traction. The inference here seems direct and decisive; and it corresponds with the conclusions drawn from other beautiful experiments of Du Bois Reymond, on the direction of the electrical currents pervading all muscular fibres, so uniform in character as to assume at once the conditions of a new law. Yet we are still short of that certainty which science is rigid in requiring. We have reason to believe all muscular action— perhaps every vital action to be attended with some chemical change in the parts concerned; and every chemical change, as we know, produces disturbance of the electrical equilibrium. Changes of temperature, moreover, or molecular motions, each incidental to muscular contraction, may be concerned in evolving these electrical currents. But whatever are the ambiguities of this question, it is obvious that they all lie within that single circle which comprehends and connects the great Correlated Physical Forces of the universe; -a magical circle, we may well call it, since it comprises within itself some of the most profound and mysterious problems which human reason can venture to approach. We must here come to a close; although there are still many topics which we might bring before our readers, illustrating the efforts and results of modern science in relation to this great subject of Life on the earth. It will have been noticed how often the question of Final Causes comes before us, as a consequence, and even integral part, of these inquiries. We have already alluded to this point; but cannot conclude without reverting once more to a principle of reasoning which it is of signal importance should be rightly appreciated in the interpretations it affords. A misplaced sophistry, fortifying itself by a single phrase of Lord Bacon's of doubtful meaning, has sought to impugn this method, and the conclusions thence derived. It cannot be done. Such reasoning is an integral necessity of our mental constitution. The fallacy lies here, as so often elsewhere, in imputing to the use of the faculty what belongs to abuse; since, if using that caution which the nature of the subject inculcates, we may safely and profitably employ it as a guide in research, as well as an exponent of discovery, in every part of the great domain of created life. ART. IX.-1. Political Progress not necessarily Democratic, or Relative Equality the true Foundation of Civil Liberty. By JAMES LORIMER, Esq., Advocate. 1 vol. 8vo. 1858. 2. A Treatise on the Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal. By THOMAS HARE, Esq., Barrister-at-law. 1 vol. 8vo. 1859. L ORD DERBY, shortly after his accession to office, in explaining to the House of Lords the principles upon which his Administration had been formed, adverted to the fact, that Bills for Parliamentary Reform had been proposed or promised by previous governments, and signified the probability of his proposing a similar Bill in the Session of 1859. This announcement has since been repeated in less general and more confident terms by several members of his Cabinet. One head of a department has informed us that he has even enjoyed a sight of the measure in its infant state; and it is generally understood, by those who are not admitted to these legislative arcana, that Lord Derby's Government has prepared, and will early in the Session produce, a Bill for amending the existing laws relative to the representation of the people. It may therefore be expected, that soon after the publication of these pages, Mr. Disraeli, as the organ of the Government in the House of Commons, and the leader of that Assembly, will lay before it a new Reform Bill; that an early day will be fixed for its second reading; and that the Members of that House who hold Liberal opinions, and are not the regular supporters of the present Government, will be called on to decide whether they will vote for or against that motion. We feel a perfect conviction that, whatever may be the character of the forthcoming measure, the Conservative members, who gave a steady support to the present Ministers in the last Session, on several questions eminently trying to Conservative feelings, will vote in its favour, without exercising their critical faculties upon it, or questioning the infallibility of its authors. They will doubtless show that uninquiring faith in their leaders, that teachable resignation of the judg ment to authority, which is the characteristic excellence and traditionary distinction of the Tory party. At the epoch of the second Reform Bill they may be expected to exhibit an unanimous deference to Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, which they refused to Sir R. Peel and the Duke of Wellington, for the settlement of the Catholic question and the repeal of the Corn Laws. But the majority of the House of Commons and of the country, who hold Liberal opinions, will require some reason for their faith; before they approve the Government Bill, they will demand to be convinced that its probable effect will be good, and that it will satisfy the conditions which a new Reform Bill, deliberately proposed by a Government and accepted by Parliament, in the year 1859, ought to fulfil. It will be our object, in the following pages, to furnish some assistance towards the solution of this problem, and to show what are the standards by which the ministerial measure, when it shall have been produced, ought to be judged. With the view of explaining the present position of the question, we shall premise an outline of its history since it became the subject of parliamentary discussion; which, it will be found, is comprised within narrow limits, notwithstanding the immense importance of the matter to which it relates. 6 Lord Chatham may be considered as the first Parliamentary Reformer. A letter, addressed by him to Lord Temple, in 1771, was publicly read and entered on the journals of the Common Council of London, in April, 1780, in which the great Minister declared his opinion that a plan for more equal representation, by additional knights of the shire, seems 'highly seasonable; and to shorten the duration of Parliaments 'not less so:' and in the same year (1771) he declared himself in Parliament, with the most solemn and deliberate conviction, 'a convert to Triennial Parliaments, as some stronger bulwark 'must be erected against the enormous power of the Crown.' And a few years later he ventured, in private conversation, to prophesy that before the close of the century, either the 'Parliament would reform itself from within, or would be reformed with a vengeance from without.' In the House of Lords he often lamented the growing venality of the smaller boroughs, and he proposed the immediate addition of a hundred county members. The first formal motion was that of the Duke of Richmond, in June, 1780, who at that time held strong Whig opinions; while Lord George Gordon's rioters were thundering at the doors of the House of Lords, and pulling the peers out of their carriages, the Duke of Richmond was calmly expounding a plan for reforming the representation of the people by universal suffrage and electoral districts. Next came the motions of Mr. Pitt, in 1782, 1783, and 1784, who doubtless sought to give effect to the views of his illustrious father on this subject. His plan of 1783 was to disfranchise corrupt boroughs, and to add one hundred to the knights of the shire and to the representatives of the metropolis. That of 1784, was to transfer the right of choosing representatives from thirty-six decayed boroughs to the counties and to large unrepresented towns. We do not doubt the sincerity of Mr. Pitt when he made these motions; and we are persuaded that one or the other branch of Lord Chatham's prophecy would before long have been fulfilled if an event had not happened which neither Lord Chatham nor any other person anticipated, and which has influenced the politics of Europe from the time of its occurrence to the present day; we mean the French Revolution of 1789. In England the effect of the French Revolution was to render all political reform impossible; to cause every reformer to be denounced as a Jacobin, and a promoter of French principles. Mr. Flood, indeed, in March, 1790, attempted to revive the question, by a motion for leave to bring in a Bill; his plan was to add a hundred members to the representation, to be elected by the resident householders in every county. The question was then taken up by Mr. Grey, who, undeterred by the war and by imputations of Jacobinism, brought forward motions on the subject of the representation in 1793 and 1797. In the latter year he proposed that the county members should be increased from 92 to 113; that copyholders and leaseholders, of a certain value, should be voters for counties; and that the remaining 400 members should be returned by householders. It should be observed that the primary object of the Parliamentary Reformers of the last century was not to diminish the influence of the great borough holders, but to restrain the power of the Crown. It is true that one object could only be accomplished through the other; but their ultimate purpose was to prevent the Crown from bartering patronage for borough votes; their policy was rather anti-monarchical than anti-aristocratic. During a large part of the reign of George III. the Crown secured a majority in the House of Commons to a Ministry of its choice by a traffic of this description. The motion of the Duke of Richmond on Parliamentary Reform was made in the same Session as the celebrated motion of Dunning against the influence of the Crown, and both had in fact the same object. The really independent part of the House of Commons then consisted of the English county members, and of the members for those few towns where the representation was open. Scotland was at that time one vast rotten borough. Ireland had still a separate Parliament. Hence the reformers of the last century, whose jealousy was of the Crown, not of territorial influence, all proposed to increase the number of the county members. Lord Stanhope remarks that, at the end of the American War, the majority for Ministers had ceased to be any token of public feeling in their favour, as it was in great measure composed of members returned for nomination seats. He mentions as an instance that, in one of the last divisions under Lord North's Ministry, the two members for Cornwall voted against him, but of its borough representatives, who took part in the division, there were eight opponents, and thirty supporters, of the Govern ment. From Mr. Grey's motion in 1797, the year of the mutiny at the Nore and the Bank restriction, the parliamentary discussion of the Reform question was, under the combined influence of the French revolution and the French war, virtually suspended for more than twenty years. The attempt of Mr. Brand, in 1810, to purify the borough system, faintly followed up by him in 1812, was crushed by a large majority; it was not until 1819, after the oratorical campaign of Hunt and the other political agitators, who, for the first time called themselves 'Radical Reformers,'* that the parliamentary discussion of this question was effectually revived. In the first Session of this year Sir Francis Burdett moved a resolution for an early consideration of the subject, which was negatived by 153 to 58 votes. He argued the question chiefly on the ground of retrenchment and excessive taxation. In the second Session of the same year (Dec. 14.), Lord John Russell made a motion on the same subject, which deserves attention as being the first real step in that progress which ended in the Reform Act of. 1832. In moving resolutions on the subject, he assumed a middle position, and distinguished himself from two extreme parties-on the one hand from those who were willing that the constitu'tion, like the temples of the gods at Rome, should remain with 'all its dust and cobwebs about it, and thought it profane in any hand to remove the corruptions by which it was defaced;' on the other, from the champions of radical reform, who seemed 'desirous to raise their name by applying a firebrand to a sanc'tuary which had stood for ages.' The evils for which he proposed remedies were the representation of small and decayed boroughs, and the non-representation of wealthy and populous 6 The phrase may have been first used in this year as the designation of a political party, but it is at least as old as the Antijacobin. In the imitation of Bion are these verses: 'Now these and more (a phrenzied choir) The same phrase also occurs in the imitation of Acme and Septimius. |