TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE END OF THE STRUGGLE.
THE division of Thursday night, which established the principle that minorities have a right to local as well as to Imperial representation, may yet prove a turning- point in the history of Great Britain. For the first time since 1832, the " speculative " politicians, the men, that is, who can think as well as vote, reason as well as feel, who want to build like architects, and not merely pile up excreta like coral insects, who believe that a representative chamber should be an organism, and not a powdery precipitate from electoral chemicals, have fairly defeated the " practical " politicians, fairly driven a new idea into the thickest-headed Philistines among mankind, the bourgeois democracy. It has been a hard fight and a long one, and it has often seemed so hopeless that the reasoners despaired. The aristocrats would not listen, the bourgeoisie could not understand if they did listen, the people would not care, wire-pullers like Mr. Disraeli perceived that the innova- tion threatened their trade, and orators like Mr. Bright, in the true spirit of political insolence, called the only proposal ever made for scientific representation the " spawn ' of feeble and prejudiced minds. Still the " reasoners," and the "dreamers," and the "enthusiasts," and the "politicians of the writing-table " fought on, opposing argument to asser- tion, sarcasm to horse laughter, intellectual enthusiasm to brute anger, till they converted the Peers, convinced the representatives of the workmen, won over the great newspaper —the Times actually became earnest, for the first time since the Crimean War—and, finally, being aided by a casual concurrence of circumstances, compelled the mass of members to consent to justice as a temporary experiment. Of course the experiment is a small one, as English experiments, and indeed all fruitful experiments, usually are, but it is quite sufficient for a trial, which if it works as we believe it will work, will change the House of Common from a chamber representing a numerical majority into one representing the whole nation—its brains as well as its stomach—and finally save us from the greatest of all our immediate dangers, the rule of a bourgeois democracy, irresistible as any democracy must be, and vulgar in thought, aspirations, and action as an Anglo-Saxon democracy tends always to become. With ten- pounders for arbiters Mr. Mill has beaten Mr. Bright, the architect the leveller, and the result of the long contest ought to encourage the fanatics, dreamers, enthusiasts, and otherbelievers in the moral right of the brain to guide the hands, to persevere in their efforts to make the sovereign assembly a real microcosm of the nation, competent to reflect people who can abolish pauperism, as well as those who pay rates to keep paupers alive. After the vote of Thursday, we do not despair when redistribution is fairly on, and London obtains its fair share of members, of trying there Mr•. Hare's plan, and so enabling the Metropolis to supplement the rank and file of the House by seating every celebrity whom less organized constituencies leave out. We have a lever in that project which we have not in this one, namely, the possibility of convincing the workmen that it is their direct interest that the experiment should be tried. Meanwhile, the work to be done is to show the minority in every borough and county how completely the new experiment protects them from disfran- chisement, how vivid it may again make their political life, how direct it makes their connection with the Assembly which is supposed to represent all opinions, but which, on the bourgeois theory, ought to represent only those which have found place in the majority of heads. If the minority can only be thoroughly convinced at once of their power and their responsibility for its exercise, the first Householder Parliament . may accept a really broad plan of redistribution, abolish all the little nests of corruption and petty prejudice, transfer nominal power to the, places where actual power resides, without running the risk of producing a House filled with men as alike, as useless, and as powerful as cyphers after an arithmetical unit. Even if the minorities, cannot accom- plish this they may, if instructed, force on a most beneficial compromise, and by insisting on single seats and single votes —a plan to which even Mr. Bright seems disposed to yield— treble their own chance of representation.
For the rest, both Houses have, during the week, greatly improved the Bill. Lord Derby has been well enough to attend till Peers, and the absurd attempt to disfranchise the London workmen by raising the lodger qualification has been out of favour with every class of the population. Any given up. Lord Cairns, who proposed that amendment, humbly confessed that he had made a blunder. He did not know, he said, he was sure ; he thought the Commons had done one thing, and found on inquiry they had done another ; and then the figure which he had taken for rental meant annual value, and then there was a difference, and so on, and so on through a quarter of an hour of a speech which reduced his audience to one of two alternatives. Either Lord Cairns, knew nothing about the lodger franchise, in which case he had no business to touch it ; or he did know, in which case he is one of the weakest of politicians. The whole scene was• most undignified, but still, the House of Lords rescinded: their vote, and the Bill was greatly the better for their in- firmity of purpose. They showed, as Mr. Disraeli said with. his usual scorn of his fetishes, " adequate intelligence " to get. out of an untenable position, and that is all which, perhaps, could be expected. On the other hand, the Commons have abolished voting-papers, which, in the present state of- English intelligence, with tenants accustomed to obey their landlords, uneducated voters, and magistrates selected because they own land, would have half ruined the Bill.. The alternative plan of collecting votes as we collect the- census will not be listened to till members have paid their first election bills, and found them increased by exactly 30a per cent., and meanwhile, for one more Parliament every voter must declare his political opinions in the middle of a noisy,. excited, and possibly half-drunk mob, who, the Standard: coolly says, are sure to be Liberal, but who, Mr. Disraeli thinks,. are sure to be Tory. Expense will very soon compel Parlia- ment to abolish the present rude scheme of voting, and this Peers are not likely to quarrel with the Commons about a. device which, if carried, would enable the freehold associa- tions to manufacture Liberal county votes by the thousand', the Bill will next week be law, and on the 17th inst. Parlia- ment will rise, having completed a single work—the dethrone- ment of the Middle class.
Its last act has been to vote Mr. Disraeli another year of power. By a clause added at the last moment, in the event of a dissolution before January, 1869, the House of Commons. is to be elected by the old constituency, and Mr. Disraeli has, therefore, only to threaten a dissolution to nullify the effect of his whole Bill. It is a very convenient arrangement, both, for him and for the members, but from the day the Bill be- comes law the Householders are masters, and they have only to signify to their members that this impudent little clause,. which disfranchises two-thirds of the constituency for a whole year, must be repealed, and it will very quietly disappear. With. a European war at hand the nation is not likely to be content with a dying Sovereign, and from the 17th the nation begins to rule.
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