THE GREAT DEBATE.
[Sidenote: 1831--Sir Robert Inglis and Reform]
The debate which followed Lord John Russell's motion for leave to bring
in the Bill contained, as well might be expected, some very remarkable
speeches. Three of these deserve the special attention of the student
of history. The first illustrated the views of the extreme Tory of
that day, and is indeed a political curiosity which ought never to be
consigned to utter oblivion. This speech was made by Sir Robert Harry
Inglis, who represented the University of Oxford. Sir Robert Inglis
was a living embodiment of the spirit of old-world Toryism as it had
come down to his day, Toryism which had in it little or nothing of the
picturesque, half poetic sentiment belonging to the earlier wearers of
the rebel rose, the flower symbolic of the Stuart dynasty. Sir Robert
Inglis was a man of education, of intelligence, and of high principle.
His sincerity was unquestioned, and his opinion would probably be well
worth having on any question which was not concerned with the
antagonism between Whig and Tory. Sir Robert argued boldly in his
speech that the principle of representation had never been recognized
by the Constitution as the Parliamentary system of England. He
insisted that the sovereign had a perfect right to choose any
representative he pleased from any constituency which it suited him to
create. The King could delegate to any nobleman or gentleman his right
of nominating a representative. Sir Robert scouted the idea that a
large, prosperous, and populous town had any better claim to be
represented in the House of Commons than the smallest village in the
country. It was all a matter for the sovereign, and if the sovereign
thought fit he had as good a right to invite any one he {145} pleased
to represent an unpeopled plain as to represent Manchester, Leeds, or
Sheffield. He denounced Russell's proposal to disfranchise the small
nomination boroughs, and he used an argument which was employed in the
same debate and by much wiser men than he in defence of the pocket
boroughs and the whole system of nomination. Some of the most
brilliant, gifted members of the House of Commons, he contended, had
been sent into that House by the patrons and owners of such boroughs,
and otherwise never could have got into Parliament at all, for they
could not have borne the enormous expense of a county contest.
We have heard that argument over and over again in days much more
recent. It would, of course, have been hard to dispose of it
completely if it could be shown that there was no possible way by which
the expenses of elections could be reduced to a reasonable amount; if
it could be shown that there was any human system so bad as to have no
compensating advantages whatever; and finally if it could be shown that
with the spread of education and the growth of popular intelligence a
man of great and commanding ability without money would not have a much
better chance of election at the hands of a large constituency than by
the mere favor of some discerning patron. Sir Robert Inglis also used
an argument which is even still not unfamiliar in political debate,
whether inside or outside Parliament. He contended not merely that the
English population had no real grievances to complain of, but that none
among the English population would have fancied that they were
suffering from grievances if it had not been for the evil advice and
turbulent agitation of mob orators. To these wicked persons, the mob
orators, Sir Robert ascribed all the disturbances which were setting
the country in commotion. If only these mob orators could be kept from
spouting everything would go well and no subject of the sovereign would
ever get it into his head that he was suffering from the slightest
grievance.
This is an argument which had just been used with regard to Catholic
Emancipation; which was afterwards to {146} be used with regard to
free-trade and the introduction of the ballot and household suffrage;
and which will probably be used again and again so long as any sort of
reform is demanded. Of course it need hardly be said that when Sir
Robert Inglis referred to mob orators he used the phrase as a term of
contempt applying to all speakers who advocated principles which were
not the principles represented by the Tory aristocracy. A Tory
landlord spouting any kind of nonsense to the most ignorant crowd would
not have been, according to this definition, a mob orator; he would
have been a high-bred Englishman, instructing his humbler brethren as
to the way they ought to go. Sir Robert also indulged in the most
gloomy prophecies about the evils which must come upon England as the
direct result of the Reform Bill if that Bill were to be passed into
law. The influence of rank and property would suddenly and completely
cease to prevail; education would lose its power to teach and to guide;
the House of Commons would no longer be the place for men of rank,
culture, and statesmanship, but would be occupied only by mob orators.
Art after art would go out and all would be night, if we may adopt the
famous line of Pope's which Sir Robert somehow failed to introduce.
[Sidenote: 1831--Peel's speech on the Reform Bill]
The second speech in the debate to which we may refer was that of Sir
Robert Peel. It was a necessity of Peel's position just then, and of
the stage of political development which his mind had reached, that he
should oppose the Reform Bill. But in the work of opposition he had to
undertake a task far more difficult to him in the artistic sense than
the task which the destinies had appointed for Sir Robert Inglis to
attempt. Inglis, although a man of ability and education, as
collegiate education then went, was so thorough a Tory of the old
school that the most extravagant arguments he used came as naturally
and clearly to his mind as if they had been dictated to him by
inspiration. But a man of Peel's high order of intellect, a man who
had been gifted by nature with the mind of a statesman, must sometimes
have found it hard indeed to convince himself that some of the
arguments he used against reform {147} were arguments which the history
of the future would be likely to maintain. Peel's genius, however, was
not one which readily adopted conclusions, especially when these
conclusions involved a change in the seeming order of things. We have
seen already that he was quite capable of taking a bold decision and
accepting its responsibilities when the movement of events seemed to
satisfy him that a choice one way or the other could no longer be
postponed.
The whole story of his subsequent career bears evidence of the same
effect. His genius guided him rightly when the fateful moment arrived
at which a decision had to be made, but when left to himself his
inclinations always were to let things go on in their old way. He had
not yet seen any necessity for a complete system of Parliamentary
reform, nor was he likely, in any case, to have approved of some of the
proposals contained in the Bill brought in by Lord John Russell. The
speech he delivered appears, by all the accounts which reach us, to
have been a genuine piece of Parliamentary eloquence. Peel did not, as
may well be imagined, commit himself to some of the extravagances which
were poured forth in absolute good faith by Sir Robert Inglis. But the
very nature of his task compelled him sometimes to have recourse to
arguments which, although put forward with more discretion and more
dexterity than Inglis had shown, seemed nevertheless to belong to the
same order of political reasoning.
It is not, perhaps, surprising that Peel should have found much to say
for the existence of the small nomination boroughs, seeing that the
same arguments were made use of a whole generation afterwards by no
less a person than Mr. Gladstone. These arguments, we need hardly say,
were founded on the familiar assumption that a Burke or a Sheridan, a
Canning or a Plunket, would have no chance whatever of getting into the
House of Commons if some appreciative patron did not generously put a
borough at his disposal. In our own days we have seen, again and
again, that a man of high political character and commanding eloquence,
but having no money or other such influence to back him, would have a
far better chance at {148} the hands of a great popular constituency
than he would be likely to have in some small borough, where local
interests might easily be brought to conspire against him. But at the
time when Peel was making his speech against the Reform project the
patronage system still prevailed in politics, if no longer in letters,
and the unendowed child of genius would have little chance indeed if he
were to try to get into Parliament on his own mere merits. On the
whole, it must be owned that Sir Robert Peel made as good a case
against the Bill as could have been made from the Conservative point of
view, and it may be added that an equally ingenious case might have
been made out by a man of his capacity against any change whatever in
any system.
[Sidenote: 1831--The second reading of the Reform Bill]
The third speech to which we think it necessary to refer was that
delivered by the Irish orator and agitator, Daniel O'Connell.
O'Connell promised the Bill all the support in his power, but he took
care to explain that he supported it only because he believed it was
the best Bill he could obtain from any Government at that moment. He
described clearly and impressively the faults which he found with Lord
John Russell's measure; and it has to be noticed that the objections
which he raised were absolutely confirmed by our subsequent political
history. He found fault with the Bill because it did not go nearly as
far as such a measure ought to go in the direction of manhood suffrage,
or, at all events, of household suffrage. He contended that no Reform
Bill could really fulfil the best purposes for which it was designed
without the adoption of the ballot system in the voting at popular
elections. He advocated shorter Parliaments and much more
comprehensive and strenuous legislation for the prevention of bribery
and corruption. In short, O'Connell made a speech which might have
been spoken with perfect appropriateness by an English Radical of the
highest political order at any time during some succeeding generations.
O'Connell's opinions seem to have been at that time, save on one
political question alone--the question of Repeal of the Union--exactly
in accord with those of the Radical party down to the days of Cobden
and Bright.
{149}
It may be mentioned, as a matter of some historical interest, that,
vindicating the true theory of popular representation, he complained
that successive English Governments had abandoned the constitutional
position taken up by the glorious Revolution of 1688. Readers of the
present day may be inclined to think, not without good reason for the
thought, that statesmanship in the days of Lord Grey's first Reform
Bill, and for many years after, might have had less trouble with
Ireland if it had taken better account of the opinions and the
influence of O'Connell.
The debate on the motion for leave to bring in the Bill lasted several
days. In accordance, however, with the usual practice of the House of
Commons, no division was taken and the Bill was read a first time. In
the House of Commons it is not usual to have a long debate on the
motion for leave to bring in a Bill, which amounts in substance to a
motion that the Bill be read for the first time. When, however, a
measure of great importance is introduced there is sometimes a
lengthened and very often a discursive debate or conversation on the
motion; but it is rarely so long and so earnest a discussion as that
which took place when Lord John Russell brought in the Reform Bill.
One result of the length of the debate which preceded the first reading
was that when the motion for the second reading came on the leading
members of the Opposition were found to have expressed fully their
opinions already, and the discussion seemed little better than the
retelling of an old story.
When the motion for the second reading came to be put to the vote it
was found that the Opposition had got together a very full gathering of
their numbers, and the second reading was only carried by a majority of
one. The hearts of many of the reformers sank within them for the
moment, and the hopes of the Tories were revived in an equal degree.
Even already it seemed clear to all of Lord Grey's colleagues that a
measure carried on its second reading by such a bare majority had not
the slightest chance of forcing its way through the House of Lords,
even if it should be fortunate enough to pass without serious {150}
damage through the House of Commons. Lord Grey and his colleagues were
already beginning to think that nothing worth accomplishing was likely
to be achieved until a general election should have greatly
strengthened the Reform party in Parliament. The movement for reform
had of late been growing steadily in most parts of the country. Some
of the more recent elections had shown that the reform spirit was
obtaining the mastery in constituencies from which nothing of the kind
had been expected a short time before, and it seemed to most of the
Whig leaders that the existing Parliament was the last bulwark against
the progress of reform. When the time came for the motion to enable
the Bill to get into committee--that is, to be discussed point by point
in all its clauses by the House, with full liberty to every member to
speak as many times as he pleased--General Gascoigne, one of the
representatives of Liverpool, proposed an amendment to the effect that
it was not expedient, at such a time, to reduce the numbers of knights,
citizens, and burgesses constituting the House of Commons, and this
amendment was carried by a majority of eight. Now the carrying of this
amendment could not possibly have been considered as the destruction of
any vital part of the Bill.
[Sidenote: 1831--William the Fourth and Reform]
Lord John Russell had argued for the reduction of the numbers in the
House as a matter of convenience and expediency; but he had not given
it to be understood that the Government felt itself pledged to that
particular proposition, and had made up his mind not to accept any
modification in that part of the plan. The authors of the Reform Bill,
however, read very wisely in the success of General Gascoigne's
amendment the lesson that in the existing Parliament the Tories would
be able to take the conduct of the measure out of the hands of the
Government during its progress through committee, and to mar and
mutilate it, so as to render it entirely unsuited to its original
purposes. Therefore Lord Grey and the other members of his Cabinet
made up their minds that the best course they could take would be to
accept the vote of the House of Commons as a distinct defeat, and to
make an {151} appeal to the decision of the constituencies by an
instant dissolution of Parliament.
One important question had yet to be settled. Would the King give his
assent to the dissolution? No one could have supposed that the King
was really at heart a reformer, and the general conviction was that if
William cared anything at all about the matter his personal inclination
would be in favor of good old Toryism, or that, at the very least, his
inclination would be for allowing things to go on in the old way. At
that time the principle had not yet been set up as a part of our
constitutional system that the sovereign was bound to submit his own
will and pleasure to the advice of his ministers. It would have been
quite in accordance with recognized precedents since the House of
Hanover came to the throne if the King were to proclaim his
determination to act upon his own judgment and let his ministers either
put up with his decision or resign their offices.
For some time, indeed, it appeared as if the King was likely to assert
his prerogative, according to the old fashion. The disagreeable and
almost hazardous task of endeavoring to persuade the King into
compliance with the desire of his Ministry was entrusted to Lord
Brougham, who was supposed, as Lord Chancellor, to be keeper of the
sovereign's conscience. Brougham was not a man who could be described
as gifted with the bland powers of persuasion, but at all events he did
not want courage for the task he had to undertake. William appears at
first to have refused flatly his consent to the wishes of the Ministry,
to have blustered a good deal in his usual unkingly, not to say
ungainly, fashion, and to have replied to Brougham's intimation that
the ministers might have to resign, with words to the effect that
ministers, if they liked, might resign and be--ministers no more. The
King, however, was at last prevailed upon to give his assent, but then
a fresh trouble arose when he found that Lord Grey and Lord Brougham,
presuming on his ultimate compliance, had already taken steps to make
preparations for the ceremonials preceding dissolution. As the {152}
Ministry thought it necessary that there should be no delay whatever in
the steps required to dissolve Parliament, a message had been sent in
order that the Life Guards should be ready, according to the usual
custom when the King went to Westminster for such a purpose. William
found in this act on the part of the Ministry a new reason for an
outburst of wrath. He stormed at Brougham; he declared that it was an
act of high-treason to call out the Life Guards without the express
authority of the King, and he raged in a manner which seemed to imply
that only the mercy of the sovereign could save Grey and Brougham from
the axe on Tower Hill.
[Sidenote: 1831--The second Reform Bill]
Perhaps it was fortunate on the whole for the peaceful settlement of
the controversy that the King should have found this new and unexpected
stimulant to his anger; for when his wrath had completely exploded over
it, and when Brougham had been able to explain, again and again, that
no act of high-treason had been contemplated or committed, the royal
fury had spent itself; the King's good-humor had returned; and in the
reaction William had forgotten most of his objections to the original
proposal. It was arranged, then, that the dissolution should take
place at once. As a matter of fact, Sir Robert Peel, in the House of
Commons, was actually declaiming, in his finest manner, and with a
voice that Disraeli afterwards described as the best ever heard in the
House, excepting indeed "the thrilling tones of O'Connell," against the
whole scheme of reform, when the Usher of the Black Rod was heard
knocking at the doors of the Chamber to summon its members to attend at
the bar of the House of Lords, in order to receive the commands of his
Majesty the King. The commands of his Majesty the King were in fact
the announcement that Parliament was dissolved, and that an appeal to
the country for the election of a new Parliament was to take place at
once.
The news was received by Reformers all over the country with the most
exuberant demonstrations of enthusiasm. In London most of the houses
throughout the principal streets were illuminated, and many windows
which showed {153} no lights were instantly broken by the exulting
crowds that swarmed everywhere. The Duke of Wellington received marked
tokens of the unpopularity which his uncompromising declaration against
all manner of reform had brought upon him. Some of the windows at
Apsley House, his town residence--the windows that looked into the
Park--were broken by an impassioned mob, and for years afterwards these
windows were always kept shuttered, as a sign--so at least the popular
faith assumed it to be--that the Duke could not forgive or forget this
evidence of public ingratitude to the conqueror of Waterloo. The King,
on the other hand, had grown suddenly into immense popularity. The
favorite title given to him at the time of his accession was that of
the "Sailor King." Now he was hailed everywhere in the streets as the
"Patriot King." Wherever his carriage made its public appearance it
was sure to be followed by an admiring and acclaiming crowd. The
elections came on at once, and it has to be noted that the amount of
money spent on both sides was something astonishing even for those days
of reckless expenditure in political contests. Neither side could make
any boast of political purity, and indeed neither side seemed to have
the slightest inclination to set up such a claim. The only rivalry was
in the spending of money in unrestricted and shameless bribery and
corruption. The more modern sense of revolt against the whole
principle of bribery was little thought of in those days. There were
men, indeed, on both sides of the political field who would never have
stooped to offer a bribe if left to the impulses of their own honor and
their own conscience. But the ordinary man of the world, and more
especially of the political world, felt that if he himself did not give
the bribe his rival would be certain to give it, and that nobody at his
club or in society would think any the worse of him because it was
understood that he had bought himself into the House of Commons. When
the elections were over the prevalent opinion as to their result was
almost everywhere that the numbers of the Reform party in the House of
Commons would be much greater than it had been in the {154} House so
lately dissolved. When the new Parliament was opened, Lord John
Russell and Mr. Stanley appeared as members of the Cabinet. The new
Parliament was opened by King William on June 21. If William really
enjoyed the consciousness of popularity, as there is every reason to
believe he did, he must have felt a very proud and popular sovereign
that day. His carriage as he drove to the entrance of the House of
Lords was surrounded and followed by an immense crowd, which cheered
itself hoarse in its demonstrations of loyalty. On June 24 Lord John
Russell introduced his second Reform Bill. It is not necessary to go
through the details of the new measure. The second Reform Bill was in
substance very much the same as its predecessor had been, but of course
its principle was debated on the motion of the second reading with as
much heat, although not at such great length, as in the case of the
first Reform Bill a few weeks before. Nothing new came out in this
second argument, and the debate on the second reading, which began on
July 4, occupied only three nights, a fact which made some members of
the Opposition think themselves entitled to the compliments of the
country. The Parliamentary opponents of the Reform Bill were, however,
soon to make it evident that they had more practical and more
perplexing ways of delaying its progress through the House of Commons
than by the delivery of long orations on the elementary principle of
reform. The second reading of the Bill was carried by 367 votes in its
favor and 231 votes against it--that is to say, by a majority of 136
for the Bill. Therefore everybody saw that, as far as the House of
Commons in the new Parliament was concerned, there was a large majority
in support of the measure brought forward by the Government.
[Sidenote: 1831--William Cobbett]
It was morning, and not very early morning, when the House divided, and
the Attorney-General had not much time to spare for rest before setting
off for one of the law courts to conduct a prosecution which the
Government had thought it well to institute against a man who held a
most prominent position in England at that time, and whose name, it is
safe to say, will be remembered as long as good {155} English prose is
studied. This man was William Cobbett, and he had just aroused the
anger of the Government by a published article in which he vindicated
the conduct of those who had set fire to hayricks and destroyed farm
buildings in various parts of the country. William Cobbett had begun
life as the son of a small farmer, who was himself the son of a day
laborer. He had lived a strange and varied life. In his boyish days
he had run away from a little farm in Surrey and had flung himself upon
the world of London. He had found employment, for a while, in the
humblest kind of drudgery as a junior copying clerk in an attorney's
office, and then he had enlisted in a regiment of foot. He was
quartered for a year at Chatham, and he devoted all his leisure moments
to reading, for which he had a passion which lasted him all his
lifetime. He is said to have exhausted the whole contents of a lending
library in the neighborhood, for he preferred reading anything to
reading nothing. He was especially fond of historical and scientific
studies, but he had a love for literature of a less severe kind also,
and he studied with intense eagerness the works of Swift, on whose
style he seems to have moulded his own with much success and without
any servile imitation. Then he was quartered with his regiment for
some time in New Brunswick, and after various vicissitudes he made his
way to Philadelphia. During his stay in New Brunswick he had studied
French, and had many opportunities of conversing in it with
French-Canadians, and when settled for a time in Philadelphia he
occupied himself by teaching English to some refugees from France. Now
and again he went backward and forward between America and England, but
it was in Philadelphia that he was first known as a writer. Under the
signature of Peter Porcupine he published the "Porcupine Papers," which
were chiefly made up of sarcastic and vehement attacks upon public men.
Cobbett had begun as a sort of Tory, or, at all events, as a professed
enemy of all Radical agitators, but he gradually became a Radical
agitator himself, and when he finally settled in England he soon began
to be recognized as one of the most powerful {156} advocates of the
Radical cause in or out of Parliament. He wrote a strong, simple
Anglo-Saxon style, and indeed it is not too much to say that, after
Swift himself, no man ever wrote clearer English prose than that of
William Cobbett. He had tried to get into Parliament twice without
success; but at last he succeeded in obtaining a seat as the
representative of the borough of Oldham, a place which he represented
until the time of his death, and which was represented by members of
his family in the memory of the present generation. He had started a
paper called _The Weekly Political Register_, and in this he championed
the Radical cause with an energy and ability which made him one of the
most conspicuous men of the time.
[Sidenote: 1831--The prosecution of Cobbett]
Lord Grey's Government was probably not very anxious to prosecute
Cobbett, if a prosecution could have been avoided, but it was feared,
perhaps, by the members of the Cabinet that some of his writings would
be used by the opponents of reform as an illustration of the principles
on which reform was founded, and the practices which it would encourage
if the Government failed to take some decided action. It was therefore
decided to institute the prosecution for the article which had been
published in the previous December. The Guildhall, where the case was
to be tried, was crowded to excess, and the prisoner was loudly
applauded when he stood in the court. He was one of the heroes of the
hour with large numbers of the people everywhere, and the court would
have been crowded this day in any case; but additional interest was
given to the sitting by the fact that Cobbett had summoned for
witnesses for his defence Lord Grey, Lord Brougham, Lord Althorp, and
Lord Durham. The summoning of these witnesses was one of Cobbett's
original and audacious strokes of humor and of cleverness, and his
object was, in fact, to make it out that the leading members of his
Majesty's Government were just as much inclined to countenance violence
as he was when such a piece of work might happen to suit their
political purposes. The stroke, however, did not produce much effect
in this case, for Lord Brougham's evidence, which in any case would
have been {157} unimportant to the question at issue, would have been
rather to the disadvantage than advantage of the prisoner if it had
been fully gone into, and Cobbett relieved Brougham from further
attendance; while Chief Justice Tenterden, the presiding judge, decided
that the testimony which Cobbett said he intended to draw from the
other noble witnesses had nothing to do with the case before the jury.
The whole question, in fact, was as to the nature of the article in the
_Political Register_. The jury could not agree upon their verdict, and
after they had been locked up for fifteen hours, and there seemed no
chance of their coming to an understanding, the jurors were discharged
and there was an end of the case. When the result was announced
Cobbett received tumultuous applause from a large number of the crowd
in court and from throngs of people outside. He left the court even
more of a popular hero than he had been when he entered it.
Now, in studying the article itself as a mere historical document, the
reader who belongs to the present generation would probably be disposed
to come to the conclusion that, while it was indeed something like a
direct incentive to violence, it also pointed to evils and to dangers
which the wisdom of statesmanship would then have done well to fear.
For the main purpose of the article was to emphasize the fact that, in
the existing conditions of things, nothing was ever likely to be done
for the relief of the hungry sufferers from bad laws and bad social
conditions, unless some deeds of violence were employed to startle the
public into the knowledge that the sufferings existed and would not be
endured in patience any longer. It is unfortunately only too true
that, at all periods of history, even the most recent history of the
most civilized countries, there are evils that legislation will not
trouble itself to deal with until legislators have been made to know by
some deeds of violence that if relief will not come, civil disturbance
must come. The whole story of the reign of William the Fourth is the
story of an age of reform, although no particular credit can be given
to the monarch himself for that splendid fact. It is a melancholy
truth {158} that not one of these reforms would have been effected at
the time or for long after if those who suffered most cruelly from
existing wrongs had always been content to suffer in law-abiding
peacefulness, and to allow the justice of their cause to prove itself
by patient argument addressed to the reason, the sympathy, and the
conscience of the ruling orders.
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