THE REFORM MOVEMENT.

A special meeting of the Law Amendment Society was held on Satur- day, Sir James Stephen in the chair, to hear a paper read by Mr. Edwin Chadwick on the best mode of preparation for legislation, apropos of the Reform Bill. The following letter of apology was sent to Mr. Chadwick by Mr. John Stuart Mill—

Blackheath, Jan. 21.

" Dear Chadwick—I have read carefully twice over your paper on the advantage of inquiry by commissions as a preparation for legislation,. and specially for Parliamentary reform, and I not only agree with you entirely on the general principle, but also in thinking Parliamentary reform a very strong case for its application. Disfranchisement: indeed, may be suffi- ciently judged of from general principles and notorious facts ; but when the question is how far to carry enfranchisement, few persons, I should think, are rash enough to imagine that they have nothing important still to learn respecting the new classes of voters to be created, their numbers, their local distribution, their degree of education (even the number of them who can read and write,) their amenability to corruption, the probability of their exercising the franchise if conferred, and the influences under which they are likely to exercise it. If the franchise is to stop anywhere short of uni- versal suffrage, or to arrive even at that by any succession of steps, the choice of the intermediate measures must necessarily be more or leas a ques- tion of statistics, and the statistics of the whole subject are in their infancy. Even on so narrow a point as the admission of the 10l. householders in the small towns to vote for the counties, all is uncertainty as to the nature of the change it would make in :the: composition.:of the county constitu- encies.

"Your paper cannot be too mucliread or too widely circulated. " I am dear Chadwick, very truly yours,

" Mr. Edwin Chadwick." " J. S. Mira,.

After a brief introduction Mr. Chadwick stated the question thus- " How preparatory inquiry for the collection of the information requisite as a basis for legislation, with a view to the reform of Parliament may best be made ? Whether by the close cabinet method ? Whether by spe- cial committees of Parliament ? Whether by a special commission of in- quiry"?

He argued on the authority of Lord John Russell, that as Ministers have little time to look into great public questions and find sufficient work in the routine of office, and that as the public opinion, which they take into account, as expressed by newspaper writers is the result of the most fragmentitious attention, the mode of proceeding by the Cabinet method is bad. In like manner he disapproved of proceeding by open or secret committees, and then set forth the advantages that would attend proceeding by Commission. For instance, if it be proposed to introduce household suffrage there should be an inquiry respecting the influence of bribery at municipal elections. Then we should learn why so many persons at present possessing the vote refuse to exercise it. Why in Manchester less than a third, in Finsbury, the City of London and Birmingham less than one half of the electors vote at contested elections ? Full inquiry is required on these subjects. A Commission might also inquire—

Whether the acceptance of office shall vacate a seat, or at all events, whether a change of office by a Member already in office, shall vacate his seat; as also the large question as to an officio seats, without the right of voting. Another most important question which such a representative committee of council might consider, would be one which I have seen reason to attach great importance to—the representation of minorities by the working of a general provision for single votes in districts to which two or more representatives are given." Sir James Stephen gave some support to the proposal, but the:remark- able part of his discourse treated of "public opinion."

"Constitutional liberty is doubtless an inestimable advantage, and so it ought to be, for the price we pay for it is incalculable. Such liberty is usu- ally defined as consisting in the subordination of the Legislature and of the Executive Government to public opinion. But what is public opinion ' ? When, and where, and by whom' and in what manner, is it to be discovered and ascertained ? And how is it to be distinguished from all spuriousimi- tations ? Of the many idols tribfis there is none whose shrine is so difficult of access or whose oracles are so ambiguous and so readily confounded with other and meaner voices. The hierophants of this mysterious power can only tell Us that public opinion is not the transient impression, but the de- liberate judgment, of the great majority of the people on such questions, and on such questions only; as immediately affect the people themselves. On all such subjects, they add, the judgments of Demos must be authorita- tive and conclusive or there is no constitutional liberty amongst us Be it so, but then the true and inherent value of these authoritative judgments of Demos most depend on the extent and accuracy of his knowledge of the subjects on which he so adjudicates. One cannot then but inquire, from what sources he gathers that knowledge. Not much from books, for even his flatterers never tell him that he isa very studious person; not much from converse for even they never ascribe to him very sociable habits; not much from observation, for the divisions and sub-divisions of labour among our people confine an immense proportion of them to the same pursuits and the same places from the cradle to the grave. But Demos is not without his means of information. Of late years he has been taught to read, though it is a gift which even yet he can exercise only here and there, and only now and then. He exercises it chiefly in reading his newspaper. His newspaper comprises 99 parts of his reading out of 100. He is the daily pupil of some such editorial improvisatore as the late Captain Sterling, the sketch of whom, by Mr. Carlyle, has been quoted to us by Mr. Chadwick. In each of the 365 days of the year the editorial improvisatore is delivered of one or of several peremptory decisions, traversing in their turns the en- tire cycle of all the political and social questions of his day and generation. He is indeed a splendid rhetorician. His artifices of style, his fertility of resource, and his promptitude of performance must seem-to the uninitiated to be half miraculous ; and to every one, initiated or not, his self-reliance must seem even yet more amazing. There is no subject either directly or indirectly affecting the state and people of our land of which he does not claim to have scaled the height, spanned the breadth, and fathomed the depth,—a claim compared to which Dr. Francis Moore's pretensions to in- terpret to us the language of the stars might pass for an excess of modesty. But Demos has other means of knowledge than these diurnal improvisations, and other sources of his all commanding public opinion.' He occasionally listens to platform orators, who on that stage sustain the various parts and properties assigned to them with a docility unsurpassed by that of the per- formers on any other theatre ; the indispensable condition of their public appearances being that they shall say nothing to shock the prejudice, of

the auditors, nothing to abate their self-esteem, and nothing which would change their plaudits into less harmonious sounds. Sometimes Demos studies the Parliamentary debates, where he finds the partisans of a Minis- try in ease and the partisans of a Ministry in posse investigating the facts and the principles in debate between them, with a candour as pellucid and a research as impartial as that of the gens togata, whose enthusiasm for or against any verdict is constantly on sale in Westminster Hall. But whether he forms this public opinion' of his, to which we are all to bow, by reading or by listening, his stipulation with his teachers is still the same. It is that they shall never fatigue him ; that they shall never force upon him any mental diet which he would find hard of digestion' ,• that the lead- ing article shall be readable in five minutes at most ; and that, in common with the speech, it shall be thoroughly spiced and seasoned to his palate with points and epigram, with antithesis and sarcasm." He pictured Demos, thus instructed and enfranchised by Mr. Bright, electing his representatives, who are to enact the laws he will receive, and under these circumstances Sir James suggested that the teachers of Demos should instruct him in the natural history of an act of Parliment. Before Sir James gave this history himself he described, for the benefit of Demos, the extreme difficulty of finding a fit Ministry with whom in modern times rests the initiation of legislative measures. Then he came to the genesis of an act of Parliament demanded by public opinion and illustrated it from an actual case.

"When Mr. Huskisson was President of the Board of Trade, the abridg- ment of the laws of customs which we had in use then was a volume as bulky as one of the heaviest of the statutes at large, and was printed ex- actly in the same close type. A most formidable volume ! Public opinion required, and our chief decided, that this vast carcase should be boiled down to its essences. With that view James Deacon Hume was summoned to Whitehall from the Customhouse of the port of London, of which he was then comptroller. I cannot undertake to say what instructions, written or oral, were addressed to him by Mr. Huskisson ; but, from my frequent offi- cial intercourse with Mr. Deacon Hume on the subject, I am well convinced that his instructions were very general and very brief. His proceedings, however, were sufficiently characteristic. He began by exiling himself from his family, whom he sent to France. He then took a lodging in Parliament Street, and became invisible to mankind. At length, after many months, he reappeared at Whitehall, bringing with him a small loosely printed octavo volume, which did not contain nearly as many words as any tangle number of Blackwood's Magazine, but which yet did contain the whole of the laws of customs which he (Mr. Hume) thought it worth while to preserve, That little volume, word for word, as it came from Mr. flume's pen, was then transplanted into the statute-book. To that import- ant work Mr. Huskisson lent the authority of his great name, and he res- cued it from all the mutilations to which it would otherwise have been sub- ject in its passage through the House of Coramons, and which, there, would have been pleasantly called amendments. In its nnamended form it was a perfect model of brief, comprehensive, simple, luminous, and efficient legis- lation, and such was certainly the opinion of Mr. Huskisson himself. Here then, you have the appearance of the draftsman as the second of the three progenitors of a Government bill. If all administrators had the profound ability of Mr. Huskisson, and all draftsmen the exquisite skill and compre- hensive knowledge of Mr. Hume we might cheerfully acquiesce in the dele- gation shy Ministers of State of their highest duties to obscure subalterns ; though even on that supposition we might be not quite able to approve a practice at once SO hazardous, so disingenuous, and so unjust. But the sup- position is far, indeed, from coinciding with the fact. Many have been the admirable draftsmen to whom of late years the Government have referred the preparation of their bills; but all the sages of Westminster Hall, past and present, if united together, could never produce a fit law for the regula- tion of any of the greater affairs and interests of this country, unless their labours were directed and guided by persons to whom those affairs and those interests were thoroughly known, and who perfectly understood those various pursuits and forms of industry and habits of life amongst the people of England over which the projected law was to exercise a direct or indirect influence, Did such a body of persons ever yet meet together in any Cabinet council, and instruct and guide any legal fabricators of Acts of Parliament ? " Next he showed how "Committees upstairs" and Members in the House treat acts of Parliament ; dilated on the inconclusive character of proceedings by Committee ; and the mockery of legislation which is some- times the fruit of the exertions of all. "To avert such disasters for the fu- ture Mr. Chadwick discusses the proposal of Earl Grey for appointing a le- gislative committee of the Privy Council, to which the preparation of all Goverment bills should belong. I suppose that his lordship would except all bills which, like the Reform Bill now in embryo, demand secrecy of ges- tation as the very condition of their birth. But with that exception it would, I doubt not, prove a valuable addition to our law-making powers. "Of the wisdom of a full enquiry throughout the kingdom before a new Reform Bill is passed, I will attempt only one addition to what Mr. Chad- wick has said. Any one who is old enough to remember the anticipations and predictions among which the Reform Bill of 1832 was passed, will! I think, now admit that the prophets of that time, whether they prophesied pleasant things or the reverse, were all strangely wrong, and that the ac- tual results and the predicted results of the measure had as little as possible in common. The prophets of 1832 were refuted by the event, because they mistook a very scanty knowledge of England and its people for a complete knowledge of them. The prophets of 1869 have not taken more pains to get rid of their ignorance, and are not, I conceive, a whit more likely to see distinctly the direction or the tendencies of the dark but most momentous journey on which they are about to enter. If we are to enter on it, because such is the mandate of 'public opinion,' perhaps it might not be amiss to have a commission of inquiry (say with Mr. Caclwick at its head), to ascer- tain what in truth public opinion' has said, or has bossy, on the sub- ject. It is strange that all our institutions are to be at the mercy of one authoritative voice, and that of the utterances of that voice there should not be so much as one authorised reporter."

The speakers who followed were in favour of inquiry before legisla- tion, but did not think that the mode proposed by Mr. Chadwick appli- cable to the ease of the Reform Bill.

A conference of Lancashire Reformers, deputies from twenty-eight towns of varying size and importance, has been held at Manchester, Mr. George Wilson in the chair, and has adopted a resolution in support of Mr. Bright's bilL Among those who spoke were Mr. Henry Ashworth of Bolton, Mr. Hervey, Mayor of Salford, Mr. Barnes late Member for Bolton, and Mr. Robertson Gladstone of Liverpool. The remainder con- stituted an admiring and applauding audience. There was, of course, no dissenting voice. Mr. Bright made a speech in further explanation of the origin and objects of his bill, now pretty well explained. On this occa- sion he set himself to show that he had done justice to the counties ; that he had sufficiently provided for the representation of the landed interest; and that numbers of boroughs are now represented by county men and the sons of county men. Thus Mr. Hutt represents Gateshead, Sir James Graham, Carlisle, Mr. Vernon Smith, Northampton, a eon of the Marquis of Westminster, Chester, Mr. Langston, Oxford, Mr. Adair, Ipswich, Mr. Ellice, Coventry, Mr. Smyth, York, Mr. Egerton, Maccles- field—all landed proprietors or the sons of landed proprietors. Even if Mr. Bright's bill passes the commercial classes may fairly speak against the unbroken phalanx of the landed interest in the House of Commons. But he does not legislate for boroughs only ; he legislates for the country, for Suffolk quite as much as for Manchester.

"Now, I venture to say that my scheme is a moderate scheme of reform. I do not think that any man who is in favour of a representation at all, who has any reliance upon the character of his countrymen—who believes in the perpetuation of freedom through a real Parliament—I do not think he can deliberately and conscientiously condemn the proposition that I have laid before the public as one unjust to any section of the people, or likely to tend in any way to the weakening of any institutions in this country which it is worth the while of the people to care one single farthing about. Why, as to our friends of the House of Lords—(Laughter and eheers)—they ought to be very much obliged to me for discussing this question with the public. Their own position is not particularly enviable with regard bolt. You observe them coming out at ' Social Science ' meetings, at mechanics' institutes, and in little villages here and there, doing, of course, a certain not easily appreciable amount of good—(iaugisfer)—telling the people all those things which, as we all know, every Sunday school teacher in Eng- land could tell them just as well—(Renewed laughter and cheering)—com- hog on to platforms, descending, s all I say, from their altitude to come among common men. But now, when the whole country is discussing this question when every newspaper is filled with it., when the population from one end of the country to the other is expressing its approval, more or less entire, of this measure, why, there is not one of these gentlemen who comes upon any platform and meets the public, who faces the breezes of popular opinion, and helps in the deliberation of the greatest question that can possibly be discussed by a great people. (Cheers.) Now, we have no idea—not the slightest—of meddling with the House of Lords. Refer- ence has been made as to what has been done in a past time when the power of the Crown was limited by act of Parliament, and we are not proporung to limit the power of the aristocracy of Parliament. We leave them as they are, with all the power and prescription law, privilege, custom, and opinion will permit them to hare; but we say, Here is another House sacred even to higher interests than the interests of an aristocracy. (Cheers.) The constitution has no more regard for Crown and aristocracy than it has for the people. The people is the most durable part of the kingdom. Privi- leges are ephemeral, but the people is immortal. (Great cheering.)_ What we ask, then, is this—we claim it by the constitution, that the House of Commons shall be made not with reference as to whether it shall be conve- nient for the House of Lords or not ; but that it shall be made a real, =de- niable, sensibly felt representation of the great body of the people of this kingdom." (Cheers.)

The conference broke up, apparently well satisfied with its work.

The Birmingham reformers held a meeting on Tuesday to support Mr. Bright ; Mr. P. II. Muntz occupying the chair. The speakers were Al- derman Baldwin, Alderman Manton, Mr. George Edmonds, and Mr. J. S. Wright. The resolutions adopted gave a general support to the mea- sure proposed by Mr. Bright. An attempt was made by Mr. Mills, a working man, to carry a resolution demanding manhood suffrage, but it met with no support. A petition to parliament was also adopted.

In the course of his speech on the occasion Alderman Baldwin thus stated his views— He asked those persons present who thought no further reform required to speak out. Receiving no answer he contiuued : Well, then, as no one dissents, we are all agreed on that point. Then what sort of reform did they require ? (A coke—" No rate-paying clauses.") Was it right that some hundred insignificant boroughs, containing only 2000 or 3000 in- habitants, should in a country like this have as much political representa- tion as places infinitely larger ? (Cries of " No.") Was the country, or had it been, well and properly governed ? (" No.") Was it as cheaply governed as it ought to be ? (" No.") Were the taxes paid by those who could best afford to pay them? (A shone of No.") Were the Army and Navy efficiently maintained? ("No.") Who was it that involved us in war ? (A voice—" The aristocracy." " Hear ! " and laughter.) Who received the greater part of their money ? (Several voices— The aristo- cracy.") He thought they were pretty well agreed on these points. He should endeavour by all the means in his power to bring about a measure that would give to Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool, and other im- portant places, that fair share of the representation to which they were en- titled; and this accomplished, they should have better government, less taxation, and fewer wars, but when they were compelled to fight they should have an efficient Army and Navy.

Among the lesser reform meetings that have been held are those at Deptford where Sir William Codrington discoursed on his past services and promised to support reform ; in Lambeth, where Mr. Roupell de- livered an ultra-Radical address suited to his constituents ; at Dudley where Mr. H. B. Sheridan gave in a general adhesion to Mr. Bright's views ; and at North Shields where Mr. Lindsay enlightened his con- stituents. In one part of his speech Mr. Lindsay defined his position.

" While I am not prepared to offer an opinion as to how that great question of reform can be dealt with in the best manner—for it is a much more difficult question than appears on the surface, I think I will be only right in saying, considering that I sin one of those cross-bench members, as we are called—the independent members—that though I will be desirous to see a reform, I cannot agree with many things which have fallen from Mr. Bright. I must tell you that frankly. Like him, I am one of the people ; but I think some of his remarks against another class, to which I don't and never will belong, were totally unnecessary and altogether uncalled fox,. I am not come here to defend the aristocracy of England—they can defend: themselves—but I will say this of them, as part and parcel of our consti- tution, I think it a very unwise thing for one in the position of Mr. Bright to attack the aristocracy in the manner in which he did. I will say thia for them, that as a body they are, perhaps, as good—number for number—am any other body of the community, and when I compare them with the aristocracy of other countries, I say I am proud of the aristocracy of Eng- land. There are good, bad, and indifferent, amongst them, but as a whole they are liberal-minded gentlemen, and they are a necessary part of a con- stitution which I admire. (" Don't commit yourself now," and laughter.) Thank you."

Mr. Sheridan took upon himself to describe the course that will be pursued by the independent liberals.

He might Bay in confidence—notwithstanding the presence of the son of one of the cabinet ministers [Mr. Pakington], that the policy of the independent liberals was to play off one party against the other, and so squeeze the party in power as to get more out of them in office than they would concede in opposition. (Laughter and cheers.) There could be no doubt the Govern- ment would bid very largely for continuation in office in the shape of liberal- ity in reform; whilst Lord Palmerston would go to a greater length proba-

bly in opposition, in order to regain office, than he would have gone if in power. Should this state of things come about the independent liberals would say, "This is the bill ; give us this measure;" and the chances were they should squeeze out a more extended measure than could yet be ima- gined.

At Edinburgh a public meeting has declared in favour of a measure of reform "based on the principles explained by Mr. Bright, and em- bodied in the schedules published by him." Baillie Russell occupied the chair. Mr. Duncan M'Laren, (Mr. Thight's brother-in-law,) Mr. Caird, M.P., and Mr. William Tait, were the principal speakers. Mr. Caird made a good speech full of statistics, in defence and illustration of Mr. Bright's views and schedules. He spoke as a tenant farmer, and advocated the interests of farmers which he distinguished from the inte- rests of the landowners. Mr. Caird, in the course of his speech, pro- mised to bring in a trill to reform the municipal institutions of Scotland.

Sir Joshua Walmsley has written a letter to the newspapers, in which he says, that as Mr. Bright makes the rating franchise dependent upon the payment of the rate, it will be a franchise of a most restrictive character." Sir Joshua hopes the Liberal Members will reintroduce the clause proposed by Lord John Russell in his last Reform Bill, to make the payment of the rate a simple debt, and not a penal enactment.