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    ing the real statesmen of the Republic who would develop the freedom of the Union , and would thus enable it to outgrow its negro encumbrance . In the name of the Black , "White is set against White ; and the very question of slavery itself is kept in suspense by the disputes about the method of terminating it . The State of Kansas is a case in point Surrounded

    . on every side , Southern men have endeavoured to preoccupy the new state in -older to maintain the balance of voting in the Senate . Instead of trusting to the rapid extension of free settlement , under which the pure Slavery interest in Congress is inevitably doomed , the Northern men have resorted to manoeuvres ; and at the present moment the Union witnesses a studied

    attempt to prevent the development of a fresh State , because the contending factions treacherously and disloyally seek to anticipate the free decision of the State . Neither one party possesses the virtue to collect the suffrages of the whole community , but each endeavours to thrust its suffrages upon the others as the decision of the entire State . One convention has confirmed rather more than

    its predecessors to the established rules of the Republic ; it has taken security for submitting the question of slavery or no slavery ¦ io all the inhabitants of the territory ; and notwithstanding the defects which may be found in the form of procedure — defects which are likely enough to be repeated ad infinitum in any future attempts—Mr . Bu ^

    CHANor proposes to start from the basis thus laid down ; to recognize the State , to develop its State organization , to endue it ¦ with responsibilit y ^ , and to extract from it , by regular means , its own decision upon the great question . This is a practical course ; but he is impeded in it by the intrigues and agitations with which English statesmanship has had as much to do as Northern

    statesmanship . It is plain that if the whole subject were thrown completely open—if the very word ' slavery' ceased to be the standard of contention— -the simple march of freedom across the continent would soon hem in the States that are encumbered with a * peculiar institution ; ' while the statesmen of the South , who rise above the level of faction to the large statesmanship of Cla . y , would assist to reconcile , in political theory as well as in practice , the South to the North . It is in that noble reconciliation that the practical statesmanship of the President renders him a pioneer .

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    THE EDUCATIONAL SUFFRAGE HOBBY . We shall believe , if things continue in their present fashion , that when men of all persuasions agree on a particular point , their consensus is sure to be an absurdity . Two hundred gentlemen , of more or less culture , have signed a document which prays Lord Palmerston to establish , upon a plan indicated , an educational suffrage . It is not a Tory , a " Whig , or a Radical scheme ; an official , a legal , or a demagogue scheme ; a medical , a

    clerical , or a scientific scheme , but a doctrinaire concatenation of a number of individuals who , perhaps , never before had a thought in common until , to speak in historical language , they found themselves thus ' pigging together , heads and points , on the same truckle-bed . ' Canterbury , Dubham , Oxford , and 1 < inco : ln are on the roll with Cummino , Maurice , and Kingsley . Sir William Williams of Kars concurs , on this occasion * , with Dx . IiOCOCK , and Doctor Cummino is of one mind with Mr . F . O .

    Wabd . Mr . Bbocjk places his card by the aide of Dr . LifrBKLi / s , John Kuskin and Edwin Chadwiok consort , Sir Culling Eardley mounts the hobW of Charles Mjbbivai . e and Arthur Blklps , and Mr ,

    Neate , sometime the elect of Oxford , jostles my Lords Pobtesoue and Duneermline . That Lord Carnarvon should subscribe himself is not marvellous , since many young men living might have been his tutors , but Lord Campbell—que diahle allait-il faire ? We can imagine Dr . Locock fascinated by so pretty an incubation , but in what moment of sublime contempt did Lord Brougham write " Brougham and Vaux" at the foot of this precious memorial ? Is this the

    time , when Canton is to be attacked , to copy our institutions from China ? Very probably the principle satisfies Iiui-in , Eil-ettl , Wan g , Yang , Tohin , and others of Wousi , near the city of Tchang-tcheou , in the province of Kiang-nan , but surely the Chief Justice , the two ex-Speakers , the Archbishop of Canterbury , the three Bishops , the Tory Peers , and the Dissenting Ministers must have mistaken their longitude . They ask us to create , from ninety thousand

    educated gentlemen , seventy constituencies , each returning a representative to the House of Commons ; and these legislators , representing the clergy , the nonconformist Ministers , the army , the navy , the universities , and the professions exclusively , -will form a College of Mandarins in Parliament , capable of wrangling on divinity with Mr . Maurice , on art with Mr . ItusKiN , on prophecy with Dr . Cumming , on geology -with Sir Roderick Murchison , on military engineering with Sir

    John BuBOrOYNE , on muscular religion with Mr . KiicasLEY . We may be sure that the elect electors would send up a good many clever men who would be useful anywhere but in Parliament , and the debates would out-Gladstonize Mr . Gladstone in rhetoric , to the bewilderment of the country gentlemen ; but what earthly right have the memorialists to suppose that they , or the classes they represent , are better qualified to depute politicians to the House of Commons

    than the average orders of the community . Give them votes , but not special votes ; otherwise , the mercantile marine , the mining interest , railway proprietors , and a hundred other batches of citizens , might fairly claim to be marked off ' the general / and ask for seventy representatives to mount guard over commerce and industry . We should be getting up caste qualifications in England while we are raving at them in India . We should be taking lessons from Pekin while

    preparing to blow Yeii out of his government . Clearly some among the gentlemen whose signatures appear desire to make terms with the Keform party , and to keep multitudes out of the way . Others , vie are firmly persuaded —indeed we know—signed the memorial inconsideratel y , and are not ready to abide by the pedantries on which it is based . It is impossible to conceive men of judgment deliberately proposing to establish a set of

    electoral colleges throughout the three kingdoms , and . seventy separate constituencies composed of the clergy , military men , professional graduates , and other experts in literature , science , and art . The ecclesiastical nominees , of course , would predominate , thirty thousand out of the ninety thousand proposed voters being ministers of religion ; and that is a point which we commend to the notice of Liberal politicians .

    Every one will admit that the persons included in the category set forth by the memorial ought to possess a vote . It may be granted to them on simple terms , by admitting lodgers , with a fixed qualification , to the exercise of the parliamentary suffrage , thus identifying them with the groat body of citizens , instead of cutting thorn oft " , upon the principles of Japanese heraldry , and creating a Bort of spurious oligarchy of Prigs . They dislike being treated as units ,

    they say . If they are better than unitswhich many a graduate and member of a learned society is not—they have a bundant means of influencing society . They have their intellect , their eloquence , their culture the respect entertained for them by the less educated classes , the free range of pulpits platforms , and the press . B ut whence arose this political rage ? The educated orders of the nation , as represented by the memorial

    have not habitually associated themselves with political movements , or enlarged their exertions beyond their churches , chapels lecture-rooms , and clubs . Whenever they do this , power accrues to them , and more they cannot have without doing an injustice to the country , and bringing ridicule upon the Constitution . The Reforms of Parliament

    and the Executive have been of popular , not of learned origin ; for all that the bishops , the army , the universities , and the illuminati have done , we might still have been the subjects of a Georgian rule . Not so , they argue . They have spread knowledge ; to them is attributable the explosion of vulgar fallacies j they , the educated , have shown the people the wav

    out ot Egyptian darkness . Then they did all this without the educational suffrage , and let them continue to do it , for it is their office , and their influence will not be the less because we refuse to render their importance a monstrosity . The principle of special suffrages could not stop , if once introduced into the constitution . Circle within

    circle , class within class , we should be the Chinese of the " West within a century , unless , as is probable , we repealed our fanciful new law within five years from its enactment , and resolved , in future , to remember what self-government means , and the true nature of a . suffrage . It is the citizen / the Englishman , who votes at the election of a Kni «? ht

    or Burgess , not the Master or Bachelor of Arts , the Hector or Vicar , the Brigadier or Captain , the Fellow of a " Royal College , a Professor of geology or of prophecy . Carry ing to its utmost the principle of a property qualification , it amounts rationally to this : that it is wise to ascertain whether the suffrage is exercised by a man competent to form a political opinion . It is no object of the electoral system to send up a gentleman from the Tower Hamlets , who , being the elect of

    nine hundred shall rise , when the two elect of nine thousand have spoken , and say , " . Sir , as a man of education , I must dissent from the views of those members , the deputies of an illiterate mob . " The difficulty is to treat the proposal with seriousness . It is a sickly conceit of dilettantism . It is scarcely an expression of opinion , "but a hesitating hint , that certain people would be willing to make an experiment upon the constitution . The constitution , however , is not a dog or a dead body for empirical or anatomical treatment . The reform to come must be a concession of

    solid power to the nation nationally , we find Mr . Cobden , Mr . Bright , Mr . Milher Gibson , Mr . Fox , Mr . Coninoham , Mr . Miall , Mr . Hoebuck , Mr . Hadfield , Mr . Robertson Gladstone , Mr . George " Wilson , Mr . Titus Salt , and others of that order , announced as having signed a memorial for a largely-extended suffrage , the ballot , and the abolition of tlio property qualification , and we are at no loss to decide -which of the two programmes will rouso enthusiasm , and which wilL be civilly sneered into limbo .

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    THE STAEJ ? SCHOOL AND PURCHASE SYSTEM . Accordi ng , to all prognostics , Her Majesty ' s Government are not inclined to enlargo the field of aelcction for officers ; but

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    1289 THE LEADER . TNo . ^ OB . Decembeb 26 . 1 ftR 7

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 26, 1857, page 1236, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2223/page/12/