MR. BAINES'S FIGURES.
AfiR. DISRAELI stated on Tuesday, in answer to Mr. 1 Lowe, who apparently wanted a rule for guessing, -that neither he nor the House wanted more complete figures than those contained in the papers which Mr. Baines obtained in 1865. He would have them tabulated if the House wished, but the figures were in themselves sufficient for all purposes .of needful discussion. Mr. Disraeli was right if his proposal Is to be one of Household Suffrage pure and simple, and right if he selects rental as his basis, but wrong if he intends to make any novel proposal about compound householders. Nothing is said about them in these returns. Mr. Baines, who never contemplated, and probably does not altogether approve, household suffrage, procured for us a return of the population in every borough in 1861, the number of the -electors on the Register in 1865, and the number of houses at each rental from 4/. up to 101., lumping together, in conclu- sion, all under those figures. Any man can, therefore, see at a glance from his Tables how his own borough will stand should household suffrage be accepted, and there is probably not a member who has not by this time learned his fate. Blue-books, however, are rare commodities outside the walls of Parliament, addition is tiresome work, and we shall, we believe, do our readers an acceptable service if we enable them to see easily the general effect of such a scheme. We must premise that Mr. Baines's figures, which are much later than those selected by Mr. Newmarch, are also more moderate as to totals, his returns showing that the total Register is not tripled, but only doubled, by household suffrage. The totals are, however, of no importance, the existence of a few high-rented' boroughs like Marylebone and Brighton depriving them of meaning, and we must, to understand the statistics, follow them to the polling booths. There are, then, 42 boroughs in which household suffrage would produce no crushing effect, either because the electoral roll would be but moderately in- -creased, or becanee, as in the Tower Hamlets, the 10/. house- holders are so numerous, that if they choose to register they -can utterly overbear every other class. In that borough, for .example, though there are only 34,115 electors on the roll, there are, after the proper deduction for female occupiers, 71,361 tenements paying over 10/., and only 13,579 below that figure. The ten-pounders, after making all deductions, therefore are masters if they choose to be, and no legislation can provide against indifference. The boroughs in which there is no overwhelming change, or in which, at all events, the charge of " swamping " cannot be fairly made, are the Tower Hamlets, Liverpool, Marylebone, Finsbury, Lambeth, Westminster, Southwark, Bristol, Greenwich, City of London, Brighton, Norwich, Devonport, Plymouth, Bath, Birkenhead, Southampton, Exeter (I), Cheltenham, Chatham (I), North- ampton (?), Monmouth, Oxford, Cambridge (I), Dover, Read- ing, Maidstone (?), Hastings, Gloucester, Winchester, Fal- mouth, Weymouth, Reigate, Windsor, Christchurch, Guild- ford, Newport (I), Dorchester (?), Hertford, Harwich, Dartmouth (?), and Totnes. The note of interrogation signifies that, although the new electors do not actually swamp the old, they will exercise an immense influence on the return. In other words, as we remarked last week, the metropolitan boroughs, the ports, and a few county towns will feel the change least, probably for these rea- sons. In London rents are so high that workmen are either electors or lodgers, and in the ports, especially the Dockyard ports, while the floating population wants no houses, the resi- dent artizans find votes increase their wages. In the exceptional towns the small number of cheap houses is probably due to the absence of ordinary business. In all such places it is, we are told, amusing to see the readiness with which members, Tories and Liberals alike, accept a proposed suffrage which, as they are well aware, they will not greatly feel, which, in some cases, as Southampton, will produce no effect whatever, and in some will seat them only the more firmly in their saddles. In any calculation of the general result, therefore, these boroughs must be deducted. The new electors in them may hold the balance of power, and force pledges upon their members, but they cannot absolutely dictate to the whole of the existing constituencies.
There remain 144 boroughs, and of these 42 are towns and cities with more than 30,000 residents. In the majority of these Household Suffrage will create a new constituency, which, as we believe, will be exceptionally good, very much under the influence of political ideas, very little under that of bribery or of intimidation, which, in fact, will freely express genuine, if mistaken, popular thought. These are Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Wolverhampton, Newcastle, Bradford, Salford, Stoke-upon-Trent, Kingston, Portsmouth, Oldham, Sunderland, Preston, Nottingham, Bolton, Leicester, Blackburn, Stockport, York, Dudley, Derby, Coventry, Roch- dale, Ipswich, Walsall, Wigan, Bury, Halifax, Cricklade, Macclesfield, Stroud, South Shields, Huddersfield, Great Yar- mouth, Tynemouth, Ashton, Gateshead, Northampton, New Shoreham, Worcester, and Chester. Two or three even of these, such as Yarmouth, Ipswich, and Stroud, will be unhesi- tatingly pronounced by Parliamentary agents bad boroughs, but in them household suffrage will make corruption exces- sively expensive. It is one thing to buy eighty freemen in a constituency divided into equal parts, as has happened in Ipswich, and quite another to purchase 2,500 new voters, most of them on one side. In all these the existing Register is more or less completely swamped by the new voters, and in seven, Leeds, Stockport, Cricklade, Ipswich (?), Huddersfield, New Shoreham, and Chester, by the new voters paying less than 4/. a year,—that is, by workmen, or in one case labourers, whose rents are artificially kept down. Their members will have to conciliate, to understand, and in great measure to represent classes of whom they have as yet scarcely heard, whom they do not in the majority of cases understand, and who are fairly entitled to an effective share of political power. In such places, if we can but put down direct bribery, we shall have nothing to fear and much to hope from household suffrage. But unfortunately household suffrage, if it is finally adopted in its simple form, does not confine its action to these centres of thought and energy, but will be felt most oppressively in boroughs of the pettiest kind. There are, for example, sixty- seven boroughs which in 1861 had less than 10,000 inhabitants, and in no less than nineteen of these the very poorest class of householders outnumber the whole existing constituency, and would exercise a predominant influence under any " check " likely to be accepted by the House of Commons, while in the remainder the new electors will in practice appoint members without appeal. Can anybody believe that this will be bene- ficial? These men have little of the education which protects the workmen of the North, little of their public spirit, and none of that sense of independence which men acquire when accustomed to work in large groups, when penetrated, in fact, with a sense that the community is above the individual. Even if we can put a stop to bribery, a most difficult task, the authority of the local magnate and the local employer of labour will not only not be impaired, but will be rendered much more absolute, that authority telling in direct proportion to the absence of pecuniary independence. What is a small car- penter, say, in Eye, to do if he knows that for the rest of his life his landlord, or principal customer, or the one man in the neighbourhood who alone can give him a contract worth having, will never again employ, or befriend, or speak to him ? He will obey orders with a readiness in exact propor- tion to his poverty, and we shall find at the end of five years that Reform has enlarged the number of nomination boroughs by 30 or 40 seats. It may have diminished direct bribery in an almost equal degree, which is a gain to the localities, but it will to that extent have diminished the opportunity for expressing real popular thought. As a witty talker is reported to have said, "Reform" in these boroughs "will make the constituencies a little worse, and leave the members just as they were." Of course, if it cannot be helped, if no line can be drawn, and all borough constituencies must be treated exactly alike, why, the question ends, and we must accept the probable evil with the undoubted good. But do not let us, at least, accept household suffrage under the idea that it will be everywhere, in New Shoreham as well as Man- chester, an unmixed benefit to the Liberal side. In 42 boroughs the Reform will probably make no change. In 42 more it will make the nomination of Tory members almost an impos- sibility, but in 67 it will make the ultimate predominance of a plutocracy, sure to be essentially unprogressive, more of a certainty than it is now. It is on its effect in the boroughs with between 30,000 and 10,000 inhabitants that we must rely for Liberal gains, and it is in such places that the result of any Reform must always be most uncertain. If we can extinguish bribery and intimidation, we may in such places gain better men, but if not, we shall lose rather than gain, the new electors being more dependent than the old, and one great end of Reform, the creation of a Liberal majority in the House as strong as the Liberal majority in the country, hold- ing the same ideas, will be entirely lost.
We shall be told by journals like the Daily News, which, though perfectly sincere, grow savage if anybody attempts to look at Reform from a different point of view from their own, that these facts are opposed to those which we published last week. In reality they only supplement them. Our argument now, as then, is, that a swamping measure, if applied to the whole list of English boroughs, cannot be an unmixed good, -that, under any view, it will probably do more harm than good. The general view is that the whole working class will pull 'together, and so, we believe, under certain circumstances they will. In that case, under household suffrage they are masters of the Empire—of India, for example, no less than of domestic taxation. The other view which the Daily News supports is that they will not pull together ; and this, in quiet times and under certain conditions, is also, no doubt, true. In that case household suffrage will leave 42 boroughs just as they are, improve 42 boroughs very decidedly—as far as the representation of workmen is concerned—injure 67 boroughs by diminishing their independence, and act no mortal man can tell how in 35 more. That result, coupled with increased middle-class influence in the counties, may be, on the whole, beneficial, especially as it will unquestionably increase the force of Parliament ; but it is not one either certain enough or large enough to call for the hallelujahs Radicals seem inclined all at once to pour forth, or to compel everybody to merge his own convictions in one tremendous shout for Household Suf- frage. It is the way in which we are all being overborne by a factitious enthusiasm, and not of this or that measure, that we now complain.
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