It is in vain to refer to the 40s. freeholders of England as affording a precedent or a parallel to town franchise. Everybody knows that the 40s. freehold--originally, when established in the time of Henry VI., a measure of landed property worth £20 or £30 a-year at this time--had come, from the change in the value of money, to be a mere house qualification. No one supposes that the 40s. freeholder _lives on his 40s._; it is the value merely of the cottage, garden, or paddock which he holds in freehold. He _lives_ on extraneous resources, the wages of labour, realised means, or the aid of his family. But the £8 tenant in Ireland _lives_ on the subject which qualifies him. In nine cases out of ten, he has no other means of livelihood whatever, and the franchise is the measure of his whole substance. It is little better in most cases than the income of an English pauper; but, such as it is, we have no doubt it is all that Free Trade measures will allow the great majority of Irish cultivators to earn; and that, unless the franchise is to dwindle away till the Irish counties in many cases become Gattons and Old Sarums, it is absolutely indispensable to enfranchise such a miserable and destitute class. But we did not expect, amidst all the gloom of our anticipations from the effects of the Reform Bill, and its consequent Free Trade measures, that this misery and destitution were to reach such a height, that it was to be proclaimed by Lord John Russell himself, and made the ground of the first great breach in his own Constitution!