ULY 1831.

On Tuesday, the fourth of July, 1831, Lord John Russell moved the second
reading of the Bill to amend the representation of the people in England
and Wales. Sir John Walsh, member for Sudbury, moved, as an amendment,
that the bill should be read that day six months. After a discussion,
which lasted three nights, the amendment was rejected by 367 votes to
231, and the original motion was carried. The following Speech was made
on the second night of the debate.

Nobody, Sir, who has watched the course of the debate can have failed to
observe that the gentlemen who oppose this bill have chiefly relied on
a preliminary objection, which it is necessary to clear away before we
proceed to examine whether the proposed changes in our representative
system would or would not be improvements. The elective franchise,
we are told, is private property. It belongs to this freeman, to that
potwalloper, to the owner of this house, to the owner of that old wall;
and you have no more right to take it away without compensation than to
confiscate the dividends of a fundholder or the rents of a landholder.

Now, Sir, I admit that, if this objection be well founded, it is
decisive against the plan of Reform which has been submitted to us. If
the franchise be really private property, we have no more right to take
members away from Gatton because Gatton is small, and to give them to
Manchester because Manchester is large, than Cyrus, in the old story,
had to take away the big coat from the little boy and to put it on the
big boy. In no case, and under no pretext however specious, would I take
away from any member of the community anything which is of the nature
of property, without giving him full compensation. But I deny that the
elective franchise is of the nature of property; and I believe that, on
this point, I have with me all reason, all precedent, and all authority.
This at least is certain, that, if disfranchisement really be robbery,
the representative system which now exists is founded on robbery. How
was the franchise in the English counties fixed? By the act of Henry
the Sixth, which disfranchised tens of thousands of electors who had not
forty shilling freeholds. Was that robbery? How was the franchise in
the Irish counties fixed? By the act of George the Fourth, which
disfranchised tens of thousands of electors who had not ten pound
freeholds. Was that robbery? Or was the great parliamentary reform made
by Oliver Crom