the able and eloquent speech of my right honourable friend the Judge
Advocate. (Sir George Grey.) He said, and he said most truly, that those
who hold this language are really accusing, not the Government of Lord
Melbourne, but the Government of Lord Grey. I was therefore, I must say,
surprised, after the speech of my right honourable friend, to hear
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke, himself a
distinguished member of the cabinet of Lord Grey, pronounce a harangue
against agitation. That he was himself an agitator he does not venture
to deny; but he tries to excuse himself by saying, "I liked the Reform
Bill; I thought it a good bill; and so I agitated for it; and, in
agitating for it, I acknowledge that I went to the very utmost limit of
what was prudent, to the very utmost limit of what was legal." Does not
the right honourable Baronet perceive that, by setting up this defence
for his own past conduct, he admits that agitation is good or evil,
according as the objects of the agitation are good or evil? When I hear
him speak of agitation as a practice disgraceful to a public man, and
especially to a Minister of the Crown, and address his lecture in a
particular manner to me, I cannot but wonder that he should not perceive
that his reproaches, instead of wounding me, recoil on himself. I was
not a member of the Cabinet which brought in the Reform Bill, which
dissolved the Parliament in a moment of intense excitement in order
to carry the Reform Bill, which refused to serve the Sovereign longer
unless he would create peers in sufficient numbers to carry the Reform
Bill. I was at that time only one of those hundreds of members of this
House, one of those millions of Englishmen, who were deeply impressed
with the conviction that the Reform Bill was one of the best laws
that ever had been framed, and who reposed entire confidence in the
abilities, the integrity, and the patriotism of the ministers; and
I must add that in no member of the administration did I place more
confidence than in the right honourable Baronet, who was then First
Lord of the Admiralty, and in the noble lord who was then Secretary for
Ireland. (Lord Stanley.) It was indeed impossible for me not to see that
the public mind was strongly, was dangerously stirred: but I trusted
that men so able, men so upright, men who had so large a stake in the
country, would carry us safe through the storm which they had raised.
And is it not rather hard that my confidence in the right honourable
Baronet and the noble lord is to be imputed to me as a crime by the very
men who are trying to raise the right honourable Baronet and the noble
lord to power? The Charter, we have been told in this debate, is the
child of the Reform Bill. But whose child is the Reform Bill? If men are
to be deemed unfit for office because they roused the national spirit
to support that bill, because they went as far as the law permitted in
order to carry that bill, then I say that no men can be more unfit for
office than the right honourable Baronet and the noble lord. It may be
thought presumptuous in me to defend two persons who are so well able to
defend themselves, and the more so, as they have a powerful ally in
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth, who, having twice
offered them high places in the Government, must be supposed to be of
opinion that they are not disqualified for being ministers by having
been agitators. I will, however, venture to offer some arguments in
vindication of the conduct of my noble and right honourable friends,
as I once called them, and as, notwithstanding the asperity which
has characterised the present debate, I should still have pleasure in
calling them. I would say in their behalf that agitation ought not to be
indiscriminately condemned; that great abuses ought to be removed;
that in this country scarcely any great abuse was ever removed till the
public feeling had been roused against it; and that the public feeling
has seldom been roused against abuses without exertions to which the
name of agitation may be given. I altogether deny the assertion which
we have repeatedly heard in the course of this debate, that a government
which does not discountenance agitation cannot be trusted to suppress
rebellion. Agitation and rebellion, you say, are in kind the same thing:
they differ only in degree. Sir, they are the same thing in the sense
in which to breathe a vein and to cut a throat are the same thing. There
are many points of resemblance between the act of the surgeon and the
act of the assassin. In both there is the steel, the incision, the
smart, the bloodshed. But the acts differ as widely as possible both in
moral character and in physical effect. So with agitation and rebellion.
I do not believe that there has been any moment since the revolution
of 1688 at which an insurrection in this country would have been
justifiable. On the other hand, I hold that we have owed to agitation a
long series of beneficent reforms which could have been effected in no
other way. Nor do I understand how any person can reprobate agitation,
merely as agitation, unless he is prepared to adopt the maxim of Bishop
Horsley, that the people have nothing to do with the laws but to
obey them. The truth is that agitation is inseparable from popular
government. If you wish to get rid of agitation, you must establish an
oligarchy like that of Venice, or a despotism like that of Russia. If
a Russian thinks that he is able to suggest an improvement in the
commercial code or the criminal code of his country, he tries to obtain
an audience of the Emperor Nicholas or of Count Nesselrode. If he
can satisfy them that his plans are good, then undoubtedly, without
agitation, without controversy in newspapers, without harangues from
hustings, without clamorous meetings in great halls and in marketplaces,
without petitions signed by tens of thousands, you may have a reform
effected with one stroke of the pen. Not so here. Here the people, as
electors, have power to decide questions of the highest importance. And
ought they not to hear and read before they decide? And how can they
hear if nobody speaks, or read if nobody writes? You must admit,
then, that it is our right, and that it may be our duty, to attempt
by speaking and writing to induce the great body of our countrymen to
pronounce what we think a right decision; and what else is agitation? In
saying this I am not defending one party alone. Has there been no Tory
agitation? No agitation against Popery? No agitation against the new
Poor Law? No agitation against the plan of education framed by the
present Government? Or, to pass from questions about which we differ to
questions about which we all agree: Would the slave trade ever have
been abolished without agitation? Would slavery ever have been abolished
without agitation? Would your prison discipline ever have been improved
without agitation? Would your penal code, once the scandal of the
Statute Book, have been mitigated without agitation? I am far from
denying that agitation may be abused, may be employed for bad ends, may
be carried to unjustifiable lengths. So may that freedom of speech
which is one of the most precious privileges of this House. Indeed,
the analogy is very close. What is agitation but the mode in which the
public, the body which we represent, the great outer assembly, if I may
so speak, holds its debates? It is as necessary to the good government
of the country that our constituents should debate as that we should
debate. They sometimes go wrong, as we sometimes go wrong. There
is often much exaggeration, much unfairness, much acrimony in their
debates. Is there none in ours? Some worthless demagogues may have
exhorted the people to resist the laws. But what member of Lord Grey's
Government, what member of the present Government, ever gave any
countenance to any illegal proceedings? It is perfectly true that some
words which have been uttered here and in other places, and which, when
taken together with the context and candidly construed, will appear to
mean nothing but what was reasonable and constitutional and moderate,
have been distorted and mutilated into something that has a seditious
aspect. But who is secure against such misrepresentation? Not, I am
sure, the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke. He ought to
remember that his own speeches have been used by bad men for bad ends.
He ought to remember that some expressions which he used in 1830, on
the subject of the emoluments divided among Privy Councillors, have been
quoted by the Chartists in vindication of their excesses. Do I blame him
for this? Not at all. He said nothing that was not justifiable. But it
is impossible for a man so to guard his lips that his language shall not
sometimes be misunderstood by dull men, and sometimes misrepresented
by dishonest men. I do not, I say, blame him for having used those
expressions: but I do say that, knowing how his own expressions had been
perverted, he should have hesitated before he threw upon men, not
less attached than himself to the cause of law, of order and property,
imputations certainly not better founded than those to which he is
himself liable.
And now, Sir, to pass by many topics to which, but for the lateness of
the hour, I would willingly advert, let me remind the House that
the question before us is not a positive question, but a question of
comparison. No man, though he may disapprove of some part of the conduct
of the present Ministers, is justified in voting for the motion which we
are considering, unless he believes that a change would, on the whole,
be beneficial. No government is perfect: but some government there must
be; and if the present government were worse than its enemies think it,
it ought to exist until it can be succeeded by a better. Now I take it
to be perfectly clear that, in the event of the removal of Her Majesty's
present advisers, an administration must be formed of which the right
honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth will be the head. Towards
that right honourable Baronet, and towards many of the noblemen and
gentlemen who would probably in that event be associated with him, I
entertain none but kind and respectful feelings. I am far, I hope, from
that narrowness of mind which makes a man unable to see merit in any
party but his own. If I may venture to parody the old Venetian proverb,
I would be "First an Englishman; and then a Whig." I feel proud of my
country when I think how much ability, uprightness, and patriotism may
be found on both sides of the House. Among our opponents stands forth,
eminently distinguished by parts, eloquence, knowledge, and, I willingly
admit, by public spirit, the right honourable Baronet the Member for
Tamworth. Having said this, I shall offer no apology for the remarks
which, in the discharge of my public duty, I shall make, without, I
hope, any personal discourtesy, on his past conduct, and his present
position.
It has been, Sir, I will not say his fault, but his misfortune, his
fate, to be the leader of a party with which he has no sympathy. To go
back to what is now matter of history, the right honourable Baronet
bore a chief part in the restoration of the currency. By a very
large proportion of his followers the restoration of the currency is
considered as the chief cause of the distresses of the country. The
right honourable Baronet cordially supported the commercial policy of Mr
Huskisson. But there was no name more odious than that of Mr Huskisson
to the rank and file of the Tory party. The right honourable Baronet
assented to the Act which removed the disabilities of the Protestant
Dissenters. But, a very short time ago, a noble Duke, one of the
highest in power and rank of the right honourable Baronet's adherents,
positively refused to lend his aid to the executing of that Act.
The right honourable Baronet brought in the bill which removed the
disabilities of the Roman Catholics: but his supporters make it a chief
article of charge against us that we have given practical effect to
the law which is his best title to public esteem. The right honourable
Baronet has declared himself decidedly favourable to the new Poor Law.
Yet, if a voice is raised against the Whig Bastilles and the Kings of
Somerset House, it is almost certain to be the voice of some zealous
retainer of the right honourable Baronet. On the great question of
privilege, the right honourable Baronet has taken a part which entitles
him to the gratitude of all who are solicitous for the honour and the
usefulness of the popular branch of the legislature. But if any person
calls us tyrants, and calls those whom we have imprisoned martyrs, that
person is certain to be a partisan of the right honourable Baronet.
Even when the right honourable Baronet does happen to agree with his
followers as to a conclusion, he seldom arrives at that conclusion by
the same process of reasoning which satisfies them. Many great questions
which they consider as questions of right and wrong, as questions of
moral and religious principle, as questions which must, for no earthly
object, and on no emergency, be compromised, are treated by him merely
as questions of expediency, of place, and of time. He has opposed many
bills introduced by the present Government; but he has opposed them on
such grounds that he is at perfect liberty to bring in the same bills
himself next year, with perhaps some slight variation. I listened to him
as I always listen to him, with pleasure, when he spoke last session on
the subject of education. I could not but be amused by the skill with
which he performed the hard task of translating the gibberish of bigots
into language which might not misbecome the mouth of a man of sense. I
felt certain that he despised the prejudices of which he condescended
to make use, and that his opinion about the Normal Schools and the Douai
Version entirely agreed with my own. I therefore do not think that,
in times like these, the right honourable Baronet can conduct the
administration with honour to himself or with satisfaction to those
who are impatient to see him in office. I will not affect to feel
apprehensions from which I am entirely free. I do not fear, and I will
not pretend to fear, that the right honourable Baronet will be a tyrant
and a persecutor. I do not believe that he will give up Ireland to the
tender mercies of those zealots who form, I am afraid, the strongest,
and I am sure the loudest, part of his retinue. I do not believe that
he will strike the names of Roman Catholics from the Privy Council book,
and from the Commissions of the Peace. I do not believe that he will
lay on our table a bill for the repeal of that great Act which was
introduced by himself in 1829. What I do anticipate is this, that he
will attempt to keep his party together by means which will excite
grave discontents, and yet that he will not succeed in keeping his party
together; that he will lose the support of the Tories without obtaining
the support of the nation; and that his government will fall from causes
purely internal.
This, Sir, is not mere conjecture. The drama is not a new one. It was
performed a few years ago on the same stage and by most of the same
actors. In 1827 the right honourable Baronet was, as now, the head of
a powerful Tory opposition. He had, as now, the support of a strong
minority in this House. He had, as now, a majority in the other House.
He was, as now, the favourite of the Church and of the Universities. All
who dreaded political change, all who hated religious liberty, rallied
round him then, as they rally round him now. Their cry was then, as
now, that a government unfriendly to the civil and ecclesiastical
constitution of the realm was kept in power by intrigue and court
favour, and that the right honourable Baronet was the man to whom the
nation must look to defend its laws against revolutionists, and its
religion against idolaters. At length that cry became irresistible.
Tory animosity had pursued the most accomplished of Tory statesmen and
orators to a resting place in Westminster Abbey. The arrangement which
was made after his death lasted but a very few months: a Tory government
was formed; and the right honourable Baronet became the leading minister
of the Crown in the House of Commons. His adherents hailed his elevation
with clamorous delight, and confidently expected many years of triumph
and dominion. Is it necessary to say in what disappointment, in what
sorrow, in what fury, those expectations ended? The right honourable
Baronet had been raised to power by prejudices and passions in which
he had no share. His followers were bigots. He was a statesman. He was
coolly weighing conveniences against inconveniences, while they were
ready to resort to a proscription and to hazard a civil war rather than
depart from what they called their principles. For a time he tried to
take a middle course. He imagined that it might be possible for him to
stand well with his old friends, and yet to perform some part of his
duty to the state. But those were not times in which he could long
continue to halt between two opinions. His elevation, as it had excited
the hopes of the oppressors, had excited also the terror and the rage of
the oppressed. Agitation, which had, during more than a year, slumbered
in Ireland, awoke with renewed vigour, and soon became more formidable
than ever. The Roman Catholic Association began to exercise authority
such as the Irish Parliament, in the days of its independence, had never
possessed. An agitator became more powerful than the Lord Lieutenant.
Violence engendered violence. Every explosion of feeling on one side of
St George's Channel was answered by a louder explosion on the other.
The Clare election, the Penenden Heath meeting showed that the time
for evasion and delay was past. A crisis had arrived which made it
absolutely necessary for the Government to take one side or the other. A
simple issue was proposed to the right honourable Baronet, concession
or civil war; to disgust his party, or to ruin his country. He chose
the good part. He performed a duty, deeply painful, in some sense
humiliating, yet in truth highly honourable to him. He came down to this
House and proposed the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Among his
adherents were some who, like himself, had opposed the Roman Catholic
claims merely on the ground of political expediency; and these persons
readily consented to support his new policy. But not so the great body
of his followers. Their zeal for Protestant ascendency was a ruling
passion, a passion, too, which they thought it a virtue to indulge. They
had exerted themselves to raise to power the man whom they regarded as
the ablest and most trusty champion of that ascendency; and he had not
only abandoned the good cause, but had become its adversary. Who can
forget in what a roar of obloquy their anger burst forth? Never before
was such a flood of calumny and invective poured on a single head. All
history, all fiction were ransacked by the old friends of the right
honourable Baronet, for nicknames and allusions. One right honourable
gentleman, who I am sorry not to see in his place opposite, found
English prose too weak to express his indignation, and pursued his
perfidious chief with reproaches borrowed from the ravings of the
deserted Dido. Another Tory explored Holy Writ for parallels, and could
find no parallel but Judas Iscariot. The great university which had been
proud to confer on the right honourable Baronet the highest marks of
favour, was foremost in affixing the brand of infamy. From Cornwall,
from Northumberland, clergymen came up by hundreds to Oxford, in order
to vote against him whose presence, a few days before, would have set
the bells of their parish churches jingling. Nay, such was the violence
of this new enmity that the old enmity of the Tories to Whigs, Radicals,
Dissenters, Papists, seemed to be forgotten. That Ministry which, when
it came into power at the close of 1828, was one of the strongest that
the country ever saw, was, at the close of 1829, one of the weakest. It
lingered another year, staggering between two parties, leaning now on
one, now on the other, reeling sometimes under a blow from the right,
sometimes under a blow from the left, and certain to fall as soon as the
Tory opposition and the Whig opposition could find a question on which
to unite. Such a question was found: and that Ministry fell without a
struggle.
Now what I wish to know is this. What reason have we to believe that any
administration which the right honourable Baronet can now form will have
a different fate? Is he changed since 1829? Is his party changed? He
is, I believe, still the same, still a statesman, moderate in opinions,
cautious in temper, perfectly free from that fanaticism which inflames
so many of his supporters. As to his party, I admit that it is not
the same; for it is very much worse. It is decidedly fiercer and
more unreasonable than it was eleven years ago. I judge by its public
meetings; I judge by its journals; I judge by its pulpits, pulpits which
every week resound with ribaldry and slander such as would disgrace the
hustings. A change has come over the spirit of a part, I hope not the
larger part, of the Tory body. It was once the glory of the Tories
that, through all changes of fortune, they were animated by a steady
and fervent loyalty which made even error respectable, and gave to what
might otherwise have been called servility something of the manliness
and nobleness of freedom. A great Tory poet, whose eminent services
to the cause of monarchy had been ill requited by an ungrateful Court,
boasted that
"Loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shined upon."
Toryism has now changed its character. We have lived to see a monster of
a faction made up of the worst parts of the Cavalier and the worst parts
of the Roundhead. We have lived to see a race of disloyal Tories. We
have lived to see Tories giving themselves the airs of those insolent
pikemen who puffed out their tobacco smoke in the face of Charles the
First. We have lived to see Tories who, because they are not allowed to
grind the people after the fashion of Strafford, turn round and revile
the Sovereign in the style of Hugh Peters. I say, therefore, that, while
the leader is still what he was eleven years ago, when his moderation
alienated his intemperate followers, his followers are more intemperate
than ever. It is my firm belief that the majority of them desire the
repeal of the Emancipation Act. You say, no. But I will give reasons,
and unanswerable reasons, for what I say. How, if you really wish to
maintain the Emancipation Act, do you explain that clamour which you
have raised, and which has resounded through the whole kingdom, about
the three Popish Privy Councillors? You resent, as a calumny, the
imputation that you wish to repeal the Emancipation Act; and yet you cry
out that Church and State are in danger of ruin whenever the Government
carries that Act into effect. If the Emancipation Act is never to be
executed, why should it not be repealed? I perfectly understand that an
honest man may wish it to be repealed. But I am at a loss to understand
how honest men can say, "We wish the Emancipation Act to be maintained:
you who accuse us of wishing to repeal it slander us foully: we value
it as much as you do. Let it remain among our statutes, provided always
that it remains as a dead letter. If you dare to put it in force,
indeed, we will agitate against you; for, though we talk against
agitation, we too can practice agitation: we will denounce you in our
associations; for, though we call associations unconstitutional, we
too have our associations: our divines shall preach about Jezebel: our
tavern spouters shall give significant hints about James the Second."
Yes, Sir, such hints have been given, hints that a sovereign who has
merely executed the law, ought to be treated like a sovereign who
grossly violated the law. I perfectly understand, as I said, that an
honest man may disapprove of the Emancipation Act, and may wish it
repealed. But can any man, who is of opinion that Roman Catholics ought
to be admitted to office, honestly maintain that they now enjoy more
than their fair share of power and emolument? What is the proportion
of Roman Catholics to the whole population of the United Kingdom?
About one-fourth. What proportion of the Privy Councillors are Roman
Catholics? About one-seventieth. And what, after all, is the power of a
Privy Councillor, merely as such? Are not the right honourable gentlemen
opposite Privy Councillors? If a change should take place, will not the
present Ministers still be Privy Councillors? It is notorious that no
Privy Councillor goes to Council unless he is specially summoned. He is
called Right Honourable, and he walks out of a room before Esquires and
Knights. And can we seriously believe that men who think it monstrous
that this honorary distinction should be given to three Roman Catholics,
do sincerely desire to maintain a law by which a Roman Catholic may be
Commander in Chief with all the military patronage, First Lord of the
Admiralty with all the naval patronage, or First Lord of the Treasury,
with the chief influence in every department of the Government. I must
therefore suppose that those who join in the cry against the three Privy
Councillors, are either imbecile or hostile to the Emancipation Act.