PEEL AND MELBOURNE.
The general election which took place in January, 1835, was hotly
contested, and in the second reformed parliament the conservatives
mustered far stronger than in the first. The party now consisted of some
270 members, chiefly returned by the counties. But they were still
outnumbered by the whigs, radicals, and Irish repealers combined, and it
was certain that an occasion for such a combination would soon arise. It
was found at once in the election of a speaker, when the house of
commons met on February 9, 1835. Sutton, now Sir Charles Manners Sutton,
was proposed for re-election by the government; the opposition candidate
was Abercromby. The number of members who took part in the division was
the largest ever assembled, being 622, and Abercromby was elected by a
majority of ten. It would have been larger, had not the government been
supported by some waverers, but its significance was appreciated by the
ministers, and still more by the king. He expressed his displeasure in a
very outspoken letter to Peel, declaring that, if the leaders "of the
present factious opposition" should be forced upon him by a refusal of
the supplies, he might, indeed, tolerate them, but could never give them
his confidence or friendship. Two days later, the 24th, the king's
speech was delivered, reflecting the spirit of the Tamworth
manifesto.[130]
[Pageheading: _PEEL'S POLICY._]
The government was again defeated by seven on an amendment to the
address, notwithstanding the loyal aid of Graham and Stanley, whose
attitude during the general election had excited Peel's mistrust. In the
course of this debate, the prime minister, abandoning his usual reserve,
definitely pledged himself not only "to advance, soberly and cautiously,
in the path of progressive improvement," but to bring forward specific
measures. "I offer you," he said, "reduced estimates, improvements in
civil jurisprudence, reform of ecclesiastical law, the settlement of the
tithe question in Ireland, the commutation of tithe in England, the
removal of any real abuse in the Church, the redress of those grievances
of which the dissenters have any just ground to complain." Nor were
these offers illusory or barren. On March 17, he brought in a bill to
relieve dissenters from disabilities in respect of marriage, which met
with general approval. It was founded on the simple principle, since
adopted, of giving legal validity to civil marriages duly solemnised
before a registrar, and leaving each communion to superadd a religious
sanction in its own way. The marriages of Churchmen in a church were to
be left on their old footing, but Churchmen were of course to be granted
the same liberty as other citizens of contracting a purely civil
marriage.
Still more important, as examples of conservative reform, were Peel's
efforts to purge the established Church of abuses, and to introduce a
voluntary commutation of tithes. His correspondence amply shows how
large a space these remedial measures occupied in his mind, and one of
his first acts was to appoint an ecclesiastical commission, with
instructions to institute a most comprehensive inquiry into every
subject affecting the distribution of church revenues. Compared with the
petty squabbles over the appropriation of an imaginary surplus to be
derived from Irish tithes which it was impossible to collect, the
schemes of Peel for purifying and strengthening the Church of England
assume heroic proportions. The report of the ecclesiastical commission
originated by him, with its startling disclosures of pluralism and
non-residence, became the basis of legislation which has wrought a
veritable revolution in the financial and disciplinary administration of
the church. His tithe bill, abortive as it was in 1835, was reproduced,
with little alteration, in the tithe commutation act of 1836.
But the whig-radical allies of 1835 had not the smallest intention of
giving Peel a fair trial; nor indeed had they any other object beyond
the recovery of power. His appeals to his opponents, though by no means
without effect in the country, fell upon deaf ears in the house of
commons, and further humiliations followed rapidly. One of these was the
successful outcry against the appointment of Londonderry, who had
excited much hostility as an uncompromising enemy to reform, to the
embassy at St. Petersburg, in consequence of which he, very honourably,
relieved the government from obloquy by declining the post. A motion to
repeal the malt tax was decisively defeated, and soon afterwards a
motion in favour of granting a charter to the University of London was
carried against the government by a large majority. Then came a defeat
on a motion for adjournment, and the arts of obstruction were
obstinately practised in debates on the estimates. At last the
inevitable crisis arrived, and, as might be expected, the final issue
was taken upon an Irish question.
The influence of O'Connell and his "tail," as his followers were called,
had been neutralised, since the reform act, by the overwhelming strength
of the whigs, and the public-spirited action of Peel, who, as leader of
the conservative opposition, actually supported the whig government in
sixteen out of twenty most important contests on domestic policy. A very
different spirit was now shown by the whig opposition, and an evil
precedent, pregnant with disastrous consequences, was set by the famous
"Lichfield House compact". This was a close alliance between O'Connell
and those whom he had so fiercely denounced as "the base, brutal, and
bloody whigs". It bore immediate fruit in a motion of Russell for a
committee of the whole house to consider the temporalities of the Irish
Church. After a debate of four nights, the resolution was carried, on
March 30, by a majority of thirty-three. On April 5, a further
resolution was carried by a majority of twenty-five for applying any
surplus-funds "to the general education of all classes of the people
without religious distinction," and was more emphatically affirmed two
days later by a majority of twenty-seven.
Peel had long been conscious of the hopelessness of his position and
impatient of maintaining the struggle. He felt the constitutional danger
of allowing the executive government to become a helpless instrument in
the hands of a hostile majority in the house of commons. Nothing but the
earnest remonstrances of the king and his tory friends, including
Wellington, had induced him to retain office so long, and, after the
division of the 7th, he firmly resolved to resign. On doing so, he
received from the whole conservative party, of which he was the
creator, a most cordial address of thanks and confidence. Though his
short administration had consolidated the whig forces for the moment,
and given them a new lease of power, it showed him to be the foremost
statesman in the country, and paved the way for his triumphant return to
office. As Guizot said, he had proved himself "the most liberal of
conservatives, the most conservative of liberals, and the most capable
man of all in both parties".
[Pageheading: _MELBOURNE'S SECOND MINISTRY._]
The king now discovered the fatal mistake which he had made in
"dismissing" his whig cabinet, as he boasted, instead of waiting for it
to break down under the stress of internal dissensions. His first idea
was to fall back on Grey, who had already betrayed his growing mistrust
of radicalism, but Grey declined to enter the lists again. There was no
resource but to recall Melbourne, whom the king personally liked, and to
put up with the elevation of Russell to a position which all admitted
him to have fairly earned. He became home secretary, as well as leader
of the house of commons, and the new whig cabinet differed little from
the old. Palmerston, Lansdowne, Auckland, Thompson, and Holland returned
to their former offices. Grant was made secretary for war and the
colonies, Duncannon became lord privy seal, Spring Rice chancellor of
the exchequer, Hobhouse president of the board of control, and Viscount
Howick, son of Earl Grey, was appointed secretary at war. Outside the
cabinet, Viscount Morpeth, son of the Earl of Carlisle, became Irish
secretary. The most significant difference between the two cabinets lay
in the omission of Brougham, which was effected by the expedient of
placing the great seal in commission. This negative act was, in reality,
the boldest and most perilous in Melbourne's political life. A
correspondence between Brougham and Melbourne in February must have made
clear to the ex-chancellor that he would be excluded from office, and he
reluctantly acquiesced in Melbourne's decision, hoping that it would be
merely temporary, and that he would soon resume his place on the
woolsack as the dominant member of the cabinet, but his exclusion was
destined to be final, and the close of a career to which English history
in the nineteenth century presents no parallel.[131]
[Pageheading: _BROUGHAM._]
Brougham was called to the Scottish bar at the age of twenty-one, having
already given proof of brilliant ability and rare versatility at the
University of Edinburgh. He was the youngest and most prolific of the
original writers in the _Edinburgh Review_, then a very powerful organ
of whig opinion, and his contributions to it ranged over some thirty
years after its first appearance in 1802. He was already twenty-nine
when he joined the English bar in 1808, and though he never rivalled
Eldon as a lawyer or Scarlett as a persuasive advocate, he soon became
an acknowledged master of the highest forensic eloquence. His fame was
already established by his argument before parliament against the orders
in council when he entered the house of commons in 1810. There his
passionate oratory and power of invective made him the most formidable
of party speakers, and it was said that Canning alone could face him on
equal terms in debate. Except during four years, 1812-16, when he was
out of parliament, his prodigious energy and versatility were the
greatest intellectual force on the liberal side throughout all the
political conflicts under the regency and the reign of George IV. His
speeches embraced every question of foreign, colonial, or domestic
policy, and it may truly be said that no salutary reform was carried
during that period of which he was not either the author or the active
promoter. The suppression of the slave-trade which had revived after the
great war, the liberty of the press, the cause of popular
education--these were among the almost innumerable objects, outside the
common run of politics, and largely philanthropic, to which he devoted
his restless mind, before it was engrossed for a while by parliamentary
reform. There, as we have seen, he showed a moderation which had not
been expected of him, nor is it too much to say that, both as a leader
of the bar and as chancellor, he made good his claim to be the greatest
of law reformers.
His famous speech of February 7, 1828, had quickened the germs of many
legal improvements carried out in a later age, and the four years of his
chancellorship actually produced great constructive amendments of the
law, such as the institution of the central criminal court and the
judicial committee of the privy council. Other reforms, in bankruptcy,
criminal law, and equity, were mainly due to his initiative, and it was
he who originated the county courts, though his bill was recklessly
thrown out by the house of lords on party grounds. His public life, up
to the year 1835, was perhaps the most brilliant and the most useful of
the century, yet it was hopelessly marred in the end by a certain
eccentric vanity, and want of loyalty to colleagues, not inconsistent
with the higher ambition of leaving the world better than he found it.
For some years after his fall he retained his astounding energy, and
even his ascendency in the house of lords, where Lyndhurst, his only
possible rival, was astute enough to court his co-operation. Never was
his fertility in debate more conspicuously shown than in the session of
1835, while he was still nominally a supporter of the whig government.
The last stage of his life, extending over more than thirty years,
belongs to another chapter of English history; it is enough here to
notice that, whatever his political aberrations, he continued in his
isolation and old age to work zealously for those social reforms which
he sincerely had at heart. The popularity which had been to him as the
breath of life never, indeed, returned to him, and his figure no longer
occupies a foremost place in the gallery of our statesmen, but the
results of his noble services to humanity remain, and the memory of them
ought not to be obscured by the sad record of his failings.
The new Melbourne administration came in with unfavourable omens.
Russell failed to secure his re-election in South Devon, but a seat was
found for him at Stroud, and though the premier emphatically denied that
he had made any bargain with O'Connell, the Irish people believed it.
Accordingly, they received the whig lord-lieutenant, Mulgrave, with a
tumultuous procession, as if his advent portended the repeal of the
union and extinction of tithes. An attempt to solve the insoluble tithe
question was, in fact, among the earliest efforts of the government, and
Morpeth, as chief secretary, introduced a very reasonable measure,
differing little, except in details, from that of his predecessor. Like
other proposals for agrarian settlements in Ireland, it involved a
certain sacrifice on the part of the tithe-owner for the sake of
security, and a subsidy from the state to relieve of arrears the
defaulting and rebellious tithe-payers. Peel stated his intention of
supporting these provisions for commutation, if they could be separated
from other provisions for "appropriation," coupled with them under the
influence of political necessity rather than of sound policy. The
proposals for appropriation were so moderate that little would have been
lost by dropping or gained by carrying them, but, moderate as they were,
they embodied a principle on which either party was resolved to stand or
fall. The consequence might have been foreseen. The bill, as a whole,
was passed in the house of commons, and even read a second time in the
house of lords, after which the appropriation clauses were rejected in
that assembly by a large majority. Thereupon Melbourne withdrew the
scheme altogether. Thus a question of third-rate importance, having been
the chronic difficulty of four Irish secretaries, was left to stand over
for three years longer, and ultimately to be settled on the very basis
which Stanley and Peel had accepted from the first. A greater waste of
parliamentary time has perhaps never been recorded.
[Pageheading: _MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS BILL._]
The session of 1835, however, was rendered memorable by the enactment of
one beneficent measure of the first magnitude. This measure--the
municipal corporations act--was preceded, like the new poor law, by a
thorough and exhaustive inquiry. A committee of the house of commons,
followed by a commission, had been appointed in 1833. The commission
prosecuted careful researches into the local conditions of each
municipality, and did not conclude its labours until 1835. Its report
laid bare not merely grotesque anomalies, but the grossest abuses of
election and administration in boroughs ruled by small, corrupt, and
irresponsible oligarchies which then abounded in England, and, still
more, in Scotland.[132] The reform act had paved the way for the
purification of such urban communities, by disfranchising the smallest
and most venal of them, by extending the boundaries of many others, by
enfranchising great towns which had remained outside the pale of
representation, and by conferring the suffrage, theretofore monopolised
by freemen and other privileged classes, on the unprivileged mass of
ten-pound householders.
The municipal corporations bill, in its ultimate form, rested on the
same broad lines of policy. It imposed upon all boroughs, with the
exception of the city of London and a few of minor importance, one
constitutional form of government, identical in all its essential
features with those which a few model boroughs already possessed. The
governing body was to consist of a mayor, aldermen, and councillors,
together forming a town council. The councillors were to be elected
directly by ratepaying occupiers, with a saving for the prescriptive
rights of existing freemen. They were to hold office for three years;
the aldermen were to be elected by the councillors for six years, with a
provision for retirement by rotation. The mayor was to be elected
annually by the town council. The elementary powers of local government,
such as the control of lighting and the constabulary force, were to be
transferred (subject to certain exceptions) from the hands of committees
into those of the one recognised and supreme municipal authority. Other
clauses provided for a division of the larger boroughs into wards, for
the abolition of exclusive trading privileges, for the public management
of charity estates, and for the appointment, at the option of each
borough, of a recorder, for the purposes of jurisdiction.
Such were the main outlines of the great measure introduced by Russell,
to which Peel heartily gave his adhesion. It was a natural, and almost
necessary, sequel of the reform act, which had already broken up many
nests of jobbery, curtailed the lucrative exercise of the elective
franchise by freemen, and undermined the influence of those self-elected
rulers who, in the worst boroughs, had become gangs of public thieves.
Supported by Peel, the bill was read a second time in the house of
commons, on June 15, without a division. Several conservative amendments
were defeated in committee by small majorities, and the bill was sent up
to the lords on July 21. There its fate was far different. Though
Wellington himself was not disposed to obstruct it, he entirely failed
to check the obstructive tactics of Lyndhurst who, on this occasion,
outdid himself in the deliberate mutilation of a bill approved by the
late conservative premier. Lord Campbell, no partial judge of Brougham,
has left on record his belief that, but for his faithful and vigorous
support, the scheme of municipal reform must have been utterly
wrecked.[133] It was allowed to be read a second time, but with the
full concurrence of Eldon and all the ultra-tory peers, Lyndhurst
succeeded in pulling it to pieces in committee. For instance, one of the
amendments imported into it perpetuated proprietary rights which it was
a chief object of the bill to abolish; another gave aldermen a
life-tenure of their offices; a third retained a part of the old town
councillors on the new town councils. Proud as he was of his destructive
exploits, as a triumph of toryism over conservatism, Lyndhurst soon
found that he could not so lightly override the wiser counsels of Peel.
When the lords' amendments came to be considered in the commons, Russell
prudently advised the acceptance of the less important, and the
disallowance of those inconsistent with the principle of the bill. He
was followed by Peel who, professing to uphold the independence of the
upper house, declared against the more obnoxious amendments, and
stickled only for points which the ministry was not unwilling to
concede. His action proved decisive. The commons stood firm on the main
issues, and the hostile party in the lords, who had vowed to mar this
reform, flinched at the last moment. Many of them abstained from
attendance. Wellington and even Lyndhurst recommended concession;
conferences took place between the houses, at which Russell played the
part of moderator, and on September 9 the corporation bill became law,
not in its entirety, but in all its essential features.
In spite of this pacific compromise, popular feeling ran higher than
ever against the house of lords which, under the evil influence of
Lyndhurst, seemed bent on thwarting every liberal measure. John Roebuck,
member for Bath, a prominent radical, who acted independently of party
connexions, took a lead in denouncing their conduct, and went so far as
to propose giving them a merely suspensory, instead of an absolute, veto
on legislation. A sweeping reform in their constitution was loudly
advocated in the press. O'Connell, exasperated by their wanton rejection
of a Dublin police bill, spent a part of the parliamentary recess in a
tour over the north of England and Scotland, exhausting the stores of
his scurrilous invective in pouring contempt on the 170 tyrants who
could dare to withstand the will of the people. But O'Connell's
eloquence, marvellous as it was, never stirred British audiences as it
stirred the Irish masses, and it happened that at this moment he was
somewhat discredited by accusations of corruption afterwards proved to
be false. The house of lords not only survived his attacks, but was
instigated by Lyndhurst to further acts of obstruction in the following
year.
[Pageheading: _COTTENHAM, LORD CHANCELLOR._]
His most powerful opponent was about to disappear from the political
scenes for the present, and in the future to be converted into an ally.
When the great seal was entrusted to commissioners, Brougham had
affected to regard the arrangement as a temporary makeshift to
propitiate William IV., and hoped that he would inherit the reversion of
the chancellorship. With this expectation he not only patronised but
warmly supported the whig ministry in 1835. But his wayward and petulant
egotism had set all his old colleagues against him, and Melbourne had
made up his mind that "it was impossible to act with him". The
interruption of legal business caused by the constant withdrawal of
three judges from their proper duties, to act as commissioners, was
severely criticised by the press, and Sir Edward Sugden, who had been
lord chancellor of Ireland under Peel, published an effective pamphlet
entitled, "What has become of the great seal?" It was thought necessary
to appoint a new chancellor, and in January, 1836, Sir Charles Pepys,
then master of the rolls, was raised to that dignity as Lord Cottenham.
Foreseeing the implacable indignation of Brougham, the ministry decided
to confer a peerage on Henry Bickersteth, the new master of the rolls,
who became Lord Langdale, and who was supposed capable of confronting
the ex-chancellor in debate. No expectation could have been more
unfounded or delusive, but the sense of disappointment and desertion so
preyed on the health and nerves of Brougham that he forsook the house of
lords for a whole session. Campbell does not shrink from saying that he
was "atrociously ill-used" on this occasion,[134] and assuredly he
should not have been left to learn from a newspaper that he was thrust
aside in favour of a man of vastly inferior gifts and services.
One other change was made in the cabinet during the recess. The Earl of
Minto became first lord of the admiralty in succession to Auckland who
had been appointed governor-general of India. When parliament met on
February 4, 1836, the prospects of the whig government were more
favourable than on their first accession to office. The factious
conduct of the house of lords in the last session had disgusted the
country, while the statesmanlike moderation of Peel secured them
fair-play in the house of commons, though it was gradually building up a
strong conservative party. Ireland again blocked the way for a while
against useful legislation for Great Britain, and the first encounter of
parties was on an amendment to the address condemning the anticipated
reform of Irish corporations on the principles already adopted for
England. This amendment, unwillingly moved by Peel, was defeated by a
majority of forty-one, and the Irish municipal bill was introduced on
the 16th. Like its English prototype, it was founded on the report of a
commission which had disclosed the grossest possible abuses in Irish
municipalities, chiefly dominated by protestant oligarchies. A similar
measure substituting elective councils for these corrupt bodies had
actually passed its third reading in the commons before the end of the
last session, but the attempt to carry it further was then abandoned.
The debates on the bill of 1836 for the same purpose inevitably turned
on broad issues which continued to disturb Irish politics and to perplex
English statesmen for the rest of the century. On the one hand, no one
could justify "government by ascendency" in Ireland, or the shameful
malpractices incident to an exercise of power under no sense of
responsibility. On the other hand, no one acquainted with Irish history
and Irish character could honestly regard the people as yet qualified
for local self-government. In the social and some of the moral virtues
they might be favourably compared with Englishmen and Scotchmen; in the
political virtues, upon which civil institutions must rest, they were
several generations behind their fellow-subjects in Great Britain.
[Pageheading: _IRISH BILLS._]
All were agreed on the necessity of sweeping away or expurgating the
existing Irish corporations, but the whole strength of the conservative
party in both houses was enlisted against the experiment of elective
town councils, especially after the evidence lately taken before the
so-called "intimidation committee" in the house of commons. Peel's
scheme was to vest the executive powers and property of Irish
corporations, at least for the present, in officers appointed by the
crown. An amendment framed in this sense was defeated by a large
majority, and the bill passed the commons with little further
opposition. When it reached the lords it was stoutly contested by
Lyndhurst, now fortified by Peel's concurrence, on the not unreasonable
ground that it would make the radicals and repealers predominant in
every Irish municipality, and create "seats of agitation" for
revolutionary purposes in the new town councils. Being converted into a
bill "for the abolition of municipal corporations" in Ireland, it was
returned in that form to the house of commons. Russell vainly attempted
to meet the lords half-way by another compromise, and the measure was
abandoned only to be adopted, in a very modified shape, after the lapse
of four years. A like course was pursued by the upper house when a new
Irish tithe bill, with an appropriation clause, was sent up to them. Had
the whig government been well advised they would scarcely have
challenged a needless collision between the two houses by reviving this
burning question so early. It would have been possible to settle the
Irish tithe system on equitable lines, without prejudicing the future
application of superfluous Church revenues, and it was a somewhat
perverse obstinacy which persisted in coupling the two objects year
after year. The ingenuity of Lyndhurst in wrecking sound reforms should
have been left without excuse; whereas, in this case, the peers could
not have accepted what they regarded as a confiscation bill without a
sacrifice of conviction and self-respect.
Happily the commutation of tithes in England presented no political
difficulties of the same nature. The payment of tithes in kind, though
founded on immemorial usage, had, indeed, produced constant discord
between the parish clergyman and his flock, while landlords and farmers
justly complained that it impeded the improvement of agriculture. In
many localities the pressure of these evils had led to voluntary
compositions between tithe-owners and tithe-payers, which, being
temporary, lacked the force of law. The permissive tithe bills of
Althorp and Peel were designed to render general a practice which
already prevailed in a thousand parishes, and that now introduced by
Russell was little more than an extension of the same principle. Its
mainspring was the appointment of commissioners with compulsory powers
in the last resort, and the provision of a self-acting machinery for
assessing the reduced annual rent charge payable in lieu of tithes, so
as to vary with the average price of wheat, barley, and oats in the
seven preceding years. This practical solution of the question was
adopted cheerfully by the wearied legislature, and the commissioners
succeeded before long in effecting universal commutation. Amendments in
detail have of course been found necessary, but the system established
by 6 and 7 William IV., cap. 61, has stood the test of long experience,
and although tithe-owners have been impoverished by the fall of prices,
the payment of tithes in England has ceased to be a grievance, except
with those who absolutely condemn the endowment of a Church.
[Pageheading: _REGISTRATION ACTS._]
An equally valuable and permanent legacy of this session is contained in
two cognate acts regulating marriages and registration in England. By
the first of these acts two new modes of celebrating marriage were
provided, without interfering with the old privileges of the established
Church in regard to marriage by licence or banns. While the essential
conditions of notice and publicity were carefully secured, the
superintendent registrar of each district was empowered either to
authorise the celebration of marriage in a duly registered place of
worship, but in presence of a district registrar, or to solemnise the
ceremony himself, without any religious service, in his own office.
Clergymen of the Church of England were constituted registrars for
marriages celebrated by themselves, and were bound to furnish the
superintendent registrars with certified entries of such marriages. The
act was complicated by a variety of safeguards, enforced by heavy
penalties, against fraud and evasion, but its leading features were
simple and have proved effectual for their purpose. It marked an advance
on the earlier marriage bill of Russell, since it not only allowed
dissenters to marry in their own chapels, but to marry without having
their banns published in the parish church. It went beyond the marriage
bill of Peel, since it not only recognised marriage as a civil contract,
but utilised the new poor law organisation, and posted in each district
a civil official before whom that contract could legally be solemnised.
The rules laid down by the first act for the registration of marriages
were an integral part of a general registration system established by
the second act, and embracing births and deaths as well as marriages.
This system, rendered possible by the division of the country into
unions, brought under effective control the old parochial registers
which had been loosely kept for three centuries. The statistical value
of the returns thus checked and digested in a central department is now
fully recognised, but can only be appreciated by students of social
history, which, indeed, is now largely founded on reports of the
registrar-general. The special provisions for the registration of deaths
are also of the utmost service in the prevention of disease and crime.
Not until after this act of 1836 was it realised by the mass of the
people, not only that a sudden death would properly be followed by a
coroner's inquest, but that every death, with its circumstances, must be
treated as a matter of public concern and duly notified. Still more
important in its results has been the requirement of a medical statement
on the cause of death--a requirement which has brought about the
discovery of numerous murders and greatly checked the commission of
others. If the marriage act relieved a large class of the community from
vexatious disabilities, the whole community assuredly owes the second
reformed parliament a debt of gratitude for the registration act which,
like so many of the best acts in the statute book, provoked but little
discussion.
A far keener party interest was excited by the crusade against the
Orange lodges in Great Britain and Ireland which Hume and Finn, an Irish
member, carried on with great energy in the sessions of 1835 and 1836.
These societies then had an importance which they no longer possess, and
were the more open to radical attacks because the Duke of Cumberland was
grand master of the order. It was said, with some justice, that while
the catholic association was nominally put down, the Orange lodges in
Ireland were openly spreading, with the connivance at least of the Irish
authorities. Their officials included noblemen of high position;
Goulburn, when chief secretary, was an Orangeman, and special efforts
had been made to enrol members in the army. Their principles were
strictly loyal, but their demonstrations were naturally resented by the
Roman catholics, and were not far removed from preparations for civil
war. They hailed the accession of Peel's short ministry with tumultuous
enthusiasm, but when the legality of their organisation and proceedings
was challenged in the house of commons, during the session of 1835,
their advocates felt compelled to support a committee of inquiry. The
evidence taken before this committee, and the debate raised by Hume on
the formation of Orange lodges in the army, damaged their cause in the
eyes of the public, and seriously compromised the Duke of Cumberland. It
was shown that his brother, the Duke of York, had resigned the grand
mastership, and on being convinced of their illegality had forbidden
Orange lodges in the army, whereas the Duke of Cumberland had accepted
the grand mastership and directly promoted military lodges.
An address condemning them was carried; the king undertook to discourage
them, and the commander-in-chief issued a stringent order for their
suppression. The struggle, however, was continued by the pertinacity of
the radicals in demanding a more extended inquiry, and the obstinacy of
the Orangemen in defying both the house of commons and the horse guards.
Early in the session of 1836 Finn and Hume renewed their assaults, and
the latter moved for an address, to be framed in the most sweeping
terms, and calling upon the crown to dismiss all persons in public
employment, from the highest to the lowest, who should belong to Orange
societies. Russell, who had been gradually rising in public estimation,
showed the qualities of a true statesman on this occasion by a firm yet
conciliatory speech which commanded assent on both sides. He exposed the
extravagant and impracticable nature of Hume's demand, but condemned the
Orange societies, and proposed an address urging the crown to use its
influence for "the effectual discouragement of Orange lodges, and
generally all political societies, excluding persons of different faith,
using signs and symbols, and acting by associated branches". This
resolution was adopted without opposition, the king heartily endorsed
it, even the Duke of Cumberland acquiesced in it, and the Orange
societies quietly dissolved themselves, for a while, throughout the
United Kingdom.
If the session of 1836 had produced no other legislative fruits it could
not be regarded as wasted. But several minor reforms of great social
benefit also date from this year, and prove that, however checked by
political blunders, the energy kindled by the reform act had not yet
exhausted itself. After repeated efforts of legal philanthropists, a
bill was now passed for the first time allowing prisoners on trial for
felony to be defended by counsel. It was brought in by William Ewart, a
private member, who sat for Liverpool, but was supported by the highest
legal authorities in the house of lords, including Lyndhurst himself,
who openly recanted his former opinions, and declared the old law to be
a barbarous survival, inconsistent with the practice of other civilised
nations. In the same house an interesting debate took place on the
management of jails, which had been placed under a system of inspection
by an act of the previous year. The reports of the inspectors disclosed
gross abuses, not only in the smaller county jails but in Newgate
itself. Lansdowne, in pledging the government to deal with the larger
question, intimated that Russell, as home secretary, was considering the
means of separating juvenile offenders from hardened criminals by
establishing places of detention in the nature of what have since been
known as reformatories.
[Pageheading: _DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS LOWERED._]
A still more notable contribution to social improvement was made by
Spring Rice, the chancellor of the exchequer, in consolidating the paper
duties on a reduced scale, and lowering the stamp duty on newspapers
from fourpence to one penny. These were the only controversial elements
in a budget otherwise modest and acceptable. The battle over paper
duties and "taxes upon knowledge" raised in the debates of 1836 was
destined to rage many years longer, but the relief granted by Spring
Rice gave a powerful impulse to journalism and periodical literature. It
was opposed by all the familiar arguments against a cheap press, but
that which most endangered its success was a rival proposal to apply any
surplus revenue to cheapening soap. Soap, it was plausibly contended,
was a necessary, reading newspapers or periodicals was only a luxury,
and a luxury, too, far move capable of being abused than expenditure on
soap. When the penny stamp on newspapers was at last preferred to
reduced soap duties it was said that, "so far as financial arrangements
were concerned, everything went to supply the essential elements of low
political clubs, _viz._, cheap gin, cheap newspapers, filthy hands, and
unwashed faces".[135]
The legislative record of 1836 was creditable to the government, nor was
the action of the upper house in amending certain of their bills so
purely mischievous as it has been described. For instance, a strange
clause had found its way into the newspaper stamp bill, requiring all
the proprietors of newspapers, however numerous, to be registered at the
stamp office. This clause was struck out in the house of lords, at the
instance of Lyndhurst, though Melbourne declared it to be a vital part
of the measure, which, however, passed without it, and was the better
for the loss of it. But the same cannot be said of Lyndhurst's conduct
at the "open conference" between the two houses on a supplementary bill
for remedying defects in the operation of the municipal corporations
act. There no question of principle was involved, and the only motive
for resisting every attempt to improve the new machinery already
established by law was one unworthy of a statesman. At the close of the
session, Lyndhurst delivered a masterly vindication of his own
proceedings, but he was answered by Melbourne in a speech of great
ability, and the position now occupied by the whigs appeared stronger
than when they came into office in 1835.
In this year complaints of agricultural distress once more became
urgent, and a committee was appointed by the house of commons, as in
1833, to inquire into its cause. Strange to say, the immediate occasion
for the second inquiry was the occurrence of three magnificent harvests
in succession, which brought down the average price of wheat from 58s.
8d. in 1832 to 53s. in 1833, 46s. 2d. in 1834, and 39s. 4d. in 1835,
whence it rose to 48s. 6d. after the harvest of 1836. The average
gazette price of 1835 was the lowest touched in the nineteenth century
until 1884, and was simply due to excess of production. It was stated
before the committee of 1836, by the comptroller of corn returns, that
in the period between 1814 and 1834 the quantity of home-grown wheat
only fell short of the consumption, on the average, by about 1,000,000
quarters a year, of which at least half was contributed by Ireland. The
committee published its evidence without making a report, but this fact
is highly significant as marking the later revolution in British
agriculture. If the area then devoted to wheat crops almost sufficed to
feed an estimated population of 14,500,000, when the yield per acre was
relatively small, we may safely infer, in the absence of trustworthy
statistics, that it must have been very much greater than at present.
[Pageheading: _AGITATION IN IRELAND._]
At the opening of 1837 there was a marked stagnation in home politics,
mainly due to an equipoise of parties and serious divisions in the ranks
of the ministerialists as well as of the opposition. Not only was there
a very strong conservative majority in the house of lords, with a
sufficient though dwindling liberal majority in the house of commons,
but neither majority was amenable to party discipline. The aggressive
policy and vexatious tactics of Lyndhurst were distasteful to his
nominal leader, the Duke of Wellington, and still more so to Peel, the
only possible conservative premier, who eschewed the very name of tory.
There was greater unity of counsels between Melbourne and Russell, but
Russell, who had learned moderation, was dependent on the support of his
extreme left, composed of violent radicals and Irish repealers. The
king, though he did not carry his repugnance to his ministers so far as
he once threatened, yet almost excluded them from social invitations,
and made no secret of his preference for the opposite party. During the
winter of 1836-37 O'Connell and his satellites were busy in organising
monster meetings to demand the abolition of tithes and municipal reform.
A national association was formed on this basis, and a certain number of
protestants were induced to join it. The government dared not show
vigour in checking it lest they should estrange their Irish allies, and
Mulgrave, the lord-lieutenant, was openly accused of favouring sedition
and discouraging loyalty by his exercise of patronage and the royal
prerogative of pardon. At last, a very large and influential meeting was
held in Dublin, at which the discontent of loyalists and patriots was
expressed with truly Irish vehemence. Still, Ireland was less disturbed
than in several previous years. About the same time, Peel, having been
elected lord rector of Glasgow University, was entertained there at
dinner by a company including many old reformers, and made one of his
greatest speeches. Its spirit was that of his Tamworth manifesto, but he
was far more outspoken in his declaration of unswerving adhesion to the
protestant cause and to the independence of the upper house.
Such were the political conditions when parliament met on January 31.
The king's speech, delivered by commission, though singularly
colourless, indicated the importance of legislating on Irish tithes,
Irish corporations, and Irish poor relief. The debate on the address was
enlivened by a furious attack of Roebuck on the whigs, but was
otherwise devoid of importance. On February 7, however, Russell
introduced a new Irish corporations bill, invoking the authority of Fox
for the doctrine that "Irish government should be regulated by Irish
notions and Irish prejudices," and avowing a faith in the efficacy of
unlimited concession which has not been justified by later experience.
He further intimated the resolution of the government to stand or fall
by this measure. No serious resistance was offered by the opposition to
its first or second reading, but Peel took occasion to protest against a
transparent inconsistency which seems to beset the advocacy of Irish
claims. It is generally assumed, and with too much justice, that Ireland
is so backward and helpless a country as to require exceptional
treatment; in short, that it must be governed by Irish ideas, with
little regard to English principles of sound policy or economy. Such
was, in effect, Fox's contention, adopted by Russell; and yet, like
future supporters of "Ireland for the Irish," he argued in the same
breath that every liberal institution suitable to Englishmen, with their
long training in self-government and instinctive reverence for law, must
needs be extended to Irishmen, with their long training in anarchy and
instinctive propensity to lawlessness. He prevailed, however, in the
house of commons, where a hostile amendment was decisively rejected, and
the bill, having passed rapidly through committee, was read a third time
by a large though reduced majority.
Had it been possible to isolate the Irish municipal bill, and to compel
the house of lords to deal with it singly, the peers might possibly have
shrunk from another collision with the commons. But it had been coupled
in the king's speech with two other projects of Irish legislation, a new
tithe bill, and an Irish poor law. Both of these were, in fact,
introduced, the former by Russell in February, the latter by Morpeth
early in May. The course to be taken by the conservative party was the
subject of anxious consultation between Peel and Wellington, and that
ultimately adopted had the full sanction of both. They regarded the
separate presentation of the municipal bill as a "manoeuvre," and,
while they overruled the wish of Lyndhurst to defeat it by an adverse
vote on the second reading, they resolved to meet it by a
counter-manoeuvre. Accordingly Wellington induced the house of lords
to postpone the committee on the municipal bill until they should have
the other two bills before them, and Peel not only approved of his
action but stated reasons for regarding them as essentially connected
with each other. June 9 was originally fixed as the date for going into
committee, but this stage was afterwards deferred until July 3, before
which unforeseen events arrested all further progress.
[Pageheading: _CHURCH RATES._]
In the meantime, the prestige of the government had been weakened by the
failure of their scheme for abolishing Church rates. The dissenters, no
longer content with religious liberty, were beginning to demand
religious equality. In the forefront of their grievances was that of
paying rates for the repair of parish churches which they did not
attend, except as members of the annual "vestry," where they could
object to a rate but might be out-voted by a majority of their
fellow-parishioners. Althorp had proposed a scheme for the removal of
this grievance in 1834, involving a parliamentary grant of £250,000.
Setting aside this alternative, as well as that of a special
contribution, voluntary or otherwise, from members of the Church, Spring
Rice now proposed a solution of his own. It consisted in vesting the
property of bishops and chapters in a commission which, by improved
management, might raise the necessary sum for church repairs, without
impairing the incomes of these ecclesiastical dignitaries. Before the
government plan was discussed in the house of commons, Howley,
archbishop of Canterbury, entered a strong protest against it in the
house of lords on the ground that it would reduce the bishops and
chapters from the position of landowners to that of "mere annuitants".
Melbourne complained of his protest somewhat angrily as premature, and
provoked a vehement reply from Blomfield, bishop of London, who, though
a member of the ecclesiastical commission, denounced any such diversion
of revenues as "a sacrilegious act of spoliation". In the elaborate
debates on the resolutions moved by Spring Rice in the house of commons
Peel took his stand partly on financial objections and partly on the
injustice of taking away from the Church a fund belonging to it by
immemorial usage, and in the main willingly contributed. Amendment after
amendment was proposed by members of the opposition, and, though each
was defeated, the government resolutions were ultimately carried by so
narrow a majority in May that no further action was taken.
The conservative reaction, now in visible progress, was typified by the
open secession of Burdett from the ranks of the reformers. This sincere
but indiscreet radical, who had once enjoyed a popularity similar to
that of Wilkes as a political martyr, became estranged from his party
when it accepted O'Connell as an auxiliary, if not as an ally. Having
failed in procuring the exclusion of the great Irish demagogue from
Brooks's club, in 1835, he withdrew his own name. Soon afterwards he
became irregular in his parliamentary attendance, and more than lukewarm
in his allegiance. Early in 1837 he was, like Stanley and Graham, so
much suspected of gravitating towards conservatism, that some of his
Westminster constituents publicly called upon him to resign. He took up
the challenge, and was re-elected against a radical opponent by a
substantial majority. It was his last re-election for a borough which he
had represented for thirty years. In the Church-rate debate he rose from
the opposition side of the house, and lamenting his separation from his
old associates, did not spare them either reproaches or hostile
criticism.
Another desertion from the whig camp took place during this session, but
in an opposite direction. Roebuck, originally one of the philosophical
radicals, had become more and more violent in his attacks on his own
leaders, whom he accused of having deceived the people. According to
him, they were "aristocratic in principle, democratic in pretence," and
all the resources of his incisive rhetoric were exhausted in exposing
their incapacity, in a motion for a committee to consider the state of
the nation. This motion, so advocated, met with no support, and gave
Russell the opportunity of once more vindicating the wisdom of
moderation in statesmanship. But there were many besides Roebuck who
were eager to complete the work of the reform act by further organic
changes, and the notice book of the house of commons in 1837 embodied
several proposals of this kind. One was Grote's annual motion for the
ballot, on which an interesting debate took place. Among the others were
two motions of Sir William Molesworth for a reform of the upper house
and for the abolition of a property qualification for the lower house, a
motion of Tennyson, who had taken the additional name of D'Eyncourt, for
the repeal of the septennial act, and another of Hume for household
suffrage, overshadowing that of Duncombe for repealing the rate-paying
clauses of the reform act itself. Nearly all of these contained the
germs of future legislation, but they formed no part of the whig
programme, nor could any whig government have carried them against so
powerful an opposition, with an invincible reserve in the house of
lords, during the last session of William IV. Only seventeen public acts
were actually passed in this session.
[Pageheading: _THE DEATH OF WILLIAM IV._]
There were, indeed, other reasons for declining to provoke a grave
contest at this juncture. The king's health was known to be failing, his
death under the law then in force would involve a general election, and
no one could desire his successor, a girl of eighteen, to begin her
reign in the midst of a political crisis. In May his illness assumed an
alarming aspect, early in June the medical reports satisfied the country
that his case was hopeless, on June 19 he received the last sacrament,
and on the 20th he died at Windsor Castle. Something more than justice
was done to his character by the leaders of both parties in parliament,
but something less than justice has been done to it by later historians.
He was inferior in strength of will to his father, in ability to his
eldest brother, and in the higher virtues of a constitutional sovereign
to his niece, who succeeded him. But he was not only a kindly and
well-meaning man, a good husband to Queen Adelaide and a good father to
his natural children, faithful to his old friends, and bountiful in his
charities; he was also a loyal servant of the state, with a genuine
sense of public duty, a natural love of justice, an independent
judgment, and a noble indifference to personal or selfish objects. His
lot was cast in almost revolutionary times, and he was called upon to
reign at an age when few men are capable of shaking off old prejudices,
yet he deserved well of his people in supporting the ministry of Grey
through all the stages of the reform movement, in spite of his own
declared sympathies, but in deference to his own conviction of paramount
obligation under the laws of the land. He was quite as liberal in
opinions as Peel, whose hearty interest in the poorer classes he fully
shared, and far more liberal than the tory majority in the house of
lords. Great he certainly was not, and he never affected the royal
dignity which partially concealed the littleness of his predecessor. But
in honesty and simplicity he was no unworthy son of George III., and the
greater pliability of his nature contributed, at least, to make the
seven years of his reign more fruitful in reforms than all the sixty
years during which the old king occupied the throne of England.
FOOTNOTES:
[130] The king to Peel (Feb. 22, 1835), Parker, _Sir Robert Peel_, ii.,
287-89.
[131] See Melbourne's letters to Brougham, _Melbourne Papers_, pp.
257-64.
[132] The abuses in the Scottish municipalities had, however, been
already removed by an act conferring the municipal franchise on £10
householders. Not the least important result of this act was the
increased strength which it gave to the "evangelical" party in the
general assembly of the Church of Scotland, which was partly elected by
the municipalities.
[133] Campbell, _Lives of the Chancellors_, viii., 470.
[134] Campbell, _Lives of the Chancellors_, viii., 476.
[135] _Annual Register_, lxxviii. (1836), p. 244