TOPICS OF THE DAY.
l'HE GOVERNMENT REFORM BILL COMPARED.
IN order to present our opinion upon the Government Reform Bill, and the present bearing of the whole question, we will put it dogmatically, in saying that if we could command the requisite number of votes in the House of Commons, we would procure the Bill to be passed with certain modifications. For while modifica- tions appear to us to be absolutely necessary, to postpone the Re- form question to another session would assist none but those who would profit by a declamatory view of the question. By succes- sive promissory bills, the public expectation has been spontaneously, we will not say wantonly, excited • to repeat the disappointments after "the two great parties in the state" have agreed that a measure ought to pass, would be to treat a nation as a woman is treated when she is courted to be slighted ; and nations as little pardon that offence as women do. They will have their revenge ; and in this case the revenge would be injurious to the best in- terests of the country. Every incentive hitherto has failed to ex- cite the people ; let them be deliberately disappointed, either by the connivance or the wrangling of the two great parties in the state, and their blood would be up ; but in a subsequent session they would not tolerate so moderate a measure as would now satisfy them. We ought almost to apologise for using the word "moderate,"
since we must confess that we do it somewhat in a slang sense. There is no correlation in this instance between what is vulgarly called moderate, and what is sufficient. Our standard is the British Constitution. We have on former occasions explained our stedfast opinion that the true method of improving the etatutable part of our Constitution, while adapting it to the enlarged intelli- gence and altering circumstances of modern times, is to keep in view the original spirit, and as far as possible to restore the truly popular elements of representation which have been suspended or contracted during the unfortunate ascendancy of party principles derived from the alternate action and reaction of Tory and Whig influences. We do not say this in abuse of great Tory and Whig statesmen ; they have at various junctures 111 our history been led into measures extreme because partial, in counteracting some dan- gerous tendency of their particular day. Measures may be con- sidered extreme which deviate largely from the spirit and bearing of our constitution as a whole. That spirit we conceive resided in the resolve of freemen who were capable of defending them- selves and speaking for themselves to have some share in the deli- berations by which their governors and tax-receivers were guided. This kind of manly independence has won the respect of all classes for each other, in rougher times, when there was less so-called intelligence. ifhere factions have departed from the original bearing of the Constitution' calmer but firmer patriots, sustained by the strength of the nation, have, with immense labour, and proportionate expenditure of anxiety and even of blood, restored their country to its true course ; and while that measure which aims at continuing the course thus deliberately marked out by succes- sive generations of our forefathers will be called in the slang of the day the most "moderate," yet it will be the one that will be the most sufficient, and in the main road of progress will go the farthest. In order, therefore, to judge of the precise value of the Government bill, and to estimate the correction which it needs to promote this kind: of progress, we must compare it with other designs. In a former number of the Spectator, we briefly sketched some of the principal projects which have recently been laid before the public; in the number before that, we printed tables setting forth Sir Eardley Wilmot's plan of electoral reform ; and we unhesitatingly avowed that of all the plans now competing for 'public adjudication, his is the best, because it most patiently and obediently proceeds upon the direct lines of our old constitu- tion.* It forms, therefore, the best standard by which to judge the Government Bill.
From this point of view, some details of the Government mea- sure are obviously desirable or harmless. In regard to the mul- tiplication of polling places, the Government bill and Sir Eard- ley's measure are at one. Booths and hustings are generally a useless expense, and their abolition is proper. The issue of voting papers is questionable, on many grounds; but particularly in multiplying the points of contact between the agents of the can- didate and the elector ; and thus offering endless facilities for bribery and chicane. We bear in mind the penal clause to check this misdemeanour ; but there are such things as paying insu- rance against penal consequences. In some cases, as where the voter lives at a great distance from the polling place, especially in the instance of universities, the polling paper may be a conve- nience. At all events it is an arrangement which does not in- volve political principle, especially in days when the mere multi- tude of voters somewhat neutralizes publicity by smothering it in crowd and tumult. The repeal of the licence upon payment of conveyance is good. The enlargement of borough boundaries is wanted. The extension of the franchise to funded property, to pensioners in the Civil Service, and to persons tried by some educational test, are all commendable provisions. And to abo-
• Feb. 5th, 1859.
* Since Sir Eardley first promulgated his plan he has slightly altered it n one point—that of freemen. The people of Coventry represented that a hardship would be caused by abolishing the freedom of apprenticeship, and the plan has been so far modified in a copy of the tables which he has since printed.
lish the necessity of resigning seats on the change of office is a measure in accordance with a very general tendency of public opinion. Perhaps in the case of leading Cabinet Ministers that test of national approbation might still be retained, but it is a point fairly debatable, and best settled in Committee of the whole House.
Pursuing our comparative survey, we now come to the more distinctly questionable portions of the scheme ; beginning with the county franchise, and particularly with those provisions which lower the franchise to 101., and for county purposes disfranchise the freeholders in boroughs. It is a mistake to suppose that the lowering of the county franchise necessarily tends to progress, or to a more popular character for the constituency. The first result would be to hand over a very large proportion of the county fran- chise to the shopkeepers in the towns which are unrepresented ; that is to say, it is substituting the shopkeeper for the farmer. How is this conservative ? How does it tend to draw on the con- stitution as it has already existed ? How does it fulfil the object of all these reforms, by rendering the representations of each part of the country, if we may use the expression, more intense ? We are well aware that Sir Eardley Wilmot proposed to give the forty-shilling freeholders in boroughs the option of voting for the place of their residence, but it was a provision in conjunction with others entirely different from those of the Government bill. Sir Eardley, proceeding, as we have already said, on the broad high- way of the constitution, and acting in accordance with the opin- ion of Lord Chief Justice Campbell and other yet higher constitu- tional authorities, proposed to restore the ancient franchise com- mon to all burgesses in towns ; and in this case the option ac- corded to the forty-shilling freeholders might have turned upon the towns rather a superior class of freeholders, whose influence and opinion would help to counterpoise the undeniably democratic tendency of the household suffrage. But if the existing borough franchise is not lowered, this counterpoise is not wanted ; while, on the contrary, it is more than ever required to counterpoise the lowered franchise in the counties. Nothing would so powerfully counteract the mischievous effect of the provision which substi- tutes the shopkeeper for the farmer. After this comparison of the Government Bill with that pro- posal which we have taken as a fair standard, we can the better understand Mr. Walpole's objection to lower the county franchise below 20/. although he would have lowered the borough fran- chise to 6/.
The Government have almost piqued themselves on establish- ing an occupancy franchise identical in town and country, ap- parently oblivious of the fact that the nominally identical Bland- ards not only refer to different things in the two different parts of the world, but that in country districts, where there are unre- presented boroughs, the town occupancy may swamp the rural oc- cupancy. On the other hand there is a kind, of tenure as a basis of an extended franchise, -conservative in ifs character, and as- sisting to draw forth a more comprehensive representation of classes—we mean copyhold property. Accordingly, in Sir Eard- ley's Bill, we find the franchise conferred on seven years' lease- holders at 101., and on 40s. copyholds equally with freeholds ; whereas the Government Bill restrains the franchise of leaseholds to an unexpired residence of thirty years, and the copyhold fran- chise is extended only to the 51. limit.
Reverting to the borough franchise, we find the occupation standard not lowered from 10/.—but a lodger franchise has been introduced. Attacks have been made upon this clause, on the ground that tricks might be played with it,—tricks, we conceive which it would not be very difficult to defeat. Nor is it quite decorous towards either political opponents or the country, to meet with jokes a plan designed with evident care and offered in good faith. But tried by the tests which we are now employing, we find very grave doubts as to the advantage of this lodger fran- chise. The sum proposed, 20/. a year, or 88. a week, is a rate seldom paid by the working man, except in great towns and cities. It is an amount of rent paid by the classes above the
working people —men who have an income which subjects them to the Income people,—men
; but that is a much more simple and tangible kind of franchise, and accordingly it is included in Sir Eardley Wilmot's draft for a bill. We have already shown that the de- posit in Savings Bank of 601. is far too high. In fact there is no doubt that the objections of Mr. Walpole to the praotical exclu- sion of the working classes generally holds good. In that res- pect the Bill fails to fulfil either public expectation, or public opinion.
There are some other points for comparison, but we have at present purposely confined ourselves to the broadest considera- tions. In our last number we examined the alterations which could be made within the scope and design apparently laid down by the authors of the bill; but it will be seen that, in order to meet the manifest requirements of the juncture and the expecta- tion of the public it would be necessary to attempt some positive enlargement of the measure. From what has passed in the re- tirement of Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley—the latter by no means considered the most "ultra" member of the Government either in Conservatism or Liberalism,—it has become evident that there are diversities of opinion even in the Ministerial ranks ; other statesmen in the Cabinet have been mentioned as persons from whom the public of this country would have expected a larger and more just appreciation of present requirements. We cannot exclude from our minds the belief that some of the Queen's advisers who have lately been in consultation with Lord Derby
must have anticipated in substance and spirit if not in form the points to which we have adverted ; undoubtedly, the bill which Mr. Disraeli has laid before the House of Commons might be ma- terially amended and enlarged without destroying it. Other Ministries have suffered their proposals to be altered and extended. To go back some way, the great Reform Bill of '32 was made to include the 50/. county franchise : and at a more recent date the Marriage and Divorce Bill underwent an integral change in com- mittee of the House of Commons. To modify the present measure in deference to any d:stinct expression of the public opinion, or what is the same thing, in conformity with any amendment upon which the leading sections of the Opposition can agree, would be to perform a national service ; and for the master reason which we pointed out at the beginning. It would not contribute to de- liberate legislation, to the passing of a grave measure or to the advancement of the country on the broad highway of the Consti- tution, if we were either to disappoint the factitiously excited an- ticipation of the public, or to fling the bill for legislation to that worst of all tribunals—a general election.
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