ce have suggested: multiply: divide: subtract: add:
try squares or cubes: try square roots or cube roots: you will never be
able to find a pretext for excluding these districts from Schedule C.
If, then, it be acknowledged that the franchise ought to be given
to important places which are at present unrepresented, and if it be
acknowledged that these districts are in importance not inferior to any
place which is at present unrepresented, you are bound to give us strong
reasons for withholding the franchise from these districts.
The honourable and learned gentleman (Sir E. Sugden.) has tried to give
such reasons; and, in doing so, he has completely refuted the whole
speech of the noble Marquess, with whom he means to divide. (The
Marquess of Chandos.) The truth is that the noble Marquess and the
honourable and learned gentleman, though they agree in their votes, do
not at all agree in their forebodings or in their ulterior intentions.
The honourable and learned gentleman thinks it dangerous to increase the
number of metropolitan voters. The noble Lord is perfectly willing to
increase the number of metropolitan voters, and objects only to any
increase in the number of metropolitan members. "Will you," says the
honourable and learned gentleman, "be so rash, so insane, as to create
constituent bodies of twenty or thirty thousand electors?" "Yes," says
the noble Marquess, "and much more than that. I will create constituent
bodies of forty thousand, sixty thousand, a hundred thousand. I will add
Marylebone to Westminster. I will add Lambeth to Southwark. I will add
Finsbury and the Tower Hamlets to the City." The noble Marquess, it
is clear, is not afraid of the excitement which may be produced by the
polling of immense multitudes. Of what then is he afraid? Simply of
eight members: nay, of six members: for he is willing, he tells us, to
add two members to the two who already sit for Middlesex, and who may
be considered as metropolitan members. Are six members, then, so
formidable? I could mention a single peer who now sends more than six
members to the House. But, says the noble Marquess, the members for
the metropolitan districts will be called to a strict account by their
constituents: they will be mere delegates: they will be forced to speak,
not their own sense, but the sense of the capital. I will answer for
it, Sir, that they will not be called to a stricter account than those
gentlemen who are nominated by some great
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