TAIT'S

EDINBURGH

MAGAZINE,

FOR

1850.

VOLUME X VII.

EDINBURGH:

SUTHERLAND AND KNOX;

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO., LONDON; AND JOHN ROBERTSON, DUBLIN.

MDCCCL.

TAIT'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

JANUARY, 1850.

HINTS ON THE FRANCHISE.

66

the Scotch operatives require to display no regret on that account, for the English freemen often do things discreditable to themselves. The ten pound rental of London, and the same rental in Thurso or Galway, are very different qualifications. Money is of less value in large towns than in old rural boroughs. Therefore, the man who pays six pounds of rental in the good town of Elgin is probably better to do in the world than a ten pound house

THE franchise will be the framework of a debate [[ representatives of the working classes exist-and in the next session of Parliament. The feeling evoked by the National Financial Reform and Complete Suffrage Association is not strong, but it is respectable. The noise made by the agitation is not deafening; but the claim is substantial, and is pressed by parties of some weight-by men with votes and influence, to whose arguments members must lend a willing audience as hustings days" approach. The period would be well selected for the settle-holder in Edinburgh. Government clings to a ment of the franchise movement on some permanent basis. The work must be done at some early date; and, on prudential motives, a quiet season should be chosen for its completion. Cottagers might teach statesmen wisdom on this and on other questions. Thatched roofs require repairs; but the thatcher does not linger idly beside his straw until the rains fall and the storms rise, to make the roof tight, for he prepares in autumn's stillness for winter's tempests. The most intelligent politicians might go, with advantage, to the peasants' school, for they alone wait until troubles come before they provide a remedy, that would prevent their occurrence, if applied at the right hour.

qualification of stone, but declines to make it more than nominally uniform. Inequalities of this description can never be entirely obviated, but arrangement and care would reduce their present inconsistencies.

Their recapitulation is an unpleasant and also an unprofitable and provoking mode of spending time. They are not defensible, and they are not defended. Their authors and supporters only decry any disturbance of the country at present. Let ill alone, they say, because some persons have been doing mischief at Turin, or in Mesopotamia, or in Bokhara. The day will never dawn on this side of the millennium, in which, somewhere, unreasonThe franchise of this country embraces so many able men will not be doing and asking unreasonable qualifications that an inquirer loses himself, or his things. The British people are not to be consijudgment, in the labyrinth. The qualification of dered as guarantees for all the human family: England would serve no good purpose in Ireland they cannot be justly punished for any crimes exand Scotland, for the forty shillings freehold of cept their own. Political privileges should not be England is unknown in the other two kingdoms. withheld from them on account of riots done by the In the latter country, two hundred shillings are Baden-Badenese; or because Red Republicanism cirrequired, in political qualifying, to stand, instead of culates through French workshops. Should the opeforty shillings in England. The franchise in ratives of England, and especially of Scotland—since Ireland is more desultory, and depends very often || those of England may buy freeholds-be politically on the caprice of valuators. Difficulty is experi- || disfranchised because they are poor? The negative enced in getting on, and at least equal difficulty in getting off, the roll of voters. A registered man has no immunity against death; but, for political purposes, he is scarcely allowed to die. His name, like a licensed house, has a virtue in it, although the original occupant may be buried for six months. The body that, by the laws of nature should be dust and ashes, walks hale and hearty to the poll, and votes for the highest bidder—unless some great political end, or some religious object, perhaps some bit of threadbare quackery, revives the lost and nearly forgotten man.

In England, the freemen form a powerful body in borough registries; but in Scotland no similar

VOL. XVII.-XO. CXCI.

is the answer by everybody; but many add, that for
their own sins they suffer. They are ignorant, im-
provident, or intemperate; and, on these grounds,
a general sentence is issued against the whole body.
The inconsistency of this conduct is remarkable,
for although the artisan who tipples has, for tip-
pling, his citizenship shred away, yet the licensed
dealer who supplies his artificial cravings, and
generally drinks deep himself, is a privileged man;
and all the other persons who minister the means
of debasement are exalted into voters, because their
trade requires or their profits enable them to pay
ten pounds and upwards of annual rent.

The argument against the concession of the suf-
A