_Two Nights in the House of Commons._
As soon as I could devote an evening to the purpose, I made my first
visit to the House of Commons, going at a very early hour in the
afternoon, and sitting through the whole till after midnight. This
House, since removed to the new Palace, then held its sessions in what
was formerly the House of Lords, said to be the scene of all the
historic events which have illustrated that body for ages, down to the
reign of William Fourth. It was fitted up for the Commons after the fire
of 1834, which destroyed St. Stephen’s Chapel. It was, first of all, the
hall of Edward Confessor’s Palace; was subsequently the scene of a
fierce passage in the life of Cœur-de-Lion; and also of that romantic
incident which Shakspeare makes the first scene in his Richard Second.
There Bacon presided, and was impeached, and fell. Lord Chatham’s
expiring effort was made there; and there he thundered those noble
remonstrances against the American war, in which our own history is so
intimately concerned. Its fitting-up, however, for the temporary use of
the Commons, gave it a very modern appearance, and it was as plain as
can well be imagined. Before I returned to America, its interior had
been pulled to pieces, and the materials sold under the hammer. I saw
it, therefore, in the Omega of its legislative uses, centuries having
expired since its Alpha. Mr. Lawrence, our worthy Ambassador, had kindly
supplied me with a ticket, which admitted the bearer to the diplomatic
benches. These are on the floor of the House, and are only separated
from those of the members by a nominal division; so that, in fact, I
found myself surrounded by them. At first the House was thin, and it
grew thinner towards seven o’clock; but at about nine o’clock it began
to fill again, the members returning from their dinners, most of them in
full dress. The earlier hours were consumed in dull and unimportant
matters, and business seemed to drag on like the daylight, till the
place began to be as stupid as it was dark and gloomy; when suddenly the
Speaker touched a bell, and a flood of soft light was showered from the
ceiling, not a lamp or burner being visible. This mode of illumination
was quite new to me, although I have heard of similar effects produced
in the same way in America. It seemed to quicken and cheer up
everything, till the Speaker left his place suddenly, (for refreshments,
it was said,) and then all stood still, the members yawning and lounging
about, and talking in a very undignified manner. When the Speaker
returned, business seemed to have begun. A message was received from the
House of Lords, with the usual formalities; but, I observed that as the
messenger backed out, making his three bows, he stumbled, and excited a
laugh, at which he also laughed, and then retired, winking and
exchanging grimaces with sundry acquaintances, as much as to say—who
cares. He was dressed in wig and gown, and was probably one of the
clerks of the Lords; and he was attended in the Commons by the
Sergeant-at-Arms, who was dressed in court-costume, and during the
ceremony carried the Mace on his shoulder. The sight of “that bauble”
revived the recollection of scenes in the House of Commons of a very
different character.
The great business of the evening was a debate on the Malt-tax, which
brought out all the strength of the House, and enabled the opposition to
talk “Protection,” with a show of very great sympathy for the distresses
of “the British farmer.” Mr. Disraeli made a great speech, in his way;
but it is a very poor way, his whole manner being declamatory and
sophomorical in the extreme. I had met him several times as I sauntered
through Pall Mall, and looked in vain for any traces in his face and
manner of the clever author of Coningsby and its successors. A jaunty
and rather flashy young man, with black ringlets, twisted about a face
quite devoid of elevated expression—such was the impression he gave me
in the open air, and in the House of Commons I saw nothing at variance
with it. He is certainly a man of parts, but that such as he should have
forced his way to the Leadership of the House of Commons, only proves
the extreme mediocrity of this generation. That he is a Jew is a great
bar to his advancement, although he is a Jewish Christian. He affects,
however, to be very proud of his _Oriental_ origin, and perhaps he may
be so; but one feels that he cannot be confided in, and that he is a
mere adventurer. He seemed to me to ape Sir Robert Peel, in his way of
thrusting his arm behind the skirts of the coat, and exposing the whole
waistcoat in a flaring manner. I have heard as good talking at a
debating club as he treated us to that night in the House of Commons.
Still he made some good hits at Ministers, and was often interrupted by
cries of _hear, hear, hear_, which are rather muttered than vociferated
around the benches. He has since been Chancellor of the Exchequer,
himself adopting the very policy which he then abused in terms the most
noisy and passionate.
Ministers were, of course, not slow in replying, and I had a chance of
beholding some of the expiring grimaces of Lord John Russell, whose
feeble government was just ready to fall to pieces of itself. I knew the
man as soon as I saw him in the House. There he sat, under a hat that
seemed to extinguish his features, trying to laugh and look
good-natured. At last he rose, and I observed that the familiar
caricatures of _Punch_ were in fact good likenesses. He is his own
caricature. A diminutive utterer of “great, swelling words;” paltry, and
yet pompous; and altogether as insignificant a person as I ever saw
dressed in brief authority. He had only a few plain things to say, and
yet he contrived to utter them, as if he were saying—“I am Sir Oracle.”
Cries of _divide_ had circulated pretty freely during the whole debate,
and now I saw a division. A personage who had been very polite to me
during the evening, volunteered to put me where I might see the whole
process. Just before the division, members came running in from the
clubs, and the “whipper-in” returned to his seat, having discharged his
duty in securing the attendance of votes for the Government. Members had
been pairing off the whole time, apparently to attend a ball or the
Opera, as the pairs were nearly always in full dress. Their negotiations
seemed to be made near the bar of the House, and the Speaker was
constantly silencing the buzz of members and spectators, by the cry of
“order—order,” or “order at the bar,” which Mr. Shaw Lefevre knows how
to speak most potently. At length for the division, the galleries were
cleared at the sound of certain bells, which the Speaker appeared to
pull; but my kind Mentor clapped me into a sort of lobby, like a closet,
in the door of which was a pane of glass, through which I saw the entire
performance at my ease, and quite by myself. Less fortunate visitors
were entirely ejected, and then the members themselves went into the
lobby, and so passed in again, their names being pricked by the tellers
as they passed, and the whole operation taking but a few minutes. The
Ministry had a handsome majority. Before the House rose that evening,
there was another division; and it so happened that I heard most of the
men of mark. Sir Charles Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hume and
Bright, the amusing Colonel Sibthorp, and the Milesian Reynolds, all
talked, and some of them several times. Mr. Keogh excited the
significant cry of _oh, oh_, with laughter, and made some sport by
rejoining, “the gentlemen may cry _oh_, but still it is true.” An
allusion to the Scottish Universities brought Sir Robert Inglis to his
feet, and he said a few pertinent words, in a manner worthy of himself
as the best specimen in the House of a true English gentleman of the old
school. Mr. Sidney Herbert spoke in a handsome manner, and Mr. Gladstone
also made a very spicy little speech, which seemed to annoy his
opponents not a little. The House sat till two o’clock, but I finally
gave it up, and left before the end. As I came out into Old Palace Yard,
and saw the towers of the Abbey in the still solemnity of the night, it
seemed more strikingly majestic than before. I thought what mighty
interests of Empires had been settled here, and how often Chatham, Fox,
Pitt and Canning, had emerged at midnight from such scenes as I had just
left, looking on the same towers, beneath which they now moulder in the
dust. The sombre mass of the Abbey seemed a commentary on the hot
debates from which I was retiring; a speaking monitor of the transient
interests of the present, and of the eternal issues of futurity, as well
as of the unchangeableness of the past.
As I walked slowly to my lodgings, I passed Whitehall. Scarce any one
was in the street, and all was silence. I stopped, and gazed on the
white walls of the Banqueting-room, and said to myself, ‘how strange!
here I am alone on this most memorable spot, in the deep and solemn
night. Can it be that here, where all is now so quiet, there stood two
hundred years ago a crowd of human beings, every one of whom was
experiencing, at the moment, emotions the most singularly mixed and
tumultuous that ever agitated the human soul? Can it be that from this
same white wall issued the figure of King Charles, and that there—just
there—he knelt at the block, and in a moment was a headless corpse?
Even so! Here rose that groan of a mighty multitude, sighing as one man,
and there the ghastly headsman stood, holding up the royal head by its
anointed locks, and crying—_this_ _is the head of a traitor!_’ I almost
turned about to see whether Cromwell’s troopers were not charging down
upon me, so strong was the impression of the spot; but just then, the
sight of a solitary policeman, patrolling beneath a gas-lamp, recalled
me to myself, and I fared thoughtfully, by the statue at Charing-Cross,
towards my temporary home.
The Papal aggression was still, in spite of the Crystal Palace and its
wonders, an absorbing topic, and my second visit to the House of Commons
had been set for an evening when a debate upon that exciting subject was
to be part of the entertainment. I felt sure that such an evening in the
House would be, in some measure, an historical one, and might be useful
to me through life, in watching the course of religious and political
events. Besides, I wanted to hear a debate that should enable me to
compare, by its unity of subject, a Parliament of Victoria, with those
of the Plantagenets and Tudors. I had my desire.
It seems impossible for the American mind to appreciate rightly the very
grave injury which has been done to the British nation by the attempt of
the Papal Court to erect Episcopal Sees, and bestow corresponding titles
within the jurisdiction of the British Church, and under the shadow of
the British Crown. But when it is considered that the Pope has thus
attempted to exercise a power to which he could never have aspired even
when England wore his yoke, and which would not now be suffered by any
Popish sovereignty in Europe; when, to say nothing of the outrage to the
Church of England, the direct attempt upon the allegiance of subjects is
considered, and its bearings upon the future are duly weighed: no
well-informed mind can hesitate a moment as to the propriety of the
feelings which it so generally inflamed, or retain any other
astonishment, than a profound one, at the feebleness and utter
imbecility of the measures with which the advisers of the greatest
Sovereign in existence have allowed her to meet the invasion. It was not
a moment for hesitation, or for consulting economics; a demand should
have been made upon the Pontiff for an immediate alteration of his
attitude towards England, and the least attempt to palter on his part
should have been responded to by a British fleet off Civita Vecchia. If
France was an obstacle to such a demonstration, and if “the peace of
Europe” must be kept at all hazards,—even the hazard of a speedy
Armageddon to pay for it—if such be the England of 1850—alas for the
extinction of the England of 1588! Is the spirit of Elizabeth past
revival?
Since 1830, the whigs, laboring, as Mr. Macaulay now confesses, under a
delusion as to the ameliorated spirit of the Papacy, have gradually
advanced the Romanists to great power and influence. They had introduced
them to parliaments; had flattered them with ecclesiastical titles; and
unavailingly tried to propitiate them with gifts. Finally, hoping to
secure the Pope’s aid in the management of Ireland, they had advanced,
step by step, to a point from which they could not recede, and at which
they ventured to go further, and actually invite him to the daring
encroachment, which to their horror and amazement, set all England in a
blaze. At every step of this infamous and foolish compromise with Rome,
true Churchmen had protested, and pleaded, and struggled in vain; but
these true men were now confounded in the disgrace of an alarming
apostacy, owing to a popular misapprehension, and it was easy to turn
the whole fury of the fire upon them. Lord John, detected in the very
act of inviting the Pope’s attempt, had the cunning to point at them,
and lay it on the “Tractarians.” The trick succeeded: the Romanizers
were gratified, for they wished well to any but the friends of a Church
which they meant to abandon and destroy; the Evangelicals swelled the
outcry, which brought popular gales to their own canvass; and the
Ministry chuckled behind their fingers. The Romanists were triumphant,
since they had the Ministry in their power; and the only real sufferers
by all the tumult and indignation thus aroused, were the very class who
alone had contested every inch of ground with Popery and the Whigs, from
the “Emancipation” of 1829, to its sequel and direct consequence, the
“Aggression,” twenty years afterwards!
Such was the very just review of the existing question, which in
different ways was brought before the House on the evening of the ninth
of May, 1851. The debate was on a motion of Mr. Urquhart, to the effect
that “the act of the Pope had been encouraged by the conduct and
declarations of her Majesty’s Government; and that large expectations of
remedy had been stimulated by Lord John’s letter to the Bishop of
Durham, which his measures had entirely disappointed.” The member
pressed his resolution (offered as an amendment to the proposed bill) by
a reference to the history at which we have glanced, and by calling to
mind some former passages in the political life of the Prime Minister,
which it could scarcely have been comfortable for him to hear just at
that moment. Sir George Grey, in a very feeble speech, replied in behalf
of his friend, from the Treasury bench, and amused himself at some
length, at the expense of Mr. Urquhart, without really affecting his
argument. Lord John Manners retorted with not a little force, at least
in his matter. He declared the proposed amendment a mere truism, and yet
one of practical utility. Lord John had successfully thrown dust in the
eyes of the people. Lord Powis and Mr. Dudley Perceval had in vain
endeavored to place the facts before the country. Then followed a
passage of pungency and truth. “The Prime Minister,” he said, “had twice
encouraged the acts against which his puny and delusive legislation was
now directed; had twice defeated the modest attempt of the Church of
England to place Bishops of her own in the great towns now occupied by
the Pope; had granted to Popish Bishops, in all the Colonies, precedence
over Anglican Bishops; had yielded similar favors to the Romish
titularies in Ireland; had pertinaciously resisted the fair demands of
the Irish Church for Scriptural Education; and yet—after a public
policy which had been one unvaried monotone of insult and wrong to the
Church of England—had contrived, by one magic stroke of the pen, to
place himself before the country as the champion of English
Protestantism, and as the only effectual antagonist of the encroachments
of the Church of Rome.” A Romish member now rose, and, while opposing
the amendment, paid a singular tribute to its truth. “He was not the man
to blame the noble Lord for encouraging the Pope’s measures; but he
blamed him for now attempting to contend with the direct consequences of
his own flattering policy.” After a rambling and incoherent speech, of
tiresome length, from a Mr. Stanford, who supported the amendment, Sir
Robert Inglis rose and opposed it with characteristic dignity, and with
that grave and sober earnestness which, under the manifest control of
taste and judgment, seems always uppermost in all his utterances. He
showed that, if the amendment were passed, it would defeat the bill.
However true, therefore, he must oppose it, because the bill was all
that the Government had offered to do, and something must be done. He
had no objection to calling on the Government to do more; he thought
that Lord John might fairly be asked to meet, in full, the expectations
he had excited; but he could not vote for an amendment which would
effectually prevent the doing of anything to carry out the just wishes
of the country.
Sir Robert, during his remarks, dropped an expression, for the first
time, if I am not mistaken, which soon became familiar. He spoke of the
opposition of the _Irish Brigade_, referring to the Romish members then
sitting, and voting together, with an appearance of complete drill, and
of absolute obedience to one command. The expression was repeated as a
quotation by another member, and raised a laugh, as something freshly
caught up, and this seemed to mark it as a hit. Finally, Mr. Reynolds,
the apparent leader of the Brigade, gave it complete success by replying
to it. Sir Robert, after quietly delivering his remarks, had walked
round from his seat, and was conversing with a friend, (while he twirled
in his hand a rose, that he had taken from his button-hole,) when Mr.
Reynolds stepped into his place, with a sort of bog-trotting movement,
and facetiously remarked that, it might seem strange to see him
standing, as it were, in the shoes of the venerable baronet, who had
just called him and his countrymen, “the Irish Brigade.” He then
acknowledged that they were banded together against the bill, and
“against every other, good or bad, which its author might propose.” He
thus avowed their purpose, to throw their entire force against the
Government, until Lord John should be driven out of power. He then went
on with Irish volubility, and the no less characteristic accent of the
Patlander, to belabor Lord John’s bill. He told not a little truth:
called it “_sham_ legislation;” stuck out his finger towards the
Minister, and said, “If ye pass it, ye dare not put it into execution.”
Here, however, he gave it the praise of being quite the thing for its
purpose—“a cruel and persecuting measure—which, as such, had received
the approbation of _the Protestant watchdog of Oxford University_.” By
this epithet, significant of high fidelity, but not intended to be
particularly respectful, he gave Sir Robert a Rowland for his Oliver.
The residue of this gentleman’s speech was amusing enough, as coming
from a Papist. He was for liberty of conscience; couldn’t bear to think
of religious persecution; and, as for the Queen, she had no subjects in
the world that could compare with her Irish subjects, for the devoted
affection with which they regarded her. One would think it a pity that
such homage as he professed for a heretic sovereign, had not been as
fashionable among his co-religionists in the days of Guido Fawkes, or of
the Spanish Armada.
At last, Lord John himself rose to reply. I thought of the history of
the house of Bedford, from the back-stairs of Henry VIII., when, as
Burke expresses it, “the lion having gorged his share of the
Ecclesiastical carcase, flung the offal to his jackal,” down to the
council-chamber of Victoria, where the jackal still waits on the lion,
in the shape of this insatiable devourer of the Church’s bread, and not
less insatiable thirster for her blood. How should he dare lift up his
voice to apologize for the brand of infamy which this evening’s debate
had stamped upon his career as a Minister, or rather which it merely
showed to have been already set by his own hands! Forth he stepped, like
himself alone, and with the same pomposity to which I have already
adverted, went through a few incantations, which ended in a fresh
transformation of the diminutive conjurer before us, into a most earnest
“deviser of securities for the crown and the nation.” He called the
opposition “mean and shabby”—for such courtesies seem to be the seven
locks of a rhetorical Samson, in his conception—and with a front of
brass, only equalled by the audacity of his imputations upon true sons
of the Church of England, declared “there had been nothing in the
conduct of the Government which had a tendency to provoke the
aggression.” He sat down, in his littleness, and was instantly pounced
upon by Disraeli, from the opposite side of the table, as it were by a
hungry terrier. “Is it a fact,” then, said he, “or is it not, that the
First Minister of the Crown has himself in this House expressed an
opinion, that _he saw no harm in Romish Bishops assuming territorial
titles in this realm of England_? Is it a fact, or is it not, in the
recollection of this House, and in the burning memory of this country?
Is it a fact, or is it not, that a Secretary of State, in another place,
has expressed his hope that Romish Bishops would soon take seats as
Peers of Parliament in the House of Lords? Is it a fact, or is it not,
that a member of the Cabinet has been sent as Plenipotentiary to Italy,
and held frequent and encouraging conversations with the Pope? Is it a
fact, or is it not, that the Pope condescended to intimate to said
Ambassador his gracious purposes to do something _that might affect
England_; and is it a fact, or is it not, that the Plenipotentiary
thought it unnecessary to inquire what it might be?”
Lord John here rallied, and interrupted the speaker, by saying that “he
had admitted the fact of a _report that the Pope said so_, but had also
stated that Lord Minto denied having heard it.” Thus terrier seemed to
have rat in his fangs, but rat could still show his teeth to terrier. It
was the first impeachment to which he had ventured any reply; and, by
replying to this, he convicted himself of the more grave charges, which
he was obliged to hear in silence, with his hat slouched down over his
criminal features. Who can feel any respect for an English patrician,
caught in such a felony, and proved as truly a moral delinquent, on a
gigantic scale, as ever a petty thief at the Old Bailey on a small one?
Oh! for a conscience in mankind to save their sympathy for the poor
wretch in the bail-dock, and to consign to merited infamy the titled and
decorated offender, whose crime is unfaithful stewardship in the State,
and treason to the Crown Imperial of the Most High God! I have no
abstract prejudice against a peerage. For my own country only do I
deprecate the idea of an aristocracy; but what are patricians worth, if
they cannot present to the State, in which they are an organic part, a
high and wholesome example of integrity and honour? In my heart,
therefore, as I looked at this scion of the house of Bedford in his
moral degradation, I felt—would that he might know the unaffected pity
with which a republican looks at him from this gallery, as a man, in
this great crisis of history, false to his rank, false to his sovereign,
false to his country, and false to his Redeemer.
Mr. Disraeli paid no attention to his disclaimers, but, as it were,
buffeted him smartly with another hit—“Is it a fact, or is it not, that
the Vice-Royalty of Ireland was in indirect communication with the Pope,
and expressed affection for his person, and reverence for his
character?” This brought out enthusiastic cheers; and Lord John tried to
emerge from beneath his hat, to look contemptuous. Ministers had a small
majority. But Lord John must have felt that his time was coming, while,
no doubt, Mr. Disraeli began to draw as near in fancy, to the envied
bench on which he sat so little at ease. The latter had done decidedly
better than when I heard him before; but, when the division was taken, I
could not but say to myself—is this all that England’s Senators have to
say in such a matter? I felt that there were few of them alive to the
importance of the thing in hand; and that no one seemed equal to the
support of old England in consistency with herself. Was this, indeed,
the Senate in which Burke had uttered his voice? Was it the hall in
which Chatham had rescued from the last disgrace the honour of his
country? And were there to be no words, like his—burning words—living
words—immortal words—to prove forever that England took not her shame
in abject submission! At least no such words were spoken. There was not
even a John of Gaunt there, to bewail the disgrace of “the dear, dear
isle,”
“Dear for her reputation through the world;”
and, notwithstanding the eminent exceptions to the remark, I said to
myself, as I left the House after midnight—I seem to have been hearing
only a “debate in the Senate of Lilliput.”
It seemed strange, before I sat at breakfast, early next morning, to
take up the _Times_, and read, in four or five columns, a very tolerable
report of the whole proceedings, and many of the words which seemed,
even then, to have scarcely ceased to sound in my ear. I cannot but add
the remark, that it is a great pity the amendment, which I had heard
debated, failed to pass. It would have loaded Lord John with the full
consequences of his own conduct, and it would have saved England from
the degradation of enacting a law, devised as a mere expedient, and
which affords to the enemy the darling satisfaction of defying it with
impunity.