grade have no comprehension of the principles of politics, and none of that instinctive fine feeling which goes a long way towards supplying the place of knowledge and reflection. A gentleman can do nothing that is coarse, violent, or unjust. A man who is ignorant, narrow-minded, and vulgar will of necessity act according to his disposition. The favoured towns of Mr. Bright returned such an immense proportion of this description of persons at the last election, that the liberals themselves freely express in private society their disgust and alarm. The increase of their numbers in each successive Parliament is fraught with danger, for the stream cannot rise higher than its source, and the doings of the House of Commons will be in keeping with the nature of those who compose it.

The reason repeatedly urged for making the Reform Bill a sweeping measure was, that it was desirable that it should be final. Its opponents maintained that so extensive a change would give rise to further change. The prophecy has received a remarkable fulfilment. At a time when the immense majority of the community, who think on the subject at all, are opposed to the introduction of any further innovation, a reform of the old reform is to be attempted, because the mere fact that the precedent has once been set invites imitation. The legacy was bequeathed to the present Government by their predecessors, and we heartily wish they had declined to accept it; but if a Reform Bill there is to be, no Conservative can do otherwise than demand as its basis that

the power of property, which is too much diminished already, should be preserved intact. Concession after concession can only end in realising the plans of Mr. Bright, and in handing over the Government of England to the mob. To give and to give is soon to lose the power to refuse. There are evils which, if it were possible, it would be desirable to correct, but every one knows that reform with most persons means a further advance to democracy, which could only aggravate the evils which at present exist, and imperil the constitution.

The ideas of the Radical Reformers are those of the French Revolutionists, who proclaimed the doctrine of the Rights of Man.' It is said,' wrote Burke, when commenting upon the theory, that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for its second: to men who may reason calmly it is ridiculous. The will of the many and their interest must very often differ; and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice. A government of five hundred country attorneys and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight-and-forty millions.' The

end

end of representative government is not that every man should be governed according to his own will, but that the country should be governed well. A man has no more claim to a vote unless he has the intelligence to use it wisely than he has a claim to be Lord Chief Justice of England without possessing a knowledge of the laws. The same rule applies to the selection of the classes who are to return the members of Parliament as to the selection of judges. The persons in each case should be fitted for the office they are called upon to discharge. Not only are the masses disqualified by their ignorance of what is most conducive to their own welfare and that of the community, but to enfranchise the many is in reality to disfranchise the few. The votes of those who are possessed of property and intelligence will be swamped by the votes of the multitude, as is already the case in the metropolitan boroughs and a large part of the towns. The inhabitants of the better houses in Belgravia, Tyburnia, Marylebone, and Westminster have no influence in the choice of a member; and is there any one except the most extravagant democrat who would wish to see the majority of the representatives in Parliament composed of such men as are returned by Finsbury, Lambeth, and Westminster? As either the upper classes or the lower must have the turning weight in the Commons, the question is, whether the interests of the State will be best served by giving the preponderance to the first, or transferring it to the last. Mr. Bright objects to allowing the medical profession a special representative, because the occupation of the doctor is so onerous that he cannot pay much attention to politics. How much knowledge then of politics can be obtained by mechanics of very inferior education to the doctor, and who work full as many hours at their trade? They may talk of state affairs, but they do not understand them. To think much of politics, and not to think rightly, is merely a motive to be mischievously active. Those who have mixed with working men know how wild are many of their notions, from their never having mastered the most elementary propositions upon which the well-being of society depends. There will always be some who are gifted with an ability beyond their fellows, and whose mental energy overcomes the obstacles opposed by their position; but in the aggregate they are not, and by the ordinances of nature cannot be, qualified to give the law to the kingdom. To pronounce upon the questions involved in legislation requires as much a particular training as the trade of the mechanic himself. He is nearly as incompetent to form sound opinions upon politics as the members of the House of Lords would be to construct a steam-engine or a musket.

But men are not all intellect, nor are their conclusions often

the

the deductions of pure reason. Reason and knowledge regulate the understanding without absolutely subduing it, and if the impulses of the lower orders are considered, we are equally led to the inference that they ought not to be the predominant power in the State. Mr. Drummond has put the point with his usual force in his Letter to Mr. Bright:'

6

"Your chief panacea is that the members of the House of Commons should represent men, and not property. Now since property always was, always is, and always must be, in the hands of a few, and distress, poverty, starvation, wretchedness, suffering, cold, hunger, sickness, improvidence, and desperation the lot of the many, your plan, which you have taken from the Socialists and Chartists, is, that the members of the House of Commons should represent poverty, and not wealth. The necessary and inevitable consequences of this must instantly be that the poor will take possession of and divide the wealth amongst themselves: and the Chartists honestly avow and declare that all property is robbery. A feeling that this division ought to be made has been growing up amongst all classes of labourers in this country for several years; how long I do not know, but I first became aware of it about thirty years ago. In talking with some agricultural labourers, who in their youth had been smugglers, and were employed by persons on board the ships of the East India Company, I found them very sharp-witted gentlemen; and they informed me that in their opinion the country would never be happy until all the poor had their rights, and that these rights were, that each man should have five acres of land. I have since followed up these inquiries in other places, and have found that the same notion exists everywhere. Amongst the operatives in the manufacturing districts the object is, not five acres of land, but a share in the profits of their employers; they have adopted the French expression, and say they will be no longer proletaires--that their masters are merely fellows with money, and that these masters are making money out of their brains-that the improvements which are daily made in machinery are never invented by the masters, but by the operatives, whilst the masters reap all the advantages. You are going to give 1,000,000 of these men equal power to send members to the House of Commons with the 1000 masters who possess the mills.'

That these socialist ideas have spread at home as well as abroad is an undoubted fact. As manufacturers do not mix with their men, as landlords do with their poorer neighbours, they know little of what the operatives say or think, but they are sufficiently informed of the views of the persons they employ, to be terrified at the proposition of Mr. Bright. He speaks to the mob; the majority of the mill-owners, we are informed, regard his scheme with alarm. Unfortunately, manufacturers are so absorbed in mercantile pursuits that, with the exception of a few busy agitators, who advocate change, they are usually inert on political subjects, and they will not act with a vigour proportioned to their fears. They forget too, perhaps, that the greatest

danger

The crisis would be

danger is not in prosperous times. when a general election fell, as in the natural course of events it sooner or later inevitably must, in a period of distress. The pressure of poverty would then prevail over every other consideration, and no scheme would be thought too wild and no remedy too desperate. What sort of House of Commons would then be returned? What incurable wounds would be inflicted on the Constitution, and the whole order of society, in those moments of frenzy! When the vessel is riding in smooth waters, it may hold together, but it is the storm which tries the ship. There are many who profess to trust in what they call the unfailing good sense of the people of England. The good sense of the multitude nevertheless is liable to interruptions, and on various occasions the property of the mill-owners has only been saved from destruction by the employment of force. The same causes would produce the same dissatisfaction, and the towns would send representatives to Parliament who, to use the expression of the Duke of Wellington, would revolutionise the country by due course of law. Even if it were admitted that the instinct which seeks to preserve property was as selfish as the instinct which seeks to seize it, it would still be true that the one instinct is honest, the other immoral; that the one is safe, the other destructive; that the one is conducive to the welfare of mankind, and that the other would result in universal confusion. This confusion, indeed, is a condition of things which can never subsist long. A nation prefers despotism to the liberty which means freedom to plunder, and it is for the sake of security to property that France not only endures but welcomes at this moment an absolute ruler. So it is that extremes meet. In the attempt to extend freedom further than the circumstances of mankind permit, it is lost altogether. America, which as yet has escaped any other despotism than that of the mob, is already a warning and not an example, and, except for the outlet which is afforded by her vast territory for enterprise, the results would be probably disastrous to her stability. It is when her unquiet spirits and needy adventurers are pent up in boundaries which admit no further extension, that her constitution will be put to its real strain. Mr. Roebuck admits that we are the best governed nation in the world. To what purpose, then, should we assimilate our system to that of a country which is far worse governed than our own?

For what practical end, indeed, we may ask, is Reform demanded, and what are the advantages we hope to obtain to counterbalance its dangers? The former Bill, combined with the power of the press, has proved effectual to secure every popular concession which had a plausible reason for it. Municipal Reform followed immediately upon general Reform. Slavery

has

has been abolished, the limitation of the hours of Factory labour has been enforced, the Corn and Navigation Laws have been repealed, the Income Tax and Succession Duty have been imposed, the Stamp on newspapers has been done away, education has been promoted by large annual grants-all of them measures which were designed, together with several others, for the especial benefit and relief of the lower orders. So much are the working classes considered in our system of finance that they are more lightly taxed than any people in Europe. What hardship continues to exist from any indisposition of the legislature to remove it? If abuses are dragged into light, are they not immediately redressed? Is there a social grievance which Parliament, as at present constituted, is not anxious to remedy, and which it does not rectify as soon as the disease has been demonstrated and a cure has been found? That able men cannot get into the House of Commons with the same facility as formerly, that the character of the members is lowered, that Governments are weaker and are less able to act upon their convictions, are great disadvantages, and may become much greater still. But these are not the evils which trouble Mr. Bright or his disciples. Their proposals can only extend and intensify the mischief, and any measure will be hurtful in the same degree in which it proceeds in the direction he has indicated, or, in other words, which takes the power of returning members from those who possess property and education, and gives it to those who have neither.

A readjustment of the representation may be unobjectionable, if, as we have before observed, the balance between the towns and the counties be not destroyed, but the attempt will be attended with innumerable difficulties, and nothing will be gained in the end. Anything approaching to a democratic measure would certainly fail to win the support of those who are seeking to overthrow the Ministry, and would as certainly provoke the opposition of a large section of the Conservative party. Parties cannot exist unless they show some submission to their leaders. Combination, without compromise, is an impossibility. It is only when the fundamental principles of the party are violated that it becomes indispensable for its adherents to abandon those who have abandoned them. The Conservatives have never displayed either a want of docility or a want of independence. They would not support Sir Robert Peel when he proposed his bill for Catholic Emancipation or the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and neither, without belying all their acts and opinions, could they support a Reform Bill which would diminish what remains of territorial influence. Recently broken up and split into sections, there is a natural desire to re-unite and to avoid