MULTIPLICATION OF VOTES.
THE Tories are fond of taunting the Liberals with poverty : the numerical majority, they sometimes admit. may be Anti-Tory, but the great mass of the property of the country, they invariably declare to be on their side. We suspect that they are deluded by the fact, or the probability, that the greater portion of the land is (however mortgaged) in Tory ownership, and have under-esti-
mated the large amount of property cf other descriptions, which is held principally by the middle classes, who are Liberals. The Tories were possessed strongly with this idea when they insisted that the principle of the Reform Act should be the representation of property, not of persons, and laboured to contract the influence of numbers. It was no dereliction of this principle to contend for the preservation of the suffrage to the venal freemen.
It appears that the scheme has only been successful in part. Acting in compliance with the letter, if not the spirit of the Re- form Act, a large number of persons have caused themselves to be placed on the register as trustees and joint-tenants; while votes have been multiplied on small pieces of property to an extent that has, we are happy to say, greatly alarmed the Tories. Thus, in the neighbourhood of Huntingdon, a forts -acre field has been so vested as to create forty Liberal electors. The Tories say that this is the work of the Duke of BEDFORD,—Whiell is false, for his Grace never owned the land, and did not meddle in the transaction. The Duke, however, has made a pretty troop of RUSSELL voters out of his Covent Garden property ; while six sons of the late Sir SAMUEL ROMILLY derive the right of suffrage out of one set of chambers in Lincoln's Inn. In these three instances, there appears nothing irregular, or what is not clearly justified by the provisions of the Reform Act. But, in addition to these, forty-two Radical Vestry- men of St. Marylebone stole a march on their Conservativecoadju- tors, and contrived to place themselves on the Overseer's lists as trustees of the church-yard and a stone-yard belonging to the parish. A petition to Parliament was presented on Monday, com- plaining of this proceeding ; when Sir SAMUEL WHALLEY stated, that the property in question was worth 30001. a year ; and he wished to know whether that property was not to be represented, merely because it was parish property ? If it shall appear that in the mode of placing the names on the register the letter of the law a as not violated, we apprehend that, on the principle of the Reform Act, the votes must be deemed good. Twelve Directors (.1 the Thames Tunnel Company have procured themselves to be regis- tered as electors of East Surry, in virtue of the property held by that concern : the Tories are very indignant that the Reformers should take such a liberty; but why should not the Thames Tun- nel property be represented ? and who so fit to represent it as the Directors of the Company ? There is scarcely any limit to this multiplication of votes. As long as men of sound mind, years of discretion, and not especially disqualified, are to be found, the law provides the means of giving them votes. Property in land and houses may be subdivided almost ad infinitum. Thus, curiously enough, the means which were employed to keep the right of election in the hands of com- paratively few, have a tendency to carry us far on the road to universal suffrage.
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