If he votes with them, he votes for
persecuting what he himself believes to be the truth.
persecuting what he himself believes to be the truth.
Macaulay
(JULY 9, 1845) A SPEECH
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF JULY 1845.
On the first of May, 1845, Mr Rutherford, Member for Leith, obtained
leave to bring in a bill to regulate admission to the Secular Chairs
in the Universities of Scotland. On the morning of the sixth of May the
bill was read a first time, and remained two months on the table of the
House. At length the second reading was fixed for the ninth of July. Mr
Rutherfurd was unable to attend on that day: and it was necessary that
one of his friends should supply his place. Accordingly, as soon as the
Order of the Day had been read, the following Speech was made.
On a division the bill was rejected by 116 votes to 108. But, in the
state in which parties then were, this defeat was generally considered
as a victory.
Mr Speaker,--I have been requested by my honourable and learned friend,
the Member for Leith, to act as his substitute on this occasion. I am
truly sorry that any substitute should be necessary. I am truly sorry
that he is not among us to take charge of the bill which he not long ago
introduced with one of the most forcible and luminous speeches that I
ever had the pleasure of hearing. His audience was small; but the few
who formed that audience cannot have forgotten the effect which his
arguments and his eloquence produced. The Ministers had come down to
resist his motion: but their courage failed them: they hesitated: they
conferred together: at last they consented that he should have leave
to bring in his bill. Such, indeed, was the language which they held on
that and on a subsequent occasion, that both my honourable and learned
friend and myself gave them more credit than they deserved. We really
believed that they had resolved to offer no opposition to a law which it
was quite evident that they perceived to be just and beneficial. But
we have been disappointed. It has been notified to us that the whole
influence of the Government is to be exerted against our bill. In such
discouraging circumstances it is that I rise to move the second reading.
Yet, Sir, I do not altogether despair of success. When I consider what
strong, what irresistible reasons we have to urge, I can hardly think
it possible that the mandate of the most powerful administration can
prevail against them. Nay, I should consider victory, not merely
as probable, but as certain, if I did not know how imperfect is the
information which English gentlemen generally possess concerning Scotch
questions. It is because I know this that I think it my duty to depart
from the ordinary practice, and, instead of simply moving the second
reading, to explain at some length the principles on which this bill has
been framed. I earnestly entreat those English Members who were not so
fortunate as to hear the speech of my honourable and learned friend, the
Member for Leith to favour me with their attention. They will, I think,
admit, that I have a right to be heard with indulgence. I have been sent
to this house by a great city which was once a capital, the abode of a
Sovereign, the place where the Estates of a realm held their sittings.
For the general good of the empire, Edinburgh descended from that high
eminence. But, ceasing to be a political metropolis, she became an
intellectual metropolis. For the loss of a Court, of a Privy Council, of
a Parliament, she found compensation in the prosperity and splendour of
an University renowned to the farthest ends of the earth as a school of
physical and moral science. This noble and beneficent institution is now
threatened with ruin by the folly of the Government, and by the violence
of an ecclesiastical faction which is bent on persecution without having
the miserable excuse of fanaticism. Nor is it only the University of
Edinburgh that is in danger. In pleading for that University, I plead
for all the great academical institutions of Scotland. The fate of all
depends on the event of this debate; and, in the name of all, I demand
the attention of every man who loves either learning or religious
liberty.
The first question which we have to consider is, whether the principles
of the bill be sound. I believe that they are sound; and I am quite
confident that nobody who sits on the Treasury Bench will venture to
pronounce them unsound. It does not lie in the mouths of the Ministers
to say that literary instruction and scientific instruction are
inseparably connected with religious instruction. It is not for them to
rail against Godless Colleges. It is not for them to talk with horror of
the danger of suffering young men to listen to the lectures of an Arian
professor of Botany or of a Popish professor of Chemistry. They are
themselves at this moment setting up in Ireland a system exactly
resembling the system which we wish to set up in Scotland. Only a few
hours have elapsed since they were themselves labouring to prove that,
in a country in which a large proportion of those who require a liberal
education are dissenters from the Established Church, it is desirable
that there should be schools without theological tests. The right
honourable Baronet at the head of the Government proposes that in the
new colleges which he is establishing at Belfast, Cork, Limerick, and
Galway, the professorships shall be open to men of every creed: and
he has strenuously defended that part of his plan against attacks from
opposite quarters, against the attacks of zealous members of the Church
of England, and of zealous members of the Church of Rome. Only the day
before yesterday the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon (Sir
Thomas Acland. ) ventured to suggest a test as unobjectionable as a test
could well be. He would merely have required the professors to declare
their general belief in the divine authority of the Old and New
Testaments. But even this amendment the First Lord of the Treasury
resisted, and I think quite rightly. He told us that it was quite
unnecessary to institute an inquisition into the religious opinions of
people whose business was merely to teach secular knowledge, and that it
was absurd to imagine that any man of learning would disgrace and ruin
himself by preaching infidelity from the Greek chair or the Mathematical
chair.
Some members of this House certainly held very different language: but
their arguments made as little impression on Her Majesty's Ministers as
on me. We were told with the utmost earnestness that secular knowledge,
unaccompanied by a sound religious faith, and unsanctified by religious
feeling, was not only useless, but positively noxious, a curse to the
possessor, a curse to society. I feel the greatest personal kindness and
respect for some gentlemen who hold this language. But they must pardon
me if I say that the proposition which they have so confidently laid
down, however well it may sound in pious ears while it is expressed in
general terms, to be too monstrous, too ludicrous, for grave refutation.
Is it seriously meant that, if the Captain of an Indiaman is a Socinian,
it would be better for himself, his crew, and his passengers, that he
should not know how to use his quadrant and his chronometers? Is it
seriously meant that, if a druggist is a Swedenborgian, it would
be better for himself and his customers that he should not know the
difference between Epsom salts and oxalic acid? A hundred millions of
the Queen's Asiatic subjects are Mahometans and Pagans. Is it seriously
meant that it is desirable that they should be as ignorant as the
aboriginal inhabitants of New South Wales, that they should have no
alphabet, that they should have no arithmetic, that they should not know
how to build a bridge, how to sink a well, how to irrigate a field? If
it be true that secular knowledge, unsanctified by true religion, is
a positive evil, all these consequences follow. Yet surely they are
consequences from which every sane mind must recoil. It is a great evil,
no doubt, that a man should be a heretic or an atheist. But I am quite
at a loss to understand how this evil is mitigated by his not knowing
that the earth moves round the sun, that by the help of a lever, a small
power will lift a great weight, that Virginia is a republic, or that
Paris is the capital of France.
On these grounds, Sir, I have cordially supported the Irish Colleges
Bill. But the principle of the Irish Colleges and the principle of the
bill which I hold in my hand are exactly the same: and the House and the
country have a right to know why the authors of the former bill are the
opponents of the latter bill. One distinction there is, I admit, between
Ireland and Scotland. It is true that in Scotland there is no clamour
against the Union with England. It is true that in Scotland no demagogue
can obtain applause and riches by slandering and reviling the English
people. It is true that in Scotland there is no traitor who would dare
to say that he regards the enemies of the state as his allies. In every
extremity the Scottish nation will be found faithful to the common cause
of the empire. But Her Majesty's Ministers will hardly I think, venture
to say that this is their reason for refusing to Scotland the boon which
they propose to confer on Ireland. And yet, if this be not their reason,
what reason can we find? Observe how strictly analogous the cases are.
You give it as a reason for establishing in Ireland colleges without
tests that the Established Church of Ireland is the Church of the
minority. Unhappily it may well be doubted whether the Established
Church of Scotland, too, be not now, thanks to your policy, the Church
of the minority. It is true that the members of the Established Church
of Scotland are about a half of the whole population of Scotland; and
that the members of the Established Church of Ireland are not much more
than a tenth of the whole population of Ireland. But the question now
before us does not concern the whole population. It concerns only the
class which requires academical education: and I do not hesitate to say
that, in the class which requires academical education, in the class for
the sake of which universities exist, the proportion of persons who
do not belong to the Established Church is as great in Scotland as in
Ireland. You tell us that sectarian education in Ireland is an evil. Is
it less an evil in Scotland? You tell us that it is desirable that the
Protestant and the Roman Catholic should study together at Cork. Is it
less desirable that the son of an elder of the Established Church
and the son of an elder of the Free Church should study together at
Edinburgh? You tell us that it is not reasonable to require from a
Professor of Astronomy or Surgery in Connaught a declaration that
he believes in the Gospels. On what ground, then, can you think it
reasonable to require from every Professor in Scotland a declaration
that he approves of the Presbyterian form of church government? I defy
you, with all your ingenuity, to find one argument, one rhetorical
topic, against our bill which may not be used with equal effect against
your own Irish Colleges Bill.
Is there any peculiarity in the academical system of Scotland which
makes these tests necessary? Certainly not. The academical system of
Scotland has its peculiarities; but they are peculiarities which are not
in harmony with these tests, peculiarities which jar with these tests.
It is an error to imagine that, by passing this bill, we shall establish
a precedent which will lead to a change in the constitution of the
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Whether such a change be or be not
desirable is a question which must be decided on grounds quite distinct
from those on which we rest our case. I entreat English gentlemen not to
be misled by the word University. That word means two different things
on the two different sides of the Tweed. The academical authorities at
Cambridge and Oxford stand in a parental relation to the student. They
undertake, not merely to instruct him in philology, geometry, natural
philosophy, but to form his religious opinions, and to watch over his
morals. He is to be bred a Churchman. At Cambridge, he cannot graduate,
at Oxford, I believe, he cannot matriculate, without declaring himself
a Churchman. The College is a large family. An undergraduate is lodged
either within the gates, or in some private house licensed and regulated
by the academical authorities. He is required to attend public worship
according to the forms of the Church of England several times every
week. It is the duty of one officer to note the absence of young men
from divine service, of another to note their absence from the public
table, of another to report those who return home at unseasonably late
hours. An academical police parade the streets at night to seize upon
any unlucky reveller who may be found drunk or in bad company. There are
punishments of various degrees for irregularities of conduct. Sometimes
the offender has to learn a chapter of the Greek Testament; sometimes
he is confined to his college; sometimes he is publicly reprimanded:
for grave offences he is rusticated or expelled. Now, Sir, whether this
system be good or bad, efficient or inefficient, I will not now inquire.
This is evident; that religious tests are perfectly in harmony with such
a system. Christ Church and King's College undertake to instruct every
young man who goes to them in the doctrines of the Church of England,
and to see that he regularly attends the worship of the Church of
England. Whether this ought to be so, I repeat, I will not now inquire:
but, while it is so, nothing can be more reasonable than to require from
the rulers of Christ Church and King's College some declaration that
they are themselves members of the Church of England.
The character of the Scotch universities is altogether different. There
you have no functionaries resembling the Vice-Chancellors and Proctors,
the Heads of Houses, Tutors and Deans, whom I used to cap at Cambridge.
There is no chapel; there is no academical authority entitled to ask a
young man whether he goes to the parish church or the Quaker meeting, to
synagogue or to mass. With his moral conduct the university has nothing
to do. The Principal and the whole Academical Senate cannot put any
restraint, or inflict any punishment, on a lad whom they may see lying
dead drunk in the High Street of Edinburgh. In truth, a student at a
Scotch university is in a situation closely resembling that of a medical
student in London. There are great numbers of youths in London who
attend St George's Hospital, or St Bartholomew's Hospital. One of these
youths may also go to Albermarle Street to hear Mr Faraday lecture on
chemistry, or to Willis's rooms to hear Mr Carlyle lecture on German
literature. On the Sunday he goes perhaps to church, perhaps to the
Roman Catholic chapel, perhaps to the Tabernacle, perhaps nowhere. None
of the gentlemen whose lectures he has attended during the week has the
smallest right to tell him where he shall worship, or to punish him for
gambling in hells, or tippling in cider cellars. Surely we must all feel
that it would be the height of absurdity to require Mr Faraday and Mr
Carlyle to subscribe a confession of faith before they lecture; and
in what does their situation differ from the situation of the Scotch
professor.
In the peculiar character of the Scotch universities, therefore, I find
a strong reason for the passing of this bill. I find a reason stronger
still when I look at the terms of the engagements which exist between
the English and Scotch nations.
Some gentlemen, I see, think that I am venturing on dangerous ground. We
have been told, in confident tones, that, if we pass this bill, we shall
commit a gross breach of public faith, we shall violate the Treaty
of Union, and the Act of Security. With equal confidence, and with
confidence much better grounded, I affirm that the Treaty of Union and
the Act of Security not only do not oblige us to reject this bill, but
do oblige us to pass this bill, or some bill nearly resembling this.
This proposition seems to be regarded by the Ministers as paradoxical:
but I undertake to prove it by the plainest and fairest argument. I
shall resort to no chicanery. If I did think that the safety of the
commonwealth required that we should violate the Treaty of Union,
I would violate it openly, and defend my conduct on the ground of
necessity. It may, in an extreme case, be our duty to break our
compacts. It never can be our duty to quibble them away. What I say
is that the Treaty of Union, construed, not with the subtlety of a
pettifogger, but according to the spirit, binds us to pass this bill or
some similar bill.
By the Treaty of Union it was covenanted that no person should be a
teacher or office-bearer in the Scotch Universities who should not
declare that he conformed to the worship and polity of the Established
Church of Scotland. What Church was meant by the two contracting
parties? What Church was meant, more especially, by the party to the
side of which we ought always to lean, I mean the weaker party? Surely
the Church established in 1707, when the Union took place. Is then,
the Church of Scotland at the present moment constituted, on all points
which the members of that Church think essential, exactly as it was
constituted in 1707? Most assuredly not.
Every person who knows anything of the ecclesiastical history of
Scotland knows that, ever since the Reformation, the great body of the
Presbyterians of that country have held that congregations ought to have
a share in the appointment of their ministers. This principle is laid
down most distinctly in the First Book of Discipline, drawn up by John
Knox. It is laid down, though not quite so strongly, in the Second Book
of Discipline, drawn up by Andrew Melville. And I beg gentlemen, English
gentlemen, to observe that in Scotland this is not regarded as a matter
of mere expediency. All staunch Presbyterians think that the flock is
entitled, jure divino, to a voice in the appointment of the pastor, and
that to force a pastor on a parish to which he is unacceptable is a sin
as much forbidden by the Word of God as idolatry or perjury. I am quite
sure that I do not exaggerate when I say that the highest of our
high churchmen at Oxford cannot attach more importance to episcopal
government and episcopal ordination than many thousands of Scotchmen,
shrewd men, respectable men, men who fear God and honour the Queen,
attach to this right of the people.
When, at the time of the Revolution, the Presbyterian worship and
discipline were established in Scotland, the question of patronage was
settled by a compromise, which was far indeed from satisfying men of
extreme opinions, but which was generally accepted. An Act, passed
at Edinburgh, in 1690, transferred what we should call in England the
advowsons from the old patrons to parochial councils, composed of the
elders and the Protestant landowners. This system, however imperfect
it might appear to such rigid Covenanters as Davie Deans and Gifted
Gilfillan, worked satisfactorily; and the Scotch nation seems to have
been contented with its ecclesiastical polity when the Treaty of Union
was concluded. By that treaty the ecclesiastical polity of Scotland was
declared to be unalterable. Nothing, therefore, can be more clear
than that the Parliament of Great Britain was bound by the most sacred
obligations not to revive those rights of patronage which the Parliament
of Scotland had abolished.
But, Sir, the Union had not lasted five years when our ancestors were
guilty of a great violation of public faith. The history of that great
fault and of its consequences is full of interest and instruction. The
wrong was committed hastily, and with contumelious levity. The offenders
were doubtless far from foreseeing that their offence would be visited
on the third and fourth generation; that we should be paying in 1845 the
penalty of what they did in 1712.
In 1712, Sir, the Whigs, who were the chief authors of the Union, had
been driven from power. The prosecution of Sacheverell had made them
odious to the nation. The general election of 1710 had gone against
them. Tory statesmen were in office. Tory squires formed more than
five-sixths of this House. The party which was uppermost thought that
England had, in 1707, made a bad bargain, a bargain so bad that it could
hardly be considered as binding. The guarantee so solemnly given to
the Church of Scotland was a subject of loud and bitter complaint.
The Ministers hated that Church much; and their chief supporters, the
country gentlemen and country clergymen of England, hated it still more.
Numerous petty insults were offered to the opinions, or, if you please,
the prejudices of the Presbyterians. At length it was determined to go
further, and to restore to the old patrons those rights which had been
taken away in 1690. A bill was brought into this House, the history
of which you may trace in our Journals. Some of the entries are very
significant. In spite of all remonstrances the Tory majority would not
hear of delay. The Whig minority struggled hard, appealed to the act of
Union and the Act of Security, and insisted on having both those Acts
read at the table. The bill passed this House, however, before the
people of Scotland knew that it had been brought in. For there were then
neither reporters nor railroads; and intelligence from Westminster
was longer in travelling to Cambridge than it now is in travelling
to Aberdeen. The bill was in the House of Lords before the Church
of Scotland could make her voice heard. Then came a petition from a
committee appointed by the General Assembly to watch over the interests
of religion while the General Assembly itself was not sitting. The first
name attached to that petition is the name of Principal Carstairs, a man
who had stood high in the esteem and favour of William the Third, and
who had borne a chief part in establishing the Presbyterian Church in
Scotland. Carstairs and his colleagues appealed to the Act of Union, and
implored the peers not to violate that Act. But party spirit ran high;
public faith was disregarded: patronage was restored. To that breach
of the Treaty of Union are to be directly ascribed all the schisms that
have since rent the Church of Scotland.
I will not detain the House by giving a minute account of those schisms.
It is enough to say that the law of patronage produced, first the
secession of 1733 and the establishment of the Associate Synod, then the
secession of 1752 and the establishment of the Relief Synod, and finally
the great secession of 1843 and the establishment of the Free Church.
Only two years have elapsed since we saw, with mingled admiration and
pity, a spectacle worthy of the best ages of the Church. Four hundred
and seventy ministers resigned their stipends, quitted their manses, and
went forth committing themselves, their wives, their children, to the
care of Providence. Their congregations followed them by thousands, and
listened eagerly to the Word of Life in tents, in barns, or on those
hills and moors where the stubborn Presbyterians of a former generation
had prayed and sung their psalms in defiance of the boot of Lauderdale
and of the sword of Dundee. The rich gave largely of their riches. The
poor contributed with the spirit of her who put her two mites into the
treasury of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, in all the churches of large towns, of
whole counties, the established clergy were preaching to empty benches.
And of these secessions every one may be distinctly traced to that
violation of the Treaty of Union which was committed in 1712.
This, Sir, is the true history of dissent in Scotland: and, this being
so, how can any man have the front to invoke the Treaty of Union and the
Act of Security against those who are devotedly attached to that system
which the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security were designed to
protect, and who are seceders only because the Treaty of Union and the
Act of Security have been infringed? I implore gentlemen to reflect on
the manner in which they and their fathers have acted towards the Scotch
Presbyterians. First you bind yourselves by the most solemn obligations
to maintain unaltered their Church as it was constituted in 1707.
Five years later you alter the constitution of their Church in a point
regarded by them as essential. In consequence of your breach of faith
secession after secession takes place, till at length the Church of
the State ceases to be the Church of the People. Then you begin to be
squeamish. Then those articles of the Treaty of Union which, when they
really were obligatory, you outrageously violated, now when they are
no longer obligatory, now when it is no longer in your power to observe
them according to the spirit, are represented as inviolable. You first,
by breaking your word, turn hundreds of thousands of Churchmen into
Dissenters; and then you punish them for being Dissenters, because,
forsooth, you never break your word. If your consciences really are so
tender, why do you not repeal the Act of 1712? Why do you not put the
Church of Scotland back into the same situation in which she was in
1707. We have had occasion more than once in the course of this session
to admire the casuistical skill of Her Majesty's Ministers. But I must
say that even their scruple about slave-grown sugar, though that scruple
is the laughing-stock of all Europe and all America, is respectable
when compared with their scruple about the Treaty of Union. Is there the
slightest doubt that every compact ought to be construed according to
the sense in which it was understood by those who made it? And is there
the slightest doubt as to the sense in which the compact between England
and Scotland was understood by those who made it? Suppose that we could
call up from their graves the Presbyterian divines who then sate in the
General Assembly. Suppose that we could call up Carstairs; that we could
call up Boston, the author of the Fourfold State; that we could relate
to them the history of the ecclesiastical revolutions which have, since
their time, taken place in Scotland; and that we could then ask them,
"Is the Established Church, or is the Free Church, identical with the
Church which existed at the time of the Union? " Is it not quite certain
what their answer would be? They would say, "Our Church, the Church
which you promised to maintain unalterable, was not the Church which you
protect, but the Church which you oppress. Our Church was the Church of
Chalmers and Brewster, not the Church of Bryce and Muir. "
It is true, Sir, that the Presbyterian dissenters are not the only
dissenters whom this bill will relieve. By the law, as it now stands,
all persons who refuse to declare their approbation of the synodical
polity, that is to say, all persons who refuse to declare that they
consider episcopal government and episcopal ordination as, at least,
matters altogether indifferent, are incapable of holding academical
office in Scotland. Now, Sir, will any gentleman who loves the Church
of England vote for maintaining this law? If, indeed, he were bound by
public faith to maintain this law, I admit that he would have no choice.
But I have proved, unless I greatly deceive myself, that he is not
bound by public faith to maintain this law? Can he then conscientiously
support the Ministers to-night?
If he votes with them, he votes for
persecuting what he himself believes to be the truth. He holds out
to the members of his own Church lures to tempt them to renounce that
Church, and to join themselves to a Church which he considers as less
pure. We may differ as to the propriety of imposing penalties and
disabilities on heretics. But surely we shall agree in thinking that we
ought not to punish men for orthodoxy.
I know, Sir, that there are many gentlemen who dislike innovation merely
as innovation, and would be glad always to keep things as they are now.
Even to this class of persons I will venture to appeal. I assure them
that we are not the innovators. I assure them that our object is to keep
things as they are and as they have long been. In form, I own, we are
proposing a change; but in truth we are resisting a change. The question
really is, not whether we shall remove old tests, but whether we shall
impose new ones. The law which we seek to repeal has long been obsolete.
So completely have the tests been disused that, only the other day, the
right honourable Baronet, the Secretary for the Home Department,
when speaking in favour of the Irish Colleges Bill, told us that the
Government was not making a rash experiment. "Our plan," he said, "has
already been tried at Edinburgh and has succeeded. At Edinburgh the
tests have been disused near a hundred years. " As to Glasgow the
gentlemen opposite can give us full information from their own
experience. For there are at least three members of the Cabinet who have
been Lords Rectors; the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Secretaries
for the Home Department and the Colonial Department. They never took
the test. They probably would not have taken it; for they are all
Episcopalians. In fact, they belong to the very class which the test
was especially meant to exclude. The test was not meant to exclude
Presbyterian dissenters; for the Presbyterian Church was not yet rent
by any serious schism. Nor was the test meant to exclude the Roman
Catholics; for against the Roman Catholics there was already abundant
security. The Protestant Episcopalian was the enemy against whom it was,
in 1707, thought peculiarly necessary to take precautions. That those
precautions have long been disused the three members of the Cabinet whom
I mentioned can certify.
On a sudden the law, which had long slept a deep sleep, has been
awakened, stirred up, and put into vigorous action. These obsolete tests
are now, it seems, to be exacted with severity. And why? Simply because
an event has taken place which makes them ten times as unjust and
oppressive as they would have been formerly. They were not required
while the Established Church was the Church of the majority. They are
to be required solely because a secession has taken place which has made
the Established Church the Church of the minority. While they could have
done little mischief they were suffered to lie neglected. They are now
to be used, because a time has come at which they cannot be used without
fatal consequences.
It is impossible for me to speak without indignation of those who have
taken the lead in the work of persecution. Yet I must give them credit
for courage. They have selected as their object of attack no less a man
than Sir David Brewster, Principal of the University of Saint Andrews.
I hold in my hand the libel, as it is technically called, in which a
Presbytery of the Established Church demands that Sir David, for the
crime of adhering to that ecclesiastical polity which was guaranteed to
his country by the Act of Union, shall be "removed from his office, and
visited with such other censure or punishment as the laws of the
Church enjoin, for the glory of God, the safety of the Church, and
the prosperity of the University, and to deter others holding the same
important office from committing the like offence in all time coming,
but that others may hear and fear the danger and detriment of following
divisive courses. " Yes; for the glory of God, the safety of the Church,
and the prosperity of the University. What right, Sir, have the
authors of such an instrument as this to raise their voices against the
insolence and intolerance of the Vatican? The glory of God! As to that,
I will only say that this is not the first occasion on which the glory
of God has been made a pretext for the injustice of man. The safety of
the Church! Sir, if, which God forbid, that Church is really possessed
by the evil spirit which actuates this Presbytery; if that Church,
having recently lost hundreds of able ministers and hundreds of
thousands of devout hearers, shall, instead of endeavouring, by
meekness, and by redoubled diligence, to regain those whom she has
estranged, give them new provocation; if she shall sharpen against them
an old law the edge of which has long rusted off, and which, when it
was first made, was made not for her defence, but for theirs; then I
pronounce the days of that Church numbered. As to the prosperity of the
University, is there a corner of Europe where men of science will not
laugh when they hear that the prosperity of the University of Saint
Andrews is to be promoted by expelling Sir David Brewster on account
of a theological squabble? The professors of Edinburgh know better
than this Presbytery how the prosperity of a seat of learning is to be
promoted. There the Academic Senate is almost unanimous in favour of
the bill. And indeed it is quite certain that, unless this bill, or some
similar bill, be passed, a new college will soon be founded and endowed
with that munificence of which the history of the Free Church furnishes
so many examples. From the day on which such an university arises, the
old universities must decline. Now, they are practically national, and
not sectarian, institutions. And yet, even now, the emoluments of a
professorship are so much smaller than those which ability and industry
can obtain in other ways, that it is difficult to find eminent men to
fill the chairs. And if there be this difficulty now, when students of
all religious persuasions attend the lectures, what is likely to happen
when all the members of the Free Church go elsewhere for instruction?
If there be this difficulty when you have all the world to choose
professors from, what is likely to happen when your choice is narrowed
to less than one-half of Scotland? As the professorships become poorer,
the professors will become less competent. As the professors become
less competent, the classes will become thinner. As the classes become
thinner, the professorships will again become poorer. The decline
will become rapid and headlong. In a short time, the lectures will be
delivered to empty rooms: the grass will grow in the courts: and men
not fit to be village dominies will occupy the chairs of Adam Smith and
Dugald Stewart, of Reid and Black, of Playfair and Jamieson.
How do Her Majesty's Ministers like such a prospect as this! Already
they have, whether by their fault or their misfortune I will not now
inquire, secured for themselves an unenviable place in the history
of Scotland. Their names are already inseparably associated with
the disruption of her Church. Are those names to be as inseparably
associated with the ruin of her Universities?
If the Government were consistent in error, some respect might be
mingled with our disapprobation. But a Government which is guided by no
principle; a Government which, on the gravest questions, does not know
its own mind twenty-four hours together; a Government which is against
tests at Cork, and for tests at Glasgow, against tests at Belfast, and
for tests at Edinburgh, against tests on the Monday, for them on the
Wednesday, against them again on the Thursday--how can such a Government
command esteem or confidence? How can the Ministers wonder that their
uncertain and capricious liberality fails to obtain the applause of
the liberal party? What right have they to complain if they lose the
confidence of half the nation without gaining the confidence of the
other half?
But I do not speak to the Government. I speak to the House. I appeal
to those who, on Monday last, voted with the Ministers against the test
proposed by the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon. I know
what is due to party ties. But there is a mire so black and so deep
that no leader has a right to drag his followers through it. It is only
forty-eight hours since honourable gentlemen were brought down to the
House to vote against requiring the professors in the Irish Colleges to
make a declaration of belief in the Gospel: and now the same gentlemen
are expected to come down and to vote that no man shall be a professor
in a Scottish college who does not declare himself a Calvinist and a
Presbyterian. Flagrant as is the injustice with which the ministers have
on this occasion treated Scotland, the injustice with which they have
treated their own supporters is more flagrant still. I call on all
who voted with the Government on Monday to consider whether they can
consistently and honourably vote with the Government to-night: I call on
all members of the Church of England to ponder well before they make it
penal to be a member of the Church of England; and, lastly, I call on
every man of every sect and party who loves science and letters, who is
solicitous for the public tranquillity, who respects the public faith,
to stand by us in this our hard struggle to avert the ruin which
threatens the Universities of Scotland. I move that this bill be now
read a second time.
*****
CORN LAWS. (DECEMBER 2, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON THE 2D
OF DECEMBER 1845.
The following Speech was delivered at a public meeting held at Edinburgh
on the second of December, 1845, for the purpose of petitioning Her
Majesty to open the ports of the United Kingdom for the free admission
of corn and other food.
My Lord Provost and Gentlemen,--You will, I hope, believe that I am
deeply sensible of the kindness with which you have received me. I only
beg that you will continue to extend your indulgence to me, if it should
happen that my voice should fail me in the attempt to address you. I
have thought it my duty to obey your summons, though I am hardly equal
to the exertion of public speaking, and though I am so situated that I
can pass only a few hours among you. But it seemed to me that this was
not an ordinary meeting or an ordinary crisis. It seemed to me that
a great era had arrived, and that, at such a conjuncture, you were
entitled to know the opinions and intentions of one who has the honour
of being your representative.
With respect to the past, gentlemen, I have perhaps a little to explain,
but certainly nothing to repent or to retract. My opinions, from the
day on which I entered public life, have never varied. I have always
considered the principle of protection of agriculture as a vicious
principle. I have always thought that this vicious principle took,
in the Act of 1815, in the Act of 1828, and in the Act of 1842, a
singularly vicious form. This I declared twelve years ago, when I stood
for Leeds: this I declared in May 1839, when I first presented myself
before you; and when, a few months later, Lord Melbourne invited me to
become a member of his Government, I distinctly told him that, in office
or out of office, I must vote for the total repeal of the corn laws.
But in the year 1841 a very peculiar crisis arrived. There was reason to
hope that it might be possible to effect a compromise, which would not
indeed wholly remove the evils inseparable from a system of protection,
but which would greatly mitigate them. There were some circumstances in
the financial situation of the country which led those who were then the
advisers of the Crown to hope that they might be able to get rid of
the sliding scale, and to substitute for it a moderate fixed duty. We
proposed a duty of eight shillings a quarter on wheat. The Parliament
refused even to consider our plan. Her Majesty appealed to the people.
I presented myself before you; and you will bear me witness that I
disguised nothing. I said, "I am for a perfectly free trade in corn:
but I think that, situated as we are, we should do well to consent to a
compromise. If you return me to Parliament, I shall vote for the eight
shilling duty. It is for you to determine whether, on those terms, you
will return me or not. " You agreed with me. You sent me back to the
House of Commons on the distinct understanding that I was to vote for
the plan proposed by the Government of which I was a member. As soon as
the new Parliament met, a change of administration took place. But it
seemed to me that it was my duty to support, when out of place, that
proposition to which I had been a party when I was in place. I therefore
did not think myself justified in voting for a perfectly free trade,
till Parliament had decided against our fixed duty, and in favour of
Sir Robert Peel's new sliding scale. As soon as that decision had been
pronounced, I conceived that I was no longer bound by the terms of the
compromise which I had, with many misgivings, consented to offer to the
agriculturists, and which the agriculturists had refused to accept. I
have ever since voted in favour of every motion which has been made for
the total abolition of the duties on corn.
There has been, it is true, some difference of opinion between me and
some of you. We belonged to the same camp: but we did not quite agree
as to the mode of carrying on the war. I saw the immense strength of the
interests which were arrayed against us. I saw that the corn monopoly
would last forever if those who defended it were united, while those who
assailed it were divided. I saw that many men of distinguished abilities
and patriotism, such men as Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, Lord
Morpeth, were unwilling to relinquish all hope that the question might
be settled by a compromise such as had been proposed in 1841. It seemed
to me that the help of such men was indispensable to us, and that, if
we drove from us such valuable allies, we should be unable to contend
against the common enemy. Some of you thought that I was timorous, and
others that I was misled by party spirit or by personal friendship.
I still think that I judged rightly. But I will not now argue the
question. It has been set at rest for ever, and in the best possible
way. It is not necessary for us to consider what relations we ought to
maintain with the party which is for a moderate fixed duty. That party
has disappeared. Time, and reflection, and discussion, have produced
their natural effect on minds eminently intelligent and candid. No
intermediate shades of opinion are now left. There is no twilight. The
light has been divided from the darkness. Two parties are ranged in
battle array against each other. There is the standard of monopoly.
Here is the standard of free trade; and by the standard of free trade I
pledge myself to stand firmly.
Gentlemen, a resolution has been put into my hands which I shall move
with the greatest pleasure. That resolution sets forth in emphatic
language a truth of the highest importance, namely, that the present
corn laws press with especial severity on the poor. There was a time,
gentlemen, when politicians were not ashamed to defend the corn laws
merely as contrivances for putting the money of the many into the
pockets of the few. We must,--so these men reasoned,--have a powerful
and opulent class of grandees: that we may have such grandees, the rent
of land must be kept up: and that the rent of land may be kept up, the
price of bread must be kept up. There may still be people who think
thus: but they wisely keep their thoughts to themselves. Nobody now
ventures to say in public that ten thousand families ought to be put on
short allowance of food in order that one man may have a fine stud and
a fine picture gallery. Our monopolists have changed their ground.
They have abandoned their old argument for a new argument much
less invidious, but, I think, rather more absurd. They have turned
philanthropists. Their hearts bleed for the misery of the poor labouring
man. They constantly tell us that the cry against the corn laws has been
raised by capitalists; that the capitalist wishes to enrich himself at
the expense both of the landed gentry and of the working people; that
every reduction of the price of food must be followed by a reduction of
the wages of labour; and that, if bread should cost only half what it
now costs, the peasant and the artisan would be sunk in wretchedness and
degradation, and the only gainers would be the millowners and the money
changers. It is not only by landowners, it is not only by Tories, that
this nonsense has been talked. We have heard it from men of a very
different class, from demagogues who wish to keep up the corn laws,
merely in order that the corn laws may make the people miserable, and
that misery may make the people turbulent. You know how assiduously
those enemies of all order and all property have laboured to deceive the
working man into a belief that cheap bread would be a curse to him. Nor
have they always laboured in vain. You remember that once, even in this
great and enlightened city, a public meeting called to consider the corn
laws was disturbed by a deluded populace. Now, for my own part, whenever
I hear bigots who are opposed to all reform, and anarchists who are bent
on universal destruction, join in the same cry, I feel certain that it
is an absurd and mischievous cry; and surely never was there a cry
so absurd and mischievous as this cry against cheap loaves. It seems
strange that Conservatives, people who profess to hold new theories
in abhorrence, people who are always talking about the wisdom of our
ancestors, should insist on our receiving as an undoubted truth a
strange paradox never heard of from the creation of the world till the
nineteenth century. Begin with the most ancient book extant, the Book of
Genesis, and come down to the parliamentary debates of 1815; and I will
venture to say that you will find that, on this point, the party which
affects profound reverence for antiquity and prescription has against it
the unanimous voice of thirty-three centuries. If there be anything
in which all peoples, nations, and languages, Jews, Greeks, Romans,
Italians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, have agreed, it has been this, that
the dearness of food is a great evil to the poor. Surely, the arguments
which are to counterbalance such a mass of authority ought to be
weighty. What then are those arguments? I know of only one. If any
gentleman is acquainted with any other, I wish that he would communicate
it to us; and I will engage that he shall have a fair and full hearing.
The only argument that I know of is this, that there are some countries
in the world where food is cheaper than in England, and where the people
are more miserable than in England. Bengal has been mentioned. But
Poland is the favourite case. Whenever we ask why there should not be
a free trade in corn between the Vistula and the Thames, the answer
is, "Do you wish our labourers to be reduced to the condition of the
peasants of the Vistula? " Was such reasoning ever heard before? See how
readily it may be turned against those who use it. Corn is cheaper at
Cincinnati than here; but the wages of the labourer are much higher at
Cincinnati than here: therefore, the lower the price of food, the higher
the wages will be. This reasoning is just as good as the reasoning of
our adversaries: that is to say, it is good for nothing. It is not
one single cause that makes nations either prosperous or miserable. No
friend of free trade is such an idiot as to say that free trade is the
only valuable thing in the world; that religion, government, police,
education, the administration of justice, public expenditure, foreign
relations, have nothing whatever to do with the well-being of nations;
that people sunk in superstition, slavery, barbarism, must be happy if
they have only cheap food. These gentlemen take the most unfortunate
country in the world, a country which, while it had an independent
government, had the very worst of independent governments; the sovereign
a mere phantom; the nobles defying him and quarrelling with each other;
the great body of the population in a state of servitude; no middle
class; no manufactures; scarcely any trade, and that in the hands of Jew
pedlars. Such was Poland while it was a separate kingdom. But foreign
invaders came down upon it. It was conquered: it was reconquered: it was
partitioned: it was repartitioned: it is now under a government of which
I will not trust myself to speak. This is the country to which these
gentlemen go to study the effect of low prices. When they wish to
ascertain the effect of high prices, they take our own country; a
country which has been during many generations the best governed in
Europe; a country where personal slavery has been unknown during ages;
a country which enjoys the blessings of a pure religion, of freedom, of
order; a country long secured by the sea against invasion; a country in
which the oldest man living has never seen a foreign flag except as a
trophy. Between these two countries our political philosophers institute
a comparison. They find the Briton better off than the Pole; and they
immediately come to the conclusion that the Briton is so well off
because his bread is dear, and the Pole so ill off because his bread is
cheap. Why, is there a single good which in this way I could not prove
to be an evil, or a single evil which I could not prove to be a good?
Take lameness. I will prove that it is the best thing in the world to
be lame: for I can show you men who are lame, and yet much happier than
many men who have the full use of their legs. I will prove health to be
a calamity. For I can easily find you people in excellent health whose
fortunes have been wrecked, whose character has been blasted, and who
are more wretched than many invalids. But is that the way in which any
man of common sense reasons? No; the question is: Would not the lame man
be happier if you restored to him the use of his limbs? Would not the
healthy man be more wretched if he had gout and rheumatism in addition
to all his other calamities? Would not the Englishman be better off
if food were as cheap here as in Poland? Would not the Pole be more
miserable if food were as dear in Poland as here? More miserable indeed
he would not long be: for he would be dead in a month.
It is evident that the true way of determining the question which we
are considering, is to compare the state of a society when food is cheap
with the state of that same society when food is dear; and this is a
comparison which we can very easily make. We have only to recall to our
memory what we have ourselves seen within the last ten years. Take the
year 1835. Food was cheap then; and the capitalist prospered greatly.
But was the labouring man miserable? On the contrary, it is notorious
that work was plentiful, that wages were high, that the common people
were thriving and contented. Then came a change like that in Pharaoh's
dream. The thin ears had blighted the full ears; the lean kine had
devoured the fat kine; the days of plenty were over; and the days of
dearth had arrived. In 1841 the capitalist was doubtless distressed. But
will anybody tell me that the capitalist was the only sufferer, or the
chief sufferer? Have we forgotten what was the condition of the
working people in that unhappy year? So visible was the misery of the
manufacturing towns that a man of sensibility could hardly bear to pass
through them. Everywhere he found filth and nakedness, and plaintive
voices, and wasted forms, and haggard faces. Politicians who had never
been thought alarmists began to tremble for the very foundations of
society. First the mills were put on short time. Then they ceased to
work at all. Then went to pledge the scanty property of the artisan:
first his little luxuries, then his comforts, then his necessaries. The
hovels were stripped till they were as bare as the wigwam of a Dogribbed
Indian. Alone, amidst the general misery, the shop with the three golden
balls prospered, and was crammed from cellar to garret with the clocks,
and the tables, and the kettles, and the blankets, and the bibles of
the poor. I remember well the effect which was produced in London by the
unwonted sight of the huge pieces of cannon which were going northward
to overawe the starving population of Lancashire. These evil days passed
away. Since that time we have again had cheap bread. The capitalist has
been a gainer. It was fit that he should be a gainer. But has he been
the only gainer? Will those who are always telling us that the Polish
labourer is worse off than the English labourer venture to tell us that
the English labourer was worse off in 1844 than in 1841? Have we not
everywhere seen the goods of the poor coming back from the magazine of
the pawnbroker?
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF JULY 1845.
On the first of May, 1845, Mr Rutherford, Member for Leith, obtained
leave to bring in a bill to regulate admission to the Secular Chairs
in the Universities of Scotland. On the morning of the sixth of May the
bill was read a first time, and remained two months on the table of the
House. At length the second reading was fixed for the ninth of July. Mr
Rutherfurd was unable to attend on that day: and it was necessary that
one of his friends should supply his place. Accordingly, as soon as the
Order of the Day had been read, the following Speech was made.
On a division the bill was rejected by 116 votes to 108. But, in the
state in which parties then were, this defeat was generally considered
as a victory.
Mr Speaker,--I have been requested by my honourable and learned friend,
the Member for Leith, to act as his substitute on this occasion. I am
truly sorry that any substitute should be necessary. I am truly sorry
that he is not among us to take charge of the bill which he not long ago
introduced with one of the most forcible and luminous speeches that I
ever had the pleasure of hearing. His audience was small; but the few
who formed that audience cannot have forgotten the effect which his
arguments and his eloquence produced. The Ministers had come down to
resist his motion: but their courage failed them: they hesitated: they
conferred together: at last they consented that he should have leave
to bring in his bill. Such, indeed, was the language which they held on
that and on a subsequent occasion, that both my honourable and learned
friend and myself gave them more credit than they deserved. We really
believed that they had resolved to offer no opposition to a law which it
was quite evident that they perceived to be just and beneficial. But
we have been disappointed. It has been notified to us that the whole
influence of the Government is to be exerted against our bill. In such
discouraging circumstances it is that I rise to move the second reading.
Yet, Sir, I do not altogether despair of success. When I consider what
strong, what irresistible reasons we have to urge, I can hardly think
it possible that the mandate of the most powerful administration can
prevail against them. Nay, I should consider victory, not merely
as probable, but as certain, if I did not know how imperfect is the
information which English gentlemen generally possess concerning Scotch
questions. It is because I know this that I think it my duty to depart
from the ordinary practice, and, instead of simply moving the second
reading, to explain at some length the principles on which this bill has
been framed. I earnestly entreat those English Members who were not so
fortunate as to hear the speech of my honourable and learned friend, the
Member for Leith to favour me with their attention. They will, I think,
admit, that I have a right to be heard with indulgence. I have been sent
to this house by a great city which was once a capital, the abode of a
Sovereign, the place where the Estates of a realm held their sittings.
For the general good of the empire, Edinburgh descended from that high
eminence. But, ceasing to be a political metropolis, she became an
intellectual metropolis. For the loss of a Court, of a Privy Council, of
a Parliament, she found compensation in the prosperity and splendour of
an University renowned to the farthest ends of the earth as a school of
physical and moral science. This noble and beneficent institution is now
threatened with ruin by the folly of the Government, and by the violence
of an ecclesiastical faction which is bent on persecution without having
the miserable excuse of fanaticism. Nor is it only the University of
Edinburgh that is in danger. In pleading for that University, I plead
for all the great academical institutions of Scotland. The fate of all
depends on the event of this debate; and, in the name of all, I demand
the attention of every man who loves either learning or religious
liberty.
The first question which we have to consider is, whether the principles
of the bill be sound. I believe that they are sound; and I am quite
confident that nobody who sits on the Treasury Bench will venture to
pronounce them unsound. It does not lie in the mouths of the Ministers
to say that literary instruction and scientific instruction are
inseparably connected with religious instruction. It is not for them to
rail against Godless Colleges. It is not for them to talk with horror of
the danger of suffering young men to listen to the lectures of an Arian
professor of Botany or of a Popish professor of Chemistry. They are
themselves at this moment setting up in Ireland a system exactly
resembling the system which we wish to set up in Scotland. Only a few
hours have elapsed since they were themselves labouring to prove that,
in a country in which a large proportion of those who require a liberal
education are dissenters from the Established Church, it is desirable
that there should be schools without theological tests. The right
honourable Baronet at the head of the Government proposes that in the
new colleges which he is establishing at Belfast, Cork, Limerick, and
Galway, the professorships shall be open to men of every creed: and
he has strenuously defended that part of his plan against attacks from
opposite quarters, against the attacks of zealous members of the Church
of England, and of zealous members of the Church of Rome. Only the day
before yesterday the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon (Sir
Thomas Acland. ) ventured to suggest a test as unobjectionable as a test
could well be. He would merely have required the professors to declare
their general belief in the divine authority of the Old and New
Testaments. But even this amendment the First Lord of the Treasury
resisted, and I think quite rightly. He told us that it was quite
unnecessary to institute an inquisition into the religious opinions of
people whose business was merely to teach secular knowledge, and that it
was absurd to imagine that any man of learning would disgrace and ruin
himself by preaching infidelity from the Greek chair or the Mathematical
chair.
Some members of this House certainly held very different language: but
their arguments made as little impression on Her Majesty's Ministers as
on me. We were told with the utmost earnestness that secular knowledge,
unaccompanied by a sound religious faith, and unsanctified by religious
feeling, was not only useless, but positively noxious, a curse to the
possessor, a curse to society. I feel the greatest personal kindness and
respect for some gentlemen who hold this language. But they must pardon
me if I say that the proposition which they have so confidently laid
down, however well it may sound in pious ears while it is expressed in
general terms, to be too monstrous, too ludicrous, for grave refutation.
Is it seriously meant that, if the Captain of an Indiaman is a Socinian,
it would be better for himself, his crew, and his passengers, that he
should not know how to use his quadrant and his chronometers? Is it
seriously meant that, if a druggist is a Swedenborgian, it would
be better for himself and his customers that he should not know the
difference between Epsom salts and oxalic acid? A hundred millions of
the Queen's Asiatic subjects are Mahometans and Pagans. Is it seriously
meant that it is desirable that they should be as ignorant as the
aboriginal inhabitants of New South Wales, that they should have no
alphabet, that they should have no arithmetic, that they should not know
how to build a bridge, how to sink a well, how to irrigate a field? If
it be true that secular knowledge, unsanctified by true religion, is
a positive evil, all these consequences follow. Yet surely they are
consequences from which every sane mind must recoil. It is a great evil,
no doubt, that a man should be a heretic or an atheist. But I am quite
at a loss to understand how this evil is mitigated by his not knowing
that the earth moves round the sun, that by the help of a lever, a small
power will lift a great weight, that Virginia is a republic, or that
Paris is the capital of France.
On these grounds, Sir, I have cordially supported the Irish Colleges
Bill. But the principle of the Irish Colleges and the principle of the
bill which I hold in my hand are exactly the same: and the House and the
country have a right to know why the authors of the former bill are the
opponents of the latter bill. One distinction there is, I admit, between
Ireland and Scotland. It is true that in Scotland there is no clamour
against the Union with England. It is true that in Scotland no demagogue
can obtain applause and riches by slandering and reviling the English
people. It is true that in Scotland there is no traitor who would dare
to say that he regards the enemies of the state as his allies. In every
extremity the Scottish nation will be found faithful to the common cause
of the empire. But Her Majesty's Ministers will hardly I think, venture
to say that this is their reason for refusing to Scotland the boon which
they propose to confer on Ireland. And yet, if this be not their reason,
what reason can we find? Observe how strictly analogous the cases are.
You give it as a reason for establishing in Ireland colleges without
tests that the Established Church of Ireland is the Church of the
minority. Unhappily it may well be doubted whether the Established
Church of Scotland, too, be not now, thanks to your policy, the Church
of the minority. It is true that the members of the Established Church
of Scotland are about a half of the whole population of Scotland; and
that the members of the Established Church of Ireland are not much more
than a tenth of the whole population of Ireland. But the question now
before us does not concern the whole population. It concerns only the
class which requires academical education: and I do not hesitate to say
that, in the class which requires academical education, in the class for
the sake of which universities exist, the proportion of persons who
do not belong to the Established Church is as great in Scotland as in
Ireland. You tell us that sectarian education in Ireland is an evil. Is
it less an evil in Scotland? You tell us that it is desirable that the
Protestant and the Roman Catholic should study together at Cork. Is it
less desirable that the son of an elder of the Established Church
and the son of an elder of the Free Church should study together at
Edinburgh? You tell us that it is not reasonable to require from a
Professor of Astronomy or Surgery in Connaught a declaration that
he believes in the Gospels. On what ground, then, can you think it
reasonable to require from every Professor in Scotland a declaration
that he approves of the Presbyterian form of church government? I defy
you, with all your ingenuity, to find one argument, one rhetorical
topic, against our bill which may not be used with equal effect against
your own Irish Colleges Bill.
Is there any peculiarity in the academical system of Scotland which
makes these tests necessary? Certainly not. The academical system of
Scotland has its peculiarities; but they are peculiarities which are not
in harmony with these tests, peculiarities which jar with these tests.
It is an error to imagine that, by passing this bill, we shall establish
a precedent which will lead to a change in the constitution of the
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Whether such a change be or be not
desirable is a question which must be decided on grounds quite distinct
from those on which we rest our case. I entreat English gentlemen not to
be misled by the word University. That word means two different things
on the two different sides of the Tweed. The academical authorities at
Cambridge and Oxford stand in a parental relation to the student. They
undertake, not merely to instruct him in philology, geometry, natural
philosophy, but to form his religious opinions, and to watch over his
morals. He is to be bred a Churchman. At Cambridge, he cannot graduate,
at Oxford, I believe, he cannot matriculate, without declaring himself
a Churchman. The College is a large family. An undergraduate is lodged
either within the gates, or in some private house licensed and regulated
by the academical authorities. He is required to attend public worship
according to the forms of the Church of England several times every
week. It is the duty of one officer to note the absence of young men
from divine service, of another to note their absence from the public
table, of another to report those who return home at unseasonably late
hours. An academical police parade the streets at night to seize upon
any unlucky reveller who may be found drunk or in bad company. There are
punishments of various degrees for irregularities of conduct. Sometimes
the offender has to learn a chapter of the Greek Testament; sometimes
he is confined to his college; sometimes he is publicly reprimanded:
for grave offences he is rusticated or expelled. Now, Sir, whether this
system be good or bad, efficient or inefficient, I will not now inquire.
This is evident; that religious tests are perfectly in harmony with such
a system. Christ Church and King's College undertake to instruct every
young man who goes to them in the doctrines of the Church of England,
and to see that he regularly attends the worship of the Church of
England. Whether this ought to be so, I repeat, I will not now inquire:
but, while it is so, nothing can be more reasonable than to require from
the rulers of Christ Church and King's College some declaration that
they are themselves members of the Church of England.
The character of the Scotch universities is altogether different. There
you have no functionaries resembling the Vice-Chancellors and Proctors,
the Heads of Houses, Tutors and Deans, whom I used to cap at Cambridge.
There is no chapel; there is no academical authority entitled to ask a
young man whether he goes to the parish church or the Quaker meeting, to
synagogue or to mass. With his moral conduct the university has nothing
to do. The Principal and the whole Academical Senate cannot put any
restraint, or inflict any punishment, on a lad whom they may see lying
dead drunk in the High Street of Edinburgh. In truth, a student at a
Scotch university is in a situation closely resembling that of a medical
student in London. There are great numbers of youths in London who
attend St George's Hospital, or St Bartholomew's Hospital. One of these
youths may also go to Albermarle Street to hear Mr Faraday lecture on
chemistry, or to Willis's rooms to hear Mr Carlyle lecture on German
literature. On the Sunday he goes perhaps to church, perhaps to the
Roman Catholic chapel, perhaps to the Tabernacle, perhaps nowhere. None
of the gentlemen whose lectures he has attended during the week has the
smallest right to tell him where he shall worship, or to punish him for
gambling in hells, or tippling in cider cellars. Surely we must all feel
that it would be the height of absurdity to require Mr Faraday and Mr
Carlyle to subscribe a confession of faith before they lecture; and
in what does their situation differ from the situation of the Scotch
professor.
In the peculiar character of the Scotch universities, therefore, I find
a strong reason for the passing of this bill. I find a reason stronger
still when I look at the terms of the engagements which exist between
the English and Scotch nations.
Some gentlemen, I see, think that I am venturing on dangerous ground. We
have been told, in confident tones, that, if we pass this bill, we shall
commit a gross breach of public faith, we shall violate the Treaty
of Union, and the Act of Security. With equal confidence, and with
confidence much better grounded, I affirm that the Treaty of Union and
the Act of Security not only do not oblige us to reject this bill, but
do oblige us to pass this bill, or some bill nearly resembling this.
This proposition seems to be regarded by the Ministers as paradoxical:
but I undertake to prove it by the plainest and fairest argument. I
shall resort to no chicanery. If I did think that the safety of the
commonwealth required that we should violate the Treaty of Union,
I would violate it openly, and defend my conduct on the ground of
necessity. It may, in an extreme case, be our duty to break our
compacts. It never can be our duty to quibble them away. What I say
is that the Treaty of Union, construed, not with the subtlety of a
pettifogger, but according to the spirit, binds us to pass this bill or
some similar bill.
By the Treaty of Union it was covenanted that no person should be a
teacher or office-bearer in the Scotch Universities who should not
declare that he conformed to the worship and polity of the Established
Church of Scotland. What Church was meant by the two contracting
parties? What Church was meant, more especially, by the party to the
side of which we ought always to lean, I mean the weaker party? Surely
the Church established in 1707, when the Union took place. Is then,
the Church of Scotland at the present moment constituted, on all points
which the members of that Church think essential, exactly as it was
constituted in 1707? Most assuredly not.
Every person who knows anything of the ecclesiastical history of
Scotland knows that, ever since the Reformation, the great body of the
Presbyterians of that country have held that congregations ought to have
a share in the appointment of their ministers. This principle is laid
down most distinctly in the First Book of Discipline, drawn up by John
Knox. It is laid down, though not quite so strongly, in the Second Book
of Discipline, drawn up by Andrew Melville. And I beg gentlemen, English
gentlemen, to observe that in Scotland this is not regarded as a matter
of mere expediency. All staunch Presbyterians think that the flock is
entitled, jure divino, to a voice in the appointment of the pastor, and
that to force a pastor on a parish to which he is unacceptable is a sin
as much forbidden by the Word of God as idolatry or perjury. I am quite
sure that I do not exaggerate when I say that the highest of our
high churchmen at Oxford cannot attach more importance to episcopal
government and episcopal ordination than many thousands of Scotchmen,
shrewd men, respectable men, men who fear God and honour the Queen,
attach to this right of the people.
When, at the time of the Revolution, the Presbyterian worship and
discipline were established in Scotland, the question of patronage was
settled by a compromise, which was far indeed from satisfying men of
extreme opinions, but which was generally accepted. An Act, passed
at Edinburgh, in 1690, transferred what we should call in England the
advowsons from the old patrons to parochial councils, composed of the
elders and the Protestant landowners. This system, however imperfect
it might appear to such rigid Covenanters as Davie Deans and Gifted
Gilfillan, worked satisfactorily; and the Scotch nation seems to have
been contented with its ecclesiastical polity when the Treaty of Union
was concluded. By that treaty the ecclesiastical polity of Scotland was
declared to be unalterable. Nothing, therefore, can be more clear
than that the Parliament of Great Britain was bound by the most sacred
obligations not to revive those rights of patronage which the Parliament
of Scotland had abolished.
But, Sir, the Union had not lasted five years when our ancestors were
guilty of a great violation of public faith. The history of that great
fault and of its consequences is full of interest and instruction. The
wrong was committed hastily, and with contumelious levity. The offenders
were doubtless far from foreseeing that their offence would be visited
on the third and fourth generation; that we should be paying in 1845 the
penalty of what they did in 1712.
In 1712, Sir, the Whigs, who were the chief authors of the Union, had
been driven from power. The prosecution of Sacheverell had made them
odious to the nation. The general election of 1710 had gone against
them. Tory statesmen were in office. Tory squires formed more than
five-sixths of this House. The party which was uppermost thought that
England had, in 1707, made a bad bargain, a bargain so bad that it could
hardly be considered as binding. The guarantee so solemnly given to
the Church of Scotland was a subject of loud and bitter complaint.
The Ministers hated that Church much; and their chief supporters, the
country gentlemen and country clergymen of England, hated it still more.
Numerous petty insults were offered to the opinions, or, if you please,
the prejudices of the Presbyterians. At length it was determined to go
further, and to restore to the old patrons those rights which had been
taken away in 1690. A bill was brought into this House, the history
of which you may trace in our Journals. Some of the entries are very
significant. In spite of all remonstrances the Tory majority would not
hear of delay. The Whig minority struggled hard, appealed to the act of
Union and the Act of Security, and insisted on having both those Acts
read at the table. The bill passed this House, however, before the
people of Scotland knew that it had been brought in. For there were then
neither reporters nor railroads; and intelligence from Westminster
was longer in travelling to Cambridge than it now is in travelling
to Aberdeen. The bill was in the House of Lords before the Church
of Scotland could make her voice heard. Then came a petition from a
committee appointed by the General Assembly to watch over the interests
of religion while the General Assembly itself was not sitting. The first
name attached to that petition is the name of Principal Carstairs, a man
who had stood high in the esteem and favour of William the Third, and
who had borne a chief part in establishing the Presbyterian Church in
Scotland. Carstairs and his colleagues appealed to the Act of Union, and
implored the peers not to violate that Act. But party spirit ran high;
public faith was disregarded: patronage was restored. To that breach
of the Treaty of Union are to be directly ascribed all the schisms that
have since rent the Church of Scotland.
I will not detain the House by giving a minute account of those schisms.
It is enough to say that the law of patronage produced, first the
secession of 1733 and the establishment of the Associate Synod, then the
secession of 1752 and the establishment of the Relief Synod, and finally
the great secession of 1843 and the establishment of the Free Church.
Only two years have elapsed since we saw, with mingled admiration and
pity, a spectacle worthy of the best ages of the Church. Four hundred
and seventy ministers resigned their stipends, quitted their manses, and
went forth committing themselves, their wives, their children, to the
care of Providence. Their congregations followed them by thousands, and
listened eagerly to the Word of Life in tents, in barns, or on those
hills and moors where the stubborn Presbyterians of a former generation
had prayed and sung their psalms in defiance of the boot of Lauderdale
and of the sword of Dundee. The rich gave largely of their riches. The
poor contributed with the spirit of her who put her two mites into the
treasury of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, in all the churches of large towns, of
whole counties, the established clergy were preaching to empty benches.
And of these secessions every one may be distinctly traced to that
violation of the Treaty of Union which was committed in 1712.
This, Sir, is the true history of dissent in Scotland: and, this being
so, how can any man have the front to invoke the Treaty of Union and the
Act of Security against those who are devotedly attached to that system
which the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security were designed to
protect, and who are seceders only because the Treaty of Union and the
Act of Security have been infringed? I implore gentlemen to reflect on
the manner in which they and their fathers have acted towards the Scotch
Presbyterians. First you bind yourselves by the most solemn obligations
to maintain unaltered their Church as it was constituted in 1707.
Five years later you alter the constitution of their Church in a point
regarded by them as essential. In consequence of your breach of faith
secession after secession takes place, till at length the Church of
the State ceases to be the Church of the People. Then you begin to be
squeamish. Then those articles of the Treaty of Union which, when they
really were obligatory, you outrageously violated, now when they are
no longer obligatory, now when it is no longer in your power to observe
them according to the spirit, are represented as inviolable. You first,
by breaking your word, turn hundreds of thousands of Churchmen into
Dissenters; and then you punish them for being Dissenters, because,
forsooth, you never break your word. If your consciences really are so
tender, why do you not repeal the Act of 1712? Why do you not put the
Church of Scotland back into the same situation in which she was in
1707. We have had occasion more than once in the course of this session
to admire the casuistical skill of Her Majesty's Ministers. But I must
say that even their scruple about slave-grown sugar, though that scruple
is the laughing-stock of all Europe and all America, is respectable
when compared with their scruple about the Treaty of Union. Is there the
slightest doubt that every compact ought to be construed according to
the sense in which it was understood by those who made it? And is there
the slightest doubt as to the sense in which the compact between England
and Scotland was understood by those who made it? Suppose that we could
call up from their graves the Presbyterian divines who then sate in the
General Assembly. Suppose that we could call up Carstairs; that we could
call up Boston, the author of the Fourfold State; that we could relate
to them the history of the ecclesiastical revolutions which have, since
their time, taken place in Scotland; and that we could then ask them,
"Is the Established Church, or is the Free Church, identical with the
Church which existed at the time of the Union? " Is it not quite certain
what their answer would be? They would say, "Our Church, the Church
which you promised to maintain unalterable, was not the Church which you
protect, but the Church which you oppress. Our Church was the Church of
Chalmers and Brewster, not the Church of Bryce and Muir. "
It is true, Sir, that the Presbyterian dissenters are not the only
dissenters whom this bill will relieve. By the law, as it now stands,
all persons who refuse to declare their approbation of the synodical
polity, that is to say, all persons who refuse to declare that they
consider episcopal government and episcopal ordination as, at least,
matters altogether indifferent, are incapable of holding academical
office in Scotland. Now, Sir, will any gentleman who loves the Church
of England vote for maintaining this law? If, indeed, he were bound by
public faith to maintain this law, I admit that he would have no choice.
But I have proved, unless I greatly deceive myself, that he is not
bound by public faith to maintain this law? Can he then conscientiously
support the Ministers to-night?
If he votes with them, he votes for
persecuting what he himself believes to be the truth. He holds out
to the members of his own Church lures to tempt them to renounce that
Church, and to join themselves to a Church which he considers as less
pure. We may differ as to the propriety of imposing penalties and
disabilities on heretics. But surely we shall agree in thinking that we
ought not to punish men for orthodoxy.
I know, Sir, that there are many gentlemen who dislike innovation merely
as innovation, and would be glad always to keep things as they are now.
Even to this class of persons I will venture to appeal. I assure them
that we are not the innovators. I assure them that our object is to keep
things as they are and as they have long been. In form, I own, we are
proposing a change; but in truth we are resisting a change. The question
really is, not whether we shall remove old tests, but whether we shall
impose new ones. The law which we seek to repeal has long been obsolete.
So completely have the tests been disused that, only the other day, the
right honourable Baronet, the Secretary for the Home Department,
when speaking in favour of the Irish Colleges Bill, told us that the
Government was not making a rash experiment. "Our plan," he said, "has
already been tried at Edinburgh and has succeeded. At Edinburgh the
tests have been disused near a hundred years. " As to Glasgow the
gentlemen opposite can give us full information from their own
experience. For there are at least three members of the Cabinet who have
been Lords Rectors; the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Secretaries
for the Home Department and the Colonial Department. They never took
the test. They probably would not have taken it; for they are all
Episcopalians. In fact, they belong to the very class which the test
was especially meant to exclude. The test was not meant to exclude
Presbyterian dissenters; for the Presbyterian Church was not yet rent
by any serious schism. Nor was the test meant to exclude the Roman
Catholics; for against the Roman Catholics there was already abundant
security. The Protestant Episcopalian was the enemy against whom it was,
in 1707, thought peculiarly necessary to take precautions. That those
precautions have long been disused the three members of the Cabinet whom
I mentioned can certify.
On a sudden the law, which had long slept a deep sleep, has been
awakened, stirred up, and put into vigorous action. These obsolete tests
are now, it seems, to be exacted with severity. And why? Simply because
an event has taken place which makes them ten times as unjust and
oppressive as they would have been formerly. They were not required
while the Established Church was the Church of the majority. They are
to be required solely because a secession has taken place which has made
the Established Church the Church of the minority. While they could have
done little mischief they were suffered to lie neglected. They are now
to be used, because a time has come at which they cannot be used without
fatal consequences.
It is impossible for me to speak without indignation of those who have
taken the lead in the work of persecution. Yet I must give them credit
for courage. They have selected as their object of attack no less a man
than Sir David Brewster, Principal of the University of Saint Andrews.
I hold in my hand the libel, as it is technically called, in which a
Presbytery of the Established Church demands that Sir David, for the
crime of adhering to that ecclesiastical polity which was guaranteed to
his country by the Act of Union, shall be "removed from his office, and
visited with such other censure or punishment as the laws of the
Church enjoin, for the glory of God, the safety of the Church, and
the prosperity of the University, and to deter others holding the same
important office from committing the like offence in all time coming,
but that others may hear and fear the danger and detriment of following
divisive courses. " Yes; for the glory of God, the safety of the Church,
and the prosperity of the University. What right, Sir, have the
authors of such an instrument as this to raise their voices against the
insolence and intolerance of the Vatican? The glory of God! As to that,
I will only say that this is not the first occasion on which the glory
of God has been made a pretext for the injustice of man. The safety of
the Church! Sir, if, which God forbid, that Church is really possessed
by the evil spirit which actuates this Presbytery; if that Church,
having recently lost hundreds of able ministers and hundreds of
thousands of devout hearers, shall, instead of endeavouring, by
meekness, and by redoubled diligence, to regain those whom she has
estranged, give them new provocation; if she shall sharpen against them
an old law the edge of which has long rusted off, and which, when it
was first made, was made not for her defence, but for theirs; then I
pronounce the days of that Church numbered. As to the prosperity of the
University, is there a corner of Europe where men of science will not
laugh when they hear that the prosperity of the University of Saint
Andrews is to be promoted by expelling Sir David Brewster on account
of a theological squabble? The professors of Edinburgh know better
than this Presbytery how the prosperity of a seat of learning is to be
promoted. There the Academic Senate is almost unanimous in favour of
the bill. And indeed it is quite certain that, unless this bill, or some
similar bill, be passed, a new college will soon be founded and endowed
with that munificence of which the history of the Free Church furnishes
so many examples. From the day on which such an university arises, the
old universities must decline. Now, they are practically national, and
not sectarian, institutions. And yet, even now, the emoluments of a
professorship are so much smaller than those which ability and industry
can obtain in other ways, that it is difficult to find eminent men to
fill the chairs. And if there be this difficulty now, when students of
all religious persuasions attend the lectures, what is likely to happen
when all the members of the Free Church go elsewhere for instruction?
If there be this difficulty when you have all the world to choose
professors from, what is likely to happen when your choice is narrowed
to less than one-half of Scotland? As the professorships become poorer,
the professors will become less competent. As the professors become
less competent, the classes will become thinner. As the classes become
thinner, the professorships will again become poorer. The decline
will become rapid and headlong. In a short time, the lectures will be
delivered to empty rooms: the grass will grow in the courts: and men
not fit to be village dominies will occupy the chairs of Adam Smith and
Dugald Stewart, of Reid and Black, of Playfair and Jamieson.
How do Her Majesty's Ministers like such a prospect as this! Already
they have, whether by their fault or their misfortune I will not now
inquire, secured for themselves an unenviable place in the history
of Scotland. Their names are already inseparably associated with
the disruption of her Church. Are those names to be as inseparably
associated with the ruin of her Universities?
If the Government were consistent in error, some respect might be
mingled with our disapprobation. But a Government which is guided by no
principle; a Government which, on the gravest questions, does not know
its own mind twenty-four hours together; a Government which is against
tests at Cork, and for tests at Glasgow, against tests at Belfast, and
for tests at Edinburgh, against tests on the Monday, for them on the
Wednesday, against them again on the Thursday--how can such a Government
command esteem or confidence? How can the Ministers wonder that their
uncertain and capricious liberality fails to obtain the applause of
the liberal party? What right have they to complain if they lose the
confidence of half the nation without gaining the confidence of the
other half?
But I do not speak to the Government. I speak to the House. I appeal
to those who, on Monday last, voted with the Ministers against the test
proposed by the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon. I know
what is due to party ties. But there is a mire so black and so deep
that no leader has a right to drag his followers through it. It is only
forty-eight hours since honourable gentlemen were brought down to the
House to vote against requiring the professors in the Irish Colleges to
make a declaration of belief in the Gospel: and now the same gentlemen
are expected to come down and to vote that no man shall be a professor
in a Scottish college who does not declare himself a Calvinist and a
Presbyterian. Flagrant as is the injustice with which the ministers have
on this occasion treated Scotland, the injustice with which they have
treated their own supporters is more flagrant still. I call on all
who voted with the Government on Monday to consider whether they can
consistently and honourably vote with the Government to-night: I call on
all members of the Church of England to ponder well before they make it
penal to be a member of the Church of England; and, lastly, I call on
every man of every sect and party who loves science and letters, who is
solicitous for the public tranquillity, who respects the public faith,
to stand by us in this our hard struggle to avert the ruin which
threatens the Universities of Scotland. I move that this bill be now
read a second time.
*****
CORN LAWS. (DECEMBER 2, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON THE 2D
OF DECEMBER 1845.
The following Speech was delivered at a public meeting held at Edinburgh
on the second of December, 1845, for the purpose of petitioning Her
Majesty to open the ports of the United Kingdom for the free admission
of corn and other food.
My Lord Provost and Gentlemen,--You will, I hope, believe that I am
deeply sensible of the kindness with which you have received me. I only
beg that you will continue to extend your indulgence to me, if it should
happen that my voice should fail me in the attempt to address you. I
have thought it my duty to obey your summons, though I am hardly equal
to the exertion of public speaking, and though I am so situated that I
can pass only a few hours among you. But it seemed to me that this was
not an ordinary meeting or an ordinary crisis. It seemed to me that
a great era had arrived, and that, at such a conjuncture, you were
entitled to know the opinions and intentions of one who has the honour
of being your representative.
With respect to the past, gentlemen, I have perhaps a little to explain,
but certainly nothing to repent or to retract. My opinions, from the
day on which I entered public life, have never varied. I have always
considered the principle of protection of agriculture as a vicious
principle. I have always thought that this vicious principle took,
in the Act of 1815, in the Act of 1828, and in the Act of 1842, a
singularly vicious form. This I declared twelve years ago, when I stood
for Leeds: this I declared in May 1839, when I first presented myself
before you; and when, a few months later, Lord Melbourne invited me to
become a member of his Government, I distinctly told him that, in office
or out of office, I must vote for the total repeal of the corn laws.
But in the year 1841 a very peculiar crisis arrived. There was reason to
hope that it might be possible to effect a compromise, which would not
indeed wholly remove the evils inseparable from a system of protection,
but which would greatly mitigate them. There were some circumstances in
the financial situation of the country which led those who were then the
advisers of the Crown to hope that they might be able to get rid of
the sliding scale, and to substitute for it a moderate fixed duty. We
proposed a duty of eight shillings a quarter on wheat. The Parliament
refused even to consider our plan. Her Majesty appealed to the people.
I presented myself before you; and you will bear me witness that I
disguised nothing. I said, "I am for a perfectly free trade in corn:
but I think that, situated as we are, we should do well to consent to a
compromise. If you return me to Parliament, I shall vote for the eight
shilling duty. It is for you to determine whether, on those terms, you
will return me or not. " You agreed with me. You sent me back to the
House of Commons on the distinct understanding that I was to vote for
the plan proposed by the Government of which I was a member. As soon as
the new Parliament met, a change of administration took place. But it
seemed to me that it was my duty to support, when out of place, that
proposition to which I had been a party when I was in place. I therefore
did not think myself justified in voting for a perfectly free trade,
till Parliament had decided against our fixed duty, and in favour of
Sir Robert Peel's new sliding scale. As soon as that decision had been
pronounced, I conceived that I was no longer bound by the terms of the
compromise which I had, with many misgivings, consented to offer to the
agriculturists, and which the agriculturists had refused to accept. I
have ever since voted in favour of every motion which has been made for
the total abolition of the duties on corn.
There has been, it is true, some difference of opinion between me and
some of you. We belonged to the same camp: but we did not quite agree
as to the mode of carrying on the war. I saw the immense strength of the
interests which were arrayed against us. I saw that the corn monopoly
would last forever if those who defended it were united, while those who
assailed it were divided. I saw that many men of distinguished abilities
and patriotism, such men as Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, Lord
Morpeth, were unwilling to relinquish all hope that the question might
be settled by a compromise such as had been proposed in 1841. It seemed
to me that the help of such men was indispensable to us, and that, if
we drove from us such valuable allies, we should be unable to contend
against the common enemy. Some of you thought that I was timorous, and
others that I was misled by party spirit or by personal friendship.
I still think that I judged rightly. But I will not now argue the
question. It has been set at rest for ever, and in the best possible
way. It is not necessary for us to consider what relations we ought to
maintain with the party which is for a moderate fixed duty. That party
has disappeared. Time, and reflection, and discussion, have produced
their natural effect on minds eminently intelligent and candid. No
intermediate shades of opinion are now left. There is no twilight. The
light has been divided from the darkness. Two parties are ranged in
battle array against each other. There is the standard of monopoly.
Here is the standard of free trade; and by the standard of free trade I
pledge myself to stand firmly.
Gentlemen, a resolution has been put into my hands which I shall move
with the greatest pleasure. That resolution sets forth in emphatic
language a truth of the highest importance, namely, that the present
corn laws press with especial severity on the poor. There was a time,
gentlemen, when politicians were not ashamed to defend the corn laws
merely as contrivances for putting the money of the many into the
pockets of the few. We must,--so these men reasoned,--have a powerful
and opulent class of grandees: that we may have such grandees, the rent
of land must be kept up: and that the rent of land may be kept up, the
price of bread must be kept up. There may still be people who think
thus: but they wisely keep their thoughts to themselves. Nobody now
ventures to say in public that ten thousand families ought to be put on
short allowance of food in order that one man may have a fine stud and
a fine picture gallery. Our monopolists have changed their ground.
They have abandoned their old argument for a new argument much
less invidious, but, I think, rather more absurd. They have turned
philanthropists. Their hearts bleed for the misery of the poor labouring
man. They constantly tell us that the cry against the corn laws has been
raised by capitalists; that the capitalist wishes to enrich himself at
the expense both of the landed gentry and of the working people; that
every reduction of the price of food must be followed by a reduction of
the wages of labour; and that, if bread should cost only half what it
now costs, the peasant and the artisan would be sunk in wretchedness and
degradation, and the only gainers would be the millowners and the money
changers. It is not only by landowners, it is not only by Tories, that
this nonsense has been talked. We have heard it from men of a very
different class, from demagogues who wish to keep up the corn laws,
merely in order that the corn laws may make the people miserable, and
that misery may make the people turbulent. You know how assiduously
those enemies of all order and all property have laboured to deceive the
working man into a belief that cheap bread would be a curse to him. Nor
have they always laboured in vain. You remember that once, even in this
great and enlightened city, a public meeting called to consider the corn
laws was disturbed by a deluded populace. Now, for my own part, whenever
I hear bigots who are opposed to all reform, and anarchists who are bent
on universal destruction, join in the same cry, I feel certain that it
is an absurd and mischievous cry; and surely never was there a cry
so absurd and mischievous as this cry against cheap loaves. It seems
strange that Conservatives, people who profess to hold new theories
in abhorrence, people who are always talking about the wisdom of our
ancestors, should insist on our receiving as an undoubted truth a
strange paradox never heard of from the creation of the world till the
nineteenth century. Begin with the most ancient book extant, the Book of
Genesis, and come down to the parliamentary debates of 1815; and I will
venture to say that you will find that, on this point, the party which
affects profound reverence for antiquity and prescription has against it
the unanimous voice of thirty-three centuries. If there be anything
in which all peoples, nations, and languages, Jews, Greeks, Romans,
Italians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, have agreed, it has been this, that
the dearness of food is a great evil to the poor. Surely, the arguments
which are to counterbalance such a mass of authority ought to be
weighty. What then are those arguments? I know of only one. If any
gentleman is acquainted with any other, I wish that he would communicate
it to us; and I will engage that he shall have a fair and full hearing.
The only argument that I know of is this, that there are some countries
in the world where food is cheaper than in England, and where the people
are more miserable than in England. Bengal has been mentioned. But
Poland is the favourite case. Whenever we ask why there should not be
a free trade in corn between the Vistula and the Thames, the answer
is, "Do you wish our labourers to be reduced to the condition of the
peasants of the Vistula? " Was such reasoning ever heard before? See how
readily it may be turned against those who use it. Corn is cheaper at
Cincinnati than here; but the wages of the labourer are much higher at
Cincinnati than here: therefore, the lower the price of food, the higher
the wages will be. This reasoning is just as good as the reasoning of
our adversaries: that is to say, it is good for nothing. It is not
one single cause that makes nations either prosperous or miserable. No
friend of free trade is such an idiot as to say that free trade is the
only valuable thing in the world; that religion, government, police,
education, the administration of justice, public expenditure, foreign
relations, have nothing whatever to do with the well-being of nations;
that people sunk in superstition, slavery, barbarism, must be happy if
they have only cheap food. These gentlemen take the most unfortunate
country in the world, a country which, while it had an independent
government, had the very worst of independent governments; the sovereign
a mere phantom; the nobles defying him and quarrelling with each other;
the great body of the population in a state of servitude; no middle
class; no manufactures; scarcely any trade, and that in the hands of Jew
pedlars. Such was Poland while it was a separate kingdom. But foreign
invaders came down upon it. It was conquered: it was reconquered: it was
partitioned: it was repartitioned: it is now under a government of which
I will not trust myself to speak. This is the country to which these
gentlemen go to study the effect of low prices. When they wish to
ascertain the effect of high prices, they take our own country; a
country which has been during many generations the best governed in
Europe; a country where personal slavery has been unknown during ages;
a country which enjoys the blessings of a pure religion, of freedom, of
order; a country long secured by the sea against invasion; a country in
which the oldest man living has never seen a foreign flag except as a
trophy. Between these two countries our political philosophers institute
a comparison. They find the Briton better off than the Pole; and they
immediately come to the conclusion that the Briton is so well off
because his bread is dear, and the Pole so ill off because his bread is
cheap. Why, is there a single good which in this way I could not prove
to be an evil, or a single evil which I could not prove to be a good?
Take lameness. I will prove that it is the best thing in the world to
be lame: for I can show you men who are lame, and yet much happier than
many men who have the full use of their legs. I will prove health to be
a calamity. For I can easily find you people in excellent health whose
fortunes have been wrecked, whose character has been blasted, and who
are more wretched than many invalids. But is that the way in which any
man of common sense reasons? No; the question is: Would not the lame man
be happier if you restored to him the use of his limbs? Would not the
healthy man be more wretched if he had gout and rheumatism in addition
to all his other calamities? Would not the Englishman be better off
if food were as cheap here as in Poland? Would not the Pole be more
miserable if food were as dear in Poland as here? More miserable indeed
he would not long be: for he would be dead in a month.
It is evident that the true way of determining the question which we
are considering, is to compare the state of a society when food is cheap
with the state of that same society when food is dear; and this is a
comparison which we can very easily make. We have only to recall to our
memory what we have ourselves seen within the last ten years. Take the
year 1835. Food was cheap then; and the capitalist prospered greatly.
But was the labouring man miserable? On the contrary, it is notorious
that work was plentiful, that wages were high, that the common people
were thriving and contented. Then came a change like that in Pharaoh's
dream. The thin ears had blighted the full ears; the lean kine had
devoured the fat kine; the days of plenty were over; and the days of
dearth had arrived. In 1841 the capitalist was doubtless distressed. But
will anybody tell me that the capitalist was the only sufferer, or the
chief sufferer? Have we forgotten what was the condition of the
working people in that unhappy year? So visible was the misery of the
manufacturing towns that a man of sensibility could hardly bear to pass
through them. Everywhere he found filth and nakedness, and plaintive
voices, and wasted forms, and haggard faces. Politicians who had never
been thought alarmists began to tremble for the very foundations of
society. First the mills were put on short time. Then they ceased to
work at all. Then went to pledge the scanty property of the artisan:
first his little luxuries, then his comforts, then his necessaries. The
hovels were stripped till they were as bare as the wigwam of a Dogribbed
Indian. Alone, amidst the general misery, the shop with the three golden
balls prospered, and was crammed from cellar to garret with the clocks,
and the tables, and the kettles, and the blankets, and the bibles of
the poor. I remember well the effect which was produced in London by the
unwonted sight of the huge pieces of cannon which were going northward
to overawe the starving population of Lancashire. These evil days passed
away. Since that time we have again had cheap bread. The capitalist has
been a gainer. It was fit that he should be a gainer. But has he been
the only gainer? Will those who are always telling us that the Polish
labourer is worse off than the English labourer venture to tell us that
the English labourer was worse off in 1844 than in 1841? Have we not
everywhere seen the goods of the poor coming back from the magazine of
the pawnbroker?
