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love progress; those who are content with an unaugmenting competence, as well as those who are in haste to be rich.' We should regard as one of the most dangerous of experiments any such change as would throw the representation, exclusively and virtually, into the hands of the energetic, and the pushing,-the men to whom is torture, repose the men to whom the past is all contemptible, the present all sombre, the future all golden. This danger the theory of our Constitution keeps at bay, and its practice has hitherto avoided. The idea of the equal representation of every separate individual is modern, foreign, and unknown to English history: the idea of a representation according to property is almost equally novel and strange: both are French and American rather than British. The English idea is the representation of classes: the House of Lords, to represent the peerage; the Knights of the Shire, to represent the landed gentry and the agricultural interests; the Burgesses, to represent the commercial and industrial interests; and the Members for the University (but a poor allowance), to represent the interests of literature and learning. There does not seem to have been the slightest attempt, in the early history of our Constitution, to proportion representation either to property or to numbers. Each county sent two knights, each borough two burgesses, without reference to population or to wealth. In so far as this syster gives no representatives to the labouring classes as such, or does not give them a fair and desirable share in the election of burgesses and knights, in so far it needs enlargement and adjustment to the altered circumstances of the times, and to the social and intellectual elevation of those classes. The accommodation, however, is to be sought, not in such a reversal of the whole system as would invest these classes with power over the whole representation of the country, but in a well-considered modification, or a harmonising addition appended to the existing plan. The desideratum is, some plan which shall give to working men a greater participation than formerly in the election of members, proportioned to their augmented intelligence and independence, some plan which shall not overturn the existing system nor proceed on the assumption of its incurable and radical injustice, but which shall harmonise with its main features, and which can be engrafted upon it and dovetailed into it, so as to better attain its purposes, and carry out its meaning. The nature of the desideratum once agreed upon, we shall be able to proceed with some suggestions, not as to details, but as to the principles which should guide us in our endeavours to supply it. But, before doing so, we must give a passing consideration to the position taken by those of our fellow-reformers who consider our theory

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of the representative system to be unsound, and our statement of its practical deficiencies to be inadequate.

The two grounds taken by those reformers both in Parliament and the country with whom we are at issue on the theory of Representation, are these. The first class of doctrinaires affirm that every man has an indefeasible right to choose his ' own rulers, and to share in the framing of those laws which he is called upon to obey.' The second class, some of whom appear as household,' some as complete' suffragists, maintain that representation can only be just when it is co-extensive with taxation-that every man who pays taxes ought, ipso facto, and in that qualification only, to have a vote.

Now, there is no reasoning so vague and unsatisfactory as that which is based upon the alleged abstract rights of man;' —and therefore we shall not join issue with the first set of schismatics from the true political Church, on that ground, but shall content ourselves with showing that they are themselves compelled to acknowledge the invalidity and untenableness of their own principle, by violating it as soon as they have laid it down; and that, if fairly worked out, it would lead to results which at once make it manifest that some fallacy lurks under its apparently axiomatic simplicity.

The

The principle laid down, it is obvious, goes the whole length of universal suffrage: every citizen, whatever be his age, sex, condition, or antecedents, is required to obey the law, and is punished for resistance to it: every citizen, therefore, whatever be his age, condition, sex, or antecedents, is entitled to a vote in the election of the members of the Legislature. woman, as well as the man, is hanged for murder; the minor, as well as the adult, is imprisoned for fraud and transported for felony; the pauper, as well as the millionaire, the criminal, as well as the unspotted Briton, is compelled to comply with every requirement of the Parliament: - all therefore have an equal claim to the elective franchise. Yet no man in his senses ever ventured to push the argument thus far. The most complete suffrage ever practically proposed, even by the Chartists, falls far short of universality; and makes exceptions as arbitrary and as fatal to the principle, as those familiar to our existing system. The nearest approach to universal suffrage ever seriously demanded, is, that every male of the age of twenty-one years,— not being an idiot, a pauper, or a convicted criminal,--shall be entitled to a vote. Now, consider what vast exclusions are embodied in this proposal. In the first place, it excludes all women; thousands of whom hold independent property; hundreds of thousands of whom pay taxes; millions of whom are at

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least as competent, intellectually and morally, to exercise the franchise as a great proportion of those who now possess it; all of whom are as deeply interested in the enactment of wise and righteous laws as their masculine fellow-citizens. Secondly, it excludes at least a million between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, who are at least as capable of a wise and honest exercise of the franchise as the freemen of Leicester, or the burgesses of Harwich.* Thirdly, it excludes all those who have, in the eye of the law, manifested a character and been guilty of a conduct which gives reason for believing that they would not exercise their franchise for their country's good. Fourthly, it excludes a large but varying number of paupers, whose misfortunes may, possibly, be their only fault. Fifthly, it excludes all whose weakness of intellect is so patent and notorious, as clearly to incapacitate them from exercising the right of suffrage beneficially or judiciously.

Now all these classes are called upon to obey the laws; all of them are interested in the process of Legislation; since all suffer by partial or unwise enactments. Yet the advocates of universal suffrage conceive themselves - truly, to be guilty of no injustice absurdly, to be guilty of no inconsistency or unfaithfulness to their theory-in excluding them; and, if closely questioned as to the defensible grounds of such exclusion, would probably reply, that women and paupers are to be excluded because they are too dependent to vote freely, — idiots and minors because they are too incapable, ignorant, and immature, to vote wisely, and convicted criminals because they are too ill-intentioned to vote honestly. Here, then, we find the advocates of universal suffrage driven by their own good sense to contend for the exclusion of large classes of their fellow-citizens, on the three several grounds of moral, mental, and circumstantial unfitness, the only grounds of disqualification which are maintained by the advocates of restricted suffrage.

The principle, then, of an inherent, inalienable right to the suffrage on the ground of inherent and inescapable liability to law, is thus virtually surrendered by its supporters; inasmuch as they arrogate to themselves the right of excluding from the franchise those whom they regard as incapacitated, either by

*Benjamin Franklin, in an amusing endeavour to be consistent, grounded his demand for annual parliaments on the fact that every year numbers of citizens came of age, and that therefore they were unjustly excluded from the rights of citizenship, till a new parliament was elected. He never perceived that his argument, if valid, would render monthly or even daily elections necessary.

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character or social position, from exercising it honestly, beneficially, or wisely. They and we arrive at the same practical conclusion, though starting from a different point. We mising that our object is the election of a legislative chamber which shall be a fair representative, not of the folly, the violence, or the passions of the populace, but of the wisdom, industry, intelligence, and deliberate opinions of the people-in a word, of all the permanent and worthy constituent elements of the community-would confer the suffrage and distribute the members in the way best suited to secure this object. Theypremising that every individual has an abstract right to the suffrage yet think themselves entitled, and find themselves obliged, to exclude all those classes whose admission, they conceive, would endanger or impede the election of a wise, compeBy acting thus, they at tent, and faithful legislative chamber.

once tacitly admit, and give in their adhesion to, our position, -viz., that the elective franchise is not an indefeasible natural right, but simply a political contrivance for the attainment of a special end.

But again: let the maintainers of universal suffrage as a natural and indefeasible right, consider the case of a colony. established, not as colonies are established in these days, but as they were founded in ancient times. A hundred men of property and education, finding England too narrow (in one sense or another) to give them a chance of maintaining their social position or their opinions, without a weary struggle, agree to emigrate. They purchase a large uninhabited district from the native possessors, collect all the needful implements of agriculture, and take out with them all the appliances of their actual civilisation. They further select and carry out with them at their own expense, a thousand men of the labouring class, perhaps their own tenants or artisans in the old country, and equally anxious with themselves to escape from its difficulties, but unable, by their own unassisted intelligence and means, to do so. The emigrants arrive in their new home, and form a happy and industrious community; the labourers toiling on the land which their employers had purchased; the capitalists providing them with tools, and directing and utilising their exertions. After the first necessary work is over, they meet to decide upon the form and principles of government for the new State. Would universal suffrage be either justice or wisdom here? Would the thousand poor have a right to bind and give law to the hundred rich? Would the many, in virtue of their numbers, be entitled to rule the land which the few had purchased, stocked, and brought them to? What honest Chartist

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will answer in the affirmative? Yet how can he hesitate to answer in the affirmative without surrendering the principle for which he contends?

But we can put a still stronger and clearer case. Another colony sets out from the mother country, composed of different ingredients. Here, we will suppose they are all equal in condition and in wealth. A thousand of them are Irish, and a thousand Scotch. They arrive at their destination, and divide the land fairly between them, sharing as brothers should share. A hundred years pass over their heads. During this period the Irish have acted as Irishmen, when congregated in masses, will act. They have only half tilled their soil, have followed the old obsolete plans of culture, and have quarrelled with all who offered to instruct them in a better way. They have been fond of sporting, have lived extravagantly, married early, and multiplied like rabbits. But they have grown poorer as they have grown more numerous; and have sold half their lands to their Scotch neighbours in return for food and aid in several seasons of scarcity which their own wilful ignorance or improvidence had brought about. At the end of the century they are 8000 in number, and are possessors of only a quarter of the land. In the mean time their fellow settlers, the Scotch, have worked hard, lived frugally, married late, studied the science of agriculture and the arts of life, developed all the native resources of the soil, brought up their families piously and wisely, and given them a solid and useful education. At the end of the century they find themselves 4000 in number, and possessors, by lawful purchase or inheritance, of three-fourths of the soil. What becomes of the right of the majority to govern? and what would be the consequence of universal suffrage here? Are the 8000 idle, incompetent, and reckless, to rule and make laws for the 4000 sober, diligent, and prudent? Does not the very fact of their being so great and so impoverished a majority prove their unfitness and incapacity for governing? And would it not be the grossest wrongs, and the most flagrant of all follies, in such a case to allow the votes of the 8000 to overpower those of the 4000? In fact, the notion, which so commonly prevails, of the natural and inherent title of the majority to govern and decide for the minority, is the result of a hasty and inconsiderate assumption. The supposed right—regarded as an original one, and prior to all convention made good. Apart from contract and constitutional arrangecan by no process of reasoning be ments, and ancestral and time-consolidated habit, the majority can have no more claim to decide for and control the minority than the minority have to decide for and control the majority.

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