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WE take up this subject after some inter- man who loves his country and respects its val; an interval big with events vital to the population, who has not long since felt the issue before us-an interval in which the iniquity of the system of the county occuquestion of the present state and future pros-pation franchises, which declares, in every pects of our elective franchise, has occupied the constant and unceasing consideration alike of the Irish people and of their enemies. The time has been busily employed in many ways, in watching the movements of the haters of the nation, and in warding off the ruin with which they endeavoured in the last session of parliament to bear down our rights; in struggling to preserve the remnant of electoral power which the present state of the law leaves us; in determining well the position which it behoves us to take in our onward march for the future.

In former numbers, we investigated, in all their details, the defects of, first, our county*, and, secondly, our town franchises+; we traced those defects up to their causes; and we exposed the shallowness of the principles upon which they have been based.

In what we so collected, we do not by any means presume to say, that we have brought forward any new views of the subject. The great bulk of our readers are familiar as we can be with the various matters we have submitted to their view. Where is the

No. I. vol. i. p. 42. † No. II. ibid. p. 343.

case, that the tenant in occupation, no matter how much he may contribute to the public burdens or the benefit of his fellowmen, shall be unenfranchised, unless he can prove that he has some certain yearly value (£10 or £20) over and above the rent and charges to which he is liable; liabilities which, we have shown, in place of tending to his disfranchisement, ought to establish his right? Where is the citizen so dull, as any longer to think of submitting to have the elective right of the inhabitants of our soil tested by the abominations of feudalism, or to place it under the caprice of the landlord class, by making "freehold" or "leasehold," or ANY arbitrary standard of tenure the foundation of the voter's qualification? Where is the being amongst us so senseless, as to suppose that we can longer endure the galling mockery exhibited in the administration of the electoral law at our registration courts-" with their quidditstheir quillets-their cases-their tenures, and their tricks?" With their "constructions,"-that "the clear yearly value" of a productive holding is not the clear average annual balance between the cash received directly for its annual produce, and the

In the meantime the atrocious and revolting bill, produced by Lord Stanley,-upon which he lavished so much of his eminent energy, ability, and power, hitherto, happily, in vain--roused the kingdom from one end to the other. We lent our aid to avert the destruction which he aimed at the Irish constituencies. But even the excitement so produced has had time to abate; and it must now have abated, if it were at all disproportionate to the injustice which aroused it.

actual and necessary annual cost and charges | them (to those willing to read them,) in of production that a provision, that a full and connected form, for a period of, man may cause a document to be produced, now, about a twelvemonth. means that he must personally appear with it? that an enactment, that a right shall be admitted "without further proof or oath," means, that the party must immediately appear and make oath ?-that partners are excluded by a clause enfranchising every male person who holds and occupies a house, warehouse, counting-house, or shop?-that the same words, in a given sentence, namely, "all persons now by law entitled to vote,' extend to classes of persons for ever, if you apply them to Protestant corporators; but The extinction of the octennial registries to individuals entitled in 1832 only, if you of 1832, in the close of the year just exapply them to Catholic citizens?—that a pri-pired, now presents a damning comment vate meeting of judges in chamber, mooting upon the fraudulent representations of the points on a modern act of parliament, is, for- supporters of that iniquitous measure. sooth, "the ancient Court of Exchequer is now plain and patent to the whole world, Chamber?"-and the like rubbish! that the Irish constituencies, under the sysNo-we have been making no novel dis-tem which has been at work, are returned to closures in the expositions we have been an amount utterly insufficient to maintain giving of the state of our elective law. We the independence of the country. have been merely recapitulating the wrongs under which our country bleeds, and with which all of us are familiar:—

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As the statements of fact in our preceding articles were no novelties to the nation-so the opinions we are now about to submit will not be found, by any means, new or surprising. The fact is, THE IRISH PEOPLE HAVE MADE UP THEIR MIND. It is not for Universal Suffrage. No; nor even for Household Suffrage. Those are schemes, which the further progress of the country render worthy of consideration at a future day. No person in Ireland now advocates either the one or the other.

may

The case is this:

But we have thought it right, and our duty, to place the whole truth of the case, as it were upon record, before our readers. have done this, not sparing painful research in the antique history of the common law itself, and in the multitudinous mazes of the A new law-we hesitate not to say, a statute law through long ages past, tracing wise law-has subjected the whole country all down to the present day. We have ransacked the stores of the existing practice, —in its length and its breadth-to taxation it is found to prevail, in England, and in for the benefit of the poor of the land. For of that taxation the possession Scotland, as well as amongst ourselves. We purpose have analysed the legal provisions on which every occupant is valued-rated—taxed. The valuations, undoubtedly, are as yet our meagre franchises depend, and we have made plain the perversions of the law main-imperfect; but even in the infancy of the tained by the benched actors in the farce of Irish registration.*

as

Let no man say, then, that in now proceeding to put forward opinions upon this subject, we have formed them in ignorance of the complicated laws upon which we treat, or that we have left the public in the dark, here or in Britain, as to the facts essential to ground a judgment. Not only have we given these details-we have submitted

* We shall not soon forget that our printer upon one occasion, with most felicitous blunder, called this (registration) "rejection."

the

of

But

thing they are by far the most nearly per-
fect of any standard of liability yet known
universal-that all other valuations for tax-
amongst us. Even as they stand, the call is
ation shall be modeled upon them.
more-they are capable of-they are open
to-continuous correction and improvement;
they are subject to a system of revision,
supervision, and control, both local and
central, which cannot fail within a short time
to render them as nearly perfect as any
human return can possibly be made.

The whole nation has had its attention

intently fixed upon this matter; and sees, as clear as the light, that we have arrived at

the one thing needful-the perfect means of ascertaining, without trouble-without reference to form-beyond the reach of fraud or juggle, or "construction"-a complete selfacting registration of all the bonâ fide occupants of property in our land; rendering them subject, every man of them, to direct local taxation: and, with this, no cajolery, no attempt at argument can, in a free country, resist the just claim of every such tax-payer to have his voice and his vote in every public election holden within his locality.

It may be objected, that the system is inadequate, as not necessarily affording a proper representation of the scientific classes, the working classes, and others. But as yet we are not in possession of the requisite means—a truth-telling, self-correcting, and unimpeachable register of the persons every where really and truly entitled to local recognition of right in each of those respects; and there can be no reason why, on that account, we should delay in seizing upon that ground-work of right, in respect of actual occupancy of property, which circumstances afford us. The old corporations and their guilds may have been in some measure intended to supply the test of franchise for the working classes in towns; but the malconstruction and perversion of them from their original intent, their exclusiveness and selfelective quality, had long unfitted them for such a function, and they have been swept away to a merited oblivion, with consent all but universal, and amid the execrations of mankind. No new machinery, for re-constructing the elements of industrial life into social and local order, has yet been discovered sufficient to answer the end proposed. And in Ireland, where the regeneration of manufactures is yet in its infancy, we can afford to bide the course of time, which will yet, assuredly, both develope and mature the means of attaining those rights, as well as every other just thing.

It will not do to argue that a franchise, "without the protection of tenure," as it is called, cannot be admitted until vote by ballot is first obtained. In a state where individuals, here and there only, can make it appear that they have all the other requisites of an aristocratic franchise, such as afflicts us, it is true that it would not be safe to remove the protection-such as it is,-which fixed tenure may furnish-without giving some such substitute as the ballot. It is therefore that in England, the high franchise of £50 occupying yearly rent-payers, adopted there at the proposition of Lord Chandos in 1832,-works so slavishly ill

for the people, so servilely well, for the Tory aristocracy. That franchise has not the armour of tenure, neither the cover of the ballot; but those are not the main causes of its weakness,-it lacks the strength, the support, the sustainment which numbers ever must inspire, and the respect which they ever must command. The Chandos voters in every English county are too many for the sound portion of the constituency, they are too few for their own mutual protection. Were they banded in such force as were the Irish forty-shilling freeholders of 1826 and 1828, they might not fail to stand, like them, high in moral independence and heroic political virtue. The worst land-despots cannot proceed to oppress, eject, and ruin the tenantry of a whole country side. When, indeed, they find an isolated voter without fellows to sustain him,-without neighbours to sympathise with him-they have means enough at hand to grind and harass, distress and destroy him and his £50 rent,-aye, even although "tenure" interpose. But numbers are strength:-'tis nature prompts us, when we are many,

"Mutuus ut nos

Affectus, petere auxilium et præstare, juberet ;-
.... laribus conjungere nostris
Tectum aliud, tutos vicino limine somnos
Ut collata daret fiducia; protegere armis
Lapsum, aut ingenti nutantem vulnere civem."

The essential principles of such a franchise, (although by piece-meal only as it were,) are all long since known and recognized amongst us. It needs but a little expanding of the mind,-a little removing of the veil of prejudice,-to discover that no new thing is sought.

We have already more than once shown that the Chandos franchise of the English. Reform Act consists in this, in its essence. It has no feudal or other qualifications of tenure; but it is objectionable in the two main points of its difference, first,—a necessity that the occupier should be subject to rent; and secondly, a necessary amount of qualification, which, by rendering the constituency narrow, makes them dependent.

The town franchises under the Reform Acts, in all the cities and boroughs in England, Scotland, and Ireland, sending members to parliament, embrace this principle; they require no tenure in the occupants of the houses and shops. But they have not the simple principle that the rate makes the voter,-there must be the set va

lue, the opinion whether or not the set value is proved, the doubt whether the tenant is of the description prescribed, and the puzzles about all the other vexatious niceties in registration which we have described.

The municipal franchises now at length conceded in all the three countries, come still nearer to the mark,-in England, closely and generally,-in Ireland, owing to the persecuting hatred of the English aristocracy against our name and nation, distantly and sparingly. But no calm thinker can look upon these distinctions as any thing but temporary. The rights of citizenship cannot be for ever confined to the inhabitants of our towns merely; and there has been a progress in events during the last ten years, which, though it may have seemed tedious to us who have lived through them, and panted as we watched impatiently the seeming-slow accomplishment of our wishes; yet, upon a retrospect, first,-of what was gained against feudalism over the oppression and monopolies of the privileged during the two hundred years that went before; and then, of the gains within those last ten years, this, our progress, cannot be viewed otherwise than as a glorious triumph, inspiriting the heart with the hope of future victories decisive, popular, and peaceful.

In Ireland we have a still earlier recognition of a general town franchise than even England possesses, in the act of 1828, (9 Geo. IV. c. 82) for the lighting, cleansing, and improving of our country towns,-the basis of which is local rating, and which has only failed of complete success because the rate prescribed happened to be the odious vestry tax; but for which, we have now reason to hope that we shall immediately see substituted the rate for the relief of the destitute poor.

It cannot be objected that, by adopting the poor rate, paupers will be enfranchised. The law which founds the rate provides against it, such persons are exempt, and are not to be rated. The test then will be complete, both in its comprehensiveness, including all genuine rate-payers, and in its accuracy, excluding all fictitious claimants.

"Whoso enjoys the advantage let him also bear the burthen," is an old maxim of the law, and upon it rests the equity of all taxation. But the converse is not less the maxim of the ancient law, (1 Co. 99, a.)qui sentit onus, sentire debet et commodum; and this is an equity upon which the right to representation is irresistable. As soon as we have gained then, as we now have, a

certain measure of our burthens, one to which all direct taxation in Ireland is either actually reduced, or just about to be adapted, -it is no longer fitting that we should halt between two opinions as to the use to be made of it; we can no longer hesitate to declare that this MUST be assumed as the true criterion,-establishing the right to vote.

The tendency of things has long been towards this point, and to it they must come. In the House of Commons it is not merely that men, who on all occasions unflinchingly support popular views, are for it,-men of both sides, who claim credit for moderate views rather, have openly and boldly advocated and pressed forward the principle,— we name Sir Jephson Norreys on the Whig, and Mr. Lucas on the Tory side.

The paltriness of the Reform Act and the miserable administration of the registration courts have digusted the minds of men of plain sense; and the doubly-refined pettyfogging of Lord Stanley's bill has proved too revolting for many even of those whom the feeling of party formally banded together in its support,-nay, there is reason to believe that Sir Robert Peel himself is secretly convinced that "to this favour we must come;" to be sure he has no wish that the question should be touched, or the matter precipitated; but it is impossible not to see that to Lord Stanley's measure he afforded no more countenance than party decency compelled.

We are at a loss, then, at nothing more than the proceedings of some among ourselves, who, after investigating and demonstrating over again what the country is long and thoroughly convinced of, viz :-the gross insufficiency of our laws of franchise and registration-have gone to work, seriously, to propose an infinite number of small improvements and minute alterations for the purpose of "amending" a system radically defective in its construction. They might as well attempt to render the Castle of Dublin or the Tower of London as strong as the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, by reparations of the walls and embattlements of the windows. These things may serve purposes to which they are proper. It will do well enough to amend them for the preservation of the rights of landlords and reversioners, whose existence is in their tenure, and whose privileges are only discernable through an artificial medium, adapted to the discovery of their feudal qualities. But the occupation franchise of a people is not of this description,-its bul warks are to be based upon broad founda

tions, and the rock of its honour must be raised on a great scale, a fortress, manifest, enduring, impregnable.

Some may nibble at the proposition and say, "this is a system yet untried in Britain; why do you not propose it for England, or for Scotland? or at all events, why not wait until it be tried there first, where some sort of a poor-law has been so much longer in operation; where it may therefore with more propriety be sooner put in experiment? and then, if it be found to answer there, it may be transplanted hither, and its working tried in our soil."

The answer is plain and cogent. The differences between the two countries require it more urgently for Ireland, and demand, that if it be tried in one country before its introduction into the other, Ireland should be that country.

Britain, compared with Ireland, is essentially an aristocratic country. It is thickly inhabited by a wealthy and powerful nobility, -a numerous and wide spread noblesse and baronetage, an ancient and indigenous, seignorial and estated hereditary gentry. Except in the large manufacturing towns this high-born and gorgeous aristocracy, as it pervades, so it influences and commands the whole frame of society, drawing within the sphere of the action of its own "wealth, rank, intellect, talent, and respectability," the great mass of the "wealth and rank," and much of the "intellect, talent, and respectability" of the other orders of society. At first sight these appear to form no part of the association, but they are every where more or less absorbed into it. To these, the existing system of registration is perfectly genial. Their claims are undisputed, their influence is paramount.

gistries, compared with ours, are everywhere considerable; therefore, though we do not mean to say that the people of England or of Scotland have not much to complain of in the state of their franchise and registration laws,-yet, their case forms by no means so great a grievance; and accordingly, with some exceptions, the cry for a new reform has not yet been raised amongst them to any intolerable height.

But what is the comparative state of Ireland? A nominal peerage of two hundred men,-more than one-third of these having no connection whatever with the country, save by name, or some empty title,and more than two-thirds of the remainder having either no residence on the properties they hold,-or seldom visiting them,-occasionally, and by necessity, and then, even, with an undisguised distaste. The noblesse and baronetage, and the hereditary gentry, for the most part, like the great lords, absentees,-few, where they are even to be found, and when found, far between. their visitings, they mix little, or not at all, in society; and where they have any small following in their association, it is destitute of "wealth, worth, talent, learning, and respectability." And amongst whom are those few hundreds to be found? Amongst a population of millions, with whom they have not, and wish not to have any bond of sympathy.

In

The practice of feudal donation after conquest, upon the Anglo-Norman invasions of the Irish territory; and afterwards, the system of forfeitures and wholesale patentgrants upon forfeiture, down to the end of the seventeenth century,-made, (nearly without exception,) to a race alien to this country,-laid the foundation of this state of Besides, in places where the power and things. The policy of the great proprieauthority of those "higher orders" are more tors, (no matter what their incumbrances circumscribed, the state of the franchise and embarrassments,) never to sell, but ever has given to the people less occasion for to lease their lands at rack rents, and, by discontent. Their forty-shilling freeholders enforcing payment of rent, to obtain the never have been disfranchised. Their £50 means of fighting and struggling with crerent-payers have been admitted. Joint ditors,-sometimes baffling them,-sometenants,-tenants in common, and in part-times beating them out,-enabled those firstnership, never have been excluded. Part- class monopolizers to preserve amongst ners in towns vote, without stint or limit themselves the dominion of the soil, to an on account of joint trading. Successive oc- extent unknown in any other country in cupation of different houses, shops, or ware-western Europe. But at the union of 1800, houses, in the same elective district, is as sufficient as a continuing in one identical spot. The law has numerous provisions for placing and continuing men's names on the register of voters without trouble, cost, or risk to themselves,-nay, sometimes without their seeking; and, in consequence, their re

the dissociation was completed. The measure of imperial policy then carried, cut the slender ties which still, for some purposes, served to hold the inheritors of the soil in connection with their estates and the men who peopled them. Those who had not been of the old absentees then began, one

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