TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE COMING REFORM BILL.
IT is difficult to believe that the coming session of Parliament will result in orderly legislation upon so momentous a subject as Re- form or, indeed, in anything save further Ministerial and party complimaions. Nevertheless it seems necessary to enter into a discussion of the principles of the subject, of the position of the statesmen, who propose to legislate on it, and of some of the sa- lient difficulties which stand in the way of results. Perhaps it may be most instructive to consider the difficulties first. The most striking difficulty of all is the common agreement of all parties that a change is to be effected. If this assertion ap- pear a paradox it will be to those only who underrate the import- ance of that help which antagonism gives to the practical move- ment of life. Lukewarm unanimity of purpose and intention is more beautiful in the point of view of sentiment, than either real, or useful, or helpful. That is a dangerous, or at least a perplex- ing state of things when all are agreed that changes must be ef- fected, but none see their way with much clearness to the precise change that is necessary or desirable. It is not possible for the great majority of mankind to depend upon the speculative facul- ties for valuable practical results ; so as to dispense with the bracing and enlightening influence of personal and party conflict. We should feel more confident expectation of a really valuable measure if liberal leaders were more frankly liberal, and conser- vative more sturdily conservative. On the one side the affectation of moderation' and on the other the affectation of enlightenment have gone far to deprive persons of all force and character. And say what we will of the impersonal influences which are supposed to have superseded individual and private virtue, force and character are needed to produce results by a people ever so unanimous.
The greatest difficulty, then, which environs the Reform ques- tion is to be found in this pseudo-unanimity. It is a difficulty which has a wider scope than appears at first sight. Hitherto all the great movements in English politics have had their origin in some deeply felt abuse, in some plain violation of ancient rights, in some encroachment upon ancient liberties, some plain wrong urgently requiring a remedy. But in the break down of the old party conflicts, and the general destruction of personal ties, the opportunity or pretext has been found for entering upon new fields of legislation upon purely speculative and abstract grounds. We do not wish to be understood as demurring to this method of pro- cedure. Life, action and movement we must have of some kind or other. And in a time when most practical grievances appear to be redressed, it is difficult to abstain from the attempt to realize speculative or ideal plans. We have already seen one great ex- ample of this in the Indian legislation of the last session. The East India Company was abolished upon a purely abstract princi- ple of Empire. Every variety of vague theory, a multitude of implications, were satisfied by the adoption of the formula of the "direct government of the Crown.' We did not proceed upon the old English plan of discovering mischiefs to apply a remedy, but in the modern European fashion of forming a new plan of government. Very few sound and sober thinkers will be found who will not agree that there is much danger in allowing thin habit of the public mind to grow. Hitherto a cry and a phrase have been sufficiently powerful at times to pull down a Cabinet. But it would be extremely unfortunate if mere cries and phrases were to be the reasons for pulling down and reconstruct- ing most of the old edifices, political, social, and religious, which have been slowly built upon the soil of England. But whatever objections there may be to working upon abstrac- tions and theories instead of in obedience to plainly felt necessi- ties, this question of Reform is so circumstanced that it must be so worked or not at all. It is now nearly ten years since the con- fession went forth from the mouths of foremost statesmen that the present adjustment of political forces is unsatisfactory, that the representation of the people is not on a sound and healthy foot- ing. It will not be pretended that the political history of the time that has elapsed since that date has gone far to disprove and discredit that confession. On the contrary, it has received con- firmation from the gradual-decline of personal character and Par- liamentary efficiency which has so strikingly marked the last five years. It has received irrefragable proof in that habit of irresolution, of temporizing, of postponement, of half-heartedness which has infected all the members of the governing class, which is fast turning Cabinet Ministers into mere negative quantities, and which, above all, marks, as we have before insisted, that the present stage of government is merely transitory and provisionaL In fact, the great argument for Reform in Parliament is, not so much the existence of abuses under the present state of things as the non-existence of any one fault or tendency in particular, and the general conviction that the character and force of the country are not now represented in its Parliamentary institutions. The question, therefore, will not bear postponement. At any cost, the moral and intellectual decline of the Legislature must be arrested : greater vigour and concentration must be imparted to it. And this can only, by common consent, be effected, so far as deliberate forethought and arrangement can bring it about, by searching reform in the composition of the House of Commons, if not, indeed—which will not fail to be considered—of the House of Lords as well.
The conditions, then, under which the country and the House
will have to approach this grave question are various and comph. Gated. There is a general sense of insufficiency, of anomaly,
of radical weakness and infirmity in the present politieLl
order, a pervading dissatisfaction, but no direct grasp of percep. tion as to the bearing which a legislative remedy will have upen
the disease. This is in truth the reason why the glaring enema-
lies of the present system have not been earlier remedied. It is intolerably absurd, if the occupation of a 10/. house be a sufficient
test of the worthiness of a man to vote, that it should depend upon
the accident of the situation of that house whether its occupant has a Vote or not. But Mr. Locke King's endeavour to destroy this particular absurdity has been resisted for a reason to whiei all parties have given their adhesion, which is now the established axiom on the subject, but which may yet prove to be far more potent in its operation than has been dreamed of by those who have urged it. Nothing has been more easy than to overcome Mr. Locke King's proposal by a reference to that "complete, fun, and exhaustive measure," which has been for years dangled be fore the eyes of the country by those whose definition of Heaven certainly must be a place where it is always "next session." But many things, not intended, may be necessary if the measure is really to be "complete," "full," "exhaustive," to be such as is now made necessary by the portentous failures in Govern- ment of those party leaders who have used the argument and that legislature which has endorsed it.. What if it be found that this character of an exhaustive measure, which has been before- hand so deliberately, for years, stamped upon the coming bill-- what if it be found that the determination to " settle " this ques- tion, and indeed any question that can possibly be raised, which has been so chivalrously declared by Lord Derby, involves some- thing far more than a redistribution of seats, and enfranchise- ment and disfranchisement of towns ? What if it be found that if a lowering of the suffrage below the 101. point be indispensable to the " exhaustion " and " settlement " which the bill is to effect, there is no point at which the legislator will be able to stop short of that residential, which for all practical purposes is equivalent to universal suffrage ? If all this should be discovered to be inevitable, only those statesmen will be responsible who have made themselves proselytes to radicalism under its new titles of " exhaustion " and " settlement" ; and only those remarkable conservatives, who, brought up, as it were, at the feet of Balaam the son of Beor, and hired to curse the cause of progress, are forced by some higher power-to bless it, and promote it faster and further than the friends and guardians of its youth. To speak seriously, we believe that the greatest difficulty will be found in the moral atmosphere of the time, and intrinsically, as a mere matter of arrangement, in discovering any point between the ten-pound householder and the general body of adult men, where a line of admission and exclusion can now be drawn, which will not offend the judgment by creating new anomalies. There are many considerations which bear upon this vital part of the subject. We must not forget that the process of "qualifying" for the exercise of suffrage which has been systematized for coun- ties under the present regime, may easily be extended so as to make of a five-pound qualification something illusory as a means of exclusion. We must not forget the steady rise of the value of labour, and the position of the English working man in the markets Of the world ; we must not forget those splendid depen- dencies of the empire to which this rise in his value is especially owing. And following the track of reflection which is suggested by those dependencies, least of all must we forget, when discuss- ing the subject of suffrage here at home, that we have during these late years been granting constitutions to those colonies, in which the right of voting has been conceded to every adult honest man and with marked results in the direction of con- servative order in communities and under circumstances most un- favourable, as might be thought, for the experiment. It appears to us that this course has weakened much the position of those who maintain the necessity for restrictions of the suffrage. It was not among the least strong of the replies which in the Jewish question were made to those, who urged the argument that the Legislature must not be unchristianized, that men were able to say, "You have granted constitutions to the colonies 'without pre- serving their Christian character ;' if you had felt the point to be of real importance that would not have been overlooked." By parity of reasoning it seems difficult to understand why the man who is pronounced unfit for the exercise of suffrage here at home should, by the fiat of the same legislative wisdom, be qualified when removed to a colony. Whether the suffrage be regarded as the expression of the bare needs and wants of each individual, or as the expression of his opinion upon public policy, it seems equally difficult to defend this " anomaly." If it be insisted that at home we have large and powerful aristocratic and moneyed classes, and that the colonies have no such orders, this is only to say, that when the higher and more fortunate classes of the community can keep down the masses of the less fortunate and privileged, they will do so ; but that they cannot, they are content to give them power. This may be good political doctrine and not without some show of sound. ifness according to old practical standards of action. an age when we are all enlightened, when we are qui But te witho..: prejudices, and can be satisfied with nothing less, than the f!..eu_ complete, exhaustive, final settlement" of questions, we sadly tailar, that such arguments will prove to be out of date and repugn.v1_ to the science, the self-sacrifice, the absence of mere party md.nece, which are henceforward, as it would appear, to animate and clar the action of our statesmen and legislators. , To watch the course which Lord Derby and his colleagues follow en this question will be perhaps the most interesting exercise of taie faculties, which has been vouchsafed to men in this latter day. It has been explained to the uninitiated outsiders during this week, that Toxophilite with his 'engagements,' with the all but certainty of winning in many, was too valuable an animal for Lord Derby to sell at the price offered the other day at Tattersalls. We wonder how the value of Lord Derby at the political Tatter- gills is affected by his engagements. If we have at all rightly divined the direction in which the force of circumstances, and of their own words will impel our legislators, we wonder how the Tory Ministry and minority are to solve pro- blems so serious ; how they are to reconcile past principles and the exigencies of Ministerial supporters, with the deep needs of the country and Wein necessities of the question. We can assure Lord Derby and himPoolleagues that the solution proposed by Mr. Henley, and frequently hinted at by Mr. Disraeli before, really will not do. The Whigs once played the Tories a scurvy trick with a Reform Bill ; now is the time for the Tories to play the Whigs a scurvy trick. From underneath a flowing robe of transcendental political doctrine such is the cloven foot that peeps out here and there in Ministerial talk. It really will not do. The country has too much reliance on the chivalry and political wisdom of my Lord Derby to believe that this is all that is meant by " settling " so great a question. The English nation, strong in the assurance which is afforded by the steadiness, the reflec- tiveness, the judgment, the sobriety evinced by that nobleman throughout the whole of his career, confidently looks to him for a solution which shall satisfy all parties ; which shall leave privi- lege unimpaired while extending suffrage to the utmost, which shall not weaken aristocracy while it concedes everything de- mocracy demands, and which shall gratify equally the judgment of the political philosopher, and the ambition of the political charlatan.
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