No More Learning

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? Have we not seen in the house of the working man, in his
clothing, in his very looks as he passed us in the streets, that he
was a happier being? As to his pleasures, and especially as to the
most innocent, the most salutary, of his pleasures, ask your own most
intelligent and useful fellow citizen Mr Robert Chambers what sale
popular books had in the year 1841, and what sale they had last year.
I am assured that, in one week of 1845, the sums paid in wages within
twenty miles of Manchester exceeded by a million and a half the sums
paid in the corresponding week of 1841.

Gentlemen, both the capitalist and the labourer have been gainers,
as they ought to have been gainers, by the diminution in the price of
bread. But there is a third party, which ought not to have gained by
that diminution, and yet has gained very greatly by it; and that party
is Her Majesty's present Government. It is for the interest of rulers
that those whom they rule should be prosperous. But the prosperity which
we have lately enjoyed was a prosperity for which we were not indebted
to our rulers. It came in spite of them. It was produced by the
cheapness of that which they had laboured to render dear. Under pretence
of making us independent of foreign supply, they have established a
system which makes us dependent in the worst possible way. As my valued
friend, the Lord Provost (Mr Adam Black. ), has justly said, there is
a mutual dependence among nations of which we cannot get rid. That
Providence has assigned different productions to different climates is a
truth with which everybody is familiar. But this is not all. Even in
the same climate different productions belong to different stages of
civilisation. As one latitude is favourable to the vine and another to
the sugar cane, so there is, in the same latitude, a state of society in
which it is desirable that the industry of men should be almost entirely
directed towards the cultivation of the earth, and another state of
society in which it is desirable that a large part of the population
should be employed in manufactures. No dependence can be conceived more
natural, more salutary, more free from everything like degradation
than the mutual dependence which exists between a nation which has a
boundless extent of fertile land, and a nation which has a boundless
command of machinery; between a nation whose business is to turn deserts
into corn fields, and a nation whose business is to increase tenfold by
ingenious processes the value of the fleece and of the rude iron ore.
Even if that dependence were less beneficial than it is, we must
submit to it; for it is inevitable. Make what laws we will, we must be
dependent on other countries for a large part of our food. That point
was decided when England ceased to be an exporting country. For,
gentlemen, it is demonstrable that none but a country which ordinarily
exports food can be independent of foreign supplies. If a manufacturer
determines to produce ten thousand pair of stockings, he will produce
the ten thousand, and neither more nor less. But an agriculturist
cannot determine that he will produce ten thousand quarters of corn,
and neither more nor less. That he may be sure of having ten thousand
quarters in a bad year, he must sow such a quantity of land that he will
have much more than ten thousand in a good year. It is evident that, if
our island does not in ordinary years produce many more quarters than we
want, it will in bad years produce fewer quarters than we want. And it
is equally evident that our cultivators will not produce more quarters
of corn than we want, unless they can export the surplus at a profit.
Nobody ventures to tell us that Great Britain can be ordinarily an
exporting country. It follows that we must be dependent: and the only
question is, Which is the best mode of dependence? That question it is
not difficult to answer. Go to Lancashire; see that multitude of cities,
some of them equal in size to the capitals of large kingdoms. Look at
the warehouses, the machinery, the canals, the railways, the docks.
See the stir of that hive of human beings busily employed in making,
packing, conveying stuffs which are to be worn in Canada and Caffraria,
in Chili and Java. You naturally ask, How is this immense population,
collected on an area which will not yield food for one tenth part of
them, to be nourished? But change the scene. Go beyond the Ohio, and
there you will see another species of industry, equally extensive and
equally flourishing. You will see the wilderness receding fast before
the advancing tide of life and civilisation, vast harvests waving round
the black stumps of what a few months ago was a pathless forest, and
cottages, barns, mills, rising amidst the haunts of the wolf and the
bear. Here is more than enough corn to feed the artisans of our thickly
peopled island; and most gladly would the grower of that corn exchange
it for a Sheffield knife, a Birmingham spoon, a warm coat of Leeds
woollen cloth, a light dress of Manchester cotton. But this exchange our
rulers prohibit. They say to our manufacturing population, "You would
willingly weave clothes for the people of America, and they would gladly
sow wheat for you; but we prohibit this intercourse. We condemn both
your looms and their ploughs to inaction. We will compel you to pay a
high price for a stinted meal. We will compel those who would gladly be
your purveyors and your customers to be your rivals. We will compel them
to turn manufacturers in self-defence; and when, in close imitation of
us, they impose high duties on British goods for the protection of their
own produce, we will, in our speeches and despatches, express wonder and
pity at their strange ignorance of political economy. "

Such has been the policy of Her Majesty's Ministers; but it has not yet
been fairly brought to the trial. Good harvests have prevented bad laws
from producing their full effect. The Government has had a run of luck;
and vulgar observers have mistaken luck for wisdom. But such runs of
luck do not last forever. Providence will not always send the rain and
the sunshine just at such a time and in such a quantity as to save
the reputation of shortsighted statesmen. There is too much reason to
believe that evil days are approaching. On such a subject it is a
sacred duty to avoid exaggeration; and I shall do so. I observe that
the writers,--wretched writers they are,--who defend the present
Administration, assert that there is no probability of a considerable
rise in the price of provisions, and that the Whigs and the
Anti-Corn-Law League are busily engaged in circulating false reports for
the vile purpose of raising a panic. Now, gentlemen, it shall not be
in the power of anybody to throw any such imputation on me; for I shall
describe our prospects in the words of the Ministers themselves. I
hold in my hand a letter in which Sir Thomas Freemantle, Secretary for
Ireland, asks for information touching the potato crop in that country.
His words are these. "Her Majesty's Government is seeking to learn the
opinion of judges and well informed persons in every part of Ireland
regarding the probability of the supply being sufficient for the support
of the people during the ensuing winter and spring, provided care be
taken in preserving the stock, and economy used in its consumption. "
Here, you will observe, it is taken for granted that the supply is
not sufficient for a year's consumption: it is taken for granted that,
without care and economy, the supply will not last to the end of the
spring; and a doubt is expressed whether, with care and economy, the
supply will last even through the winter. In this letter the Ministers
of the Crown tell us that famine is close at hand; and yet, when this
letter was written, the duty on foreign corn was seventeen shillings
a quarter. Is it necessary to say more about the merits of the sliding
scale? We were assured that this wonderful piece of machinery would
secure us against all danger of scarcity. But unhappily we find that
there is a hitch; the sliding scale will not slide; the Ministers are
crying "Famine," while the index which they themselves devised is still
pointing to "Plenty. "

And thus, Sir, I come back to the resolution which I hold in my hand, A
dear year is before us. The price of meal is already, I believe, half as
much again as it was a few months ago. Again, unhappily, we are able
to bring to the test of facts the doctrine, that the dearness of food
benefits the labourer and injures only the capitalist. The price of
food is rising. Are wages rising? On the contrary, they are falling. In
numerous districts the symptoms of distress are already perceptible.
The manufacturers are already beginning to work short time. Warned by
repeated experience, they know well what is coming, and expect that 1846
will be a second 1841.

If these things do not teach us wisdom, we are past all teaching. Twice
in ten years we have seen the price of corn go up; and, as it went up,
the wages of the labouring classes went down. Twice in the same period
we have seen the price of corn go down; and, as it went down, the wages
of the labouring classes went up. Surely such experiments as these would
in any science be considered as decisive.

The prospect, gentlemen, is, doubtless, gloomy. Yet it has its bright
part. I have already congratulated you on the important fact that
Lord John Russell and those who have hitherto acted on this subject in
concert with him, have given up all thoughts of fixed duty. I have to
congratulate you on another fact not less important. I am assured that
the working people of the manufacturing districts have at last come to
understand this question. The sharp discipline which they have undergone
has produced this good effect; that they will never again listen to any
orator who shall have the effrontery to tell them that their wages rise
and fall with the price of the loaf. Thus we shall go into the contest
under such leading and with such a following as we never had before. The
best part of the aristocracy will be at our head. Millions of labouring
men, who had been separated from us by the arts of impostors, will be
in our rear. So led and so followed, we may, I think, look forward to
victory, if not in this, yet in the next Parliament. But, whether our
triumph be near or remote, I assure you that I shall not fail as regards
this question, to prove myself your true representative. I will now, my
Lord, put into your hands this resolution, "That the present corn law
presses with especial severity on the poorer classes. "

*****




THE TEN HOURS BILL. (MAY 22, 1846) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE 22D OF MAY 1846.

On the twenty-ninth of April, 1846, Mr Fielden, Member for Oldham, moved
the second reading of a Bill for limiting the labour of young persons
in factories to ten hours a day. The debate was adjourned, and was
repeatedly resumed at long intervals. At length, on the twenty-second of
May the Bill was rejected by 203 votes to 193. On that day the following
Speech was made.

It is impossible, Sir, that I can remain silent after the appeal which
has been made to me in so pointed a manner by my honourable friend, the
Member for Sheffield (Mr Ward. ), and even if that appeal had not been
made to me, I should have been very desirous to have an opportunity of
explaining the grounds on which I shall vote for the second reading of
this bill.

It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to assure my honourable friend that
I utterly disapprove of those aspersions which have, both in this House
and out of it, been thrown on the owners of factories. For that valuable
class of men I have no feeling but respect and good will. I am convinced
that with their interests the interests of the whole community, and
especially of the labouring classes, are inseparably bound up. I can
also with perfect sincerity declare that the vote which I shall give
to-night will not be a factious vote. In no circumstances indeed should
I think that the laws of political hostility warranted me in treating
this question as a party question. But at the present moment I would
much rather strengthen than weaken the hands of Her Majesty's Ministers.
It is by no means pleasant to me to be under the necessity of opposing
them. I assure them, I assure my friends on this side of the House with
whom I am so unfortunate as to differ, and especially my honourable
friend the Member for Sheffield, who spoke, I must say, in rather too
plaintive a tone, that I have no desire to obtain credit for humanity at
their expense.