to more simple nations. If a native inhabitant of Bengal or China were to be informed, that in the west of Europe there is a small island, which in the course of one hundred years contributed four hundred and fifty millions to the exigencies of the State, and that every individual, on the making of a demand, vied with his neighbour in alacrity to subscribe, he would immediately exclaim, "Magnanimous nation! you must surely be invincible." But far dif ferent would be his sentiments, if informed of the tricks and job attending these transactions, where even loyalty was seen cringing for its bonus! By a calculation I have made, which I believe cannot be controverted, it appears, from the vast increase of our burthens during the war, that if peace were to be concluded to-morrow, we should have to provide taxes annually to the amount of 28,000,0007. To this is further to be added, the expense of that system, by which Ireland is not governed, but ground, insulted, and oppressed. To find a remedy for all these incumbrances, the first thing to be done is, to restore the credit of the Bank, which has failed, as well in credit as in honour. Let it no longer, in the minister's hands, remain the slave of political circumstances. It must continue insolvent till the connection is broken off.

It is, Sir, highly offensive to the decency and sense of a commercial people, to observe the juggle between the minister and the Bank. The latter vauntingly boasted itself ready and able to pay; but that the minister kindly prevented, and put a lock and key upon it. There is a liberality in the British nation which always makes allowance for inability of payment. Commerce requires enterprise, and enterprise is subject to losses. But I believe no indulgence was ever shown to a creditor, saying, "I can, but will not pay you." Such was the real condition of the Bank, together with its accounts, when they were laid before the House of Commons; and the chairman reported from the committee, stating its prosperity, and the great increase of its cash and bullion. The minister, however, took care to verify the old saying, "Brag is a good dog, but Hold-fast is better." "Ah!" said he, "my worthy chairman, this is excellent news, but I will take care to secure it." He kept his word, took the money, gave exchequer bills for it, which were no security, and there was then an end to all our public credit. It is singular enough, Sir, that the report upon this bill stated that it was meant to secure our public credit from the avowed intentions of the French to make war upon it. This was done most effectually. Let the French come when they please, they cannot touch our public credit at least. The minister has wisely provided against it, for he has previously destroyed it. The only consolation besides that remains to us, is his assurance that all will return again to its former state at the conclusion of the war. Thus we are to hope, that though the Bank now presents a meagre spectre, as soon as peace is restored the golden bust will make its reappearance.

Though, Sir, I have opposed the present tax, I am still conscious that our existing situation requires great sacrifices to be made, and

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that a foreign enemy must at all events be resisted. I behold in the measures of the minister nothing except the most glaring incapacity, and the most determined hostility to our liberties; but we must be content, if necessary for preserving our independence from foreign attack, to strip to the skin. It is an established maxim," we are told, that men must give up a part for the preservation of the remainder. I do not dispute the justice of the maxim. But this is the constant language of the gentleman opposite me. We have already given up part after part, nearly till the whole is swallowed up. If I had a pound, and a person asked me for a shilling, to preserve the rest I should willingly comply, and think myself obliged to him. But if he repeated that demand till he came to my twentieth shilling, I should ask him,-"Where is the remainder? Where is my pound now? Why, my friend, that is no joke at all." Upon the whole, Sir, I see no salvation for the country but in the conclusion of a peace and the removal of the present ministers.

THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE ON THE

FRANCHISE.

[Mr. Gladstone was born at Liverpool, Dec. 20, 1809. He entered the House of Commons in 1832 as a member for Newark. In 1866, on the death of Lord Palmerston, he became Prime Minister; since which time he has maintained his position as leader of the Liberal party.]

I AM not prepared to discuss admission to the franchise as it was discussed fifty years ago when Lord John Russell had to state with almost bated breath that he expected to add in the three kingdoms half a million to the constituencies. It is not now a question of nicely calculated less or more. I take my stand on the broad principle that the enfranchisement of capable citizens be they few or be they many,-and if they be many so much the better-gives an addition of strength to the State. The strength of the modern State lies in the representative system. I rejoice to think that in this happy country and under this happy Constitution we have other sources of strength in the respect paid to various orders of the State, and in the authority they enjoy, and in the unbroken course which has been allowed to most of our national traditions; but still, in the main, it is the representative system which is the strength of the modern State in general, and of the State in this country in particular. Sir, I may say-it is an illustration which won't occupy more than a moment that never has this great truth been so vividly illustrated as in the war of the American Republic. The convulsion of that country between 1861 and 1865 was perhaps the most frightful which ever assailed a national existence. The efforts which were made on both sides were marked. The exertions by which alone the movement was put down were not only extraordinary, they were what would antecedently have been called impossible, and they were only rendered possible by the fact that they proceeded from a nation where every capable citizen was enfranchised and had a direct and an energetic interest in the well-being and the unity of the State. Sir, the only question

that remains in the general argument is, who are capable citizens? And, fortunately, that is a question which, on the present occasion, need not be argued at length, for it has been already settled-in the first place by a solemn legislative judgment acquiesced in by both parties in the State, and in the second place by the experience of the last more than fifteen years. Who, Sir, are the capable citizens of the State, whom it is proposed to enfranchise? It is proposed in the main to enfranchise the county population on the footing, and according to the measure, that has already been administered to the population of the towns. What are the main constituents of the county population? First of all, they are the minor tradesmen of the country, and the skilled labourers and artisans in all the common arts of life, and especially in connection with our great mining industry. Is there any doubt that these are capable citizens? You have yourselves asserted it by enfranchising them in the towns, and we can only say that we heartily subscribe to the assertion. But besides the artisans and the minor tradesmen scattered throughout our rural towns we have also to deal with the peasantry of the country. Is there any doubt that the peasantry of the country are capable citizens, qualified for enfranchisement, qualified to make good use of their power as voters? This is a question which has been solved for us by the first and second Reform Bills, because many of the places which under the name of towns are now represented in this House are really rural communities, based upon a peasant constituency. For my part I should be quite ready to fight the battle of the peasant upon general and argumentative grounds. I believe the peasant generally to be, not in the highest sense, but in a very real sense, a skilled labourer. He is not a man tied down to one mechanical exercise of his physical powers. He is a man who must do many things, and many things which require in him the exercise of active intelligence. But as I say, it is not necessary to argue on that ground, first of all because we have got his friends here, from whom we must anticipate great zeal for his enfranchisement; and secondly, because the question has been settled by legislative authority in the towns, and by practical experience. If he has a defect it is that he is too ready, perhaps, to work with and to accept the influence of his superiors superiors, I mean, in worldly station. But that is the last defect that you will be disposed to plead against him, and it is a defect that we do not feel ourselves entitled to plead, and that we are not at all inclined to plead. We are ready to take him as he is and joyfully bring him within the reach of this last and highest privilege of the Constitution. There is only one other word, Sir, to add on this part of the subject. The present position of the franchise is one of greater and grosser anomaly than any in which it has been heretofore placed, because the exclusion of persons of the same class and the same description is more palpable and more pervading than before, being, in fact, spread over the whole country, persons being excluded in one place while the same persons are admitted in another. I wish

just to call the attention of the House to an important fact connected with this part of the question which is of frequent occurrence. It is a thing which the house detests, and which we in this Bill shall endeavour to avoid-namely, the infliction of personal disfranchisement. Observe how the present state of the franchise law brings this about. It is known and well understood that a labourer must follow his labour. Where his labour goes, where the works go in which he is employed, he must follow. He cannot remain at a great distance from them; and the instance I will give and though I am not personally conversant with it, I believe there is no doubt about the fact-is an instance which I think singularly applicable. It is that of the ship-building works on the Clyde. Those works were within the precincts of the city of Glasgow, and the persons who laboured in them were able to remain within the city, being near their work, and at the same time to enjoy the franchise. But the marvellous enterprise of Glasgow, which has made that city the centre and crown of the ship-building business of the world, could not be confined within the limits of the city of Glasgow, and it moved down the river. As the trade moved down the river the artisans required to move down the river with it. That was a matter of necessity, and the obedience to that necessity involves under the present law wholesale disfranchisement. That is an argument which is sufficient for disposing of the general question. The whole population, I rejoice to think, have liberty of speech, they have liberty of writing, they have liberty of meeting in public, they have liberty of private association, they have liberty of petitioning Parliament. All these privileges are not privileges taking away from us, diminishing our power and security, they are all of them privileges on the existence of which our security depends. Without them we could not be secure. I ask you to confer upon the very same classes the crowning privilege of voting for a representative in Parliament, and then I say we who are strong now as a nation and a State shall by virtue of that change be stronger still.

We propose to establish a new franchise, which I should calltill a better phrase be disco vered the service franchise. It will be given to persons who are inhabitants, and in the sense of inhabitancy, who are occupiers. The present law restricts, I believe, the signification of the term "occupiers" to those who are either owners or tenants. Our object is to provide a franchise for those inhabitants who are neither owners nor tenants; but they must be householders in this sense-either, in the first place, that they are actual inhabitants; or, in the second place, that there is no other inhabitant with them, superseding them or standing in the same position with them; and in the third place, they must either be inhabitants of an integral house or else of that separate part of a house which, at any rate, so far as England is concerned, has already been declared to be a house for electoral purposes. Hon. gentlemen are aware of the general reasons which may be pleaded

in favour of this enlargement. It is an enlargement absolutely required by the principle of this Bill, because the principal and central idea of this Bill is to give every householder a vote. The householder is just as much a householder, and has just as much the responsibility of a householder, whether he is in the eye of the law an owner or a tenant, or whether he is not, provided he is an inhabitant in the sense I have described. And this service franchise is a far-reaching franchise. It goes to men of high class, who inhabit valuable houses, as the officers of great institutions. It descends to men of humble class, who are the servants of the gentry, or the servants of the farmer, or the servants of some other employer of labour who are neither owners nor tenants, and who, in many cases, cannot be held as tenants, in consequence of the essential conditions intended to be realised through their labours, but who fully fulfil the idea of responsible inhabitant householders.

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This is a measure with results such as I have ventured to sketch them that ought to bring home to the mind of every man favourable to the extension of popular liberty, the solemn question what course he is to pursue in regard to it. I hope the House will look at it as the Liberal party in 1831 looked at the Reform Bill of that date, and determined that they would waive criticism of minute details, that they would waive particular preferences and predelictions, and would look at the broad scope and general effect of the measure. Do that upon this occasion. It is a Bill worth having, and if it is worth having, again I say it is a Bill worth your not endangering. Let us enter into no byeways which would lead us off the path marked out straight before us; let us not wander on the hill-tops of speculation; let us not wander into the morasses and fogs of doubt. We are firm in the faith that enfranchisement is a good, that the people may be trusted-that the voters under the Constitution are the strength of the Constitution. What we want in order to carry this Bill, considering as I fully believe that the very large majority of this country are favourable to its principle-what we want in order to carry it is union and union only. What will endanger it is disunion and disunion only. Let us hold firmly together and success will crown our effort. You will, as much as any former Parliament that has conferred great legislative benefits on the nation, have your reward, and

"Read your history in a nation's eyes,"

for you will have deserved it by the benefits you will have conferred. You will have made this strong nation stronger still, stronger by its closer union without; stronger against its foes, if and when it has any foes without; stronger within by union between class and class, and by arraying all classes and all portions of the community in one solid, compacted mass round the ancient throne which it has loved so well, and round a Constitution now to be more than ever powerful, and more than ever free.