12 NOVEMBER 1853, Page 10

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM : PROGRESS OF THE DISCUSSION.

Puntro discussion is proceeding rapidly on the probable, possible, and desirable changes to be attempted by the Reform Bill of next session. Comment from all sides of the political world, shaping it- self in friendly suggestion or hostile criticism, is filling up details, correcting mistakes, and pointing out indefensible positions, in the various schemes that ingenious speculation and practical experience have furnished as starting-points for the deliberation of Govern- ment. There results a general agreement on points which by them- selves would form the subject of a tolerably comprehensive bill; on other points, a wavering hesitancy, a reluctance to being com- mitted to a positive opinion, would seem to be the predominating sentiment ; on others, decided opposition of opinion indicates either irreconcilable aims or misapprehension of the effect of particular means. It may serve a useful purpose to state briefly the results of the discussion, so far as it has proceeded.

First it may be noted as remarkable, that, in approaching an organic change, a tone of calm argumentative appeal to the reason- ing faculties and to the virtuous aspirations of the citizen is the general characteristic of the discussion up to the present time. On the one hand, no angry susceptibilities of classes or individuals are roused by the threatened deprival of power and privilege, conse- crated by long prescription but found prejudicial to the interests and rights of the community ; on the other hand, no class is press- ing eagerly forward to a conflict long desired, which is to wipe out the remembrance of ages of oppression and contumely, or to confer upon a sudden all that is needed to make life a scene of enjoyment and content. Fear and hope are scarcely awake, certainly calm and unexcited. It is impossible to over-estimate the advantages of this tone of the public mind in the preliminary stage of the business. We believe that, when the time for action comes, en- thusiasm and energy will be aroused exactly in proportion to the real worth and comprehensiveness of the scheme proposed by Ministers. The quiescent attitude is that of a nation which has no intolerable wrong to stimulate its passions, too much experience to expect the millennium at the hands of a Ministry however able, too little certain of the intentions of that Ministry to excite itself beforehand, but at the same time too well aware of the many and gross anomalies and defects of its Parliamentary system, and too anxious for prac- tical government the best and wisest it can procure, not to wel- come with gratitude and pass with acclamation a sound, thorough, comprehensive, and honest measure.

It is perhaps only another form of the same fact, at least an immediate corollary from it, that men's minds are set more upon making Parliamentary representation real—upon purifying its processes so as to render it truly indicative of the political opinion of the nation—than upon simply admitting to the franchise per- sons and classes hitherto excluded. To put down corruption in all its tangible forms with a strong hand, to check and baffie its more hidden processes by alterations of machinery, to assign political power to constituencies in something like the true proportions of their relative importance, appear to be objects in which the vast majority are nominally agreed, and on the prin- cipal means for attaining which there does not seem any decided difference of opinion, or any avowed reluctance to consent to the employment of the means. The disfranchisement of persons con- victed of taking or offering bribes—the suppression of the smaller Parliamentary boroughs, and perhaps of the class of "freemen "- the equalization of the town and country franchise—may be looked upon as points on which public opinion has advanced greatly towards unanimity, whether considered as ends desirable in themselves, or as means towards lessening the corruption that has hitherto pre- vailed in the form of direct bribery, of avowed coercion, or of pre- ponderating personal control, that, equally with the other two causes, vitiates the return as the free voice of a constituency called together to pronounce mediately on the political interests of the nation.

We should rank in a second class, among questions on which the majority of politicians are indisposed to commit themselves to posi- tive opinions, the disposal of the Members taken from the smaller boroughs ; though we think the hesitation lies only between the

two counter-schemes of adding those Members to the county representation, with probably a further subdivision of counties, or of constituting groups of small boroughs into constituencies. The proposal to bestow the transferred Members on single towns, the most populous of those at present unrepresented, belong to a stage of opinion somewhat obsolete, when reform of the representation was the cheval de bataille of a section of Liberals, rather than the practical desire of the nation.

We cannot pronounce with anything like assured certainty as to the general run of political opinion with reference to the various proposals that have been made for an educational franchise. The few journals that represent the defunct Derbyite party have lately been exercising their critical talents upon both the general principle of separate constituencies composed of the specially educated classes, and upon the details of the scheme that has most formally embodied the principle. Leading journals of other parties or of no parties have with few exceptions given a re- spectful attention to the particular scheme, and if they have not advocated, have carefully abstained from controverting its funda- mental principle. It is worth noting, that the principle, in one shape or another, has been forming in the minds of thoughtful men for years past, and has now advanced into a topic of-popular discus- data supplied to him by the end of that per io . A correspondent, sion. Advocated by men -eminent both for literary culture and scientific attainment, and offering without doubt a certainty of pure constituencies, with a chance of introducing into political life a much-needed order of mind and character, the principle is not to be tossed aside because a gentleman in a journal styled Conserva- tive cannot extend his conception of classes beyond the material divisions of agriculture and commerce, or because it would be a difficult task to define an educated man. At the same time, such criticisms should put the authors of the scheme upon their best endeavours to devise some definition, or set of definitions, which may group together what Coleridge termed the " elerisy " of the nation,—definitions which shall give distinct expression to the feeling that is in men's minds when they use the familiar term " educated classes." We think that the fate of the principle of educated constituencies is to a great degree dependent Oil a suite. ciently liberal interpretation of the term, combined with care to abstain from arrogating too large a share of the representation for what must, in the broadest acceptation of the qualification, be a very small section of the people. It is not to weight of numbers that the Members for such constituencies, if created, will owe their influence or usefulness.

A group of proposals for investigating and punishing the offences against purity of election, committed by principals or their agents in elections,—such as the transference of the jurisdiction in those cases to a court of law, or to a Committee of the House presided over by a Judge, the infliction of disgraceful personal punishment on the corrupters in addition to disfranchisement,—might be car- ried by the Government, if they had skill enough to define the acts which should constitute corruption. The difficulty is felt to lie there, not in the indifference of the public, which probably never was so thoroughly minded to put down corruption, and certainly is not disposed to spare the instigators and organizers of the whole system, while striking at here and there an insignificant and subordinate local scoundrel. This is a point on which the writer in the current Edinburgh Review mischievously, in our opinion, exaggerates the disposition of his countrymen, practi- cally and in their private intercourse, to condone and tolerate acts of political corruption. The man who will define "cos. ruption," and " agency," without straining common sense, will have practically solved the problem of prevention. Government would be compelled by the unanimity of public opinion to frame severe enactments ; and the same public opinion would cordially second the operation of such enactments, if the first result were to put Coppock and Brown in Newgate, with a score of Members from both sides of the House to keep them company. The public would also welcome as subsidiary to such measures, and indirectly promotive of the same end, as well as directly tending to good or- der and public morality, any change in the mode of taking votes at elections, and in the general conduct of electoral business, which would cheek the tendency to Bacchanalian excess and savage tu- mult, now too often turning the most serious political occasion into a saturnalia of base appetites and angry passions. It is probable that we might not be noting the progress made in the discussion towards a statesmanlike Reform Bill, had it not been for the efforts made for twenty years past by a party whose aim was to transfer a predominating political power in this coun- try from the upper and middle to the lower classes ; and who for that purpose have advocated equal electoral districts and the low- ering of the franchise so as to include either all adult males or at least so large a proportion as would have swamped the voices of all the present electors together. "There is a Providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will".; and it certainly is true in this case that the ends proposed are widely different from those likely to be achieved. If there is one conviction more strongly impressed upon the public mind than another, , is that, while it is just and expedient that the poorest class should have a representation in Parliament, they must be by all means prevented from acquiring a monopoly of

representation, which would be the proximate effect of any very material lowering of the franchise, without some such guarantee as that suggested by ourselves in a fourfold divi- sion of the constituencies. It may be asserted without fear of con- tradiction, that the principle of the representation of classes, di- rectly or indirectly, has firm hold of the rational portion of the English public; and that, as a consequence, if the scheme of direct representation of classes be thought too novel and daring an ex- periment, the majority of the lowest class—of the class at present excluded by their poverty—will continue to be excluded, and that the anomalies of our electoral districts, though modified, will not yield to a system founded on simple numerical proportion. It is not for us to determine what favour has been awarded to our scheme for reconciling universal suffrage with the safety of exist- ing important interests, and with the progress of well-considered legislation ; but we are sure of this, that universal suffrage, or anything like it, cannot be granted in this country except in com- bination with a scheme embodying the principle of -representa- tion of classes ; while, in combination with such a scheme, it would offer the surest means of a perfect national representation of in- terests and opinions, and would appear to set finally at rest the whole question of the suffrage, or at least leave the field open for

the new phase of woman's elevation into the citizen glass,—a pear which will take a long time to ripen.