OR, x
Re pa
! NEW PLANE TOR POLITICAL REFOBM. 50I

8 Were received, Dat the new League did not grow. The
eng hardly seemed to know what it was that they wished
: do. They were not; sure in their tactics. Cobden thought
bit ought to be a metropolitan association. Mr. Bright
; the contrary believed that Lancashire and Yorkshire must
io s contre, The scheme of the asscciation was ambiguous.
We are asking people,” said Mr. Bright, “te join for an
"efineq or ill-defined object, and we neither propose an end
the movement, nor a clear and open way for working it.”
fe two chiefs were not exactly of one mind as to the true
Plicy in the most important part of the programme. Cobden,
we have ~ often said, was essentially an economical, a
orl, and a social reformer. He was never an enthusiast for
re Yeform in the machinery. Immediately after the repeat
ihe Corn Law, he confessed that on the question of the
"Hage he had gone back. “And yet,” he went on, “Tam
"eth like Peel and ¥ree Trade. I do not oppose the
Mincipjg of giving men a control over their own affairs. I
at Confess, however, that I am less sanguine than I used to
> %hou the effects of a wide extension of the franchise”?
3 own favourite plan of extension through the forty shilling
“ehol or only recommended itself to him because it brought
"hi the virtue of thrift, snd the recommendation of proety,
 Mr, Bright, though cordially acquiescing in the plan
“frag it went, and as a means of bringing the old factions to
* “itulation in some of the counties, always maintained that
’ "ould gover enfranchise so many voters permanently as to
Ake any real and effective change in the representation.
5 *™h before and after the League was dissolved, Mr. Bright
Wisteq that “no object was worth a real and great effort,
tor of a thorough reform in Parliament.” Although, hower,
 there waz not a sufficiently clear and concentrated
imity to give an impulse to a new Teague, there was
$ Tn Rw, Sturges, July 16, 1848.

1849.
Hv. 45.