No More Learning

It
was that party which opposed the war with America and the war with the
French Republic; which imparted the blessings of our free Constitution
to the Dissenters; and which, at a later period, by unparalleled
sacrifices and exertions, extended the same blessings to the Roman
Catholics. To the Whigs of the seventeenth century we owe it that we
have a House of Commons. To the Whigs of the nineteenth century we owe
it that the House of Commons has been purified. The abolition of the
slave trade, the abolition of colonial slavery, the extension of popular
education, the mitigation of the rigour of the penal code, all, all were
effected by that party; and of that party, I repeat, I am a member. I
look with pride on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of human
freedom and of human happiness. I see them now hard pressed, struggling
with difficulties, but still fighting the good fight. At their head I
see men who have inherited the spirit and the virtues, as well as the
blood, of old champions and martyrs of freedom. To those men I propose
to attach myself. Delusion may triumph: but the triumphs of delusion are
but for a day. We may be defeated: but our principles will only gather
fresh strength from defeats. Be that, however, as it may, my part is
taken. While one shred of the old banner is flying, by that banner will
I at least be found. The good old cause, as Sidney called it on the
scaffold, vanquished or victorious, insulted or triumphant, the good
old cause is still the good old cause with me. Whether in or out of
Parliament, whether speaking with that authority which must always
belong to the representative of this great and enlightened community,
or expressing the humble sentiments of a private citizen, I will to the
last maintain inviolate my fidelity to principles which, though they may
be borne down for a time by senseless clamour, are yet strong with the
strength and immortal with the immortality of truth, and which, however
they may be misunderstood or misrepresented by contemporaries, will
assuredly find justice from a better age. Gentlemen, I have done. I have
only to thank you for the kind attention with which you have heard me,
and to express my hope that whether my principles have met with your
concurrence or not, the frankness with which I have expressed them will
at least obtain your approbation.

*****




CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY OF LORD MELBOURNE. (JANUARY 29, 1840) A
SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 29TH OF JANUARY 1840.

On the twenty-eighth of January 1840, Sir John Yarde Buller moved the
following resolution:

"That Her Majesty's Government, as at present constituted, does not
possess the confidence of the House. "

After a discussion of four nights the motion was rejected by 308 votes
to 287. The following Speech was made on the second night of the debate.

The House, Sir, may possibly imagine that I rise under some little
feeling of irritation to reply to the personal reflections which have
been introduced into the discussion. It would be easy to reply to these
reflections. It would be still easier to retort them: but I should
think either course unworthy of me and of this great occasion. If ever
I should so far forget myself as to wander from the subject of debate to
matters concerning only myself, it will not, I hope, be at a time when
the dearest interests of our country are staked on the result of our
deliberations. I rise under feelings of anxiety which leave no room in
my mind for selfish vanity or petty vindictiveness. I believe with the
most intense conviction that, in pleading for the Government to which
I belong, I am pleading for the safety of the Commonwealth, for the
reformation of abuses, and at the same time for the preservation of
august and venerable institutions: and I trust, Mr Speaker, that when
the question is whether a Cabinet be or be not worthy of the confidence
of Parliament, the first Member of that Cabinet who comes forward to
defend himself and his colleagues will find here some portion of that
generosity and good feeling which once distinguished English gentlemen.
But be this as it may, my voice shall be heard. I repeat, that I am
pleading at once for the reformation and for the preservation of our
institutions, for liberty and order, for justice administered in mercy,
for equal laws, for the rights of conscience, and for the real union of
Great Britain and Ireland. If, on so grave an occasion, I should advert
to one or two of the charges which have been brought against myself
personally, I shall do so only because I conceive that those charges
affect in some degree the character of the Government to which I belong.

One of the chief accusations brought against the Government by the
honourable Baronet (Sir John Yarde Buller. ) who opened the debate,
and repeated by the seconder (Alderman Thompson. ), and by almost every
gentlemen who has addressed the House from the benches opposite, is that
I have been invited to take office though my opinion with respect to the
Ballot is known to be different from that of my colleagues. We have been
repeatedly told that a Ministry in which there is not perfect unanimity
on a subject so important must be undeserving of the public confidence.
Now, Sir, it is true that I am in favour of secret voting, that my noble
and right honourable friends near me are in favour of open voting,
and yet that we sit in the same Cabinet. But if, on account of this
difference of opinion, the Government is unworthy of public confidence,
then I am sure that scarcely any government which has existed within the
memory of the oldest man has been deserving of public confidence. It
is well-known that in the Cabinets of Mr Pitt, of Mr Fox, of Lord
Liverpool, of Mr Canning, of the Duke of Wellington, there were
open questions of great moment. Mr Pitt, while still zealous for
parliamentary reform, brought into the Cabinet Lord Grenville, who
was adverse to parliamentary reform. Again, Mr Pitt, while eloquently
supporting the abolition of the Slave Trade, brought into the Cabinet
Mr Dundas, who was the chief defender of the Slave Trade. Mr Fox,
too, intense as was his abhorrence of the Slave Trade, sat in the same
Cabinet with Lord Sidmouth and Mr Windham, who voted to the last against
the abolition of that trade. Lord Liverpool, Mr Canning, the Duke of
Wellington, all left the question of Catholic Emancipation open. And
yet, of all questions, that was perhaps the very last that should have
been left open. For it was not merely a legislative question, but a
question which affected every part of the executive administration.
But, to come to the present time, suppose that you could carry your
resolution, suppose that you could drive the present Ministers from
power, who that may succeed them will be able to form a government in
which there will be no open questions? Can the right honourable Baronet
the member for Tamworth (Sir Robert Peel. ) form a Cabinet without
leaving the great question of our privileges open? In what respect is
that question less important than the question of the Ballot? Is it not
indeed from the privileges of the House that all questions relating
to the constitution of the House derive their importance? What does it
matter how we are chosen, if, when we meet, we do not possess the
powers necessary to enable us to perform the functions of a legislative
assembly? Yet you who would turn out the present Ministers because they
differ from each other as to the way in which Members of this House
should be chosen, wish to bring in men who decidedly differ from each
other as to the relation in which this House stands to the nation, to
the other House, and to the Courts of Judicature. Will you say that the
dispute between the House and the Court of Queen's Bench is a trifling
dispute? Surely, in the late debates, you were all perfectly agreed as
to the importance of the question, though you were agreed as to nothing
else. Some of you told us that we were contending for a power essential
to our honour and usefulness. Many of you protested against our
proceedings, and declared that we were encroaching on the province of
the tribunals, violating the liberty of our fellow citizens, punishing
honest magistrates for not perjuring themselves. Are these trifles? And
can we believe that you really feel a horror of open questions when we
see your Prime Minister elect sending people to prison overnight,
and his law officers elect respectfully attending the levee of those
prisoners the next morning? Observe, too, that this question of
privileges is not merely important; it is also pressing. Something must
be done, and that speedily. My belief is that more inconvenience would
follow from leaving that question open one month than from leaving the
question of the Ballot open ten years.

The Ballot, Sir, is not the only subject on which I am accused of
holding dangerous opinions. The right honourable Baronet the Member
for Pembroke (Sir James Graham. ) pronounces the present Government
a Chartist Government; and he proves his point by saying that I am a
member of the government, and that I wish to give the elective franchise
to every ten pound householder, whether his house be in a town or in
the country. Is it possible, Sir, that the honourable Baronet should not
know that the fundamental principle of the plan of government called the
People's Charter is that every male of twenty-one should have a vote?
Or is it possible that he can see no difference between giving the
franchise to all ten pound householders, and giving the franchise to all
males of twenty-one? Does he think the ten pound householders a class
morally or intellectually unfit to possess the franchise, he who bore a
chief part in framing the law which gave them the franchise in all the
represented towns of the United Kingdom? Or will he say that the ten
pound householder in a town is morally and intellectually fit to be
an elector, but that the ten pound householder who lives in the
open country is morally and intellectually unfit? Is not house-rent
notoriously higher in towns than in the country? Is it not, therefore,
probable that the occupant of a ten pound house in a rural hamlet will
be a man who has a greater stake in the peace and welfare of society
than a man who has a ten pound house in Manchester or Birmingham? Can
you defend on conservative principles an arrangement which gives votes
to a poorer class and withholds them from a richer? For my own part, I
believe it to be essential to the welfare of the state, that the elector
should have a pecuniary qualification. I believe that the ten pound
qualification cannot be proved to be either too high or too low.
Changes, which may hereafter take place in the value of money and in
the condition of the people, may make a change of the qualification
necessary. But the ten pound qualification is, I believe, well suited to
the present state of things. At any rate, I am unable to conceive why it
should be a sufficient qualification within the limits of a borough, and
an insufficient qualification a yard beyond those limits; sufficient at
Knightsbridge, but insufficient at Kensington; sufficient at Lambeth,
but insufficient at Battersea? If any person calls this Chartism, he
must permit me to tell him that he does not know what Chartism is.

A motion, Sir, such as that which we are considering, brings under our
review the whole policy of the kingdom, domestic, foreign, and colonial.
It is not strange, therefore, that there should have been several
episodes in this debate. Something has been said about the hostilities
on the River Plata, something about the hostilities on the coast of
China, something about Commissioner Lin, something about Captain Elliot.
But on such points I shall not dwell, for it is evidently not by the
opinion which the House may entertain on such points that the event
of the debate will be decided. The main argument of the gentlemen who
support the motion, the argument on which the right honourable Baronet
who opened the debate chiefly relied, the argument which his seconder
repeated, and which has formed the substance of every speech since
delivered from the opposite side of the House, may be fairly summed
up thus, "The country is not in a satisfactory state. There is much
recklessness, much turbulence, much craving for political change; and
the cause of these evils is the policy of the Whigs. They rose to power
by agitation in 1830: they retained power by means of agitation through
the tempestuous months which followed: they carried the Reform Bill
by means of agitation: expelled from office, they forced themselves in
again by means of agitation; and now we are paying the penalty of their
misconduct. Chartism is the natural offspring of Whiggism. From those
who caused the evil we cannot expect the remedy. The first thing to
be done is to dismiss them, and to call to power men who, not having
instigated the people to commit excesses, can, without incurring the
charge of inconsistency, enforce the laws. "

Now, Sir, it seems to me that this argument was completely refuted by
the able and eloquent speech of my right honourable friend the Judge
Advocate. (Sir George Grey. ) He said, and he said most truly, that those
who hold this language are really accusing, not the Government of Lord
Melbourne, but the Government of Lord Grey. I was therefore, I must say,
surprised, after the speech of my right honourable friend, to hear
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke, himself a
distinguished member of the cabinet of Lord Grey, pronounce a harangue
against agitation. That he was himself an agitator he does not venture
to deny; but he tries to excuse himself by saying, "I liked the Reform
Bill; I thought it a good bill; and so I agitated for it; and, in
agitating for it, I acknowledge that I went to the very utmost limit of
what was prudent, to the very utmost limit of what was legal. " Does not
the right honourable Baronet perceive that, by setting up this defence
for his own past conduct, he admits that agitation is good or evil,
according as the objects of the agitation are good or evil? When I hear
him speak of agitation as a practice disgraceful to a public man, and
especially to a Minister of the Crown, and address his lecture in a
particular manner to me, I cannot but wonder that he should not perceive
that his reproaches, instead of wounding me, recoil on himself. I was
not a member of the Cabinet which brought in the Reform Bill, which
dissolved the Parliament in a moment of intense excitement in order
to carry the Reform Bill, which refused to serve the Sovereign longer
unless he would create peers in sufficient numbers to carry the Reform
Bill. I was at that time only one of those hundreds of members of this
House, one of those millions of Englishmen, who were deeply impressed
with the conviction that the Reform Bill was one of the best laws
that ever had been framed, and who reposed entire confidence in the
abilities, the integrity, and the patriotism of the ministers; and
I must add that in no member of the administration did I place more
confidence than in the right honourable Baronet, who was then First
Lord of the Admiralty, and in the noble lord who was then Secretary for
Ireland. (Lord Stanley. ) It was indeed impossible for me not to see that
the public mind was strongly, was dangerously stirred: but I trusted
that men so able, men so upright, men who had so large a stake in the
country, would carry us safe through the storm which they had raised.
And is it not rather hard that my confidence in the right honourable
Baronet and the noble lord is to be imputed to me as a crime by the very
men who are trying to raise the right honourable Baronet and the noble
lord to power? The Charter, we have been told in this debate, is the
child of the Reform Bill. But whose child is the Reform Bill? If men are
to be deemed unfit for office because they roused the national spirit
to support that bill, because they went as far as the law permitted in
order to carry that bill, then I say that no men can be more unfit for
office than the right honourable Baronet and the noble lord. It may be
thought presumptuous in me to defend two persons who are so well able to
defend themselves, and the more so, as they have a powerful ally in
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth, who, having twice
offered them high places in the Government, must be supposed to be of
opinion that they are not disqualified for being ministers by having
been agitators. I will, however, venture to offer some arguments in
vindication of the conduct of my noble and right honourable friends,
as I once called them, and as, notwithstanding the asperity which
has characterised the present debate, I should still have pleasure in
calling them. I would say in their behalf that agitation ought not to be
indiscriminately condemned; that great abuses ought to be removed;
that in this country scarcely any great abuse was ever removed till the
public feeling had been roused against it; and that the public feeling
has seldom been roused against abuses without exertions to which the
name of agitation may be given. I altogether deny the assertion which
we have repeatedly heard in the course of this debate, that a government
which does not discountenance agitation cannot be trusted to suppress
rebellion. Agitation and rebellion, you say, are in kind the same thing:
they differ only in degree. Sir, they are the same thing in the sense
in which to breathe a vein and to cut a throat are the same thing. There
are many points of resemblance between the act of the surgeon and the
act of the assassin. In both there is the steel, the incision, the
smart, the bloodshed. But the acts differ as widely as possible both in
moral character and in physical effect. So with agitation and rebellion.
I do not believe that there has been any moment since the revolution
of 1688 at which an insurrection in this country would have been
justifiable. On the other hand, I hold that we have owed to agitation a
long series of beneficent reforms which could have been effected in no
other way. Nor do I understand how any person can reprobate agitation,
merely as agitation, unless he is prepared to adopt the maxim of Bishop
Horsley, that the people have nothing to do with the laws but to
obey them. The truth is that agitation is inseparable from popular
government. If you wish to get rid of agitation, you must establish an
oligarchy like that of Venice, or a despotism like that of Russia. If
a Russian thinks that he is able to suggest an improvement in the
commercial code or the criminal code of his country, he tries to obtain
an audience of the Emperor Nicholas or of Count Nesselrode. If he
can satisfy them that his plans are good, then undoubtedly, without
agitation, without controversy in newspapers, without harangues from
hustings, without clamorous meetings in great halls and in marketplaces,
without petitions signed by tens of thousands, you may have a reform
effected with one stroke of the pen. Not so here. Here the people, as
electors, have power to decide questions of the highest importance. And
ought they not to hear and read before they decide? And how can they
hear if nobody speaks, or read if nobody writes? You must admit,
then, that it is our right, and that it may be our duty, to attempt
by speaking and writing to induce the great body of our countrymen to
pronounce what we think a right decision; and what else is agitation? In
saying this I am not defending one party alone. Has there been no Tory
agitation? No agitation against Popery? No agitation against the new
Poor Law? No agitation against the plan of education framed by the
present Government? Or, to pass from questions about which we differ to
questions about which we all agree: Would the slave trade ever have
been abolished without agitation? Would slavery ever have been abolished
without agitation? Would your prison discipline ever have been improved
without agitation? Would your penal code, once the scandal of the
Statute Book, have been mitigated without agitation? I am far from
denying that agitation may be abused, may be employed for bad ends, may
be carried to unjustifiable lengths. So may that freedom of speech
which is one of the most precious privileges of this House. Indeed,
the analogy is very close. What is agitation but the mode in which the
public, the body which we represent, the great outer assembly, if I may
so speak, holds its debates? It is as necessary to the good government
of the country that our constituents should debate as that we should
debate. They sometimes go wrong, as we sometimes go wrong. There
is often much exaggeration, much unfairness, much acrimony in their
debates. Is there none in ours? Some worthless demagogues may have
exhorted the people to resist the laws. But what member of Lord Grey's
Government, what member of the present Government, ever gave any
countenance to any illegal proceedings? It is perfectly true that some
words which have been uttered here and in other places, and which, when
taken together with the context and candidly construed, will appear to
mean nothing but what was reasonable and constitutional and moderate,
have been distorted and mutilated into something that has a seditious
aspect. But who is secure against such misrepresentation? Not, I am
sure, the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke. He ought to
remember that his own speeches have been used by bad men for bad ends.
He ought to remember that some expressions which he used in 1830, on
the subject of the emoluments divided among Privy Councillors, have been
quoted by the Chartists in vindication of their excesses. Do I blame him
for this? Not at all. He said nothing that was not justifiable. But it
is impossible for a man so to guard his lips that his language shall not
sometimes be misunderstood by dull men, and sometimes misrepresented
by dishonest men. I do not, I say, blame him for having used those
expressions: but I do say that, knowing how his own expressions had been
perverted, he should have hesitated before he threw upon men, not
less attached than himself to the cause of law, of order and property,
imputations certainly not better founded than those to which he is
himself liable.

And now, Sir, to pass by many topics to which, but for the lateness of
the hour, I would willingly advert, let me remind the House that
the question before us is not a positive question, but a question of
comparison. No man, though he may disapprove of some part of the conduct
of the present Ministers, is justified in voting for the motion which we
are considering, unless he believes that a change would, on the whole,
be beneficial. No government is perfect: but some government there must
be; and if the present government were worse than its enemies think it,
it ought to exist until it can be succeeded by a better. Now I take it
to be perfectly clear that, in the event of the removal of Her Majesty's
present advisers, an administration must be formed of which the right
honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth will be the head. Towards
that right honourable Baronet, and towards many of the noblemen and
gentlemen who would probably in that event be associated with him, I
entertain none but kind and respectful feelings. I am far, I hope, from
that narrowness of mind which makes a man unable to see merit in any
party but his own. If I may venture to parody the old Venetian proverb,
I would be "First an Englishman; and then a Whig. " I feel proud of my
country when I think how much ability, uprightness, and patriotism may
be found on both sides of the House. Among our opponents stands forth,
eminently distinguished by parts, eloquence, knowledge, and, I willingly
admit, by public spirit, the right honourable Baronet the Member for
Tamworth. Having said this, I shall offer no apology for the remarks
which, in the discharge of my public duty, I shall make, without, I
hope, any personal discourtesy, on his past conduct, and his present
position.

It has been, Sir, I will not say his fault, but his misfortune, his
fate, to be the leader of a party with which he has no sympathy. To go
back to what is now matter of history, the right honourable Baronet
bore a chief part in the restoration of the currency. By a very
large proportion of his followers the restoration of the currency is
considered as the chief cause of the distresses of the country. The
right honourable Baronet cordially supported the commercial policy of Mr
Huskisson. But there was no name more odious than that of Mr Huskisson
to the rank and file of the Tory party. The right honourable Baronet
assented to the Act which removed the disabilities of the Protestant
Dissenters. But, a very short time ago, a noble Duke, one of the
highest in power and rank of the right honourable Baronet's adherents,
positively refused to lend his aid to the executing of that Act.
The right honourable Baronet brought in the bill which removed the
disabilities of the Roman Catholics: but his supporters make it a chief
article of charge against us that we have given practical effect to
the law which is his best title to public esteem. The right honourable
Baronet has declared himself decidedly favourable to the new Poor Law.
Yet, if a voice is raised against the Whig Bastilles and the Kings of
Somerset House, it is almost certain to be the voice of some zealous
retainer of the right honourable Baronet. On the great question of
privilege, the right honourable Baronet has taken a part which entitles
him to the gratitude of all who are solicitous for the honour and the
usefulness of the popular branch of the legislature. But if any person
calls us tyrants, and calls those whom we have imprisoned martyrs, that
person is certain to be a partisan of the right honourable Baronet.
Even when the right honourable Baronet does happen to agree with his
followers as to a conclusion, he seldom arrives at that conclusion by
the same process of reasoning which satisfies them. Many great questions
which they consider as questions of right and wrong, as questions of
moral and religious principle, as questions which must, for no earthly
object, and on no emergency, be compromised, are treated by him merely
as questions of expediency, of place, and of time. He has opposed many
bills introduced by the present Government; but he has opposed them on
such grounds that he is at perfect liberty to bring in the same bills
himself next year, with perhaps some slight variation. I listened to him
as I always listen to him, with pleasure, when he spoke last session on
the subject of education. I could not but be amused by the skill with
which he performed the hard task of translating the gibberish of bigots
into language which might not misbecome the mouth of a man of sense. I
felt certain that he despised the prejudices of which he condescended
to make use, and that his opinion about the Normal Schools and the Douai
Version entirely agreed with my own. I therefore do not think that,
in times like these, the right honourable Baronet can conduct the
administration with honour to himself or with satisfaction to those
who are impatient to see him in office. I will not affect to feel
apprehensions from which I am entirely free. I do not fear, and I will
not pretend to fear, that the right honourable Baronet will be a tyrant
and a persecutor. I do not believe that he will give up Ireland to the
tender mercies of those zealots who form, I am afraid, the strongest,
and I am sure the loudest, part of his retinue. I do not believe that
he will strike the names of Roman Catholics from the Privy Council book,
and from the Commissions of the Peace. I do not believe that he will
lay on our table a bill for the repeal of that great Act which was
introduced by himself in 1829. What I do anticipate is this, that he
will attempt to keep his party together by means which will excite
grave discontents, and yet that he will not succeed in keeping his party
together; that he will lose the support of the Tories without obtaining
the support of the nation; and that his government will fall from causes
purely internal.

This, Sir, is not mere conjecture. The drama is not a new one. It was
performed a few years ago on the same stage and by most of the same
actors. In 1827 the right honourable Baronet was, as now, the head of
a powerful Tory opposition. He had, as now, the support of a strong
minority in this House. He had, as now, a majority in the other House.
He was, as now, the favourite of the Church and of the Universities. All
who dreaded political change, all who hated religious liberty, rallied
round him then, as they rally round him now. Their cry was then, as
now, that a government unfriendly to the civil and ecclesiastical
constitution of the realm was kept in power by intrigue and court
favour, and that the right honourable Baronet was the man to whom the
nation must look to defend its laws against revolutionists, and its
religion against idolaters. At length that cry became irresistible.
Tory animosity had pursued the most accomplished of Tory statesmen and
orators to a resting place in Westminster Abbey. The arrangement which
was made after his death lasted but a very few months: a Tory government
was formed; and the right honourable Baronet became the leading minister
of the Crown in the House of Commons. His adherents hailed his elevation
with clamorous delight, and confidently expected many years of triumph
and dominion. Is it necessary to say in what disappointment, in what
sorrow, in what fury, those expectations ended?
The right honourable
Baronet had been raised to power by prejudices and passions in which
he had no share. His followers were bigots. He was a statesman. He was
coolly weighing conveniences against inconveniences, while they were
ready to resort to a proscription and to hazard a civil war rather than
depart from what they called their principles. For a time he tried to
take a middle course. He imagined that it might be possible for him to
stand well with his old friends, and yet to perform some part of his
duty to the state. But those were not times in which he could long
continue to halt between two opinions. His elevation, as it had excited
the hopes of the oppressors, had excited also the terror and the rage of
the oppressed. Agitation, which had, during more than a year, slumbered
in Ireland, awoke with renewed vigour, and soon became more formidable
than ever. The Roman Catholic Association began to exercise authority
such as the Irish Parliament, in the days of its independence, had never
possessed. An agitator became more powerful than the Lord Lieutenant.
Violence engendered violence. Every explosion of feeling on one side of
St George's Channel was answered by a louder explosion on the other.
The Clare election, the Penenden Heath meeting showed that the time
for evasion and delay was past. A crisis had arrived which made it
absolutely necessary for the Government to take one side or the other. A
simple issue was proposed to the right honourable Baronet, concession
or civil war; to disgust his party, or to ruin his country. He chose
the good part. He performed a duty, deeply painful, in some sense
humiliating, yet in truth highly honourable to him. He came down to this
House and proposed the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Among his
adherents were some who, like himself, had opposed the Roman Catholic
claims merely on the ground of political expediency; and these persons
readily consented to support his new policy. But not so the great body
of his followers. Their zeal for Protestant ascendency was a ruling
passion, a passion, too, which they thought it a virtue to indulge. They
had exerted themselves to raise to power the man whom they regarded as
the ablest and most trusty champion of that ascendency; and he had not
only abandoned the good cause, but had become its adversary. Who can
forget in what a roar of obloquy their anger burst forth? Never before
was such a flood of calumny and invective poured on a single head. All
history, all fiction were ransacked by the old friends of the right
honourable Baronet, for nicknames and allusions. One right honourable
gentleman, who I am sorry not to see in his place opposite, found
English prose too weak to express his indignation, and pursued his
perfidious chief with reproaches borrowed from the ravings of the
deserted Dido. Another Tory explored Holy Writ for parallels, and could
find no parallel but Judas Iscariot. The great university which had been
proud to confer on the right honourable Baronet the highest marks of
favour, was foremost in affixing the brand of infamy. From Cornwall,
from Northumberland, clergymen came up by hundreds to Oxford, in order
to vote against him whose presence, a few days before, would have set
the bells of their parish churches jingling. Nay, such was the violence
of this new enmity that the old enmity of the Tories to Whigs, Radicals,
Dissenters, Papists, seemed to be forgotten. That Ministry which, when
it came into power at the close of 1828, was one of the strongest that
the country ever saw, was, at the close of 1829, one of the weakest. It
lingered another year, staggering between two parties, leaning now on
one, now on the other, reeling sometimes under a blow from the right,
sometimes under a blow from the left, and certain to fall as soon as the
Tory opposition and the Whig opposition could find a question on which
to unite. Such a question was found: and that Ministry fell without a
struggle.

Now what I wish to know is this. What reason have we to believe that any
administration which the right honourable Baronet can now form will have
a different fate? Is he changed since 1829? Is his party changed? He
is, I believe, still the same, still a statesman, moderate in opinions,
cautious in temper, perfectly free from that fanaticism which inflames
so many of his supporters. As to his party, I admit that it is not
the same; for it is very much worse. It is decidedly fiercer and
more unreasonable than it was eleven years ago. I judge by its public
meetings; I judge by its journals; I judge by its pulpits, pulpits which
every week resound with ribaldry and slander such as would disgrace the
hustings. A change has come over the spirit of a part, I hope not the
larger part, of the Tory body. It was once the glory of the Tories
that, through all changes of fortune, they were animated by a steady
and fervent loyalty which made even error respectable, and gave to what
might otherwise have been called servility something of the manliness
and nobleness of freedom. A great Tory poet, whose eminent services
to the cause of monarchy had been ill requited by an ungrateful Court,
boasted that

"Loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shined upon. "

Toryism has now changed its character. We have lived to see a monster of
a faction made up of the worst parts of the Cavalier and the worst parts
of the Roundhead. We have lived to see a race of disloyal Tories. We
have lived to see Tories giving themselves the airs of those insolent
pikemen who puffed out their tobacco smoke in the face of Charles the
First. We have lived to see Tories who, because they are not allowed to
grind the people after the fashion of Strafford, turn round and revile
the Sovereign in the style of Hugh Peters. I say, therefore, that, while
the leader is still what he was eleven years ago, when his moderation
alienated his intemperate followers, his followers are more intemperate
than ever. It is my firm belief that the majority of them desire the
repeal of the Emancipation Act. You say, no. But I will give reasons,
and unanswerable reasons, for what I say. How, if you really wish to
maintain the Emancipation Act, do you explain that clamour which you
have raised, and which has resounded through the whole kingdom, about
the three Popish Privy Councillors? You resent, as a calumny, the
imputation that you wish to repeal the Emancipation Act; and yet you cry
out that Church and State are in danger of ruin whenever the Government
carries that Act into effect. If the Emancipation Act is never to be
executed, why should it not be repealed? I perfectly understand that an
honest man may wish it to be repealed. But I am at a loss to understand
how honest men can say, "We wish the Emancipation Act to be maintained:
you who accuse us of wishing to repeal it slander us foully: we value
it as much as you do. Let it remain among our statutes, provided always
that it remains as a dead letter. If you dare to put it in force,
indeed, we will agitate against you; for, though we talk against
agitation, we too can practice agitation: we will denounce you in our
associations; for, though we call associations unconstitutional, we
too have our associations: our divines shall preach about Jezebel: our
tavern spouters shall give significant hints about James the Second. "
Yes, Sir, such hints have been given, hints that a sovereign who has
merely executed the law, ought to be treated like a sovereign who
grossly violated the law. I perfectly understand, as I said, that an
honest man may disapprove of the Emancipation Act, and may wish it
repealed. But can any man, who is of opinion that Roman Catholics ought
to be admitted to office, honestly maintain that they now enjoy more
than their fair share of power and emolument? What is the proportion
of Roman Catholics to the whole population of the United Kingdom?
About one-fourth. What proportion of the Privy Councillors are Roman
Catholics? About one-seventieth. And what, after all, is the power of a
Privy Councillor, merely as such? Are not the right honourable gentlemen
opposite Privy Councillors? If a change should take place, will not the
present Ministers still be Privy Councillors? It is notorious that no
Privy Councillor goes to Council unless he is specially summoned. He is
called Right Honourable, and he walks out of a room before Esquires and
Knights. And can we seriously believe that men who think it monstrous
that this honorary distinction should be given to three Roman Catholics,
do sincerely desire to maintain a law by which a Roman Catholic may be
Commander in Chief with all the military patronage, First Lord of the
Admiralty with all the naval patronage, or First Lord of the Treasury,
with the chief influence in every department of the Government. I must
therefore suppose that those who join in the cry against the three Privy
Councillors, are either imbecile or hostile to the Emancipation Act.

I repeat, therefore, that, while the right honourable Baronet is as free
from bigotry as he was eleven years ago, his party is more bigoted
than it was eleven years ago. The difficulty of governing Ireland in
opposition to the feelings of the great body of the Irish people is, I
apprehend, as great now as it was eleven years ago. What then must be
the fate of a government formed by the right honourable Baronet? Suppose
that the event of this debate should make him Prime Minister? Should I
be wrong if I were to prophesy that three years hence he will be more
hated and vilified by the Tory party than the present advisers of the
Crown have been? Should I be wrong if I were to say that all those
literary organs which now deafen us with praise of him, will then deafen
us with abuse of him? Should I be wrong if I were to say that he will
be burned in effigy by those who now drink his health with three times
three and one cheer more? Should I be wrong if I were to say that those
very gentlemen who have crowded hither to-night in order to vote him
into power, will crowd hither to vote Lord Melbourne back? Once already
have I seen those very persons go out into the lobby for the purpose of
driving the right honourable Baronet from the high situation to which
they had themselves exalted him. I went out with them myself; yes, with
the whole body of the Tory country gentlemen, with the whole body of
high Churchmen. All the four University Members were with us. The effect
of that division was to bring Lord Grey, Lord Althorpe, Lord Brougham,
Lord Durham into power. You may say that the Tories on that occasion
judged ill, that they were blinded by vindictive passion, that if
they had foreseen all that followed they might have acted differently.
Perhaps so. But what has been once may be again. I cannot think it
possible that those who are now supporting the right honourable Baronet
will continue from personal attachment to support him if they see that
his policy is in essentials the same as Lord Melbourne's. I believe that
they have quite as much personal attachment to Lord Melbourne as to
the right honourable Baronet. They follow the right honourable Baronet
because his abilities, his eloquence, his experience are necessary to
them; but they are but half reconciled to him. They never can forget
that, in the most important crisis of his public life, he deliberately
chose rather to be the victim of their injustice than its instrument.
It is idle to suppose that they will be satisfied by seeing a new set of
men in power. Their maxim is most truly "Measures, not men. " They care
not before whom the sword of state is borne at Dublin, or who wears the
badge of St Patrick. What they abhor is not Lord Normanby personally or
Lord Ebrington personally, but the great principles in conformity with
which Ireland has been governed by Lord Normanby and by Lord Ebrington,
the principles of justice, humanity, and religious freedom. What they
wish to have in Ireland is not my Lord Haddington, or any other viceroy
whom the right honourable Baronet may select, but the tyranny of race
over race, and of creed over creed. Give them what they want; and you
convulse the empire. Refuse them; and you dissolve the Tory party. I
believe that the right honourable Baronet himself is by no means without
apprehensions that, if he were now called to the head of affairs, he
would, very speedily, have the dilemma of 1829 again before him. He
certainly was not without such apprehensions when, a few months ago,
he was commanded by Her Majesty to submit to her the plan of an
administration. The aspect of public affairs was not at that time
cheering. The Chartists were stirring in England. There were troubles in
Canada. There were great discontents in the West Indies. An expedition,
of which the event was still doubtful, had been sent into the heart of
Asia. Yet, among many causes of anxiety, the discerning eye of the right
honourable Baronet easily discerned the quarter where the great and
immediate danger lay. He told the House that his difficulty would
be Ireland. Now, Sir, that which would be the difficulty of his
administration is the strength of the present administration. Her
Majesty's Ministers enjoy the confidence of Ireland; and I believe that
what ought to be done for that country will excite less discontent
here if done by them than if done by him. He, I am afraid, great as his
abilities are, and good as I willingly admit his intentions to be, would
find it easy to lose the confidence of his partisans, but hard indeed to
win the confidence of the Irish people.

It is indeed principally on account of Ireland that I feel solicitous
about the issue of the present debate. I well know how little chance he
who speaks on that theme has of obtaining a fair hearing. Would to
God that I were addressing an audience which would judge this great
controversy as it is judged by foreign nations, and as it will be judged
by future ages. The passions which inflame us, the sophisms which
delude us, will not last for ever. The paroxysms of faction have their
appointed season. Even the madness of fanaticism is but for a day. The
time is coming when our conflicts will be to others what the conflicts
of our forefathers are to us; when the preachers who now disturb the
State, and the politicians who now make a stalking horse of the Church,
will be no more than Sacheverel and Harley. Then will be told, in
language very different from that which now calls forth applause from
the mob of Exeter Hall, the true story of these troubled years.

There was, it will then be said, a part of the kingdom of Queen Victoria
which presented a lamentable contrast to the rest; not from the want of
natural fruitfulness, for there was no richer soil in Europe; not from
want of facilities for trade, for the coasts of this unhappy region were
indented by bays and estuaries capable of holding all the navies of the
world; not because the people were too dull to improve these advantages
or too pusillanimous to defend them; for in natural quickness of wit
and gallantry of spirit they ranked high among the nations. But all the
bounty of nature had been made unavailing by the crimes and errors of
man. In the twelfth century that fair island was a conquered province.
The nineteenth century found it a conquered province still. During that
long interval many great changes had taken place which had conduced to
the general welfare of the empire: but those changes had only aggravated
the misery of Ireland. The Reformation came, bringing to England and
Scotland divine truth and intellectual liberty. To Ireland it brought
only fresh calamities. Two new war cries, Protestant and Catholic,
animated the old feud between the Englishry and the Irishry. The
Revolution came, bringing to England and Scotland civil and spiritual
freedom, to Ireland subjugation, degradation, persecution. The Union
came: but though it joined legislatures, it left hearts as widely
disjoined as ever. Catholic Emancipation came: but it came too late;
it came as a concession made to fear, and, having excited unreasonable
hopes, was naturally followed by unreasonable disappointment. Then
came violent irritation, and numerous errors on both sides. Agitation
produced coercion, and coercion produced fresh agitation. Difficulties
and dangers went on increasing, till a government arose which, all other
means having failed, determined to employ the only means that had not
yet been fairly tried, justice and mercy. The State, long the stepmother
of the many, and the mother only of the few, became for the first time
the common parent of all the great family. The body of the people began
to look on their rulers as friends. Battalion after battalion, squadron
after squadron was withdrawn from districts which, as it had till then
been thought, could be governed by the sword alone. Yet the security
of property and the authority of law became every day more complete.
Symptoms of amendment, symptoms such as cannot be either concealed or
counterfeited, began to appear; and those who once despaired of the
destinies of Ireland began to entertain a confident hope that she would
at length take among European nations that high place to which her
natural resources and the intelligence of her children entitle her to
aspire.

In words such as these, I am confident, will the next generation speak
of the events in our time. Relying on the sure justice of history and
posterity, I care not, as far as I am personally concerned, whether we
stand or fall. That issue it is for the House to decide. Whether the
result will be victory or defeat, I know not. But I know that there are
defeats not less glorious than any victory; and yet I have shared in
some glorious victories. Those were proud and happy days;--some who sit
on the benches opposite can well remember, and must, I think, regret
them;--those were proud and happy days when, amidst the applauses and
blessings of millions, my noble friend led us on in the great struggle
for the Reform Bill; when hundreds waited round our doors till sunrise
to hear how we had sped; when the great cities of the north poured forth
their population on the highways to meet the mails which brought from
the capital the tidings whether the battle of the people had been lost
or won. Such days my noble friend cannot hope to see again. Two such
triumphs would be too much for one life. But perhaps there still awaits
him a less pleasing, a less exhilarating, but a not less honourable
task, the task of contending against superior numbers, and through
years of discomfiture, for those civil and religious liberties which are
inseparably associated with the name of his illustrious house. At his
side will not be wanting men who against all odds, and through all turns
of fortune, in evil days and amidst evil tongues, will defend to the
last, with unabated spirit, the noble principles of Milton and of Locke.
We may be driven from office. We may be doomed to a life of opposition.
We may be made marks for the rancour of sects which, hating each other
with a deadly hatred, yet hate toleration still more. We may be exposed
to the rage of Laud on one side, and of Praise-God-Barebones on the
other. But justice will be done at last: and a portion of the praise
which we bestow on the old champions and martyrs of freedom will not
be refused by future generations to the men who have in our days
endeavoured to bind together in real union races too long estranged, and
to efface, by the mild influence of a parental government, the fearful
traces which have been left by the misrule of ages.

*****




WAR WITH CHINA. (APRIL 7, 1840) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE 7TH OF APRIL, 1840.

On the seventh of April, 1840, Sir James Graham moved the following
resolution:

"That it appears to this House, on consideration of the papers relating
to China presented to this House by command of Her Majesty, that the
interruption in our commercial and friendly intercourse with that
country, and the hostilities which have since taken place, are mainly to
be attributed to the want of foresight and precaution on the part of Her
Majesty's present advisers, in respect to our relations with China, and
especially to their neglect to furnish the Superintendent at Canton with
powers and instructions calculated to provide against the growing evils
connected with the contraband trade in opium, and adapted to the novel
and difficult situation in which the Superintendent was placed. "

As soon as the question had been put from the Chair the following Speech
was made.

The motion was rejected, after a debate of three nights, by 271 votes to
261.

Mr Speaker,--If the right honourable Baronet, in rising to make an
attack on the Government, was forced to own that he was unnerved and
overpowered by his sense of the importance of the question with which he
had to deal, one who rises to repel that attack may, without any shame,
confess that he feels similar emotions. And yet I must say that the
anxiety, the natural and becoming anxiety, with which Her Majesty's
Ministers have awaited the judgment of the House on these papers, was
not a little allayed by the terms of the right honourable Baronet's
motion, and has been still more allayed by his speech. It was impossible
for us to doubt either his inclination or his ability to detect and
to expose any fault which we might have committed, and we may well
congratulate ourselves on finding that, after the closest examination
into a long series of transactions, so extensive, so complicated, and,
in some respects, so disastrous, so keen an assailant could produce only
so futile an accusation.

In the first place, Sir, the resolution which the right honourable
Baronet has moved relates entirely to events which took place before the
rupture with the Chinese Government. That rupture took place in March,
1839. The right honourable Baronet therefore does not propose to pass
any censure on any step which has been taken by the Government within
the last thirteen months; and it will, I think, be generally admitted,
that when he abstains from censuring the proceedings of the Government,
it is because the most unfriendly scrutiny can find nothing in those
proceedings to censure. We by no means deny that he has a perfect right
to propose a vote expressing disapprobation of what was done in 1837 or
1838. At the same time, we cannot but be gratified by learning that he
approves of our present policy, and of the measures which we have taken,
since the rupture, for the vindication of the national honour and for
the protection of the national interests.

It is also to be observed that the right honourable Baronet has not
ventured, either in his motion or in his speech, to charge Her Majesty's
Ministers with any unwise or unjust act, with any act tending to lower
the character of England, or to give cause of offence to China. The only
sins which he imputes to them are sins of omission. His complaint is
merely that they did not foresee the course which events would take at
Canton, and that consequently they did not send sufficient instructions
to the British resident who was stationed there. Now it is evident that
such an accusation is of all accusations that which requires the fullest
and most distinct proof; for it is of all accusations that which it is
easiest to make and hardest to refute. A man charged with a culpable
act which he has not committed has comparatively little difficulty in
proving his innocence. But when the charge is merely this, that he has
not, in a long and intricate series of transactions, done all that it
would have been wise to do, how is he to vindicate himself? And the case
which we are considering has this peculiarity, that the envoy to whom
the Ministers are said to have left too large a discretion was fifteen
thousand miles from them. The charge against them therefore is this,
that they did not give such copious and particular directions as
were sufficient, in every possible emergency, for the guidance of a
functionary, who was fifteen thousand miles off. Now, Sir, I am ready to
admit that, if the papers on our table related to important negotiations
with a neighbouring state, if they related, for example, to a
negotiation carried on with France, my noble friend the Secretary for
Foreign Affairs (Lord Palmerston. ) might well have been blamed for
sending instructions so meagre and so vague to our ambassador at Paris.
For my noble friend knows to-night what passed between our ambassador
at Paris and the French Ministers yesterday; and a messenger despatched
to-night from Downing Street will be at the Embassy in the Faubourg
Saint Honore the day after to-morrow. But that constant and minute
control, which the Foreign Secretary is bound to exercise over
diplomatic agents who are near, becomes an useless and pernicious
meddling when exercised over agents who are separated from him by a
voyage of five months. There are on both sides of the House gentlemen
conversant with the affairs of India. I appeal to those gentlemen. India
is nearer to us than China. India is far better known to us than China.
Yet is it not universally acknowledged that India can be governed only
in India? The authorities at home point out to a governor the general
line of policy which they wish him to follow; but they do not send him
directions as to the details of his administration. How indeed is it
possible that they should send him such directions? Consider in what a
state the affairs of this country would be if they were to be conducted
according to directions framed by the ablest statesman residing in
Bengal. A despatch goes hence asking for instructions while London is
illuminating for the peace of Amiens. The instructions arrive when the
French army is encamped at Boulogne, and when the whole island is up in
arms to repel invasion. A despatch is written asking for instructions
when Bonaparte is at Elba. The instructions come when he is at the
Tuilleries. A despatch is written asking for instructions when he is at
the Tuilleries. The instructions come when he is at St Helena. It would
be just as impossible to govern India in London as to govern England at
Calcutta. While letters are preparing here on the supposition that there
is profound peace in the Carnatic, Hyder is at the gates of Fort St
George. While letters are preparing here on the supposition that trade
is flourishing and that the revenue exceeds the expenditure, the crops
have failed, great agency houses have broken, and the government is
negotiating a loan on hard terms. It is notorious that the great men
who founded and preserved our Indian empire, Clive and Warren Hastings,
treated all particular orders which they received from home as mere
waste paper. Had not those great men had the sense and spirit so to
treat such orders, we should not now have had an Indian empire. But the
case of China is far stronger. For, though a person who is now writing a
despatch to Fort William in Leadenhall Street or Cannon Row, cannot know
what events have happened in India within the last two months, he may be
very intimately acquainted with the general state of that country, with
its wants, with its resources, with the habits and temper of the native
population, and with the character of every prince and minister from
Nepaul to Tanjore.