A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume IV Part 7

The imaginary foreigner who knew nothing about the principle of the workings of our Const.i.tution before his arrival in the country might well have been amazed and confounded, and might have fancied, if he had been a reader of English literature, that he had lost his way somehow, and instead of arriving in England had stumbled into the State of Laputa. He might well indeed be excused for such bewilderment, seeing that an English student of the present day finds it hard to realize in his mind the possibility and the reality of the condition of things which existed in this country within the lifetime of men still living.

Lord John Russell then went on to describe the manner in which the Government proposed to deal with the existing defects of the whole Parliamentary system. He laid it down as the main principle of the reforms he was prepared to introduce that a free citizen should not be compelled to pay taxes in the imposition and levying of which he was allowed to have no voice. The vast majority of free citizens could in any case only express their opinions as to this or that financial impost through their representatives in the House of Commons. This principle had of late been allowed to fail so grossly and so widely in its application that the House of Commons had almost entirely ceased to represent the will of the people.

Lord John Russell explained that the chief evils with which the Government had to deal were three in number. The first was the nomination of members of Parliament by individual patrons. The second was the nomination of members by close corporations. The third was the {141} enormous expense of elections, which was princ.i.p.ally caused by the open bribery and corruption which had almost become a recognized accompaniment of every contest. He proposed to deal with the first evil by abolishing altogether the representation of the nominal const.i.tuencies, the const.i.tuencies that had no resident inhabitant, the boroughs which at some distant time had had houses and inmates, but of which now only the faintest traces were visible to the eye of the traveller--like, for instance, the extinct communities of whose existence some faint memorial evidence might be traced on Salisbury Plain. The Census last taken, that of 1821, the Government had resolved to accept as a basis of operations, and Lord John Russell proposed that every borough which, at that date, had less than 3000 inhabitants should cease any longer to send a member to the House of Commons. All boroughs that had not more than 4000 inhabitants should send in future only one member each to Parliament. The principle of nomination by individuals or by corporations was to come to an end.

The "fancy franchises" were to be got rid of altogether. In the boroughs every householder paying rates on houses of the yearly value of ten pounds and upwards was ent.i.tled to have a vote.

The Government, however, proposed to deal mercifully, so far as possible, with the existing interests of voters, although the process of extinction was summary and complete with regard to the so-called rights of patrons and of corporations. For instance, resident voters, under the old qualifications, were to be allowed to retain their right during their lives, but with the lapse of each life the qualification expired and the owner of such a vote could have no successor. When dealing with the counties Lord John Russell announced that copyholders to the value of ten pounds a year and leaseholders for not less than twenty-one years at an annual rent of fifty pounds and upwards were to have the franchise. The abolition of the small boroughs and the uninhabited const.i.tuencies would reduce the number of members in the House of Commons by 168, and Lord John Russell explained that the Government did not {142} propose to fill up all these vacancies, being of opinion that the House was already rather overflowing in its numbers and had a good deal too many members for the proper discharge of its business.

[Sidenote: 1831--The principles of the Reform Bill]

Some of the vacant seats were, however, to be a.s.signed to the cities and towns which were then actually unrepresented in the House of Commons. Seven of these towns were to have two representatives each, and twenty smaller but still goodly towns were to have one representative each. Even at this day it may still come as a matter of surprise to some readers to learn that the seven towns which in 1831 were wholly unrepresented, and to which the Bill proposed to give two members each, were Manchester, which was to include Salford; Birmingham, Leeds, Greenwich, Wolverhampton, Sheffield, and Sunderland.

The Government proposed to give eight additional members to the metropolis itself--that is to say, two members each to the Tower Hamlets, Holborn, Finsbury, and Lambeth. The three Ridings of Yorkshire were to have two members each, and twenty-six counties already represented, and in each of which there were more than 150,000 inhabitants, were each to have two additional members. It is not necessary to go more fully into the details of the scheme which Lord John Russell expounded elaborately to the House of Commons.

In Ireland and in Scotland there were some slight differences as to the scale of the qualification from those that were proposed for England; but in the three countries the principle was the same, and the right to vote was a.s.sociated with a certain occupation of land or payment of household rating, and new const.i.tuencies were created where towns, unrepresented before, had grown up into recognized importance. By the changes that the Bill proposed to make no less than half a million of new voters were to be created throughout Great Britain and Ireland.

For the purpose of diminishing the enormous expense of elections it was proposed that the poll should be taken at the same time in separate districts, so that no voter should have to travel more than fifteen miles in order to record his vote, and {143} that the time over which an election contest could be spread should be greatly reduced, and reduced in proportion to the size of the const.i.tuency. It is as well to say at once that that part of the Reform Bill which aimed at the due reduction of election expenses to their legitimate and necessary proportions proved an utter failure. No reduction in the amount of what may be called working expenses could have diminished, to any satisfactory degree, the evil from which the country was suffering at that time, and from which it continued to suffer for more than another generation. Bribery and corruption were the evils which had to be dealt with, and the Reform Bill of 1831 left these evils as it had found them. The Bill, however, did, in its other provisions, do much to establish a genuine principle of Parliamentary representation.

To begin with, it proclaimed the principle of representation as the legal basis of the whole Parliamentary system. It abolished the nomination of members, whether by individual persons or by corporations. It laid down as law that representation must bear some proportion to the numbers represented. It made actual, or at least occasional, residence a qualification for a voter. These were the main principles of the measure. The attention of readers will presently be drawn to the manner in which the Bill failed to answer some of the demands made upon the Government by the spreading intelligence of the country, and left these demands to be more adequately answered by the statesmen of a later generation. Enough to say that with all its defects the Bill, as Lord John Russell explained it, was, for its time, a bold and broad measure of reform, and that it laid down the lines along which, as far as human foresight can discern, the movement of progress in England's political history will make its way.

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CHAPTER LXXII.

THE GREAT DEBATE.

[Sidenote: 1831--Sir Robert Inglis and Reform]

The debate which followed Lord John Russell's motion for leave to bring in the Bill contained, as well might be expected, some very remarkable speeches. Three of these deserve the special attention of the student of history. The first ill.u.s.trated the views of the extreme Tory of that day, and is indeed a political curiosity which ought never to be consigned to utter oblivion. This speech was made by Sir Robert Harry Inglis, who represented the University of Oxford. Sir Robert Inglis was a living embodiment of the spirit of old-world Toryism as it had come down to his day, Toryism which had in it little or nothing of the picturesque, half poetic sentiment belonging to the earlier wearers of the rebel rose, the flower symbolic of the Stuart dynasty. Sir Robert Inglis was a man of education, of intelligence, and of high principle.

His sincerity was unquestioned, and his opinion would probably be well worth having on any question which was not concerned with the antagonism between Whig and Tory. Sir Robert argued boldly in his speech that the principle of representation had never been recognized by the Const.i.tution as the Parliamentary system of England. He insisted that the sovereign had a perfect right to choose any representative he pleased from any const.i.tuency which it suited him to create. The King could delegate to any n.o.bleman or gentleman his right of nominating a representative. Sir Robert scouted the idea that a large, prosperous, and populous town had any better claim to be represented in the House of Commons than the smallest village in the country. It was all a matter for the sovereign, and if the sovereign thought fit he had as good a right to invite any one he {145} pleased to represent an unpeopled plain as to represent Manchester, Leeds, or Sheffield. He denounced Russell's proposal to disfranchise the small nomination boroughs, and he used an argument which was employed in the same debate and by much wiser men than he in defence of the pocket boroughs and the whole system of nomination. Some of the most brilliant, gifted members of the House of Commons, he contended, had been sent into that House by the patrons and owners of such boroughs, and otherwise never could have got into Parliament at all, for they could not have borne the enormous expense of a county contest.

We have heard that argument over and over again in days much more recent. It would, of course, have been hard to dispose of it completely if it could be shown that there was no possible way by which the expenses of elections could be reduced to a reasonable amount; if it could be shown that there was any human system so bad as to have no compensating advantages whatever; and finally if it could be shown that with the spread of education and the growth of popular intelligence a man of great and commanding ability without money would not have a much better chance of election at the hands of a large const.i.tuency than by the mere favor of some discerning patron. Sir Robert Inglis also used an argument which is even still not unfamiliar in political debate, whether inside or outside Parliament. He contended not merely that the English population had no real grievances to complain of, but that none among the English population would have fancied that they were suffering from grievances if it had not been for the evil advice and turbulent agitation of mob orators. To these wicked persons, the mob orators, Sir Robert ascribed all the disturbances which were setting the country in commotion. If only these mob orators could be kept from spouting everything would go well and no subject of the sovereign would ever get it into his head that he was suffering from the slightest grievance.

This is an argument which had just been used with regard to Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation; which was afterwards to {146} be used with regard to free-trade and the introduction of the ballot and household suffrage; and which will probably be used again and again so long as any sort of reform is demanded. Of course it need hardly be said that when Sir Robert Inglis referred to mob orators he used the phrase as a term of contempt applying to all speakers who advocated principles which were not the principles represented by the Tory aristocracy. A Tory landlord spouting any kind of nonsense to the most ignorant crowd would not have been, according to this definition, a mob orator; he would have been a high-bred Englishman, instructing his humbler brethren as to the way they ought to go. Sir Robert also indulged in the most gloomy prophecies about the evils which must come upon England as the direct result of the Reform Bill if that Bill were to be pa.s.sed into law. The influence of rank and property would suddenly and completely cease to prevail; education would lose its power to teach and to guide; the House of Commons would no longer be the place for men of rank, culture, and statesmanship, but would be occupied only by mob orators.

Art after art would go out and all would be night, if we may adopt the famous line of Pope's which Sir Robert somehow failed to introduce.

[Sidenote: 1831--Peel's speech on the Reform Bill]

The second speech in the debate to which we may refer was that of Sir Robert Peel. It was a necessity of Peel's position just then, and of the stage of political development which his mind had reached, that he should oppose the Reform Bill. But in the work of opposition he had to undertake a task far more difficult to him in the artistic sense than the task which the destinies had appointed for Sir Robert Inglis to attempt. Inglis, although a man of ability and education, as collegiate education then went, was so thorough a Tory of the old school that the most extravagant arguments he used came as naturally and clearly to his mind as if they had been dictated to him by inspiration. But a man of Peel's high order of intellect, a man who had been gifted by nature with the mind of a statesman, must sometimes have found it hard indeed to convince himself that some of the arguments he used against reform {147} were arguments which the history of the future would be likely to maintain. Peel's genius, however, was not one which readily adopted conclusions, especially when these conclusions involved a change in the seeming order of things. We have seen already that he was quite capable of taking a bold decision and accepting its responsibilities when the movement of events seemed to satisfy him that a choice one way or the other could no longer be postponed.

The whole story of his subsequent career bears evidence of the same effect. His genius guided him rightly when the fateful moment arrived at which a decision had to be made, but when left to himself his inclinations always were to let things go on in their old way. He had not yet seen any necessity for a complete system of Parliamentary reform, nor was he likely, in any case, to have approved of some of the proposals contained in the Bill brought in by Lord John Russell. The speech he delivered appears, by all the accounts which reach us, to have been a genuine piece of Parliamentary eloquence. Peel did not, as may well be imagined, commit himself to some of the extravagances which were poured forth in absolute good faith by Sir Robert Inglis. But the very nature of his task compelled him sometimes to have recourse to arguments which, although put forward with more discretion and more dexterity than Inglis had shown, seemed nevertheless to belong to the same order of political reasoning.

It is not, perhaps, surprising that Peel should have found much to say for the existence of the small nomination boroughs, seeing that the same arguments were made use of a whole generation afterwards by no less a person than Mr. Gladstone. These arguments, we need hardly say, were founded on the familiar a.s.sumption that a Burke or a Sheridan, a Canning or a Plunket, would have no chance whatever of getting into the House of Commons if some appreciative patron did not generously put a borough at his disposal. In our own days we have seen, again and again, that a man of high political character and commanding eloquence, but having no money or other such influence to back him, would have a far better chance at {148} the hands of a great popular const.i.tuency than he would be likely to have in some small borough, where local interests might easily be brought to conspire against him. But at the time when Peel was making his speech against the Reform project the patronage system still prevailed in politics, if no longer in letters, and the unendowed child of genius would have little chance indeed if he were to try to get into Parliament on his own mere merits. On the whole, it must be owned that Sir Robert Peel made as good a case against the Bill as could have been made from the Conservative point of view, and it may be added that an equally ingenious case might have been made out by a man of his capacity against any change whatever in any system.

[Sidenote: 1831--The second reading of the Reform Bill]

The third speech to which we think it necessary to refer was that delivered by the Irish orator and agitator, Daniel O'Connell.

O'Connell promised the Bill all the support in his power, but he took care to explain that he supported it only because he believed it was the best Bill he could obtain from any Government at that moment. He described clearly and impressively the faults which he found with Lord John Russell's measure; and it has to be noticed that the objections which he raised were absolutely confirmed by our subsequent political history. He found fault with the Bill because it did not go nearly as far as such a measure ought to go in the direction of manhood suffrage, or, at all events, of household suffrage. He contended that no Reform Bill could really fulfil the best purposes for which it was designed without the adoption of the ballot system in the voting at popular elections. He advocated shorter Parliaments and much more comprehensive and strenuous legislation for the prevention of bribery and corruption. In short, O'Connell made a speech which might have been spoken with perfect appropriateness by an English Radical of the highest political order at any time during some succeeding generations.

O'Connell's opinions seem to have been at that time, save on one political question alone--the question of Repeal of the Union--exactly in accord with those of the Radical party down to the days of Cobden and Bright.

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It may be mentioned, as a matter of some historical interest, that, vindicating the true theory of popular representation, he complained that successive English Governments had abandoned the const.i.tutional position taken up by the glorious Revolution of 1688. Readers of the present day may be inclined to think, not without good reason for the thought, that statesmanship in the days of Lord Grey's first Reform Bill, and for many years after, might have had less trouble with Ireland if it had taken better account of the opinions and the influence of O'Connell.

The debate on the motion for leave to bring in the Bill lasted several days. In accordance, however, with the usual practice of the House of Commons, no division was taken and the Bill was read a first time. In the House of Commons it is not usual to have a long debate on the motion for leave to bring in a Bill, which amounts in substance to a motion that the Bill be read for the first time. When, however, a measure of great importance is introduced there is sometimes a lengthened and very often a discursive debate or conversation on the motion; but it is rarely so long and so earnest a discussion as that which took place when Lord John Russell brought in the Reform Bill.

One result of the length of the debate which preceded the first reading was that when the motion for the second reading came on the leading members of the Opposition were found to have expressed fully their opinions already, and the discussion seemed little better than the retelling of an old story.

When the motion for the second reading came to be put to the vote it was found that the Opposition had got together a very full gathering of their numbers, and the second reading was only carried by a majority of one. The hearts of many of the reformers sank within them for the moment, and the hopes of the Tories were revived in an equal degree.

Even already it seemed clear to all of Lord Grey's colleagues that a measure carried on its second reading by such a bare majority had not the slightest chance of forcing its way through the House of Lords, even if it should be fortunate enough to pa.s.s without serious {150} damage through the House of Commons. Lord Grey and his colleagues were already beginning to think that nothing worth accomplishing was likely to be achieved until a general election should have greatly strengthened the Reform party in Parliament. The movement for reform had of late been growing steadily in most parts of the country. Some of the more recent elections had shown that the reform spirit was obtaining the mastery in const.i.tuencies from which nothing of the kind had been expected a short time before, and it seemed to most of the Whig leaders that the existing Parliament was the last bulwark against the progress of reform. When the time came for the motion to enable the Bill to get into committee--that is, to be discussed point by point in all its clauses by the House, with full liberty to every member to speak as many times as he pleased--General Gascoigne, one of the representatives of Liverpool, proposed an amendment to the effect that it was not expedient, at such a time, to reduce the numbers of knights, citizens, and burgesses const.i.tuting the House of Commons, and this amendment was carried by a majority of eight. Now the carrying of this amendment could not possibly have been considered as the destruction of any vital part of the Bill.

[Sidenote: 1831--William the Fourth and Reform]

Lord John Russell had argued for the reduction of the numbers in the House as a matter of convenience and expediency; but he had not given it to be understood that the Government felt itself pledged to that particular proposition, and had made up his mind not to accept any modification in that part of the plan. The authors of the Reform Bill, however, read very wisely in the success of General Gascoigne's amendment the lesson that in the existing Parliament the Tories would be able to take the conduct of the measure out of the hands of the Government during its progress through committee, and to mar and mutilate it, so as to render it entirely unsuited to its original purposes. Therefore Lord Grey and the other members of his Cabinet made up their minds that the best course they could take would be to accept the vote of the House of Commons as a distinct defeat, and to make an {151} appeal to the decision of the const.i.tuencies by an instant dissolution of Parliament.

One important question had yet to be settled. Would the King give his a.s.sent to the dissolution? No one could have supposed that the King was really at heart a reformer, and the general conviction was that if William cared anything at all about the matter his personal inclination would be in favor of good old Toryism, or that, at the very least, his inclination would be for allowing things to go on in the old way. At that time the principle had not yet been set up as a part of our const.i.tutional system that the sovereign was bound to submit his own will and pleasure to the advice of his ministers. It would have been quite in accordance with recognized precedents since the House of Hanover came to the throne if the King were to proclaim his determination to act upon his own judgment and let his ministers either put up with his decision or resign their offices.

For some time, indeed, it appeared as if the King was likely to a.s.sert his prerogative, according to the old fashion. The disagreeable and almost hazardous task of endeavoring to persuade the King into compliance with the desire of his Ministry was entrusted to Lord Brougham, who was supposed, as Lord Chancellor, to be keeper of the sovereign's conscience. Brougham was not a man who could be described as gifted with the bland powers of persuasion, but at all events he did not want courage for the task he had to undertake. William appears at first to have refused flatly his consent to the wishes of the Ministry, to have bl.u.s.tered a good deal in his usual unkingly, not to say ungainly, fashion, and to have replied to Brougham's intimation that the ministers might have to resign, with words to the effect that ministers, if they liked, might resign and be--ministers no more. The King, however, was at last prevailed upon to give his a.s.sent, but then a fresh trouble arose when he found that Lord Grey and Lord Brougham, presuming on his ultimate compliance, had already taken steps to make preparations for the ceremonials preceding dissolution. As the {152} Ministry thought it necessary that there should be no delay whatever in the steps required to dissolve Parliament, a message had been sent in order that the Life Guards should be ready, according to the usual custom when the King went to Westminster for such a purpose. William found in this act on the part of the Ministry a new reason for an outburst of wrath. He stormed at Brougham; he declared that it was an act of high-treason to call out the Life Guards without the express authority of the King, and he raged in a manner which seemed to imply that only the mercy of the sovereign could save Grey and Brougham from the axe on Tower Hill.

[Sidenote: 1831--The second Reform Bill]

Perhaps it was fortunate on the whole for the peaceful settlement of the controversy that the King should have found this new and unexpected stimulant to his anger; for when his wrath had completely exploded over it, and when Brougham had been able to explain, again and again, that no act of high-treason had been contemplated or committed, the royal fury had spent itself; the King's good-humor had returned; and in the reaction William had forgotten most of his objections to the original proposal. It was arranged, then, that the dissolution should take place at once. As a matter of fact, Sir Robert Peel, in the House of Commons, was actually declaiming, in his finest manner, and with a voice that Disraeli afterwards described as the best ever heard in the House, excepting indeed "the thrilling tones of O'Connell," against the whole scheme of reform, when the Usher of the Black Rod was heard knocking at the doors of the Chamber to summon its members to attend at the bar of the House of Lords, in order to receive the commands of his Majesty the King. The commands of his Majesty the King were in fact the announcement that Parliament was dissolved, and that an appeal to the country for the election of a new Parliament was to take place at once.

The news was received by Reformers all over the country with the most exuberant demonstrations of enthusiasm. In London most of the houses throughout the princ.i.p.al streets were illuminated, and many windows which showed {153} no lights were instantly broken by the exulting crowds that swarmed everywhere. The Duke of Wellington received marked tokens of the unpopularity which his uncompromising declaration against all manner of reform had brought upon him. Some of the windows at Apsley House, his town residence--the windows that looked into the Park--were broken by an impa.s.sioned mob, and for years afterwards these windows were always kept shuttered, as a sign--so at least the popular faith a.s.sumed it to be--that the Duke could not forgive or forget this evidence of public ingrat.i.tude to the conqueror of Waterloo. The King, on the other hand, had grown suddenly into immense popularity. The favorite t.i.tle given to him at the time of his accession was that of the "Sailor King." Now he was hailed everywhere in the streets as the "Patriot King." Wherever his carriage made its public appearance it was sure to be followed by an admiring and acclaiming crowd. The elections came on at once, and it has to be noted that the amount of money spent on both sides was something astonishing even for those days of reckless expenditure in political contests. Neither side could make any boast of political purity, and indeed neither side seemed to have the slightest inclination to set up such a claim. The only rivalry was in the spending of money in unrestricted and shameless bribery and corruption. The more modern sense of revolt against the whole principle of bribery was little thought of in those days. There were men, indeed, on both sides of the political field who would never have stooped to offer a bribe if left to the impulses of their own honor and their own conscience. But the ordinary man of the world, and more especially of the political world, felt that if he himself did not give the bribe his rival would be certain to give it, and that n.o.body at his club or in society would think any the worse of him because it was understood that he had bought himself into the House of Commons. When the elections were over the prevalent opinion as to their result was almost everywhere that the numbers of the Reform party in the House of Commons would be much greater than it had been in the {154} House so lately dissolved. When the new Parliament was opened, Lord John Russell and Mr. Stanley appeared as members of the Cabinet. The new Parliament was opened by King William on June 21. If William really enjoyed the consciousness of popularity, as there is every reason to believe he did, he must have felt a very proud and popular sovereign that day. His carriage as he drove to the entrance of the House of Lords was surrounded and followed by an immense crowd, which cheered itself hoa.r.s.e in its demonstrations of loyalty. On June 24 Lord John Russell introduced his second Reform Bill. It is not necessary to go through the details of the new measure. The second Reform Bill was in substance very much the same as its predecessor had been, but of course its principle was debated on the motion of the second reading with as much heat, although not at such great length, as in the case of the first Reform Bill a few weeks before. Nothing new came out in this second argument, and the debate on the second reading, which began on July 4, occupied only three nights, a fact which made some members of the Opposition think themselves ent.i.tled to the compliments of the country. The Parliamentary opponents of the Reform Bill were, however, soon to make it evident that they had more practical and more perplexing ways of delaying its progress through the House of Commons than by the delivery of long orations on the elementary principle of reform. The second reading of the Bill was carried by 367 votes in its favor and 231 votes against it--that is to say, by a majority of 136 for the Bill. Therefore everybody saw that, as far as the House of Commons in the new Parliament was concerned, there was a large majority in support of the measure brought forward by the Government.

[Sidenote: 1831--William Cobbett]

It was morning, and not very early morning, when the House divided, and the Attorney-General had not much time to spare for rest before setting off for one of the law courts to conduct a prosecution which the Government had thought it well to inst.i.tute against a man who held a most prominent position in England at that time, and whose name, it is safe to say, will be remembered as long as good {155} English prose is studied. This man was William Cobbett, and he had just aroused the anger of the Government by a published article in which he vindicated the conduct of those who had set fire to hayricks and destroyed farm buildings in various parts of the country. William Cobbett had begun life as the son of a small farmer, who was himself the son of a day laborer. He had lived a strange and varied life. In his boyish days he had run away from a little farm in Surrey and had flung himself upon the world of London. He had found employment, for a while, in the humblest kind of drudgery as a junior copying clerk in an attorney's office, and then he had enlisted in a regiment of foot. He was quartered for a year at Chatham, and he devoted all his leisure moments to reading, for which he had a pa.s.sion which lasted him all his lifetime. He is said to have exhausted the whole contents of a lending library in the neighborhood, for he preferred reading anything to reading nothing. He was especially fond of historical and scientific studies, but he had a love for literature of a less severe kind also, and he studied with intense eagerness the works of Swift, on whose style he seems to have moulded his own with much success and without any servile imitation. Then he was quartered with his regiment for some time in New Brunswick, and after various vicissitudes he made his way to Philadelphia. During his stay in New Brunswick he had studied French, and had many opportunities of conversing in it with French-Canadians, and when settled for a time in Philadelphia he occupied himself by teaching English to some refugees from France. Now and again he went backward and forward between America and England, but it was in Philadelphia that he was first known as a writer. Under the signature of Peter Porcupine he published the "Porcupine Papers," which were chiefly made up of sarcastic and vehement attacks upon public men.

Cobbett had begun as a sort of Tory, or, at all events, as a professed enemy of all Radical agitators, but he gradually became a Radical agitator himself, and when he finally settled in England he soon began to be recognized as one of the most powerful {156} advocates of the Radical cause in or out of Parliament. He wrote a strong, simple Anglo-Saxon style, and indeed it is not too much to say that, after Swift himself, no man ever wrote clearer English prose than that of William Cobbett. He had tried to get into Parliament twice without success; but at last he succeeded in obtaining a seat as the representative of the borough of Oldham, a place which he represented until the time of his death, and which was represented by members of his family in the memory of the present generation. He had started a paper called _The Weekly Political Register_, and in this he championed the Radical cause with an energy and ability which made him one of the most conspicuous men of the time.

[Sidenote: 1831--The prosecution of Cobbett]

Lord Grey's Government was probably not very anxious to prosecute Cobbett, if a prosecution could have been avoided, but it was feared, perhaps, by the members of the Cabinet that some of his writings would be used by the opponents of reform as an ill.u.s.tration of the principles on which reform was founded, and the practices which it would encourage if the Government failed to take some decided action. It was therefore decided to inst.i.tute the prosecution for the article which had been published in the previous December. The Guildhall, where the case was to be tried, was crowded to excess, and the prisoner was loudly applauded when he stood in the court. He was one of the heroes of the hour with large numbers of the people everywhere, and the court would have been crowded this day in any case; but additional interest was given to the sitting by the fact that Cobbett had summoned for witnesses for his defence Lord Grey, Lord Brougham, Lord Althorp, and Lord Durham. The summoning of these witnesses was one of Cobbett's original and audacious strokes of humor and of cleverness, and his object was, in fact, to make it out that the leading members of his Majesty's Government were just as much inclined to countenance violence as he was when such a piece of work might happen to suit their political purposes. The stroke, however, did not produce much effect in this case, for Lord Brougham's evidence, which in any case would have been {157} unimportant to the question at issue, would have been rather to the disadvantage than advantage of the prisoner if it had been fully gone into, and Cobbett relieved Brougham from further attendance; while Chief Justice Tenterden, the presiding judge, decided that the testimony which Cobbett said he intended to draw from the other n.o.ble witnesses had nothing to do with the case before the jury.

The whole question, in fact, was as to the nature of the article in the _Political Register_. The jury could not agree upon their verdict, and after they had been locked up for fifteen hours, and there seemed no chance of their coming to an understanding, the jurors were discharged and there was an end of the case. When the result was announced Cobbett received tumultuous applause from a large number of the crowd in court and from throngs of people outside. He left the court even more of a popular hero than he had been when he entered it.

Now, in studying the article itself as a mere historical doc.u.ment, the reader who belongs to the present generation would probably be disposed to come to the conclusion that, while it was indeed something like a direct incentive to violence, it also pointed to evils and to dangers which the wisdom of statesmanship would then have done well to fear.

For the main purpose of the article was to emphasize the fact that, in the existing conditions of things, nothing was ever likely to be done for the relief of the hungry sufferers from bad laws and bad social conditions, unless some deeds of violence were employed to startle the public into the knowledge that the sufferings existed and would not be endured in patience any longer. It is unfortunately only too true that, at all periods of history, even the most recent history of the most civilized countries, there are evils that legislation will not trouble itself to deal with until legislators have been made to know by some deeds of violence that if relief will not come, civil disturbance must come. The whole story of the reign of William the Fourth is the story of an age of reform, although no particular credit can be given to the monarch himself for that splendid fact. It is a melancholy truth {158} that not one of these reforms would have been effected at the time or for long after if those who suffered most cruelly from existing wrongs had always been content to suffer in law-abiding peacefulness, and to allow the justice of their cause to prove itself by patient argument addressed to the reason, the sympathy, and the conscience of the ruling orders.

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CHAPTER LXXIII.

THE TRIUMPH OF REFORM.

[Sidenote: 1831--Obstructive tactics in the Commons]

The Reform Bill was, then, clearly on its way to success. It had pa.s.sed its second reading in the House of Commons by a large, and what might well be called a triumphant, majority. Now, when a great measure reaches that stage in the modern history of our Const.i.tution, we can all venture to forecast, with some certainty, its ultimate fate. We are speaking, it need hardly be said, of reform measures which are moved by a clear principle and have a strong and resolute band of followers. Such measures may be defeated once and again by the House of Lords, and may be delayed in either or both Houses for a considerable time; but it only needs perseverance to carry them in the end. Some of the more enlightened and intelligent Conservatives must have begun already to feel that the ultimate triumph of the reform measure was only a question of time; but then those who were opposed to every such reform were determined that, at all events, the triumph should be put off as long as possible. The House of Lords would, no doubt, throw out the Bill when it came for the first time within the range of their power; but it was resolved, meanwhile, to keep the Bill as long as possible in the House of Commons. Therefore there now set in a Parliamentary campaign of a kind which was almost quite new to those days, but has become familiar to our later times--a campaign of obstruction. After the second reading of the new Reform Bill there set in that first great systematic performance of obstruction which has been the inspiration, the lesson, and the model to all the obstructives of later years. The rules and the practices of the House of Commons offered in those times, and, {160} indeed, for long after, the most tempting opportunities to any body of members who were anxious to prolong debate for the mere purpose of preventing legislation. For example, it was understood until quite lately that any motion made in the House, even the most formal and technical, might be opposed, and, if opposed, might be debated for any length of time, without the Speaker having the power to intervene and cut short the most barren and meaningless discussion.