7 Wholly Conservative.-South Lancashire, West Kent, South Devonshire, North Yorkshire, South Essex, East Somerset, North Essex. 5 Wholly Liberal.—Middlesex, South Stafford shire, West Cornwall, West York (2 seats). This would give a gain of, at most, nine Conservative to six Liberal seats. Of the four boroughs that are to receive additional members, Manchester and Birmingham are purely Liberal, Liverpool and Leeds are split boroughs. With these the proportion stands at ten new Conservative and nine new Liberal seats. The course of the perfectly new constituencies it is naturally more difficult to predict. But we fear that the probabilities lean in every case towards the Liberal side. There can be very little doubt that Chelsea and Kensington will become a metropolitan borough of the purest water, and will return two members, well worthy in point of talent and sagacity to rank with the rest of their compeers. Considering the origin and traditions of the University of London, we shall be pleasantly disappointed if it returns anything more Conservative in politics and reli Commons; it will create new constituencies, which-still assuming that the tone of the and it will metamorphose old ones. It is in constituencies remain the same-will be dithe latter respect, undoubtedly, that it will vided thus:operate with the most effect, for, in point of the destruction of boroughs, Lord John's natural tastes have been put under restraint. Scheduling boroughs is a very fascinating amusement, to the arithmetical race of politicians, who believe in the inalienable right of eight beggars to govern seven Rothschilds, and, what is more, to tax them. Small boroughs must stink in the nostrils of those whose ideal of politics is a rule-of-three representation. But a trifling obstacle has hitherto hindered the consummation of these scientific aspirations: the ducks have absolutely declined to come and be killed. The small boroughs cannot be persuaded that the Tower Hamlets, which is the largest borough, is so obviously the wisest, that they are bound in patriotism to immolate themselves, in order that its like may be multiplied in the land. Lord John therefore has been content with a very moderate massacre. He has confined himself to five-and-twenty seats; and, relying on one of the evil precedents of the Bill of last year, he had disarmed half the hostility of his victims, as well as rescued a whole batch of Whig boroughs by dispensing altogether with a schedule A. So far Lord John Russell has made a good bargain for his party. But setting aside the conside-gion than Professor Francis Newman. The ration of what he might have been forced to do, and confining our view to what he has actually done, the schedules of the Bill, taken by themselves, will not effect any great change in the balance of parties. Looking at the re-distribution of the seats apart from the question of the lowered suffrage, and estimating the political future of each constituency entirely from its present conduct, the result will be as follows. The five-and-twenty boroughs that are partially disfranchised may be divided under these three heads : ster, Honiton. decision of the newly-fledged constituencies of Burnley, Staleybridge, and Birkenhead, is in the womb of fate; but if they do return Conservatives, we fear they will be selected from that hybrid class of politicians of whom the last election produced not a few, who voraciously swallowed the plumpest Radical pledges, and the Alpha and Omega of whose Conservatism consisted in voting with Mr. Disraeli on a confidence division. Adding these six votes to the Liberal side, it will appear that, whereas the Conservatives lose thirteen seats, they only regain ten; while the Liberals, losing twelve, receive fifteen. The upshot of the schedules, therefore, is a 7 Wholly Conservative.-Devizes, Marlow, Huntingdon, Knaresborough, Ludlow, Leomin6 Wholly Liberal.-Bodmin, Ripon, Marlbo-transfer of three seats. If any sanguine polirough, Richmond, Totnes, Thetford. tician should flatter himself that Birkenhead 12 Split Boroughs.-Guilford, Hertford, Dor-will return a Conservative member, the transchester, Chippenham, Cirencester, Maldon, fer of seats will be reduced to two. Tewkesbury, Andover, Lymington, Wells, Evesham, Harwich. Seven Conservative and six Liberal seats, therefore, are lost for certain; and assuming that the losses in the split boroughs will be equally divided, the disfranchisement will mulet the Conservative party of thirteen seats, and the Liberal party of twelve. Now let us see in what proportion the enfranchisement will restore them. Thirteen seats go to counties Unhappily this consoling calculation is nothing but a pleasing dream. Every element on which it is founded becomes worthless under the action of the suffrage clauses. After the democratic addition which is to be made to the constituencies, but little of their political identity will remain. Of the exact extent and direction of this change nobody can form more than a distant estimate. Even the numerical statistics on the subject are wretchedly superficial. It is a curious proof of the unconcern of the political pococuranti | added to the constituency, as being rated at by whom we are governed, that they have ten pounds and less than fifty pounds, is not even thought it worth while to ascertain 27,400. But this will not be pure addition. the number of the new electors into whose The list of ten-pounders will contain to a hands the wealth and respectability of each great extent names that are already on the constituency are to be delivered. There is register among the 26,200 freeholders, &c. some glimmer of information with respect to No doubt a great number of the freeholders the increase which is likely to take place in will be residents in Sheffield, Leeds, and other the Boroughs; but with respect to the Coun- represented towns, and will not, therefore, be ties we are still absolutely in the dark. Re- included in the ten-pound list. But still a turns have appeared of the number of rate- deduction, the exact proportion of which nopayers whose annual payments lie within the thing but experience can ascertain, must be limits of ten and fifty pounds, and who are, made on account of the freeholders from the therefore, nominally enfranchised by this Bill. apparent addition to cach County constituBut we have no returns whatever to show ency. Of the Boroughs we have more cerhow many of them are already on the register tain information. After the twenty or twentyby virtue of other qualifications-such as free- five per cent. for incapacitated persons has hold, copyhold, &c. The future condition of been subtracted, the returns may be taken as the county constituencies, as it appears upon an absolute evidence of the impending inthe face of the return, may be summed up in crease. The following list, taken from an the following manner. Eighteen counties in exulting Radical organ, of the thirty-four England and Wales, including divisions of Boroughs in which the Bill will leave the counties in that term, will have their consti- register twice, or more than twice as bulky as tuencies more than doubled, viz. :— it is now, will give an idea of the character of the Boroughs on whom its operation will chiefly fall. We have marked with asterisks the Boroughs which now return each one Conservative member (Yarmouth alone returning two), and in which, therefore, Conservative seats will probably be lost :— South Chester, North Derby, South Essex, Herts, West Kent, North Lancashire, Middlesex, Monmouth, North Shropshire, East Surrey, West Surrey, South Warwick, Brecon, Cardigan, Carmarthen, Carnarvon, Merioneth, Montgomery. Ten occupy the other extreme of the list, and will have less than half their present numbers added to the existing register, viz.:— North Durham, Dorset, East Gloucester, West Gloucester, North Leicester, South Leicester, South Northampton, South Northumberland, North Wilts, South Wilts. The remaining fifty-three lie between these two extremes, and will be increased by more than fifty and less than a hundred per cent. Happily the probable addition, though formidable enough according to the lowest estimate, is not so bad as it looks on this return. In the Counties, as in the Boroughs, one-fifth or one-fourth must be deducted for females, incapacitated persons, and absentees. But the varied suffrage of the Counties furnishes another ground of uncertainty. The interval between ten and fifty pound rating is a region in which small freeholders may be expected to abound: and these men cannot, of course, be qualified twice over, though they may figure in this return among the number of new electors. The case of the West Riding will furnish an illustration. The electors for this division number 36,000, but the fiftypounders only amount to 10,400. The 26,000, who make the difference between these two sums, are in the main freeholders, copyholders, or leaseholders. Now the number of electors It is evident, therefore, that the main in- | weaker the hands that it falls into the better. crease will be in manufacturing places. But Anyhow Elagabalus is more tolerable than beyond this one result the figures furnish no Caligula. All the evils that we inveigh definite rule. Neither locality nor size fur- against in the constituencies where freemen nishes any criterion of the prevalence of the prevail, the chronic corruption, the sickening race of six-pounders whom Lord John Russell debauchery, the wide-spreading fraud and delights to honour. Of the remaining 165 wholesale perjury that adorn the working of Boroughs of England and Wales, 53 will our representative system in such places as enjoy an increase of between fifty and a Berwick and Norwich, would be ill exchanged hundred per cent., while the increase of the for the strong, steady, deadly gripe of the remaining 112 will be less than fifty per trades' unions. These bodies have shown a cent. The smallest Borough, Arundel, is in tenacity of purpose, a vigour, and a pliability the first list; the Tower Hamlets, the largest of organisation which would make them reBorough, is in the second. It is not very doubtable antagonists if they were actuated consoling to find that three metropolitan by the purest morality and guided by the constituencies have an increase of less than most enlightened wisdom. But the stupid four per cent.— barbarism of their economical creed, the ferocity with which their secret conclaves pronounce the doom of a horrible death against all who thwart their projects, the readiness with which they find instruments to execute their murderous decrees, warn us that, if ever England should really pass under their power, we should welcome the military despotism that should relieve us. of readers pass over with unconcern the paragraphs that from time to time record some mysterious outrage in a manufacturing district. It does not occur to them to notice that the house was blown up, or the man was shot for refusing to obey the rules of this or that trades' union. Perhaps these crimes will attract more attention when the supreme power in England has been surrendered to the class at the bidding of whose elected chiefs they are planned and perpetrated. Boroughs. Marylebone Finsbury Additional Per Cent. Registered 511 319 . London (City) 19,026 Increase. 21 3 2 Is the inference to be drawn that in London we have already sunk as low as we can sink, and that, therefore, the Bill is powerless here; and that the effect of its more energetic operation upon other Boroughs will only be to introduce to supreme political power new batches of the class who have so long ruled us in the metropolis, and have given us so many proofs of their sagacity and enlightenment! The character of these new depositaries of power it is naturally still more difficult to ascertain. We have no means of knowing anything of them as a whole. Individuals may retail the narrow results of their personal experience; but the means of forming a comprehensive estimate or of predicting the combined result of conflicting tendencies are utterly wanting. The leap which the House of Commons is taking with such philosophic calmness is a leap absolutely in the dark. We are humbly carrying our homage to some new king, but we know neither his name nor character. When the transfer is effected, when the new reign is opened, when the old rulers are irrrevocably dethroned, then the veil will be drawn aside, and we shall see the form and lineaments of the now unknown Power which will thenceforth dispose of the fortunes of England. Until this interesting revelation is made, it is scarcely worth while to speculate. Some say that the publicans will be our masters; others declare that it will be the trades unions. It is a blessed choice between debauchery and crime. On the whole, we pray for King Publican and his merry rule. If the sceptre is to be wielded for the benefit of one, and that the hungriest class, the The mass Whatever may be the special character of our new constitution, it is, at all events, clear that it will be more democratic than before. Whether its advance be great or small, it will, at all events, be great enough to destroy the power of the only element that can staunchly resist any further movement. Mr. Bright has assured us, and we do not doubt him, that this bill will not be a settlement of the question, but only the preliminary to further change. If resistance be apparently difficult now, it will be utterly impossible with a Reformed Parliament two sessions hence. The bill, therefore, will bring democracy to us, if not at once, at least by stages. Mr. Rolt truly described the peril that is hidden under the word Democracy when he said that the severance between property and representation is increased by this bill and will increase still more. Mr. Bright, while threatening a further agitation, tries to lull us with the assurance that the class he seeks to enfranchise cannot band together for a political purpose, because their differences are as wide as the differences of those above them. On many points it may be so; nay, possibly, on all points but one. But that resource. Until such a policy shall have one, the question of taxation, is the cardinal lasted long enough to scare capital from our question of our day. The object of shifting shores, property will always be within reach, taxation from their own shoulders to the rich enough to yield abundantly to pressure, shoulders of their betters is an object for too helplessly overborne by numbers to raise which poor men will not long scruple to band a voice or an arm in self-defence. It will, no together. The question whether, in a country doubt, be a consolation to the gentlemen of where there are few rich and many poor, the property, who are now conveying away their poor shall use the power that theorists have political independence with such refined ingiven them to bleed the rich, is a question difference, to feel that they extended a that the very first Reformed Parliament will generous confidence' to their countrymen, be called upon to decide. We have already and that, if they sacrificed themselves, they pointed out how Mr. Gladstone, foreseeing, no at least redeemed the pledges of their. doubt, that this is the battle-field on which leaders. the classes of modern society must fight out It seems as if a mysterious fatality attended their hostile claims, has obligingly rolled and on this question of Reform. Nobody wishes levelled it in readiness. He has provided for it, and nobody dares resist it. Á malign both the hour and the man. By his Budget and inexplicable influence appears to have he has supplied the opportunity for the mastered the wills of our politicians, so that conflict; by his Reform Bill he has taken they vie with each other in professing objects care that there shall be champions to fight which they do not seek, and forwarding it. Next year there will be a colossal deficit, changes whose consequences they dread. which will cast even the deficit of the present Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor,' year into the shade. How is that deficit to might with truth be said, not now by one be met? Democracies, in spite of Mr. frail heroine, but by a whole class of sagaBright, are generally combative, and will not cious and practised rulers. Some dark spell, care, for the first year or two at least, to like the spell of a nightmare, seems to be on reduce the estimates. There will be nothing their tongues, and they are all engaged in for it but more and yet more income-tax. promoting and praising an undertaking of But the traders will not long endure-they which in heart their only wish is that it scarcely endure now-the income-tax as it should utterly miscarry. Lord John notostands. How easy it will be to silence all riously dislikes the change to which he is clamours, except those of the rich who will pledged. His colleagues reluctantly accept be practically unrepresented, by suppressing it, because they cannot do without him. Schedule D., and allowing the income-tax to His adversaries hardly dare resist it, for fear slide into a property-tax. Is there not the he should outbid them with the Radicals; Liverpool budget and the word of the great Parliament sullenly submits to it, because it prophet Bright to justify it? And then, cannot dispense with the Ministry; and the when the property-tax has been fairly set to Conservative majority of the nation wonderwork, what a mighty financial engine,' as ingly acquiesce, because every man of emiMr. Gladstone would say, it will prove? It nence is committed to it. The rise and will be a great occasion for a new set of progress of this Reform question-how it was reforms in the tariff. The precedent of the sown, and how it grew and spread, and how paper-duty will come most appositely to hand. every statesman successively was entangled in The tea, sugar, coffee, and corn duties have its withes--is one of the saddest tales in the already been condemned by the financiers of history of modern Parliamentary intrigues. the future. Talk not of the state of the It brings to light, more than any other exchequer or the difficulties of filling the question, the famine of principle that desovoid. Was the great financier of 1860 lates the land. One firm will, one fixed deterred by the state of his exchequer? The political belief, one hearty preference of conproperty-tax is at your elbow, ready and able viction before place, among the leaders of for any burden you may lay upon it. You parties, would have broken the fatal charm have nothing to do but to relieve industry-which is now compelling Parliament to i.e. the six-pound voter; and you may safely burden property-i.e. the swamped and outvoted landowner. It will be a halcyon era for Chancellors of the Exchequer. It will be a day of simple and straightforward budgets, free from financial difficulties or the claims of jostling interests. Every deficiency can be filled up, every difficulty made straight, by a single application to the one fathomless march on to its own destruction, with a perfect consciousness of the goal that lies before it. Like bankrupt governments, they have created political capital by an unlimited issue of pledges, and for a time their trade has flourished gaily; but the day of reckoning has come at last, and now the holders want gold for their notes. Perhaps the opposing leaders now see, when it is too late, that insincerity is never profitable but when | with the constitution of 1832. But from the it is practised only on one side. An antago- moment that his nominal adversary was nism of truth and uprightness, instead of an snatched away in the prime of a statesman's antagonism of false professions, would have energies, at the culmination of his great produced exactly the same results on the career, from that moment Lord John's forrelative strength of parties. tunes began to wane. He floundered from one blunder into another. The Durham letter and the quarrel with Lord Palmerston, laid the foundation of the feuds that have most embarrassed his subsequent course. Since that time the Irish Catholics have never ceased to revile him, and Lord Palmerston has missed no chance of tripping him up. But in proportion as his popularity decayed, his heart warmed again to the friend of his youth. Reform had made a great man of him once, and might possibly save him from sinking back into a small one. At all events, it would be an effective thorn in the side of his successor. Accordingly, when his Ministry was at its last gasp, he launched another Reform Bill. Probably he never attached any serious idea to the proposal; it was only a pastime of debate, a little statesman-like flirtation with a question which he never dreamt of really undertaking, The origin of the evil is no doubt due to Lord John Russell. Among many qualities which have procured for him a high position, both in the political and religious world, scrupulousness in his mode of obtaining office has never been conspicuous; and he has .never observed much ceremony in wafting himself over to the Treasury Bench by the help of a delusive cry. No one suffered from his indifference on the subject of political identity more acutely than Sir Robert Peel. Lord John, in the character of a patron of Catholics, ejected Sir Robert Peel from office in 1835; and in the character of patron of Tipperary Whiteboys, he ejected Sir Robert from office in 1846. But when once the object was attained, and the soft benches of office were pressed again by his congenial form, all allusion to the question that had brought him there was as impertinent in his eyes as an allusion to masks would be when the Carnival was over. Sir Robert Peel's views were in both cases exactly carried out. The Catholics got no Church plunder, and the Tipperary Boys were coerced-the only departure from the original programme being that the Minister who carried out this policy was named Russell, and not Peel. Sir Robert had a great insight into his rival's character. Perhaps it was derived from his actual experience in these cases of the tendencies of that character, or perhaps from Lord John's unequal solution of that difficult problem which most statesmen have tried their hands at, but in which all the rest have sadly broken down, of finding the exact moment at which a conversion on the subject of the Corn Laws could be profitably effected. From whatever source he derived his foresight, certain it is that in 1846 Sir Robert made a very remarkable prophecy with respect to Lord John's future career. Among other speculations as to the measures that the new Ministry might bring in, he was asked if he thought Lord John Russell would have recourse to another Reform Bill. No,' was the answer, 'he will not dream of it now; it is his last card-he will not play it yet: but whenever his Ministry shall be on the point of falling to pieces, then he will introduce a Reform Bill.' It is needless to say that the prediction was verified to the letter. So long as there was some sort of majority at his back, so long as the magnanimity of his ousted rival guarded him from his own followers and his own blunders, Lord John Russell was abundantly satisfied But The Whigs had collapsed, not in consequence of any external blow, but from absolute inanition of ability. It was reasonable to suppose that a grateful country, bearing in mind their superhuman efforts to govern the State for the last five years, without a spark of statesmanship, would abstain from laying again upon their shoulders the unequal burden of office for at least five or six years to come. Nothing could be safer, therefore, than a pledge that would act as a convenient missile against his opponents, but could not, for many years at least, rebound upon himself. he argued hastily from what he remembered of the strength of conservatives in the days of Sir Robert Peel. He then little knew Mr. Disraeli's unrivalled powers of conducting his party into the ditch. That favourite of misfortune was then only known as a debater, who had risen into eminence by his intense Protectionism and by the virtuous indignation with which he proscribed all statesmen who changed their minds; and his advent to power was looked for more with curiosity than with dread. No sooner, however, was the object of his ambition attained, than he went forth blundering and to blunder, on that career of disastrous leadership of which the recent majorities on the Budget are the latest fruit; and from that time it became evident that the Conservatives would have a long tenure of opposition and that Lord John's return to power was inevitable. Perhaps, when Lord John saw the calibre of the adversary with whom he had to deal, it occurred to him to wish that he had not said quite so much |