and the like-may be safely referred over to the deliberative wisdom of the house of commons, chosen under the new system, and by the new constituency.

Before adverting particularly to the basis of the elective qualification, let us endeavour to obtain clear ideas relative to those who have hitherto exercised the franchise. We do not allude to the boroughmongers, about whom there can be neither mistake nor mystery, but principally to voters in corporate, and what are termed open boroughs. By observing the manner in which these have exercised their privilege, we shall be better enabled to judge by whom, and in what manner, it can be most advantageously exercised in future.

The boroughs which return members are of three sorts; first, the close, pocket, or marketable boroughs, in which the power of returning the members is exercised by one or two individuals; secondly, the corporation boroughs, in which the members are returned by a dozen or two of self-elected corporators; thirdly, the open boroughs, in which the members are returned by voters, varying in number from 500 to 8 or 10,000.

Although the number of voters in the several descriptions of boroughs is so different, there are, in fact, with the exception of London, and perhaps one or two more places, only two mediums through which the members obtain their seat; namely, from personal connexion with the patron, and, open or indirect purchase, by money or money's worth. In this consists the glaring and unequalled defect of our representative system, and which renders it immeasurably inferior to that of a neighbouring kingdom.

In France the number of electors amounts to 80,000; the new law proposes to double this number, which is much too narrow a basis long to satisfy the people of that country. In England the number of electors, who actually voted for members of the house of commons, in 1830, has been calculated to amount to 87,000, which is rather more than the number of electors in France; but mark the difference in the two systems of representation. What class, interest, or section of society do the English electors represent? None; not a single social element, either of property, number, or intelligence. For the most part they are in the lowest state of indigence, non-resident, and the hireling tools of the candidates. Contrast these with the conditions under which the French constituency exercise their suffrages. First, the BALLOT excludes corruption and intimidation; and every elector, according to his judgment, may be supposed to vote for the man best qualified to advance the general interests: he can have no other motive ; his only grounds for preferring one person to another must be public, not personal to himself, like those of the English elector. Secondly, the French electors comprise nearly the entire proprietary and intelligence of the community; they consist of householders, retailers, shopkeepers, and of the classes more opulent than these: hence they embody, either directly, or through dependence on the working classes, the chief interests of the community.

But these are not the only points of contrast between the two countries in France there is no richly-endowed Church nor Aristocracy to make head against; there are no interests like the Bank, or East-India company, or West-India planters, or brewers, or old chartered corporations to counterpoise. The constitution of society is essentially democratic; there is no monied aristocracy, nor landed interest: having no primogeniture or entail laws, property is more equally divided. Hence it is, that a much smaller body of electors in France would adequately represent and sustain the interests of the community, than would be adequate to similar purposes in England: for it must be borne in mind, that the excellence of any system of representation does not consist in the number of voters, but in the unbiassed and incorrupt exercise of their suffrages, and in their being sufficiently numerous to touch on, and constitute a fair and aliquot proportion of every social interest.

After duly considering the points we have indicated, the reader will not be at a loss to account for the different results presented in the history of the French chamber of deputies and the English house of commons, though both deriving their origin from an elective basis of similar extent, but differently constituted, differently exercised, and with widely different interests to contend against. To these discrepances in the two countries we have thought it expedient to advert, because it is highly probable, that reference will be made to the limited constituency of France, as an argument for a contracted plan of parliamentary reform, which would be neither suited to the peculiarities of our domestic organization, nor adequate to meet the just expectation of the people. Let us now return to the boroughs, and first, of the absolutely rotten ones, such as the following, out of scores more, present an example :

These, no doubt, were formerly the metropolitan towns of the country, the hives of industry and population, which have exchanged

condition with Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool. The population mentioned above is generally that of the entire parish; the borough which exercises the right of returning the two members being seldom more than a few miserable huts. There is in all these cases but one real voter, the patron, who is generally the lord of the manor; in some instances, as Gatton and Old Sarum, there are literally no inhabitants beyond the bailiff or steward of the estate; and in others, though the population may amount to a few hundreds, the nominal voters seldom exceed twenty,--creatures of the proprietor.

About disfranchising such places there cannot exist the smallest hesitation; such ghosts and mockeries of towns and cities ought long ago to have been struck out of the national representation, which has been the case with others that formerly sent members to parliament. But it is alleged, by some, the proprietors-usurpers or robbers would be a more appropriate term-ought first to receive compensation. A borough is reckoned to produce its owner about £3000 a year, the seats being worth £1500 per annum. About £60,000 might, therefore, be the value of the franchise to the patron. And at this rate it is proposed to buy up out of the produce of the taxes, all the decayed boroughs in the kingdom. What a suggestion! The Boroughmongers have been realizing £3000 per annum by the exercise of the franchises of the people; from the same cause, they, and their families, and connexions have long been in the annual receipt of immense sums, in pensions, salaries, and sinecures; and now they wish to sell the fee-simple of their robberies, and receive a full equivalent for the plunder they may hereafter lose by the interruption of their depredations. In lieu of compensation, ought they not to refund? What compensation did the thieves and cut-purses of the metropolis receive for the losses sustained by the introduction of the new police? To buy the boroughs-the people's rights, would be to consecrate the vilest injustice, and quite as pernicious in precedent as the ancient blackmail, or compounding with the purloiners of bankers' parcels.

What compensation has any other class of society received for losses sustained by the progress of social improvement? Here is a great measure of national reform about to be introduced, and certain individuals will be damnified thereby. Very well; similar vicissitudes have befallen other sections of the community, and what compensation have they received? What compensation has been awarded to the hundreds of thousands plunged in distress and penury by the introduction of machinery? What compensation has been awarded to the sufferers by the Bank Restriction Act, and the restoration of the currency? What compensation have the publicans obtained for losses incurred by the opening of the beer-trade? What compensation has the poor Irish peasantry received, ejected from their homes under the operation of the Sub-letting Act? None, none; neither would we grant any compen

Letter to H. Brougham, Esq. M.P. for Yorkshire, on the State of the Representation, p. 24.

sation to the rot-ocracy. We would award to them the same act of grace and mercy that we would award to the West-India slaveholders; they should have a bill of indemnity for past crimes, and they ought to be truly thankful for that.

Next, let us advert to the CORPORATION BOROUGHS, in which the franchise is monopolized by a small corporation, consisting generally of less than twenty-four persons. Many of these corporators have become posssessed of the elective right to the exclusion of the great bulk of their fellow- townsmen, by nothing less than direct usurpation. In the time of Charles II. when a design to establish despotism was entertained, the rights of these towns were taken away by a manœuvre. A book was written by Dr. Brady, to prove that the word commonalty in a charter meant corporation; and in pursuance of this new doctrine the committees of the house of commons, in the course of about twenty years, deprived the inhabitants of a great number of boroughs of their elective rights, limiting them to the select corporation in each town.

As the members of such corporations were generally tradesmen of the place they have been easily subdued by the influence of a neighbouring peer, or wealthy commoner, upon whose support they depended. Friends and relatives, in some cases persons of the lowest condition of life, and even menial servants, have been elected members of such corporations; and these have, in their turn, elected other creatures of their patron, to succeed to vacant places. There are many corporations of this kind which appear to have been instituted as a convenient machinery, by which the elective interest of a patron might be securely managed; the greater number of their members residing at a distance, and visiting the place only to make members of parliament. When the right is vested in freemen, chosen by these corporations, the case is very little altered; as the freedom is seldom conferred upon any individual on whose support the influential party cannot depend. Even plain right has often been arbitrarily denied; and should the favoured persons incline to change their opinions, a host of freemen are admitted on the spur of the occasion to counterbalance their number. Where the right of election has extended beyond these narrow limits to the inhabitants paying scot and lot, the right of persons unfavourable to the influential party, has been successfully defeated, by omitting to rate them to the parish taxes; and friendly magistrates have been found to sanction the omission, though the rejected persons formed the most wealthy portion of the parish. Attempts have been made, from time to time, to open these boroughs, by petitioning the house of commons; but the enormous expense of the prosecution of a petition places redress out of the reach of poor persons.

In dealing with these little nests of corruption, there can certainly exist as little hesitation, as in blotting out of the representation the pocket boroughs of peers and rich commoners. The elective franchise ought to be restored to the inhabitants generally; and the same course ought to be pursued in respect to those boroughs, in themselves populous, but in which the franchise is absurdly confined to the holders of

BURGAGE TENURES, mostly few in number, but conferring the only right of voting that exists in the place. In very early times, all the burgesses who held houses or lands within the borough, were entitled to vote. This has been gradually abridged under various pretexts, but chiefly through parliamentary decisions, and the intrigues of corporations. As the right of sending representatives has been for some centuries regarded as an immunity, it has been restricted to the ancient limits of the place which originally enjoyed it; these limits being often very narrow, wealthy individuals easily acquired the entire real property of the borough; and if the suffrage was confined to burgageholds, controlled the exercise of it, by conferring on their friends, relatives, and dependent, the right of property during the election. All such boroughs must necessarily be included in the condemned list, and be either totally disfranchised, or the franchise spread over a wider basis.

The last class of boroughs is, those termed "OPEN," such as Bristol and Liverpool. These are, assuredly, the vilest parts of our representation, exhibiting, every election, the most revolting spectacles of venality, drunkenness, riot, and licentiousness. Money is the chief influence, and expended in every possible form of bribery-in treating, in buying freedoms, in idle pageantry, in the fees of legal agents, in the conveyance of voters from distant places, in maintaining them while absent, and reconveying them to their homes with the profits of their bartered franchises. There are not half a dozen places in the kingdom, where an honest man, of known competency and character, can hope to be successful in a contest with a man who will expend a fortune to succeed. Thus it is that rich men, or men who are likely to have places and offices to dispose of, are mostly returned for those places; and it is observable, that the open boroughs have returned a smaller proportion of members, than any other class, distinguished for probity, intelligence, and devotion to popular rights.

The original intent of the charters given to the cities and boroughs of England cannot be mistaken. Unquestionably it was meant that the inhabitants of the places so chartered should elect for themselves representatives in parliament.* It was not, however, intended that this should be done by any indiscriminate scheme of representation; because, the franchise is always found to be vested in some definite class,-in the freemen, or the free burgesses, or the free barons,―clearly shewing that the vassal, menial, or vagrant should not be eligible to the exercise of the elective function; therefore, it was stipulated that the elector should have acquired his freedom, which generally rendered a certain servitude necessary, and ensured his being an inhabitant, and really interested in the prosperity of the town.

Circumstances have intervened to defeat entirely the spirit and intent of this arrangement. The intelligent and independent part of the population of open boroughs are mostly ineligible to vote, while the franchise

⚫ Letter on the State of the Representation, before quoted, p. 6.