mentary Constitution. We pointed out that the changes worked by the Reform Bill of 1832, however noiseless, had been vast, significant, and seminal; that the House of Commons had become far more imbued with popular opinions, far more sensitive to popular feeling, far more amenable to popular control; that its constitution was less exclusively party, and its discipline less peculiarly military, than before; that it showed a strong and natural tendency to usurp many of the ministerial functions, and thereby to incur much of the ministerial responsibility. We called attention, also, to the momentous fact that, in proportion as it was becoming more and more democratic in its constitution, it was becoming more and more supreme in its jurisdiction; that while it more fully represented the people, it also more entirely monopolised the functions of the three branches of the Legislature; that in fact -looking at our old Constitution as a mixed one-we had for some time been burning the candle at both ends. We discussed fully both the claims and the consequences of universal or 'complete' suffrage: and proved that, while the supposed right of every citizen to the electoral franchise could be made good by no consistent or tenable reasoning, the concession of that right, so far from being an indefeasible guarantee of liberty, might be made the surest instrument of despotism. We showed that the idea which lies at the root of our Electoral System in Great Britain is, and has always been-not the representation of numbers, nor yet that of property, but that of classes; that the adoption of either of the former as a basis would lead to results little foreseen by our Liberals, and from which the most liberal would shrink back aghast; that while the great blot, drawback, and want of the actual Parliamentary suffrage is the inadequate admission within its pale of the labouring classes, the removal of this injustice and defect must be managed with judgment and with caution; that, while the aim and the operation of the measure of 1832 was to place the representation in the hands of the middle classes, any such general and decided lowering of the voting qualification, as was commonly asked for, would take the representation out of the hands of those classes, and would be, in truth, not an advancing but a retrogressive step; and that a 51. franchise would not, as was imagined, be the continuance, confirmation, and extension of the 104. franchise, but its reversal, negation, and discomfiture. While not coldly admitting, but anxiously urging, that an extension of the Parliamentary suffrage to our working classes was both necessary, desirable, and just, we pointed out-what recent disclosures have so signally confirmed-that the thing specially needed was not a lowering, but an elevation and purification, of the franchise; and we hinted that, not only might the two objects be combined, but that the one might be made the means and the security of the other, -inasmuch as among those now virtually or actually excluded, are to be found sounder, healthier, and higher electoral elements than many now within the pale. Finally, taking our stand on the conclusions at which we seemed to have logically arrived, and on the principles which we conceived we had irrefragably established,-we ventured to suggest two or three broad and simple practical measures by the adoption of which, or, at least, by a movement in the direction of which, the great ultimate object which all sincere reformers have in view, might, in our judgment, be most effectually secured; by which the really worthy, competent, and educated of all ranks should be blended in one comprehensive and respectable constituency, and those only should be left destitute of the electoral franchise, who neither value it sufficiently to make any effort for its attainment, nor manifest any of the qualifications, from which we can infer that, if they possessed it, they would exercise it in a right spirit, or for their own interests, or for their country's good. At the period when those papers appeared, the interest once so generally felt in the subject of Parliamentary Reform was languid or asleep; other topics had elbowed it for a time out of the public mind; and measures of a more urgent and practical character absorbed the attention both of the Legislature and the Nation; nor should we have dreamed of entering so largely into the question, had not a pledge been volunteered by the Administration of Lord John Russell, to bring forward a comprehensive proposal on the first feasible occasion. Now, however, the position of the question is altogether changed: the circumstances of the last general election have again lifted it into prominence and paramount importance; dormant interest. is once more aroused; the blots and defects of the existing system have been forced upon our notice with an importunity which will take no denial; and the presentation of seventy-six petitions, the unseating of thirty-six Members for bribery or other undue practices, and the disclosures of the general and widespread corruption practised at elections-long known to the initiated, but never before so laid bare to the public at large -have startled both the Government and the People into a fresh access of vigilance and zeal, and concentrated the general attention upon one branch of the wide question. The extension of the franchise is no longer held forth as the cardinal point, the head and front, of a new Reform Bill:-the suppression of bribery and other corrupt influences is now felt to be the problem most imperatively calling for solution. No measure which does not fairly and manfully grapple with this giant evil, will be worthy of the reputation of the Administration which stands pledged to bring it forward, or will have the smallest chance of meeting acceptance with the country. The New Reform Bill, which is promised for an early period. of next Session, and which Ministers must diligently employ their autumn leisure in concocting, will have to deal with three several points the extension, the re-distribution, and the purification of the Franchise; it must decide who shall possess the suffrage; under what divisions, and in what localities that suffrage shall be exercised; and how that exercise shall be guarded and secured. Of these three problems the last is the one which at present excites the principal interest, and to hich we propose chiefly to address ourselves;-and it will not improbably appear, on close consideration, that the readiest, surest, and perhaps only possible solution of it is to be found in our mode of dealing with the other two. And, first, let us clear our way, and diminish our work by one preliminary observation: We are not-thank God we have never yet been-please God we never shall be-in the position in which our French neighbours find themselves every four or five years,-that namely, of having to construct a constitution wholly afresh; to write upon white paper; to create as it were a world out of nothing. Carte blanche is a condition happily unknown to our politicians. In the immediate case before us our limitations both as philosophers and as statesmen are fixed: we have to amend, to engraft, to modify, to curtail -not to reconstruct. We may therefore dismiss wholly from consideration all those projects and suggestions which would deserve the most sedulous and impartial examination were we called upon to deal ab initio with an infant state, or to frame a substitute for some utterly annihilated and unrevivable régime, -all schemes, however ingenious, plausible, profound or just, which presuppose a demolition of the existing framework of our polity. Universal suffrage, annual parliaments, the franchise of women, and the like, we put aside at once, as changes which, since no Legislature will listen to them, it would be idle for us to discuss and silly to pronounce upon. The same may be said with respect to Electoral Districts—a favourite idea with many, and one which we discussed fully on a previous occasion; because, though we by no means wish to decide that the plan may not adduce many strong arguments in its favour, and that some such division (if based not on population, but on area, or on area and population combined,) might not be found of great indirect benefit in eliminating corrupt and sinister influences - it yet involves far too wide a departure from our traditional ideas and timehonoured arrangements to be seriously and patiently entertained. Our sole aim in the following remarks will be to offer such small practical assistance as it may be in our power to render to our statesmen in the knotty task which lies before them. We shall confine ourselves to the really feasible: what it would be impossible to carry, we shall hold it useless to suggest. In the creation of a House of Commons at the present day, theory and practice are somewhat discrepant. In theory, our sovereign issues a writ to certain counties and boroughs, desiring them to select from among their residents one, two or more individuals qualified to represent their wants and to advise with the monarch and the peers on the government of the realm. In practice, certain parties or sections, having their own grievances to redress or their own opinions to make good, look out for representatives who will serve their purpose, and endeavour to secure the election of these representatives by various licit or illicit means:-or certain politicians, having their own personal objects to serve or their own laudable ambition to gratify by a seat in Parliament, labour to induce different constituencies to return them by persuasives and pressure of various sorts-sometimes less honourable than the object they are designed to subserve. The influences and allurements brought to bear upon the electors in order to affect their choice are of various kinds, -some legitimate, some immoral, some not altogether undue in their nature but exercised to an undue degree, some of a nature which it is not easy to class peremptorily under any of these categories. Sometimes votes are purchased by hard cash,— sometimes they are obtained by the promise of a private or a Government appointment; sometimes the elector is cajoled out of his suffrage by 'soft sawder'-sometimes by oratorical flummery-sometimes by dishonourable beer; often votes are obtained by fraud-oftener by force; the tenant is pressed by the well-founded fear of losing his farm-the workman is coerced by the threat of being dismissed from his employment -the shopman by the dread of losing his custom-the debtor by the prospect of being called upon to pay an inconvenient debt; the courteous voter is influenced by the wish to oblige a neighbour-the poor man by the wish to show respect and gratitude to a kind and considerate landlord—the ignorant man, if he is humble, by deference to the arguments of those he knows to be honest and well-informed-if he is vain and sus - picious, by the representations of the inflammatory spouter; property, custom, money, hope, gratitude, wisdom, virtue, the high arts of the statesman, the low arts of the demagogue-all play their part in the great struggle, all exercise their influence over the choice of the hapless elector. To obtain a perfectly spontaneous and unbiassed choice, all these extrinsic influences ought to be suppressed; but this is at once felt to be impossible, even were it desirable: voters will always be open to cajolery, to deception, to interest, to persuasion, to personal affection; the notion of meeting these influences has therefore never been seriously entertained;—but simple bribery or barefaced intimidation, being so scandalous, so disgraceful and so apparently preventable, have had legislative thunderbolts hurled at them for generations-and hitherto in vain. It appears that electoral corruption commenced in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and that, beginning with a standing order of the House of Commons in 1677, no less than ten distinct Acts (enumerated by Sir E. Wilmot) have been passed to punish and prevent it, besides a variety of enactments enumerated by Mr. Elliot regulating the mode of judging of elections petitioned against for bribery:with what effect we may learn from the fact that, between 1833 and 1853, no less than 323 elections had been petitioned against ; that of these petitions 82 resulted in unseating the members for corrupt practices; and that at the last general election petitions were presented from 76 places; and that 36 members were unseated in consequence;- and finally, that it has been stated publicly by the most experienced electioneering agents, and is commonly believed, that were the law strictly carried out, and the circumstances of every election scrupulously inquired into, scarcely a single member could retain his seat. When to these facts we add that several writs have been suspended, and two places disfranchised for notorious and inveterate corruption, we have said enough to justify the conclusion that there must have been some strange misconception or misdirection in all our previous efforts to enforce purity of election, and that in order to discover a remedy, we must go rather more deeply than we have hitherto done into the analysis of the disorder. Instead, therefore, of professing a pious but unavailing horror at the charge of bribery, instead of veiling our faces before it as a thing scarcely to be recognised or named, or hurling against it solemn but waste and futile enactments, let us look it fairly and coolly in the face, as an evil and a wrong beyond question, but still an evil naturally incidental to and long inwoven into the essence of our * Parl. Paper, 431. (May 2. 1853.) |