The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-02-21 00:00:00

NEW FRANCHISE.

The abortive attempt made two years since to
reduce the limit of borough qualification from £lO
to £5 has, it appears, deterred Lord JOHN Bus-
SELL from repeating the experiment ; but, in order
that a sop should be thrown to the Cerberus of
democracy, and opposition in some measure dis-
armed, he proposes to throw open the franchise to
householders of £6, provided they have been oc-
cupiers for above two years and a half. This,
however, is but a small part of the scheme of ex-
tension, for he has introduced a variety of qualifi-
cations, so complicated in their details, that it
might perhaps have been as well for him to throw
off the mask at once, and declare his adhesion to
the principle of universal suffrage, and the other
points of the charter. In the first place, persons
in the ..receipt of salaries of £lOO, payable half-
yearly or quarterly, but not weekly, are to be en-
franchised ; but he might have spared the distinc-
tion as to the times of payment, as an income of
£lOO a year is liable to the Income-tax ; and by
another provision of this bill the payment of £2 a
year in income or assessed-taxes is to confer the
privilege. Lord Joux RUSSELL claimed credit to
himself for excluding the recipient of weekly wages,
but it is a false pretence, for any man claiming the
franchise for the receipt of £lOO a year makes
himself liable to the income-tax, and upon that
ground would have a right to the franchise, at
whatever intervals his wages may be paid.
Another qualification is the receipt of £lO yearly
from the Funds, or Bank, or India Stock. This
is certainly a descent in the scale, giving a purely
money qualification, and opening the door to a
wholesale manufacture of faggot voters, by any
large capitalist, who has no better claims than his
money bags, and is covetous of senatorial dignity.
The price would be little more than has often been
paid for safe votes, while means might be readily
adopted for the advances being made as loans.
The same principle is evident•, though on a still
lower scale, in the franchise being conferred on the
depositors of £5O in a savings'-bank, a less ex-
pensive mode of purchasing prospective votes, when
the voters can be trusted. The graduatc3 of any
university are also to be qualified, an extension of
the franchise less objectionable than the foregoing,
inasmuch as the privileged may be supposed to be
in some degree more enlightened by education
than the mere possessors of a sum of money. We
have already alluded to the householders in repre-
sented boroughs of £6 a year, provided they have
been occupiers for two years and a half, and we
therefore proceed to the

NEW COUNTY FRANCHISE.
It will be recollected that more than one attempt
has been made to reduce the qualification of occu-
piers of counties to the same limit as that of
boroughs ; so that the man rated at £lO yearly, if
not resident in a represented borough, should vote
for the county. The evils of such an arrangement
would be that the representation now in the hands
of freeholders, or substantial occupiers of £5O
yearly, would be entirely transferred to mere cot-
tagers renting small plots of land, and in a condi-
lutellectually alldt3ocially far below .that of the

small occupiers in towns. Lord JOHN RUSSELL
makes the concession, and proposes to obviate the
evil by rendering necessary that the building upon
the land should be of the annual value of £5,
excepting where it is the residence of the voter ;
so that the occupant of the meanest hovel, if he
rent land to the value of £lO yearly, would be
entitled to vote for the county representatives.
The effect of such a measure would be either to
swamp the substantial constituency, or prevent the
landholders from allowing the labouring class any
opportunity of cultivating the soil on their own
account. It may also have the effect of encou-
raging a system of squatting for political purposes,
thereby tending to reduce the rural population of
England to the miserable condition which rendered
Ireland, a few years since, the plague-spot of
civilisation. We come now to the