THE withdrawal of the Reform Bill is a pretty instance of poetical justice, and a curious illustration of party politics. It is said that Lord John Russell is extremely mortified at the frustration of his unhappy Bill, and we can well believe it; for besides losing the chance of identifying his name with a further measure of Reform, he has incurred, for the third time in his life, the disgrace of turning out a Government, and failing to fulfil the pledges on the strength of which he was supported. He overthrew the first Administration of Sir Robert Peel by voting the appropriation of the surplus revenues of the Irish Church to the purposes of general education; and when he entered upon office, he found it convenient to forget that in resolution after resolution he had insisted on the necessity of such a measure. He expelled the second Administration of Sir Robert Peel by opposing the Irish Coercion Bill, the spirit of which he had himself to adopt when he attained the Premiership. And now, for the third time, we find him overturning a Tory Government for not doing what he himself is unable to perform. Lord Derby's Cabinet produced a Reform Bill which is universally admitted to be the best measure of the kind as yet submitted to Parliament. Lord John Russell declined even to consider the principle of it, and eventually drove the Tories from the Treasury bench on the special ground that they were not sufficiently ardent in the cause of Reform. He and his party came into office for the express purpose of reconstructing the constitution, and the moment they are seated on the well-padded bench at the right hand of the Speaker, they discover that they have undertaken impossibilities, and that their promises are not to be redeemed. Nor can they blame the Opposition for this ignominious failure. They have to blame only themselves and their friends. The chief opposition to the Reform Bill came from the supporters of the Government, who gave

notice of no less than seventy out of the ninety amendments which it was proposed to carry in committee. But an obstacle more deadly to the success of the measure than the sneers of Tories or the machinations of Whigs, was that which the Government itself raised in the Treaty with France and the consequent Budget. On the first night of the session it was announced that on the 20th of February Lord John Russell would bring in his Reform Bill. Evidently it was concluded that the Government was earnest for Reform. Reform was the question of the day. Ministers were to stand or fall by Reform. Who so eager as they to keep faith with the country? It soon oozed out that they had a card on which they placed greater reliance, and which they intended to play first. The Budget was to be produced a fortnight before the Reform Bill, and many weeks before the usual time. The enthusiasm to be created by the Budget and the French Treaty, was to cover the multitude of offences that were likely to spring out of a Reform Bill in which nobody had any confidence. Then came the incident of Mr Gladstone's loss of voice. Observe the consequence. The Budget was postponed four days-from the 6th to the 10th of February; and the Reform Bill was postponed ten days-from the 20th February to the 1st of March. When Mr Gladstone had made his financial statement, it was urged by Mr Disraeli, that for measures so important as those proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the country and the House of Commons should have time to deliberate, and that in the interval we could proceed to the consideration of the Reform Bill. Lord John Russell replied, "Well, that is not the course I am going to pursue. However anxious I may be to bring in that Bill, it will be my duty not to submit it to the consideration of the House until we have gone through at least all the principal measures indicated by the Budget." So that although the Government came into

office for the express purpose of extending the franchise, and although they had an opportunity of laying their proposals before the House of of Commons at a comparatively early period of the session, they deliberately preferred the Budget to Reform, and treated as of secondary moment the pledges by which they had been wafted into power. The very men who had staked their all upon Reform, when the time came for the fulfilment of their pledges, treated them as subsidiary to a Budget which is all but universally regarded as the most mischievous sham that has ever been offered to the country. Lord John Russell might well feel mortified as he saw the toils gathering around him, and knew that by his own act he had rendered himself incapable of fulfilling the solemn engagement which secured place for himself and his friends.

It is hard that such an event should be recorded three times of a statesman, who, besides, has the unenviable reputation of upsetting every coach of which he is not the charioteer; but the country has been so relieved by the withdrawal of the Reform Bill, that in the present instance no one has been willing to press him very severely for his broken Vows. As a party, indeed, the Opposition could have little to fear from the passing of the Reform Bill. It would not have much interfered with the constituencies in which Conservative feeling is dominant. The principal effect of it would have been not to transfer power from one side of the House to the other, but to transfer a goodly number of seats from Whigs to Radicals. The Whig party would have been destroyed for ever; the Radicals would take their place as the natural opponents of the Tories; and in all probability the country would so speedily be disgusted with their extravagant theories and their clumsy administration, that the Tory party would return triumphant to office. If the Tory party were place-hunters, this would be a consummation most devoutly to be wished for. The second Reform Bill, instead of, like the first, giving a long lease of office to the Whigs, would give

that precious boon to their political antagonists. The Tory party, however, have no desire to witness the final extinction of the Whigs. We believe in the good effects of a moderate opposition, and that it would be ruinous to the country, however it might temporarily benefit our political friends, if the Whig side of the House of Commons should be chiefly Radical-if Mr Bright should be the great god, and Mr Edwin James the legal luminary of our opponents-and if the watchwords of the party should be Household Suffrage, Ballot, Electoral Districts, and "Down with the House of Lords." The Whigs understood the feeling of the Tories perfectly well, and did all in their power to place upon them the burden of rejecting the obnoxious Bill. The latter, however, were not to be misled. They insisted upon the Whigs fighting their own battle, and it must be admitted that the Whigs fought with uncommon zeal, though their tactics somewhat resembled those of the Parthians, who levelled their most deadly arrows at those behind them. Their opposition was so powerful that Lord John Russell was compelled to yield to their representations, and to withdraw his little monster of a Bill, with which the Liberal side of the House has been so disgusted, that the more knowing politicians confidently predict the impossibility of passing such a measure for at least a couple of years to come. In making this calculation they look chiefly to the census which takes place next year, although the returns cannot be made up before 1862. So much has been made of statistics in the measure introduced by Lord John Russell, that we are, by a logical necessity, compelled to ask for the most accurate tables; and it would be at once ungracious and unreasonable for the Radicals to refuse a little delay, when the tables which are to convince everybody are so near at hand. In any case, however, it will be next to impossible to pass a Reform Bill in the ensuing session of Parliament, inasmuch as the legislature will have more than enough to do in the reconstruction of our financial system, which has

been so rudely disturbed by the wild experiments of the present year. If the bill, necessitated by what we may call the provisional Budget of 1860, consumed so much time as to compel the postponement of the great constitutional question on which the Cabinet staked its existence and its honour, the bills required by the renovating finance of 1861-by a Budget that must be prospective as well as retrospective will assuredly take up not less time, nor exhaust less of the public interest. Moreover, if we look to foreign affairs, we shall find some reason to anticipate the possibility of the Reform Bill being postponed for even longer than two years. The Continent is in a very troubled state. All is uncertainty, and war is the universal expectation. Even England is compelled to consider the probability of being dragged into the vortex. But if war comes-and when we are expending £30,000,000 a-year on our sea and land forces, besides raising a loan of £12,000,000 for fortifications, it may almost be said that war has already come-we may calculate that for at least three years England will be completely absorbed in the question of fleets and armies, and in the direction of an active foreign policy; and our Parliament will have neither the time nor the inclination for a Reform Bill. Parliament has never been able to do two things at once-to do great things in the prosecution of domestic legislation, while pushing with ardour a foreign policy worthy of our power; to amputate its own legs by way of constitutional reform, and at the same time to give a good kick to the enemy with whom we are at war. We may therefore expect that the country will have ample time to consider the principles on which a Reform Bill ought to be based.

Consideration is absolutely necessary, for we have so tinkered the constitution that we are in a fair way to change it altogether. Observe the downward course of our legislation, and the impossibility of logically stopping until we are landed in the practical absurdity of universal suffrage and mobocracy. If A is admitted to the suffrage, why not B?

if B, why not C? if C, why not D and the whole alphabet? We commenced our course of constitutional legislation in the present century by the Test and Corporation Acts, which removed disabilities from Dissenters. By emancipating the Catholics we proclaimed still further that our free constitution ought not to be based on a doctrine of exclusiveness. Then came the Reform Bill, which gave to every man in a £10 house the right of voting for a parliamentary representative. We did not stop here, but ere long declared that it was unnecessary for members of Parliament to be of the Christian faith, or to have any qualification from property. We have now been asked to give the franchise to the occupiers of houses at a rental of £6; and there is no reason in the world, except the practical absurdity in which we should very soon find ourselves, why, having done so much, we should not go still further, and give the suffrage to every householder. In point of fact, whether the legislature grants this boon to the lower classes or not, it is pretty evident that in the natural course of things they must have it sooner or later. It was only last year that, from the speculations of M. Chevalier and Mr Cobden on the fall in the value of gold, we deduced the obvious inference that a £10 house must at no distant period be within the means of every man who has a roof over his head. A rent of £10 a-year means no more than 3s. 10d. a-week, and there are not many tenements in London which fail to command such a price. The electors of Marylebone and Finsbury who send Mr Edwin James and Mr Duncombe to Parliament cannot be deteriorated by a lowering of the electoral qualification. A reduction of the qualification to £6 will make the very smallest addition possible to the number of the electors, almost all the householders being already included in the registration. So manifestly is this the case, that the efforts of such men as Mr Edwin James and Mr Thomas Duncombe are directed not to the lowering of the household qualification, which their constituents do not demand, but to the admission of the class of lodgers

to the privileges of the franchise. What has happened in London will sooner or later happen in every town in the kingdom. Rents will rise, or, what is the same thing, money will fall, so that every householder in the land will have the benefit of the franchise. Then it will be time for the lodgers to fight for their privileges. At first their qualification may be set down at a good round figure, which will be reduced by agitation until at last it becomes so small as to include every lodger, and to be equivalent to universal suffrage. So far, however, universal suffrage would be restrained by the formalities of registration. But it would speedily be discovered that a system of annual registration is a hardship to the great majority of electors-namely, those who frequently shift their lodgings. By degrees we should come to keep the registers constantly open, and such confusion would ensue, such brawling and such loss of time, that in self-defence the populace would abolish registration, or, rendering it a farce, fall back on the American model, and vote wholesale, by ticket, by ballot, and by bullet. Of course, we all regard such a state of things with unmingled horror; but is it not the logical result to which we are tending? Lord John Russell's Bill, so far from being a final settlement of the question, would but pave the way, first for household, then for universal suffrage; and it is because they clearly see this that our legislature felt the necessity of pausing in the downward course, and calmly measuring the difficulties of the situation.

The question is nothing less than this, How is the constitution to be saved? For the constitution is gone if the balance on which it depends is overset. Most clearly it is overset, if the dominant power in the State is given to the working classes, which outnumber all the others put together. Where are we to stop? On what principle are we to stop? Are we to concede so much to-day and so much to-morrow, and give up little by little, until we lose all? Is it the principle of Conservatives to conserve what cannot be conserved? It must be confessed that in this

dallying with reform we are treading a very dangerous path; and in the breathing-time which is given to us, we would seriously ask the Tory leaders, committed as they are to an extension of the franchise, whether it is not possible to feel our way to a final solution of the question, and to some means of guarding the constitution from utter destruction. The prerogatives of the Crown have been gradually diminished; the powers of the House of Lords have been curtailed to little more than those of a Court of Review, and in the present session it has been even proposed to take from them the right of reviewing financial measures; and while the House of Commons has become almost absolute in the State, we are entertained with the suggestion that it should be filled with the delegates of a single class, and that the lowest in the country. How are we to avert such a calamity? As yet the only intelligible remedies have been proposed by that party which has most immediate reason to dread the degradation of our constituencies. Lord John Russell proposed a scheme by which minorities should be represented, and Mr John Stuart Mill proposed a method by which the evils of universal suffrage might be nullified. There was also a third scheme, suggested by Mr Hare, in accordance with which our whole electoral system would be disturbed, and our present geographical system of voting would be displaced by one that would admit of a small band in Edinburgh uniting with small bands and little flocks in various other cities, to elect a representative who would have no chance of receiving the confidence of any single constituency. Practically, all the electors of the United Kingdom would put their votes into a single urn. He who might have the greatest number of votes, wherever these votes came from, would be at the head of the poll; he who might have the next greatest number would stand next; and so we might go on with the whole 656 members, the calculation being, that in this way men who find themselves in a small minority in separate towns, would find them

selves a respectable and influential party by clubbing with men of like sentiment in other towns. In fact, any two thousand electors might unite together so as to form a separate constituency entitled to a representative. This method of voting would so completely revolutionise our electoral system, that we have not heard of any practical statesman giving it his sanction. We mention it here merely to show how thoughts are tending, and how imperious are the difficulties which we have to face.

The solution proposed by Lord John Russell is much more practicable; and although it is far from being satisfactory, yet we are unwilling to reject it peremptorily. His object was to get the opinion of a respectable minority represented. If the working classes are to be admitted to the exercise of the franchise, it is clear that they will outnumber the other electors, who will practically have no voice in the choice of a representative, and might as well not vote at all. In order to meet this disadvantage, Lord John Russell proposed to diminish the number of votes at the disposal of each elector. In a town represented by three members, each elector would have, under the existing arrangement, a vote for each member, and the dominant class in the township might elect all three. It was therefore proposed to give to each elector a vote for only two of the representatives, so that other electors, who held opinions different from those of the majority, might, if they were influential and strong enough, unite to secure the election of the third member. The merit of this proposal is, that it does to a certain extent what it professes to do. It would no doubt secure, in a good number of cases, the election of a member acceptable to an influential section of the constituency, who, under a system where mere numbers prevail, would otherwise have no voice in the selection of a candidate. Its demerit is that it is not enoughthat it would be a very partial remedy for the evils introduced into our constitution by handing over the election of our representatives to the

mob. The mob would, by the help of a little organisation, learn to manage the third representative as well as the other two. Still, the measure is something, if it is not everything; and it is especially valuable as the recognition by Lord John Russell of a principle,-a principle which we cannot think that Mr Disraeli disposed of when he stated, in disparagement of Lord John's plan, that there is no method of giving a voice to the minority known to the constitution except that of making the minority a majority. When we are revolutionising the constitution by force of numbers, a statesman may be pardoned for devising a new method of voting, which may counteract the effects of our hazardous reforms. But in point of fact Mr Disraeli's objection, in so far as we have been able to apprehend it, is a phrase rather than an argument. The 500 electors of some small nomination borough are called a majority, and are therefore entitled to a member; the 5000 Conservative electors, in some more populous constituency in which they are swamped by numbers, are a minority, and are entitled to nothing. It is surely hard to say that these 5000 are entitled to nothing until they can outnumber the mob, and turn their minority into a majority. If Lord John Russell's scheme does not fully meet the necessities of the case, it at all events shows a consideration of it, for which we are anxious to give him all the credit which is consistent with the fact of his having quietly dropped all reference to it in the Reform Bill of the present session.

Lastly, we come to the suggestion of Mr John Stuart Mill, a man who cannot be accused of deficient sympathy with the lower classes. Mr John Mill is the ablest and most philosophical of the Radical politicians, but he stands aghast at the idea of handing over the government of the country to a Parliament elected by universal suffrage. When universal suffrage comes, depend upon it we shall not be able to devise any checks against it; and whatever checks we can impose upon it must be established now, in anticipation, or never. We have admitted so