claim to the franchise a legal right to its exercise. Yet what is the fact? Why, that out of a collective population of twentyeight millions of persons in the United Kingdom, the total number of the electoral body, according to the largest latitude to which they can be stretched, is less than a million—or less than one in thirty of the entire population! To call this an actual representation is a perversion of terms; for, after making all the necessary deductions for children, paupers, and criminals, the electoral body does not contain more than one in ten of the persons who are morally entitled to enjoy, and perfectly well qualified to exercise that right, both from their general share in contributing to the revenue of the country through taxation, and in their equal competency with those who do belong to the electoral body to discharge all its duties.

Limited Area of Operation.

The second defect of the Reform Bill is, that it is not sufficiently comprehensive in the habitable area or surface of the country which it brings within its operation. Many thousands of persons of intelligence and property, of excellent morals and unquestionable competency, are excluded from the enjoyment of the franchise, for no better reason than that they live beyond a certain arbitrary line of boundary, instead of within it ;—as if a man had not the same interest in the good government of the country, and the same stake in its welfare, whether he lived in a villa in the suburbs, or within the heart of an enfranchised borough. But while thousands are thus excluded from the franchise because they live a few yards beyond the boundary of a borough town, millions are excluded from any share in the electoral privilege because the town in which they live has only eight or ten thousand inhabitants,

while many places of less than half that amount of population continue to have still, under this Reform Bill, one or two members;-as if the population of a small town had not as great an interest in the good government of a country as the population of a large one;-and as if all men, possessing an equal degree of property, intelligence, or whatever else was made the qualification for voting, ought not, in justice, to enjoy an equal share in the choice of representatives, whether they lived in a large town or a small one-a village, or a separate dwelling apart from any congregated habitations whatever. And yet it is known that millions are so excluded from the enjoyment of the franchise, for no better reasons than these.

Injustice of Property Qualification.

The third defect in the Reform Bill is, in its making property or rental the standard of qualification:-first, because of the total want of affinity between the nature of the qualification and the nature of the trust to be discharged; next, from the extremely fluctuating value of such a standard; and, thirdly, from the extensive temptations which it offers to fraud and misrepresentation.

The trust to be discharged by an elector is that of choosing, out of any number of candidates presenting themselves to his choice, the person or persons whom he may conscientiously prefer to represent his wishes, and guard his interests in the legislature of the country. The qualification demanded for the exercise of this trust is, in counties, a freehold property worth forty shillings a year, or a farm tenantcy-at-will of fifty pounds a year; and in such towns as have representatives, the occupation of a dwelling-house or other premises, of the clear annual value of ten pounds. The very diversity of these

standards must strike every one at the first glance as unjust, considering that each entitles the owner, tenant, or occupier, to exactly the same number of votes, though the relative values of the standards are so different. If property were really made the qualification for voting, as it is among the proprietary body of the East India Company, or of Railways, and many other large public establishments, where directors are chosen to represent and guard the interests of the proprietors, as members of Parliament are chosen to represent and guard the interests of electors, the practice, to be consistent with the theory, ought to allow the voters an increased number of votes in some ascending ratio in proportion to their property, or to the amount of their stake in the concern, which is actually done in the public institutions referred to. But when this argument is pressed, the idea of property being the real qualification is abandoned;—and it is alleged that the forty shilling freehold, the fifty pound tenantey, and the ten pound rental, are all taken as presumptive proofs that the persons holding them are possessed of the requisite degree of intelligence and independence to exercise the franchise, and therefore it is given to them.

But who is there, knowing anything of the agricultural population, that does not smile at the idea of the requisite intelligence being indicated by the forty shilling freeholds, or the requisite independence being indicated by the fifty pound tenantey-at-will? it being matter of notoriety that among the former are hundreds who can neither read nor write, and who must consequently be shut out from all political knowledge whatever; and that among the latter there is not one in a hundred who dare vote for any other candidate than the one approved and patronised by his landlord, under pain of being ejected from his farm, and himself and his family ruined? Even in the ten pound occupancies of the boroughs,

the dependence of the poor tenant on his rich landlord, in very many instances, subjects him to a rise of rent, or warning to quit, unless he votes as such rich landlord may desire.

Uncertainty of a Property Qualification.

The fluctuation in the standard of value is another unavoidable evil in such a qualification as this. Not only are the scale, size, and rental of dwellings totally different in different boroughs-making what is a very high qualification in one town a very low one in another-but in years of varying prosperity or adversity, the capacity of the occupants to pay a fixed rental being greater or less according to circumstances, changes are perpetually occurring in the occupancy of dwellings, which cannot possibly affect the moral competency of the elector to discharge his trust, though he may live in a house of eight pounds rental this year, instead of a house of ten pounds rental which he occupied the year before; and as it cannot affect his moral competency, so neither ought it to diminish his legal right. On this subject a pleasant story is told by Franklin, which is sufficiently apposite to be introduced here.

It is said that in the elections of one of the New England states, the property qualification required in an elector was the possession of land, house, cattle, or other substance, of the clear value of twenty pounds. An elector, who followed the humble but useful occupation of a market-gardener, possessed a valuable ass, on which he transported his produce to market; and in the registry of his name, as an elector, he entered this useful animal, which was of the full value of twenty pounds, as his qualification. He had voted on this for several years, without question or objection; but it unfortunately happened that, on the day preceding the last election,

the ass met with an accident and was killed. Its possessor, hardly supposing that this would make any difference in his own position as a voter, repaired to the polling-booth on the following morning, and tendered his vote; but the friends of the opposite candidate having communicated the fact of the death of his ass to the officer appointed to receive the votes, the voter was rejected, on the ground of his qualification being void. On hearing this, the man exclaimed--"Well! I had always thought the vote was mine, since I alone had the determination of how it should be disposed of; but it is clear to me now, that the vote belonged to the ass, and not to myself, and I must have acted as trustee for my donkey. If the vote had been mine, I could have exercised it to-day, as on all former occasions; as I have the same interest in making a good choice, and the same capacity to do it. But the ass being dead, and the vote becoming extinct with him, what can be more certain than this-that the vote was the ass's?-for on no other supposition can it be rejected.”

The absurdity of a property qualification for the exercise of the electoral franchise, cannot be more fairly exemplified than by such a case as this.

Temptations to Fraudulent Practices.

The extensive temptations which the selection of this standard offers to fraud and misrepresentation is even a still greater evil than either of the former. It is well known that what are called "fagot-votes" are created in great numbers, among the landed gentry, by cutting up large parcels of land into small forty shilling freeholds, and conveying them to dependents, for no other purpose than to create votes. In England some of the Tory nobility and gentry have signalised themselves as the patrons of this sort of qualification.