franchise to the five-pound level would do exceedingly little for them. They consist almost exclusively of two classes,— a broker and petty-dealer class, whose shops, and sometimes their dwelling-houses, are of value enough to bring them within the limits of the ten-pound qualification; and a class of unskilled labourers, who live gregariously in humble hovels, to which a five-pound qualification would not nearly descend, and who, besides, shift their dwellings, on the average, some four or five times every twelvemonth. One has but to scan for a few minutes the congregation of the Roman Catholic chapel in Lothian Street, as the motley crowd defiles on their dismissal towards the Cowgate, in order to see that in this party, as in the other, it is from universal suffrage, and not from a judiciously restricted extension of the franchise, that there is aught to be feared. The qualification would require to descend very low indeed ere it could reach the class, comprising nine-tenths of the whole congregation, who wear their week-day clothes on Sunday because they have no other, and are able, at the utmost, to greet the day with a clean shirt ; and as for the few respectably dressed men in black among them, that, though on but the ordinary level of the attendants at Protestant places of worship, catch the eye here as the magnates and aristocrats of their church,—they are all voters already. As opposed to the Papists, however, the Protestant party would gain in strength, and that very considerably, by such a limited extension of the franchise as the one we specify. At least not more than one-third of the men who attend anti-Popish lectures, and whose presence at Mr John Hope's meeting made it respectable in point of appearance and numbers, at present possess the franchise; but they are a decent, well-conditioned class, and the houses they inhabit do not fall, save in exceptional cases, beneath a fivepound rental, but, on the contrary, average very considerably above it. It may be safely presumed that any few ac

cessions of strength which Popery might receive from a fivepound extension of the franchise would be balanced at least ten times over by the assistance which Protestantism would draw from the accession to political power of this thoroughly respectable antagonist class.

There are two other parties, the "Edinburgh Review" Whigs and the "Blackwood Magazine" Tories,-whom the extension of the franchise would leave exactly as they are, unless, indeed, in the exercise of an ingenuity in which they excel all other political bodies, they should fall upon some new mode of manufacturing fictitious votes. Of these two parties, the Parliament House forms the central nucleus, and each in turn, as their friends chance to be in power for the time, possess the legal patronage of Scotland. Judgeships, sheriffships, clerkships, procurator-fiscalships, all the many offices which Government can bestow, and to which gentlemen of the law are alone eligible, with not a few, besides, for which they are as eligible as any other class, are the good and weighty things which, like a great primary planet in the centre of a system, give cohesion and force to the movements of these parties. We make the remark in, we trust, no invidious spirit. Human nature being what it is, these things must and will have their weight and influence. There have been many instances of wholly disinterested individuals among both Whigs and Tories; but there never yet was a wholly disinterested party, especially when in power; and that patronage which made Lord Dundas in the last age the great centre round which Scotch politics revolved, renders the Parliament House a great political centre now, especially in Edinburgh. We remember seeing, many years ago, an ingenious caricature of the times of Fox and Pitt, which represented the great political system of the country as formed on the plan of the solar system. The Treasury, with its massive bags of guineas, formed the solar centre, and the various

British statesmen of the age, inscribed within circles of bright gambouge, of a size proportionate to their influence, revolved as planets around it. Some of the larger ones had their satellites. Georgium Sidus (George III) possessed as his moons the class of men known as "the friends of the King." also had his numerous satellites, and so had Fox. a good deal of complexity in the system,—

"With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,

Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."

Pitt

There was

But the great centre of all,—the vast attractive mass towards which all gravitated, and round which all revolved,—was the Treasury, with its bushels of golden guineas. And round this attractive circle, alike bright and solid, the great statesmen of London and the smaller statesmen of Edinburgh will continue to revolve in these as certainly as in former times; and it would be idle to dream of any other condition of things with respect to the old governing parties, whether Whig or Tory. But not the less is it a duty on the part of men who love their country sedulously to watch over an influence of this biassing kind, and on proper occasions to strive hard to counteract it. And by no class could it be more effectually counteracted than by a class who for themselves could have nothing to look for or expect. And such a class the five-pound householders would scarce fail to approve themselves. scarlet coat, associated with a letter-carrier's office, might now and then be found for a compliant working man who voted as he was bid; but there could be no loaves and fishes found for so great a multitude as that of the five-pound householders.

A

Nor would we deem them an unsafe class in the main. They would be found to comprise the great bulk of the membership of all the evangelical Churches, but few indeed of the lapsed classes. Nay, we know not that we could draw a better or more practical line of demarcation between these

lapsed classes and our useful citizens of the humbler class, than that which a five-pound household qualification would furnish. It has been said by a contemporary, more especially by its correspondents, that our aim in supporting Mr Brown Douglas in the recent contest was simply to aggrandize the Free Church. We see not, however, how, in the political field, the Free Church could be aggrandized. We certainly look for no endowments for herself, and ask neither place nor emolument for her ministers or members. We have assuredly no wish to see her revolving round the Treasury as her centre. If we have desired to see some of her abler men returned to Parliament, it was not because they were Free Churchmen, but because we knew that on the most important questions of the day their opinions were sound; and if we now desire to see many of her members possessed of the franchise, it is only because we believe they would exercise it safely and well. We simply throw off, on the present occasion, a few suggestions, not as definite conclusions, but as food for thought, -as contributions, too, towards the solution of what we deem an interesting problem. The show of hands at the hustings of last week was greatly in favour of Mr Brown Douglas; and, when led to inquire how best the "declaration of the poll" could be made to agree with the "show of hands," we could bethink us of no better plan than that of a five-pound qualification.-February 16, 1856.

THE STRIKES.

FIRST ARTICLE.

THE last twelvemonth has been peculiarly marked in the manufacturing world as a year of strikes and combinations; nor, though there are adjustments taking place, and bands of operatives returning to their employment after months of voluntary idleness, are they by any means yet at an end. Great fires and disastrous shipwrecks are both very terrible things; but, so far as the mere waste of property is involved, a protracted strike is at least as formidable as either, and its permanent effects are often incalculably more mischievous. Wreck or conflagration never yet ruined any branch of industry. Were all the manufactured goods in London to be destroyed in one fell blaze, a few months of accelerated industry would repair the loss. The greatest calamity of the kind which could possibly take place would resemble merely the emptying of a reservoir fed by a perennial stream, that would continue flowing till it had filled it again. But the loss occasioned by a long-protracted strike is often of a deeper kind. It not only empties the reservoir, but in some instances cuts off the spring, and in this way robs of its means of supply the town or district whose only resource the spring had constituted. Nations have in this way, when there were competing nations in the field, been permanently stripped of lucrative branches of industry, and become the mere importers of articles with which they had been accustomed to supply their neighbours. In other instances the effects are disastrous, not to the nation generally, but to merely a class of its workers. A partial strike of one section of workmen, on the product of whose labours certain other sections are dependent