Mr. Plunkett, the Conservative Member for West Gloucester- shire, made
a remarkable and carefully-finished speech in the same sense as Mr. Lowe, though of course not so reactionary ; and later in the evening Mr. Goschen defended his well-known
view that the agricultural labourers are not yet fit for political power, and may use it to relax the restrictions on out-door re- lief. He also argued that the Reform Act of 1867 has weakened the fibre of Conservative resistance to change, and made the Government unduly sensitive to the changing gusts of popular opinion. Lord Hartington pointed out how little reason there was to suppose that the concession of the urban suffrage to the rural districts is a preparation for repudiating that urban suffrage altogether in favour of universal suffrage ; and insisted that the Conservatives by fighting in 1832 for the Chandos Clause, which based the county franchise partly on the urban prin- ciple of an occupation franchise,--instead of resting it on property,—and then reducing the urban franchise to a house- hold one in 1867, had really paved the way for this step, which they nevertheless declined to take ; and Sir Stafford Northcote opposed the motion, in a speech of which the key-note was the inopportuneness of reopening these questions every ten years, and by an appeal to the fears of Irish Members, who must suffer greatly by any redistribution of seats on the principle of population. The motion was defeated by a majority of 52 (271 to 219).
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