Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN
 
 PABLIAMENTABY BEFOBM. 
 
 AN ESSAY. 
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT. 
 
 REPRINTED, WITH CONSIDERABLE ADDITIONS, FROM THE NATIONAL REVIEW. 
 
 LONDON : 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. 
 
 [Price Two Shillings.']
 
 PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVET, AKD FRANKITK, 
 
 Great New Street and Fetter Lane.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM/ 
 
 WE shall not be expected to discuss in a party spirit the subject 
 of Parliamentary Reform. It has never been objected to the 
 NATIONAL REVIEW that it is a party organ; and even periodicals 
 which have long been such, scarcely now discuss that subject in 
 a party spirit. Both Whigs and Conservatives are pledged to do 
 something, and neither as a party have agreed what they would 
 do. We would attempt to give an impartial criticism of the 
 electoral system which now exists, and some indication of the 
 mode in which we think that its defects should be amended. It 
 is possible, we fear, that our article may be long, and that our 
 criticism on existing arrangements may appear tedious. But a 
 preliminary understanding is requisite ; unless we are agreed as 
 to what is to be desired, we cannot hope to agree as to what is 
 to be done : a clear knowledge of the disease must precede the 
 remedy. In business, no ingenuity of detail can compensate for 
 indistinctness of design. 
 
 There is much that may be said against the Reform Act of 
 1832 ; but, on the whole, it has been successful. It is a common- 
 place to speak of the legislative improvements of the last twenty- 
 five years, and it would be tedious to enumerate them. Free 
 trade, a new colonial policy, the improved poor-law, the encum- 
 bered-estate act in Ireland, the tithe commutation, municipal 
 reform, the tentative but most judicious support of education, 
 are only some of the results of the reform of the House of Com- 
 mons. Scarcely less important is the improvement which the 
 Reform Bill has introduced into the general tone of our adminis- 
 tration ; our executive has become purer, more considerate, and 
 more humane, and it would be difficult to show that in its ordi- 
 nary and beneficial action it is much weaker. Nor is this all. 
 So much of agreement in opinion as we see around us is perhaps 
 unexampled in a political age ; and it is the more singular, be- 
 cause the English nation is now considerably less homogeneous 
 
 * On the Electoral Statistics of the Counties and Boroughs in England and 
 Wales during the Twenty-five Years from the Reform Act of 1832 to the Present 
 Time. By William Newmarch, one of the Honorary Secretaries of the Statis- 
 tical Society. Kead before the Statistical Society, 16th June 1857, and printed 
 in the Journal of that Society, Vol. XX. Parts II. and III. We cannot speak 
 too highly of these most admirable statistics. No pains have been spared to 
 make them complete, and extreme judgment has been shown in the selection. 
 When it is not otherwise stated, all our electoral statistics are from this source. 
 
 1081571
 
 4 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 in its social structure than it was once. The prodigious growth 
 of manufactures and trade has created a new world in the north 
 of England, which contrasts with the south in social circum- 
 stances and social habits : at no former time was there such a 
 difference as there now is between Lancashire and Devonshire. 
 It is impossible not to ascribe this agreement to the habit of 
 national discussion which the Reform Act has fostered. The 
 scattered argument, the imperfect but perpetual influence of the 
 press and society, have made us, perhaps even to an excessive 
 degree, unanimous. Possibly we are all too much disposed to 
 catch the voice which is in the air. Still, a little too much 
 concord is better than a little too much discord. It is a striking 
 result, that our present constitution has educed from such dissi- 
 milar elements so much of harmony. 
 
 Beneficial, however, as are these incidental results of the 
 Reform Bill, they are not the most important parts of its success. 
 This measure has, to a considerable extent, been successful in its 
 design. The object which its iramers had in view was, to transfer 
 the predominant influence in the state from certain special classes 
 to the general aggregate of fairly instructed men. It is not per- 
 haps very easy to prove upon paper that this has been, at least in a 
 very great degree, effected. The most difficult thing to establish 
 by argument is an evident fact of observation. There are no statis- 
 tics of opinion to which we can refer, there is no numerical com- 
 parison which will establish the accordance of parliamentary with 
 social opinion. We must trust to our eyes and ears, to the 
 vague but conclusive evidence of events. If, indeed, public opi- 
 nion had always been as unanimous as it now is, we should have 
 some difficulty in ascertaining the fact. When every body thinks 
 the same, there is no saying which is the stronger party. But 
 during the last twenty-six years there have been many periods 
 at which public opinion was much divided and strongly excited. 
 The great legislative changes which have been mentioned were 
 not effected without long and animated party dissension. The 
 policy of a great country like this has continually required the 
 determination of critical questions, both at home and abroad ; 
 its ramified affairs have been a never-failing source of contro- 
 verted topics. What would have been the sign if the expressed 
 opinion of Parliament had been contrary to the distinct opinion 
 of the country ? In the present state of the country we should 
 not have been long in learning it. We should have had political 
 meetings, not of one class but all classes, clouds of petitions from 
 every quarter, endless articles in newspapers ; the cry would only 
 have died away when the obnoxious decision was reversed, and 
 the judgment of Parliament submitted itself to the will of the 
 nation. The inclination of the House of Commons is evidently
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 5 
 
 not to oppose the country. On the contrary, we all know the 
 power, the undue power, possessed by that part of the press whose 
 course is supposed to indicate what is likely to be the common 
 opinion. So far from our legislators dissenting too often from 
 the expressed judgment of the country, they are but too much 
 swayed by indications of what it probably will be. The history 
 of our great legislative changes, of itself shows that the opinion 
 of Parliament is, in the main, coincident with that of the nation. 
 Parliament and the country were converted at the same time. 
 Even the history of the corn-law agitation, which is often referred 
 to as indicating the contrary, proves this conspicuously. It suc- 
 ceeded almost at the moment that impartial people, who had no 
 interests on either side, were convinced that it ought to succeed. 
 Mr. Cobden liked to relate, that when he first began to dream 
 of agitating the question, a most experienced nobleman ob- 
 served to him, " Repeal the Corn-laws ! you will repeal the 
 monarchy as soon." The noble lord was right in estimating the 
 tenacity and intensity of the protectionist creed ; but he did not 
 know, and Mr. Cobden did, the power of plain argument on the 
 common mass of plain men, and the certainty that their opinion, 
 if really changed, would suffice to change the course of our legis- 
 lation, even in opposition to strong aristocratic influence and 
 very rooted prejudice. It has been said that Sir Robert Peel 
 owed his success in life to " being converted at the conversion 
 of the average man;" the same influences acted on his mind 
 that acted on the minds of most other people throughout the 
 nation, and in much the same measure. He was, therefore, con- 
 verted to new views at the same time that most other people 
 were converted to them. The same may be said of the present 
 Parliament. Nobody would call the reformed House of Com- 
 mons original; it is never in advance of the higher order of cul- 
 tivated thought : but every one would agree that it is preemi- 
 nently considerate, well -judging, and con vincible; and when 
 people say this, they mean that its opinions commonly coincide 
 with their own. 
 
 In no respect is the reality of the accordance in opinion 
 between Parliament and the nation so convincingly shown as 
 in the sympathy of Parliament with the eccentricities of public 
 opinion. We are constantly acknowledging that "the English 
 mind" is exclusively occupied with single questions ; sometimes 
 with one, and sometimes with another, but at each time with 
 one only. If Parliament did not share the same influences as 
 the general body of fairly educated men, there would every now 
 and then be a remarkable contrast between the subjects which 
 interested Parliament and that which occupied the nation. The 
 intensity of our peculiar sympathies makes this more likely.
 
 6 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 Satirists say that the English nation is liable to intellectual 
 seizures ; and so exclusive and so restless is our intellectual 
 absorption, so sudden its coming, so quick sometimes is its ces- 
 sation, that there is some significance in the phrase. We are 
 struck with particular ideas, and for the time think of nothing 
 else. It will be found that Parliament, if it be sitting, thinks 
 of the same. No instance of this can be more remarkable 
 than the parliamentary proceedings on Mr. Roebuck's mo- 
 tion for an inquiry into the conduct of the Crimean campaign. 
 There was great excitement in the nation at the moment ; it has 
 enabled the present generation to understand what historians 
 did not before understand the fate of poor Admiral Byng. The 
 English nation cannot bear failure in war. If there had been 
 any one to hang at the time Mr. Roebuck made his motion, 
 and he could have been hung directly, certainly he would have 
 been hung. On the other hand, the authority of statesmanlike 
 opinion in Parliament, the weight of political connection, the 
 legitimate disinclination to break up a government during a dan- 
 gerous crisis, and what is more remarkable the great pre- 
 ponderance of sound argument, were united to influence Parlia- 
 ment not to grant even an inquiry. The result showed that the 
 opinion of our leading statesmen was right, and that the argu- 
 ments they produced were incontrovertible. Few investigations 
 that have been commenced with so much outcry have ever had 
 so trivial an effect. Yet, in opposition to all these influences, 
 usually so omnipotent, in opposition to the combined force of 
 personal feeling and abstract argument, the House of Commons 
 so far accurately represented the sentiment of the countiy as to 
 grant, and even to insist on granting, the inquiry. This parlia- 
 mentary episode appears to be an instantia lucifera on the sub- 
 ject ; it shows that, even when we could wish it otherwise, the 
 House of Commons will echo the voice of the nation. 
 
 After all, there can be no more conclusive evidence of the 
 substantial agreement between Parliament and the nation than 
 the slight interest which is taken by the public in all questions 
 of organic reform. Every one knows how the Reform Act of 
 1832 was carried ; no one doubted that the public mind was 
 excited then ; no fair person could doubt what the decision of 
 the nation then was. The " insurrection of the middle classes," 
 as it has been called, ensured the success of the " Bill." It 
 was alleged by its most reasonable opponents " that the measure 
 could not be final; that those on whom it was proposed to 
 confer the franchise would, even after the passing of the mea- 
 sure, be but small in comparison with those from whom it 
 would be still withheld ; that in a few years a similar agitation 
 would recur, and a similar necessity of yielding to agitation ;
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 7 
 
 that the storm of 1832 would be a feeble prelude to that of 
 1842," &c. These prophecies were not without a species of pro- 
 bability, but they have not been realised. No excited multitude 
 clamours for enfranchisement ; the reality is the reverse of the 
 anticipation. 
 
 T\vo defects, however, may be discerned in the general ac- 
 cordance of parliamentary with national opinion. The Parlia- 
 ment certainly has an undue bias towards the sentiments and 
 views of the landed interest. It is not easy to trace this in im- 
 mediate results. We have said that we scarcely think that it is 
 proved by the history of the free-trade agitation ; that agitation 
 was successful nearly, if not quite, as soon as it should have been. 
 We may, indeed, speculate on the results which might have oc- 
 curred if the Irish famine had not happened, and if Sir R. Peel had 
 not formed a statesmanlike judgment upon its consequences; we 
 may believe that there would in that case have been an opposition 
 between an educated nation converted by reasoning to the prin- 
 ciples of free trade, and a majority in Parliament wedded by pre- 
 judice and interest to protection. Still, as this is but conjecture, 
 we cannot cite it as conclusive evidence. Nor is the partiality to 
 real property in matters of taxation which is occasionally dwelt on 
 very easy to prove in figures. The account is at best a complicated 
 one. The exemption of land from probate duty is partly compen- 
 sated by the succession duty, by the land-tax, by the more severe 
 pressure of the income-tax, and still more by the necessary in- 
 cidence of much local taxation on this kind of property. Still, a 
 fair observer, closely comparing the opinion of the House of Com- 
 mons with that of the public out of doors, will certainly observe 
 some signs of a partiality towards the landed interest among our 
 legislators. We cannot ascribe this to any obvious preponderance 
 in number of the county over the borough seats. Taking popula- 
 tion as a test, it is otherwise. There are in England and Wales 
 159 county members, more than double that number (viz. 335) 
 of borough members; the population of the represented boroughs 
 is 7,500,000, that of the counties 10,500,000, consequently the 
 represented boroughs have not as many inhabitants as the coun- 
 ties, though they elect twice the number of members. This test 
 is, of course, a most imperfect one ; but it may serve to show 
 that in mere arithmetic the counties are not extravagantly fa- 
 voured. The real cause is the peculiar structure of our county 
 society. A county member is almost of necessity one of the 
 county gentry ; he must not only possess land, but it must be land 
 in that place : no one else is " entitled to stand." On the other 
 hand, boroughs return a very miscellaneous class of members. 
 Many important landowners sit for them. So great is the va- 
 riety, that no class is excluded from them altogether. This con-
 
 8 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 trast must affect the distribution of parliamentary power. The 
 county members form a peculiar class in the House of Com- 
 mons, and exercise a steady influence there out of proportion to 
 their mere numbers. Besides, so much more of social influence 
 belongs to the territorial aristocracy than to any other class, 
 that its weight is indefinitely increased. Not a few men enter 
 Parliament mainly to augment their social importance, and over 
 these the unquestioned possessors of social rank necessarily have 
 great power. A third circumstance contributes its effect. The 
 ministers of the crown are generally large landowners. By im- 
 perious social usage, they must be men of large property ; and 
 all opulence gravitates towards the land. Political opulence 
 does so particularly. Until recently there was much difficulty 
 in finding other investments not requiring sedulous personal at- 
 tention, and not liable to be affected by political vicissitudes. It 
 is of essential importance that ministers of state should be per- 
 sons at ease in their worldly circumstances, and it is quite out of 
 the question that they should have any share in the administra- 
 tion of commercial enterprises ; they have enough to do without 
 that. Their wealth too should not be in a form that could expose 
 them even to the suspicion of stock-jobbing, or of making an im- 
 proper use of political information. We have now many kinds 
 of property debentures, canal shares, railway shares, &c., which 
 have these advantages in nearly an equal degree with land 
 itself; but the growth of these is recent. It may hereafter have 
 important consequences, but it has not as yet had time to achieve 
 them. Accordingly the series of cabinet ministers presents a 
 nearly unbroken rank of persons who either are themselves large 
 landowners, or are connected closely by birth or intermarriage 
 with large landowners. This combination of circumstances gives 
 to real property an influence in our political system greater than 
 in strict theory we should wish it to have. It is true that the 
 owners of much land are men of much leisure, and the posses- 
 sion of such property has a sedative influence, which in modera- 
 tion may not be undesirable ; but the effective representation of 
 national opinion requires the selection of members of parliament 
 from men of various occupations, various tendencies, and various 
 sympathies. Public opinion in a composite nation is formed by 
 the action and reaction of many kinds of minds ; and abstract- 
 edly it seems a defect that the solid mass of county members, on 
 whatever side of the house they sit, should present features so 
 marked and uniform. 
 
 The second defect in the accordance of parliamentary with 
 national opinion is but another phase of the same fact. Too 
 little weight is at present given to the growing parts of the coun- 
 try, too much to the stationary. It appears that the county
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 9 
 
 constituencies in England and Wales have only increased, in 
 the twenty years between 1837 and 1857, from 473,000 to 
 505,000, that is, at about six per cent ; the borough constituen- 
 cies, in the same period, have increased from 321,000 to 439,000, 
 or at the rate of seventeen per cent. And it further appears, as 
 we should expect, that the principal increase, both in the case of 
 counties and boroughs, is not in the purely agricultural districts, 
 but in the great scenes of manufacturing industry and in the 
 metropolis. The growth of constituencies, according to the 
 present franchise, is a much better test of relative importance 
 than the mere growth of population ; it indicates the increase of 
 property, and therefore of presumable intelligence. These figures 
 plainly indicate, if not an existing defect, yet a source of future 
 defect in our representative system. If there was a just propor- 
 tion between the two halves of England in 1832, there is not that 
 just proportion now. In the long-run, public opinion will be 
 much more influenced by the growing portion of the country 
 than by the stationary. It is an indistinct perception of this 
 fact that stimulates whatever agitation for reform at present 
 exists. The manufacturers of Leeds and Manchester do not give 
 levees and entertainments to Mr. Bright from any attraction to 
 abstract democracy; the rate-paying franchise which Mr. Bright 
 desires would place these classes under the irresistible control of 
 their work-people. What our great traders really desire is, their 
 own due weight in the community. They feel that the country 
 squire and the proprietor of a petty borough have an influence in 
 the nation above that which they ought to have, and greater than 
 their own. A system arranged a quarter of a century ago presses 
 with irritating constraint on those who have improved with half- 
 magical rapidity during that quarter of a century, is unduly 
 favourable to those who have improved much less or not at all. 
 
 Subject, however, to these two exceptions, the House of Com- 
 mons of the present day coincides nearly or sufficiently nearly 
 in habitual judgment with the fairly intelligent and reasonably 
 educated part of the community. Almost all persons, except 
 the avowed holders of the democratic theory, would think that 
 this is enough. Most people wish to see embodied in Parliament 
 the true judgment of the nation ; they wish to see an elected 
 legislature fairly representing that is, coinciding in opinion 
 with the thinking part of the community. What more, they 
 would inquire, is wanted? We answer, that though this is by 
 much the most important requisite of a good popular legislature, 
 it is not absolutely the only one. 
 
 At present, the most important function of the representative 
 part of our legislature the House of Commons is the ruling 
 function. By a very well-known progress of events, the popular
 
 10 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 part of our constitution has grown out of very small beginnings 
 to a practical sovereignty over all the other parts. To possess the 
 confidence of the House of Commons is all that a minister desires; 
 the power of the crown is reduced to a kind of social influence ; 
 that of the House of Lords is contracted to a suspensive veto. 
 For the exercise of this ruling function, the substantial conformity 
 of the judgment and opinion of the House of Commons with that 
 of the fairly cultivated and fairly influential part of the people at 
 large is the most important of possible conditions, is, in fact, the 
 one condition on which the satisfactory performance of that func- 
 tion appears to depend. No legislature destitute of this qualifi- 
 cation, whatever its other merits may be, can create that feeling 
 of diffused satisfaction which is the peculiar happiness of consti- 
 tutional countries, or can ensure that distinct comprehension of 
 a popular policy which is the greatest source of their strength. 
 Notliing can satisfy which is not comprehended : no policy can 
 be popular which is not understood. This is a truth of every- 
 day observation. "We are, nowadays, so familiar with the bene- 
 ficial results of the ruling action of Parliament, that we are en- 
 grossed by it ; we fancy that it is the sole duty of a representative 
 assembly : yet so far is this from being the case, that in England 
 it was not even the original one. 
 
 The earliest function of a House of Commons was undeniably 
 what we may call an expressive function. In its origin it was 
 (matters of taxation excepted) a petitioning body ; all the early 
 statutes, as is well known, are in this form : the Petition of Right 
 is an instance of its adoption in times comparatively recent. The 
 function of the popular part of the legislature was then to repre- 
 sent to the king the wants of his faithful commons. They were 
 called to express the feelings of those who sent them and their 
 own. Of course, in its original form, this function is obsolete ; 
 and if something analogous to it were not a needful element in 
 the duties of every representative assembly, it would be childish 
 to refer to it. But in every free country it is of the utmost im- 
 portance, and, in the l9ng-run, a pressing necessity, that all 
 opinions extensively entertained, all sentiments widely diffused, 
 should be stated publicly before the nation. We may place the 
 real decision of questions, the actual adoption of policies, in the 
 ordinary and fair intelligence of the community, or in the legis- 
 lature which represents it. But we must also take care to bring 
 before that fair intelligence and that legislature the sentiments, 
 the interests, the opinions, the prejudices, the wants, of all classes 
 of the nation ; we must be sure that no decision is come to in 
 ignorance of real facts and intimate wants. The diffused multi- 
 tude of moderate men, whose opinions, taken in the aggregate, 
 form public opinion, are just as likely to be tyrannical towards
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 11 
 
 what they do not realise, inapprehensive of what is not argued 
 out, thoughtless of what is not brought before them, as any other 
 class can be. They will judge well of what they are made to 
 understand ; they will not be harsh to feelings that are brought 
 home to their imagination ; but the materials of a judgment must 
 be given them, the necessary elements of imagination must be 
 provided, otherwise the result is certain. A free government is 
 the most stubbornly stupid of all governments to whatever is 
 unheard by its deciding classes. On this account it is of the 
 utmost importance that there should be in the House of Com- 
 mons some persons able to speak, and authorised to speak, the 
 wants, sentiments, and opinions of every section of the commu- 
 nity delegates, one might almost say, of that section. It is only 
 by argument in the legislature that the legislature can be im- 
 pressed ; it is by argument in the legislature that the attention 
 of the nation is most easily attracted and most effectually re- 
 tained. 
 
 If, with the light of this principle, we examine our present 
 system of representation, it seems unquestionable that it is defec- 
 tive. We do not provide any mode of expression for the senti- 
 ments of what are vaguely but intelligibly called the working 
 classes. We ignore them. The Reform Act of 1832 assumed 
 that it was expedient to give a representation to the wants and 
 feelings of those who live in ten-pound houses, but that it was 
 not expedient to give any such expression to the wants and feel- 
 ings of those who live in houses rated below that sum. If we 
 were called to consider that part of this subject, we should find 
 much to excuse the framers of that act in the state of opinion 
 which then prevailed and the general circumstances of the time. 
 It was necessary to propose a simple measure ; and this nume- 
 rical demarcation has a trenchant simplicity. But if we now con- 
 siderately review our electoral organisation, we must concede that, 
 however perfectly it may provide an appropriate regulator for 
 our national affairs, it omits to provide a befitting organ of ex- 
 pression for the desires and convictions of these particular classes. 
 The peculiar characteristics of a portion of the working 
 classes render this omission of special importance. The agri- 
 cultural labourers may have no sentiments on public affairs ; but 
 the artisan classes have. Not only are their circumstances pe- 
 culiar, and their interests sometimes different from those of the 
 higher orders of the community, both which circumstances are 
 likely to make them adopt special opinions, and are therefore 
 grounds for a special representation, but the habit of mind 
 which their pursuits and position engender is of itself not un- 
 likely to cause some eccentricity of judgment. Observers tell us 
 that those who live by manual ingenuity are more likely to be
 
 12 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 remarkable for originality than for modesty. In the present 
 age, and to some extent, we must expect, in every age, such 
 persons must be self-taught ; and self-taught men are commonly 
 characterised by a one-sided energy and something of a self-suf- 
 ficient disposition. The sensation of perfection in a mechanical 
 employment is of itself not without an influence tending towards 
 conceit ; and however instructed in definite learning energetic 
 men in these classes may become, they are not subjected to the 
 insensible influences of cultivated life, they do not live in the 
 temperate zone of society, which soon chills the fervid ideas 
 of unseasonable originality. Being cooped up within the nar- 
 row circle of ideas that their own energy has provided, they 
 are particularly liable to singular opinions. This is especially 
 the case on politics. They are attracted to that subject in a 
 free country of necessity; their active intellects are in search 
 of topics for reflection ; and this subject abounds in the very 
 atmosphere of our natural life, is diffused in newspapers, ob- 
 truded at elections, to be heard at every corner of the street. 
 Energetic minds in this class are therefore particularly likely 
 to entertain eccentric opinions on political topics ; and it is 
 peculiarly necessary that such opinions should, by some ade- 
 quate machinery, be stated and made public. If such singu- 
 lar views be brought into daily collision with ascertained facts 
 and the ordinary belief of cultivated men, their worth can be 
 tested, the weakness of their fallacious part exposed, any new 
 grain of truth they may contain appreciated. On some subjects 
 (possibly, for example, on simple questions of foreign policy) the 
 views of self-taught men may be very valuable, for their moral 
 instincts sometimes have a freshness rarely to be found. At 
 any rate, whatever may be the abstract value of the special sen- 
 timents and convictions of the operative classes, their very spe- 
 ciality is a strong indication that our constitution is defective in 
 providing no distinct outlet for their expression. 
 
 A theorist might likewise be inclined to argue that the 
 Heform Act of 1832 was defective in not providing an appropri- 
 ate organ for the expression of opinion of the higher orders of 
 society. It selects a ten-pound householder for special favour. 
 In large towns, nay to a certain extent in any town, the more 
 cultivated and refined classes, who live in better houses than 
 these, are practically disfranchised ; the number of their inferiors 
 renders valueless the suffrage conferred on them. We remember 
 some years ago hearing a conversation between a foreigner and 
 a most accomplished Englishman who lived in Russell Square. 
 The foreigner was expatiating on the happiness of English people 
 in being governed by a legislature in which they were repre- 
 sented. The Eussell- Square scholar replied, " / am represented
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 13 
 
 by Mr. Waklcy and Tom Duncombe." He felt the scorn natural 
 to a cultivated man in a metropolitan constituency at the sup- 
 position that such representatives as these really expressed his 
 views and sentiments. We know how constantly in America, 
 which is something like a nation of metropolitan constituencies, 
 the taste and temper of the electors excludes the more accom- 
 plished and leisured classes from the legislature, and how vulgar 
 a stamp the taste and temper of those elected impresses on the 
 proceedings of its legislature and the conduct of its administra- 
 tion. Men of refinement shrink from the House of Represen- 
 tatives as from a parish vestry. In England, though we feel 
 this in some measure, we feel it much less. Other parts of our 
 electoral system now afford a refuge to that refined cultivation 
 which is hateful to and hates the grosser opinion of the small 
 shopkeepers in cities. Our higher classes still desire to rule the 
 nation ; and so long as this is the case, the inherent tendencies 
 of human nature secure them the advantage. Manner and bear- 
 ing have an influence on the poor ; the nameless charm of re- 
 finement tells ; personal confidence is almost every where more 
 easily accorded to one of the higher classes than to one of the 
 lower classes. From this circumstance, there is an inherent ten- 
 dency in any electoral system which does not vulgarise the go- 
 vernment to protect the rich and to represent the rich. Though 
 by the letter of the law, a man who lives in a house assessed at 
 10J. has an equal influence on the constitution of the legislature 
 with a man whose house is assessed at 100/., yet, in truth, the 
 richer man has the security that the members of Parliament, and 
 especially the foremost members of Parliament, are much more 
 likely to be taken from his class than from a poorer class. 
 
 We may therefore conclude that there is not any ground for 
 altering the electoral system established by the Reform Act of 
 1832 on account of its not providing for the due representation 
 of the more cultivated classes. Indirectly it does so. But we 
 must narroAvly watch any changes in that system which are pro- 
 posed to us, with the view of seeing whether their operation 
 might not have a tendency to impair the subtle working of this 
 indirect machinery. We must bear in mind that the practical 
 disfranchisement of the best classes is the ascertained result of 
 giving an equal weight to high and low in constituencies like 
 the metropolitan. 
 
 These considerations do not affect our previous conclusion as 
 to the lower orders. We ascertained that, however perfectly the 
 House of Commons under the present system of election may 
 coincide in judgment with the fairly educated classes of the 
 country, and however competent it may on that account be to 
 perform the ruling function of a popular legislature, it was ne-
 
 14 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 vertheless defective in its provision for the performance of the 
 expressive functions of such a legislature ; because it provided 
 no organ for informing Parliament and the country of the sen- 
 timents and opinions of the working, and especially of the 
 artisan classes. 
 
 Another deficiency in the system of representation now ex- 
 isting is of a different nature. It is not only desirable that a 
 popular legislature should be fitted to the discharge of its duties, 
 but also that it should be elected by a process which occasions 
 no unnecessary moral evils. A theorist would be inclined to 
 advance a step further. He would require that a popular as- 
 sembly should be elected in the mode which would diffuse the 
 instruction given by the habitual possession of the franchise 
 among the greatest number of competent persons, and which 
 would deny it to the greatest number of unfit persons. But every 
 reasonable theorist would hasten to add, that the end must never 
 be sacrificed to the means. The mode of election which is 
 selected must be one which will bring together an assembly of 
 members fitted to discharge the functions of Parliament. Among 
 those modes of election, this theoretical principle prescribes the 
 rule of choice ; but we must not, under its guidance, attempt to 
 travel beyond the circle of those modes. A practical states- 
 man will be very cautious how he destroys a machinery which 
 attains its essential object for the sake of an incidental benefit 
 which might be expected from a different machinery. If we 
 have a good legislature, he will say, let us not endanger its 
 goodness for the sake of a possible diffusion of popular education. 
 All sensible men would require that the advocates of such a 
 measure should show beyond all reasonable doubt that the ex- 
 tension of the suffrage, which they recommend on this second- 
 ary ground, should not impair the attainment of the primary 
 end for which all suffrage was devised. At the present moment, 
 there certainly are many persons of substantial property and 
 good education who do not possess the franchise, and to whom it 
 would be desirable to give it, if they could be distinguished from 
 others who are not so competent. A man of the highest edu- 
 cation, who does not reside in a borough, may have large pro- 
 perty in the funds, in railway shares, or any similar investment ; 
 but he will have no vote unless his house is rated above 50/. 
 But, as we have said, we must not, from a theoretical desire 
 to include such persons in our list of electors, run a risk of ad- 
 mitting also any large number of persons who would be unfit to 
 vote, and thereby impairing the practical utility of Parliament. 
 No such hesitation should, however, hold us back when peculiar 
 moral evils can be proved to arise from a particular mode of 
 election. If that be so, we ought on the instant to make the
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 15 
 
 most anxious search for some other mode of election not liable 
 to the same objection : we ought to run some risk ; if another 
 mode of election can be suggested, apparently equal in efficiency, 
 which would not produce the same evils, we should adopt it at 
 once in place of the other. We must act on the spirit of faith 
 that what is morally wrong cannot be politically right. 
 
 This objection applies in the strongest manner to one portion 
 of our electoral system, namely, the smaller borough constitu- 
 encies. We there intrust the franchise to a class of persons 
 few enough to be bought, and not respectable enough to refuse 
 to be bought. The disgraceful exposures of some of these 
 boroughs before election committees make it probable that the 
 same abuses exist in others : doubtless, too, we do not know the 
 worst. The worst constituencies are slow to petition, because 
 the local agents of both parties are aware of what would come to 
 light, and fear the consequent penalties. Enough, however, is 
 in evidence for us to act upon. Some of these small boroughs 
 are dependent on some great nobleman or man of fortune ; and 
 this state is perhaps preferable to their preserving a vicious inde- 
 pendence : but even this state is liable to very many objections. 
 It is most advantageous that the nominal electors should be the 
 real electors. Legal fictions have a place in courts of law ; it is 
 sometimes better or more possible to strain venerable maxims 
 beyond their natural meaning than to limit them by special 
 enactment : but legal fictions are very dangerous in the midst of 
 popular institutions and a genuine moral excitement. We speak 
 day by day of " shams ;" and the name will be for ever applied 
 to modes of election which pretend to intrust the exclusive choice 
 to those who are known by every body never to choose. The 
 Reform Act of 1832 was distinctly founded on the principle that 
 all modes of election should be real. 
 
 We arrive, therefore, at the result that the system of 1832 
 is defective, because it established, or rather permitted to con- 
 tinue, moral evils which it is our duty to remove, if by possibi- 
 lity they can be removed. However, in that removal we must 
 be careful to watch exactly what we are doing. It has been 
 shown that the letter of the Reform Act makes no provision for 
 the special representation of wealth and cultivation ; the repre- 
 sentation which they have is attained by indirect means. The 
 purchasable boroughs are undoubtedly favourable to wealth; 
 the hereditary boroughs to men of hereditary cultivation ; and 
 we should be careful not to impair unnecessarily the influence of 
 these elements by any alteration we may resolve upon. 
 
 We can now decide on the result which we should try to 
 attain in a new Reform Bill. If we could obtain a House of 
 Commons that should be well elected, that should contain true
 
 16 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 and adequate exponents of all class interests, that should coin- 
 cide in opinion with the fair intelligence of the country, we shall 
 have all which we ought to desire. We have satisfied ourselves 
 that we do not possess all these advantages now ; we have seen 
 that a part of our system of election is grossly defective ; that 
 our House of Commons contains no adequate exponents of the 
 views of the working classes ; that though its judgment has, as 
 yet, fairly coincided with public opinion, yet that its constitution 
 gives a dangerous preponderance to the landed interest, and is 
 likely to fail us hereafter unless an additional influence be given 
 to the more growing and energetic classes of society. 
 
 We should think it more agreeable (and perhaps it would be 
 so to most of our readers) if we were able at once to proceed 
 to discuss the practical plan by which these objects might be 
 effected; but in deference to a party which has some zealous 
 adherents, and to principles which, in an indistinct shape, are 
 widely diffused, we must devote a few remarks to the considera- 
 tion of the ultra-democratic theory ; and as we have to do so, it 
 will be convenient to discuss in connection with it one or two of 
 the schemes which the opponents of that theory have proposed 
 for testing political intelligence. 
 
 As is well known, the democratic theory requires that parlia- 
 mentary representation should be proportioned to mere numbers. 
 This is not, indeed, the proposition which is at this moment put 
 forward. The most important section of democratic reformers 
 now advocate a rate-paying or household franchise ; but this is 
 either avowedly as a step to something farther, or because from 
 considerations of convenience it is considered better to give the 
 franchise only to those whose residences can be identified. But 
 it is easy to show that the rate-paying franchise is almost equally 
 liable with the manhood suffrage to a most important objection. 
 That objection, of course, is, that the adoption of the scheme 
 would give entire superiority to the lower part of the commu- 
 nity. Nothing is easier than to show that a rate-paying fran- 
 chise would have that effect. In England and Wales 
 
 The number of houses assessed at 10. and above 
 
 is computed to be 990,000 
 
 at 61. and under 10Z. 572,000 
 
 under 61 1,713,000 
 
 3,275,000 
 
 More than half the persons who would be admitted by the rate- 
 paying franchise are, therefore, of a very low order, living in 
 houses under 61. rent, and two-thirds are below 1 O/., the lowest 
 qualification admitted by the present law. It therefore seems
 
 Parliamentary Reform, 17 
 
 quite certain that the effect of the proposed innovation must be 
 very favourable to ignorance and poverty, and very unfavourable 
 to cultivation and intelligence. 
 
 There used to be much argument in favour of the democratic 
 theory, on the ground of its supposed conformity with the abstract 
 rights of man. This has passed away; but we cannot say that 
 the reasons by which it has been replaced are more distinct : we 
 think that they are less distinct. "We can understand that an 
 enthusiast should maintain, on fancied grounds of immutable 
 morality, or from an imaginary conformity with a supernatural 
 decree, that the ignorant should govern the instructed ; but we 
 do not comprehend how any one can maintain the proposition 
 on grounds of expediency. We might believe it was right to 
 submit to the results of such a polity ; but those results, it would 
 seem, must be beyond controversy pernicious. The arguments 
 from expediency, which are supposed to establish the proposition, 
 are never set forth very clearly ; and we do not think them worth 
 confuting. We are, indeed, disposed to believe, in spite of much 
 direct assertion to the contrary, that the democratic theory still 
 rests not so much on reason as on a kind of sentiment on an 
 obscure conception of abstract rights. The animation of its ad- 
 vocates is an indication of it. They think they are contending 
 for the " rights" of the people ; and they endeavour to induce the 
 people to believe so too. We hold this opinion the more strongly, 
 because we believe that there is such a thing, after all, as abstract 
 right in political organisations. We find it impossible to believe 
 that all the struggles of men for liberty, all the enthusiasm it 
 has called forth, all the passionate emotions it has caused in the 
 very highest minds, all the glow of thought and rustle of obscure 
 feeling which the very name excites in the whole mass of men, 
 have their origin in calculations of advantage and a belief that 
 such and such arrangements would be beneficial. The masses of 
 men are very difficult to excite on bare grounds of self-interest ; 
 most easy, if a bold orator tells them confidently they are wronged. 
 The foundation of government upon simple utility is but the fiction 
 of philosophers ; it has never been acceptable to the natural feel- 
 ings of mankind. There is far greater truth in the formula of 
 the French writers, that " le droii derive de la capacite" Some 
 sort of feeling akin to this lurks, we believe, in the minds of our 
 reformers ; they think they can show that some classes now un- 
 enfranchised are as capable of properly exercising the franchise 
 as some who have possessed it formerly, or some who have it 
 now. The five-pound householder of to-day is, they tell us, in 
 education and standing but what the ten-pound householder was 
 in 1832. The opponents of the theory are pressed with the argu- 
 ment, that every fit person should have the franchise, and that
 
 18 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 many who are excluded are as fit as some who exercise it, and 
 from whom no one proposes to take it away. 
 
 The answer to the argument is plain. Fitness to govern, for 
 that is the real meaning of exercising the franchise which elects 
 a ruling assembly, is not an absolute quality of any individual. 
 That fitness is relative and comparative ; it must depend on the 
 community to be governed, and on the merits of other persons 
 who may be capable of governing that community. A savage 
 chief may be capable of governing a savage tribe ; he may have 
 the right of governing it, for he may be the sole person capable 
 of so doing ; but he would have no right to govern England. We 
 must look likewise to the competitors for the sovereignty. What- 
 ever may be your capacity for rule, you have no right to obtain 
 the opportunity of exercising it by dethroning a person who is 
 more capable. You are wronging the community if you do : for 
 you are depriving it of a better government than that which you 
 can give to it. You are wronging also the ruler you supersede ; 
 for you are depriving him of the appropriate exercise of his facul- 
 ties. Two wrongs are thus committed from a fancied idea that 
 abstract capacity gives a right to rule irrespective of comparative 
 relations. The true principle is, that every person has a right to 
 so much political power as he can exercise without impeding any 
 other person who would more fitly exercise such power. If we 
 apply this to the lower orders of society, we see the reason why, 
 notwithstanding their numbers, they must always be subject 
 always at least be comparatively uninfluential. Whatever their 
 capacity may be, it must be less than that of the higher classes, 
 whose occupations are more instructive and whose education is 
 more prolonged. Any such measure for enfranchising the lower 
 orders as would overpower, and consequently disfranchise, the 
 higher, should be resisted on the ground of " abstract right;" you 
 are proposing to take power from those who have the superior 
 capacity, and to vest it in those who have but an inferior capacity, 
 or, in many cases, no capacity at all. If we probe the subject to 
 the bottom, we shall find that justice is on the side of a gra- 
 duated rule, in which all persons should have an influence pro- 
 portioned to their political capacity ; and it is at this graduation 
 that the true maxims of representative government really aim. 
 They wish that the fairly intelligent persons, who create public 
 opinion, as we call it, in society, should rule in the state, which 
 is the authorised means of carrying that opinion into action. 
 This is the body which has the greater right to rule ; this is the 
 felt intelligence of the nation, " la legitime aristocratic, celle qu'ac- 
 ceptent librement les masses, sur qui doit exercer son pouvoir."* 
 
 It is impossible to deny that this authority, in matters of 
 * M. Guizot, Essai sur les Origines du Gouvernement reprcsentatif.
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 19 
 
 political opinion, belongs by right, and is felt to belong in fact, to 
 the higher orders of society rather than to the lower. The ad- 
 vantages of leisure, of education, of more instructive pursuits, of 
 more instructive society, must and do produce an effect. A writer 
 of very democratic leanings has observed, that " there is an uncon- 
 querable, and, to a certain extent, beneficial proneness in man to 
 rely on the judgment and authority of those who are elevated 
 above himself in rank and riches, from the irresistible associations 
 of the human mind ; a feeling of respect and deference is enter- 
 tained for a superior in station which enhances and exalts all his 
 good qualities, gives more grace to his thoughts, more wisdom to 
 his opinions, more weight to his judgment, more excellence to 
 
 his virtues Hence the elevated men of society will always 
 
 maintain an ascendency which, without any direct exertion of 
 influence, will affect the result of popular elections ; and when to 
 this are added the capabilities which they possess, or ought to 
 possess, from their superior intelligence, of impressing their own 
 opinions on other classes, it will be evident that if any sort of 
 control were justifiable, it would be superfluous for any good pur- 
 pose."* There are individual exceptions; but in questions of this 
 magnitude we must speak broadly : and we may say that political 
 intelligence will in general exist rather in the educated classes 
 than in the less educated, rather in the rich than the poor ; and 
 not only that it will exist, but that it will, in the absence of 
 misleading feelings, be felt by both parties to exist. 
 
 We have quoted the above passage for more reasons than one. 
 It not only gives an appropriate description of the popular asso- 
 ciation of superiority in judgment with superiority in station, 
 but it draws from the fact of that association an inference which 
 would be very important if it were correct. It says, in sub- 
 stance, that as the higher orders are felt by the lower to be more 
 capable of governing, they will be chosen by the lower, if the 
 latter are left free to choose; that, therefore, no matter how 
 democratic the government in fact, the more democratic the 
 government, the surer are the upper orders to lead. But expe- 
 rience shows that this is an error. If the acquisition of power 
 is left to the unconscious working of the natural influences of 
 society, the rich and the cultivated will certainly acquire it ; they 
 obtain it insensibly, gradually, and without the poorer orders 
 knowing that they are obtaining it. But the result is different 
 when, by the operation of a purely democratic constitution, the 
 selection of rulers is submitted to the direct vote of the populace. 
 The lower orders are then told that they are perfectly able to 
 judge; demagogues assert it to them without ceasing: the con- 
 
 * Bailey on Representative Government ; quoted in Sir G. Lewis's " Essay on 
 the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion," p. 228.
 
 20 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 stitution itself is appealed to as an incontrovertible witness to 
 the fact ; as it has placed the supreme power in the hands of the 
 lower and more numerous classes, it would be contravening it to 
 suppose that the real superiority was in the higher and fewer. 
 Moreover, when men are expressly asked to acknowledge their 
 superiors, they are by no means always inclined to do so. They 
 do not object to yield a mute observance, but they refuse a defi- 
 nite act of homage. They will obey, but they will not say that 
 they will obey. In consequence, history teaches that under a 
 democratic government those who speak the feelings of the ma- 
 jority themselves have a greater chance of being chosen to rule, 
 than any of the higher orders, who, under another form of 
 government, would be admitted to be the better judges. The 
 natural effect of such a government is to mislead the poor. 
 
 We have no room to notice the specific evils which would ac- 
 crue from the adoption of an unmixedly democratic constitution. 
 One, however, which has not been quite appreciated follows natur- 
 ally from the remarks we have made. There is a risk of vul- 
 garising the whole tone, method, and conduct of public business. 
 We see how completely this has been done in America ; a country 
 far more fitted, at least in the northern states, for the democratic 
 experiment than any old country can be. Nor must we imagine 
 that this vulgarity of tone is a mere external expression, not af- 
 fecting the substance of what is thought, or interfering with the 
 policy of the nation. No defect really eats away so soon the 
 political ability of a nation. A vulgar tone of discussion disgusts 
 cultivated minds with the subject of politics; they will not apply 
 themselves to master a topic which, besides its natural difficulties, 
 is encumbered with disgusting phrases, low arguments, and the 
 undisguised language of coarse selfishness. We all know how we 
 should like to interfere in ward elections, borough politics, or any 
 public matter over which a constant habit of half-educated dis- 
 cussion has diffused an atmosphere of deterring associations. A 
 high morality, too, shrinks with the inevitable shyness of supe- 
 riority from intruding itself into the presence of low debates. 
 The inevitable consequence of vulgarising our Parliament would 
 be the deterioration of public opinion, not only in its more re- 
 fined elements, but in aD the tangible benefits we derive from the 
 application to politics of thoroughly cultivated minds. 
 
 Nor can we allude to the refutation of the purely democratic 
 theory which the facts of English history supply us. It is fre- 
 quently something like pedantry when reference is made to the 
 origin of the House of Commons as a source of data for deciding 
 on the proper constitution for it now. What might have been 
 a proper constitution for it when an inconsiderable part of the 
 government, may be a most improper one now that it is the ruling
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 21 
 
 part. Still, one brief remark may be advanced as to the early his- 
 tory of our representative system, which will have an important 
 reference to the topic. " Whilst," writes one of our soundest con- 
 stitutional antiquaries, " boroughs were thus reluctant to return 
 members, and burgesses disinclined to serve in that capacity, the 
 sheriffs assumed a right of sending or omitting precepts at their 
 pleasure. Where boroughs were unwilling or unable to send re- 
 presentatives, the sheriff, from favour or indulgence, withheld the 
 precept, which in strictness he was bound to issue, and thus ac- 
 quired a discretionary power of settling what places were to elect, 
 and what places were not to elect, members of Parliament. In his 
 return to the writ of summons, he sometimes reported that he had 
 sent his precept to a borough, but had received no answer to it. 
 Sometimes he asserted, without the slightest regard to truth, that 
 there were no more cities or boroughs in his bailiwick than those 
 mentioned in his return. At other times he qualified this assertion 
 by adding that there were none fit to send members to Parlia- 
 ment, or that could be induced to send them. No notice seems 
 ever to have been taken of these proceedings 'of the sheriffs ; nor 
 is there the slightest ground for suspecting that in the exercise 
 of his discretionary power he was directed by any secret instruc- 
 tions from the king and council : ' I have never, seen or heard/ 
 says Brady, ' of any particular directions from the king and 
 council or others to the sheriffs, for sending their precepts to 
 this or that borough only and not to others/ Provided there 
 was a sufficient attendance of members for the public business, the 
 government seem to have been indifferent to the number that came, or 
 to the number of places from which they were sent."* The public 
 business of that time was different from the public business which 
 is now transacted by Parliament ; but we may paraphrase the 
 sentence into one that is applicable to us. Provided we have a 
 House of Commons coinciding in opinion with the general mass 
 of the public, and containing representatives competent to ex- 
 press the peculiar sentiments of all peculiar classes, we have pro- 
 vided for our " public business ;" we need not trouble ourselves 
 much further, Ave shall have attained all reasonable objects of de- 
 sire, and established a polity with which we may be content. 
 
 The most obvious way of attempting this is, to represent, or 
 attempt to represent, intelligence directly. The simplest plan 
 of embodying public opinion in a legislature, is to give a special 
 representation in that legislature, to the politically intelligent 
 persons who create that opinion. To attain this end directly is, 
 however, impossible. There is no test of intelligence which a 
 revising barrister could examine, on which attorneys could 
 argue before him. The absurdity of the idea is only rendered 
 
 * Allen on Parliamentary Reform, 1832.
 
 22 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 more evident by the few proposals which are made in the hope 
 of realising it. Mr. Holyoake proposes that the franchise should 
 be given to those who could pass a political examination ; an 
 examination, that is, in some standard text-book, Mill's Prin- 
 ciples of Political Economy, or some work of equal reputation. 
 But it does not need to be explained that this would enfranchise 
 extremely few people in a country. Only a few persons give, or 
 can give, a scientific attention to politics; and very many who 
 cannot, are in every respect competent to give their votes as elec- 
 tors, and even to serve as representatives. It is probable that the 
 adoption of such an examination suffrage, in addition to the kinds 
 of suffrage which exist now, would not add one per cent to the pre- 
 sent constituencies ; and that if it were made a necessary qualifi- 
 cation for the possession of a vote, we should thereby disfranchise 
 ninety -nine hundredths of the country. A second proposal with 
 the same object is, to give votes to all members of " learned so- 
 cieties." But this would be contemptibly futile. There is no 
 security whatever that members of learned societies should be 
 really learned. They are close corporations ; and the only check 
 on the admission of improper persons in future is the discre- 
 tion of those who have been admitted already. At present most 
 members of such societies undoubtedly have an interest in the 
 objects for which they were formed ; but create a political mo- 
 tive, and a skilful parliamentary agent will soon fill the lists with 
 the names of persons not celebrated for scientific learning, but 
 who know how to vote correctly upon occasion. The idea of a 
 direct representation of intelligence wholly fails from the non- 
 existence of a visible criterion of that intelligence. All that 
 can be done in this direction must be effected by a gradual ex- 
 tension of the principle which has given members to our Univer- 
 sities. No one can obtain admission to these bodies without a 
 prolonged course of study, or without passing a strict examination 
 in several subjects. This is a kind of franchise not to be manu- 
 factured; it is only obtained as a collateral advantage, by per- 
 sons who are in pursuit of quite different objects. Such bodies, 
 however, are obviously few, and such kinds of franchise are 
 necessarily limited. But they should be extended as far as pos- 
 sible; and as many such bodies as can be found will tend to 
 supply us with an additional mode of giving a representation 
 to cultivation and refinement, an object which we noticed as 
 one of the desirable ends apparently least provided for by the 
 letter of our present system.* 
 
 * In relation to this subject, we must call special attention to the claims of 
 the University of London and. of the Scotch Universities to representation in 
 Parliament. The former University had a distinct pledge from the Government 
 which founded it that it should be placed on an equality in every respect with
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 23 
 
 The criteria by which a franchise can be determined must 
 have two characteristics. They must be evident and conspicuous 
 tests about which there can be no question. Our registration 
 courts cannot decide metaphysical niceties ; our machinery must 
 be tough, if it is to stand the wear and tear of eager contests. 
 Secondly, as we have explained, such criteria must be difficult 
 to manufacture for a political object. Our tests must not be 
 counterfeited, and they must be conspicuous. These two re- 
 quirements nearly confine us to a property qualification. Pro- 
 perty is, indeed, a very imperfect test of intelligence; but it is 
 some test. If it has been inherited, it guarantees education ; 
 if acquired, it guarantees ability. Either way it assures us of 
 something. In all countries where any thing has prevailed short 
 of manhood suffrage, the principal limitation has been founded 
 on criteria derived from property. And it is very important to 
 observe that there is a special appropriateness in the selection. 
 Property has not only a certain connection with general intelli- 
 gence, but it has a peculiar connection with political intelligence. 
 It is a great guide to a good judgment to have much to lose by 
 a bad judgment. Generally speaking, the welfare of a country 
 will be most dear to those who are well off there. Some con- 
 siderations, it is true, may limit this principle : great wealth has 
 an emasculating tendency ; the knowledge that they have much 
 at stake may make men timid in action, and too anxious, for 
 the successful discharge of high duties : still the broad conclu- 
 sion is unaffected, that the possession of property is not only 
 an indication of general mind, but has a peculiar tendency to 
 generate political mind. 
 
 Similar considerations limit the kinds of property to be se- 
 lected. Our property qualification must be conspicuous and 
 uncreateable. Keal property, houses and land, on which our 
 present qualification is based, possess these elements in a pre- 
 eminent degree. We think, however, that they are not the only 
 kinds of property which now in a sufficient degree possess these 
 requirements. They probably were so formerly ; but one of the 
 most important alterations in our social condition is the change in 
 the nature of much of our wealth. The growth of what lawyers 
 call personal property has of late years been enormous. Rail- 
 Oxford and Cambridge. And such Universities would not only introduce addi- 
 tional representatives of intellectual culture into the House of Commons, but 
 representatives also of free intellectual culture, as distinguished from the repre- 
 sentatives of the ecclesiastical culture of the older Universities. Mr. Bright has 
 reproached the members for Oxford and Cambridge Universities with their 
 habitual antagonism to Reform. This is, we fear, a true accusation. At a time 
 when educational questions are engrossing a larger and larger share of public 
 attention, an adequate representation of liberal intellectual culture is most desir- 
 able in the House of Commons.
 
 24 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 way shares, canal shares, public funds, bank shares, debentures 
 without number, are only instances of what we mean. Great 
 industrial undertakings are a feature in our age, and it is fitting 
 that a share in them should give a franchise as much as an 
 estate in land. Two conditions only would be necessary to be 
 observed. First, the property must be substantial, as it is called ; 
 that is to say, it should be remunerative. Property which does 
 not yield an income is not sufficiently tangible for the purposes 
 of a qualification : men of business may say it is about to yield a 
 dividend ; but this is always open to infinite argument. It would 
 be necessary to provide that the business property to be repre- 
 sented should have been for a moderate period say three years 
 properly remunerative ; no one should register for such pro- 
 perty unless it had for that period paid a regular interest. Se- 
 condly, such property should have been in the possession of the 
 person wishing to register on account of it for at least an equal 
 previous period. This is necessary to prevent the creation of 
 fictitious votes. Real property is, indeed, exposed to this dan- 
 ger ; but the occupancy of houses and lands is a very visible fact, 
 and acts of ownership over the soil are tolerably well known on 
 the spot. It is therefore somewhat difficult to create fictitious 
 tenancies or freeholds. In the case of share-property there is 
 no equal check. The only precaution which can be taken is, to 
 make the pecuniary risk of those who try to create such votes as 
 large as possible. If it be required that the property be regis- 
 tered for a moderate period in the company's books as belonging 
 to the person who claims to vote in respect of it, that person 
 must have during that time the sole right to receive the divi- 
 dends, and the shares will be liable for all his debts. If a real 
 owner chooses to put a nominal one in this position, he does 
 it at the risk of both principal and income. 
 
 We have, then, arrived at the end of another division of our 
 subject. We have shown that the democratic theory is erroneous, 
 and that the consequences of acting upon it would be pernicious. 
 We have discussed the most plausible schemes which have been 
 suggested for testing political intelligence, and we have found 
 reason to think that a property qualification is the best of those 
 modes. It has incidentally appeared that the property qualifica- 
 tion which at present exists in England is defective, because it 
 only takes cognisance of a single kind of property. We may now 
 resume the thread of our discussion, which we laid aside to show 
 the errors of the democratic theory. We proceed to indicate how 
 the defects which have been proved to be parts of our existing 
 system of representation can be remedied without impairing its 
 characteristic excellence, without destroying a legislature which 
 is in tolerable conformity with intelligent opinion.
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 25 
 
 The first defect which we noticed was, that the existing system 
 takes no account of the views and feelings of the working classes, 
 and affords no means for their expression. How, then, can this 
 he supplied? It is evident that this end can only be approached 
 in two ways ; we may give to the working classes a little influ- 
 ence in all constituencies, or we may give to them a good deal of 
 influence in a few constituencies. By the conditions of the 
 problem they are to have some power in the country, but not all 
 the power ; and these are the only two modes in which that end 
 can be effected. 
 
 The objection to the first plan is in the nature of a dilemma. 
 Either your arrangements give to the working classes a suf- 
 ficient power to enable them to decide the choice of the member, 
 or they do not. If they do, they make these classes absolute in 
 the state. If the degree of influence which you grant to them 
 in every constituency is sufficient to enable them to choose the 
 representative for that constituency, you have conferred on these 
 inferior classes the unlimited control of the nation. On the 
 other hand, if the degree of influence you give to the poorer 
 classes is not sufficient to enable them to control the choice of 
 any members, you have done nothing. There will be no persons 
 in Parliament inclined by nature and empowered by authority 
 to express their sentiments; their voice will be as much unheard 
 in Parliament as it is now. If the poor are to have a diffused 
 influence in all constituencies, it must be either a great one or 
 a small one. A small one will amount only to the right of voting 
 for a candidate who is not elected; a great one will, in reality, be 
 the establishment of democracy. 
 
 "We shall see the truth of this remark more distinctly if we 
 look a little in detail at one or two of the plans which are pro- 
 posed with this object. Perhaps the most remarkable of these 
 is that which is at present in operation in Prussia. The suffrage 
 is there very diffused ; it amounts to something very like man- 
 hood suffrage. But the influence of the lower classes is limited in 
 this way : The constituency is divided into classes according to 
 the amount of direct taxation they respectively pay. The names 
 of those voters who pay the highest amount of tax are put to- 
 gether till a third part of the whole amount of direct taxes paid 
 by the electoral district has been reached. These form the first 
 class. Again, as many names are taken as will make up another 
 third of the same total taxation ; and these form the second class. 
 The third class is formed of all the rest, and each class has an 
 equal vote. By this expedient a few very rich persons in class 1, 
 and a moderate number of moderately rich persons in class 2, 
 have each of them as much influence as the entire number of 
 the poorer orders in class 3. In Prussia a system of double re-
 
 26 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 presentation has also been adopted, and for that purpose the 
 constituency is divided into sections. But we need not confuse 
 ourselves with prolix detail ; the principle is all which is to the 
 purpose. The effect of the plan is evident ; it is equivalent to 
 giving to the working classes one-third of the influence in every 
 constituency, and no more than one-third. But it is evident 
 that this arrangement not only gives no security for the return 
 of a satisfactory spokesman for the lower orders, but that it pro- 
 vides that no such spokesman shah 1 be returned. The two 
 superior classes are two-thirds of the constituency, and they will 
 take effectual care that no member animated solely with the 
 views of the other third shall ever be elected. So far as class 
 feeling goes, the power given to the lower orders is only the 
 power of voting in a perpetual minority. Undoubtedly, in case 
 of a division between the two superior classes, the lower orders 
 would hold the balance ; they would have the power in all con- 
 stituencies of deciding who should and who should not be the 
 member. But this is not the kind of influence which we have 
 shown it to be desirable that the lower orders should possess. 
 Nothing can be more remote from their proper sphere than the 
 position of arbitrator between the conflicting views of two classes 
 above them. We wish that they should have a few members to 
 express their feelings; we do not wish that they should decide 
 on the critical controversies of their educated fellow-subjects, 
 that they should determine by a casting and final vote the policy 
 of the nation. 
 
 Another plan suggested is, that the lower orders should have 
 a single vote, and that persons possessed of property should have 
 a second vote. But statistics show that the power which this 
 would give to the lower orders would be enormous. For example, 
 if it should be enacted that all persons living in houses rated at 
 less than 10. shall have one vote, and that those living in houses 
 rated at more than 10Z., two votes, we should have 
 
 990,000 living inhouses of Wl. and more j ^ Ij980}0 00 votes, 
 2,280,000 living in houses under 10Z. . . . with 2,280,000 votes ; 
 
 giving a clear majority throughout the country to the lowest class 
 of rate-payers ; and that majority would of course be much aug- 
 mented if we conferred (as the advocates of manhood suffrage 
 propose) a vote on every adult male in the country, whether he 
 paid rates or not. The inevitable effect of this plan would be to 
 give an authoritative control to the poorer classes. We might, 
 indeed, try to obviate this by giving a still greater number of 
 votes, say three or four, to the richer class ; but then we should 
 reduce the poorer class to an impotent minority throughout the
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 27 
 
 country. In the first case, they would have the power of returning 
 nearly all the members of the legislature ; in the second, they 
 would not as a class, or with an irresistible influence, return 
 any. 
 
 Another scheme, proposed with this object, at least in part, 
 is the " representation of minorities," as it is commonly called. 
 This is to be attained by the ingenious device of making the 
 number of votes to be possessed by each constituent less than the 
 number of members to be returned by the constituency. The 
 consequence is inevitable : an ascertaiiiable minority of the con- 
 stituency, by voting for a single candidate only, can effectually 
 secure his election. Thus, if the number of members is three 
 and the number of votes two, any fraction of the constituency 
 greater than two-fifths can be sure of returning a member, if 
 they are in earnest enough on the matter to vote for him only. 
 The proof of this is, that a minority of two-fifths will have exactly 
 as many votes to give to one member as the remaining three- 
 fifths have to give to each of three members. If the constituency 
 be 5000, a minority of two-fifths of the electors, or 2000, would 
 have 2000 votes to give to a single candidate ; and the remaining 
 3000 would have only 6000 votes to divide between three can- 
 didates, which is only 2000 for each. A minority at all greater 
 than 2000, therefore, would, if it managed properly, be certain to 
 return a member. The objection to this plan is, that it would 
 rather tend to give us a Parliament principally elected by the 
 lower orders, with special members among them to express the 
 sentiments of the wealthier classes, than a Parliament generally 
 agreeing with the wealthier classes, and containing special repre- 
 sentatives for the lower : the principal representation is almost 
 by express legislation given to the more numerous classes ; a less 
 to the minority. It would not solve the problem of giving a 
 certain power to the lower orders, and yet not giving them a pre- 
 dominant power. In the case which we have supposed of a con- 
 stituency with three members and two votes, the minority also 
 would be a larger one than the richer classes can permanently 
 hope to constitute in the country. Two-fifths of a great town 
 must necessarily include many of the poorer, less cultivated, and 
 less competent. We must remember, also, that the disproportion 
 in number between rich and poor, even between the decidedly 
 poor and the rather wealthy, tends to augment. Society increases 
 most rapidly at its lower end ; the wide base extends faster than 
 the narrower summit. At present persons li ving in " ten-pound 
 houses," or upwards, are something like 21 per cent of the adult 
 males in the nation, and about 30 per cent of the rate-paying 
 population. But in process of time the inevitable increase of the 
 humbler orders will reduce them to afar more scanty proportion.
 
 28 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 The operation of the plan might become even more defective if 
 it were combined, as is often proposed, with an increase of the 
 number of members returned by the constituencies to which 
 it is to be applied. If four members were given to a populous 
 constituency, and each elector were to have three votes, it would 
 require that a minority should be more than three-sevenths* of 
 the constituency, to enable it to be certain of returning a candi- 
 date. The rich and educated cannot expect to remain so large a 
 fraction of the nation as this ; they are not so now. 
 
 The most plausible way of embodying the minority principle 
 in action would be to give only one vote to each person, and 
 only two members to the constituency. In this case, any mino- 
 rity greater than one- third of the constituency would be sure of 
 returning a member ; and as this fraction is smaller than those 
 we have mentioned, it would evidently be more suitable to the 
 inevitable fewness of the rich and intelligent. But even this 
 plan would give half the members of the country to the least 
 capable class of voters ; and it would have the additional disad- 
 vantage of establishing a poor-class member and rich-class mem- 
 ber side by side in the same constituency, which would evidently 
 be likely to excite keen jealousy and perpetual local bitterness. 
 
 We believe, indeed, that it was an afterthought in the advo- 
 cates of " minority representation," to propose it as a means of 
 giving some, but not too much, representation to the poor. Its 
 name shows that it was originally devised as a means of giving a 
 representation to minorities as such. The extreme case used to 
 be suggested of a party which had a very large minority in every 
 constituency, but which had not a majority in any, and had not 
 therefore any share in the representation. It cannot be denied 
 that such a case might occur : but if the constituencies be, as they 
 should be, of varied kinds, it is very unlikely; and in politics, 
 any contingency that is very unlikely never ought to be thought 
 of; the problems of practical government are quite sufficiently 
 complicated, if those who have the responsibility of solving 
 them deal only with difficulties which are imminent and dan- 
 gers which are probable. But in the actual working of affairs, 
 and irrespectively of any case so extreme as that which is put 
 forward, the elimination of minorities which takes place at 
 general elections is a process highly beneficial. It is decidedly 
 advantageous that every active or intelligent minority should 
 have adequate spokesmen in the legislature; but it is often 
 not desirable that it should be represented there in exact pro- 
 
 * The rule is, that a minority, to be certain of electing its candidate, must be 
 more than that fraction of the constituency, which may be expressed as follows : 
 
 The number of votes. 
 The number of members + the number of votes.
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 29 
 
 portion to its national importance. A very considerable num- 
 ber of by no means unimportant persons rather disapproved of 
 the war with Russia ; but their views were very inadequately re- 
 presented in the votes of Parliament, though a few able men ade- 
 quately expressed their characteristic sentiments. And this was as 
 it should be. The judgment of the Parliament ought always to be 
 coincident with the opinion of the nation ; but there is no objec- 
 tion to its being more decided ; it is extremely important that it 
 should not be less decided. Very frequently it is of less import- 
 ance which of two courses be selected than that the one which 
 is selected should be consistently adhered to and energetically 
 carried through. If every minority had exactly as much weight 
 in Parliament as it has in the nation, there might be a risk of in- 
 decision. Members of Parliament are apt enough to deviate from 
 the plain decisive path, from vanity, from a wish to be original, 
 from a nervous conscientiousness. They are subject to special 
 temptations, which make their decisions less simple and con- 
 sistent than the nation's. We need a counteracting influence ; 
 and it mil be no subject for regret if that influence be tolerably 
 strong. It is therefore no disadvantage, but the contrary, that 
 a diffused minority in the country is in general rather inade- 
 quately represented. A strong conviction in the ruling power 
 will give it strength of volition. The House of Commons should 
 think as the nation thinks ; but it should think so rather more 
 strongly, and with somewhat less of wavering. 
 
 It was necessary to discuss this aspect of the minority prin- 
 ciple, though it may seem a deviation from the investigation into 
 the best mode of giving a due but not an undue influence to the 
 working classes. The advocates of that principle generally con- 
 sider its giving a proper, and not more than a proper, degree of 
 power to the poor as a subordinate and incidental advantage in 
 a scheme which for other reasons ought to be adopted ; it was 
 therefore desirable to prove that no such other reasons exist, as 
 well as that it would very imperfectly, if at all, tend to place 
 the working classes in the position we desire. 
 
 Some persons have imagined that the enfranchisement of all 
 the lower orders may be obtained without its attendant con- 
 sequence, the disfranchisement of other classes, by means of 
 the system of " double representation," which gives to the pri- 
 mary electors only the power of nominating certain choosers, or 
 secondary electors, who are to select the ultimate representative. 
 This proposal was made by Hume many years ago ; it formed 
 part of more than one of the earlier French constitutions ; and it 
 is now being tried, as we have observed, in Prussia. We have 
 an example of its effects likewise in a part of the constitution of 
 the United States. Although, therefore, we may not have quite
 
 30 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 so full a trial of the proposed machinery as we could wish, we have 
 some experience of it. The most obvious objection to it is, that it 
 gives to the working classes the theoretical supremacy as much as 
 a scheme of single representation. Whether the working classes 
 choose the member of Parliament, or whether they choose an inter- 
 mediate body who are to choose the member, their power of selec- 
 tion will be equally uncontrolled, the overwhelming advantage 
 derived from their numbers will be the same. It is alleged that 
 the working classes will be more fit to choose persons who would 
 exercise an intermediate suffrage ; that they could choose persons 
 in their own neighbourhood well known to them, and for whom 
 they had a respect; and that the ultimate representative nominated 
 by these local worthies would be a better person than the work- 
 ing classes would have nominated themselves at first. And in 
 quiet times, and before a good machinery of electioneering influ- 
 ence had been organised, we are inclined to believe that such 
 would be the effect. The working classes might, in the absence 
 of excitement and artificial stimulus, choose persons whom they 
 knew to be better judges than themselves ; and, in accordance 
 with the theory of the scheme, would give to them a bond-fide 
 power of independent judgment. But in times of excitement 
 this would not be the case. The primary electors can if they 
 will require from the secondary a promise that they will choose 
 such and such members ; they can exact a distinct pledge on 
 the subject, and give their votes only to those who will take 
 that pledge. This is actually the case in the election of the 
 President in the United States. As a check on the anticipated 
 inconveniences of universal suffrage, the framers of the federal 
 constitution provided that the President should be chosen by an 
 electoral college elected by universal suffrage, and not by the 
 nation at large directly. In practice, however, the electoral 
 college is a " sham." Its members are only chosen because they 
 will vote that Mr. Buchanan be President, or that Colonel Fre- 
 mont be President ; no one cares to know any thing else about 
 them. There is no debate in the college, no exercise of discre- 
 tionary judgment : they travel to Washington, and give their 
 vote in a " sealed envelope," and they have no other duty to per- 
 form. According to these votes the President is elected. Such, 
 indeed, appears the natural result wherever the lower orders take 
 a strong interest in the selection of the ultimate members for 
 the constituency. They have the power of absolutely determin- 
 ing the choice of those members ; and when they care to exercise 
 it, they will exercise it. In Prussia, as it would appear from the 
 newspaper narrative of the recent elections, a real choice has 
 been exercised by the Wahlmanner the secondary electors. But 
 a few years of experience among a phlegmatic people are not a
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 31 
 
 sufficient trial; there are as yet no parliamentary agents at Berlin. 
 In this country, as in America, an effectual stimulus would soon 
 be applied to the primary electors. If twenty intermediate stages 
 were introduced, the result would be identical : a pledge would 
 be exacted at every stage ; the primary body would alone exercise 
 a real choice, and the member would be the direct though dis- 
 guised nominee of the lower orders. This scheme would every 
 where, in critical times, and in electioneering countries at all 
 times, give to the democracy an uncontrolled power. 
 
 An expedient has, it is true, been proposed for preventing 
 this. It has been suggested that the secondary electors, the 
 electoral college in the American phrase, should have other 
 duties to perform besides that of electing the representative. 
 Suppose, for example, that the electors at large chose a muni- 
 cipal town-council, and that the latter elected the representative 
 of the town in the legislature ; it is thought that persons with 
 good judgment would be chosen to ensure the due performance 
 of the municipal duties, and that a good member of Parliament 
 would be selected by the bond-fide choice of those persons with 
 good judgment. The scheme would be far too alien to English 
 habits and traditions to be seriously proposed for adoption by this 
 country even if its abstract theory were sound ; but there is an 
 obvious objection of principle to it. The local duties of a muni- 
 cipal council are too different from that of selecting a parlia- 
 mentary representative to be properly combined with them. We 
 should probably have a town-council of political partisans, as was 
 the case before the Municipal Reform Act; and the uninteresting 
 local duties would be sacrificed to the more interesting questions 
 of the empire. In the real operation of the scheme very much 
 would depend on the time at which the town-council was elected. 
 If it were elected simultaneously with the general election of 
 members of Parliament, nobody would think of any thing but 
 the latter. The town-councillors would be chosen to vote for the 
 borough member, and with no regard to any other consideration. 
 We should have a fictitious electoral college, with the added in- 
 convenience that it would be expected to perform duties for which 
 it was not selected, and to which it would be entirely ill-suited. 
 On the other hand, if the town-council were elected when the 
 parliamentary election was not thought of, we might, in times of 
 fluctuating opinion, have a marked opposition between the opinion 
 of the town-council and the opinion of the constituency. In an 
 excitable country, and every country which takes a regular in- 
 terest in politics becomes excitable, no such opposition would 
 be endured. It would be monstrous that the member for Lon- 
 don at a critical epoch, say when a question of war or peace was 
 pressing for decision, should be nominated by a town-council
 
 32 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 elected some time before, when no such question was even thought 
 of. There used in the ante-Reform-BiLL times to be occasional 
 riots when the close corporations, with whom the exclusive suf- 
 frage in many boroughs then rested, made a choice not approved 
 of by the population of the town. If this was the case when the 
 borough- councillors were only exercising an immemorial right, 
 it will be much more likely to be so when they are but recently 
 nominated agents, deriving their whole authority from the dissen- 
 tients, and making an unpopular choice in the express name of 
 an angry multitude. We may therefore dismiss the proposed 
 expedient of double representation with the remark, that if the 
 intermediate body be elected with little reference to its electoral 
 functions, it will be little fitted for such functions ; and if it is 
 elected mainly with reference to them, it will have no independent 
 power of choice, but be bound over to elect the exact person whom 
 its constituents have decided to favour. 
 
 A much more plausible proposal is suggested by the recom- 
 mendation which we made some pages back, that the principle 
 which assigns the franchise to those who can show a property 
 qualification should not be confined to real estate, but be ex- 
 tended to every kind of property that yielded an income and was 
 owned bond fide. A considerable number of the working classes 
 possess savings; not large, it is true, when contrasted with mid- 
 dle-class opulence, but still most important to, and most valued 
 by, those who have hoarded them during a lifetime. The total 
 accumulation is likewise very large when set down in the aggre- 
 gate. It has been suggested that a suffrage conferred on the 
 owners of moneyed property would of itself enfranchise the most 
 thrifty and careful of the working classes; and that, as these 
 would probably be the best judging of their class, it would be 
 needless to inquire as to the mode in which any others could 
 obtain the franchise. There may be a question whether we do 
 wish simply to find representatives in the best of the working 
 classes. We are not now seeking legislators who will exercise a 
 correct judgment, but rather spokesmen who will express popu- 
 lar sentiments. We need not, however, dwell on this, as there 
 is a more conclusive objection to the plan proposed. Un- 
 fortunately, the savings of the working classes are not in- 
 vested in a form which would be suitable for political purposes. 
 The most pressing need of the poor is a provision for failing 
 health and for old age. They most properly endeavour to sa- 
 tisfy this by subscribing to " benefit societies" or other similar 
 clubs, which, in consideration of a certain periodical payment, 
 guarantee support during sickness, or a sum of money in case of 
 decease. Now this life-and-health insurance wants all the cri- 
 teria of a good property qualification. There is no test of its
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 33 
 
 bona fides. Simulated qualifications might be manufactured by 
 any skilful attorney. The periodical payment might be easily 
 repaid on pretence of sickness ; and it would be perfectly impos- 
 sible for any revising barrister to detect the fraud. There would 
 be no security that the periodical premium even belonged to the 
 poor man; it might be lent him, and with little risk, by his 
 richer neighbour. Electioneering has conquered many difficul- 
 ties. It would be easy to have an understanding that the secre- 
 tary to the society, the clerk of the electioneering attorney, 
 should see that the premium was soon repaid, in name to the 
 poor subscriber, and in fact to the vote-making capitalist. The 
 finances of some of these societies have never been in the best 
 order ; and there would be very great difficulty in tracking even 
 a gross electioneering fraud. Perhaps no practical man will ques- 
 tion but that the manipulation of a borough attorney would soon 
 change the character of a " benefit society;" it would cease to be, 
 as now, the repository of the real savings of the best working 
 men ; it would become a cheap and sure machinery for creating 
 votes in the name of the most corruptible. So large a portion of 
 the savings of thrifty operatives are most properly laid by in these 
 insurance associations, that it is scarcely likely that a moneyed 
 property qualification would give a vote to a considerable pro- 
 portion even of the very best of them. A few would be admitted 
 by giving the franchise to those who left a certain sum in a 
 savings-bank for a certain time ; but, to prevent fraud, that time 
 must be considerable, and careful returns, prepared for Lord 
 John Russell's Reform Bill, are said to show that the number 
 enfranchised would be even fewer than might have been expected. 
 At any rate, it would not be safe to rely on such a franchise for 
 creating a parliamentary organ for the lower classes. Those 
 enfranchised by it would be scattered through a hundred consti- 
 tuencies. There would be no certainty that even one member 
 in the House would speak their sentiments. Moreover, we have 
 doubts whether a constituency composed only of operatives who 
 had a considerable sum in the savings-bank after providing, as 
 in all likelihood they would have done, for the wants of their 
 families in case of their death and sickness, would not rather 
 have the feelings of petty capitalists than of skilled labourers. 
 Those who have just risen above a class can scarcely be relied 
 on for giving expression to its characteristic opinions. However, 
 as it would be scarcely possible to create such a constituency, 
 there is no reason for prolonging an anticipatory discussion on 
 its tendencies. On the whole, therefore, we must, though rather 
 against our wishes, discard the idea of creating a working-class 
 franchise by an extension of the suffrage qualification to all 
 kinds of property. A careful examination appears to show that
 
 34 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 we could not obtain in that way a characteristic expression for 
 the wants of the masses. 
 
 These are the principal schemes which have been proposed 
 for adding to the legislature some proper spokesmen of the 
 wants of the lower classes by giving to those classes some influ- 
 ence in every constituency. Our survey of them has confirmed 
 the anticipation with which we set out. The dilemma remains. 
 Either the influence is great enough to determine the choice 
 of the member, or it is not : if it is not, no spokesmen for the 
 working classes will be elected ; if it is, no one not thoroughly 
 imbued with the news and sentiments of the lower orders would 
 be chosen, we should have a democracy. 
 
 As this, the first of the only two possible expedients, has failed 
 us, we resort with anxiety to the second. Since it does not seem 
 possible to procure spokesmen for the working classes by a uni- 
 form franchise in all constituencies, is it possible to do so by a 
 varying franchise, which shall give votes according to one cri- 
 terion in one town, and to another criterion in another town? 
 It evidently is possible. Whether there are any countervailing 
 objections is a question for discussion, but of the possibility 
 there cannot be a doubt. If all the adult males in Stafford 
 have votes, then the member for Stafford will be elected by uni- 
 versal suffrage ; he will be the organ of the lower orders of that 
 place. Supposing that place to be subject in this respect to no 
 important local anomaly, the lower orders there will be like the 
 corresponding classes elsewhere. By taking a fair number of 
 such towns, we may secure ourselves from the mischievous re- 
 sults of local irregularities; we can secure a fair number of 
 spokesmen for the lower orders. 
 
 The scheme is not only possible, but has been tried, and in 
 this country. Before the Reform Bill of 1832 there was a great 
 disparity in the suffrage qualification of different constituencies. 
 " A variety of rights of suffrage," said Sir James Mackintosh, in 
 1818,* "is the principle of the English representation;" and he 
 went on to enumerate the various modes in which it might be 
 obtained, by freehold property, by burgage tenure, by pay- 
 ment of scot and lot, &c. The peculiar circumstances of 1832 
 made it necessary, or seemingly necessary, to abolish these con- 
 trasted qualifications. Great abuses prevailed in them, and it 
 would have been difficult to adjust remedies for the removal of 
 those abuses. The great requirement of the moment was a sim- 
 ple bill. During a semi-revolution there was no time for nice 
 reasonings. Something universally intelligible was to be found. 
 The enthusiasm of the country must be concentrated "on the 
 
 Edinburgh Review, No. LXL, article "Universal Suffrage ;" an admirable 
 essay, singularly worth reading at present.
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 35 
 
 whole bill and nothing but the bill." "We must not judge the 
 tumult of that time by the quietude of our own. 
 
 At a calmer moment the more philosophic of liberal states- 
 men were, however, aware of the advantages of the machinery 
 which they were afterwards compelled to destroy. The essay of 
 Sir James Mackintosh, to which we have referred, appeared in 
 the Edinburgh Review, and was considered at the time as an 
 authoritative exposition of liberal doctrine : and almost the whole 
 of it is devoted to a proof that this system of varying qualifica- 
 tion is preferable, not only to universal suffrage, but to any uni- 
 form " right of franchise." On the point we are particularly con- 
 sidering, he says : " For resistance to oppression, it is peculiarly 
 necessary that the lower, and in some places the lowest, classes 
 should possess the right of suffrage. Their rights would other- 
 wise be less protected than those of any other class : for some 
 individuals of every other class would generally find admittance 
 into the legislature ; or, at least, there is no other class which is 
 not connected with some of its members. Some sameness of 
 interest, and some fellow-feeling, would therefore protect every 
 other class, even if not directly represented. But in the unedu- 
 cated classes, none can either sit in a representative assembly, or 
 be connected on an equal footing with its members. The right 
 of suffrage, therefore, is the only means by which they can make 
 their voice heard in its deliberations. They also often send to 
 a representative assembly members whose character is an im- 
 portant element in its composition, men of popular talents, 
 principles, and feelings; quick in suspecting oppression, bold 
 in resisting it; not thinking favourably of the powerful; lis- 
 tening, almost with credulity, to the complaints of the humble 
 and the feeble ; and impelled by ambition, where they are not 
 prompted by generosity, to be the champions of the defenceless. 
 It is nothing to say that such men require to be checked and 
 restrained by others of a different character; this may be truly 
 said of every other class. It is to no purpose to observe, that 
 an assembly exclusively composed of them would be ill fitted 
 for the duties of legislation ; for the same observation would be 
 perfectly applicable to any other of those bodies which make use- 
 ful parts of a mixed and various assembly/' Sir James had 
 evidently the words of the member for "Westminster sounding in 
 his ears. His words are not an expression of merely speculative 
 approbation, they are a copy from the life. 
 
 An authority still more remarkable remains. Lord John Rus- 
 sell, in 1821, expressed a very decided opinion on the advantages 
 of having a different scale of property qualification in different 
 places, and rather boldly grappled with an obvious objection to 
 it. We quote the passage : " All parts of the country, and all
 
 36 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 classes of the people, ought to have a share in elections. If this 
 is not the case, the excluded part or class of the nation will be- 
 come of no importance in the eyes of the rest : its favour will 
 never be courted in the country, and its interests will never be 
 vigilantly guarded in the legislature. Consequently, in propor- 
 tion to the general freedom of the community will be the discon- 
 tent excited in the deprived class by the sentence of nullity and 
 inactivity pronounced upon them. Every system of uniform 
 suffrage except universal contains this dark blot. And universal 
 suffrage, in pretending to avoid it, gives the whole power to the 
 highest and the lowest, to money and to multitude; and thus 
 disfranchises the middle class, the most disinterested, the most 
 independent, and the most unprejudiced of all. It is not neces- 
 sary, however, although every class ought to have an influence in 
 elections, that every member of every class should have a vote. 
 A butcher at Hackney, who gives his vote perhaps once in twelve 
 years at an election for the county of Middlesex, has scarcely 
 any advantage over another butcher at the same place who has 
 no vote at all. And even if he had, the interest of the state is 
 in these matters the chief thing to be consulted ; and that is 
 as well served by the suffrage of some of each class, as by that of 
 all of each class. " The necessary effect of the Act of 1832 has 
 been to make us forget the value of what the authors of it con- 
 sidered a most beneficial part of our representative system. That 
 such great statesmen should have pronounced such panegyrics 
 on the diversity of qualifications in different constituencies, when 
 it was a living reality before their eyes, shows at least that it is 
 practicable and possible. 
 
 The plan is, indeed, liable to several objections : it is not to 
 be expected that in a complicated subject any scheme which is ab- 
 solutely free even from serious inconveniences could be suggested. 
 By far the most popular objection is that which Lord John Rus- 
 sell noticed in the passage we have just cited. There is a sense 
 of unfairness in the project. Why should an artisan in Liver- 
 pool have a vote, and an artisan in Macclesfield no vote ? Why 
 should the richer classes in one constituency be disfranchised 
 by the wholesale admission of their poorer neighbours, and the 
 richer classes in another constituency not be so disfranchised ? 
 The answer is suggested by a portion of our preceding remarks. 
 No one has a right, as we have seen, to any portion of political 
 power which he cannot exercise without preventing some others 
 from exercising better that or some greater power. If all the 
 operatives in the great towns were enfranchised, they would pre- 
 vent the higher classes from exercising any power : and this is 
 the reply to the unenfranchised artisan in Macclesfield. If there 
 were no representatives of the working classes in Parliament, its
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 37 
 
 measures might be less beneficial, and its debates would be im- 
 perfect ; the higher classes in some great towns must have less 
 power than in some other great towns, because a uniform suf- 
 frage impedes the beneficial working of Parliament, and prevents 
 the ruling legislature from exercising its nearly omnipotent power 
 well and justly. To have a good Parliament, we must disfran- 
 chise some good constituents. Perhaps, indeed, the whole dif- 
 ficulty is overrated. We see every day that, so far as the middle 
 classes are concerned, it is of no perceptible consequence to the 
 individual whether he has a vote or not : it is of great conse- 
 quence to him that the supreme legislature should accord with 
 the views of his class and himself; but whether he has voted 
 for any particular member of that legislature is a trifle. We 
 never dream in society of asking whether the person we are 
 talking to has a vote or not. Both live, and live equally, in 
 the atmosphere of politics. Similarly, it is of great importance 
 to the lower classes that their feelings should be sufficiently ex- 
 pressed in Parliament ; but which of them votes for the person 
 who should express them is of no consequence at all. The non- 
 voter ought to take as much interest in politics as the voter. 
 When all of a class cannot exercise power without impeding a 
 more qualified class, we may select from considerations of con- 
 venience which members of the less qualified class are to have 
 power. There is no injustice in allowing expediency to adjust 
 the claims of persons similarly entitled. 
 
 It may also be objected that this plan of representing the 
 lower classes does not give them the general instruction which 
 the exercise of the suffrage is supposed to bestow. An unen- 
 franchised artisan in Macclesfield is not educated by giving the 
 suffrage to an artisan in Manchester. But it is a mistake to 
 suppose that there is much, if any, instruction in the personal 
 exercise of the franchise. Popular elections have no doubt a 
 didactic influence on the community at large ; they diffuse an 
 interest in great affairs through the country ; but the elevating 
 effect of giving a vote is always iufinitesimally small. Among 
 the lower classes it is a question whether the risk of moral de- 
 terioration does not quite equally balance the hope of moral 
 elevation. Popular institutions educate by the intellectual atmo- 
 sphere which they constantly create, and not by the occasional 
 decisions which they require. And were it otherwise, intellec- 
 tual instruction is but a secondary benefit of popular govern- 
 ment ; and we must not throw away, in the hope of increasing it, 
 the primary advantage of being well governed. We believe too 
 that, in fact, mere existence under a good government is more 
 instructive than the power of now and then contributing to a 
 bad government.
 
 38 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 We are more afraid of the objection that this inequality of 
 suffrage in otherwise similar constituencies is an anomaly which 
 may grow up imperceptibly, as it did before the Reform Bill, but 
 cannot now be created de novo. We admit the difficulty : we 
 are well aware that this inequality, like every other expedient in 
 politics to which the objections are apparent and the advantages 
 latent, is far easier to preserve than to originate. But when great 
 interests are at stake, we should only give up that which is im- 
 possible ; what is merely difficult should be done. Moreover, a 
 little examination will, we think, show that the obstacles are far 
 slighter than they might seem at first sight. 
 
 In this point of view it is worth remarking, that the ine- 
 quality of suffrage qualification to a certain extent still exists. 
 The operation of the Reform Act has been to hide and diminish, 
 but not to annihilate, the inequalities which existed before. The 
 constituencies in which these inequalities existed were naturally 
 opposed to their abolition, and a compromise was effected. All 
 persons duly qualified to vote on the 7th of June 1832 were to 
 retain their right for life, subject to certain conditions of resi- 
 dence and registration. In all boroughs, likewise, in which free- 
 dom of the borough, whether acquired by birth or servitude 
 prescriptively, gave a vote, that franchise was to a certain ex- 
 tent retained. The freemen of such boroughs have votes now 
 just as before, and freedom can be acquired in the same way : no 
 change on this point was effected in 1832, except that a borough 
 franchise so obtained is forfeited by non-residence in the borough. 
 The number of these anomalous votes is still very considerable. 
 Mr. Newmarch has shown that in 1853 it amounted to 60,565, 
 which is more than one-seventh of 400,000, the number (or 
 nearly so) of borough electors at that time. We have therefore 
 a very considerable amount of inequality in our present system ; 
 we should scarcely propose to increase it, but to distribute it 
 more usefully. 
 
 The freemen of Coventry, Derby, Leicester, are not a class 
 of whom we wish to undertake the defence ; and in many towns 
 the existence of those old rights is a recognised nuisance. We 
 are not prepared to approve all anomalies in our representation. 
 Our principles are especially opposed to the enfranchisement of 
 favoured individuals in minor towns few enough to be bought, 
 corruptible enough to wish to be bought, who are not in general 
 the majority of the constituency, but who exercise important in- 
 fluence because they can throw in a purchasable balance of votes 
 on critical occasions ; who are in no respect fair representatives 
 of the working classes, who do not return to the house a single 
 fit person willing to be spokesman for them. We argue only 
 that the effect of the Act of 1832 has been to diminish the in-
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 39 
 
 equality of suffrage qualification before existing; and by no means 
 to establish, even if a single act of parliament could have so done, 
 the erroneous principle that there is to be no inequality. 
 
 But the most effectual way of showing that it is possible to 
 create de novo a beneficial variety of property qualifications, is to 
 point out how it can be done. If it be admitted that we should 
 found working-class constituencies, it is clear that we should 
 found them where the working classes live. This is of course 
 in the great seats of industry, where work is plentiful and con- 
 stant. Those who reside in such towns are likewise the most 
 political part of the class : the agricultural labourers, scattered 
 in rural parishes, with low wages and little knowledge, have no 
 views and no sentiments which admit of parliamentary expres- 
 sion; they have no political thoughts. If we wish to give due 
 expression, and not more than due expression, to the ideas of the 
 democracy, we must select some few of the very largest towns, 
 where its characteristic elements are most congregated. It would 
 have been more fortunate if these towns had acquired such a fran- 
 chise prescriptively; but it would have been all but miraculous if 
 such had been the case. Many of our greatest towns are situated 
 in what, in more purely agricultural times, were very uninfluential 
 districts ; we must not expect an hereditary franchise for newly- 
 created interests. As it is necessary to have a rule of selection, the 
 best which can be suggested is the rule of population ; we would 
 propose, therefore, that in the very largest towns in England* 
 there should be what Mr. Bright advocates for all towns, a rate- 
 paying franchise. If this were extended to all towns having more 
 than 75,000 inhabitants, it would include London, Liverpool, 
 Manchester, the Tower Hamlets, Marylebone, Finsbury, Bristol, 
 Birmingham, Lambeth, Westminster, Leeds, Sheffield, Wolver- 
 hampton, Southwark, Greenwich, Bradford, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
 
 * It may, indeed, be objected that these large constituencies are just the ones 
 in which a rate-paying franchise would have the most conclusively democratic 
 effect; and that if we concede it as to these, it is not worth while to resist it 
 with respect to others in which we might hope, by the influence of wealth and 
 social standing, to counteract more or less its democratic tendency. But facts 
 show that in an immense number of constituencies these influences could not 
 control that tendency effectually. If an act giving votes to all rate-payers be ever 
 passed, it will probably be accompanied by a readjustment of the electoral districts 
 on a democratic principle, which would augment the influence of mere numbers. 
 But we need not consider this, since the introduction of the rate-paying franchise 
 into our present constituencies would introduce a new element, much too large 
 to be easily managed by indirect influences. It is of course not known exactly 
 how large that new element would be; but very careful tables have been com- 
 piled of the number of inhabited houses in our present boroughs; and as the 
 number of women rated in respect of them is no doubt small, all but a minute 
 fraction of such houses would give a qualification to a mile voter. Jvow it ap- 
 pears that in all except ten borough constituencies the number of inhabited houses 
 was in 1852, and doubtless is still, more than double that of the present electors; 
 and consequently the new element which would be introduced would greatly pre-
 
 40 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 and Salford. If there were a bond-fide representation of the 
 working classes in these towns, they could not complain of a 
 class disfranchisemeiit ; there would be adequate spokesmen for 
 them. A member speaking the voice of places where such num- 
 bers of operatives are congregated, could speak the sentiments 
 of that class with authority. No one could be unaware that the 
 constituency in these large towns was ultra-democratic. The 
 representation of the lower orders would be conspicuous as well 
 as effectual. 
 
 Nor would the number of representatives so given to the lower 
 classes be sufficient to deteriorate the general character of the 
 legislature. It would not amount to forty for England and 
 Wales, or to fifty for the United Kingdom ; a considerable num- 
 ber, no doubt, but not sufficient to destroy the representative 
 character of a house of 658 members. The House of Commons 
 would still represent the educated classes as a whole ; its opinion 
 would still be their opinion ; the performance of its ruling func- 
 tion would be unimpaired ; and that of its expressive function 
 would be improved. 
 
 We have dwelt so long on this part of our subject, that we 
 shall not be able to devote as much space as we could wish to 
 the explanation of the mode in which we think the remaining 
 defects of our representative system should be remedied. We 
 can only state briefly a few of the most important considerations. 
 
 The first of those defects, which we specified at the outset, is 
 
 ponderate over, and in fact disfranchise, the old. It is evident that it would be 
 very difficult to manage so many new voters by any indirect influences. We 
 copy the table for two counties, Cornwall and Lancashire. 
 
 CORNWALL. 
 Electors. Inhabited Houses. 
 
 Bodmin 390 1,103 
 
 Helston 309 1,453 
 
 Launceston .... 438 1,051 
 
 Liskeard .... 372 965 
 
 Penryn and Falmouth . 856 2,073 
 
 St. Ives 536 2,003 
 
 Truro 646 2,194 
 
 LANCASHIRE. 
 
 Ashton-under-Lyne . . 1,085 5,346 
 
 Blackburn .... 1,518 7,919 
 
 Bolton 1,933 10,394 
 
 Bury . . 1,218 5,825 
 
 Clitheroe . 457 2,192 
 
 Oldham . . 2,098 13,658 
 
 Lancaster . 1,328 2,891 
 
 Eochdale . 1,255 5,829 
 
 Warrington . 720 4,380 
 
 Wigan 797 ....... 5,686 
 
 Edwards's Statistical Tables, p. 6.
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 41 
 
 the existence of small boroughs, which are either in the hands 
 of individual proprietors or have become in the process of time 
 nests of corruption. We need not specify examples ; the fact is 
 sufficiently familiar. Indeed, all small boroughs in the course 
 of years must rapidly tend towards one or other of these fates. 
 A great deal of wealth in this country seeks to invest itself poli- 
 tically. A small borough of this sort necessarily contains a con- 
 siderable number of corruptible individuals ; year by year skilful 
 parliamentary agents ascertain who these individuals are, and 
 buy them. The continual temptation is too much for shop- 
 keeping humanity ; with every election the number of purchas- 
 able votes tends to increase : one would not have yielded, only he 
 wanted a new shop-front ; another, who is proof against plate- 
 glass, desires money to put out his son in the world. Gradually 
 an atmosphere of corruption closes over the borough, and men of 
 the world cease to expect purity from it. The only way in which 
 this sort of retail purchase can be escaped is by a wholesale pur- 
 chase. A rich proprietor may buy a large majority of the vote- 
 conferring properties in the borough, and so become despotic 
 in the town. Each presentation (to borrow a phrase from the 
 church) is not in that case sold on the day of election, because 
 the advowson has been bought before by some one who has a use 
 for it. 
 
 We may escape, then, the necessity of ascertaining the elec- 
 toral corruption of particular boroughs, and lay it down as a 
 general condition of permanent purity that a constituency should 
 contain a fixed number five hundred suppose electors. It is 
 quite true that this remedy is not certainly effectual : there are 
 many boroughs, where the enfranchised constituency exceed this 
 number, in which the elections are not at all what we should 
 wish. But the tendency of such a measure is plain. It prevents 
 the wholesale purchase by the neighbouring proprietors, because 
 it makes the property too large for all ordinary wealth to buy. 
 It tends to prevent the retail purchase by increasing the supply 
 of votes, which always lessens their market value, and in very 
 many cases reduces it below the price which will tempt ordinary 
 voters to corruption. The expedient is not a perfectly effectual 
 one, but at the least it is a considerable palliative. 
 
 What, then, is to be done with boroughs below the prescribed 
 limits ? There are in England and Wales about sixty-seven mem- 
 bers, elected by forty-two of such boroughs. What course would 
 it be wisest to take with respect to such seats ? The most easy 
 plan in theory is to annihilate them at once, to have a new 
 schedule A of places disfranchised. But it is easier to write such 
 a recommendation in an essay than to carry the enactment in 
 practice, These seats have the protective instincts of property.
 
 42 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 Money has been spent on many of them for a course of years : in 
 all of them the present electors would vote nearly as a man 
 against the abolition of " themselves." The strenuous resistance 
 of the members for such seats must be expected to any bill which 
 should propose to abolish them in toto. And such resistance 
 would be the more effectual, because in all likelihood it would be 
 indirect. The interested members, unless a sinister policy were 
 unusually wanting in its characteristic acuteness, would not risk 
 a division on the unpleasant question of abolishing or not abo- 
 lishing their own seats. They would throw the probably decisive 
 weight of their votes into the scale most inconvenient to the 
 government proposing that abolition ; would combine with every 
 strong opposition to it; in the present state of parties would 
 soon reduce it to a minority. A proposal to disfranchise many 
 boroughs would soon issue in the resignation of the proposing 
 government. 
 
 We must therefore assume that for the present, to some 
 considerable extent, the influence of such boroughs must con- 
 tinue to exist. In 183.2 there was a popular feeling which 
 carried every thing before it. Now all we can hope to carry is 
 a compromise. As a compromise, the best expedient which we 
 can suggest is to combine such boroughs. The English respect 
 for vested interests would preclude the popularity of a sweeping 
 act ; but the English liking for a moderate expedient would be a 
 strong support to any measure that could be so called. The 
 effect of such a combination would probably be in great part to 
 set the joint constituency free from the yoke of great proprietors. 
 If Lord A is supreme in borough a, and Mr. B in town b, a and 
 b combined will probably be controlled by neither. The local 
 feeling of b will resist Lord A ; that of a would be rigid to the 
 enticements of Mr. B. If one of the boroughs should be " in- 
 dependent/' that is to say, purchased voter by voter at each elec- 
 tion, its inhabitants would probably rather be purchased by any 
 one than by the proprietor of the antagonistic borough. We 
 are aware that these are not very attractive considerations ; but 
 what are we to do ? Us ont des canons. We must make the best 
 terms we can with constituencies which we cannot hope entirely 
 to destroy. 
 
 We shall be asked why we group these existing boroughs 
 with one another, instead of combining them with new towns not 
 now possessed of the borough franchise, which are therefore at 
 present comparatively uncorrupt. We admit that, in some indi- 
 vidual cases, there may be conclusive reasons for taking the latter 
 course; but we think that there are political arguments which 
 should disincline us from adopting it in general. 
 
 We saw reason to believe that the principal defects of our
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 43 
 
 House of Commons, as a ruling assembly, were an excessive bias to 
 the landed interest, and an insufficient sympathy with the grow- 
 ing interests of the country. On this account it is desirable not to 
 take from the county constituencies all the liberalising element 
 which they at present possess ; on the contrary, it would be de- 
 sirable, if possible, to increase it. We should, however, weaken 
 that liberal element very materially if, in our extreme desire to 
 remedy borough corruption, we extracted from the constituency 
 of the counties the inhabitants of all their larger towns. The effect 
 of Mr. Locke King's proposal to reduce the county franchise from 
 50/. to 10/., if it should be adopted, as it probably will be, will 
 be to augment the county influence of the towns which have no 
 borough member.* We must not counteract this tendency. As 
 we think it desirable to diminish the sectarian character of our 
 county members, we must not adopt the most effectual of all 
 schemes for preserving it unimpaired we must not absorb into 
 the boroughs all other influences save those of the country gen- 
 tlemen. 
 
 Our second reason for rather preferring to combine the very 
 small boroughs with one another than to unite each of them 
 with some town at present unenfranchised is, that we wish to 
 diminish the number of seats for such constituencies. If we 
 annexed new elements to each of them, there would be a plau- 
 sible argument for not diminishing their number. But, as has 
 been explained, we wish to provide a more ample representation 
 for the growing districts of the country; and there is a very ge- 
 neral and well-grounded opinion that the House of Commons is 
 already quite sufficiently numerous. In order, therefore, to in- 
 crease the representation of the progressive parts of England in 
 the proportion which seems desirable, we must take from the 
 decaying or stationary towns of the less active parts of the coun- 
 try the right of sending members which they have now. On a 
 great scale, the same plan was adopted in 1832 : it was then 
 necessary to remedy a great evil ; and therefore it was necessary 
 that the number of seats disfranchised should be great, and the 
 number of newly-enfranchised towns considerable also. As we 
 have shown, no such enormous evil remains at present to be 
 remedied. The judgment of Parliament coincides fairly, if not 
 precisely, with the opinion of the nation. All we have to correct 
 is, a slight bias in one direction, and a perceptible but not extreme 
 
 * The general effect of Mr. Locke King's proposal is a qucestio vexata. One 
 point may be, however, laid down with confidence : its effect will probably be 
 more favourable to the petty proprietor than to the large ones. The estates of 
 the larger are not usually cut up into farms yielding less than 10/. rent. The small 
 occupier generally rents of the small proprietor. Possibly the effect of this 
 circumstance, likewise, may be to mitigate the class peculiarities of our county 
 members. The quarter-sessions influence varies with the acreage.
 
 44 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 deficiency of sympathy in another. The changes we have to make, 
 therefore, may be slight in comparison with those of 1832; still, so 
 important is it that Parliament should really coincide in opinion 
 with the nation, that we should take account of the beginnings of 
 a discrepancy ; while the topic of reform in our electoral system 
 is definitely before the public, we should take the opportunity of 
 correcting the undue inclination of the legislature towards the 
 less active, and its contrast of feeling (which though slight is 
 real) to the more active part of the community. 
 
 We are the more certain that it is advisable to make some 
 such change as this, because, as we have before observed, we 
 believe this uneasy consciousness of the less perfect represen- 
 tation of the progressive elements in the nation, as compared 
 with the unprogressive, to be the secret source of almost all the 
 slight popular enthusiasm which now exists in favour of reform. 
 The external form of what is proposed is, indeed, different ; the 
 principal, as well as the most popular, suggestion is one for the 
 representation of the working classes. We have no doubt that 
 those who are at the head of that movement, as well as those 
 who join in it, quite believe that such is their true object. But 
 it is at least an odd undertaking to be headed by master manu- 
 facturers. Whatever view we may take of the effects of universal 
 or of rate-paying franchise on other parts of the nation, there 
 can be little question that its influence would be detrimental to 
 the power of opulent capitalists. We must alter the world before 
 there ceases to be some opposition of feeling (there is often a 
 momentary opposition of interest] between the mill-owner and 
 his work-people. In the days of the short-time agitation both 
 parties understood this perfectly. Even now a Parliament of 
 capitalists would probably propose to repeal the ten-hours bill ; 
 a Parliament of working men would very likely desire to extend 
 its principle. To say the least, it is strange that the character- 
 istic men of one class should be so ready to throw all power into 
 the hands of the other. 
 
 A letter from Mr. Bright himself to a Manchester association 
 puts the matter in a different light. " On a great occasion/' he 
 tells us, " like the one now before the country, there will be dif- 
 ferences of opinion. Some think one extent of franchise better 
 than another. Some are for a 6/. rental; some are for a 51. 
 rental ; you are for the extension of the right of voting to every 
 man. Now I prefer to establish the parliamentary suffrage on 
 the basis which has been tried for some centuries in our parishes, 
 and which has been adopted at a recent period in our poor-law 
 unions and in our municipal governments ; with some needless 
 restriction, with regard to the municipal franchise, which I would 
 not introduce into our parliamentary franchise. The more public
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 45 
 
 opinion is freely and honestly expressed, the more distinctly will 
 a government, engaged in preparing a Reform Bill, be able to 
 discover which is the point likely to be most satisfactory to the 
 public. I consider these differences of opinion on the subject as 
 of trifling importance when compared with the question of the 
 distribution of seats and members. This is the vital point in the 
 coming bill; and unless it be well watched, you may get any 
 amount of suffrage, and yet find, after all, that you have lost the 
 substance, and are playing merely with the shadow of popular 
 representation/' 
 
 This at least is an intelligible doctrine. A redistribution of 
 seats in proportion to population would indisputably be most 
 advantageous to Mr. Bright and his associates. Some of their 
 school have made a calculation that sixty-three boroughs, return- 
 ing eighty-five members, have not, taken together, as many elec- 
 tors as Manchester, which returns but two. And, independently 
 of extreme cases, it is quite indisputable that the large towns 
 and crowded populations of Lancashire and the West Riding 
 would, in any grouping based on electoral numbers, assume a 
 proportionate magnitude that would be quite different from that 
 which they have at present. If such a readjustment could be 
 earned, and the present franchise retained, the followers of Mr. 
 Bright would be one of the most numerous divisions of the House 
 of Commons. It is true that the advantage of their success must 
 be shared with the class most antagonistic to them in feeling. 
 The county representation would have to be extended if electoral 
 numbers, or any mere numbers, were to be taken as the guide 
 to a new adjustment. But Mr. Bright probably does not fear a 
 conflict with Mr. Newdegate. "We can well understand that he 
 should esteem the lowering of the franchise, which would impair 
 his power, less important than a reapportionment of members, 
 which must increase it. 
 
 We can spare but a few words to show the unsoundness of 
 the principle on which the proposed readjustment is to be based; 
 and we would hope that only a few words are needed. Mr. 
 Bright considers it an obvious absurdity that a constituency of 
 1000 electors should return a member, and that another con- 
 stituency with 5000 should return but one member also. Such 
 a variety is nevertheless primd facie beneficial : it would be a 
 probable sign of the complete imperfection of an electoral or- 
 ganisation if every constituency in it were equally numerous. All 
 such systems must tend to give undue preponderance to some 
 classes, and to deny, not only substantial influence, but even bare 
 expression, to the views of other classes. If the -nation be homo- 
 geneous, equal patches of population will tend to return similar 
 members. The more numerous the constituency, the more likely
 
 46 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 is this to be the result. Thousand A may differ from Thousand B ; 
 but Million A will assuredly be identical with Million B. The 
 doctrine of chances forbids us to expect contrasted representa- 
 tives from constituencies with a family likeness. If, indeed, the 
 nation should not be homogeneous, but should contain two very 
 numerous classes of unlike tendencies, whose harmony is pre- 
 served by the continual arbitration of less numerous classes inter- 
 mediate between them, the result of an equal division of electoral 
 districts would be different, and it would be worse. Each of the 
 intermediate classes would be merged in one of the larger. We 
 may, however, look at the living operation, and not at the bare 
 theory. We have mentioned the contrast between Mr. Bright 
 and Mr. Newdegate. What is it that prevents the continual dis- 
 turbance of parliamentary peace between two classes of men so 
 dissimilar as the members for counties especially purely agricul- 
 tural counties and members for manufacturing cities? Obvi- 
 ously the existence of the intermediate elements, of members sent 
 up by agricultural towns, which contain industrial elements, and 
 by smaller manufacturing towns, which have no notion of being 
 offered in sacrifice to the populace of great cities. An electoral 
 system composed of " population sections" would not give us 
 a representative assembly adapted to the performance of either 
 of its two functions. A House of Commons so elected would 
 not represent the public opinion of the country, and therefore 
 could not rule it as it should be ruled. The impartial and arbi- 
 trating element would be deficient. And, as has been explained, 
 this complete deficiency in the qualities necessary to a ruling 
 legislature would not be compensated by any excellence in the 
 qualities necessary to secure a good expression of the grievances 
 and opinions of all classes. Old English good sense selected a 
 town to send representatives separately from a county in which 
 it was situated because it saw there the conspicuous focus of 
 separate feelings, separate interests, possibly separate complaints. 
 Our new reformers would undo this wise arrangement. They 
 would (at least, such is the logical tendency of their argument) 
 destroy those bounds and limits to constituencies which secure a 
 character to the constituency; they would represent the shipping 
 interest by throwing Hull into the county of York and Grimsby 
 into the county of Lincoln : distinct definition is all that is neces- 
 sary to disprove such ideas. 
 
 Paradoxical as it may sound, the evident untenableness of 
 Mr. Bright's views gives them a claim on our attention. It is 
 an indication of social unsoundness that men of ability and energy 
 sincerely advocate very absurd theories, and are able to collect 
 considerable audiences to applaud those theories. We may speak 
 of our national contentment ; but the answer comes, What, then,
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 47 
 
 do these people complain of? We must not rest satisfied with 
 a mere refutation of the doctrines which are avowed, or an expo- 
 sition of the mischievous consequences of the plans proposed. 
 There are certain theories of political philosophy which supply 
 ready arguments against almost every state of society which has 
 been able to maintain a long existence. These heresies float 
 among the most ordinary ideas of mankind, and are ready with- 
 out the least research to the hand of whoever may believe that 
 he wants them. Latent discontent with the existing form of 
 government catches hastily at whatever justifies it ; it seeks in 
 these old forms of false doctrine a logical basis for itself. One of 
 these heresies is the purely democratic theory of government ; 
 it has very rarely indeed been adopted as a guide to action, but 
 its existence is nearly as old as political speculation. In every 
 age and country a class which has not so much power as it thinks 
 it ought to have snatches at the notion that all classes ought to 
 have equal power. Such an " uneasy class" believes that it ought 
 to have as much power as the class which is in possession ; and 
 not liking to put forward even to itself a selfish claim of indivi- 
 dual merit, it tries to found its pretensions on the " equal rights 
 of all mankind." Mr. Burke described the first East-Indian 
 nabobs as "Jacobins almost to a man," because they did not 
 find their social position " proportionate to their new wealth." 
 We cannot fail to observe that the new business- wealth of the 
 present day (of which Mr. Bright is the orator and mouthpiece) 
 has a tendency to democracy for the same reason. Such a symp- 
 tom in the body-politic is an indication of danger. So energetic 
 a class as the creators of Manchester need to be conciliated ; their 
 active intelligence has rights which assuredly it will make heard. 
 The great political want of our day is a capitalist conserva- 
 tism. If we could enlist the intelligent creators of wealth in 
 the ranks of those who would give their due influence to intel- 
 ligence and property, we should have almost secured the stability 
 of our constitution ; we should have pacified its most dangerous 
 assailants ; we should count them among our most active allies. 
 If the transfer of a moderate number of seats in Parliament 
 from boroughs, which scarcely profess to exercise an independent 
 choice of representatives, to large and growing towns would only 
 in a subordinate degree conduce to this effect, such a transfer 
 should be made. There would still be enough of smaller con- 
 stituencies for all purposes that are useful. 
 
 We have, therefore, completed our task. We have shown 
 the defects which our present system of representation seems to 
 contain ; and we have endeavoured to indicate the mode in which 
 those defects might, we think, be remedied. The subject is one 
 of great complexity and extent, and very difficult to discuss
 
 48 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 within the limits of an article. To be considered profitably, it 
 must be considered as a whole ; and it will be evident from our 
 own pages how much space any attempt to discuss the entire 
 topic necessarily requires. Whatever errors of detail may be 
 found in our opinions, we cannot doubt that our general purpose 
 has been correct. A real statesman at the present day must 
 endeavour to enlarge the influence of the growing parts of the 
 nation, as compared with the stationary ; to augment the influ- 
 ence of the capitalist classes, but to withstand the pernicious 
 theories which some of them for the moment advocate ; to or- 
 ganise an expression for the desires of the lower orders, but to 
 withstand even the commencement of a democratic revolution. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 18th February 1859. 
 
 THERE are some points suggested by the previous discussion 
 which I was unable, from want of space, to treat as I should have 
 wished ; and some too which have been brought out more clearly 
 by the events of the last few weeks. I gladly, therefore, make 
 use of the opportunity afforded me by the republication of the 
 foregoing essay to make some additional remarks. 
 
 A striking and most healthy symptom in the public mind in 
 reference to Reform just now is its freshness. In former times 
 the Tory party never thought about the matter. One of their 
 traditional tenets, as a party, was an opposition to Reform ; and 
 all who desired a further change than that of 1832 were in 
 their eyes Radicals and Democrats. The subject was not one for 
 argument. The Liberals, on the other hand, had a vague kind 
 of abstract idea that the franchise must be extended some time 
 or other. They would have been shocked to hear themselves 
 called Democrats ; but when they talked about Reform, their 
 language, as far as it had a meaning at all, had a democratic 
 meaning. It was imagined that as soon as the " masses" had ac- 
 quired a certain minimum of education, they would have a claim 
 of right to be enfranchised ; and it was overlooked that in practice 
 this would be equivalent to the disfranchisement of all other 
 classes, and would give the lower orders the uncontrolled guid- 
 ance of the community. At present the state of public opinion 
 is infinitely more hopeful. The Tories have been stimulated to 
 the consideration of the subject. As a government of their own
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 49 
 
 is to propose a Reform Bill, it is impossible any longer to regard 
 the topic as beyond the range of permitted speculation. The 
 Liberals likewise have been rather rudely awakened to the un- 
 pleasant consequences of their former ideas. Mr. Bright, more 
 than any one else, should have the credit of arousing the present 
 liberal reaction against democracy. He has propounded in a 
 definite plan what was before an intangible idea. The subject 
 has come within the range of practical English thought almost 
 for the first time; and, as usual, the tone of habitual discussion 
 on it has deepened and improved. A feeling of sympathy for 
 intelligent working people is perhaps stronger than ever, and 
 there is every wish that they should, if possible, have some power 
 in the community ', but there is a distinct and settled deter- 
 mination that they shall not have all the power. 
 
 I have dwelt so fully on this part of the subject in the pre- 
 ceding essay, that it is not necessary for me now to resume the 
 general discussion of it. The public mind is in a much more 
 likely mood to entertain what appear to me to be just ideas than 
 it ever was before, or than I could have hoped it would be now. 
 There are one or two incidental remarks, however, which it is 
 necessary to make on the subject. 
 
 The most telling objection to the expedient suggested in the 
 foregoing essay for representing the working classes viz. that of 
 lowering the qualification so as to include them in the great seats 
 of industry, but not elsewhere is, that it sacrifices the political 
 power of the higher classes in those important places. The 
 higher classes in Manchester cannot be expected to like that they 
 should be disfranchised by the wholesale enfranchisement of the 
 working men in Manchester. That it should ever be pleasant, it 
 would be impossible to hope ; but there are some considerations 
 which tend, I think, to make it less unpleasant than might be 
 imagined at first sight. 
 
 In the first place, a great deal of the anticipated calamity 
 has happened, and is being endured. The creators of the wealth 
 of Manchester, and when I speak of Manchester, I only do so 
 because it stands out in the public mind as a type and symbol 
 of cities of the class, are not the ten-pound householders who 
 return its members. These are the small shopkeepers and petty 
 dealers, who swarm and congregate about every great commercial 
 place ; but who bear to the merchants and manufacturers of 
 those places much the same relation that the sutlers of a camp 
 bear to its disciplined army. In London, where the geographi- 
 cal division of industrial pursuits is unusually evident, there are 
 whole constituencies composed nearly exclusively of these rather 
 mean attendants on commercial civilisation. The Tower Ham- 
 lets contain very little else; and any one can see by walking 
 
 D
 
 50 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 through them how little their population has of the cultivated 
 energy and enlarged acuteness commonly to be found in a great 
 merchant. In other towns Liverpool is a striking contrast in 
 this respect to London this attendant community of inferior 
 dealers resides in the closest proximity to the most important 
 mercantile offices in the focus of business transactions. The 
 effect of the Act of 1832 has been to throw the representation of 
 the large trading towns into the hands of these inferior traders, 
 whose vicinity to the greater ones is inevitable, and whose numbers 
 are overwhelming. A portion of the higher class of traders sym- 
 pathise in the views of the lower; this portion assume to be 
 the leaders of the place, and give to persons at a distance an 
 idea of its tendencies quite different from what would be desired 
 by the higher citizens in general. There has always been an 
 anti-Manchester party at Manchester. The school which Mr. 
 Bright represents has not the undisputed lead among the manu- 
 facturing and mercantile men of the north which they are com- 
 monly thought to have. The most cultivated people there are 
 perhaps generally opposed to it. The highest and best class of 
 the traders in great commercial towns are already disfranchised ; 
 and it would, in reality, be better for them that it should be 
 thoroughly understood to be so. At present the world imagines 
 that their present representatives express their feelings, and state 
 their opinions. If the representation of such places were avow- 
 edly and constitutionally in the hands of the working classes, 
 it would be understood that the higher traders had no voice. 
 Those of them and they are a very large number who have 
 none now would be great gainers, because they would no longer 
 have the vexation of being thought to sympathise with persons 
 to whom they are emphatically opposed. The reason is different 
 with respect to the prevailing party in those boroughs; but the 
 conclusion is the same. So far are Mr. Bright' s followers from 
 protesting against the wholesale admission of the class of voters 
 just below them, that they are clamorous in favour of that ad- 
 mission. If the adoption of a rate-paying franchise is supported 
 by any part of the country, it is by the constituencies of the very 
 largest towns. There is no hardship in giving to them the boon 
 which they demand for every one. 
 
 If, however, it should be found that the higher classes of the 
 largest towns exceedingly disliked the evident disfranchisement 
 which would be the certain consequence of extending the borough 
 franchise in such towns to the lower orders, it would not be by 
 any means impossible to find practicable plans of preserving 
 to them an effectual franchise. The first of these plans is the 
 creation of what may be called suburban constituencies. The 
 greater part of our merchants and traders, even the higher part
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 51 
 
 of our shopkeepers, have long since deserted the straitened dwell- 
 ings over the shop and the counting-house which contented 
 their fathers. They have residences in country districts near 
 their places of business ; all round our largest cities there is a 
 network of them. Many constituencies could be found in the 
 environs of our great cities where the rich, comfortable, and 
 intellectual business-classes reside in very great numbers, and 
 where they would be far more likely to predominate, and to have 
 an effectual voice in the selection of members of Parliament, 
 than under the present suffrage system they are, or can be, in 
 the great seats of industry themselves. Such classes would be- 
 nefit exceedingly by conceding to the working classes the un- 
 disputed command of the representation of the great town itself, 
 if they could thereby obtain a real representation for themselves 
 at their own homes. That which they have now so numerous 
 are the meaner householders is rather a vexing mockery than a 
 desirable reality ; what they would obtain would be a substantial 
 and effectual influence on the legislature. If it were necessary, 
 it would be easy to provide that the representation should be 
 really in the hands of the higher class by fixing the property 
 qualification for a vote at a higher point than usual (at 20/. 
 suppose) ; but I rather apprehend that this expedient, though 
 quite defensible, and by no means intrinsically undesirable, would 
 not be absolutely necessary, as the number of the higher classes 
 residing in well-selected suburban constituencies would give them, 
 under a ten-pound franchise, an effectual superiority. 
 
 A second plan, which is not inconsistent with the first, but 
 rather supplementary to it, is a development of the suggestion 
 that personal property should be made the basis and criterion of 
 a qualification as well as real property. The first step to carry 
 this into practice raises the question, For what constituency is 
 this qualification to give a vote ? Railway debentures and the 
 public funds have no locality ; if they are to give a vote, they 
 may do so for one place as well as for another. I would propose 
 to give the voter himself a choice on this point. If he had the 
 power of registering himself on the ground of a monied- pro- 
 perty qualification within a certain circle of constituencies, say 
 to any one situated at not more than fifty miles from his usual 
 place of abode, he could transfer his vote to that one where 
 it was most wanted, and would be most effectual. The higher 
 classes in the largest constituencies practically disfranchised as 
 they almost are now, and as they would be quite if the sugges- 
 tions I have ventured to make were adopted might find a sa- 
 tisfactory refuge in the smaller constituencies of the neighbour- 
 hood, Avhose numbers they would augment, and whose compo- 
 sition they would materially improve. In general, too, the crea-
 
 52 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 tion of a transferable constituency, by conferring the suffrage 
 on the possessors of non-local wealth as such, would be a mate- 
 rial strengthening of the educated classes as opposed to the non- 
 educated, because it would give the former an opportunity of 
 concentrating their power where it would tell most, while the 
 power of the lower classes would be dispersed, and inseparably 
 attached to certain places. 
 
 Both of these are expedients for giving to the disfranchised 
 upper classes of the most numerous constituencies power else- 
 where than in these constituencies ; two other expedients may be 
 mentioned, by which they might still retain considerable influ- 
 ence in them. 
 
 The first of these is a modification of the " minority prin- 
 ciple." It has been shown in the preceding essay, by arguments 
 which are to my own mind conclusive, that this ingenious expe- 
 dient would not of itself solve the problem of giving to the work- 
 ing classes a certain number of spokesmen in Parliament with- 
 out conferring on them the supreme authority in the state. The 
 working classes are the enormous majority in the country; if 
 the franchise is universally lowered so as to include them in every 
 constituency, they will be masters of the country. By means of 
 the minority principle a certain power may be preserved to some 
 fraction more or less of the constituency, according to circum- 
 stances ; but the great preponderance will be with the majority 
 still. In the case usually supposed of a constituency with three 
 members, in which each constituent has nevertheless but two 
 votes, a minority at all greater than two-fifths of the constitu- 
 ency could return one member, if they pleased it, with complete 
 certainty ; but the corresponding majority of a trifle less than 
 three-fifths would return two members with equal certainty. 
 The influence of the majority would still be double the influence 
 of the minority. So far from this principle giving to the working 
 classes a few members and no more, it gives the greater number 
 to them, and only a few in comparison to the rich. But though 
 this expedient does not of itself give the solution of the problem 
 of which we are in search, it gives us the means of alleviating 
 the inconvenience attaching to what we have found to be one 
 solution of that problem. We may by means of the minority 
 principle give a voice to the rich in the exceptional constituen- 
 cies in which it has been proposed to lower the franchise so as 
 to include the working men. In these constituencies we only 
 wish to give the rich some power ; it is the principle of the pro- 
 posal to give the greater power to their inferiors. 
 
 One of the modes in which the minority principle might be 
 made use of for this purpose has an appearance of equality which 
 would be, I should imagine, attractive to consistent Democrats.
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 53 
 
 It is proposed that, no matter what the number of members for 
 the constituency may be, no elector shall have more than one 
 vote. As has been previously pointed out, this is by far the 
 most efficacious form of the minority principle, because the mi- 
 nority to which it gives a member is smaller than it is under any 
 other modification of that principle. If there were only two 
 members for a constituency, a minority at all exceeding one- 
 third might be certain of returning a single member. I cannot, 
 indeed, imagine that in this form the principle could ever be 
 adopted, or even seriously advocated. No one would say that 
 one-third plus one of the nation was entitled to as much voice 
 in its deliberations and decisions as two-thirds minus one of it. 
 A small minority, as such, and no matter how composed, could 
 never claim to have as much power as a large majority, the 
 members of which might, for aught which appears, be equally 
 intelligent. Nor, even if we supposed the minority to be the 
 rich and educated, and the majority the poor and ignorant, 
 would the result be satisfactory. The error would then be in the 
 other direction : the ignorant majority would in that case have as 
 much power as the instructed minority, which is exactly what 
 we desire that they should not have. Like all other modifica- 
 tions of the minority principle, this one fails as an anti-demo- 
 cratic expedient applicable to the whole country. It would be 
 most dangerous to lower very greatly the franchise throughout 
 the country, in reliance on its efficacy in precluding a despotism 
 of the uneducated. But if the franchise be only extended to the 
 working classes in certain exceptional constituencies, the adop- 
 tion of the rule that no elector should have more than a single 
 vote might in them be very beneficial. Suppose that three mem- 
 bers were assigned to such constituencies, and that no elector 
 possessed more than a single vote, a moderate fraction (one-fourth 
 of the constituency plus one) could always be sure of returning a 
 member, and the remaining part of the constituency (three-fourths 
 minus one) would return the other two. If the higher classes of 
 a great town were really united, and used their legitimate influ- 
 ence with zeal, they could always command somewhat more than 
 a quarter of the constituency : they would be secure of returning 
 a representative to the legislature as well as their inferiors. 
 
 The same end would be reached by the adoption of what is 
 called the " cumulative vote" in these exceptional constituencies. 
 By this is simply meant that the elector should be permitted to 
 give all his votes to a single member if he pleases : thus, if the 
 members to be elected for the constituency be three, and each 
 elector have three votes, he would be enabled to give all his votes 
 to any one candidate, instead of being compelled, as at present, 
 either to distribute them among three candidates, or abstain
 
 54 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 from using some of them. By means of this expedient also, a 
 minority at all greater than one quarter could with certainty re- 
 turn a member; and the effect in that respect would be of course 
 the same as if that result had been attained by the other ex- 
 pedient. I cannot but think, however, that the latter mode is 
 very preferable in other respects. Mr. J. S. Mill says very justly 
 that the principle of giving the elector fewer votes than there 
 are members to be elected must always be unpopular, " because 
 it cuts down the privileges of the voter ;" while, on the other 
 hand, the adoption of the cumulative vote increases them, and 
 has in consequence a tendency to be popular. Mr. Mill justly 
 observes also that the expedient of the " cumulative vote" has 
 another great advantage; it enables voters to indicate not only 
 their preference for a candidate, but the degree of their pre- 
 ference. Instead of voting mechanically for all the candidates 
 put forward by their party, it enables them to select the one 
 whom they really themselves most approve, and to support him 
 only. This would tend to secure to eminent and trusted states- 
 men a secure position in their respective constituencies, which 
 is one of the most important among the minor excellencies of a 
 representative system. 
 
 By one or other of these two schemes, it would be possible 
 to give a real representation to the working classes in the large 
 towns in which they live, and to preserve a portion of influence 
 and a share in the local representation to the higher classes of 
 the town. Both schemes are, however, liable to the very consider- 
 able objection that they permit, or rather provide for, the election 
 in the same place of a member for the poor and a member for 
 the rich, which is very likely to cause local ill-feeling, and may 
 sometimes irritate the t poor into momentary turbulence. On 
 this ground, it seems to me preferable that the higher classes in 
 the large towns should be content with such indirect compensa- 
 tion for their local disfranchisement as would be afforded by the 
 two plans which were noticed first. But popular impression has 
 an incalculable influence in such questions ; and if the higher 
 classes in these first-class constituencies would feel it a stigma 
 or an injustice to have no share in their local representation, 
 such a share must be reserved to them, although we are thereby 
 compelled to allow of the election of two contrasted kinds of 
 members for the same town. 
 
 It may likewise be objected to the creation of such excep- 
 tional constituencies as I have proposed, that their exceptional 
 character could not be permanent. If you once lower the quali- 
 fication in one constituency, it may be said there will be no 
 rest from agitation until it has been lowered to the same extreme 
 point in all constituencies. But this appears to me to assume
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 55 
 
 that the democratic tendencies of the country are far more power- 
 ful than they really are. The extension of the suffrage, espe- 
 cially a very large extension of it, is not very popular with the 
 existing constituencies. If we give to such privileged bodies a 
 good argumentative defence, the oligarchical tendencies of human 
 nature will go far to ensure their maintaining their privileges. 
 Nothing tends to the longevity of a public benefit so much as 
 its being also a particular private advantage to some one who 
 will look after it. Such a defence the existing constituencies 
 will really have if we assign to the working classes some real re- 
 presentation in Parliament ; but while the most numerous class 
 have no means at all of making their voice heard, there will 
 always be an uneasy feeling that they are unduly depressed and 
 unfeelingly disregarded. So far, then, from the creation of ex- 
 ceptional constituencies tending to weaken the arguments in fa- 
 vour of the general structure of the present constituencies, it is 
 the only way of removing the most telling argumentative objec- 
 tion to our existing arrangements. 
 
 An exceptional character in particular constituencies is, it 
 should be observed, an essential element in every system of class 
 representation. If you lay down the principle that there shall 
 be persons in Parliament qualified and authorised to speak the 
 sentiments of special classes, you must take care that in certain 
 electoral bodies those classes shall predominate, that the mem- 
 ber for such bodies shall be their member. You can only secure 
 speciality in the member by a speciality in the constituency. 
 This is the very ground on which borough populations were ori- 
 ginally selected for a separate representation. It was believed 
 that places differing so much from the rural districts in which 
 they were situated would have distinct interests to advocate, 
 distinct opinions to maintain, possibly distinct grievances to 
 state. In a word, it was believed that they would send a special 
 representative, with something to say different from that which 
 an ordinary county representative would ever say. By selecting 
 for particular representation towns occupied in all the important 
 kinds of trade, we have secured an expression to the opinions 
 and sentiments of all kinds of capitalists. By giving special re- 
 presentatives to the universities, we have provided, perhaps 
 not adequately, but still to some extent, for the characteristic 
 expression of the peculiar views of the cultured classes. I 
 believe that the principle of special representation should be ex- 
 tended to the lower classes also, who, from an improvement in 
 education, have now in the larger towns opinions to state, and 
 perhaps, in their own estimation, grievances to make known. If 
 a special representation is given to such persons, it can only be 
 in the same way that special representatives are given to other
 
 56 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 classes, by creating constituencies with a corresponding spe- 
 ciality. 
 
 It is to be observed, that the necessity for creating such 
 exceptional constituencies would not be obviated by the recom- 
 mendation which Mr. Mill has made of giving one vote to every 
 man, whatever be his education, and additional votes in a rapidly- 
 ascending scale to persons of greater education. The object of 
 this recommendation is to keep the principal authority in the 
 state in the hands of educated men. The scale of votes is avow- 
 edly arranged for that purpose. By the adoption of this scheme, 
 you would give to the working classes no characteristic ex- 
 pression in the legislature; you would give them an influence 
 in every constituency in appearance considerable, but which 
 would be of no practical avail to them as a class, because on all 
 characteristic points their voice would be neutralised, and when- 
 ever there were class candidates theirs would be rejected, by the 
 more numerous votes given for that very purpose to the more 
 educated classes. 
 
 I must have wearied every reader with this part of the sub- 
 ject ; and my only excuse is the strong conviction which I feel 
 of its importance, and my wish not to omit to make any ob- 
 servation which may serve to throw it into what seems to me the 
 true light. 
 
 The only other point on which I wish to say any thing more 
 has reference to the rival schedules of Mr. Bright and of the 
 Times. I own I cannot imagine that any such extensive scheme 
 of disfranchisement as either of these two plans contemplate is 
 at all within the sphere of practicability. There is no such 
 pressure from without as could alone compel the passing of a 
 measure so destructive. Nor upon principle does it seem to me 
 that the adoption of such a scheme would be advisable. The 
 principle, both of Mr. Bright' s schedules and those of the Times, 
 is the disfranchisement of the smaller constituencies, whether 
 corrupt or uncorrupt, whether independent or dependent ; and 
 the transfer of their members to very large towns or to coun- 
 ties. As far as the nomination boroughs go, I have no wish to 
 say a word in their defence. In former times there may have 
 been a certain advantage in the existence of such seats. Young 
 men of promise were then occasionally brought into Parliament 
 by the patrons of such constituencies, and great statesmen 
 sometimes found a refuge in them during moments of unpopu- 
 larity. But these advantages belong to past times. Before the 
 Reform Act of 1832 the borough proprietors had boroughs to 
 spare ; such was the plenty of such seats, that there were some 
 left for the public, after providing for the relations and personal 
 friends of the proprietor. But the fact is otherwise at present.
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 57 
 
 There are not now enough of such boroughs to provide for the 
 personal connections of those who own them; and the public 
 derive almost no advantage from their continuance. 
 
 As I have explained, all very small boroughs tend to become 
 either dependent or corrupt, and therefore all very small ones 
 should be abolished. But this is no ground for abolishing a great 
 number of constituencies which, though not very large, are still 
 large enough to be fairly independent and fairly uncorrupt. 
 There can be no ground for disfranchising every place which 
 has not 10,000 inhabitants. If we look to abstract principle as 
 our guide, no measure would be more undesirable. We have 
 seen it to be desirable not only that there should be special 
 representatives for every class in Parliament, but likewise that 
 the predominant tone and temper of Parliament should be des- 
 potically controlled by no class or sect of persons, that it should 
 coincide with the feeling of the nation itself. The accordance of 
 the opinion of Parliament with that of the country is the prin- 
 cipal condition for the performance by Parliament of its great 
 function of ruling the country. This can only be secured by 
 the continuance in Parliament of many members representing no 
 special interest, bound down to state the ideas of no particular 
 class, themselves not markedly exhibiting the characteristics of 
 any particular status, but able to form a judgment of what is 
 good for the country as freely and impartially as other edu- 
 cated men. It is impossible to expect that such persons will 
 be commonly sent to Parliament by the counties and the large 
 towns. A good deal has already been said of the sectarian 
 character of the county members. I fear it must be allowed 
 that the better class of members for large towns are at least as 
 sectarian ; they are capitalists, men of business, representing 
 the views and opinions of the ten-pound householders. I am 
 not speaking of such members as stray in occasionally for such 
 constituencies as the Tower Hamlets. A low class of demagogue 
 will now and then be returned by every very large constituency ; 
 but the characteristic tendency of the large towns is to return 
 men of business of mature age, and of a certain very recognis- 
 able, if not very describable, tendency of sentiment and opinion, 
 a kind of member as marked, as peculiar, and as distinct 
 from all others as any county member can be. I cannot but 
 think that we shall impair the proper working of our parliament- 
 ary constitution if we greatly augment the number of class re- 
 presentatives, whether for the large towns or the counties. What- 
 ever other defects may be alleged to exist in the smaller boroughs, 
 the objection that they return exclusively the representatives of 
 a class cannot be made to them. Every species of member sits 
 for some of them. A list of persons more unlike one another
 
 58 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 could hardly be found than the list of the representatives for our 
 smaller boroughs. When we consider how exceedingly impor- 
 tant it is that the judgment of Parliament should be alloyed by no 
 class prejudice or class interest, that its decisions should be in 
 accordance with the real and deliberate decision of the nation, 
 we shall, I hope, pause before we abolish constituencies so likely 
 to contribute to effect this result. It is not possible for human 
 skill to apportion to each special interest the exact number of 
 representatives which it ought 'to have, and to compose a Parlia- 
 ment exclusively of such special representatives. It would re- 
 quire more skill than any statesman can claim to establish a 
 coincidence of opinion between Parliament and the country solely 
 by the definite allotment of particular members to particular 
 classes. There is no criterion to tell us with accuracy how much 
 each class contributes to the formation of public opinion. The 
 sole expedient for securing the result which we wish to obtain, 
 is that by which it has actually been obtained. We have a Par- 
 liament, subject to two slight objections, fairly coincident in judg- 
 ment with the reflecting part of the community. This inestim- 
 able coincidence of judgment is largely due to the immemorial 
 existence of very many impartial constituencies. We have class 
 advocates in Parliament, it is true ; but many unbiased judges, 
 many national representatives, are to be found there likewise. 
 Perhaps no course could be more dangerous for the country than 
 to diminish the number of the latter, and so lose, possibly at a 
 very critical moment, the incalculable benefit of their impartial 
 intelligence. 
 
 London : Printed by Robson, Levey, and Frankljn, Great New Street and Fetter Lane.
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 NON-RENEWABLE 
 
 FEB (i 2001 
 
 DUE 2 WKS FROM DATE RECEIVED 

 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACIl 
 
 A 000 031 461 7