The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMM—At the beginning of the Easter recess
Mr. Bright exhibited himself oscillating violently
between his own most passionate instincts and the
politic moderation which was doubtless enforced on
him by his more prudent friends. We know not
which was the less agreeable to listen to—his de-
nunciations of all who differed from him, or the
transparent flattery by which he sought to avert
influential opposition. At Rochdale on Wednesday
evening Mr. Bright had come to rest in his usual
mean of illiberality and injustice. A foreigner who
knew nothing of our history and political life would
be led to believe from Mr. Bright's language that
half the House of Commons, and a large section of
the more prosperous and educated inhabitants of
England, were as much alienated from the national
interests as the Jacobites of a hundred and fifty
years back, and that there existed in every part of
Queen Victoria's kingdom a numerous and power-
Iful public enemy. What purpose is served by
drawing such falsely-coloured pictures of an honest
and legitimate difference of opinion—a difference
which regards methods and details rather than
principles—we cannot conceive. But it is fair to
believe that one who can so misunderstand or mis-
represent the opinions of a large section of his
countrymen cannot be a safe guide for the rest of
them. Mr. Bright speaks in lofty terms of the
share he has had in the production of the bill, and
in rousing the present agitation. " I regret to say
that while the advice I gave to Reformers in
general has been in the main followed, that which
I gave to her Majesty's Government has not been
followed so exactly as I could have wished." He,
however, allows that her Majesty's Ministers have
a right to some opinions of their own, and that if
14 or 15 persons form the Cabinet, and are respon-
rible for the measures which that Cabinet lays be-
fore Parliament, it is but fair that we should allow
them to exercise their judgment, make allowance
for difficulties. and give a favourable consideration
to what they produce. It may prove that if Mr.
Bright's advice had been less followed than it has
been, if some of those 14 or 15 persons had insisted
on abandoning his programme and on dealing with
Reform as a whole, according to the reiterated ad-
vice of the soundest liberal politicians, the prospects
of the Ministry and of their measure would be con-
siderably brighter than at present; but as the scheme,
though altered in details from that supplied to the
Government by Mr. Bright, agrees with it in the
principle of dealing with Reform by a series of un-
connected Bills, there is nothing left but to defend
it as it stands, and to denounce everyone who opposes
it. The Tories are declared to be either exhibiting a

" more than usual depravity or else a desperate reso-
lution to withstand every proposition of Reform."
Now, itis no business of ours to defend the Conserva-
tive party, which is quite able to take care of itself.
But we may ask what purpose is served by this
senseless railing. Of late, Mr. Bright can never
open his mouth without some invective on " the
Tories" 'and their criminality. Are we really to
believe that nearly 300 members of the House of
Commons, with the majority of the inhabitants of
our agricultural districts, a large proportion of the
metchants in London and Liverpool and a respect-
able minority, even in such places as Manchester
and Leeds, are depraved, and that in wishing to
have one Reform Bill instead of half-a-dozen they
make a conspicuous display of this depravity ?
Does anybody believe this ? Does Mr. Bright
believe it ? And if such language does not express
the truth, what but harm can come from the use of
it ? No one who reads the Rochdale speech will
have a worse opinion of his tory neighbours, but
if he be a man of refined feeling he will be apt to
conceive an undue prejudice against a cause -which
is advocated with such violence and injustice.
" Depravity " is of course not only the quality of
Tories. They have " a consistent and persistent
" hatred of popular institutions." Their conduct on
the present occasion is " factious to the last degree."
Or else it is " something, if not more immoral, more
selfish and stupid." All this is grounded on the cir-
cumstance that the Tories brought in a reform bill
seven years ago, whereas now they oppose the pass-
ing of a piece of a reform bill. The reform bill of
1849, which it is now generally allowed might have
been amended in committee into an excellent plea-
sure, owed its defeat eminently to the present Pre-
mier, and it is rather hard that any body of men
should be abused from presuming to criticise in turn
the production of their leading opponent. We may
dismiss, as unworthy of serious notice, the specula-
tions of Mr. Bright as to whether the opponents of
the Government measure would be convinced or
merely yield to fear if the working classes were to
throw up their work for a few days and imitate their
fathers in 1832. Mr. Bright lingers fondly round
the idea which he gave to the world in his late let-
ter, but as on this occasion he is purely hypothetical
it is useless to argue the matter. For the present,
at least, all.menabers of the House of Commons, as
Mr. Bright justly observes, may walk among the
working people unharmed. Should platform speeches
produce a departure from this happy state of things,
it may then be necessary to take more practical
account of the new method of influencing the Legis-
lature. We believe, however, that working people
know very well they are not 4, vilified," and that
they have no desire to mob the House of Commons,
or to assault individual members. The speculations
of Mr. Bright on this subject are as baseless as his
expectation that the Tory party will plunge England
into the Austro-Prussian war, or attack the Ameri-
can Union on the fishery question, to get rid of the
reform bill.

POST. —The returns en which the ministerial bil
for the redistribution of seats will be based will be
found, as we have reason to believe, to furnish
some very striking arguments to those who insist
upon the great comparative importance of that
point of the scheme of reform which has been
postponed to the other. We are pretty well ac-
customed to hear of what are called " anomalies"
in our institutions, but there appears to be such a
crop of anomalies in the distribution of members of
Parliament as comnared with the population elect-
ing them, as will suffice to startle even those who
are most averse from any change of institutions
whatever; and, without going so far as to assert
that population should be the sole basis for the dis-
tribution of members, it must be admitted that, as
the matter stands at present, representation and
population bear to each other not only less relation
than they should do, but no sort of relation what-
ever. It would seem that of the 202 cities or
boroughs which are represented in Parliament, no
less than 70 possess a population of less than
10,000 ; and of these, 9 have a population of less
than 5,000. Thus there are 132 represented
boroughs with populations above the 10,000 limit,
and 193 with populations above the 5,000 limit.
On the other hand, of unrepresented towns there
are 39 having a population exceeding 10,000, and
no fewer than 126 having a population exceeding
5,000 ; or, in other words, out of 419 towns in Eng-
land and Wales of the same class, the advantage of
representation is conferred upon 193, and withheld
from less than 126. This is the general result, but
on entering into the details they appear still more
startling. Thus, Ashburton, with a population of
3,062, and Arundel, with a population of 2,498,
have each a member ; and Honiton, with 3,301 in-
habitants, has actually two members ; while neither
Torquay, with 16,419 ; Burnley, with 29,700 ;
Chelsea, with 63,009, or Kensington, with 70,000
, inhabitants, have any share in the borough franchise
at all. Many counties, too, appear to be unduly
favoured as compared with others. The boroughs of
Cornwall, with an aggregate population of 63,000,
have 10 members between them ; while the York-
shire boroughi, with a population of 617,000, or
just about ten times as much, have but 16 mem-
bers altogether. The Wiltshire boroughs, again
with 95,000 inhabitants, have 14 members ; the
Devonshire boroughs, with 214,000, have 18
members ; while those of Middlesex, with 1,800,000
inhabitants, have but 12 representatives between
them. This, too, it must be remembered, only shows
the difference of treatment of such boroughs as are
now represented : and if those at present without
any members at all were added, the contrasts would
be more striking, since the more favoured counties
have in them very few of the unrepresented towns,
which by far the most part lie in the less favoured
districts. It may, however, be said that, for pur-
poses of comparison it is not the population, but the
number of registered voters that should be taken.
In that case the results will be found equally
startling, Wells, with 277 voters ; Thetford, with
224 ; Leominster, with 337 ; Honiton, with 228 ;
and Tewkesbury, with 312, return two members
each ; while Manchester, with 21,542 electors ;
Tower Hamlets, with 34,115 ; and Lambeth, with
27,754, return no more than two ; and Birkenhead,
with 4,563 electors, and Salford, with 5,327, only
send one member each to represent them in Parlia-
ment. It needs no argument to deduce from these
figures the inference that redistribution is impera-
tively called for, and the Government will gain from
these returns more support for the scheme of their
second bill than was afforded by the same means to
the first. At the same time this is not a question
which can be treated on purely arithmetical ground ;
and it is neither reasonable nor desirable that the
bill which is promised should aim at an exact pro-
, portionment of representation, either to the aggre-
gate or to the elective population of each boroug
• Such an attempt, if it were made, would certaimnh.
blly
• end in failure, even if submitted to an ass
more enamoured of abstract principles ofjheucsptiecyde
than the House of Commons, and it is to h
L that the Government will recognise the preoprsiheatlyl
of introducing a measure in which moderation
appear sufficiently mixed with justice to enable it
to lincl favour with practical politicians.