10, Downing Street, |
Whitehall, |
Jan 4. 1884 |
| Mr Gladstone submits his humble duty to Your Majesty, and humbly
reports that the Cabinet met this day to consider some leading points
of Parliamentary business for the approaching Session. |
| They advise that the first great measure of the year should be a
Bill for extending to the Counties the occupation franchise, and also
the lodger franchise, now enjoyed in Boroughs, and for rendering it
uniform as far as may be in town and country, and throughout the Three
Kingdoms. |
| Certain limited franchises of a miscellaneous kind ought, as they
conceive, to drop with the present holders: but they propose to have
the whole substance of the property franchises, now subsisting in
Counties, unaltered, only making provision against spurious votes
by restraining subdivision and rent-charges. |
| The safe working of the household franchise in Boroughs has removed,
in the judgement of Your Majesty's Advisers, all, even the most shadowy
grounds for apprehension from the enfranchisement of what may be considered
as even a safe class of the population. |
| The reasons formerly urged for combining redistribution of seats
with the franchise lose nearly all their force in view of a large
though not absolute assimilation; while the reasons against it subsist
in still fuller force than heretofore, and the Cabinet conceive the
severance of the two measures to be recommended in the highest degree
by public reasons. |
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