befriended those who were of different opinions. We shall catch further glimpses of this great man, hereafter. Sydrach Sympson, according to Neale, a meek and quiet divine, educated at Cambridge, but driven out of the church by Archbishop Laud, a man of great learning, and equal piety and moderation, though silenced at one time by the Assembly, because he differed from them on some matters of discipline, was a companion and fellow-labourer of the Independent band. Last, but not least, was Dr. Thomas Goodwin, a divine of much celebrity, respecting whom it was recorded in the common register of the University of Cambridge, where he studied, in scriptis in re theologica quamplurimus orbi notus.' His opinions on the five points were of the high Calvinistic school, but he did not fail to inculcate the practical lessons of Christianity, and was opposed to Antinomianism equally in theory and practice. Such were the men who fought the early battles of Independency.'-pp. 163-165.

We part from Mr. Stoughton with sincere respect. He has furnished a volume which all may read with interest, and from which most may gather both information and instruction. To our young people, his labours will prove especially useful, and to all such, we cordially recommend them.

ART. VIII. Electoral Districts. By Alexander Mackay, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London: C. Gilpin.

Speech of Mr. Cobden, M.P., in the Debate on Mr. Hume's Motion, July 6th, 1848.

Ir is in the recollection of all, that when the scheme of the Reform Bill was first announced in the House of Commons, a leading politician of the day declared that it took away his breath.' The significance of the expression has lost somewhat of its force, since it has become evident, that 'the bill' has failed to neutralize that preponderating influence of the landed and aristocratic class in the House of Commons, which it was expected to reduce to its equitable proportion. To those who had so long struggled for an infusion of the more popular or democratic element into that House, the extinction of so many small boroughs by Schedule A., and the excision of one member each from the boroughs enumerated in Schedule B., and the transference of the representation to such places as Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, etc., seemed a great stride; and almost by acclamation, those who had contended for Universal Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, and Annual Parliaments, hailed the measure, if not as a realization of their theory, at least, as a practical means of good government. The experience of fifteen years has demonstrated that the House of Commons, under the

Reform Bill, is still, as before that measure was passed, essentially aristocratic in its composition, and the tendencies of its legislation. We are not unmindful, whilst we pen this, of what the reformed House has done. It has opened the China and East India trade, it has abolished slavery in the colonies, it has freed the municipal corporations, it has repealed the Corn and Provision laws, it has substituted to a large extent taxes upon property and income, for impolitic taxes on the raw materials of manufacture; and it is about, as we would fain believe, to give the coup de grace to the Navigation Laws. Yet must it be noted, that the most important of these measures, the Abolition of Slavery and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, were not spontaneous acts of the people's representatives. They were extorted from the House of Commons, only after costly and prolonged agitations. The first too had its price, in the apportionment of which the members of both houses had, directly or indirectly, no small concern; whilst the carrying of the latter has left, as the strongest section in parliament, that which clings to a protective policy in its most extreme form, and which, with a pertinacity of resistance, and an acrimony of debate, unknown since the discussions on the reform measure, now seeks to re-enact protection for the West India planter, if it does not indeed aim to re-enact slavery and the slave-trade. The fact that the agitations alluded to were absolutely unavoidable, on the supposition that the ends contemplated were really necessary to the nation's weal, of itself, is decisive of the failure of the Reform Bill to produce a close harmony betwixt the people and the House of Commons. But that failure becomes all the more palpable, when it is remembered, that the voices which out of doors, in public meetings and otherwise, compelled the House to fulfil their wishes, -were precisely the voices of those who either were altogether unrepresented in parliament, or whose share in that representation was utterly disproportioned to their number. Is it needful to state, that the agitation against the Corn Laws had its birthplace in a county which contains as many £10 electors, as the eight counties of Kent, Devon, Norfolk, Wilts, Suffolk, Dorset, Lincoln, and Northampton; and that whilst that one county sent twenty-two voices to parliament, to denounce protection as an injustice and a crime, those eight counties sent eighty-five, to defend the one and to perpetuate the other? It is asserted that the present demand for organic change, owes no small share of its vitality to that restlessness of spirit, which a preceding agitation has generated; nay, it is coarsely hinted that men who took part in the league agitation, find the sober business of life distasteful, and are the real movers in the agitation for parliamentary reform. It needs no oracle to tell us, that however pleasant pay may be to the agents of such an organiza

tion as the League,' the payees found it anything but an agreeable matter to them, save only when the contributions took the form of a tribute to their great leader; nor should it have escaped the sagacity of the potent writer, who has given utterance to this slander, that it is just possible the 41,041 £10 electors of Lancashire may have reflected that, if they had sent eighty-five representatives to the Commons' House, as did the 41,581 electors of the privileged counties we have named, the corn-laws might have been earlier repealed, and their money saved into the bargain. The practical people of this country, and especially the people of Lancashire and the north' in general, have an instinctive perception, that the process of roasting a pig by burning one's house down, is very expensive, as well as very absurd and ridiculous; and in virtue of that instinct, they have long since decided that it will be better to get the means for all reformns, once and for ever, by a change in the composition of the Commons' House, which shall give them their just status there, than to have a separate and distinct agitation to get up whenever they deem it necessary for the public good, that their opinions and wishes. should be known in parliament. The pertinacious resistance to any change in the protective policy of the legislature led, in fact, to a considerable secession from the ranks of the League in 1841, and for a time, the conviction that repeal was an impossibility, so long as the Commons' House remained unreformed, paralysed its operation, and brought out in active and even virulent opposition to it, the Chartist body. And, though it is not denied, that the leaders of the League held on their course, in the confident belief that when the truth of their principles came to be generally understood by the middle classes, throughout the more popular constituencies of the nation, even an unreformed House of Commons would give way;-they would be greatly deficient in political sagacity, if they did not see a more excellent way' for the accomplishment of similar legislative changes, by bringing the legislature into harmony with the national mind. There is no statesman whose opinion is worth anything, who now denies the absolute necessity, and the critical timeliness of the Free Trade measure of 1846. But free trade would be a theory still, and not a fact, but for the League. The League, in the vastness of its organization, its protracted toil, and its almost superhuman energy, may be taken as the measure of a resisting force somewhere; and though it need not be denied that one element of resistance was the ignorance of the people out of doors, the mass of the opposing force was in the ignorance, the pride, the selfishness, and the class prejudices of a majority in the Commons; composed in the main of Tories, but including no small number of Whigs. And yet both Whig and Tory free trade leaders of the House of Commons, now resist the

only means whereby such organizations as the League may be rendered unnecessary; and in the same breath, condemn agitatation as a political evil, and class agitators with disturbers of the public peace, and pestilent demagogues! The best answer to this accusation, is the fact, that the League agitators are the proposers of a reform in the representation, which to a large extent, would obviate the need of agitation; or at the least, would render it so palpably factious, that none but the very turbulent-the men who only live in and by confusion-would take part in it.

It would, however, be a partial explanation of the movement now taking place in favour of a large reform of the House of Commons, were it resolved into a mere question of the economy and better adaptation of it, as a means of legislative change. The movement has its origin in far weightier considerations than those of mere utility and fitness. The most important of these considerations are, first,-That the admission of the operative classes to the right of the franchise, is indispensable to the permanence and stability of our institutions; and second, That on several vital questions of social and political economy, the middle classes differ widely from the legislative classes, and are precluded, by the unequal distribution of the representation, from giving effect to their views in their House of Commons. The middle classes feel strongly on both these points; and the assertion is not lightly made that, long ere the Revolution of February 23rd broke out, and, of course, long before the 'Members League' was announced, the Liberal party in most of the large constituencies of the empire had arrived, not only at the conclusions now stated, but had contemplated and weighed the means by which they could obviate the evils which they indicate. It would be difficult to name a popular constituency which did not pledge the candidate for its suffrage, at the last election, to household suffrage at the least; and not one which did not record its condemnation of the centralizing tendency of the national legislation, either by returning members pledged to resist that tendency, or, by a formidable minority in support of members so pledged; that minority, being only such, because of the unprincipled coalition of a small section of so-called Liberals, with the Tory party of the constituency.

It is beside the purpose of this article, more distinctly to specify the points of difference betwixt the middle classes and the legislative and administrative classes. It must suffice to say, that the differences embrace greater and weightier questions than the incidence or the amount of a tax, or the scale of the national defences. The whole question of the end and scope of civil government has been raised; and on this fundamental question-a large section of the middle classes, com

prising the most earnest, enlightened, and religious portion, are in direct antagonism with the ruling and legislating class; whilst on the grave questions of colonial and external policy, the entire middle class is arriving at conclusions which will, ere long, be embodied in vigorous action against the accredited policy of the Foreign and Colonial Offices. Never, since 1640, were larger questions before the public mind, nor can the solution of them be deferred. The contest on both these great branches of controversy is unavoidable. The legislature is not resistant simply on the first point of difference-it is aggressive; and as to the latter, the increasing burden of our colonial government, and the imminent peril to the experiment of free trade, which persistance in our external polity involves, are continually forcing both subjects on the attention of the commercial classes; and they lack neither the intelligence nor the power, to make their opinions felt in the legislature. At present, however, the middle classes are at serious disadvantage, just in proportion as they are inadequately represented in the Commons' House. They know it is there the battle of their principles must be fought: and alike, because it is their right, and because of the great end which the attainment of the right will subserve, it may be set down as a postulate, that they are committed to a vigorous,—perhaps a protracted-but ultimately, a successful struggle for an efficient reform of the Commons' House :-including a large extension of the franchise, and an equitable distribution of the representation. It is our immediate object to develope the rationale of the latter, by a full exposure of the anomalies, the inequalities, and the gross injustice, of the present representative system.

The clever pamphlet of Mr. Mackay has already developed and placed in strong relief, these anomalies and inequalities, chiefly as respects the ratio of representation to population. Incidentally he has touched on them, as shown by the ratio of representation to property. Both because a close and remarkable coincidence can be shown betwixt a scale of representation based on population, and one based on property; and because the opponents of re-distribution cannot, consistently, and with any face, meet the argument, as based on property, with the common places which satisfy them, and too many in the country, of whom better things might have been expected, when that argument rests on population alone, the former view of the question will be exclusively presented now, except as for the purpose of illustration, broad general results on either plan, may be compared. There is the more reason, too, for this exclusive attention to the property side of the controversy, because of the profound ignorance of the great majority even of the educated classes,