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

<<

LONDON, FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 1830.

Another struggle for Parliamentary reform was
gallantly made last evening, but, as a matter of
course, proved wholly ineffectual. Under the direc-
tions of our veteran Reformer Jossru Humß, the
Honourable Member for Leicester, the Honourable
Member for Sheffield, and the Honourable and Gal-
lant Representative of Middlesex, endeavoured to urge
upon the consideration of the Legislature the neces-
sity of extending the suffrage, of adopting the ballot,
of consenting to triennial Parliaments, and of ar-
ranging the elective districts in a manner more ac-
cordant with the principles of the Constitution, and
in a form more proportioned to the relative size
of the constituencies. All to no purpose !
Sir GEORGE GREY was obdurate. Lord JOHN
RUSSELL was more than obdurate, his rejec-
tion of the scheme being enforced by the sarcasm
of his language. It is strange too that the pseudo-
lovers of democracy—these most specious Whigs and
so-called Liberals—should persist in flinging back in
the teeth of the people such demands as those we
have enumerated, as though they were propositions
of unparalleled extravagance. It is strange, we say,
because the requirements comprised in the motion of
the Hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose are
either such as have been acknowledged in pre-
vious legislation, or such as are strictly com-
patible with the legislative measures intro-
duced and carried by the present generation
of statesmen. Triennial Parliaments, for example,
are no novel theories spawned from the new-fangled
philosophy of a CHEVALIER, and assented to by the
squally new-fangled social philosophy ofa FOURRIER.
Septennial Parliaments, contrasted with them, are
as things of yesterday to Ithe matters of antiquity ;
for what we now ask is only a return to the ancient
custom of our constitution. The extension of the
suffrage, at least to some moderate extent, is a schethe
precisely resembling the one propounded by the Go-
vernment in reference to the sister island, and intro-
duced to the Legislature under the form of the Parlia-
mentary Voters (Ireland) Bill. When we ask,
therefore, for the extension of the elective franchise
to a larger section of the people in Wales and
England—to something more than 800,000 out of a
population of 16,000,000, or, taking even the revised
calculation of the Home Secretary, to something
more than 944,000, out of an adult male popula-
tion of 4,500,000—we are only asking for the appli-
cation to the chief portion of the United Kingdom
trhegoveCrnambitesnett
veardyv is abbloeonsfor wthheicbilette
hasof dtheoesmeed
of the smaller of the British islands. We are only
seeking a small instalment of that wholesome reform
which has been lavished wholesale upon the English
settlers in Southern Africa, and in others of our colo-
nial possessions. With reference to the ballot, more.
over, we are simply requiring from the national re.:
presentatives that mode of voting which has
been long in vogue in their most conser-
vative and most aristocratic clubs—that mode
of voting which has twice saved the people
of France on occasions of tremendous emergency
from being plunged anew into all the horrors of a
social and political revolution. Finally, as to the
better distribution of the country into electoral dis-
tricts, we maintain that Mr. HUME and the rest of
the Radical Reformers are insisting upon a necessity
which is altogether removed beyond the reach of con-
tradiction. It is removed beyond the reach of con-
tradiction, for inasmuch as it admits of no argument
whether it is just or unjust that a borough of 20,000
voters should have as many representatives as a
borough of 60,000 or 70,000.
•
f;wing, therefore, that the demands coraprioed in