THE CONSERVATIVES AND THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE, on Tuesday, certainly did not preclude himself from proposing, in some future Parliament, to extend household suffrage to the counties ; but as certainly his speech was not of a kind to favour the notion that he is at present indulging any dream of such a policy ; and it must have been obvious to him, if he judged by the speeches of his most enthusiastic supporters, and the way in which they were received on the Conservative side of the House, that the temper of the Conservative party must change very greatly before such a new step in their education would be safe. Only Mr. Knowles, the Conservative Member for Wigan, warned his own party that they could not indefinitely delay deal-
ing with this matter ; but his, we believe, was the sole Con- servative voice raised on that side. And yet it is, in many respects, a very strange thing, that there should not now be more Conservatives who, simply as Conservatives, desire to see the same settlement of the question made for the counties which has been made for the boroughs. Lord Claud Hamilton, indeed, quoted Mr. Disraeli's saying of twelve years ago, that "if he had selected any fixed sum as a basis of the suffrage, the moment the Liberals were in want of a cry they would propose a new Reform Bill, accompanied by all the agitation and bitterness of feeling inseparable from such a proposal. Therefore he preferred household suffrage as the basis of the borough franchise, with every prospect of its being accepted as a permanent basis." Well, of that policy Lord Claud Hamil- ton did not seem to disapprove. He said, indeed, that both the prophets of good and the prophets of evil had been dis- appointed ; and he thought the character of the House of Commons had been injured by the change. But he regarded the new borough constituencies as quite competent to emanci- pate themselves, at very short notice, from the "gross hum- bug" of such an agitation as that grounded on the Bulgarian atrocities of 1876; and he was even generous enough to re- cognise in the borough householder, the chief instrument of that benignant Providence which rescued the country from the power of Mr. Gladstone's Government in 1874. With such opinions as these, it is odd that Lord Claud Hamilton did not see that Mr. Disraeli's Conservative reason for going at once to household suffrage in the boroughs, is even more applicable now to extending that suffrage to the counties. Mr. Disraeli's prediction has been verified in both respects. Household suffrage in the boroughs has practically been ac- cepted as a "permanent basis." There is no sign of a party in the country for universal suffrage. There is no sign of an agitation in Parliament to go beyond household suffrage. On the other hand, whether it be because the Liberals are, as Mr. Disraeli kindly suggested, "in want of a cry," or for some other reason, the county suffrage, which was based upon an arbitrary rental, has provoked the most wide-spread dissatis- faction,—a dissatisfaction greatly increased by Mr. Disraeli's own policy in giving an artisan on one side of an arbitrary line a political privilege, which he refused to an equally steady and equally successful artisan on the other side of that line. We have long had a new Reform Bill proposed, "with all the agitation and bitterness of feeling inseparable from such a pro- posal ;" and the new Reform Bill so proposed is nothing but an application of Mr. Disraeli's own cure for agitation in the boroughs, to the case of the counties. How is it that the Con- servatives do not see this? How is it that they are not anxious to reach in the coanties also the same ledge which has proved so efficacious in stopping the downward motion of Radical agitation in the boroughs, especially since, if they got the control of the movement, they might very well insist on the adoption with it of the guarantee they approve,—of fair representation of minorities, in the sense advocated by Mr. Courtney and Mr. Blennerhassett ? No one who reads the debate can help feeling a certain wonder at the complete absence of any anxiety amongst the Conservatives to do what must be done before long in the best possible way, especially after what seems to be considered the triumphantly Conserva- tive, though rather tardy, fruit of the Reform Act of 1867, in the elections of 1874. We will try and give what we sup- pose to be the true answer. In the first place, it is obvious that the Conservative feeling is one of far greater dread of the labourer of the rural dis- tricts than of the artisan of the towns. Mr. Knowles and those who, like him, regard the question chiefly as one for the enfranchisement of urban voters who happen to be outside the Parliamentary boroughs, have no dread of the change.
The real dread is of the enfranchisement of the rural labourer. And the ground of that dread is twofold,—first, the political fear of alienating the farmers from the Conservative cause, for there is nothing of which the farmer is so jealous as the political power of the labourer ; and next, and perhaps quite as much, the dread of the country party themselves, that the enfranchisement of the labourer will involve some bold experiments with the land laws, which they dread almost as a tradesman dreads special legislation in regard to the conduct of his own particular business. The fear of offending the farmers, as the steadiest voters of whom the Conservative
party can boast, was clear enough throughout. But the vague dread of the agricultural labourers, and of their subversive aims, on the part of the Conservative gentry themselves, was quite as remarkable. Lord Claud Hamilton expressed dis. tinctly enough both these fears when, commenting on Mr. Arch's advice "Get your vote, and you will get higher wages," he said :—" One thing was clear ; the moment those men were in possession of votes, some gigantic county agitation was in- tended. What an admirable moment the patriotic gentlemen opposite had selected for this great social and economic revolu- tion in the counties ! Who paid the labourers, and on whom are they dependent, as a rule ? Why, the farmers. There• was no more loyal, industrious, and respectable body of men in the country than the British farmers. But foreign com- petition, the cattle disease, and four consecutive years of bad harvest, had brought the farmers to this condition, that—with a bad harvest this year, hundreds of them would be reduced to absolute poverty. And this was the moment honourable gentlemen selected for agitating in the counties." Alarm for the results of the vague "gigantic county agitation"
and alarm for the results which the fear of it would produce on the farmers as a class, here come out together in the closest proximity. Lord Claud is evidently seriously anxious about the labourers and their political ideas ; but he is still more alarmed at the effect which the discounted expectation of it may produce on the loyalty of the farmers. From neither point of view will it do, he thinks, to countenance any new Conservative experiment. The labourers might be asking for something revolutionary ; but whether that were so or not,—to the Conservatism of the farmers at least, the mere enfranchise- ment of the labourers would be a deadly blow.
Such is, as we believe, the chief secret of the panic in the Conservative ranks concerning household suffrage in the counties ; nor do they care in the least for the strong evidence which these very fears of theirs afford, that in denying the agri- cultural labourers the suffrage, they deny them a very real poli- tical benefit. If there be these grand and vague schemes for agitation in the labourers' breast, what remedy so good as the airing of their vague schemes in a practical Parliament ? If there be these bitter jealousies between the labourers and the farmers, what is more unjust than to trust the grievances of the labourers to the care of representatives chosen by the farmers ? Mr. Trevelyan, in his remarkable speech, put the case for the labourers with extraordinary force, when he pointed out that in all the recent legislative discussions in which they were chiefly interested, the representative of their interests had been always some important borough Member,—Mr. Lefevre, M.P. for Reading, for instance, in relation to Commons enclosures ; Mr. Fawcett, M.P. for Hackney, in relation to the schooling of the labourers' children ; Mr. Cowen, M.P. for Newcastle-on-Tyne, in the endeavour to extend the Artisans' Dwellings Act to the agricultural labourers ; Mr. Mundella, M.P. for Sheffield, in relation to the abominable system of paying labourers' wages in part in cyder and beer. These things being so, how can any one reasonably pretend, as Lord Claud Hamilton pretended on Tuesday night, that the countymembers are always as ready to redress any grievances the labourers may suffer from, as the borough Members are to redress the grievances of urban residents who do not happen to be their own constituents ? The facts are just the other way. The grievances of the county labourers,—and most of all, their educational griev- ances,—are resolutely ignored by the county Members, and have a chance only with the Members for large boroughs.
So far as we can see, Mr. Lowe's great argument, which he presses ad nauseam, that you must think of the Government of England before you think of the grievances of any parti- cular class of electors,—that you must ask yourself whether household franchise in the counties will injure the House of Commons as a legislative body, before you can properly take into account whether or not it will benefit the agricultural labourers themselves,—this great argument, though it was advanced as a show-argument by Lord Claud Hamilton, does not really weigh with the Conservative ranks. If they could be sure that there would be no " tampering " with the land, and no alienation of the farmers,—the great show-argument about the character of the House of Commons might take care of itself. It does not substantially alarm the Conservative party, though it does seriously alarm Mr. Lowe and Mr. Courtney. The answer to Mr. Lowe is this :—It is not true, but false, that the extension of household franchise to the counties would, at all events if undertaken by the Conservative party, injure the constitution of the House of Commons. Indeed, it might very well materially improve it. The mere fact that a new and great class, less contented with the existing life of the nation than any other, should be adequately represented, would be itself, taken alone, a very great improvement to the character of the House of Commons. What Mr. Lowe fears
is not the representation of that class, but the illiterateness of that class, and its insensibility to other and greater objects than the well-being of any one class. But this is precisely what it would be easy for a Conservative Government, without giving any offence to the genuine Democrats among the Liberal party, to remedy. The fair representation of minori- ties is a purely democratic measure. The need of it is more and more felt every year in the United States. Its tendency is in the direction of further equality, not of greater ine- quality. And yet it might incidentally remedy by far the greatest evil in our present system,—the complete exclusion of a great, and that the most reflecting, part of the nation from any real representation at all. If Mr. Lowe had been wise, he would have insisted on such modifica- tions as these, instead of declaiming against popular suff- rage. If Mr. Courtney had been wise, he would have sup- ported Mr. Trevelyan's motion, instead of opposing it, while pressing his own rider. But as it is, Mr. Lowe has stamped himself once more as a reactionary who does not care to under- stand his age ; and Mr. Courtney, as the representative of a small borough who is more afraid of its disfranchisement than of perpetuating a great public injustice, and a serious national danger.
Previous page
