To successfully combat the allurements of cabarets and gin palaces, you must “compel” men to visit your News Rooms by the force of superior attraction.
There is “REST” enough, too much, already. Nothing breaks the low and grovelling monotony of “the Pious Public House.” No healthier pursuit interferes with the recreation supplied by the tap-room, or the sanded parlour. You must _tempt_ people into churches—the arguments of fear have not succeeded in making them frequented. The excitements you employ are not sufficient to attract the poor to your benches—try the effect of supplementing the Act, as I have briefly indicated—take it up in this wise temper, and you will have no dismal failures to lament.
Gentlemen, it is related of the Emperor AUGUSTUS—it was the glory of his reign—that he found Rome brick, and that he left it marble. Let it be your higher aim, your nobler distinction, that you found the people ignorant, and that you left them INSTRUCTED—that you found them wholly untaught in _political and social science_, { 15} and that you left them INTELLIGENT—that you found the gates of the temple of knowledge closed to the toiling classes, and that you OPENED THEM TO ALL!
Gentlemen, I belong to no Party, but I will yield to none in my earnest desire to thoroughly RESTORE and REPAIR the venerable Fabric of the Constitution, and to put the Representation of the People on a firm basis, and to have a House of Commons for the common people. I am for a more comprehensive franchise than the symbolical one of lath and plaster. I would give a vote to every man certified as competent to READ and WRITE. I prefer a representation of INTELLIGENT MEN to any Franchise that can be devised. What claim has an illiterate hind to the Elective franchise? Not the slightest. You put a dangerous weapon into his hand of the use of which he is ignorant. The Suffrage is a TRUST, and a man wholly uninstructed is unqualified to exercise it. Philosophers laugh at _manhood_ suffrage _de se_, and ask why should not such a franchise include women?
I am of opinion that a Reading and Writing qualification is fairer and more equitable, and affords as good a security for an honest vote, as any £ s. d. franchise whatever. With an untaxed Press, with Knowledge set free, with cheap and good Literature, such a suffrage could not fail to stimulate the popular education. I have no faith in a £6 or a £5 franchise, unless it is annexed with a reading certificate, and to make no provision for a £10 or £12 LODGER FRANCHISE, as Mr. James proposes, seems mean popularity-hunting, and like a determination on the part of Lord John Russell to ignore the claims of a very large and respectable class in St. Marylebone, and other Metropolitan Parishes, because they are quiet and not demonstrative. But such palpable injustice cannot be endured for ever. That “ugly rush,” predicted by Mr. Henley, may yet come; for there is always danger of convulsion when large bodies of men are insulted, and deprived of their just political rights, in order to please the rampant, degenerate Earl GREY, the rank Tory DICTATOR, alias Renegade Whig, Earl DERBY, or such a loud, noisy Declaimer, as Sir E. Bully Lytton, M.P.