The Sun.
London, England, 1850-03-01 00:00:00

as his data, excluding the double, treble and quadruple
votes held by one person from his calculation, he found
that he had between 780,000 and 800,000 voters. Now
he proposed that the number of persons en-
titled to vote should be increased to 3,232,762.
Lodgers were equally as fit, and many of them more fit,
to enjoy the franchise than those who now possessed it,
and he would provide in the Bill that es'« ry lodger
might be registered to the poor-rates of the
house in which he lived; and after he had
been so registered for twelve months he should
be equally competent to exercise the franchise as if ho
were the possessor of the whole house. Now it was to
this extent that he would carry his plan of registration,
and he put it to the House whether there would be
any danger in thus extending the suffrage. Did
they not all know that whenever the power
of government was confined to a narrow basis,
it invariably led to anarchy and confusion? Had
they net proofs of this in the recent occurrences on
the continent? What, however, had they to fear from
Government if they extend the franchise? Laws were
made not for the benefit of classes, but the good of the
community at large, and the Sovereign was no less than
the first magistrate of the land—whose duty it
was to carry out the laws when they bad received the
sanction of the two Legislative Chambers. Were they
not then in more danger by confining the franchise to a
million when it ought to be enjoyed by three or four
millions? What would any of them say if they were in
the situation of the millions that were now rejected ?
‘Vbat would any of the Members of that House say or
do, were they in the situation of millions of artisans, on
whose industry some of the finest manufactures de-
pended— (Hear, hear)—receiving 11., 21., or 3/. a
week, and who would be called upon to assist
in keeping the Queen's peace should a dis-
turbance break out whilst they were walking the
streets? Were not those artisans entitled to say, " You
call on us to execute the laws, but do you give
us any share or interest in making those laws?
You treat us as serfs, and drive us like cattle,
and yet you call upon us for assistance ?"
Whilst men of large incomes are taxed a thousandth part,
a hundredth part, or a twentieth part, of their earnings,
the artizan was taxed one-fourth of his whole wages
on his consumption of the ordinary articles of
subsistence. Men not more worthy than they in Bel-
gium, the United States, and in France could not be
taxed without their consent; and why should not the
artizan class of England he placed on a similar footing?
But he had, moreover, the deliberate judgment of her Ma-
jesty's Ministers on the paper of the 20th of January
last. He referred to the Bill of rights for the colonies,
and they must not tell him that they could not place any
confidence in the people of England when they were
placing this confidence in the mixed population of the
Cape of Good Hope, New Zealand, and other
colonies.—(lltar, hear.) He said then that it
was an insult to the people of this coun-
try that they should be denied a privilege
at home which they would immediately obtain upon set•
ting their foot upon a colonial strand.—(Hear.) Under
these circumstances he would say that he had not only
a right to ask, but to demand that this right should
be conceded to the people of England.—(Hear, hear.)
Were they less intelligent, less diligent, less moral, less
worthy of the right of conferring legislative powers than
the inhabitants of any of the colonies?—(Hear, hear)—
and if not, why was not the privilege conceded? To
show that they were not ho would refer to a
dispatch of Lord Stanley's in 1832. The Ho-
nourable Member then read his Lordship's dispatch.
Here was the principle of extending power and put-
ting into the hands of every man a right to
share in local government, equally applicable to
the national government, of which he was a part;
and, therefore, he contended that he had Lord
Stanley's decided opinion in favour of his scheme.
Her Majesty's Government was proposing to
introduce universal suffrage into the colonies. Thus far
he was supported by parity of reasoning. Every man
who was rated to the road-tax at the Cape of Good
Hope was to hare a vote. Her Majesty's Government
were ready to show their confidence in 180,000 persons
at the Cape of Good Hope, and yet they were back-
ward in giving the franchise to Englishmen,
who were no less intelligent and trustworthy.
He wished to carry out a system of equalization by
means of electoral districts, and there were precedents of
a recent date emanating from the Government, in regard
to the colonies, which justified him in asking the House to
adopt the course which he suggested, and he asked Hon.
Members to pause before they gave a vote in favour of
rejecting the measure. Her Majesty's Ministers had
given the colonies three representative estates, which
consisted of the governor, a legislative council, and a re-
presentative assembly, and the power and privileges of
each were distinctly defined. Now he did not
object to our estates of the King, Lords, and
Commons being continued, but what he wished
was that the latter should become a better reflex of the
opinions of the people. In that case it would be more
pure and more efficient. His own conscientious be-
lief was that many in the House held their seats in
consequence of having paid large sums of money to per-
sons to secure their election, an this was equally as bad
in principle as the borough-mongering system of old.
Three years was long enough for any man to hold a seat
in that House. At one time he agreed with his late
lamented friend Cartwright, that one year would be suf-
ficient, but at the present moment he should be satisfied
by triennial Parliaments. Another point he thought it
right to mention was the payment of Members. True,
it was one of the points of the Charter, but: for the
last 12 or 15 years of his life his principle had been to pay
every officer for the duty ho had to perform, and he still
was of the same opinion. He considered that every
man ought to be paid for his services, and by the parties
who employed him. With regard to the constitution
and privileges extended to the Cape of Good Hope, they
bad, in his humble opinion, a precedent which warranted
them more than any other to press the Government on
this question. They had Ireland and the colonies, and
why not, he would ask, extend the Satre privileges to the
the people of England and Scotland? He held in his
hand the speech of the Noble Lord, delivered on the Bth
of last month—and here he must pay the Noble Lord
the compliment to say that he never heard a speech since
the time of the Reform Bill more really like the Noble
Lord kimself—and in that speech the Noble Lord re-
marked, that wherever Englishmen went, they carried
with them the spirit of the free institutions of their
country. Now, he would ask the Noble Lord where
was the spirit of those institutions at home, which they
might carry with them to other countries? With regard
to the Reform Bill, he (Mr. Hume) must say that it did
not fulfil the objects which it professed. And what were
those objects? Tbey were the very objects which he
was now contending, and the very objects for which the
Noble Lord himself; he believed, considered to be just.
There was another question in his (Mr. Hume's) motion
—the vote by ballot. Now, the Noble Lord, in in-
troducing the Reform Bill, had staasd that more ingeni-
ous arguments had never come under his notice than
had been advanced in favour of the ballot; yet the Noble
Lord, on that occasion, said that the ballot was not to
form any part of his Bill. He (Mr. Hume) had voted
for that Bill, but he was for " the Bill, the whole Bill,
and nothing but the Bill." Now as the Noble Lord
boasted of the rights and liberties of Englishmen, and
that they would carry those liberties wherever they
might go, he thought the Noble Lord ought really to
extend their rights and liberties to them. But it would
be said, " Oh, but you have got the Reform Bill, and is
not that quite enough? " He (Mr. Hume) would say,
"No, it is not quite enough." lie would refer the
Noble Lord to another passage in his speech, when in-
troducing the Reform Bill. The Noble Lord on that
occasion said, " When I propose a reform in Parliament
I propose that the people should send into this House
their real representatives, that those representatives
should consider their wants and attend to their inte-
rests. I propose that they should have this vast power."
Now give them the Noble Lord's system as implied in
those words. Let the Noble Lord come up to his
own mark, and he is fairly entitled to amend
the Reform Bill. Now he asked the Noble
Lord to do so. He (Mr. Hume) held that the
principles which were comprised in his motion,
and the arguments which he had advanced in
support of those principles, were not to be controverted.
His demand was " justice," which was the right of every
Englishman. When the Noble Lord, on the 6th of
February, introduced the Reform Bill, he stated that it
was his intention to give representatives to every part of
the country, and that be did not wish to give a pre-
ponderance to any part over the other, and that the
Government had taken into consideration the propriety
of giving a certain number of towns and manufacturing
districts a share in the representation. Now, he wished
the Noble Lord would carry out that intention, and give
such representation to the people.—(Hear.) The Noble
Lord would recollect that in his recent motion to extend
the benefit of free trade to the colonies, he made
allusion to the loss of the North American possessions
(United States) to this country, and had attributed that
loss to a " series of blunders." True it was; and the
Noble Lord should not forget that in those " series of
blunders" the main cause of the loss of their North
American possessions was attributable to " taxation
without representation," and Lord Camden, in reference
to the Stamp Act, in connexion with the cause of
dispute in that matter, had expressed himself
in February, 1766, in these words—" My impression
is, and I shall retain it to the last hour of my
life, that ' taxation without representation' is most un-
just, and whoever takes from a man his substance, in
such a case, commits a robbery." He (Mr. Hume) re-
peated the words, it was " a robbery."—(Hear, hear.)
With respectjto the object of the Reform Bill, he might
also refer to the authority of the late Earl Grey. That
Noble Earl had said he believed it to be " a mounts)
of peace and reconciliation." On the 9th of February
the Noble Earl. (Grey) had quoted from Whitelock's
book on Government, and in speaking of the genius of
the constitution, that authority laid down as an opinion,
that " whenever the question of the right of the electors
was brought before the House of Commons, the good
sense of the House was in favour of the people, and of
the feeling that the more free the elections were, the
more beneficial would it prove to the country.—(Hear,
hear.) That was the evidence of the late Earl Grey in
favour of Parliamentary Reform, and in speaking of it,
he pronounced it to be a measure of peace and concilia-
tion, while, on the other hand, its refusal would be at-
tended with disquiet and discontent. Sergeant Gran:
ville, too, in a House of Commons in which Seldon and
several other distinguished Members were, laid down
the same opinions, and contended that all inhabitant-
householders who were rated should have a vote in the
election of the Commons.—(Cries of " Hear, hear.")
The same opinion was come to by the House in the case
of the Pontefract election. He next considered the ac-
tual state of the constituent body, showing that there
were no less than eighty-five qualifications for voters in
counties, cities, and boroughs. When such a state of
things existed was it to be wondered at, that they should
require an expensive staff of lawyers to travel about the
country, holding registration and registry revision
sessions? It was an utter absurdity to assert that the
iguorauce_of the great bulk of the people, could be put