means of effecting it. While bit-by-bit reforms, he added, would bear no fruit in their isolated shapes, a
general measure comprising them would be sure to win support and admiration from all parts of the community,
and would thus at once acquire sufficient force out of doors to be carried by a large majority within. This
is hopeful language to have been held by a cabinet minister, and on its brave fulfilment much will depend.
But Mr. Maule was even more explicit. He expressed to Mr. Locke King agreement in the principle of
his bill for conferring the ten-pound franchise in counties, and also declared the specific intention of
government "to extend the franchises of the people generally." And further, as if to leave no possible doubt
as to one direction which a portion of these franchises would take, he declared his belief that the noble
attitude which England had presented at a time when almost every other country on the earth was
convulsed with revolutions, had unanswerably shown that the franchise should now be conferred on many who
did not possess it, the friends of law, the friends of order, and "entirely worthy of such an extension." If
Free Trade be a boon worth keeping, it is this language which holds out the hope that it will yet be fully
worked out, and finally secured to us. Other encouraging signs have also made their appearance. Mr.
Herries was defeated in his attempt to force taxation back into the old channels by a majority of nearly fifty,
and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so far amending his budget as to remove its most objectionable feature,
has promised future enforcement of the only principle which should now prevail in our fiscal policy. If we
now submit to the income tax, it will be for advantages incomparably countervailing its evil. To the income
tax, with all its inequalities, the middle classes are again willing to submit; but with the condition that
industry shall in future be relieved of all pressure that can fairly be taken from it, that encouragement shall
be given in every conceivable form to the productive capabilities of the country, and that the promise of a
just and reasonable extension of the franchise shall be fairly and honourably kept. This is what our present
governors are now "bound over to;" and, in consideration of this, many present shortcomings are wisely
agreed to be forgiven.

Thus are particular ailments overlooked when general remedies come within view, and even the scandals
of St. Alban's appear to show less hideous than if the time had not clearly arrived when its corrupt existence
must have an end. The last case is about the worst in which this notorious place has figured. More shameless
corruption was successfully carried on, and more infamous arts successfully used to intercept its consequences.
Although the committee had full view of the small house "opening into two thoroughfares" wherein
sovereigns passed incessantly for votes by regular tariff; although for several days they had to sit listening
to the unmistakeable sound of this "bell-metal," and several specific cases of its transfer were in their very
grasp; yet at the critical moment of proof the necessary witnesses were kidnapped and carried off, the
proceedings of the committee arrested, their power defied, and the sitting member perforce confirmed in his
seat side by side with a resolution that corruption of the grossest kind had been practised. The House of
Commons has since revenged itself for not getting rid of the member by clapping his kidnapper into
Newgate, which for the present is all it can do; and on the very evening when it did this, it had the
pleasure and privilege of hearing from Mr. Jacob Bell, thus sitting in its despite for St. Alban's, a lecture on
the danger of "acquiescing in principles at variance with morality, honour, and Christianity." To this the
House might fairly have rejoined that the acquiescing in the honorable member's retention of his seat, if that was
what he referred to, had been no willing act of its own; but from a subsequent part of Mr. Bell's speech it turned
out that this was not what he referred to. He was in truth rebuking Mr. Roebuck for his loose notions in
regard to savages, and for certain resolute opinions expressed by the member for Sheffield on the necessity
of exterminating the Caffirs. The house listened with curious patience; perhaps out of a sort of feeling
that the man sent to St. Stephen's from St. Alban's must be better qualified than most men to defend the
barbarous instincts, and represent the interests of savages. It was well known, remarked Mr. Bell, that
these aborigines (he did not mention Caffraria, but neither did he mention St. Alban's) were ready to sell
what they had at a moderate price—here the House laughed; that they were quite open to terms of
capitulation—here there was another laugh; and that there were means of effecting their civilisation other than
those of actual bloodshed, since even among savages there were principles of honour. So may even the
Waggetts, Edwardses, and Skeggses, have a good word artfully said for them. It is much to the credit of
the new member's ingenuity that he should thus have been able, without too violent a shock to the pride
and self esteem of the House, to defend his absent constituents, eulogise the moderation of their tariff of
prices, and waft even a word of consolation into Newgate itself.

If we would offer an example of coarse self-exposure to contrast with this delicacy in disguise, we have
but to turn to Mr. Ferrand on the hustings at Aylesbury. Here he was opposed by Mr. Bethel, a gentleman
of the utmost refinement of manners as well as intellect; and all the ranting, roaring madness of abuse of
which the Ferrand nature is capable, was elicited by the violence of the contrast. As he formerly called
Mr. Cornewall Lewis a conspirator, for which he was brought to his knees in the Court of Queen's Bench; as
he bestowed upon Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright the endearing epithet of blood-stained serpents; as he accused
the Manchester cotton-spinners of murdering three hundred negroes in America every year, and of starving
tens of thousands of their labourers on a penny a head per day; precisely so, he fell foul of Mr. Bethel, called
him a tool and a renegade, assailed him with falsehoods of the grossest description, and flourished envelopes
of Mr. Bethel's private letters, with which he had managed to come provided. It is yet more as a triumph
of good manners than of sound principles that the return of the great equity counsel in the teeth of this
vile vituperation deserves record and remembrance. Perhaps there is no instance known, even in the annals
of election hustings, of anything so happy and apropos as Mr. Bethel's answer to one of the vulgar calumnies
of his opponent. Thus ran Mr. Ferrand's argument. He is come here to play the game of the Whigs.
Here is an envelope with 'W. G. Hayter' in the corner. What does that mean? Why, it means that the
borough of Aylesbury is to be made a stepping-stone to the bench. He wants to be a judge, and that's all
he wants with you. Whereto Mr. Bethel quietly interposed the remark that he had just refused the Vice-
Chancellorship, offered him by Lord John Russell.

Nevertheless who shall take upon him to say that Mr. Ferrand is not at this moment embittering his
leisure, in his "country seat in Yorkshire," with the feeling that if he had but exercised less delicacy, and
been less scrupulous of consideration for the feelings of others, he might now have been sitting member for
Aylesbury? For even such, it would seem, is the feeling of Bishop Philpotts, as he sits musing in his palace
at Exeter, when he remembers that long ago he had come to the conclusion of proclaiming his "entire want