But the

of value between ten pounds and seven pounds belong almost exclusively to the artisan class. But there are two material points which we do not know. Certain causes of incapacity-non-residence, non-payment of rates, receipt of relief, employment by the Government, composition by landlord-do in the existing constituency reduce the number upon the register considerably below that of the actual occupiers of houses of the value of ten pounds. It is not, however, safe to calculate the deduction for the new constituency upon the average percentage furnished by the experience of the old, inasmuch as one of the most potent causes of incapacity -the non-payment of rates-is abolished by the Bill. Again in several boroughs a number of working men who live in houses of value between ten pounds and seven pounds are already on the register in the capacity of freemen. They must clearly be deducted from the number of working men whom the new measure will add to the constituencies. But unfortunately their number is absolutely uncertain, and no effort has been made to remove our ignorance upon this head. These, then, are two items of deduction to be made from the number of the seven pound occupiers whom the Bill will add to the register, and whom we may look on as a pure reinforcement of working men. uncertain elements do not appear only upon one side of the account. No estimate whatever is furnished of the number of working men whom the lodger franchise, the repeal of the rate-paying clauses, and the enfranchisement of compound householders will add to the electoral body in each borough. These numbers, however, must be very large, and will bring an addition to the strength of the working class more than sufficient to outweigh any deduction from it due to the causes we have specified. Mr. Gibbs, in a letter to the Times' of March 31st, states that the constituency of Birmingham, with which he is acquainted, will be doubled by the operation of these provisions, and that the new Bill will more than double the borough constituencies. His authority is as good, probably, as any that can be obtained upon a point that is purely conjectural. It would be very desirable that accurate information should be obtained of the exact value of all these items, whether of addition or of deduction. But in the mean time the safest course is to treat them as balancing each other, and to strike them out of both sides of the account. Such a mode of computation is much more favourable to the Government than that of Mr. Gibbs, and by adopting it we shall certainly not be overrating the strength of the artisan contingent that is to be added to the constituencies.

6

Disturbing elements, then, being struck out on both sides, we may assume that the number of seven pound occupiers is idenVol. 119.-No. 238.

2 N

tical

tical with the number of working men that are to be added. The following will then be the list of boroughs in England and Wales in which the working-men will be absolute masters of the representation:

Boroughs.

1 Beaumaris ..

Total number of members in whose constituencies the working men

would have a majority, 133.

The

The result will be that in about two-fifths of the existing boroughs of England and Wales working men will be in a majority. Considering their power of combination, their ignorance of economical laws, their strong taste for the despotism of numbers, this result is far from reassuring, even if it went no further. A very slender reinforcement from theorists of the upper or middle class, or any slight freak of fortune, might place them in absolute command of the boroughs. Of their position in the counties it is difficult to speak with certainty. The forty-shilling freehold costs about fifty pounds; and to judge from the enormous sums which the working classes are able to collect whenever they are on strike, it is probable that a very large number of them have accumulated savings which do not fall far short of that amount. How large their influence in counties is or is likely to become we have obtained no statistics from the Government to tell us, and therefore we are incapable of accurately judging.

But even these calculations do not represent the full danger to which the balance of the Constitution is exposed. Every calculation is merely provisional until the Bill for redistributing seats has been produced. No one can tell how far the new county franchises will overwhelm the rural interest until we know how many unrepresented towns and suburbs are to be taken out of the county representation. No one can tell how many boroughs will return members elected purely by the working class until we know what boroughs are to return members at all. We have been told nothing as to the views of the Government in reference to the question of redistribution; we know still less what will ultimately be the view of Parliament. Mr. Bright, in the only Reform Bill he ever produced, proposed to transfer to larger constituencies no less than ninety-six of the seats which under this Bill would remain to the upper and middle classes. He appears to be keeper of the conscience of the Government; and if, in their scheme of redistribution, they follow him as faithfully as they have hitherto done, it is needless to point out how overwhelming will be the preponderance of the working class in the boroughs. But here again we are left to pure conjecture. This time it is not from the ignorance of those who should enlighten The Government, of set purpose, withhold the information which they have in their hands. They require the House of Commons to work out this political problem, and they refuse to it and to the country the most important of the elements upon which its solution depends. It seems impossible to conceive a more hopeless calculation than that which we are called upon to make. Elaborate data have been furnished us, difficult 2 N 2

us.

to

to master, and insufficient, when we have them, to support any reliable conclusion. But for the sum we have to do these data are simply worthless; they might as usefully have remained among the archives of the department that compiled them. The one and only thing we know with certainty concerning the future structure of the House of Commons is that it will not be founded upon the state of things which these statistics portray. balance between town and country, lower class and middle class, what it may, no sagacity can discover it from the statistics of constituencies of which a quantity quite uncertain is to be destroyed in order to be replaced by substitutes absolutely unknown. Whigs as well as Conservatives could hardly do otherwise than rebel at a plan of legislation at once so humiliating and so unsafe. In the smallest matters no one is fond of unlimited liability. Men do not willingly embark on an enterprise without knowing the chances on both sides. They do not undertake contracts of which they do not know the subject matter, vouch for statements of which they have not seen the wording, nor sign deeds of which the contents are hidden from them. But any of these follies would shine out as wise and far-seeing proceedings compared with the infatuation of consenting to alter the ancient constitution of a mighty empire by enactments of which the most experienced of those who vote for them cannot even distantly guess at the result.

Mr. Gladstone, however, sturdily declines to furnish any more statistics. Like a burnt child he dreads the fire. He has had enough of statistics; he weakly made a concession last autumn to the cry for information, which he would now gladly recall, and consented to the collection of a volume of figures, which, imperfect as it is, has already struck a deadly blow at his Bill, and bids fair to upset his Ministry. He is fond himself of the Rule of Three, and loses no opportunity of impressing its value on the House of Commons; and, by its aid, he has no doubt already worked out in his head the answer to the question: "Given a Ministry jeopardised, and six Whig magnates alienated, by one volume of statistics; what will be the result of half-a-dozen?' So far as he is concerned, he is resolved that the answer to that question shall remain a matter of calculation, and not become a matter of experience; therefore he prefers to urge any argument, no matter how puerile, rather than yield another inch to the demand for more accurate information. He even condescends to urge on us that we ought not to count those whom he proposes to admit, because they are 'fellow-Christians and our own flesh and blood.' It does not appear to have occurred to him that this

novel qualification for the elective franchise will admit every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom, with the solitary exception of the unlucky Jews. It seems, however, to be on the strength of this consanguinity and fellow-Christianity suffrage that the House of Commons is to be asked to take its leap in the dark' on the 12th of this month. If it looks for better arguments to encourage it in venturing upon this great experiment, it does not seem likely to obtain them.

It is, in truth, the absolutely experimental character of this undertaking which brings into the strongest relief the imprudence of the course which is now urged upon the House of Commons. Even in enterprises which have often been undertaken before, and of which the conditions are well known, men do not ordinarily put any important interests to hazard, without procuring all the available information that can be necessary for their guidance. The most experienced seamen upon the best known sea will not willingly set out without lead, or chart, or compass. If the operation of placing supreme power in the hands of the poorest section of the community had been a common one in the history of the world, and had often been performed with success, the House of Commons would still be justified in asking for the most abundant information on the subject before it moved a step. But there are no such precedents to encourage us in this case. The experiment is absolutely new. The ancient republics are put out of the question by the existence of slavery, which acted as a very effective restriction of the franchise. In modern times the United States and our own Colonies are the only instances in which supreme political power has been given to the masses upon any considerable scale. In them the experiment is for the most part so recent as to furnish little ground for inductive reasoning. We know little of the result of the experiment as yet, and what little we know is far from reassuring. But this at least we know, that the experience of a new country, blessed with a boundless expanse of unoccupied land, is no guide for an older country in which that happy period of national infancy has long gone by. The great danger of democracy is, that it places supreme power in the hands of those who may be misled by hunger into acts of folly or of wrong. In an old country, no excellence of institutions can ensure that such periods of maddening want shall not occasionally occur. Where the bounty of Nature is wellnigh exhausted, and multitudes exist upon no other resource than the prosperity of trade, it must be that sometimes that one precarious resource will fail. When such periods of distress do come, it is vain to hope that argument will restrain

hungry