PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.
On the 27th of April Lord John Russell again brought forward the question of parliamentary reform. The resolution he proposed was “that the present state of the representation of this country in parliament requires the most serious consideration of this house.” In his speech on this occasion he laid down two premises: first, “that it was a matter of paramount importance to adapt every government to the wants and wishes, the prejudices and existing circumstances of the country for which it was intended; and that the people of this country had arrived at a degree of knowledge, intelligence, and wealth, which made them a people more worthy than had ever before existed of being entrusted with the privilege of electing their representatives, and more capable of exercising it with advantage.” From these premises he concluded that the house of commons as it existed at present, was badly constituted; for instead of being chosen by the more numerous, the more intelligent, and the mora wealthy class, it was elected by the minority, the less intelligent, and the less wealthy. As therefore the elective franchise, instead of remaining in the hands of the many, had become the property of a few, and as such a discrepancy between the condition of the people, and the constitution of the government had unhappily come into existence, calamities would one day or other ensue, unless the state of the representation were amended, from which neither the constitution nor the country would ever recover. After noticing the objections commonly urged against the necessity of reform, the noble mover continued, that, of two modes of reform which it was customary to propose, the one a total reconstruction, and the other a partial renovation of the house of commons, the latter appeared to him of the soundest principle, and the best suited to the condition of the country. The principal feature of his plan, he explained, would be, to restrict a hundred of the smaller boroughs to one member instead of allowing them two, and to give the number of representatives thus subtracted from them to towns of importance unrepresented. These details, however, he said, would be matter of future deliberation. The object he had in view was, in the words of Mr. Fox, “not to pull down, but to work upon our constitution; to examine it with care and reverence; to repair it where decayed; to amend it where defective; to prop it where it wanted support; and to adapt it to the purposes of the present time, as our ancestors had done from generation to generation, and always transmitted it not only unimpaired, but improved, to posterity.” The measure was supported by Mr. Hobhouse, and opposed by Messrs. Dennison and Lamb; but the debate did not present much novelty, and it terminated in the rejection of the motion by a majority of two hundred and forty-seven to one hundred and twenty-three.