First of all we had a general intimation and promise that
something would be done; then a series of resolutions, which
strutted a brief hour upon the stage and then disappeared; then
there was a bill, which we were told, on the authority of a
cabinet minister, was framed in ten minutes, and which was
withdrawn in very little more than ten minutes; and lastly, there
was a bill which—undergoing the strangest transformations in its
course through parliament—did, I will not say, become the law of
the land, but was altered into something like that which became
the law of the land.—GLADSTONE.
I
From Rome Mr. Gladstone kept a watchful eye for the approaching political
performances at Westminster. He had written to Mr. Brand a month after his
arrival:—
_51 P. di Spagna, Oct. 30, ’66._—The Clarendons are to be here
this evening to stay for a fortnight or three weeks. Dean and Lady
A. Stanley are in the house with us. I doubt if there are any
other English parties in Rome.
The reform movement is by degrees complicating the question. It is
separating Bright from us, and in one sense thus clearing our way.
But then it may become too strong for us; or at least too strong
to be stayed with our bill of last year. I do not envy Lord Derby
and his friends their reflections this autumn on the course they
have pursued. Meanwhile I wish that our press, as far as we may be
said to have one, would write on this text: _that a bill from
them, to be accepted by the people, must be larger, and not
smaller, than would have been, or even would be, accepted from
us_. For confidence, or credit, stands in politics in lieu of
ready money. If, indeed, your enemy is stronger than you are, you
must take what he gives you. But in this case he is weaker, and
not stronger. A good bill from them would save us much trouble and
anxiety. A straightforward bill, such an £8 franchise without
tricks, would be easily dealt with. But their bill will be neither
good nor straightforward. The mind of Disraeli, as leader of the
House of Commons, and standing as he does among his compeers, will
predominate in its formation. Now he has made in his lifetime
three attempts at legislation—the budget of 1852, the India bill
of 1858, the Reform bill of 1859. All have been thoroughly
tortuous measures. And the Ethiopian will not change his skin. His
Reform bill of 1867 will be tortuous too. But if you have to drive
a man out of a wood, you must yourself go into the wood to drive
him. We may have to meet a tortuous bill by a tortuous motion.
This is what I am afraid of, and what I am, for one, above all
things anxious to avoid. In 1859 the liberal party had to play the
obstructive, and with evil consequences. It would be most
unfortunate if they should be put into such a position again. Pray
consider this. I do not like what I see of Bright’s speeches. We
have no claim upon him, more than the government have on us; and I
imagine he will part company the moment he sees his way to more
than we would give him.
II
(M65) The general character of the operations of 1867, certainly one of
the most curious in our parliamentary history, was described by Mr.
Gladstone in a fragment written thirty years after. Time had extinguished
the volcanic fires, and the little outline is sketched with temper and a
sort of neutrality:—
When the parliament reassembled in 1867, parties and groups were
curiously distributed. The two great bodies were the regular
supporters of the Tory ministry, and those grouped around us who
had been expelled. The first did not know what course they would
have to take; that depended on the secret counsels of another
mind. To keep to the _drapeau_ was the guiding motive, as has been
since the creed and practice of Peel were subverted by the
opposite principles of Disraeli, who on a franchise question had
his peer colleagues at his feet. Besides these, other divisions
had to be recognised. The Salisbury secession from the government,
supported by Sir W. Heathcote and Beresford Hope, was high in
character, but absolutely insignificant in numbers. There was
Lowe, so great among the Adullamites of 1866, but almost alone
among them in the singleness and strength of his opposition to
reform. There was the bulk of the Adullamite body, unable to place
themselves in declared opposition to the liberal mass, but many of
them disposed to tamper with the question, and to look kindly on
the tory government as the power which would most surely keep down
any enlargement of the franchise to its minimum. It would be idle
to discuss the successive plans submitted by the government to the
House of Commons with an unexampled rapidity. The governing idea
of the man who directed the party seemed to be not so much to
consider what ought to be proposed and carried, as to make sure
that, whatever it was, it should be proposed and carried by those
now in power. The bill on which the House of Commons eventually
proceeded was a measure, I should suppose, without precedent or
parallel, as, on the other hand it was, for the purpose of the
hour, and as the work of a government in a decided minority, an
extraordinary stroke of parliamentary success. Our position, on
the other hand, was this: (1) We felt that if household suffrage
were to be introduced into the boroughs, it ought to be a real
household suffrage. (2) The existing state of our legislation,
under which a large majority of the householders made no
disbursement of rates, but paid them without distinction in their
rent, showed that a bill professedly for household suffrage, but
taking no notice of compounding, would be in the first place a
lottery, and in the second an imposture. Some towns would have
large enfranchisement, some none at all, and no principle but the
accidental state of local law would determine on which side of the
line any town was to be found. And the aggregate result would be
ludicrously small as a measure of enfranchisement. Of such a
measure we could not approve. We did not wish to make at once so
wide a change as that involved in a genuine household suffrage
(always in our minds involving county as well as town), and we
could not fairly separate ourselves from Bright on such a point.
(3) So we adhered to our idea of an extension, considerable but
not violent, and performing all it promised.
But the Adullamite spirit went to work, and finding that the bill
had the popular recommendation of a great phrase [household
suffrage], combined with the recommendation to them of a narrow
sphere of practical operation, determined to support the principle
of the bill and abandon our plan, although our mode of operation
had been warmly approved at party meetings held at my house. The
result was in a tactical sense highly damaging to us. Perhaps we
ought to have recognised that the idea of household suffrage, when
the phrase had once been advertised by a government as its
battle-ground, was irresistible, and that the only remaining
choice was whether it should be a household suffrage cribbed,
cabined, and confined by the condition of personal ratepaying, or
a household suffrage fairly conforming in substance and operation
to the idea that the phrase conveyed. The first was in our view
totally inadmissible; the second beyond the wants and wishes of
the time. But the government, it must be admitted, bowled us over
by the force of the phrase; and made it our next duty to bowl them
over by bringing the reality of the bill into correspondence with
its great profession. This we were able to do in some degree, when
we reached the committee, for some of the restrictions included in
the measure were such as the double-facing liberal fringe did not
venture to uphold against the assaults of their own party. But the
grand question of compound householding, which was really to
determine the character of our legislation, was one on which we
could not reckon upon either the conscientious or the intimidated
and prudential support of our liberal fringe. The government were
beyond all doubt, at least for the moment, masters of the
situation. The question was raised, if not in its fullest breadth
yet in a form of considerable efficiency, by a proposal from Mr.
Hodgkinson, member for Newark, and a local solicitor little known
in the House.(152) He went there to support it, but without an
idea that it could be carried, and anticipating its defeat by a
majority of a hundred. Never have I undergone a stranger emotion
of surprise than when, as I was entering the House, our whip met
me and stated that Disraeli was about to support Hodgkinson’s
motion. But so it was, and the proposition was adopted without
disturbance, as if it had been an affair of trivial importance.
How it came about I partially learned at a later date. A cabinet
was held after the fact, which Sir John Lambert, the great
statistician of the day, was summoned to attend. The cabinet had
had no idea that the Hodgkinson amendment was to be accepted; the
acceptance was the sole act of Mr. Disraeli; and when it had been
done the ministers assembled in order to learn from Sir John
Lambert what was the probable addition that it would make to the
constituency.
I do not suppose that in the whole history of the ’mystery-man,’
this proceeding can be surpassed. The tories, having been brought
to accept household suffrage on the faith of the limitation
imposed by personal payment of the rates, found at a moment’s
notice that that limitation had been thrown overboard, and that
their leader had given them a bill virtually far larger than any
that Mr. Bright had sought to impose upon them. It was certainly
no business of ours to complain, and they made it no business of
theirs. I imagine that they still relied upon rectification of the
bill by the House of Lords. And the Lords did rectify it largely;
but these rectifications were all rejected when the bill returned
to us, except the minority [representation], which Mr. Disraeli
was strong enough to secure by means of the votes of a body of
liberals who approved it, and which he accepted to humour or
comfort the Lords a little, while he detested it, and made, as
Bright said, the best speech ever delivered against it. So came
about the establishment of an effective household suffrage in the
cities and boroughs of England.
III
(M66) The process effecting this wide extension of political power to
immense classes hitherto without it, was in every respect extraordinary.
The great reform was carried by a parliament elected to support Lord
Palmerston, and Lord Palmerston detested reform. It was carried by a
government in a decided minority. It was carried by a minister and by a
leader of opposition, neither of whom was at the time in the full
confidence of his party. Finally, it was carried by a House of Commons
that the year before had, in effect, rejected a measure for the admission
of only 400,000 new voters, while the measure to which it now assented
added almost a million voters to the electorate.(153)
We always do best to seek rational explanations in large affairs. It may
be true that “if there were no blunders there would be no politics,” but
when we have made full allowance for blunder, caprice, chance, folly,
craft, still reason and the nature of things have a share. The secret of
the strange reversal in 1867 of all that had been said, attempted, and
done in 1866, would seem to be that the tide of public opinion had
suddenly swelled to flood. The same timidity that made the ruling classes
dread reform, had the compensation that very little in the way of popular
demonstration was quite enough to frighten them into accepting it. Here
the demonstration was not little. Riots in Hyde Park, street processions
measured by the mile in the great cities from London up to Glasgow,
open-air meetings attended by a hundred, two hundred, two hundred and
fifty thousand people at Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, showed that even
though the workmen might not be anxious to demand the franchise, yet they
would not stand its refusal. In the autumn of 1868 Mr. Bright led a
splendid campaign in a series of speeches in England, Scotland, and
Ireland, marked by every kind of power. It is worthy of remark that not
one of the main changes of that age was carried in parliament without
severe agitation out of doors. Catholic emancipation was won by O’Connell;
the reform act of 1832 by the political unions; free trade by the league
against the corn law. Household suffrage followed the same rule.
It was undoubtedly true in a sense that Mr. Gladstone was at the head of a
majority in 1866, and now again in. 1867. But its composition was
peculiar. Sir Thomas Acland (April 10, 1867) describes Mr. Gladstone as
hampered by three sets of people: “1. Radicals, who will vote for
household suffrage, but don’t want it carried. 2. Whigs (aristocrats), who
won’t risk a collision with the government, and hope that very little
reform will be carried, and want to discredit Gladstone. 3. A large body
who care for nothing except to avoid a dissolution.” “There is a fresh
intrigue,” he adds, “every twelve hours.”
The trenchant and sardonic mind of the leader of the revolt that had
destroyed the bill of 1866, soon found food for bitter rumination. On the
eve of the session Lowe admitted that he had very little hope of a
successful end to his efforts, and made dismal protests that the reign of
reason was over. In other words, he had found out that the men whom he had
placed in power, were going to fling him overboard in what he called this
miserable auction between two parties, at which the country was put up for
sale, and then knocked down to those who could produce the readiest and
swiftest measure for its destruction.
The liberal cave of the previous year was broken up, Lowe and the ablest
of its old denizens now voting with Mr. Gladstone, but the great majority
going with the government. The place of the empty cave was taken by a new
group of dissidents, named from their habitat the party of the Tea-Room.
Many, both whigs above the gangway and even radicals below, were averse to
bringing Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone back again; they thought a bill
would have a better chance with the tories than with the old leaders.
Insubordination and disorganisation were complete. “I have never seen
anything like it,” says the new Lord Halifax;(154) “but the state of
things this year enables me to understand what was very inexplicable in
all I heard of last year.” We can hardly wonder that the strain was often
difficult to bear. A friend, meeting Mr. Gladstone at dinner about this
time (March 25), thought that he saw signs of irritated nerve. “What an
invaluable gift,” he reflects, “a present of phlegm from the gods would
be! If we could roll up Thompson [master of Trinity] or Bishop Thirlwall
with him and then bisect the compound, we should get a pair as invincible
as the Dioscuri.” An accomplished observer told his constituents that one
saw the humour of the great parliamentary chess tournament, looking at the
pieces on the board and the face of Disraeli; its tragic side in a glimpse
of the face of Gladstone; in the mephistophelian nonchalance of one, the
melancholy earnestness of the other.(155)
(M67) Everybody knew that Disraeli, as he watched the scene from behind
his mask, now and again launching a well-devised retort, was neither liked
nor trusted, though more than a little feared; and that Gladstone, with
his deeply lined face, his “glare of contentious eagerness,” his seeming
over-righteousness, both chafed his friends and exasperated his foes. As
it was excellently put by a critic in the press,—the House was
indifferent, and Mr. Gladstone was earnest; the House was lax and he was
strict; it was cynical about popular equality, and he was enthusiastic; it
was lazy about details, he insisted upon teaching it the profoundest
minutiæ.(156) About this time, Lord Russell told Lord Halifax that he had
gone down to see his brother the Duke of Bedford when he was dying, and
had said to him that things were drifting into the country being governed
by Disraeli and Gladstone, and the Duke observed that neither of them was
fit for it. And Halifax himself went on to say that Gladstone had, in
truth, no sympathy or connection with any considerable party in the House
of Commons. For the old whig party remembered him as an opponent for many
years; the radicals knew that on many points, especially on all church
matters, he did not agree with them, and though they admired his talents,
and hailed his recent exertions in favour of reform, they had no great
attachment to him, nor did he seem to be personally popular with any of
them.
Far away from the world of politics, we have an estimate of Mr. Gladstone
at this time from the piercing satirist of his age. “Is not he at any rate
a man of principle?” said a quaker lady to Carlyle. “Oh, Gladstone!” the
sage replied, “I did hope well of him once, and so did John Sterling,
though I heard he was a Puseyite and so forth; still it seemed the right
thing for a state to feel itself bound to God, and to lean on Him, and so
I hoped that something might come of him. But now, he has been declaiming
that England is such a wonderfully prosperous state, meaning that it has
plenty of money in its breeches pocket.... But that’s not the prosperity
we want. And so I say to him, ‘You are not the life-giver to England. I go
my way, you go yours, good morning (with a most dramatic and final
bow).’ ”(157) England however thought otherwise about life-givers, and
made a bow of a completely different sort. Yet not at once. It was Mr.
Disraeli who played the leading part in this great transaction, not by
inventing the phrase of household suffrage, for that principle was Mr.
Bright’s; nor by giving his bill the shape in which it ultimately became
law, for that shape was mainly due to Mr. Gladstone, but as the mind by
whose secret counsels the arduous and intricate manœuvre was directed.
“The most wonderful thing,” wrote Bishop Wilberforce at the end of the
session, “is the rise of Disraeli. It is not the mere assertion of talent.
He has been able to teach the House of Commons almost to ignore Gladstone,
and at present lords it over him, and, I am told, says that he will hold
him down for twenty years.”(158) If Mr. Disraeli said this, he proved
almost as much mistaken as when Fox was confident of holding the young
Pitt down in 1783. Still he impressed his rival. “I met Gladstone at
breakfast,” says Lord Houghton (May), “he seems quite awed by the
diabolical cleverness of Dizzy.” Awe, by no means the right word, I fancy.
IV
(M68) On April 12 the first act of the Reform question of 1867 ended in an
awkward crisis for Mr. Gladstone. The details of the story are intricate
and not much to our purpose. Mr. Gladstone’s version printed above
discovers its general features. Some particulars, properly biographic,
will fill up his sketch. “If you have to drive a man out of a wood,” Mr.
Gladstone said, “you must yourself go into the wood to drive him.” The
bystander of a later time, however, may be content to keep outside the
thicket until the driver and the driven both emerge. Mr. Disraeli began by
preparing a series of resolutions—platitudes with little relation to
realities. He told the House that reform should no longer be allowed to
determine the fate of cabinets, and the House laughed. Yet if Mr. Disraeli
had only at this time enjoyed the advantage of a better character—if he
had been Althorp, Russell, Peel—instead of laughing, his hearers would
perhaps have recognised good sense and statesmanship. As he said later,
whig prime ministers, coalition prime ministers, coalition chancellors of
the exchequer, had one after another had their innings, and with a
majority at their back; was it not well now to try something that might be
carried by consent? Under pressure from Mr. Gladstone the government
explained their plan, dropped the resolutions, and brought in a bill.(159)
Men were to have votes who had university degrees, or were members of
learned professions, or had thirty pounds in a savings bank, or fifty
pounds in the funds, or paid a pound in direct taxes; but the fighting
point was that every householder who paid rates should have a vote. A
scheme for seats accompanied. To comfort his party for giving so wide a
suffrage, the minister provided checks by conferring a double vote on
certain classes of citizens, and imposing strict terms as to residence.
Three members of his cabinet, of whom Lord Cranborne was the most
important, refused the unsubstantial solace and resigned. But Mr. Disraeli
saw that he would regain by disorganising his opponents more than he would
lose by dislocating his friends.
Mr. Gladstone flew down upon the plan with energy, as a measure of
illusory concessions, and securities still more illusory. His speech was
taken in some quarters in a conservative sense, for Lowe at once wrote to
him (March 21) urging him to follow it up by resisting the second reading
on the principle of righting rent against rating. Since Callimachus, the
Athenian polemarch, had to give the casting vote at Marathon when the ten
generals were equally divided on the question of fighting the Persians or
not fighting, “no one,” cried Lowe, “ever had a weightier case to decide”
than Mr. Gladstone now. He forgot that the brave Callimachus was slain,
and Mr. Gladstone would in a political sense have been slain likewise if
he had taken Lowe’s advice, for, as he says, Disraeli had by talk of
household suffrage “bowled them over.” A meeting of 278 liberals was held
at his house, and he addressed them for nearly an hour, concurring not
over-willingly in the conclusion that they should not resist the second
reading.(160) He had a long conversation with Mr. Bright two days before,
whom he found ’sensible, moderate, and firm,’ and whose view was no doubt
the opposite of Lowe’s. The bill was read a second time without a division
(March 26).
A few entries in Sir Robert Phillimore’s journal help us to realise the
state of the case during this extraordinary session:—
_April 9._—Entire collapse of Gladstone’s attack on government
yesterday. _Tea-room_ schism of liberal members, including the H.
of C. Russell. Disraeli’s insolent triumph. 10.—Returned to the
Coppice with Ld. Richard Cavendish. He tells me Hastings Russell
and his brother cannot bear Gladstone as their leader. 12.—In the
middle of the day saw Gladstone and Mrs. Gladstone. His _disgust_
and _deep mortification_ at the defection of his party, mingled
with due sense of the loyalty of the greater number, and
especially of his old cabinet. The expression of my wish that, if
deserted, he will abdicate and leave them to find another leader
fully responded to by him. 13.—Defeat of the opposition last
night; great triumph of Disraeli; a surprise, I believe, to both
parties; 289 voted with Gladstone. What will he do? _Query._—Ought
he on account of the defection of 20 to leave so considerable a
party?
(M69) The occasion just mentioned marked a climax. Mr. Gladstone moved an
amendment to remove the personal payment of rates as an essential
qualification, and to confer the franchise on the householder whether he
paid the rate direct or through the landlord. The next day the diary
records: _April 12._—“Spoke in reply and voted in 289-310. A smash perhaps
without example. A victory of 21 for ministers.” A new secession had taken
place, and 43 liberal members voted with the government, while nearly 20
were absent. The Cranborne secession was small, and some who had been
expected to stay away voted with the government. “Gladstone expressed
himself strongly to five or six members of the late government whom he
summoned to his house in the morning. He spoke of retiring to a back
bench, and announcing that he would give up the ostensible post of leader
of the opposition. He was dissuaded from doing this at the present moment,
and went out of town, as indeed did almost everybody else.”(161) Still the
notion of a back bench did lodge itself in his mind for long. The “smash”
was undoubtedly severe. As Mr. Gladstone wrote to one of the members for
the City, a supporter, it showed that the liberals whose convictions
allowed united action upon reform were not a majority but a minority of
the House of Commons. Considering the large number who supported his
proposal, he told his correspondent that though he would move no further
amendment of his own, he was not less willing than heretofore to remain at
the service of the party. “The friendly critics,” he said to Brand, “note
a tone of despondency in my letter to Crawford. That is all owing to
Granville and others who cut off a fine peacock’s tail that I had
appended.” So day after day amid surf and breakers he held to his oar. If
Mr. Gladstone was much buffeted in the house of his friends, he was not
without valiant backers, and among them none was more stout than Mr.
Bright, the least effusive of all men in the direction of large panegyric.
Speaking to his constituents at Birmingham, “Who is there in the House of
Commons,” he demanded, “who equals Mr. Gladstone in knowledge of all
political questions? Who equals him in earnestness? Who equals him in
eloquence? Who equals him in courage and fidelity to his convictions? If
these gentlemen who say they will not follow him have any one who is
equal, let them show him. If they can point out any statesman who can add
dignity and grandeur to the stature of Mr. Gladstone, let them produce
him.” A deputation against the bill from some popular body came to him
(May 11). Mr. Disraeli at once regretted that these “spouters of stale
sedition,” these “obsolete incendiaries,” should have come forward to pay
their homage to one who, wherever he may sit, must always remain the pride
and ornament of the House—
“Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?”
V
To the Duchess of Sutherland Mr. Gladstone wrote (July 9):—
I do not plead guilty to the indictment for “non-attendance.” I
think that for three months I have been in the House for more
hours than the Speaker. I have heard every important word that has
been spoken on the Reform bill, and at least nine-tenths of all
the words. True, outside the Reform bill I only attend when I
think there is a chance of being useful; and in the present state
of the House these opportunities are few. I act from no personal
motive. But for me to be present and interfere continuously, or so
far continuously as I might in other circumstances, would exhibit
needlessly from day to day the divisions and consequent weakness
of the liberal party. I admit also that time tells on a man of my
age and temperament; and my brain tells me that I want more rest
and not less. Is this unreasonable? I am against all needless
waste of life or anything else. Everything should be husbanded. I
must add that more attendance would but aggravate the
susceptibility which depends on nerves rather than will, and
already makes my attendance less useful.
The Phillimore diary gives us one or two glimpses more:—
_May 9._—Carnarvon delighted with Gladstone’s speech at S.P.G.
meeting. 10.—Called on Gladstone in bed at 1.30. Ill from effect
of the great exertion of yesterday—S.P.G. in the morning, H. of C.
in the evening.... The effect of these defeats of Gladstone in the
H. of C. has been to bind the whigs closer to him. 24.—The dinner
to Brand and presentation of plate deferred, ostensibly on the
ground of his health and necessity of going to German waters,
really because at present Gladstone refuses to take the chair at
the dinner, though attached to Brand, because many who had
deserted him (G.) would attend the dinner. Gladstone will not
countenance the appearance of a sham union when the party is
discredited. _June 7._—Attack on Gladstone as being in debt “hard
pressed by creditors,” and therefore wishing for office. The
malice against him is wonderful. _29._—Dined at Newspaper Press
Fund. Gladstone in the chair, made a really faultless speech.
Never did I hear his voice better, nor the flow of his eloquence
more unbroken.
Two or three items more from Mr. Gladstone’s diary are worth recording:—
_May 6._—The underground tone of the House most unsatisfactory.
_May 9._—Spoke earnestly and long for compound householders, in
vain. Beaten by 322-256. Much fatigued by heat and work. _May
28._—Spoke (perforce) on Disraeli’s astonishing declaration of
consistency. _July 15._—Third reading of Reform bill. A remarkable
night. Determined at the last moment not to take part in the
debate, for fear of doing mischief on our own side.
The conservative leader himself was exposed to onslaughts from his
followers and confederates of the previous year as severe as have ever
fallen on the head of an English party. “Never,” cried Mr. Lowe, in
desolation and chagrin, “never was there tergiversation so complete. Such
conduct may fail or not; it may lead to the retention or the loss of
office; but it merits alike the contempt of all honest men, and the
execration of posterity.” Lord Cranborne, the chief conservative seceder,
described the bill in its final shape, after undergoing countless
transformations, as the result of the adoption of the principles of Bright
at the dictation of Gladstone. It was at Mr. Gladstone’s demand that
lodgers were invested with votes; that the dual vote, voting papers,
educational franchise, savings-bank franchise, all disappeared; that the
distribution of seats was extended into an operation of enormously larger
scale. In his most biting style, Lord Cranborne deplored that the House
should have applauded a policy of legerdemain; talked about borrowing
their ethics from the political adventurer; regretted, above all things,
that the Reform bill should have been purchased at the cost of a political
betrayal that had no parallel in our parliamentary annals, and that struck
at the very root of that mutual confidence which is the very soul of our
party government.
Merciless storms of this kind Mr. Disraeli bore imperturbably. He
complained of the intolerant character of the discussions. “Everybody who
does not agree with somebody else is looked upon as a fool, or as being
mainly influenced by a total want of principle in the conduct of public
affairs.” He doubted whether Mr. Bright or anybody else could show that
the tory party had changed their opinions. He had not changed his own
opinions; the bill was in harmony with the general policy they had always
maintained, though adapted, of course, to the requirements of the year. On
Mr. Lowe’s “most doleful vaticinations that ever were heard,” about the
new voters repudiating the national debt and adopting an inconvertible
paper currency, he poured easy ridicule. Yet only a year before this Mr.
Disraeli himself had prophesied that the end of a seven pound franchise
would be a parliament of no statesmanship, no eloquence, no learning, no
genius. “Instead of these you will have a horde of selfish and obscure
mediocrities, incapable of anything but mischief, and that mischief
devised and regulated by the raging demagogue of the hour.”
Mr. Gladstone summed the matter up in a sentence to Dr. Pusey: “We have
been passing through a strange and eventful year: a deplorable one, I
think, for the character and conduct of the House of Commons, but yet one
of promise for the country, though of a promise not unmixed with evils.”