The morning star of hope is visible, the sun of freedom has begun to shine on the labourers' mind, and for all the rebuffs they may get from men inside the House of Commons, or outside either, they never mean to have the sun of their freedom eclipsed nor their star of hope darkened again. The grand and august meeting of the unenfranchised in Exeter Hall on the 16th of last May, with the Right Hon. John Bright in the chair, lives in the memory of tens of thousands of working men to-day. Nor will this suffice. They intend next May to assemble in larger numbers still. The men who will be there will be sent by their brethren, and at the expense of their brethren. Many have commenced to establish a fund for that purpose already, and who will dare to laugh and say that these men are not in earnest, after the expense and trouble that they have put themselves to time after time, and bearing so patiently denial after denial and insult after insult ? That these honest hard-working law-abiding subjects want their political rights to ruin the country? I [ pity such ignorance. It won't be the ignorance of the working men that will ruin the country; it will be the stupidity and ignorance of those who deny the workman his rights that will ruin the country. Who has made the country what it is? The political nobodies, who fancy they are everybody? No, the men who have tilled our fields, cut our canals, built our great cities, laid down our railroads, melted our iron, dived into the bowels of the earth and brought up millions of pounds' worth of wealth to the surface—these are the men who have made England great and glorious, and that too at a great risk of life, as witness the Blantyre explosion. Aye, and yet after men have risked their lives and limbs, not in shooting down their fellows, but to make the land of their birth, the land they have toiled to make wealthy, great, and noble in the eyes of the whole world, they are not to be trusted with a vote lest they should ruin the country! I repeat it again, I pity the ignorance of those who talk like that. Are we for

I ever to be denied our rights? Will our legislators be so unwise as to tarnish the fair name of our country ? Must we for ever be treated as aliens in blood, as unworthy the dignity of freemen, or even the nobleness of manhood ? Freedom has raised her voice; we mean to obey her call; we don't intend to be frightened away from our standard. Our forefathers have won many battles for their country, and we, their sons, mean to win the battle for freedom ourselves. It is very gratifying to see our Scotch brethren demanding their political rights, and presenting to Lord Hartington their views upon political matters. The Liberals of Scotland have shown their true colours, and the weak-kneed Liberals--I mean the Whigs of England-must either be true to the cause of Liberalism, or they will have to be quietly put on one side. Mr. Gladstone has struck the right note; he has said • Enfranchise the people. He has faith in human instincts; his special trust is in the grod sense of his countrymen. Enfranchise the

people, and they will educate themselves. Enfranchise the people; it binds society together, and England will be a safer, a happier, and a more prosperous nation.

We are asked sometimes—I mean those of us who live in the unenfranchised districts—why we urge our claim so strongly. Is there anything in a vote which will do you any good ? Do you believe it to be the only panacea for all the ills you say you have to bear? Such like questions are often asked the unenfranchised workman. Well, let us see.

Have we in our rural villages the same sanitary arrangements as there are in our enfranchised towns? It is true there are in some parts nuisance inspectors; but are there not many, very many villages where there are no sanitary arrangements at all? I need not name villages, but any one who travels the counties of Wilts, Dorset, Hants, Berks, Somerset, Devon, yes, and in the Midlands too, must observe the bad sanitary condition of the villages in the rural districts; but who ever brought a rural sanitary bill into Parliament to compel the great landowner to properly drain his cottage property? Are there not villages in this country to-day where the sanitary condition is in such a state as would not be suffered to exist in any of our large towns ? There are, it is true, many improvements needed in our towns, but they have the means in their hands to rectify it. If an enfranchised town is suffering from bad sanitary arrangements-it may be the local squire or lord may object to certain measures the town authorities have seen fit to adopt—where do they apply to? Why, to Parliament. They have their representatives there; their requirements must be attended to, their health and comfort must have proper attention paid to it. But how is the rural workman without a vote to make himself heard on a matter of this kind ? He may call the district nuisance inspector in, but what follows as a rule? It may be he complains of some nuisance which may emanate from his rich neighbour's neglect; if so, if he cannot ply his trade to profit without begging the custom of his rich neighbour to keep his trade going, no matter how bad the nuisance he must hold his tongue or be prepared for consequences. And while such laws exist as the law of primogeniture and entail, it will be more or less the policy of the present owner to get as great a rent as he can, with doing as little in the shape of improvement as he can. Only the other week in Wilts I saw cottages unfit for human beings to live in fast going to decay, and the sooner the better ; but will the present owner build more? Question. During the last twenty years how many of our cottages have been pulled down and no more built to replace them, thus driving the farm labourer into the towns, and in tens of thousands of instances robbing the land of his useful labour, for which we are suffering to-day! Had the labourer been enfranchised half a century ago, the land as well as the villages would

a

not have presented such a serious picture of dilapidation as they do. Of course there are exceptions to the rule. Then there is

water. If the water of a town is bad, means are set on foot to improve it; a town water bill is brought into the House ; the remedy is soon found. And yet in many of our villages the water is not fit for human beings to drink; but who is to call the attention of the Legislature to it? Some one may raise the question, but not until the vote is extended to every householder in the counties will that question receive its due consideration--not only good drainage and good water, but good and decent cottages. Why is there an Artisans' Dwellings Act for our large towns? Why was the number of the inhabitants to say where the law should take effect and where it should not? Why not an Agricultural Labourers' Dwellings Act ? He would have had his act the same as the artisan, but he has no vote; and when the same right to send men to Parliament, as the artisan in the towns has, is given to the labourer, he will no longer be content to live in a fever-den of bad smells. He will no longer be content to drink impure water which injures his own health and that of his family. He will have a cottage decent and fit to live in; he will no longer be content to have but one sleeping room, where father, mother, boys, and girls are herded together like pigs-where the virtues and chastity of the daughter cannot be preserved for want of proper sleeping accommodation. No, he will have these comforts ; but when ?-when he can force his claims for justice and right upon the Legislature by being a part of the body politic, and not a political slave. But if you demand these sanitary comforts you will have to pay for them. The rural workman is quite aware of that, and is willing to pay for them; and if the present price he gets for his labour won't meet his necessary comforts, he must put a higher price on his labour. Enfranchise him, he will free himself. Enfranchisement means better education, better sanitary arrangements, better water where water is bad, better homes, less immorality, less crime, less pauperism. We mean to have the vote.

THE LABOURERS AND THE VOTE.

II.

It seems a disadvantage to the cause of the agricultural labourers, and others as claimants of a vote in Parliamentary elections on a full equality as between counties and boroughs, that men as prominent by name and voice in the Liberal party as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe should be so far from thinking alike. As the former statesman has suggested, the leaders of the party in both Houses of Parliament have signified their readiness to go for such equality; but even that assurance affords no sufficient guarantee that they will have the entire support of all their followers when the time for action comes. Under such circumstances, the leaders of the party now in power, or some of them, will perhaps see what a fine opportunity they have. For although the Conservatives give only what they feel constrained to give, yet, as no party can in our times continue in power without going forward in action, they may be expected at any time to move, and, unlike the Liberals, are so thoroughly drilled to march together that they would vote to a man if Lord Beaconsfield, who, when a commoner, gave the franchise to householders in boroughs, proposed to do the same for householders in counties.

Some persons will have searched in the Prime Minister's speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet for those foreshadowings of Ministerial intentions which have sometimes been a feature in that display. On this occasion Lord Beaconsfield expressed a hope that on the next the statesman holding his position, himself or whomsoever else, might have pleasanter themes than war and famine, and he proceeded to treat on domestic subjects of a more interesting character. Already, indeed, he accepts the only charge Lord Hartington, according to the Earl's interpretation, brings against the Government—that, namely, of making every class comfortable :' this, however, is but the obverse of his own charge against his predecessors, that they made every class uneasy.' At this moment, he proceeded to affirm, the British people are so perfectly content that nobody can persuade any five others to join him in complaining of a political grievance. While thus flattering bimself, be equally flatters the people whom he has so completely pacified. Always possessed of a political instinct,

they have year by year become more and more educated, more thoughtful, and more acquainted with public affairs. For two centuries they have enjoyed franchises possessed by no other people, and not even by the nobility of many nations; they have acquired further immunities too profusely, as some think, accorded them, but, in Lord Beaconsfield's mind, the gifts of a wise generosity and a boon of which the people have shown themselves entirely worthy. But here, when perhaps some listeners were sanguine enough to expect a coming event casting its shadow before, the orator stopped short; the oracle was dumb, and said neither • Rest and be thankful,' nor . You -shall see what

you

shall see.' One cannot wonder that an honest and straightforward Liberal should deprecate the leaving of such a question as the county franchise’ to the bands of a statesman who, instead of dealing sincerely with it, might manipulate it in a scheming and conjuring spirit. We would much rather that the work to be done were superintended and carried through by a statesman and a party in undoubted sympathy with the claimants for admission to the pale of the Constitution; but unless the party mainly so sympathising with the object act solidly together, it were practically questionable whether another party really united, and commanded ably by their leader, might not as well be encouraged to take the enterprise in hand; for these would at present have it in their power to defeat the others, and those who want the work done, and done quickly, would suffer disappointment and delay. There is a marked difference, no doubt, between a Peel and a Disraeli; but the greatest reforms of both their times have been -achieved by putting questions of men and party in abeyance for the "while.

If, therefore, a party man proposes to put the question of the county franchise on a non-party ground, he begins with a respectable claim on the confidence of those who make the application, and of those by whom it is to be granted or refused. Parties may, nay must, rise out of the exercise of political franchises; but surely parties ought not to determine the grounds on which those franchises should be bestowed or withheld. If, in an old community like that to which we all belong, it is impracticable to talk much about natural rights, good arguments may yet be founded upon the stages by which England has grown to her present breadth, and length, and depth, and height. In passing through a Sunday School, I learned from a psalm of Asaph that God Almighty brought a vine out of Egypt, cast out the heathen and planted it, prepared room before it, caused it to take deep root and to fill the land, till it sent out its boughs unto the sea, and its branches unto the river. In this picture we have a fair account of the social, commercial, and political growth. and expansion of our own country, except that, in spite of all her wealt! and fruitfulness, she needs one thing to complete her resem