THE LIBERAL PARTY AND REFORM.
To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR,—I am not going to try to throw a single ray of light upon this question. I only want to urge you to help yourreaders to think about it wisely. Pray do not let it drop. Keep it before us, press it upon us. At present I firmly believe there are many among us who do not know what on earth to do with it.
I know members of the Liberal party who, looking forward to the inevitable general election, are strongly tempted to do one of two things—(1) vote for a Tory, or (2) not vote at all.
I have seen men yielding to the former of these two temptations mainly and expressly on the ground that a 5/. franchise—the thing which would be accepted, I am afraid, by our Liberal candidates as a solution of the great question of Reform—must lead to a com- plete swamping of the educated and wealthier classes, or to a sys- tem of 'bribery and corruption more shameless and more extensive than any we have yet seen in England, to the exclusion of the just influence of all interests save one, or to illegal and immoral efforts on the part of the excluded interests to deliver themselves from their destroyer.
With regard to the second temptation—the temptation not to vote at all—a man who 'values his privileges and accepts his re- sponsibilities as a citizen will certainly pause long before he yields to it. And yet there can be no doubt that to many it will prove very strong ; much stronger, I think, to a man who is trying hard to find out what is right with all his heart than can be the temptation to surrender his individual judgment and to repeat the war cries of the mob to which your correspondent alludes.
I am speaking of the position of voters. How to vote, if to vote, will puzzle many. We will suppose two candidates to be soliciting my vote. One says, "We (I and my party) will resist the adoption of this 5/. franchise as a settlement of the question, we will simply stand as we are." The other says, "I am bound to support this 5/. franchise. I should lose the support of the extreme section of the Liberal party. I should seriously endanger my own election if I even hinted that I had any scruples on the subject. Surely neither of these men are right. True progress will be the result of neither of these courses. On what general principle of political conduct am I to fall back? I ask, but cannot answer. You know how it is answered by the great metropolitan constituencies.—Your obedient servant,
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