o explain the
alterations in the present bill, which alterations regarded the manner
of carrying into effect principles already adopted by the house.
These principles consisted in the disfranchisement of decayed and
inconsiderable boroughs; the enfranchisement of large and opulent
towns; and the introduction of a general new electoral qualification.
As regards the disfranchisement of decayed boroughs, the former bill had
taken the census of 1821 as the rule, and had fixed on a certain amount
of population, disfranchising all those whose population did not at that
time reach the amount. Since that time a new census had been taken. This
census could not be thrown out of view, but, at the same time, it was
liable to objection, having been taken after a particular point of
population had been fixed as that of disfranchisement, it was not
improbable that pains had been taken to raise certain boroughs above
the line of disfranchisement. Ministers had, therefore, rather taken
the number of houses than that of inhabitants, it being less likely that
improper practices would be adopted in regard to the former than to the
latter. It had been found difficult, he continued, to draw a line which
should mark where the census should be attended to, and where it was
to be disregarded. Ministers had used every effort to obtain a correct
account of the size and importance of the boroughs which were to be
abolished; and on the data they had obtained schedule A of the new bill
was to be founded. The drawing of the line at which disfranchisement
should stop, he said, must necessarily be arbitrary, whether the
population, the houses, or the amount of the assessed taxes, or the
number of boroughs, was to be taken into consideration. It had appeared
to ministers that the number which had been fixed last session to be
disfranchised was proper, and therefore they proposed to strike off
fifty-six, the number which stood in schedule A of the former bill. The
consequence of this was that some of the boroughs which formerly escaped
disfranchisement in consequence of the population of their parishes
being large, though the boroughs themselves were inconsiderable, would
now be placed in schedule A, whilst others would be raised out of it,
and placed in schedule B. Another part of the disfranchising clauses of
the bill regarded the boroughs in schedule B, which were to be deprived
of only one of their two members. Ministers had now resolved to give
an ad