The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-23 00:00:00

retention of those small • boroughs where the franchise,
though apparently the same, is really higher, which gives
us that calm wisdom and fair intelligence which interposes,
as the hon. gentleman has well said, between rival interests
—between the agricultural classes, on the one hand, and
the great urban populations, on the other. (Cheers.) Ido
not say that this or any other argument would avail to save
those smaller boroughs in proportion as the larger towns
grew up in wealth and importance. I feel that I must
leave the small boroughs at present to the able defence of
the hon. gentleman opposite. What I say is, that in the
meanwhile you need not be in a hurry to get rid of a ma-
chinery which adds to the power of this house by insuring
the varied accomplishments of its members and increasing
the number of competitors for the government of the
country. (Cheers.) This advantage Ido not think is
to be counterbalanced merely by transferring the seats
taken from smaller boroughs either to counties or to towns
already represented, and thus diminishing the number
of members who have nothing but the business of the
State to think of. (Cheers.) And Ido fear that when-
ever that transfer is effected, whenever the smaller
boroughs wholly vanish out of our system, you will realise
the same evil of which America complains, of which
our free colonies, such as Canada and Australia, com-
plain already—viz, that when only very popular con-
stituencies exist members become rather delegates than
representatives; men of large property, of refined education
of independent character, decline to enter into political life,
and the popular Assembly ceases to represent, what this
house now does, the highest and noblest elements of the
general community. (Cheers.) Sir, in the curious corre-
spondence between Mirabeau and the Count de la Merck, in
which the Count was engaged in obtaining Mirabeau's aid
to save the monarchy, I forget his exact words, but they are
to this effect; Mirabeau said,—" I am afraid it is too late.
In destroying an aristocracy ofland you have made an aris-
tocracy of money, which of all aristocracies is the most
timid ; you have made a democracy of large towns which,
of all democracies, is the most fickle. I fear it is too late,
and the monarchy is gone." (Cheers.) The monarchy went.
What went with it ? Did not liberty go ? Monarchy
in one shape or other was soon restored ; monarchy
reigns still. Has liberty been restored as well ? What
killed liberty? The democracy of large towns, and the
terror which democracy itself had of its own excess.
For democracy in France still exists—a democracy of
universal suffrage and vote by ballot. Pardon me if I prefer
the freedom of which this house, with its tempered suffrage,
is still the guardian—a freedom safe, because education
controls and property does not fear it. Hon. gentlemen. ask, "Are you afraid of the working man ?" Certainly
not; I am proud of the English workman, whether he be
the simple village peasant, with his homely virtues, or that
more agitated but, with all his faults, that noble human
being, the skilled mechanic of our manufacturing towns,
with his thirst forknowledge and his dreams or some poli-
tical Utopia, quite as rational as Plato himself had dreamed.
But it is one thing to admire the individual, and respect
the class he belongs to, it is another thing to say that to
that class you will intrust all the destinies of England. I
would intrust the destinies of England to no single class
whatever but if you admit the working men, as a body,
their numbers alone give them a large majority in every
constituency, and Mils all the education and property of
the other classes roust be borne down by that class in which.
education is of necessity the least diffused, and by which
the laws that affect property must be the most imperfectly
understood, (Cheers.) And here, sir, Ido complain of the
dangerous vent of candour' with which hon. gentlemen
opposite -hove made their appeal to the working class—the
noble lorg• the member for London and the right hon. bast.
the menther for Halifax both say that the fault of the bill
is that it does not admit the working clan s ; they dwell on
this objection; they inflame the working men with the be-
lief that they shall come into the franchise not by threes
an .d fours, but by hundreds and thousands, and then in the
Rome breath they declare that they have no idea of admit-
ting the numbers whose expectations they so cruelly excite.
(Cheers.) No, you do not admit the ;numbers, but you lay
down the principle by which they must be either admitted
or deceived. You would lower the suffrage on the express
principle that it ought to include the working class. Does
it do so by the mysterious franchise which the noble lord
would give but declines to divulge, then the evil is accom-
plished. Does it not do so, then you have equally conceded
the principle that must accomplish the evil ; for the work-
men excluded by the suffrage will never rest till they are
admitted by the principle you allow. And I venture to pre-
dict, when you talk of releasing the elements of democracy—
and upon this subject I have heard some of the most deplo-
rable rubbish that ever was talked by educated men—that
whenever the noble lord and the member for Halifax bring
forward their measure, and the workmen as a class find that
they do not pour in their formidable multitudes through the -
door those gentlemen will keep ajar with a chain across it,
there will be among them one cry of angry disappointment.
(Cheers.) But I may be asked,Would you never lower the
borough franchisgat all, or do you mean to say that the
working class are to be everlastingly excluded? To both
these questions I answer, No. With regard to the borough
franchise, I can but place before you in uo hostile spirit the
reasons why I think you should pause before you insist on
any great reduction ; but I do say it is your duty to tell us
to what extent you would go. Show us the numbers below
the present £lO constituency which your franchise would
give, and then clearly ascertain whether your constituen-
cies desire you to swamp them. As to the future admission
of the working class, I believe in my own heart that I go
further than the noble lord ; I go further than most of the
great republican writers, ancient and modern ; I go in theory
as far as Mr. John Mill, and I would net object to the widest
possible suffrage, if you can effect a contrivance by which
intelligence shall still prevail over numbers. (Cheers.) If
that be impossible, then I say, at least, the first step towards
anything that approaches to universal suffrage should be
something that approaches to universal education. But
this I will say, that when you invite the agitation of the
working class against this measure, 3roushould not only tell
us what you refuse from us, you should make it clear to
the country what you would give ; and then let the c *aptly
decide between the two. (Cheers.) Sir, Lord Plunkett, in
one of his great forensic speeches, said, " Time is repre-
sented with the hour-glass as well as the scythe." True,
with the scythe he mows down—by the aid of the hour-
glass he reconstructs. You would borrow from Time the
*scythe ; have you consulted his hour-glass ? You would
mow down this Government and this Reform Bill. Be it
so ; have you consulted the hour-glass ? What Govern-
nicht and what Reform Bill will you reconstruct ? So far
as this Government is concerned I will not defend at
this moment its alleged faults—l will not at this moment
ask if it has no merits ; nor will I, even now,
when gentlemen opposite are arrayed against it, ungrate-
fully forget the patriotic countenance it has received
amidst the earlier but not the greater difficulties it has had
to encounter. All I would say is, our intentions in this
bill, amidst the general state of England and of Europe, aro
not such as to merit the censure of any upright and high-
minded Liberal. (Hear, hear.) I grant the bill is not ono
which gentlemen below the gangway would give if it were
their task to make one; but, so far as the Government is
concerned, I ask you, as men of honour, if Lord Derby's '
Government had passed a bill according to your models,
though you world have accepted the bill, would you not
have despised its authors ? (Hear, hear.) Should we not
have been traitors to the loyal gentlemen we represent ?
We should have come into your camp, not as now, with a
fair flag of truce and overtures of mutual compromise, but
with standards trailed in the dust, and offering up the keys
of every fortress which the loyalty of our followers had con-
fided to our charge. No 1 If a Reform Bill such as you
desire must be carried, it is for you to propose it ; it is not
for us. But, before you raise the scythe to mow us down,
look again at the hour-glass 1 What is the next Govern-
ment ? Can it last if the member for Birmingham and the
noble Viscount, if the member for Sheffield and the member
for London, do not sit on the same Treasury bench ? Can it
last if they do? In either case the sand in the hour-glass
will be violently shaken. Now, one moment more, as to This
bill. It is said not to be final. Ro Reform Bill can be.
The fault you allege is its merit. It is its merit if it meets
some of the requirements of the day present, and does not
give to-day what you may regret to-morrow, that you can-
not restore. Democracy is like the grave; it perpetually
cries " Give, give," and like the grave it never returns
what it has once taken. But you live under a constitutional
monarchy, which has all the vigour of health and all the
energy of movement. Do not surrender to democracy that
which is not yet ripe for the gave. Gentlemen employ
much sarcastic cavil in the dispute* as to what is the main
principle of this bill. I say, as Lord Macaulay said in the
debate on the old Reform Bill, I care little for technical de-
finitions on that score. I should not like to base the de-
fence of this or of any Reform Bill upon an abstract doc-
trine on which special pleaders may differ. I would take
that which was our main object for the back bone and life-
spring of the bill. That main object, so admirably stated
by my noble friend the Secretary for India, was, irrespec-
tively of party interests, to confirm and extend to the middle
class the political power which during the last twenty years
they have exercised, so as to render liberty progressive and
institutions safe, but, at the same time, to widen the fran-
chise the middle class now enjoys so that it may include all
belonging to the class who are now without a vote, and,
instead of bringing the middle-class franchise down to the
level of the workman, lift into that franchise the artisan
who may have risen above the daily necessities of the
manual labourer by the exercise of economy and fore-
thought. The bill, therefore, I own it, is emphatically a
bill for the middle-class. The bill is theirs ; it is not the
cause of the aristocrat ; it is not the cause of the Con-
servative county gentleman who, of all parties concerned,
has made the largest concession. The cause is that of the
middle class down to the verge at which the influence of
that class would melt away amidst the necessities of
manual labour and the turbulence of concentered numbers.
If they of the middle class like to abandon that cause they •
abdicate their own power, and with it all which has hitherto
made the resources of England unshaken amidst tho vicis-
situdes of commerce and the calamities of war. If they
honestly think the time has come when it is safe to accept
the counter principle which you advance—viz., that poli-
tical power should begin to descend to the working class—
not knowing where that principle,once adopted, can stop
till it reaches manhood suffrage, hen I say with the mid-
dle class the responsibility must rest. Meanwhile, you in
this house will determine whether it is your duty thus
abruptly to sign away the influence of that class of which
you are still the representatives and trustees--whether you
really secure the title deeds of their commerce, and take
solid guarantees for the safety of their old English free-
dom, by accepting an amendment which commits you to a
pledge to the working class—a pledge which you can never
redeem to their satisfaction until you have placed capital
and knowledge at the command of impatient poverty and
uninstructed numbers. (Great cheering.)
Mr. BYNG was opposed to the bill both in principle and
in detail. He regretted the Government had let pass the
golden opportunity of introducing a bill which might have
settled the question on some regular principle which might
have commanded the all but universal support of the house.
The bill proposed to introduce uniformity of suffrage : from
that principle he must express his dissent. The bill was
not founded on general justice, nor would it give universal
satisfaction : it was easy for the Government to disclaim
any party motive, but it so happened that in South Lanca-
shire, West Yorkshire, and Middlesex, where the liberal
interest was most powerful, the effect would be rather to
reduce the constituency. In regard to what were called the
fancy franchises, he was highly in favour of the extension
of the franchise to depositors in savings banks and lodgers
too. 'With regard to the other, which gave votes to
graduates, ministers, and schoolmasters, the effect would be
unimportant, as the greater number of 'these possessed the
right of voting in respect of other qualifications. The right
hon. gentleman drew a vivid and fearful picture of a period
when, ruin having spread all around, the working classes
would be battering at the doors of that house for the boon
which was now denied. He hoped and trusted that that
picture would never be realised ; but the best way of pre-
venting that was to affirm a resolution which would prove
to the working classes that there was a party in that house
who were not neglectful of their interests. (Hear, hear;)
There was, in his opinion, a wide distinction between
Americanising their institutions and giving the working
classes that share in the representation to which they were
entitled ; and he believed that by affirming the latter part
of the resolution of the noble lord they would do more
to promote the interests of the country, aye, and to harmo-
nise not merely the middle and the working classes, but
also the upper, the middle, and the lower classes, than by
supporting a ball which he believed could never be carried
in its preant shape, a which, if carried, would be only a