CHAPTER X.

Abolition of Slavery.--Abridgment of the Apprenticeship.--The East India

Company's Trade is Thrown Open.--Commencement of Ecclesiastical

Reforms.--The New Poor-law.--State of Ireland.--Agitation against

Tithes.--Coercion Bill.--Beginning of Church Reform.--Sir Robert Peel

becomes Prime-minister.--Variety of Offices held Provisionally by the

Duke of Wellington.--Sir Robert Peel Retires, and Lord Melbourne Resumes

the Government.--Sir Robert Peel Proposes a Measure of Church

Reform.--Municipal Reform.--Measures of Ecclesiastical Reform.

Apart from the consideration of the abstract principle, on which the

advocates of Parliamentary Reform had insisted, of the light of many

classes hitherto unrepresented to representation, they had also dwelt on

the practical advantage which might be expected to ensue from the

greater degree in which public opinion would henceforth be brought to

bear on the action of the Houses, and, by a natural consequence, on the

administrative government also. And the bill had hardly passed when this

result began to show itself, not only in transactions of domestic

legislation, but in others which affected our most remote dependencies,

both in the East and West. We have seen in a previous chapter how

Wilberforce, after twenty years of labor and anxiety, reaped the reward

of his virtuous exertions in the abolition of the slave-trade. But he

had not ventured to grapple with the institution which gave birth to

that trade, the employment of slaves in our West India Islands. Yet it

was an evil indefensible on every ground that could possibly be alleged.

It was not only a crime and an injustice, but it was an anomaly, and a

glaring inconsistency, in any British settlement. The law, as we have

seen, had been laid down as absolutely settled, that no man within the

precincts of the United Kingdom could be a slave; that, even had such

been his previous condition, the moment his foot touched English soil he

became a free man. By what process of reasoning, then, could it be

contended that his right to liberty according to English law depended on

what portion of the British dominion he was in--that what was

incompatible with his claims as a human being in Kent ceased to be so in

Jamaica? The sentiment that what was just or unjust in one place was

just or unjust in every place; that a man's right to freedom did not

depend on the country of his birth or the color of his skin, had

naturally and logically been widely diffused and fostered by the

abolition of the slave-trade. It was but a small step from admitting

that there could be no justification for making a man a slave, to

asserting that there was an equal violation of all justice in keeping

one in slavery; and this conclusion was strengthened by tales, which

were continually reaching those most interested in the subject, of

oppression and cruelty practised by the masters, or oftener by their

agents and overseers, on the unfortunate beings over whom they claimed

power and right as absolute as any owner could pretend to over any

description of property. They made so general an impression that, ten

years before the time at which we have now arrived, a society had been

formed in London whose object was the immediate extinction of slavery in

every British settlement; and Canning, then Secretary of State, had

entered warmly into the general object of the society; not, indeed,

thinking the instant abolition practicable, but inducing Parliament to

pass a body of resolutions in favor of at once improving the condition

of the slaves, as the best and necessary preparation for their entire

enfranchisement;[226] and the next year, 1824, the subject was

recommended to the attention of the Houses in the King's speech, and an

Order in Council was issued enjoining the adoption of a series of

measures conceived in the spirit of those resolutions, among which one

was evidently meant as a precursor of the slaves' entire emancipation,

since it gave the "negro who had acquired sufficient property" a title

"to purchase his own freedom and that of his wife and family." And it

was, probably, from regarding it in this light that the planters (as the

owners of estates in the West Indies were generally called) selected

that provision as the object of their most vehement remonstrances. But,

though they were not so open in their remonstrances against the other

clauses of the order, they did worse, they disregarded them; and the

stories of the ill-treatment of the slaves were neither less frequent

nor less revolting than before.

Fresh Orders in Council, avowedly designed as the stepping-stones to

eventual emancipation, were issued; and one which reached the West

Indies at the end of 1831 was, unhappily, so misconstrued by the slaves

in Jamaica, who regarded it as recognizing their right to instant

liberation, that, when their masters refused to treat it as doing so,

they broke out into a formidable insurrection, which was not quelled

without great loss of life and destruction of property. The planters

were panic-stricken; many of them, indeed, were almost ruined. The

colonial Legislatures,[227] which had been established in the greater

part of the islands, addressed the ministers with strong protests

against the last Order in Council; and the mischief which had

confessedly been already done, and the farther mischief which was not

unreasonably dreaded, were so great that the cabinet consented to

suspend it for a while; and the House of Commons made a practical

confession that the planters were entitled to sympathy as well as the

slaves, by voting nearly a million of money to compensate those of

Jamaica for their recent losses.

But out-of-doors the feeling rather was that the insurrection had been

caused, not by the unreasoning though natural impatience for freedom

entertained by the negro--whom Canning had truly described as

"possessing the form and strength of a man, but the intellect of a

child"--but by the slackness and supineness of the local Legislature,

too much under the influence of the timid clamors of the planters to

listen to the voice of justice and humanity, which demanded to the full

as emphatically, if somewhat less vociferously, the immediate

deliverance of the slave. The object, however, thus desired was not so

free from difficulty as it seemed to those zealous but irresponsible

advocates of universal freedom; for, in the first place the slaves were

not the only persons to be considered; the planters also had an

undoubted right to have their interests protected, since, however

illegitimate property in human beings might be, it was certain that its

existence in that portion of the King's dominions had been recognized by

Parliament and courts of justice for many generations, and that suddenly

to withdraw a sanction and abrogate a custom thus established, and, as

it might fairly be believed, almost legalized by time, would be not only

ruinous to the planters, who would have no other means of cultivating

their lands, but, as being ruinous to them, would also manifestly be

most unjust. Even in the interests of the slaves themselves, instant

emancipation before they were fit for it might prove to them a very

doubtful blessing. The state, too, and the general interests of the

kingdom had to be considered, for the shipping employed in the West

India trade, and the revenue derived by the Imperial Exchequer from it,

were both of great amount. It was a very complicated question, and

required very cautious handling; but it was plain that the people were

greatly excited on the subject. One or two of the ministers themselves

had deeply pledged themselves to their constituents to labor for the

cessation of slavery; and eventually, though by no means blind to the

difficulty of arriving at a thoroughly safe solution of the question,

the ministry decided that "delay was more perilous than decision," and

they brought in a bill, in which they endeavored to combine the three

great objects--justice to the slave, by conferring on him that freedom

to which he, in common with all mankind, had an inviolable right;

justice to the slave-owner, by compensating him fairly for the loss of

what (however originally vicious the practice may have been) he was

entitled by long usage and more than one positive law to regard as

property; and a farther justice to the slave, that justice which

consists in being careful so to confer benefits as to do the greatest

amount of good to the recipient. The first object was attained by

enacting that those who had hitherto been slaves should be free; the

third was arrived at by making the freedom thus given, not

instantaneous, but by leading them to it, and preparing them for its

proper and useful enjoyment, by a system of apprenticeship. The slave

was to be apprenticed to his master for seven years, receiving, partly

in money and partly in kind, a certain fair amount of wages, and having

also one-fourth of his time absolutely at his own disposal. And the

second was secured by granting the planters the magnificent sum of

twenty millions of money, as compensation for the injury done to them;

or, in other words, as purchase-money for the property they were

compelled to surrender. The apprenticeship system did not wholly

succeed. The slaves were not sufficiently enlightened to appreciate the

character of the new arrangement; and, as the light in which it appeared

to them was rather that of deferring than of securing their

emancipation, it made them impatient rather than thankful. In the

majority of cases it proved difficult to induce them to work even

three-fourths of their time, and eventually the planters themselves were

driven to the conclusion that it was best to abridge the period of

apprenticeship. By the act of the colonial Legislatures themselves it

was shortened by two years, and the emancipation was completed on the

1st of August, 1838.

Still, though on this single point the success of the scheme did not

fully correspond to the hopes of those who had framed it, it was one

which did great honor to their ingenuity as well as to their

philanthropy (Lord Stanley, as Colonial Secretary, being the minister to

whose department it belonged). And the nation itself is fairly entitled

to no small credit for its cordial, ungrudging approval of a measure of

such unprecedented liberality. Indeed, the credit deserved was frankly

allowed it by foreign countries. To quote the language of an eloquent

historian of the period, "the generous acquiescence of the people under

this prodigious increase of their burdens has caused the moralists of

other nations to declare that the British Act of Emancipation stands

alone for moral grandeur in the history of the world."[228] And, in

respect of the personal liberty of the subject, it may be said to have

completed the British constitution; establishing the glorious principle,

that freedom is not limited to one part of our sovereign's dominions, to

these islands alone, but that in no part of the world in which the

British flag is erected can any sort of slavery exist for a single

moment.

The abolition of the political authority of the East India Company,

which took place some years after the time at which we have arrived, and

which will be mentioned in a subsequent chapter, would make it

unnecessary to mention the renewal of its charter, which took place at

this time, were it not that the force of public opinion again made

itself felt in some important limitations of its previous rights. The

monopoly of the trade with China which the Company had hitherto enjoyed

was resented as an injustice by the great body of our merchants and

ship-owners, who contended that all British subjects had an equal right

to share in advantages which had been won by British arms. The

government and Parliament adopted their view, and the renewed charter

extinguished not only that monopoly, but even the Company's exclusive

trading privileges in India itself, though these, like the rights of the

West India planters over their slaves, were purchased of it by an

annuity for forty years, which was estimated as an equivalent for the

loss of profit which must result to the proprietors of the Company's

stock from the sudden alteration. It cannot be said that any

constitutional principle was involved in what was merely a commercial

regulation, or relaxation of such regulations. Yet it may not be thought

inopportune to mention the transaction thus briefly, as one important

step toward the establishment of free-trade, which, at the end of fifty

years from the time when Pitt first laid the foundation of it, was

gradually forcing itself on all our statesmen, as the only sound

principle of commercial intercourse between nations. The laborious

historian of Europe during these years finds fault with the arrangements

now made, but only on the ground that they did not go far enough in that

direction; that, while "everything was done to promote the commercial

and manufacturing interests of England, nothing was done for those of

Hindostan;"[229] that, "while English cotton goods were admitted for a

nominal duty into India, there was no corresponding advantage thought of

to the industry of India in supplying the markets of the country." The

objection was not unfounded; but the system of which it complains was

too one-sided to be long maintained, and in less than ten years a great

financial reform had swept away the great mass of import duties, and so

far had placed the Indian manufacturer on the same level with his

fellow-subjects of English blood.

The disturbances which agitated the first years of the reign of William

IV. were not caused solely by the excitement attendant on the passing of

the Reform Bill. There had been extensive agricultural distress in

England, which had shown itself in an outbreak of new crimes, the

burning of ricks in the farm-yards, and the destruction of machinery, to

which the peasantry were persuaded by designing demagogues to attribute

the scarcity of employment. But statesmen of both parties were agreed in

believing that a great deal of the poverty which, especially in the

agricultural counties, had become the normal condition of the laborer,

might be ascribed to the pernicious working of the Poor-law, which

subsisted with scarcely any alteration as it had been originally enacted

in the reign of Elizabeth. There was even reason to doubt whether the

slight changes which had been made had been improvements. If they had

been in the direction of increased liberality to the poor man who needed

parish relief, and had to some extent lessened his discomforts, they had

at the same time tended greatly to demoralize both him and his employer,

by introducing a system of out-door relief, which, coupled with the

practice of regarding such relief as a legitimate addition to wages, led

the former to feel no shame at underpaying his workmen, and the workman

to feel no shame at depending on the parish for a portion of his means

of subsistence. It was not to be wondered at that under such a system

the poor-rates gradually rose to the prodigious amount of seven millions

and a quarter of money; or that the rate-payers began to clamor against

such a state of things, as imposing on them a burden beyond their power

to bear. It was evident that it was an evil which imperatively demanded

a remedy; and accordingly one of the first objects to which Lord Grey's

Cabinet turned its attention after the completion of the Reform Bill was

the amendment of the Poor-law.

The scheme which in the spring of 1834 they introduced to Parliament was

the first instance of the adoption in this country of that system of

centralization which has long been a favorite with some of the

Continental statesmen, but which is not equally in harmony with the

instincts of our people, generally more attached to local government.

But, if ever centralization could commend itself to the English mind, it

might well be when a new law and a new principle of action were to be

introduced, in the carrying out of which uniformity of practice over the

whole kingdom was especially desirable. Accordingly, the government bill

proposed the establishment of a Board of Commissioners to whom the

general administration of the Poor-laws over the whole kingdom was to be

intrusted. They were to have power to make rules and regulations as to

the mode or modes of relief to be given, subject to the approval of the

Secretary of State, that thus the establishment of one uniform system

over the whole country might be secured. Power was to be given to unite

several parishes into one union, and to erect large workhouses for the

several parishes thus massed together;[230] and every union was to be

under the management of boards of guardians, elected by the rate-payers

of the different parishes, with the addition of the resident magistrates

as ex officio guardians. Lord Althorp, who introduced the bill, admitted

that such extensive powers as he proposed to confer on the Board of

Commissioners were "an anomaly in the constitution," but pleaded the

necessity of the case as their justification, since it was indispensable

to vest a discretionary power somewhere, and the government was too

fully occupied with the business of the nation, while the local

magistrates would be destitute of the sources of information requisite

to form a proper opinion on the subject. The commissioners alone, being

exclusively devoted to the subject, and being alone in possession of all

the information that could be collected, were really the only body who

could fairly be trusted to form correct opinions on it.[231] The fact of

the creation of such a board being "an anomaly," or, as it might rather

have been called, a novelty in the constitution, does not seem an

insuperable objection, unless it were also inconsistent or at variance

with the fundamental principles of the constitution, and that can hardly

be alleged in this instance. It is true that local management, whether

its range were wide or narrow, whether covering the business of a county

or limited to a single parish, had been the general rule; but, like

every other arrangement for the conduct of affairs of any kind, that

local management was inherently subject to the supreme authority and

interference of Parliament. Nor, as the maintenance of this

Parliamentary authority, as the supreme referee in the last resource,

was provided for by the subordination of the commissioners for the

approval of their regulations to the Secretary of State, does it seem

that the arrangement now proposed and adopted can be said to have been

inconsistent with constitutional principle. And the necessity for some

change of that nature was clearly made out by the abuses which,

undeniably, had been suffered to grow up under the old system.

If the habitual condition of the Irish peasant were to be taken into

account, it would be correct to say that there was less distress at this

time in England than in Ireland; but there was still greater discontent,

and infinitely more of dangerous disturbance. Catholic Emancipation had

stimulated the agitators, not pacified them; they regarded it as a

triumph over the English government; and, being so, as at once a reason

for demanding, and a means of extorting, farther concessions. But this

notion of theirs, when inculcated on the peasantry, bore terrible fruit,

in such an increase of crime as had probably never been known in any

country in the world. In the provinces of Leinster, Munster, and

Connaught murders, deeds of arson, and rapine were of far more than

daily occurrence.[232] Lord Althorp asserted in the House of Commons

that more lives had been sacrificed in Ireland by murder in the

preceding year than in one of Wellington's victories. And what was, if

possible, a still worse symptom of the disposition of the common people,

was exhibited in the impossibility of bringing the criminals, even when

well known, to justice. Jurors held back from the assizes, witnesses who

had seen murders committed refused to give evidence. The Roman Catholic

prelates, and the higher class of the Roman Catholic clergy--most of

whom, greatly to their credit, exerted themselves to check this fearful

progress of wickedness--found their denunciations unheeded; while

O'Connell, in his place in the House of Commons, used language which to

an ignorant and ferocious peasantry looked almost like a justification

of it, affirming it to be caused wholly by the "unjust and ruinous

policy of the government" in refusing to abolish tithes. It was not the

first time that the existence of tithe had been alleged as an Irish

grievance. In the three southern provinces by far the greater portion of

the tenantry were Roman Catholics, and they had long been complaining

that they were forced to pay for the support of the Protestant clergyman

of their parish, whose ministrations they could not attend, as well as

for the maintenance of their own priest, whose livelihood depended on

their contributions. According to strict political economy, there could

be no doubt that the burden of the tithe fell, not on the tenant, but on

the landlord, in the calculation of whose rent the amount of tithe to

which each holding was liable was always taken into consideration; and

that being the true doctrine, it was equally plain that in reality the

Protestant clergy were paid, not by Roman Catholics, but by Protestants,

since it was not disputed that by far the greater part of the

land-owners in every province were Protestants.[233] But an ignorant

peasant is no student of political economy or of logic; and the fact

that the payment of the tithe passed through his hands was in his eyes,

an incontrovertible proof that it came out of his pocket. The discontent

had gradually begotten an organized resistance to the payment, and the

mischief of allowing the continuance of such a state of feeling and

conduct, which was manifestly likely to impair the respect for all law,

made such an impression on the government that, in the royal speech with

which he opened the session of 1832, the King recommended the whole

subject to the consideration of Parliament, urging the Houses to inquire

"whether it might not be possible to effect improvements in the laws

respecting this subject."

In compliance with this recommendation, committees were appointed by

both Houses; and the result of their investigations was a recommendation

that a new arrangement should be made, under which the tithe should be

commuted to a rent-charge. Accordingly, the next year the ministers

proceeded to give effect to this recommendation. But they reasonably

judged that an alteration of a particular law in compliance with the

clamor raised against it would be a concession pregnant with mischief to

the principle of all government, if it were not accompanied, or rather

preceded, by a vindication of the majesty of all law; and therefore the

first measure affecting Ireland, which they brought in in 1833, was a

"Coercion Bill," which empowered the Lord-lieutenant not only to

suppress the meetings of any assembly or association which he might

consider dangerous to the public peace, but also to declare by

proclamation any district in which tumults and outrages were rife to be

"in a disturbed state;" and in districts thus proclaimed no person was

to be permitted to be absent from his house from an hour after sunset to

sunrise. Houses might be searched for arms, martial law was to be

established, and courts-martial held for the trial of all offences

except felonies; and the _Habeas Corpus_ Act was suspended for three

months. O'Connell and his party protested with great vehemence against

such an enactment, as a violation of every right secured to the subject

by the constitution. And a bill which suspended the ordinary courts of

justice must be admitted to have been incompatible with the constitution

as commonly understood and enjoyed. But if the measure thus proposed was

extraordinary, the state of affairs which had led to its proposal was so

also in a far greater degree. The records of no nation had ever

presented such a fearful catalogue of crimes as was now laid before the

Parliament, and at such a crisis the statesmen to whom the tranquillity

of the country and the safety of the citizens were intrusted were

undoubtedly called upon to go back from the letter of the constitution

to that which is the primary object of every constitution--the safety of

those who live under it. _Salus populi suprema lex_. And the argument of

necessity was regarded, and rightly regarded, by both Houses of

Parliament as a sufficient and complete justification of even so

exceptional an enactment.

And concurrently with this enactment, which, however indispensable for

the repression of crime, no one could deny to be severe, the ministers

endeavored also to remove the causes of discontent by a large measure of

Church reform, not confining their aim to settling the tithe question,

but dealing with the whole question of the Irish Church in such a way as

to lay down, as an undoubted principle of the constitution, the doctrine

that the Church existed for the benefit of the nation; that its property

was bestowed on it for the same object; and that, consequently, the

nation, or in other words the Parliament, had a perfect right to deal

with its property and endowments of all kinds, always keeping the same

end in view, the general advantage of the whole nation. Proceeding on

these maxims, they introduced a Church Reform Bill, in which, perhaps,

the most remarkable circumstance of all was, that the evil which had

been the original cause of their taking up the subject at all was the

last thing settled, not, indeed, being finally arranged for four years;

while the principal detail in the way of reform which was completed in

this first session was one which, however reasonable, had hitherto

received but little attention, and had certainly provoked no great

outcry. It could not be denied that the Episcopal Establishment in

Ireland was out of all proportion to the extent of the country and the

number of the Protestant population, or of the parishes. The entire

population in communion with the Church fell short of 900,000. The

number of parishes scarcely exceeded 1400. But over this comparatively

scanty flock were set no fewer than eighteen bishops and four

archbishops; while England, with 12,000 parishes, was contented with

twenty-four bishops and two archbishops. It was proposed to consolidate

these bishoprics into ten, the archbishoprics into two, a reduction

which could hardly fail to commend itself to all. But with this

reduction was combined a variety of other details relating to the

Episcopal revenues, to the right of the bishops to grant leases, and

other matters of finance, which the ministers proposed so to remodel as

to create a very large fund to be at the disposal of the state. On this

point the greater part of the ministerial scheme was wrecked for the

time. They succeeded in carrying that part of it which consolidated the

bishoprics, and in inducing the House of Commons to grant, first as a

loan, which was originally turned into a gift, a million of money to be

divided among the incumbents of the different parishes, who were reduced

to the greatest distress by the inability to procure payment of their

tithes, the arrears of which amounted to a far larger sum.

But the assertion that any surplus fund arising from redistribution of

the Episcopal revenues ought to belong to the state, not only called

forth a vigorous resistance from the whole of the Tory party at its

first promulgation, but, when the subject was revived the next year, and

one of the supporters of the ministry, Mr. Ward, proposed a resolution

that any such surplus might be legitimately applied to secular purposes,

it produced a schism in the ministry itself. The resolution was

cordially accepted by Lord John Russell, but was so offensive to four of

his colleagues, Mr. Stanley and Sir James Graham being among the number,

that they at once resigned their offices. The breach thus made was not

easily healed; and before the end of the session other dissensions of a

more vexatious and mortifying character led to the retirement of the

Prime-minister himself. All attempts to deal with the tithe question

failed for the time, four more years elapsing before it was finally

settled. But, curtailed as it was, the bill of 1833 still deserves to be

remembered as a landmark in constitutional legislation, since it

afforded the first instance of Parliament affirming a right to deal with

ecclesiastical dignities and endowments, thus setting a precedent which,

in the next reign, was followed with regard to the Church of England.

Lord Melbourne succeeded Lord Grey at the Treasury; but every one saw

that the ministry was greatly weakened. The King, too, had become

greatly dissatisfied both with their general policy, especially in

regard to the Irish Church--which he took an opportunity of assuring the

Irish bishops he was unalterably resolved to uphold--and also with the

language and conduct of one or two individual ministers, to which it is

not necessary to refer more particularly; and when, on the death of Lord

Spencer, father of Lord Althorp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which

took place in November, 1834, it became necessary for Lord Melbourne to

propose to him a re-arrangement of some of the cabinet offices, he at

once dismissed the whole body of the ministers. It was a somewhat

singular step to take, for they had not been defeated in Parliament, and

he did not himself allege any special dissatisfaction with anything

which they had yet done, though he did apprehend that some of them would

press upon him measures disadvantageous to "the clergy of the Church of

England in Ireland," to which he had an insuperable objection; and,

moreover, that the subject would cause fresh divisions in the ministry,

and the resignation of one or two more of its most important members. He

had, indeed, six months before, given a practical proof of his distrust

of the ability of Lord Melbourne and the colleagues who remained to him

to carry on the government of the kingdom satisfactorily, by desiring

the new Prime-minister to enter into communication with the leaders of

the Opposition, "to endeavor at this crisis to prevail upon them to

afford their aid and co-operation toward the formation of an

administration upon an enlarged basis, combining the services of the

most able and efficient members of each" party.[234] Nor had he

relinquished the idea of bringing about such a coalition, till he

learned that both Lord Melbourne and Sir Robert Peel considered the

differences which divided them to be too deeply founded on principle to

render their union in one administration either beneficial to the state

or creditable to themselves. And it may be said that the letter in which

Lord Melbourne had in November announced to his Majesty the death of

Lord Spencer, and the necessity for new arrangements which that event

had created, by the expression that "in these new and altered

circumstances it was for his Majesty to consider whether it were his

pleasure to authorize Viscount Melbourne to attempt to make such fresh

arrangements as might enable his present servants to continue to conduct

the affairs of the country, or whether his Majesty deemed it advisable

to adopt any other course," and that "Lord Melbourne earnestly entreated

that no personal consideration for him might prevent his Majesty from

taking any measures or seeking any other advice which he might think

more likely to conduce to his service and to the advantage of the

country," did not only contemplate, but to a certain degree even

suggested, the possibility of his Majesty's preferring to have recourse

to fresh advisers.

The King's subsequent acts and their result, however, certainly took the

kingdom by surprise. He applied to the Duke of Wellington to undertake

the formation of a new ministry; and the Duke, explaining to the King

that "the difficulty of the task consisted in the state of the House of

Commons, earnestly recommended him to choose a minister in the House of

Commons," and named Sir Robert Peel as the fittest object for his

Majesty's choice. Sir Robert was in Italy at the time; but, on receiving

the royal summons, he at once hastened to England, the Duke of

Wellington in the mean time accepting the offices of First Lord of the

Treasury and Secretary of State, as a provisional arrangement, till he

should arrive in London.

Sir Robert reached England early in December; and though, if "he had

been consulted beforehand, he would have been inclined to dissuade the

dismissal of the last ministry as premature and impolitic," he did not

consider it compatible "with his sense of duty" to decline the charge

which the King laid upon him, and at once accepted the office of

Prime-minister, being fully aware that by so doing he "became

technically, if not morally, responsible for the dissolution of the

preceding government, though he had not had the remotest concern in

it."[235] In the formation of his ministry he so far endeavored to carry

out the views which the King had suggested to Lord Melbourne in the

summer as to invite the co-operation of Mr. Stanley (who, by the death

of his grandfather, had recently become Lord Stanley) and Sir J. Graham,

who, as has been mentioned before, had retired from Lord Grey's cabinet.

A new name, that of "Conservative," had recently been invented for the

more moderate section of the old Tory party; and it was one which,

though Lord Grey had taunted them with it, as betraying a sense of shame

at adhering to their old colors, Peel was inclined to adopt for himself,

as characteristic of his feelings and future objects; and perhaps he

thought it might help to smooth the way for a junction with him of those

who would flinch from proclaiming so decided a change in their opinions

as would be implied by their becoming colleagues of one who still

cherished the name of Tory. But they declined his offers; and

consequently he was forced to select his cabinet entirely from the party

of anti-Reformers. He dissolved Parliament, a step as to which it seemed

to him that the universal expectations of, and even preparation for, a

dissolution, left him practically scarcely any option;[236] but he soon

found, as, indeed, he had feared he should find, the attempt to

establish a Conservative government premature. The party of the late

ministry, following the example set by Mr. Fox in 1784 with better

fortune, divided against him in the House of Commons on every occasion,

defeating him in every division; and at the beginning of April he

retired, and Lord Melbourne and his former colleagues resumed their

offices with very little change.

They had, as was natural, not been contented with opposing the

Conservative ministry in its general policy, but in both Houses they had

attacked it with great energy. They had begun the battle in both Houses

in the debate on the address, in which they selected three points in the

recent transactions for special condemnation, affirming that in every

one of them the royal prerogative had been unconstitutionally

exercised--the dismissal of the late ministry, the dissolution of

Parliament, and the appointment of the Duke of Wellington to a variety

of offices. In the House of Commons the attack was led by Lord Morpeth

and Lord John Russell; in the House of Lords by Lord Melbourne himself.

It was urged that, though the prerogative of the sovereign to dismiss

his ministers was undoubted and inalienable, yet the Houses had a clear

right to sit in judgment on any particular exercise of it; and that the

circumstances of the late ministry having been but recently formed, of

its possessing in a conspicuous degree the confidence of the great

majority of the House of Commons, and of its being occupied at the

moment of its dismissal with matters of high national concern, justified

the House in calling on the new ministers to show valid reasons for its

sudden dismissal. As to the dissolution, it was asked what misdemeanor

the late House of Commons had committed? No difference had occurred

between it and the other House of Parliament. It had passed no hostile

vote against any administration. It had been in existence but a very

short time. All these circumstances, they affirmed, made it reasonable

for the Houses to express to his Majesty their disapprobation of the

dissolution. Lord Morpeth argued, moreover, that the right of the House

of Commons to inquire into such an exercise of the royal prerogative was

proved by the example of Mr. Pitt, who, in 1784, had introduced into the

speech from the throne a paragraph inviting Parliament to approve of the

recent dissolution; and what Parliament could be asked to approve of, it

manifestly had an equal right to censure. But the most vehement of the

censures of the Opposition were directed against what Lord Morpeth

called "the most unseemly huddling of offices in the single person of

the Duke of Wellington; an unconstitutional concentration of

responsibility and power, at which there was hardly an old Whig of the

Rockingham school whose hair did not stand on end." He admitted that in

the present instance the arrangement had only been provisional and

temporary, and that "no harm had been done;" but, he asked, "what harm

might not have been done? If the country had been suddenly obliged to go

to war, who would have been responsible for the Foreign Department? If

an insurrection of the negroes had occurred, who was responsible for the

Colonial Office? If in Ireland any tithe dispute had arisen, who was

responsible as Home-secretary?" And Lord Melbourne, though a speaker

generally remarkable for moderation, on this subject went much farther;

and, after urging that, "if one person held the situation of First Lord

of the Treasury, and also that of Secretary of State for the Home

Department, it would not only place in his hands without any control the

appointment to every great office in the state, but a person so situated

would also have the pecuniary resources of the state at his disposal

without check or investigation," he proceeded to assert that "an

intention to exercise those offices would amount to a treasonable

misdemeanor." He did not, indeed, go so far as his late

Attorney-general, Sir J. Campbell, who, in vexation at his loss of

office, had even threatened the Duke with impeachment; but, though he

admitted that the Duke had been free from the guilty intention of

exercising the authority of these offices, he suggested that "the Lords

ought to pass some resolution calculated to prevent so great a breach of

the constitution from being drawn into a precedent."

On the first point thus raised, for the dismissal of the late ministry

without any such cause as is usually furnished by an adverse vote of one

of the Houses of Parliament, Peel frankly admitted that his acceptance

of office rendered him constitutionally responsible, though, as he also

said, it was notorious that in fact he had, and could have had, no

previous knowledge of it; but he denied that any constitutional question

whatever was involved in it, since the King's right was denied by no

one; and he could, therefore, only consent to discuss it as a question

of policy and expediency. And, looking at it in this light, he regarded

his defence as easy and complete. He contended that the events of the

past year, the resignation of several of the subordinate ministers, and

finally of Lord Grey himself, and the proposal which had been made to

him (Peel) and several of his friends to coalesce with Lord Melbourne,

rendered the act by which the late government had been removed perfectly

justifiable on the part both of the King and of himself; that the King

was justified in thinking a wholly fresh arrangement preferable to a

re-arrangement of Lord Melbourne's cabinet; and he himself in obeying

his sovereign's commands to form a new administration.

The wisdom and propriety of the dissolution, too, could only be examined

as a question of expediency; but in this instance every consideration

not only recommended but compelled it. "When he undertook the arduous

duties now imposed upon him, he did determine that he would leave no

constitutional effort untried to enable him satisfactorily to discharge

the trust imposed in him. He did fear that if he had met the late

Parliament he should have been obstructed in his course, and obstructed

in a manner and at a season which might have precluded an appeal to the

people. It was the constant boast of the late government that the late

Parliament had unbounded confidence in them. And, if that Parliament

was, as had been constantly asserted, relied upon as ready to condemn

him without a hearing, could any one be surprised at his appeal to the

judgment of another, a higher and a fairer tribunal, the public sense of

the people?" Precedent, too, was in his favor on this point, since,

"whenever an extensive change of government had occurred, a dissolution

of Parliament had followed;" and he referred to the year 1784, and to

1806, when the administration of which Lord Grey was the leading member

at once dissolved the existing Parliament on coming into office; though

he believed "the present to be the first occasion on which a House of

Commons had been invited to express its dissatisfaction at the exercise

of the prerogative of dissolution."

To the strictures of Lord Melbourne and Lord Morpeth on the Duke of

Wellington's temporary assumption of a combination of offices, it was

replied by Sir Robert and the Duke that, though there might be

inconvenience from the assumption of all those powers by one individual,

it was so far from being unconstitutional, that it was a common practice

for the Secretary for one department to act for another during intervals

of recreation, or periods of ill-health; that there was ample precedent

for such a proceeding. In the last week of the life of Queen Anne, the

Duke of Shrewsbury had united three of the greatest posts of the

kingdom, those of Lord Treasurer, Lord Chamberlain, and Lord-lieutenant

of Ireland, with the sanction of that great constitutional lawyer, Lord

Somers. And in 1827 Mr. Canning had retained the seals of the Foreign

Office for some weeks after his appointment as First Lord of the

Treasury. Moreover, there was actually a law which provided that when

the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer is vacant the seals of that

office shall be delivered to the Chief-justice; and under this rule, in

the latter part of the reign of George II., Chief-justice Lord Mansfield

had continued finance-minister for above three months. And, as to the

practical result of what had been done in the present instance, the Duke

affirmed, what, indeed, was universally admitted, that the arrangement

had from the first been understood to be merely temporary; that no

inconvenience had resulted from it; indeed, that "not a single act had

been done in any one of the offices which had not been essentially

necessary for the service of the country."

The first two points on which the ministry was assailed it seems

superfluous to examine, since it is clear that the position taken up by

Sir Robert Peel is impregnable: that, on every view of the principles

and practice of the constitution, there was no doubt of the right of the

sovereign to dismiss his ministers or to dissolve the Parliament at his

pleasure; and that those acts can only be judged of by a consideration

of their expediency. Inexpedient, indeed, the dismissal of the preceding

ministry is generally considered to have been, even in the interest of

the Conservatives themselves. But inexpedient the dissolution can hardly

be pronounced to have been, since, though the new election failed to

give them a majority in the House of Commons, it beyond all doubt

greatly strengthened their minority. On the other hand, though it cannot

be denied that the House of Commons has a perfect right to express its

disapproval of any or every act of the minister, it is not so clear that

Lord Morpeth's invitation to it to express its dissatisfaction with this

particular act of dissolution was, on general principles, expedient or

safe; since such a vote is making a perilous approach to claiming for

the House the right of being asked for its consent to its own

dissolution, a claim the admission of which had been one of the most

fatal, if not the most fatal, of all the concessions of Charles I.

As to the Duke of Wellington's assumption of a variety of offices, it is

probable that when he first proposed to the King to confer them on him,

he anticipated no objection whatever from any quarter, since he had so

little idea of there being any impropriety in holding two offices, were

they ever so apparently incongruous, if his Majesty should have directed

him to do so, that seven years before, when he became Prime-minister, he

had at first designed permanently to retain the command of the army in

conjunction with the Treasury, and had only been induced to abandon the

intention by the urgent remonstrance of Sir Robert Peel; and,

constitutionally, there does not seem to be any limitation of the

sovereign's power to confer offices, to unite or to divide them. Indeed,

the different Secretary-ships of State seem to owe their existence

entirely to his will, and not to any act of Parliament. He can diminish

the number, if he should think fit, as he did in 1782, when, on the

termination of the American war, he forbore to appoint a successor to

Lord George Germaine, in Lord Rockingham's administration; or he can

increase the numbers, as he did in 1794, when he revived the third

Secretaryship, which he had suppressed twelve years before, without any

act of Parliament being passed to direct either the suspension or the

revival. He can even leave the most important offices vacant, and

intrust the performance of their duties to a commission, as was done in

this very year 1835, when the Great Seal was put in commission, and the

duties, for above two years, were performed by commissioners, who had

other duties also to discharge; and these instances may, perhaps,

warrant the conclusion that the distribution of the different posts in

what is generally known as the cabinet is dictated by considerations of

what is practicable and expedient rather than by any positive and

invariable rule or principle.

Yet it does not follow that, because the constitution was not violated

or endangered by such an arrangement, the leaders of the Opposition did

other than their duty in calling attention to it. Unquestionably, it is

historically true that the liberties of the people owe their

preservation, growth, and vigor to the jealous watchfulness to check the

first and slightest appearance of any attempt to encroach upon them,

which has been constantly exercised from the very earliest times by an

almost unbroken series of fearless and independent patriots. And in this

instance the very novelty of such an arrangement as had taken place did

of itself make criticism a duty; though it may also be thought that the

critics acted wisely in contenting themselves with calling notice to it,

and abstaining from asking Parliament to pronounce a formal judgment on

it, since any express censure would have been unwarranted either by the

facts of the case or by any inference to be drawn from previous usage,

while an approval of it would wear the appearance not only of

sanctioning, but even of inviting a repetition of an arrangement which,

if ever attempted to be carried out in actual practice, must tend to

grave inconvenience, if not to discredit.

Lord Melbourne resumed office, and, being strengthened by the manifest

inability of the opposite party to command the confidence of the House

of Commons, began to apply himself with vigor to the carrying out of

several measures of internal reform, some of which involved not only the

property but the long-established rights of very considerable bodies,

and, as so doing, have an importance in a constitutional point of view,

besides that arising from their immediate effects. Peel had been equally

alive to the desirableness, so cogent as almost to amount to a moral

necessity, of introducing reforms into more than one old institution,

such as should bring them more into harmony with the spirit of the age,

remodelling or terminating some arrangements which were manifest abuses,

and others which, though, if dispassionately examined and properly

understood, they, perhaps, were not really grievances, yet in their

operation caused such discontent and heart-burnings that they were as

mischievous as many others far more indefensible in theory. And,

short-lived as his administration had been, he had found time to frame

and introduce an extensive measure of Church reform, not only dealing

with the question of tithes, the levy and collection of which in some of

their details had long been made subjects of bitter complaints by the

farmers, but including also provision for the creation of two new

bishoprics, those of Ripon and Manchester. No part of his measure was

more imperatively called for by the present circumstances of the nation,

or of greater importance in its future operation. There had been no

increase in the number of bishops since the reign of Elizabeth; but

since her time not only had the population of the entire kingdom been

quadrupled, but some districts which had then been very scantily peopled

had become exceedingly populous. These districts had hitherto been

almost destitute of Episcopal supervision, which now was thus to be

supplied to them. But the new legislation did more. It might be expected

that the growth of the population would continue, and would in time

require a farther and corresponding increase of the Episcopate; and the

erection of these new dioceses was, therefore, not only the supplying of

a present want, but the foundation of a system for increasing the

efficiency of the Church which should be capable of gradual progressive

expansion, as the growth of the population in various districts might be

found to require additional facilities for supervision. And the judgment

with which the new arrangement met the requirements of the community may

be regarded as proved by the circumstance that now, after the lapse of

nearly half a century, it is maintained in active operation, and is

admitted by all parties not only to be of the greatest practical

benefit, but also to have a moral effect scarcely less valuable in the

degree in which it has stimulated the application of private munificence

to the great work of Church extension.

But before Lord Grey quitted office his government had also called the

attention of Parliament to the necessity of a large municipal reform,

which, indeed, it seemed to them that the Reform Bill had bound them, in

all consistency, to introduce. In the speech with which the King had

closed the session of 1833, he had informed the Houses that he had

"directed commissions to be issued for investigating the state of the

municipal corporations throughout the United Kingdom, the result of

whose inquiries would enable them to mature some measure which might

seem best fitted to place the internal government of corporate cities

and towns upon a solid foundation in respect of their finances, their

judicature, and their police." He reminded them that they had recently

passed acts "for giving constitutions upon sound principles to the royal

and parliamentary boroughs of Scotland," and warned them that "their

attention would hereafter be called to the expediency of extending

similar advantages to the unincorporated towns in England which had now

acquired the right of returning members to Parliament." The commission

of which his Majesty thus spoke had now presented its report, strongly

condemnatory of the existing system in almost every point of view; of

the constitution and mode of election of the existing corporations, and

of their government of the towns over which they presided. It declared

that "even where they existed in their least imperfect form, and were

most rightfully administered, they were inadequate to the wants of the

present state of society." But they charged them also with positive

offences of no venial kind. "They had perverted their powers to

political ends, sacrificing local interests to party purposes. They had

diverted from their legitimate use revenues which ought to have been

applied for the public advantage, wasting them in many instances for the

benefit of individuals; sometimes even employing for purposes of

corruption funds originally intended for charitable uses." And they

asserted that this too common misconduct of these bodies had engendered

"among a great majority of the inhabitants of the incorporated towns a

general and just dissatisfaction with their municipal institutions, a

distrust of the self-elected municipal councils, and of the municipal

magistracy, tainting with suspicion the local administration of

justice." And therefore they "felt it their duty to represent to his

Majesty that the existing municipal corporations of England and Wales

neither possessed nor deserved the confidence and respect of his

Majesty's subjects; and that a thorough reform must be effected before

they could become what they ought to be, useful and efficient

instruments of local government."

It would be superfluous here to repeat the story of the rise of the

boroughs, whose gradual acquisition of charters, with privileges and

powers of various degrees, has been sufficiently investigated by

Hallam.[237] What the Parliament had now to deal with was the way in

which the system worked in the nineteenth century; and here it must be

confessed that the report of the commissioners, severe as it was, did in

no degree exaggerate the prevailing evils. The corporations had

gradually become self-elected oligarchies of the worst kind. It must be

admitted that, in perverting their authority to political purposes, they

might plead the excuse that they were but following the example set them

by the ministers of William III., who introduced into their bill for

restoring the corporations which James II. had suppressed clauses

manifestly intended to preserve the ascendency of the Whig party, "by

keeping the Church or Tory faction out of"[238] them. But no such

palliation (if, indeed, that had any right to be called a palliation)

could be alleged for their abuse of the trusts committed to them; abuse

which, if committed by single individuals, would have been branded, and

perhaps punished, as malversation and fraud of the deepest dye. A

sufficient specimen of the kind and extent of their misdeeds in one

branch of their duties was afforded by a single paragraph of Lord John

Russell's speech, in which he affirmed that, in some of the reports of

their management of charitable estates committed to their care, it was

proved that "the property, instead of being employed for the general

benefit of the town, had been consumed for the partial benefit of a few

individuals, and not unfrequently in the feastings and entertainments in

which the mayor and other corporators had been in the habit of

indulging. In some not very large boroughs these expenses had amounted

to £500 and £600 a year; and the enjoyment had been confined to freemen

of only one party." And the perpetuity of this mismanagement was in most

instances secured by the members of the corporation themselves electing

their new colleagues on the occasion of any vacancy.

To put an end to this discreditable state of affairs, the government had

prepared a very sweeping scheme of reform, though that it was not too

sweeping was proved by the approval with which not only its principle

but most of its details were received by the greater part of the

Opposition; the leading principle being, to quote the words of the

minister in introducing the bill, "that there should be one uniform

government instituted, applicable to all; one uniform franchise for the

purpose of election; and a like description of officers in each, with

the exception of some of the larger places, in which there would be a

recorder, or some other such magistrate. The first thing to be amended

was the mode of election to the corporation, which was now to be

intrusted to all such rate-payers in each borough as had paid poor-rates

for three years, and resided within seven miles of the place." Lord John

Russell had considered, he said, "whether this franchise should be

limited to those paying a certain amount of rates; to the ten-pound

householders, for instance, to whom the parliamentary franchise was

confined;" but he decided on proposing to extend it to _all_

rate-payers, because, according to the established principle, to the

known and recognized principle of the constitution, it is right that

those who contribute their money should have a voice in the election of

the persons by whom the money is expended. The old modes of acquiring

the freedom of a corporation, such as birth, apprenticeship, etc., were

to be abolished, as also were all exclusive rights of trade, vested

rights, however, being preserved. The next point to be decided was the

composition of the corporation which these rate-payers were to elect,

and the ministerial proposal was that each corporation should consist of

a mayor, aldermen, and councillors, possessing a certain amount of

property as a qualification, and varying in number according to the

population of the borough; the larger towns being also divided into

wards, with a certain number of common-councilmen and aldermen to be

chosen in each ward. The mayor was to be a yearly officer; of the

aldermen and councillors a certain number were to retire each year,

being, however, capable of re-election. The mayor was to be elected by

the councils, and was to be a magistrate during his year of office. And

the body thus constituted was to have the entire government of the

borough; of its police, its charities, and generally, and most

especially, of the raising and expenditure of its funds,[239] which had

been too often dealt with in a manner not only wasteful, but profligate.

Cases had been brought forward in which "corporations had been incurring

debts year by year, while the members were actually dividing among

themselves the proceeds of the loans they raised." The revenue derived

from charitable estates had been "no less scandalously mismanaged." And

the bill provided for the appointment of finance committees, trustees,

auditors, and a regular publication of all the accounts, as the only

efficient remedy and preventive of such abuses. The whole police of the

town and administration of justice was also to be completely under the

control of the council; and for the appointment of magistrates the

council was to have the power of recommending to the crown those whom

they thought fit to receive the commission of the peace; and in the

large towns it should have power also to provide a salary for

stipendiary magistrates. Another clause provided that towns which could

not as yet be included in the bill, since they had never been

incorporated, might obtain charters of incorporation by petition to the

Privy Council.

Such were the general provisions of this great measure of reform; a bill

similar in principle having already been enacted for Scotland, and

another being shortly after passed, with such variations of detail as

the differences in the circumstances of the country required, for

Ireland. Some of the clauses, especially those which preserved the

vested rights of freemen and their families, and which required a

certain amount of property or rating qualifications in the town

councillors, were not originally included in the bill, but were inserted

as amendments in the House of Lords; and it may be remarked that the

result of the discussion in that House afforded a proof of the sagacity

of those peers who, though conscientiously opposed to the Reform Bill,

preferred allowing it to pass by their own retirement from the final

divisions to driving the minister to carry his point by a creation of

peers, since the avoidance of such an addition to their numbers as had

been threatened enabled them now to force the adoption of these

amendments on a reluctant minister. And it seems difficult to deny that

the first was required by justice, and that the second was most

desirable in the interests of the measure itself. Without it the town

councillors, from among whom the mayor was to be chosen, might have been

selected from the poorest, the least educated, and least independent

class of the rate-payers. In some boroughs, or in some wards of many

boroughs, it may be regarded as certain that they would have been so

chosen; and such an admixture of unfit persons would have tended to

bring some degree of discredit on the whole council, while to the

successful inauguration of a new system the establishment of a general

feeling of respect for it and confidence in it was of primary

importance. The danger, too, of so ill-judged a selection would have

been greatest in the larger boroughs, those being, at the same time, the

very places in which the occasional difficulty of maintaining order and

tranquillity made it even more necessary than in smaller towns that the

council should enjoy the esteem and confidence of their fellow-citizens.

The principle that every man who contributed to the rates had a right to

claim a voice in the election of those who were to expend them, which

the minister laid down as the justification of the clause conferring the

municipal franchise on all the rate-payers, was strongly contested by

Sir Robert Peel, though neither he nor those of his party in the Upper

House proposed any alteration of the bill in this respect; but he

pointed out that, though Lord John affirmed it to be the known and

recognized principle of the constitution, he had not acted on it in the

Reform Bill; and it is certainly open to question whether the adoption

of some limitation would not have been an improvement on the present

measure. The doctrine established in this instance by Lord John gave a

preponderance at every municipal election to mere numbers, since the

poorest class is everywhere the most numerous, and its admission led

almost inevitably to a reduction of the parliamentary franchise at some

future day, though certainly at this time, and for many years afterward,

Lord John was far from contemplating any alteration of the Reform Bill,

but, on the contrary, took every opportunity of proclaiming his

adherence to it as a final solution of the question.

But though in this particular it is possible that the bill might have

been improved, it must be allowed to have been a measure very creditable

to its framers. Few reforms have been conceived in a more judicious and

more moderate spirit; few have been so carefully limited to the removal

of real and proved abuses, and the prevention of their recurrence, while

avoiding any concessions to the insidious demands of revolutionists, or

the ill-regulated fancies of metaphysical theorists. It was a reform

strictly in accordance with some of the most important principles of the

constitution, as they have been gradually developed by the practical

experience of successive generations. It combined with felicitous skill

representative with local government; it secured uniformity in working,

and that peculiarly English principle of publicity, without which the

best-devised system cannot long be preserved from degeneracy.

The Church reforms in England and Ireland, which were carried out about

the same time, cannot be said to have involved any constitutional

principle, though one of them greatly extended the principle of

religious toleration and indulgence to the Dissenters of various sects.

No alteration had been made in the Marriage Act of 1754, which declared

it indispensable to the validity of a marriage that it should be

performed in a church and by a clergyman of the Established Church. And

it was not strange that this should be felt as a grievance by those who

were not in communion with that Church. But some of the Dissenting sects

had an additional cause of discontent in the words of the marriage

service, which gave a religious character to the ceremony, while they

regarded it as a civil contract. In his short administration Sir Robert

Peel had recognized the validity of the arguments against the unmodified

maintenance of the existing law, and had framed a measure calculated, in

his view, to give the Dissenters the relief their title to which could

not be denied. But his bill had been extinguished by his retirement. And

Lord John Russell now availed himself of the machinery of another

measure, which he introduced at the same time, to make the relief

somewhat wider and more effective.

Hitherto there was no record of births and marriages beyond that which

was preserved in the registers of different parishes, which in former

years had in many instances been carelessly and inaccurately kept. But

at the beginning of 1836, the ministers, justly urging that it was

important, in a national point of view, both with regard to the security

of titles to property, and to that knowledge of the state of population

the value of which was recognized by the establishment of the practice

of taking a decennial census, that there should be a general register of

all such occurrences, introduced a bill to establish a registry and

registrar in every Poor-law union, with a farther registry for each

county, and a chief or still more general one in London for the whole

kingdom, subject to the authority of the Poor-law Commissioners. And by

a second bill they farther proposed that the registries to be thus

established should be offices at which those who desired to do so might

contract purely civil marriages. Previous clauses in it provided that

members of any sect of Protestant Dissenters might be married in their

own chapels, and by ministers of their own persuasion. After enactments

removing all the civil disabilities under which Nonconformists had

labored for one hundred and fifty years had been placed on the

statute-book, it was clearly inconsistent in the highest degree to

retain still more offensive and unreasonable religious disabilities, and

to deny to them the right of being married by their own ministers,

according to the rites most agreeable to their consciences or

prejudices. And though some of the details of the ministerial measure

were objected to and slightly altered in its passage through Parliament,

the general principle was admitted by the warmest friends and most

recognized champions of the Established Church, who wisely felt that a

bulwark which is too ill-placed or too unsubstantial to be defended, is

often a treacherous source of weakness rather than strength, and that a

temperate recognition of the validity of claims founded on justice was

the best protection against others which had no such foundation, and

that measures such as these adopted in a spirit of generous conciliation

could only strengthen the Church by taking at least one weapon from the

hands of its enemies.

Another of the measures relating to the Church, of which Peel had

prepared a sketch, had for its object the removal of a grievance of

which the members of the Church itself had long been complaining, the

mode of the collection of tithe. It would be superfluous here to

endeavor to trace the origin of tithes, or the purposes beyond the

sustentation of the clergymen to which they were originally

applied.[240] They had undoubtedly been established in England some time

before the Conquest, and the principle that the land should support the

National Church was admitted by a large majority of the population; it

may probably be said with something nearly approaching unanimity on the

part of those who really paid it, namely, the land-owners. The objection

to the tithe system was founded rather on the way in which it worked,

operating, as Lord John Russell described it, as "a discouragement to

industry; a penalty on agricultural skill; a heavy mulct on those who

expended the most capital and displayed the greatest skill in the

cultivation of the land." The present mode of levying the tithes forced

the clergy to forbearance at the expense of what they deemed to be their

rights, or led them to enforce them at the expense of the influence

which they ought to possess with their parishioners, compelling them to

lose either their income by their indulgence, or their proper weight and

popularity in the parish by the exaction of what the law gave them for

"the support of themselves and their families." And this dilemma was

felt so keenly by the clergy themselves, that it had become a very

general feeling with them that, "if any sort of commutation could be

devised, they would be delighted to be delivered from this objectionable

mode of payment." Indeed, Sir Robert Peel, whose measure of the

preceding year had been chiefly directed to the encouragement of

voluntary commutations, had stated to the House that there were already

two thousand parishes in the kingdom in which a commutation between the

clergyman and his parishioners had been agreed upon, and established as

a durable settlement by separate acts of Parliament. Indeed,

arrangements of this kind existed very generally; the parishes in which

the tithe was taken in kind being comparatively few, and the plan

usually adopted being for the occupier of land to pay the incumbent a

fixed annual sum bearing a certain proportion to his rent. But

arrangements which were optional were, of course, liable to be

rescinded; and Peel desired to establish a system which should be

universal and permanent. And with this view he had designed the

appointment of a temporary commission, one member of which should be

nominated by the Primate, as the representative of the Church, under

whose supervision the tithes of every parish in the kingdom should be

commuted into a rent-charge, regulated partly by the composition which

had hitherto been paid, and partly by the average price of grain--wheat,

barley, and oats. It was no new idea, since as far back as 1791 Pitt had

proposed a general commutation of tithes for a corn rent, and had

submitted a plan with that object to the Primate, though circumstances

of which we have no accurate knowledge prevented him from proceeding

with it.[241] Objections[242] were taken to this last part of the

arrangement, chiefly because it would render perpetual the terms of

existing compositions, the extreme augmentation of them which was

provided for in the bill being only ten per cent., while it was

notorious that the majority of incumbents had shown such liberality in

these matters that the compositions rarely amounted to two-thirds of the

sum to which they were legally entitled. And it was hardly denied that

the measure did involve some sacrifice of the extreme legal rights of

the clergy; but it was urged and generally felt by the most judicious

friends of the Church that the peace and harmony which might be expected

to be the fruit of the measure was worth some sacrifice, and the bill

was passed with very general approval; a bill on similar principles,

with such variations as were required by the differences between the two

countries, being also passed for Ireland.

The last measure on ecclesiastical subjects was also chiefly of a

financial character, though its details were calculated, some directly,

others indirectly, to produce benefits of a still more important nature.

The condition of the property of the bishops and the ecclesiastical

chapters had long been a subject of censorious remark. The various

dioceses differed greatly in extent, as did, therefore, the labors of

the diocesans. Some sees contained above 1000, one (London) even above

1200 parishes; others contained under 150. The revenues of some were

very large, in one or two instances approaching £20,000 a year, while

those of others scarcely exceeded £1000 or £1500 a year, thus affording

incomes palpably inadequate to the support of the Episcopal dignity; so

inadequate, indeed, that they were generally supplemented by the

addition of some better endowed deanery or canonry. It was universally

felt that such a deficiency and such a mode of supplying it were in

themselves a scandal, which was greatly augmented by the system of

translations to which it had given birth. The poorer bishoprics would

hardly have been accepted at all had they not been regarded as

stepping-stones to others of greater value; and the hope of such

promotion had in some cases the not unnatural, however deplorable,

effect of making the bishop anxious to please the minister of the day,

to whom alone he could look for translation, by parliamentary

subservience; and the still more mischievous result (if possible) of

rendering the whole Bench liable to the same degrading suspicion; while

the canonries and prebends in the different chapters, whose revenues

also varied greatly, were in every diocese so numerous that they had

become nearly sinecures, the duties rarely exceeding residence for a

month, or, at the outside, six weeks in a year.

These abuses (for such they could not be denied to be) had attracted the

attention of Sir Robert Peel, who had appointed a commission, of which

many of the highest dignitaries of the Church were members, and who,

after very careful investigation and deliberation, presented a series of

reports on which the ministry framed its measure. They proposed, as has

already been mentioned in connection with the labors of Sir Robert Peel,

an amalgamation of four of the smaller bishoprics at their next vacancy,

in order hereafter to provide for the addition of two new ones at

Manchester, or Lancaster, and Ripon, without augmenting the number of

bishops. Lord Melbourne apparently feared to provoke the hostility of

some of the extreme Reformers, who had recently proposed to deprive the

bishops of their seats in the House of Lords, if he should attempt to

increase the number of the spiritual peers; though, as their number had

been stationary ever since the Reformation, while that of the lay peers

had been quadrupled, such an objection hardly seemed entitled to so much

consideration. Another clause was directed toward the establishment of

greater equality between the revenues of the different bishoprics, a

step which, besides its inherent reasonableness and equity, would

extinguish the desire of promotion by translation, except in a few

specified instances. Various reasons, sufficiently obvious and

notorious, rendered the two archbishoprics, and the bishoprics of

London, Durham, and Winchester, more costly to the occupants than the

other dioceses; and these were, therefore, left in possession of larger

revenues than the rest, proportionate to their wider duties or heavier

charges. But all the others were to be nearly equal, none exceeding

£5500, and none falling below £4500; while the five richer sees were

also the only ones to which a prelate could be translated from another

diocese. It followed, almost as a matter of course, that the practice of

allowing a bishop to hold any other preferment was to cease with the

cessation of the cause that had led to such an abuse.

Another part of the bill provided for the suppression of such canonries

or prebends as might fairly be considered superfluous. Four were

considered sufficient for the proper performance of the duties of each

cathedral; and the extinction (after the lives of the present holders)

of the rest was designed to form a large fund, to be at the disposal of

the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,[243] and to be applied by them chiefly

to meet the wants of the more populous parishes in different large

towns, for which it had hitherto been difficult to make any

provision,[244] by contributing to the erection of additional churches,

by increasing the incomes of the incumbents in cases where it was

insufficient, or in any other way which the practical experience of the

members of the commission might suggest. One very important reform of a

different kind was also provided for in the abolition of pluralities,

the bill prohibiting the holding of two livings by the same person

except they were within ten miles of each other. The measure was

objected to by Sir Robert Inglis, who had represented Oxford as the

peculiar champion of Protestant and Church principles ever since 1829,

and by a party which shared his views, as one calculated to be "fatal to

the best interests of the Church." They looked on the property of the

Church and everything connected with it as invested with so peculiar a

character, that they not only contested the right of Parliament to take

any step to diminish its revenues or to change the employment of them,

but they even "disputed its right to deprive one class of the clergy of

any portion of their revenues for the purpose of distributing it among

another." But the distinction thus made between Church property and that

of any other public body seems one which can hardly be supported. The

purposes for which ecclesiastical chapters or officials have been

endowed with possessions and revenues are undoubtedly of a more sacred

character than the duties imposed on lay corporations; but that

consideration cannot be regarded as affecting the tenure of those

possessions, or as inconsistent with the doctrine that they are national

property, bestowed by the nation on the Church for the service and

advantage of the people; deeply interested not only in the maintenance

of an Established Church, but in that Church being in the highest

possible degree efficient for its holy objects. Being so bestowed and

appropriated, that property must, on every principle of the

constitution, be subject to the control of the national Parliament. And

surely that control could never be more legitimately exerted than in

carrying out the recommendations of a commission which numbered among

its members several of the prelates of the Church, whose profession and

position were a guarantee for their anxiety to preserve all the rights

of the Church which contributed to its credit or efficiency; while their

matured experience enabled them better than any other men to judge how

to reconcile the maintenance of its dignity with the extension of its

usefulness.

Notes:

[Footnote 226: The second resolution affirmed that "this House looks

forward to a progressive improvement in the character of the slave

population, such as may prepare them for a participation in those civil

rights and privileges which are enjoyed by other classes of his

Majesty's subjects." (Stapleton's "Life of Canning," iii., 98, where

also large extracts from the minister's speech are given.)]

[Footnote 227: Trinidad, St. Lucia, and Demerara were the only British

islands which had not separate Legislatures.]

[Footnote 228: Miss Martineau. "History of the Thirty Years' Peace,"

book iv., c. viii.]

[Footnote 229: Alison, "History of Europe," 2d series, c. xxxi., sec.

74.]

[Footnote 230: In the debate on the Registration Bill, in 1836, Lord

John Russell stated that two hundred and twenty eight unions had already

been formed in England and Wales, and that it might be calculated that

when the whole country was divided into unions the entire number would

amount to something more than eight hundred.]

[Footnote 231: See Lord Althorp's speech, of parts of which an abstract

is given in the text.--_Parliamentary Debates_, xxii., April 17.]

[Footnote 232: Lord Althorp made the following frightful statement of

the crimes committed in the province of Leinster alone in the last three

months of 1832 and the first three of 1833: 207 murders, 271 cases of

arson. The assaults attended with grievous personal injury were above

1000; burglaries and robberies, above 3000.]

[Footnote 233: It was often asserted that fourteen-fifteenths of the

land in Ireland belonged to Protestants, but this estimate was,

probably, an exaggeration.]

[Footnote 234: "Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel," ii., 3, 19.]

[Footnote 235: "Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel," pp. 31, 32.]

[Footnote 236: "One important question I found practically, and perhaps

unavoidably, decided before my arrival, namely, the dissolution of the

existing Parliament. Every one seemed to have taken it for granted that

the Parliament must be dissolved, and preparations had accordingly been

made almost universally for the coming contest."--_Peel's Memoirs_, ii.,

43.]

[Footnote 237: "Middle Ages," ii., 31 _seq_. See also Stubbs,

"Constitutional History," i., 82-92 _et seq._]

[Footnote 238: See Hallam's "Constitutional History," ii., 155.]

[Footnote 239: This was a matter of no small importance. The number of

boroughs included in the bill was 183, having a population of about two

millions. Their annual income was stated by Lord John Russell to be as

nearly as possible £2000 a year for each, being £367,000; but their

annual expenditure exceeded that amount by £10,000, being £377,000;

"besides which there was a debt of £2,000,000 owing by these bodies."]

[Footnote 240: See Hallam, "Middle Ages," ii., 205-207.]

[Footnote 241: "Life of Pitt," ii., 131. Lord Stanhope imagines that the

plan was relinquished in consequence of discouraging comments by the

Archbishop (Dr. Moore).]

[Footnote 242: These objections were founded on the following

calculations, or something similar to them. The tithe was the tenth of

the produce. In letting estates it was estimated that a farm ought to

produce three rents; in other words, that a farm let at £1 an acre ought

to produce yearly £3 an acre. One-tenth of three pounds, or 6s.,

therefore, was what the clergyman was entitled to claim. Out of this,

however, he had to defray the cost of collection, which might, perhaps,

be one shilling, leaving him five shillings. But the average of

compositions over the whole kingdom was under 2s. 9d., or

eleven-twentieths of what he was entitled to; and if augmented by ten

per cent., it would not exceed three shillings.]

[Footnote 243: The fund so created was expected to amount to £130,000 a

year.]

[Footnote 244: As instances of the want of church-room in such towns,

Lord John cited the dioceses of London, Chester, York, Lichfield, and

Coventry, containing a population of 2,590,000 persons, with church

accommodation for only 276,000, or one-ninth of the population; the

Commissioners, from whose report he was quoting, reckoning that

church-room ought to be provided for one-third.]