No More Learning

Thousands who would gladly possess a copy of Paradise Lost, must forego
that great enjoyment. And what, in the meantime, is the situation of the
only person for whom we can suppose that the author, protected at such
a cost to the public, was at all interested? She is reduced to utter
destitution. Milton's works are under a monopoly. Milton's granddaughter
is starving. The reader is pillaged; but the writer's family is not
enriched. Society is taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbitant price
for the poems; and it has at the same time to give alms to the only
surviving descendant of the poet.

But this is not all. I think it right, Sir, to call the attention of
the House to an evil, which is perhaps more to be apprehended when an
author's copyright remains in the hands of his family, than when it is
transferred to booksellers. I seriously fear that, if such a measure
as this should be adopted, many valuable works will be either totally
suppressed or grievously mutilated. I can prove that this danger is
not chimerical; and I am quite certain that, if the danger be real,
the safeguards which my honourable and learned friend has devised are
altogether nugatory. That the danger is not chimerical may easily be
shown. Most of us, I am sure, have known persons who, very erroneously
as I think, but from the best motives, would not choose to reprint
Fielding's novels, or Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire. Some gentlemen may perhaps be of opinion that it would be
as well if Tom Jones and Gibbon's History were never reprinted. I will
not, then, dwell on these or similar cases. I will take cases respecting
which it is not likely that there will be any difference of opinion
here; cases, too, in which the danger of which I now speak is not matter
of supposition, but matter of fact. Take Richardson's novels. Whatever
I may, on the present occasion, think of my honourable and learned
friend's judgment as a legislator, I must always respect his judgment as
a critic. He will, I am sure, say that Richardson's novels are among
the most valuable, among the most original works in our language. No
writings have done more to raise the fame of English genius in foreign
countries. No writings are more deeply pathetic. No writings, those of
Shakspeare excepted, show more profound knowledge of the human heart. As
to their moral tendency, I can cite the most respectable testimony. Dr
Johnson describes Richardson as one who had taught the passions to move
at the command of virtue. My dear and honoured friend, Mr Wilberforce,
in his celebrated religious treatise, when speaking of the unchristian
tendency of the fashionable novels of the eighteenth century, distinctly
excepts Richardson from the censure. Another excellent person, whom I
can never mention without respect and kindness, Mrs Hannah More, often
declared in conversation, and has declared in one of her published
poems, that she first learned from the writings of Richardson those
principles of piety by which her life was guided. I may safely say that
books celebrated as works of art through the whole civilised world, and
praised for their moral tendency by Dr Johnson, by Mr Wilberforce, by
Mrs Hannah More, ought not to be suppressed. Sir, it is my firm belief,
that if the law had been what my honourable and learned friend proposes
to make it, they would have been suppressed. I remember Richardson's
grandson well; he was a clergyman in the city of London; he was a most
upright and excellent man; but he had conceived a strong prejudice
against works of fiction. He thought all novel-reading not only
frivolous but sinful. He said,--this I state on the authority of one of
his clerical brethren who is now a bishop,--he said that he had never
thought it right to read one of his grandfather's books. Suppose, Sir,
that the law had been what my honourable and learned friend would make
it. Suppose that the copyright of Richardson's novels had descended, as
might well have been the case, to this gentleman. I firmly believe,
that he would have thought it sinful to give them a wide circulation.
I firmly believe, that he would not for a hundred thousand pounds have
deliberately done what he thought sinful. He would not have reprinted
them. And what protection does my honourable and learned friend give to
the public in such a case? Why, Sir, what he proposes is this: if a book
is not reprinted during five years, any person who wishes to reprint
it may give notice in the London Gazette: the advertisement must be
repeated three times: a year must elapse; and then, if the proprietor of
the copyright does not put forth a new edition, he loses his exclusive
privilege. Now, what protection is this to the public? What is a new
edition? Does the law define the number of copies that make an edition?
Does it limit the price of a copy? Are twelve copies on large paper,
charged at thirty guineas each, an edition? It has been usual, when
monopolies have been granted, to prescribe numbers and to limit prices.
But I did not find the my honourable and learned friend proposes to do
so in the present case. And, without some such provision, the security
which he offers is manifestly illusory. It is my conviction that, under
such a system as that which he recommends to us, a copy of Clarissa
would have been as rare as an Aldus or a Caxton.

I will give another instance. One of the most instructive, interesting,
and delightful books in our language is Boswell's Life of Johnson.
Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book,
considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in the
escutcheon of the family. He thought, not perhaps altogether without
reason, that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous and
degrading light. And thus he became so sore and irritable that at last
he could not bear to hear the Life of Johnson mentioned. Suppose that
the law had been what my honourable and learned friend wishes to
make it. Suppose that the copyright of Boswell's Life of Johnson had
belonged, as it well might, during sixty years, to Boswell's eldest
son. What would have been the consequence? An unadulterated copy of the
finest biographical work in the world would have been as scarce as the
first edition of Camden's Britannia.

These are strong cases. I have shown you that, if the law had been what
you are now going to make it, the finest prose work of fiction in the
language, the finest biographical work in the language, would very
probably have been suppressed. But I have stated my case weakly. The
books which I have mentioned are singularly inoffensive books, books not
touching on any of those questions which drive even wise men beyond the
bounds of wisdom. There are books of a very different kind, books which
are the rallying points of great political and religious parties. What
is likely to happen if the copyright of one of the these books should by
descent or transfer come into the possession of some hostile zealot? I
will take a single instance. It is only fifty years since John Wesley
died; and all his works, if the law had been what my honourable and
learned friend wishes to make it, would now have been the property of
some person or other. The sect founded by Wesley is the most numerous,
the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most zealous of sects. In every
parliamentary election it is a matter of the greatest importance to
obtain the support of the Wesleyan Methodists. Their numerical strength
is reckoned by hundreds of thousands. They hold the memory of their
founder in the greatest reverence; and not without reason, for he was
unquestionably a great and a good man. To his authority they constantly
appeal. His works are in their eyes of the highest value. His doctrinal
writings they regard as containing the best system of theology ever
deduced from Scripture. His journals, interesting even to the common
reader, are peculiarly interesting to the Methodist: for they contain
the whole history of that singular polity which, weak and despised
in its beginning, is now, after the lapse of a century, so strong,
so flourishing, and so formidable. The hymns to which he gave his
imprimatur are a most important part of the public worship of his
followers. Now, suppose that the copyright of these works should belong
to some person who holds the memory of Wesley and the doctrines and
discipline of the Methodists in abhorrence. There are many such persons.
The Ecclesiastical Courts are at this very time sitting on the case of
a clergyman of the Established Church who refused Christian burial to a
child baptized by a Methodist preacher. I took up the other day a work
which is considered as among the most respectable organs of a large
and growing party in the Church of England, and there I saw John Wesley
designated as a forsworn priest. Suppose that the works of Wesley were
suppressed. Why, Sir, such a grievance would be enough to shake the
foundations of Government. Let gentlemen who are attached to the Church
reflect for a moment what their feelings would be if the Book of Common
Prayer were not to be reprinted for thirty or forty years, if the price
of a Book of Common Prayer were run up to five or ten guineas. And
then let them determine whether they will pass a law under which it is
possible, under which it is probable, that so intolerable a wrong may be
done to some sect consisting perhaps of half a million of persons.

I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened
to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if
the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of
the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it
to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable
kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were
virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have
been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually
repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright
has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are
regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving
men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and
compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute
will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this
law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present
race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable
monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the
violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit;
and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should
the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as
popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every
cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich
for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred
years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author
when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be
considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no
person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes
nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share
in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to
create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable
restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to
a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from
pillaging and defrauding the living. If I saw, Sir, any probability that
this bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections might
be removed, I would not divide the House in this stage. But I am so
fully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable to
my honourable and learned friend, could render his measure supportable
to me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a
second time this day six months.

*****




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go on to Burke. His little tract, entitled the Vindication of Natural
Society is certainly not without merit; but it would not be remembered
in our days if it did not bear the name of Burke. To this tract my noble
friend would give a copyright of near seventy years. But to the great
work on the French Revolution, to the Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs, to the letters on the Regicide Peace, he would give a copyright
of thirty years or little more.
And, Sir observe that I am not selecting here and there extraordinary
instances in order to make up the semblance of a case. I am taking the
greatest names of our literature in chronological order. Go to other
nations; go to remote ages; you will still find the general rule the
same. There was no copyright at Athens or Rome; but the history of the
Greek and Latin literature illustrates my argument quite as well as if
copyright had existed in ancient times. Of all the plays of Sophocles,
the one to which the plan of my noble friend would have given the
most scanty recompense would have been that wonderful masterpiece, the
Oedipus at Colonos. Who would class together the Speech of Demosthenes
against his Guardians, and the Speech for the Crown? My noble friend,
indeed, would not class them together. For to the Speech against the
Guardians he would give a copyright of near seventy years, and to the
incomparable Speech for the Crown a copyright of less than half that
length. Go to Rome. My noble friend would give more than twice as long a
term to Cicero's juvenile declamation in defence of Roscius Amerinus as
to the Second Philippic. Go to France. My noble friend would give a far
longer term to Racine's Freres Ennemis than to Athalie, and to Moliere's
Etourdi than to Tartuffe. Go to Spain. My noble friend would give a
longer term to forgotten works of Cervantes, works which nobody now
reads, than to Don Quixote. Go to Germany. According to my noble
friend's plan, of all the works of Schiller the Robbers would be the
most favoured: of all the works of Goethe, the Sorrows of Werter would
be the most favoured. I thank the Committee for listening so kindly to
this long enumeration. Gentlemen will perceive, I am sure, that it is
not from pedantry that I mention the names of so many books and authors.
But just as, in our debates on civil affairs, we constantly draw
illustrations from civil history, we must, in a debate about literary
property, draw our illustrations from literary history. Now, Sir, I
have, I think, shown from literary history that the effect of my
noble friend's plan would be to give to crude and imperfect works, to
third-rate and fourth-rate works, a great advantage over the highest
productions of genius. It is impossible to account for the facts which I
have laid before you by attributing them to mere accident. Their number
is too great, their character too uniform. We must seek for some other
explanation; and we shall easily find one.

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

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

*****




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

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

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

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

The motion was rejected by 287 votes to 49.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it is said, You must not attach so much importance to this petition.
It is very foolish, no doubt, and disgraceful to the author, be he who
he may. But you must not suppose that those who signed it approve of
it. They have merely put their names or their marks without weighing the
sense of the document which they subscribed. Surely, Sir, of all reasons
that ever were given for receiving a petition with peculiar honours, the
strangest is that it expresses sentiments diametrically opposed to
the real sentiments of those who have signed it. And it is a not less
strange reason for giving men supreme power in a state that they sign
political manifestoes of the highest importance without taking the
trouble to know what the contents are. But how is it possible for us to
believe that, if the petitioners had the power which they demand,
they would not use it as they threaten? During a long course of years,
numerous speakers and writers, some of them ignorant, others dishonest,
have been constantly representing the Government as able to do, and
bound to do, things which no Government can, without great injury to the
country, attempt to do.