PROSPECTS OE REEORM: 
 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 SIR JOSHUA WALMSLEY, M.P. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY KENT AND EICIIAEDS, 
 51 AND 52 , PATERNOSTER ROIY. 
 
SeVxG^v/, A. 
 
PROSPECTS OF REFORM, 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I think I can congratulate the Progressists uiioii 
 your appearance in public life. The welcome which 
 has greeted you appears to me to be the proof that you 
 were wanted. Instinct is the intellect of the masses ; 
 and there is, so far, every reason to conclude that the 
 selection of you as one of their leaders has not been 
 unhappy. Elected to the House of Commons at, for 
 you, a fortunate moment: when that assembly was in its 
 normal state of repose after a severe struggle : when the 
 country was in passage from one to another set of hopes : 
 when among the constituencies there was too much 
 apathy, and among the representatives too much of the 
 correspondent caution : your courage and your honesty 
 were easily discernible; and it was your great advantage 
 when called upon to act, by those whom Continental 
 revolutions had ceased to terrify, that you were new to 
 the scene, though, apparently, not to the personnel of 
 politics, and that you stood unfettered by any of those 
 restrictions which arise either from the fellowships or the 
 conveniences of a party. You were a new man, and, 
 therefore, free to diverge from the ancient ways believed 
 by dozing Radicalism to be constitutional short-cuts. 
 You were pledged neither to the rule-of-three school of 
 Mr. Hume, to the Benthamism sentimentalised 
 of Sir W. Molesworth, nor to the Manchester transcen¬ 
 dentalisms of Mr. Cobden. You arrived at St. Stephen’s 
 fresh with the country-cousinhood of politics: and, truly, 
 your rusticity has been of great avail to men whose 
 
minds, it is evident, have become diseased in the rank 
 atmosphere of parliamentary routine. You, powerful 
 from these circumstances, accepted a position from which 
 others shrank; and though we may guess that you 
 entertained considerable personal ambition (as what 
 man who enters public life does not ?), it is at least 
 sufficient for us that in that position you have done the 
 public some service. In proportion to the rapidity of 
 your individual success, will be the numbers of your 
 enemies and the recklessness of the imputations against 
 your intentions; hut, as a man of the world, you will 
 know that the people care little as to the motives which 
 procure them friends. They press all ambitions into 
 their service, and they have accepted you with unusual 
 eagerness ; and even if they were to insist on all their 
 combatants being Catos, I think you would ’scape whip¬ 
 ping upon pleas quite as legitimate as any which it 
 would be in the power of your neighbours to prefer. 
 Perhaps it may be true that as a man who has passed 
 his life in business pursuits, youi- abilities may be of an 
 administrative rather than of a legislative order ; but the 
 world will be satisfied if, should you have regarded 
 politics as a business, you deal with banlaupt politicians 
 in a business-like manner. 
 
 You assumed a heavy responsibility when you under¬ 
 took to initiate and to conduct an out-of-door middle- 
 class agitation for Reform of Parliament, and you must 
 be judged according to the results which you have ac¬ 
 complished. The Association of which you were elected 
 President has now been twelve months before the country, 
 and it will be well to seize this, specially the season for 
 balancing accounts, as opportune for the purpose of consi¬ 
 dering how far you have succeeded, and what may be your 
 chances for the future. Let us not take a triumph 
 
5 
 
 for granted before we have examined the trophies. Let 
 us not, at the same time, suppose that you have failed 
 because the gain may be, as yet, equivocal. You may 
 not have done all that you expected to do; but you will 
 have done enough if it be more than those whom your 
 intentions made your enemies have anticipated. And is 
 this so ? 
 
 Most people looked upon you when you commenced, 
 with wonder—nothing more. Very few could understand 
 your motives or surmise your calculations. You cer¬ 
 tainly presented yourselves in a questionable shape: you 
 first appeared both as Financial and Parliamentary Re¬ 
 formers, combining the Liverpool with the Nottingham 
 ethics, and attempting to distract the world with a 
 double range of ideas which had no legitimate con¬ 
 nection. You sought, perhaps, by your title to catch an 
 economically inclined middle class, and, at the same 
 time, to enlist the sympathies of those uneasy sections 
 whose chief grievance, as interpreted by themselves, is 
 political degradation. But, by degrees, you disen¬ 
 thralled yourselves from the pretence: and, while vaguely 
 declaring your sense of manifold misgovernment, be¬ 
 came precise in the requisition of the one only remedy— 
 an extension of the suffrage. There was no very great 
 demand at the time for such a declaration. Radicalism 
 had for years been mere history; and, if the demon¬ 
 stration of Kennington Common in the previous year 
 proved anything, it was only that London was full of 
 pick-pockets, and that Feargus O’Connor was a very 
 remote descendant of Bayard. Discontent was at least 
 dormant, and if the Whig Government was unpopular, 
 it was for other reasons than because Lord John Russell 
 was believed to have spoken of the measures of’32 as 
 final. The Financial Reformers were, as a class, no 
 
6 
 
 more Radicals than the Colonial Reformers ; and it is 
 fair to say, of the majority of those gentlemen who en¬ 
 rolled themselves in Liverpool and Edinburgh as mem¬ 
 bers of the anti-clothing-colonel societies, that if it could 
 have been shomi to them that their great objects were 
 not to be achieved but by the admission of their gar¬ 
 deners and their coachmen to the privilege of the fran¬ 
 chise, they would have patriotically retired again into 
 private life. In parliament the suffrage question was the 
 least prominent of all stock sessional subjects. Mr. Hume 
 proffered his motion more in charity than either in faith 
 or hope, and the debate which attended it was a mere 
 make-believe; uninteresting within, unserviceable with¬ 
 out the house. Tliere were some one hundred gentle¬ 
 men regarded as pledged to the support of a reform of 
 the House of Commons, but whose movements were as 
 little affected by that pledge as by a concession to the 
 memorable maxim of George Coleman, that “virtue is a 
 good thing.” No pressing national demand, therefore, 
 called your association into existence: you were de¬ 
 cidedly a seven months’ society. You excited the less 
 sensation that you adopted an ancient formulae. House¬ 
 hold suffrage and the ballot were traditions of 1798, 
 rather than truths of 1849. There seemed no very par¬ 
 ticular reason for adopting these and your other some¬ 
 what confused principles, but that Mr. Hume had 
 happened to propose them; and ivhile the surprise in the 
 first instance was that you should have determined to 
 agitate for Parliamentary Reform at all, the astonish¬ 
 ment subsequently was still greater that you should 
 have appealed to the public on such terms. Not being 
 hampered by any dictates from the country, and ob¬ 
 viously arguing, at that moment, in the abstract, it was 
 not improbably expected that, having only to deliberate 
 
with yourselves, you would have consulted philoso¬ 
 phical requirements in your definition of Parliamentary 
 Reform. It was open to you either to proceed to the 
 principle of universal suffrage, sanctioned by reasoning, 
 or to content yourselves with the suggestion of that im¬ 
 provement in the Reform Bill which even the authors 
 of that act have admitted to be necessary, namely, a 
 greater equalisation of electoral districts. You adopted 
 the middle course, discovered by the member for Mont¬ 
 rose, on the ground that while you would he going far 
 enough to secure the adhesion of the masses of the peo¬ 
 ple, you would, on the other hand, thus not too recklessly 
 jostle the conservative notions distinguishing the middle 
 and moneyed classes. This supposed felicitous medium 
 was your claim to a hearing, and to popularity, and to a 
 gi’eat extent, no doubt, you have not been disappointed. 
 You have held great meetings in London and in the 
 large towns of England and Scotland, and you have 
 everywhere congregated on your platforms members 
 both of the middle and of the working classes. You 
 have boasted in consequence that you have effected an 
 “ union” of those classes, that you have conquered old 
 prejudices and healed old sores, and that you liave thus 
 set on foot, for the general benefit, a movement in tlie 
 direction of a Reform of the Legislature, in ■.vhlch every 
 section of ultra-politicians, can rvithout a compromise 
 participate. Let us examine these pretensions and as¬ 
 certain whence it comes that in your hands a virtue has 
 been discovered which remained unperceived while the 
 motion was the sole property of Mr. Hume. 
 
 To understand the. merits of this movement we must 
 remember the perplexity in which the representatives of 
 all political colours and creeds found themselves at the 
 commencement of the year. A “ dead-lock” was the 
 
s 
 
 only applicable description. One of those periods had 
 arrived which, in tlie careers of nations, indicates the 
 letharg)' of age. A vast change in our commercial sys¬ 
 tem had been accomplished which all the rules of logic 
 had induced, hut which experience had not yet arrived 
 to justify: and in the uncertainties thus suggested, men’s 
 minds paused between hope and fear. In England a 
 season of undue speculation had been followed by an era 
 of consequent difficulties and trading embarrassments; 
 and capital, disturbed in its natural flow, had not yet re¬ 
 arranged itself. In Ireland a people, exhausted by famine, 
 by insurrection, without hope and without leaders, had 
 resigned themselves to despair, and what wealth 
 and intelligence remained seemed to be gradually 
 succumbing to the overwhelming pressure of po¬ 
 verty and distress. In the Colonies, from the Cape 
 to Canada, one scene, however varied in its hues, was 
 ever 3 ^vhere visible—contest and controversy with the 
 Government at home—^preparation on all hands for a 
 rupture with the mother country. Parliament was a 
 reflex of the mutabilities abroad. A Government was in 
 office which, confessedly, was a make-shift ; -which did 
 not govern, which only pretended to inter-reign; which 
 had not the confidence of the country; which only asked 
 the forbearance of the House. The Commons existed 
 but in ancient forms; they presented neither thought nor 
 action; their debates were delusions, their deliberations 
 routine. There were, in that assembly, neither the tri¬ 
 bune breathing the popular will, demanding progress, 
 nor the Constitutionalist expressing the prejudgments 
 of an aristocracy, defending the present, nor the philo¬ 
 sopher elucidating first principles, and proffering ar¬ 
 bitrations. The “popular members,” entombed under 
 details and seeking still to deal with a system against 
 
9 
 
 which they had sneered for years in vain, ascended to nn 
 Iiiglier subjects than Financial Reform, piecemeal Co¬ 
 lonial concessions, small compensations for Sudbury 
 disfranchisements, or minute modifications in the re¬ 
 venues of certain obnoxious bishoprics. The nominees of 
 the House of Lords, in or out of office, contented them¬ 
 selves with intimations of “ time to time” ameliora¬ 
 tions, and set, as dark guardian angels over their 
 official sleep, the terrors which in a commercial com¬ 
 munity can always be conveniently aroused by the 
 narration from a Lord of a Continental Revolution. 
 Opposite to the Radicals were the Peclitcs, philosophical 
 biders of time, not quite sure of a party, not very 
 certain of a policy. The assembly, in fact, was only 
 made respectable, in the face of a vulgar scramble, in 
 which crotchetmongers, red-tapists in esse, red-tapists 
 in posse, were the competitors, by the earnestness in 
 their selfishness of ex post facto Protectionists; and the 
 atmosphere would not have been distinguishable from 
 that of a parish vestry but for the supreme superiority 
 of one orator, DTsraeli, who fruitlessly consecrated his 
 genius to the maintenance of the dignity of a prejudice. 
 The House of Lords, which year by year declined more 
 and more into the sere and yellow leaf of legislative life, 
 was known only as a stage for the eccentricities of a 
 buffoon, the rhetoric of a debater who would not believe 
 that his ennoblement had disabled him, or the bawlings 
 of ducal discontent with foreseen declension in undue 
 rent-rolls The crown, held by a woman, and therefore 
 easily reducible to the insignificance contemplated in a 
 model constitution, was but an abstract institution, a 
 metaphysical estate, and it was ingeniously put forth 
 that the nation must be free, when, so evidently, the 
 first person in the realm had become in practice a slave. 
 
10 
 
 MTiile all Continental Europe was entering on a new 
 stage of existence, fevered with that agitation of 
 thought, which is said by Burke to be the beginning of 
 truth, England alone seemed torpid; sensible of the 
 difiiculties which the empire, somewhat insecure of its 
 balance, had to encounter, but wanting the faith, the 
 energy, the justice to face the problem about her. 
 Ground down with taxation, the cry from the middle 
 classes, who, having lost the traditions of Waterloo 
 and of Trafalgar, no longer deified generals or Avor- 
 shipped admirals, for economy and for retrenchment, 
 Avas natural and to be expected; but discussion on these 
 heads Avas admitted to be but a postponement of the real 
 grievance—^the need of an adjustment of the National 
 Debt. The great body of the working classes (for 
 Chartism is only a disease of London beer-houses), aware 
 of misgovern raent, awake to their wants, were yet silent, 
 because decencies dAvelt around them, and no absolute 
 oppression provoked them, and because the function of a 
 people is not to philosophise, but to observe ; and their 
 silence, instead of being taken as ominous, Avas accepted 
 as a compliment. The Oligarchy, in fact, in whose 
 hands this empire has been played Avith since the de¬ 
 thronement of James the Second, Avas never more un¬ 
 disturbed, never more apparently secure, never so 
 unblushingly arrogant. Government was in the 
 possession not only of the aristocracy, but of a single 
 family of that aristocracy. Its misrule Avas pal¬ 
 pable on all sides—in England, AAuth its three million 
 paupers, in Ireland, prostrate, and poorer than she had 
 been during the preceding fifty years ; in the Colonies, 
 antagonist and discontented, Aveak themselves, and a 
 source of weakness to us. Our legislature Avithout 
 genius to dmect it, our population Avithout prospects, 
 
11 
 
 the cabinet councils, the dynastic schemings of one or 
 two families for three or four families—this was a 
 “ dead-lock—a moment disgraceful in our history, be¬ 
 cause no deeds illustrated it, no aspirations influenced 
 it, and because when nations so sleep it fares with them as 
 with the traveller who sinks to slumber in the midst of ice. 
 And as it was at the beginning of 1849, so is it at the 
 commencement of 1850: the only change is in the 
 probabilities which the Reform agitation inofFers. 
 
 This lethargy was, at least, the sign that the existing 
 system was worn out. A healthy public feeling had 
 disappeared; and in its absence fraud and cant were 
 triumphant, and political meannesses were permitted to 
 the Whigs which at no other period of our annals would 
 have been endured for an instant. An alteration of this 
 system, a large infusion into Parliamentary life of popu¬ 
 lar blood, an appeal from a clique to a country was the 
 only resource ; and you and your friends were, at such 
 a moment, bold and lucky in your suggestion. You 
 saw that what we wanted in England was a revolution ; 
 that a revolution by political means for social ends was 
 impending, inevitable : and you chose to put yourselves 
 at the head of it and to render it emphatically peaceable. 
 There are truths which do not depend on logic: the 
 people, wherever you presented yourselves, caught at once 
 at a proposal of Parliamentary Reform ; for the people 
 can have no hope if it be not in themselves. It was easily 
 made apparent to the masses of those who live by their 
 labour, and to the shopocracy of the great to\TOS, that 
 modifications, or ameliorations, financial reforms, eccle¬ 
 siastical accommodations, little constitutions to little 
 colonies, small bits of justice for the great wants of Ire¬ 
 land, were no longer worth the labour which it would 
 take for their attainment, while palpably the men and 
 
12 
 
 the materials of Government were so feeble and so worn 
 out. You brought forward prominently a comprehensive 
 remedy, and it has not been rejected. Looking at the 
 time which has elapsed since you first proposed to 
 the country the discussion of its great requirements, you 
 have produced wonders. Parliament you have not 
 affected, the nation you have not had time to agitate ; 
 but already you have introduced a new element into all 
 the calculations of our statesmen, and you have at least 
 advertised, where you have not personally been through 
 the land, that that notable constitutional safeguard, an 
 opposition in Parliament, will shortly not be wanting. 
 In a word, thoughts of Reform—a phrase which of itself 
 speaks of national energy—have again hecome familiar 
 to Englishmen, and, did you leave your work there, 
 you would be entitled to some thanks. 
 
 But make no mistakes as to your progress. Do not 
 imagine that you are indebted for your reception to your 
 peculiar principles. You spoke of Reform, and it was 
 enough. You need not have specified your limitations. 
 Do not deceive yourselves with the idea that any charm 
 in your programme has created an union of the hitherto 
 unfriendly classes of society. The secret of such success 
 as you have gained lies simply in this :—that as a novelty 
 in English popular progress, the proposal to move on came 
 from the higher to the lower class. Had you started with 
 a committee of working men on the same principles, you 
 would have been scouted as vulgar, and heard of only 
 after many years of travail. Your good fortune was 
 that you found a large number of thoughtful middle 
 class men ready to commence this agitation, and the 
 people applauded you utterly irrespective of the degrees 
 of your creed. A standard was needed to rally round : 
 you offered it, and it was elevated with acclamation. 
 
13 
 
 You did not select the inscription for this standard witli- 
 out some judgment. The name of Mr. Hume, whose long- 
 tried integrity, and persevering and disinterested career 
 of public usefulness, have mainly redeemed the “popular 
 party” of late years from utter contempt, Avill ensure with 
 the people respect for any proposal which proceeds to 
 them through his friends: and his motion to extend the 
 franchise to every householder and lodger occupying 
 a tenement orportion of a tenement twelve months, regis¬ 
 tered hy means of the poor’s-rate-hooks, was sufficiently 
 large in its contemplated operation to enable your 
 orators to appeal, on very respectable grounds, for the 
 support of the majority of their audiences. Had 
 you, however, confined youi selves to the old more li¬ 
 mited Whig panacea, household suffrage, you would 
 have been equally successful, and would not have had 
 one follower more or less. Your perpetual repudiation 
 of your own principles on the ground that they were too 
 restricted was therefore unnecessary. Had you pro¬ 
 posed household suffrage merely, you would have been 
 encumbered and damaged in the same way as you now 
 are with the friendship and the sanction of Mr. Feargus 
 O’Connor; and for the same reason: that he was hound 
 to go as far as you go, intending to go farther, and tliat 
 he had confidence in the latent sincerity of your extreme 
 intentions. That dangerous mass of ill-fed, ill-clothed, 
 ignorant, uneducated savage men who are the victims of 
 social disorder, but who believe, and truly, in the possi¬ 
 bility of political regeneration, would have cheered you 
 with all their heart and soul, and would have given you, 
 as they have given you, their confidence and their respect, 
 so long as you but conceded in a general way, in justifica¬ 
 tion of their disaffection, that Parliament was a fraud. 
 And as for the middle classe.s, vdio have joined you, be 
 
14 
 
 proud of their co-operation, but l)e assured tlmt Mr. 
 Hume’s motion has very little to do with the enthusiasm 
 which you have witnessed. That reservation as to 
 manhood suffrage, which has resounded on all your plat¬ 
 forms, has come chiefly when not from the lips of the 
 professional Chartist, from the long-headed, earnest- 
 hearted, leaders of every middle class movement—the 
 Mials, the Gilpins, and the Sturges. The middle 
 class, as a class, you have not yet gained over to you, 
 and, whatever your principles, you never will; for that 
 class, as a class, is the most essentially Conservative. 
 Numbers of them will enlist in your ranks, will head 
 your subscription-books, will give you their time, and 
 will march arm-in-arm fraternally, as we have seen, with 
 the artisan and the operative ; but these will be men, as 
 they have so far been, who are prepared at all risks to 
 make every sacrifice to the holiness and the justice of that 
 principle of civilised society which enunciates that the 
 franchise is the right of every citizen. The aid which you 
 will obtain from both classes wall depend on the evidence 
 which you may continue to give of the rectitude of your 
 aims and the statesmanship of your policy; but, in neither 
 case, will you have reasonable gi-ound for congi-atulation 
 on anypeculiar virtues discoverable in your prospectus. 
 Your aspirations will be regarded as indefinite, whatever 
 your declarations to the contrary, and the agitation will 
 be sustained by an excitement as to ihe question, not as 
 to 7/our question, of “ Reform.” Indeed it is very likely 
 that in your own council the expectation is, that you 
 will get very much less or very much more than you 
 ask for. The French in 184S sought Reform and got 
 a Republic. That is a consideration which will always 
 be in your favour with those who, among ourselves, are 
 not disposed to venerate overmuch “Mr. Hume’s motion.” 
 
And to have achieved this, to have forced tlie question 
 of Reform upon the country, and to have re 2 )roduced a 
 public opinion, the influence of which will he imme¬ 
 diately salutary, is to have achieved much. You have 
 achieved this with unprecedentedly small means witli 
 new men, and with very little of those aids which you 
 might fairly have anticipated. Your colleagues in Par¬ 
 liament have all held hack from you. Mr. Hume has 
 given you his motion ; he no doubt thought it was 
 enough. But one or two of the popular favourites liave 
 even appeared in your lengthy lists of “ those present.” 
 The names which have been handed to you are not 
 those which the people remember to have seen printed 
 in large letters. Mr. C. Pearson has endorsed your 
 claims in Lambeth with that loose running hand in 
 which he always conveys his assurances of Liberalism, 
 but Mr. Pearson, it is his countrymen’s misfortune, was 
 never heard of out of London. Col. Thompson, always 
 in the van of every honest movement, has granted you 
 his popularity; his age could do no more. Mr. Bernal 
 Osborne did not disdain your alliance, because, as a light 
 horseman of the popular party, he could always find fo¬ 
 rage for his constituents on your platforms. The twins 
 of Finsbm-y were invalided. The members for the 
 Tower Hamlets and for Oldham ratified your preten¬ 
 sions. Lord Dudley Stuart, amiable and careless, risked 
 his gentility in your company, and spoke nearly as well 
 for his degraded countrymen as he does for batches of 
 distressed Poles and devoted Hungarians. Where, 
 however, were those whose characters and whose in¬ 
 tellects should have been unreservedly at your service ? 
 Sir W. Molesworth ? He was admiring the architecture 
 of the House of Lords. Arthur Roebuck ? He was 
 too busy proving that Celts were not Saxons. Where 
 
l6 
 
 were the Radical mag^nates of the Citj', tlie Dillons, 
 Dukes, Traverses, &c., &c. ? Too interested in re¬ 
 ciprocal grumbling that “ a Liverpool man” had been 
 the first to point their way to power. Where, more ' 
 especially, were those masters in the Manchester School 
 —^John Bright, Milner Gibson, Richard Cobden ? 
 Rumour says that not only are they not with you, but 
 that they are against you. Tlie legends of “the 
 League,” it is said, have induced a belief with Messrs. 
 Gibson and Bright that agitation is the destiny of 
 Manchester, and that no meeting can be entitled to 
 their attendance which does not vote Mr. Wilson into 
 the chair. This, however, it is to be hoped, is only a 
 temporary sentiment. The Reformers of England 
 point to Mr. Bright as their leader: and lead he 
 soon will. For Mr. Cobden’s absence from your 
 movement the reason is given b}^ himself: and it 
 is a reason which he will do well to retract with as little 
 delay as possible. He states that he does not see his 
 way to the budget of ’33 —which is his seventh financial 
 heaven—except through the extension of the forty-shil¬ 
 ling freeholds. That is to sa)', that Mr. Cobden has lost 
 his faith in agitation: he now believes in a con,spiracy. 
 It is impossible to avoid seeing that Mr. Cobden, among 
 his other deficiencies, does not comprehend the philoso¬ 
 phy of political agitation in England. He looks upon 
 it is a struggle. It is not so ; it is an education. He 
 says he despaired of the League after six years’ “ fight¬ 
 ing,” until the expedient of securing votes through the 
 forty shilling freeholds of the counties occurred to him. 
 Th.e inference is, that, had this idea presented itself in 
 the first year of his agitation, he would have acted upon 
 it, and that, if he could, he would have pressed Free Trade 
 upon the country before the country was educated or 
 
17 
 
 prepared to receive the novel creed. The .second infer¬ 
 ence is, that, if the loop-hole of the forty shilling freehold 
 had not been detected, the League would never have 
 attained its object; Mr. Cobden thus confessing a con¬ 
 viction that the measures of 1846 were conceded not from 
 a sense of the justice of the demand and the commercial 
 wisdom of the principle involved, but from a panic pro¬ 
 duced in the minds of the privileged classes in conse- 
 sequenco of South Lancashire and the West Riding- 
 having been won by the Leaguers. That a man of Mr. 
 Cobden’s keen perceptions should liave fallen into these 
 Irlunders of reasoning and of fact is odd enough, and it 
 would seem as if, in thus decrying the efficiency of his 
 own agitation in past times, he had been bent upon dis¬ 
 proving the correctness of the compliment which once 
 was paid to him on the score of his “ unadorned elo¬ 
 quence.” Yet this faith in the forty shilling freeholds 
 is of late date. Mr. Cobden, at Paris, warned kings 
 and states of the results winch would be brought 
 about by the agitation of an abstract dogma : and, at 
 the same time, he must have been well aware that 
 neither the German, Russian, nor French constitutions 
 were graced with this special county qualification, 
 in which alone he would induce us to confide 
 here. And, as regards the recommendation at home, as 
 he considers it more unlilcely that through its own in¬ 
 nate force truth will succeed here than at St. Peters- 
 burgh, there is very little to bear out the encomium. 
 The English and Welsh counties, where alone this 
 freehold is to be found, return altogether 159 memhers. 
 Mr. Cobden holds out the liope of gaining not more than 
 one half of them, and that liope, as regards this peculiar 
 expedient, is clearly illusory. Let us suppose that he 
 adds 80 county gentlemen to liis present 70 followers in 
 
18 
 
 a division on the great budget question: will he consider 
 the nation safe u'ith 150 Financial Reformers ? If this is 
 the only road through which Mr. Cobden can see his 
 way to a Parliament which shall have the confidence of 
 the country, his hopes of office must be distant, and hopes 
 of office it is natural to conclude he has. Office as a 
 middle-class minister, pledged with no inconvenient 
 strictness to any extreme questions, bound only to en¬ 
 force economy at home and to beg for peace abroad, 
 would no doubt suit him; and to such office his admirers 
 would be nulling to consign him; but if he have no de¬ 
 mocratic sympathies, no comprehension of democratic 
 necessities, and no faith but in a forty shilling free- 
 holdery, a nation’s pride, it would be more discreet in 
 him to let us know it, and more honest in him not to 
 use bis influence, indirectly, under the guise of friend¬ 
 ship and counsel, in thwarting the efforts of men who 
 have less cotton in their eai's, and are better disposed to 
 listen to the pulsation of the heart of England. 
 
 “ Some dire nmfortune to portend. 
 
 No enemy can match a friend." 
 
 There need be little fear, however, of the negligence, 
 to use no harsher word, of Mr. Cobden having any evil 
 influence on the event. In these causes of great truths 
 and great necessities all men may aid, but no man can 
 retard. And I am much mistaken if a few miracles will 
 not renew this gentleman’s faith in public declarations. 
 Your association will shortly be much more necessary to 
 him than he to you. 
 
 The prospects of Reform, then, judging by the results 
 of your first }"ear’s campaign, are encouraging; and as 
 your failure would be fatal for years to come, so all 
 honest men, whatever their views of the limits of 
 your principles, must pray for your prosperity. In 
 
19 
 
 Parliamentary Reform is the only hope of a renewal of 
 the vigour of the empire. Those whom you address 
 are not, mainly, the disfranchised many ; your proposal 
 necessarily interests those also who, apparently privi¬ 
 leged, find the franchise a futility while an oligarchical 
 system, unparalleled in history for the enormity of its 
 exclusiveness in the face of our politically well instructed 
 people, prevails in opposition to all the onward ideas of 
 the age. Every circumstance around us points to the 
 expediency of Parliamentary Reform. The depressed 
 traders and workmen of England, sinking under the 
 weight of restrictive taxation—the artisans of Scotland, 
 educated, moral, and industrious—the unhappy people 
 of Ireland, not least afflicted by a mockery of represen¬ 
 tation—the sullen colonist, republican in self-defence,but 
 loyal by instinct, will ere long be alike convinced that 
 rescue from the bureaucracy of an used-up seigneurie, 
 jrermitted to be insolent only because in its respect for 
 order the country endures them, is to be assured solely 
 through the admission of the masses to a preponderating 
 voice in the government. To induce a cry for Parlia¬ 
 mentary Reform, even though there are “ Republicans,” 
 “ Repealers,” “ Federalists,” and generally “ Anar¬ 
 chists,” among us, it will not bo required of you to 
 threaten any damage to contemporaneous constitutional 
 proprieties. It is enough to propose that our trinity of 
 “ estates” is not incompatible with priority of the 
 Commons, and to let it be known that all you will in¬ 
 sist on is the trial of the present constitution at its ut¬ 
 most tension. The shopkeeper will be for Parliamentary 
 Reform, because thereby alone can he procure financial 
 alleviations. The labourer will be for Parliamentary 
 Reform, because thus alone is he to attain the laws 
 from which the labourer’s interest shall not be carefully 
 
20 
 
 excluded. The farmer will be for Parliamentary Re¬ 
 form, because not otherwise can he encounter the 
 rent-inspired reasonings of a landed aristocracy. The 
 Canadians, Anstralians, and West Indians, and their 
 colonial agents in Palace Yard, will be for Par¬ 
 liamentary Reform, because contention rrith the suc¬ 
 cessive incapables in Downing Street is beginning 
 to be wearisome. The dissenter will be for Parlia¬ 
 mentary Reform because he must trust to the people 
 to separate the church fi-om the state. Advocates, present 
 and probable, yoi have on all sides. Go on, therefore ; 
 your statesmanship is practical; sooner than you expect 
 you -will have England, Ireland, and Scotland—chronic 
 Conservatives excepted—unanimously pronouncing for 
 your specific. Although with at present as your leaders 
 but a W. J. Fox, a G. Thompson, a W. Williams, a 
 W. A. Wilkinson, or a D. W. Wire, you may be 
 consoled by the reflection that, your story is a plain one 
 and may be plainly told, and needs neither prestige nor 
 position in your orators to make it heard. By-and-by, 
 if the present Thermopyltean band of 84 do not join 
 you en masse, you will have replaced them, through less 
 reckless constituencies, by men more in earnest and less 
 given to fritter away the fortunes of a monarchy. Nay, 
 you will find yourselves threatened early enough with 
 the patronage of Whig patriotism: a change of ministry 
 would give you lords for leaders. Perhaps complete 
 success cannot be obtained but through a section of the 
 aristocracy ; in which sense the Whigs are still necessary 
 to their century ; and if they are steadied into honesty 
 by a pressure from without of your application, you will 
 have little reason to complain if you should share the 
 fate of all discoverers and rea}) few of the first fruits 
 of your own invention. 
 
Pause, however, ere you recommence your agitation, 
 and reflect if it would not be more politic to be more 
 sincere, and to announce frankly that the finality of Mr. 
 Hume’s motion is as unpalatable as the finality of Lord 
 John Russell’s measure. Go not to the nation with a 
 pretence in your mouths which is not the purpose of 
 your hearts. You say that the most speedy path to the 
 enfranchisement of the six millions of adult males now 
 without votes, is through the enfranchisement in the 
 first place of the three million occupiers of houses or 
 parts of houses, rated for twelve months to the poor. 
 It would be the readiest way, if there were less disposi¬ 
 tion to concede the one boon than the other; but the 
 opposition you have to encounter is precisely the same 
 in both cases. You make the same exertions to gain 
 the less which would be called for to accomplish the 
 greater; you shock as many prejudices and disturb as 
 many interests by making the minor as by preferring 
 the final claim. To argue that a Parliament elected by 
 your suffrage would be as impressed with the popular 
 instincts as a Parliament returned by the whole people, 
 is, even if true, to avoid the question; because you pro¬ 
 fess to seek justice, and because you promise in the end 
 to ask for it. And when you tell us that by the mode¬ 
 ration of your demands you have induced the middle 
 class men to join you, you forget that you have systema¬ 
 tically informed us of your ultimate hopes of a complete 
 suffrage, and that therefore you can have deluded nobody. 
 You have been successful and have, in a certain degree, 
 effected a co-operative action between money and the 
 masses, simply because the suggestion originally came 
 from the moneyed men, and not from the men counted 
 among the disrespectable ; and you will continue to be 
 successful because your agitation, if you be wise, will re- 
 
22 
 
 tain that aspect. And as I before said, while it was at 
 the outset, sufficient that you should generalise and 
 talk of Reform, it has become, while you are advancing 
 into a “ great fact” of some ethical importance that you 
 should be distinct in the wording of your appeal. You 
 were probably well advised in your quasi moderation at 
 the commencement, because in the commencement it 
 was above all things indispensable that you should gain 
 a hearing and a status, which could not be confounded 
 with Chartism : but a hearing you have got, a con¬ 
 trasted position is accorded to you, and you can afford 
 to be candid. Unless you can shew us that you profit 
 in any respect by your pretence, which it is evident you 
 do not, you cannot justify the resort to that which is 
 clearly so much of a lie as is involved in the suppression 
 of a truth. Be assured that in your plans of Reform, 
 when you begin to map it, you are behind, not before, 
 the age. Remember also that a great aim with you 
 should be to extinguish Chartism, which, so long as 
 its now leader lives, remains a political demoralisation, 
 and, that you can do this without crossing, with 
 your middle class legions, over to the Charter. Even 
 a change in phraseology would be for your benefit: ifi 
 instead of the cumbrous English in which you 
 now propose terms, you were to record your adhesion to 
 a manhood suffrage with a limitation of twelve months’ 
 residence—a limitation which possesses all the advan¬ 
 tages and none of the objections of a property qualifica¬ 
 tion—you would obtain all that you have now attained, 
 and this much more—the enthusiasm of those who, 
 puritans in politics, stickle to the death for a principle, 
 and who prefer the Charter, a blunder and a bungle 
 though it be, to the compromise which you proffer. It 
 is your mission, if rightly understood, to close the con- 
 
23 
 
 test in England between popular rights and aristocratic 
 privileges, finally and irrevocably to give the people a 
 pure and perfect representation : and beware of tlio 
 peddling which may reserve for you, to do over again, 
 a work as great as that to which you have now 
 devoted yourselves. You may get more than you ask— 
 that is to say, that when you have created an opinion 
 you may not be able to contradict it—or you may got 
 less, for it is very unlikely that Mr. Hume’s motion 
 would be accepted as the basis of legislation, and in that 
 case you could not insist on “ the whole bill” when the 
 philosophy of you proceedings, as interpreted by your¬ 
 selves, is to take little that you may afterwards take 
 much. Temporise not in the expectation of seeing 
 the aristocracy of the middle classes fraternise with 
 you. The only Reform which they would sanction would 
 be such as can effect no change in the system from which 
 we suffer. You want as friends only all true men ; you 
 have them or will have them from all classes. And for 
 the sake of present efficiency and ultimate good, gather 
 them round an indisputable truth. 
 
 KTNIS,