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Untitled Article
t > eing able to achieve every needful and every useful aroeltotatiaia of our institutions by j * enceaWe mfatts , without the * . ) ighte $ t n * k to the social state , auH without . the smallest danger of revolutionary violence . /' The statement on which your exhortation is founded entirely blinks the present condition of the House of Commons . It is
there that the organic reforms which you enumerate are stopped in their course . The extension of the suffrage is not yet impeded by the House of Lords , but by the House of Commons . The ballot is not yet rejected by the House of Lords , it is refused by the House of Commons . Instead of the Lords declaringthat the representative trust shall not be abridged in its
duration , the representatives decline putting to them any such question , and choose to abide by the usurpation of their predecessors . We know we cannot get a perfect Corporation Reform " from the Lords ., but we also know that we could only obtain a very imperfect one from the Commons ; so that the question became one of degree rather than of principle . Did not Lord John
Russell oppose the annual election of Town Councillors , although it already exists in London , Norwich , and other large Corporations ? Did not Sir John Hobhouse oppose the ballot in municipal elections ? Do not let us lay upon the Lords more than belongs to them . True , we " do honestly look for justice to the people of Ireland , " both for their sakes and our own ; but even on this point are not the Peers justified by that very charitable Whig , Lord Ebrington , on the ground
of the division of opinion being so near a balance ? Might not a thundering majority have compelled the Peers to make that u one step / ' that one little step which constituted the whole mighty march of the Commons ? Suppose , were it possible , the House of Lords reformed , as you propose , but without any previous change in the Commons ; in what would our condition be better than it now is ? Your
upper house would still be behind the Commons ; and the Commons would still be behind the people . There would be the same succession of poor patchwork measures , mitigating * a little evil , but every where leaving ample room for corruption to resume its dirty work . There would still be the opening for Toryism , by court intrigue , and by all its nefarious electioneering "
arts of bribery , influence , and intimidation , to attempt , and perhaps accomplish its reactions , and by taking advantage of its intervals of power to throw us back to a recommencement of the task of Reformation . We must come at last to a House of Commons founded on a broader basis , chosen by a freer ,
because a secret vote , and by the limitation of its term made more responsible . Why not strive for this at once ? Is it wise to wait for it until we gvt a reformed House of Lords to help ub ? That were Homething like the boy who waited fur the sky to fall , that he might catca larks . Let us obtain a Uoutie of
Untitled Article
Agitation of Peerage Reform . 59
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1836, page 59, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2653/page/59/
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