curtailing it.  And what has been the result?  How many men are there in this room who know the respective nature of their votes?  And is there a single woman who knows the political worth of her husband’s vote?  Passing the other day from the Bank of this great metropolis to its suburb called Brentford, journeying as I did the whole way through continuous rows of houses, I found myself at first in a very ancient borough returning four members,—­double the usual number,—­not because of its population but because it has always been so.  Here I was informed that the residents had little or nothing to do with it.  I was told, though I did not quite believe what I heard, that there were no residents.  The voters however, at any rate the influential voters, never pass a night there, and combine their city franchise with franchises elsewhere.  I then went through two enormous boroughs, one so old as to have a great political history of its own, and the other so new as to have none.  It did strike me as odd that there should be a new borough, with new voters, and new franchises, not yet ten years old, in the midst of this city of London.  But when I came to Brentford, everything was changed.  I was not in a town at all though I was surrounded on all sides by houses.  Everything around me was grim and dirty enough, but I am supposed to have reached, politically, the rustic beauties of the country.  Those around me, who had votes, voted for the County of Middlesex.  On the other side of the invisible border I had just past the poor wretch with 3s. a day who lived in a grimy lodging or a half-built hut, but who at any rate possessed the political privilege.  Now I had suddenly emerged among the aristocrats, and quite another state of things prevailed.  Is that a reasonable manipulation of the votes of the people?  Does that arrangement give to any man an equal share in his country?  And yet I fancy that the thing is so little thought of that few among you are aware that in this way the largest class of British labour is excluded from the franchise in a country which boasts of equal representation.”

“The chief object of your first Reform Bill was that of realising the very fact of representation.  Up to that time your members of the House of Commons were in truth deputies of the Lords or of other rich men.  Lord A, or Mr. B, or perhaps Lady C, sent whom she pleased to Parliament to represent this or that town, or occasionally this or that county.  That absurdity is supposed to be past, and on evils that have been cured no one should dwell.  But how is it now?  I have a list, in my memory, for I would not care to make out so black a catalogue in legible letters,—­of forty members who have been returned to the present House of Commons by the single voices of influential persons.  What will not forty voices do even in your Parliament?  And if I can count forty, how many more must there be of which I have not heard?” Then there was a voice calling upon the Senator to name those men,