The Sun.
London, England, 1859-02-28 00:00:00

attention of the house, and has become at last
Ministerial question, and has been mentioned no
less than three times in the Royal Speeches. It
might have been possible for my noble colleague
and the Cabinet to have, by evasion, delayed bring-
ing forward this subject; but I can assure the
house that such a course would not be agreeable
either to my noble colleague or myself, and we both
felt that in introducing a measure on the subject of
the representation we were only discharging a public
duty. I deny that there is anything in the career
of Lord Derby that rendered him an improper
party to bring forward a Reform Bill, and I refer
to the assistance which he rendered to the bill of
1832. It appears that there are at present two
classes of reformers, the first of which would adapt
the bill of 1832 to 1859, and would base and
would construct their measure in accordance with the
spirit and genius of the Constitution, and amongst
them may be classed her Majesty's Ministers.
(Hear, hear, and laughter,) The other class of
Parliamentary Reformers base their views on the
standard of population. Certainly some of these
admit property with a murmur, and say that pro-
perty and population should go hand in hand to-
gether, but it was only in statistics that they are
found hand in hand together. (Laughter.)
But that principle is altogether fallacious, for
members are not sent to this house to represent
either population or property, but opinion. But
taking this standard, so far as related to property
and population, what was the ease ? li, Scotland
and England the population was nearly equal
but London alone was assessed at £44,000,000 to
the income tax, while the whole of Scotland pays
£33,000,000. Again, the City of London is more
populous than 25 Welsh and English counties, who
return less than 44 members, and is richer than
Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham put to-
gether, and it is richer also than Bristol, Leeds,
Newcastle, Stoke-upon-Trent, and other places
which return 30 members. 1 contend that,
looking at the country generally, instead of
her isolated position, even if you go on the
principle of population, you should in justice take
away members from boroughs and distribute them
amongst the county constituencies. (The right
hon. gentleman having cited the cases of Durham,
West Lancahire, and other counties, in support of
his position) proceeded—There is one singular fea-
ture in the views of the new school of Re-
formers,- namely. that they will do away
with the present system, but in reality they
substitute no other; and the effect of their principle
if reduced to practice will be that members will be
selected only from a limited class. The result
will be that this house will relapse into that
ignominous state from which the energy and spirit
of English gentlemen received it two centuries
ago. In our measure we do not proceed on the
ground of reducing or increasing the franchise,
but of intrusting it to those who would use it for
the best interests of the country. He thought the
rating of the country was most unequal, and the
adopting of a rating clause on property would lead
to great injustice. The effect of adopting
an £8 rating instead of a £lO value
would work most objectionably. For in-
sSance, if they took Boston and adopted an
£8 rating franchise, the effect would be
to disfranchise about 400 electors. The same would
be the effect if they took Dover or any other borough.
With respect to the £lO borough franchise
persons occupying houses of £4OO voted under
the £lO franchise, and he admitted that many who
did not live in a £lO house ought to have a vote.
The Government proposed by this bill to give
the franchise to all those who may have
money in the funds or in Indian stock
amounting to £lO should have a vote. Another
qualification under the bill is that any
person having £6O in a savings bank
for a year should have a vote for the place in which
he resides. We also propose to give the right to vote to
all pensions, naval, military, and civil, to the amount
of £2O per annum. (Hear, hear.) The dweller in a
portion of a house whose rent amounted to £2O per
annum, or Bs. a week, would be entitled to a vote.
The privilege of vote should also be conferred
upon graduates of all universities, upon ministers
of religion, upon the members of legal professions
in all its branches, and all medical gen-
tlemen reeistered under the late act, and to
these have been included all schoolmasters holding
a certificate from the Council. (Hear, hear.)

[LEFT SPEAKING.)