248 The Scarborough Election. [Aug.
places which stood boldly forth in opposition to the tardy Conservatism of the counties. Has all this altered? If not, it is a very extraordinary circumstance, that the Liberal press should be demanding the dismantlement of its own fortresses, simply because a few crimps in Scarborough have taken offence at the measures of Mr Labouchere. But if, on the contrary, the mind of the boroughs has altered, are we to seek for an explanation of this change in purely local causes and social alterations, without reference to the great questions which affect the industry of the country? Have those spectral ogres of the Times, "the crimps," secured a mastery in all the boroughs? It would seem so. These "social changes," which have nothing to do with Free Trade, appear to be tolerably widespread. Here is the prophesied result:
"It is, however, a most important consideration,that with first one wretched little borough changing sides, and then another, for reasons too ridiculous to be appreciated, and too small to be weighed, there may at last be a Protectionist majority large enough, in the present state of parties, to render government impossible. There is the Irish brigade; and there is the not less formidable body of private malcontents, always increasing in the fourth or fifth session. Next year Lord John Russell may find himself half-a-dozen times in the same scrape as that which sent him to the Queen last April, and it is worth considering whether he will get out of it as easily as he did then."
And in order to prevent this awful—catastrophe the bare thought of which is enough to make the flesh creep, and the hair stand on end—the remedy is at once propounded.
"With such a prospect before us, with unknown struggles and unprecedented collisions within the bounds of possibility, there is only one resource—and we must say that her Majesty's present advisers will be answerable for the consequences if they do not adopt it—they must lay the foundations of an appeal to the people with a large and liberal measure of Parliamentary reform. It is high time that this great country should cease to quake and to quail at the decisions of stupid and corrupt little constituencies, of whom, as in the case before us, it would take thirty to make one metropolitan borough."
Put this into plain language, and it amounts simply to an admission that the sentiments of the electoral body, as at present constituted, are opposed to the longer continuance of the Free Trade experiment, and that, in the event of a general election, the Whigs would be found in a minority. If this be so, can the country really have benefited by a measure which it seems so desirous to repudiate? We are told so, in as many words; and we are next informed that, because the electors are so very stupid as not to appreciate the vast blessings which they at present enjoy, and never enjoyed before, it is absolutely necessary to reconstruct the whole framework of the representative system!
How this scheme is to be carried into effect, we shall not pause to inquire. We presume that a main element of it is centralisation, whereby the rights and privileges of the boroughs may be transferred to the larger towns, and the voice of half England stifled by the roar of London. The tyranny of democracy is boundless. Constituencies of some seven, eight, or nine hundred electors will no longer suit its turn. They are "wretched," "stupid," "contemptible," because they exercise their own judgment upon matters politic, and refuse to vote that black is white at the bidding of the Ministry, and of the soi-disant Liberal press. Therefore their offence is rank, and their power must be taken from them. Scarborough and Knaresborough must be suppressed, because they have chosen to return Protectionists: had they returned Radicals to Parliament, there would have been no necessity for a change.
Let the men of the boroughs look to it! They are openly threatened with the extinction of their legislative existence insulted, defied, and maligned because they will not submit any longer to be yoked to the Juggernaut chariot of Free Trade. So long as they were useful to the Whigs, they were cajoled, flattered, and caressed; now, they must either make up their minds to vote against their conscience and their convictions, or run the risk of virtual extinction. Let them look to it! Next year there is to be a new Reform Bill, and we shall then know what is proposed to be done with the mass of the refractory boroughs. It is time to take the alarm, when the leading organ of the Ministry has threatened such a place as Scarborough with the penalties of political deprivation.
