Speeches - 1853 Author:Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. July 5, 1831. On the Adjourned Debate on the Second Beading of Lord John Russell's Parliamentary Reform Bill for Ireland. Before... more » I proceed to examine what may be termed the political arguments applicable to the question, I wish to notice one position, which, if it were a sound one, I admit would be decisive against Reform. That position is — that the elective franchise is property — as much property as the dividends of the fundholder, or the rents of the landowner. It must either be property or not property ; and if it be property, to seize what belongs to the rich man, in order to give it to the poor man, would be to break up the very foundation of social order. I support this measure because I am convinced that the elective franchise is not property, and that the Bill ought not, therefore, to give compensation. Looking back to the earliest times, we shall find, that if the elective franchise be property, the present system is founded upon the most monstrous system of injustice and robbery. The great disfranchisement of the reign of Henry VI., was an act of unheard-of plunder, and the same remark will apply to the Reform introduced by Oliver Cromwell. I will not argue on the merit or demerit of his system, but this I will say, that the best and wisest men of that, and subsequent times, never treated the- elective franchise as property. I speak of all the debates in which Maynard and Hale partook under the vigorous Oliver, and his feeble successor. Sir Henry Vane said, Hansard, 3d Series, vol. iv. 1831, that it was a Reform which the Long Parliament would have made had it lasted; and Lord Clarendon declared, that it was a Reform which the King ought to have made had he then come to the Crown. Lord Clarendon, the most distinguished of royalis...« less