THE COMING ELECTIONS.
I T is, we suppose, natural that men interested in the result
of the next elections should be somewhat in a hurry. Nobody knows exactly what the new Electorate will demand, Members' knees are loosened with fear, and action of any kind, even if it be only that fussy waste of time known as house-to- house canvassing, is a relief from uncertainty and fear. The people who manage elections, too, are usually of the bustling sort, with a tendency to believe in the "early bird" and im- becile proverbs of the same description, and they, besides, want their temporary importance to last as long as it can. Serious Liberals will, however, we think, do well not to be too precipitate. Their chances of a heavy majority in the next Parliament,—a majority which will give next year's speeches at the Merchant Taylors' Hall a very different tone,—are, we believe, very good indeed. There are signs of worry in the counties and of dismay in the medium boroughs which are very hopeful indeed, and the Tories are making the mistake to which they are always liable, but from which we should have thought Mr. Disraeli's electioneering genius would have preserved them. They are putting the clergy too visibly in the fore- front of the battle, thus rousing the new county electors—the Nonconformists hitherto without votes—to special exertions, and annoying that immense class even of Churchmen which is always fretted when "the parsons begin buzzing about." A nice, gentlemanly, domineering rector, who would as soon think of preaching in his shirt-sleeves as of calling unofficially on a country tradesman or small farmer, or twelve-pounder of any kind, is about as bad an electioneering agent for the new constituencies as Mr. Spofforth could find, and he is employing that kind very freely. The suburban voters seem very staunch, clever squires shake their heads over the lists in big villages, and altogether the prospect is by no means of an unpleasant kind. But genuine Liberals want something more than a majority, however large ; they want to see a new class of men come forward; men who will not merely give pledges, but who can see the evils to be removed and honestly care to remove them ; men who do not think that even under a Liberal Government England is the happiest, and greatest, and best managed country in the world. The effect of the hurry now visible is to bring the old men too prominently to the front, much too prominently,—so prominently that as yet but one candidate has appeared who differs in any marked degree from the usual ran appreciated by election committees. The tendency is to let the old men have a new trial, and it is greatly increased by the result of the carelessness or half-heartedness which has left one fatal blot in the whole scheme of reform. The expense of this election, the legitimate expense we mean, will be something frightful. Not one single step has been taken to diminish it, every sug- gestion which might by possibility cheapen elections or give men of moderate incomes a chance of entering Parliament, having been hooted down by the reigning plutocracy, anxious above all things to keep out brains. On the other hand, the increase of the electorate involves of itself an enormous increase in expenditure. Even millionaires may wince when they think of the kind of hole a battle for a populous county will make in their cash balance. What sort of a bill will be presented, for instance, under the heading "carriage of electors ?" They will have little armies to move, and all of them in chariots. Even in the South, where things are not quite so bad, the expense will be very great, and men with from three to ten thousand a year are shying at offered seats, and asking questions which attorneys pronounce "rather mean," and doubting whether it is quite wise or even quite right to buy seats at their daughters' cost, for it is on them the penalty falls. It is not much better in the towns. The members for the manufacturing cities find
their large constituencies multiplied threefold or fourfold, and see quite clearly that for the first election, at all events, they must multiply agency, rooms, clerks, and all the rest of the machinery in the same proportion. The larger county towns do not ask so much, but they ask three times as much as they did, and people, however patriotic, are solicitous for their money. A candidate with, say, 3,000/. a year, will not like the little account which will be pre- sented to him in Norwich, or Ipswich, or Nottingham, or Exeter, or many another borough hitherto considered attainable by a man of moderate means. That does not signify to the party, because they have as much money as their rivals, and spend it quite as liberally, but it affects most terribly the chances of new men, tends to secure the House of Commons as a monopoly to mil- lionaires. We write lightly, for the notion of a Parliamentary auc- tion, of the Empire put up to the highest bidder as a result of a Reform Bill has in it an irresistible grotesquerie, but it is a most serious question whether any moderate fortune whatever will be able to stand this first Reform election. Happy the Member for the University of Aberdeen! His seat ought not to cost him more than 20/. for postages, and he will be six hundred miles from his constituents, but he is an unique exception to the general law of plunder. If the men really required in Parliament, men with heads and hearts, men not convinced by their own comfort that all is always for the best, and that God built Bethnal Green, are to stand at all, there must be some arrangement, some organization to meet this difficulty, and there has as yet been no time for it. We do not mean that subscriptions should be raised, though that also ought to be easy, but that some agreement should be arrived at for stopping the regular plunder, for con- testing boroughs, for instance, without throwing thousands into publicans' tills, for abolishing the absurd etiquettes under which it will cost many members from three hundred pounds to a thousand in postages alone, to circulate documents the local paper could circulate better for five pounds. The House of Commons, of course, will do nothing, Liberals and Tories chuckling together over the discomfiture of the "paupers ;" but the electors, if they are in earnest, may do much.
Then all this hurry has another effect. Everybody is arranging addresses, and settling pledges, and swallowing demands, as at the last election, without any reference whatever to the immense change which has occurred in the electorate. Until the Register has been put in some sort of order the new electors will not recognize their changed posi- tion, will not see each other's faces, or realize that the power of action has passed down to them. They require a little time to satisfy themselves that it is all true ; that the dominance of a caste has passed away for ever ; that if they combine the wrath of the squire or the plutocrat will be as inno- cuous as summer lightning ; that it is for them to give, instead of receiving orders. The country press, the new courtesy of clergymen, the speeches of " popular " candidates whose only chance of election is a movement among those who were till yesterday non-electors, will teach them the truth at last ; and when they know it, they will find that they also have definite wants, and wishes, and theories, and pre- ferences for candidates ; but all this will take time. Time was not required in 1832 ; because the terrible character of a struggle which threatened civil war had educated the people, because the county franchise went such a little way down, and because the gentry were anxious the new electors should realize their power; but all these conditions are wantingin 1868. The struggle was a retreat, the franchise reaches down to men slow to realize political change, and the gentry would like nothing so much as to see the vote left unused. It will take months of strong writing, and stump speeches, and hundreds of clever agents to bring the revolution home to those it has bene- fited, and till it has been brought home every electioneering stroke must be a blow into space, which may hit, but by luck rather than design. The fear some people express that unless there is hurry the Irish Church will grow on the affections of the people is, we believe, pure nonsense ; but, suppose it true, it is better the nation should resolve to maintain that oppres- sion another seven years, than that it should decide without knowing or caring what it is deciding upon. We want the real opinion of the Householders of the kingdom, even if it is against us ; and we shall not get it if the agents are in such a hurry to propose the old men, with their anti- quated pledges and wearisome promises to do as little as they can help.
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