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 Rus-
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
Al the ;receipt of salaries of £lOO, payable half-
rearly or quarterly, but not weekty, are to be en-
franchised; but he might have spared the distinc-
tion es 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 is income or assessed-taxes is to einfer the
privilege. Lord JOHN RUSSELL claimed credit to
himself for excluding the recipient of weekly wages,
but it is a false pretenee, 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 bo 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 lns
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, iul 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 graduates 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,
tiou intellectually and socially 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

DISFRANCHISEMENT OF BOROUGHS.

The bill, like its prototype of 1832, has a series
of schedules annexed, containing lists of boroughs
wholly and partially disfranchised, and boroughs
and counties on which the forfeited privileges are
to be conferred. Schedule A contains a list of
nineteen boroughs at present returning twenty-
nine members, all of which are to be disfranchised
because they have less than 300 eldctors or 5,000
inhabitants ; and schedule B contains a list of
thirty-three boroughs, each of which is to be de-
prived of one of its representatives because they
have less than 500 electors, or 10,000 inhabitants.
The total number of seats thus rendered vacant is
62, which, with four from Sudbury and St. Alban's
previously disfranchised, will render 66 to be dis-
posed of in order to preserve the ancient number
of 658 members of the House of Commons. Of
the propriety or justice of thus making population
a test of fitness for representation, we shall com-
ment in treating of the mode in which it is pro-,
posed to confer the franchise.
NEW COUNTY MEMBEEt

By schedule C, South Lancashire and West York-
shire are each to be subdivided, and each division
to have three members. Glamorganshire is to
have one member ; and thirty-seven other counties
or divisions of counties, now returning two mem-
bers, are each to have an additional one, thereby
making forty-six new county members. The ap-
portionment of so large a share to county represen-
tation might be deemed incredible liberality and
concession to constitutional principles on the part
of such an extreme Radical as Lord JOHN Rus-
SELL, were it not that by his alteration of the
county franchise, he destroys the whole value of it.
To the Opposition he may say, "See how large a
concession I have made to the great strength of the
Conservative party ;" and when his Radical friends
complain, he quiets them by coolly referring to the
fact, that his alteration of the franchise has de-
stroyed the whole value of the seeming boon.