But we are told that the
Government
is weak.
Macaulay
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. For it was not merely a legislative question, but a
question which affected every part of the executive administration.
But, to come to the present time, suppose that you could carry your
resolution, suppose that you could drive the present Ministers from
power, who that may succeed them will be able to form a government in
which there will be no open questions? Can the right honourable Baronet
the member for Tamworth (Sir Robert Peel. ) form a Cabinet without
leaving the great question of our privileges open? In what respect is
that question less important than the question of the Ballot? Is it not
indeed from the privileges of the House that all questions relating
to the constitution of the House derive their importance? What does it
matter how we are chosen, if, when we meet, we do not possess the
powers necessary to enable us to perform the functions of a legislative
assembly? Yet you who would turn out the present Ministers because they
differ from each other as to the way in which Members of this House
should be chosen, wish to bring in men who decidedly differ from each
other as to the relation in which this House stands to the nation, to
the other House, and to the Courts of Judicature. Will you say that the
dispute between the House and the Court of Queen's Bench is a trifling
dispute? Surely, in the late debates, you were all perfectly agreed as
to the importance of the question, though you were agreed as to nothing
else. Some of you told us that we were contending for a power essential
to our honour and usefulness. Many of you protested against our
proceedings, and declared that we were encroaching on the province of
the tribunals, violating the liberty of our fellow citizens, punishing
honest magistrates for not perjuring themselves. Are these trifles? And
can we believe that you really feel a horror of open questions when we
see your Prime Minister elect sending people to prison overnight,
and his law officers elect respectfully attending the levee of those
prisoners the next morning? Observe, too, that this question of
privileges is not merely important; it is also pressing. Something must
be done, and that speedily. My belief is that more inconvenience would
follow from leaving that question open one month than from leaving the
question of the Ballot open ten years.
The Ballot, Sir, is not the only subject on which I am accused of
holding dangerous opinions. The right honourable Baronet the Member
for Pembroke (Sir James Graham. ) pronounces the present Government
a Chartist Government; and he proves his point by saying that I am a
member of the government, and that I wish to give the elective franchise
to every ten pound householder, whether his house be in a town or in
the country. Is it possible, Sir, that the honourable Baronet should not
know that the fundamental principle of the plan of government called the
People's Charter is that every male of twenty-one should have a vote?
Or is it possible that he can see no difference between giving the
franchise to all ten pound householders, and giving the franchise to all
males of twenty-one? Does he think the ten pound householders a class
morally or intellectually unfit to possess the franchise, he who bore a
chief part in framing the law which gave them the franchise in all the
represented towns of the United Kingdom? Or will he say that the ten
pound householder in a town is morally and intellectually fit to be
an elector, but that the ten pound householder who lives in the
open country is morally and intellectually unfit? Is not house-rent
notoriously higher in towns than in the country? Is it not, therefore,
probable that the occupant of a ten pound house in a rural hamlet will
be a man who has a greater stake in the peace and welfare of society
than a man who has a ten pound house in Manchester or Birmingham? Can
you defend on conservative principles an arrangement which gives votes
to a poorer class and withholds them from a richer? For my own part, I
believe it to be essential to the welfare of the state, that the elector
should have a pecuniary qualification. I believe that the ten pound
qualification cannot be proved to be either too high or too low.
Changes, which may hereafter take place in the value of money and in
the condition of the people, may make a change of the qualification
necessary. But the ten pound qualification is, I believe, well suited to
the present state of things. At any rate, I am unable to conceive why it
should be a sufficient qualification within the limits of a borough, and
an insufficient qualification a yard beyond those limits; sufficient at
Knightsbridge, but insufficient at Kensington; sufficient at Lambeth,
but insufficient at Battersea? If any person calls this Chartism, he
must permit me to tell him that he does not know what Chartism is.
A motion, Sir, such as that which we are considering, brings under our
review the whole policy of the kingdom, domestic, foreign, and colonial.
It is not strange, therefore, that there should have been several
episodes in this debate. Something has been said about the hostilities
on the River Plata, something about the hostilities on the coast of
China, something about Commissioner Lin, something about Captain Elliot.
But on such points I shall not dwell, for it is evidently not by the
opinion which the House may entertain on such points that the event
of the debate will be decided. The main argument of the gentlemen who
support the motion, the argument on which the right honourable Baronet
who opened the debate chiefly relied, the argument which his seconder
repeated, and which has formed the substance of every speech since
delivered from the opposite side of the House, may be fairly summed
up thus, "The country is not in a satisfactory state. There is much
recklessness, much turbulence, much craving for political change; and
the cause of these evils is the policy of the Whigs. They rose to power
by agitation in 1830: they retained power by means of agitation through
the tempestuous months which followed: they carried the Reform Bill
by means of agitation: expelled from office, they forced themselves in
again by means of agitation; and now we are paying the penalty of their
misconduct. Chartism is the natural offspring of Whiggism. From those
who caused the evil we cannot expect the remedy. The first thing to
be done is to dismiss them, and to call to power men who, not having
instigated the people to commit excesses, can, without incurring the
charge of inconsistency, enforce the laws. "
Now, Sir, it seems to me that this argument was completely refuted by
the able and eloquent speech of my right honourable friend the Judge
Advocate. (Sir George Grey. ) He said, and he said most truly, that those
who hold this language are really accusing, not the Government of Lord
Melbourne, but the Government of Lord Grey. I was therefore, I must say,
surprised, after the speech of my right honourable friend, to hear
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke, himself a
distinguished member of the cabinet of Lord Grey, pronounce a harangue
against agitation. That he was himself an agitator he does not venture
to deny; but he tries to excuse himself by saying, "I liked the Reform
Bill; I thought it a good bill; and so I agitated for it; and, in
agitating for it, I acknowledge that I went to the very utmost limit of
what was prudent, to the very utmost limit of what was legal. " Does not
the right honourable Baronet perceive that, by setting up this defence
for his own past conduct, he admits that agitation is good or evil,
according as the objects of the agitation are good or evil? When I hear
him speak of agitation as a practice disgraceful to a public man, and
especially to a Minister of the Crown, and address his lecture in a
particular manner to me, I cannot but wonder that he should not perceive
that his reproaches, instead of wounding me, recoil on himself. I was
not a member of the Cabinet which brought in the Reform Bill, which
dissolved the Parliament in a moment of intense excitement in order
to carry the Reform Bill, which refused to serve the Sovereign longer
unless he would create peers in sufficient numbers to carry the Reform
Bill. I was at that time only one of those hundreds of members of this
House, one of those millions of Englishmen, who were deeply impressed
with the conviction that the Reform Bill was one of the best laws
that ever had been framed, and who reposed entire confidence in the
abilities, the integrity, and the patriotism of the ministers; and
I must add that in no member of the administration did I place more
confidence than in the right honourable Baronet, who was then First
Lord of the Admiralty, and in the noble lord who was then Secretary for
Ireland. (Lord Stanley. ) It was indeed impossible for me not to see that
the public mind was strongly, was dangerously stirred: but I trusted
that men so able, men so upright, men who had so large a stake in the
country, would carry us safe through the storm which they had raised.
And is it not rather hard that my confidence in the right honourable
Baronet and the noble lord is to be imputed to me as a crime by the very
men who are trying to raise the right honourable Baronet and the noble
lord to power? The Charter, we have been told in this debate, is the
child of the Reform Bill. But whose child is the Reform Bill? If men are
to be deemed unfit for office because they roused the national spirit
to support that bill, because they went as far as the law permitted in
order to carry that bill, then I say that no men can be more unfit for
office than the right honourable Baronet and the noble lord. It may be
thought presumptuous in me to defend two persons who are so well able to
defend themselves, and the more so, as they have a powerful ally in
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth, who, having twice
offered them high places in the Government, must be supposed to be of
opinion that they are not disqualified for being ministers by having
been agitators. I will, however, venture to offer some arguments in
vindication of the conduct of my noble and right honourable friends,
as I once called them, and as, notwithstanding the asperity which
has characterised the present debate, I should still have pleasure in
calling them. I would say in their behalf that agitation ought not to be
indiscriminately condemned; that great abuses ought to be removed;
that in this country scarcely any great abuse was ever removed till the
public feeling had been roused against it; and that the public feeling
has seldom been roused against abuses without exertions to which the
name of agitation may be given. I altogether deny the assertion which
we have repeatedly heard in the course of this debate, that a government
which does not discountenance agitation cannot be trusted to suppress
rebellion. Agitation and rebellion, you say, are in kind the same thing:
they differ only in degree. Sir, they are the same thing in the sense
in which to breathe a vein and to cut a throat are the same thing. There
are many points of resemblance between the act of the surgeon and the
act of the assassin. In both there is the steel, the incision, the
smart, the bloodshed. But the acts differ as widely as possible both in
moral character and in physical effect. So with agitation and rebellion.
I do not believe that there has been any moment since the revolution
of 1688 at which an insurrection in this country would have been
justifiable. On the other hand, I hold that we have owed to agitation a
long series of beneficent reforms which could have been effected in no
other way. Nor do I understand how any person can reprobate agitation,
merely as agitation, unless he is prepared to adopt the maxim of Bishop
Horsley, that the people have nothing to do with the laws but to
obey them. The truth is that agitation is inseparable from popular
government. If you wish to get rid of agitation, you must establish an
oligarchy like that of Venice, or a despotism like that of Russia. If
a Russian thinks that he is able to suggest an improvement in the
commercial code or the criminal code of his country, he tries to obtain
an audience of the Emperor Nicholas or of Count Nesselrode. If he
can satisfy them that his plans are good, then undoubtedly, without
agitation, without controversy in newspapers, without harangues from
hustings, without clamorous meetings in great halls and in marketplaces,
without petitions signed by tens of thousands, you may have a reform
effected with one stroke of the pen. Not so here. Here the people, as
electors, have power to decide questions of the highest importance. And
ought they not to hear and read before they decide? And how can they
hear if nobody speaks, or read if nobody writes? You must admit,
then, that it is our right, and that it may be our duty, to attempt
by speaking and writing to induce the great body of our countrymen to
pronounce what we think a right decision; and what else is agitation? In
saying this I am not defending one party alone. Has there been no Tory
agitation? No agitation against Popery? No agitation against the new
Poor Law? No agitation against the plan of education framed by the
present Government? Or, to pass from questions about which we differ to
questions about which we all agree: Would the slave trade ever have
been abolished without agitation? Would slavery ever have been abolished
without agitation? Would your prison discipline ever have been improved
without agitation? Would your penal code, once the scandal of the
Statute Book, have been mitigated without agitation? I am far from
denying that agitation may be abused, may be employed for bad ends, may
be carried to unjustifiable lengths. So may that freedom of speech
which is one of the most precious privileges of this House. Indeed,
the analogy is very close. What is agitation but the mode in which the
public, the body which we represent, the great outer assembly, if I may
so speak, holds its debates? It is as necessary to the good government
of the country that our constituents should debate as that we should
debate. They sometimes go wrong, as we sometimes go wrong. There
is often much exaggeration, much unfairness, much acrimony in their
debates. Is there none in ours? Some worthless demagogues may have
exhorted the people to resist the laws. But what member of Lord Grey's
Government, what member of the present Government, ever gave any
countenance to any illegal proceedings? It is perfectly true that some
words which have been uttered here and in other places, and which, when
taken together with the context and candidly construed, will appear to
mean nothing but what was reasonable and constitutional and moderate,
have been distorted and mutilated into something that has a seditious
aspect. But who is secure against such misrepresentation? Not, I am
sure, the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke. He ought to
remember that his own speeches have been used by bad men for bad ends.
He ought to remember that some expressions which he used in 1830, on
the subject of the emoluments divided among Privy Councillors, have been
quoted by the Chartists in vindication of their excesses. Do I blame him
for this? Not at all. He said nothing that was not justifiable. But it
is impossible for a man so to guard his lips that his language shall not
sometimes be misunderstood by dull men, and sometimes misrepresented
by dishonest men. I do not, I say, blame him for having used those
expressions: but I do say that, knowing how his own expressions had been
perverted, he should have hesitated before he threw upon men, not
less attached than himself to the cause of law, of order and property,
imputations certainly not better founded than those to which he is
himself liable.
And now, Sir, to pass by many topics to which, but for the lateness of
the hour, I would willingly advert, let me remind the House that
the question before us is not a positive question, but a question of
comparison. No man, though he may disapprove of some part of the conduct
of the present Ministers, is justified in voting for the motion which we
are considering, unless he believes that a change would, on the whole,
be beneficial. No government is perfect: but some government there must
be; and if the present government were worse than its enemies think it,
it ought to exist until it can be succeeded by a better. Now I take it
to be perfectly clear that, in the event of the removal of Her Majesty's
present advisers, an administration must be formed of which the right
honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth will be the head. Towards
that right honourable Baronet, and towards many of the noblemen and
gentlemen who would probably in that event be associated with him, I
entertain none but kind and respectful feelings. I am far, I hope, from
that narrowness of mind which makes a man unable to see merit in any
party but his own. If I may venture to parody the old Venetian proverb,
I would be "First an Englishman; and then a Whig. " I feel proud of my
country when I think how much ability, uprightness, and patriotism may
be found on both sides of the House. Among our opponents stands forth,
eminently distinguished by parts, eloquence, knowledge, and, I willingly
admit, by public spirit, the right honourable Baronet the Member for
Tamworth. Having said this, I shall offer no apology for the remarks
which, in the discharge of my public duty, I shall make, without, I
hope, any personal discourtesy, on his past conduct, and his present
position.
It has been, Sir, I will not say his fault, but his misfortune, his
fate, to be the leader of a party with which he has no sympathy. To go
back to what is now matter of history, the right honourable Baronet
bore a chief part in the restoration of the currency. By a very
large proportion of his followers the restoration of the currency is
considered as the chief cause of the distresses of the country. The
right honourable Baronet cordially supported the commercial policy of Mr
Huskisson. But there was no name more odious than that of Mr Huskisson
to the rank and file of the Tory party. The right honourable Baronet
assented to the Act which removed the disabilities of the Protestant
Dissenters.
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. For it was not merely a legislative question, but a
question which affected every part of the executive administration.
But, to come to the present time, suppose that you could carry your
resolution, suppose that you could drive the present Ministers from
power, who that may succeed them will be able to form a government in
which there will be no open questions? Can the right honourable Baronet
the member for Tamworth (Sir Robert Peel. ) form a Cabinet without
leaving the great question of our privileges open? In what respect is
that question less important than the question of the Ballot? Is it not
indeed from the privileges of the House that all questions relating
to the constitution of the House derive their importance? What does it
matter how we are chosen, if, when we meet, we do not possess the
powers necessary to enable us to perform the functions of a legislative
assembly? Yet you who would turn out the present Ministers because they
differ from each other as to the way in which Members of this House
should be chosen, wish to bring in men who decidedly differ from each
other as to the relation in which this House stands to the nation, to
the other House, and to the Courts of Judicature. Will you say that the
dispute between the House and the Court of Queen's Bench is a trifling
dispute? Surely, in the late debates, you were all perfectly agreed as
to the importance of the question, though you were agreed as to nothing
else. Some of you told us that we were contending for a power essential
to our honour and usefulness. Many of you protested against our
proceedings, and declared that we were encroaching on the province of
the tribunals, violating the liberty of our fellow citizens, punishing
honest magistrates for not perjuring themselves. Are these trifles? And
can we believe that you really feel a horror of open questions when we
see your Prime Minister elect sending people to prison overnight,
and his law officers elect respectfully attending the levee of those
prisoners the next morning? Observe, too, that this question of
privileges is not merely important; it is also pressing. Something must
be done, and that speedily. My belief is that more inconvenience would
follow from leaving that question open one month than from leaving the
question of the Ballot open ten years.
The Ballot, Sir, is not the only subject on which I am accused of
holding dangerous opinions. The right honourable Baronet the Member
for Pembroke (Sir James Graham. ) pronounces the present Government
a Chartist Government; and he proves his point by saying that I am a
member of the government, and that I wish to give the elective franchise
to every ten pound householder, whether his house be in a town or in
the country. Is it possible, Sir, that the honourable Baronet should not
know that the fundamental principle of the plan of government called the
People's Charter is that every male of twenty-one should have a vote?
Or is it possible that he can see no difference between giving the
franchise to all ten pound householders, and giving the franchise to all
males of twenty-one? Does he think the ten pound householders a class
morally or intellectually unfit to possess the franchise, he who bore a
chief part in framing the law which gave them the franchise in all the
represented towns of the United Kingdom? Or will he say that the ten
pound householder in a town is morally and intellectually fit to be
an elector, but that the ten pound householder who lives in the
open country is morally and intellectually unfit? Is not house-rent
notoriously higher in towns than in the country? Is it not, therefore,
probable that the occupant of a ten pound house in a rural hamlet will
be a man who has a greater stake in the peace and welfare of society
than a man who has a ten pound house in Manchester or Birmingham? Can
you defend on conservative principles an arrangement which gives votes
to a poorer class and withholds them from a richer? For my own part, I
believe it to be essential to the welfare of the state, that the elector
should have a pecuniary qualification. I believe that the ten pound
qualification cannot be proved to be either too high or too low.
Changes, which may hereafter take place in the value of money and in
the condition of the people, may make a change of the qualification
necessary. But the ten pound qualification is, I believe, well suited to
the present state of things. At any rate, I am unable to conceive why it
should be a sufficient qualification within the limits of a borough, and
an insufficient qualification a yard beyond those limits; sufficient at
Knightsbridge, but insufficient at Kensington; sufficient at Lambeth,
but insufficient at Battersea? If any person calls this Chartism, he
must permit me to tell him that he does not know what Chartism is.
A motion, Sir, such as that which we are considering, brings under our
review the whole policy of the kingdom, domestic, foreign, and colonial.
It is not strange, therefore, that there should have been several
episodes in this debate. Something has been said about the hostilities
on the River Plata, something about the hostilities on the coast of
China, something about Commissioner Lin, something about Captain Elliot.
But on such points I shall not dwell, for it is evidently not by the
opinion which the House may entertain on such points that the event
of the debate will be decided. The main argument of the gentlemen who
support the motion, the argument on which the right honourable Baronet
who opened the debate chiefly relied, the argument which his seconder
repeated, and which has formed the substance of every speech since
delivered from the opposite side of the House, may be fairly summed
up thus, "The country is not in a satisfactory state. There is much
recklessness, much turbulence, much craving for political change; and
the cause of these evils is the policy of the Whigs. They rose to power
by agitation in 1830: they retained power by means of agitation through
the tempestuous months which followed: they carried the Reform Bill
by means of agitation: expelled from office, they forced themselves in
again by means of agitation; and now we are paying the penalty of their
misconduct. Chartism is the natural offspring of Whiggism. From those
who caused the evil we cannot expect the remedy. The first thing to
be done is to dismiss them, and to call to power men who, not having
instigated the people to commit excesses, can, without incurring the
charge of inconsistency, enforce the laws. "
Now, Sir, it seems to me that this argument was completely refuted by
the able and eloquent speech of my right honourable friend the Judge
Advocate. (Sir George Grey. ) He said, and he said most truly, that those
who hold this language are really accusing, not the Government of Lord
Melbourne, but the Government of Lord Grey. I was therefore, I must say,
surprised, after the speech of my right honourable friend, to hear
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke, himself a
distinguished member of the cabinet of Lord Grey, pronounce a harangue
against agitation. That he was himself an agitator he does not venture
to deny; but he tries to excuse himself by saying, "I liked the Reform
Bill; I thought it a good bill; and so I agitated for it; and, in
agitating for it, I acknowledge that I went to the very utmost limit of
what was prudent, to the very utmost limit of what was legal. " Does not
the right honourable Baronet perceive that, by setting up this defence
for his own past conduct, he admits that agitation is good or evil,
according as the objects of the agitation are good or evil? When I hear
him speak of agitation as a practice disgraceful to a public man, and
especially to a Minister of the Crown, and address his lecture in a
particular manner to me, I cannot but wonder that he should not perceive
that his reproaches, instead of wounding me, recoil on himself. I was
not a member of the Cabinet which brought in the Reform Bill, which
dissolved the Parliament in a moment of intense excitement in order
to carry the Reform Bill, which refused to serve the Sovereign longer
unless he would create peers in sufficient numbers to carry the Reform
Bill. I was at that time only one of those hundreds of members of this
House, one of those millions of Englishmen, who were deeply impressed
with the conviction that the Reform Bill was one of the best laws
that ever had been framed, and who reposed entire confidence in the
abilities, the integrity, and the patriotism of the ministers; and
I must add that in no member of the administration did I place more
confidence than in the right honourable Baronet, who was then First
Lord of the Admiralty, and in the noble lord who was then Secretary for
Ireland. (Lord Stanley. ) It was indeed impossible for me not to see that
the public mind was strongly, was dangerously stirred: but I trusted
that men so able, men so upright, men who had so large a stake in the
country, would carry us safe through the storm which they had raised.
And is it not rather hard that my confidence in the right honourable
Baronet and the noble lord is to be imputed to me as a crime by the very
men who are trying to raise the right honourable Baronet and the noble
lord to power? The Charter, we have been told in this debate, is the
child of the Reform Bill. But whose child is the Reform Bill? If men are
to be deemed unfit for office because they roused the national spirit
to support that bill, because they went as far as the law permitted in
order to carry that bill, then I say that no men can be more unfit for
office than the right honourable Baronet and the noble lord. It may be
thought presumptuous in me to defend two persons who are so well able to
defend themselves, and the more so, as they have a powerful ally in
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth, who, having twice
offered them high places in the Government, must be supposed to be of
opinion that they are not disqualified for being ministers by having
been agitators. I will, however, venture to offer some arguments in
vindication of the conduct of my noble and right honourable friends,
as I once called them, and as, notwithstanding the asperity which
has characterised the present debate, I should still have pleasure in
calling them. I would say in their behalf that agitation ought not to be
indiscriminately condemned; that great abuses ought to be removed;
that in this country scarcely any great abuse was ever removed till the
public feeling had been roused against it; and that the public feeling
has seldom been roused against abuses without exertions to which the
name of agitation may be given. I altogether deny the assertion which
we have repeatedly heard in the course of this debate, that a government
which does not discountenance agitation cannot be trusted to suppress
rebellion. Agitation and rebellion, you say, are in kind the same thing:
they differ only in degree. Sir, they are the same thing in the sense
in which to breathe a vein and to cut a throat are the same thing. There
are many points of resemblance between the act of the surgeon and the
act of the assassin. In both there is the steel, the incision, the
smart, the bloodshed. But the acts differ as widely as possible both in
moral character and in physical effect. So with agitation and rebellion.
I do not believe that there has been any moment since the revolution
of 1688 at which an insurrection in this country would have been
justifiable. On the other hand, I hold that we have owed to agitation a
long series of beneficent reforms which could have been effected in no
other way. Nor do I understand how any person can reprobate agitation,
merely as agitation, unless he is prepared to adopt the maxim of Bishop
Horsley, that the people have nothing to do with the laws but to
obey them. The truth is that agitation is inseparable from popular
government. If you wish to get rid of agitation, you must establish an
oligarchy like that of Venice, or a despotism like that of Russia. If
a Russian thinks that he is able to suggest an improvement in the
commercial code or the criminal code of his country, he tries to obtain
an audience of the Emperor Nicholas or of Count Nesselrode. If he
can satisfy them that his plans are good, then undoubtedly, without
agitation, without controversy in newspapers, without harangues from
hustings, without clamorous meetings in great halls and in marketplaces,
without petitions signed by tens of thousands, you may have a reform
effected with one stroke of the pen. Not so here. Here the people, as
electors, have power to decide questions of the highest importance. And
ought they not to hear and read before they decide? And how can they
hear if nobody speaks, or read if nobody writes? You must admit,
then, that it is our right, and that it may be our duty, to attempt
by speaking and writing to induce the great body of our countrymen to
pronounce what we think a right decision; and what else is agitation? In
saying this I am not defending one party alone. Has there been no Tory
agitation? No agitation against Popery? No agitation against the new
Poor Law? No agitation against the plan of education framed by the
present Government? Or, to pass from questions about which we differ to
questions about which we all agree: Would the slave trade ever have
been abolished without agitation? Would slavery ever have been abolished
without agitation? Would your prison discipline ever have been improved
without agitation? Would your penal code, once the scandal of the
Statute Book, have been mitigated without agitation? I am far from
denying that agitation may be abused, may be employed for bad ends, may
be carried to unjustifiable lengths. So may that freedom of speech
which is one of the most precious privileges of this House. Indeed,
the analogy is very close. What is agitation but the mode in which the
public, the body which we represent, the great outer assembly, if I may
so speak, holds its debates? It is as necessary to the good government
of the country that our constituents should debate as that we should
debate. They sometimes go wrong, as we sometimes go wrong. There
is often much exaggeration, much unfairness, much acrimony in their
debates. Is there none in ours? Some worthless demagogues may have
exhorted the people to resist the laws. But what member of Lord Grey's
Government, what member of the present Government, ever gave any
countenance to any illegal proceedings? It is perfectly true that some
words which have been uttered here and in other places, and which, when
taken together with the context and candidly construed, will appear to
mean nothing but what was reasonable and constitutional and moderate,
have been distorted and mutilated into something that has a seditious
aspect. But who is secure against such misrepresentation? Not, I am
sure, the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke. He ought to
remember that his own speeches have been used by bad men for bad ends.
He ought to remember that some expressions which he used in 1830, on
the subject of the emoluments divided among Privy Councillors, have been
quoted by the Chartists in vindication of their excesses. Do I blame him
for this? Not at all. He said nothing that was not justifiable. But it
is impossible for a man so to guard his lips that his language shall not
sometimes be misunderstood by dull men, and sometimes misrepresented
by dishonest men. I do not, I say, blame him for having used those
expressions: but I do say that, knowing how his own expressions had been
perverted, he should have hesitated before he threw upon men, not
less attached than himself to the cause of law, of order and property,
imputations certainly not better founded than those to which he is
himself liable.
And now, Sir, to pass by many topics to which, but for the lateness of
the hour, I would willingly advert, let me remind the House that
the question before us is not a positive question, but a question of
comparison. No man, though he may disapprove of some part of the conduct
of the present Ministers, is justified in voting for the motion which we
are considering, unless he believes that a change would, on the whole,
be beneficial. No government is perfect: but some government there must
be; and if the present government were worse than its enemies think it,
it ought to exist until it can be succeeded by a better. Now I take it
to be perfectly clear that, in the event of the removal of Her Majesty's
present advisers, an administration must be formed of which the right
honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth will be the head. Towards
that right honourable Baronet, and towards many of the noblemen and
gentlemen who would probably in that event be associated with him, I
entertain none but kind and respectful feelings. I am far, I hope, from
that narrowness of mind which makes a man unable to see merit in any
party but his own. If I may venture to parody the old Venetian proverb,
I would be "First an Englishman; and then a Whig. " I feel proud of my
country when I think how much ability, uprightness, and patriotism may
be found on both sides of the House. Among our opponents stands forth,
eminently distinguished by parts, eloquence, knowledge, and, I willingly
admit, by public spirit, the right honourable Baronet the Member for
Tamworth. Having said this, I shall offer no apology for the remarks
which, in the discharge of my public duty, I shall make, without, I
hope, any personal discourtesy, on his past conduct, and his present
position.
It has been, Sir, I will not say his fault, but his misfortune, his
fate, to be the leader of a party with which he has no sympathy. To go
back to what is now matter of history, the right honourable Baronet
bore a chief part in the restoration of the currency. By a very
large proportion of his followers the restoration of the currency is
considered as the chief cause of the distresses of the country. The
right honourable Baronet cordially supported the commercial policy of Mr
Huskisson. But there was no name more odious than that of Mr Huskisson
to the rank and file of the Tory party. The right honourable Baronet
assented to the Act which removed the disabilities of the Protestant
Dissenters.
