The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PDBLIO JOURNALS.

TlMES.—After so many years of discussion the
arguments for Parliamentary Reform do not admit
of much novelty. The cry for it is deep and strong
rather than varied. No reasoning in its favour can
be more effective than that which presents itself to
the mind of every man who can understand a page
of statistics, and has before him a list of the coun-
ties and boroughs with their constituencies and
members. When one can show that a place little
larger than a village, and far less innocent, returns
as many members as a vast seat of industry ; that
the majority of the House of Commons is elected by
a small minority of the population ; that members
of the same family are returned in a county Par-
liament after Parliament and generation after gene-
ration, he has what no impartial person can deny to
be a strong, and, indeed, an unanswerable, case in
favour of Reform. The task of exposing these ano-
malies and shortcomings is so easy that no gifted
advocate is wanted ; the dullest among the briefless
would be almost as effective as a Scarlett or a Fol-
lett ; the mediocrities of a provincial meeting can
strike as heavy a blow as the most approved orator
and statesman. But the very obviousness of the
chief arguments for an improvement in our electoral
system tend to give Reform demonstrations an air
of sameness. A great multitude of people all over
the kingdom are convinced that the number of
Parliamentary electors is far too limited, and that
the apportionment of members to population is not
only anomalous, but absurd and mischievous.
The changes that :have taken place in foreign
countries, and the general extension of the fran-
chise even among our Continental neighbours,
cause numbers of the English people to believe,
not without reason, that the time has come
for our own country to bring within the electoral
pale a large class of educated men. In various
ways the Liberal party has been maintaining this
principle for years past, and it is now supported
by great gatherings of the labouring classes who
urge such a measure as would include the mass of
themselves—namely, the adoption of what is called
Manhood Suffrage. But, whether it be a moderate
Reformer or a Manhood Suffrage-man who speaks,
the arguments are pretty much the same, and they
are the old unanswerable ones derived from the
abuses and anomalies of the present system. The
rhetoric of the speakers is rather directed against the
tangible defects which the Parliamentary Companion
reveals to every one who chooses to look at it than
employed in positive reasoning of the philosophical
order in favour of the rights of man, or of the statis-
tical kind in favour of any definite lower franchise.
For these reasons the speeches delivered at Reform
meetings do not display much originality, or tell us
much that we did not know before. We do not
say that they are on that account less effective, for
a crowned meeting is not a place where sustained
argument has the best chance of success ; and, as
these demonstrations are gatherings to insist on cer-
tain well-known principles, the fewer, the broader,
and the plainer the arguments advanced the more
aptly does the speaker take hold on the sympathies
of his audience. But even Mr. Bright is unable to
avoid something like repetition. When we read
his address at Manchester on Monday evening we
cannot help thinking that we heard all this before.
The million and a quarter of men who have the
franchise are contrasted with the five millions who
are without it. The boroughs under 20,000 people
are put in the scale against the boroughs over 20,000,
and the income-tax of the one is weighed against
the income-tax of the other. The county repre-
sentation is declared not to be an honest represen-
tation, but a dead body tied to the living body of
the borough representation. The remedy for the
evils of the State is, in Mr. Bright's opinion, the
establishment of large constituencies and the taking
of votes by ballot. We have again the denuncia-
tions of the malignant and discreditable opposition
made to the bill of the late Government, and Mr.
Lowe's remarks on the present ten-pounders are
again recommended for general circulation among
working men. Beyond these topics there is little to
be found in Mr. Bright's speech, except that he is
more than usually vehement against Lord Derby and
the Tory party. It may be that Mr. Bright felt it
necessary to confine himself to the generalities of
the Reform question, inasmuch as the demonstration
was under the patronage of the Reform League, and
most of the speakers were 'Manhood Suffragemen,
while he does not commit himself to so extensive a
change. There is no reason, indeed, why a political
body should not comprise men who differ as to the
extent of the measures they demand, but it is evident
that such a divergence must make the speakers who
have to face the House of Commons a few months
hence somewhat shy of descending to details. Mr.
Bright does not think it necessary to state his own
views of a reform bill, or to consider whether such a
bill as even his own political friends in the House of
Commons would propose is likely to accord with the
principles advanced by Mr. Beales and his fellow
agitators. But of one thing he appears to be cer-
tain—that Lord Derby cannot, and indeed ought
not, to be permitted to deal with Reform. Mr.
Bright's anger against the party now in office seems
to have deepened during the recess, and his personal
attacks on the Premier form the most striking fea-
ture of his late address. After incidentally describ-
ing him as " not the wisest of men," Mr. Bright
takes occasion to give a short sketch of the noble
earl's career, and to say that he is not the leader of
his party in a high sense—not its educator, not its
guide, but its leader in all foolish contests in which
in its ignorance and selfishness it involves itself with
the people. All this was to be expected, and in the
usual style of platform oratory. But Mr. Bright,
who can be polite to noblemen when he pleases, is
not likely to go out of his way to make an invective
on the chief of the Conservatives, unless with a definite
object in view. It is plain that in the Radical ranks a
reform bill from the present Government is expected,
and it seems as if it were thought desirable to raise
a cry against it beforehand. Mr. Bright hopes that
no Reformer will dream of such a thing as that the
Conservatives will pass a Reform Bill. Any such
measure will only be some juggle, some dishonest
trick, something base, like the means by which
they overthrew the bill of Lord Russell's Govern-
ment. We think it would have been better if
Mr. Bright had followed the example of Mr. Glad-
stone, and declared his readiness to judge any forth-
coming measure on its merits, and to support it or
oppose it irrespective of party. What the intentions
of the present Ministry may be is only known to
themselves, but their policy, no less than their duty,
is to propose to the House of Commons an efficient
measure of Reform, which, without being less broad
and liberal than that of the late Government, shall
avoid the gross defects which made that hastily con-
structed measure intolerable both to friends and foes.
This there is no reason that they should nob do, nor
can we think that any impartial politician would
stigmatise the bill of 1859, which Mr. Bright holds
up as an example of Tory legislation, as a "Reform
Bill of a most fraudulent character." That bill pro-
posed nothing less than the reduction of the county
franchise to £lO, which would have added 200,000
voters to the county constituencies alone, and fully
revivified that " dead body" of which Mr. Bright
speaks. It also proposed a lodger franchise, which
would have added a large and respectable class to the
borough electors. There is nothing at all in the
bill of 1859 which should make us believe that a Con-
servative Ministry is unable to frame such a measure
as shall satisfy the country. At any rate, the Go-
vernment are entitled to the forbearance of the pub-
lic until its measure is before Parliament. We fully
admit that the settlement of the Reform question can
be no longer delayed, and that if the Government
propose any measure justly chargeable with ineffi-
ciency and evasion, they will deserve the downfall
that will overtake them. But there will be time
enough to rail against them in February next. To
begin now will seem as if it was Lord Derby's suc-
cess rather than his failure that was feared.
POST.—" The summer has set in with unusual
severity" is a saying to which the perpetual inver-
sion of the seasons to which we are in this country
accustomed has long lent the sanction of an acknow-
ledged truth. But we generally hope to see in the
course of the months which form the season so
designated some little gleam of sunshine, some
cheering and ripening rays, and in our wildest mo-
ments perhaps even such a glimpse of blue sky as
may last for the greater part of a morning ; in
short, the hope that springs eternal in the human
breast generally whispers to us with the first cutting
and dashing blasts and rains of spring that even an
English summer has some fine days in it ; that Mr.
Kingsley's beloved north-easter, if it brings cold,
also brings sunshine, and that the south-
wester is laden with a little warmth as well as much
rain. This present year, however, has not even done
so much for those of us who endeavour to find some-
thing good in our native clime. The summer has
not only set in, but appears determined to go out,
with severity, and we are driven back upon the des-
perate hope that it cannot last for ever, and that
the autumn may perhaps yet have a few unclouded

days in store to gladden the heart of the farmer and
the sailor. The accounts of agricultural prospects
are most disheartening. On every side is heard the
same tale of crops which have been spoiled, and
which even then cannot be gathered for the heavy
rains. Indeed, for a long time past the harvest has
not been reaped under such difficulties, nor been ei
such an inferior quality ; and this year will be long
remembered as having been one of peculiar misfer"
tune for the agricultural interest, whose herds were
decimated in the spring by the Rinderpest to an
extent perfectly appalling, and whose crops are noW
blighted beyond hope by the unparalleled succession
of storms which has marked the season, on the
nature of which they are so entirely dependent'
The loss will be most enormous, and the farmere
have a strong claim on the sympathy of the public
at large—a claim so much the stronger that the evil
is of the nature of those which cannot possibly he
averted by any prudence, industry, or foresight of
those who are victims to it. It is precisely in the
same category as the cotton famine in Lancashire,
and the sufferers in this case have not as they had
in that the consolation —a poor one, it is true, but
still a consolation--of knowing that the evil is
occasioned by a course of events the tendency 0t
which is in accordance with their own opinions.
The Lancashire operatives sympathised all through
with the very measures of repression which deprived,
them of the means of earning their livelihood, and
were intelligent enough to find some comfort in the
reflection that, although their industry was for the
moment annihilated, it was in order to the advance-
ment of opinions identical with their own. But the
Yorkshire farmer and the Dorsetshire labourer have
no such consolation; their evil for them is all perS
loss ; so far as it goes there is absolutely no remedy
for it or comfort in it, and they can but fall back
upon the hope of better times in the future. The
Lancashire operatives received much praise—an",
deservedly so—for the peaceable and intelligentspirit in which they endured the calamity which fell
upon them. The nation was continually called upon
to bear a willing witness to the fact that there viere
no riotings, mill-burnings, or violence of any kin"
in consequence of the cotton famine. The agricul-
tural class is not less intelligent, and certainly 110 t
less law-loving than the operative class, and the pro-
priety with which the heavy misfortune of a ruined
crop of home produce is met and borne with by
those whose livelihood depends upon it is certainly
not less deserving, in its degree, of sympathy than
a similar propriety in the case of foreign produce'
Mr. Bright alluded to the absence of violence and
disorder, in the present instance, in his speech at
Manchester on Monday evening, and, with charac-
teristic modesty, took all the credit to himself and,
his party, but it would have been at least graceful
if he had but recognised the existence in the agricul-
tural classes of those classes which he so constantly,
paraded as existing in the manufacturing classes et
those qualities which he so constantly paraded as
existing in the manufacturing classes on the similar.
occasion to which we have referred. But it is ine
peculiarity to perceive only the interests and the
virtues of the class of which he has especially consti-
tuted himself the representative, and in the present
instance he sees the question only as it affects the
consumer, while in the former he saw it only as It
affected the producer, and in each case he twists it
round to prove the enormous superiority of his
clients to all other created beings. IN or has the
summer been unfavourable alone to the harvest'
Commerce has also greatly suffered. There is such
a thing as landsmen's foul weather, which is sailors'
fine weather, but this summer it has been univer-
sally bad both ashore and afloat. A low barometer,
gales of wind, and that greatest enemy of the sailor,
thick rain, have been the rule; and the average dura-
tion of voyages has not for years—regard being bat'
to the increased facilities—been so great during the
summer months as it has this year. The wreck
chart, too, has received far more than its usual ad-
dition for the season, and those who go down t°
the sea in ships will long remember the delays and
daggers which they have encountered this season
during the months when fair weather is expected t°
be the rule. On the Continent, even in the sPots
usually most favoured, the same state of things has
prevailed, and the effects will be there even more
sensibly felt than in England. The maize and wheat
are beaten down by continual rains, and the vines,
which at this time should be burnt up and covered
with ripened fruit, are as green as in spring, and
laden with nothing but decayed and tasteless grapey
In the Medoc the vintage, which by this time shoal
l;
be long over, is but now begun, and the quality of
the claret of 1866 will be such as to place it among
the worst of the years that have ever been known'
In the Sauterne district, and indeed everywhere)
the same state of things exists. The grapes,
drenched with rain, have filled out to bursting, an"'
having had no sun to ripen them, are either already
rotting on the earth or will yield but a tasteless/
bodiless liquid, utterly valueless for wine making'
In fact there has been no summer at all, and the
season which bears that name has brought but dis-
appointment, discouragement, and in too many 1n,.;
stances ruin, to those who depend upon it for the"
bread. The predictions of the continental weather
seers are not more reassuring for the autumn, but
there is some hope, even from the very severity of
the past months, that we may yet see a t
Martin's summer, which, although it cannot make
up to the crops what they lack, will yet gladden._
our hearts and lead us to hope for better things
next year.