Lord Stmtheclexi moved in the House of Lords on Thursday,
-" That in the opinion of this House, in any further scheme to amend the Reform Act of 1832 and increase the body of electors, it is not desirable or necessary that all boroughs should return members by the same qualification,"—a proposition for which we have.of ten contended, and which recommends itself to anybody -who is convinced that in one class of boroughs a very good con- stituency may be got out of a very low qualification, which would produce a very bad and corrupt constituency in another class of boroughs. It cannot be wise to make so rigid a principle of uni- formity of machinery that you must apply a new and efficient machine for one place and process to another place and process where it is notoriously a change for the worse. You might as well insist on applying a machine invented for the sift- ing of flour to the sifting of sand or gravel. Lord Strath- -eden showed historically that variety of franchise, and not uniformity, was the old principle, to which Lord Derby replied, without absolutely rejecting the suggestion, that "the -question of reinstating peculiar qualifications is very different from the proposal [not?] to abolish existing rights to vote. Sound reasons must be given for introducing peculiar suffrages, now that we have agreed to come down to the dead level of a uniform franchise ;"—to which we should reply, first, that we never have agreed to come down to the dead level of a
• -uniform franchise, since the county and borough franchises have always been different ; and that no sounder reason can be given for extending the franchise widely in Leeds or Manchester, and not extending it in Yarmouth or Tams than this,—that we know in the former places the extension will include the best class of voters, .and in the latter the worst. Did any statesman ever find a sounder reason for any policy than that ? What Lord Grey dropped incidentally on the same subject was also favourable to Lord Stratheden's resolution. Of course it was not pressed.
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