in Norway, a large portion of the population; in Great Britain, about one in every seven male adults; in Belgium, about one in every twenty-one; in France, under Louis Philippe, there were about one in forty-four.

'In the United States are printed annually seventy-five million newspapers; in Great Britain, sixty millions; France, less than one-fourth the quantity of matter contained in the above figure.'

But, perhaps, the most striking result of statistical inquiries is to show that liberty and good-living go hand in hand. Our author says:

These data furthermore suggest so remarkable a coincidence between the political condition of states and their prosperity and power, that, whether cause or effect, whether symptom or disease, we cannot readily escape the conviction that an indissoluble connection exists between the form of a people's government and its greatness and well-being. Accordingly as a nation is arbitrarily governed or popularly represented, do we find the collective wealth of the community, the revenue it furnishes to the state, the quantity of food its individual members consume, the luxuries they enjoy, and the superfluities they interchange with the stranger.

'Beneath the unmitigated despotism and resolute obscurantism of the Czar, the Russian lives, trades, and contributes to the revenue, as follows: --His staple food is rye and cabbage; his average consumption of colonial produce is 1lb. 4oz. to 1lb. 9oz. of sugar, and 24oz. tea; he trades to the extent of Ss., and contributes to the state 5s. The Austrian, under an absolutism locally modified, and with a rigorous censorship, lives on inferior grains, consumes 2lb. 11oz. sugar, and contributes to the state about 7s. 7d. The Prussian and German, under illusory constitutions, and a preventative censorship, live-the Prussian on potatoes and rye, the German on inferior grains. They average a consumption of 4lbs. 14oz. of sugar, 14lb. of coffee. The estimate of animal food in Prussia is averaged from 15lbs. to 30lbs., and the Prussian contributes rather less than 10s. to the royal treasury. If we now take France, with a representative form of government, in which one adult male in every 44 has till lately been sharing, and with a press which the law persecuted, but could not silence: the Frenchman's staple food is wheat; he consumes from 6lbs. 10oz. to 7lbs. 4oz. of sugar; he trades at the rate of 54s., and contributes upwards of 39s. to the state. The Belgian, with a more liberal constitution than the French was, giving to one adult male in every 21 a vote, lives chiefly on wheat, consumes 14lbs. of sugar, contributes 18s. to the state, and trades to the extent of 70s. The inhabitant of Great Britain, whose electors are one in seven, lives on wheat and animal food, consuming, at the lowest calculation, 77lbs. of meat, 191bs. of sugar, 1lb. of coffee, 1lb. 9oz. of tea. He trades to the extent of 107s., contributes 35s. to the state, and, in its need, has contributed upwards of 100 with far more facility than the Russian pays his five. The United-States man, thoroughly self-governed, and whose vote

is his birthright, has secured a share of material comfort proportioned to the freedom of his institutions. A choice of grains, 19lbs. of sugar, near 6lbs. of coffee, nearly 1lb. of tea, and, at the lowest computation, 200lbs. of meat, constitute his average food. He has traversed his country with canals and railway lines, almost doubling those of the United Kingdom; and his shipping, more than half that of Great Britain, almost equals the collective navies of all Continental Europe. His trade averaged in 1840, 57s., and the cost of his government was five or six.' -Ib. pp, 285-287.

Thus it seems liberty means something more than the mere power of doing as we please: it means good food, good lodging, good clothing, all sorts of comforts, and plenty of them. The government that withholds liberty, withholds all these from the people, and they who neglect to combine and exert themselves in the cause of constitutional liberty, consent to the poverty of themselves and neighbours, and condemn the helpless and their own children to it. This is a point of view from which it may be well to look habitually at this great question.

ART. VIII.-Borough Elections Bill. Introduced by Sir John Hanmer, Mr. Hume, and Mr. Baines. May, 1848.

Bill for Disfranchising the Freemen of the Borough of Great Yarmouth. May 9th, 1848.

Act for Disfranchising the Freemen of the Borough of Great Yarmouth. June 8th, 1848.

Corrupt Practices at Elections Bill. Introduced by Lord John Russell. July, 1848.

· Electors.-Abstract of Return to an Address of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated March 12th, 1847;-for,

'Return, in a tabular Form, for the year 1846, of the Number of Electors on the Registers of each County, City, Town, and Borough, in England, Wales, and Scotland, returning Members to Parliament, exhibiting the several Qualifications, and distinguishing those who are required from those who are not required to pay Rates and Taxes, to entitle them to be placed on the Registers.

Tabular Return of the several Qualifications of Electors in the Counties, Cities, Towns, and Boroughs of England, Wales, and Scotland, which returned Members to Parliament previous to the passing of the Reform Act, distinguishing the Qualifications for which the payment of Rates and Taxes was required, from those of which such payment was not required.

The £10 voters in each Borough to be classed according to the

annual value at which they are rated in the Parish Books, distinguishing those rated at £10 and not exceeding £15; £15 and not exceeding £20; £20 and not exceeding £25; £25 and not exceeding £30; £30 and not exceeding £40; £40 and not exceeding £50; and classing all those rated at a higher value than £50, according to a scale ascending £20 at each step.

Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 23rd July, 1847.' 751.

In this article we shall attempt to sketch an outline of the evils of the representation under the Reform Act. But this is a task for a volume, if every statement is to be supported by proofs abundant enough to satisfy every doubt, and refute every objection. However, time and space, and the immediate object of the paper, prescribe neither an elaborate dissertation, nor a minutely detailed argument, but a brief and descriptive catalogue of electoral criminalities, compressed within the compass of a few pages. Meanwhile, we shall not hesitate to make our statements with the confidence of those who know their views are the results of faithful investigations, and supported by masses of sworn evidence, recorded by parliament, and published by authority. The assailants of such views will not find them more pregnable because they cannot see all the bulwarks and entrenchments which surround them.

A consequence, to some readers, of the design of the paper, must be an impression of exaggeration, if not of libel. Exaggeration is the word which expresses the feeling with which a man regards a statement or an emotion beyond his notion of the requirements of truth, or the demands of the occasion. But after all, who is right, depends on the facts, and he who has examined them most, is likeliest to be right in his expression of sentiments, and in his portraiture of circumstances.

Nobody knows the numbers of the present electoral body. Those who have studied the subject most closely, differ in their guesses by a twelfth, a sixth, a fourth of the whole of the electors of the three kingdoms. The number of men who are voters, is a very different thing from the number of electors, which again differs from the number of actual voters. But the numbers of both, the voters who are registered, and of the men who are voters, are unknown and undiscoverable. This is a fact at which our readers will not be amazed, if they accompany us to the end of this attempt to afford them, as if through chinks and crevices, some glimpses into the electoral system of which they are the victims. Oligarchical power in the representative system walks in darkness.

We may state our numerical guesses. The electors of the

three kingdoms number about 1,100,000. Roundly stated, England has 800,000, Scotland, 85,000, Wales, 50,000, and Ireland, somewhat less than 120,000 electors. But we personally know several rich men, who have many votes, each in different boroughs and counties. We personally know one very poor man, who has assured us he is a registered elector for several counties. The dead are on every register, and vote by personators at every general election. The names on the register of 1846 probably amounted to 1,200,000; the men who are the owners of the names, and the actual electoral body, probably did not exceed 900,000, in the three kingdoms.

Guesses and glimpses are all that can be obtained of the moral condition of the electoral body. But 'appalling' is not too strong a word to describe the emotion these inspire.

'Crime,' to use words we have elsewhere used, 'like a bleeding cancer, has sent its fibres through the whole of the electoral body. The ramifications of crime throughout the electoral body are marvellous, when laid bare by the dissecting knife. Every voter of the million is not a fibre of the cancer, which, in bulk, is a smaller thing than the body in which it thrives; but investigation proves every elector to be either a participator or a, victim of the fatal fungi of crime, whose tendrils are intertwined with every part of the representative system of this country. How so much evil has come to affect so many; how the swiftly spreading malady has hitherto escaped systematic exposure; how, until the formation of the Anti-Bribery Society, no men have combined on the determination to affect its extermination, -are facts of the strange and startling kind every now and then exposed to the light, to show how very different the progress of civilization is from the progress of morality. Crime, victorious over all our preventive punishments, menaces the vital functions of the representative system itself, and taints the life's blood, and curbs the pulsations of the very heart of our national and popular morality. The lordliest evil afflicting the people is less class legislation, than it is legislation issuing from electoral criminality.' This iniquity has now reached such a pitch, that if the people do not destroy it quickly, it will destroy the empire.

The parties guilty of electoral crimes may be classified as candidates, electors, and agents. The law at present professes to punish candidates, and occasionally unseats members, and parliament has on rare occasions disfranchised guilty electors; but agents are continually declared to be guilty of bribery and corruption, and are always allowed by the election committees and the House of Commons to escape unpunished. The members unseated since the Reform Act have all been declared by

the election committees to be innocent of bribery or treating themselves; but they have been ejected, nevertheless, and made incapable of sitting in that parliament. The members have thus been declared guiltless of knowledge or consent, and yet punished. But as for the agents, they have been found guilty uniformly, and as uniformly let off, unharmed, unpunished, and unblamed. The last parliament punished guilty Sudbury with complete disfranchisement, and last session witnessed the extinction of the electoral privileges of the freemen of Great Yarmouth, and many an aspirant after senatorial consequence has found the expenditure of many thousands of pounds, issue only in exposure and expulsion; but the agents have lived and prospered by the criminalities, always guilty, always well paid, and always scot-free. Disfranchised electors, and unseated members, may grieve, but the electioneering agents always win and laugh!

We shall turn our attention first to the electors. But here we must be permitted to remark, that of all the documents published as statements of sound representative principles, and known to us, the one called the People's Charter is the most objectionable. Half a century before this document was concocted, the disciples of Major Cartwright, Jeremy Bentham, and Charles James Fox, had held and taught the true principles of representation. But in the year 1838, seven London tradesmen, and seven members of parliament, met together, and drew up this document, and published it, announcing that henceforth the friends and foes of the people would be distinguished by the test of the People's Charter. Many thorough liberals resented this arrogance in 1838, and have seen many reasons to scout it since. In the People's Charter there is scarcely an important word that is well chosen. The word 'charter' is misapplied, in every aspect in which it can be regarded. A charter is a document granted by a king, and conferring certain privileges. But this document is a claim or bill of rights. By calling the claim to the suffrage a charter, a thing conferred by royalty, either the divine right of kings is acknowledged, or else the absurdity is perpetrated, of asking the sovereignty of the people from the chief magistrate of the country. Friends of constitutional monarchy cannot approve of the charter, because it recognizes in the monarch a superiority to the people, which has no sanction in the constitution of 1688. This document uses the phrase, universal suffrage, to describe a suffrage which excludes women and children, and which includes only about a fifth of the universal humanity it professes to enfranchise. It is ridiculous to attach importance to annual parliaments, and denounce, as hostile to popular rights, the man who prefers