No More Learning

As there were in Europe then,
so there are in India now, several systems of law widely differing from
each other, but coexisting and coequal. The indigenous population has
its own laws. Each of the successive races of conquerors has brought
with it its own peculiar jurisprudence: the Mussulman his Koran and the
innumerable commentators on the Koran; the Englishman his Statute Book
and his Term Reports. As there were established in Italy, at one and
the same time, the Roman Law, the Lombard law, the Ripuarian law, the
Bavarian law, and the Salic law, so we have now in our Eastern empire
Hindoo law, Mahometan law, Parsee law, English law, perpetually mingling
with each other and disturbing each other, varying with the person,
varying with the place. In one and the same cause the process and
pleadings are in the fashion of one nation, the judgment is according
to the laws of another. An issue is evolved according to the rules
of Westminster, and decided according to those of Benares. The only
Mahometan book in the nature of a code is the Koran; the only Hindoo
book, the Institutes. Everybody who knows those books knows that they
provide for a very small part of the cases which must arise in every
community. All beyond them is comment and tradition. Our regulations in
civil matters do not define rights, but merely establish remedies. If
a point of Hindoo law arises, the Judge calls on the Pundit for an
opinion. If a point of Mahometan law arises, the Judge applies to the
Cauzee. What the integrity of these functionaries is, we may learn from
Sir William Jones. That eminent man declared that he could not answer
it to his conscience to decide any point of law on the faith of a Hindoo
expositor. Sir Thomas Strange confirms this declaration. Even if there
were no suspicion of corruption on the part of the interpreters of the
law, the science which they profess is in such a state of confusion that
no reliance can be placed on their answers. Sir Francis Macnaghten tells
us, that it is a delusion to fancy that there is any known and fixed law
under which the Hindoo people live; that texts may be produced on any
side of any question; that expositors equal in authority perpetually
contradict each other: that the obsolete law is perpetually confounded
with the law actually in force; and that the first lesson to be
impressed on a functionary who has to administer Hindoo law is that it
is vain to think of extracting certainty from the books of the jurist.
The consequence is that in practice the decisions of the tribunals are
altogether arbitrary. What is administered is not law, but a kind of
rude and capricious equity. I asked an able and excellent judge lately
returned from India how one of our Zillah Courts would decide
several legal questions of great importance, questions not involving
considerations of religion or of caste, mere questions of commercial
law. He told me that it was a mere lottery. He knew how he should
himself decide them. But he knew nothing more. I asked a most
distinguished civil servant of the Company, with reference to the clause
in this Bill on the subject of slavery, whether at present, if a dancing
girl ran away from her master, the judge would force her to go back.
"Some judges," he said, "send a girl back. Others set her at liberty.
The whole is a mere matter of chance. Everything depends on the temper
of the individual judge. "

Even in this country we have had complaints of judge-made law; even in
this country, where the standard of morality is higher than in almost
any other part of the world; where, during several generations, not
one depositary of our legal traditions has incurred the suspicion of
personal corruption; where there are popular institutions; where every
decision is watched by a shrewd and learned audience; where there is an
intelligent and observant public; where every remarkable case is fully
reported in a hundred newspapers; where, in short, there is everything
which can mitigate the evils of such a system. But judge-made law, where
there is an absolute government and a lax morality, where there is no
bar and no public, is a curse and a scandal not to be endured. It is
time that the magistrate should know what law he is to administer, that
the subject should know under what law he is to live. We do not mean
that all the people of India should live under the same law: far from
it: there is not a word in the bill, there was not a word in my right
honourable friend's speech, susceptible of such an interpretation.
We know how desirable that object is; but we also know that it is
unattainable. We know that respect must be paid to feelings generated by
differences of religion, of nation, and of caste. Much, I am persuaded,
may be done to assimilate the different systems of law without wounding
those feelings. But, whether we assimilate those systems or not, let us
ascertain them; let us digest them. We propose no rash innovation; we
wish to give no shock to the prejudices of any part of our subjects. Our
principle is simply this; uniformity where you can have it: diversity
where you must have it; but in all cases certainty.

As I believe that India stands more in need of a code than any other
country in the world, I believe also that there is no country on which
that great benefit can more easily be conferred. A code is almost the
only blessing, perhaps is the only blessing, which absolute governments
are better fitted to confer on a nation than popular governments.
The work of digesting a vast and artificial system of unwritten
jurisprudence is far more easily performed, and far better performed, by
few minds than by many, by a Napoleon than by a Chamber of Deputies and
a Chamber of Peers, by a government like that of Prussia or Denmark
than by a government like that of England. A quiet knot of two or three
veteran jurists is an infinitely better machinery for such a purpose
than a large popular assembly divided, as such assemblies almost always
are, into adverse factions. This seems to me, therefore, to be precisely
that point of time at which the advantage of a complete written code of
laws may most easily be conferred on India. It is a work which cannot
be well performed in an age of barbarism, which cannot without great
difficulty be performed in an age of freedom. It is a work which
especially belongs to a government like that of India, to an enlightened
and paternal despotism.

I have detained the House so long, Sir, that I will defer what I had to
say on some parts of this measure, important parts, indeed, but far less
important, as I think, than those to which I have adverted, till we are
in Committee. There is, however, one part of the bill on which, after
what has recently passed elsewhere, I feel myself irresistibly impelled
to say a few words. I allude to that wise, that benevolent, that noble
clause which enacts that no native of our Indian empire shall, by reason
of his colour, his descent, or his religion, be incapable of holding
office. At the risk of being called by that nickname which is regarded
as the most opprobrious of all nicknames by men of selfish hearts and
contracted minds, at the risk of being called a philosopher, I must say
that, to the last day of my life, I shall be proud of having been one
of those who assisted in the framing of the bill which contains that
clause. We are told that the time can never come when the natives of
India can be admitted to high civil and military office. We are told
that this is the condition on which we hold our power. We are told that
we are bound to confer on our subjects every benefit--which they
are capable of enjoying? --no;--which it is in our power to confer
on them? --no;--but which we can confer on them without hazard to the
perpetuity of our own domination. Against that proposition I solemnly
protest as inconsistent alike with sound policy and sound morality.

I am far, very far, from wishing to proceed hastily in this most
delicate matter. I feel that, for the good of India itself, the
admission of natives to high office must be effected by slow degrees.
But that, when the fulness of time is come, when the interest of India
requires the change, we ought to refuse to make that change lest we
should endanger our own power, this is a doctrine of which I cannot
think without indignation. Governments, like men, may buy existence too
dear. "Propter vitam vivendi perdere causas," is a despicable policy
both in individuals and in states. In the present case, such a policy
would be not only despicable, but absurd. The mere extent of empire
is not necessarily an advantage. To many governments it has been
cumbersome; to some it has been fatal. It will be allowed by every
statesman of our time that the prosperity of a community is made up of
the prosperity of those who compose the community, and that it is the
most childish ambition to covet dominion which adds to no man's comfort
or security. To the great trading nation, to the great manufacturing
nation, no progress which any portion of the human race can make in
knowledge, in taste for the conveniences of life, or in the wealth by
which those conveniences are produced, can be matter of indifference.
It is scarcely possible to calculate the benefits which we might derive
from the diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population of
the East. It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better
for us that the people of India were well governed and independent of
us, than ill governed and subject to us; that they were ruled by their
own kings, but wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery,
than that they were performing their salams to English collectors and
English magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too poor to buy,
English manufactures. To trade with civilised men is infinitely more
profitable than to govern savages. That would, indeed, be a doting
wisdom, which, in order that India might remain a dependency, would make
it an useless and costly dependency, which would keep a hundred millions
of men from being our customers in order that they might continue to be
our slaves.

It was, as Bernier tells us, the practice of the miserable tyrants whom
he found in India, when they dreaded the capacity and spirit of some
distinguished subject, and yet could not venture to murder him, to
administer to him a daily dose of the pousta, a preparation of opium,
the effect of which was in a few months to destroy all the bodily and
mental powers of the wretch who was drugged with it, and to turn him
into a helpless idiot. The detestable artifice, more horrible than
assassination itself, was worthy of those who employed it. It is no
model for the English nation. We shall never consent to administer the
pousta to a whole community, to stupefy and paralyse a great people whom
God has committed to our charge, for the wretched purpose of rendering
them more amenable to our control. What is power worth if it is
founded on vice, on ignorance, and on misery; if we can hold it only
by violating the most sacred duties which as governors we owe to the
governed, and which, as a people blessed with far more than an ordinary
measure of political liberty and of intellectual light, we owe to a race
debased by three thousand years of despotism and priestcraft? We are
free, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion
of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation.

Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that we may keep
them submissive? Or do we think that we can give them knowledge without
awakening ambition? Or do we mean to awaken ambition and to provide it
with no legitimate vent? Who will answer any of these questions in the
affirmative? Yet one of them must be answered in the affirmative, by
every person who maintains that we ought permanently to exclude the
natives from high office. I have no fears. The path of duty is plain
before us: and it is also the path of wisdom, of national prosperity, of
national honour.

The destinies of our Indian empire are covered with thick darkness. It
is difficult to form any conjecture as to the fate reserved for a
state which resembles no other in history, and which forms by itself
a separate class of political phenomena. The laws which regulate its
growth and its decay are still unknown to us. It may be that the public
mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that
system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a
capacity for better government; that, having become instructed in
European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European
institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never
will I attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be
the proudest day in English history. To have found a great people sunk
in the lowest depths of slavery and superstition, to have so ruled
them as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of
citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all our own. The sceptre may
pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profound
schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there are
triumphs which are followed by no reverse. There is an empire exempt
from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific
triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable
empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.

*****




EDINBURGH ELECTION, 1839. (MAY 29, 1839) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH
ON THE 29TH OF MAY 1839.

The elevation of Mr Abercromby to the peerage in May 1839, caused a
vacancy in the representation of the city of Edinburgh. A meeting of
the electors was called to consider of the manner in which the vacancy
should be supplied. At this meeting the following Speech was made.

My Lord Provost and Gentlemen,--At the request of a very large and
respectable portion of your body, I appear before you as a candidate
for a high and solemn trust, which, uninvited, I should have thought
it presumption to solicit, but which, thus invited, I should think it
cowardice to decline. If I had felt myself justified in following my own
inclinations, I am not sure that even a summons so honourable as that
which I have received would have been sufficient to draw me away from
pursuits far better suited to my taste and temper than the turmoil of
political warfare. But I feel that my lot is cast in times in which
no man is free to judge, merely according to his own taste and temper,
whether he will devote himself to active or to contemplative life; in
times in which society has a right to demand, from every one of its
members, active and strenuous exertions. I have, therefore, obeyed your
call; and I now present myself before you for the purpose of offering
to you, not, what I am sure you would reject with disdain, flattery,
degrading alike to a candidate, and to a constituent body; but such
reasonable, candid, and manly explanations as become the mouth of a free
man ambitious of the confidence of a free people.

It is hardly necessary for me to say that I stand here unconnected with
this great community. It would be mere affectation not to acknowledge
that with respect to local questions I have much to learn; but I hope
that you will find in me no sluggish or inattentive learner. From an
early age I have felt a strong interest in Edinburgh, although attached
to Edinburgh by no other ties than those which are common to me with
multitudes; that tie which attaches every man of Scottish blood to the
ancient and renowned capital of our race; that tie which attaches every
student of history to the spot ennobled by so many great and memorable
events; that tie which attaches every traveller of taste to the most
beautiful of British cities; and that tie which attaches every lover
of literature to a place which, since it has ceased to be the seat of
empire, has derived from poetry, philosophy, and eloquence a far higher
distinction than empire can bestow. If to those ties it shall now be
your pleasure to add a tie still closer and more peculiar, I can only
assure you that it shall be the study of my life so to conduct myself
in these our troubled times that you may have no reason to be ashamed of
your choice.

Those gentlemen who invited me to appear as a candidate before you were
doubtless acquainted with the part which I took in public affairs during
the three first Parliaments of the late King. Circumstances have since
that time undergone great alteration; but no alteration has taken place
in my principles. I do not mean to say that thought, discussion, and the
new phenomena produced by the operation of a new representative system,
have not led me to modify some of my views on questions of detail; but,
with respect to the fundamental principles of government, my opinions
are still what they were when, in 1831 and 1832, I took part, according
to the measure of my abilities, in that great pacific victory which
purified the representative system of England, and which first gave a
real representative system to Scotland. Even at that time, Gentlemen,
the leaning of my mind was in favour of one measure to which the
illustrious leader of the Whig party, whose name ought never to be
mentioned without gratitude and reverence in any assembly of British
electors, I mean Earl Grey, was understood to entertain strong
objections, and to which his Cabinet, as a Cabinet, was invariably
opposed. I speak of the vote by ballot. All that has passed since that
time confirms me in the view which I was then inclined to take of
that important question. At the same time I do not think that all the
advantages are on one side and all the disadvantages on the other. I
must admit that the effect of the practice of secret voting would be to
withdraw the voter from the operation of some salutary and honourable,
as well as of some pernicious and degrading motives. But seeing, as
I cannot help seeing, that the practice of intimidation, instead of
diminishing, is gaining ground, I am compelled to consider whether the
time has not arrived when we are bound to apply what seems the only
efficient remedy. And I am compelled to consider whether, in doing so,
I am not strictly following the principles of the Reform Bill to the
legitimate conclusions. For surely those who supported the Reform Bill
intended to give the people of Britain a reality, not a delusion; to
destroy nomination, and not to make an outward show of destroying it;
to bestow the franchise, and not the name of the franchise; and least of
all, to give suffering and humiliation under the name of the franchise.
If men are to be returned to Parliament, not by popular election, but
by nomination, then I say without hesitation that the ancient system was
much the best. Both systems alike sent men to Parliament who were not
freely chosen by independent constituent bodies: but under the old
system there was little or no need of intimidation, while, under the new
system, we have the misery and disgrace produced by intimidation added
to the process. If, therefore, we are to have nomination, I prefer the
nomination which used to take place at Old Sarum to the nomination which
now takes place at Newark. In both cases you have members returned at
the will of one landed proprietor: but at Newark you have two hundred
ejectments into the bargain, to say nothing of the mortification and
remorse endured by all those who, though they were not ejected, yet
voted against their consciences from fear of ejectment.

There is perhaps no point on which good men of all parties are more
completely agreed than on the necessity of restraining and punishing
corruption in the election of Members of Parliament. The evils of
corruption are doubtless very great; but it appears to me that those
evils which are attributed to corruption may, with equal justice, be
attributed to intimidation, and that intimidation produces also some
monstrous evils with which corruption cannot be reproached. In both
cases alike the elector commits a breach of trust. In both cases alike
he employs for his own advantage an important power which was confided
to him, that it might be used, to the best of his judgment, for the
general good of the community. Thus far corruption and intimidation
operate in the same manner. But there is this difference betwixt the two
systems; corruption operates by giving pleasure, intimidation by giving
pain. To give a poor man five pounds causes no pain: on the contrary
it produces pleasure. It is in itself no bad act: indeed, if the five
pounds were given on another occasion, and without a corrupt object, it
might pass for a benevolent act. But to tell a man that you will reduce
him to a situation in which he will miss his former comforts, and in
which his family will be forced to beg their bread, is a cruel act.
Corruption has a sort of illegitimate relationship to benevolence, and
engenders some feelings of a cordial and friendly nature. There is a
notion of charity connected with the distribution of the money of the
rich among the needy, even in a corrupt manner. The comic writer who
tells us that the whole system of corruption is to be considered as a
commerce of generosity on one side and of gratitude on the other, has
rather exaggerated than misrepresented what really takes place in
many of these English constituent bodies where money is lavished to
conciliate the favour and obtain the suffrages of the people. But in
intimidation the whole process is an odious one. The whole feeling on
the part of the elector is that of shame, degradation, and hatred of the
person to whom he has given his vote. The elector is indeed placed in a
worse situation than if he had no vote at all; for there is not one of
us who would not rather be without a vote than be compelled to give it
to the person whom he dislikes above all others.

Thinking, therefore, that the practice of intimidation has all the evils
which are to be found in corruption, and that it has other evils which
are not to be found in corruption, I was naturally led to consider
whether it was possible to prevent it by any process similar to that by
which corruption is restrained. Corruption, you all know, is the subject
of penal laws. If it is brought home to the parties, they are liable to
severe punishment. Although it is not often that it can be brought
home, yet there are instances. I remember several men of large property
confined in Newgate for corruption. Penalties have been awarded
against offenders to the amount of five hundred pounds. Many members of
Parliament have been unseated on account of the malpractices of their
agents. But you cannot, I am afraid, repress intimidation by penal laws.
Such laws would infringe the most sacred rights of property. How can I
require a man to deal with tradesmen who have voted against him, or to
renew the leases of tenants who have voted against him? What is it that
the Jew says in the play?

"I'll not answer that,
But say it is my humour. "

Or, as a Christian of our own time has expressed himself, "I have a
right to do what I will with my own. " There is a great deal of weight
in the reasoning of Shylock and the Duke of Newcastle. There would be
an end of the right of property if you were to interdict a landlord
from ejecting a tenant, if you were to force a gentleman to employ a
particular butcher, and to take as much beef this year as last year.
The principle of the right of property is that a man is not only to
be allowed to dispose of his wealth rationally and usefully, but to
be allowed to indulge his passions and caprices, to employ whatever
tradesmen and labourers he chooses, and to let, or refuse to let, his
land according to his own pleasure, without giving any reason or asking
anybody's leave. I remember that, on one of the first evenings on which
I sate in the House of Commons, Mr Poulett Thompson proposed a censure
on the Duke of Newcastle for His Grace's conduct towards the electors of
Newark. Sir Robert Peel opposed the motion, not only with considerable
ability, but with really unanswerable reasons. He asked if it was meant
that a tenant who voted against his landlord was to keep his lease for
ever. If so, tenants would vote against a landlord to secure themselves,
as they now vote with a landlord to secure themselves. I thought, and
think, this argument unanswerable; but then it is unanswerable in favour
of the ballot; for, if it be impossible to deal with intimidation by
punishment, you are bound to consider whether there be any means of
prevention; and the only mode of prevention that has ever been suggested
is the ballot. That the ballot has disadvantages to be set off against
its advantages, I admit; but it appears to me that we have only a choice
of evils, and that the evils for which the ballot is a specific remedy
are greater than any which the ballot is likely to produce. Observe with
what exquisite accuracy the ballot draws the line of distinction between
the power which we ought to give to the proprietor and the power which
we ought not to give him. It leaves the proprietor the absolute power
to do what he will with his own. Nobody calls upon him to say why he
ejected this tenant, or took away his custom from that tradesman. It
leaves him at liberty to follow his own tastes, to follow his strangest
whims. The only thing which it puts beyond his power is the vote of the
tenant, the vote of the tradesman, which it is our duty to protect. I
ought at the same time to say, that there is one objection to the
ballot of a very serious nature, but which I think may, nevertheless, be
obviated. It is quite clear that, if the ballot shall be adopted, there
will be no remedy for an undue return by a subsequent scrutiny. Unless,
therefore, the registration of votes can be counted on as correct,
the ballot will undoubtedly lead to great inconvenience. It seems,
therefore, that a careful revision of the whole system of registration,
and an improvement of the tribunal before which the rights of the
electors are to be established, should be an inseparable part of any
measure by which the ballot is to be introduced.

As to those evils which we have been considering, they are evils which
are practically felt; they are evils which press hard upon a large
portion of the constituent body; and it is not therefore strange, that
the cry for a remedy should be loud and urgent. But there is another
subject respecting which I am told that many among you are anxious, a
subject of a very different description. I allude to the duration of
Parliaments.

It must be admitted that for some years past we have had little reason
to complain of the length of Parliaments. Since the year 1830 we
have had five general elections; two occasioned by the deaths of two
Sovereigns, and three by political conjunctures. As to the present
Parliament, I do not think that, whatever opinion gentlemen may
entertain of the conduct of that body, they will impute its faults to
any confidence which the members have that they are to sit for seven
years; for I very much question whether there be one gentleman in the
House of Commons who thinks, or has ever thought, that his seat is worth
three years' purchase. When, therefore, we discuss this question,
we must remember that we are discussing a question not immediately
pressing. I freely admit, however, that this is no reason for not fairly
considering the subject: for it is the part of wise men to provide
against evils which, though not actually felt, may be reasonably
apprehended. It seems to me that here, as in the case of the ballot,
there are serious considerations to be urged on both sides. The
objections to long Parliaments are perfectly obvious. The truth is that,
in very long Parliaments, you have no representation at all. The mind
of the people goes on changing; and the Parliament, remaining unchanged,
ceases to reflect the opinion of the constituent bodies. In the old
times before the Revolution, a Parliament might sit during the life
of the monarch. Parliaments were then sometimes of eighteen or twenty
years' duration. Thus the Parliament called by Charles the Second soon
after his return from exile, and elected when the nation was drunk with
hope and convulsed by a hysterical paroxysm of loyalty, continued to sit
long after two-thirds of those who had heartily welcomed the King
back from Holland as heartily wished him in Holland again. Since the
Revolution we have not felt that evil to the same extent: but it must be
admitted that the term of seven years is too long. There are, however,
other considerations to set off against this. There are two very serious
evils connected with every general election: the first is, the violent
political excitement: the second is, the ruinous expense. Both these
evils were very greatly diminished by the Reform Act. Formerly these
were things which you in Scotland knew nothing about; but in England
the injury to the peace and morals of society resulting from a general
election was incalculable. During a fifteen days' poll in a town of one
hundred thousand inhabitants, money was flowing in all directions; the
streets were running with beer; all business was suspended; and there
was nothing but disturbance and riot, and slander, and calumny, and
quarrels, which left in the bosoms of private families heartburnings
such as were not extinguished in the course of many years. By limiting
the duration of the poll, the Reform Act has conferred as great a
blessing on the country,--and that is saying a bold word,--as by any
other provision which it contains. Still it is not to be denied that
there are evils inseparable from that state of political excitement into
which every community is thrown by the preparations for an election. A
still greater evil is the expense. That evil too has been diminished by
the operation of the Reform Act; but it still exists to a considerable
extent. We do not now indeed hear of such elections as that of Yorkshire
in 1807, or that of Northumberland in 1827. We do not hear of elections
that cost two hundred thousand pounds. But that the tenth part of that
sum, nay, that the hundredth part of that sum should be expended in a
contest, is a great evil. Do not imagine, Gentlemen, that all this evil
falls on the candidates. It is on you that the evil falls.
The effect
must necessarily be to limit you in your choice of able men to serve
you. The number of men who can advance fifty thousand pounds is
necessarily much smaller than the number of men who can advance five
thousand pounds; the number of these again is much smaller than the
number of those who can advance five hundred pounds; and the number of
men who can advance five hundred pounds every three years is necessarily
smaller than the number of those who can advance five hundred pounds
every seven years. Therefore it seems to me that the question is one of
comparison. In long Parliaments the representative character is in some
measure effaced. On the other side, if you have short Parliaments, your
choice of men will be limited. Now in all questions of this sort, it
is the part of wisdom to weigh, not indeed with minute accuracy,--for
questions of civil prudence cannot be subjected to an arithmetical
test,--but to weigh the advantages and disadvantages carefully, and then
to strike the balance. Gentlemen will probably judge according to their
habits of mind, and according to their opportunities of observation.
Those who have seen much of the evils of elections will probably incline
to long Parliaments; those who have seen little or nothing of these
evils will probably incline to a short term. Only observe this, that,
whatever may be the legal term, it ought to be a year longer than that
for which Parliaments ought ordinarily to sit. For there must be a
general election at the end of the legal term, let the state of the
country be what it may. There may be riot; there may be revolution;
there may be famine in the country; and yet if the Minister wait to
the end of the legal term, the writs must go out. A wise Minister will
therefore always dissolve the Parliament a year before the end of the
legal term, if the country be then in a quiet state. It has now been
long the practice not to keep a Parliament more than six years. Thus
the Parliament which was elected in 1784 sat till 1790, six years;
the Parliament of 1790 till 1796, the Parliament of 1796 to 1802, the
Parliament of 1812 to 1818, and the Parliament of 1820 till 1826. If,
therefore, you wish the duration of Parliaments to be shortened to three
years, the proper course would be to fix the legal term at four years;
and if you wish them to sit for four years, the proper course would be
to fix the legal term at five years. My own inclination would be to fix
the legal term at five years, and thus to have a Parliament practically
every four years. I ought to add that, whenever any shortening of
Parliament takes place, we ought to alter that rule which requires that
Parliament shall be dissolved as often as the demise of the Crown takes
place. It is a rule for which no statesmanlike reason can be given; it
is a mere technical rule; and it has already been so much relaxed that,
even considered as a technical rule, it is absurd.

I come now to another subject, of the highest and gravest importance:
I mean the elective franchise; and I acknowledge that I am doubtful
whether my opinions on this subject may be so pleasing to many here
present as, if I may judge from your expressions, my sentiments on
other subjects have been. I shall express my opinions, however, on this
subject as frankly as I have expressed them when they may have been more
pleasing. I shall express them with the frankness of a man who is more
desirous to gain your esteem than to gain your votes. I am for the
original principle of the Reform Bill. I think that principle excellent;
and I am sorry that we ever deviated from it. There were two deviations
to which I was strongly opposed, and to which the authors of the bill,
hard pressed by their opponents and feebly supported by their friends,
very unwillingly consented. One was the admission of the freemen to vote
in towns: the other was the admission of the fifty pound tenants at will
to vote in counties. At the same time I must say that I despair of being
able to apply a direct remedy to either of these evils. The ballot might
perhaps be an indirect remedy for the latter. I think that the system of
registration should be amended, that the clauses relating to the payment
of rates should be altered, or altogether removed, and that the elective
franchise should be extended to every ten pound householder, whether
he resides within or without the limits of a town. To this extent I am
prepared to go; but I should not be dealing with the ingenuousness which
you have a right to expect, if I did not tell you that I am not prepared
to go further. There are many other questions as to which you are
entitled to know the opinions of your representative: but I shall only
glance rapidly at the most important. I have ever been a most determined
enemy to the slave trade, and to personal slavery under every form. I
have always been a friend to popular education. I have always been a
friend to the right of free discussion. I have always been adverse to
all restrictions on trade, and especially to those restrictions which
affect the price of the necessaries of life. I have always been adverse
to religious persecution, whether it takes the form of direct penal
laws, or of civil disabilities.

Now, having said so much upon measures, I hope you will permit me to
say something about men. If you send me as your representative to
Parliament, I wish you to understand that I shall go there determined
to support the present ministry. I shall do so not from any personal
interest or feeling. I have certainly the happiness to have several kind
and much valued friends among the members of the Government; and there
is one member of the Government, the noble President of the Council, to
whom I owe obligations which I shall always be proud to avow. That noble
Lord, when I was utterly unknown in public life, and scarcely known even
to himself, placed me in the House of Commons; and it is due to him
to say that he never in the least interfered with the freedom of my
parliamentary conduct. I have since represented a great constituent
body, for whose confidence and kindness I can never be sufficiently
grateful, I mean the populous borough of Leeds. I may possibly by
your kindness be placed in the proud situation of Representative of
Edinburgh; but I never could and never can be a more independent Member
of the House of Commons than when I sat there as the nominee of Lord
Lansdowne. But, while I acknowledge my obligations to that noble person,
while I avow the friendship which I feel for many of his colleagues,
it is not on such grounds that I vindicate the support which it is my
intention to give them. I have no right to sacrifice your interests to
my personal or private feelings: my principles do not permit me to do
so; nor do my friends expect that I should do so. The support which I
propose to give to the present Ministry I shall give on the following
grounds. I believe the present Ministry to be by many degrees the best
Ministry which, in the present state of the country, can be formed.
I believe that we have only one choice. I believe that our choice is
between a Ministry substantially,--for of course I do not speak of
particular individuals,--between a Ministry substantially the same that
we have, and a Ministry under the direction of the Duke of Wellington
and Sir Robert Peel. I do not hesitate to pronounce that my choice is in
favour of the former. Some gentleman appears to dissent from what I say.
If I knew what his objections are, I would try to remove them. But it
is impossible to answer inarticulate noises. Is the objection that the
government is too conservative? Or is the objection that the government
is too radical? If I understand rightly, the objection is that the
Government does not proceed vigorously enough in the work of Reform. To
that objection then I will address myself. Now, I am far from denying
that the Ministers have committed faults. But, at the same time, I make
allowances for the difficulties with which they are contending; and
having made these allowances, I confidently say that, when I look back
at the past, I think them entitled to praise, and that, looking forward
to the future, I can pronounce with still more confidence that they are
entitled to support.

It is a common error, and one which I have found among men, not only
intelligent, but much conversant in public business, to think that in
politics, legislation is everything and administration nothing. Nothing
is more usual than to hear people say, "What! another session gone and
nothing done; no new bills passed; the Irish Municipal Bill stopped in
the House of Lords. How could we be worse off if the Tories were in? "
My answer is that, if the Tories were in, our legislation would be in as
bad a state as at present, and we should have a bad administration into
the bargain. It seems strange to me that gentlemen should not be
aware that it may be better to have unreformed laws administered in a
reforming spirit, than reformed laws administered in a spirit hostile to
all reform. We often hear the maxim, "Measures not men," and there is
a sense in which it is an excellent maxim. Measures not men, certainly:
that is, we are not to oppose Sir Robert Peel simply because he is Sir
Robert Peel, or to support Lord John Russell simply because he is Lord
John Russell. We are not to follow our political leaders in the way in
which my honest Highland ancestors followed their chieftains. We are not
to imitate that blind devotion which led all the Campbells to take the
side of George the Second because the Duke of Argyle was a Whig, and
all the Camerons to take the side of the Stuarts because Lochiel was a
Jacobite. But if you mean that, while the laws remain the same, it is
unimportant by whom they are administered, then I say that a doctrine
more absurd was never uttered. Why, what are laws? They are mere words;
they are a dead letter; till a living agent comes to put life into them.
This is the case even in judicial matters. You can tie up the judges
of the land much more closely than it would be right to tie up the
Secretary for the Home Department or the Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
Yet is it immaterial whether the laws be administered by Chief Justice
Hale or Chief Justice Jeffreys? And can you doubt that the case is still
stronger when you come to political questions? It would be perfectly
easy, as many of you must be aware, to point out instances in which
society has prospered under defective laws, well administered, and other
instances in which society has been miserable under institutions that
looked well on paper. But we need not go beyond our own country and our
own times. Let us see what, within this island and in the present year,
a good administration has done to mitigate bad laws. For example, let us
take the law of libel. I hold the present state of our law of libel to
be a scandal to a civilised community. Nothing more absurd can be found
in the whole history of jurisprudence. How the law of libel was abused
formerly, you all know. You all know how it was abused under the
administrations of Lord North, of Mr Pitt, of Mr Perceval, of the
Earl of Liverpool; and I am sorry to say that it was abused, most
unjustifiably abused, by Lord Abinger under the administration of the
Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. Now is there any person who will
pretend to say that it has ever been abused by the Government of
Lord Melbourne? That Government has enemies in abundance; it has been
attacked by Tory malcontents and by Radical malcontents; but has any one
of them ever had the effrontery to say that it has abused the power of
filing ex officio informations for libel? Has this been from want of
provocation? On the contrary, the present Government has been libelled
in a way in which no Government was ever libelled before. Has the law
been altered? Has it been modified? Not at all. We have exactly the
same laws that we had when Mr Perry was brought to trial for saying that
George the Third was unpopular, Mr Leigh Hunt for saying that George the
Fourth was fat, and Sir Francis Burdett for expressing, not perhaps in
the best taste, a natural and honest indignation at the slaughter which
took place at Manchester in 1819. The law is precisely the same; but if
it had been entirely remodelled, political writers could not have had
more liberty than they have enjoyed since Lord Melbourne came into
power.

I have given you an instance of the power of a good administration to
mitigate a bad law. Now, see how necessary it is that there should be a
good administration to carry a good law into effect. An excellent bill
was brought into the House of Commons by Lord John Russell in 1828, and
passed. To any other man than Lord John Russell the carrying of such
a bill would have been an enviable distinction indeed; but his name
is identified with still greater reforms. It will, however, always be
accounted one of his titles to public gratitude that he was the author
of the law which repealed the Test Act. Well, a short time since, a
noble peer, the Lord Lieutenant of the county of Nottingham, thought fit
to re-enact the Test Act, so far as that county was concerned. I have
already mentioned His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, and, to say truth,
there is no life richer in illustrations of all forms and branches of
misgovernment than his. His Grace very coolly informed Her Majesty's
Ministers that he had not recommended a certain gentleman for the
commission of the peace because the gentleman was a Dissenter. Now here
is a law which admits Dissenters to offices; and a Tory nobleman takes
it on himself to rescind that law. But happily we have Whig Ministers.
What did they do? Why, they put the Dissenter into the Commission; and
they turned the Tory nobleman out of the Lieutenancy. Do you seriously
imagine that under a Tory administration this would have been done? I
have no wish to say anything disrespectful of the great Tory leaders.
I shall always speak with respect of the great qualities and public
services of the Duke of Wellington: I have no other feeling about him
than one of pride that my country has produced so great a man; nor do
I feel anything but respect and kindness for Sir Robert Peel, of whose
abilities no person that has had to encounter him in debate will ever
speak slightingly. I do not imagine that those eminent men would have
approved of the conduct of the Duke of Newcastle. I believe that the
Duke of Wellington would as soon have thought of running away from the
field of battle as of doing the same thing in Hampshire, where he is
Lord Lieutenant. But do you believe that he would have turned the Duke
of Newcastle out? I believe that he would not. As Mr Pulteney, a great
political leader, said a hundred years since, "The heads of parties are,
like the heads of snakes, carried on by the tails. " It would have been
utterly impossible for the Tory Ministers to have discarded the powerful
Tory Duke, unless they had at the same time resolved, like Mr Canning in
1827, to throw themselves for support on the Whigs.

Now I have given you these two instances to show that a change in the
administration may produce all the effects of a change in the law. You
see that to have a Tory Government is virtually to reenact the Test Act,
and that to have a Whig Government is virtually to repeal the law of
libel. And if this is the case in England and Scotland, where society is
in a sound state, how much more must it be the case in the diseased
part of the empire, in Ireland? Ask any man there, whatever may be his
religion, whatever may be his politics, Churchman, Presbyterian, Roman
Catholic, Repealer, Precursor, Orangeman, ask Mr O'Connell, ask Colonel
Conolly, whether it is a slight matter in whose hands the executive
power is lodged. Every Irishman will tell you that it is a matter of
life and death; that in fact more depends upon the men than upon the
laws. It disgusts me therefore to hear men of liberal politics say,
"What is the use of a Whig Government? The Ministers can do nothing for
the country. They have been four years at work on an Irish Municipal
Bill, without being able to pass it through the Lords. " Would any ten
Acts of Parliament make such a difference to Ireland as the difference
between having Lord Ebrington for Lord Lieutenant, with Lord Morpeth
for Secretary, and having the Earl of Roden for Lord Lieutenant, with Mr
Lefroy for Secretary? Ask the popular Irish leaders whether they
would like better to remain as they are, with Lord Ebrington as Lord
Lieutenant, or to have the Municipal Bill, and any other three bills
which they might name, with Lord Roden for Viceroy; and they will at
once answer, "Leave us Lord Ebrington; and burn your bills. " The truth
is that, the more defective the legislation, the more important is a
good administration, just as the personal qualities of the Sovereign are
of more importance in despotic countries like Russia than in a limited
monarchy. If we have not in our Statute Book all the securities
necessary for good government, it is of the more importance that
the character of the men who administer the government should be an
additional security.

But we are told that the Government is weak. That is most true; and I
believe that almost all that we are tempted to blame in the conduct of
the Government is to be attributed to weakness. But let us consider what
the nature of this weakness is. Is it that kind of weakness which makes
it our duty to oppose the Government? Or is it that kind of weakness
which makes it our duty to support the Government? Is it intellectual
weakness, moral weakness, the incapacity to discern, or the want
of courage to pursue, the true interest of the nation? Such was the
weakness of Mr Addington, when this country was threatened with invasion
from Boulogne. Such was the weakness of the Government which sent out
the wretched Walcheren expedition, and starved the Duke of Wellington in
Spain; a government whose only strength was shown in prosecuting writers
who exposed abuses, and in slaughtering rioters whom oppression had
driven into outrage. Is that the weakness of the present Government? I
think not. As compared with any other party capable of holding the reins
of Government, they are deficient neither in intellectual nor in moral
strength. On all great questions of difference between the Ministers and
the Opposition, I hold the Ministers to be in the right. When I consider
the difficulties with which they have to struggle, when I see how
manfully that struggle is maintained by Lord Melbourne, when I see that
Lord John Russell has excited even the admiration of his opponents by
the heroic manner in which he has gone on, year after year, in sickness
and domestic sorrow, fighting the battle of Reform, I am led to the
conclusion that the weakness of the Ministers is of that sort which
makes it our duty to give them, not opposition, but support; and that
support it is my purpose to afford to the best of my ability.

If, indeed, I thought myself at liberty to consult my own inclination,
I should have stood aloof from the conflict. If you should be pleased
to send me to Parliament, I shall enter an assembly very different
from that which I quitted in 1834. I left the Wigs united and dominant,
strong in the confidence and attachment of one House of Parliament,
strong also in the fears of the other. I shall return to find them
helpless in the Lords, and forced almost every week to fight a battle
for existence in the Commons. Many, whom I left bound together by what
seemed indissoluble private and public ties, I shall now find assailing
each other with more than the ordinary bitterness of political
hostility. Many with whom I sate side by side, contending through whole
nights for the Reform Bill, till the sun broke over the Thames on our
undiminished ranks, I shall now find on hostile benches. I shall be
compelled to engage in painful altercations with many with whom I had
hoped never to have a conflict, except in the generous and friendly
strife which should best serve the common cause. I left the Liberal
Government strong enough to maintain itself against an adverse Court; I
see that the Liberal Government now rests for support on the preference
of a Sovereign, in whom the country sees with delight the promise of a
better, a gentler, a happier Elizabeth, of a Sovereign in whom we hope
that our children and our grandchildren will admire the firmness, the
sagacity, and the spirit which distinguished the last and greatest of
the Tudors, tempered by the beneficent influence of more humane times
and more popular institutions. Whether royal favour, never more needed
and never better deserved, will enable the government to surmount the
difficulties with which it has to deal, I cannot presume to judge. It
may be that the blow has only been deferred for a season, and that a
long period of Tory domination is before us. Be it so. I entered public
life a Whig; and a Whig I am determined to remain. I use that word, and
I wish you to understand that I use it, in no narrow sense. I mean by
a Whig, not one who subscribes implicitly to the contents of any book,
though that book may have been written by Locke; not one who approves
the whole conduct of any statesman, though that statesman may have been
Fox; not one who adopts the opinions in fashion in any circle, though
that circle may be composed of the finest and noblest spirits of the
age. But it seems to me that, when I look back on our history, I can
discern a great party which has, through many generations, preserved its
identity; a party often depressed, never extinguished; a party which,
though often tainted with the faults of the age, has always been in
advance of the age; a party which, though guilty of many errors and
some crimes, has the glory of having established our civil and religious
liberties on a firm foundation; and of that party I am proud to be a
member. It was that party which, on the great question of monopolies,
stood up against Elizabeth. It was that party which, in the reign of
James the First, organised the earliest parliamentary opposition, which
steadily asserted the privileges of the people, and wrested prerogative
after prerogative from the Crown. It was that party which forced
Charles the First to relinquish the ship-money. It was that party which
destroyed the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court. It was that
party which, under Charles the Second, carried the Habeas Corpus Act,
which effected the Revolution, which passed the Toleration Act, which
broke the yoke of a foreign church in your country, and which saved
Scotland from the fate of unhappy Ireland. It was that party which
reared and maintained the constitutional throne of Hanover against the
hostility of the Church and of the landed aristocracy of England. 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.