Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Mr. Gladstone's Suf

frage Act of 1884.

2,000,000 (voters) more, nearly twice as much as was added in 1867, and more than four times as much as was added in 1832. Surely it is worth doing. . . We are firm in the faith that enfranchisement is good, and that the people may be trusted, and that voters under the constitution are the strength of the constitution. . . You will, as much as any former Parliament that has conferred great legislative benefits on the nation, have your reward and read your history in a nation's eyes; for you will have deserved all the benefits you will have conferred. You will have made a strong nation stronger still-stronger in union without, and stronger against its foes (if and when it has any foes) within; stronger in union between class and class, and in rallying all classes and portions of the community in one solid, compact mass around the ancient throne which it has loved so well, and round the constitution now to be more than ever free and more than ever powerful.

9910

There was little excitement over the bill, and although the lords rejected the first bill, the agreement was reached over "sundry cups of afternoon tea in private conference" rather than through any pressure by the people. The difference in the public attitude is well described by Gladstone in the Edinburgh Review: "But speak to a reformer of '32 and he will tell you what a difference there is in the tone and bearing of the meetings held then and held now respectively. The meetings held half a century ago were worthy of the seriousness of the occasion. There was oppression in those days. The voice of the people was smothered. They had no hope of being able to make their grievances heard so long as all power was concentrated in the hands of an imperious oligarchy. The meetings of that time were grave and serious incidents in the life of a nation. They were the demands of a downtrodden people calling for freedom. They were the earnest gatherings of determined men. They meant civil war if their demands were slighted and their oppression continued. No man who recollects the crisis of 1831 would for an instant compare the present political aspect of the country with the agitation prevailing in October of that year when Bristol and Nottingham were in flames, when bishops were insulted in their dioceses, and peers dragged from their carriages in the streets, and one universal outcry ran through the nation, 'Down with the House of Lords'. At that time it would have cost a man his life to address a popular meeting in opposition to the Reform Bill.""

In 1884, after some discussion, Gladstone was persuaded to add a redistribution bill to the suffrage measure and the Lords gave way with10 Gladstone's speech, Annual Register, Vol. 126, p. 92.

11 Political Speeches of Gladstone in Edinburgh Review, V. 160, pp. 569-570.

[graphic][merged small]

Terms of the Act

of 1884.

out serious trouble. The bill provided for an extension of the household suffrage, as given to the boroughs in 1867, to the counties. A new "service" franchise was added to include men not owners or tenants but not household servants. The Bill of 1884 thus excluded from the suffrage household servants, bachelors living at home, and those with no fixed home. These latter classes have been given the suffrage in the Parliamentary Act of 1918. The distribution act of the same year provided in general for "single member equal electional districts". Towns under 15,000 were merged with the county. Those between 15,000 and 50,000 were given one member each. Except in London and in boroughs and cities with a population of between 50,000 and 165,000 one member constituencies became the rule.

With the Act of 1884 the struggle for universal manhood suffrage practically came to an end, and England followed America and France in their recognition of a democracy based upon the broad foundations of equal participation of all classes. When the great budget bill of Mr. Lloyd George was presented in 1909 the long opposition of the House of Lords created so strong a feeling that they were interfering with the sovereignty of the people that a bill was drawn in 1912 to check their authority. This bill made the power of the House of Commons in England complete and final. There was left only the question proposed by Mill in 1867, that of equal suffrage for women. This problem made slow progress to 1914, but the growing consciousness of the need of such legislation together with the very important part taken by women in the World War, brought it to a focus in the proposal for practically universal suffrage which became law in England in April, 1918.

Thus has closed one of the most interesting and one of the most picturesque struggles in history, a struggle which consistently aimed at the destruction of aristocratic and class interference with the march of democracy. At the same time it makes necessary the struggle of to-day over the problem of governmental activity. Now that the people as a whole control the government through the suffrage, the question of the socialization of legislation 12 has become of vital interest, an interest which the war has intensified a thousand fold.

SUGGESTED READINGS

SEE PRECEDING CHAP. IV

12 By the socialization of legislation is meant the problem of determining what questions of reform shall be acted upon by legislation and what question shall be left for individual control

CHAPTER VI

DEVELOPMENT OF ITALIAN NATIONALITY

ITALY'S development is in some ways very similar to that of Germany. She had been a part of the Roman Empire and during the

Individualistic Character of Italy's De

barbarian and later European invasions she had been a prey of every warring nation. It was in Italy that the Renaissance had its beginning. The movement was velopment. particularly individualistic. The growth of commerce of Italian cities; the individualistic character of the states of Italy, like Greece in the times of Athens and Sparta, developed such strong animosities and rivalries that any attempt to bind them together failed. The continued strife between the empire and the papacy during the Middle Ages was a detrimental influence. Italy, like Germany, was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Neither empire nor papacy was able to dominate and to use Metternich's phrase, "Italy was only a geographic expression." Italy came under the influence of the French Revolution with its slogans of equality before the law, of abolition of serfdom and religious freedom. Napoleon did much to unify the country. "Liberty and union were the two miracles performed by the French for the Italians." The freedom and union of the Italians, however, was short-lived. The Congress of Vienna attempted to restore the conditions which had existed prior to the French Revolution and the era of Napoleon. "Since the fall of the Roman Empire; parcelled out during the Middle Ages; conquered from the sixteenth century at first by Spain and then Austria, Italy almost unified by Napoleon had been again dismembered in 1815 by the treaty of Vienna." It was divided into some ten small states. Among these the chief states were the Kingdom of Sardinia, ruled over by the House of Savoy; the duchies of Parma and Modena; the grand duchy of Tuscany, the territory of Lombardy-Venetia, ruled over by Austria or Austrian princes; and the kingdom of the two Sicilies under the Bourbons of Naples, descendants of Louis XIV. In all these states through the influence of Metternich, who at the Congress of Vienna had developed the idea of intervention, which had for its aim the suppression of every liberal and national movement, attempts were made to restore the old absolutist governments. Metternich abhorred revolution, comparing it at one time "to a volcano, to a fire which threatens to

The Treaty of Vienna and Italy.

[subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed]

devour everything; and then to a hydra which opens its jaws to gulp down the whole social order." In every Italian state, a severe censor

[graphic]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

ITALY IN 1921.

ship of the press was established; everything French was rooted out; the church was restored and education placed in its control. In some of the states even roads and bridges built by the French were destroyed. The parcelling of Italy into pieces; the restoration of absolutism;

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »