The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860

Chapter 13

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Such uncompromising language was, not unnaturally, regarded by the Opposition in both Houses as a direct defiance, and the challenge was promptly taken up both in and out of Parliament. It happened that at this moment the ministry was extremely unpopular in the City; not, indeed, on account of his hostility to Reform, but in consequence of the recent introduction by the Home-secretary of a police force in London, on the model of one which the Duke himself, when Irish Secretary, had established in Dublin. The old watchmen had been so notoriously inefficient that it might have been expected that the change would have been hailed with universal approval and grat.i.tude, but it met with a very different reception. Many of the newspapers which had not yet forgiven the pa.s.sing of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation made it a ground for the strongest imputations on the Duke himself, some of them even going the length of affirming that he aimed at the throne, and that the organization of this new force was the means on which he reckoned for the attainment of his object. No story is too gross for the credulity of the populace. To hear of such a plot was to believe it; to believe it was to resolve to defeat it; and at the beginning of November the government received several warnings that a plan was in agitation to raise a formidable riot on Lord Mayor"s Day, when the King and the Duke himself were expected to dine with the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor even wrote to the Duke to suggest the prudence of his coming "strongly and sufficiently guarded," and the result of this advice was certainly strange. The Duke cared little enough about personal danger to himself, but he regarded himself as specially bound by his office to watch over the public tranquillity, and to do nothing that might be expected to endanger it. He was at least equally solicitous that a new reign should not open with a tumult which could in any way be regarded as an insult to the King; and, under the influence of these feelings, he took the responsibility of giving the King the unprecedented advice of abandoning his intention of being present at the Guildhall banquet. Such a step had an inevitable tendency to weaken the ministry still farther by the comments which it provoked. Even his own brother, Lord Wellesley, did not spare his sarcasms, p.r.o.nouncing it "the boldest act of cowardice he had ever heard of;" while the Reformers ascribed the unpopularity which it confessed to the Duke"s declaration against any kind or degree of Reform; and, to test the correctness of this opinion, Mr. Brougham, who, in the House of Commons, was the most eloquent champion of Reform, gave notice of a motion on the subject for the 16th of November. Before that day came, however, the ministry had ceased to exist. On the preceding evening it had been defeated on a proposal to refer to a select committee the consideration of the Civil List, a new settlement of which was indispensable at the beginning of a new reign, and on the morning of the 16th the Duke resigned, not only advising the King to intrust the formation of the new cabinet to Lord Grey--who was universally recognized as the head of the Whig party--but recommending his Majesty also to be prepared to consent to a measure of moderate Reform, which, though he could not bring himself to co-operate in it, he was satisfied that the temper of the House of Commons, if not of the people out-of-doors also, rendered unavoidable.[216] The advice was taken. Lord Grey had no difficulty in forming a ministry in which the Whigs were aided by the junction of several of the more moderate Tories, who had regarded Canning as their leader; and from the very beginning Parliamentary Reform was proclaimed to be the one great object of his government. It would be more correct to call it a Reform of the House of Commons, since there was no idea of interfering with the House of Lords, even in those parts of it which were of a representative character, the Scotch and Irish peers. But, by whatever t.i.tle the ministerial policy was designated, no one misunderstood what was intended; and as Parliament was, after a few days, adjourned over the Christmas holidays, the recess was spent by a sub-committee of the cabinet in framing a measure.

The great extension of our trade, which was the fruit partly of his wise commercial policy, and partly of the long war; the rapid and prodigious growth of our manufactures, developed by the inventive ingenuity of our mechanics and engineers, had given a consideration and influence to the commercial, manufacturing, and moneyed cla.s.ses which could not be disregarded. The land-owners, who had previously almost monopolized the representation, no longer const.i.tuted the wealthiest cla.s.s of the community. Pitt himself had raised a banker to the peerage. More recently, men closely connected with the commercial cla.s.ses had become cabinet ministers, one of whom had even subsequently sacrificed office to his feeling of the propriety of enfranchising a single town, Birmingham. But there were other towns at least equal in importance to Birmingham which were unrepresented, and it was clearly impossible to maintain a system which gave representatives to boroughs like Gatton, Old Sarum, or Corfe Castle--where the electors scarcely outnumbered the members whom they elected--and withheld them from large and opulent manufacturing centres like Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield. The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, therefore, of these towns, and of others whose population and consequent importance, though inferior to theirs, was still vastly superior to those of many which had hitherto returned representatives, was so manifestly reasonable and consistent with the principles of our parliamentary const.i.tution, that it was impossible to object to it. And their enfranchis.e.m.e.nt unavoidably led to the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the smaller boroughs, unless the House of Commons were to be enlarged to a number which was not likely to tend to the facilitation of business. Indeed, in the opinion of the framers of the bill, the House was _already too large_, and they proposed to reduce its number by upward of sixty--a step to which it is probable that many of those whose opposition contributed to defeat it subsequently repented of their resistance. Nevertheless, the line adopted by the Duke of Wellington"s ministry showed that there was still a large party to whom reform on a large scale was altogether distasteful; and accordingly the bill which, under the influence of these considerations, Lord Grey"s administration brought forward in the spring of 1831, gave rise to the fiercest struggles in both Houses of Parliament that had been witnessed for many generations. One Parliament was dissolved; two sessions of that which followed were opened in a single year; once the ministry itself was dissolved, though speedily reconstructed; and three bills were framed, each in some degree differing from its predecessor in some of its details, though all preserved the same leading principles of disfranchising wholly or partially the smaller boroughs; of enfranchising several large and growing towns; of increasing the number of county representatives; and of enfranchising also some cla.s.ses which previously had had no right of voting. It would be a waste of time to specify the variations in the three bills. It is sufficient to confine our attention to that which eventually became law. Fifty-six boroughs were wholly disfranchised; those in which the population fell short of a certain number (2000), and where the amount of a.s.sessed taxes paid by the inhabitants was correspondingly small. Thirty more were deprived of one of their members, being those in which the population was between 2000 and 4000. And the seats thus vacated were divided between the towns which since the Revolution had gradually grown into importance, the suburbs of the metropolis, and the counties, the majority of which were now divided into two halves, each half returning two members, as many as had previously represented the whole. The boundaries of the boroughs, too, were in most cases extended.

More important, perhaps, in its influence on subsequent legislation was the alteration made in the qualifications which const.i.tuted an elector.

Hitherto the franchise, the right of voting at elections, had been based on property. The principle had not, indeed, been uniformly adhered to in the boroughs, where, as Lord John Russell, in the speech with which he introduced the bill, pointed out, a curious variety of courses had been adopted. "In some," as he described the existing practice, "the franchise was exercised by "a select corporation;" that is to say, it was in the possession of a small number of persons, to the exclusion of the great body of the inhabitants who had property and interest in the place represented. In ancient times, he believed, every freeman, being an inhabitant householder resident in the borough, was competent to vote. As, however, this arrangement excluded villeins and strangers, the franchise always belonged to a particular body in every town--a body undoubtedly possessed of property, for they bore the charges of their members, and on them were a.s.sessed the subsidies and taxes voted by Parliament. But when villeinage ceased, various and opposite courses seemed to have been pursued in different boroughs. In some, adopting the liberal principle that all freemen were to be admitted, householders of all kinds, down to the lowest degree, and even sometimes beyond, were admitted. In others, adopting the exclusive principle that villeins and strangers were no part of the burgesses, new corporations were erected, and the elective franchise was more or less confined to a select body."

But all these diversities and varieties were now swept away, and a uniform franchise was established, all tenants whose rent amounted to 10 receiving the franchise in boroughs, while by a kindred amendment, which was forced on the ministers at a very early stage of the measure, tenants at will whose tent amounted to 50 became ent.i.tled to vote in the counties.

The arrangements for taking the poll were also greatly changed. Instead of the fifteen days which had of late been allowed for a county election, two were now thought sufficient.[217] In boroughs the time was abridged in a similar proportion, and the arrangement was facilitated by a division of counties into several convenient polling districts, so that no elector should require to travel more than a few miles to record his vote.

This last change was universally accepted as a great practical improvement, from its tendency to lessen the expense of election contests, which had risen to an enormous and ruinous height. But every other part of the scheme was viewed with the greatest repugnance, not to say dread, by the Opposition; and every one of the bills was fought step by step in the House of Commons. The first bill was only carried by a majority of one; the second was absolutely rejected by the House of Lords; and on the third the ministers, after carrying it triumphantly through the Lower House, were defeated in the Upper House on a point of detail, which, though of no great importance in itself, they regarded as an indication that the peers, though they had consented to read it a second time, would insist on remodelling it to a great degree, and, if they were not allowed to do so, would again reject it altogether.

Meanwhile, the people were wrought up to a pitch of frenzy absolutely unprecedented. Never had agitators, among whom some of the ministers themselves were not ashamed to appear, been so unscrupulous in their endeavors to excite discontent. One cabinet minister wrote inflammatory articles in the newspapers; another publicly called the legitimate opposition of the peers "the whisper of a faction." And their exertions soon bore fearful fruit. In London some of the peers who had been most prominent in their objections to the bill were hooted and pelted, and one, Lord Londonderry, was nearly murdered. The King and Queen were insulted by mobs in the Park, some of the rioters even openly threatening the Queen with death, because she was believed to be favorable to the anti-Reformers. In some of the most important provincial towns the discontent broke out into actual insurrection. At Bristol a tumultuous mob, whose numbers were swelled by crowds of the worst ruffians of the metropolis, sought to murder the Recorder, Sir Charles Wetherall, when he came down to that city to hold the quarter-sessions; and, when defeated in their attack on him, stormed the Mansion House, and set it, with the Bishop"s Palace and other public buildings, and scores of private houses, on fire, several of the rioters themselves, who had got drunk, perishing in the flames. A similar mob rose in arms at Derby, but did less mischief, as there the magistrates knew their duty better. But Nottingham almost equalled Bristol in its horrors. Because the Duke of Newcastle was a resolute anti-Reformer, a ferocious gang attacked and set on fire the fine old Castle; and, not content with committing fearful ravages in the town, roamed over the adjacent district, attacked the houses of many of the leading country gentlemen, plundering and burning the dwellings, and in more than one instance murdering some of the inhabitants.

The King had hitherto borne himself between the contending parties in the state with scrupulous fairness to both. Though, he had, probably, been taken by surprise by the sweeping character of the changes his ministers had proposed, he had given them a frank support, consenting, even at a moment"s notice, to dissolve the Parliament after the unfavorable division in the House of Commons on the first bill; but he had, at the same time, warned them that he would never consent to employ any means of coercion to overbear the free decision of the House of Lords. And he had more than once rejected as unconst.i.tutional their solicitations to allow them to make peers with that object. At last they endeavored to compel his consent by resigning their offices, though the ground for so decided a step can hardly be deemed sufficient, since the provocation which they alleged was only Lord Lyndhurst"s success in carrying an amendment to take the enfranchising clauses of the bill before those of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt, so as to give the latter a more gracious appearance, as if the boroughs to be extinguished were made to suffer, not so much for their own positive unworthiness as in order to make room for others which had become of undeniably greater importance.

The King took the strictly const.i.tutional line of accepting their resignation and intrusting the Duke of Wellington with the task of forming a new administration, warning the Duke, at the same time, that he considered himself now pledged to grant a large measure of Reform; but the Duke found the task impracticable, and then, as the only means of averting farther insurrectionary tumults, which bore no slight resemblance to civil war, and might not impossibly end in it, the King did at last consent to permit the creation of a sufficient number of peers to insure the pa.s.sing of the bill. But he could not overcome his repugnance to the measure as a severe blow to the const.i.tution--one which would in effect be tantamount to the extinction of the independence of the Upper House as a legislative body; and, thinking no means unjustifiable that would avert the necessity of such a creation, he conceived the idea of authorizing his private secretary, Sir Herbert Taylor, to request the chief peers on the Opposition side to absent themselves from the division on the third reading. It seemed to him, and indeed to many of them, the only thing that could be done. Their judgment of the character and eventual consequences of the ministerial bill was unaltered; but they saw the violence of the public feeling on the subject, and the danger to the state of too stubborn and uncompromising a resistance to it, and, yielding loyal obedience to their royal master"s wish, they retired from the House without voting.

Those who remained pa.s.sed the bill, and in the beginning of June, 1832, it became law.

We have ventured in a previous chapter to call in question the propriety of the conduct of the King"s father, George III., in using his personal entreaties to influence the House of Lords against the India Bill of Mr.

Fox. The transaction which has been related here is the second and only other instance since the Revolution of a sovereign having recourse to such a device to sway the votes of members of either House. But the circ.u.mstances were so entirely different, nay, so diametrically opposite, that an opinion of the impropriety of the sovereign"s deed in the former case imposes no obligation on the ground of consistency to censure it in the later instance. The interference of George III. was designed to thwart and defeat his ministers on a measure of which he had not previously intimated any disapproval. William IV., on the other hand, was exerting himself to support his ministers, not, as it seems probable, without some sacrifice of his own judgment. His father acted as he did to avert an inroad on his prerogative and independence, which he had been persuaded to apprehend, but the danger of which can hardly be said to have been proved beyond all question; so that even those who think the result of his action fortunate for the nation cannot defend the action as one that on any const.i.tutional principle can be justified.

The son, at a far more critical moment, adopted the course which he did adopt as the only means which he saw of extricating the state and the nation from an alternative of great calamities: the extinction of, or at least a deep wound to, the legislative independence of the House of Lords, by the following of a single precedent[218] which had ever since been universally condemned; or, on the other hand, a continuance of outrages and tumults which had already disgraced the nation in the eyes of the world, and which, if renewed and continued, could not fail to imperil the safety of the state. Such a motive may certainly be allowed to excuse the irregularity of the act.

When, however, we come to consider the proposal to create peers, which drove the King to take such a step, that is a question on which, while it is still more important, it is also more difficult to form a satisfactory judgment. It was denounced by the Duke of Wellington and other peers as utterly unconst.i.tutional and revolutionary; as a destruction of the great principle of the equality of the two Houses; as a denial to the peers of their right to form and act upon their own deliberate judgment; and as a reduction of their position to that of a body existing merely to register the decrees of the other House. Indeed, that it had this character was admitted by Lord Grey himself, with no abatement beyond such mitigation as might be found in the idea that it was only intended to affect their decision on a single question. So far it may be said that even while defending it he condemned it; _Habemus confitentem reum_. But the task of a ruler or legislator is often but a choice between difficulties, or even between manifest evils. And, even if an act or course be admitted to be intrinsically evil, taken by itself, yet, if the evil which it is calculated or designed to avert be a greater evil still, the defence is complete, or, at all events, sufficient. And this, in fact, is the principle of the justification which Lord Grey alleged. He was, perhaps, unconsciously referring to a pa.s.sage in Mr. Hallam"s great work on "Const.i.tutional History" (then very recently published), in which, while discussing Sunderland"s Peerage Bill, and admitting that "the unlimited prerogative of augmenting the peerage is liable to such abuses, at least in theory, as might overthrow our form of government," he proceeds to point out that in the exercise of this, as of every other power, "the crown has been carefully restrained by statutes, and by the responsibility of its advisers;" but that, while "the Commons, if they transgress their boundaries, are annihilated by a proclamation" (that is, by a dissolution) "against the ambition, or, what is much more likely, the perverse haughtiness of the aristocracy, the const.i.tution has not furnished such direct securities.... The resource of subduing an aristocratical faction by the creation of new peers could never be const.i.tutionally employed, except in the case of a nearly equal balance; but it might usefully hang over the heads of the whole body, and deter them from any gross excesses of faction or oligarchical spirit. The nature of our government requires a general harmony between the two Houses of Parliament."[219] In the present case no one could impute the difference between the two Houses to any "perverse haughtiness" on the part of the peers. But the difference existed, and was too deeply founded on the cautious principles of the Tory party to be surmountable by ordinary means. It was certain also that the Commons would not give way; that, without danger to the public peace, they could not give way.

And this was, in fact, Lord Grey"s contention: that a crisis had arisen in which compulsion must be exercised on one or other of the disagreeing parties; and that coercion of the peers by an augmentation of their number, or a threat of it, was the only compulsion practicable. In upholding this position, however, it must be remarked that he was betrayed into the use of language which was as great a violation of const.i.tutional and parliamentary principle and usage as the action which he was recommending; language, too, which was quite unnecessary to strengthen his argument. He accused the Lords of "opposing the declared and decided wishes both of the crown and the people;" of "acting adversely to the crown;" and this introduction of the sovereign"s name to overawe the a.s.sembly was unconst.i.tutional in the highest degree. For, const.i.tutionally, the sovereign has no right to signify his opinion, nor, indeed, any recognized means of signifying it but by giving or withholding his royal a.s.sent to measures which the two Houses have pa.s.sed. On any bill which has not yet been pa.s.sed by them he has, as has been already implied, no legitimate means whatever of expressing his judgment. The time has not come for him to do so. Moreover, the statement was, probably, not believed by any one to be strictly true, for it was pretty generally understood that the King would have preferred a far more moderate measure. But, indeed, in the very speech in which the Prime-minister made this use of the King"s name he presently added an observation which was a sufficient condemnation of his previous language. For, in denouncing the "vile attacks which had been made on his Majesty in the public press," and disclaiming all share in them (a disclaimer which however true of himself, could not, it is believed, have been uttered with equal truth by all his colleagues), he pointed out that "it ought always to be recollected that it is contrary to the principles of the const.i.tution to arraign the personal conduct of the sovereign." It follows, as a matter of course, that it is equally contrary to those principles to allege his personal opinions in either House on any measure before it, since, if alleged, they must be open to criticism; unless, indeed, the mere allegation of the royal sentiments were to be taken as decisive of the question, in which case all freedom of discussion would be at once extinguished.

But this irregularity, into which the Prime minister was apparently betrayed by his desire of victory, must not be allowed to affect our verdict on the main question; and, now that the lapse of time has enabled us to contemplate dispa.s.sionately the case on which he had to decide, it will, probably, be thought that his justification of his conduct in recommending a creation of peers is fairly made out. That, under any pressure short of that, the peers would have again rejected the Reform Bill, or at least would have pared it down to much smaller proportions than would have satisfied the popular demand for Reform, may be regarded as certain; and equally certain that such a line of conduct would have led to a renewal of disgraceful and dangerous tumults. The minister, therefore, as has been said before, had to choose between two evils. It was a grievous dilemma; but those who had to deal with it (even while it may be admitted that they cannot be held wholly free from blame, as having themselves contributed by their own language to the popular excitement and irritation)[220] may be excused for thinking the wound inflicted on the const.i.tution, by thus overbearing the voice of one House of Parliament on a single occasion, less formidable in its immediate fruit, and more capable of being remedied and retrieved, than that which would have followed from a renewal of insurrectionary tumults, even if they should have come short of actual civil war.

One critic of these transactions[221] whose experience and high reputation ent.i.tle his opinion to respectful consideration, after reminding his readers that, "although Parliament is said to be dissolved, a dissolution extends, in fact, no farther than to the Commons, and that the Peers are not affected by it; no change can take place in the const.i.tution of their body, except as to a small number of Scotch representative peers," proceeds to argue that, "so far as the House of Peers is concerned, a creation of peers by the crown on extraordinary occasions is the only equivalent which the const.i.tution has provided for the change and renovation of the House of Commons by a dissolution. In no other way can the opinions of the House of Lords be brought into harmony with those of the people." But it may be feared that this comparison is rather ingenious than solid. Indeed, the writer himself limits such an expedient as a creation of peers to insure the pa.s.sing of a particular measure to "extraordinary occasions." But a dissolution of the House of Commons is so far from being so limited, that it is the natural and inevitable end of every House of Commons after an existence which cannot exceed seven years, and which is very rarely so protracted. And though it may be, and probably has been, the case that a House of Commons has pa.s.sed measures to which it had no great inclination, lest it should provoke a minister to a premature dissolution, yet no submission on its part can long postpone it; and a threat or apprehension of a dissolution would certainly fail to overcome the opposition of the House of Commons, or of a party within it, if the measure before them seemed open to serious objection. The presumed or presumable immortality of the one body, and the limited existence of the other, seem to const.i.tute so essential a difference between them as must prevent the measures adopted toward one being fairly regarded as any guide to a justification of those employed in the case of the other.

The Reform Bill of 1832 has sometimes been called a new Revolution, and to some extent it deserved the name; for it was not, like the Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation Act, a mere restoration of privileges to any cla.s.s or cla.s.ses of the people which had once been enjoyed by them, and had subsequently been withdrawn, but it was a grant of a wholly new privilege to places and to cla.s.ses which had never enjoyed it; while it was manifest that the political power thus conferred on these cla.s.ses involved a corresponding diminution of the powers of those who had hitherto monopolized it. It was also the introduction of a new principle. The old doctrine of the const.i.tution had been, that the possession of freehold property, as the only permanent stake in the country, was the only qualification which could ent.i.tle a subject to a voice in the government and legislation of the kingdom. The new doctrine was that, as others besides owners of land contributed to the revenue by the payment of taxes, those who did so contribute to a sufficient amount had a right to a voice, however indirect or feeble, in the granting of those taxes; and so far it was the extension and application to subjects at home of the principle for which Lord Chatham and Burke had contended sixty years before in the case of the American Colonies, that taxation and a right to representation went together; a principle which, many ages before, had been laid down by the greatest of our early kings as the foundation of our parliamentary const.i.tution and rights. But this principle, however generally it may have been a.s.serted, had hitherto been but very partially carried out in practice, and the old borough system had been skilfully devised by successive kings and ministers to keep the political power in the hands of the crown and the aristocracy.

It was with that object that most of the boroughs which were first allowed to return members under the Tudors had been enfranchised,[222] a great n.o.ble or landholder, whose affection to the government could not be doubted, being often able to obtain the promotion of some village or petty town in the neighborhood of his estates to the dignity of a parliamentary borough, and thus acquiring a great addition to his political and social importance by his power of influencing the election. No one could deny that the existence of such boroughs was an abuse, or at least an anomaly, rendered the more conspicuous as time went on by the denial of representatives to towns which contained as many thousands of citizens as they could boast single burgesses. At the same time it was equally undeniable that the aristocracy, generally speaking, exerted their influence advantageously for the state. A peer or great squire who could return the members for a borough took a worthy pride in the abilities and reputation of those whom he thus sent to Parliament; especially the leaders of the two parties sought out promising young men for their seats; and it has often been pointed out that, of the men who in the House of Commons had risen to eminence in the country before the Reform Bill, there was scarcely one who had not owed his introduction to Parliament to the patron of one of those boroughs which were now wholly or partially disfranchised; while on one or two occasions these "rotten boroughs," as, since Lord Chatham"s time, they were often derisively called, had proved equally useful in providing seats for distinguished statesmen who, for some reason or other, had lost the confidence of their former const.i.tuents. So, when Bristol had disgraced itself by the rejection of Burke, Malton had averted the loss with which Parliament and the country were threatened by again, through the influence of Lord Rockingham, returning the great statesman as their representative. So, to take a later instance, Westbury, under the influence of Sir Mana.s.seh Lopes, had provided a refuge for Sir Robert Peel, when the course which he had taken on Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation had cost him his seat for Oxford. And these practical uses of these small boroughs--anomalies in a representative system, as they were called in the debates on the subject, and as they must be confessed to have been--were so important, that some even of those who felt compelled by their principles to vote for their parliamentary extinction have, nevertheless, confessed a regret for the sacrifice, lamenting especially that it has, in a great degree, closed the doors of the House of Commons against a cla.s.s whose admission to it is on every account most desirable, the promising young men of both parties.

In one point of great importance the framers of the Reform Bill of 1832 proved to be mistaken. They justified the very comprehensive or sweeping range which they had given it by their wish to make it a final settlement of the question, and by the expression of their conviction that the completeness with which it had satisfied all reasonable expectations had effectually prevented any necessity for ever re-opening the question. Their antic.i.p.ations on this head were not shared by their opponents, who, on the contrary, foretold that the very greatness of the changes now effected would only whet the appet.i.te for a farther extension of them; nor by a growing party, now beginning to own the t.i.tle of Radicals, which till very recently had only been regarded as a reproach, and who, even before the bill pa.s.sed,[223] expressed their discontent that it did not go farther, but accepted it as an instalment of what was required, and as an instrument for securing "a more complete improvement." And their expectations have been verified by subsequent events. Indeed, it may easily be seen that the principles on which one portion of the bill--that which enfranchised new cla.s.ses of voters--was framed were such as, in shrewd hands, might easily be adduced as arguments in favor of the necessity of reconsideration of the question from time to time. So long as the right of voting was confined to owners of property, or members of corporate bodies, the line thus laid down was one which was not liable to be crossed. But the moment that tenancy was added to ownership, and a line was drawn distinguishing electors from non-electors, not by the nature of their qualifications, but by the amount of their rent, detail was subst.i.tuted for principle; and the proposer or maintainer of the rule that the qualification should be a yearly rental of 10 might be called on to explain why, if 10 were a more reasonable limit than 15, 8 were not fairer than 10. Or again, if the original argument were, that a line must of necessity be drawn somewhere, and that 10 was the lowest qualification which seemed to guarantee such an amount of educated intelligence in the voter as would enable him to exercise the franchise conferred on him judiciously and honestly, such reasoning would from time to time invite the contention that the spread of education had rendered 8 tenants now as enlightened as 10 tenants had been some years before. And thus the measure of 1832, instead of forever silencing the demand for Reform by the completeness of its concessions, did in fact lay the foundation for future agitation, which has been farther encouraged and fed by farther submission to it, and which its leaders, who have so far triumphed, show no purpose to discontinue. To discuss whether such extensions of the franchise as have already been adopted, and those farther steps in the same direction which are generally understood to be impending, will eventually be found compatible with the preservation of our ancient monarchical const.i.tution, is a fitting task for the statesmen and senators whose duty it is to examine in all their bearings the probable effects of the measures which may be proposed. But the historian"s business is rather "to compile the records of the past" than to speculate on the future.[224] And the course which was too perilous or difficult for Mr.

Hallam to undertake we will follow his example in avoiding. But it cannot be denied that, if the Reform Bill of 1832 transferred the chief political power of the state from the aristocracy to the middle cla.s.ses, a farther lowering of the qualification for the exercise of the franchise must transfer it from the middle to the lower cla.s.ses; and that those who view such transfer with alarm, and deprecate it as fraught with peril to all our ancient inst.i.tutions, maintain their opinions by arguments as old, indeed, as the days of the Roman republic,[225] but which have not lost strength by lapse of time, if indeed, they have not been fortified by events in the history of more than one modern nation.

Even before the introduction of the first Reform Bill one measure had been pa.s.sed of const.i.tutional importance, though the concurrence of both parties in its principle and details prevented it from attracting much notice. Two daughters who had been born to the King and Queen had died in their infancy, and the royal pair were now childless; and, as some years had elapsed since the birth of the last, it was probable that they might remain so. The presumptive heiress to the throne was, therefore, the daughter of the deceased Duke of Kent, the Princess Victoria, our present most gracious sovereign, and, as she was as yet only eleven years of age, it was evidently necessary to provide for the contingency of the death of the King before she should attain her majority. A Regency Bill for that purpose had, therefore, been prepared by the Duke of Wellington"s cabinet, and had been introduced by Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst in the House of Lords before the resignation of the ministry.

It could not be so simple in its arrangements as such bills had sometimes been, since there was more than one contingency possible, for which it was requisite to provide. It was possible not only that William IV. might die within the next seven years, but also that at his death he might leave a child, or his widow in a state which warranted the expectation of one, the latter case being the more difficult to decide upon, since no previous Regency Bill furnished any precedent for the ministers" guidance.

The first point, however, to be settled was, who was the most proper person to administer the affairs of the kingdom as Regent, in the event of the heiress to the crown being still a minor at the King"s death. It was a question on which it was evidently most desirable that no difference of opinion should be expressed. And, in fact, no difference existed. The leaders of both parties--the Duke and his colleagues, who had framed the bill, and Lord Grey, with his colleagues, who adopted it--agreed that the mother of the young sovereign would be the fittest person to exercise the royal authority during the minority; and, farther, that she should neither be fettered by any limitations to that authority, nor by any councillors appointed by Parliament nominally to advise and a.s.sist, but practically to control her. It was felt that a Regent acting for a youthful daughter would need all the power which could be given her; while, as she could never herself succeed to the throne, she could be under no temptation, from views of personal ambition, to misuse the power intrusted to her.

At first sight it seemed a more difficult and delicate question what course should be pursued with reference to the possible event of the King dying while the Queen, his widow, was expecting to become a mother.

As has been said above, no precedent was to be found in any former bill; yet it seemed to be determined by the old const.i.tutional maxim, that the King never dies. Not even for a moment could the throne be treated as vacant, and, therefore, it was proposed and determined that in such a case the Princess Victoria must instantly be proclaimed Queen, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent must instantly a.s.sume the authority of Regent; but that, on the birth of a posthumous child to the Queen Dowager, the Princess and the d.u.c.h.ess, as a matter of course, should resume their previous rank, and Queen Adelaide become Regent, and govern in the name of her new-born infant and sovereign. The strict const.i.tutional correctness of the principle elaborately and eloquently expounded to the peers by Lord Lyndhurst was unanimously admitted, and the precedent now set was followed, with the needful modification, when, ten years afterward, it became necessary to provide for the possibility of Queen Victoria dying during the minority of her heir. The parent of the infant sovereign, Prince Albert, was appointed Regent, with the cordial approval of the nation; the dissent of the Queen"s uncle, the Duke of Suss.e.x who, with a very misplaced ambition, urged instead the appointment of a Council of Regency, of which he hoped to become the most influential member, only serving to make the unanimity of the rest of the Parliament more conspicuous.

A somewhat kindred question, inasmuch as it affected the personal arrangements, if they may be so termed, of the sovereign, was settled in the same session, and on a new principle. What was called the Civil List had hitherto been placed on a footing which was at once unintelligible and misleading. The expression was first used at the Revolution, and was applied not only to that portion of the revenue which was devoted to the personal expenses of the sovereign, but also to many branches of the civil expenditure of the state, with which, in fact, he had no concern whatever. Not only the salaries of the great officers of the household, but those also of the ministers, amba.s.sadors, and of the judges, were paid out of it, as well as those of many place-holders of various cla.s.ses, and pensions to a large amount. Amounts embracing such a variety of miscellaneous and unconnected expenses could hardly be expected to be kept with regularity, and there was lavish waste in every department. Burke"s bill had rectified some of the abuses, and had also pointed out the way to some other reforms which were gradually adopted; but still numbers of charges were left untouched, and there was scarcely any one subject which afforded more topics to unscrupulous demagogues than the amount of the Civil List, which the ignorant mult.i.tude were constantly a.s.sured that the King enjoyed to squander on his own pleasures, though, in fact, the greater part of it was expended in the service of the state, and was entirely free from his control. Only a portion of the sum which went under this name was voted annually by the Parliament. A portion was derived from the Crown Lands, from duties known as Droits of the Crown and Droits of the Admiralty, etc., the amount of which fluctuated, and with which Parliament was admitted to have no right to interfere. But the working of the whole was satisfactory to no one--neither to the King himself, nor to those who upheld the right of the Parliament to have a predominant control of every branch of expenditure of the public money. The feeling that the whole of the royal income and expenditure should be placed on a different footing was general, and the fall of the Duke of Wellington"s ministry had been immediately caused by the success of a proposal that, before fixing the new sovereign"s Civil List, Parliament should refer the matter to a committee, that inquiry might be made into every part of it. Lord Grey"s ministry were bound to act in conformity with a resolution on which they had, as it were, ridden into office; and the arrangement which they ultimately effected was one in which common-sense and the royal convenience and comfort were alike consulted. That portion of the Civil List of his predecessor which was voted by Parliament amounted to nearly 850,000 a year; but, besides that sum, George IV.

enjoyed the income already mentioned as derived from Crown Lands, Droits, etc., while a farther large sum was furnished by the ancient revenue of the crown of Scotland, and another was received from Ireland.

The ministers now proposed that all these sources of income should be handed over to the Treasury, and that the Civil List should henceforward be fixed at 510,000, being at the same time relieved from all the foreign and extraneous charges on it which had invidiously swelled the gross amount, without being in any way under the control of the sovereign, or in any way ministering to his requirements, either for personal indulgence or for the maintenance of the state and magnificence imposed on him by his position.

Such a change was on every ground most desirable. It was clearly in accordance with our parliamentary const.i.tution that grants of money made by the Parliament should express distinctly and unmistakably the objects to which they were really to be applied; and that the charges of departments connected with the government, the administration of justice, or the foreign service of the country, should not be mixed up with others of a wholly different character, so as to make what was, in fact, the expenditure of the nation wear the appearance of being the expenditure of the sovereign. Moreover, the a.s.signment of many of the charges to the Civil List even gave a false character to the appointments themselves. If a sovereign was to pay amba.s.sadors and judges out of what seemed to be his private income, the logical conclusion could hardly be avoided that he had a right to lower those salaries, or even to diminish the number of those appointments. And it may even be said that the less any real danger of such a right being so exercised was to be apprehended, the more unadvisable was it to retain an arrangement which in theory could be described as liable to such an abuse.

Notes:

[Footnote 216: But it may be remarked that till very recently the people out-of-doors had ceased to show any great anxiety about Reform. Two or three years before, Lord Althorp, who, in Lord Grey"s ministry, was Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, told Peel that the people had become so indifferent to it, that he never meant to bring forward the question again, and in the last seven years only fourteen pet.i.tions had been presented to Parliament in favor of it.

In reality, such a feeling in the people would have been eminently favorable to a calm framing of a Moderate measure; but this indifference was soon changed into a more violent and widely diffused excitement than there was any record of since the days of the Popish Plot; that excitement, however, according to the confession of the historian of the Whig ministry and the Reform Bill, himself an ardent reformer, being "no spontaneous result of popular feeling, but being brought about by the incessant labors of a few shrewd and industrious partisans forming a secret, but very active and efficient, committee in London."--Roebuck"s _History of the Whig Ministry_, etc., ii., 309.]

[Footnote 217: In 1835 the two days were reduced to one.]

[Footnote 218: The creation of twelve peers, in the reign of Queen Anne, to secure a majority in favor of the Peace of Utrecht.]

[Footnote 219: "Const.i.tutional History," iii., 331. See the whole pa.s.sage.]

[Footnote 220: Lord John Russell had publicly described the language of the Tory Peers in the debate on Lord Lyndhurst"s amendment as "the whisper of a faction." And many articles of most extreme violence which appeared in the _Times_ about the same time were generally believed to have been written (in part at least) by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham.]

[Footnote 221: "Const.i.tutional History of England," by Sir J.E. May, 1., 262.]

[Footnote 222: Elizabeth enfranchised no fewer than sixty-two in the course of her reign, "a very large proportion of them petty boroughs, evidently under the influence of the crown or the peerage."--Hallam, _Const.i.tutional History_ i., 360.]

[Footnote 223: Sir A. Alison, "History of Europe," xxiii., 55, quotes a paragraph from the _Examiner_ newspaper, which says: "The ground, limited as it is, which it is proposed to clear and open to the popular influence, will suffice as the spot desired by Archimedes for the plant of the power which must ultimately govern the whole system. Without reform, convulsion is inevitable. Upon any reform farther reform is inevitably consequent, and the settlement of the const.i.tution on the democratic basis certain."]

[Footnote 224: Hallam, "Const.i.tutional History," c. xvi., _in fin._]

[Footnote 225: "Semper in republica timendum est ne plurimum valeant plurinn."--Cicero.]

CHAPTER X.

Abolition of Slavery.--Abridgment of the Apprenticeship.--The East India Company"s Trade is Thrown Open.--Commencement of Ecclesiastical Reforms.--The New Poor-law.--State of Ireland.--Agitation against t.i.thes.--Coercion Bill.--Beginning of Church Reform.--Sir Robert Peel becomes Prime-minister.--Variety of Offices held Provisionally by the Duke of Wellington.--Sir Robert Peel Retires, and Lord Melbourne Resumes the Government.--Sir Robert Peel Proposes a Measure of Church Reform.--Munic.i.p.al Reform.--Measures of Ecclesiastical Reform.

Apart from the consideration of the abstract principle, on which the advocates of Parliamentary Reform had insisted, of the light of many cla.s.ses. .h.i.therto unrepresented to representation, they had also dwelt on the practical advantage which might be expected to ensue from the greater degree in which public opinion would henceforth be brought to bear on the action of the Houses, and, by a natural consequence, on the administrative government also. And the bill had hardly pa.s.sed when this result began to show itself, not only in transactions of domestic legislation, but in others which affected our most remote dependencies, both in the East and West. We have seen in a previous chapter how Wilberforce, after twenty years of labor and anxiety, reaped the reward of his virtuous exertions in the abolition of the slave-trade. But he had not ventured to grapple with the inst.i.tution which gave birth to that trade, the employment of slaves in our West India Islands. Yet it was an evil indefensible on every ground that could possibly be alleged.

It was not only a crime and an injustice, but it was an anomaly, and a glaring inconsistency, in any British settlement. The law, as we have seen, had been laid down as absolutely settled, that no man within the precincts of the United Kingdom could be a slave; that, even had such been his previous condition, the moment his foot touched English soil he became a free man. By what process of reasoning, then, could it be contended that his right to liberty according to English law depended on what portion of the British dominion he was in--that what was incompatible with his claims as a human being in Kent ceased to be so in Jamaica? The sentiment that what was just or unjust in one place was just or unjust in every place; that a man"s right to freedom did not depend on the country of his birth or the color of his skin, had naturally and logically been widely diffused and fostered by the abolition of the slave-trade. It was but a small step from admitting that there could be no justification for making a man a slave, to a.s.serting that there was an equal violation of all justice in keeping one in slavery; and this conclusion was strengthened by tales, which were continually reaching those most interested in the subject, of oppression and cruelty practised by the masters, or oftener by their agents and overseers, on the unfortunate beings over whom they claimed power and right as absolute as any owner could pretend to over any description of property. They made so general an impression that, ten years before the time at which we have now arrived, a society had been formed in London whose object was the immediate extinction of slavery in every British settlement; and Canning, then Secretary of State, had entered warmly into the general object of the society; not, indeed, thinking the instant abolition practicable, but inducing Parliament to pa.s.s a body of resolutions in favor of at once improving the condition of the slaves, as the best and necessary preparation for their entire enfranchis.e.m.e.nt;[226] and the next year, 1824, the subject was recommended to the attention of the Houses in the King"s speech, and an Order in Council was issued enjoining the adoption of a series of measures conceived in the spirit of those resolutions, among which one was evidently meant as a precursor of the slaves" entire emanc.i.p.ation, since it gave the "negro who had acquired sufficient property" a t.i.tle "to purchase his own freedom and that of his wife and family." And it was, probably, from regarding it in this light that the planters (as the owners of estates in the West Indies were generally called) selected that provision as the object of their most vehement remonstrances. But, though they were not so open in their remonstrances against the other clauses of the order, they did worse, they disregarded them; and the stories of the ill-treatment of the slaves were neither less frequent nor less revolting than before.

Fresh Orders in Council, avowedly designed as the stepping-stones to eventual emanc.i.p.ation, were issued; and one which reached the West Indies at the end of 1831 was, unhappily, so misconstrued by the slaves in Jamaica, who regarded it as recognizing their right to instant liberation, that, when their masters refused to treat it as doing so, they broke out into a formidable insurrection, which was not quelled without great loss of life and destruction of property. The planters were panic-stricken; many of them, indeed, were almost ruined. The colonial Legislatures,[227] which had been established in the greater part of the islands, addressed the ministers with strong protests against the last Order in Council; and the mischief which had confessedly been already done, and the farther mischief which was not unreasonably dreaded, were so great that the cabinet consented to suspend it for a while; and the House of Commons made a practical confession that the planters were ent.i.tled to sympathy as well as the slaves, by voting nearly a million of money to compensate those of Jamaica for their recent losses.

But out-of-doors the feeling rather was that the insurrection had been caused, not by the unreasoning though natural impatience for freedom entertained by the negro--whom Canning had truly described as "possessing the form and strength of a man, but the intellect of a child"--but by the slackness and supineness of the local Legislature, too much under the influence of the timid clamors of the planters to listen to the voice of justice and humanity, which demanded to the full as emphatically, if somewhat less vociferously, the immediate deliverance of the slave. The object, however, thus desired was not so free from difficulty as it seemed to those zealous but irresponsible advocates of universal freedom; for, in the first place the slaves were not the only persons to be considered; the planters also had an undoubted right to have their interests protected, since, however illegitimate property in human beings might be, it was certain that its existence in that portion of the King"s dominions had been recognized by Parliament and courts of justice for many generations, and that suddenly to withdraw a sanction and abrogate a custom thus established, and, as it might fairly be believed, almost legalized by time, would be not only ruinous to the planters, who would have no other means of cultivating their lands, but, as being ruinous to them, would also manifestly be most unjust. Even in the interests of the slaves themselves, instant emanc.i.p.ation before they were fit for it might prove to them a very doubtful blessing. The state, too, and the general interests of the kingdom had to be considered, for the shipping employed in the West India trade, and the revenue derived by the Imperial Exchequer from it, were both of great amount. It was a very complicated question, and required very cautious handling; but it was plain that the people were greatly excited on the subject. One or two of the ministers themselves had deeply pledged themselves to their const.i.tuents to labor for the cessation of slavery; and eventually, though by no means blind to the difficulty of arriving at a thoroughly safe solution of the question, the ministry decided that "delay was more perilous than decision," and they brought in a bill, in which they endeavored to combine the three great objects--justice to the slave, by conferring on him that freedom to which he, in common with all mankind, had an inviolable right; justice to the slave-owner, by compensating him fairly for the loss of what (however originally vicious the practice may have been) he was ent.i.tled by long usage and more than one positive law to regard as property; and a farther justice to the slave, that justice which consists in being careful so to confer benefits as to do the greatest amount of good to the recipient. The first object was attained by enacting that those who had hitherto been slaves should be free; the third was arrived at by making the freedom thus given, not instantaneous, but by leading them to it, and preparing them for its proper and useful enjoyment, by a system of apprenticeship. The slave was to be apprenticed to his master for seven years, receiving, partly in money and partly in kind, a certain fair amount of wages, and having also one-fourth of his time absolutely at his own disposal. And the second was secured by granting the planters the magnificent sum of twenty millions of money, as compensation for the injury done to them; or, in other words, as purchase-money for the property they were compelled to surrender. The apprenticeship system did not wholly succeed. The slaves were not sufficiently enlightened to appreciate the character of the new arrangement; and, as the light in which it appeared to them was rather that of deferring than of securing their emanc.i.p.ation, it made them impatient rather than thankful. In the majority of cases it proved difficult to induce them to work even three-fourths of their time, and eventually the planters themselves were driven to the conclusion that it was best to abridge the period of apprenticeship. By the act of the colonial Legislatures themselves it was shortened by two years, and the emanc.i.p.ation was completed on the 1st of August, 1838.

Still, though on this single point the success of the scheme did not fully correspond to the hopes of those who had framed it, it was one which did great honor to their ingenuity as well as to their philanthropy (Lord Stanley, as Colonial Secretary, being the minister to whose department it belonged). And the nation itself is fairly ent.i.tled to no small credit for its cordial, ungrudging approval of a measure of such unprecedented liberality. Indeed, the credit deserved was frankly allowed it by foreign countries. To quote the language of an eloquent historian of the period, "the generous acquiescence of the people under this prodigious increase of their burdens has caused the moralists of other nations to declare that the British Act of Emanc.i.p.ation stands alone for moral grandeur in the history of the world."[228] And, in respect of the personal liberty of the subject, it may be said to have completed the British const.i.tution; establishing the glorious principle, that freedom is not limited to one part of our sovereign"s dominions, to these islands alone, but that in no part of the world in which the British flag is erected can any sort of slavery exist for a single moment.

The abolition of the political authority of the East India Company, which took place some years after the time at which we have arrived, and which will be mentioned in a subsequent chapter, would make it unnecessary to mention the renewal of its charter, which took place at this time, were it not that the force of public opinion again made itself felt in some important limitations of its previous rights. The monopoly of the trade with China which the Company had hitherto enjoyed was resented as an injustice by the great body of our merchants and ship-owners, who contended that all British subjects had an equal right to share in advantages which had been won by British arms. The government and Parliament adopted their view, and the renewed charter extinguished not only that monopoly, but even the Company"s exclusive trading privileges in India itself, though these, like the rights of the West India planters over their slaves, were purchased of it by an annuity for forty years, which was estimated as an equivalent for the loss of profit which must result to the proprietors of the Company"s stock from the sudden alteration. It cannot be said that any const.i.tutional principle was involved in what was merely a commercial regulation, or relaxation of such regulations. Yet it may not be thought inopportune to mention the transaction thus briefly, as one important step toward the establishment of free-trade, which, at the end of fifty years from the time when Pitt first laid the foundation of it, was gradually forcing itself on all our statesmen, as the only sound principle of commercial intercourse between nations. The laborious historian of Europe during these years finds fault with the arrangements now made, but only on the ground that they did not go far enough in that direction; that, while "everything was done to promote the commercial and manufacturing interests of England, nothing was done for those of Hindostan;"[229] that, "while English cotton goods were admitted for a nominal duty into India, there was no corresponding advantage thought of to the industry of India in supplying the markets of the country." The objection was not unfounded; but the system of which it complains was too one-sided to be long maintained, and in less than ten years a great financial reform had swept away the great ma.s.s of import duties, and so far had placed the Indian manufacturer on the same level with his fellow-subjects of English blood.

The disturbances which agitated the first years of the reign of William IV. were not caused solely by the excitement attendant on the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill. There had been extensive agricultural distress in England, which had shown itself in an outbreak of new crimes, the burning of ricks in the farm-yards, and the destruction of machinery, to which the peasantry were persuaded by designing demagogues to attribute the scarcity of employment. But statesmen of both parties were agreed in believing that a great deal of the poverty which, especially in the agricultural counties, had become the normal condition of the laborer, might be ascribed to the pernicious working of the Poor-law, which subsisted with scarcely any alteration as it had been originally enacted in the reign of Elizabeth. There was even reason to doubt whether the slight changes which had been made had been improvements. If they had been in the direction of increased liberality to the poor man who needed parish relief, and had to some extent lessened his discomforts, they had at the same time tended greatly to demoralize both him and his employer, by introducing a system of out-door relief, which, coupled with the practice of regarding such relief as a legitimate addition to wages, led the former to feel no shame at underpaying his workmen, and the workman to feel no shame at depending on the parish for a portion of his means of subsistence. It was not to be wondered at that under such a system the poor-rates gradually rose to the prodigious amount of seven millions and a quarter of money; or that the rate-payers began to clamor against such a state of things, as imposing on them a burden beyond their power to bear. It was evident that it was an evil which imperatively demanded a remedy; and accordingly one of the first objects to which Lord Grey"s Cabinet turned its attention after the completion of the Reform Bill was the amendment of the Poor-law.

The scheme which in the spring of 1834 they introduced to Parliament was the first instance of the adoption in this country of that system of centralization which has long been a favorite with some of the Continental statesmen, but which is not equally in harmony with the instincts of our people, generally more attached to local government.

But, if ever centralization could commend itself to the English mind, it might well be when a new law and a new principle of action were to be introduced, in the carrying out of which uniformity of practice over the whole kingdom was especially desirable. Accordingly, the government bill proposed the establishment of a Board of Commissioners to whom the general administration of the Poor-laws over the whole kingdom was to be intrusted. They were to have power to make rules and regulations as to the mode or modes of relief to be given, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, that thus the establishment of one uniform system over the whole country might be secured. Power was to be given to unite several parishes into one union, and to erect large workhouses for the several parishes thus ma.s.sed together;[230] and every union was to be under the management of boards of guardians, elected by the rate-payers of the different parishes, with the addition of the resident magistrates as ex officio guardians. Lord Althorp, who introduced the bill, admitted that such extensive powers as he proposed to confer on the Board of Commissioners were "an anomaly in the const.i.tution," but pleaded the necessity of the case as their justification, since it was indispensable to vest a discretionary power somewhere, and the government was too fully occupied with the business of the nation, while the local magistrates would be dest.i.tute of the sources of information requisite to form a proper opinion on the subject. The commissioners alone, being exclusively devoted to the subject, and being alone in possession

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