No More Learning

No tradesman of good repute
will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this
law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present
race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable
monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the
violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit;
and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should
the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as
popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every
cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich
for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred
years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author
when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be
considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no
person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes
nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share
in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to
create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable
restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to
a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from
pillaging and defrauding the living. If I saw, Sir, any probability that
this bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections might
be removed, I would not divide the House in this stage. But I am so
fully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable to
my honourable and learned friend, could render his measure supportable
to me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a
second time this day six months.

*****




COPYRIGHT. (APRIL 6, 1842) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN A COMMITTEE OF THE
HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 6TH OF APRIL 1842.

On the third of March 1842, Lord Mahon obtained permission to bring in
a bill to amend the Law of Copyright. This bill extended the term of
Copyright in a book to twenty-five years, reckoned from the death of the
author.

On the sixth of April the House went into Committee on the bill, and Mr
Greene took the Chair. Several divisions took place, of which the result
was that the plan suggested in the following Speech was, with some
modifications, adopted.

Mr Greene,--I have been amused and gratified by the remarks which
my noble friend (Lord Mahon. ) has made on the arguments by which I
prevailed on the last House of Commons to reject the bill introduced by
a very able and accomplished man, Mr Serjeant Talfourd. My noble friend
has done me a high and rare honour. For this is, I believe, the first
occasion on which a speech made in one Parliament has been answered in
another. I should not find it difficult to vindicate the soundness of
the reasons which I formerly urged, to set them in a clearer light,
and to fortify them by additional facts. But it seems to me that we had
better discuss the bill which is now on our table than the bill which
was there fourteen months ago. Glad I am to find that there is a very
wide difference between the two bills, and that my noble friend,
though he has tried to refute my arguments, has acted as if he had been
convinced by them. I objected to the term of sixty years as far too
long. My noble friend has cut that term down to twenty-five years. I
warned the House that, under the provisions of Mr Serjeant Talfourd's
bill, valuable works might not improbably be suppressed by the
representatives of authors. My noble friend has prepared a clause which,
as he thinks, will guard against that danger. I will not, therefore,
waste the time of the Committee by debating points which he has
conceded, but will proceed at once to the proper business of this
evening.

Sir, I have no objection to the principle of my noble friend's bill.
Indeed, I had no objection to the principle of the bill of last year. I
have long thought that the term of copyright ought to be extended. When
Mr Serjeant Talfourd moved for leave to bring in his bill, I did not
oppose the motion. Indeed I meant to vote for the second reading, and
to reserve what I had to say for the Committee. But the learned Serjeant
left me no choice. He, in strong language, begged that nobody who was
disposed to reduce the term of sixty years would divide with him. "Do
not," he said, "give me your support, if all that you mean to grant to
men of letters is a miserable addition of fourteen or fifteen years to
the present term. I do not wish for such support. I despise it. " Not
wishing to obtrude on the learned Serjeant a support which he despised,
I had no course left but to take the sense of the House on the second
reading. The circumstances are now different. My noble friend's bill
is not at present a good bill; but it may be improved into a very
good bill; nor will he, I am persuaded, withdraw it if it should be so
improved. He and I have the same object in view; but we differ as to the
best mode of attaining that object. We are equally desirous to extend
the protection now enjoyed by writers. In what way it may be extended
with most benefit to them and with least inconvenience to the public, is
the question.

The present state of the law is this. The author of a work has a certain
copyright in that work for a term of twenty-eight years. If he should
live more than twenty-eight years after the publication of the work, he
retains the copyright to the end of his life.

My noble friend does not propose to make any addition to the term
of twenty-eight years. But he proposes that the copyright shall last
twenty-five years after the author's death. Thus my noble friend makes
no addition to that term which is certain, but makes a very large
addition to that term which is uncertain.

My plan is different. I would made no addition to the uncertain term;
but I would make a large addition to the certain term. I propose to add
fourteen years to the twenty-eight years which the law now allows to an
author. His copyright will, in this way, last till his death, or till
the expiration of forty-two years, whichever shall first happen. And I
think that I shall be able to prove to the satisfaction of the Committee
that my plan will be more beneficial to literature and to literary men
than the plan of my noble friend.

It must surely, Sir, be admitted that the protection which we give to
books ought to be distributed as evenly as possible, that every book
should have a fair share of that protection, and no book more than a
fair share. It would evidently be absurd to put tickets into a wheel,
with different numbers marked upon them, and to make writers draw, one
a term of twenty-eight years, another a term of fifty, another a term of
ninety. And yet this sort of lottery is what my noble friend proposes to
establish. I know that we cannot altogether exclude chance. You have two
terms of copyright; one certain, the other uncertain; and we cannot, I
admit, get rid of the uncertain term. It is proper, no doubt, that an
author's copyright should last during his life. But, Sir, though we
cannot altogether exclude chance, we can very much diminish the share
which chance must have in distributing the recompense which we wish
to give to genius and learning. By every addition which we make to the
certain term we diminish the influence of chance; by every addition
which we make to the uncertain term we increase the influence of chance.
I shall make myself best understood by putting cases. Take two eminent
female writers, who died within our own memory, Madame D'Arblay and Miss
Austen. As the law now stands, Miss Austen's charming novels would have
only from twenty-eight to thirty-three years of copyright. For that
extraordinary woman died young: she died before her genius was fully
appreciated by the world. Madame D'Arblay outlived the whole generation
to which she belonged. The copyright of her celebrated novel, Evelina,
lasted, under the present law, sixty-two years. Surely this inequality
is sufficiently great--sixty-two years of copyright for Evelina, only
twenty-eight for Persuasion. But to my noble friend this inequality
seems not great enough. He proposes to add twenty-five years to Madame
D'Arblay's term, and not a single day to Miss Austen's term. He would
give to Persuasion a copyright of only twenty-eight years, as at
present, and to Evelina a copyright more than three times as long, a
copyright of eighty-seven years. Now, is this reasonable? See, on the
other hand, the operation of my plan. I make no addition at all to
Madame D'Arblay's term of sixty-two years, which is, in my opinion,
quite long enough; but I extend Miss Austen's term to forty-two years,
which is, in my opinion, not too much. You see, Sir, that at present
chance has too much sway in this matter: that at present the protection
which the State gives to letters is very unequally given. You see that
if my noble friend's plan be adopted, more will be left to chance than
under the present system, and you will have such inequalities as are
unknown under the present system. You see also that, under the system
which I recommend, we shall have, not perfect certainty, not perfect
equality, but much less uncertainty and inequality than at present.

But this is not all. My noble friend's plan is not merely to institute
a lottery in which some writers will draw prizes and some will draw
blanks. It is much worse than this. His lottery is so contrived that, in
the vast majority of cases, the blanks will fall to the best books, and
the prizes to books of inferior merit.

Take Shakspeare. My noble friend gives a longer protection than I should
give to Love's Labour's Lost, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre; but he gives
a shorter protection than I should give to Othello and Macbeth.

Take Milton. Milton died in 1674. The copyrights of Milton's great
works would, according to my noble friend's plan, expire in 1699. Comus
appeared in 1634, the Paradise Lost in 1668. To Comus, then, my noble
friend would give sixty-five years of copyright, and to the Paradise
Lost only thirty-one years. Is that reasonable? Comus is a noble
poem: but who would rank it with the Paradise Lost? My plan would give
forty-two years both to the Paradise Lost and to Comus.

Let us pass on from Milton to Dryden. My noble friend would give
more than sixty years of copyright to Dryden's worst works; to the
encomiastic verses on Oliver Cromwell, to the Wild Gallant, to the Rival
Ladies, to other wretched pieces as bad as anything written by Flecknoe
or Settle: but for Theodore and Honoria, for Tancred and Sigismunda, for
Cimon and Iphigenia, for Palamon and Arcite, for Alexander's Feast, my
noble friend thinks a copyright of twenty-eight years sufficient. Of
all Pope's works, that to which my noble friend would give the largest
measure of protection is the volume of Pastorals, remarkable only as the
production of a boy. Johnson's first work was a Translation of a Book of
Travels in Abyssinia, published in 1735. It was so poorly executed that
in his later years he did not like to hear it mentioned. Boswell once
picked up a copy of it, and told his friend that he had done so. "Do not
talk about it," said Johnson: "it is a thing to be forgotten. " To this
performance my noble friend would give protection during the enormous
term of seventy-five years. To the Lives of the Poets he would give
protection during about thirty years. Well; take Henry Fielding; it
matters not whom I take, but take Fielding. His early works are read
only by the curious, and would not be read even by the curious, but for
the fame which he acquired in the latter part of his life by works of
a very different kind. What is the value of the Temple Beau, of the
Intriguing Chambermaid, of half a dozen other plays of which few
gentlemen have even heard the names? Yet to these worthless pieces my
noble friend would give a term of copyright longer by more than twenty
years than that which he would give to Tom Jones and Amelia.

Go on to Burke. His little tract, entitled the Vindication of Natural
Society is certainly not without merit; but it would not be remembered
in our days if it did not bear the name of Burke. To this tract my noble
friend would give a copyright of near seventy years. But to the great
work on the French Revolution, to the Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs, to the letters on the Regicide Peace, he would give a copyright
of thirty years or little more.

And, Sir observe that I am not selecting here and there extraordinary
instances in order to make up the semblance of a case. I am taking the
greatest names of our literature in chronological order. Go to other
nations; go to remote ages; you will still find the general rule the
same. There was no copyright at Athens or Rome; but the history of the
Greek and Latin literature illustrates my argument quite as well as if
copyright had existed in ancient times. Of all the plays of Sophocles,
the one to which the plan of my noble friend would have given the
most scanty recompense would have been that wonderful masterpiece, the
Oedipus at Colonos. Who would class together the Speech of Demosthenes
against his Guardians, and the Speech for the Crown? My noble friend,
indeed, would not class them together. For to the Speech against the
Guardians he would give a copyright of near seventy years, and to the
incomparable Speech for the Crown a copyright of less than half that
length. Go to Rome. My noble friend would give more than twice as long a
term to Cicero's juvenile declamation in defence of Roscius Amerinus as
to the Second Philippic. Go to France. My noble friend would give a far
longer term to Racine's Freres Ennemis than to Athalie, and to Moliere's
Etourdi than to Tartuffe. Go to Spain. My noble friend would give a
longer term to forgotten works of Cervantes, works which nobody now
reads, than to Don Quixote. Go to Germany. According to my noble
friend's plan, of all the works of Schiller the Robbers would be the
most favoured: of all the works of Goethe, the Sorrows of Werter would
be the most favoured. I thank the Committee for listening so kindly to
this long enumeration. Gentlemen will perceive, I am sure, that it is
not from pedantry that I mention the names of so many books and authors.
But just as, in our debates on civil affairs, we constantly draw
illustrations from civil history, we must, in a debate about literary
property, draw our illustrations from literary history. Now, Sir, I
have, I think, shown from literary history that the effect of my
noble friend's plan would be to give to crude and imperfect works, to
third-rate and fourth-rate works, a great advantage over the highest
productions of genius. It is impossible to account for the facts which I
have laid before you by attributing them to mere accident. Their number
is too great, their character too uniform. We must seek for some other
explanation; and we shall easily find one.

It is the law of our nature that the mind shall attain its full power
by slow degrees; and this is especially true of the most vigorous minds.
Young men, no doubt, have often produced works of great merit; but it
would be impossible to name any writer of the first order whose juvenile
performances were his best. That all the most valuable books of history,
of philology, of physical and metaphysical science, of divinity, of
political economy, have been produced by men of mature years will hardly
be disputed. The case may not be quite so clear as respects works of
the imagination. And yet I know no work of the imagination of the very
highest class that was ever, in any age or country, produced by a
man under thirty-five. Whatever powers a youth may have received from
nature, it is impossible that his taste and judgment can be ripe, that
his mind can be richly stored with images, that he can have observed
the vicissitudes of life, that he can have studied the nicer shades of
character. How, as Marmontel very sensibly said, is a person to paint
portraits who has never seen faces? On the whole, I believe that I may,
without fear of contradiction, affirm this, that of the good books now
extant in the world more than nineteen-twentieths were published after
the writers had attained the age of forty. If this be so, it is evident
that the plan of my noble friend is framed on a vicious principle. For,
while he gives to juvenile productions a very much larger protection
than they now enjoy, he does comparatively little for the works of men
in the full maturity of their powers, and absolutely nothing for any
work which is published during the last three years of the life of the
writer. For, by the existing law, the copyright of such a work lasts
twenty-eight years from the publication; and my noble friend gives only
twenty-five years, to be reckoned from the writer's death.

What I recommend is that the certain term, reckoned from the date of
publication, shall be forty-two years instead of twenty-eight years. In
this arrangement there is no uncertainty, no inequality. The advantage
which I propose to give will be the same to every book. No work will
have so long a copyright as my noble friend gives to some books, or so
short a copyright as he gives to others. No copyright will last ninety
years. No copyright will end in twenty-eight years. To every book
published in the course of the last seventeen years of a writer's life
I give a longer term of copyright than my noble friend gives; and I
am confident that no person versed in literary history will deny
this,--that in general the most valuable works of an author are
published in the course of the last seventeen years of his life. I will
rapidly enumerate a few, and but a few, of the great works of English
writers to which my plan is more favourable than my noble friend's plan.
To Lear, to Macbeth, to Othello, to the Fairy Queen, to the Paradise
Lost, to Bacon's Novum Organum and De Augmentis, to Locke's Essay on
the Human Understanding, to Clarendon's History, to Hume's History, to
Gibbon's History, to Smith's Wealth of Nations, to Addison's Spectators,
to almost all the great works of Burke, to Clarissa and Sir Charles
Grandison, to Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Amelia, and, with the single
exception of Waverley, to all the novels of Sir Walter Scott, I give a
longer term of copyright than my noble friend gives. Can he match that
list? Does not that list contain what England has produced greatest in
many various ways--poetry, philosophy, history, eloquence, wit, skilful
portraiture of life and manners? I confidently therefore call on the
Committee to take my plan in preference to the plan of my noble friend.
I have shown that the protection which he proposes to give to letters is
unequal, and unequal in the worst way. I have shown that his plan is to
give protection to books in inverse proportion to their merit. I shall
move when we come to the third clause of the bill to omit the words
"twenty-five years," and in a subsequent part of the same clause I
shall move to substitute for the words "twenty-eight years" the words
"forty-two years. " I earnestly hope that the Committee will adopt these
amendments; and I feel the firmest conviction that my noble friend's
bill, so amended, will confer a great boon on men of letters with the
smallest possible inconvenience to the public.

*****




THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER. (MAY 3, 1842) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE THIRD OF MAY 1842.

On the second of May 1842, Mr Thomas Duncombe, Member for Finsbury,
presented a petition, very numerously signed, of which the prayer was as
follows:

"Your petitioners, therefore, exercising their just constitutional
right, demand that your Honourable House, to remedy the many gross
and manifest evils of which your petitioners complain, do immediately,
without alteration, deduction, or addition, pass into a law the document
entitled the People's Charter. "

On the following day Mr Thomas Duncombe moved that the petitioners
should be heard by themselves or their Counsel at the Bar of the House.
The following Speech was made in opposition to the motion.

The motion was rejected by 287 votes to 49.

Mr Speaker,--I was particularly desirous to catch your eye this evening,
because, when the motion of the honourable Member of Rochdale (Mr
Sharman Crawford. ) was under discussion, I was unable to be in my place.
I understand that, on that occasion, the absence of some members of
the late Government was noticed in severe terms, and was attributed to
discreditable motives. As for myself, Sir, I was prevented from coming
down to the House by illness: a noble friend of mine, to whom particular
allusion was made, was detained elsewhere by pure accident; and I am
convinced that no member of the late administration was withheld by any
unworthy feeling from avowing his opinions. My own opinions I could have
no motive for disguising. They have been frequently avowed, and avowed
before audiences which were not likely to regard them with much favour.

I should wish, Sir, to say what I have to say in the temperate tone
which has with so much propriety been preserved by the right honourable
Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department (Sir James Graham. );
but, if I should use any warm expression, I trust that the House will
attribute it to the strength of my convictions and to my solicitude
for the public interests. No person who knows me will, I am quite sure,
suspect me of regarding the hundreds of thousands who have signed the
petition which we are now considering, with any other feeling than
cordial goodwill.

Sir, I cannot conscientiously assent to this motion. And yet I must
admit that the honourable Member for Finsbury (Mr Thomas Duncombe. ) has
framed it with considerable skill. He has done his best to obtain the
support of all those timid and interested politicians who think much
more about the security of their seats than about the security of their
country. It would be very convenient to me to give a silent vote with
him. I should then have it in my power to say to the Chartists of
Edinburgh, "When your petition was before the House I was on your side:
I was for giving you a full hearing. " I should at the same time be able
to assure my Conservative constituents that I never had supported and
never would support the Charter. But, Sir, though this course would be
very convenient, it is one which my sense of duty will not suffer me
to take. When questions of private right are before us, we hear, and
we ought to hear, the arguments of the parties interested in those
questions. But it has never been, and surely it ought not to be, our
practice to grant a hearing to persons who petition for or against a law
in which they have no other interest than that which is common between
them and the whole nation. Of the many who petitioned against slavery,
against the Roman Catholic claims, against the corn laws, none was
suffered to harangue us at the bar in support of his views. If in the
present case we depart from a general rule which everybody must admit to
be a very wholesome one, what inference can reasonably be drawn from
our conduct, except this, that we think the petition which we are now
considering entitled to extraordinary respect, and that we have not
fully made up our minds to refuse what the petitioners ask? Now, Sir, I
have fully made up my mind to resist to the last the change which they
urge us to make in the constitution of the kingdom. I therefore think
that I should act disingenuously if I gave my voice for calling in
orators whose eloquence, I am certain, will make no alteration in my
opinion. I think too that if, after voting for hearing the petitioners,
I should then vote against granting their prayer, I should give them
just ground for accusing me of having first encouraged and then deserted
them. That accusation, at least, they shall never bring against me.

The honourable Member for Westminster (Mr Leader. ) has expressed a
hope that the language of the petition will not be subjected to severe
criticism. If he means literary criticism, I entirely agree with him.
The style of this composition is safe from any censure of mine; but the
substance it is absolutely necessary that we should closely examine.
What the petitioners demand is this, that we do forthwith pass what is
called the People's Charter into a law without alteration, diminution,
or addition. This is the prayer in support of which the honourable
Member for Finsbury would have us hear an argument at the bar. Is it
then reasonable to say, as some gentlemen have said, that, in voting for
the honourable Member's motion, they mean to vote merely for an inquiry
into the causes of the public distress?
If any gentleman thinks that an
inquiry into the causes of the public distress would be useful, let him
move for such an inquiry. I will not oppose it. But this petition does
not tell us to inquire. It tells us that we are not to inquire. It
directs us to pass a certain law word for word, and to pass it without
the smallest delay.

I shall, Sir, notwithstanding the request or command of the petitioners,
venture to exercise my right of free speech on the subject of the
People's Charter. There is, among the six points of the Charter, one for
which I have voted. There is another of which I decidedly approve. There
are others as to which, though I do not agree with the petitioners, I
could go some way to meet them. In fact, there is only one of the six
points on which I am diametrically opposed to them: but unfortunately
that point happens to be infinitely the most important of the six.

One of the six points is the ballot. I have voted for the ballot; and I
have seen no reason to change my opinion on that subject.

Another point is the abolition of the pecuniary qualification for
members of this House. On that point I cordially agree with the
petitioners. You have established a sufficient pecuniary qualification
for the elector; and it therefore seems to me quite superfluous to
require a pecuniary qualification from the representative. Everybody
knows that many English members have only fictitious qualifications, and
that the members for Scotch cities and boroughs are not required to
have any qualification at all. It is surely absurd to admit the
representatives of Edinburgh and Glasgow without any qualification, and
at the same time to require the representative of Finsbury or Marylebone
to possess a qualification or the semblance of one. If the qualification
really be a security for respectability, let that security be
demanded from us who sit here for Scotch towns. If, as I believe, the
qualification is no security at all, why should we require it from
anybody? It is no part of the old constitution of the realm. It was
first established in the reign of Anne. It was established by a bad
parliament for a bad purpose. It was, in fact, part of a course of
legislation which, if it had not been happily interrupted, would have
ended in the repeal of the Toleration Act and of the Act of Settlement.

The Chartists demand annual parliaments. There, certainly, I differ from
them; but I might, perhaps, be willing to consent to some compromise. I
differ from them also as to the expediency of paying the representatives
of the people, and of dividing the country into electoral districts.
But I do not consider these matters as vital. The kingdom might, I
acknowledge, be free, great, and happy, though the members of this house
received salaries, and though the present boundaries of counties and
boroughs were superseded by new lines of demarcation. These, Sir,
are subordinate questions. I do not of course mean that they are not
important. But they are subordinate when compared with that question
which still remains to be considered. The essence of the Charter is
universal suffrage. If you withhold that, it matters not very much what
else you grant. If you grant that, it matters not at all what else you
withhold. If you grant that, the country is lost.

I have no blind attachment to ancient usages. I altogether disclaim what
has been nicknamed the doctrine of finality. I have said enough to-night
to show that I do not consider the settlement made by the Reform Bill
as one which can last for ever. I certainly do think that an extensive
change in the polity of a nation must be attended with serious evils.
Still those evils may be overbalanced by advantages: and I am perfectly
ready, in every case, to weigh the evils against the advantages, and to
judge as well as I can which scale preponderates. I am bound by no tie
to oppose any reform which I think likely to promote the public good. I
will go so far as to say that I do not quite agree with those who think
that they have proved the People's Charter to be absurd when they have
proved that it is incompatible with the existence of the throne and
of the peerage. For, though I am a faithful and loyal subject of Her
Majesty, and though I sincerely wish to see the House of Lords powerful
and respected, I cannot consider either monarchy or aristocracy as the
ends of government. They are only means. Nations have flourished without
hereditary sovereigns or assemblies of nobles; and, though I should be
very sorry to see England a republic, I do not doubt that she might, as
a republic, enjoy prosperity, tranquillity, and high consideration.
The dread and aversion with which I regard universal suffrage would be
greatly diminished, if I could believe that the worst effect which it
would produce would be to give us an elective first magistrate and a
senate instead of a Queen and a House of Peers. My firm conviction is
that, in our country, universal suffrage is incompatible, not with this
or that form of government, but with all forms of government, and with
everything for the sake of which forms of government exist; that it is
incompatible with property, and that it is consequently incompatible
with civilisation.

It is not necessary for me in this place to go through the arguments
which prove beyond dispute that on the security of property civilisation
depends; that, where property is insecure, no climate however delicious,
no soil however fertile, no conveniences for trade and navigation, no
natural endowments of body or of mind, can prevent a nation from sinking
into barbarism; that where, on the other hand, men are protected in
the enjoyment of what has been created by their industry and laid up
by their self-denial, society will advance in arts and in wealth
notwithstanding the sterility of the earth and the inclemency of the
air, notwithstanding heavy taxes and destructive wars. Those persons who
say that England has been greatly misgoverned, that her legislation is
defective, that her wealth has been squandered in unjust and impolitic
contests with America and with France, do in fact bear the strongest
testimony to the truth of my doctrine. For that our country has made and
is making great progress in all that contributes to the material comfort
of man is indisputable. If that progress cannot be ascribed to
the wisdom of the Government, to what can we ascribe it but to the
diligence, the energy, the thrift of individuals? And to what can we
ascribe that diligence, that energy, that thrift, except to the security
which property has during many generations enjoyed here? Such is the
power of this great principle that, even in the last war, the most
costly war, beyond all comparison, that ever was waged in this world,
the Government could not lavish wealth so fast as the productive classes
created it.

If it be admitted that on the institution of property the wellbeing
of society depends, it follows surely that it would be madness to give
supreme power in the state to a class which would not be likely to
respect that institution. And, if this be conceded, it seems to me to
follow that it would be madness to grant the prayer of this petition. I
entertain no hope that, if we place the government of the kingdom in the
hands of the majority of the males of one-and-twenty told by the head,
the institution of property will be respected. If I am asked why I
entertain no such hope, I answer, because the hundreds of thousands of
males of twenty-one who have signed this petition tell me to entertain
no such hope; because they tell me that, if I trust them with power, the
first use which they will make of it will be to plunder every man in the
kingdom who has a good coat on his back and a good roof over his head.
God forbid that I should put an unfair construction on their language!
I will read their own words. This petition, be it remembered, is an
authoritative declaration of the wishes of those who, if the Charter
ever becomes law, will return the great majority of the House of
Commons; and these are their words: "Your petitioners complain, that
they are enormously taxed to pay the interest of what is called the
national debt, a debt amounting at present to eight hundred millions,
being only a portion of the enormous amount expended in cruel and
expensive wars for the suppression of all liberty by men not authorised
by the people, and who consequently had no right to tax posterity
for the outrages committed by them upon mankind. " If these words mean
anything, they mean that the present generation is not bound to pay the
public debt incurred by our rulers in past times, and that a national
bankruptcy would be both just and politic. For my part, I believe it to
be impossible to make any distinction between the right of a fundholder
to his dividends and the right of a landowner to his rents. And, to do
the petitioners justice, I must say that they seem to be much of the
same mind. They are for dealing with fundholder and landowner alike.
They tell us that nothing will "unshackle labour from its misery, until
the people possess that power under which all monopoly and oppression
must cease; and your petitioners respectfully mention the existing
monopolies of the suffrage, of paper money, of machinery, of land, of
the public press, of religion, of the means of travelling and transit,
and a host of other evils too numerous to mention, all arising from
class legislation. " Absurd as this hubbub of words is, part of it is
intelligible enough. What can the monopoly of land mean, except property
in land? The only monopoly of land which exists in England is this, that
nobody can sell an acre of land which does not belong to him. And what
can the monopoly of machinery mean but property in machinery? Another
monopoly which is to cease is the monopoly of the means of travelling.
In other words all the canal property and railway property in the
kingdom is to be confiscated. What other sense do the words bear? And
these are only specimens of the reforms which, in the language of the
petition, are to unshackle labour from its misery. There remains,
it seems, a host of similar monopolies too numerous to mention; the
monopoly I presume, which a draper has of his own stock of cloth; the
monopoly which a hatter has of his own stock of hats; the monopoly
which we all have of our furniture, bedding, and clothes. In short, the
petitioners ask you to give them power in order that they may not leave
a man of a hundred a year in the realm.

I am far from wishing to throw any blame on the ignorant crowds which
have flocked to the tables where this petition was exhibited. Nothing
is more natural than that the labouring people should be deceived by the
arts of such men as the author of this absurd and wicked composition.
We ourselves, with all our advantages of education, are often very
credulous, very impatient, very shortsighted, when we are tried by
pecuniary distress or bodily pain. We often resort to means of immediate
relief which, as Reason tells us, if we would listen to her, are certain
to aggravate our sufferings. Men of great abilities and knowledge have
ruined their estates and their constitutions in this way. How then
can we wonder that men less instructed than ourselves, and tried by
privations such as we have never known, should be easily misled
by mountebanks who promise impossibilities? Imagine a well-meaning
laborious mechanic, fondly attached to his wife and children. Bad times
come. He sees the wife whom he loves grow thinner and paler every day.
His little ones cry for bread, and he has none to give them. Then come
the professional agitators, the tempters, and tell him that there is
enough and more than enough for everybody, and that he has too little
only because landed gentlemen, fundholders, bankers, manufacturers,
railway proprietors, shopkeepers have too much. Is it strange that the
poor man should be deluded, and should eagerly sign such a petition as
this? The inequality with which wealth is distributed forces itself
on everybody's notice. It is at once perceived by the eye. The reasons
which irrefragably prove this inequality to be necessary to the
wellbeing of all classes are not equally obvious. Our honest working man
has not received such an education as enables him to understand that the
utmost distress that he has ever known is prosperity when compared with
the distress which he would have to endure if there were a single month
of general anarchy and plunder. But you say, it is not the fault of the
labourer that he is not well educated. Most true. It is not his fault.
But, though he has no share in the fault, he will, if you are foolish
enough to give him supreme power in the state, have a very large share
of the punishment. You say that, if the Government had not culpably
omitted to establish a good system of public instruction, the
petitioners would have been fit for the elective franchise. But is that
a reason for giving them the franchise when their own petition proves
that they are not fit for it; when they give us fair notice that, if we
let them have it, they will use it to our ruin and their own? It is not
necessary now to inquire whether, with universal education, we could
safely have universal suffrage. What we are asked to do is to give
universal suffrage before there is universal education. Have I any
unkind feeling towards these poor people? No more than I have to a
sick friend who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which the
physician has forbidden. No more than a humane collector in India has
to those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity crowd round the
granaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures that the doors may be
opened and the rice distributed. I would not give the draught of water,
because I know that it would be poison. I would not give up the keys of
the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcity
into a famine. And in the same way I would not yield to the importunity
of multitudes who, exasperated by suffering and blinded by ignorance,
demand with wild vehemence the liberty to destroy themselves.

But it is said, You must not attach so much importance to this petition.
It is very foolish, no doubt, and disgraceful to the author, be he who
he may. But you must not suppose that those who signed it approve of
it. They have merely put their names or their marks without weighing the
sense of the document which they subscribed. Surely, Sir, of all reasons
that ever were given for receiving a petition with peculiar honours, the
strangest is that it expresses sentiments diametrically opposed to
the real sentiments of those who have signed it. And it is a not less
strange reason for giving men supreme power in a state that they sign
political manifestoes of the highest importance without taking the
trouble to know what the contents are. But how is it possible for us to
believe that, if the petitioners had the power which they demand,
they would not use it as they threaten? During a long course of years,
numerous speakers and writers, some of them ignorant, others dishonest,
have been constantly representing the Government as able to do, and
bound to do, things which no Government can, without great injury to the
country, attempt to do. Every man of sense knows that the people support
the Government. But the doctrine of the Chartist philosophers is that it
is the business of the Government to support the people. It is supposed
by many that our rulers possess, somewhere or other, an inexhaustible
storehouse of all the necessaries and conveniences of life, and, from
mere hardheartedness, refuse to distribute the contents of this magazine
among the poor. We have all of us read speeches and tracts in which it
seemed to be taken for granted that we who sit here have the power of
working miracles, of sending a shower of manna on the West Riding,
of striking the earth and furnishing all the towns of Lancashire with
abundance of pure water, of feeding all the cotton-spinners and weavers
who are out of work with five loaves and two fishes. There is not a
working man who has not heard harangues and read newspapers in which
these follies are taught. And do you believe that as soon as you give
the working men absolute and irresistible power they will forget all
this? Yes, Sir, absolute and irresistible power. The Charter would
give them no less. In every constituent body throughout the empire
the working men will, if we grant the prayer of this petition, be an
irresistible majority. In every constituent body capital will be placed
at the feet of labour; knowledge will be borne down by ignorance; and is
it possible to doubt what the result must be? The honourable Member for
Bath and the honourable Member for Rochdale are now considered as very
democratic members of Parliament. They would occupy a very different
position in a House of Commons elected by universal suffrage, if they
succeeded in obtaining seats. They would, I believe, honestly oppose
every attempt to rob the public creditor. They would manfully say,
"Justice and the public good require that this sum of thirty millions
a year should be paid;" and they would immediately be reviled as
aristocrats, monopolists, oppressors of the poor, defenders of old
abuses. And as to land, is it possible to believe that the millions who
have been so long and loudly told that the land is their estate, and is
wrongfully kept from them, should not, when they have supreme power, use
that power to enforce what they think their rights? What could follow
but one vast spoliation? One vast spoliation! That would be bad enough.
That would be the greatest calamity that ever fell on our country. Yet
would that a single vast spoliation were the worst! No, Sir; in the
lowest deep there would be a lower deep. The first spoliation would not
be the last. How could it? All the causes which had produced the first
spoliation would still operate. They would operate more powerfully than
before. The distress would be far greater than before. The fences which
now protect property would all have been broken through, levelled, swept
away. The new proprietors would have no title to show to anything that
they held except recent robbery. With what face then could they complain
of being robbed? What would be the end of these things? Our experience,
God be praised, does not enable us to predict it with certainty. We can
only guess. My guess is that we should see something more horrible than
can be imagined--something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger
scale. There would be many millions of human beings, crowded in a narrow
space, deprived of all those resources which alone had made it possible
for them to exist in so narrow a space; trade gone; manufactures gone;
credit gone. What could they do but fight for the mere sustenance
of nature, and tear each other to pieces till famine, and pestilence
following in the train of famine, came to turn the terrible commotion
into a more terrible repose? The best event, the very best event, that I
can anticipate,--and what must the state of things be, if an Englishman
and a Whig calls such an event the very best? --the very best event,
I say, that I can anticipate is that out of the confusion a strong
military despotism may arise, and that the sword, firmly grasped by some
rough hand, may give a sort of protection to the miserable wreck of all
that immense prosperity and glory. But, as to the noble institutions
under which our country has made such progress in liberty, in wealth,
in knowledge, in arts, do not deceive yourselves into the belief that
we should ever see them again. We should never see them again. We should
not deserve to see them. All those nations which envy our greatness
would insult our downfall, a downfall which would be all our own work;
and the history of our calamities would be told thus: England had
institutions which, though imperfect, yet contained within themselves
the means of remedying every imperfection; those institutions her
legislators wantonly and madly threw away; nor could they urge in their
excuse even the wretched plea that they were deceived by false promises;
for, in the very petition with the prayer of which they were weak enough
to comply, they were told, in the plainest terms, that public ruin would
be the effect of their compliance.

Thinking thus, Sir, I will oppose, with every faculty which God has
given me, every motion which directly or indirectly tends to the
granting of universal suffrage. This motion I think, tends that way.
If any gentleman here is prepared to vote for universal suffrage with a
full view of all the consequences of universal suffrage as they are set
forth in this petition, he acts with perfect consistency in voting for
this motion. But, I must say, I heard with some surprise the honourable
baronet the Member for Leicester (Sir John Easthope. ) say that, though
he utterly disapproves of the petition, though he thinks of it just as
I do, he wishes the petitioners to be heard at the bar in explanation
of their opinions. I conceive that their opinions are quite sufficiently
explained already; and to such opinions I am not disposed to pay any
extraordinary mark of respect. I shall give a clear and conscientious
vote against the motion of the honourable Member for Finsbury; and I
conceive that the petitioners will have much less reason to complain
of my open hostility than of the conduct of the honourable Member, who
tries to propitiate them by consenting to hear their oratory, but has
fully made up his mind not to comply with their demands.

*****




THE GATES OF SOMNAUTH. (MARCH 9, 1843) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF MARCH 1843.

On the ninth of March 1843, Mr Vernon Smith, Member for Northampton,
made the following motion:

"That this House, having regard to the high and important functions
of the Governor General of India, the mixed character of the native
population, and the recent measures of the Court of Directors for
discontinuing any seeming sanction to idolatry in India, is of opinion
that the conduct of Lord Ellenborough in issuing the General Orders of
the sixteenth of November 1842, and in addressing the letter of the same
date to all the chiefs, princes, and people of India, respecting the
restoration of the gates of a temple to Somnauth, is unwise, indecorous,
and reprehensible. "

Mr Emerson Tennent, Secretary of the Board of Control, opposed the
motion. In reply to him the following Speech was made.

The motion was rejected by 242 votes to 157.

Mr Speaker,--If the practice of the honourable gentleman, the Secretary
of the Board of Control, had been in accordance with his precepts, if he
had not, after exhorting us to confine ourselves strictly to the subject
before us, rambled far from that subject, I should have refrained from
all digression. For and truth there is abundance to be said touching
both the substance and the style of this Proclamation. I cannot,
however, leave the honourable gentleman's peroration entirely unnoticed.
But I assure him that I do not mean to wander from the question before
us to any great distance or for any long time.

I cannot but wonder, Sir, that he who has, on this, as on former
occasions, exhibited so much ability and acuteness, should have gravely
represented it as a ground of complaint, that my right honourable
friend the Member for Northampton has made this motion in the Governor
General's absence. Does the honourable gentleman mean that this House
is to be interdicted from ever considering in what manner Her Majesty's
Asiatic subjects, a hundred millions in number, are governed? And how
can we consider how they are governed without considering the conduct
of him who is governing them? And how can we consider the conduct of him
who is governing them, except in his absence? For my own part, I can say
for myself, and I may, I doubt not, say for my right honourable friend
the Member for Northampton, that we both of us wish, with all our hearts
and souls, that we were discussing this question in the presence of
Lord Ellenborough. Would to heaven, Sir, for the sake of the credit of
England, and of the interests of India, that the noble lord were at this
moment under our gallery! But, Sir, if there be any Governor who has
no right to complain of remarks made on him in his absence, it is that
Governor who, forgetting all official decorum, forgetting how important
it is that, while the individuals who serve the State are changed, the
State should preserve its identity, inserted in a public proclamation
reflections on his predecessor, a predecessor of whom, on the present
occasion, I will only say that his conduct had deserved a very different
return. I am confident that no enemy of Lord Auckland, if Lord Auckland
has an enemy in the House, will deny that, whatever faults he may
have committed, he was faultless with respect to Lord Ellenborough. No
brother could have laboured more assiduously for the interests and
the honour of a brother than Lord Auckland laboured to facilitate Lord
Ellenborough's arduous task, to prepare for Lord Ellenborough the
means of obtaining success and glory. And what was the requital? A
proclamation by Lord Ellenborough, stigmatising the conduct of Lord
Auckland. And, Sir, since the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the
Board of Control has thought fit to divert the debate from its proper
course, I will venture to request that he, or the honourable director
who sits behind him (Sir James Hogg. ), will vouchsafe to give us some
explanations on an important point to which allusion has been made.
Lord Ellenborough has been accused of having publicly announced that our
troops were about to evacuate Afghanistan before he had ascertained that
our captive countrymen and countrywomen had been restored to liberty.
This accusation, which is certainly a serious one, the honourable
gentleman, the Secretary of the Board of Control, pronounces to be a
mere calumny. Now, Sir, the proclamation which announces the withdrawing
of the troops bears date the first of October 1842. What I wish to know
is, whether any member of the Government, or of the Court of Directors,
will venture to affirm that on the first of October 1842, the Governor
General knew that the prisoners had been set at liberty? I believe that
no member either of the Government or of the Court of Directors will
venture to affirm any such thing. It seems certain that on the first
of October the Governor General could not know that the prisoners were
safe. Nevertheless, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board
of Control assures us that, when the proclamation was drawn up, the
Governor General did know that the prisoners were safe. What is the
inevitable consequence? It is this, that the date is a false date, that
the proclamation was written after the first of October, and antedated?
And for what reason was it antedated? I am almost ashamed to tell
the House what I believe to have been the reason. I believe that Lord
Ellenborough affixed the false date of the first of October to his
proclamation because Lord Auckland's manifesto against Afghanistan was
dated on the first of October. I believe that Lord Ellenborough wished
to make the contrast between his own success and his predecessor's
failure more striking, and that for the sake of this paltry, this
childish, triumph, he antedated his proclamation, and made it appear to
all Europe and all Asia that the English Government was indifferent
to the fate of Englishmen and Englishwomen who were in a miserable
captivity. If this be so, and I shall be surprised to hear any person
deny that it is so, I must say that by this single act, by writing those
words, the first of October, the Governor General proved himself to be a
man of an ill-regulated mind, a man unfit for high public trust.

I might, Sir, if I chose to follow the example of the honourable
gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, advert to many other
matters. I might call the attention of the House to the systematic
manner in which the Governor General has exerted himself to lower
the character and to break the spirit of that civil service on the
respectability and efficiency of which chiefly depends the happiness of
a hundred millions of human beings. I might say much about the financial
committee which he appointed in the hope of finding out blunders of his
predecessor, but which at last found out no blunders except his own.