Sir Henry James, at Dumfries, chiefly set himself to refute
Mr. Gibson's fallacious representations of the comparative finance of the two Governments, which he did with uncommon ability and precision. Also, in the latter part of his speech he criticised very impressively the appeals made by Lord Water- ford,—one of the bitterest opponents of the Irish Land Act,—to Sir Stafford Northcote's Ulster audience, not to endanger the large concessions they had gained under the Irish Land Act, by imperilling the Union; in other words, Lord Waterford appealed to the Act which he had described as one of confisca- tion, to secure the loyalty of the Irish farmers, and yet wanted that loyalty not for the Government which passed the Act, but for the Opposition which resisted it ! Sir Henry James went on to advocate making the residential franchise the principal one for counties as well as boroughs, tracing very humorously the anomalies of the franchises conferred by cutting tithe rent- charges and other faggots into qualifications for party voters. He excited great cheering by tracing one of the earliest creations of these faggot votes to a certain Sir James Lowther, of West- moreland, soon after the Act of 1774. Sir Henry James is evidently deeply convinced that enfranchisement of non-resident investors in political property of this questionable kind, is a bogus qualification of the worst description.
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