Source of Lord John Russell’s new proposal to swamp the Counties by the admission of £10 occupants.—“The other plan is to extend the £10 qualification to counties, by which means every householder (to the requisite value) throughout the land would possess a vote; if he resided in a small town or a village, or an isolated dwelling, he would be upon the county register. The only objection we can hear of to this plan is, that in the country districts and in hamlets a £10 occupancy generally includes some land, and would not, therefore, indicate the same social station as the living in a £10 house in town, and that it might lead to the creation, for the sake of augmenting landlord influence, of a numerous and dependent class of tenant voters. But in the first place, the occupier of a £10 house in villages and small towns belongs to a decidedly higher social grade than the occupier of a £10 house in cities; and, in the second place, it would not be difficult to meet the objection, by requiring that the qualifying occupancy shall be, in the county register, a house, and not a house and land, or by fixing a sum which shall, as nearly as can be ascertained, be generally an equivalent to the £10 occupancy contemplated by the present law.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1852, p. 472.
That is the second instance of appropriation on the part of the wise, ripe, deliberate statesman, who for twenty years had been watching the progress of his own handiwork with the view to introducing repairs. Before this article in the Edinburgh Review appeared, it had never occurred to him how convenient it might be to swamp the counties, and how very simple were the means of doing so! Now for appropriation third:—
Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal to admit all Graduates of Universities to Town and County franchise. “It is, of course, desirable, and is admitted to be so by every party, that all educated men shall be voters; the difficulty is to name any ostensible qualifications which shall include them, and them alone. But though we cannot frame a criterion which shall include all, there is no reason why we should not accept one which will include a considerable number of whose fitness to possess the franchise there can be no question. We would propose, therefore, that the franchise be granted to all graduates of Universities,” &c.—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1852, p. 473.
Another hint adopted by Sir Fretful Plagiary! Next we come to a more serious matter:—
Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal for disfranchising the lesser English boroughs.—“The great majority of them are notoriously undeserving of the franchise, and those who know them best are least disposed to undertake their defence. The plan of combining a number of them into one constituency would be futile or beneficial according to the details of each individual case. If a close or a rotten borough were amalgamated with an open or a manufacturing town, much advantage might possibly result; if two or three corrupt or manageable constituencies merely united their iniquities, the evil of the existing things would only be spread farther and rooted faster. We should propose, therefore, at once to reduce the 61 boroughs with fewer than 500 electors, and now returning 91 members, to one representative each.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1852, p. 496.
We shall see presently that this proposal was amended, as not being sufficiently sweeping. Only thirty seats are here proscribed; but it was afterwards found expedient to increase the black list to the number of sixty-six. Pass we to the next instance of palpable cribbage.
Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal that Members accepting office shall not be obliged to vacate their seats.—“The most desirable man cannot be appointed Colonial Minister, because his seat, if vacated, might be irrecoverable. Administrations cannot strengthen themselves by the alliance of colleagues who possess the confidence of the general public, because the place for which they sit has been offended by some unpopular vote or speech. We need add no more on this head: the peculiarity of the case is, that we have no adverse arguments to meet.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1852, p. 501.
The writer is decidedly wrong about the non-existence of adverse arguments; and we shall be happy to convince him of the fact if he will be kind enough to accord us a meeting. In the mean time, however, he has humbugged Lord John, which was evidently his special purpose. Even while we deprecate the morality of his proceeding, we can hardly forbear expressing our admiration of his skill. We know not his earthly name or habitation; but he is a clever fellow, for he has led, with equal audacity and success, the ex-Premier of Great Britain, and the father of Reform, by the nose!
But we have not yet done. The article last referred to was penned and published before the new Parliament met, towards the close of 1852, and before the balance and state of parties could be ascertained. The result of the election showed that parties were in effect almost equally balanced—so much so, that, but for the junction of the Peelites with the Liberals, Lord Derby would have obtained a majority. The election, it will be remembered, took place under circumstances peculiarly unfavourable to the Government; and never perhaps was misrepresentation of every kind more unscrupulously employed than by the Liberal press on that occasion. Still it became evident that Conservatism was gaining ground in the country; and it was a natural inference that, after the question of Protection was finally set at rest, its progress would be still more rapid. This was not exactly what the writer in the Edinburgh Review had calculated on. He now saw that it would be necessary, if the Liberal party was to be maintained in power, to go a good deal further than he at first proposed; and accordingly, when he appears again before us in October 1853, we find him armed this time, not with a pruning-hook, but with a formidable axe. We hear no more about “theoretical propriety”—he is evidently determined upon mischief. Now, then, for his developed views, as adopted by his docile pupil.
Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal that freemen shall have no votes.—“There is no doubt in the mind of any man, we imagine, that incomparably the most openly and universally venal portion of borough constituencies are the old freemen, so unhappily and weakly retained by the Reform Act of 1832.... The disfranchisement of the freemen is, perhaps, of all steps which will be urged upon Parliament, the most clearly and indisputably right and necessary, and, added to the plan already suggested for pursuing individual cases of venality, will probably sweep away the most incurably corrupt class of electors.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1853, p. 596.