The GLIO Site

     THERE was a speech delivered the other day in the county of Norfolk, which demands the consideration of every reformer. A deputation went down from Norwich to Thetford, and endeavoured, at a public meeting, to impress the constituency of the latter town with a sense of their own degradation, inferiority, and insignificance. It is not much the custom in this world for people to appreciate such lessons as the good folks of Thetford were taught by the Norwich deputation. But in this instance, the lecture being popularly delivered, seems to have produced good effects. "What right have you," said Mr. TILLETT to the men of Thetford, "what right have you to return two members to the House of Commons? I find that 160 of you can make two members of parliament, whilst it takes 13,000 voters to make two in the Tower Hamlets. How can it be right and just and honest for a house in Thetford to confer such an undue power according to parliamentary valuation, and for a voter in Thetford to enjoy such an undue amount of influence?"

     The good folks of Thetford, strange as it may appear to the Conservatives, fully appreciated this reasoning. In fact there is reason to believe that a proportion, by no means inconsiderable, of the Thetford constituency are of opinion that it would be better their town should be without the privilege of returning representatives than that it should return them on the system now existing. "The election for Thetford," says Mr. TILLETT, " is a delusion and a snare. You are brought to the hustings nominally to return those whom other men decide shall be your members." Is this a pleasant state of things to the voter who would be independent? We apprehend not. But it is the state of things which the government are perpetuating, and which it is even asserted that it is possible they may extend.

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     To extend the franchise in these very small boroughs without readjusting the electoral constituencies  would be an absolute injury to the poorer and more dependent voters. Leave the inhabitants of such places to return their members upon the existing system, and you inevitably entail a sense of degradation, every man whom you invest with the privilege of voting. To make an extended franchise effective, all boroughs with populations below 8,000 ought to be re-arranged. We give a list of them:

     With the exception of Liskeard and five other boroughs respecting which we have less perfect information, these sixty towns are every one of them either thoroughly corrupt or else subject to a nominee influence. Here are nearly a hundred members returned as the nominees of a system which is obnoxious to the legislation of the Reform Bill and to the principle of the British constitution. And yet we are told that we want no measure of reform that will cure these constituencies of the defects which are inherent to the present system.

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