. THE PROSPECTS OF THE REFORM BILL.
IT is obvious to those who watch the divisions in aommittee that the Liberal Members are quite aware what a blunder it was last week to let the majority obtained on the second reading of the Reform Bill dwindle as it did in the first sitting devoted to that Bill after Easter, and that the careless confidence to which that blunder was due is not likely to occur again. It is asserted again and again, till some of the Conservative speakers appear almost to persuade themselves of what they would so much like to believe, that the country is very in- different about Reform. The Liberal Members know better. They are,perfectly well aware that great as is the talent of the present large constituencies for silence,—little as they are accustomed to besiege their representatives by letter, as the old ten-pound householders used to do,—they do care ex- tremely to carry the extension of the franchise to the county householders, a measure which they really and truly regard as essential to the routing of "privilege" out of its last strong hold. Whatever the householders fail to understand, they. understand that the present Government was deeply pledged to this reform ; and any excuse for a further delay of it would have done more to sow distrust of the Liberal Government than
any Egyptian complication which the minds of the electors could take in. They were deeply stirred at the beginning of the - year, when there arose some doubt as to the intention of the Government to delay Reform for another Session. They would be deeply stirred now if any question arose as to the carrying of this Bill, or as to the solidity of the reform to be carried. Forinstance, Mr. Leighton's insidious proposal to restore faggot- voting to more than its highest climax of historic influences, by giving the same freehold qualification to a non-resident in Parliamentary boroughs which the Bill,.unfortunately, leaves to .a non-resident in the county, would, we believe, arouse a most indignant feeling in the country at large so soon as it was mastered. Of course, it will be rejected. Of course the • Liberals draw the strongest distinction between the historical qualification Which has done so much good, and which, under the new restraint, will- do so little harm, and a proposal, without historical excuse, to give a powerful influence in boroUghs to a crowd of persons who have no proper connection at all with • those boroughs. The Democracy of England, though it is as yet only half-constituted, is, like all democracies, somewhat slow to grasp the meaning of political details, and would not catch the real drift of Mr. Leighton's amendment for some time after it had been before the public. But when it did catch that drift, it would swat once that the proposal is really meant to baulk, so far as possible, the democracy of its desire to give to numbers, and not to classes, the power of speaking for the English people, and would resent extremely any disposition of 'Liberal Members to coquet with that proposaL For this, we take it, is what the English people at this moment ears most about—that the landed interest shall be deprived of its overweening influence in elections,. just as capitalists have already been deprived of theirs, in order that the nation may be supreme, and that classes may recognise their true position as constituent elements of the nation, and may cease to be, what they have too often been, rivals of the nation, or rather pretenders speaking for the nation. The Conservatives seem to us to be strangely blind to the popular feeling in this respect. They think that because small classes like the farmers and the landowners are jealous of any infringement of their power to return County Members, therefore a multitude like the borough householders must also
be jealous of any such diminution of their individual influence in returning Borough Members, as must of course result from the Redistribution Bill which will immediately follow . the Franchise Bill. And it is clear. from their speeches that they in their hearts believe that the householders in the • boroughs like the present Bill better than they would like a complete Bill, only because it gives them the chance of flooding county constituencies with urban voters if a Dissolution should take place between .the passing of this •
Bill and the passing of a Redistribution Bill. No illusion was ever greater. Democracies, even when only half-constituted, like the present English democracy,—for without the county franchise it is but a lop-sided democracy,—are not liable to the temptation to be exclusive which besets small classes. Democracies are liable to other, and perhaps e ien worse,.
temptations, no doubt. They are often self-willed, and reluctant to recognise their own impotence to turn wrong into right.
They are despotic in their own way, if -they see the smallest disposition to thwart their will, rather than to move it by argument and principle. But they are not liable to the kind of jealousies to which oligarchies are always liable. They. are too much possessed with- the idea that power ought to reside in the people, to wish to keep any legitimate part of the people out of their rights in order that they themselves may rule over their fellow-citizens. They would not enjoy it, even if they thought it probable that :they could long retain such a power ; for it is not, in effect, their own power for which they are so jealous, but the power of the people as a whole,—indeed, the conception of the people is an ideal which takes hold of their imaginations, and which would vanish at once if they were conscious of with- holding
from .others what they claimed for themselves. We sincerely believe that this conception has gained so strong a hold of them, that they insist on including Ireland in the ' scope of the Bill, though they are without any feeling but vexation at the recent course taken by the Irish people, out of pure devotion to their ideaL We have heard it said lat the universal cry for the inclusion of Ireland in the Bill was a cry got up by the wire pullers, who knew that without the Irish votes the Bill could hardly be carried. That, no doubt, is the cynical view ; and with -many politicians cynicism is • another name for political wisdom, and they never hug themselves So much. as when they .find themselves secretly believing that everybody is at heart always as selfish as almost all of us are at times. We are sure, however, that, in this case, it is a thoroughly vulgar error. Demo- cracies, like classes, cannot avoid being influenced by the law of their being. If they once begin to be indifferent about the principle of democracy, they are indifferent to the very law of their being ; and they cannot see any section of the people excluded from one of the chief rights of the people with- out being conscious that they are giving up the democratic principle itself. We are persuaded that not only are the borough householders absolutely determined to .share their rights with the whole United Kingdom, but that it is the principle for which they are enthusiastic, and that; wire-pullers or no .wire-pullera, they would have resented the exclusion 8f Ireland from the Bill just as much as they would resent the exclusion of the English agricultural labourers from the Bill. An inchoate democracy once possessed with the popular idea, is as eager to be, as it were,-perfected into a true democracy, as a great singer is to behold the rapture with which his voice can light up the faces of a gross and dull multi- tude. A people cannot feel that it is quite itself while it sees any of the nation outside the charmed circle of politi- cal power. We hold, then, that the Liberals have interpreted aright the heart of the constituencies when they take such pains to carry the great majority they have mustered on the second reading into all the minor issues of the Bill. And we are much mistaken if that feeling will not also greatly alter the division on the vote of censure. The Liberals know that a successful vote of censure would destroy the Bill, and that many of its opponents press the vote- of censure for that very purpose. But the English people, who care comparatively little about Egypt, care a great deal for the. Franchise Bill. And they will not forgive the burking of the Franchise Bill under cover of a snatch at the . Pyramids.
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