The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-21 00:00:00

The Reform League.

The following address has been issued by the
president to the members of the Reform League
My Friends—The vote of last Monday in the
House of Commons has cleared the political atmos-
phere. The enemies and the friends of all real re-
form stand now in undisguised antagonism before the
country. That vote has released you from the obli-
gation you had undertaken, in a spirit of kindly and
conciliatory compromise, to suspend for a time your
advocacy of the complete enfranchisement of
the working classes, and support the more limited
measure of Parliamentary reform brought forward
by the Government. That measure, moderate as it
was, far as it fell short of the full and just rights of
the people, has been pertinaciously obstructed night
after night, and at length defeated, by a combina-
tion of treacherous Liberals with the Tory opposi-
tion. You gave your consent to support that mea-
sure in good faith ; you gave it in order to disarm
the virulence of factious hostility to a Government
which was honestly seeking to amend, though not
to the extent you desired, the representation of the
people. You gave that consent, too, in order to
show that the working classes were not the unrea-
soning and impracticable advocates of what had
been, however erroneously, described as extreme
and revolutionary projects ; in order to show that
you could respect even the prejudices of honest op-
ponents, and exercise the self-control of voluntarily
abstaining from insisting upon your legitimate par-
ticipation in the political privileges which are en-
joyed by your brethren in the colonies, and to which
the constitution of your own country, forbidding
any man to be taxed or legislated for against his
own consent, entitles you. You gave, further, your
consent to support the Government bill as an answer
to the foul insults and calumnies poured forth
against the working classes in that assembly, whose
conduct during the late discussion has been, on
many occasions, such as a meeting of working men
would have been ashamed to exhibit. All has been
in vain. The attempt to extend the right of voting
to only a small fraction of the millions still disfran-
chised has encountered the most reckless hostility,
has been met in a spirit of determined antagonism
to any real extension of the constituency ; whilst at
the same time artifice after artifice has been had
recourse to, and at length successfully-, to place the
Government in a minority. The true and gene-
rous principles upon which Mr. Gladstone so
nobly advocated the throwing open the portals
of the constitution to fellow Christians and fel-
low men have been the subject only of jest and ri-
dicule in the present Parliament. That Parliament
must be altered if the people are not content
to remain disfranchised. How is this to be
accomplished ? What is to be done in the present
crisis ? The answer seems to me to be plain and
simple. There must go forth a resolute demand for
a new and larger measure of reform—a measure to
be based upon some principle which shall, under
present circumstances, gather together into one com-
pact body the scattered forces of the great Liberal
party. Is there anything which can form this bond
of union ? It seems to me there is, and that it was
furnished in the course of the late discussion in Par-
liament, furnished by the general admission that the
principles upon which the Government measure was
founded led necessarily, in their full application, to
household, if not to manhood or universal, suffrage.
Household suffrage was distinctly advocated in that
discussion by the present greatest and most un-
daunted champion of popular rights, Mr. Bright.
It received the sanction of the Attorney-General as
the especially constitutional franchise ; it forms the
essential portion of the programme of the National
Reform Union ; it is a link between London, Man-
chester, Birmingham, and Bristol, both as regards
the great bulk of middle-class reformers, and,
probably, the majority of the working-classes; for
it is notorious that many intelligent working men,
whilst fully adhering, as do the members of the
League, to the abstract justice of manhood suffrage,
are not agreed as to its present practicability.
Household suffrage, in combination especially with
the lodger franchise, is, in fact, practically and sub-
stantially all but equivalent to what the advocates
of residential and registered manhood suffrage re-
quire. Here, then, as it seems to me, the mem-
bers of the League, whilst not abandoning in prin-
ciple the full claim of the people to manhood
suffrage, may cordially unite with all other real Re-
formers in making the vote of last Monday the basis •
of an organisation that shall eventually secure a true
and solid representation of the people in the Parlia-
ment and government of our country. The Times
of to-day alleges that the Opposition cannot be
charged with refusing to enfranchise working men,
cannot be charged with the exclusion of a single
ratepayer from the franchise, and they are ready
to apply the principle and the privilege of scot and
lot to the entire population of England. Let these
allegations be at once put to the test, my friends.
Let there go forth the resolute, unanimous deman d
for a new and larger Reform Bill, based upon the
principles of the household and lodger franchise.
Let that be your answer to the vote of last Monday.
—I am, yours most faithfully,
"June 20." " EDMOND BEALES.