup-
posed to receive a profit of more than £25 per an-
num. Well, his income may be more than £25,
because, apart from the profit he may receive, that
which would be welgesto himself if he worked upon
some other farm as much as he works on his own,
and therefore £25 may not be an exactly fair esti-
mate of the income of such a man. But a house
in the country to which there is no land attached,
of £lO per annum, in any country !district of Scot-
land, surely you will admit that no man would live
in a house and pay £lO per annum of rent in the
country districts of Scotland, who had not an in-
come of more than £25 per annum. (Laughter
and cheers.) I think few men would live in ahouse
of £lO in the country districts of Scotlandwho had
not an income varying from £7O to £lOO a year.
If that be so, we come inevitably to the conclusion
that the high probability is that every occupier of a
house of £lO in the country districts of Scotland is a
man of a larger annual income than the man
who has no other income but that which he derives
from a farm, the annual rent of which is £so—
I think that is not an inconclusive
argument, but rather a satisfactory argument to
those timid persons who may not have examined
this question so much as I have, and who fear that
if you lower the franchise in the counties from a
£5O to a £lO occupation you admit a large number
of persons apparently of less intelligence and edu-
cation, so far as intelligence and education are to be
measured by the test of their annual income. Now
we come to the question of what we shall do after
we have settled the question of the franchise—that
all ratepayers in burghs, for example, have the
vote—that all £lO and upwards occupiers in coun-
ties have the vote. There is another most important
part of a Reform Bill, and that is, to carry out fur-
ther what was commonly called schedule A—the
disfranchising clause of the Reform Bill of 1832.
Well, I presume that every man would say at once
that you must take a certain line of population, or
of number of electors, or of amount of payment to
the taxes, or of rateable property, and of property
charged to the income tax. From one or from all
of these you must draw some line, and you must
disfranchise the burghs which are below that line,
because you conclude that they are not entitled to
that amount of political power in Parliament which
is designated by the returning of two members, or
even of one member, to the House of Commons. And
if their be a certain number of burghs which you
must disfranchise entirely, there -will probably be
another number of burghs which youj must par-
tially enfranchise, just as you did in the Reform
Act, and then you will give a number of seats more
or less as you draw the line—and those members and
seats you must re-apportion in some cases to new
constituencies not now enfranchised, and in others
you must re-apportion them in greater numbers to
the larger constituencies of the country. I think
I could show a plan which would be satisfactory to
all those persons who wish for an honest Parlia-
mentary reform. You have in Parliamentary returns
accounts of the population of every burgh, of the
rateable property in every burgh, of th• property
which pays income fax in every burgh, under sche-
dule A, which includes land and houses, under
schcdile D, which includes the profits upon trade.
You have, in fact, all the statistics, all the details,
all the facts, to enable you to judge how far one
town, or one cluster of towns, is more entitled to
power than another smaller town, or less impor-
tant cluster of towns. Now, if you have happened
lately to read some articles in the Times newspaper
you will have observed that the Times is in a con-
dition of great difficulty. ( A laugh.) It looks to
me very much like what one could imagine of that
great steamship that has not yet gone to sea—if
you could imagine that great steamship in the Bay
of Biscay, with its propeller driving it one way and
its paddlewheels driving it the other—without
cargo, and without chart, and without compass, and
without sailing regulations, and with nobody on
board who understood nautical affairs—you would
see something very much like • the condition in
which I fear the Times newspaper is at this mo-
ment. (Renewed laughter.) The Times, as you
know, is accustomed generally to go with the
strongest, and-the moment the Times finds that the
people of the United Kingdom are in earnest on the
question of reform, they will just be as zealous and
as entirely with us as they were during the year
1831 and the year 1832. (Cheers.) But the Times
just now asks me in repeated leading articles, why
I deal in these vague and general statements, and
why I don't tell the public exactly the details of
the measure which, on behalf of many reformers in
England, I have been requested to prepare ? Well,
but the Times, as a great public instructor, has said
much more to the public than ever I have, and the
Times professes to be wise on the question of Par-
liamentary reform ; but the Times has never con-
descended to put the clauses of its act of Parlia-
ment in any leading article that I have seen. (A
laugh.) The Times not long ago supported a Go-
vernment that was pledged to Parliamentary re-
form. Lord Palmerston was pledged to introduce a
bill, as I have been requested to introduce one. He
was a minister, and I am not; but in all that time
I don't recollect one single occasion on which the
Times insisted-upon it that Lord Palmerston should
explain the exact clauses of his bill. (Cheers.) All
that I can promise the Times is this, that wherever
I attend a public meeting, if it be possible for lan-
guage to do it, I will make my audience understand
what are the principles which I think should guide
any measure of parliamentary reform ; and I hope
it will be such—and I have great reason to believe
that it will be such—as will entitle it to the confi-
fidence of the reformers of this nation. (Applause.)
But now, turning to the county members once
more. The other day there was a meeting, I think,
in Warwickshire, and a gentleman, a member of
Parliament for one of the divisions of Warwick-
shire, went into the question of county representa-
tion. Now that gentleman, Mr. Newdegate, is a
man who is profound in statistics. There is no
amount of labour that he wont give if he once finds
himself amongst a heap of figures. But, strong as
he is in statistics, I know hardly anybody more
confined or more feeble on any question of princi-
ple. Now Mr. Newdegate was a great friend of
the agricultural interest ; and you know that he
was one of the very strongest supporters to the very
last of the principle of protection. He had abun-
dance of statistics to prove that he was right. Well,
fortunately for himself as a landowner, fortunately
for all the tenants of the United Kingdom, and
still more fortunately for the people of this country,
the great majority of whom have to work for their
living, all Mr. Newdegate's principles and statistics
nv
oe rubbish.dii e, carted,,p ua ( t
some.
oLNI
were
elacirgse it
N.oTee(reb,youptailiamtheentllsooumseucohf Cuottme;
Now, Mr. Newdegate, I am
question to mc, and rather dared me
to meet him on the question of county representa-
tion. He is anxious that the counties should have
far more members than they have at present, and
a far larger shareiu the representation of the House
of Commons. I believe that if he really understood
-iomething of. the. constitution, of object ePluatry, and
something of the basis and the of the House