“restore the balance which Marylebone and Manchester, if left even with
the £10 franchise undisputed masters of the field, would radically
disturb.”
Whether that means to disturb from the roots or to disturb from
radicalism, I do not know.
“But besides this advantage, they act with the counties in giving that
due influence to property without which our House of Commons would very
inadequately represent the nation, and thus make it feasible to admit
the householders of our large towns to an extent which would otherwise
be inequitable, and possibly lead to injurious results.”
So that the proposal of the noble Lord’s Government, coupled as it is
with the disfranchisement of these small boroughs, is in his opinion
inequitable certainly, and possibly likely to lead to injurious
results. He goes on:
“These are the reasons why, in my opinion, after abolishing 141 seats
by the Reform Act, it is not expedient that the smaller boroughs be
extinguished by any further large process of enfranchisement. The last
Reform Bill of Lord Palmerston’s Government went quite far enough in
this direction.”
Now, sir, what did the last Reform Bill of Lord Palmerston do? It
took away the second member from twenty-five boroughs, and that was
the whole of it. It did not break up a single electoral district. The
present bill takes away forty-nine members from these places, and
therefore, according to the words of the Prime Minister written six
months ago, it exactly doubles what the Ministry ought to do in the
matter. After that I think the House will agree with me that it would
not become the member for Calne to add anything in defence of his
borough; for what could he say that the Prime Minister had not said a
hundred times better and with all the authority and weight of such a
statesman, writing deliberately in his study no less than thirty-three
years after the passing of the Reform Act? Well, I shall say no more of
that, but for some reason for which we have yet to hear I will assume
that the small boroughs are to be disfranchised. The next question
that we have to consider is what is to be done with the seats to be
acquired by that disfranchisement. It does seem to me quite absurd to
halt between two opinions in this way. I must assume that there is some
good and cogent reason for disfranchising the small boroughs, or else
I suppose they would let us alone. But if there be a good and cogent
reason for disfranchising them, what possible reason can there be for
re-enfranchising them immediately afterwards? What reason can there
be for giving them back as a fraction that which you have taken away
as an integer? The first process condemns the second. It may be right
and wise--I do not in my conscience think it is--to disfranchise these
boroughs; but if you do take that course your business surely should
be to do the best you can for the interests of the country at large
with the seats you thus obtain. If you are to be influenced by respect
for traditions, and by veneration for antiquity, perhaps Calne should
have some claim, because it was there that the memorable encounter is
said to have taken place between St. Dunstan and his enemies, which
terminated in the combatants all tumbling through the floor, with the
exception of the Saint himself. And I may remind you that in our own
times Calne was represented by Dunning, by Lord Henry Petty, by Mr.
Abercromby, for some time Speaker of this House, and by Lord Macaulay.
That might avail something; but if it is all to go for nothing, I ask
on what principle, having first broken up the electoral system of these
boroughs and taken away their franchise, you begin to reconstruct them
in groups? If you are actuated by a veneration for antiquity, or by an
indisposition to destroy a state of things which is, if not carried
too far, in no slight degree advantageous, and eases very much the
working of the government of the country, besides introducing into
this House a class of persons some of whom you would do very badly
without--if that be so, leave these boroughs alone. If it be not, deal
with the question in a bold and manly spirit; but do not take a thing
away from them because you say it is wrong they should have it, and
then give it them back again in part because you say it is right they
should have it. That involves a contradiction. Look at what you are
doing. You take away the franchise from these places and then you limit
yourself by giving it to boroughs which have previously possessed it.
You unite together boroughs that have been in the habit of engrossing
for themselves all the care and attention of a single member, who is
obliged to pay great regard to their wishes, to look after their little
wants, to pet them and coddle them and make much of them. That which he
has been used to do for one of these boroughs he will still be expected
to do, and must do, after they are grouped; and what he does and pays
for one of the group he will have to do and pay for all the rest. Not
one of the three or four will bate one jot or tittle of its claim upon
the member, or candidate, but everything will be multiplied by so many
times as there are separate places in the group. You must have as many
agents in each of them, you must give as many subscriptions to their
charities, their schools, and their volunteers. Everything of that
kind, in fact, will be multiplied by this system three or four fold.
Now these boroughs at present give you a great advantage. All must
admit that there is an advantage, if it is not bought too dear, in
having means by which persons who are not of large fortune can obtain
seats in this House. But by this Bill you take away that one clear
advantage of these boroughs, the one thing for which, I think, they
very worthily exist--you make them very expensive constituencies;
and you then retain them out of veneration for antiquity and from a
traditionary feeling, when you have stripped them of the very merit
which recommends them to the friends of the Constitution! Well, sir, it
is polygamy for a man to marry three or four wives; but that comparison
does not do justice to this particular case, because you enforce an
aggravated form of political polygamy by asking a man to marry three or
four widows. The House need not be afraid of my pursuing that branch
of the subject. The best that can be said for the Ministerial Bill--at
least what has been said for it--is that it is intended to remove
anomalies. I really know of no other defence that is offered for it
than that. Well, sir, mankind will tolerate many anomalies if they are
old, and if as they have grown up they have got used to them. They
will also tolerate anomalies if they have been necessarily occasioned
by the desire to work out improvements. But when people set about
correcting anomalies, and so do their work as to leave behind them and
to create even worse anomalies than any they found existing, neither
gods nor men can stand it. Is not that the case here? I would briefly
call attention to two or three of the proposed groups. In Cornwall
you have Bodmin, Liskeard, and Launceston, with 18,000 inhabitants
between them, thrown into a group; but the towns of Redruth, Penzance,
and others, making up altogether 23,000, in the same county, are left
without the means of representation. Then, in the county of Devon,
you are to have Totnes joined with Dartmouth and Ashburton, and by
putting the three places together you only get 11,500 people; but
there is Torquay, with 16,000, that you leave entirely unrepresented.
I should not object to that, because if a thing works well you do not
do wrong in leaving it alone; but if you do begin to meddle with it,
it is monstrous to turn everything upside down, and then introduce a
thousand times greater anomalies than those you have removed. People
will bear with anomalies that are old, historical, and familiar, and
that, after all, answer some useful end; but they revolt at them when
you show them how flagrant an injustice and inequality the House of
Commons or the Government will perpetrate in the name of equality and
justice. Then there is the group of Maldon and Harwich, thirty miles
apart. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was much shocked at
our objecting to these boroughs being joined in this extraordinary
way; but, sir, were we not told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer
that these things were done upon geographical considerations? The
geographical considerations referred to by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer appear to me to mean, as interpreted by his Bill, that the
members for the towns to be grouped should learn as much geography
as possible by having as large distances as possible to travel over.
Then we have in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, Cirencester,
Tewkesbury, and Evesham, with 16,000 inhabitants; but in Worcestershire
alone you have Oldbury and Stourbridge, with a population of 23,000,
which remain utterly unrepresented. Again, there is the case of Wells
and Westbury, which scrape together 11,000 inhabitants, while between
the two we find Yeovil with 8000, and for which nothing is done. In
Wiltshire, Chippenham, Malmesbury, and Calne have 19,000 inhabitants,
but a very few miles from Calne is Trowbridge, with 9626 inhabitants,
the second town in the county, which you leave unrepresented. In
Yorkshire, Richmond and Northallerton scrape together 9000 inhabitants,
while for Barnsley, with 17,000, Doncaster, 16,000, and Keighley,
15,000, you do nothing at all. Such things may be tolerable when
they have grown up with you, but they are utterly intolerable when a
Government interferes, and introduces a measure which overlooks such
cases while professing to take numbers as its guide. The Government
has repudiated geographical considerations, but it is more absurd if
taken numerically. Here is, however, something worse than an anomaly.
It is a gross injustice. The House is aware--with the two exceptions of
Bewdley and Droitwich, which are probably to be accounted for by haste
and carelessness, the matter being a small one--that all the boroughs
having a less population than 8000 inhabitants are dealt with in some
way or other. There are two ways of treating these boroughs. There is a
gentler and a severer form. There are eight boroughs which are picked
out for what I call the question ordinary--that is, losing one member;
and the remainder, a very large number, are picked out and formed into
sixteen groups, this being the extraordinary or exquisite torture
of being pounded to pieces, brayed in a mortar, and then renovated.
In judging of the treatment which these boroughs receive, I think
some principle ought to be observed. The geographical principle has
been ostentatiously set aside, and look at what has happened to the
numerical principle. There is Newport, in the Isle of Wight, with 8000
inhabitants, which loses only one of its members, and is not grouped;
while Bridport, with 7819 inhabitants, loses both its members and is
grouped. There are seven boroughs having smaller populations than
Bridport from which only one member is taken, and they are not grouped;
while Bridport, with a large population, has both its members taken
and is grouped. Is it on account of geographical considerations that
it is coupled with Honiton, nineteen miles off? [An honorable member:
Twenty-one!] That is not anomaly. It is simply a gross injustice.
There is Chippenham, with 7075 inhabitants. Chippenham, as every one
knows, is a rising railway town. Yet it is grouped; while there are
five boroughs which contain fewer inhabitants than Chippenham which
will each continue to return one member. Going a little further, we
find Dorchester, with 6779 inhabitants, and three boroughs smaller
than itself. Dorchester loses both members, while the three boroughs
smaller than Dorchester retain one member. They are Hertford, Great
Marlow, and Huntingdon. I can simply attribute the cause of this to the
great haste, carelessness, and inadvertency which have characterized
this measure. I am far from attributing it to any improper motives. I
have not the slightest notion of anything of the kind. It arises, I
believe, from the mere wantonness or carelessness of the Government
hurrying forward a Bill which they did not intend to bring in, and
which they were at last compelled to bring in, contrary to all their
declarations. Between Huntingdon, the smallest borough that loses
one member, and Newport, the largest, there are seventeen boroughs,
nine of them returning one member each and eight returning two, all
of which have larger population than Huntingdon, which is allowed to
retain one member while they are grouped. The reason I cannot tell, but
there stands the anomaly. This grouping of boroughs cannot therefore,
I say, be satisfactory to any class of gentlemen. Of course, it is
not satisfactory to the small boroughs. They are material out of
which other people are to be compensated, and of course no one likes
to be included in such a process. But I cannot imagine that it can be
satisfactory to gentlemen who call for those measures with a view to
remove anomalies and promote equality, and make the Parliament a more
accurate representative of the population of the country. It seems to
me that everybody must be dissatisfied with such a proceeding as this.
The House need not take all these groups as they stand, because any
one of them might be remedied in Committee, but the whole principle of
the thing is so bad that it is absolutely impossible to deal with it
in Committee at all. I have been assuming hitherto that we have good
grounds for getting these forty-nine members that are wanted, but that
depends entirely upon the use the Government make of them when they
have them. What do they do with them? They propose to give out of these
forty-nine twenty-five as third members to counties, and four as third
members to large towns, and seven to Scotland. I deny that a case is
made out in favor of this arrangement. The honorable gentlemen opposite
with whom I sympathize so much on this question may not perhaps agree
with me on this point. I maintain that it is a mere illusion, as
things now stand and looking at these two measures as a whole, to talk
of county representation; you must look at the two things together,
franchise and redistribution, and you must remember that the counties
you give these members to are to become really groups of towns. Every
one knows very well where the houses between £14 and £50 are to be
found. They are to be found, not in the rural districts, but in the
towns. What you are preparing to do for the counties’ members is to
make a total change in the nature of their constituency. But under
the system proposed the county members would no longer represent a
constituency which from its present and peculiar character can easily
be worked as a whole. When you lower the franchise as proposed you
have taken the power out of the rural districts and given it to small
towns, with probably an attorney in each. When you speak of giving a
third member to counties you must remember that you are talking of
counties not as they are now, but as you propose to make them. It is
an illusion, therefore, to say that a great deal is done for the rural
districts in thus adding members to the counties, and this will be
the more easily understood if you have not forgotten the opinion of
Lord Russell, who says how materially the small boroughs assist the
counties in maintaining the balance of power. I altogether decline to
be caught by that bait. But, putting that aside, on what principle are
we to give three members to counties? It has been the practice to give
two members to counties from time immemorial, with a slight exception
at the time of the Reform, which is by no means generally approved. I
am willing to accept the fact without stopping to inquire too curiously
whether this number was fixed upon because they slept in the same bed
or rode on the same horse on their journeys to London. But, if you
come to make it a general practice to give three members to counties,
I think we are entitled to ask upon what principle this is to be done.
For my own part, I can suggest no other principle than the mere worship
of numbers. It is quite a new principle that numbers should not only
be represented in this House because they are important, but that that
importance should entitle them to more votes. The House will recollect
that every member has two separate and distinct duties to perform. He
is the representative of the borough which sends him to Parliament, and
he has to look after its local interests to the best of his power. That
is a small and, in the mild and just times in which we live, generally
a comparatively easy duty, but his greater and more pre-eminent duty is
to look after the affairs of the Empire. The real use, therefore, of an
electoral district, be it small or large, is one more important than
the adequate representation of the numbers of any particular place, so
long as they are represented. It is that it should send to Parliament
the persons best calculated to make laws, and perform the other
functions demanded of the members of the House. This seems to me to go
directly against the principle that these great communities are not
only entitled to send competent gentlemen to represent their affairs,
but to send as many members as will correspond with their weight in
the country. If once you grant this principle you are advancing far on
the road to electoral districts and numerical equality. I say this is
the mere principle of numbers. If the principle be once established,
it is very easy to give it extension. Scarcely a meeting is assembled
on this subject without some man getting up and complaining that the
member for a small borough, myself, for instance, should have a vote
which will counterbalance the vote of a representative of a borough
containing 200,000 or 300,000. If it was a fight for the good things of
this world between Caine and Birmingham, I could understand how such
a principle might be adopted; but when it is a question of making the
laws and influencing the destinies of this country, the question is
not which is the larger body, but which best discharges its duty in
sending members to Parliament. I cannot find a trace of that principle
in the whole of this Bill, for it is clear that there is no such idea
in giving these three members to counties. They are mere concessions to
the importance of the constituencies to which they are given, while the
small boroughs are grouped in a manner likely to promote mediocrity,
because gentlemen of shining qualities and useful attainments will
scarcely be able to contest them, unless possessed of great wealth. I
cannot bring my mind to the idea of giving three members to those large
constituencies. We should, on the whole, be far better without those
twenty-nine members. We had better use for them. Now, I have gone
through the details of this Bill; and perhaps the House will allow me
to sum up what I think of the whole effect of the Ministerial measure.
You say how frightful the expenses of elections are, and declare
that they are a canker-worm in the very heart of the Constitution.
Yet what is the effect of this Bill with regard to the legitimate
expenses of elections? The Government are proposing to increase the
size of the constituency of every borough in the kingdom. Will they
decrease expense? They propose to disfranchise small boroughs; and
instead of subdividing districts with a view to make more manageable
constituencies, except in the case of the Tower Hamlets and South
Lancashire, a senseless homage is paid to mere numbers, adding to that
which is already too much. Then there is another thing. It is the duty
of every man who calls himself a statesman to study the signs of the
times, and make himself master, as far as he can, of the tendencies of
society. What are those signs and tendencies? I suppose we shall none
of us doubt that they are tending more or less in the direction, as
I said before, of uniformity and democracy. What, then, is the duty
of a wise statesman under such circumstances? Is it to stimulate the
tendencies which are already in full force and activity, or is it not
rather, if he cannot leave matters alone, to see if he cannot find
some palliative? If he cannot prevent the change which stronger powers
are working, should he not make that change as smooth as possible, and
not by any means accelerate it? But the whole of this Bill is not in
the way of moderating, but stimulating existing tendencies. It is not
always wise, and the observation is as old as Aristotle, to make a law
too accurately in correspondence with the times or the genius of the
Government under which you live. The best law that could be made for
the United States would not be one peculiarly democratic. The best law
for the French Government to enact is not one of an ultra-monarchical
character. There is sound wisdom in this, and it should be kept well in
mind; but it seems to have been by no means considered by the framers
of the crude measure before us.
“But our new Jehu spurs the hot-mouthed horse,
Instructs him well to know his native force,
To take the bit between his teeth and fly,
To the next headlong steep of anarchy.”[27]
Passing to another point, I have to remind you that the Chancellor
of the Exchequer frightened us the other day by giving us a prose
version of Byron’s poem on “Darkness,” when we were told that our
coal was all going to be consumed, and that we were to die like the
last man and woman of our mutual hideousness. Upon that the Right
Honorable Gentleman founded a proposition; and never was so practical a
proposition worked out upon so speculative a basis. “You will have no
coal in one hundred years,” he says, “and, therefore, pay your debts”;
and, addressing the honorable gentlemen opposite, he says, “Commerce
may die, navigation may die, and manufactures may die,--and die they
will,--but land will remain, and you will be saddled with the debt.”
That was the language of the Right Honorable Gentleman. Now, if we are
to pay terminable annuities on the strength of the loss of our coal,
do not you think we may apply the same dogma to this proposed reform
of our Constitution? What is the Right Honorable Gentleman seeking
to do by this Bill? He is seeking to take away power of control from
the land--from that which is to remain when all those fine things I
have mentioned have passed away in the future--from that which will
be eventually saddled with the whole burden of the debt, and to
place it in these fugitive and transitory elements which, according
to the account he gave us, a breath has made and a breath can unmake.
I ask, is that, upon the Right Honorable Gentleman’s own showing,
sound prospective wisdom? I do not deal myself with such remote
contingencies; I offer this simply as an _argumentum ad hominem_. I
should like to hear the answer. I have a word to say with regard to
the franchise. We have had a little light let in upon this subject. We
are offered, as you all know, a £7 franchise. It is defended by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer upon two grounds--flesh and blood, and
fathers of families. The £7 franchise is defended by the honorable
Member for Birmingham upon another ground; he takes his stand on the
ancient lines of the British Constitution. I will suggest to him one
line of the British Constitution, and I should like to know whether
he means to stand by it. In his campaign of 1858, in which he had
taken some liberties with the Crown and spoke with some disrespect
of the Temporal Peers, he came to the Spiritual Peers, and this was
the language he employed. He said, “That creature of monstrous--nay,
of adulterous birth.” I suppose there is no part of the British
Constitution much more ancient than the Spiritual Peers. Is that one
of the lines the honorable gentleman takes his stand upon? Again,
the Attorney-General, having recovered from the blow the grouping
of Richmond must have been to him, has become a convert, and like
most converts he is an enthusiast. He tells us that he is for the
£7 franchise because he is in favor, like the honorable Member for
Birmingham, of household suffrage.[28] These are the reasons which are
given in order to induce us to adopt the £7 franchise. I ask the House,
is there any encouragement in any of these arguments to adopt it? The
Chancellor of the Exchequer says it is flesh and blood; it is a very
small instalment of flesh and blood, and none can doubt that any one
asking for it upon that ground only asks for it as a means to get more
flesh and blood. The honorable Member for Birmingham stands upon the
Constitution, and he puts me in mind of the American squib which says:
“Here we stand on the Constitution, by thunder,
It’s a fact of which there are bushels of proofs,
For how could we trample upon it, I wonder,
If it wasn’t continually under our hoofs.”
Well, the honorable gentleman asks the £7 upon the ground that it
is constitutional--that is, upon the ground of household suffrage.
He wants it with a view of letting us down gently to household
suffrage. The Attorney-General, of course, means the same. In fact,
he said we ought to do it at once. But see what a condemnation the
Attorney-General passes upon the Government of which he forms a part.
He says: “You have taken your stand upon the £7 franchise. The ground
you take is so slippery and unsafe, so utterly untenable, that I would
rather go down to the household suffrage at once--to the veriest cabin
with a door and a chimney to it that can be called a house. There I may
perhaps touch ground.” What encouragement do these gentlemen give us to
take the £7 franchise? Yet the honorable Member for Westminster says
that £7 is no great extension, and out of all comparison with universal
suffrage; so he excuses himself for having thrown overboard all the
safeguards which he has recommended should be girt round universal
suffrage. I do not object to his throwing them overboard. Checks and
safeguards, in my opinion, generally require other safeguards to take
care of them. The first use universal suffrage would make of its
universality would be to throw the safeguards over altogether. He says
the £7 franchise has nothing to do with safeguards. The Chancellor of
the Exchequer goes to universal suffrage, and the other two to whom
I have referred profess they go to household suffrage. Do you think
you could stop there? You talk of touching ground--would it be solid
ground or quicksand? You think that when you have got down to that you
can create a sort of household aristocracy. The thing is ridiculous.
The working-classes protest even now against what they call a
brick-and-mortar suffrage. They say, “A man ’s a man for a’ that.” The
Bill appears to me to be the work of men who
“At once all law, all settlement control,
And mend the parts by ruin of the whole.
The tampering world is subject to this curse,
To physic their disease into a worse.”[29]
What shall we gain by it? I have not, I think, quibbled with the
question. I have striven to do what the Government have evaded
doing--to extract great principles out of this medley, for medley it
is, composed partly out of veneration for numbers and partly out of
a sort of traditional veneration for old boroughs, which are to be
preserved after what is beneficial in them has been taken from them.
Then we have to consider the proposed county franchise, founded, as
it has been said, upon utter ignorance. It is quite evident that this
Bill has been framed without information, because the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, as is well known, has told us that the only copy he had--I
may be right; at any rate I cannot be wrong until I have stated it
somehow--the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us that the only copy he
had of those statistics was the one which he was obliged to lay on the
table of the House. If I am wrong, let the Right Honorable Gentleman
contradict me.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I spoke of the last absolutely
finished copy. The substance of those statistics, as far as regarded
the general bases of the measure, had been in our hands for weeks
before that time, but was not in a state to be placed on the table of
the House until all the columns had been filled in.
MR. LOWE: Well, sir, that finished document is what I call a copy.
It may be that the Bill was originally drawn for £6 and £12, and
that at the last moment £7 and £14 were substituted, and that it was
regarded as a matter of little consequence what the exact figures
were. As to the element of time, I suppose, however, I must not say
anything, or the Right Honorable Gentleman will be angry with me.
The twelve nights that he gave us for the Franchise Bill are pretty
well gone, and we have now got what he never contemplated we should
have, a Redistribution Bill as well. I suppose I had better say
nothing about the support the Government will have, or I had better
veil it in a dead language and say, _Idem trecenti Juravimus_.[30] I
would ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how he can expect to get
the Bill through the Committee under those circumstances, bearing in
mind that most of the newspapers that lay claim to intelligence and
write for educated persons, having begun with rather vague notions
of liberality, have written themselves fairly out of them, and that
educated opinion is generally adverse to this measure. These, sir,
are the prospects we have before us. We have a measure of the most
ill-considered and inadequate nature, which cannot be taken as it is,
and which, as I understand it, is based on principles so absolutely
subversive and destructive--the grouping, for instance--that if we
were ever so anxious to aid the Government we could not accept it.
Well then, sir, what objection can there be to the advice given to
the Government by my honorable friend, the Member for Dumfries,--no
hostile adviser,--to put off the question for another year, and give
the educated opinion of the country time to decide on this matter? What
are the objections to such a course? There are only two that I know
of. One is, that the honorable gentlemen are anxious for a settlement.
But are there materials for a settlement in the Bill before us? How,
for instance, can you settle the grouping? If you retain the principle
on which the Government act, that of grouping those boroughs that
have already members, you may do a little better than they have done,
because they seem to have gone gratuitously wrong; but you cannot make
an effective measure of it, and one that would stand. I am convinced
that it would generate far more inequality than it seeks to remove.
Then, the giving the constituencies three members is a principle of
the greatest gravity and weight, not only for its actual results, but
because it really concedes the principle of electoral districts.
That, surely, is a matter not to be lightly disposed of; nor do I see
how it can be compromised, because if the Government gives it up,
it must select some other apportionment, which can only be done by
creating other electoral districts. Then, as regards the franchise:
no doubt that we could get through, because it would only be dealing
with a figure, and I dare say there are many honorable gentlemen whose
opinions are entitled to great weight who would like a compromise on
the franchise. But then you have to consider this, that a compromise on
the franchise is a capitulation. Take what I said of the opinions of
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the honorable Member for Birmingham,
and the Attorney-General, and it is just as true of £8 as of £7, and of
£9 as of £8. If you once give up the notion of standing on the existing
settlement, so far as the mere money qualification for the franchise
is concerned, whatever other qualifications you may add to it, you
give up the whole principle. As the Attorney-General himself sees,
you must go down to household suffrage at last--whether any farther
is a matter on which men may differ, though, for my part, I think you
would have to go farther. I must say, therefore, that I can see no
materials for a compromise in the borough franchise part of this Bill,
and I come therefore to the conclusion that, desirable as it would
be, weary as we all are of the subject, and anxious as we all are to
get rid of it, there is no place for a compromise. The divergence
is too wide; the principles are too weighty; the time is too short;
the information is too defective; the subject is too ill-considered.
Well, then the other objection to a postponement is that, as my Right
Honorable friend, the Secretary for the Colonies, told us, the honor of
the Government would not permit them to take that course. Now, I think
we have heard too much about the honor of the Government. The honor of
the Government obliged them to bring in a Reform Bill in 1860.[31] It
was withdrawn under circumstances which I need not allude to, and as
soon as it was withdrawn the honor of the Government went to sleep. It
slept for five years. Session after session it never so much as winked.
As long as Lord Palmerston lived honor slept soundly; but when Lord
Palmerston died, and Lord Russell succeeded by seniority to his place,
the “Sleeping Beauty” woke up. As long as the Government was kept
together by having no Reform Bill, honor did not ask for a Reform Bill;
but when, owing to the peculiar predilections of Lord Russell, the
Government was best kept together by having a Reform Bill, honor became
querulous and anxious for a Reform Bill. But that, Sir, is a very
peculiar kind of honor. It puts me in mind of Hotspur’s description:
“By Heaven, methinks it were an easy leap,
To pluck bright honor from the pale-fac’d moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honor by the locks;
So he that doth redeem her thence might wear,
Without corrival all her dignities.”[32]
That is, as long as honor gives nothing, she is allowed to sleep, and
nobody cares about her, but when it is a question of wearing “without
corrival all her dignities,” honor becomes a more important and
exacting personage, and all considerations of policy and expediency
have to be sacrificed to her imperious demands. But then there is
another difficulty. The Government have told us that they are bound
in this matter. Now, “bound” means contracted, and I want to know
with whom they contracted. Was it with the last House of Commons?
But the plaintiff is dead, and has left no executor. Was it with the
people at large? Well, wait till the people demand the fulfilment of
the contract. But it was with neither the one or the other, because
the Under-Secretary for the Colonies let the cat out of the bag. He
said that he himself called upon Earl Russell to redeem their pledge.
I suppose he is Attorney-General for the people of England. He called
upon the Government to redeem their pledge. Now, one often hears
of people in insolvent circumstances, who want an excuse to become
bankrupt, getting a friendly creditor to sue them. And this demand
of the honorable gentleman has something of the same appearance. But
there has been a little more honor in the case. The Government raised
the banner in this House, and said they were determined that we should
pass the Franchise Bill, without having seen the Redistribution Bill.
Well, they carried their point, but carried it by that sort of majority
that though they gained the victory they scarcely got the honor of the
operation, and if there was any doubt about that I think there was no
great accession of honor gained last Monday in the division, when the
House really by their vote took the management of the Committee out
of the hands of the Executive. All these things do not matter much to
ordinary mortals, but to people of a Castilian turn of mind they are
very serious. Sir, I have come to the conclusion that there must be
two kinds of honor, and the only consolation I can administer to the
Government is in the words of Hudibras:
“If he that’s in the battle slain
Be on the bed of honor lain,
Then he that’s beaten may be said
To lie on honor’s truckle bed.”[33]
Well, sir, as it seems to be the fashion to give the Government advice,
I will offer them a piece of advice, and I will give them Falstaff’s
opinion of honor:
“What is honor?... a trim reckoning.... I’ll none of it. Honor is a
mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism.”[34]
Sir, I am firmly convinced--and I wish, if possible, to attract the
serious attention of the House for a few moments--that it is not the
wish of this country to do that which this Bill seeks to do. There is
no doubt the main object of this Bill is to render it impossible for
any other Government than a Liberal one to exist in this country for
the future. I do not say that this object would appear an illegitimate
one in the eyes of heated partisans and in moments of conflict, for we
are all of us naturally impatient of opposition and contradiction, and
I dare say such an idea has occurred to many Governments before the
present and to many Parliaments before this; but I do say that it is a
shortsighted and foolish idea, because if we could succeed in utterly
obliterating and annihilating the power of the honorable gentlemen
opposite all we should reap as the result of our success would be the
annihilation of ourselves. The history of this country--the glorious
and happy history of this country--has been a conflict between two
aristocratic parties, and if ever one should be destroyed the other
would be left face to face with a party not aristocratic, but purely
democratic. The honorable Member for Birmingham said with great
truth the other day that if the purely aristocratic and the purely
democratic elements should come into conflict the victory would, in
all probability, be on the side of democracy. The annihilation of one
of the aristocratic parties--and I know it is in the minds of many,
though, of course, it is not openly avowed--would be a folly like that
of a bird which, feeling the resistance the air offers to its flight,
imagines how well it would fly if there was no air at all, forgetting
that the very air which resists it also supports it, and ministers to
it the breath of life, and that if it got quit of that air it would
immediately perish. So it is with political parties; they not only
oppose, they support, strengthen, and invigorate each other, and I
shall never, therefore, be a party to any measure, come from whichever
side of the House it may, which seeks so to impair and destroy the
balance of parties existing in this country that whichever party were
in office should be free from the check of a vigorous opposition,
directed by men of the same stamp and position as those to whom they
were opposed. I do not believe that is an object of this Bill which
the people of this country will approve, nor do I believe that they
wish materially to diminish the influence of the honorable gentlemen
opposite. There are plenty of gentlemen who do wish it, but I do not
believe it is the wish of the country, and therefore I believe they
would have looked with much greater satisfaction on the principle of
grouping if it had not been so studiously confined to represented
boroughs, and if, instead of first swamping the counties by a low
franchise, and then offering the illusory boon of three members, it
had relieved the county constituencies of considerable portions of
the great towns by an efficient Boundaries Bill, and had erected
some of the towns which now almost engross the county representation
into distinct constituencies. And while passing by that point, let
me say that the provisions with regard to boundaries appear to me
to be one of the most delusive parts of the whole Bill, because the
effect of them is that no suburbs not now included in the municipal
district can be included in the Parliamentary district, unless those
who live in these suburbs are content to saddle themselves with
municipal taxation. I do not believe the country wishes to see the
door to talent shut more closely than it is, or this House become an
assembly of millionaires. I do not believe the country would look with
satisfaction on the difference of tone within the House which must be
produced if the elements of which it is the result are altered. Nor
do I believe that it will look with satisfaction on that inevitable
change of the Constitution which must occur if these projects are
carried into execution--a change breaking the close connection
between the executive Government and the House of Commons. I believe
sincerely that this House is anxious to put down corruption, and I
will say again at any risk of obloquy that it is not the way to put
down corruption to thrust the franchise into poorer hands. If we are
really desirous of achieving this result there is but one way that I
know of, and that is by taking care that you trust the franchise only
to those persons whose positions in life give security that they are
above the grosser forms of corruption. And if you do prefer to have a
lower constituency, you must look the thing in the face--you will be
deliberately perpetuating corruption for the sake of what you consider
the greater good of making the constituencies larger. These are things
which I do not believe the people of this country wish to have. And,
therefore, I believe that you will be acting in accordance with sound
wisdom and enlightened public opinion of the country by deferring this
measure another year. I press most earnestly for delay. The matter is
of inexpressible importance; any error is absolutely irretrievable; it
is the last thing in the world which ought to be dealt with rashly or
incautiously. We are dealing not merely with administration, not merely
with a party; no, not even with the Constitution of the kingdom. To
our hands at this moment is intrusted the noble and sacred future of
free and self-determined government all over the world. We are about to
surrender certain good for more than doubtful change; we are about to
barter maxims and traditions that have never failed for theories and
doctrines that never have succeeded. Democracy you might have at any
time. Night and day the gate is open that leads to that bare and level
plain, where every ant’s-nest is a mountain and every thistle a forest
tree. But a government such as England has, a government the work of
no human hand, but which has grown up, the imperceptible aggregation
of centuries--this is a thing which we only can enjoy; which we
cannot impart to others; and which, once lost, we cannot recover for
ourselves. Because you have contrived to be at once dilatory and
hasty heretofore, that is no reason for pressing forward rashly and
improvidently now. We are not agreed upon details, we have not come
to any accord upon principles. To precipitate a decision in the case
of a single human life would be cruel. It is more than cruel--it is
parricide in the case of the Constitution, which is the life and soul
of this great nation. If it is to perish, as all human things must
perish, give it at any rate time to gather its robe about it, and to
fall with decency and deliberation.
“To-morrow!
Oh, that’s sudden! spare it! spare it!
It ought not so to die.”[35]