As the Parliamentary Vacation approaches its end, public meet- ings
have become rather more frequent ; and also, negatively or positively, they have become rather more practical than usual ; the chief subjects being Representative Reform and Education.
Reform has found its most conspicuous discussion at Man- chester. The result, negative On the general subject, assumed a limited and almost local character. There were the usual awes-, sories of a Manchester meeting, although the banquet was held ini a didingroom instead of the great Free-trade Hal. There were the expected speakers—Mr. Milner Gibson and Mr. John Bright, Members for the city ; Mr. George Wilson, standing Chairman of the associations and meetings connected with Manchester poli- tics; the principal Free-trade Members ; and above all, Mr. Cob- den. Several of the subjects with which some of these gentle- men are more or less identified—the further improvement of the tariff, the removal of taxes on knowledge, promotion of public edu- cation, sanitary reform, &c.—dropped out of view, or were but little discussed. Only, two subjects were copiously handled—Par- liamentary Reform, and peace with Russia. Mr. Cobden an- nounced that he and his friends are not for giving the franchise to " everybody " now; but he would add, say a million, to the fran- chise, leaving the complete extension to time. Mr. Bright would give the franchise to every frugal, industrious, and aspinng work- man. Mr. Milner Gibson would have a "full representation" of the people. A Mr. Whitehouse appeared as delegate from a so- ciety in London, to advocate the Ballot. But the meeting came to a single resolution, embodying a request "that the Liberal Members connected with the county of Lancaster, with the addi- tion of leading Reformers of each district, should consider them- selves as a committee to aid in any proceeding with reference to Parliamentary Reform, with a view to secure such an additional representation to this county, as its population, industry, wealth, and intelligence' obviously require." This leaves the general sub- ject of Reform to Ministers.
Although still general in results, the Education meetings have a decidedly practical tendency. We may at once except the extra- ordinary exhibition by Bishop Hampden at the meeting of the Dio- cesan Board of Education in Hereford. Dr. Hampden reproduces all the old anti-educational arguments against the value of secular instruction, which, he said, might only make people more wicked ; the true cause of general depravity being "the immoral habits" of the people, illustrated by the voluntary absence of five millions from chureh. Unbenefited by the discussions on the subject, the Bishop appears to have stood still; and he produces truisms and falsisms of twenty years back as if they were new ideas. It was evidently otherwise with the gentlemen, reverend or lay, who stood around him; and whose report showed the deplorable want of practical instruction in the diocese, where a hundred and four- teen parishes are entirely without schools, while some few attempts at establishing wheels for farmers and labourers have been sue-. cessful. •
The meetings in Liverpool and Glasgow to promote reformatory schools for juvenile delinquents deserve notice, not for their argu- ments,—which were excellent, but which have been anticipated by the Birmingham meeting, and by the writings of leading re- formers,—but for the conjunction of men seldom seen together- Tories, Whigs, Radicals, Churchmen High and Low, Dissenters and Unitarians, Ultra-Protestants and Roman Catholics. The great educational meeting at Edinburgh equally attests the uni- versal spread of a conviction that it is time to leave off discussing, and to do. With some excellent speaking, the practical result of the Edinburgh meeting was a resolution, recommending that dis- puted details should be set aside for a time, and that Government should be called upon to bring forward "a satisfactory measure upon their own responsibility." Is not this crying, We want to be governed ?
