State Library of NSW
[Page 137]
backed, but unfortunately all have more or less pledged themselves seeing the close contest of parties in late years on the hustings & so we are to have the hateful matter dragged into light [indecipherable]. The Ministry had determined in [indecipherable] Bill to go [indecipherable] them to redress the [indecipherable] to £6 rent or [indecipherable] & Bright declaring that this would satisfy him as an instalment, promised his adhesion [?]. A large party in the House however & The Times & other papers do not wish for an "instalment", that is to say a series of Reform Agitations to last for years, so they call out for what is now called "lateral" Reform the taking in of Codgers educated men &c & the shifting of the Representation from decayed Boroughs to flourishing Towns. I have had something to do with these Boroughs by the way & anything more hopelessly & brutally wrought you cannot conceive, & it appears now that Genl. Russell who is quaking in his shoes, is likely to enlarge the scope of his Bill. Marsh, the other day boldly & like a man declared against any Reform in the House, upon which the "Star" I think which is Brights organ said that it was not ministerial that Mr. M. should speak in this way considering what he had recently [indecipherable] in Australia, but he must without them the people of England were not a "Convict population. My deliberate opinion is that most domination in England wd be ten times worse than it is in any of our Colonies or in [indecipherable] & simply because the lower classes are 10 times better off & 10 times more intelligent.
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