Mr. Bright's speech on laying the foundation-stone of the new
Rochdale Town Hall was a mere panegyric on the municipal elections of this country, by way of suggesting the inference that the electoral franchise for Parliameutary purposes might well be as widens it is for local purposes. That respectable members might so be chosen no one doubts, but the question is simply whether the members so chosen would represent half as many and as various in- terests as they do at present,—a question Mr. Bright will never see. He always argues that quadrupling the constituency is quadrupling the area of represented wishes,—a mode of reasoning -which would prove that an army voting en masse would elect a fairer representation of its various interests, than if the soldiers were to elect separately, non-commissioned officers separately, and the higher grades separately. In the second Rochdale meet- ing, the Reform demonstration of Tuesday, Mr. Bright said nothing that he had not said better a hundred times before. He had a bad cold, and one may weary even of Reform.
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