A return just issued to Parliament contains some statistics which
will be most useful to those who are studying the ques- tion of Redistribution. In England and Wales, the population of the counties now exceeds that of the boroughs, though, of course, the latter contain many large, but new, towns, which are still unrepresented. The population in 1881 was 13,688,000 in counties, and 12,285,000 in boroughs. Nevertheless, the boroughs send up 297 Members, and the counties only 187. Allowing for, say, 1,400,000 of population to be taken out of the counties for new boroughs, the present representation of the counties would still be unfairly less than that of boroughs, the true proportion being 242 Members to each. That is to say, under a mathematical scheme of redistribution, the counties would gain fifty-five Members and the boroughs lose fifty-five, —a difference, if the two were opposed, of 110 votes. They are not opposed, but we should not be surprised if some leading Tories, recollecting these facts, and possessed with the notion that London is Tory, made a considerable effort to extend Redistribution as nearly to the mathematical limit as English feeling will allow.
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