Mr. Stansfeld brought forward his resolution for an amend- ment
of the registration law, and the adoption of the principle of " One man, one vote," in the House of Commons on Tues- day night. Mr. Stansfeld maintained that no prompt and official system of registration could conveniently be adopted without doing away with the qualifications which enable one man to obtain votes in more than one locality and in places where he is not resident, and he urged that the principle of household suffrage could not be reconciled with the property qualification enabling electors to vote in half-a-dozen different constituencies. The motion was seconded by Mr. Howell, and then Mr. Howorth moved his amendment, declaring that the principle of registration ought to be reformed, but that the needful reform will involve a rectification of the representation of different parts of the United Kingdom in proportion to population; in other words, that the disproportionate electoral power wielded by a certain nunaber of small constituencies is a much more serious matter than the disproportionate electoral power wielded by a certain number of individual electors. Mr. Howorth commented on Mr. Gladstone's strategy in this matter, which combined, he said, the restless activity of Achilles with the consummate craft of Ulysses, and reproached him for reopening a question which had been deliberately settled by a compromise with the Conservatives.
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