the great men of 1776 thought safeguards around the franchise wise and prudent in their day, before the great tide of emigration had set in to the westward, and when the population was only 4,000,000, what would they say, could they but rise from their graves and see how their successors have thrown down the prudent barriers they had raised, and laid the franchise bare to citizenship, now that the Union numbers 23,000,000 souls, and that the tide of emigration is daily flooding them with hordes of the discontented and turbulent from every country in the Old World?

But perhaps it may be said that I, as an Englishman, am prejudiced against republican institutions in any shape; let me, then, quote you an authority which every educated American will respect.  Mr. Justice Kent says, “The progress and impulse of popular opinion, is rapidly destroying every constitutional check, every conservative element, intended by the sages who framed the earliest American Constitutions as safeguards against the abuses of popular suffrage.”  Let us turn to another equally eminent American authority, Mr. Justice Story.  “It might be urged, that it is far from being clear, upon reasoning or experience, that uniformity in the composition of a representative body is either desirable or expedient, founded in sounder policy, or more promotive of the general good, than a mixed system, embracing, representing, and combining distinct interests, classes, and opinions.  In England, the House of Commons, as a representative body, is founded upon no uniform principle, either of numbers, or classes, or places; ... and in every system of reform which has found public favour in that country, many of these diversities have been embodied from choice, as important checks upon undue legislation, as facilitating the representation of different interests and different opinions, and as thus securing, by a well-balanced and intelligent representation of all the various classes of society, a permanent protection of the public liberties of the people, and a firm security of the private rights of persons and property.”

Thus far I have quoted the opinions of the highest American authorities upon the franchise.  And, as far as the lowering it in England affords us any light, I would wish some unbiased and competent person to inform the public, whether—­whatever other benefit it may have procured to the community—­it has increased or decreased bribery and corruption; and how the balance between advantage and disadvantage will stand, in reference to the community at large, by a further lowering of the franchise in this country; and also to what extent—­if any—­it can be lowered, without throwing all but unlimited power into the hands of the masses, and thus destroying that balance of the different interests of the community which are—­thank God—­still represented, and which, if once lost, would reduce our beloved Sovereign to the position of a gaudy puppet, and the House of Lords to a mere cypher, and be as certainly followed by all the horrors of a revolution, and all the evils of a corrupt democracy.  How easy is it to find politicians ever ready to sniff the incense of popularity at the plausible shrine of a descending franchise!—­how difficult to find those who, while granting what is just and prudent, have the wisdom to plan, and the courage to dare, measures to arrest a mobular avalanche!