MR. BRIGHT ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 156, 19 April 1859, Page 4

MR. BRIGHT ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

THE following report of Mr. Bright's speech on Parliamentary Reform* delivered at the City Hall, Glasgow, on the evening of the the 21st December, is taken from the Liverpool Mercury: — "The appearance of Mr. Bright on the platform was the signal for nearly the whole of the immense audience rising simultaneously and cheering and waving their hats and handkerchiefs with an enthusiasm rarely heard or witnessed in the City Hall of Glasgow. "The chairman (Mr. Walter Buchanan, M.P. for Glasgow), in a short speech, introduced Mr. Bright. " Mr. Bright, on rising, was again greeted with loud cheers. He commenced by saying that when he looked at the great meetings at which he had been lately present, he asked, what was the great question which stirred the hearts of his countrymen ? Was it some phantom which they could never overtake? He believed that they toad some great object which had brought < them together that evening : they were there to discuss the great question of Parliamentary Reform. Let him remind them that when they discussed the reform of the House of Commons they discussed by far the most important branch of the Legislature, which was not only consistent with liberty, but was inseparable from liberty in this country. William Perm gave this definition of liberty —that country is a free country where the laws rule, and the people make the laws. In the discussion of this question (said Mr. Bright) we are in a very different position than when I was here before. Now it is allowed that we have figures on our side. Now nobody gets up to tell us from the multiplicationtable that the people of England are fairly represented in the House of Commons. The •whole body of the electors of the United Kingdom amount to one-sixth of the people, and one-sixth of that number of electors return half the members of the United Kingdom. Mr. Bright then proceeded to give some illustrations of the inequality ot the representation. Everybody sees, he said, that Parliament sitting half the year must do something ; but perhaps it would be impossible to devise an instrument more clumsy and more untrustworthy for the purpose for which it exists. There are constituencies numbering—one as low as 86 members, and many of no more than 200. To use a common expression, they can scarcely keep themselves warm. A few lawyers and nobodies can send up the member, who has, perhaps, no principle at all but where to find a pleasant lounge. The House of Commons does not respond to the sympathies of the people, but is more in unison with the ruling classes, their interests and prejudices. To-morrow morning some, critic, pen in hand, will be saying that numbers ought not to be the test of constituencies, but that property ought also to be taken into consideration. Mr. Bright then proceeded to show that 101 boroughs in England and Ireland returned 126 members, and Edinburgh and Glasgow, with a greater amount of taxable property, returned only four members. His experience led him to the conclusion that whatever test they took they would come to the same startling results, that these great interests were inadequately represented in the House of Commons. He had a great suspicion of those who were constantly saying something should be done, yet always raising objections to those who tried to do anything. He was told that the sentiments he expressed at Birmingham had been considerably modified, but if his first speech and the speech •at Ediriburgh were compared, he defied any one to state he had abandoned' any principle which he had first stated. Nearly thirty years ago the sentiments he had uttered were proclaimed by Lord Durham. His opinions were not novel—they were the same which Lord Grey brought before the House of Commons in the year 1797What is the change which is to stamp everybody? It is that the franchise shall be lowered so as to take in the persons and the houses which are rated for the support of the poor. One reason why he proposed the extension of the franchise was, that every working man who was liable to have weekly earnings taxed had a right to be accounted a citizen, and was entitled to the rights of citizenship. It had been objected to this argument, that in England persons had votes according to the amount of their property—a plan which it was said might work locally, but would be monstrous if applied to elections of members of the legislature. Some electors had one vote, and some as many as six. He, however, should not continue such a law, but propose to give one vote only to each person registered as electors. In Scotland he had learnt that lodgers in certain large cities who paid annually a sum of £10 or more could claim to vote for members of Parliament. This was an excellent provision, and he saw no reason why this should not be extended to England. In England they had a considerable advantage over Scotland in the county franchise—they had the 40s. franchise; and he did not think the safety j of the empire would be endangered by extending the same principle to Scotland. | Mr. Bright next referred to the question of the ballot. In the county of Lancaster, from which he came, all those who hoped for the franchise would, he believed, implore that they should not receive it without the ballot. He could not understand why any man could oppose the ballot. The rich man, tha intellectual man, and the religious man would still naturally possess great influence; but the power of the unscrupulous man would be more readily checked in this way than in any other. In thousands of cases, by solicitation, the votes were virtually enforced from the electors. There was no proposition submitted to the public in England received with such favour as that the ballot shall I form a part of the new Reform Bill. The !

next point to which Mr. Bright referred was the distribution of seats in Parliament. What should be done with such a borough as Glasgow ? Would they go on returning the same number of members, while equal populations elsewhere were returning 80 or 100 members, as the case might.be? He was not prepared to say where the line should be drawn, or if what he was likely to propose would be adopted. Itwas possible to make a great change in the representation and yet to make no improvement. It was quite possible that the Government might propose a measure that would leave representation in a more unsatisfactory condition than at present. It was his opinion that there could be no fair acceptable representation of the people except on the basis he had stated. A real measure of Reform was as much wanted for the safety and security of the middle classes as for the working-classes. Some years ago it was said that public meetings were dangerous, but now political meetings were common, and yet the public safety was never more secure. When he was here before, at that time one noble lord said that he would leave the country if the Corn Laws were repealed; but, as a labourer pithily said, he could not take his land with him. This, as Jeremiah Bentham said, was the hobgoblin method of argument. He was told'by a gentleman in Edinburgh that the method of election by voting as he proposed would raise the number of electors from 8000 to 17,000 and in Glasgow of course it would be considerably more. He appealed to the generosity of electors to do justice to their poorer countrymen. He utterly mistook them if they did not signally show their gratitude for that act of justice. He spproved of the extension of the suffrage, as having a natural and inevitable tendency to improve the morality of the people by increasing their self-respect. He believed that when they invited the great body of artizans into the electoral body, they gave them the means of improving their condition more than any other of those means so frequently brought before the public. He would now speak of a system in Scotland, and not against landlords, from whom he had received many kindnesses —the monopoly of the land. Why should that description of property not be as free as shops and houses ? They might travel for a whole, day over an extent of country which belonged only to one man, who could not be expected to perform the duties of proprietor to such a vast extent of property. The few tenants could never expect to possess any portion of it. He did not desire to force landlords to divide their properties, but he opposed the laws of entail and primogeniture as being unjust. The agricultural population had no chance of rising in the world ; they were bound as free men, and those in the towns were especially bound, through their representatives, to apply the principles of political economy to land as freely as they applied them to other descriptions of property. Mr. Disraeli said on more than one occasion that our representation depended on policy—meaning our foreign policy. Our past foreign policy involved the country in paying £28,000,000 annually, as interest on the National Debt ; and our present foreign policy in spending £22,000,000 annually, for the support of our military and naval establishments. He did not intend to speak of foreign policy just now ; but there was a diplomacy which the people were told they could not understand, and in which a great many lords were employed. Our foreign ministers have drifted us into a great many wars, and if not prevented would do so again. He had often compared in his own mind the people of England and the people of Egypt, and the monuments of Egypt to our Foreign Office. We have, indeed, no obelisks or columns such as those on the banks of the Nile, but in the Foreign Office of England you will find a mystery as great, a superstition as fearful, and a loathsomeness as horrible as among the ancient tombs of the Egyptians. The people knew nothing of the foreign policy of their rulers, and yet that policy had wrought innumerable wrongs and caused sufferings and calamities, the extent of which was only recorded on the tablets of the eternal God. The people were not permitted to know how those wars were brought about. He was told that the people were as proud of the late war as their governors, and more so than the House of Lords, who were grieved at it. But if so, all he knew was that they never told their crrief. It was a striking thing to observe the delusions which many people in the world lived under, and their subrnissiveness to those delusions. He hoped that an improved representation would place the secret and irresponsible power of the Foreign Office under the influence of Parliament. They were so delighted with the real freedom they enjoyed, that the Government extracted from the people a far greater amount of money than was ever raised from any nation on the face of the earth. What he wanted was, that all the people should examine these questions thoroughly, for it was of groat consequence to the % prosperity of the nation. Though the working men paid no taxes at all, and they were entirely paid by the employing class, yet the subtraction of so much wealth diminished the fund for the employment of labour, and thus affected the condition of the working people. In conclusion, he said he was not there to set class against class. He implored the middle and working classes to unite their powers on this question of representative reform. He had spent man)' years of his life in advocating freedom of trade, and he hoped yet to see the bounds of freedom made broader in many other directions. He loved his country, he loved his freedom, and it was because he believed that freedom could only be maintained by means of a fair system of representation that he was there that night to address the citizens of Glasgow, and to ask their support."