After this, Lord John Russell went out of office; but the _Review_ kept harping on Reform. The writer had already stated, “that a new measure of Parliamentary Reform was demanded, rather in the name of theoretical propriety than of practical advantage.” It seems to us that such an admission was nearly tantamount to an argument against the policy of making any change at all; more especially when we were told, nearly in the same page, that “there was no _call_ for Parliamentary Reform on the part of any large or influential class.” If that were true, we should like to know who “demanded” the new measure? But we must not be too critical regarding the advances of the new Lycurgus. In October 1852, a second article appeared, the preamble of which was very moderate—indeed, rather calculated to impress the casual reader with the idea that the author would have much preferred if “the vexed question of the franchise” could have been left alone. Nevertheless it appeared to him that there were “many reasons which make it impossible either entirely to shelve or long to postpone the question of Parliamentary Reform;” and, having stated these, he dashes again into his subject. He is, however, a great deal too knowing to commence with the proposal of innovations. He treats us to several pages of high Conservativism, condemnatory of universal suffrage; and having thus established a kind of confidence—acting on Quintilian’s advice, to frame the introduction so as “_reddere auditores benevolos, attentos, dociles_”—he begins to propound his new ideas. In this article we have:— _Source of Lord John Russell’s new proposal to swamp the Counties by the admission of £10 occupants._—“The other plan is to extend the £10 qualification to counties, by which means _every_ householder (to the requisite value) throughout the land would possess a vote; if he resided in a small town or a village, or an isolated dwelling, he would be upon the county register. The only objection we can hear of to this plan is, that in the country districts and in hamlets a £10 occupancy generally includes some land, and would not, therefore, indicate the same social station as the living in a £10 house in town, and that it might lead to the creation, for the sake of augmenting landlord influence, of a numerous and dependent class of tenant voters. But in the first place, the occupier of a £10 house in villages and small towns belongs to a decidedly higher social grade than the occupier of a £10 house in cities; and, in the second place, it would not be difficult to meet the objection, by requiring that the qualifying occupancy shall be, in the county register, a house, and not a house and land, or by fixing a sum which shall, as nearly as can be ascertained, be generally an equivalent to the £10 occupancy contemplated by the present law.”—_Edinburgh Review_, Oct. 1852, p. 472.