No More Learning

There is no quackery in medicine, religion, or
politics, which may not impose even on a powerful mind, when that mind
has been disordered by pain or fear. It is therefore no reflection
on the poorer class of Englishmen, who are not, and who cannot in the
nature of things be, highly educated, to say that distress produces on
them its natural effects, those effects which it would produce on the
Americans, or on any other people, that it blinds their judgment, that
it inflames their passions, that it makes them prone to believe those
who flatter them, and to distrust those who would serve them. For the
sake, therefore, of the whole society, for the sake of the labouring
classes themselves, I hold it to be clearly expedient that, in a
country like this, the right of suffrage should depend on a pecuniary
qualification.

But, Sir, every argument which would induce me to oppose Universal
Suffrage, induces me to support the plan which is now before us. I am
opposed to Universal Suffrage, because I think that it would produce a
destructive revolution. I support this plan, because I am sure that it
is our best security against a revolution. The noble Paymaster of the
Forces hinted, delicately indeed and remotely, at this subject. He spoke
of the danger of disappointing the expectations of the nation; and for
this he was charged with threatening the House. Sir, in the year 1817,
the late Lord Londonderry proposed a suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act. On that occasion he told the House that, unless the measures which
he recommended were adopted, the public peace could not be preserved.
Was he accused of threatening the House? Again, in the year 1819, he
proposed the laws known by the name of the Six Acts. He then told
the House that, unless the executive power were reinforced, all the
institutions of the country would be overturned by popular violence. Was
he then accused of threatening the House? Will any gentleman say that
it is parliamentary and decorous to urge the danger arising from popular
discontent as an argument for severity; but that it is unparliamentary
and indecorous to urge that same danger as an argument for conciliation?
I, Sir, do entertain great apprehension for the fate of my country. I do
in my conscience believe that, unless the plan proposed, or some similar
plan, be speedily adopted, great and terrible calamities will befall us.
Entertaining this opinion, I think myself bound to state it, not as a
threat, but as a reason. I support this bill because it will improve our
institutions; but I support it also because it tends to preserve them.
That we may exclude those whom it is necessary to exclude, we must admit
those whom it may be safe to admit. At present we oppose the schemes of
revolutionists with only one half, with only one quarter of our proper
force. We say, and we say justly, that it is not by mere numbers, but
by property and intelligence, that the nation ought to be governed. Yet,
saying this, we exclude from all share in the government great masses
of property and intelligence, great numbers of those who are most
interested in preserving tranquillity, and who know best how to preserve
it. We do more. We drive over to the side of revolution those whom we
shut out from power. Is this a time when the cause of law and order can
spare one of its natural allies?

My noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, happily described the
effect which some parts of our representative system would produce
on the mind of a foreigner, who had heard much of our freedom and
greatness. If, Sir, I wished to make such a foreigner clearly understand
what I consider as the great defects of our system, I would conduct
him through that immense city which lies to the north of Great Russell
Street and Oxford Street, a city superior in size and in population to
the capitals of many mighty kingdoms; and probably superior in opulence,
intelligence, and general respectability, to any city in the world. I
would conduct him through that interminable succession of streets and
squares, all consisting of well built and well furnished houses. I
would make him observe the brilliancy of the shops, and the crowd of
well-appointed equipages. I would show him that magnificent circle of
palaces which surrounds the Regent's Park. I would tell him that the
rental of this district was far greater than that of the whole kingdom
of Scotland, at the time of the Union. And then I would tell him that
this was an unrepresented district. It is needless to give any more
instances. It is needless to speak of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds,
Sheffield, with no representation, or of Edinburgh and Glasgow with a
mock representation. If a property tax were now imposed on the principle
that no person who had less than a hundred and fifty pounds a year
should contribute, I should not be surprised to find that one half in
number and value of the contributors had no votes at all; and it would,
beyond all doubt, be found that one fiftieth part in number and value of
the contributors had a larger share of the representation than the
other forty-nine fiftieths. This is not government by property. It
is government by certain detached portions and fragments of property,
selected from the rest, and preferred to the rest, on no rational
principle whatever.

To say that such a system is ancient, is no defence. My honourable
friend, the Member for the University of Oxford (Sir Robert Harry
Inglis. ), challenges us to show that the Constitution was ever better
than it is. Sir, we are legislators, not antiquaries. The question for
us is, not whether the Constitution was better formerly, but whether we
can make it better now. In fact, however, the system was not in ancient
times by any means so absurd as it is in our age. One noble Lord (Lord
Stormont. ) has to-night told us that the town of Aldborough, which he
represents, was not larger in the time of Edward the First than it is at
present. The line of its walls, he assures us, may still be traced. It
is now built up to that line. He argues, therefore, that as the founders
of our representative institutions gave members to Aldborough when it
was as small as it now is, those who would disfranchise it on account
of its smallness have no right to say that they are recurring to the
original principle of our representative institutions. But does the
noble Lord remember the change which has taken place in the country
during the last five centuries? Does he remember how much England has
grown in population, while Aldborough has been standing still? Does
he consider, that in the time of Edward the First, the kingdom did not
contain two millions of inhabitants? It now contains nearly fourteen
millions. A hamlet of the present day would have been a town of some
importance in the time of our early Parliaments. Aldborough may be
absolutely as considerable a place as ever. But compared with the
kingdom, it is much less considerable, by the noble Lord's own showing,
than when it first elected burgesses. My honourable friend, the Member
for the University of Oxford, has collected numerous instances of the
tyranny which the kings and nobles anciently exercised, both over this
House and over the electors. It is not strange that, in times
when nothing was held sacred, the rights of the people, and of the
representatives of the people, should not have been held sacred. The
proceedings which my honourable friend has mentioned, no more prove
that, by the ancient constitution of the realm, this House ought to be
a tool of the king and of the aristocracy, than the Benevolences and the
Shipmoney prove their own legality, or than those unjustifiable arrests
which took place long after the ratification of the great Charter
and even after the Petition of Right, prove that the subject was not
anciently entitled to his personal liberty. We talk of the wisdom of
our ancestors: and in one respect at least they were wiser than we. They
legislated for their own times. They looked at the England which was
before them. They did not think it necessary to give twice as many
Members to York as they gave to London, because York had been the
capital of Britain in the time of Constantius Chlorus; and they would
have been amazed indeed if they had foreseen, that a city of more than
a hundred thousand inhabitants would be left without Representatives in
the nineteenth century, merely because it stood on ground which in
the thirteenth century had been occupied by a few huts. They framed
a representative system, which, though not without defects and
irregularities, was well adapted to the state of England in their time.
But a great revolution took place. The character of the old corporations
changed. New forms of property came into existence. New portions of
society rose into importance. There were in our rural districts rich
cultivators, who were not freeholders. There were in our capital rich
traders, who were not liverymen. Towns shrank into villages. Villages
swelled into cities larger than the London of the Plantagenets.
Unhappily while the natural growth of society went on, the artificial
polity continued unchanged. The ancient form of the representation
remained; and precisely because the form remained, the spirit departed.
Then came that pressure almost to bursting, the new wine in the old
bottles, the new society under the old institutions. It is now time for
us to pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, not
by superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances, did,
but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done. All
history is full of revolutions, produced by causes similar to those
which are now operating in England. A portion of the community which had
been of no account expands and becomes strong. It demands a place in the
system, suited, not to its former weakness, but to its present power.
If this is granted, all is well. If this is refused, then comes
the struggle between the young energy of one class and the ancient
privileges of another. Such was the struggle between the Plebeians and
the Patricians of Rome. Such was the struggle of the Italian allies for
admission to the full rights of Roman citizens. Such was the struggle
of our North American colonies against the mother country. Such was
the struggle which the Third Estate of France maintained against the
aristocracy of birth. Such was the struggle which the Roman Catholics
of Ireland maintained against the aristocracy of creed. Such is the
struggle which the free people of colour in Jamaica are now maintaining
against the aristocracy of skin. Such, finally, is the struggle which
the middle classes in England are maintaining against an aristocracy
of mere locality, against an aristocracy the principle of which is to
invest a hundred drunken potwallopers in one place, or the owner of
a ruined hovel in another, with powers which are withheld from cities
renowned to the furthest ends of the earth, for the marvels of their
wealth and of their industry.

But these great cities, says my honourable friend the Member for the
University of Oxford, are virtually, though not directly, represented.
Are not the wishes of Manchester, he asks, as much consulted as those
of any town which sends Members to Parliament? Now, Sir, I do not
understand how a power which is salutary when exercised virtually can
be noxious when exercised directly. If the wishes of Manchester have as
much weight with us as they would have under a system which should give
Representatives to Manchester, how can there be any danger in giving
Representatives to Manchester? A virtual Representative is, I presume,
a man who acts as a direct Representative would act: for surely it
would be absurd to say that a man virtually represents the people
of Manchester, who is in the habit of saying No, when a man directly
representing the people of Manchester would say Aye. The utmost that
can be expected from virtual Representation is that it may be as good
as direct Representation. If so, why not grant direct Representation to
places which, as everybody allows, ought, by some process or other, to
be represented?

If it be said that there is an evil in change as change, I answer that
there is also an evil in discontent as discontent. This, indeed, is the
strongest part of our case. It is said that the system works well. I
deny it. I deny that a system works well, which the people regard
with aversion. We may say here, that it is a good system and a perfect
system. But if any man were to say so to any six hundred and fifty-eight
respectable farmers or shopkeepers, chosen by lot in any part of
England, he would be hooted down, and laughed to scorn. Are these the
feelings with which any part of the government ought to be regarded?
Above all, are these the feelings with which the popular branch of
the legislature ought to be regarded? It is almost as essential to the
utility of a House of Commons, that it should possess the confidence of
the people, as that it should deserve that confidence. Unfortunately,
that which is in theory the popular part of our government, is in
practice the unpopular part. Who wishes to dethrone the King? Who wishes
to turn the Lords out of their House? Here and there a crazy radical,
whom the boys in the street point at as he walks along. Who wishes to
alter the constitution of this House? The whole people. It is natural
that it should be so. The House of Commons is, in the language of Mr
Burke, a check, not on the people, but for the people. While that check
is efficient, there is no reason to fear that the King or the nobles
will oppress the people. But if the check requires checking, how is it
to be checked? If the salt shall lose its savour, wherewith shall we
season it? The distrust with which the nation regards this House may
be unjust. But what then? Can you remove that distrust? That it exists
cannot be denied. That it is an evil cannot be denied. That it is an
increasing evil cannot be denied. One gentleman tells us that it has
been produced by the late events in France and Belgium; another, that
it is the effect of seditious works which have lately been published.
If this feeling be of origin so recent, I have read history to little
purpose. Sir, this alarming discontent is not the growth of a day or of
a year. If there be any symptoms by which it is possible to distinguish
the chronic diseases of the body politic from its passing inflammations,
all those symptoms exist in the present case. The taint has been
gradually becoming more extensive and more malignant, through the whole
lifetime of two generations. We have tried anodynes. We have tried cruel
operations. What are we to try now? Who flatters himself that he can
turn this feeling back? Does there remain any argument which escaped the
comprehensive intellect of Mr Burke, or the subtlety of Mr Windham? Does
there remain any species of coercion which was not tried by Mr Pitt and
by Lord Londonderry? We have had laws. We have had blood. New treasons
have been created. The Press has been shackled. The Habeas Corpus Act
has been suspended. Public meetings have been prohibited. The event has
proved that these expedients were mere palliatives. You are at the end
of your palliatives. The evil remains. It is more formidable than ever.
What is to be done?

Under such circumstances, a great plan of reconciliation, prepared by
the Ministers of the Crown, has been brought before us in a manner which
gives additional lustre to a noble name, inseparably associated during
two centuries with the dearest liberties of the English people. I will
not say, that this plan is in all its details precisely such as I might
wish it to be; but it is founded on a great and a sound principle. It
takes away a vast power from a few. It distributes that power through
the great mass of the middle order. Every man, therefore, who thinks as
I think is bound to stand firmly by Ministers who are resolved to
stand or fall with this measure. Were I one of them, I would sooner,
infinitely sooner, fall with such a measure than stand by any other
means that ever supported a Cabinet.

My honourable friend, the Member for the University of Oxford, tells us,
that if we pass this law, England will soon be a republic. The reformed
House of Commons will, according to him, before it has sate ten years,
depose the King, and expel the Lords from their House. Sir, if my
honourable friend could prove this, he would have succeeded in bringing
an argument for democracy, infinitely stronger than any that is to be
found in the works of Paine. My honourable friend's proposition is in
fact this: that our monarchical and aristocratical institutions have no
hold on the public mind of England; that these institutions are regarded
with aversion by a decided majority of the middle class. This, Sir, I
say, is plainly deducible from his proposition; for he tells us that the
Representatives of the middle class will inevitably abolish royalty and
nobility within ten years: and there is surely no reason to think that
the Representatives of the middle class will be more inclined to a
democratic revolution than their constituents. Now, Sir, if I were
convinced that the great body of the middle class in England look with
aversion on monarchy and aristocracy, I should be forced, much against
my will, to come to this conclusion, that monarchical and aristocratical
institutions are unsuited to my country. Monarchy and aristocracy,
valuable and useful as I think them, are still valuable and useful as
means, and not as ends. The end of government is the happiness of
the people: and I do not conceive that, in a country like this, the
happiness of the people can be promoted by a form of government in which
the middle classes place no confidence, and which exists only because
the middle classes have no organ by which to make their sentiments
known. But, Sir, I am fully convinced that the middle classes sincerely
wish to uphold the Royal prerogatives and the constitutional rights of
the Peers. What facts does my honourable friend produce in support of
his opinion? One fact only; and that a fact which has absolutely nothing
to do with the question. The effect of this Reform, he tells us, would
be to make the House of Commons allpowerful. It was allpowerful once
before, in the beginning of 1649. Then it cut off the head of the King,
and abolished the House of Peers. Therefore, if it again has the supreme
power, it will act in the same manner. Now, Sir, it was not the House of
Commons that cut off the head of Charles the First; nor was the House
of Commons then allpowerful. It had been greatly reduced in numbers by
successive expulsions. It was under the absolute dominion of the army. A
majority of the House was willing to take the terms offered by the King.
The soldiers turned out the majority; and the minority, not a sixth part
of the whole House, passed those votes of which my honourable friend
speaks, votes of which the middle classes disapproved then, and of which
they disapprove still.

My honourable friend, and almost all the gentlemen who have taken the
same side with him in this Debate, have dwelt much on the utility of
close and rotten boroughs. It is by means of such boroughs, they tell
us, that the ablest men have been introduced into Parliament. It is
true that many distinguished persons have represented places of this
description. But, Sir, we must judge of a form of government by its
general tendency, not by happy accidents. Every form of government has
its happy accidents. Despotism has its happy accidents. Yet we are not
disposed to abolish all constitutional checks, to place an absolute
master over us, and to take our chance whether he may be a Caligula or
a Marcus Aurelius. In whatever way the House of Commons may be chosen,
some able men will be chosen in that way who would not be chosen in any
other way. If there were a law that the hundred tallest men in England
should be Members of Parliament, there would probably be some able men
among those who would come into the House by virtue of this law. If the
hundred persons whose names stand first in the alphabetical list of the
Court Guide were made Members of Parliament, there would probably be
able men among them. We read in ancient history, that a very able king
was elected by the neighing of his horse; but we shall scarcely, I
think, adopt this mode of election. In one of the most celebrated
republics of antiquity, Athens, Senators and Magistrates were chosen by
lot; and sometimes the lot fell fortunately. Once, for example, Socrates
was in office. A cruel and unjust proposition was made by a demagogue.
Socrates resisted it at the hazard of his own life. There is no event in
Grecian history more interesting than that memorable resistance. Yet who
would have officers appointed by lot, because the accident of the lot
may have given to a great and good man a power which he would probably
never have attained in any other way? We must judge, as I said, by
the general tendency of a system. No person can doubt that a House of
Commons chosen freely by the middle classes, will contain many very able
men. I do not say, that precisely the same able men who would find
their way into the present House of Commons will find their way into
the reformed House: but that is not the question. No particular man
is necessary to the State. We may depend on it that, if we provide the
country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it
with great men.

There is another objection, which, I think, was first raised by the
honourable and learned Member for Newport. (Mr Horace Twiss. ) He tells
us that the elective franchise is property; that to take it away from
a man who has not been judicially convicted of malpractices is robbery;
that no crime is proved against the voters in the close boroughs; that
no crime is even imputed to them in the preamble of the bill; and that
therefore to disfranchise them without compensation would be an act of
revolutionary tyranny. The honourable and learned gentleman has compared
the conduct of the present Ministers to that of those odious tools of
power, who, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, seized
the charters of the Whig corporations. Now, there was another precedent,
which I wonder that he did not recollect, both because it is much more
nearly in point than that to which he referred, and because my noble
friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, had previously alluded to it. If
the elective franchise is property, if to disfranchise voters without a
crime proved, or a compensation given, be robbery, was there ever such
an act of robbery as the disfranchising of the Irish forty-shilling
freeholders? Was any pecuniary compensation given to them? Is it
declared in the preamble of the bill which took away their franchise,
that they had been convicted of any offence?
Was any judicial inquiry
instituted into their conduct? Were they even accused of any crime? Or
if you say that it was a crime in the electors of Clare to vote for
the honourable and learned gentleman who now represents the county of
Waterford, was a Protestant freeholder in Louth to be punished for
the crime of a Catholic freeholder in Clare? If the principle of the
honourable and learned Member for Newport be sound, the franchise of the
Irish peasant was property. That franchise the Ministers under whom the
honourable and learned Member held office did not scruple to take away.
Will he accuse those Ministers of robbery? If not, how can he bring such
an accusation against their successors?

Every gentleman, I think, who has spoken from the other side of the
House, has alluded to the opinions which some of His Majesty's Ministers
formerly entertained on the subject of Reform. It would be officious in
me, Sir, to undertake the defence of gentlemen who are so well able to
defend themselves. I will only say that, in my opinion, the country will
not think worse either of their capacity or of their patriotism, because
they have shown that they can profit by experience, because they have
learned to see the folly of delaying inevitable changes. There are
others who ought to have learned the same lesson. I say, Sir, that there
are those who, I should have thought, must have had enough to last them
all their lives of that humiliation which follows obstinate and boastful
resistance to changes rendered necessary by the progress of society, and
by the development of the human mind. Is it possible that those persons
can wish again to occupy a position which can neither be defended nor
surrendered with honour? I well remember, Sir, a certain evening in the
month of May, 1827. I had not then the honour of a seat in this House;
but I was an attentive observer of its proceedings. The right honourable
Baronet opposite (Sir Robert Peel), of whom personally I desire to speak
with that high respect which I feel for his talents and his character,
but of whose public conduct I must speak with the sincerity required
by my public duty, was then, as he is now, out of office. He had just
resigned the seals of the Home Department, because he conceived that the
recent ministerial arrangements had been too favourable to the Catholic
claims. He rose to ask whether it was the intention of the new Cabinet
to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, and to reform the Parliament.
He bound up, I well remember, those two questions together; and he
declared that, if the Ministers should either attempt to repeal the
Test and Corporation Acts, or bring forward a measure of Parliamentary
Reform, he should think it his duty to oppose them to the utmost. Since
that declaration was made four years have elapsed; and what is now the
state of the three questions which then chiefly agitated the minds of
men? What is become of the Test and Corporation Acts? They are repealed.
By whom? By the right honourable Baronet. What has become of the
Catholic disabilities? They are removed. By whom? By the right
honourable Baronet. The question of Parliamentary Reform is still
behind. But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the import,
do most clearly indicate that unless that question also be speedily
settled, property, and order, and all the institutions of this great
monarchy, will be exposed to fearful peril. Is it possible that
gentlemen long versed in high political affairs cannot read these signs?
Is it possible that they can really believe that the Representative
system of England, such as it now is, will last to the year 1860? If
not, for what would they have us wait? Would they have us wait merely
that we may show to all the world how little we have profited by our own
recent experience? --Would they have us wait, that we may once again hit
the exact point where we can neither refuse with authority, nor
concede with grace? Would they have us wait, that the numbers of the
discontented party may become larger, its demands higher, its feelings
more acrimonious, its organisation more complete? Would they have us
wait till the whole tragicomedy of 1827 has been acted over again?
till they have been brought into office by a cry of 'No Reform,' to be
reformers, as they were once before brought into office by a cry of
'No Popery,' to be emancipators? Have they obliterated from their
minds--gladly, perhaps, would some among them obliterate from their
minds--the transactions of that year? And have they forgotten all the
transactions of the succeeding year? Have they forgotten how the spirit
of liberty in Ireland, debarred from its natural outlet, found a vent
by forbidden passages? Have they forgotten how we were forced to indulge
the Catholics in all the license of rebels, merely because we chose
to withhold from them the liberties of subjects? Do they wait for
associations more formidable than that of the Corn Exchange, for
contributions larger than the Rent, for agitators more violent than
those who, three years ago, divided with the King and the Parliament
the sovereignty of Ireland? Do they wait for that last and most dreadful
paroxysm of popular rage, for that last and most cruel test of military
fidelity? Let them wait, if their past experience shall induce them to
think that any high honour or any exquisite pleasure is to be obtained
by a policy like this. Let them wait, if this strange and fearful
infatuation be indeed upon them, that they should not see with their
eyes, or hear with their ears, or understand with their heart. But let
us know our interest and our duty better. Turn where we may, within,
around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that
you may preserve. Now, therefore, while everything at home and abroad
forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the
spirit of the age, now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the
Continent is still resounding in our ears, now, while the roof of a
British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of
forty kings, now, while we see on every side ancient institutions
subverted, and great societies dissolved, now, while the heart of
England is still sound, now, while old feelings and old associations
retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away, now, in this
your accepted time, now, in this your day of salvation, take counsel,
not of prejudice, not of party spirit, not of the ignominious pride of
a fatal consistency, but of history, of reason, of the ages which are
past, of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a
manner worthy of the expectation with which this great debate has been
anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind.
Renew the youth of the State. Save property, divided against itself.
Save the multitude, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the
greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilised community that ever
existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich
heritage of so many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible.
The time is short. If this bill should be rejected, I pray to God that
none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes
with unavailing remorse, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of
ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.

*****




PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. (JULY 5, 1831) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE 5TH OF JULY 1831.

On Tuesday, the fourth of July, 1831, Lord John Russell moved the second
reading of the Bill to amend the representation of the people in England
and Wales. Sir John Walsh, member for Sudbury, moved, as an amendment,
that the bill should be read that day six months. After a discussion,
which lasted three nights, the amendment was rejected by 367 votes to
231, and the original motion was carried. The following Speech was made
on the second night of the debate.

Nobody, Sir, who has watched the course of the debate can have failed to
observe that the gentlemen who oppose this bill have chiefly relied on
a preliminary objection, which it is necessary to clear away before we
proceed to examine whether the proposed changes in our representative
system would or would not be improvements. The elective franchise,
we are told, is private property. It belongs to this freeman, to that
potwalloper, to the owner of this house, to the owner of that old wall;
and you have no more right to take it away without compensation than to
confiscate the dividends of a fundholder or the rents of a landholder.

Now, Sir, I admit that, if this objection be well founded, it is
decisive against the plan of Reform which has been submitted to us. If
the franchise be really private property, we have no more right to take
members away from Gatton because Gatton is small, and to give them to
Manchester because Manchester is large, than Cyrus, in the old story,
had to take away the big coat from the little boy and to put it on the
big boy. In no case, and under no pretext however specious, would I take
away from any member of the community anything which is of the nature
of property, without giving him full compensation. But I deny that the
elective franchise is of the nature of property; and I believe that, on
this point, I have with me all reason, all precedent, and all authority.
This at least is certain, that, if disfranchisement really be robbery,
the representative system which now exists is founded on robbery. How
was the franchise in the English counties fixed? By the act of Henry
the Sixth, which disfranchised tens of thousands of electors who had not
forty shilling freeholds. Was that robbery? How was the franchise in
the Irish counties fixed? By the act of George the Fourth, which
disfranchised tens of thousands of electors who had not ten pound
freeholds. Was that robbery? Or was the great parliamentary reform made
by Oliver Cromwell ever designated as robbery, even by those who most
abhorred his name? Everybody knows that the unsparing manner in which he
disfranchised small boroughs was emulously applauded, by royalists, who
hated him for having pulled down one dynasty, and by republicans, who
hated him for having founded another. Take Sir Harry Vane and Lord
Clarendon, both wise men, both, I believe, in the main, honest men, but
as much opposed to each other in politics as wise and honest men
could be. Both detested Oliver; yet both approved of Oliver's plan of
parliamentary reform. They grieved only that so salutary a change should
have been made by an usurper. Vane wished it to have been made by the
Rump; Clarendon wished it to be made by the King. Clarendon's language
on this subject is most remarkable. For he was no rash innovator.
The bias of his mind was altogether on the side of antiquity and
prescription. Yet he describes that great disfranchisement of boroughs
as an improvement fit to be made in a more warrantable method and at a
better time. This is that better time. What Cromwell attempted to effect
by an usurped authority, in a country which had lately been convulsed
by civil war, and which was with difficulty kept in a state of sullen
tranquillity by military force, it has fallen to our lot to accomplish
in profound peace, and under the rule of a prince whose title is
unquestioned, whose office is reverenced, and whose person is beloved.
It is easy to conceive with what scorn and astonishment Clarendon would
have heard it said that the reform which seemed to him so obviously just
and reasonable that he praised it, even when made by a regicide, could
not, without the grossest iniquity, be made even by a lawful King and a
lawful Parliament.

Sir, in the name of the institution of property, of that great
institution, for the sake of which, chiefly, all other institutions
exist, of that great institution to which we owe all knowledge, all
commerce, all industry, all civilisation, all that makes us to differ
from the tattooed savages of the Pacific Ocean, I protest against the
pernicious practice of ascribing to that which is not property the
sanctity which belongs to property alone. If, in order to save political
abuses from that fate with which they are threatened by the public
hatred, you claim for them the immunities of property, you must expect
that property will be regarded with some portion of the hatred which is
excited by political abuses. You bind up two very different things, in
the hope that they may stand together. Take heed that they do not fall
together. You tell the people that it is as unjust to disfranchise a
great lord's nomination borough as to confiscate his estate. Take heed
that you do not succeed in convincing weak and ignorant minds that there
is no more injustice in confiscating his estate than in disfranchising
his borough. That this is no imaginary danger, your own speeches in this
debate abundantly prove. You begin by ascribing to the franchises of Old
Sarum the sacredness of property; and you end, naturally enough, I
must own, by treating the rights of property as lightly as I should be
inclined to treat the franchises of Old Sarum. When you are reminded
that you voted, only two years ago, for disfranchising great numbers of
freeholders in Ireland, and when you are asked how, on the principles
which you now profess, you can justify that vote, you answer very
coolly, "no doubt that was confiscation. No doubt we took away from the
peasants of Munster and Connaught, without giving them a farthing of
compensation, that which was as much their property as their pigs or
their frieze coats. But we did it for the public good. We were pressed
by a great State necessity. " Sir, if that be an answer, we too may plead
that we too have the public good in view, and that we are pressed by a
great State necessity. But I shall resort to no such plea. It fills me
with indignation and alarm to hear grave men avow what they own to be
downright robbery, and justify that robbery on the ground of political
convenience. No, Sir, there is one way, and only one way, in which those
gentlemen who voted for the disfranchising Act of 1829 can clear their
fame. Either they have no defence, or their defence must be this;
that the elective franchise is not of the nature of property, and that
therefore disfranchisement is not spoliation.

Having disposed, as I think, of the question of right, I come to the
question of expediency. I listened, Sir, with much interest and pleasure
to a noble Lord who spoke for the first time in this debate. (Lord
Porchester. ) But I must own that he did not succeed in convincing me
that there is any real ground for the fears by which he is tormented.
He gave us a history of France since the Restoration. He told us of the
violent ebbs and flows of public feeling in that country. He told us
that the revolutionary party was fast rising to ascendency while M. De
Cazes was minister; that then came a violent reaction in favour of the
monarchy and the priesthood; that then the revolutionary party again
became dominant; that there had been a change of dynasty; and that the
Chamber of Peers had ceased to be a hereditary body. He then predicted,
if I understood him rightly, that, if we pass this bill, we shall
suffer all that France has suffered; that we shall have violent contests
between extreme parties, a revolution, and an abolition of the House of
Lords. I might, perhaps, dispute the accuracy of some parts of the noble
Lord's narrative. But I deny that his narrative, accurate or inaccurate,
is relevant. I deny that there is any analogy between the state of
France and the state of England. I deny that there is here any
great party which answers either to the revolutionary or to the
counter-revolutionary party in France. I most emphatically deny that
there is any resemblance in the character, and that there is likely to
be any resemblance in the fate, of the two Houses of Peers. I always
regarded the hereditary Chamber established by Louis the Eighteenth
as an institution which could not last. It was not in harmony with the
state of property; it was not in harmony with the public feeling; it
had neither the strength which is derived from wealth, nor the strength
which is derived from prescription. It was despised as plebeian by
the ancient nobility. It was hated as patrician by the democrats. It
belonged neither to the old France nor to the new France. It was a mere
exotic transplanted from our island. Here it had struck its roots deep,
and having stood during ages, was still green and vigorous. But it
languished in the foreign soil and the foreign air, and was blown
down by the first storm. It will be no such easy task to uproot the
aristocracy of England.

With much more force, at least with much more plausibility, the noble
Lord and several other members on the other side of the House have
argued against the proposed Reform on the ground that the existing
system has worked well. How great a country, they say, is ours! How
eminent in wealth and knowledge, in arts and arms! How much admired! How
much envied! Is it possible to believe that we have become what we are
under a bad government! And, if we have a good government, why alter
it? Now, Sir, I am very far from denying that England is great, and
prosperous, and highly civilised. I am equally far from denying that she
owes much of her greatness, of her prosperity, and of her civilisation
to her form of government. But is no nation ever to reform its
institutions because it has made great progress under those
institutions? Why, Sir, the progress is the very thing which makes the
reform absolutely necessary. The Czar Peter, we all know, did much for
Russia. But for his rude genius and energy, that country might have
still been utterly barbarous. Yet would it be reasonable to say that
the Russian people ought always, to the end of time, to be despotically
governed, because the Czar Peter was a despot? Let us remember that the
government and the society act and react on each other. Sometimes
the government is in advance of the society, and hurries the society
forward. So urged, the society gains on the government, comes up with
the government, outstrips the government, and begins to insist that the
government shall make more speed. If the government is wise, it will
yield to that just and natural demand. The great cause of revolutions
is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still. The
peculiar happiness of England is that here, through many generations,
the constitution has moved onward with the nation. Gentlemen have told
us, that the most illustrious foreigners have, in every age, spoken
with admiration of the English constitution. Comines, they say, in the
fifteenth century, extolled the English constitution as the best in the
world. Montesquieu, in the eighteenth century, extolled it as the best
in the world. And would it not be madness in us to throw away what
such men thought the most precious of all our blessings? But was the
constitution which Montesquieu praised the same with the constitution
which Comines praised? No, Sir; if it had been so, Montesquieu never
would have praised it. For how was it possible that a polity which
exactly suited the subjects of Edward the Fourth should have exactly
suited the subjects of George the Second? The English have, it is true,
long been a great and a happy people. But they have been great and happy
because their history has been the history of a succession of timely
reforms. The Great Charter, the assembling of the first House of
Commons, the Petition of Right, the Declaration of Right, the Bill which
is now on our table, what are they all but steps in one great progress?
To every one of those steps the same objections might have been made
which we heard to-night, "You are better off than your neighbours are.
You are better off than your fathers were. Why can you not leave well
alone? "

How copiously might a Jacobite orator have harangued on this topic
in the Convention of 1688! "Why make a change of dynasty? Why trouble
ourselves to devise new securities for our laws and liberties? See what
a nation we are. See how population and wealth have increased since what
you call the good old times of Queen Elizabeth. You cannot deny that the
country has been more prosperous under the kings of the House of Stuart
than under any of their predecessors. Keep that House, then, and be
thankful. " Just such is the reasoning of the opponents of this
bill. They tell us that we are an ungrateful people, and that, under
institutions from which we have derived inestimable benefits, we are
more discontented than the slaves of the Dey of Tripoli. Sir, if we had
been slaves of the Dey of Tripoli, we should have been too much sunk
in intellectual and moral degradation to be capable of the rational and
manly discontent of freemen. It is precisely because our institutions
are so good that we are not perfectly contended with them; for they have
educated us into a capacity for enjoying still better institutions. That
the English Government has generally been in advance of almost all other
governments is true. But it is equally true that the English nation is,
and has during some time been, in advance of the English Government. One
plain proof of this is, that nothing is so ill made in our island as
the laws. In all those things which depend on the intelligence, the
knowledge, the industry, the energy of individuals, or of voluntary
combinations of individuals, this country stands pre-eminent among all
the countries of the world, ancient and modern. But in those things
which it belongs to the State to direct, we have no such claim to
superiority. Our fields are cultivated with a skill unknown elsewhere,
with a skill which has extorted rich harvests from moors and morasses.
Our houses are filled with conveniences which the kings of former times
might have envied. Our bridges, our canals, our roads, our modes of
communication, fill every stranger with wonder. Nowhere are manufactures
carried to such perfection. Nowhere is so vast a mass of mechanical
power collected. Nowhere does man exercise such a dominion over matter.
These are the works of the nation. Compare them with the works of the
rulers of the nation. Look at the criminal law, at the civil law, at the
modes of conveying lands, at the modes of conducting actions. It is by
these things that we must judge of our legislators, just as we judge
of our manufacturers by the cotton goods and the cutlery which they
produce, just as we judge of our engineers by the suspension bridges,
the tunnels, the steam carriages which they construct. Is, then,
the machinery by which justice is administered framed with the same
exquisite skill which is found in other kinds of machinery? Can there
be a stronger contrast than that which exists between the beauty, the
completeness, the speed, the precision with which every process is
performed in our factories, and the awkwardness, the rudeness, the
slowness, the uncertainty of the apparatus by which offences are
punished and rights vindicated? Look at the series of penal statutes,
the most bloody and the most inefficient in the world, at the puerile
fictions which make every declaration and every plea unintelligible both
to plaintiff and defendant, at the mummery of fines and recoveries, at
the chaos of precedents, at the bottomless pit of Chancery. Surely we
see the barbarism of the thirteenth century and the highest civilisation
of the nineteenth century side by side; and we see that the barbarism
belongs to the government, and the civilisation to the people.

This is a state of things which cannot last. If it be not terminated by
wisdom, it will be terminated by violence. A time has come at which it
is not merely desirable, but indispensable to the public safety, that
the government should be brought into harmony with the people; and it
is because this bill seems to me likely to bring the government into
harmony with the people, that I feel it to be my duty to give my hearty
support to His Majesty's Ministers.

We have been told, indeed, that this is not the plan of Reform which the
nation asked for. Be it so. But you cannot deny that it is the plan of
Reform which the nation has accepted. That, though differing in many
respects from what was asked, it has been accepted with transports
of joy and gratitude, is a decisive proof of the wisdom of timely
concession. Never in the history of the world was there so signal an
example of that true statesmanship, which, at once animating and gently
curbing the honest enthusiasm of millions, guides it safely and steadily
to a happy goal.