From this table may also be seen how vain are the hopes of those who imagine that the county representation is to form any barrier against the democratic inroads of the manufacturing interest. Twice as many Irish and English county members, and thrice as many for open places, voted for the Bill as against it. This evinces, in the most convincing manner, the democratic tendency of the electors, even without the £10 freeholders. What will be the result of the elections with that portentous addition to the popular force?

But this table furnishes another and a still more alarming subject for consideration. It appears from it that a considerable majority of English and Scotch members are against the Bill, and that it was carried by the preponderance of the Irish.

Thus there were 266 members for Great Britain against the Bill, and 251 for it; in other words, a majority of fifteen members were against it. Ireland threw in her weight to cast the balance: if she does so successfully, she will more than repay, by that single stroke, the oppression of four hundred years.

Now, what will be the result of the next election under the new constitution in Ireland, with every £10 householder voting for a member of Parliament ? At least sixty out of the 103 members she is to return, will be not only in the Radical, but in the Anti-Union interest. They will, in fact, be nominated by O'Connell, as completely as his son was recently named by him for the county of Clare. Here is ample subject for serious consideration. Sixty Catholic Radicals returned by O'Connell ! That will indeed make England feel the bitterness of Irish Immigration. With a powerful body of this description, supported by the incessant clamour of seven million Irishmen on the other side of the Channel, how is the Union to be maintained? How is the empire to be saved from

dismemberment? What security will remain for the institutions or property of Great Britain, when the Catholics combine with the English Radicals?

Catholic Emancipation has brought the empire to the perilous position in which it is now placed on the Reform Question. The Catholic members carried the majority in the House of Commons: the Duke of Norfolk was the first peer who declared in the Upper House in its favour. The first return they have made for admission into the pale of the constitution, has been to combine with its enemies for its destruction. Such is the effect of a great concession to popular clamour.

The unanimous support which the Radicals have given to the bill, in every part of the country, is the clearest proof of its democratic tendency. Hunt and Hume, O'Connell and O'Gorman Mahon, the Times and the Examiner, are equally loud in its praise. These Radicals know well what will increase the influence of their own party: they have an eagle's eye for discovering anything which has a tendency, however remote, to continue the hated power of the aristocracy. Can it be supposed that they would support the bill, unless it went to subvert the power of their enemies? Their boast, their glory is, that it will have this effect: "Let this bill be passed," says the Examiner," and the settlement of the government upon a democratic basis is certain."

Where, says Lord Brougham, were the rotten boroughs in the days of Saxon liberty? How can it be called revolution, which only restores the constitution to the days of pristine liberty? Where, we ask in reply, was the democratic press in the days of Alfred? Where was the power of the people in the days of Magna Charta, when all that the nobles who obtained it thought proper to stipulate for the cultivators of the soil, was, that their plough-goods should not be distrained in seed-time? Where the weight of the commons, when their representatives in Parliament concluded their petition with, "for God's sake-and, as an act of mercy?" When the feudal nobility lived in rude magnificence in their castles, surrounded by their armed retainers-when the commons were few in number, ignorant, and dispirited-when the greatest city in the kingdom,

London excepted, did not contain twenty thousand soulswhen printing was unknown, and the daily press unborn, it might be perfectly safe to send writs to every borough as it rose to anything like eminence; though the same course would be highly perilous at this time, when the power of the people has so enormously increased, when a democratic press incessantly stimulates their ambition, and the change in the mode of warfare, consequent on the invention of firearms, has caused the sword to fall from the hands of the country nobility. An increase of borough representation was then required, to counterbalance the exorbitant power of the feudal nobility; an increase of the influence of the peers is now required, to counterbalance the turbulent vigour of the commons.

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No change can be safely introduced in favour of popular power, except what is done by slow and imperceptible additions. Lord Brougham has, indeed, ridiculed all plans of "bit-by-bit" reformers; but a greater man than Lord Brougham has pronounced them to be the only safe and beneficial innovations. Prudenter igitur faciunt homines," says Lord Bacon, "si in innovationibus suis a tempore exemplum petant: tempus enim innovat vel maxime sed tacite, pedetentim, ac sine sensu. Expedit præterea experimentis novis in corporibus politicis medendis, non uti, nisi urgens incumbat necessitas, aut evidens se ostendat utilitas; et sedulo cavere ut reformationis studium mutationem inducat, non autem studium mutationis reformationem prætexat." *

The democratic tendency of the daily press, and its prodigious influence even on powerful minds, must be calculated upon as a fixed power in future in the constitution. Its operation will be always felt, except during those periods of excitement from foreign war, when the ordinary bent of the popular mind is for a time diverted. It arises partly from the extension of the power of reading and thinking on political subjects to the mass of the community, and partly

"They act wisely, who, in their innovations, follow the example of timewhich is indeed the greatest of all innovators; but is so step by step, silently and unperceived. It is of importance also to attempt no new experiments in the body politic, unless urgent necessity, or evident utility, recommend it: and, above all, to take care, that desire of reformation should induce the change, not the desire of change induce the reformation.”—Bacon, x. 66, De Innovationibus.

from the vast increase of our manufacturing population. Crowded together in great numbers, ignorant except of what they learn through the daily press, incessantly stimulated by abuse of their superiors, such men will always be inclined to democracy. From their vast numbers, any journals which they support must necessarily have ten times the circulation which those enjoy who support the aristocratic side of the question. Hence the prodigious increase of the revolutionary journals of the present day, and the alarming fact, that with few exceptions the whole press is on the popular side. It is to no purpose to say they do not influence the thinking part of the people: true, they do not; but how many of the readers of newspapers are capable of thinking? Not one in fifty.

Thus the boasted and long-wished-for Reform will amount only to a change of masters. We shall unhorse the aristocracy of rank and station, and place that of adventurers and money-lenders in its stead; we shall be governed by a domination more fierce and unbending than that of family or possessions; we shall overthrow the hereditary influence of the peers and proprietors of England, and fall under the government of the conductors of reviews and the editors of newspapers. Lord Brougham's bill will destroy that wholesome state of the representation which he has so well described as characterising the English legislature; and commence, in its stead, that ruinous rule of adventurers and demagogues which, he has so clearly shown, brought on the horrors of the French Revolution.

By passing the present bill, it is said, you will secure the numerous body of the new voters on the side of order; full reliance may be placed on them in any future contests with the inferior and unrepresented classes, and the pyramid of society placed on a broad and stable basis. It is hard to say whether this argument, which at first sight appears most plausible, is, in reality, worse founded in precedent or principle.

In France, after the Restoration in 1815, the qualification of an elector was fixed at the payment of 300 francs a-year of direct taxes, which, making allowance for the difference in the value of money, is equal to about £20 a-year here. Certainly this was a very high qualification; imply

ing, as it did, at least £400 a-year of income to each elector. Yet, high as it was, it furnished no security against the demand for an extension of the elective franchise, by the very exclusive and limited class who alone enjoyed it. The Chamber of Deputies, at each successive dissolution, became more and more democratical; until it became so hostile to the Throne, that the government could no longer be conducted, and a dissolution ensued, under circumstances which brought about the Revolution of 1830.

But we need not resort to foreign countries for proof of this truth. What is the boast of the Reformers at the present day? That the electors of England would return a great majority of Reforming members; that, on a dissolution, no man would be able to stand up on the hustings but those who would pledge themselves to support the present bill, which makes so great an addition to the electors of the empire. If this position be well founded-and that it is so, to a great extent, no one can doubt-what comes of the argument that the new electors will immediately close the door against all new entrants, and resolutely range themselves with Government in all future contests with the people? Why are the new and more extended electors to be so totally different from the present and more restricted? Human nature will be the same in future years as in the present; the same passions and desires will mislead mankind then as at this time; and the same causes which now make the existing electors clamour for a duplication of their class, will make the Reformed electors demand universal suffrage and vote by ballot.

The reason is obvious, and will remain the same in all ages. The people, after obtaining the elective franchise, will soon discover that they have been deluded into the acquisition of a privilege of no practical value. The million of electors who, under the new constitution, are to return the Parliament of Great Britain, will, ere long, find that their condition is no ways ameliorated by the new privilege they have acquired wages are as low, taxes as heavy, tithes as vexatious, poor-rates as burdensome, as under the old constitution. If their representatives in Parliament are sufficiently strong to secure the abolition of these burdens