Sir Robert Peel becomes Prime-minister.--Commercial Reforms.--
Free-trade.--Religious Toleration.--Maynooth.--The Queen's
University.--Post-office Regulations.--The Opening of Letters.--
Naturalization of Aliens.--Recall of Lord Ellenborough.--Reversal of the
Vote on the Sugar Duties.--Refusal of the Crown to Sanction a Bill.--The
Question of Increase in the Number of Spiritual Peers.--Repeal of the
Corn-laws.--Revolution in France, and Agitation on the Continent.--Death
of Sir Robert Peel.--Indifference of the Country to Reform.--Repeal of
the Navigation Laws.--Resolutions in Favor of Free-trade.--The Great
Exhibition of 1851.
The transactions mentioned in the last chapter were among the last
events of Lord Melbourne's ministry. He had for some time been aware of
his impending defeat in the House of Commons, and, greatly to his
credit, had endeavored to make the return to office easier to his
successors by the friendly counsels he had given to the Queen on the
subject.[258] A dissolution of Parliament in the summer of 1841 only
weakened his party, and in September he resigned, and was succeeded by
Sir Robert Peel, who, comparatively short as was his tenure of
office,[259] found it long enough to establish for himself a reputation
as the greatest financier of Europe since the days of Pitt. It may be
worth remarking that, in the "Memoirs of the Prince Consort," it is
mentioned that in the course of his administration Peel found reason to
change his judgment on the question of which House of Parliament it was
the more desirable for the Prime-minister to be a member. Canning had
more than once asserted his conviction that the public business would be
more satisfactorily conducted when the Prime-minister was a commoner,
founding his opinion chiefly on the paramount importance of financial
questions, the discussion of which is almost confined to the House of
Commons, and conceiving it to be supported by the history of the
administration of Pitt, from whom, indeed, he had imbibed the idea; and
in former years Peel had more than once expressed his concurrence with
that view of the subject. But, from papers which were intrusted to him
for the execution of his great work, Sir Theodore Martin learned that
Peel had subsequently found reason to come to the opposite conclusion,
not from any change in his view of the relative importance of the
different departments of administration, but solely because "the amount
of work imposed upon the first minister in the House of Commons, in
addition to what he had to go through elsewhere, was too great for any
human strength. In the House of Lords the Prime-minister would escape
the necessity for being in a position to vindicate all the details of
administration, and to answer the multiplicity of questions on all sorts
of subjects, the putting of which has almost degenerated into a vice. He
had, therefore, come to the conclusion that it was there he ought to
be."[260] And, indeed, the subjects which demanded the care of the
minister, and attracted the attention of Parliament, were constantly
increasing in number, variety, and importance to the very end of his
administration. Not only were the financial difficulties of the country,
the depressed state of agriculture and commerce (the result of a
succession of bad harvests), sufficient causes for grave anxiety, but
the terrible war, of which mention has already been made, which we had
now been carrying on for nearly three years in Afghanistan, and which,
before the end of this very year, was about to be signalized by a
disaster such as had never before befallen a British army, threatened to
kindle the flames of war in Europe also, from the share which the
intrigues of Russia had had in fomenting the quarrel; and the same
danger was more than once in the course of the next five years imminent,
from the irritation with which France regarded us, and which, commencing
in Syria, while Lord Melbourne was still at the helm, lost no
opportunity of displaying itself, whether in transactions in the remote
Pacific Ocean or the old battle-field of the two nations, the Spanish
peninsula; and finally, these embarrassing perplexities were crowned by
the appalling visitation of famine, which, at the end of the fourth year
of the administration, fell upon Ireland with a severity surpassing any
similar event in modern history.
With all these multiform difficulties the new minister grappled with
unflinching courage, and with conspicuous success. Peace was preserved
abroad, and financial prosperity was restored at home. Into the details
of his measures devised for this last-mentioned object, though the
leading features of his administration, and those on which his fame
chiefly rests, it would be beside the purpose of the present work to
enter. It is sufficient to say here that, in the spirit of Pitt's great
financial reform of 1787, he revised the whole of the import duties of
our commercial tariff, especially reducing the duties on raw
material;[261] making up the deficiency so caused by an income tax,
which he described as a temporary imposition, since he doubted not that
the great increase of lawful trade, which would be the consequence of
the reduction of duties, would soon enable the revenue to dispense with
a tax to the objections of which he was not blind. In recommending this
great change to the House, he laid down as the soundest maxim of
financial legislation, in which "all were now agreed, the principle that
we should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest," a
doctrine which, when more fully carried out, as it was sure to be, led
almost inevitably to the great measure for which his administration is
most celebrated, the repeal of the Corn-laws. There could be no doubt
that, in the most modified application of it, it struck at the root of
the principle of protection, which had hitherto been the fundamental
principle of our finance, and made a farther extension of it inevitable.
And, as he had been one of the leading members of the ministry which
carried Catholic Emancipation, so he now proceeded on the same path of
religious toleration; and, in the session of 1844, successfully
recommended to the House of Commons a bill which had already been passed
by the Lords, repealing a number of penal acts affecting the Roman
Catholics, which, though they had long been practically obsolete, still
encumbered, and it may be said disgraced, the statute book, and were, so
to say, a standing degradation of and insult to the Roman Catholic body.
One of them, passed in the reign of William and Mary, still forbade any
Roman Catholic to come within ten miles of London, to have either sword
or pistol in his house, or to possess a horse worth more than five
pounds. Another, enacted under Elizabeth, still made every Roman
Catholic who omitted to take certain oaths guilty of high-treason,
though no attempt to administer those oaths had been made since the
Revolution. Another, of the time of Charles I., deprived any Roman
Catholic who should send his son to a foreign school of all protection
of the law; he could neither sue nor defend an action. It may fairly be
said that the credit of Parliament and of the nation was concerned in
the abrogation of laws so ridiculously oppressive, and not the less
obnoxious for being practically invalid. And in the same spirit another
measure was framed and carried by the Lord Chancellor, whose object was
the confirmation of religious endowments belonging to different sects of
Protestant Dissenters, and their protection from vexatious and unjust
litigation, by making a continued possession of any kind of endowment or
property for twenty years a valid title.
These enactments may be regarded as indispensable supplements to the
repeal of the Test Act and Catholic Emancipation. They were the
coping-stone of the great edifice of religious toleration, of which the
former acts had laid the foundation. And the next year Peel carried out
still farther the same principle, by a measure which could not fail to
be regarded as an especial boon in Ireland, since the great majority of
the population of that kingdom were of the Roman Catholic persuasion. It
has been seen that when the troubled state into which the Continent was
thrown by the French Revolution threw hinderances in the way of the
Irish students designed for the Roman Catholic priesthood going to one
of the great Continental colleges, such as St. Omer or Salamanca, for
their education, Pitt established for them a college at Maynooth, for
the endowment of which Parliament was annually asked for a grant of
about £9000. The sum had long been felt to be altogether inadequate to
the requirements of the foundation. As early as the year 1807, Lord
Liverpool, then Home-secretary, had contemplated a large increase of the
grant, though the weakness of the government, then presided over by the
Duke of Portland, prevented him from carrying out that and other
measures which he had conceived in a kindred spirit. Moreover, the grant
was rarely proposed without giving rise to a warm debate raised by a
party whose too tender consciences forbade them to sanction any measure
appearing to foster a religion from which they dissented. And to remedy
the two evils (the one arising from the want of a sufficient provision,
the other from the spirit of religious controversy, for which the House
of Commons was certainly very ill-calculated), Peel, in 1845, proposed
to treble the grant, so as to put the college on a more satisfactory
footing, by providing sufficient incomes for the professors, and a
revenue adequate to the respectable maintenance of an increased number
of pupils; and also to place the charge for the future on the
Consolidated Fund, by which step its yearly discussion in Parliament
would be altogether avoided. The measure was vigorously resisted, partly
on the religious ground already mentioned, and partly by an argument,
urged with some plausibility, that the design with which the college had
originally been founded had not been realized; that, in fact, it had not
proved a benefit to the country, but rather the reverse, by tempting
into the service of the Roman Catholic Church a humbler and poorer class
of students than could devote themselves to it when the preliminary
education involved the expense of a protracted residence in a foreign
country. But the obvious advantages of the change prevailed over these
considerations, and the bill was carried by large majorities.[262]
And now that the long cessation of controversy on the subject--which,
indeed, has been not the least beneficial fruit of this bill of
1845--permits a candid consideration of it in all its bearings, it will
probably be thought that Parliament had not often come to a wiser
decision, one more dictated by judicious liberality of sentiment, and
more imperatively required on every ground of statesman-like policy. If
the countervailing objections and advantages be calmly weighed, it may
almost be said that there was no alternative between enlarging the
endowment and putting it on a new footing, or suppressing the college
altogether. In its existing condition it was notoriously inadequate to
fulfil the design of its founder; and any establishment visibly
inadequate to its design tends to bring the design itself into some
degree of contempt. Yet even if it should be granted that there might
have been no fair ground of complaint if the college had never been
founded, to close it after its benefits, however scanty, had been
enjoyed for half a century, could not fail to have been regarded as an
unpardonable injustice and injury. The other alternative, therefore, was
practically the only one that remained; and in embracing it Peel was but
carrying out the original principle on which the college was founded. It
had been intended to be efficient; through lack of means it had proved
inefficient. The obvious and just remedy was to supply such increased
means as to create or bestow the efficiency originally aimed at. And it
was a felicitous idea to place the charge for the future on such a
footing as to combine with such an increase an avoidance of the
irritation which its yearly discussion had never failed to excite.
And at the same time, to carry still farther the principle of religious
toleration, or rather of religious equality, he induced the Parliament
to found a new university, consisting of three colleges, one in each of
the three provinces of Ulster, Munster and Connaught (Leinster, as
having Trinity College and Maynooth, being regarded as already
sufficiently provided with university education), which should be open
to students of every religious denomination, and at which, while every
kind of secular education, both literary and scientific, should be
given, the stirring up of religious controversy and animosity should be
guarded against, by the absence of any theological professorships. He
did not, indeed, design that the still greater benefits of religious
education should be withheld from the pupils, but he proposed to provide
for that object by confiding their religious education to the care of
the clergy of each persuasion, some of whom in each town which was the
seat of a college--Belfast, Cork, and Galway--might be trusted for
willingness to superintend it. It was hoped that one fruit of this
scheme, and that by no means its least valuable result, would be that
the association of pupils of various creeds in their studies and
amusements from an early age would lead them to maintain, in their more
mature years, the harmony of which the foundation had thus been laid in
their youth; and that thus the religious animosities which were the
principal obstacle to the prosperity of the country would be softened,
and in time extinguished. And this object has been achieved to a great
extent, though the disfavor with which the Roman Catholic Church regards
any educational system which is not under the superintendence of its
priesthood has prevented the scheme from attaining the full development
which was hoped for. The number of students of each of the principal
sects--the Church of Ireland, the Roman Catholics, and the
Presbyterians--steadily increases.[263] Members of each religious body
are among the professors in each college, and all accounts represent the
most perfect harmony and cordiality as existing throughout the whole
body.
Yet, important as was the principle contained in these measures, none of
them, perhaps, caused such excitement at the moment as an exercise by
the government of what was, in point of fact, one of its most ancient,
as well as most essential, powers: the occasional opening of letters
which passed through the post, in compliance with a warrant of the
Secretary of State. England had at all times been the refuge of those
unquiet spirits who, in pursuit of their schemes of rebellion and
revolution, had incurred the displeasure of their own governments, and
had too easily found accomplices here. And in the course of the summer
some notorious offenders of this class found a member of the House of
Commons to present a petition, in which they complained that some
letters which they had posted had been stopped and opened by the
officers of the Post-office. The member who presented the petition
appears to have fancied it an unprecedented and wholly unlawful exercise
of authority; but Sir James Graham, the Home-secretary, not only at once
avowed that the statement was true, and that he had issued his warrant
for the opening of the letters mentioned, but also showed that the power
to issue such an order was reserved to the Secretary of State in all the
statutes which regulated the proceedings of the Post-office. The clause
in the act which conferred the power had been originally framed by Lord
Somers, a statesman certainly as little open as any of his time to the
suspicion of desiring to encroach on the rightful liberty of the
subject; and it had been exercised from time to time in every reign
since the Revolution. It was a power intrusted to the Secretaries of
State for the public safety, and exercised by them on their own
responsibility. The practice and its justification were assailed in both
Houses of Parliament by members of the extreme Liberal party; but,
though no distinct motion on the subject was made, the general feeling
of both Houses was plainly evinced, that it was a power which might at
times be highly useful for the prevention of crime, or for the
hinderance of conspiracies which might be dangerous to the general
welfare and tranquillity, and that the constitutional responsibility
attaching to every minister for every official act was a sufficient
security against its being improperly used.[264]
And it will, probably, be generally admitted that this was the
statesman-like view of the subject. There is no doubt that the practice
in question does infringe the great constitutional right of every
individual in these kingdoms to absolute freedom of communication with
his friends. But the most important and the most cherished
constitutional rights must possess something of elasticity. It must be
necessary at times to go back to the original object for which those
rights have been conferred and secured. That original object is the
safety and welfare of the whole body corporate--of the entire nation.
And if that safety and welfare at times require the sacrifice, a wise
ruler will not hesitate to demand it of the people, or to impose it on
them for their own good. So another principle of the constitution is the
absolute freedom of action for all the subjects of the sovereign; yet
that principle is infringed by more than one statute: Factory Acts,
which limit the hours of even voluntary labor; Education Acts, which
compel the parent to a certain line of conduct toward his children; each
in their way substitute another rule for that entire freedom of action
which, as has been said before, is the fundamental principle of the
constitution; but they make the substitution on the reasonable ground
that the course of action which they compel is for the benefit, not only
of the individual constrained, but of the whole community of which he is
a member, and for whose welfare all laws and constitutions exist.
One of the grounds of complaint against the exercise of this power,
which had been alleged by some of the opponents of the government, had
been that Sir James Graham's conduct had been dictated by an unworthy
subservience to some of the despotic sovereigns of the Continent. The
fact was indignantly denied in the House of Lords by the Duke of
Wellington; and in the course of the session a remarkable proof was
afforded how little influence such motives had on the decisions of our
government, when they acquiesced in the passing of a bill which was a
virtual repeal of the Alien Act, which had existed for more than half a
century, and of which more than one Continental sovereign would
certainly have desired the retention. Of late, indeed, it had been so
modified, that practically it had become little more than a dead letter;
and now, in 1844, without being formally repealed, it was virtually
abrogated by an act which enabled all foreigners to obtain letters of
naturalization, which conferred on them every right of British subjects,
except those of becoming members of Parliament,[265] or of the Privy
Council.
Generally speaking, few governments had enjoyed more of the confidence
of the nation than Peel's did in 1844; yet in this year it was exposed
to two remarkable mortifications. The charter of the East India Company,
as framed by Pitt in subsequent events, which has led to the entire
extinction of the political power of the Company, makes anything beyond
this brief mention of the transaction superfluous at the present time.
The other mortification of the ministry to which allusion has been made
fell upon it at home in the Parliamentary discussion of the
Prime-minister's financial measures, on which his judgment was usually
regarded as pre-eminent, and on which a large majority of the House was
generally disposed implicitly to follow his guidance. Sir Robert was
not, indeed, himself Chancellor of the Exchequer, that office being
filled by Mr. Goulburn, but it was certain that the Budget was inspired
by a deference to the Prime-minister's views. And, among the
arrangements which it proposed, one consisted of a relaxation of the
sugar-duties, which was regarded with dread by those interested in the
West Indies, as a farther step in the direction of free-trade, and as
depriving them of the modified protection which they were as yet
enjoying. To preserve that protection to them, Mr. Miles, the member for
Bristol, proposed an amendment which, after an animated debate, was
carried by a majority of twenty. Three months before, on the Factory
Bill and the question whether the hours of labor should be limited to
ten or to twelve, the minister had also found himself defeated, though
by a much smaller majority; but in that case the defeat had been the
less pronounced from the inconsistency of the votes on the different
limits.[266] And he extricated himself from that difficulty by
abandoning the bill altogether, and introducing a new one, not without
angry resistance on the part of Lord John Russell and other members of
the Opposition. They denounced such a manoeuvre as alike
unconstitutional and unparliamentary; while he, on the contrary,
insisted that the House had always jealously retained the right of
reconsidering its own decisions. In that instance, however, the
introduction of a new bill might have been regarded as the simplest mode
of harmonizing the variety of views which had been represented by the
discussion of and votes on the ministerial proposal and the amendments;
but no such expedient was practicable in this case, that of the
sugar-duties. A defeat on an important clause in the Budget by a
majority of twenty was a far more serious matter; it was such a blow as
had generally been reckoned sufficient to require a resignation of a
ministry. But on this occasion Peel did not feel himself called on to
take that step; nor was he inclined to dissolve Parliament, which some
regarded as his only legitimate alternative, though he had little doubt
that, if he did so, he should be supported by the confidence of the
country. After careful reflection, the course on which he eventually
decided was to adhere to the principle of a relaxation of duties, but to
consent to a moderate variation from his original proposal as to the
amount. And in pursuit of this plan, on the next discussion of the
Budget, he proposed an amendment to that effect, making the adoption of
it by the House a test of its confidence in the administration. Lord
John Russell opposed the amendment with great vehemence, pronouncing the
acceptance of it, if it should be accepted, and the House should thus
consent "to retract its previous vote, a lamentable proof of
subserviency, which would disgrace it with the country." What Sir Robert
now asked was, substantially, that they should now declare that to be
expedient which they had declared to be inexpedient only three nights
ago; and Lord Palmerston insisted that the proper course to be taken by
the government was to resign; while Mr. Labouchere, who had also been a
member of Lord Melbourne's cabinet,[267] though he admitted that there
might be "circumstances under which a minister might without impropriety
ask the House to reconsider a vote," denied that the present was such a
case, and especially denounced the importation of the question of
confidence or no confidence in the ministry into the discussion as
"dangerous and unconstitutional." Another section of the Opposition
agreed in taking the same line; Mr. Disraeli (then beginning to lay the
foundations of his reputation and influence) strongly denouncing the
conduct of the minister, as degrading both to his own supporters and
still more to the whole House, and recommending him to say frankly to
both, "We have gauged your independence, and you may have a semblance of
parliamentary freedom as far as this point, but the moment you go
farther, you must either submit to public disgrace, or we must submit to
private life." The end of the discussion was, that the minister
prevailed by a majority a trifle larger than that which had defeated him
before. This is not the place to discuss the difference between one
principle of taxation and another; but the question whether a minister
when defeated is justified in asking either House of Parliament to
reconsider its vote, seems one that could only have been raised in a
House under the influence of unusual excitement of some kind. The charge
that such a request was unconstitutional only serves to show how loosely
the words "constitution" and "unconstitutional" are often used even by
those from whom precision of language might most be expected; for Sir
Robert Peel's proposal that the House should retract its vote was not
unprecedented, the very same demand having been made in 1833 by Lord
Althorp, then Chancellor of the Exchequer of Lord Grey's ministry, of
which those very men were members who were now loudest in denouncing the
conduct of the present government. And on that occasion it is worth
remarking that, though Lord Althorp's demand was resisted in one or two
quarters, he was vigorously supported by Sir Robert Peel, on the ground
that, though to rescind one night a vote passed on a former one might be
not altogether free from objection, it would be a far greater evil that
questions of importance should be held to be in all cases finally
decided by a single vote, passed, it might be, in a thin House, or in
obedience to some sudden impulse.
And this seems to be the view of the case commended not only by
constitutional and parliamentary practice, but by common-sense. It would
be strange, indeed, when the questions submitted to the British
Parliament and the decisions of that Parliament on them are so often of
paramount importance to the whole world, if the Parliament should be the
only body in the world denied the right of revising its own judgments,
the only one whose first resolution is so irrevocable that even itself
may not change or modify it. To rescind a recent vote is, no doubt, as
Sir Robert Peel said, a step not wholly free from objection. It should
be an exceptional act, as one which, if often repeated, would give an
appearance of capricious fickleness and instability to the opinions of
Parliament, calculated to impair that respect for it which the whole
state and nation are deeply concerned in upholding; but to refuse, under
any circumstances, to confess a change of judgment, would lay the
Parliament open to an imputation at least equally dangerous to that
respect--that of an obstinacy which refuses to confess the possibility
of being mistaken, or to hear reason. It would not be well, therefore,
that the abrogation of a previous vote should become an ordinary
practice; but it would be equally undesirable that any fixed or
unchangeable rule should be interposed to prevent a second discussion of
an important question, with the possibility of its leading to a reversal
of the opinion first expressed.
In the same year (1844) the ministers felt compelled to raise a
constitutional point of singular refinement, which had the effect of
arresting the progress of a bill, in which one part of the kingdom took
a lively interest, which a division in its favor proved to be fully
shared by the House of Lords.[268] It has been already mentioned that in
the last year of the preceding reign a bill had passed for creating,
when opportunity offered by the sees affected becoming vacant, two new
bishoprics at Ripon and Manchester, the incomes of which were to be
provided by the union of some of the smaller existing bishoprics,
Gloucester with Bristol, St. Asaph with Bangor. But the Welsh regarded
with great disapproval any reduction of the number of bishoprics in the
principality, and Lord Powis now brought in a bill to repeal so much of
the act as provided for the union of two Welsh sees, urging not only
their great extent, which he stated at 3000 square miles of very
mountainous country, but the fact that the population of North Wales was
steadily and largely increasing. The bill, as has been intimated, was
favorably received by the Lords, who passed the second reading by a
majority of twelve; but, before it could be read a third time, the Duke
of Wellington, as leader of the ministry in that House, announced that
the bill was one which touched the prerogative of the crown, and
therefore could not be proceeded with without the consent of her
Majesty, which he was not authorized to express.
As the matter was explained by the Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, the
manner in which the bill touched the royal prerogative was this: as,
during the vacancy of any see, its temporalities belonged to the crown,
any alterations in a see affected the direct pecuniary interests of the
crown, and he, as Speaker of the House, doubted whether he should be
justified in putting a question which so touched the royal prerogative
without the sovereign's consent. A committee which was appointed to
investigate the case fully confirmed the view thus taken by the
ministers, and the bill was dropped.
It was, however, an exercise of the royal prerogative which was received
by the House in general with great dissatisfaction. Certainly, since the
Civil List and royal income had been placed on their present footing, it
was only by a very forced construction that the pecuniary interests of
the sovereign could be said to be affected. And it seemed a very
insufficient plea for evoking the exercise of a power which, as it was
said, had certainly never been exerted before since the accession of the
Hanoverian dynasty. Nor was it made more acceptable by the explanation
of Lord Brougham, who on this occasion came to the support of the
minister, that the refusal of the crown's consent at this stage was "a
warning, as it were, a polite and courteous communication between the
sovereign, as guardian of the privileges of the crown, and the two
Houses of Parliament, that if they passed a certain bill it would not
receive the royal assent;" for, though the right to refuse the royal
assent to any bill was incontestable, it had not been exercised since
the time of William III., and to put it in force for the protection of
an imaginary interest of the crown itself would have been so unpopular
an exercise of it that no administration could have ventured to advise
it.
One of the arguments which the Duke of Wellington brought forward in the
discussion, and which, probably, contributed to induce him thus to
strangle Lord Powis's bill, has had an influence on subsequent
legislation. He urged that its adoption--since the resolution to
establish bishoprics at Manchester and Ripon was one which every one
desired to carry out--would increase the number of bishops, "and thus
make an organic change in the constitution of the House of Lords." It is
not very clear how the addition of a single spiritual peer could have
that effect. But the Duke had dwelt upon the same argument before in the
debate on the proposed union of the sees affected, urging that there was
such a jealousy of the Church in many quarters, and especially in some
of the large towns, that it would be very undesirable to pass any
measure the effect of which would be to increase the number of Episcopal
peers. Even if there was any general reluctance at that time to see such
an increase (a fact which was by no means ascertained), it may be
doubted whether it was founded on any sufficient reason. It is not easy
to see why, when there is no limit to the augmentation of the number of
lay peers, it should be judged impolitic or unjust to make even so small
an addition to the number of spiritual peers. At the Restoration the
spiritual peers were, probably, more than a fifth of the entire House.
From the great number of subsequent creations of lay peers they were now
less than a sixteenth, so that there could be no ground for apprehending
that a slight re-enforcement of the Episcopal bench would disturb the
balance, or give the Church an undue preponderating weight in the
decisions of the House. The difficulty, however, such as it appeared to
the Duke then, has had such weight with subsequent administrations, that
a new principle has been established of creating bishoprics which shall
not at first confer seats in the Upper House till their holders become
entitled to them by seniority. As they are peers from the moment of
their consecration, it may be doubted whether this creation of peers,
without seats in Parliament, does not deserve the name of "an organic
change in the constitution," far more than the addition of one or two
ecclesiastical peers to the Episcopal bench; and also whether it has not
established a dangerous principle and precedent; the disconnection of
bishoprics from seats in Parliament, in even a single instance, seeming
to furnish an argument in favor of the exclusion of the whole order, a
measure which, if unjust and injurious to the Church, would be at least
equally injurious to Parliament itself, and to the whole state.
But all questions of this kind were presently lost sight of in the
excitement produced by the measure which more than any other has stamped
Sir Robert Peel's administration with a lasting character, the repeal of
the Corn-laws. Many statesmen, even of those who were most in favor of
free-trade in other articles of commerce, made an exception in the case
of corn, partly from a feeling of the necessity of encouraging
agriculture, and partly from a conviction of the danger of in any way
contributing to create or increase a dependence on foreign countries for
the food of the people. Both Whigs and Tories were generally thus agreed
on the necessity of maintaining the principle of protection; the dispute
between the two parties being whether it were best achieved by a fixed
duty on imported corn, or by what was commonly known as a sliding scale:
a scale, that is, which varied inversely with the price of the grain
itself, rising as the price in the home market fell, and falling as it
rose. In the manufacturing districts a different feeling had prevailed
for some years. In the first years of the present reign severe distress
in Manchester and others of the chief manufacturing towns had led to the
formation of an association whose chief object was sufficiently
indicated by its title of the Anti-Corn-law League. At first Mr.
Villiers, the member for Wolverhampton, was its principal spokesman in
the House of Commons, but at subsequent elections two manufacturers of
great eloquence obtained seats, and year after year urged the entire
repeal of all duties on corn with great earnestness, though for some
time their arguments made but little impression on the House. Their
motions were rejected in 1842 by a majority of 300; in 1843 by one
exceeding 250; in 1844 by above 200; and in 1845 by one of more than 130
in a much smaller House. But this last division had scarcely been taken
when an unprecedented calamity--the almost entire failure of the potato
crop, which was attacked in nearly every part of both islands by a new
disease, the cause of which is not to this day fully ascertained--
suddenly changed the aspect of the subject. To the English farmer and
laborer it was a severe loss; to the Irish farmer it was ruin; to the
Irish peasant famine. The grain harvest, too, was generally deficient.
And it was evident that rigorous measures, promptly taken, were
indispensable, if a large portion of the peasantry in the southern and
western provinces of Ireland were not to be left to perish of actual
starvation. In the face of so terrible an emergency Peel acted with
great decision. On his own responsibility he authorized the purchase of
a large supply of Indian corn from the United States, hoping, among
other indirect effects of such a step, to accustom the Irish to the use
of other kinds of food besides the root on which hitherto they had too
exclusively relied.[269] And he laid before his colleagues in the
cabinet a proposal to suspend the existing Corn-law "for a limited
period," a measure which all saw must lead to its eventual repeal. It
would be superfluous now to recapitulate the discussions which took
place, the various alternative proposals which were suggested, or the
dissensions in the cabinet to which his proposal gave birth; the
resignation of the ministry, and its subsequent resumption of office,
when Lord Stanley and Lord John Russell had found it impossible to form
an administration. It is sufficient to say that, as soon as Parliament
met, Sir Robert brought forward a bill to reduce the duty on corn to
four shillings, a price only half of the lowest fixed duty that had ever
been proposed before, that reduction, too, being a stepping-stone to the
abolition of all duties, at the end of three years, beyond a shilling a
quarter, which was to be retained, in order to acquire an accurate
knowledge of the quantity of grain imported. The diminution, however, of
this duty was not the whole object of his new measure. It included other
arrangements which would serve as a compensation to the agriculturists,
by relieving them from some of the peculiar burdens to which the land
was subjected; and it contained, farther, a reduction or abolition of
import duties hitherto levied on many other articles, especially on such
as "formed the clothing of the country," on the fair ground that if the
removal of protection from the agriculturist were "a sacrifice for the
common good," the commercial and manufacturing interests might justly be
required to make a similar sacrifice for the same patriotic object.
Though opposed in both Houses with unusual bitterness, the ministry
carried their measure, which, indeed, in all probability, even if the
destruction of the potato crop had not come to accelerate the movement,
could not have been long delayed, the continual and rapid increase of
the population adding yearly strength to the arguments of those who
denounced the imposition of any tax which had the effect of increasing
the price of the people's food. But, however inevitable it may have
been, we are not the less compelled to regard it as indirectly bringing
about a great constitutional change, or rather as consummating that
which had been commenced by the Reform Bill. Till the year 1832 the
territorial aristocracy had exerted a predominating influence in the
government of the state. The Reform Bill, which deprived the wealthier
land-owners of the greater part of their power at elections, struck the
first blow at that influence. The abolition of the Corn-laws inflicted
on it a still more decisive wound, by its extinction of the doctrine
that there was any such peculiar sacredness about the land and its
produce as entitled them to protection beyond that enjoyed by other
kinds of property. Placing in that respect the commercial and
manufacturing interest on a level with the landed interest, it made us,
in a farther and a somewhat different sense from that in which Napoleon
had used the phrase, a nation of shopkeepers.[270]
The repeal of the Corn-laws had another result: it divided the
Conservative party, and, as a necessary consequence, led to the downfall
of the ministry. The same session which witnessed its success in
carrying that repeal witnessed also its defeat on a coercion bill, which
they regarded as indispensable for the "protection of life in Ireland,"
where actual murders had reached the appalling amount of nearly three
hundred in two years. The ministry at once resigned, and Lord John
Russell had no difficulty in forming an administration, now that the
question of the Corn-laws was finally settled. It was, however, no bed
of roses to which the new ministry succeeded; the famine in Ireland
exceeded the worst anticipations; and, though prodigious efforts were
made by the government and Parliament to relieve it, though large sums
were placed at the disposal of the Lord-lieutenant, aided by
contributions from private sources in England to an enormous amount;
though the small remnant of the import duty on corn which had been left
on it by the measure of the preceding year was taken off, and the
navigation laws suspended, in order that no obstacle interposed to the
acquisition of food from every available quarter, it was estimated that
more than half a million of people perished through actual famine or the
diseases which scarcity brought in its train.[271] A severe monetary
crisis was one not unnatural result of this distress, so severe that the
Funds fell to a price below any that had been quoted for many years, and
the reserve in the Bank of England to an amount lower than it had been
at any period since 1828. And these difficulties had hardly been
surmounted when a new revolution in France overturned the dynasty of
Louis Philippe and established a republic. The revolutionary contagion
spread to Italy, where, indeed, the movement had begun. The Pope--Pius
IX.--who had but lately succeeded to the tiara, was forced to flee from
Rome in the disguise of a foreign courier, after his Prime-minister had
been murdered by the mob. Germany was scarcely less disturbed. The
administration of Metternich, who had governed Austria with authority
little less than absolute for nearly forty years, was overthrown in a
tumult in which he himself escaped with difficulty from the violence of
the populace; dangerous riots took place at Munich, at Berlin, and at
the capitals of most of the smaller principalities, and for some time
everything seemed to portend the outbreak of a general war, likely to be
the more formidable as being a war of the revolutionary and republican
against the monarchical principle. Happily, that danger was averted. The
only war which broke out between different nations was a brief contest
in the north of Italy, which the superior numbers of the Austrian armies
and the skill of Marshal Radetsky, a veteran who had learned the art of
war under Suvarof nearly sixty years before, decided in favor of
Austria, and which in the spring of 1849 was terminated by a peace on
less unfavorable terms to Sardinia than she could well have expected.
And in the same season tranquillity was re-established even at Rome,
which, from the peculiar character of the Papal power, contained special
elements of provocation and danger.
But, though peace was thus generally maintained, these various events
had produced a ferment of spirits which required some time to calm down,
and so greatly embarrassed the government, that in the spring of 1852
Lord John Russell's administration was dissolved, and a new ministry was
formed by Lord Derby[272]. But the causes which had overthrown his
predecessor remained to weaken him; so that for some time it seemed
impossible to form a ministry which afforded any promise of stability.
Such a rapid succession of changes as ensued had had no parallel since
the first years of George III. Between February, 1852, and February,
1855, the country had no fewer than four different Prime-ministers, a
fact which was at once both the proof and the parent of weakness in
every administration. Lord John Russell had attempted to procure a
factitious support in the country by stimulating a fresh demand for
parliamentary reform. A year or two before, he had provoked the
dissatisfaction of the "Advanced Liberals," as they called themselves,
by insisting on the finality of the Reform Bill of 1832, and by advising
his followers "to rest and be thankful" for what had been then obtained.
But now he began to advance an opinion that that act required "some
amendments to carry into more complete effect the principles on which it
was founded." He inserted an intimation of that doctrine in the Queen's
speech; and endeavored to give effect to it by bringing in a bill to
lower the franchise, having, it seems, persuaded himself that a
five-pound franchise would create a more Conservative class of
voters.[273] He had scarcely introduced it when the fall of his ministry
led to its abandonment; but, though it was coldly received by the House
of Commons, the idea was taken up by the other political parties, who
can hardly be acquitted of having used the question merely as an
instrument of party warfare, trying, with an unstatesmanlike
indifference to the danger of re-awakening the old frenzy on the
subject, to rouse the nation to take an interest in it; but trying in
vain. The nation was no longer in the same temper as it had displayed
twenty years before. The Reform Bill of 1832 had been demanded and
carried with a frantic vehemence of enthusiasm such as could only have
been excited by real defects and grievances. But those grievances had
been removed and redressed. And the bulk of the people could take no
interest in schemes whose sole end seemed to be either to satisfy the
theories of some political doctrinaires or to embarrass an adversary;
till at last, as Reform Bill after Reform Bill was framed, brought in,
and defeated, or dropped, it became plain, "as the Prince Consort noted
in a private memorandum at the end of 1859, that what the country
wanted, in fact, was not reform, but a bill to stop the question of
Reform."[274] And, at last, the prevalence of this feeling Lord John
Russell could not conceal even from himself, but confessed to Lord
Palmerston, then Prime-minister, who had always silently discouraged the
movement, that "the apathy of the country was undeniable; nor was it a
transient humor. It seemed rather a confirmed habit of mind. Four Reform
Bills had been introduced of late years by four different governments,
and for not one of them had there been the least enthusiasm. The
conclusion to which he had come was, that the advisers of the crown of
all parties having offered to the country various measures of reform,
and the country having shown itself indifferent to them all, the best
course which could now be taken was to wait till the country should show
a manifest desire for an amendment of the representation."[275]
There was, however, in these years one subject in which the country did
take a real interest; that was the development and extension of the
principles of free-trade. On that the national view had become so
decided that in 1848 the Parliament even abolished the navigation laws,
which had subsisted so long, the first act on the subject dating from
the reign of Richard II., that the adherence to the principle contained
in them of confining both the export and the import trade of the
kingdom, with but few exceptions, to British shipping, seemed almost an
essential article of the constitution. It was the dearer, too, to the
national prejudices, from the sense universally entertained of the
paramount importance of maintaining the pre-eminence of our navy, and
from the belief that the commercial marine was a nursery for the royal
fleets, with which they could not dispense. But latterly the laws had
become unpopular even with some of those who had formerly been supposed
to derive the greatest benefit from them. Many of our colonies had
complained of their operation, and several of the ablest of our colonial
governors had recommended their repeal. They had been found, too, to
present frequent and considerable difficulties in our commercial
negotiations with other countries, and many naval officers of large
experience and sound judgment expressed a decided belief that they were
of no practical use to the naval service. The result of a long and able
debate was that the laws were repealed, with the exception of that
portion of them which preserved the monopoly of the coasting trade to
our own seamen and vessels, that exception being chiefly dictated by
considerations connected with the prevention of smuggling.
The ground on which the ministers relied in proposing this repeal of
laws so ancient was that, when protection had been removed from every
other trade, those concerned in these different trades had an
irresistible claim for its removal from the shipping. And on general
principles, both of commerce and statesmanship, the claim was, as they
urged, irresistible, unless some object of greater importance still than
uniformity of legislation--namely, the national safety, bound up as it
unquestionably was in the perpetual pre-eminence of the national
navy--required an exception to be made. But for the maintenance of our
maritime supremacy it was, as Burke had preached three-quarters of a
century before, better to trust to the spirit of the people, to their
attachment to their government, and to their innate aptitude for
seamanship, which they seem to have inherited from the hardy rovers of
the dark ages, and which no other nation shares with them in an equal
degree. And if that may safely be trusted, as undoubtedly it may, to
maintain the supremacy of our warlike fleets, the preponderance of
argument seemed greatly on the side of those who contended that our
commercial fleets needed no such protection; to which it may be added
that exceptions to a general rule and principle are in themselves so
questionable, that the burden of proof seems to lie upon those who would
establish or maintain them. But the advocates of free-trade were not
content even with this triumph, though it might have been thought a
crowning one, and in the course of the next year they succeeded in
carrying a resolution which (though Lord Derby and the opponents of the
act of 1846 were now in office) was not resisted even by the ministry,
being, in fact, the result of a compromise between the different
parties; and which asserted that "the improved condition of the country,
and especially of the industrious classes, was mainly the result of
recent legislation, which had established the principle of unrestricted
competition, ... and that it was the opinion of the House that this
policy, firmly maintained and prudently extended, would, without
inflicting injury on any important interest, best enable the industry of
the country to bear its own burdens, and would thereby most surely
promote the welfare and contentment of the people." Such a resolution
was, in fact, the adoption of free-trade as the permanent ruling
principle of all future commercial legislation. And even before the
adoption of this resolution, the feeling in favor of free-trade had been
greatly strengthened by the Great Exhibition, which not only delighted
the world for six months with a spectacle of such varied and surpassing
beauty as even its original projector, the Prince Consort, had not
pictured to himself, but which had also the farther and more important
effect of instructing the British workman in every branch of
manufacture, by bringing before his eyes the workmanship of other
nations; and, as we may well believe (though such a result is not so
easily tested), of improving the mutual good-will between rival nations,
from the respect for each which the experience of their skill and
usefulness could not fail to excite.
Notes:
[Footnote 258: On the 20th of February, 1840, Baron Stockmar writes:
"Melbourne told me that he had already expressed his opinion to the
Prince that the Court ought to take advantage of the present movement to
treat all parties, especially the Tories, in the spirit of a general
amnesty." To the Queen his language was the same: "You should now hold
out the olive-branch a little."--_Life of the Prince Consort_, i., 83.]
[Footnote 259: He became Prime-minister in September, 1841, and retired
in June, 1846--four years and three-quarters afterward.]
[Footnote 260: "Life of the Prince Consort," i., 266. It may be remarked
that, in spite of the opinion thus expressed by Sir Robert Peel, of
those who, since his retirement in 1846, have held the same office, the
majority have been members of the House of Commons. The peers who have
since been Prime-ministers have been Lord Aberdeen and Lord Derby; the
members of the House of Commons have been Lord John Russell, Lord
Palmerston, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Gladstone; though it may be thought
that in his second ministry Mr. Disraeli showed his concurrence in Sir
Robert Peel's latest view, by becoming a peer in the third year of his
administration.]
[Footnote 261: Lord Stanhope tells us "the remedial resolutions moved by
Pitt in the House of Commons, as abolishing the old duties and
substituting new ones in a simpler form, amounted in number to no less
than 2537."--_Life of Pitt_, i., 330. Peel, in his speech, March 21,
1842, states that he reduces or takes off altogether (wherever the duty
is trifling, but is practicable) the duty on 750 articles of import.]
[Footnote 262: In the Commons by 307 to 184; in the Lords by 226 to 69.]
[Footnote 263: The following statements of the members of colleges and
of the three denominations for 1879, 1874, and 1869 appear in the last
_Queen's University Calendar_:
1879. 1874. 1869.
Church of Ireland ....... 201 189 211
Roman Catholics ....... 223 188 161
Presbyterians .......... 388 249 227
Other denominations...... 88 87 83
--- --- ---
900 713 682]
[Footnote 264: In the course of the session, in order to tranquillize
the public mind on the subject, secret committees were appointed by both
Houses of Parliament to investigate the subject, from whose inquiries it
appeared that, since the days when the government was endangered by the
plots of the Jacobites, the power had been very sparingly used. The most
conspicuous instance of its employment had been in the case of Bishop
Atterbury, several of whose letters had been opened, and were produced
in Parliament to justify the bill of "pains and penalties" which was
passed against him. The power had been confined to Great Britain till
the latter part of the last century, when it was judged desirable to
extend it also to the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. But, since the Peace
of Amiens, the number of letters opened in a year had not, on an
average, exceeded eight; nor was there the least ground for suspecting
that a single one had been opened except on such information as fully
warranted suspicion.
The practice, however, was not confined to our own government. In the
second volume of the "Life of Bishop Wilberforce" a page is given of his
diary, dated July 18, 1854, which records a conversation in which the
Duke of Newcastle and Lord John Russell took part, and in which it is
mentioned that the French government, under the administration of M.
Guizot, opened letters, and that the practice was not confined to
monarchical or absolute governments, for "the American government opens
most freely all letters." And, with reference to this particular case,
the Duke of Newcastle said that "Sir James Graham really opened
Mazzini's letters on information which led to a belief that a great act
of violence and bloodshed might be prevented by it."--_Life of Bishop
Wilberforce_, ii., 247.]
[Footnote 265: A subsequent act, passed since the date at which the
present history closes, has repealed even this exception. By the 33d
Victoria, c. 14 ("Law Reports," p. 169), it is enacted that "an alien,
to whom a certificate of naturalization is granted, shall in the United
Kingdom be entitled to all political and other rights, powers, and
privileges, and be subject to all obligations to which a natural born
British subject is entitled as subject in the United Kingdom," etc.; and
at the general election of 1880 the Baron de Ferrieres, a Belgian
nobleman, who had been naturalized in 1867, was elected M.P. for
Cheltenham.]
[Footnote 266: In one instance--on the question whether twelve should be
the number of hours, as proposed by the Government--the majority against
that number was 186 to 183. But immediately afterward a majority of 188
to 184 decided against Lord Ashley's alternative proposal of ten hours.]
[Footnote 267: As President of the Board of Trade. He afterward was
raised to the Peerage as Lord Taunton.]
[Footnote 268: The second reading was carried in the House of Lords by
49 to 37.]
[Footnote 269: See "Peel's Memoirs," ii., 173.]
[Footnote 270: It has been observed that till the Corn-laws were
repealed there had been no instance whatever of any person who had been
engaged in trade becoming a cabinet minister. Since that time there have
been several, some of whom only relinquished their share in houses of
business on receiving their appointments, and some who are generally
understood to have continued to participate in the profits of trade
while members of an administration.]
[Footnote 271: Alison, quoting the General Report of the Census
Commissioners, estimates the deaths caused by famine and the diseases
engendered by it at the appalling number of 590,000, and states the sums
advanced under different acts of Parliament to meet the emergency at
£7,132,268.--_History of Europe_, vii., 274, 276, 2d series.]
[Footnote 272: The same statesman who has previously been mentioned as
Lord Stanley, and whom the death of his father had recently raised to
the House of Peers.]
[Footnote 273: In 1853 he said to Lord Clarendon, speaking of a new bill
which he was pressing on Lord Aberdeen, then Prime-minister, "I am for
making it as Conservative as possible, and that by a large extension of
the suffrage. The Radicals are the ten-pound holders. The five-pound
holders will be Conservative, as they are more easily acted
upon."--_Life of the Prince Consort_, ii., 503. It was the same idea
that inspired some of the details of the Reform Bill subsequently passed
by Lord Derby's third ministry.]
[Footnote 274: "Life of the Prince Consort," iv., 395.]
[Footnote 275: "Life of the Prince Consort," v., 56.]