Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

REFORM DEMONSTRATIONS.

'Well, that is very true. For my own part, in my individual capacity I cannot see that there is any danger of admitting you; but still, you know, it is wise to proceed gradually. A £7 voter is real flesh and blood. But you are only gradual flesh and blood. Read Darwin on the origin of species, and learn that you are fellow-Christians in an inperfect state of development.'"

The fact that Earl Grosvenor had moved an amendment that it would be inexpedient to consider the bill for the reduction of the franchise until the house had before it the whole scheme of the government, though Mr. Gladstone had stated that he would not enter into the scheme for distribution till after the second reading of the franchise bill, showed that the Whigs were indifferent to the success of the measure. The eldest son of the Marquis of Westminster was usually regarded as a steady supporter of the government. He had now joined with others in showing that he did not regard it with confidence.

The second reading was not to take place till after the Easter recess, and during the interval considerable excitement prevailed in those parts of the country where the reform party was strongest.

At Liverpool there were enthusiastic demonstrations. Mr. Gladstone addressed one great meeting at which the Duke of Argyll, Mr. Goschen, and others of his colleagues were present. In response to his declaration that the government would abide by the bill which they had introduced and stand or fall with it the audience rose to their feet and greeted him with long-continued cheering.

"Having," he said, "produced this measure, founded in a spirit of moderation, we hope to support it with decision. It is not in our power to secure the passing of the measure: that rests more with you, and more with those whom you represent, and of whom you are a sample, than it does with us. Still, we have a great responsibility and are conscious of it, and we do not intend to flinch from it. We stake ourselves-we stake our existence as a government-and we also stake our political character on the adoption of the bill in its main provisions. You have a right to expect

217

from us that we should tell you what we mean, and that the trumpet which it is our business to blow should give forth no uncertain sound. Its sound has not been, and I trust will not be, uncertain. We have passed the Rubicon -we have broken the bridge, and burned the boats behind us. We have advisedly cut off the means of retreat, and having done this we hope that, as far as time is yet permitted, we have done our duty to the crown and to the nation."

The passing of the Rubicon, the breaking of the bridge and the burning of the boats, was another phrase about which much reference played in after debates; but it at least expressed the determined attitude of the govern

ment.

Mr. Bright took another standpoint:-At a reform meeting at Birmingham a letter from him was read in which he said: "Parliament is never hearty for reform, or for any good measure. It hated the Reform Bill of 1831 and 1832. It does not like the franchise bill now upon its table. It is to a large extent the offspring of landed power in the counties and of tumult and corruption in the boroughs, and it would be strange if such a parliament were in favour of freedom and of an honest representation of the people. But, notwithstanding such a parliament, this bill will pass if Birmingham and other towns do their duty." The opposition was referred to as "a dirty conspiracy." "What," he asked, "should be done, and what must be done, under these circumstances? You know what your fathers did thirty-four years ago, and you know the result. The men who, in every speech they utter, insult the working men, describing them as a multitude given up to ignorance and vice, will be the first to yield when the popular will is loudly and resolutely expressed. If Parliament Street from Charing Cross to the venerable Abbey were filled with men seeking a reform bill, as it was two years ago with men come to do honour to an illustrious Italian, these slanderers of their countrymen would learn to be civil if they did not learn to love freedom." At Manchester also Mr. Bright urged an immediate organization. for meetings and petitions-"as men living ina

free country, with representative institutions, determined to partake in some measure of that representation, and to be free."

Mr. Lowe had received some strong remonstrances from his constituents on the subject of his charges against the classes to which the franchise was proposed to be extended; and as Mr. Gladstone at Liverpool had referred to his language in terms of rebuke, he complained that he had been misunderstood and misrepresented, as he only intended to refer to the vices which existed in some constituencies as shown by the records of the house. He did not, however, succeed in explaining away the apparent meaning of what he had said at the time. The fact was that Mr. Lowe, who was in some other matters an extreme reformer, was so utterly opposed to the extension of the franchise that he had let his vigorous representations of its dangers run into language which either expressed what he meant, or very far exceeded his intention; but the words had been shot forth, and they stuck like arrows. Perhaps the knowledge of this, and the reproof which Mr. Gladstone had at the time administered to him, gave force and fire to his speech when, the house having reassembled, the debate on the bill again came forward. It was the seventh evening in which the measure had been discussed; the second reading was proposed, and it was necessary to oppose it with all the vigour that could be summoned to the task. Mr. Lowe rose to that task. It was the greatest of his parliamentary achievements. He never surpassed it. In a speech lasting two hours and a half he essayed to show the false principles upon which the measure was founded, the avowed coercion which was being brought to bear on the House of Commons, the extensive and powerful tyranny which would be exercised through the bill by trades-unions, and the fatal injuries which democracy would inflict upon the English constitution. Amid a tempest of cheering from the opposition and from many on the ministerial side of the house he contended that the principle of Mr. Gladstone's measure, and the idea that, however covertly, lay at the root of all his reasoning, was the fitness of the poorer classes for the franchise,

and their indefeasible claim to it as soon as they were fit-and not any conviction that the objects of good government would be materially aided by their admission. He pointed out that every one of Mr. Gladstone's plans went, not towards enfranchising 200,000 men, but towards enfranchising all, since all were "flesh and blood-fellow-citizens and Christians and fathers of families." For his part he thought they had more reason every day they lived to regret the loss of Lord Palmerston. "By way of a mortuary contribution, it seems to me that the remaining members of his cabinet laid in his grave all their moderation, all their prudence, and all their statesmanship. The government have performed an immense exploit. They have carried the great mass of their party-men of moderate opinion and views-they have carried them over from their own views and laid them at the feet of the member for Birmingham. They are brought into contact now with men and principles from which six months ago they would have recoiled. That is what has happened to part of them. The rest of us are left like sheep in the wilderness. And after the success of this extraordinary combination for I can give it no other name-we, who remain where we were, are charged with being conspirators and traitors. We are told that we are bound by every tie to support Lord Russell. I dispute that. I never served under him. I have served, unfortunately, for a little less than ten years under two prime ministers--one being Lord Aberdeen, and the other Lord Palmerston. Both these governments Lord Russell joined; both these governments he abandoned; and both these governments he assisted to destroy. I owe him no allegiance. I am not afraid of the people of this country; they have shown remarkable good sense-remarkable, indeed, in contrast with the harangues that have been addressed to them. Nor am I afraid of those who lead them. Demagogues are the commonplaces of history; they are found everywhere where there is popular commotion. They have all a family likeness. Their names float lightly on the stream of time; they finally contrive to be handed down somehow, for

THE DEBATE ON THE REFORM BILL.

they are as little to be regarded for themselves
as the foam which rides on the top of the
stormy wave, and bespatters the rock it can-
not shake; but what I do fear-what fills me
with the gloomiest misgivings, is when I see
a number of gentlemen of rank, property, and
intelligence, carried away without even being
convinced, or even over-persuaded, to support
a policy which many of them in their hearts
detest and abhor. Monarchies exist by loy-
alty, aristocracies by honour, popular assem-
blies by political virtue. When these things
begin to fail it is in their loss, and not in comets,
eclipses, and earthquakes, that we are to look
for the portents that herald the fall of states."
Though he could not agree with the chancellor
of the exchequer, there was, happily, one com-
mon ground left them-the Second Eneid.
"My right honourable friend returned again
to the poor old Trojan horse. I will add one
more to the excerpt from the story of that noble
animal, after which I will promise to turn
him out to grass for the remainder of his life.
The passage which I wish to call attention to
presents a sketch of the army, and not only of
the army but of the general also.

'The fatal horse pours forth the human tide,
Insulting Sinon flings his firebrands wide:
The gates are burnt, the ancient rampart falls;
And swarming myriads climb its crumbling walls.'

I have now traced as well as I could what
I believe would be the natural result of a
measure which seems to my poor imagination
destined to absorb and destroy, one after the
other, those institutions which have made
England what she has hitherto been, and what
I believe no other country ever was or ever
will be. Surely the heroic work of so many
centuries, the matchless achievements of so
many wise heads and strong hands, deserve a
nobler consummation than to be sacrificed to
revolutionary passion, or to the maudlin en-
thusiasm of humanity. But if we do fall we
shall fall deservedly. Unconstrained by any
external force, not beaten down by any intes-
tine calamity: in the plethora of wealth and
the surfeit of our too exuberant prosperity
we are about, with our own rash and uncon-
strained hands, to pluck down on our own
heads the venerable temple of our liberty and

219

our laws. History may record other catastrophies as signal and as disastrous, but none more wanton and more disgraceful.”

Even Mr. Disraeli could scarcely have made a speech that would have elicited such tumultuous applause as that with which the opponents of the bill greeted these utterances. Mr. Disraeli, in fact, left the honours of the evening with the member for Calne, but he had his own contributions to make to the debate, in which he denounced the proposed bill, as one calculated to reconstruct the constitution upon American principles. He defended the Conservatives from the charge of unfairness, and declared that the house ought to proceed on the principle that they were the House of Commons and not the House of the People:-that they represented a great political order of the state, and not an indiscriminate multitude. In estimating what share the working-classes should possess in the power of the state-a share which he did not at all begrudge them-they ought to act and to form that estimate according to the spirit of the English constitution.

In his speech he had referred to the early opinions expressed by Mr. Gladstone on the subject of reform, and a reference to this point formed one of the most effective parts of Mr. Gladstone's reply to his opponents before the close of the debate. That reply was itself a masterly effort, for as we have noted, in these debates there occurred some of the most conspicuous examples of the style of the finest speakers in parliament. It was one o'clock in the morning when Mr. Gladstone rose to reply to the charges brought against the bill. Mr. Lowe had alluded to words which had been used at the meeting at Liverpool, as intended to attack or disparage members of the house; but he denied that they had that application, and reminded his right honourable friend of a passage in a play of Aristophanes (the sentiments and circumstances associated with which he had forgotten), where one of the characters addressing the audience said, "But now, my good Athenians, pray recollect, I am not speaking of the city, I am not speaking of the public, I am only speaking of certain depraved and crooked little men." Replying to Mr.

Disraeli he said, "At last we have obtained a declaration from an authoritative source that a bill, which, in a country with five millions of adult males, proposes to add to a limited constituency 200,000 of the middle class and 200,000 of the working class, is in the judgment of the leader of the Tory party a bill to reconstruct the constitution on American principles." Mr. Disraeli's reference to the opinions held by the chancellor of the exchequer in 1832 was not a fortunate one, for it gave Mr. Gladstone an opportunity, of which he made active use, especially as his opponent had in a previous part of the debate said, in reply to a powerful speech by Mr. John Stuart Mill, that he would not refer to statements made in that gentleman's writings twenty-five years before.

"The right honourable gentleman," said Mr. Gladstone, "secure in the recollection of his own consistency, has taunted me with the errors of my boyhood. When he addressed the honourable member for Westminster, he showed his magnanimity by declaring that he would not take the philosopher to task for what he wrote twenty-five years ago; but when he caught one who, thirty-six years ago, just emerged from boyhood, and still an undergraduate at Oxford, had expressed an opinion adverse to the Reform Bill of 1832, of which he had so long and bitterly repented, then the right honourable gentleman could not resist the temptation. . . . As the right honourable gentleman has exhibited me, let me exhibit myself. It is true, I deeply regret it, but I was bred under the shadow of the great name of Canning, every influence connected with that name governed the politics of my childhood and of my youth; with Canning I rejoiced in the removal of religious disabilities, and in the character which he gave to our policy abroad; with Canning I rejoiced in the opening which he made towards the establishment of free commercial interchanges between nations; with Canning, and under the shadow of that great name, and under the shadow of that yet more venerable name of Burke, I grant, my youthful mind and imagination were impressed just the same as the mature mind of the right honourable gentle

man is now impressed. I had conceived that fear and alarm of the first Reform Bill in the days of my undergraduate career at Oxford which the right honourable gentleman now feels.

I envy him not one particle of the polemical advantage which he has gained by his discreet reference to the proceedings of the Oxford Union Debating Society in the year of grace 1831. My position, sir, in regard to the Liberal party is in all points the opposite of Earl Russell's.

I have none of the claims he possesses. I came among you an outcast from those with whom I associated, driven from them, I admit, by no arbitrary act, but by the slow and resistless forces of conviction. I came among you, to make use of the legal phraseology, in forma pauperis. I had nothing to offer you but faithful and honourable service. You received me with kindness, indulgence, generosity, and I may even say with some measure of confidence. And the relation between us has assumed such a form that you can never be my debtors, but that I must for ever be in your debt."

.

The reply concluded with words that were not soon forgotten:-"We are assailed; this bill is in a state of crisis and of peril, and the government along with it. We stand or fall with it. . . We stand with it now; we may fall with it a short time hence. If we do so fall, we, or others in our places, shall rise with it hereafter. I shall not attempt to measure with precision the forces that are to be arrayed against us in the coming issue. Perhaps the great division of to-night is not the last that must take place in the struggle. At some point of the contest you may possibly succeed. You may drive us from our seats. You may bury the bill that we have introduced, but we will write upon its gravestone for an epitaph this line, with certain confidence in its fulfilment—

"Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor."1

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side. The great social forces which move onwards in their might and majesty,

1 From our bones an avenger will arise.

TRIUMPH OF THE ADULLAMITES.

and which the tumult of our debates does not for a moment impede or disturb-those great social forces are against you: they are marshalled on our side; and the banner which we now carry in this fight, though perhaps at some moment it may droop over our sinking heads, yet it soon again will float in the eye of heaven, and it will be borne by the firm hands of the united people of the three kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain and to a not far distant victory."

It is not to be wondered at that the division on the second reading was taken amidst tremendous excitement, still less surprising is it that, when it became known how small a majority was likely to be secured by the government, that excitement was intensified. It was at three o'clock in the morning (Saturday morning the 28th of April), that the house divided, and a large crowd waited in Westminster Hall to hear the result. Members had struggled back to their seats after the division, eager expectation was on every face, the air seemed to be charged with electricity, there was a hum, a murmur, a hush, a half audible whisper before the tellers appeared, and then a surging of the crowd at the bar of the house, a rising of the strangers in the galleries, a craning of necks and a strained and almost painful attention. The ayes were 318, the noes 313. The announcement had scarcely left the speaker's lips when, like the bursting of a pent-up storm, one great shout, or rather shriek and roar arose in the house. Never had such a scene been witnessed. It surpassed even that at the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832; but this time it was on the side of the opponents of the measure. In one of the largest, if not the very largest division that had ever taken place within the walls of parliament, and after such a struggle, for the government to have only a majority of five, was near enough to their defeat to cause a shout of exultation to rise alike from the opposition benches and from those where sat the malcontents, whose desertion had dwindled down a large majority to this small one. The Conservatives were even less uproarious than the Adullamites, who from the ministerial benches roared their triumph, while Mr. Lowe,

221

his white hair glistening like silver over his face, purple with delight, almost danced as he stood up waving his hat in wide and triumphant circles over the very heads of the men who had been his antagonists. Such was the scene on that memorable morning, as repeated outbursts of cheering marked the near defeat of the government. Not till the voices of the shouters began to fail could the chancellor of the exchequer gain a hearing, but at last he rose, and amidst a sudden profound silence calmly said, "Sir, I propose to fix the committee for Monday, and I will then state the order of business." It had been a memorable night. After one of the greatest orations ever delivered within the house, after a scene of unparalleled excitement, silence fell upon the assembly. The dawn was breaking as members went forth into Palace Yard, where a crowd was still waiting to cheer the supporters of the bill, which those who knew the parliamentary portents already feared was doomed to defeat.

The government had now to bring forward the bill for the redistribution of seats and the franchise bills for Scotland and Ireland. The plan for redistribution did not disfranchise any of the boroughs, nor did it alter the total number of members to be returned to the House of Commons, but some small boroughs were to return only one representative instead of two, and other boroughs were grouped together. By these means forty-nine seats were left for disposal, and it was proposed to give twenty-six of these seats to counties or to the divisions and subdivisions of counties, and an additional member each to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Salford. The borough of the Tower Hamlets was to be divided with two members for each division. Chelsea and Kensington were made a borough returning two members, and a new member each was given to Burnley, Staley bridge, Gravesend, Hartlepool,Middlesborough,Dewsbury, and the University of London. remaining seven seats were allotted to Scotland and Ireland. On the 14th of May the redistribution bill was read a second time, a fortnight afterwards the two bills were combined and went into committee with some

The

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »