No More Learning

In no case whatever shall I again
be a member of any Ministry. During what may remain of my public life,
I shall be the servant of none but you. I have nothing to ask of any
government, except that protection which every government owes to a
faithful and loyal subject of the Queen. But I do hope to see in office
before long a Ministry which will treat this great question as it
should be treated. It will be the duty of that Ministry to revise the
distribution of power. It will be the duty of that Ministry to consider
whether small constituent bodies, notoriously corrupt, and proved to
be corrupt, such, for example, as Harwich, ought to retain the power of
sending members to Parliament. It will be the duty of such a Ministry
to consider whether small constituent bodies, even less notoriously
corrupt, ought to have, in the counsels of the empire, a share as great
as that of the West Riding of York, and twice as great as that of the
county of Perth. It will be the duty of such a Ministry to consider
whether it may not be possible, without the smallest danger to peace,
law, and order, to extend the elective franchise to classes of the
community which do not now possess it. As to universal suffrage, on that
subject you already know my opinions; and I now come before you with
those opinions strengthened by everything which, since I last professed
them, has passed in Europe. We now know, by the clearest of all proofs,
that universal suffrage, even united with secret voting, is no security
against the establishment of arbitrary power. But, Gentlemen, I do look
forward, and at no very remote period, to an extension of the franchise,
such as I once thought unsafe. I believe that such an extension will,
by the course of events, be brought about in the very best and happiest
way. Perhaps I may be sanguine: but I think that good times are coming
for the labouring classes of this country. I do not entertain that hope
because I expect that Fourierism, or Saint Simonianism, or Socialism, or
any of those other "isms" for which the plain English word is "robbery,"
will prevail. I know that such schemes only aggravate the misery which
they pretend to relieve. I know that it is possible, by legislation, to
make the rich poor, but that it is utterly impossible to make the poor
rich. But I believe that the progress of experimental science, the
free intercourse of nation with nation, the unrestricted influx of
commodities from countries where they are cheap, and the unrestricted
efflux of labour towards countries where it is dear, will soon produce,
nay, I believe that they are beginning to produce, a great and most
blessed social revolution. I need not tell you, Gentlemen, that in those
colonies which have been planted by our race,--and, when I speak of our
colonies I speak as well of those which have separated from us as of
those which still remain united to us,--I need not tell you that in
our colonies the condition of the labouring man has long been far more
prosperous than in any part of the Old World. And why is this? Some
people tell you that the inhabitants of Pennsylvania and New England
are better off than the inhabitants of the Old World, because the
United States have a republican form of government. But we know that the
inhabitants of Pennsylvania and New England were more prosperous than
the inhabitants of the Old World when Pennsylvania and New England were
as loyal as any part of the dominions of George the First, George the
Second, and George the Third; and we know that in Van Diemen's Land, in
New Zealand, in Australasia, in New Brunswick, in Canada, the subjects
of Her Majesty are as prosperous as they could be under the government
of a President. The real cause is that, in these new countries, where
there is a boundless extent of fertile land, nothing is easier than for
the labourer to pass from the place which is overstocked with labour to
the place which is understocked; and that thus both he who moves and he
who stays always have enough. This it is which keeps up the prosperity
of the Atlantic States of the Union. They pour their population back to
the Ohio, across the Ohio to the Mississippi, and beyond the Mississippi
to the Rocky Mountains. Everywhere the desert is receding before the
advancing flood of human life and civilisation; and, in the meantime,
those who are left behind enjoy abundance, and never endure such
privations as in old countries too often befall the labouring classes.
And why has not the condition of our labourers been equally fortunate?
Simply, as I believe, on account of the great distance which separates
our country from the new and unoccupied part of the world, and on
account of the expense of traversing that distance. Science, however,
has abridged, and is abridging, that distance: science has diminished,
and is diminishing, that expense. Already New Zealand is, for all
practical purposes, nearer to us than New England was to the Puritans
who fled thither from the tyranny of Laud. Already the ports of North
America, Halifax, Boston, and New York, are nearer to us than, within
the memory of persons now living, the Island of Skye and the county of
Donegal were to London. Already emigration is beginning to produce the
same effect here which it has produced on the Atlantic States of
the Union. And do not imagine that our countryman who goes abroad is
altogether lost to us. Even if he goes from under the dominion of the
British Queen and the protection of the British flag he will still,
under the benignant system of free trade, continue to be bound to us by
close ties. If he ceases to be a neighbour, he is still a benefactor
and a customer. Go where he may, if you will but maintain that system
inviolate, it is for us that he is turning the forests into cornfields
on the banks of the Mississippi; it is for us that he is tending his
sheep and preparing his fleeces in the heart of Australasia; and in
the meantime it is from us that he receives those commodities which are
produced with most advantage in old societies, where great masses of
capital have been accumulated. His candlesticks and his pots and his
pans come from Birmingham; his knives from Sheffield; the light cotton
jacket which he wears in summer from Manchester; the good cloth coat
which he wears in winter from Leeds; and in return he sends us back,
from what was lately a wilderness, the good flour out of which is made
the large loaf which the British labourer divides among his children. I
believe that it is in these changes that we shall see the best solution
of the question of the franchise. We shall make our institutions more
democratic than they are, not by lowering the franchise to the level of
the great mass of the community, but by raising, in a time which will be
very short when compared with the existence of a nation, the great mass
up to the level of the franchise.

I feel that I must stop. I had meant to advert to some other subjects.
I had meant to say something about the ballot, to which, as you know, I
have always been favourable; something about triennial parliaments, to
which, as you know, I have always been honestly opposed; something about
your university tests; something about the cry for religious equality
which has lately been raised in Ireland; but I feel that I cannot well
proceed. I have only strength to thank you again, from the very bottom
of my heart, for the great honour which you have done me in choosing me,
without solicitation, to represent you in Parliament. I am proud of our
connection; and I shall try to act in such a manner that you may not be
ashamed of it.

*****




EXCLUSION OF JUDGES FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. (JUNE 1, 1853) A SPEECH
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 1ST OF JUNE 1853.

On the first of June 1853, Lord Hotham, Member for Kent, moved the third
reading of a bill of which the chief object was to make the Master
of the Rolls incapable of sitting in the House of Commons. Mr Henry
Drummond, Member for Surrey, moved that the bill should be read a third
time that day six months. In support of Mr Drummond's amendment the
following Speech was made.

The amendment was carried by 224 votes to 123.

I cannot, Sir, suffer the House to proceed to a division without
expressing the very strong opinion which I have formed on this subject.
I shall give my vote, with all my heart and soul, for the amendment
moved by my honourable friend the Member for Surrey. I never gave a vote
in my life with a more entire confidence that I was in the right; and I
cannot but think it discreditable to us that a bill for which there is
so little to be said, and against which there is so much to be said,
should have been permitted to pass through so many stages without a
division.

On what grounds, Sir, does the noble lord, the Member for Kent, ask
us to make this change in the law? The only ground, surely, on which
a Conservative legislator ought ever to propose a change in the law is
this, that the law, as it stands, has produced some evil. Is it then
pretended that the law, as it stands, has produced any evil? The noble
lord himself tells you that it has produced no evil whatever. Nor can
it be said that the experiment has not been fairly tried. This House and
the office of Master of the Rolls began to exist, probably in the same
generation, certainly in the same century. During six hundred years this
House has been open to Masters of the Rolls. Many Masters of the Rolls
have sate here, and have taken part, with great ability and authority,
in our deliberations. To go no further back than the accession of the
House of Hanover, Jekyll was a member of this House, and Strange, and
Kenyon, and Pepper Arden, and Sir William Grant, and Sir John Copley,
and Sir Charles Pepys, and finally Sir John Romilly. It is not even
pretended that any one of these eminent persons was ever, on any single
occasion, found to be the worse member of this House for being Master of
the Rolls, or the worse Master of the Rolls for being a member of this
House. And if so, is it, I ask, the part of a wise statesman, is it, I
ask still more emphatically, the part of a Conservative statesman, to
alter a system which has lasted six centuries, and which has never
once, during all those centuries, produced any but good effects, merely
because it is not in harmony with an abstract principle?

And what is the abstract principle for the sake of which we are asked to
innovate in reckless defiance of all the teaching of experience? It is
this; that political functions ought to be kept distinct from judicial
functions. So sacred, it seems, is this principle, that the union of the
political and judicial characters ought not to be suffered to continue
even in a case in which that union has lasted through many ages without
producing the smallest practical inconvenience. "Nothing is so hateful,"
I quote the words of the noble lord who brought in this bill, "nothing
is so hateful as a political judge. "

Now, Sir, if I assent to the principle laid down by the noble lord, I
must pronounce his bill the most imbecile, the most pitiful, attempt at
reform that ever was made. The noble lord is a homoeopathist in state
medicine. His remedies are administered in infinitesimal doses. If he
will, for a moment, consider how our tribunals are constituted, and how
our parliament is constituted, he will perceive that the judicial
and political character are, through all grades, everywhere combined,
everywhere interwoven, and that therefore the evil which he proposes
to remove vanishes, as the mathematicians say, when compared with the
immense mass of evil which he leaves behind.

It has been asked, and very sensibly asked, why, if you exclude the
Master of the Rolls from the House, you should not also exclude the
Recorder of the City of London. I should be very sorry to see the
Recorder of the City of London excluded. But I must say that the reasons
for excluding him are ten times as strong as the reasons for excluding
the Master of the Rolls. For it is well-known that political cases
of the highest importance have been tried by Recorders of the City of
London. But why not exclude all Recorders, and all Chairmen of Quarter
Sessions? I venture to say that there are far stronger reasons for
excluding a Chairman of Quarter Sessions than for excluding a Master of
the Rolls. I long ago attended, during two or three years, the Quarter
Sessions of a great county. There I constantly saw in the chair an
eminent member of this House. An excellent criminal judge he was. Had
he been a veteran lawyer, he could hardly have tried causes more
satisfactorily or more expeditiously. But he was a keen politician: he
had made a motion which had turned out a Government; and when he died
he was a Cabinet Minister. Yet this gentleman, the head of the Blue
interest, as it was called, in his county, might have had to try men of
the Orange party for rioting at a contested election. He voted for the
corn laws; and he might have had to try men for breaches of the peace
which had originated in the discontent caused by the corn laws. He was,
as I well remember, hooted, and, I rather think, pelted too, by the mob
of London for his conduct towards Queen Caroline; and, when he went
down to his county, he might have had to sit in judgment on people
for breaking windows which had not been illuminated in honour of Her
Majesty's victory. This is not a solitary instance. There are, I dare
say, in this House, fifty Chairmen of Quarter Sessions. And this is an
union of judicial and political functions against which there is really
much to be said. For it is important, not only that the administration
of justice should be pure, but that it should be unsuspected. Now I
am willing to believe that the administration of justice by the unpaid
magistrates in political cases is pure: but unsuspected it certainly is
not. It is notorious that, in times of political excitement, the cry
of the whole democratic press always is that a poor man, who has been
driven by distress to outrage, has far harder measure at the Quarter
Sessions than at the Assizes. So loud was this cry in 1819 that Mr
Canning, in one of his most eloquent speeches, pronounced it the most
alarming of all the signs of the times. See then how extravagantly, how
ludicrously inconsistent your legislation is. You lay down the principle
that the union of political functions and judicial functions is a
hateful abuse. That abuse you determine to remove. You accordingly leave
in this House a crowd of judges who, in troubled times, have to try
persons charged with political offences; of judges who have often
been accused, truly or falsely, of carrying to the judgment seat their
political sympathies and antipathies; and you shut out of the house a
single judge, whose duties are of such a nature that it has never once,
since the time of Edward the First, been even suspected that he or any
of his predecessors has, in the administration of justice, favoured a
political ally, or wronged a political opponent.

But even if I were to admit, what I altogether deny, that there is
something in the functions of the Master of the Rolls which makes it
peculiarly desirable that he should not take any part in politics,
I should still vote against this bill, as most inconsistent and
inefficient. If you think that he ought to be excluded from political
assemblies, why do not you exclude him? You do no such thing. You
exclude him from the House of Commons, but you leave the House of Lords
open to him. Is not the House of Lords a political assembly? And is it
not certain that, during several generations, judges have generally had
a great ascendency in the House of Lords? A hundred years ago a
great judge, Lord Hardwicke, possessed an immense influence there. He
bequeathed his power to another great judge, Lord Mansfield. When age
had impaired the vigour of Lord Mansfield, the authority which he had,
during many years, enjoyed, passed to a third judge, Lord Thurlow.
Everybody knows what a dominion that eminent judge, Lord Eldon,
exercised over the peers, what a share he took in making and unmaking
ministries, with what idolatrous veneration he was regarded by one great
party in the State, with what dread and aversion he was regarded by the
other. When the long reign of Lord Eldon had terminated, other judges,
Whig and Tory, appeared at the head of contending factions. Some of us
can well remember the first ten days of October, 1831. Who, indeed, that
lived through those days can ever forget them? It was the most exciting,
the most alarming political conjuncture of my time. On the morning of
the eighth of October, the Reform Bill, after a discussion which had
lasted through many nights, was rejected by the Lords. God forbid that
I should again see such a crisis! I can never hope again to hear such
a debate. It was indeed a splendid display of various talents and
acquirements. There are, I dare say, some here who, like myself, watched
through the last night of that conflict till the late autumnal dawn,
sometimes walking up and down the long gallery, sometimes squeezing
ourselves in behind the throne, or below the bar, to catch the eloquence
of the great orators who, on that great occasion, surpassed themselves.
There I saw, in the foremost ranks, confronting each other, two judges,
on one side Lord Brougham, Chancellor of the realm, on the other Lord
Lyndhurst, Chief Baron of the Exchequer. How eagerly we hung on their
words! How eagerly those words were read before noon by hundreds of
thousands in the capital, and within forty-eight hours, by millions
in every part of the kingdom! With what a burst of popular fury
the decision of the House was received by the nation! The ruins of
Nottingham Castle, the ruins of whole streets and squares at Bristol,
proved but too well to what a point the public feeling had been wound
up. If it be true that nothing is so hateful to the noble lord, the
Member for Kent, as a judge who takes part in political contentions, why
does he not bring in a bill to prevent judges from entering those lists
in which Lord Brougham and Lord Lyndhurst then encountered each other?
But no: the noble lord is perfectly willing to leave those lists open to
the Master of the Rolls. The noble lord's objection is not to the union
of the judicial character and the political character. He is quite
willing that anywhere but here judges should be politicians. The Master
of the Rolls may be the soul of a great party, the head of a great
party, the favourite tribune of a stormy democracy, the chief spokesman
of a haughty aristocracy. He may do all that declamation and sophistry
can do to inflame the passions or mislead the judgment of a senate. But
it must not be in this room. He must go a hundred and fifty yards hence.
He must sit on a red bench, and not on a green one. He must say, "My
Lords," and not "Mr Speaker. " He must say, "Content," and not "Aye. "
And then he may, without at all shocking the noble lord, be the most
stirring politician in the kingdom.

But I am understating my case. I am greatly understating it. For, Sir,
this union of the judicial character and the political character, in
Members of the other House of Parliament, is not a merely accidental
union. Not only may judges be made peers; but all the peers are
necessarily judges. Surely when the noble lord told us that the union
of political functions and of judicial functions was the most hateful of
all things, he must have forgotten that, by the fundamental laws of the
realm, a political assembly is the supreme court of appeal, the court
which finally confirms or annuls the judgments of the courts, both of
common law and of equity, at Westminster, of the courts of Scotland, of
the courts of Ireland, of this very Master of the Rolls about whom we
are debating. Surely, if the noble lord's principle be a sound one, it
is not with the Master of the Rolls but with the House of Peers that we
ought to begin. For, beyond all dispute, it is more important that the
court above should be constituted on sound principles than that the
court below should be so constituted. If the Master of the Rolls goes
wrong, the House of Peers may correct his errors. But who is to correct
the errors of the House of Peers? All these considerations the noble
lord overlooks. He is quite willing that the peers shall sit in the
morning as judges, shall determine questions affecting the property, the
liberty, the character of the Queen's subjects, shall determine those
questions in the last resort, shall overrule the decisions of all the
other tribunals in the country; and that then, in the afternoon,
these same noble persons shall meet as politicians, and shall debate,
sometimes rather sharply, sometimes in a style which we dare not imitate
for fear that you, Sir, should call us to order, about the Canadian
Clergy Reserves, the Irish National Schools, the Disabilities of the
Jews, the Government of India. I do not blame the noble lord for not
attempting to alter this state of things. We cannot alter it, I know,
without taking up the foundations of our constitution. But is it not
absurd, while we live under such a constitution, while, throughout
our whole system from top to bottom, political functions and judicial
functions are combined, to single out, not on any special ground, but
merely at random, one judge from a crowd of judges, and to exclude
him, not from all political assemblies, but merely from one political
assembly? Was there ever such a mummery as the carrying of this bill
to the other House will be, if, unfortunately, it should be carried
thither. The noble lord, himself, I have no doubt, a magistrate, himself
at once a judge and a politician, accompanied by several gentlemen who
are at once judges and politicians, will go to the bar of the Lords, who
are all at once judges and politicians, will deliver the bill into the
hands of the Chancellor, who is at once the chief judge of the realm and
a Cabinet Minister, and will return hither proud of having purified the
administration of justice from the taint of politics.

No, Sir, no; for the purpose of purifying the administration of justice
this bill is utterly impotent. It will be effectual for one purpose,
and for one purpose only, for the purpose of weakening and degrading the
House of Commons. This is not the first time that an attempt has been
made, under specious pretexts, to lower the character and impair the
efficiency of the assembly which represents the great body of the
nation. More than a hundred and fifty years ago there was a general cry
that the number of placemen in Parliament was too great. No doubt, Sir,
the number was too great: the evil required a remedy: but some rash and
short-sighted though probably well meaning men, proposed a remedy which
would have produced far more evil than it would have removed. They
inserted in the Act of Settlement a clause providing that no person who
held any office under the Crown should sit in this House. The clause was
not to take effect till the House of Hanover should come to the throne;
and, happily for the country, before the House of Hanover came to the
throne, the clause was repealed. Had it not been repealed, the Act of
Settlement would have been, not a blessing, but a curse to the country.
There was no want, indeed, of plausible and popular commonplaces in
favour of this clause. No man, it was said, can serve two masters. A
courtier cannot be a good guardian of public liberty. A man who derives
his subsistence from the taxes cannot be trusted to check the public
expenditure. You will never have purity, you will never have economy,
till the stewards of the nation are independent of the Crown, and
dependent only on their constituents. Yes; all this sounded well: but
what man of sense now doubts that the effect of a law excluding all
official men from this House would have been to depress that branch of
the legislature which springs from the people, and to increase the
power and consideration of the hereditary aristocracy? The whole
administration would have been in the hands of peers. The chief object
of every eminent Commoner would have been to obtain a peerage. As
soon as any man had gained such distinction here by his eloquence and
knowledge that he was selected to fill the post of Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Secretary of State, or First Lord of the Admiralty, he would
instantly have turned his back on what would then indeed have been
emphatically the Lower House, and would have gone to that chamber in
which alone it would have been possible for him fully to display his
abilities and fully to gratify his ambition. Walpole and Pulteney, the
first Pitt and the second Pitt, Fox, Windham, Canning, Peel, all the men
whose memory is inseparably associated with this House, all the men of
whose names we think with pride as we pass through St Stephen's Hall,
the place of their contentions and their triumphs, would, in the vigour
and prime of life, have become Barons and Viscounts. The great conflict
of parties would have been transferred from the Commons to the Lords.
It would have been impossible for an assembly, in which not a single
statesman of great fame, authority, and experience in important affairs
would have been found, to hold its own against an assembly in which
all our eminent politicians and orators would have been collected. All
England, all Europe, would have been reading with breathless interest
the debates of the peers, and looking with anxiety for the divisions of
the peers, while we, instead of discussing high questions of state, and
giving a general direction to the whole domestic and foreign policy
of the realm, should have been settling the details of canal bills and
turnpike bills.

The noble lord, the Member for Kent does not, it is true, propose so
extensive and important a change as that which the authors of the Act of
Settlement wished to make. But the tendency of this bill is, beyond
all doubt, to make this House less capable than it once was, and less
capable than the other House now is, of discharging some of the most
important duties of a legislative assembly.

Of the duties of a legislative assembly, the noble lord, and some of
those gentlemen who support his bill, seem to me to have formed a very
imperfect notion. They argue as if the only business of the House of
Commons was to turn one set of men out of place, and to bring another
set into place; as if a judge could find no employment here but factious
wrangling. Sir, it is not so. There are extensive and peaceful provinces
of parliamentary business far removed from the fields of battle where
hostile parties encounter each other. A great jurist, seated among
us, might, without taking any prominent part in the strife between
the Ministry and the Opposition, render to his country most valuable
service, and earn for himself an imperishable name. Nor was there ever
a time when the assistance of such a jurist was more needed, or was more
likely to be justly appreciated, than at present. No observant man can
fail to perceive that there is in the public mind a general, a
growing, an earnest, and at the same time, I must say, a most sober and
reasonable desire for extensive law reform. I hope and believe that, for
some time to come, no year will pass without progress in law reform;
and I hold that of all law reformers the best is a learned, upright, and
large-minded judge. At such a time it is that we are called upon to shut
the door of this House against the last great judicial functionary to
whom the unwise legislation of former parliaments has left it open. In
the meantime the other House is open to him. It is open to all the other
judges who are not suffered to sit here. It is open to the Judge of
the Admiralty Court, whom the noble lord, twelve or thirteen years ago,
prevailed on us, in an unlucky hour, to exclude. In the other House
is the Lord Chancellor, and several retired Chancellors, a Lord Chief
Justice, in several retired Chief Justices. The Queen may place there
to-morrow the Chief Baron, the two Lords Justices, the three Vice
Chancellors, the very Master of the Rolls about whom we are debating:
and we, as if we were not already too weak for the discharge of our
functions, are trying to weaken ourselves still more. I harbour no
unfriendly feeling towards the Lords. I anticipate no conflict with
them. But it is not fit that we should be unable to bear an equal part
with them in the great work of improving and digesting the law. It
is not fit that we should be under the necessity of placing implicit
confidence in their superior wisdom, and of registering without
amendment, any bill which they may send us. To that humiliating
situation we are, I grieve to say, fast approaching. I was much struck
by a circumstance which occurred a few days ago. I heard the honourable
Member for Montrose, who, by the by, is one of the supporters of
this bill, urge the House to pass the Combination Bill, for a most
extraordinary reason. "We really," he said, "cannot tell how the law
about combinations of workmen at present stands; and, not knowing how
the law at present stands, we are quite incompetent to decide whether
it ought to be altered. Let us send the bill up to the Lords. They
understand these things. We do not. There are Chancellors, and
ex-Chancellors, and Judges among them. No doubt they will do what is
proper; and I shall acquiesce in their decision. " Why, Sir, did ever any
legislative assembly abdicate its functions in so humiliating a manner?
Is it not strange that a gentleman, distinguished by his love of popular
institutions, and by the jealousy with which he regards the aristocracy,
should gravely propose that, on a subject which interests and excites
hundreds of thousands of our constituents, we should declare ourselves
incompetent to form an opinion, and beg the Lords to tell us what we
ought to do?
And is it not stranger still that, while he admits the
incompetence of the House to discharge some of its most important
functions, and while he attributes that incompetence to the want of
judicial assistance, he should yet wish to shut out of the House the
only high judicial functionary who is now permitted to come into it?

But, says the honourable Member for Montrose, the Master of the Rolls
has duties to perform which, if properly performed, will leave him no
leisure for attendance in this House: it is important that there should
be a division of labour: no man can do two things well; and, if we
suffer a judge to be a member of Parliament, we shall have both a bad
member of Parliament and a bad judge.

Now, Sir, if this argument proves anything, it proves that the Master
of the Rolls, and indeed all the other judges, ought to be excluded from
the House of Lords as well as from the House of Commons. But I deny
that the argument is of any weight. The division of labour has its
disadvantages as well as its advantages. In operations merely mechanical
you can hardly carry the subdivision too far; but you may very easily
carry it too far in operations which require the exercise of high
intellectual powers. It is quite true, as Adam Smith tells us, that a
pin will be best made when one man does nothing but cut the wire, when
another does nothing but mould the head, when a third does nothing but
sharpen the point. But it is not true that Michael Angelo would have
been a greater painter if he had not been a sculptor: it is not true
that Newton would have been a greater experimental philosopher if he had
not been a geometrician; and it is not true that a man will be a worse
lawgiver because he is a great judge. I believe that there is as close
a connection between the functions of the judge and the functions of the
lawgiver as between anatomy and surgery. Would it not be the height of
absurdity to lay down the rule that nobody who dissected the dead should
be allowed to operate on the living? The effect of such a division of
labour would be that you would have nothing but bungling surgery; and
the effect of the division of labour which the honourable Member for
Montrose recommends will be that we shall have plenty of bungling
legislation. Who can be so well qualified to make laws and to mend laws
as a man whose business is to interpret laws and to administer laws? As
to this point I have great pleasure in citing an authority to which
the honourable Member for Montrose will, I know, be disposed to pay the
greatest deference; the authority of Mr Bentham. Of Mr Bentham's
moral and political speculations, I entertain, I must own, a very
mean opinion: but I hold him in high esteem as a jurist. Among all his
writings there is none which I value more than the treatise on Judicial
Organization. In that excellent work he discusses the question whether a
person who holds a judicial office ought to be permitted to hold with
it any other office. Mr Bentham argues strongly and convincingly against
pluralities; but he admits that there is one exception to the general
rule. A judge, he says, ought to be allowed to sit in the legislature as
a representative of the people; for the best school for a legislator
is the judicial bench; and the supply of legislative skill is in all
societies so scanty that none of it can be spared.

My honourable friend, the Member for Surrey, has completely refuted
another argument to which the noble lord, the Member for Kent, appears
to attach considerable importance. The noble lord conceives that no
person can enter this House without stooping to practice arts which
would ill become the gravity of the judicial character. He spoke
particularly of what he called the jollifications usual at elections.
Undoubtedly the festivities at elections are sometimes disgraced by
intemperance, and sometimes by buffoonery; and I wish from the bottom of
my heart that intemperance and buffoonery were the worst means to which
men, reputed upright and honourable in private life, have resorted in
order to obtain seats in the legislature. I should, indeed, be sorry
if any Master of the Rolls should court the favour of the populace by
playing the mounttebank on the hustings or on tavern tables. Still more
sorry should I be if any Master of the Rolls were to disgrace himself
and his office by employing the ministry of the Frails and the Flewkers,
by sending vile emissaries with false names, false addresses, and bags
of sovereigns, to buy the votes of the poor. No doubt a Master of the
Rolls ought to be free, not only from guilt, but from suspicion. I
have not hitherto mentioned the present Master of the Rolls. I have not
mentioned him because, in my opinion, this question ought to be decided
by general and not by personal considerations. I cannot, however,
refrain from saying, with a confidence which springs from long and
intimate acquaintance, that my valued friend, Sir John Romilly, will
never again sit in this House unless he can come in by means very
different from those by which he was turned out. But, Sir, are we
prepared to say that no person can become a representative of the
English people except by some sacrifice of integrity, or at least of
personal dignity? If it be so, we had indeed better think of setting
our House in order. If it be so, the prospects of our country are dark
indeed. How can England retain her place among the nations, if the
assembly to which all her dearest interests are confided, the assembly
which can, by a single vote, transfer the management of her affairs to
new hands, and give a new direction to her whole policy, foreign and
domestic, financial, commercial, and colonial, is closed against every
man who has rigid principles and a fine sense of decorum? But it is
not so. Did that great judge, Sir William Scott, lower his character by
entering this House as Member for the University of Oxford? Did Sir
John Copley lower his character by entering this House as Member for the
University of Cambridge? But the universities, you say, are constituent
bodies of a very peculiar kind. Be it so. Then, by your own admission,
there are a few seats in this House which eminent judges have filled
and may fill without any unseemly condescension. But it would be most
unjust, and in me, especially, most ungrateful, to compliment the
universities at the expense of other constituent bodies. I am one of
many members who know by experience that a generosity and a delicacy
of sentiment which would do honour to any seat of learning may be found
among the ten pound householders of our great cities. And, Sir, as to
the counties, need we look further than to your chair? It is of as much
importance that you should punctiliously preserve your dignity as that
the Master of the Rolls should punctiliously preserve his dignity.
If you had, at the last election, done anything inconsistent with
the integrity, with the gravity, with the suavity of temper which so
eminently qualify you to preside over our deliberations, your public
usefulness would have been seriously diminished. But the great county
which does itself honour by sending you to the House required from you
nothing unbecoming your character, and would have felt itself degraded
by your degradation. And what reason is there to doubt that other
constituent bodies would act as justly and considerately towards a judge
distinguished by uprightness and ability as Hampshire has acted towards
you?

One very futile argument only remains to be noticed. It is said that
we ought to be consistent; and that, having turned the Judge of the
Admiralty out of the House, we ought to send the Master of the Rolls
after him. I admit, Sir, that our system is at present very anomalous.
But it is better that a system should be anomalous than that it should
be uniformly and consistently bad. You have entered on a wrong course.
My advice is first that you stop, and secondly that you retrace your
steps. The time is not far distant when it will be necessary for us to
revise the constitution of this House. On that occasion, it will be
part of our duty to reconsider the rule which determines what
public functionaries shall be admitted to sit here, and what public
functionaries shall be excluded. That rule is, I must say, singularly
absurd. It is this, that no person who holds any office created since
the twenty-fifth of October, 1705, shall be a member of the House of
Commons. Nothing can be more unreasonable or more inconvenient. In
1705, there were two Secretaries of State and two Under Secretaries.
Consequently, to this day, only two Secretaries of State and two Under
Secretaries can sit among us. Suppose that the Home Secretary and the
Colonial Secretary are members of this House, and that the office of
Foreign Secretary becomes vacant. In that case, no member of this House,
whatever may be his qualifications, his fame in diplomacy, his knowledge
of all the politics of the Courts of Europe, can be appointed. Her
Majesty must give the Admiralty to the commoner who is, of all her
subjects, fittest for the Foreign Office, and the seals of the Foreign
Office to some peer who would perhaps be fitter for the Admiralty.
Again, the Postmaster General cannot sit in this House. Yet why not? He
always comes in and goes out with the Government: he is often a member
of the Cabinet; and I believe that he is, of all public functionaries,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer alone excepted, the one whom it would be
most convenient to have here. I earnestly hope that, before long,
this whole subject will be taken into serious consideration. As to the
judges, the rule which I should wish to see laid down is very simple.
I would admit into this House any judge whom the people might elect,
unless there were some special reason against admitting him. There is a
special reason against admitting any Irish or Scotch judge. Such a judge
cannot attend this House without ceasing to attend his court. There is a
special reason against admitting the Judges of the Queen's Bench and of
the Common Pleas, and the Barons of the Exchequer. They are summoned to
the House of Lords; and they sit there: their assistance is absolutely
necessary to enable that House to discharge its functions as the highest
court of appeal; and it would manifestly be both inconvenient and
derogatory to our dignity that members of our body should be at the beck
and call of the peers. I see no special reason for excluding the Master
of the Rolls; and I would, therefore, leave our door open to him. I
would open it to the Judge of the Admiralty, who has been most unwisely
excluded. I would open it to other great judicial officers who are
now excluded solely because their offices did not exist in 1705,
particularly to the two Lords Justices, and the three Vice Chancellors.
In this way, we should, I am convinced, greatly facilitate the important
and arduous work of law reform; we would raise the character of this
House: and I need not say that with the character of this House must
rise or fall the estimation in which representative institutions are
held throughout the world. But, whether the extensive changes which
I have recommended shall be thought desirable or not, I trust that
we shall reject the bill of the noble lord. I address myself to the
Conservative members on your left hand; and I ask them whether they are
prepared to alter, on grounds purely theoretical, a system which
has lasted during twenty generations without producing the smallest
practical evil. I turn to the Liberal members on this side; and I ask
them whether they are prepared to lower the reputation and to impair
the efficiency of that branch of the legislature which springs from
the people. For myself, Sir, I hope that I am at once a Liberal and a
Conservative politician; and, in both characters, I shall give a clear
and conscientious vote in favour of the amendment moved by my honourable
friend.

*****




INDEX.

Absalom and Achitophel of Dryden, character of it.

Absolute government, theory of.

Absolute rulers.

Academy, the French, its services to literature.

Addington, Henry, formation of his administration.
His position as Prime Minister.
Resigns.
Raised to the peerage.

Aeschines, compared by Mr Mitford to Demosthenes.

Aeschylus, his works, how regarded by Quintillian.

Agesilaus, depressed by the constitution of Lycurgus.

Ajax, the prayer of, in the Iliad.

Aldrich, Dean, his mode of instructing the youths of his college.
Employs Charles Boyle to edit the letters of Phalaris.

Alfieri, Vittorio, character of his works.
His great fault in his compositions.

Anatomy Bill, Speech on.

Antinomian barn preacher, story of the.

Approbation, love of.

Aristocratical form of government. See Oligarchy.

Aristotle, his unrivalled excellence in analysis and combination.
Value of his general propositions.
His enlightened and profound criticism.

Arnault, A. V. , Translation from.

Arras, cruelties of the Jacobins at.

Arrian, his character as a historian.

Arts, the fine, laws on which the progress and decline of depend.

Athenian Revels, scenes from.

Athens; disreputable character of Peiraeus.
Police officers of the city.
Favourite epithet of the city.
The Athenian orators.
Excellence to which eloquence attained at.
Dr Johnson's contemptuous derision of the civilisation of the
people of.
Their books and book education.
An Athenian day.
Defects of the Athenians' conversational education.
The law of ostracism at Athens.
Happiness of the Athenians in their term of government.
Their naval superiority.
Ferocity of the Athenians in war.
And of their dependencies in seditions.
Cause of the violence of faction in that age.
Influence of Athenian genius on the human intellect and on
private happiness.
The gifts of Athens to man.
Character of the great dramas of Athens.
Change in the temper of the Athenians in the time of
Aristophanes.

Atterbury, Francis, his birth and early life.
Defends Martin Luther against the aspersions of Obadiah Walker.
Enters the church and becomes one of the royal chaplains.
Assists Charles Boyle in preparing an edition of the letters of
Phalaris.
His answer to Bentley's dissertation on the letters of Phalaris.
Bentley's reply.
Atterbury's defence of the clergy against the prelates.
Created a D. D. and promoted to the Deanery of Carlisle.
His pamphlets against the Whigs.
Appointed to the Deanery of Christ Church.
Removed to the Bishopric of Rochester.
His opposition to the Government of George I.
His private life.
His taste in literature and literary friends.
Thrown into prison for treason.
Deprived of his dignities and banished for life.
Calls Pope as a witness to his innocence.
Goes to Paris, and becomes Prime Minister of King James.
Retires from the court of the ex-King.
Death of his daughter.
Induced by the Pretender to return to Paris.
His defence of the charge of having garbled Clarendon's History
of the Rebellion.
His death.

August, lines written in.

Bacon, Lord, his description of the logomachies of the schoolmen.
And of the Utilitarian philosophy.
His mode of tracking the principle of heat.

Barbaroux, the Girondist, his execution.

Barere, Bertrand, Memoires de, of Carnot and David, review of
the.
Barere's true character.
His lies.
His talents as an author.
Sketch of his life.
Votes against the King.
His federal views and ultra Girondism.
His apparent zeal for the cause of order and humanity.
His motion for punishing the Jacobins.
Defeat of the Girondists.
Retains his seat at the Board of the Triumphant Mountain.
His infamous motion against the chiefs of the Girondists.
Moves that the Queen be brought before the Revolutionary
Tribunal.
Regales Robespierre and other Jacobins at a tavern on the day of
the death of the Queen.
Formation of his peculiar style of oratory.
His Carmagnoles.
Effect produced by his discourses.
Seconds Robespierre's atrocious motion in the Convention.
Becomes one of the six members of the Committee of Public Safety.
The first to proclaim terror as the order of the day.
Recommends Fouquier Tinville to the Revolutionary Committee of
Paris.
His proposal to destroy Lyons and Toulon.
His opposition to the personal defence of Danton.
His support of the wretch Lebon.
His war against learning, art, and history.
His sensual excesses.
Becomes a really cruel man.
His morning audiences and mode of treating petitions.
His orders against certain head-dresses.
Nicknames given to him.
Obtains a decree that no quarter should be given to any English
or Hanoverian soldier.
M. Carnot's defence of this barbarity.
Barere's support of Robespierre's fiendish decree.
His panegyric on Robespierre.
His motion that Robespierre and his accomplices should be put to
death.
Destruction of the power of the Jacobins.
Report on his conduct voted by the Convention.
Condemned to be removed to a distant place of confinement.
His perilous journey.
Imprisoned at Oleron.