reading of the Bill to amend the representation of the people in England
and Wales. Sir John Walsh, member for Sudbury, moved, as an amendment,
that the bill should be read that day six months. After a discussion,
which lasted three nights, the amendment was rejected by 367 votes to
231, and the original motion was carried. The following Speech was made
on the second night of the debate.
Nobody, Sir, who has watched the course of the debate can have failed to
observe that the gentlemen who oppose this bill have chiefly relied on
a preliminary objection, which it is necessary to clear away before we
proceed to examine whether the proposed changes in our representative
system would or would not be improvements. The elective franchise,
we are told, is private property. It belongs to this freeman, to that
potwalloper, to the owner of this house, to the owner of that old wall;
and you have no more right to take it away without compensation than to
confiscate the dividends of a fundholder or the rents of a landholder.
Now, Sir, I admit that, if this objection be well founded, it is
decisive against the plan of Reform which has been submitted to us. If
the franchise be really private property, we have no more right to take
members away from Gatton because Gatton is small, and to give them to
Manchester because Manchester is large, than Cyrus, in the old story,
had to take away the big coat from the little boy and to put it on the
big boy. In no case, and under no pretext however specious, would I take
away from any member of the community anything which is of the nature
of property, without giving him full compensation. But I deny that the
elective franchise is of the nature of property; and I believe that, on
this point, I have with me all reason, all precedent, and all authority.
This at least is certain, that, if disfranchisement really be robbery,
the representative system which now exists is founded on robbery. How
was the franchise in the English counties fixed? By the act of Henry
the Sixth, which disfranchised tens of thousands of electors who had not
forty shilling freeholds. Was that robbery? How was the franchise in
the Irish counties fixed? By the act of George the Fourth, which
disfranchised tens of thousands of electors who had not ten pound
freeholds. Was that robbery? Or was the great parliamentary reform made
by Oliver Cromwell ever designated as robbery, even by those who most
abhorred his name? Everybody knows that the unsparing manner in which he
disfranchised small boroughs was emulously applauded, by royalists, who
hated him for having pulled down one dynasty, and by republicans, who
hated him for having founded another. Take Sir Harry Vane and Lord
Clarendon, both wise men, both, I believe, in the main, honest men, but
as much opposed to each other in politics as wise and honest men
could be. Both detested Oliver; yet both approved of Oliver's plan of
parliamentary reform. They grieved only that so salutary a change should
have been made by an usurper. Vane wished it to have been made by the
Rump; Clarendon wished it to be made by the King. Clarendon's language
on this subject is most remarkable. For he was no rash innovator.
The bias of his mind was altogether on the side of antiquity and
prescription. Yet he describes that great disfranchisement of boroughs
as an improvement fit to be made in a more warrantable method and at a
better time. This is that better time. What Cromwell attempted to effect
by an usurped authority, in a country which had lately been convulsed
by civil war, and which was with difficulty kept in a state of sullen
tranquillity by military force, it has fallen to our lot to accomplish
in profound peace, and under the rule of a prince whose title is
unquestioned, whose office is reverenced, and whose person is beloved.
It is easy to conceive with what scorn and astonishment Clarendon would
have heard it said that the reform which seemed to him so obviously just
and reasonable that he praised it, even when made by a regicide, could
not, without the grossest iniquity, be made even by a lawful King and a
lawful Parliament.
Sir, in the name of the institution of property, of that great
institution, for the sake of which, chiefly, all other institutions
exist, of that great institution to which we owe all knowledge, all
commerce, all industry, all civilisation, all that makes us to differ
from the tattooed savages of the Pacific Ocean, I protest against the
pernicious practice of ascribing to that which is not property the
sanctity which belongs to property alone. If, in order to save political
abuses from that fate with which they are threatened by the public
hatred, you claim for them the immunities of property, you must expect
that property will be regarded with some portion of the hatred which is
excited by political abuses. You bind up two very different things, in
the hope that they may stand together. Take heed that they do not fall
together. You tell the people that it is as unjust to disfranchise a
great lord's nomination borough as to confiscate his estate. Take heed
that you do not succeed in convincing weak and ignorant minds that there
is no more injustice in confiscating his estate than in disfranchising
his borough. That this is no imaginary danger, your own speeches in this
debate abundantly prove. You begin by ascribing to the franchises of Old
Sarum the sacredness of property; and you end, naturally enough, I
must own, by treating the rights of property as lightly as I should be
inclined to treat the franchises of Old Sarum. When you are reminded
that you voted, only two years ago, for disfranchising great numbers of
freeholders in Ireland, and when you are asked how, on the principles
which you now profess, you can justify that vote, you answer very
coolly, "no doubt that was confiscation. No doubt we took away from the
peasants of Munster and Connaught, without giving them a farthing of
compensation, that which was as much their property as their pigs or
their frieze coats. But we did it for the public good. We were pressed
by a great State necessity." Sir, if that be an answer, we too may plead
that we too have the public good in view, and that we are pressed by a
great State necessity. But I shall resort to no such plea. It fills me
with indignation and alarm to hear grave men avow what they own to be
downright robbery, and justify that robbery on the ground of political
convenience. No, Sir, there is one way, and only one way, in which those
gentlemen who voted for the disfranchising Act of 1829 can clear their
fame. Either they have no defence, or their defence must be this;
that the elective franchise is not of the nature of property, and that
therefore disfranchisement is not spoliation.
Having disposed, as I think, of the question of right, I come to the
question of expediency. I listened, Sir, with much interest and pleasure
to a noble Lord who spoke for the first time in this debate. (Lord
Porchester.) But I must own that he did not succeed in convincing me
that there is any real ground for the fears by which he is tormented.
He gave us a history of France since the Restoration. He told us of the
violent ebbs and flows of public feeling in that country. He told us
that the revolutionary party was fast rising to ascendency while M. De
Cazes was minister; that then came a violent reaction in favour of the
monarchy and the priesthood; that then the revolutionary party again
became dominant; that there had been a change of dynasty; and that the
Chamber of Peers had ceased to be a hereditary body. He then predicted,
if I understood him rightly, that, if we pass this bill, we shall
suffer all that France has suffered; that we shall have violent contests
between extreme parties, a revolution, and an abolition of the House of
Lords. I might, perhaps, dispute the accuracy of some parts of the noble
Lord's narrative. But I deny that his narrative, accurate or inaccurate,
is relevant. I deny that there is any analogy between the state of
France and the state of England. I deny that there is here any
great party which answers either to the revolutionary or to the
counter-revolutionary party in France. I most emphatically deny that
there is any resemblance in the character, and that there is likely to
be any resemblance in the fate, of the two Houses of Peers. I always
regarded the hereditary Chamber established by Louis the Eighteenth
as an institution which could not last. It was not in harmony with the
state of property; it was not in harmony with the public feeling; it
had neither the strength which is derived from wealth, nor the strength
which is derived from prescription. It was despised as plebeian by
the ancient nobility. It was hated as patrician by the democrats. It
belonged neither to the old France nor to the new France. It was a mere
exotic transplanted from our island. Here it had struck its roots deep,
and having stood during ages, was still green and vigorous. But it
languished in the foreign soil and the foreign air, and was blown
down by the first storm. It will be no such easy task to uproot the
aristocracy of England.
With much more force, at least with much more plausibility, the noble
Lord and several other members on the other side of the House have
argued against the proposed Reform on the ground that the existing
system has worked well. How great a country, they say, is ours! How
eminent in wealth and knowledge, in arts and arms! How much admired! How
much envied! Is it possible to believe that we have become what we are
under a bad government! And, if we have a good government, why alter
it? Now, Sir, I am very far from denying that England is great, and
prosperous, and highly civilised. I am equally far from denying that she
owes much of her greatness, of her prosperity, and of her civilisation
to her form of government. But is no nation ever to reform its
institutions because it has made great progress under those
institutions? Why, Sir, the progress is the very thing which makes the
reform absolutely necessary. The Czar Peter, we all know, did much for
Russia. But for his rude genius and energy, that country might have
still been utterly barbarous. Yet would it be reasonable to say that
the Russian people ought always, to the end of time, to be despotically
governed, because the Czar Peter was a despot? Let us remember that the
government and the society act and react on each other. Sometimes
the government is in advance of the society, and hurries the society
forward. So urged, the society gains on the government, comes up with
the government, outstrips the government, and begins to insist that the
government shall make more speed. If the government is wise, it will
yield to that just and natural demand. The great cause of revolutions
is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still. The
peculiar happiness of England is that here, through many generations,
the constitution has moved onward with the nation. Gentlemen have told
us, that the most illustrious foreigners have, in every age, spoken
with admiration of the English constitution. Comines, they say, in the
fifteenth century, extolled the English constitution as the best in the
world. Montesquieu, in the eighteenth century, extolled it as the best
in the world. And would it not be madness in us to throw away what
such men thought the most precious of all our blessings? But was the
constitution which Montesquieu praised the same with the constitution
which Comines praised? No, Sir; if it had been so, Montesquieu never
would have praised it. For how was it possible that a polity which
exactly suited the subjects of Edward the Fourth should have exactly
suited the subjects of George the Second? The English have, it is true,
long been a great and a happy people. But they have been great and happy
because their history has been the history of a succession of timely
reforms. The Great Charter, the assembling of the first House of
Commons, the Petition of Right, the Declaration of Right, the Bill which
is now on our table, what are they all but steps in one great progress?
To every one of those steps the same objections might have been made
which we heard to-night, "You are better off than your neighbours are.
You are better off than your fathers were. Why can you not leave well
alone?"
How copiously might a Jacobite orator have harangued on this topic
in the Convention of 1688! "Why make a change of dynasty? Why trouble
ourselves to devise new securities for our laws and liberties? See what
a nation we are. See how population and wealth have increased since what
you call the good old times of Queen Elizabeth. You cannot deny that the
country has been more prosperous under the kings of the House of Stuart
than under any of their predecessors. Keep that House, then, and be
thankful." Just such is the reasoning of the opponents of this
bill. They tell us that we are an ungrateful people, and that, under
institutions from which we have derived inestimable benefits, we are
more discontented than the slaves of the Dey of Tripoli. Sir, if we had
been slaves of the Dey of Tripoli, we should have been too much sunk
in intellectual and moral degradation to be capable of the rational and
manly discontent of freemen. It is precisely because our institutions
are so good that we are not perfectly contended with them; for they have
educated us into a capacity for enjoying still better institutions. That
the English Government has generally been in advance of almost all other
governments is true. But it is equally true that the English nation is,
and has during some time been, in advance of the English Government. One
plain proof of this is, that nothing is so ill made in our island as
the laws. In all those things which depend on the intelligence, the
knowledge, the industry, the energy of individuals, or of voluntary
combinations of individuals, this country stands pre-eminent among all
the countries of the world, ancient and modern. But in those things
which it belongs to the State to direct, we have no such claim to
superiority. Our fields are cultivated with a skill unknown elsewhere,
with a skill which has extorted rich harvests from moors and morasses.
Our houses are filled with conveniences which the kings of former times
might have envied. Our bridges, our canals, our roads, our modes of
communication, fill every stranger with wonder. Nowhere are manufactures
carried to such perfection. Nowhere is so vast a mass of mechanical
power collected. Nowhere does man exercise such a dominion over matter.
These are the works of the nation. Compare them with the works of the
rulers of the nation. Look at the criminal law, at the civil law, at the
modes of conveying lands, at the modes of conducting actions. It is by
these things that we must judge of our legislators, just as we judge
of our manufacturers by the cotton goods and the cutlery which they
produce, just as we judge of our engineers by the suspension bridges,
the tunnels, the steam carriages which they construct. Is, then,
the machinery by which justice is administered framed with the same
exquisite skill which is found in other kinds of machinery? Can there
be a stronger contrast than that which exists between the beauty, the
completeness, the speed, the precision with which every process is
performed in our factories, and the awkwardness, the rudeness, the
slowness, the uncertainty of the apparatus by which offences are
punished and rights vindicated? Look at the series of penal statutes,
the most bloody and the most inefficient in the world, at the puerile
fictions which make every declaration and every plea unintelligible both
to plaintiff and defendant, at the mummery of fines and recoveries, at
the chaos of precedents, at the bottomless pit of Chancery. Surely we
see the barbarism of the thirteenth century and the highest civilisation
of the nineteenth century side by side; and we see that the barbarism
belongs to the government, and the civilisation to the people.
This is a state of things which cannot last. If it be not terminated by
wisdom, it will be terminated by violence. A time has come at which it
is not merely desirable, but indispensable to the public safety, that
the government should be brought into harmony with the people; and it
is because this bill seems to me likely to bring the government into
harmony with the people, that I feel it to be my duty to give my hearty
support to His Majesty's Ministers.
We have been told, indeed, that this is not the plan of Reform which the
nation asked for. Be it so. But you cannot deny that it is the plan of
Reform which the nation has accepted. That, though differing in many
respects from what was asked, it has been accepted with transports
of joy and gratitude, is a decisive proof of the wisdom of timely
concession. Never in the history of the world was there so signal an
example of that true statesmanship, which, at once animating and gently
curbing the honest enthusiasm of millions, guides it safely and steadily
to a happy goal. It is not strange, that when men are refused what is
reasonable, they should demand what is unreasonable. It is not strange
that, when they find that their opinion is contemned and neglected by
the Legislature, they should lend a too favourable ear to worthless
agitators. We have seen how discontent may be produced. We have seen,
too, how it may be appeased. We have seen that the true source of the
power of demagogues is the obstinacy of rulers, and that a liberal
Government makes a conservative people. Early in the last session, the
First Minister of the Crown declared that he would consent to no
Reform; that he thought our representative system, just as it stood, the
masterpiece of human wisdom; that, if he had to make it anew, he would
make it such as it was, with all its represented ruins and all its
unrepresented cities. What followed? Everything was tumult and panic.
The funds fell. The streets were insecure. Men's hearts failed them for
fear. We began to move our property into German investments and American
investments. Such was the state of the public mind, that it was not
thought safe to let the Sovereign pass from his palace to the Guildhall
of his capital. What part of his kingdom is there in which His Majesty
now needs any other guard than the affection of his loving subjects?
There are, indeed, still malecontents; and they may be divided into two
classes, the friends of corruption and the sowers of sedition. It is
natural that all who directly profit by abuses, and all who profit by
the disaffection which abuses excite, should be leagued together against
a bill which, by making the government pure, will make the nation loyal.
There is, and always has been, a real alliance between the two extreme
parties in this country. They play into each other's hands. They live
by each other. Neither would have any influence if the other were taken
away. The demagogue would have no audience but for the indignation
excited among the multitude by the insolence of the enemies of Reform:
and the last hope of the enemies of Reform is in the uneasiness excited
among all who have anything to lose by the ravings of the demagogue.
I see, and glad I am to see, that the nation perfectly understands and
justly appreciates this coalition between those who hate all liberty and
those who hate all order. England has spoken, and spoken out. From her
most opulent seaports, from her manufacturing towns, from her capital
and its gigantic suburbs, from almost every one of her counties, has
gone forth a voice, answering in no doubtful or faltering accent to that
truly royal voice which appealed on the twenty-second of last April to
the sense of the nation.
So clearly, indeed, has the sense of the nation been expressed, that
scarcely any person now ventures to declare himself hostile to all
Reform. We are, it seems, a House of Reformers. Those very gentlemen
who, a few months ago, were vehement against all change, now own that
some change may be proper, may be necessary. They assure us that their
opposition is directed, not against Parliamentary Reform, but against
the particular plan which is now before us, and that a Tory Ministry
would devise a much better plan. I cannot but think that these tactics
are unskilful. I cannot but think that, when our opponents defended the
existing system in every part, they occupied a stronger position than
at present. As my noble friend the Paymaster-General said, they have
committed an error resembling that of the Scotch army at Dunbar. They
have left the high ground from which we might have had some difficulty
in dislodging them. They have come down to low ground, where they are at
our mercy. Surely, as Cromwell said, surely the Lord hath delivered them
into our hand.
For, Sir, it is impossible not to perceive that almost every argument
which they have urged against this Reform Bill may be urged with equal
force, or with greater force, against any Reform Bill which they can
themselves bring in.
First take, what, indeed, are not arguments, but wretched substitutes
for arguments, those vague terms of reproach, which have been so
largely employed, here and elsewhere, by our opponents; revolutionary,
anarchical, traitorous, and so forth. It will, I apprehend, hardly be
disputed that these epithets can be just as easily applied to one Reform
Bill as to another.
But, you say, intimidation has been used to promote the passing of this
bill; and it would be disgraceful, and of evil example, that Parliament
should yield to intimidation. But surely, if that argument be of any
force against the present bill, it will be of tenfold force against any
Reform Bill proposed by you. For this bill is the work of men who are
Reformers from conscientious conviction, of men, some of whom were
Reformers when Reformer was a name of reproach, of men, all of whom were
Reformers before the nation had begun to demand Reform in imperative and
menacing tones. But you are notoriously Reformers merely from fear. You
are Reformers under duress. If a concession is to be made to the public
importunity, you can hardly deny that it will be made with more grace
and dignity by Lord Grey than by you.
Then you complain of the anomalies of the bill. One county, you say,
will have twelve members; and another county, which is larger and more
populous, will have only ten. Some towns, which are to have only one
member, are more considerable than other towns which are to have two. Do
those who make these objections, objections which by the by will be more
in place when the bill is in committee, seriously mean to say that a
Tory Reform Bill will leave no anomalies in the representative system?
For my own part, I trouble myself not at all about anomalies, considered
merely as anomalies. I would not take the trouble of lifting up my hand
to get rid of an anomaly that was not also a grievance. But if gentlemen
have such a horror of anomalies, it is strange that they should so long
have persisted in upholding a system made up of anomalies far greater
than any that can be found in this bill (a cry of "No!"). Yes; far
greater. Answer me, if you can; but do not interrupt me. On this point,
indeed, it is much easier to interrupt than to answer. For who can
answer plain arithmetical demonstration? Under the present system,
Manchester, with two hundred thousand inhabitants, has no members. Old
Sarum, with no inhabitants, has two members. Find me such an anomaly in
the schedules which are now on the table. But is it possible that you,
that Tories, can seriously mean to adopt the only plan which can remove
all anomalies from the representative system? Are you prepared to
have, after every decennial census, a new distribution of members
among electoral districts? Is your plan of Reform that which Mr Canning
satirised as the most crazy of all the projects of the disciples of Tom
Paine? Do you really mean
"That each fair burgh, numerically free,
Shall choose its members by the rule of three?"
If not, let us hear no more of the anomalies of the Reform Bill.