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

NEW BOROUGH MEMBERS.

By schedule D, the nine most populous boroughs,

exclusive of the metropolis, now returning two re-
presentatives, and Salford now returning one, are
each to have an additional member. By schedule
E three boroughs, now- unrepresented, containing
more than 20,000 inhabitants, are each to have
one member. These are Birkenhead, Burnley, and
Staley-bridge. Chelsea and Kensington are to be
made into a metropolitan borough, with two mem-
bers. The. Inns of Court are to return two mem-
bers ; the London University one ; and Scotland is
to have three additional representatives. It will
be seen that, in this distribution, population is
made the sole test of claim to representation, al-
though nothing can be more fallacious. Take the
instance of Birkenhead, of which the majority of
the population are substantial householders, and
yet it is placed on an equality with Burnley and
Staleybridge, where the inhabitants are chiefly
artisans, earning weekly wages ; and yet to confer
the privilege of representation on masses of the
population, of whom but a small proportion could
obtain even the reduced scale of franchise, repre-
sentatives are taken away from the cities of Lich-
field, Peterborough, Wells, Ripon, and Chichester,
and the county towns of Bodmin, Huntingdon,
Buckingham, Dorchester, and Guildford, in all of
which places more is contributed to the assessed
taxes than in manufacturing towns of three or
four times the population ; where the inhabitants
have not sufficient intelligence to comprehend even
their own petty interests, but join in senseless
strikes at the bidding of some inflated demagogue.
With Lord JOHN RUSSELL it appears to have
been simply a question of numbers, without refe-
rence to quality,—a notion so utterly subversive of
all distinctions in society, that the most rabid
Chartist need not hesitate to claim him as a leader

There is, however, another feature in the bill
which ought not to pass unnoticed. In the addi-
tion to the county members, and also to the nine
boroughs which are to have three representatives,
the electors are not to vote for more than two
candidates, and the third candidate is to be the
choice of the
_minority, provided he have above
two-fifths of the whole number of votes. There
is something so exquisitely cunning in this
arrangement, that it is worthy of the reputation
of its author for consummate tact. The Conserva-
tive constituencies are not only to be swamped by
a new kind of votes, something worse than
the old potwallopers, but in places where they
may still maintain their influence their triumph is
to be half defeated by their opponent being ad-
mitted as the representative of the minority, and
this with such evident party bias, that, for more
than forty- places where a Radical candidate would
thus be admitted, the Conservatives would only
gain a similar advantage in about half a dozen.
It will. help to realise the absurdity to imagine
the ConserVative constituency of Liverpool com-

pelled to send to Parliament such a politician as
Sir ERSKINE PERRY, a degradation no way com-
pensated by a Conservative being returned for
Manchester through similar means ; while in more
than forty counties Radicals would be smuggled i
into Parliament after the same fashion. It is a
principle of the Constitution that the House of
Commons represents the opinions of the majority
of the people possessing a known and definite
qualification; but it would be difficult to ascertain
what portion of the people would be represented
under such a system as that proposed, while frauds
and evasions would be so commonly perpetrated
as to make it difficult for a man to be honest
if he would.