representative. Everybody knows that many English members have
only fictitious qualifications, and that the members for Scotch
cities and boroughs are not required to have any qualification at
all. It is surely absurd to admit the representatives of
Edinburgh and Glasgow without any qualification, and at the same
time to require the representative of Finsbury or Marylebone to
possess a qualification or the semblance of one. If the
qualification really be a security for respectability, let that
security be demanded from us who sit here for Scotch towns. If,
as I believe, the qualification is no security at all, why should
we require it from anybody? It is no part of the old
constitution of the realm. It was first established in the reign
of Anne. It was established by a bad parliament for a bad
purpose. It was, in fact, part of a course of legislation which,
if it had not been happily interrupted, would have ended in the
repeal of the Toleration Act and of the Act of Settlement.

The Chartists demand annual parliaments. There, certainly, I
differ from them; but I might, perhaps, be willing to consent to
some compromise. I differ from them also as to the expediency of
paying the representatives of the people, and of dividing the
country into electoral districts. But I do not consider these
matters as vital. The kingdom might, I acknowledge, be free,
great, and happy, though the members of this house received
salaries, and though the present boundaries of counties and
boroughs were superseded by new lines of demarcation. These,
Sir, are subordinate questions. I do not of course mean that
they are not important. But they are subordinate when compared
with that question which still remains to be considered. The
essence of the Charter is universal suffrage. If you withhold