nearly, if not quite, a million and a half. There is Liverpool, with its commercial interests, and with a port perhaps the largest in the world. Look at Manchester, with its 400,000 of a population, and with its vast manufacturing interests. Look at Birmingham, the very centre and heart of the island, also with a population of 400,000, and with interests which I need not describe, because they are well known to the House. Look at Leeds, the centre and capital of the county of York. They asked the House to grant them additional representation; and they wanted more than one new member, because they said that their population was so great, their interests beyond all arithmetical computation, and their influence in the country undoubtedly large. Well, they asked the House for greater representation, and the House, by unanimous. consent for I will undertake to say there was as much satisfaction on that side as there was on this—agreed, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he would give these additional members to the four boroughs I have named. Now, there is a million and a half of population in those four boroughs, which are now represented by eight members; and if this Bill passes, they would have twelve members. I am not speaking of whether they sit on that side of the House or on this; and I believe my opinion would be exactly the same, and just as strong, if I represented any other borough, as it is representing Birmingham. Well, these four boroughs would have twelve representatives amongst them; and when there was a great question before the country-as, for example, the question of the character of the Administration, or it might be the question of a further change in Parliamentary representation, or it might be the condition of Ireland, if that member was merely to be paired against one of their present

representatives, I say, as one of the members for Birmingham, that I wholly protest against this proposition. What will you do with my colleague, if I should be humiliated to sit for a borough in which I cannot say that I have been elected by the majority of the voices of the constituency? What will we say to the minority member for Birmingham? Supposing my late lamented friend and colleague, Mr Scholefield, had been the representative for the minority. At his death, there must have been a new writ issued for an election for Birmingham. Would you, by any clause in this Bill, or of any future Bill, prevent the majority of the constituency voting for his successor? Suppose my hon. colleague the member for the minority in the future Parliament, if I should be unfortunate enough to be associated with such a one-supposing he was found serviceable to Lord Derby and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and invited to take a seat in the Government-in this Bill you have re-enacted that members taking certain offices shall be re-elected; but if he went down as the member for the minority, who is to re-elect him? Do you think that the two-thirds who support myself and my colleague would be so condescending as to return your minority member, to sit with a Government to which they are opposed? The whole matter is so monstrous and so unconstitutional, that I feel I am humiliating you or myself in discussing it. It may not be humiliating you, because you do not believe in it. You believe in the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in one of the most impressive speeches made in this House-and no man speaks more impressively than he does, when he speaks from his heart-opposed this scheme. You believed him and voted with him. He thinks now as he then did, and

he has followed my speech from beginning to end, and there is not a single word which he is prepared at this moment to contradict. May I ask the House to lift itself just for one moment from any very narrow view of party? This is not a question of party-let us leave that altogether alone; and we are not going to injure Government. There is nothing of that in it. It would be greatly to the credit of Lord Derby and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in regard to the historic value of their measure, if it would not be defaced by a great evil like this. I am speaking in their interest as much as in the interest of any man who has supported this Bill. Let us get rid of all questions of party or feeling about voting for or against Government. This point has been recommended to us by the House of Lords, in which there cannot be the same knowledge or interest in connexion with the matter that there is in this House. Let us look at it as regards the great body of the people, for whom we sit here. Let us look at it in reference to the grand old freedom for which our forefathers struggled and maintained, and the fruit of which we from the day of our birth until this hour have been constantly enjoying. If this proposition had come before the House at the time when the grand men, the giants of the English constitution, sat in it, they would have treated it in a manner much less decorous than we shall treat it, and there is not one single name which appears among the great men who have fought for English liberty and freedom who would not have given his vote against the Lord's amendment in the division to which I now ask the House to proceed. JOHN BRIGHT.

MODERN RELIGIOUS SPECULATIONS.

WE live in times when the whole nature of our relation to the unseen world is widely, eagerly, and assiduously questioned. Sometimes we are told of general laws, so conceived as to be practically independent either of a Lawgiver or a Judge. Sometimes of a necessity working all things to uniform results, but seeming to crush and to bury under them the ruins of our will, our freedom, our personal responsibility. Sometimes of a private judgment, which we are to hold upon the hard condition of taking nothing upon trust, of passing by, at the outset of our mental life, the whole preceding education of the world, of owning no debt to those who have gone before without a regular process of proof,—in a word, of beginning anew each man for himself—a privilege which I had thought was restricted to the lower orders of creation, where the parent infuses no prejudices into its litter or its fry. Such are the fancies which go abroad. Such are the clouds which career in heaven, and pass between us and the sun, and make men idly think, that what they see not, is not, and blot the prospects of what is in so many and such true respects a happy and a hopeful age. It is, I think, an observation of St Augustine, that those periods are critical and formidable, when the power of putting questions runs greatly in advance of the pains to answer them. Such appears to be the period in which we live. And all among us, who

are called in any manner to move in the world of thought, may well ask, Who is sufficient for these things? Who can with just and firm hand sever the transitory from the durable, and the accidental from the essential, in old opinions? Who can combine, in the measures which reason would prescribe, reverence and gratitude to the past with a sense of the new claims, new means, new duties of the

present? Who can be stout and earnest to do battle for the Truth; and yet hold sacred, as he ought, the freedom of inquiry, and cherish, as he ought, a chivalry of controversy like the ancient chivalry of arms? One persuasion, at least, let us embrace: one error let us avoid. Let us be persuaded of this, that Christianity will, by her inherent resources, find for herself a philosophy equal to all the shifting and all the growing wants of the time. Let us avoid the error of seeking to cherish a Christianity of isolation. The Christianity which is now and hereafter to flourish, and, through its power in the inner circles of human thought, to influence ultimately, in some manner more adequate than now, the masses of mankind, must be such as of old the wisdom of God was described. "For in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold, subtil, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing all things. . . . For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of God, and the image of His goodness." (Wisdom of Solomon). It must be filled full with human and genial warmth, in close sympathy with every true instinct and need of man, regardful of the just titles of every faculty of his nature, apt to associate with it and make its own all, under whatever name, which goes to enrich and enlarge the patrimony of the race. And therefore, it is well that we should look out over the field of history, and see, if haply its records, the more they are unfolded, do or do not yield us new materials for the support of faith. Me at least for one, experience has convinced that, just as fresh wonder and confirmed conviction flow from examining the structure of the universe and its