The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-18 00:00:00

present deficiency. The wrongs of existing boroughs are
thus" redressed, but there remain some large and populous
districts which have hitherto been entirely unrepresented.
Su& are Chelsea, Kensington, Gravesend, Burnley, and
Birkenhead. • Mr. Bright acts cautiously in this matter. He
enfranchises 7 at an expense of 9 seats, but he wisely retains,
seven unappropriated seats to sustain the hopes and excite '
the emulation of his supporters. Mr. Bright has thus dis-
posed of 104 out of his 130 seats entirely, as it will be seen,
among the large boroughs. He has only 26 remaining.
These he bestows upon the English. and Irish counties, in
the proportion of 18 to England and 8 to Ireland. Thus he
makes up his tale of 130, and with some unimportant re-
appointment of their own members among the Scotch coun-
ties Mr. Bright's scheme, so far as regards enfranchisement
and disfranchisement, is complete.
We do not profess to pass ajudgmerit upon this important
document upon the hasty perusal which the hour at which
we received it has permitted us to give to it. Cuvier or
Owen may tell the habits and instincts of an unseen beast
by contemplating a single tooth of the creature, but we
prefer to form an opinion upon a leisurely examination of
the entire animal. Every one, will be struck by the strong
contrast between. Mr. Bright's speeches • and Mr. Bright's
bill ; every one will be a little surprised to find that Mr.
Bright's bill is not so wildly extravagant as those who be-
lieved the orator expected from the lawgiver. But still, this
proposition involves a tremendous change. The proposal
is to take 78 seats from the• country party, and to give them
to the towns. This change' of 78 seats would couat 156
upon a division. This is the practical effect of the scheme,
so far as we have it yet. before us. Mr. Bright strikes off
from the rural boroughs 130 'members. Of these he gives
104 to the towns and 26 to the., counties. The balance
against the county party is 78. What other ele-
ments of a democratic character there . may be in
the bill we cannot yet know, but this redistribution
alone is quite sufficient to overthrow the existing balance
of interests in our Horse of Commons. The counties, it
' must brernarked, get nothing in this distribution, for the
26 added Members cannot be considered as 'even equal to
the mass of population and property now nearly thrown
into the counties th the shape of those 65 boroughs which
are hereafter to be portions of the county constituencies.
We are however, rather expounding than criticising. This
scheme,has evidently been prepared with great labour, and
it is put forth as one to which some persons in Parliament,
and -many more out of Parliament have bound theniselves.
It is, moreover, the first of, the rival Reform Bills. It de-
serves, in every point of view, very careful consideration ;
and we hope that Mr: Bright and his friends will, enable us
to discuss his measure in its complete form with all its
details before us.

(From, the Morning Herald.)
Our representative institutions are now upon their trial.
This form of government has been for centuries a continued
success amongst us, securing to all classes not only a won-
derful degree of prosperity, but also A fair share of political
power. Yet representative institutions are assailed by cer-
tain members of the community as if they had proved in-
jurious to liberty instead of having served as its best de-
fence. Minor defects and petty inconveniences are pounced
Upon with avidity, and because perfection has not been
attained the whole system is , condemned. There are,
in fact, certain persons who regard anything approach-
ing to an equitable distribution of political power and
a fair representation of conflicting interests with
jealousy.. They desire to place the: supremacy in the
hands of a single -class, to change the character of our
House of Commons, and make it a national assembly, in-
stead of a'council composed of ambassadors from the differ-
ent interests of the kingdom. In spite of the repeated
failure of- democratic experiments in continental states, in
defiance of the warning recently uttered by the President of
the United States, 'they cling to the fatal delusion that
universal suffrage, electoral districts; and vote by ballot,
will bring prosperity and contentment to a nation. -Stub-
-born facts convey a different moral, but these adiocates pay
no heed whatever either to arguments or,facth that are in
opposition to their own narrow views. The admission by
the'first magistrate of the AmeriCan 'Republic, -that either
in a dissolution of the confederacy or in a military despo-
tism the license of democratic rule must terminate, fails to
produce conviction in their minds. . They keep hammering
away at the old theme as vigorously as if nothing had hap-
pened, and believe, or pretend to believe, that by a change
in the time-honoured institutions of a state corruption of
every Hz:twill be removed, and man's fallen nature be
purified and rendered immaculate, In fact, they promise
to effect by, political changes the great work of the regene-
ration of- the human race, which a higher authority has
told us is beyond-the scope of mortal achievement.
The new regenerators of mankind have found, in the
member for Birminghani an enthusiastic ally. - During
the recess he has toiled diligently,- though not con-
sistently, at the scheme. One day the Sisyphus of
democracy has rolled the heavy stone of reform a few
paces up the incline, the next he has tried to push it
in quite a- different direction. He began the crusade
with the exploded doctrine of man's inalienable right
to the suffrage. The first speech at Birmingham was
but a feeble echo of the revolutionary cry .of ' Liberty,
equality, and fraternity." But the common sense of Eng-
lishmen revolted at the idea of a crusade against our exist-
ing institutions, waged after this fashion, and Mr. Bright
moderated his tone. He abandoned universal suffrage in
despair, and declared that he only wished to extend the Re-
form Bill of 1832, which he had before denounced in the
strongest manner. Last night the hon. gentleman enlight-
ened the people of Bradford- on the principles of the mea-
sure itself. If we call to mind the virulence with which
Mr. Bright has assailed the 'constitution of this country we
are constrained to admit that his measure is, comparatively
speaking, harmless. The Assailant of Crown, Lords; and
Commons, has come down from the sterile heights of demo-
cratic innovation, and only asks for a small instalment of
the destruction hei once openly preached. Even this stal-
wart champion's eyes have been opened to the impossibility
of reducing England to the dimensions of a fourth-rate
power. He is aware that wholesale and indiscriminate at-
tack has damaged his cause, so he suddenly gives up the
panaceas that were to accomplish marvels. Not a word
does ho now say of electoral districts or universal suffrage.
The bill contains 12 schedules, and the sword of, disfran-
chisement is brandished over the heads of certain consti-
tuencies, while other favoured localities are to receive an
accession of members. But this champion of the rights of
man did not tell his audience why a person dwelling in one
of the smaller borbughs should be deprived even of 'a single
vote, while the favoured inhabitant of either of the two
wards into which the city of Manchester is to be portioned
out will have three. If the franchise can he claimed by
'every Briton as a right, how are we to account for this
anomaly ? Mr. Bright has abandoned his theory,
and his object is to secure for the manufacturing
towns the preponderance. So he shapes his bill in such a
way that all the smaller boroughs will be entirely abolished
and the larger towns obtain additional members. We need
not on this occasion comment upon his positive injustice to
the counties. Why are their large populations to be left
out of the calculation and the boroughs, that already enjoy
a preponderance, to have
that preponderance increased ?
With one breath Mr. Bright argues in favour of numbers,
with the next he declares that numbers in the counties go
for nothing. It is only in boroughs that the individual
elector attains full development and stands the least chance
of obtaining what has been rather facetiously described as
his birthright. •
One fact will show the positive unfairness, not to say in-
justice, of the scheme. It is proposed, in schedule G, that
five boroughs,.ekeeeding 316,000 inhabitants, and nosy re-
turning two members each, shall in future return six mem-
bers each. These boroughs are to be divided into two
wards, each ward returning three members, and each elector
is to be registered in one ward only. Our readers will na-
turally ask why the number of inhabitants has been fixed at
the arbitrary standard of 316,000 ? The answer will afford
an idea of Mr. Bright's lave of fair play. This schedule
contains the names of five boroughs—Liverpool, with its
375,955 inhabitants ; Marylebone, with 370,957 ; Glasgow,
with 329,097; Finsbury, with 323,772; and Manchester,
with 316,213 inhabitants. The number 316,000 inhabi-
tants has been fixed upon as giving to a borough the right
of returning six members to Parliament, and fortunate
Manchester has exactly two hundred and thirteen to spare.
By a happy coincidence the great cotton mart comes within
the magic circle. Dublin can boast of 265,252 inha-
bitants—that is, 50,961 less than Manchester, -the
well-beloved—and is to return only four members.
But the population of Manchester is less than that of
Liverpool by 59,742 souls, yet both boroughs are to
return the same number of members to Parliament.
Dublin has fifty thousand nine hundred and sixty-one in-
habitants less than Manchester, and for that reason loses
two members. Manchester has fifty-nine thousand seven
hundred and forty-two inhabitants less than Liverpool, yet
is to have equal privileges in this new reform scheme. Such
is the equitable arrangement contemplated by Reformers
who tell us that numbers form the proper basis of repre-
sentation, and who talk lou ly on the rights of all men and,'
of justice being rigidly adm nistered.
1
This is only one specimen and by no means the worst, to
be found in a proposal that has been industriously puffed in
many quarters, and is regal -pied as the bill of rights of those
who. desire to substitute class legislation for our represen-
tative institutions. The rating franchise for boroughs, and
a ten-pound qualification for counties, have gained' the
mastery over the inalienable-right doctrine, and Mr.
Bright, who a short time since refused to place any limits
whatever to the franchise, destroys at one fell swoop the
rising hopes of many an unfledged elector. The modern
Prospero doffs his mantle and breaks his wand, and endea-
vours to follow, though with his usual eccentricity and
exaggeration, the antecedents of other Reformers. He in-
creases the number of members in one direction, and sweeps
away a constituency in another ; but he is no longer the
real Simon Pure, and those who remember his former
pledges ask in amazement for an explanation of the enigma.
It is not, however, our duty to account for the inconsis-
tencies of these advocates. It is sufficient for us to show
that those who denounce everybody and everything have
their weak side, and that between their promises and their
performance a wide distinction exists. It is not only in
the drama that the unities of time, place, and action are
violated, and farces as well as tragedies are sometimes per-
formed by very solemn actors. Such assuredly was the
case at Bradford last night, and we are not surprised to
learn that model Reformers are already making wry faces.

POSTAL COMMUNICATION BETWEEN IRELAND
AND ENGLAND.—The city article of the Freeman of yester-
day says the City of Dublin Steam Company held a special
meeting on Saturday to receive the report of the directors
in reference to the contract for the mail service. The re-
port was adopted. There are to be two departures from
Dublin-7 a.m. and 7.30 p.m; and two from London—at
7.30 a.m. and 8.30 p.m. The distance to be performed in
eleven hours, or a penalty of 345. a minute. Four boats,
600-horse power and 300 feet long, to be built for the ser-
vice, with a speed of 20 miles an hour.. The. contract Was
signed on the 3d of January, and the company must be
ready to start to work in two years.
lAuvEratsEmENT.l—Holloway's Pills and Ointment—
Health—Air.—The
mildness of the present welther,
though a boon to the very poor and destitute, who, Flovous
to relate, often want food and raiment, is weakening and
enervating to the body ; hence fever, diphtheria, chest com-
plaints, and gout have been so prevalent, and in some loca-
lities an epidemic diphtheria has prevailed, as at Salisbury
and Windsor; in -both places Holloway's- preparations
checked that and its kindred febrile complaints With uner-
ring certainty, and the pills, taken as preventives, saved
hundreds from receiving the infection or disorder, Hol-
loway's medicines correct the depressing effects of this mild,
dump weather; they purify the blood and restore tone fo-
every organ in the body, more especially:Al tkitbrai4 aud,
nvves.