Mr. Fawcett on Thursday made a gallant fight for his
proposal authorizing candidates with less than two thousand a year to stand for Parliament. Re called it, of course, a proposal to throw the returning officer's expenses on the borough and, county rates, but that was what he meant, and the House understood him perfectly. Consequently, holding as it does that a member with less than that income must - necessarily be an adventurer, a demagogue, or "a cad," it rejected the proposition by 248 to 142, the full state of the House indicating the keen interest felt by the rich in main- taining their monopoly of power. At the same time the House authorized an increase in the number of polling-places, every new place being in counties a relief, and in boroughs a fresh tax, and declined to limit the extortions of the returning officers, though Mr. Ayrton kindly suggested that most of them ought to be sent to Newgate. The voting on this subject was all of a piece, in- tended for no other end but to confine Parliament to the men whom wealth has made indifferent to progress, and callous to the claims of the poor
