MR. LOWE'S REJOINDER ON COUNTY SUFFRAGE.
NIR, LOWE'S rejoinder to Mr. Gladstone in the December number of the Fortnightly has more astuteness than ability. He makes much of Mr. Gladstone's admission that he was not afraid even of universal suffrage and equal electoral districts, and argues the whole case as if that were the real issue, which certainly it is not even to Mr. Gladstone, still less to the public at large. The great argument for extending household suffrage to the counties is that without doing so you net only exclude from the franchise a very great number of people who are in every way as much qualified as their neighbours, excepting by the mere accident of living within the bounds of a Parliamentary borough, and who feel keenly the injustice of such an accidental exclusion, but also keep an entire class who are serious losers by exclusion from political power, from all enjoyment of political influence. That argument has absolutely no application to the extension of household into universal suffrage. It is impossible to point out any class at all who would not possess their full relative share of political power, if household suffrage were extended to the counties. Of course, those who had neither a house of their own, nor a lodger qualification, would note under such a law, obtain a vote. But there would not be relatively more of these non-householders among one class than among another. In all classes there would be many, but in none would the limitation to household suffrage tend to disturb the relative distribution of power. Therefore the two chief arguments for household suffrage in the counties are not arguments at all for the universal suffrage which Mr. Lowe is so anxious to prove to be certain to result from the smaller concession. When household suffrage had once been granted in the counties, it would no longer be possible to say that of two men equally qualified in every way, the one, living on one side of the street, possessed the franchise, while the other, on the other side of the street, did not. It would no longer be possi- ble to say that 0110 large class of the community, possessed with a deep sense of special grievances and special miseries of its own, was treated as a lower caste to whom the possession of political power was forbidden. And as neither of these arguments could be urged for extending household into uni- versal suffrage, we take it that the very unreasonable emphasis laid by Mr. Lowe, on a mere °biter dictum of Mr. Gladstone's, though it may be a clever argument= ad imminent, is of no weight at all to those who are pleading for household suffrage in the counties only on these two great and sufficient grounds. . But the real weakness of Mr. Lowe's paper lies less in the arguments ho urges than in the arguments he evades. He evades altogether dealing with the argument on which Mr. Gladstone had dwelt most, that to keep any great class out of the range of political influence and privilege is to make them a danger to the Constitution, instead of one of its sup-
ports. He evades altogether the argument which has always seemed to us much the most important of any, that the admission of any class te the franchise at once makes its chief interests and grievances a far more real and far graver subject of Parliamentary debate than they can otherwise be, and causes them to be treated in a
responsible and not in an airy, literary fashion. And finally, he meets the argument on which Mr. Glad- stone laid much stress,—naneely, that on certain very wide questions the popular instinct is far truer and juster than that of class,—with the contemptuous remark that Mr. Gladstone would have done much better to give one or two instances. Now it is impossible to believe Mr. Lowe ignorant of the weight attaching to these three arguments in the minds of Liberals, and on the first and third at least, Mr. Gladstone had said BD much that he was almost bound not to ignore them in any attempt to rejoin. The only inference we can draw is that either Mr. Lowe cannot meet them, or that he is quite unable to enter into th,e importance attached to them. Le the former case, his article is so faulty that it is hardly worth consideration ; in the latter, the constitution of his own mind is so peculiar, that we can hardly credit him with any grasp of the issues really raised in the political world. Let us say a few words on each point.
Starting even from Mr. Lowe's own point of view,—that from the point of view of those who dread universal suffrage as one of the most unmanageable and inscrutable of political machines,—it would, to us, seem a matter of the first possible importance not to leave the householders of the counties any longer outside the sphere of political influence. There is, as we have said, this great difference between the grounds for present demand for household suffrage in the counties and any conceivable excuse for the future demand of what Mr. Lowe is so much afraid of, universal suffrage everywhere,— that now there is a class, and a large class, without any political prospect or right—a class of political pariahs—while after the extension of household suffrage to the counties there would be no such class, but in every part of the realm it would be due simply to a man's individual preference for a life without ties, if he failed by becoming a householder to qualify hina- self for the vote. At present, the agricultural labourer feels that he is despised and taken no account of in the Constitution. Were he once admitted, there would be no group of men at all able to urge this. Even a non-voter would know that his brothers and father and coueins had votes, and that it was his own doing simply that he had none. No reasonable man would deny that this would involve the removal of a serious danger te the Constitution. An aggrieved class denied all power under the Constitution, and not only denied all power, but denied it when others who seem to them no better in any way than themselves are accorded their share of power, are necessarily a discontented and angry class, disposed to ally themselves with the friends not merely of reform, but of revolution. Receive them on equal terms with their brethren, and they will no longer be eager to grasp at revolutionary schemes. Refuse to receive them, and you foeter the seeds of an ignorant agitation, which may be all the more serious for its ignorance, as well as for the violence which ignorance is apt to cause. It is childish to talk as if the admission of the agricultural labourer to a household suffrage increased the danger of an agitation for universal suffrage, unlese that agitation be already active amongst those who have now house- hold suffrage. Everybody knows that is not so. There is hardly a constituency anywhere that encourages its candidates to endea- vour to extend the suffrage in places where houeehold suffrage has been granted. Not a Bill, as far es we know, has ever been even introduced. into Parliament with that object. It is not a question even mooted, or if mooted at all, only in these rural constituencies where as yet there is 11Q household fran- chise. Now it is absurd to say that the franchise which has set to sleep all talk of the People's Charter in the boroughs, will necessarily revive the talk of that Charter, if applied to the counties. We only ask that the remedy which has pro- duced so much tranquillity in the boroughs should be tried also in the counties. And we maintain it to be morally cer- tain that it will produce the pain° effect, Mr. Lowe seems to argue that what has produced a sedative effect on OA
comparatively restless populations of our large towns, will produce an intoxicating effect when accorded to the rela- tively quiet populations of our country parishes. That is against all reason and analogy. The counties, we venture to say, will be as easily satisfied as the boroughs. If we want to stimulate a cry for universal suffrage, we should keep the agricultural population in their discontent and disgust as long as possible,—not satisfy them with the very concession which has reduced Chartism in the boroughs to the mere shadow of a name.
In the next place, Mr. Lowe wholly ignores the chief set-off against the mischief—which we in no way ignore—of largo and comparatively ignorant constitu- encies. We agree with Mr. Lowe that, other things being equal, a constituency of vast proportions is in itself mis- chievous, and leads both to great expense in canvassing, and to an inability adequately to organise its opinions, which have bad political results. But Mr. Lowe will not look at the set-off against this mischief. Yet these large popular constituencies, incompetent as they are to pronounce on a vast number of political questions,—many of which in fact they never trouble their heads about,—certainly swamp all those doctrinaire and obstinate fixed ideas which so often divert politicians from the true issue. Take the case of Educa- tion. The Churchmen and Dissenters had been quarrelling over education for thirty years, when Mr. Disraeli's Govern- ment in 1867 passed their Reform Act. What was the result? These sectarian squabbles became mere eddies in the great sea of household suffrage, and Parliament soon became aware that in a case affecting one of the great interests of the nation at large, these little political knots, whether sundered or cut, must not be allowed to stand in the way of the popular wish for a good and, in a general sense, a religious education. And that is the use of these wide suffrages. They are most unmanage- able political instruments for many purposes. But on sub- jects where the great interests of the masses are concerned, they lend a decisive force which you cannot got from any other quarter. Precisely the same would be true if the agri- cultural labourers were admitted to the franchise. On subjects affecting their most important interests,—on the subject, for Instance, of Labourers' Dwellings, deliberately shut out from the scope of Mr. Cross's Artisans' Dwellings Act,—and on the subject of "Justices' justice,"—we should soon find that Parliament, so dilatory and hesitating hitherto, would become prompt and resolute. It is hardly candid in Mr. Lowe to evade the force of this most weighty argument. And last, as to the argument urged by Mr. Gladstone, which Mr. Lowe meets so contemptuously,—that popular instincts judge on many points much more truly and much more disinter- estedly than the more cultivated judgment of select society,— does Mr. Lowe really doubt this when he asks for an instance ? Does he doubt, for instance, that on the question of the right and wrong of the struggle in America, English "society," and as far as could be judged, even the middle-class, was all NA rong, and the masses,—even though containing a large number of artisans who suffered profoundly by the cessation of the cotton supply,—all right ? Can he doubt that on the Irish Church question again, it was definitely the vote of the constituencies to which household suffrage had just been granted which gave Mr. Gladstone a majority, while the large suburban con- stituencies, still voting under the limited suffrage, gave an immense majority the other way ? Again, how does he suppose that the movement of last autumn—in which he himself took so spasmodic a part, so soon to be followed by indif- ference and even something like depreciation—was supported ? Was it from the middle-classes, or the multitude, that those great meetings against the policy of helping Turkey were sup- plied ? Would not England have been at war at the present mothent, but for the unmistakable vpice of the multitude for- bidding the Government to enter on such a course ? Mr. Lowe must be oblivious by choice of the lessons of history, if he doubts for a moment that on issues which go to the heart of a people, nations judge far better and more truly than the most refined and cultivated of electoral classes. The truth is, that Mr. Lowe has touched only a small corner of the question he diseussc s, and has touched even that corner with a faltering hand.
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