tuents, and only seek to escape the more swift wrath of the Minister. Triennial Parliaments ought most certainly to be substituted for septennial. The necessity of securing the electors by the plan of secret voting, seems at length to have forced itself on the minds of those formerly most reluctant to entertain the subject of the Ballot. To tenants this would assuredly afford no protection; it seems, however, clear that it would be some shelter to tradesmen; and the scenes at the last general election appear to show that some such protection is necessary, if town elections are to be other than a farce. But a large extension of the suffrage is the one thing needful; nor can any consistent Reformer feel very clearly in favour of the Ballot, while so few classes have the right to vote at all. The mere household qualification will clearly not suffice. That comprehends many of the least enlightened and least independent classes in society-persons always looking up to rank and fortune, and ever ready to square their conduct to the wishes of those who possess them; while it wholly excludes the better informed, more virtuous, and incomparably more independent, and less time serving class of workmen who have struggled to educate themselves, and are less beholden to their employers than these are to them. No one, however, can desire to let in any ignorant and profligate person merely because he is twenty-one years of age, and not insane or convicted of a crime. Therefore an education qualification seems on every account to be the fittest. Lord Brougham's Education Bill provides for this in all votes respecting school affairs, nor can there be conceived a reason why it should not be extended to Parliamentary elections. How far all or any of these salutary and even necessary improvements may be introduced into our new Parliamentary constitution within a few years, there are no means of conjecturing. The existing Government have declared against all further change. Arrogating to the authors of the Bill an infallibility never before ascribed to any men, and a power of foreseeing future events which no human being can be gifted with, they have decided that the unerring and prophetic wisdom of 1831 cannot be appealed from; and that all we now complain of must be endured, rather than alter a final measure, and charge its authors with the proneness to err, which had heretofore been imagined to be the lot of man. This delusion will continue as long as Members of Parliament shall regard their own personal interest in promotion and patronage as of more value to them than the favour of their constituents and the good will of the people at large. But, in the meantime, the confidence of the country is wholly alienated from its Government, and the representative body enjoys fully less of the public esteem and respect than those whom a few years ago, men of big professions and puny performance used to taunt with holding their power of making laws by an hereditary title. It would be well if their own election had bestowed a better spirit of conduct with a title supposed to be so much more valid. SPEECH. MY LORDS,-I feel that I owe some apology to your lordships for standing in the way of any noble lords* who wish to address you: but after much deliberation, and after consulting with several of my noble friends on both sides of the House, it did appear to us, as I am sure it will to your lordships, desirable, on many grounds, that the debate should be brought to a close this night; and I thought I could not better contribute to that end than by taking the present opportunity of addressing you. Indeed, I had scarcely any choice. I am urged on by the anxiety I feel on this mighty subject, which is so great, that I should hardly have been able to delay the expression of my opinion much longer; if I had, I feel assured that I must have lost the power to address you. This solicitude is not, I can assure your lordships, diminished by my recollection of the great talents and brilliant exertions of those by whom I have been preceded in the discussion, and the consciousness of the difficulties with which I have to contend in following such men. It is a deep sense of these difficulties that induces me to call for your patient indulgence. For although not unused to meet *The Marquess of Cleveland and several others had risen and given way. |