Raikes, M.P. for the University of Cambridge, made a not-
able proposal, in his speech at Bury St. Edmund's, on Monday. It was that household franchise should be conferred, as pro- posed, on the agricultural labourers, but that instead of voting for county divisions, they should all be assigned as voters to the nearest Parliamentary borough ; so that we may have a vast number of rural districts resembling Shoreham or Retford, mis- called boroughs, while the counties should remain as-before, the preserves of the middle-classes. Of course, if that extraordinary proposal could be adopted, Mr. Raikes would hardly be prepared to decrease the number of county representatives and enor- mously increase that of the boroughs, in a proportion corn-
spending to their electoral strength, for if that were done, it is not clear that the Tories would gain by this inconceivably gro- tesque arrangement, while it would certainly pit the middle- classes against the masses in an exceedingly menacing manner. Does he, however, seriously suppose that if the masses of the counties were absorbed into the boroughs, the boroughs would be content to retain no more than their present voting-power P If so, even in the history of that "Rake's progress "of which Mr. Talbot talked so amusingly the other day at Swansea, there never was a more remarkable instance of living in a fools' paradise.
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