25 JANUARY 1913, Page 19

A remarkable meeting of protest against the Franchise and Registration

Bill was held at Cannon Street Hotel on Tuesday. Lord Rothschild, having moved a resolution urging Parliament to reject a proposal which would, amongst other evils, reduce the electorate of the first city of the Empire from over 31,000, representing the highest interests, to under 3,000 residents, Mr. Balfour supported the motion in a powerful speech. The electoral scheme of the Government, be maintained, went five-sixths of the way towards disfranchising the City of London altogether, and with its disfranchisement the future of London as a municipal and as a representative body would vanish. They had still got to hear what the Government's justi- fication was, but they knew what their plan was, and on what it was based—the idiotic proposition that people ought to vote in virtue of the place where they sleep, not on account of the place where they work. Mr. Balfour further pointed out with great effect that at the very moment that the Government were saying that the City of London should never again bare as a constituency any weight in the counsels of Empire, they were introducing forty-two representatives of the newly con- stituted nation " who were going to vote upon your affairs, the affairs of England and the affairs of Scotland, without having the smallest interest in them."