Demand for Parliamentary Reform.--Death of George IV., and Accession of
William IV.--French Revolution of 1830.--Growing Feeling in Favor of
Reform.--Duke of Wellington's Declaration against Reform.--His
Resignation: Lord Grey becomes Prime-minister.--Introduction of the
Reform Bill.--Its Details.--Riots at Bristol and Nottingham.--Proposed
Creation of Peers.--The King's Message to the Peers.--Character and
Consequences of the Reform Bill.--Appointment of a Regency.--
Re-arrangement of the Civil List.
One of Pitt's great measures of domestic, apart from financial or
commercial, policy having become law, it seemed in some degree natural
to look for the accomplishment of the other, a reform of the House of
Commons, which, indeed, after the conclusion of the war, had been made
at times the subject of earnest petition, being one in which a far
greater number of people had a lively interest than that excited by
Catholic Emancipation. The Englishmen who had advocated that measure had
been striving for the adoption of a principle rather than for a
concession from which they could expect any personal benefit, since very
few in any English or Scotch constituency were Roman Catholics, or
desired to return a Roman Catholic representative. But thousands in
every county, including the whole body of citizens of some of the
largest and most flourishing towns, felt a personal concern in the
attainment of Parliamentary Reform, as the measure which would give
them, and which could alone give them, that voice in the affairs of the
kingdom to which they felt themselves entitled, but which they had never
yet enjoyed.
And before the end of the next session the prospect of the early success
of their aspirations was greatly increased by the death of the King.
George IV., who in his early manhood had attached himself to the Whigs
with an ardor and ostentation altogether unbecoming his position as heir
to the throne, had formally separated himself from them after the death
of Fox in 1806, and had gradually come to regard their adversaries with
a favor as exclusive as he had formerly shown to themselves. But the
Duke of Clarence, who now succeeded to the throne, had always shown a
leaning toward the Whigs, who of late had been commonly regarded as the
reforming party. While the war lasted, and during the few remaining
years of the reign of George III., no active steps toward Reform were
taken in Parliament; but under George IV. more than one borough
convicted of gross and habitual corruption, as has been mentioned, was
disfranchised. Grampound was so punished in the time of Lord Liverpool,
and its members were transferred to Yorkshire, so as to give that
largest of the counties four representatives; and it may be remarked
that this arrangement caused the Prime-minister to suggest an
improvement in the details of an election--which was afterward
universally adopted--when, in reply to a remark on the great
inconvenience that was found to exist in taking the poll at once in so
large a county as Yorkshire, he hinted at the possibility of obviating
that difficulty by allowing polls to be taken in different parts of the
county. And, since the Duke had been in office, two more boroughs,
Penrhyn and East Retford, had also been disfranchised; though the
Reformers failed in their endeavor to get the seats thus vacated
transferred to Manchester and Birmingham. With the accession of the new
sovereign, however, they became more active. They found encouragement in
other circumstances also. Many of those who were commonly called the
Ultra Tories had been so alienated from the Duke's government by the
Emancipation Act, that they were known to be ready to coalesce with
almost any party for the sake of overturning his administration.
Moreover, as forty years before, the French Revolution of 1789 had
caused great political excitement in England, so now the new French
revolution of July acted as a strong stimulus on the movement party in
this as well as in other countries; and altogether there was a very
general feeling that the time for important changes had come. The Duke
of Wellington was not blind to the prevalence of the idea; and, being by
no means willing to admit that his own policy of the preceding year had
in the least contributed to strengthen it, he conceived it to be his
duty to discountenance it by every means in his power; but the steps
which he took with that object only invigorated and inflamed it. As
Prime-minister, he inserted in the speech with which the new sovereign
opened his first Parliament in the autumn after his accession a general
panegyric on that "happy form of government under which, through the
favor of Divine Providence, this country had enjoyed for a long
succession of years a greater share of internal peace, of commercial
prosperity, of true liberty, of all that constitutes social happiness,
than had fallen to the lot of any other country of the world." And in
his own character, a few nights afterward, he added a practical
commentary on those sentences of the royal speech, when, in allusion to
Lord Grey's expression of a hope that the ministers would prepare "to
redress the grievances of the people by a reform of the Parliament," he
repudiated the suggestion altogether, avowing that the government were
contemplating no such measure, and adding that "he would go farther, and
say that he had never read or heard of any measure up to that moment
which in any degree satisfied his mind that the state of the
representation could be improved or rendered more satisfactory to the
country at large than at that moment. He was fully convinced that the
country possessed at that moment a Legislature which answered all good
purposes of legislation to a greater degree than any Legislature had
ever answered them in any country whatever.... And he would at once
declare that, as far as he was concerned, as long as he held any station
in the government of the country, he should always feel it his duty to
resist any measure of Reform when proposed by others."
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 gratitude, but it met with a
very different reception. Many of the newspapers which had not yet
forgiven the passing of Catholic Emancipation 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, pronouncing 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 title 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 classes which could not be
disregarded. The land-owners, who had previously almost monopolized the
representation, no longer constituted the wealthiest class of the
community. Pitt himself had raised a banker to the peerage. More
recently, men closely connected with the commercial classes 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
enfranchisement, 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 constitution, that it was impossible to
object to it. And their enfranchisement unavoidably led to the
disfranchisement 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 classes 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 assessed 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 constituted 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 assessed 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 entitled 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 unconstitutional 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 disfranchisement, 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 constitutional 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 passing of the bill. But he could not overcome his
repugnance to the measure as a severe blow to the constitution--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 passed 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
circumstances 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 constitutional 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 unconstitutional 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
passage in Mr. Hallam's great work on "Constitutional 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 constitution has not
furnished such direct securities.... The resource of subduing an
aristocratical faction by the creation of new peers could never be
constitutionally 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
constitutional 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 assembly was unconstitutional in the highest degree. For,
constitutionally, the sovereign has no right to signify his opinion,
nor, indeed, any recognized means of signifying it but by giving or
withholding his royal assent to measures which the two Houses have
passed. On any bill which has not yet been passed 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 constitution 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 dispassionately 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 constitution, 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 entitle 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 constitution 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 constitution
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
passing 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 passed 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 constitute 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
Emancipation Act, a mere restoration of privileges to any class or
classes 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 classes which had never enjoyed it; while it
was manifest that the political power thus conferred on these classes
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 constitution had been, that the
possession of freehold property, as the only permanent stake in the
country, was the only qualification which could entitle 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 constitution and rights. But this
principle, however generally it may have been asserted, 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 noble 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 constituents. 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 Manasseh Lopes, had provided a
refuge for Sir Robert Peel, when the course which he had taken on
Catholic Emancipation 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 class 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 anticipations 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 appetite for a farther
extension of them; nor by a growing party, now beginning to own the
title of Radicals, which till very recently had only been regarded as a
reproach, and who, even before the bill passed,[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 classes 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 substituted 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
constitution, 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 classes,
a farther lowering of the qualification for the exercise of the
franchise must transfer it from the middle to the lower classes; and
that those who view such transfer with alarm, and deprecate it as
fraught with peril to all our ancient institutions, 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 passed of constitutional 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 assist, 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 constitutional 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
Duchess of Kent must instantly assume the authority of Regent; but that,
on the birth of a posthumous child to the Queen Dowager, the Princess
and the Duchess, 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 constitutional 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 Sussex 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, ambassadors, and of the judges, were
paid out of it, as well as those of many place-holders of various
classes, 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 multitude were
constantly assured 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 constitution 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 assignment of many of the
charges to the Civil List even gave a false character to the
appointments themselves. If a sovereign was to pay ambassadors 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 petitions 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: "Constitutional History," iii., 331. See the whole
passage.]
[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: "Constitutional 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,
_Constitutional 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 constitution on the
democratic basis certain."]
[Footnote 224: Hallam, "Constitutional History," c. xvi., _in fin._]
[Footnote 225: "Semper in republicâ timendum est ne plurimum valeant
plurinn."--Cicero.]