holders are paid, let us look at the facts. opportunity of laying their measure before There is a contract between the landlord the House; and looking to the language and the tenant, and the latter pays so of a noble Earl in "another place"-lookmuch a week. Does the amount varying also at the language of the right hon. from time to time as the poor rates rise Gentleman the Chancellor of the Excheor fall? I apprehend not. It is a fixed quer-having regard to the existing differsum; but the amount of the composition ences of opinion, and being anxious to changes according to the exigencies of settle the question - he maintained that the parish. Although the sum paid as rent he had a right to say that the Governincludes the rate, I deny altogether that ment had agreed to submit themselves to the rate is paid in the rent in the sense in the opinion of the House of Commons. which the term "payment of rate" is or- For what was the language of the noble dinarily used. Without going any further Earl at the head of the Government? He into the question, I say that, in proposing said the course of the Government was that the occupier shall have a vote upon purely tentative. Well, what was the being rated and paying the rate, and that meaning of "tentative? Why this-that every facility shall be given him to get in a question of great difficulty, they threw upon the rate book and to pay the rate, themselves on the wisdom of Parliament, notwithstanding any obstruction offered by and called on Parliament to determine the landlord, the Government have adopted what should be the conditions under which an old-established principle, and not, as the Bill should be passed. He (Sir Edward the right hon. Gentleman would lead the Buller) asserted that the principle of the House to suppose, an altogether new one, Bill was household suffrage. It was housewhich is too "preposterous" to be acted hold suffrage, subject to such conditions as the wisdom of Parliament might impose. upon. And the fact that it was so, only proved the truth of the adage that "reality was stranger than fiction." If twelve months ago any prophet had foretold that a time would arrive when a Conservative Government would bring forward a Reform Bill based on household suffrage-if any person, donning the garb of prophecy, had ventured to address the hon. Member for Birmingham and said, "If you look for the success of household suffrage and the dawn of your principles you must look to the Conservative quarter of the horizon"any one venturing so to prophecy would have been ridiculed and scouted, as having no attribute of a prophet, but insanity. In the language of the Cumaan sybil"Via prima salutis,

No hon. Member rising to address the House

SIR EDWARD BULLER said, he was greatly surprised at the indisposition evinced to discuss adequately the provisions of the Bill. He had anxiously examined the whole question, and he had arrived at the conclusion that here was an attempt to reduce to nothing a great measure, not by clauses in the Bill, but by a reference to Acts of Parliament which were entirely alien to its object, and which had been passed entirely without reference to the question of the franchise. An important question might be asked. Where were we? We had been travelling at a railway pace under the dangerous guidance of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (the Chancellor of the Exchequer). What was really the great" Quod minimè reris, Graiâ pandetur ab urbe." principle of the Bill? And what was there He could not understand why the Governto prevent that right hon. Gentleman from ment, who had invited the House to assist accepting the Amendment of the right them in introducing limitations into the Bill, hon. Gentleman the Member for South should now say that this question of perLancashire? The Chancellor of the Ex-sonal rating was one of such vital imporchequer said the principle of the Bill was personal rating. He denied it. There would be many occupiers of houses, shops, and warehouses who were rated, and paid their rates, and yet were without votes. Still further would this principle of personal rating be abandoned if the lodger franchise were adoptod. He had taken a course which the press had called both immoral and pusillanimous. He had been anxious that the Government should have the fullest

tance that it could not be abandoned. Having used the small influence which he possessed as a Parliamentary unit to procure the consideration of the Bill, he felt exceedingly disappointed now with this decision. After the declarations of the Government, he thought the proper course for them to have adopted would have been to have stated that while they approved of the plan of personal rating they were willing to abandon it if the sense of the House was [Committee-Clause 3.

against it. That they had failed to do this | the democratic portions of the Bill, and on was a great disappointment to him and to every ground he felt constrained to support every hon. Gentleman who desired the the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman the progress of the measure. It was not the Member for South Lancashire. declarations of the Government, but their actions, which induced the belief that they were prepared to adopt Amendments to the measure. The dual voting had been abandoned. ["Question!"]

MR. BAILEY rose to order. He considered that the hon. Baronet was out of order in referring to the principle of dual voting, which had no reference to the clause under discussion.

THE CHAIRMAN said, that the clause opened up the whole question of the borough franchise, and it was open to any hon. Member, in discussing it, to compare the different plans that had been introduced.

THE O'DONOGHUE could not agree with the hon. Baronet who had last addressed the House in thinking that the Bill was very wide in its scope. If he were of that opinion, he should regard it much more favourably than he did at present. No one would gainsay the truth of the assertion that the task of satisfactorily settling the question of Parliamentary Reform was one of extraordinary difficulty, and had led to repeated failures; and some hon. Gentlemen might, perhaps, shelter themselves behind such an admission from the reproaches to which their own repeated failures had exposed them. Now, he was disposed to inquire whether those failures were to be ascribed to something inherent in the question of Reform-something complex and inscrutable, with which the human mind could scarcely grapple-or whether they were not the result of the manner in which the subject had been approached! If the former assumption were correct, failure could be easily accounted for; but if the latter were the true cause, the House would certainly bring upon itself the wellmerited contempt of the country, and would forfeit the confidence reposed in them. He believed that the people of this country had endeavoured to ascertain why it was that the question of Reform had made so little progress; that they had mastered the subject, and had arrived at a conclusion upon it. For his own part he had always held the opinion that this was in reality a question of the simplest character, and that there was only one way of settling it, although he confessed that the events of the last and the present Session had so perplexed him that at times he found it required no ordinary effort to retain his original belief.

SIR EDWARD BULLER: The scheme of the Government had been properly characterized as a double-faced scheme, having one Conservative and one Liberal aspect, and appealing on different and conflicting grounds to the support of both sides of the House. Some of the Members of the present Government were remarkable for their literary lore; now it appeared to him that they had now set up a Pagan divinity, had done him into modern English, and had presented him to the House in the shape of a Reform Bill. This idol, with its two faces, had, however, met with sorry treatment at the hands of its worshippers. The duality of its faces had been destroyed -they had knocked out both its eyes, and he was inclined to think that, before they had done with it, there would be hardly one of its Conservative features that would not be so maimed and battered as to be altogether past recognition. He would not travel over the ground so well occupied by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire; but he considered that one of the principal objections to the measure was that the compound-householders He acknowledged that could not get upon the register without an after listening to the speeches of the hon. additional payment over and above the Gentlemen opposite, and more especially rates that were due, and that this payment to those of the Chancellor of the Exche afforded an opening for an enormous quer, he had frequently left the House amount of corruption. The electioneering much oppressed with what appeared to him agent would place upon the register the to be a manifest want of comprehension, poorest and least independent among the and with very exalted notions respecting whole constituency, so that the very men the powers of the right hon. Gentleman; whom the House most wished to exclude and he had sometimes fallen-though only I would be admitted, while those whom they for the moment-into the not uncommon most wished to admit would be excluded. error of imagining that wise men were The barriers raised by the Bill were, in his seldom, if ever, understood by plain mortals, opinion, utterly insufficient. The fancy and that to be unintelligible franchises were quite valueless to counteract most certain indications of wisdom. He

was one of the

the only man who knew how to manage the hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright). He knew how to thwart himand hence the hon. Member for Birmingham entertained for him as much hatred as one man could harbour towards another. Before the noble Lord died, a coalition had taken place between the right hon. Member for South Lancashire and the hon. Member for Birmingham — a very powerful combination he was quite ready to admit; but as so long as the noble Lord lived it was unsuccessful. But no sooner was the noble Lord lost to the country than the question of Reform assumed another phase, and the Bill of last year was the consequence. The real author of that Bill, as of the present Bill, was the hon. Mem. ber for Birmingham. But for that coalition there would have been no Reform Bill-no Reform League-no meeting in Hyde Park, or in Trafalgar Square. The Bill of last year was lost, and a new state of circumstances had arisen, and he (Mr. Kendall) found himself placed in a situation of some embarrassment. He could not shut his eyes to the fact that there were very many sensible, hard-headed, unyielding Conser

had to do was to establish a character for sincerity and plain dealing. There was only one way of settling the Reform question, and that was by extending the franchise and though there might be diversity of opinion as to the form and degree of the extension, there existed great unanimity on the point that the extension should be considerable, and that the creation of votes should not be left to any chance agency whatever. According to the plan of the Government, every man who lived in a house should exercise the right of voting if he personally paid his rates. There were multitudes of persons living in houses under a certain value who were debarred from the right of voting, and were most deeply interested in the settlement of this question of Reform. These were the very persons to whom the Chancellor of the Exchequer affected to offer the franchise, though he proposed as necessary for its attainment a condition almost impossible to be complied with; for in the case of the municipal franchise the direct payment of rates had proved almost a complete barrier against obtaining the franchise. He could not understand how any one favourable to such a liberal exten-vatives who were of a different opinion now sion of the franchise as was necessary for the settlement of the Reform question could sanction a Bill like the present. He thought that in no case should the personal payment of rates be necessary; and therefore he should vote for the Amendment, believing it to be essential to the further progress of Reform, believing it to be proposed in a spirit of sincerity and wisdom, and hoping that it might prove the fortunate means of bringing together the friends of Reform, who, unless he was greatly deceived, formed the majority of that House.

In 1859, when a Reform Bill was brought forward by a Conservative Government, he opposed it, for he thought it came badly from them. That Government lost office, and was succeeded by one under the Premiership of Lord Palmerston; and when he (Mr. Kendall) looked round the House and saw Lord Palmerston, he used to think that the noble Lord was the best Conservative in the House-that he was

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from that which they had expressed when they saw that there was no desire for Reform. Things were very different now, they argued; and as there was a deeprooted feeling of discontent planted in the minds of men, it was desirable that a large measure of Reform should be introduced by Her Majesty's Ministers, whose motives should be above suspicion. The Government introduced a large measure of Reform. Then it became necessary for him to ask himself, What shall I do?" He held very strong Conservative opinions. When he met his constituents, who were a very independent body of men, three or four months ago, he told them that he earnestly hoped that the Government would not bring in a Reform Bill, and that they would not take the speeches delivered at the meetings that had been held represented the opinions of a large proportion of the people; but he added, that if the Government should in their discretion determine to bring in a Reform Bill, they would find that he had changed his opinions, at least that he had supported the Government. He (Mr. Kendall) had been anxious to test whether all the appeals that had been made to the people and for the people were genuine or not. He had heard the other evening that the hon. Member for Birming.

ham and the right hon. Member for South SIR WILLIAM HEATHCOTE said, Lancashire, at a meeting held in the house it was absolutely necessary, in dealing of the latter, had tried to strangle the Bill with the Amendment now under considerabefore it got to the second reading; and tion, that it should not be regarded as an from the same quarter he had heard phrases isolated proposal for dispensing with the which struck him as peculiar, such as an personal payment of rates, but as combined "unskilled peasantry," the "substrata," with the subsequent Amendment, by which and shortly afterwards the "residuum." no householder below £5 a year of rateHe should like to know what some of the able value should be admitted to vote at lower orders would think when they heard all. The two modes of extending the of such terms being applied to them by suffrage, which were offered on the OppoMembers of Parliament? He had asso- site sides of the House, must be considered ciated during the last forty years with all each as a whole. The Government proclasses of his countrymen, and his honest posed household suffrage absolutely unbelief was that household suffrage would limited by any test of value, but subject bring in a large number of men, honest, to the conditions that the house should be simple-minded (using the word in the best rated and the rates thereon paid by the sense), who in disposing of their votes occupier. His right hon. Friend the Memwould look to men of respectability and ber for South Lancashire (Mr. Gladstone), character, and would vote for them in pre- on the other hand, proposed that the sufference to excitable men. But this did not frage should be given to such householders suit hon. Gentlemen opposite. He protested only as were rated at £5 a year and upagainst the franchise being dealt with as wards, but that the payment of the rates if it were to be put up to a Dutch auction. thereon should equally qualify the voter, He did not think that such a course was whether it was made by the landlord or dignified. There was this thing to be said the occupier. In the whole course of a long for household suffrage-that it presented Parliamentary experience he had never something simple and intelligible, and that felt himself in a more unsatisfactory posicould not easily be mystified. In large tion; because he could give an unqualified towns a workman, who was a good work- approval to neither of the two alternatives. man, need not to seek for work, for he was He nevertheless felt bound to deal with known, and respected, and employed; and them in the best way he could, for he therefore the argument of the right hon. concurred in the opinion, so generally Gentleman as to such a man having fre- expressed, that it was most desirable that quently to change his residence in order the question of Reform should be settled to follow his work was futile. He was during the present Session. He did not satisfied that the whole question of Reform profess to be a believer in Reform in the had been brought about by agitation in the sense of believing that of the varied and country; but still, if Her Majesty's Minis- sometimes conflicting forces which gave ters thought that they ought to give the impulse to the great and complicated mafranchise to the working classes, he chine of English Government, it was the thought that they ought to go to some popular portion which most required to be good resting-point; and, in his opinion, the strengthened at the time; nor in the sense resting-point which they had chosen was a of believing that any Reform which they very good one. He understood this point were likely to pass would produce, or have to be household suffrage, accompanied by any tendency to produce, improvement in residence and payment of rates. He hoped the composition or quality of that House, that the Government would stick to their or in the thoughtfulness, wisdom, and imcolours so far as the main points of the partiality of its legislation-still less that Bill were concerned, and that they would it would tend towards greater sagacity and rather go to the country than be driven self-control in defining clearly, and maininto adopting any course which they did taining steadily, the limits between due not think was a right one. At the same watchfulness over the Executive Governtime, he hoped that they would be ready ment, and that usurpation, to which popular to cede points which did not involve any assemblies are prone, of arrogating to principle; and he was sure if they acted themselves Executive functions. But he in this way that they might either carry still recognised the position in which he their measure, or, in the event of defeat, found the country; and, as a practical man, appeal with success to the country. he admitted the pressure of facts. He saw the position into which Parliament and the [Committee-Clause 3.

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