was before an intangible idea. The subject has come within the range of practical English thought almost for the first time; and as usual, the tone of habitual discussion on it has deepened and improved. A feeling of sympathy for intelligent working people is perhaps stronger than ever, and there is every wish that they should if possible have some power in the community; but there is a distinct and settled determination that they shall not have all the power.

I have dwelt so fully on this part of the subject in the preceding essay, that it is not necessary for me now to resume the general discussion of it. The public mind is in a much more likely mood to entertain what appear to me to be just ideas than it ever was before, or than I could have hoped it would be now. There are one or two incidental remarks, however, which it is necessary to make on the subject.

The most telling objection to the expedient suggested in the foregoing essay for representing the working classes-viz., that of lowering the qualification so as to include them in the great seats of industry, but not elsewhere-is, that it sacrifices the political power of the higher classes in those important places. The higher classes in Manchester cannot be expected to like that they should be disfranchised by the wholesale enfranchisement of the workingmen in Manchester. That it should ever be pleasant, it would be impossible to hope; but there are some considerations which tend, I think, to make it less unpleasant than might be imagined at first sight.

In the first place, a great deal of the anticipated calamity has happened, and is being endured. The creators of the wealth of Manchester- and when I speak of Manchester, I only do so because it stands out in the public mind as a type and symbol of cities of the class are not the £10 householders who return its members: these are the small shopkeepers and petty dealers who swarm and congregate about every great commercial place, but who bear to the merchants and

manufacturers of those places much the same relation that the sutlers of a camp bear to its disciplined army. In London, where the geographical division of industrial pursuits is unusually evident, there are whole constituencies composed nearly exclusively of these rather mean attendants on commercial civilization : the Tower Hamlets contain very little else, and any one can see by walking through them how little their population has of the cultivated energy and enlarged acuteness commonly to be found in a great merchant. In other towns-Liverpool is a strong contrast in this respect to London - this attendant community of inferior dealers resides in the closest proximity to the most important mercantile offices, in the focus of business transactions. The effect of the Act of 1832 has been to throw the representation of the large trading towns into the hands of these inferior traders, whose vicinity to the greater ones is inevitable and whose numbers are overwhelming. A portion of the higher class of traders sympathize in the views of the lower; this portion assume to be the leaders of the place, and give to persons at a distance an idea of its tendencies quite different from what would be desired by the higher citizens in general. There has always been an anti-Manchester party at Manchester. The school which Mr. Bright represents has not the undisputed lead among the manufacturing and mercantile men of the North which it is commonly thought to have the most cultivated people there are perhaps generally opposed to it. The highest and best class of the traders in great commercial towns are already disfranchised, and it would in reality be better for them that it should be thoroughly understood to be so: at present the world imagines that their present representatives express their feelings and state their opinions. If the representation of such places were avowedly and constitutionally in the hands of the working classes, it would be understood that the higher traders had no voice; those of them-and they are

a very large number-who have none now would be great gainers, because they would no longer have the vexation of being thought to sympathize with persons to whom they are emphatically opposed. The reason is different with respect to the prevailing party in those boroughs, but the conclusion is the same: so far are Mr. Bright's followers from protesting against the wholesale admission of the class of voters just below them, that they are clamorous in favor of that admission; if the adoption of a rate-paying franchise is supported by any part of the country, it is by the constituencies of the very largest towns. There is no hardship in giving to them the boon which they demand for every one.

If, however, it should be found that the higher classes of the largest towns exceedingly disliked the evident disfranchisement which would be the certain consequence of extending the borough franchise in such towns to the lower orders, it would not be by any means impossible to find practicable plans of preserving to them an effectual franchise. The first of these plans is the creation of what may be called suburban constituencies. The greater part of our merchants and traders, even the higher part of our shopkeepers, have long since deserted the straitened dwellings over the shop and the counting-house which contented their fathers. They have residences in country districts near their places of business; all round our largest cities there is a network of them. Many constituencies could be found in the environs of our great cities where the rich, comfortable, and intellectual business classes reside in very great numbers, and where they would be far more likely to predominate, and to have an effectual voice in the selection of members of Parliament, than under the present suffrage system they are or can be in the great seats of industry themselves. Such classes would benefit exceedingly by conceding to the working classes the undisputed command of the representation of the

great town itself, if they could thereby obtain a real representation for themselves at their own homes. That which they have now - so numerous are the meaner householders-is rather a vexing mockery than a desirable reality; what they would obtain would be a substantial and effectual influence on the legislature. If it were necessary, it would be easy to provide that the representation should be really in the hands of the higher class by fixing the property qualification for a vote at a higher point than usual (at £20, suppose); but I rather apprehend that this expedient, though quite defensible and by no means intrinsically undesirable, would not be absolutely necessary, as the number of the higher classes residing in well-selected suburban constituencies would give them, under a £10 franchise, an effectual superiority.

A second plan, which is not inconsistent with the first, but rather supplementary to it, is a development of the suggestion that personal property should be made the basis and criterion of a qualification as well as real property. The first step to carry this into practice raises the question, For what constituency is this qualification to give a vote? Railway debentures and the public funds have no locality; if they are to give a vote, they may do so for one place as well as for another. I would propose to give the voter himself a choice on this point. If he had the power of registering himself on the ground of a moneyed-property qualification within a certain circle of constituencies-say to any one situated at not more than fifty miles from his usual place of abodehe could transfer his vote to that one where it was most wanted and would be most effectual. The higher classes in the largest constituencies - practically disfranchised as they almost are now, and as they would be quite if the suggestions I have ventured to make were adopted-might find a satisfactory refuge in the smaller constituencies of the neighborhood, whose numbers they would augment and whose composition

they would materially improve. In general, too, the creation of a transferable constituency, by conferring the suffrage on the possessors of non-local wealth as such, would be a material strengthening of the educated classes as opposed to the non-educated, because it would give the former an opportunity of concentrating their power where it would tell most, while the power of the lower classes would be dispersed and inseparably attached to certain places.

Both of these are expedients for giving to the disfranchised upper classes of the most numerous constituencies power elsewhere than in these constituencies; two other expedients may be mentioned by which they might still retain considerable influence in them.

The first of these is a modification of the "minority principle." It has been shown in the preceding essay, by arguments which are to my own mind conclusive, that this ingenious expedient would not of itself solve the problem of giving to the working classes a certain number of spokesmen in Parliament without conferring on them the supreme authority in the state. The working classes are the enormous majority in the country: if the franchise is universally lowered so as to include them in every constituency, they will be masters of the country. By means of the minority principle a certain power may be preserved to some fraction more or less of the constituency, according to circumstances; but the great preponderance will be with the majority still. In the case usually supposed of a constituency with three members, in which each constituent has nevertheless but two votes, a minority at all greater than twofifths of the constituency could return one member, if they pleased it, with complete certainty; but the corresponding majority of a trifle less than three-fifths would return two members with equal certainty, the influence of the majority would still be double the influence of the minority. So far from this principle giving to the working classes a few members and