EXTENSION NOT DETERIORATION OF THE FRANCHISE.
IT may be said with little stretch of language, that in many in- stances, the Members who sit in the English Parliament professedly to represent the people, are practically elected by the least intelli- gent, most ignorant, and most corrupt class in the country. When parties are nearly divided in constituencies that are tolerably
limited, and are accessible to corrupt persuasion, there is usually a class that is able to turn the balance and to decide the election, and therefore virtually to nominate the Member. In the Election Committees of the week we have proofs that this scandal still goes
: the class is before U8 in all its characteristic traits. In Lan- caster, one of these effective voters nominates the Member on the strength of assistance to get his clothes out of pawn ; in Canter- bury, the Member is returned by a class who play at bearing
colours, as a colourable mode of being paid for the vote; in Bridge- ' north, one of these independent electors "finds" a five-pound note in a place called Back Lane. Another elector at Lancaster "finds five sovereigns on a bed ; and he pockets the windfall without any direct proof of the sources whence it comes, but with an intuitive sense of virtue rewarded that is better than reason.
In very gross oases the existence of this arbitrating class is de- tected, and it does happen sometimes that it is defeated. There have indeed been notorious instances in which such classes have been working oveztly, and yet for want of "proof" they have not been defeated. It is not always so easy to bring the operations of a Frail or Flewker to proof. But besides these well-known yet unconvicted offenders, there are many whose operations are sus- pected without the possibility of proof; and these are to be found
-in a considerable proportion of the boroughs, if not also in some counties. Their malversation of -the franchise differs from that of the people at LancaSter, Bridgenorth, and Canterbury, in their un- detected impunity ; but in principle their conduct is the same.
• While other parties are contesting, these decide ; and the conse- quence, it is to be feared, in too many cases is, that the Member who professedly sits for this or that constituency owes an allegiance to the arbitrating party whose character is exposed by the Election Committees.
There is not only the grievance that this arbitrating party
steals the privilege of the proper constituency, but there is the farther vexation that it enjoys the privilege which is denied to a much more independent and intelligent class.. It is common to speak of extensions of the franchise as being extensions " down- wards" ; a phrase generally understood to mean not only that the franchise may be extended to persons who have less money wealth, but also to those who have a less real stake in the country to be a pledge for their virtue, and who have less intelligence and less trustworthiness as citizens. Now, the fact is, that at the top of the unenfranchised class there are very great numbers who are infinitely superior in all qualities of worldly wisdom, intelligence, and moral worth, as compared with those arbitrating classes. In- stead, therefore, of an eitension of the franchise being an ex- tension "downwards," there is very little doubt that its most im- mediate effect would be to raise the mean average level of intelli- gence and moral trustworthiness in the electoral body.
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