Repeal, I have in a great measure vindicated myself from the charge of
inconsistency which has been brought against me by my honourable friend
the Member for Lincoln. It is very easy to bring a volume of Hansard to
the House, to read a few sentences of a speech made in very different
circumstances, and to say, "Last year you were for pacifying England by
concession: this year you are for pacifying Ireland by coercion. How can
you vindicate your consistency?" Surely my honourable friend cannot
but know that nothing is easier than to write a theme for severity, for
clemency, for order, for liberty, for a contemplative life, for a active
life, and so on. It was a common exercise in the ancient schools of
rhetoric to take an abstract question, and to harangue first on one side
and then on the other. The question, Ought popular discontents to be
quieted by concession or coercion? would have been a very good subject
for oratory of this kind. There is no lack of commonplaces on either
side. But when we come to the real business of life, the value of these
commonplaces depends entirely on the particular circumstances of the
case which we are discussing. Nothing is easier than to write a treatise
proving that it is lawful to resist extreme tyranny. Nothing is easier
than to write a treatise setting forth the wickedness of wantonly
bringing on a great society the miseries inseparable from revolution,
the bloodshed, the spoliation, the anarchy. Both treatises may contain
much that is true; but neither will enable us to decide whether a
particular insurrection is or is not justifiable without a close
examination of the facts. There is surely no inconsistency in speaking
with respect of the memory of Lord Russell and with horror of the crime
of Thistlewood; and, in my opinion, the conduct of Russell and the
conduct of Thistlewood did not differ more widely than the cry for
Parliamentary Reform and the cry for the Repeal of the Union. The Reform
Bill I believe to be a blessing to the nation. Repeal I know to be a
mere delusion. I know it to be impracticable: and I know that, if it
were practicable, it would be pernicious to every part of the empire,
and utterly ruinous to Ireland. Is it not then absurd to say that,
because I wished last year to quiet the English people by giving them
that which was beneficial to them, I am therefore bound in consistency
to quiet the Irish people this year by giving them that which will
be fatal to them? I utterly deny, too, that, in consenting to arm the
government with extraordinary powers for the purpose of repressing
disturbances in Ireland, I am guilty of the smallest inconsistency. On
what occasion did I ever refuse to support any government in repressing
disturbances? It is perfectly true that, in the debates on the Reform
Bill, I imputed the tumults and outrages of 1830 to misrule. But did I
ever say that those tumults and outrages ought to be tolerated? I did
attribute the Kentish riots, the Hampshire riots, the burning of corn
stacks, the destruction of threshing machines, to the obstinacy with
which the Ministers of the Crown had refused to listen to the demands
of the people. But did I ever say that the rioters ought not to be
imprisoned, that the incendiaries ought not to be hanged? I did ascribe
the disorders of Nottingham and the fearful sacking of Bristol to the
unwise rejection of the Reform Bill by the Lords. But did I ever say
that such excesses as were committed at Nottingham and Bristol ought not
to be put down, if necessary, by the sword?
I would act towards Ireland on the same principles on which I acted
towards England. In Ireland, as in England, I would remove every just
cause of complaint; and in Ireland, as in England, I would support the
Government in preserving the public peace. What is there inconsistent
in this? My honourable friend seems to think that no person who believes
that disturbances have been caused by maladministration can consistently
lend his help to put down those disturbances. If that be so, the
honourable and learned Member for Dublin is quite as inconsistent as
I am; indeed, much more so; for he thinks very much worse of the
Government than I do; and yet he declares himself willing to assist
the Government in quelling the tumults which, as he assures us, its own
misconduct is likely to produce. He told us yesterday that our harsh
policy might perhaps goad the unthinking populace of Ireland into
insurrection; and he added that, if there should be insurrection, he
should, while execrating us as the authors of all the mischief, be found
in our ranks, and should be ready to support us in everything that
might be necessary for the restoration of order. As to this part of the
subject, there is no difference in principle between the honourable and
learned gentleman and myself. In his opinion, it is probable that a time
may soon come when vigorous coercion may be necessary, and when it may
be the duty of every friend of Ireland to co-operate in the work of
coercion. In my opinion, that time has already come. The grievances of
Ireland are doubtless great, so great that I never would have connected
myself with a Government which I did not believe to be intent on
redressing those grievances. But am I, because the grievances of Ireland
are great, and ought to be redressed, to abstain from redressing the
worst grievance of all? Am I to look on quietly while the laws are
insulted by a furious rabble, while houses are plundered and burned,
while my peaceable fellow-subjects are butchered? The distribution of
Church property, you tell us, is unjust. Perhaps I agree with you.
But what then? To what purpose is it to talk about the distribution of
Church property, while no property is secure? Then you try to deter us
from putting down robbery, arson, and murder, by telling us that if we
resort to coercion we shall raise a civil war. We are past that fear.
Recollect that, in one county alone, there have been within a few
weeks sixty murders or assaults with intent to murder and six hundred
burglaries. Since we parted last summer the slaughter in Ireland has
exceeded the slaughter of a pitched battle: the destruction of property
has been as great as would have been caused by the storming of three or
four towns. Civil war, indeed! I would rather live in the midst of any
civil war that we have had in England during the last two hundred
years than in some parts of Ireland at the present moment. Rather, much
rather, would I have lived on the line of march of the Pretender's army
in 1745 than in Tipperary now. It is idle to threaten us with civil war;
for we have it already; and it is because we are resolved to put an
end to it that we are called base, and brutal, and bloody. Such are the
epithets which the honourable and learned Member for Dublin thinks
it becoming to pour forth against the party to which he owes every
political privilege that he enjoys. He need not fear that any member
of that party will be provoked into a conflict of scurrility. Use
makes even sensitive minds callous to invective: and, copious as his
vocabulary is, he will not easily find in it any foul name which has not
been many times applied to those who sit around me, on account of the
zeal and steadiness with which they supported the emancipation of
the Roman Catholics. His reproaches are not more stinging than the
reproaches which, in times not very remote, we endured unflinchingly in
his cause. I can assure him that men who faced the cry of No Popery are
not likely to be scared by the cry of Repeal. The time will come when
history will do justice to the Whigs of England, and will faithfully
relate how much they did and suffered for Ireland; how, for the sake of
Ireland, they quitted office in 1807; how, for the sake of Ireland, they
remained out of office more than twenty years, braving the frowns of
the Court, braving the hisses of the multitude, renouncing power,
and patronage, and salaries, and peerages, and garters, and yet not
obtaining in return even a little fleeting popularity. I see on the
benches near me men who might, by uttering one word against Catholic
Emancipation, nay, by merely abstaining from uttering a word in favour
of Catholic Emancipation, have been returned to this House without
difficulty or expense, and who, rather than wrong their Irish
fellow-subjects, were content to relinquish all the objects of their
honourable ambition, and to retire into private life with conscience
and fame untarnished. As to one eminent person, who seems to be regarded
with especial malevolence by those who ought never to mention his name
without reverence and gratitude, I will say only this: that the loudest
clamour which the honourable and learned gentleman can excite against
Lord Grey will be trifling when compared with the clamour which Lord
Grey withstood in order to place the honourable and learned gentleman
where he now sits. Though a young member of the Whig party, I will
venture to speak in the name of the whole body. I tell the honourable
and learned gentleman, that the same spirit which sustained us in a just
contest for him will sustain us in an equally just contest against him.
Calumny, abuse, royal displeasure, popular fury, exclusion from office,
exclusion from Parliament, we were ready to endure them all, rather than
that he should be less than a British subject. We never will suffer him
to be more.
I stand here, Sir, for the first time as the representative of a
new constituent body, one of the largest, most prosperous, and most
enlightened towns in the kingdom. The electors of Leeds, believing that
at this time the service of the people is not incompatible with the
service of the Crown, have sent me to this House charged, in the
language of His Majesty's writ, to do and consent, in their name and in
their behalf, to such things as shall be proposed in the great Council
of the nation. In the name, then, and on the behalf of my constituents,
I give my full assent to that part of the Address wherein the House
declares its resolution to maintain inviolate, by the help of God, the
connection between Great Britain and Ireland, and to intrust to the
Sovereign such powers as shall be necessary to secure property, to
restore order, and to preserve the integrity of the empire.
*****
JEWISH DISABILITIES. (APRIL 17, 1833) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN A COMMITTEE
OF THE WHOLE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 17TH OF APRIL, 1833.
On the seventeenth of April, 1833, the House of Commons resolved itself
into a Committee to consider of the civil disabilities of the Jews.
Mr Warburton took the chair. Mr Robert Grant moved the following
resolution:--
"That it is the opinion of this Committee that it is expedient to remove
all civil disabilities at present existing with respect to His Majesty's
subjects professing the Jewish religion, with the like exceptions as
are provided with respect to His Majesty's subjects professing the Roman
Catholic religion."
The resolution passed without a division, after a warm debate, in the
course of which the following Speech was made.
Mr Warburton,--I recollect, and my honourable friend the Member for
the University of Oxford will recollect, that when this subject was
discussed three years ago, it was remarked, by one whom we both loved
and whom we both regret, that the strength of the case of the Jews was a
serious inconvenience to their advocate, for that it was hardly possible
to make a speech for them without wearying the audience by repeating
truths which were universally admitted. If Sir James Mackintosh felt
this difficulty when the question was first brought forward in this
House, I may well despair of being able now to offer any arguments which
have a pretence to novelty.
My honourable friend, the Member for the University of Oxford, began his
speech by declaring that he had no intention of calling in question the
principles of religious liberty. He utterly disclaims persecution, that
is to say, persecution as defined by himself. It would, in his opinion,
be persecution to hang a Jew, or to flay him, or to draw his teeth,
or to imprison him, or to fine him; for every man who conducts himself
peaceably has a right to his life and his limbs, to his personal liberty
and his property. But it is not persecution, says my honourable friend,
to exclude any individual or any class from office; for nobody has a
right to office: in every country official appointments must be subject
to such regulations as the supreme authority may choose to make; nor can
any such regulations be reasonably complained of by any member of the
society as unjust. He who obtains an office obtains it, not as matter of
right, but as matter of favour. He who does not obtain an office is
not wronged; he is only in that situation in which the vast majority
of every community must necessarily be. There are in the United Kingdom
five and twenty million Christians without places; and, if they do not
complain, why should five and twenty thousand Jews complain of being in
the same case? In this way my honourable friend has convinced himself
that, as it would be most absurd in him and me to say that we are
wronged because we are not Secretaries of State, so it is most absurd
in the Jews to say that they are wronged, because they are, as a people,
excluded from public employment.
Now, surely my honourable friend cannot have considered to what
conclusions his reasoning leads. Those conclusions are so monstrous that
he would, I am certain, shrink from them. Does he really mean that it
would not be wrong in the legislature to enact that no man should be
a judge unless he weighed twelve stone, or that no man should sit in
parliament unless he were six feet high? We are about to bring in a bill
for the government of India. Suppose that we were to insert in that bill
a clause providing that no graduate of the University of Oxford
should be Governor General or Governor of any Presidency, would not my
honourable friend cry out against such a clause as most unjust to
the learned body which he represents? And would he think himself
sufficiently answered by being told, in his own words, that the
appointment to office is a mere matter of favour, and that to exclude
an individual or a class from office is no injury? Surely, on
consideration, he must admit that official appointments ought not to
be subject to regulations purely arbitrary, to regulations for which no
reason can be given but mere caprice, and that those who would exclude
any class from public employment are bound to show some special reason
for the exclusion.
My honourable friend has appealed to us as Christians. Let me then ask
him how he understands that great commandment which comprises the law
and the prophets. Can we be said to do unto others as we would that they
should do unto us if we wantonly inflict on them even the smallest
pain? As Christians, surely we are bound to consider, first, whether,
by excluding the Jews from all public trust, we give them pain; and,
secondly, whether it be necessary to give them that pain in order to
avert some greater evil. That by excluding them from public trust
we inflict pain on them my honourable friend will not dispute. As a
Christian, therefore, he is bound to relieve them from that pain, unless
he can show, what I am sure he has not yet shown, that it is necessary
to the general good that they should continue to suffer.
But where, he says, are you to stop, if once you admit into the House of
Commons people who deny the authority of the Gospels? Will you let in
a Mussulman? Will you let in a Parsee? Will you let in a Hindoo, who
worships a lump of stone with seven heads? I will answer my honourable
friend's question by another. Where does he mean to stop? Is he ready to
roast unbelievers at slow fires? If not, let him tell us why: and I
will engage to prove that his reason is just as decisive against the
intolerance which he thinks a duty, as against the intolerance which he
thinks a crime. Once admit that we are bound to inflict pain on a man
because he is not of our religion; and where are you to stop? Why stop
at the point fixed by my honourable friend rather than at the point
fixed by the honourable Member for Oldham (Mr Cobbett.), who would make
the Jews incapable of holding land? And why stop at the point fixed by
the honourable Member for Oldham rather than at the point which would
have been fixed by a Spanish Inquisitor of the sixteenth century? When
once you enter on a course of persecution, I defy you to find any reason
for making a halt till you have reached the extreme point. When my
honourable friend tells us that he will allow the Jews to possess
property to any amount, but that he will not allow them to possess the
smallest political power, he holds contradictory language. Property
is power. The honourable Member for Oldham reasons better than my
honourable friend. The honourable Member for Oldham sees very clearly
that it is impossible to deprive a man of political power if you
suffer him to be the proprietor of half a county, and therefore very
consistently proposes to confiscate the landed estates of the Jews. But
even the honourable Member for Oldham does not go far enough. He has
not proposed to confiscate the personal property of the Jews. Yet it is
perfectly certain that any Jew who has a million may easily make himself
very important in the State. By such steps we pass from official power
to landed property, and from landed property to personal property, and
from property to liberty, and from liberty to life. In truth, those
persecutors who use the rack and the stake have much to say for
themselves. They are convinced that their end is good; and it must be
admitted that they employ means which are not unlikely to attain the
end. Religious dissent has repeatedly been put down by sanguinary
persecution. In that way the Albigenses were put down. In that way
Protestantism was suppressed in Spain and Italy, so that it has never
since reared its head. But I defy any body to produce an instance in
which disabilities such as we are now considering have produced any
other effect than that of making the sufferers angry and obstinate.
My honourable friend should either persecute to some purpose, or not
persecute at all. He dislikes the word persecution I know. He will not
admit that the Jews are persecuted. And yet I am confident that he would
rather be sent to the King's Bench Prison for three months, or be fined
a hundred pounds, than be subject to the disabilities under which the
Jews lie. How can he then say that to impose such disabilities is not
persecution, and that to fine and imprison is persecution? All his
reasoning consists in drawing arbitrary lines. What he does not wish to
inflict he calls persecution. What he does wish to inflict he will not
call persecution. What he takes from the Jews he calls political power.
What he is too good-natured to take from the Jews he will not call
political power. The Jew must not sit in Parliament: but he may be the
proprietor of all the ten pound houses in a borough. He may have more
fifty pound tenants than any peer in the kingdom. He may give the voters
treats to please their palates, and hire bands of gipsies to break their
heads, as if he were a Christian and a Marquess. All the rest of this
system is of a piece. The Jew may be a juryman, but not a judge. He
may decide issues of fact, but not issues of law. He may give a hundred
thousand pounds damages; but he may not in the most trivial case grant a
new trial. He may rule the money market: he may influence the
exchanges: he may be summoned to congresses of Emperors and Kings. Great
potentates, instead of negotiating a loan with him by tying him in a
chair and pulling out his grinders, may treat with him as with a great
potentate, and may postpone the declaring of war or the signing of a
treaty till they have conferred with him. All this is as it should
be: but he must not be a Privy Councillor. He must not be called Right
Honourable, for that is political power. And who is it that we are
trying to cheat in this way? Even Omniscience. Yes, Sir; we have been
gravely told that the Jews are under the divine displeasure, and that if
we give them political power God will visit us in judgment. Do we then
think that God cannot distinguish between substance and form? Does not
He know that, while we withhold from the Jews the semblance and name
of political power, we suffer them to possess the substance? The plain
truth is that my honourable friend is drawn in one direction by his
opinions, and in a directly opposite direction by his excellent heart.
He halts between two opinions. He tries to make a compromise between
principles which admit of no compromise. He goes a certain way in
intolerance. Then he stops, without being able to give a reason for
stopping. But I know the reason. It is his humanity. Those who formerly
dragged the Jew at a horse's tail, and singed his beard with blazing
furzebushes, were much worse men than my honourable friend; but they
were more consistent than he.
It has been said that it would be monstrous to see a Jew judge try a man
for blasphemy. In my opinion it is monstrous to see any judge try a man
for blasphemy under the present law. But, if the law on that subject
were in a sound state, I do not see why a conscientious Jew might not
try a blasphemer. Every man, I think, ought to be at liberty to discuss
the evidences of religion; but no man ought to be at liberty to force on
the unwilling ears and eyes of others sounds and sights which must cause
annoyance and irritation. The distinction is clear. I think it wrong to
punish a man for selling Paine's Age of Reason in a back-shop to those
who choose to buy, or for delivering a Deistical lecture in a private
room to those who choose to listen. But if a man exhibits at a window
in the Strand a hideous caricature of that which is an object of awe
and adoration to nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of
people who pass up and down that great thoroughfare; if a man in a place
of public resort applies opprobrious epithets to names held in reverence
by all Christians; such a man ought, in my opinion, to be severely
punished, not for differing from us in opinion, but for committing a
nuisance which gives us pain and disgust. He is no more entitled to
outrage our feelings by obtruding his impiety on us, and to say that
he is exercising his right of discussion, than to establish a yard for
butchering horses close to our houses, and to say that he is exercising
his right of property, or to run naked up and down the public streets,
and to say that he is exercising his right of locomotion. He has a right
of discussion, no doubt, as he has a right of property and a right of
locomotion. But he must use all his rights so as not to infringe the
rights of others.
These, Sir, are the principles on which I would frame the law of
blasphemy; and if the law were so framed, I am at a loss to understand
why a Jew might not enforce it as well as a Christian. I am not a Roman
Catholic; but if I were a judge at Malta, I should have no scruple about
punishing a bigoted Protestant who should burn the Pope in effigy before
the eyes of thousands of Roman Catholics. I am not a Mussulman; but if
I were a judge in India, I should have no scruple about punishing a
Christian who should pollute a mosque. Why, then, should I doubt that
a Jew, raised by his ability, learning, and integrity to the judicial
bench, would deal properly with any person who, in a Christian country,
should insult the Christian religion?
But, says my honourable friend, it has been prophesied that the Jews are
to be wanderers on the face of the earth, and that they are not to mix
on terms of equality with the people of the countries in which they
sojourn. Now, Sir, I am confident that I can demonstrate that this is
not the sense of any prophecy which is part of Holy Writ. For it is an
undoubted fact that, in the United States of America, Jewish citizens do
possess all the privileges possessed by Christian citizens. Therefore,
if the prophecies mean that the Jews never shall, during their
wanderings, be admitted by other nations to equal participation of
political rights, the prophecies are false. But the prophecies are
certainly not false. Therefore their meaning cannot be that which is
attributed to them by my honourable friend.
Another objection which has been made to this motion is that the Jews
look forward to the coming of a great deliverer, to their return to
Palestine, to the rebuilding of their Temple, to the revival of their
ancient worship, and that therefore they will always consider England,
not their country, but merely as their place of exile. But, surely, Sir,
it would be the grossest ignorance of human nature to imagine that the
anticipation of an event which is to happen at some time altogether
indefinite, of an event which has been vainly expected during many
centuries, of an event which even those who confidently expect that it
will happen do not confidently expect that they or their children or
their grandchildren will see, can ever occupy the minds of men to such
a degree as to make them regardless of what is near and present and
certain. Indeed Christians, as well as Jews, believe that the existing
order of things will come to an end. Many Christians believe that Jesus
will visibly reign on earth during a thousand years. Expositors of
prophecy have gone so far as to fix the year when the Millennial period
is to commence. The prevailing opinion is, I think, in favour of the
year 1866; but, according to some commentators, the time is close at
hand. Are we to exclude all millennarians from Parliament and office, on
the ground that they are impatiently looking forward to the miraculous
monarchy which is to supersede the present dynasty and the present
constitution of England, and that therefore they cannot be heartily
loyal to King William?