mitigate a bad law. Now, see how necessary it is that there should be a
good administration to carry a good law into effect. An excellent bill
was brought into the House of Commons by Lord John Russell in 1828, and
passed. To any other man than Lord John Russell the carrying of such
a bill would have been an enviable distinction indeed; but his name
is identified with still greater reforms. It will, however, always be
accounted one of his titles to public gratitude that he was the author
of the law which repealed the Test Act. Well, a short time since, a
noble peer, the Lord Lieutenant of the county of Nottingham, thought fit
to re-enact the Test Act, so far as that county was concerned. I have
already mentioned His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, and, to say truth,
there is no life richer in illustrations of all forms and branches of
misgovernment than his. His Grace very coolly informed Her Majesty's
Ministers that he had not recommended a certain gentleman for the
commission of the peace because the gentleman was a Dissenter. Now here
is a law which admits Dissenters to offices; and a Tory nobleman takes
it on himself to rescind that law. But happily we have Whig Ministers.
What did they do? Why, they put the Dissenter into the Commission; and
they turned the Tory nobleman out of the Lieutenancy. Do you seriously
imagine that under a Tory administration this would have been done? I
have no wish to say anything disrespectful of the great Tory leaders.
I shall always speak with respect of the great qualities and public
services of the Duke of Wellington: I have no other feeling about him
than one of pride that my country has produced so great a man; nor do
I feel anything but respect and kindness for Sir Robert Peel, of whose
abilities no person that has had to encounter him in debate will ever
speak slightingly. I do not imagine that those eminent men would have
approved of the conduct of the Duke of Newcastle. I believe that the
Duke of Wellington would as soon have thought of running away from the
field of battle as of doing the same thing in Hampshire, where he is
Lord Lieutenant. But do you believe that he would have turned the Duke
of Newcastle out? I believe that he would not. As Mr Pulteney, a great
political leader, said a hundred years since, "The heads of parties are,
like the heads of snakes, carried on by the tails." It would have been
utterly impossible for the Tory Ministers to have discarded the powerful
Tory Duke, unless they had at the same time resolved, like Mr Canning in
1827, to throw themselves for support on the Whigs.
Now I have given you these two instances to show that a change in the
administration may produce all the effects of a change in the law. You
see that to have a Tory Government is virtually to reenact the Test Act,
and that to have a Whig Government is virtually to repeal the law of
libel. And if this is the case in England and Scotland, where society is
in a sound state, how much more must it be the case in the diseased
part of the empire, in Ireland? Ask any man there, whatever may be his
religion, whatever may be his politics, Churchman, Presbyterian, Roman
Catholic, Repealer, Precursor, Orangeman, ask Mr O'Connell, ask Colonel
Conolly, whether it is a slight matter in whose hands the executive
power is lodged. Every Irishman will tell you that it is a matter of
life and death; that in fact more depends upon the men than upon the
laws. It disgusts me therefore to hear men of liberal politics say,
"What is the use of a Whig Government? The Ministers can do nothing for
the country. They have been four years at work on an Irish Municipal
Bill, without being able to pass it through the Lords." Would any ten
Acts of Parliament make such a difference to Ireland as the difference
between having Lord Ebrington for Lord Lieutenant, with Lord Morpeth
for Secretary, and having the Earl of Roden for Lord Lieutenant, with Mr
Lefroy for Secretary? Ask the popular Irish leaders whether they
would like better to remain as they are, with Lord Ebrington as Lord
Lieutenant, or to have the Municipal Bill, and any other three bills
which they might name, with Lord Roden for Viceroy; and they will at
once answer, "Leave us Lord Ebrington; and burn your bills." The truth
is that, the more defective the legislation, the more important is a
good administration, just as the personal qualities of the Sovereign are
of more importance in despotic countries like Russia than in a limited
monarchy. If we have not in our Statute Book all the securities
necessary for good government, it is of the more importance that
the character of the men who administer the government should be an
additional security.
But we are told that the Government is weak. That is most true; and I
believe that almost all that we are tempted to blame in the conduct of
the Government is to be attributed to weakness. But let us consider what
the nature of this weakness is. Is it that kind of weakness which makes
it our duty to oppose the Government? Or is it that kind of weakness
which makes it our duty to support the Government? Is it intellectual
weakness, moral weakness, the incapacity to discern, or the want
of courage to pursue, the true interest of the nation? Such was the
weakness of Mr Addington, when this country was threatened with invasion
from Boulogne. Such was the weakness of the Government which sent out
the wretched Walcheren expedition, and starved the Duke of Wellington in
Spain; a government whose only strength was shown in prosecuting writers
who exposed abuses, and in slaughtering rioters whom oppression had
driven into outrage. Is that the weakness of the present Government? I
think not. As compared with any other party capable of holding the reins
of Government, they are deficient neither in intellectual nor in moral
strength. On all great questions of difference between the Ministers and
the Opposition, I hold the Ministers to be in the right. When I consider
the difficulties with which they have to struggle, when I see how
manfully that struggle is maintained by Lord Melbourne, when I see that
Lord John Russell has excited even the admiration of his opponents by
the heroic manner in which he has gone on, year after year, in sickness
and domestic sorrow, fighting the battle of Reform, I am led to the
conclusion that the weakness of the Ministers is of that sort which
makes it our duty to give them, not opposition, but support; and that
support it is my purpose to afford to the best of my ability.
If, indeed, I thought myself at liberty to consult my own inclination,
I should have stood aloof from the conflict. If you should be pleased
to send me to Parliament, I shall enter an assembly very different
from that which I quitted in 1834. I left the Wigs united and dominant,
strong in the confidence and attachment of one House of Parliament,
strong also in the fears of the other. I shall return to find them
helpless in the Lords, and forced almost every week to fight a battle
for existence in the Commons. Many, whom I left bound together by what
seemed indissoluble private and public ties, I shall now find assailing
each other with more than the ordinary bitterness of political
hostility. Many with whom I sate side by side, contending through whole
nights for the Reform Bill, till the sun broke over the Thames on our
undiminished ranks, I shall now find on hostile benches. I shall be
compelled to engage in painful altercations with many with whom I had
hoped never to have a conflict, except in the generous and friendly
strife which should best serve the common cause. I left the Liberal
Government strong enough to maintain itself against an adverse Court; I
see that the Liberal Government now rests for support on the preference
of a Sovereign, in whom the country sees with delight the promise of a
better, a gentler, a happier Elizabeth, of a Sovereign in whom we hope
that our children and our grandchildren will admire the firmness, the
sagacity, and the spirit which distinguished the last and greatest of
the Tudors, tempered by the beneficent influence of more humane times
and more popular institutions. Whether royal favour, never more needed
and never better deserved, will enable the government to surmount the
difficulties with which it has to deal, I cannot presume to judge. It
may be that the blow has only been deferred for a season, and that a
long period of Tory domination is before us. Be it so. I entered public
life a Whig; and a Whig I am determined to remain. I use that word, and
I wish you to understand that I use it, in no narrow sense. I mean by
a Whig, not one who subscribes implicitly to the contents of any book,
though that book may have been written by Locke; not one who approves
the whole conduct of any statesman, though that statesman may have been
Fox; not one who adopts the opinions in fashion in any circle, though
that circle may be composed of the finest and noblest spirits of the
age. But it seems to me that, when I look back on our history, I can
discern a great party which has, through many generations, preserved its
identity; a party often depressed, never extinguished; a party which,
though often tainted with the faults of the age, has always been in
advance of the age; a party which, though guilty of many errors and
some crimes, has the glory of having established our civil and religious
liberties on a firm foundation; and of that party I am proud to be a
member. It was that party which, on the great question of monopolies,
stood up against Elizabeth. It was that party which, in the reign of
James the First, organised the earliest parliamentary opposition, which
steadily asserted the privileges of the people, and wrested prerogative
after prerogative from the Crown. It was that party which forced
Charles the First to relinquish the ship-money. It was that party which
destroyed the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court. It was that
party which, under Charles the Second, carried the Habeas Corpus Act,
which effected the Revolution, which passed the Toleration Act, which
broke the yoke of a foreign church in your country, and which saved
Scotland from the fate of unhappy Ireland. It was that party which
reared and maintained the constitutional throne of Hanover against the
hostility of the Church and of the landed aristocracy of England. It
was that party which opposed the war with America and the war with the
French Republic; which imparted the blessings of our free Constitution
to the Dissenters; and which, at a later period, by unparalleled
sacrifices and exertions, extended the same blessings to the Roman
Catholics. To the Whigs of the seventeenth century we owe it that we
have a House of Commons. To the Whigs of the nineteenth century we owe
it that the House of Commons has been purified. The abolition of the
slave trade, the abolition of colonial slavery, the extension of popular
education, the mitigation of the rigour of the penal code, all, all were
effected by that party; and of that party, I repeat, I am a member. I
look with pride on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of human
freedom and of human happiness. I see them now hard pressed, struggling
with difficulties, but still fighting the good fight. At their head I
see men who have inherited the spirit and the virtues, as well as the
blood, of old champions and martyrs of freedom. To those men I propose
to attach myself. Delusion may triumph: but the triumphs of delusion are
but for a day. We may be defeated: but our principles will only gather
fresh strength from defeats. Be that, however, as it may, my part is
taken. While one shred of the old banner is flying, by that banner will
I at least be found. The good old cause, as Sidney called it on the
scaffold, vanquished or victorious, insulted or triumphant, the good
old cause is still the good old cause with me. Whether in or out of
Parliament, whether speaking with that authority which must always
belong to the representative of this great and enlightened community,
or expressing the humble sentiments of a private citizen, I will to the
last maintain inviolate my fidelity to principles which, though they may
be borne down for a time by senseless clamour, are yet strong with the
strength and immortal with the immortality of truth, and which, however
they may be misunderstood or misrepresented by contemporaries, will
assuredly find justice from a better age. Gentlemen, I have done. I have
only to thank you for the kind attention with which you have heard me,
and to express my hope that whether my principles have met with your
concurrence or not, the frankness with which I have expressed them will
at least obtain your approbation.
*****
CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY OF LORD MELBOURNE. (JANUARY 29, 1840) A
SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 29TH OF JANUARY 1840.
On the twenty-eighth of January 1840, Sir John Yarde Buller moved the
following resolution:
"That Her Majesty's Government, as at present constituted, does not
possess the confidence of the House."
After a discussion of four nights the motion was rejected by 308 votes
to 287. The following Speech was made on the second night of the debate.
The House, Sir, may possibly imagine that I rise under some little
feeling of irritation to reply to the personal reflections which have
been introduced into the discussion. It would be easy to reply to these
reflections. It would be still easier to retort them: but I should
think either course unworthy of me and of this great occasion. If ever
I should so far forget myself as to wander from the subject of debate to
matters concerning only myself, it will not, I hope, be at a time when
the dearest interests of our country are staked on the result of our
deliberations. I rise under feelings of anxiety which leave no room in
my mind for selfish vanity or petty vindictiveness. I believe with the
most intense conviction that, in pleading for the Government to which
I belong, I am pleading for the safety of the Commonwealth, for the
reformation of abuses, and at the same time for the preservation of
august and venerable institutions: and I trust, Mr Speaker, that when
the question is whether a Cabinet be or be not worthy of the confidence
of Parliament, the first Member of that Cabinet who comes forward to
defend himself and his colleagues will find here some portion of that
generosity and good feeling which once distinguished English gentlemen.
But be this as it may, my voice shall be heard. I repeat, that I am
pleading at once for the reformation and for the preservation of our
institutions, for liberty and order, for justice administered in mercy,
for equal laws, for the rights of conscience, and for the real union of
Great Britain and Ireland. If, on so grave an occasion, I should advert
to one or two of the charges which have been brought against myself
personally, I shall do so only because I conceive that those charges
affect in some degree the character of the Government to which I belong.
One of the chief accusations brought against the Government by the
honourable Baronet (Sir John Yarde Buller.) who opened the debate,
and repeated by the seconder (Alderman Thompson.), and by almost every
gentlemen who has addressed the House from the benches opposite, is that
I have been invited to take office though my opinion with respect to the
Ballot is known to be different from that of my colleagues. We have been
repeatedly told that a Ministry in which there is not perfect unanimity
on a subject so important must be undeserving of the public confidence.
Now, Sir, it is true that I am in favour of secret voting, that my noble
and right honourable friends near me are in favour of open voting,
and yet that we sit in the same Cabinet. But if, on account of this
difference of opinion, the Government is unworthy of public confidence,
then I am sure that scarcely any government which has existed within the
memory of the oldest man has been deserving of public confidence. It
is well-known that in the Cabinets of Mr Pitt, of Mr Fox, of Lord
Liverpool, of Mr Canning, of the Duke of Wellington, there were
open questions of great moment. Mr Pitt, while still zealous for
parliamentary reform, brought into the Cabinet Lord Grenville, who
was adverse to parliamentary reform. Again, Mr Pitt, while eloquently
supporting the abolition of the Slave Trade, brought into the Cabinet
Mr Dundas, who was the chief defender of the Slave Trade. Mr Fox,
too, intense as was his abhorrence of the Slave Trade, sat in the same
Cabinet with Lord Sidmouth and Mr Windham, who voted to the last against
the abolition of that trade. Lord Liverpool, Mr Canning, the Duke of
Wellington, all left the question of Catholic Emancipation open. And
yet, of all questions, that was perhaps the very last that should have
been left open. For it was not merely a legislative question, but a
question which affected every part of the executive administration.
But, to come to the present time, suppose that you could carry your
resolution, suppose that you could drive the present Ministers from
power, who that may succeed them will be able to form a government in
which there will be no open questions? Can the right honourable Baronet
the member for Tamworth (Sir Robert Peel.) form a Cabinet without
leaving the great question of our privileges open? In what respect is
that question less important than the question of the Ballot? Is it not
indeed from the privileges of the House that all questions relating
to the constitution of the House derive their importance? What does it
matter how we are chosen, if, when we meet, we do not possess the
powers necessary to enable us to perform the functions of a legislative
assembly? Yet you who would turn out the present Ministers because they
differ from each other as to the way in which Members of this House
should be chosen, wish to bring in men who decidedly differ from each
other as to the relation in which this House stands to the nation, to
the other House, and to the Courts of Judicature. Will you say that the
dispute between the House and the Court of Queen's Bench is a trifling
dispute? Surely, in the late debates, you were all perfectly agreed as
to the importance of the question, though you were agreed as to nothing
else. Some of you told us that we were contending for a power essential
to our honour and usefulness. Many of you protested against our
proceedings, and declared that we were encroaching on the province of
the tribunals, violating the liberty of our fellow citizens, punishing
honest magistrates for not perjuring themselves. Are these trifles? And
can we believe that you really feel a horror of open questions when we
see your Prime Minister elect sending people to prison overnight,
and his law officers elect respectfully attending the levee of those
prisoners the next morning? Observe, too, that this question of
privileges is not merely important; it is also pressing. Something must
be done, and that speedily. My belief is that more inconvenience would
follow from leaving that question open one month than from leaving the
question of the Ballot open ten years.
The Ballot, Sir, is not the only subject on which I am accused of
holding dangerous opinions. The right honourable Baronet the Member
for Pembroke (Sir James Graham.) pronounces the present Government
a Chartist Government; and he proves his point by saying that I am a
member of the government, and that I wish to give the elective franchise
to every ten pound householder, whether his house be in a town or in
the country. Is it possible, Sir, that the honourable Baronet should not
know that the fundamental principle of the plan of government called the
People's Charter is that every male of twenty-one should have a vote?
Or is it possible that he can see no difference between giving the
franchise to all ten pound householders, and giving the franchise to all
males of twenty-one? Does he think the ten pound householders a class
morally or intellectually unfit to possess the franchise, he who bore a
chief part in framing the law which gave them the franchise in all the
represented towns of the United Kingdom? Or will he say that the ten
pound householder in a town is morally and intellectually fit to be
an elector, but that the ten pound householder who lives in the
open country is morally and intellectually unfit? Is not house-rent
notoriously higher in towns than in the country? Is it not, therefore,
probable that the occupant of a ten pound house in a rural hamlet will
be a man who has a greater stake in the peace and welfare of society
than a man who has a ten pound house in Manchester or Birmingham? Can
you defend on conservative principles an arrangement which gives votes
to a poorer class and withholds them from a richer? For my own part, I
believe it to be essential to the welfare of the state, that the elector
should have a pecuniary qualification. I believe that the ten pound
qualification cannot be proved to be either too high or too low.
Changes, which may hereafter take place in the value of money and in
the condition of the people, may make a change of the qualification
necessary. But the ten pound qualification is, I believe, well suited to
the present state of things. At any rate, I am unable to conceive why it
should be a sufficient qualification within the limits of a borough, and
an insufficient qualification a yard beyond those limits; sufficient at
Knightsbridge, but insufficient at Kensington; sufficient at Lambeth,
but insufficient at Battersea? If any person calls this Chartism, he
must permit me to tell him that he does not know what Chartism is.
A motion, Sir, such as that which we are considering, brings under our
review the whole policy of the kingdom, domestic, foreign, and colonial.
It is not strange, therefore, that there should have been several
episodes in this debate. Something has been said about the hostilities
on the River Plata, something about the hostilities on the coast of
China, something about Commissioner Lin, something about Captain Elliot.
But on such points I shall not dwell, for it is evidently not by the
opinion which the House may entertain on such points that the event
of the debate will be decided. The main argument of the gentlemen who
support the motion, the argument on which the right honourable Baronet
who opened the debate chiefly relied, the argument which his seconder
repeated, and which has formed the substance of every speech since
delivered from the opposite side of the House, may be fairly summed
up thus, "The country is not in a satisfactory state. There is much
recklessness, much turbulence, much craving for political change; and
the cause of these evils is the policy of the Whigs. They rose to power
by agitation in 1830: they retained power by means of agitation through
the tempestuous months which followed: they carried the Reform Bill
by means of agitation: expelled from office, they forced themselves in
again by means of agitation; and now we are paying the penalty of their
misconduct. Chartism is the natural offspring of Whiggism. From those
who caused the evil we cannot expect the remedy. The first thing to
be done is to dismiss them, and to call to power men who, not having
instigated the people to commit excesses, can, without incurring the
charge of inconsistency, enforce the laws."