so, how can any man have the front to invoke the Treaty of Union and the
Act of Security against those who are devotedly attached to that system
which the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security were designed to
protect, and who are seceders only because the Treaty of Union and the
Act of Security have been infringed? I implore gentlemen to reflect on
the manner in which they and their fathers have acted towards the Scotch
Presbyterians. First you bind yourselves by the most solemn obligations
to maintain unaltered their Church as it was constituted in 1707.
Five years later you alter the constitution of their Church in a point
regarded by them as essential. In consequence of your breach of faith
secession after secession takes place, till at length the Church of
the State ceases to be the Church of the People. Then you begin to be
squeamish. Then those articles of the Treaty of Union which, when they
really were obligatory, you outrageously violated, now when they are
no longer obligatory, now when it is no longer in your power to observe
them according to the spirit, are represented as inviolable. You first,
by breaking your word, turn hundreds of thousands of Churchmen into
Dissenters; and then you punish them for being Dissenters, because,
forsooth, you never break your word. If your consciences really are so
tender, why do you not repeal the Act of 1712? Why do you not put the
Church of Scotland back into the same situation in which she was in
1707. We have had occasion more than once in the course of this session
to admire the casuistical skill of Her Majesty's Ministers. But I must
say that even their scruple about slave-grown sugar, though that scruple
is the laughing-stock of all Europe and all America, is respectable
when compared with their scruple about the Treaty of Union. Is there the
slightest doubt that every compact ought to be construed according to
the sense in which it was understood by those who made it? And is there
the slightest doubt as to the sense in which the compact between England
and Scotland was understood by those who made it? Suppose that we could
call up from their graves the Presbyterian divines who then sate in the
General Assembly. Suppose that we could call up Carstairs; that we could
call up Boston, the author of the Fourfold State; that we could relate
to them the history of the ecclesiastical revolutions which have, since
their time, taken place in Scotland; and that we could then ask them,
"Is the Established Church, or is the Free Church, identical with the
Church which existed at the time of the Union?" Is it not quite certain
what their answer would be? They would say, "Our Church, the Church
which you promised to maintain unalterable, was not the Church which you
protect, but the Church which you oppress. Our Church was the Church of
Chalmers and Brewster, not the Church of Bryce and Muir."
It is true, Sir, that the Presbyterian dissenters are not the only
dissenters whom this bill will relieve. By the law, as it now stands,
all persons who refuse to declare their approbation of the synodical
polity, that is to say, all persons who refuse to declare that they
consider episcopal government and episcopal ordination as, at least,
matters altogether indifferent, are incapable of holding academical
office in Scotland. Now, Sir, will any gentleman who loves the Church
of England vote for maintaining this law? If, indeed, he were bound by
public faith to maintain this law, I admit that he would have no choice.
But I have proved, unless I greatly deceive myself, that he is not
bound by public faith to maintain this law? Can he then conscientiously
support the Ministers to-night? If he votes with them, he votes for
persecuting what he himself believes to be the truth. He holds out
to the members of his own Church lures to tempt them to renounce that
Church, and to join themselves to a Church which he considers as less
pure. We may differ as to the propriety of imposing penalties and
disabilities on heretics. But surely we shall agree in thinking that we
ought not to punish men for orthodoxy.
I know, Sir, that there are many gentlemen who dislike innovation merely
as innovation, and would be glad always to keep things as they are now.
Even to this class of persons I will venture to appeal. I assure them
that we are not the innovators. I assure them that our object is to keep
things as they are and as they have long been. In form, I own, we are
proposing a change; but in truth we are resisting a change. The question
really is, not whether we shall remove old tests, but whether we shall
impose new ones. The law which we seek to repeal has long been obsolete.
So completely have the tests been disused that, only the other day, the
right honourable Baronet, the Secretary for the Home Department,
when speaking in favour of the Irish Colleges Bill, told us that the
Government was not making a rash experiment. "Our plan," he said, "has
already been tried at Edinburgh and has succeeded. At Edinburgh the
tests have been disused near a hundred years." As to Glasgow the
gentlemen opposite can give us full information from their own
experience. For there are at least three members of the Cabinet who have
been Lords Rectors; the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Secretaries
for the Home Department and the Colonial Department. They never took
the test. They probably would not have taken it; for they are all
Episcopalians. In fact, they belong to the very class which the test
was especially meant to exclude. The test was not meant to exclude
Presbyterian dissenters; for the Presbyterian Church was not yet rent
by any serious schism. Nor was the test meant to exclude the Roman
Catholics; for against the Roman Catholics there was already abundant
security. The Protestant Episcopalian was the enemy against whom it was,
in 1707, thought peculiarly necessary to take precautions. That those
precautions have long been disused the three members of the Cabinet whom
I mentioned can certify.
On a sudden the law, which had long slept a deep sleep, has been
awakened, stirred up, and put into vigorous action. These obsolete tests
are now, it seems, to be exacted with severity. And why? Simply because
an event has taken place which makes them ten times as unjust and
oppressive as they would have been formerly. They were not required
while the Established Church was the Church of the majority. They are
to be required solely because a secession has taken place which has made
the Established Church the Church of the minority. While they could have
done little mischief they were suffered to lie neglected. They are now
to be used, because a time has come at which they cannot be used without
fatal consequences.
It is impossible for me to speak without indignation of those who have
taken the lead in the work of persecution. Yet I must give them credit
for courage. They have selected as their object of attack no less a man
than Sir David Brewster, Principal of the University of Saint Andrews.
I hold in my hand the libel, as it is technically called, in which a
Presbytery of the Established Church demands that Sir David, for the
crime of adhering to that ecclesiastical polity which was guaranteed to
his country by the Act of Union, shall be "removed from his office, and
visited with such other censure or punishment as the laws of the
Church enjoin, for the glory of God, the safety of the Church, and
the prosperity of the University, and to deter others holding the same
important office from committing the like offence in all time coming,
but that others may hear and fear the danger and detriment of following
divisive courses." Yes; for the glory of God, the safety of the Church,
and the prosperity of the University. What right, Sir, have the
authors of such an instrument as this to raise their voices against the
insolence and intolerance of the Vatican? The glory of God! As to that,
I will only say that this is not the first occasion on which the glory
of God has been made a pretext for the injustice of man. The safety of
the Church! Sir, if, which God forbid, that Church is really possessed
by the evil spirit which actuates this Presbytery; if that Church,
having recently lost hundreds of able ministers and hundreds of
thousands of devout hearers, shall, instead of endeavouring, by
meekness, and by redoubled diligence, to regain those whom she has
estranged, give them new provocation; if she shall sharpen against them
an old law the edge of which has long rusted off, and which, when it
was first made, was made not for her defence, but for theirs; then I
pronounce the days of that Church numbered. As to the prosperity of the
University, is there a corner of Europe where men of science will not
laugh when they hear that the prosperity of the University of Saint
Andrews is to be promoted by expelling Sir David Brewster on account
of a theological squabble? The professors of Edinburgh know better
than this Presbytery how the prosperity of a seat of learning is to be
promoted. There the Academic Senate is almost unanimous in favour of
the bill. And indeed it is quite certain that, unless this bill, or some
similar bill, be passed, a new college will soon be founded and endowed
with that munificence of which the history of the Free Church furnishes
so many examples. From the day on which such an university arises, the
old universities must decline. Now, they are practically national, and
not sectarian, institutions. And yet, even now, the emoluments of a
professorship are so much smaller than those which ability and industry
can obtain in other ways, that it is difficult to find eminent men to
fill the chairs. And if there be this difficulty now, when students of
all religious persuasions attend the lectures, what is likely to happen
when all the members of the Free Church go elsewhere for instruction?
If there be this difficulty when you have all the world to choose
professors from, what is likely to happen when your choice is narrowed
to less than one-half of Scotland? As the professorships become poorer,
the professors will become less competent. As the professors become
less competent, the classes will become thinner. As the classes become
thinner, the professorships will again become poorer. The decline
will become rapid and headlong. In a short time, the lectures will be
delivered to empty rooms: the grass will grow in the courts: and men
not fit to be village dominies will occupy the chairs of Adam Smith and
Dugald Stewart, of Reid and Black, of Playfair and Jamieson.
How do Her Majesty's Ministers like such a prospect as this! Already
they have, whether by their fault or their misfortune I will not now
inquire, secured for themselves an unenviable place in the history
of Scotland. Their names are already inseparably associated with
the disruption of her Church. Are those names to be as inseparably
associated with the ruin of her Universities?
If the Government were consistent in error, some respect might be
mingled with our disapprobation. But a Government which is guided by no
principle; a Government which, on the gravest questions, does not know
its own mind twenty-four hours together; a Government which is against
tests at Cork, and for tests at Glasgow, against tests at Belfast, and
for tests at Edinburgh, against tests on the Monday, for them on the
Wednesday, against them again on the Thursday--how can such a Government
command esteem or confidence? How can the Ministers wonder that their
uncertain and capricious liberality fails to obtain the applause of
the liberal party? What right have they to complain if they lose the
confidence of half the nation without gaining the confidence of the
other half?
But I do not speak to the Government. I speak to the House. I appeal
to those who, on Monday last, voted with the Ministers against the test
proposed by the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon. I know
what is due to party ties. But there is a mire so black and so deep
that no leader has a right to drag his followers through it. It is only
forty-eight hours since honourable gentlemen were brought down to the
House to vote against requiring the professors in the Irish Colleges to
make a declaration of belief in the Gospel: and now the same gentlemen
are expected to come down and to vote that no man shall be a professor
in a Scottish college who does not declare himself a Calvinist and a
Presbyterian. Flagrant as is the injustice with which the ministers have
on this occasion treated Scotland, the injustice with which they have
treated their own supporters is more flagrant still. I call on all
who voted with the Government on Monday to consider whether they can
consistently and honourably vote with the Government to-night: I call on
all members of the Church of England to ponder well before they make it
penal to be a member of the Church of England; and, lastly, I call on
every man of every sect and party who loves science and letters, who is
solicitous for the public tranquillity, who respects the public faith,
to stand by us in this our hard struggle to avert the ruin which
threatens the Universities of Scotland. I move that this bill be now
read a second time.
*****
CORN LAWS. (DECEMBER 2, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON THE 2D
OF DECEMBER 1845.
The following Speech was delivered at a public meeting held at Edinburgh
on the second of December, 1845, for the purpose of petitioning Her
Majesty to open the ports of the United Kingdom for the free admission
of corn and other food.
My Lord Provost and Gentlemen,--You will, I hope, believe that I am
deeply sensible of the kindness with which you have received me. I only
beg that you will continue to extend your indulgence to me, if it should
happen that my voice should fail me in the attempt to address you. I
have thought it my duty to obey your summons, though I am hardly equal
to the exertion of public speaking, and though I am so situated that I
can pass only a few hours among you. But it seemed to me that this was
not an ordinary meeting or an ordinary crisis. It seemed to me that
a great era had arrived, and that, at such a conjuncture, you were
entitled to know the opinions and intentions of one who has the honour
of being your representative.
With respect to the past, gentlemen, I have perhaps a little to explain,
but certainly nothing to repent or to retract. My opinions, from the
day on which I entered public life, have never varied. I have always
considered the principle of protection of agriculture as a vicious
principle. I have always thought that this vicious principle took,
in the Act of 1815, in the Act of 1828, and in the Act of 1842, a
singularly vicious form. This I declared twelve years ago, when I stood
for Leeds: this I declared in May 1839, when I first presented myself
before you; and when, a few months later, Lord Melbourne invited me to
become a member of his Government, I distinctly told him that, in office
or out of office, I must vote for the total repeal of the corn laws.
But in the year 1841 a very peculiar crisis arrived. There was reason to
hope that it might be possible to effect a compromise, which would not
indeed wholly remove the evils inseparable from a system of protection,
but which would greatly mitigate them. There were some circumstances in
the financial situation of the country which led those who were then the
advisers of the Crown to hope that they might be able to get rid of
the sliding scale, and to substitute for it a moderate fixed duty. We
proposed a duty of eight shillings a quarter on wheat. The Parliament
refused even to consider our plan. Her Majesty appealed to the people.
I presented myself before you; and you will bear me witness that I
disguised nothing. I said, "I am for a perfectly free trade in corn:
but I think that, situated as we are, we should do well to consent to a
compromise. If you return me to Parliament, I shall vote for the eight
shilling duty. It is for you to determine whether, on those terms, you
will return me or not." You agreed with me. You sent me back to the
House of Commons on the distinct understanding that I was to vote for
the plan proposed by the Government of which I was a member. As soon as
the new Parliament met, a change of administration took place. But it
seemed to me that it was my duty to support, when out of place, that
proposition to which I had been a party when I was in place. I therefore
did not think myself justified in voting for a perfectly free trade,
till Parliament had decided against our fixed duty, and in favour of
Sir Robert Peel's new sliding scale. As soon as that decision had been
pronounced, I conceived that I was no longer bound by the terms of the
compromise which I had, with many misgivings, consented to offer to the
agriculturists, and which the agriculturists had refused to accept. I
have ever since voted in favour of every motion which has been made for
the total abolition of the duties on corn.
There has been, it is true, some difference of opinion between me and
some of you. We belonged to the same camp: but we did not quite agree
as to the mode of carrying on the war. I saw the immense strength of the
interests which were arrayed against us. I saw that the corn monopoly
would last forever if those who defended it were united, while those who
assailed it were divided. I saw that many men of distinguished abilities
and patriotism, such men as Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, Lord
Morpeth, were unwilling to relinquish all hope that the question might
be settled by a compromise such as had been proposed in 1841. It seemed
to me that the help of such men was indispensable to us, and that, if
we drove from us such valuable allies, we should be unable to contend
against the common enemy. Some of you thought that I was timorous, and
others that I was misled by party spirit or by personal friendship.
I still think that I judged rightly. But I will not now argue the
question. It has been set at rest for ever, and in the best possible
way. It is not necessary for us to consider what relations we ought to
maintain with the party which is for a moderate fixed duty. That party
has disappeared. Time, and reflection, and discussion, have produced
their natural effect on minds eminently intelligent and candid. No
intermediate shades of opinion are now left. There is no twilight. The
light has been divided from the darkness. Two parties are ranged in
battle array against each other. There is the standard of monopoly.
Here is the standard of free trade; and by the standard of free trade I
pledge myself to stand firmly.
Gentlemen, a resolution has been put into my hands which I shall move
with the greatest pleasure. That resolution sets forth in emphatic
language a truth of the highest importance, namely, that the present
corn laws press with especial severity on the poor. There was a time,
gentlemen, when politicians were not ashamed to defend the corn laws
merely as contrivances for putting the money of the many into the
pockets of the few. We must,--so these men reasoned,--have a powerful
and opulent class of grandees: that we may have such grandees, the rent
of land must be kept up: and that the rent of land may be kept up, the
price of bread must be kept up. There may still be people who think
thus: but they wisely keep their thoughts to themselves. Nobody now
ventures to say in public that ten thousand families ought to be put on
short allowance of food in order that one man may have a fine stud and
a fine picture gallery. Our monopolists have changed their ground.
They have abandoned their old argument for a new argument much
less invidious, but, I think, rather more absurd. They have turned
philanthropists. Their hearts bleed for the misery of the poor labouring
man. They constantly tell us that the cry against the corn laws has been
raised by capitalists; that the capitalist wishes to enrich himself at
the expense both of the landed gentry and of the working people; that
every reduction of the price of food must be followed by a reduction of
the wages of labour; and that, if bread should cost only half what it
now costs, the peasant and the artisan would be sunk in wretchedness and
degradation, and the only gainers would be the millowners and the money
changers. It is not only by landowners, it is not only by Tories, that
this nonsense has been talked. We have heard it from men of a very
different class, from demagogues who wish to keep up the corn laws,
merely in order that the corn laws may make the people miserable, and
that misery may make the people turbulent. You know how assiduously
those enemies of all order and all property have laboured to deceive the
working man into a belief that cheap bread would be a curse to him. Nor
have they always laboured in vain. You remember that once, even in this
great and enlightened city, a public meeting called to consider the corn
laws was disturbed by a deluded populace. Now, for my own part, whenever
I hear bigots who are opposed to all reform, and anarchists who are bent
on universal destruction, join in the same cry, I feel certain that it
is an absurd and mischievous cry; and surely never was there a cry
so absurd and mischievous as this cry against cheap loaves. It seems
strange that Conservatives, people who profess to hold new theories
in abhorrence, people who are always talking about the wisdom of our
ancestors, should insist on our receiving as an undoubted truth a
strange paradox never heard of from the creation of the world till the
nineteenth century. Begin with the most ancient book extant, the Book of
Genesis, and come down to the parliamentary debates of 1815; and I will
venture to say that you will find that, on this point, the party which
affects profound reverence for antiquity and prescription has against it
the unanimous voice of thirty-three centuries. If there be anything
in which all peoples, nations, and languages, Jews, Greeks, Romans,
Italians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, have agreed, it has been this, that
the dearness of food is a great evil to the poor. Surely, the arguments
which are to counterbalance such a mass of authority ought to be
weighty. What then are those arguments? I know of only one. If any
gentleman is acquainted with any other, I wish that he would communicate
it to us; and I will engage that he shall have a fair and full hearing.
The only argument that I know of is this, that there are some countries
in the world where food is cheaper than in England, and where the people
are more miserable than in England. Bengal has been mentioned. But
Poland is the favourite case. Whenever we ask why there should not be
a free trade in corn between the Vistula and the Thames, the answer
is, "Do you wish our labourers to be reduced to the condition of the
peasants of the Vistula?" Was such reasoning ever heard before? See how
readily it may be turned against those who use it. Corn is cheaper at
Cincinnati than here; but the wages of the labourer are much higher at
Cincinnati than here: therefore, the lower the price of food, the higher
the wages will be. This reasoning is just as good as the reasoning of
our adversaries: that is to say, it is good for nothing. It is not
one single cause that makes nations either prosperous or miserable. No
friend of free trade is such an idiot as to say that free trade is the
only valuable thing in the world; that religion, government, police,
education, the administration of justice, public expenditure, foreign
relations, have nothing whatever to do with the well-being of nations;
that people sunk in superstition, slavery, barbarism, must be happy if
they have only cheap food. These gentlemen take the most unfortunate
country in the world, a country which, while it had an independent
government, had the very worst of independent governments; the sovereign
a mere phantom; the nobles defying him and quarrelling with each other;
the great body of the population in a state of servitude; no middle
class; no manufactures; scarcely any trade, and that in the hands of Jew
pedlars. Such was Poland while it was a separate kingdom. But foreign
invaders came down upon it. It was conquered: it was reconquered: it was
partitioned: it was repartitioned: it is now under a government of which
I will not trust myself to speak. This is the country to which these
gentlemen go to study the effect of low prices. When they wish to
ascertain the effect of high prices, they take our own country; a
country which has been during many generations the best governed in
Europe; a country where personal slavery has been unknown during ages;
a country which enjoys the blessings of a pure religion, of freedom, of
order; a country long secured by the sea against invasion; a country in
which the oldest man living has never seen a foreign flag except as a
trophy. Between these two countries our political philosophers institute
a comparison. They find the Briton better off than the Pole; and they
immediately come to the conclusion that the Briton is so well off
because his bread is dear, and the Pole so ill off because his bread is
cheap. Why, is there a single good which in this way I could not prove
to be an evil, or a single evil which I could not prove to be a good?
Take lameness. I will prove that it is the best thing in the world to
be lame: for I can show you men who are lame, and yet much happier than
many men who have the full use of their legs. I will prove health to be
a calamity. For I can easily find you people in excellent health whose
fortunes have been wrecked, whose character has been blasted, and who
are more wretched than many invalids. But is that the way in which any
man of common sense reasons? No; the question is: Would not the lame man
be happier if you restored to him the use of his limbs? Would not the
healthy man be more wretched if he had gout and rheumatism in addition
to all his other calamities? Would not the Englishman be better off
if food were as cheap here as in Poland? Would not the Pole be more
miserable if food were as dear in Poland as here? More miserable indeed
he would not long be: for he would be dead in a month.