10 JULY 1830, Page 13

COUNTY REPRESENTATION.

THE late Mr. CANNING had but one answer to all reasonings in favour of a reform in the representation of the people,—" the pre- sent system works well." We do not recollect that he ever proved or attempted to prove for whom. We are quite satisfied that the system, in many cases, does not work well for the voters—this is matter-of-fact experience • we rather suspect that it does not work well, in some cases, for their representatives ; and in not a few it seems to work but indifferently for either. We have a fine exemplification of this last mode of working, in our county elections, where, after all, the system is purest. Some miserables have imagined, that a salve for all the imperfections of our representation might be found in admitting copyholders to the same privileges as freeholders ; and the eloquence that has been expended on this single point of doctrine is unaccountable. Let us see how very manageable the freeholders are in their unaugmented numbers.

Lord MILTON is perhaps as fair a specimen of a respectable landed proprietor as any in England—a specimen of a class of so- cial humanity that exists nowhere else. With noble birth, the highest connexions, splendid fortune, every requisite in excess that could render retirement and isolation excusable, he is found familiarly mingling in every-day converse with his fellow country- men, joining in their business, participating in their pleasures, with no more of a lord and a man of fortune in his manner and appearance—nay, not even in his speech, which is neither pompous nor dull—than if his father had been a plain yeoman, and himself the fashioner of his own estate of some five hundred pounds a- year. Lord MILTON has represented Yorkshire for several Par- liaments, and now he retires. Why? Is he unpopular? The very contrary. He cannot afford the ordinary expenses of a Yorkshire election. A hundred thousand a-year is too small an income to admit of the purchase of a place which he cannot hope to enjoy but for a year or two more. His connexion with the county has already cost him a perpetual annuity of not less than twenty thousand pounds. It may be said, why is not such a repre- sentative returned freely? —It is impossible; the voters cannot afford to go to York to poll for him. They ask no bribe, they only ask-their expenses ; and their expenses Lord MmoN'S fortune is not sufficient to pay ! Mr. MARSHALL, a man intimately conversant with the county and its interest—an able and honest gentleman—also retires. Mr. FOUNTAYNE WILSON, zealous as he is for the remains of the Constitution, is yet more zealous (and small blame to him) for the integrity of his estate—he too withdraws. Here is the largest county of England gone a-begging for repre- sentatives, because none but the Bank of England could continue to canvass it. York is dwindled, by the mere fact of its .magni- tude, into a condition not superior to .a close borough. The two or three hundred electors round its capital are its virtual corpora- tion, and he who gains their suffrage must be its member. Are other counties better? Look at Oxfordshire ; look at Essex. Everywhere, in fact, the working of our county system is useless to the voters-ruinous, where they attempt it, to the competing candi- dates. The consequence is, that families tacitly agree not to dis- turb the peace of the county, as it is called; that is, they agree to deprive the voters of their franchise by denying them a choice. A county member is thus to his party or to the Minister, as the case may be, the most subservient of dependants. The only men in the House who have constantly distinguished themselves, are the members for boroughs, -because, with all their bribery and villany, boroughs are accessible to men of moderate fortune, and the greater number of them are in consequence canvassed at every dissolution. The voters of counties exercise their privileges but once in twenty or thirty years. During the interval, they are as much the property of the family that beggared itself at the last great election, as Old Sarum is of its proprietor.