But I am quite willing to rest the subject upon a higher ground, and to take it upon reason, and not upon authority. I will therefore follow the noble Earl* somewhat more closely through his argument, the boast of our antagonists.

He began with historical matter, and gave a very fair and manly explanation of his family's connexion with the Borough of Tiverton. This, he said, would set him rectus in curia, as he phrased it. If by this he meant that he should thence appear to have no interest in opposing the Bill, I cannot agree with him; but certainly his narrative, coupled with a few additions by way of reference, which may be made to it, throws considerable light upon the system of rotten boroughs. The influence by which his family have so long returned the two members, is, it seems, personal, and in no way connected with property. This may be very true; for certainly the noble Lord has no property within a hundred miles of the place; yet, if it is true, what becomes of the cry, raised by his Lordship, about property? But let that pass-the influence then is personal-aye, but it may be personal, and yet be official also. The family of the noble Earl has for a long series of years been in high office, ever since the time when its founder also laid the foundations of the borough connexion, as SolicitorGeneral. By some accident or other, they have always been connected with the Government, as well as the borough. I venture to suspect that the matter of patronage may have had some share in cementing the attachment of the men of Tiverton to the house of Ryder. I take leave to suggest the bare possibility of many such men having always held local and other places of the voters and their families having always

got on in the world through that patronage. If it should turn out that I am right, there may be no very peculiar blame imputable to the noble Earl and his Tiverton supporters; but it adds one to the numberless proofs that the borough system affords endless temptations to barter political patronage for Parliamentary power-to use official influence for the purpose of obtaining seats in the Commons, and, by means of those seats, to retain that influence.

The noble Earl complained that the Reform Bill shut the doors of Parliament against the eldest sons of Peers, and thus deprived our successors of the best kind of political education. My Lords, I freely admit the justice of his panegyric upon this constitutional training, by far the most useful which a statesman can receive; but I deny that the measure proposed will affect it will obstruct the passage to the House of Commons; it will rather clear and widen it to all, who, like your Lordships' sons, ought there to come. My noble friend, who so admirably answered the noble Earl, in a speech distinguished by the most attractive eloquence, and which went home to every heart from the honest warmth of feeling, so characteristic of his nature, that breathed through ithas already destroyed this topic by referring to the most notorious facts, by simply enumerating the open counties represented by Peers' eldest sons. But I had rather take one instance for illustration, because an individual case always strikes into the imagination, and rivets itself deep in the memory. I have the happiness of knowing a young nobleman-whom to know is highly to esteem-a more virtuous, a more accomplished I do not know-nor have any of your lordships, rich as you are in such blessings, any arrow in all your quivers of which you have more reason to be proud. He sat for a nomination borough; formed his own opinion; decided for the Bill; differed with his family-they excluded him from Parliament, closing against him, at least that avenue to a statesman's best education, and an heir-apparent's most valued preparation for discharging the duties of the Peerage. How did this worthy scion of a noble stock seek to re-open the door thus closed, and resume his political schooling, thus interrupted by the borough patrons? Did he resort to another close borough, to find an avenue like that which he had lost under the present system, and long before the wicked Bill had prevented young lords from duly finishing their Parliamentary studies? No such thing. He threw himself upon a large community-canvassed a populous city and started as a candidate for the suffrages of thousands, on the only ground which was open to such solicitation-he avowed himself a friend of the Bill. Mutato nomine de te. The borough that rejected him was Tiverton-the young nobleman was the heir of the house of Ryder-the patron was the noble Earl, and the place to which the ejected member resorted for the means of completing his political education in one house, that he might one day be the ornament of the other, was no small, rotten, nomination borough, but the great town of Liverpool.

LORD HARROWBY begged to set the noble and learned Lord right. He was himself abroad at the time, fifteen hundred miles off; and his family had nothing to do with the transaction. His son was not returned, because he did not offer himself. [Cries of Hear!]

The LORD CHANCELLOR continued.-I hope the noble Lords will themselves follow the course their cries seem to recommend, and endeavour to hear.

Excess of noise may possibly deter some speakers from performing their duty; but my political education (of which we are now speaking) has been in the House of Commons; my habits were formed there; and no noise will stop me. I say so in tenderness to the noble persons who are so clamorous; and that, thus warned, they may spare their own lungs those exertions which can have no effect except on my ears, and perhaps to make me more tedious. As to the noble Earl's statement, by way of setting me right, it is wholly unnecessary, for I knew he was abroadI had represented him as being abroad, and I had never charged him with turning out his son. The family, however, must have done it. (Lord Harrowby said, No.) Then so much the better for my argument against the system, for then the borough itself had flung him out, and prevented him from having access to the political school. I believe the statement that the family had nothing to do with it, because the noble Earl makes it; but it would take a great deal of statement to make me believe that neither the patron nor the electors had any thing to do with the exclusion, and that the Member had voluntarily given up his seat, and indeed his office with his seat, beside abandoning his political studies, when he could have continued them as representative of his father's borough.

4

But the next argument of the noble Earl I am, above all, anxious to grapple with, because it brings me at once to a direct issue with him, upon the great principle of the measure. The grand charge iterated by him, and re-echoed by his friends, is, that population, not property, is assumed, by the Bill, as the basis of representation. Now, this is a mere fallacy, and a gross fallacy. I will not call it a wilful misstatement; but I will demonstrate that two perfectly different things are, in different parts of this short proposition, carefully confounded, and described under the same equivocal name. If, by basis of representation is meant the ground upon which it was deemed right, by the framers of the Bill, that some places should send Members to Parliament, and others not, then I admit that there is some foundation for the assertion; but then it only applies to the new towns, and also it has no bearing whatever upon the question. For the objection—and I think the sound objectionto taking mere population as a criterion in giving the elective franchise, is, that such a criterion gives you electors without a qualification, and is, in fact, universal suffrage. And herein, my lords, consists the grievous unfairness of the statement I am sifting; it purposely mixes together different matters, and clothes them with an ambiguous covering, in order, by means of the confusion and the disguise, to insinuate that universal suffrage is at the root of the Bill. Let us strip off this false garb.. Is there in the Bill any thing resembling universal suffrage? Is it not framed upon the very opposite principles? In the counties, the existing qualification by freehold is retained in its fullest extent; but the franchise is extended to the other kinds of property, copyhold and leasehold. It is true that tenants at will are also to enjoy it, and their estate is so feeble, in contemplation of law, that one can scarce call it property. But whose fault is that? Not the authors of the Bill, for they deemed that terms of years alone should give a vote; but they were opposed and defeated in this by the son of my noble friend* near me, and his fellow labourers against the measure. Let us now look to the borough qualification. (Some noise from conversation here took