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SALISBURY, PRINTER, PRIMROSE-HILL, SALISBURY-SQUARE, FLEET-STREET.

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TAIT'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

JANUARY, 1850.

HINTS ON THE FRANCHISE.

THE franchise will be the framework of a debate || representatives of the working classes exist-and in the next session of Parliament. The feeling evoked by the National Financial Reform and Complete Suffrage Association is not strong, but it is respectable. The noise made by the agitation is not deafening; but the claim is substantial, and is pressed by parties of some weight-by men with votes and influence, to whose arguments members must lend a willing audience as "hustings days approach.

The period would be well selected for the settlement of the franchise movement on some permanent basis. The work must be done at some early date; and, on prudential motives, a quiet season should be chosen for its completion. Cottagers might teach statesmen wisdom on this and on other questions. Thatched roofs require repairs; but the thatcher does not linger idly beside his straw until the rains fall and the storms rise, to make the roof tight, for he prepares in autumn's stillness for winter's tempests. The most intelligent politicians might go, with advantage, to the peasants' school, for they alone wait until troubles come before they provide a remedy, that would prevent their occurrence, if applied at the right hour.

The franchise of this country embraces so many qualifications that an inquirer loses himself, or his judgment, in the labyrinth. The qualification of England would serve no good purpose in Ireland and Scotland, for the forty shillings freehold of England is unknown in the other two kingdoms. In the latter country, two hundred shillings are required, in political qualifying, to stand, instead of forty shillings in England. The franchise in Ireland is more desultory, and depends very often on the caprice of valuators. Difficulty is experienced in getting on, and at least equal difficulty in getting off, the roll of voters. A registered man has no immunity against death; but, for political purposes, he is scarcely allowed to die. His name, like a licensed house, has a virtue in it, although the original occupant may be buried for six months. The body that, by the laws of nature should be dust and ashes, walks hale and hearty to the poll, and votes for the highest bidder-unless some great political end, or some religious object, perhaps some bit of threadbare quackery, revives the lost and nearly forgotten man.

In England, the freemen form a powerful body in borough registries; but in Scotland no similar

VOL. XVII.-NO. CICIM.

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the Scotch operatives require to display no regret on that account, for the English freemen often do things discreditable to themselves. The ten pound rental of London, and the same rental in Thurso or Galway, are very different qualifications. Money is of less value in large towns than in old rural boroughs. Therefore, the man who pays six pounds of rental in the good town of Elgin is probably better to do in the world than a ten pound householder in Edinburgh. Government clings to a qualification of stone, but declines to make it more than nominally uniform. Inequalities of this description can never be entirely obviated, but arrangement and care would reduce their present inconsistencies.

Their recapitulation is an unpleasant and also an unprofitable and provoking mode of spending time. They are not defensible, and they are not defended. Their authors and supporters only decry any disturbance of the country at present. Let ill alone, they say, because some persons have been doing mischief at Turin, or in Mesopotamia, or in Bokhara. The day will never dawn on this side of the millennium, in which, somewhere, unreasonable men will not be doing and asking unreasonable things. The British people are not to be considered as guarantees for all the human family: they cannot be justly punished for any crimes except their own. Political privileges should not be withheld from them on account of riots done by the Baden-Badenese; or because Red Republicanism circulates through French workshops. Should the operatives of England, and especially of Scotland-since those of England may buy freeholds-be politically disfranchised because they are poor? The negative is the answer by everybody; but many add, that for their own sins they suffer. They are ignorant, improvident, or intemperate; and, on these grounds, a general sentence is issued against the whole body. The inconsistency of this conduct is remarkable, for although the artisan who tipples has, for tippling, his citizenship shred away, yet the licensed dealer who supplies his artificial cravings, and generally drinks deep himself, is a privileged man; and all the other persons who minister the means of debasement are exalted into voters, because their trade requires or their profits enable them to pay ten pounds and upwards of annual rent.

The argument against the concession of the suf

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gain more by the adoption of this principle than the owners and tenants of farms, because it would improve the character of farm labourers in many respects. It would give a tremendous blow to nocturnal trespasses for sinister objects; and game preservers should have it in their minds with that view. It would also secure steady labourers, and an abundant supply at hay and harvest seasons, for which farmers should support the allotment scheme. The franchise would also exclude some trades that are overdone. The wages paid in various de

frage to the unen franchised, because many of them consume part of their earnings in a most objectionable manner, is worthless; except against the evil-doers themselves, and better or wiser men should not be punished for their misdeeds. The spirit of our laws has said for centuries, that ten guilty men should escape rather than one innocent person be punished. The administration of the electoral law punishes many innocent persons to prevent the escape without punishment of many who are guilty. Various schemes have been propounded to reformpartments of the weaving business prove the trade the law, and to extend the franchise to all competent persons. A five pound franchise, household franchise, a moral and intellectual franchise, have been advocated with various degrees of zeal. The first would be, probably, supported by many of the Whigs; the second is a premium on early marriages, and calculated to exclude thrifty bachelors who have some stake in the well-doing of the nation, and intelligence to give effect to their motives; the third is, doubtless, the most complete and advisable scheme, but it is troublesome, and Government officials hate trouble, while it is also liable to abuse-a counter qualification that might compensate its administrators for some objections.

A franchise of five pounds would not carry the same objections in principle as one of ten. The difference between five and ten in this case is more than one of degree. Sanatory reformers who have studied the circumstances of all towns, with populations ranging over ten thousand, will admit readily that in nearly all of them an artisan's family may obtain a house, or part of a house, suitable to their real necessities, for a less annual rent than ten pounds, but not for less than five. This is a broad distinction in the character of the two rental qualifications. Ten excludes economieal and industrious families; five includes all of them who are not suffering severe calamity, or do not follow an overdone trade. Ten pounds yearly is four shillings weekly-a higher proportion than should be paid for rental out of any income under twenty to thirty shillings weekly; and a higher sum than that for which persons with a better income can obtain sufficient accommodation in many of the largest towns; while five pounds annually is two shillings weekly, a payment for rental absolutely necessary to all who receive twelve shillings of weekly wages or upwards, and who properly, in their circumstances, discharge in their families the duties owing to them, and to society on their ac

count.

A five pound franchise is not, therefore, a palliative of the present system, but involves a new principle. A rental of ten pounds yearly would be, for many families, a deed of misthrift; while the payment of five pounds is a certificate, in the great majority of cases, that just precautions for health, and the culture of the moral feelings, have been adopted. The line would not include many deserving persons amongst the peasantry and country labourers, although it is desirable that they should pay five pounds annually, that their cottages should be increased in value by allotments of land, in all cases sufficient for this purpose. No classes would

to be in bad circumstances. It may answer, and even do well, on the Irish or the Saxon systems, where it is pursued in conjunction with the cultivation of small farms; where the weaver considers it as a supplementary branch of support, in which the aid of his family can be profitably employed; but as the sole means of support in large towns, or in any other quarter, very few branches of handloom weaving are at present advisable professions.

A household franchise is indefinite, and contains no element that could induce a wise man to stop at that point, short of universal suffrage: for what is a house? Is it a single room in a six pair attic, or one of the pyramidical mansions at Prince Albert's gate? Is it a hut or a mansion; or where is the line between the two; which divides between houses, and hovels, or lodgings? Mr. Hume once defined a householder to be a rate-payer; but in the great majority of towns and rural districts, persons occupying less than five pounds worth per annum of houses or lands, are not rated, and by this definition, would be placed on the terms of a five pound franchise. Another objection is présented by the fact that in many quarters a strong opposition has been formed to rating on rental, from good motives; and supported, we believe, by strong reasons. Heritable property should not be alone required to bear local or general taxation. Dividends from the funds, interest from mortgages, professional incomes, and profits from trade, will all be involved in the vortex of local rating. Precarious incomes are to be considered in a very different light, and dealt with entirely in a different manner from incomes derived from property; but they are liable to some share of general burdens, and are unlikely to be long exempted. In this change, however, small incomes, like small rentals, will be practically exempted, and the class of persons inhabiting houses cheaper than five pounds of annual rent would be left off the roll of electors, in return for being left out of the local rate collector's list.

These remarks are intended only to show the practical working of a household suffrage with a rate-paying clause. It is said by Mr. Cobden, whỏ has adopted it from Mr. Hume, to be an old Saxon practice-to have all the advantage of precedent

and to be therefore dear to Englishmen. We cannot discuss the question in that form, for the anxieties of Englishmen for this or any other system of franchise cannot be exactly ascertained; but we wish them to know the precise meaning of a household franchise, under the qualification of rate-paying. rate-paying. It is a five pound qualification, in almost all towns, and may be higher in some other

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