THE ENGLISH REFORM BILL. [From the Times, March 4.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 932, 8 July 1854, Page 4

THE ENGLISH REFORM BILL. [From the Times, March 4.]

It is generally admitted that, whatever a man bas to do, he is himself the best judge as to the manner of doing it. From having his eye upon ! the object before him, and seeing the difficulties in his way, he knows best the time, place, and 1 other circumstances which give him the fairest chance of success. Government will have the benefit of this rule in the conduct of the Reform Bill, and it was given them last night by those whose opinions were worth anything on the subject. A month ago they were told they were bringing on their Reform Bill too fast, and now they are told, especially by that discreet and consistent gentleman the member for Westminster, that they are too slow. Then they are told that, if they postpone their measure vow, they ought to have postponed it two months ago, and will put themselves under a similar obligation to pos/pone it indefinitely. For our part, we hold it very difficult to say exactly when the bill ought to come on. Confessedly, it is a measure that will occupy the public mind, or, at least, ought to occupy the public mind, when it is once in debate ; and therefore it is not a measure to be discussed in ihe midst of preparations for war, or with war actually ragiug about us. At the opening of the session there was too much probability of war, but not enough to justify Government in departing from the pledge they had given to bring in a measure of Parliamentary Reform. Now the case is different. An ultimatum is on its way to St. Petersburgh, and it is not only possible, but most likely that, before the end of the month the rejection of that ultimatum will have put us in a state of actual war. What that means every man fifty years old knows too well. It implies daily accounts of bloody encounters by sea and by laxid, sometimes- triumphant, sometimes disastrous —

perhaps simple and glorious, perhaps mysterious and provoking. They that know little of war, except through some popular compendium of history, know little of the stern, dismal, and disagreeable stuff wbich.forms its chief-rnaieriaL even where England is one of the parties. They'know little how the patience is tried and the feelings hanowed by long and ineffective blockades, by frightful shipwreck, by dreadful epidemics, by fruitless puisuits, by protracted sieges, by tedious marches, by sanguinary collisions, by unprofitable victories, by ill-disguised defeats, by disastrous retreats, by enormous waste of men and of money, by the inexplicable conduct of allies, and other calamities which take possession of the public I mind, to the exclusion of every domestic object. I Suppose the case of three or four of our ships foundering in tbe Baltic, or running ashore under hostile batteries, aud being captured by tbe enemy — in what mood would the country be for settling the conditions of the £6 household suffrage, or deciding the limits of the new metropolitan borough ? Or suppose that a division of the English army were cut off, and a regiment of the Guards } among them, would the British public care one straw whether Chichester returned one member ior two, or none at all ? We are certain that it ! would not, and that the whole cause of reform would be rendered ridiculous by its inevitable comparison with a subject involving the honour of tbe. country, tbe lives of thousands, and the cheerfulness of every hearth in the empire Time and tide wait for no man, and war is not less exigent and peremptory. Indeed there is nothing that will wait so little. Should the end of the month leave us at war, it will be necessary to issue orders to every part of the world, and to go strait at the most vital portions of our huge, blustering and unwieldy antagonists. Not a day should be lost in striking home, on the largest, most terrible, and therefore ultimately tbe most merciful scale. But, supposing the thunderbolts of war fairly launched, and two thousand heavy guns in either sea ready to pour a torrent of destruction on the boasted fortification of the foe, — ■ in that dreadful pause, when the fate of an empire hangs on the balance, the public will have no heart to consider the nice question of representing minorities or the merits of a savings'"bank suffrage. One of tbe great peculiarities of war is the perfect sympathy between those who stay at home with those who go to battle. The gentleman and the cottager alike go with the son or the neighbour engaged in the bloody strife. For the time, the warrior leads and tbe civilian follows. If the Reform Bill is likely to be discussed with such spirit in the camp or tbe fleet, and if the hardships of a march, or the tediousness of a cruise can be beguiled with electoral districts, qualifications, and schedules, then will these topics bo interesting at home, but certainly not otherwise. If we go to war wo shall all go to war : and we shall go to war with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. That heart and that mind are much too finite for the reception of more than ont subject of overwhelming 1 interest. That this is no merely abstract and philosophical account of the effect of war upon the mind of a nation will appear from the simple fact that Parliamentary Reform^inj/oduced by Lord Grey and Pitt himielf before tbe breaking out of ihe French Revolution, nevertheless remained in almost entire abeyance till that war was concluded, and did not acquire force enough to result in actual legis- | htion till sixteen years after the termination of the war. Bat the test has been already applied, and, before a blow has been struck, we have had tbe opportunity of seeing the comparative interest felt by the British public in the question of nathnnl | honour and that of Parliamentary Reform. Not a soldier has left for the East, by night or by day i but he has been escorted by thousands of all classes in succession from the gate of his barrack to the open sea. We will venture to say, that neither in the shouts of the multitude, nor in the remarks of the calmest and most philosophical spectators, was rbe subject of Parlinmentary Rei form ever once mentioned. Certainly, we have ! heard no groans for the boroughs in schedule A, no cheering for the £6 householders, no demonstration for the Inns of Court, or cries for an educational suffrage. Indeed, we much suspect that if, when tbe Scots fusiliere were issuing from the gate of Buckingham Palace on their way to (he station, a Chartist had taken the opportunity of recommending his fire points to the attention of the twenty thousand persons there assembled, he would scarcely have met wilh even proper civility at their hands. Certainly a liitle more attention might have been expected, and, instead of Ministers having reason to dread the postponement of the bill, tbey have rather cause to be annoyed that it has created so little enthusiasm on tbe part of the classes it is intended to benefit. If Sir John Shelly had been able to get up a large display "of metropolitan enthusiasm for the pend- \ ing measnre, he vould not have reason to complain that Government was allowing it to cool — that it was deferring the hopes and sickening the hearts of his patriotic constituents, and baulking their reasonable expectations. But he cannot pretend anything of the kind. They don't seem to care about the bill so much as they "ought to do, not because they don't know it to be a very good bill, but because at this moment their animosity is more against the Czar than against the boroughmongers, and tbey would rather see one Russian frigate brought a prize into port thin hear that fifty small boroughs had been disfranchised. Sir John Shelley knows this very well, and yet he can talk the platform rant about "bamboozling reformers," and the superior wisdom of '* SOWSS 0W S t0 tue country upon the bill." Only think of going to the country on a Reform Bill at a moment when our fleets might be scattered on the ocean, our armies surrounded, our alliance broken up, and our politics complicated with unexpected difficulties ! Such random talk really means that a man, being under the necessity of saying something or other to prove his existence to his constituents, adopts the vulgar rule of distinguishing himself by the most startling and parodoxical stuff that he can cram into five minutes' speech. We will venture to say that he meets with no response worth having. Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Phinn, and Mr. Hume, are much more earnest and consistent reformers, and they are guile satisfied ; so Sir John Shelley surely need be under uo alarm.