THE TRIUMPH OF REFORM.
[Sidenote: 1831--Obstructive tactics in the Commons]
The Reform Bill was, then, clearly on its way to success. It had
passed its second reading in the House of Commons by a large, and what
might well be called a triumphant, majority. Now, when a great measure
reaches that stage in the modern history of our Constitution, we can
all venture to forecast, with some certainty, its ultimate fate. We
are speaking, it need hardly be said, of reform measures which are
moved by a clear principle and have a strong and resolute band of
followers. Such measures may be defeated once and again by the House
of Lords, and may be delayed in either or both Houses for a
considerable time; but it only needs perseverance to carry them in the
end. Some of the more enlightened and intelligent Conservatives must
have begun already to feel that the ultimate triumph of the reform
measure was only a question of time; but then those who were opposed to
every such reform were determined that, at all events, the triumph
should be put off as long as possible. The House of Lords would, no
doubt, throw out the Bill when it came for the first time within the
range of their power; but it was resolved, meanwhile, to keep the Bill
as long as possible in the House of Commons. Therefore there now set
in a Parliamentary campaign of a kind which was almost quite new to
those days, but has become familiar to our later times--a campaign of
obstruction. After the second reading of the new Reform Bill there set
in that first great systematic performance of obstruction which has
been the inspiration, the lesson, and the model to all the obstructives
of later years. The rules and the practices of the House of Commons
offered in those times, and, {160} indeed, for long after, the most
tempting opportunities to any body of members who were anxious to
prolong debate for the mere purpose of preventing legislation. For
example, it was understood until quite lately that any motion made in
the House, even the most formal and technical, might be opposed, and,
if opposed, might be debated for any length of time, without the
Speaker having the power to intervene and cut short the most barren and
meaningless discussion.
[Sidenote: 1831--Parliamentary procedure]
When the House goes into committee, according to the formal
Parliamentary phrase, the temptation to obstruct becomes indefinitely
multiplied, for in committee a member can speak as often as he thinks
fit on the subject--or, at least, such was his privilege before the
alterations adopted in very recent years. It may be well to explain to
the general reader the meaning of what takes place when the House goes
into committee. When a Bill has passed through its first and second
reading it is understood that the main principles of the measure have
been agreed upon, and that it only remains for the House to go into
committee for the purpose of considering every clause and every minute
detail of the Bill before it comes up to the House again for its third
and final reading. Now the House, when it goes into committee, is
still just the same House of Commons as before, except that the Speaker
leaves the chair and the assembly is presided over by the Chairman of
Committees, who sits not in the Speaker's throne-like chair, but in an
ordinary seat at the table in front of it. There is, however, the
important difference that, while in the House itself, presided over by
the Speaker, a member can only speak once on each motion, in the
committee he can speak as often as he thinks fit, and for the obvious
reason that, where mere details are under consideration, it was not
thought expedient to limit the number of practical suggestions which
any member might desire to offer as the discussion of each clause
suggested new possibilities of improvement. By the alterations
effected recently in the rules of procedure the Speaker of the House,
or the Chairman of Committees, obtains a {161} certain control over
members who are evidently talking against time and for the sake of
wilful obstruction; but in the days of Lord John Russell's Reform Bill
no such authority had been given to the presiding officer.
The very motion--in ordinary times a purely formal motion--which had to
be passed in order that the House might get into committee, gave to the
opponents of reform their first opportunity of obstruction. The motion
was that the Speaker do now leave the chair, and the moment that motion
was put it was immediately met by an amendment. A Tory member raised
the question that there was a mistake in one of the returns of
population in the constituency which he represented, and he proposed
that his constituent should be allowed to show cause in person or by
counsel at the bar of the House for a rectification of the error. Lord
John Russell admitted that there appeared to have been some mistake in
the return, but he contended that the motion to enable the House to go
into committee was not the proper time at which such a question could
be raised. Every one in the House knew perfectly well the motive for
raising the question just then, and after some time had been wasted in
absolutely unnecessary discussion the obstructive amendment was
defeated by a majority of 97. That, however, did not help matters very
much, for the House had still to divide upon the question that the
Speaker do now leave the chair. This was met by repeated motions for
adjournment, and on every one of these motions a long discussion was
kept up by some leading members of the Opposition and by their faithful
followers. The reader will remember that until the motion had been
carried for the Speaker to leave the chair it was still the House, and
not the committee, that was sitting, and therefore no member could
speak more than once on the same subject. But then this fact did not
secure even that particular stage of the debate against obstruction,
for there were several different forms in which the motion for
adjournment might be made, and on each of these several proposals a
member was entitled to speak even although he had already spoken on
each motion previously proposed {162} to the same practical effect.
Perhaps it may be as well to bring the condition of things more clearly
and more practically within the understanding of the general reader,
seeing that the Parliamentary obstruction which may be said to have
begun with the Reform Bill became afterwards so important an instrument
for good or for evil in our legislative system. The motion then is
made that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair. Thereupon Mr. Brown,
Tory member, moves as an amendment that the House do now adjourn, and
Mr. Brown sets forth in a lengthened speech his reasons for thinking
that the House ought not to sit any longer that night. Some member of
the Ministry rises and gives his reason for urging that the Speaker
should be allowed to leave the chair at once, and that the House go
into committee in order to consider the details of the measure.
Thereupon several of Mr. Brown's friends arise, and one after another
expound, at great length, their reason for supporting Mr. Brown. The
ministers, by this time, have made up their minds that the best course
they can follow is to let Mr. Brown's friends have all the talk to
themselves, but some independent members on the side of the Government
are sure to be provoked into making speeches denouncing the
obstructives and thereby only helping to obstruct. At length, when all
Mr. Brown's friends have had their say--and Mr. Brown, it will be
remembered, cannot speak again on this particular question--a division
is taken on his amendment, and the amendment is lost. Then the
question is put once more for the Speaker to leave the chair, and
instantly Mr. Jones, another Tory member, springs to his feet and moves
as an amendment, not that the House do now adjourn, but that this
debate be now adjourned, which, as every one must see, is quite a
different proposition. On this new amendment Mr. Brown is quite
entitled to speak, and he does speak accordingly, and so do all his
friends, and at last a division is taken and the amendment of Mr. Jones
has the same fate as the amendment of Mr. Brown, and is defeated by a
large majority. Up comes the question once more about the Speaker
leaving the chair, and up gets Mr. Robinson, {163} another Tory member,
and moves that the House do now adjourn, which motion is strictly in
order, for it is quite clear that the House might with perfect
consistency refuse to adjourn at midnight and yet might be quite
willing to adjourn at four o'clock in the morning. On the amendment of
Mr. Robinson his friends Brown and Jones are of course entitled to
speak, and so are all their colleagues in the previous discussions, and
when this amendment too is defeated, then Mr. Smith, yet another Tory
member, rises in his place, as the familiar Parliamentary phrase goes,
and moves that this debate be now adjourned. This is really a fair
summary of the events which took place in the House of Commons on this
first grand opportunity of obstruction, the motion to enable the House
to get into committee on the details of the Reform Bill.
[Sidenote: 1831--The Reform Bill in committee]
It was half-past seven in the morning when the out-wearied House
consented to adjourn, and the story was told, at the time, that when
Sir Charles Wetherell was leaving Westminster Hall with some of his
Tory colleagues he observed that a heavy rain was pouring down, and he
declared with a vigorous oath that if he had known of that in time he
would have treated the Government to a few more divisions before giving
them a chance of getting to their homes. The Bill, however, did get
into committee at last, and then the work of obstruction began again
and was carried on after the most systematic fashion. In committee the
opportunities were ample, for the case of each constituency which it
was proposed to disfranchise, or each constituency the number of whose
members it was proposed to lessen, had to be discussed separately, and,
of course, gave rise to an unlimited number of speeches. A committee
was actually formed to prepare, organize, and apply the methods of
obstruction, and of this committee no less a person than Sir Robert
Peel, then one of England's most rising statesmen, afterwards to be one
of her greatest statesmen, was the president. Sir Robert Peel was
himself one of the most frequent speakers in the obstructive debates,
and among his rivals were Sir Charles Wetherell and Mr. John Wilson
Croker, a man who has {164} been consigned to a sort of immortality by
a famous essay of Macaulay's and by Disraeli's satirical picture of him
as Mr. Rigby in "Coningsby." The committee of Tory members which has
been already mentioned arranged carefully, in advance, the obstruction
that was to be carried on in the case of each particular constituency,
and planned out in advance how each discussion was to be conducted and
who were to take the leading parts in it.
[Sidenote: 1831--Determination to pass the Bill]
Meanwhile popular feeling was rising more and more strongly as each day
of debate dragged on. Some of the largest constituencies were most
active and energetic in their appeals to the Government to hold out to
the very last and not yield an inch to the obstructionists. A fear
began to spread abroad that Lord Grey and his colleagues might endeavor
to save some of the main provisions of their Bill by surrendering other
parts of it to the Opposition. This alarm found expression in the cry
which soon began to be heard all over the country, and became in fact
the battle-cry of Reformers everywhere--the Bill, the whole Bill, and
nothing but the Bill. Great public meetings were held in all parts for
the purpose of urging the Government to make no concessions to the
political enemy. During the summer a meeting of the most influential
supporters of the Government was held in the Foreign Office, and at
that meeting Lord Althorp, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced that
Lord Grey and his colleagues were perfectly determined not to give way,
and he declared that the Government were resolved to keep the House of
Commons sitting until December, or, if necessary, until the following
December, in order to pass the Bill before the rising of the House for
its recess. Naturally this firm declaration had some effect on the
obstructionists, especially on the rank and file of the
obstructionists. Nothing discourages and disheartens obstruction so
much, in the House of Commons, as a resolute announcement on the part
of the Ministry that the House is to be kept together until the measure
under debate, whatever it may be, is disposed of. It is a hard task,
at any time, to keep the House of Commons together after the regular
season for its {165} holiday has come on; and if the rank and file of
Opposition can once be brought to believe that a certain measure is to
be passed no matter what number of weeks or months it may occupy, the
rank and file is very apt to make up its mind that there is no use in
throwing good months after bad, and that it might be as well to get the
thing done, since it has to be done, without unlimited sacrifice of
personal comfort. Still, the leaders of the Tory Opposition were not
deterred by Lord Althorp's proclamation from maintaining their work of
obstruction for some time yet. The impatience and anger of the country
rose higher and higher. A reforming member of the House was in an
unlucky plight indeed if he happened to be caught by one of the
amendments proposed from the benches of Opposition and, believing that
it had something reasonable in it, allowed his too sensitive conscience
to persuade him into supporting it by his vote. Into such a plight
fell a worthy alderman of the City of London--who had been sent into
the House of Commons as a Radical reformer. This well-meaning person
had permitted himself to become satisfied that there was something to
be said for one of the Opposition amendments, and in a moment of rash
ingenuousness he voted for it. He was immediately afterwards formally
censured by his constituents and by the body to which he officially
belonged. He was informed by solemn resolutions that he had been sent
into the House of Commons to help the Government in passing the Reform
Bill, and it was more or less plainly intimated to him that he had no
more right to the exercise of his independent opinion on any of the
details of the measure than a private soldier on a battle-field would
have to exercise his individual judgment as to the propriety of obeying
or disobeying the order of his commanding officer. The poor man had to
make the most fervid assurances that he had meant no harm in voting for
the Opposition amendment, that he was thoroughly devoted to the cause
of reform, and to the particular measure then before the House of
Commons, and that never again was he to be induced by any arguments to
give a vote against the Government on any {166} section or sentence or
line of Lord John Russell's Bill. Then, and not until then, he was
taken back into favor.
[Sidenote: 1831--The Reform Bill passes the Commons]
The Bill, however, did get through committee at last. The Government
contrived by determined resistance and untiring patience to get their
scheme of reform out of committee in substantially the condition they
wished it to have. Then came the third reading. It was confidently
assumed on both sides of the House that there would be a long debate on
the motion that the Bill be now read a third time. In the House of
Commons, however, it often happens that the assumption of a forthcoming
debate as a certainty is itself the one cause which prevents the
debates from being long. So it happened on this important occasion.
Every Tory took it for granted that his brother Tories would keep the
debate going for an indefinite time, and in this fond faith a good many
Tories felt themselves in no hurry to get to the House, and were
willing to leave the first hour or two at the disposal of their
colleagues. When the sitting began, and, indeed, when the motion for
the third reading came on, there were comparatively few Tories in the
House, and the great leaders of Opposition were not present. There was
confusion in the ranks of the Tories, and the crowded benches of the
Reformers thundered with clamorous shouts of "Divide! Divide!" Now,
it takes a very heroic orator indeed to continue declaiming for a long
time when a great majority of the members present are bellowing at him
and are drowning, by their united voices, the sounds of the words which
he is trying to articulate. The members of Opposition in the House
found this fact brought home to them, and, being further bewildered by
the fortuitous absence of their leaders, soon gave up the struggle, and
the debate collapsed, and the third reading was carried by a large
majority before Sir Robert Peel, Sir Charles Wetherell, and others came
in leisurely fashion into the House, filled with the assumption that
there would be ample opportunity for them to carry on the debate. Even
yet, however, all was not over. According to the procedure of the
House, it was not enough that the motion for the third reading of the
{167} Bill should be carried. It was still necessary to propose the
motion that the Bill do now pass. The moment this motion was proposed
the torrent of opposition, frozen up for a too-short interval, began to
flow again in full volume. The nature of the formal motion gave
opportunity for renewed attacks on the whole purpose of the Bill, and
all the old, familiar, outworn arguments were repeated by orator after
orator from the Tory benches. But this, too, had to come to an end.
The House was no longer in committee, and each member could only speak
once on this final motion. Of course, there could be motions for
adjournment, and on each such motion, put as an amendment, there would
be opportunity for a fresh debate; but the leaders of the Opposition
were beginning to see that there was nothing of much account to be done
any longer in the House of Commons, and that their hopes of resisting
the progress of reform must turn to the House of Lords. So the Reform
Bill passed at last through the House of Commons, and then all over the
country was raised the cry, "What will the Lords do with it?"
Soon the temper of the more advanced Reformers throughout the country
began to change its tone, and the question eagerly put was not so often
what will the Lords do with the Bill? but what shall we do with the
House of Lords? At every great popular meeting held throughout the
constituencies an outcry was raised against the House of Lords as a
part of the constitutional system, and no speaker was more welcome on a
public platform than the orator who called for the abolition of the
hereditary principle in the formation of legislators. One might have
thought that the agitation which broke out all over the country, and
the manner in which almost all Reformers seemed to have taken it for
granted that the hereditary Chamber must be the enemy of all reform,
might have put the peers on their guard and taught them the unwisdom of
accepting the imputation against them, and thus proving that they had
no sympathy with the cause of the people. But the great majority of
the Tory peers of that day had not yet risen to the idea that there
could be any {168} wisdom in any demand made by men who had no
university education, who had not what was then described as a stake in
the country. The voice of the people was simply regarded as the voice
of the rabble, and the Tory peers had no notion of allowing themselves
to be guided by any appeal coming from such a quarter.
[Sidenote: 1831--The Reform Bill in the Lords]
The agitation of which we are speaking had been going on during the
long reign of obstruction in the Commons, and there was no time lost by
the Government between the passing of the Bill in the representative
Chamber and its introduction in the House of Lords. On the evening of
the day when the Bill was passed by the Commons, September 23, 1831, it
was formally brought into the House of Lords and read a first time. It
has already been explained that, according to Parliamentary usage, the
first reading of any Bill is taken in the House of Lords as a matter of
right and without a division. The second reading of the Bill was taken
on October 3. Lord Grey, who had charge of the measure in that House,
delivered one of the most impressive and commanding speeches which had
ever come from his eloquent lips, not merely in recommendation of the
measure itself, but in solemn warning to the peers in general, and to
the bishops and archbishops in particular, to pause and consider
carefully all the possible consequences before committing themselves to
the rejection of a demand which was made by the vast majority of the
English people.
Lord Grey was a noble illustration of what may be described as the
stately order of Parliamentary eloquence. He had not the fire and the
passion of Fox; he had not the thrilling genius of Pitt; and, of
course, his style of speech had none of the passionate and sometimes
the extravagant declamation of which Brougham was a leading master. He
had a dignified presence, a calm, clear, and penetrating voice, a style
that was always exquisitely finished and nobly adapted to its purpose.
It would not be too much to say for Earl Grey that he might have been
the ideal orator for an ideal House of Lords, if we assume the ideal
House of Lords to be an assembly in which appeal {169} was always made
to high principle, to reason, and to justice, not to passion, to
prejudice, or to party. Lord Grey, so far as we can judge from
contemporary accounts, never spoke better than in the debate on the
second reading of the Reform Bill, and it was evident that he spoke
with all the sincere emotion of one whose mind and heart alike were
filled with the cause for which he pleaded. But the House of Lords
just then was not in a mood to be swayed greatly by argument or by
eloquence. Lord Wharncliffe moved an amendment to the effect that the
Bill be read a second time this day six months. This, at least, was
the shape that the motion took after some discussion, because Lord
Wharncliffe, in the first instance, had concluded his speech against
the second reading by the blunt motion that the Bill be rejected; and
it was only when it had been pressed upon his attention that such a
method of disposing of the measure would be a downright insult to the
Commons that he consented to modify his proposal into the formal and
familiar amendment that the Bill be read a second time this day six
months. The effect would be just the same in either case, for no
Ministry would think of retaining office if the discussion of its most
important measure were postponed in the House of Lords for a period of
six months. During the debate which followed, the Duke of Wellington
spoke strongly against the Bill. On the morning of October 8 the
division was taken. There were 199 votes for the amendment and 158
against it, or, in other words, for the second reading of the Bill.
The second reading was therefore rejected by a majority of 41. The
whole work of legislation during all the previous part of the year had
thus been reduced to nothing, and the House of Lords had shown what it
would do with the Bill by contemptuously rejecting it, and thus bidding
defiance to the demand unquestionably made by the vast majority of the
people of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Parliament was at once prorogued, and the members who were in favor of
reform hurried off to address great meetings of their constituents, and
to denounce the action of the House of Lords. Popular enthusiasm was
aroused {170} more than ever in favor of the Reform Bill, and popular
passion was stirred in many places to positive fury against the
principal opponents of the Bill. In London several public men who were
conspicuous for their opposition to the Bill were surrounded in their
carriages as they drove through the streets by suddenly collected
crowds, who hooted and hissed them, and would have gone much further
than hooting and hissing in their way of expressing condemnation but
for the energetic intervention of the newly created police force. In
some of the provincial towns, and here and there throughout the
country, the most serious riots broke out. In Derby there were
disturbances which lasted for several days, and consisted of attacks on
unpopular persons and of fierce fights with the police. Nottingham was
the centre of rioting even more serious. Nottingham Castle, the seat
of the Duke of Newcastle, was attacked by a furious mob and actually
burned to the ground. In the immediate neighborhood was the estate of
Mr. Musters, which was invaded by an excited mob. The dwelling-house
was set on fire, and, although the conflagration was not allowed to
spread far, yet it ended in a tragedy which must always have a peculiar
interest for the lovers of poetry and romance. The wife of Mr. Musters
was the Mary Chaworth made famous by Lord Byron in his poem of the
"Dream," and other poems as well--the Mary Chaworth who was his first
love, and whom, at one time, he believed destined to be his last love
also. Mary Chaworth does not seem to have taken the poet's adoration
very seriously--at all events, she married Mr. Musters, a country
gentleman of good position. Mrs. Musters was in her house on the night
when it was attacked by the mob, and when the fire broke out she fled
into the open park and sought shelter there among the trees. The mob
was dispersed and Mrs. Musters, after a while, was able to return to
her home; but she was in somewhat delicate health, the exposure to the
cold night air of winter proved too much for her, and she became one of
the most innocent victims to the popular passion aroused by the
opposition to the Reform Bill.
{171}
[Sidenote: 1831--The Reform riots]
Bristol was the scene of the most formidable riots during all that
period of disturbance. Sir Charles Wetherell, who had made himself
conspicuous as an opponent of reform, was the Recorder as well as the
representative of Bristol, and his return to the city after the Lords
had thrown out the Bill became the signal for an outbreak of popular
fury. Houses were wrecked in various parts of the city; street fights
took place between the mob and the military, day after day; the Mansion
House, where Sir Charles Wetherell was supposed to have taken refuge,
was besieged, attacked, and almost demolished, and Sir Charles
Wetherell himself was rescued, more than once, with the utmost
difficulty from hostile crowds who seemed thirsting for his blood. All
these riots were atoned for dearly soon after by some who had taken
part in them. The stroke of the law was heavy and sharp in those days,
and many of the rioters in Derby, Nottingham, and Bristol, and other
places expiated on the scaffold their offences against peace and order.
Some of the cathedral cities became scenes of especial disturbance
because of the part so many of the prelates who were members of the
House of Lords had taken against the Reform Bill. The direct appeal
which Earl Grey had made to the archbishops and bishops in the House of
Lords to think long and well before opposing the Reform Bill was
delivered with the highest and sincerest motive, with the desire that
the Church should keep itself in harmony with the people; but the mere
fact that the appeal was made, and made in vain, seems to have aroused
in many parts of the country, and especially in the cathedral cities, a
stronger conviction than ever that the prelates were, for the most
part, the enemies of popular rights. Then, again, there was a more or
less general impression that the King himself, in his heart, was not in
favor of reform and would be glad to get rid of it if he could. Daniel
O'Connell, addressing a great popular meeting at Charing Cross in
London, pointed with his outstretched right arm towards Whitehall, and
awakened a tremendous outburst of applause from the vast crowd by
telling them that it was there Charles I. had lost his head {172}
because he had submitted to the dictation of his foreign wife. There
was a popular belief at the time that Queen Adelaide, the wife of King
William, cherished a strong hatred against reform such as Lord Grey and
his colleagues were pressing on, and that she was secretly influencing
the mind of her husband her own way, and so it was that O'Connell's
allusion got home to the feelings and the passions of the multitude who
listened to his words. Never, in the nineteenth century, had England
gone through such a period of internal storm. All over the Continent
observers were beginning to ask themselves whether the monarchy in
England was not on the verge of such a crisis as had just overtaken the
monarchy in France.
[Sidenote: 1832--The third Reform Bill]
Lord Grey and his ministers still, however, held firmly to their
purpose, and the King, much as he may have disliked the whole reform
business, and gladly as he would have got rid of it, if it were to be
got rid of by any possible means, had still wit enough to see that if
he were to give his support to the House of Lords something even more
than the House of Lords might be in danger. Parliament was therefore
called together again in December, and the Royal Speech from the Throne
commended to both Houses the urgent necessity of passing into law as
quickly as possible the ministerial measure of reform. Lord John
Russell brought in his third Reform Bill for England and Wales, a Bill
that was, in purpose and in substance, much the same as the two
measures that had preceded it, and this third Reform Bill passed by
slow degrees through its several stages in the House of Commons. Then
again came up the portentous question, "What will the Lords do with
it?" There could not be the least doubt in the mind of anybody as to
what the majority of the House of Lords would be glad to do with the
Bill if they only felt sure that they could work their will upon it
without danger to their own order. There, however, the serious
difficulty arose. The more reasonable among the peers did not attempt
to disguise from themselves that another rejection of the Bill might
lead to the most serious disturbances, and even possibly to civil war,
and they were not {173} prepared to indulge their hostility to reform
at so reckless an expense. The greater number of the Tory peers,
however, acted on the assumption, familiar at all times among certain
parties of politicians, that the more loudly people demanded a reform
the more resolutely the reform ought to be withheld from them, and
that, if the people attempted to rise up, the only proper policy was to
put the people down by force. The opinions and sentiments of the less
headlong among the Conservative peers had led to the formation of a
party, more or less loosely put together, who were called at that time
the "Waverers," just as a political combination of an earlier day
obtained the title of the "Trimmers." The Waverers were made up of the
men who held that their best and most patriotic policy was to regard
each portion of the Bill brought before them on its own merits, and not
to resist out of hand any proposition which seemed harmless in itself
simply because it formed part of the whole odious policy of reform.
King William is believed, at one time, to have set hopes on the efforts
of the Waverers, and to have cherished a gladsome belief that they
might get him out of his difficulties about the Reform Bill; as indeed
it will be seen they did in the end, though not quite in the way which
he would have desired.
Lord Grey introduced the third Reform Bill on March 27, 1832. The
first reading passed, as a matter of course, but when the division on
the motion for the second reading came on on April 14, there was only a
majority of 9 votes for the Bill: 184 peers voted for it and 175
against it. Of course Lord Grey and his colleagues saw, at once, that
unless the conditions were to be completely altered there would be no
chance whatever in the House of Lords for a measure of reform which had
passed its second reading by a majority of only 9. The moment the Bill
got into committee there would be endless opportunities afforded for
its mutilation, and if it were to get through the House at all, it
would be only in such a form as to render it wholly useless for the
objects which its promoters desired it to accomplish. This dismal
conviction was very speedily {174} verified. When the Bill got into
committee, Lord Lyndhurst moved an amendment to the effect that the
question of enfranchisement should precede that of disfranchisement.
Now this proposal was not in itself one necessarily hostile to the
principle of the Bill. It is quite easy to understand that a sincere
friend to reform might have, under certain conditions, adopted the
views that Lord Lyndhurst professed to advocate. But the Ministry knew
very well that the adoption of such a proposal would mean simply that
the whole conduct of the measure was to be taken out of their hands and
put into unfriendly hands--in other words, that it would be utterly
futile to go any further with the measure if the hostile majority were
thus allowed to deal with it according to their own designs and their
own class interest.
[Sidenote: 1832--The Peers and the third Reform Bill]
Lord Lyndhurst was a man of great ability, eloquence, and astuteness.
He was one of the comparatively few men in our modern history who have
made a mark in the Law Courts and in Parliament. As a Parliamentary
orator he was the rival of Brougham, and the rivalry was all the more
exciting to the observers because it was a rivalry of styles as well as
of capacities. Lyndhurst was always polished, smooth, refined, endowed
with a gift of argumentative eloquence, which appealed to the intellect
rather than to the feelings, was seldom impassioned, and even when
impassioned kept his passion well within conventional bounds. Brougham
was thrilling, impetuous, overwhelming, often extravagant, scorning
conventionality of phrase or manner, revelling in his own exuberant
strength and plunging at opponents as a bull might do in a Spanish
arena. Lyndhurst's amendment was one especially suited to bring to his
side the majority of the Waverers. It was plausible enough in itself,
and gave to many a Waverer, who must have had in his mind a very clear
perception of its real object, some excuse for persuading himself that,
in voting for it, he was not voting against the principle of reform.
When the division came to be taken on May 7, 151 peers voted for the
amendment and 116 against it, thus showing a majority of 35 against
{175} the Government, by whom of course the amendment had been
unreservedly opposed.
The country saw that a new crisis had come, and a crisis more serious
than any which had gone before. There was only one constitutional
course by which the difficulty could be got over, and that was by the
King giving his consent to the creation of a number of new peers large
enough to carry the Reform Bill through all its subsequent stages in
the House of Lords. Other outlet of safety through peaceful means
there was none. Lord Grey's Ministry could not possibly remain in
office and see the measure, on which they believed the peace and
prosperity of the country to depend, left at the mercy of an
irresponsible majority of Tory peers. The King was most unwilling to
help his ministers out of the trouble, especially by such a process as
they had suggested, and in his heart would have been very glad to be
rid of them and the Reform Bill at the same time. Charles Greville in
his Memoirs makes several allusions to the King's well-known dislike
for the Whig ministers and his anxiety to get the Duke of Wellington
back again. Lord Grey and his colleagues, finding it hard to get the
King to recognize the gravity of the situation, and to adopt the advice
they had offered to him, felt that there was nothing left for them but
to resign office. And the King was delighted to have a chance of
recalling the Duke of Wellington to the position of Prime Minister.
Under the date of May 17, 1832, Greville has some notes which well
deserve quotation: "The joy of the King at what he thought to be his
deliverance from the Whigs was unbounded. He lost no time in putting
the Duke of Wellington in possession of everything which had taken
place between him and them upon the subject of reform and with regard
to the creation of peers, admitting that he had consented, but saying
he had been subjected to every species of persecution. His ignorance
and levity put him in a miserable light and proved him to be one of the
silliest old gentlemen in his dominions." Greville goes on to say:
"But I believe he is mad, for yesterday he gave a dinner to the Jockey
Club, {176} at which, notwithstanding his cares, he seemed to be in
excellent spirits, and after dinner he made a number of speeches so
ridiculous and nonsensical beyond all belief but to those who heard
them, rambling from one subject to another, repeating the same thing
over and over again, and altogether such a mass of confusion, trash,
and imbecility, as made one laugh and blush at the same time."
[Sidenote: 1832--The King seeks a Prime Minister]
The poor muddled-headed old King in fact could not understand that the
question submitted to him allowed of no middle course of compromise.
He seemed to think he had gone far enough in the way of conciliation
when he offered to allow his ministers to create a certain number of
peers. No concession, however, could be of the slightest use to the
Ministry unless the power were conceded to them to create as many new
peers as might be necessary to overbear all opposition to the Reform
Bill. The struggle was in fact between the existing House of Lords and
the vast majority of the nation. One or other must conquer. The only
constitutional way in which the existing opposition of the House of
Lords could be overborne was by the creation of a number of new peers
great enough to turn the majority of the House of Lords into a minority.
Lord Grey and Lord Althorp were not, it is hardly necessary to say, men
who shared in the popular sentiment, which would, if it could, have
abolished altogether the hereditary principle in legislation. But Lord
Grey and Lord Althorp read the signs of the times, and saw clearly
enough that if the House of Lords were allowed to stand much longer in
the way of the Reform Bill the result would be probably a political
revolution which would abolish the House of Lords altogether.
Therefore the ministers could make no terms with the King short of
those which they had offered, and as the King did not see his way to
accept their conditions there was nothing left for them but to resign
office. Accordingly Lord Grey tendered his resignation and that of his
colleagues, and the King, after much indecision and mental flurry,
thought he could do nothing better than to accept the resignation, and
try to find a set of ministers more suitable to his {177} inclinations.
He sent for Lord Lyndhurst and entered into conversation with that
astute lawyer and politician, and Lord Lyndhurst advised him to send
for the Duke of Wellington. The Duke was sent for, but the Duke had
not much to say which could lend any help to the King in his
difficulties. Wellington saw distinctly enough that there was no
alternative but that which lay in the choice between reform and some
sort of popular revolution. We have seen already in these volumes how
Wellington preferred to accept Catholic Emancipation rather than take
the risk of plunging the country into civil war. In the case of the
Reform Bill he would have acted, no doubt, upon the same principle if
driven to the choice, but after the repeated and energetic
denunciations of reform which he had delivered in the House of Lords he
did not think that it would be a fitting part for him, even for the
sake of helping the sovereign out of his constitutional trouble, to be
the Prime Minister by whom any manner of Reform Bill should be
introduced. Wellington therefore strongly urged the King to send for
Sir Robert Peel, and declared that he himself would lend all the
support he possibly could to a Peel Administration. Peel was sent for
accordingly, but Peel was too far-seeing a statesman to believe that he
could possibly hold office for many weeks unless he yielded to the full
demands of the country, and his political principles would not have
allowed him to go so far as that. He did his best to make it clear to
the King that no administration but a reform administration could
stand, and that, if a reform administration had to be accepted, there
was nothing better to be done than to invite Lord Grey and Lord John
Russell back again to office.
Meanwhile the country was aroused to a fervor of enthusiasm in favor of
reform, which seemed only to increase with every delay and to grow
stronger with every opposition. Public meetings were held in
Birmingham of larger size than had ever been gathered together in
England before, and resolutions were passed by acclamation which were
almost revolutionary in their character. In many cities and towns
appeals were made for a run on the {178} bank, a run for gold, and
there were alarming signs that the advice was likely to be followed to
such a degree as to bring about utter confusion in the money market.
In the City of London an immense meeting was held, at which resolutions
were passed calling on the House of Commons to stop the supplies unless
the King accepted the councils of the Whig statesmen and gave them
authority for the election of new peers. The overwhelming strength of
the demand for reform may be easily estimated when it is remembered
that the majority in the great cities and towns, and also in the
counties, were for once of the same opinion. In more than one great
political controversy of modern times, as in the free-trade agitation
for example, it has happened that the town population were of one
opinion and the county population of another. But at the time which we
are now describing the great cities and towns were all nearly
unrepresented, and in their demand for representation they were of one
mind and one spirit with the county populations, which called out for a
real and not a sham representation. There will probably always be a
question of curious speculation and deep interest to the students of
history as to the possibility of a great revolution in England if the
King had made up his mind to hold out against the advice of the Whig
statesmen and to try the last chance. It is certain that the leading
Whig nobles were considering, with profound earnestness, what course it
might be necessary for them to take if the King were absolutely to
refuse all concession and to stand by what he believed to be his
sovereign right to set up his own authority as supreme. If the choice
should be forced on them, would these Whig nobles stand by the
obstinate King or throw in their lot with the people? This grave
question must have been considered again and again in all its bearings
by the Whig leaders during that time of terrible national crisis.
[Sidenote: 1832--The Whig nobles and the military]
It would seem to be beyond all question that some, at least, of the
Whig nobles were contemplating the possibility of their having to
choose between the King and the people, and that their minds were made
up, should the worst come {179} to the worst, to side with the people.
Many years afterwards, during the State trials at Clonmel which
followed the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848, evidence was brought
forward by the counsel for the defence of Mr. Smith O'Brien and his
fellow-prisoners to prove that the Whig nobles during the reform crisis
in England had been in communication with Sir Charles Napier, the great
soldier, for the purpose of ascertaining how the army would act if
there should come to be a struggle between the sovereign claiming
despotic rights and the people standing up for constitutional
government. All this, however, is now merely a question of interesting
historical speculation. The King had tried Wellington, had tried Peel,
had sent for Wellington a second time, and found that Wellington,
though he dared do all that might become a man, saw nothing to be
gained for sovereign or State by an attempt to accomplish the
impossible, and William at last gave way. It was about time that he
did so. William was becoming utterly unpopular with the great mass of
his subjects. He who had been endowed with the title of the Patriot
King was now to be an object of hatred and contempt to the crowds in
the streets with whom from day to day he could not avoid being brought
into contact. When his carriage appeared in one of the great London
thoroughfares it was followed again and again by jeering and furious
mobs, who hissed and groaned at him, and it was always necessary for
his protection that a strong escort of cavalry should interpose between
him and his subjects. Even in the London newspapers of the day, those
at least that were in favor of reform, and which constituted the large
majority, language was sometimes used about the King which it would be
impossible to use in our days about some unpopular Lord Mayor or member
for the City.
All this told heavily upon poor King William, who was a good-natured
sort of man in his own way if his ministers and others would only let
him alone, and who rather fancied himself in the light of a popular
sovereign. He therefore made up his mind at last to accept the advice
{180} of his Whig ministers and grant them the power of creating as
many new peers as they thought fit, for the purpose of passing their
importunate Reform Bill. The consent was given at an interview which
the King had with Lord Grey and Lord Brougham, Lord Brougham as keeper
of the royal conscience taking the principal conduct of the
negotiations on behalf of the Government. The King, as usual on such
occasions, was flurried, awkward, and hot-tempered, and when he had
made up his mind to yield to the advice of his ministers he could not
so far master his temper as to make his decision seem a graceful
concession. Even when he announced that the concession was to be made
the trouble was not yet quite over. Lord Brougham thought it necessary
to ask the King for his consent in writing to the creation of the new
peers, and hereupon the wrath of the sovereign blazed out afresh. The
King seemed to think that such a demand showed a want of confidence in
him which amounted to something like an insult, and he fretted and
stormed for a while as though he had been like Petruchio "aboard
carousing to his mates." After a while, however, he came into a better
humor, and perhaps saw the reasonableness of the plea that Lord Grey
and Lord Brougham could not undertake the task now confided to them
without the written warrant of the King's authority. William therefore
turned away and scratched off at once a brief declaration conferring on
his ministers the power to create the necessary number of peers,
qualifying it merely with the condition that the sons of living peers
were to be called upon in the first instance. The meaning of this
condition was obvious, and its object was not unreasonable from the
King's point of view, or, indeed, from the point of view of any
statesman who was anxious that the House of Lords should be kept as
long as possible in its existing form. Nobody certainly wanted to
increase the number of peers to any great extent, and if only the
eldest sons of the living peers were to be called to the House of Lords
each would succeed in process of time to his father's title and the
roll of the peerage would become once again as it had been before.
{181}
[Sidenote: 1832--Passage of the third Reform Bill]
The political crisis was over now. When once the royal authority had
been given for the unlimited creation of new peers there was an end of
all the trouble. Of course, there was no necessity to manufacture any
new batches of peers. As the Reform Bill was to be carried one way or
the other, whether with the aid of new peers or without it, the Tory
members of the House of Lords could not see any possible advantage in
taking steps which must only end in filling their crimson benches with
new men who might outvote them on all future occasions. The Reform
Bill passed through all its stages in the House of Lords, not without
some angry and vehement discussions, during which personal
recriminations were made that would have been considered disorderly at
the meeting of a parish vestry. One noble lord denounced the conduct
of Lord Grey as atrocious, and even the stately Lord Grey was roused to
so much anger by this expression that he forgot his habitual
self-control and dignity and replied that he flung back the noble
lord's atrocious words with the utmost scorn and contempt.
The Bill passed its third reading in the House of Lords on June 4,
1832, and received the royal assent on June 7. The royal assent,
however, was somewhat ungraciously given. King William declined to
give his assent in person, a performance which, at the time, seemed to
be expected from him, and it was signified only by the medium of a
formal committee. The Bill, however, was passed, the third Reform Bill
that had been introduced since Lord Grey had come into office. The
Reform Bills for Ireland and Scotland which had gone through their
stages in the House of Commons immediately after the Bills relating to
England and Wales were then carried through the House of Lords. The
great triumph was accomplished.
It is not without historical interest to notice the fact that a long
discussion sprang up at this time and was revived again and again,
during many successive years, with regard to certain words used by Lord
John Russell in expressing his satisfaction at the passing of the
Reform Bill. He was endeavoring to calm the apprehensions of timid
{182} people throughout the country who feared that the whole time of
Parliament would thenceforward be taken up with the passing of new and
newer Reform Bills, and he declared that the Government of which he was
a member had no intention but that the Reform Act should be a final
measure. It might have seemed clear to any reasonable mind that Lord
John had no idea of proclaiming his faith in the absolute finality of
any measure passed, or to be passed, by human statesmanship, but was
merely expressing the confident belief of his colleagues and himself
that the Bill they had passed would satisfy the needs and the demands
of the existing generation. At the time, however, a storm of
remonstrance from the more advanced Liberals broke around Lord John
Russell's head, and he was charged with having declared that the Reform
Act was meant to be a measure for all times, and that he and his
colleagues would never more set their hands to any measure intended to
broaden or deepen its influence. There were indeed popular caricatures
of Lord John to be seen in which he was exhibited with the title of
"Finality Jack." Lord John's public career proved many times, in later
days, how completely his meaning had been misunderstood by some of
those whose cause he had been espousing, for all through his honored
life he continued to be a leader of reform. But the common
misunderstanding of the phrase was in itself significant, for it seemed
to foretell the fact that the Bill, with all the great changes it had
introduced and the new foundations it had laid for the future system of
constitutional government, was in itself indeed far from being a final
measure. The authors of the Reform Bill had left what might now be
called "the masses" almost altogether out of their calculations. The
rate at which the franchise was fixed for town and country rendered it
practically impossible that the artisan in the town or the laborer in
the country could have any chance whatever of obtaining a vote.
[Sidenote: 1832--Some defects in the Reform Bill]
This was the one great defect of the Reform Bill introduced by Lord
Grey and Lord John Russell. Perhaps it would not have been prudent for
these statesmen, at that {183} time, to enter on the introduction of a
more comprehensive measure. Perhaps Lord Grey and Lord John Russell
would have preferred of their own judgment not to introduce too
comprehensive a reform measure all at once, and to allow the franchise
to broaden slowly down. But it is certain that almost immediately
after the passing of the Reform Bill a profound feeling of
disappointment began to grow and spread among the classes who found
themselves excluded from any of its benefits, and who believed, with
good reason, that they had rendered much practical service in the
carrying of the measure. The feeling prevailed especially among the
artisans in the cities and towns. In some of the towns the Reform Bill
had distinctly operated as a measure of disfranchisement rather than of
enfranchisement. In Preston, for instance, there had been so large a
number of what we have called, adopting a more modern phrase, "fancy
franchises" that something not very far removed from universal suffrage
was attainable by the male population. These fancy franchises could
not be justified on any principle commending itself to rational minds,
and it was, moreover, an obvious absurdity to have one system of voting
prevailing in this constituency and a totally different system
prevailing in another. Therefore Lord Grey and Lord John Russell
cannot be censured for their resolve to abolish the fancy franchises
altogether. They were introducing an entirely new constitutional
system, and it was evident that in the new system there must be some
uniform principle as to the franchise. But it is none the less certain
that the men who were disfranchised by an Act professedly brought in to
extend the suffrage must have felt that they had good reason to
complain of its direct effect upon themselves and upon what they
believed to be their rights. Nearly forty years of agitation had yet
to be gone through before the principal deficiencies in the Reform Act
of 1833 were supplied by Liberal and Tory legislation.
Before closing this chapter of history it is fitting to take notice of
the fact that the debates on the Reform Bill gave opportunity for the
public opening of a great career in {184} politics and in
literature--the career of Lord Macaulay. [Sidenote: 1832--Thomas
Babington Macaulay] Thomas Babington Macaulay was a new member of the
House of Commons when the first Reform Bill was introduced by Lord John
Russell. He was the son of Zachary Macaulay, who was famous in his
day, and will always be remembered as the high-minded philanthropist
and the energetic and consistent opponent of slavery and the slave
trade. Macaulay the son had, from his earliest years, given evidence
of precocious and extraordinary intelligence and versatility. When he
entered Parliament he found that his fame had gone before him, but his
friends were not quite certain whether he was to be poet, essayist,
historian, or political orator. As years went on, he proved that he
could write brilliant and captivating poems; that he could turn out
essays which had a greater fascination for the public than many of the
cleverest novels; that he could write history which set critics
disputing, but which everybody had to read; and that he could deliver
political speeches in the House of Commons which, when correctly
reproduced from the newspapers, appeared to belong to the highest class
of Parliamentary eloquence. It may well be questioned whether any man
could possibly attain supreme success in the four fields in which, from
time to time, Macaulay appeared to be successful. At present we are
only concerned with the speeches which he delivered in the House of
Commons during the debates on the Reform Bills. Macaulay's appearance
was not impressive, and he had a gift of fluency, a rapidity of
utterance which continued, from first to last, to be a most serious
difficulty in the way of his success as a Parliamentary orator. He
appears to have committed his speeches to memory, and his memory was
one of the most amazing of all his gifts; and when he rose to deliver
an oration he rattled it off at such a rate of speed that the sense
ached in trying to follow him, and the reporters for the newspapers
found it almost impossible to get a full note of what he said. This
was all the more embarrassing because his speeches abounded in
illustrations and citations from all manner of authorities, authors,
and historical incidents, and the bewildered {185} reporter found
himself entangled in proper names which shorthand in the pre-phonetic
days could but slowly reproduce. The speeches, when revised by the
author, were read with intense delight by the educated public, and with
all the defects of the orator's utterance he soon acquired such a fame
in the House of Commons that no one ever attracted a more crowded and
eager audience than he did when it became known that he was about to
make a speech. We may quote here a characteristic description given by
Greville of his first meeting with Macaulay in the early February of
1833, while the struggle over Lord Russell's third Reform Bill was
still going on. "Dined yesterday," says Greville, "with Lord Holland;
came very late and found a vacant place between Sir George Robinson and
a common-looking man in black. As soon as I had time to look at my
neighbor, I began to speculate, as one usually does, as to who he might
be, and as he did not for some time open his lips except to eat, I
settled that he was some obscure man of letters, or of medicine,
perhaps a cholera doctor. In a short time the conversation turned on
early and late education, and Lord Holland said he had always remarked
that self-educated men were peculiarly conceited and arrogant, and apt
to look down on the generality of mankind from their being ignorant of
how much other people knew; not having been at public schools, they are
uninformed of the course of general education. My neighbor observed
that he thought the most remarkable example of self-education that of
Alfieri, who had reached the age of thirty without having acquired any
accomplishment save that of driving, and who was so ignorant of his own
language that he had to learn it like a child, beginning with
elementary books. Lord Holland quoted Julius Caesar and Scaliger as
examples of late education, said that the latter had been wounded, and
that he had been married and commenced learning Greek the same day,
when my neighbor remarked 'that he supposed his learning Greek was not
an instantaneous act like his marriage.' This remark and the manner of
it gave me the notion that he was a dull fellow, for it came out in a
{186} way which bordered on the ridiculous so as to excite something
like a sneer. I was a little surprised to hear him continue the thread
of conversation, from Scaliger's wound, and talk of Loyola having been
wounded at Pampeluna. I wondered how he happened to know anything
about Loyola's wound. Having thus settled my opinion I went on eating
my dinner, when Auckland, who was sitting opposite to me, addressed my
neighbor: 'Mr. Macaulay, will you drink a glass of wine?' I thought I
should have dropped off my chair. It was Macaulay, the man I had been
so long most curious to see and to hear, whose genius, eloquence,
astonishing knowledge, and diversified talents have excited my wonder
and admiration for such a length of time, and here I had been sitting
next to him, hearing him talk, and setting him down for a dull fellow."
We are here only at the opening of Macaulay's great career. Even at
this time the world seemed to have made up its mind that Macaulay had a
great career before him. At the present day, when more than forty
years have passed over his tomb in Westminster Abbey, it is a question
still keenly contested every now and then, whether Macaulay fully
realized or barely failed to realize the expectations which men were
forming of him on that day when Charles Greville met him for the first
time, and was amazed to find, as the conversation went on, that he was
sitting next to Macaulay.
[Sidenote: 1832--Death of Sir Walter Scott]
The year of the Reform Bill was marked by an event forever memorable in
the history of literature. That event was the death of Sir Walter
Scott. The later years of Scott's life, as we all know, had been
darkened by the failure of his publishers, by the money troubles in
which that failure had involved him, by the exhausting efforts he had
to make to force his wearied mind into redoubled literary exertion,
and, more than all, by the loss of the wife who had been his devoted
companion for so many years. No words could be more sorrowful and more
touching in their simplicity than those in which Scott declared that
after his wife's death he never knew what to do with that large share
of his thoughts which always, in other {187} days, used to be given to
her. He had gone out to Italy, obeying the advice of his friends, in
the hope of recovering his health under warmer skies than those of his
native land, but the effort was futile. It was of no use his trying to
shake off his malady of heart and body by a change of air. He carried
his giant about with him, if we may apply to his condition the
expressive and melancholy words which Emerson used with a different
application. Scott was little over sixty years of age when he died--a
time of life at which, according to our ideas of longevity at the
present day, we should regard a man as having hardly passed the zenith
of his powers and his possibilities. He had added a new chapter to a
history of the world's literature. He had opened a new school of
romance which soon found brilliant pupils in all countries where
romance could charm. There have been many revolutions in literary
rulership since his time, but Walter Scott has not been dethroned.
{188}