The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-04-27 00:00:00

In our second edition we gave the opening remarks of
Lord Howick, and now we subjoin the concluding portion
of his speech. He proceeded to say—The " beneficial inte-
rest of .£10" contended for by Mr. O'Connell, after the de-
ductions which that member professed to allow, would not
be unfairly represented by this £5 rating. There were some
persons, not included in the £8 leaseholders' test, whom this
£5 rating would admit : those, for instance, who paid a very
low rent for a property not rateable in all at so much as £B,
but yet yielding to the holders a profit of more than £5 be-
yond that low rent. But as he was aware that on the other
hand there would be many voters whom the £8 leaseholders'
test would admit, but whom his £5 property rating would ex-
clude, he was disposed to move also another change, admitting
a large class of voters, a change which would substitute for the

government proposal of a rating on a lease at a low rent,
a proposal of a rating at a higher rent, but without
any lease. The circumstances of Ireland, however, were so
different from those of England, and her general wealth so
far inferior, that the English £5O franchise would be too
high for Ireland. What the proper amount would be he
was not yet prepared to state ; but it should be an amount
hich would give a constituency at least as numerous as that
which existed immediately after the reform act. All he
should now ask of the House would be merely to consent to
the principle. It would be said that tenants without leases
would be deficient in independence. He did not think it
was found to make much defference whether the tenant had

a lease or not.; for, except in times of great excitement, times
happily rare, all' kinds of tenants very generally desired to
vote with their landlords. The most dependent tenants in Ire-
land were the tenants of the smallest farms, such tenants as
the Government measure proposed to enfranchise. That
measure would lead to the fraud of leasing small properties
at very high rents, with an engagement for a debate so long
as he voter should continue to vote with his landiord. But
even by adopting the low amount of £B, it was by no means
clear that any considerable number of voters would be pro-
duced. For though much of the new leasing would be frau-
dulent, the whole amount of new leasing would be diminished
by the general indisposition of the L•ish landlords to trust
their tenants with the franchise. There was another ar-
gument which might be brought against him from the
Conservative side of the House,—that he had laid no
ground for altering the Reform Act. The answer was,
that the people of Ireland were entitled to a sufficient
representation, which at present the; did not possess.
There had been a great reduction in the number of the Irish

voters, chiefly among the lower classes. A fair settlement of
this question would be a great boon to Ireland, and one
which the conservative party itself would find it expedient to
concede rather than suffer the constituency to dwindle as it
otherwise must. He then moved to omit those words at the
end of the first clause which abrogate the beneficial interest
franchise created by the reform act, for the purpose of ena-
bling him, in the second clause, to define that beneficial in-
terest by the £5 rating propounded in the earlier;part of his

speech