ount--Scotland yet
possesses forty-eight members, while the metropolis has only twenty.
Do you Reformers mean to say that you are prepared to disfranchise
Scotland; or that you are going to develop the representation of the
metropolis in proportion to its population and property; and so
allow a country like England, so devoted to local government and so
influenced by local feeling, to be governed by London? And,
therefore, when those speeches are made which gain a cheer for the
moment, and are supposed to be so unanswerable as arguments in favor
of parliamentary change, I would recommend the house to recollect
that this, as a question, is one of the most difficult and one of
the deepest that can possibly engage the attention of the country.
The fact is this--in the representation of this country you do not
depend on population or on property merely, or on both conjoined;
you have to see that there is something besides population and
property--you have to take care that the country itself is
represented. That is one reason why I am opposed to the second
reading of the bill. There is another objection which I have to
this bill brought forward by the honorable member for Leeds, and
that is, that it is brought forward by the member for Leeds. I do
not consider this a subject which ought to be intrusted to the care
and guidance of any independent member of this house. If there be
one subject more than another that deserves the consideration and
demands the responsibility of the government, it certainly is the
reconstruction of our parliamentary system; and it is the government
or the political party candidates for power, who recommend a policy,
and who will not shrink from the responsibility of carrying that
policy into effect if the opportunity be afforded to them, who alone
are qualified to deal with a question of this importance. But, sir,
I shall be told, as we have been told in a previous portion of the
adjourned debate, that the two great parties of the State cannot be
trusted to deal with this question, because they have both trifled
with it. That is a charge which has been made repeatedly during
this discussion and on previous occasions, and certainly a graver
one could not be made in this house. I am not prepared to admit
that even our opponents have trifled with this question. We have
had a very animated account by the right honorable gentleman who has
just addressed us as to what may be called the Story o