call, a path of life which I believed that I had quitted forever, I
shall be painfully reminded of the changes which the last five years
have produced. In Parliament I shall look in vain for virtues which I
loved, and for abilities which I admired. Often in debate, and never
more than when we discuss those questions of colonial policy which are
every day acquiring a new interest, I shall remember with regret how
much eloquence and wit, how much acuteness and knowledge, how many
engaging qualities, how many fair hopes, are buried in the grave of poor
Charles Buller. There were other men, men with whom I had no political
connection and little personal connection, men to whom I was, during a
great part of my public life, honestly opposed, but of whom I cannot
now think without grieving that their wisdom, their experience, and the
weight of their great names can never more, in the hour of need, bring
help to the nation or to the throne. Such were those two eminent men
whom I left at the height, one of civil, the other of military fame; one
the oracle of the House of Commons, the other the oracle of the House
of Lords. There were parts of their long public life which they would
themselves, I am persuaded, on a calm retrospect, have allowed to be
justly censurable. But it is impossible to deny that each in his own
department saved the State; that one brought to a triumphant close the
most formidable conflict in which this country was ever engaged with a
foreign enemy; and that the other, at an immense sacrifice of personal
feeling and personal ambition, freed us from an odious monopoly, which
could not have existed many years longer without producing fearful
intestine discords. I regret them both: but I peculiarly regret him who
is associated in my mind with the place to which you have sent me. I
shall hardly know the House of Commons without Sir Robert Peel. On the
first evening on which I took my seat in that House, more than two and
twenty years ago, he held the highest position among the Ministers
of the Crown who sate there. During all the subsequent years of my
parliamentary service I scarcely remember one important discussion in
which he did not bear a part with conspicuous ability. His figure is now
before me: all the tones of his voice are in my ears; and the pain with
which I think that I shall never hear them again would be embittered by
the recollection of some sharp encounters which took place between us,
were it not that at last there was an entire and cordial reconciliation,
and that, only a very few days before his death, I had the pleasure of
receiving from him marks of kindness and esteem of which I shall always
cherish the recollection.
But, Gentlemen, it is not only by those changes which the natural law of
mortality produces, it is not only by the successive disappearances of
eminent men that the face of the world has been changed during the five
years which have elapsed since we met here last. Never since the origin
of our race have there been five years more fertile of great events,
five years which have left behind them a more awful lesson. We have
lived many lives in that time. The revolutions of ages have been
compressed into a few months. France, Germany, Hungary, Italy,--what
a history has theirs been! When we met here last, there was in all of
those countries an outward show of tranquillity; and there were few,
even of the wisest among us, who imagined what wild passions, what wild
theories, were fermenting under that peaceful exterior. An obstinate
resistance to a reasonable reform, a resistance prolonged but for
one day beyond the time, gave the signal for the explosion; and in an
instant, from the borders of Russia to the Atlantic Ocean, everything
was confusion and terror. The streets of the greatest capitals of Europe
were piled up with barricades, and were streaming with civil blood. The
house of Orleans fled from France: the Pope fled from Rome: the Emperor
of Austria was not safe at Vienna. There were popular institutions in
Florence; popular institutions at Naples. One democratic convention sat
at Berlin; another democratic convention at Frankfort. You remember, I
am sure, but too well, how some of the wisest and most honest friends of
liberty, though inclined to look with great indulgence on the excesses
inseparable from revolutions, began first to doubt and then to despair
of the prospects of mankind. You remember how all sorts of animosity,
national, religious, and social, broke forth together. You remember
how with the hatred of discontented subjects to their governments was
mingled the hatred of race to race and of class to class. For myself, I
stood aghast; and though naturally of a sanguine disposition, I did for
one moment doubt whether the progress of society was not about to be
arrested, nay, to be suddenly and violently turned back; whether we
were not doomed to pass in one generation from the civilisation of the
nineteenth century to the barbarism of the fifth. I remembered that Adam
Smith and Gibbon had told us that the dark ages were gone, never more
to return, that modern Europe was in no danger of the fate which had
befallen the Roman empire. That flood, they said, would no more return
to cover the earth: and they seemed to reason justly: for they compared
the immense strength of the enlightened part of the world with the
weakness of the part which remained savage; and they asked whence were
to come the Huns and the Vandals, who should again destroy civilisation?
It had not occurred to them that civilisation itself might engender the
barbarians who should destroy it. It had not occurred to them that
in the very heart of great capitals, in the neighbourhood of splendid
palaces, and churches, and theatres, and libraries, and museums, vice
and ignorance might produce a race of Huns fiercer than those who
marched under Attila, and of Vandals more bent on destruction than those
who followed Genseric. Such was the danger. It passed by. Civilisation
was saved, but at what a price! The tide of popular feeling turned and
ebbed almost as fast as it had risen. Imprudent and obstinate opposition
to reasonable demands had brought on anarchy; and as soon as men had
a near view of anarchy they fled in terror to crouch at the feet of
despotism. To the dominion of mobs armed with pikes succeeded the
sterner and more lasting dominion of disciplined armies. The Papacy
rose from its debasement; rose more intolerant and insolent than before;
intolerant and insolent as in the days of Hildebrand; intolerant and
insolent to a degree which dismayed and disappointed those who had
fondly cherished the hope that the spirit which had animated the
Crusaders and the Inquisitors had been mitigated by the lapse of years
and by the progress of knowledge. Through all that vast region, where
little more than four years ago we looked in vain for any stable
authority, we now look in vain for any trace of constitutional freedom.
And we, Gentlemen, in the meantime, have been exempt from both those
calamities which have wrought ruin all around us. The madness of 1848
did not subvert the British throne. The reaction which followed has not
destroyed British liberty.
And why is this? Why has our country, with all the ten plagues raging
around her, been a land of Goshen? Everywhere else was the thunder and
the fire running along the ground,--a very grievous storm,--a storm such
as there was none like it since man was on the earth; yet everything
tranquil here; and then again thick night, darkness that might be felt;
and yet light in all our dwellings. We owe this singular happiness,
under the blessing of God, to a wise and noble constitution, the work of
many generations of great men. Let us profit by experience; and let us
be thankful that we profit by the experience of others, and not by our
own. Let us prize our constitution: let us purify it: let us amend it;
but let us not destroy it. Let us shun extremes, not only because each
extreme is in itself a positive evil, but also because each extreme
necessarily engenders its opposite. If we love civil and religious
freedom, let us in the day of danger uphold law and order. If we are
zealous for law and order, let us prize, as the best safeguard of law
and order, civil and religious freedom.
Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are free with servitude all around
us, why our Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended, why our press
is still subject to no censor, why we still have the liberty of
association, why our representative institutions still abide in all
their strength, I answer, It is because in the year of revolutions we
stood firmly by our Government in its peril; and, if I am asked why
we stood by our Government in its peril, when men all around us were
engaged in pulling Governments down, I answer, It was because we knew
that though our Government was not a perfect Government, it was a good
Government, that its faults admitted of peaceable and legal remedies,
that it had never inflexibly opposed just demands, that we had obtained
concessions of inestimable value, not by beating the drum, not by
ringing the tocsin, not by tearing up the pavement, not by running to
the gunsmiths' shops to search for arms, but by the mere force of reason
and public opinion. And, Gentlemen, preeminent among those pacific
victories of reason and public opinion, the recollection of which
chiefly, I believe, carried us safely through the year of revolutions
and through the year of counter-revolutions, I would place two great
reforms, inseparably associated, one with the memory of an illustrious
man, who is now beyond the reach of envy, the other with the name of
another illustrious man, who is still, and, I hope, long will be, a
living mark for distinction. I speak of the great commercial reform of
1846, the work of Sir Robert Peel, and of the great parliamentary reform
of 1832, the work of many eminent statesmen, among whom none was more
conspicuous than Lord John Russell. I particularly call your attention
to those two great reforms, because it will, in my opinion, be the
especial duty of that House of Commons in which, by your distinguished
favour, I have a seat, to defend the commercial reform of Sir Robert
Peel, and to perfect and extend the parliamentary reform of Lord John
Russell.
With respect to the commercial reform, though I say it will be a sacred
duty to defend it, I do not apprehend that we shall find the task very
difficult. Indeed, I doubt whether we have any reason to apprehend a
direct attack upon the system now established. From the expressions used
during the last session, and during the late elections, by the Ministers
and their adherents, I should, I confess, find it utterly impossible to
draw any inference whatever. They have contradicted each other; and they
have contradicted themselves. Nothing would be easier than to select
from their speeches passages which would prove them to be Freetraders,
and passages which would prove them to be protectionists. But, in truth,
the only inference which can properly be drawn from a speech of one of
these gentlemen in favour of Free Trade is, that, when he spoke, he was
standing for a town; and the only inference which can be drawn from the
speech of another in favour of Protection is, that, when he spoke,
he was standing for a county. I quitted London in the heat of the
elections. I left behind me a Tory candidate for Westminster and a Tory
candidate for Middlesex, loudly proclaiming themselves Derbyites and
Freetraders. All along my journey through Berkshire and Wiltshire I
heard nothing but the cry of Derby and Protection; but when I got to
Bristol, the cry was Derby and Free Trade again. On one side of the
Wash, Lord Stanley, the Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign
Department, a young nobleman of great promise, a young nobleman who
appears to me to inherit a large portion of his father's ability and
energy, held language which was universally understood to indicate that
the Government had altogether abandoned all thought of Protection. Lord
Stanley was addressing the inhabitants of a town. Meanwhile, on the
other side of the Wash, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was
haranguing the farmers of Lincolnshire; and, when somebody took it upon
him to ask, "What will you do, Mr Christopher, if Lord Derby abandons
Protection?" the Chancellor of the Duchy refused to answer a question so
monstrous, so insulting to Lord Derby. "I will stand by Lord Derby," he
said, "because I know that Lord Derby will stand by Protection." Well,
these opposite declarations of two eminent persons, both likely to know
the mind of Lord Derby on the subject, go forth, and are taken up
by less distinguished adherents of the party. The Tory candidate for
Leicestershire says, "I put faith in Mr Christopher: while you see Mr
Christopher in the Government, you may be assured that agriculture will
be protected." But, in East Surrey, which is really a suburb of London,
I find the Tory candidate saying, "Never mind Mr Christopher. I trust to
Lord Stanley. What should Mr Christopher know on the subject? He is not
in the Cabinet: he can tell you nothing about it." Nay, these tactics
were carried so far that Tories who had formerly been for Free Trade,
turned Protectionists if they stood for counties; and Tories, who had
always been furious Protectionists, declared for Free Trade, without
scruple or shame, if they stood for large towns. Take for example
Lord Maidstone. He was once one of the most vehement Protectionists
in England, and put forth a small volume, which, as I am an elector of
Westminster, and as he was a candidate for Westminster, I thought it my
duty to buy, in order to understand his opinions. It is entitled Free
Trade Hexameters. Of the poetical merits of Lord Maidstone's hexameters
I shall not presume to give an opinion. You may all form an opinion for
yourselves by ordering copies. They may easily be procured: for I was
assured, when I bought mine in Bond Street, that the supply on hand
was still considerable. But of the political merits of Lord Maidstone's
hexameters I can speak with confidence; and it is impossible to
conceive a fiercer attack, according to the measure of the power of
the assailant, than that which his lordship made on Sir Robert Peel's
policy. On the other hand, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who is now Solicitor
General, and who was Solicitor General under Sir Robert Peel, voted
steadily with Sir Robert Peel, doubtless from a regard to the public
interest, which would have suffered greatly by the retirement of so able
a lawyer from the service of the Crown. Sir Fitzroy did not think it
necessary to lay down his office even when Sir Robert Peel brought in
the bill which established a free trade in corn. But unfortunately,
Lord Maidstone becomes a candidate for the City of Westminster, and Sir
Fitzroy Kelly stands for an agricultural county. Instantly, therefore,
Lord Maidstone forgets his verses, and Sir Fitzroy Kelly forgets his
votes. Lord Maidstone declares himself a convert to the opinions of Sir
Robert Peel; and Sir Robert Peel's own Solicitor General lifts up his
head intrepidly, and makes a speech, apparently composed out of Lord
Maidstone's hexameters.
It is therefore, Gentlemen, utterly impossible for me to pretend to
infer, from the language held by the members of the Government,
and their adherents, what course they will take on the subject of
Protection. Nevertheless, I confidently say that the system established
by Sir Robert Peel is perfectly safe. The law which repealed the Corn
Laws stands now on a much firmer foundation than when it was first
passed. We are stronger than ever in reason; and we are stronger than
ever in numbers. We are stronger than ever in reason, because what was
only prophecy is now history. No person can now question the salutary
effect which the repeal of the Corn Laws has had on our trade and
industry. We are stronger than ever in numbers. You, I am sure,
recollect the time when a formidable opposition to the repeal of the
Corn Laws was made by a class which was most deeply interested in that
repeal; I mean the labouring classes. You recollect that, in many large
towns, ten years ago, the friends of Free Trade could not venture to
call meetings for the purpose of petitioning against the Corn Laws, for
fear of being interrupted by a crowd of working people, who had been
taught by a certain class of demagogues to say that the question was
one in which working people had no interest, that it was purely a
capitalist's question, that, if the poor man got a large loaf instead of
a small one, he would get from the capitalist only a sixpence instead
of a shilling. I never had the slightest faith in those doctrines.
Experience even then seemed to me completely to confute them. I compared
place with place; and I found that, though bread was dearer in England
than in Ohio, wages were higher in Ohio than in England. I compared
time with time; and I saw that those times when bread was cheapest
in England, within my own memory, were also the times in which the
condition of the labouring classes was the happiest. But now the
experiment has been tried in a manner which admits of no dispute. I
should be glad to know, if there were now an attempt made to impose a
tax on corn, what demagogue would be able to bring a crowd of working
men to hold up their hands in favour of such a tax. Thus strong,
Gentlemen, in reason, and thus strong in numbers, we need, I believe,
apprehend no direct attack on the principles of Free Trade. It will,
however, be one of the first duties of your representatives to be
vigilant that no indirect attack shall be made on these principles; and
to take care that in our financial arrangements no undue favour shall be
shown to any class.