The Sun. — 1848-07-07 (London, England)

HUME—That was a mere error. Mr. Sergeant TALFOURD quite believed so. But the public understood the Hon. Member to go for " household suffrage." If there had been a dinner, though he would not insinuate that any such festivity had taken place, the teastwould clearly have been " Horne and Household Suffrage." The universal cry was " Hume and Household Suffrage." The babbling gossip of the air repeated " Hume and Household Suffrage." But when the Hon. Member interpretation clause to explain his plan he introduced an clause ; and, accustomed as he (Sergeant Talfourd) was to interpretation clauses, he confessed that this was the strangest S he had ever seen. one of them directed that every singular Should include all the plurals; others that every masculine, was to include all the feminn es ; but this interpretation for ( clause was still more curious, said the Learned Sergeant) it explained the denemination ‘ household suffrage" to mean, not every man that holds a house,‘ bnt every house that holds a man.—(Loud laughter.) Household suffrage was, no'doubt, an endearing term. It was especially so at the tea-tables of the family petitioners, but this plan of household suffrage included not householders alone, but every n!an alive in this country, except those who slept under 0917 tents. It was universal suffrage in another shape— less plain and Undisguised ; and so the family petitions a second time had evidently prayed for something the Hon. Member never meant. But the reason lie gave wuast thes tillwmordores _edifyingrthan the interpretation. . I did n houses? 4 suffrage in my resolution," said the Hon. Gentle!o? "because, although the Committee on whose part I bringforward these resolutions, agreed to the words household suffrage, they did not agree as to their meaning." A Curious result of the combined deliberations of the ComMittee. The Hon. Member had done well, however, in ontltting the words, for the notion of household suffrage ttihn edveraliheet of existing circumstances of the popular mind, and the most t conceptions formed of it, was, of all notions, Hon. li:issue, and delusive. Having thus touched upon the question_end s principal propositions, he now came to settlement of as the contemplated measure intended as a it were put theforth question, or merely as an instalment ? If argumest. Hisas a settlement, it was wholly untenable in nits the suffrage Hon. Friends must know that the more deficertain limits, the made, the more you extended it within 'who still remain e more agitation did you excite among those tnde of the tenur without those limits. The very infiniheld lessened the" uPen which the elective franchise was did not exercise it effect: of their exclusion with those who certain degree of bnt once draw the line between a ceryou would find thosepoverty and the lower degree beyond it, and line with the fiercest lower degrees assailing this definite est determination, and keeping up, until they gained their point, an agitation altogether destructive of the well-b him not be eingof the State.—(Hear, hear.) Let a people prepared takenfoasr advocatingl the principle that, with Property should be the exercise of their political rights, Power should rest. 1.1 e sole ground on which political He well knew that there was a nobler 'wealth than what onsiss in acres or gold; he well knew that a deep attachmente to country, a lofty patriotism, a generous pride in the institutions and ancient glories of his native land, held their existence among the very humblest classes of Englishmen,i beneath the modest roof of the peasant asn the palace of the Peer; but he could not derivew thence the conclusion that these humbler classes, in their present condition of knowledge, were fitted to take part. in the legislation of this country, or to be admitted, even in the wholesale way proposed, to the election of it * legislators. To such a proposition the education returns said No • inthteh returns of crime, increasing not much in number, but'atrocious character of the crimes reported, said, No; terriblertyh,esais 0 outbreaks which had so disturbed the count : the conscience of the statesman, who felt how little had yet been done by him for the spiritual and secular edu)catizno,:slfd people, emphatithheesee that any eorrecally said No.—( Hear, heals sponding increase had takseinnopelacleB3inztthe intellectual aggranadli would assent not disement of the country withssoion to the to this motion merely, but the distinction as franchise of all his fellow-countrymen to their having or holding houses or simply living in intellectual ; but he found that no such Member diffusion adtual power had taken place. His Hon. Friend Mi for Oldham had eloquently cited, in vancement of knowledge among us, the vast cheap literature, and the names of several men, such' of Thomas Cooper and Ebenezer Elliott, who, men of theas humblest class of life, had distinguished themselves by their glowing and powerful writings. The facts stated by his Hon. Friend not merely proved nothing—they indicated nothing as to the existence of mental power among the masses. In all ages it had pleased the Creator to bestow the gifts of genius upon the humblest among men as upon the highest. It had been so in the Dark Ages—it was so now ; but this proved nothing as to the general mind of the people, from among whom these meteors of genius arose. It could scarcely be said that the mind of Greece, after the Trojan war, was in a state of intellectual elevation, yet it was that age which produced those rhapsodies which bad vivified, and embalmed the truths they narrated, and whose sublime diction had ever mince been the rule of their art to critics—their inspiration to Poets. The Hon. Member for Oldham had cited the author of the " Purgatory of Suicides" as a man, fitted by his glowing verse, to adorn the Legislature of this country. The merits of Mr. Thomas Cooper, as a poet, no man better ape Predated than he (Mr. Sergeant Talfourd) did ; but he