ate did not contain two thousand
inhabitants should be deprived of the privilege of sending members to
parliament. This, he explained, would disfranchise sixty boroughs, and
get rid of one hundred and nineteen members. Disfranchisement was not
to stop here. There were some boroughs which should be blotted out
altogether, while others, although more flourishing in point of
population, were too low to have any good title to retain their present
privilege of sending two members to the house of commons. It was
therefore proposed that all boroughs whose population exceeded,
according to the census of 1821, two thousand, and yet was under four
thousand, should only send one instead of two members. The number of
these boroughs was forty-seven; and Weymouth, which had hitherto sent
four members, was in future only to send two. Having proposed the
disfranchisement of these places, amounting in the whole to one hundred
and sixty-eight members, Lord John Russell explained the ministerial
plan of enfranchisement. It was proposed that each of seven considerable
towns should send two members, and twenty others one member each. Then
twenty-seven of the largest counties, including Yorkshire, was in
future to return four members instead of two, with this exception, that
Yorkshire, already possessing four, was to return an additional member
for each riding. The representation of London, likewise, was to be more
than doubled; the Tower Hamlets, Finsbury, Lambeth, and Marylebone,
were each to return two members. But the most important part of the new
constitution was as follows:--The cities, boroughs, and counties which
were to send members, and the number of members to be elected being
ascertained, the existing right of franchise in them all was to be
altered, and a new franchise introduced, extending equally to those
which remained untouched, with the declared purpose of increasing the
number of electors, and of having but one uniform election throughout
the empire. The elective franchise was to be extended to all persons
paying a rent of ten pounds per annum, whether they occupied the
premises or not; copyholders, whose property was of the same yearly
value, and all householders to an equal amount, were to be electors for
counties; all holders of leases for twenty-one years, which had not been
renewed within two years, were to have the privilege of voting in towns;
and all leaseholders for twenty years of property worth fifty pounds per