Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century Part 5

1. Describe the early life of George Stephenson.

2. What attempts at locomotives had been made prior to his time?

3. What success of Stephenson's led to the Stockton-Darlington railway?

4. How did the " Quarterly" comment on the proposed Liverpool line?

5. What was the view of the Parliamentary committee?

6. Describe Stephenson's work on the Liverpool & Manchester line.

7. What compet.i.tors had the "Rocket"?

8. Describe the later work of the two Stephensons.

9. Contrast Stephenson's England with that of to-day.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIFE OF STEPHENSON. Samuel Smiles. ("Lives of the Engineers.")

V

RUSSELL AND PARLIAMENTARY REFORM

[JOHN RUSSELL, Earl Russell, born, London, August 18, 1792; died, Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park, May 28,1878; educated at Westminster School and Edinburgh University; Member of Parliament, 1813; favored Catholic emanc.i.p.ation; 1830-34, paymaster general; 1831, introduced the first Reform Bill; 1832, carried the third Reform Bill; 1835-39, Home Secretary; 1839-41, Colonial Secretary; 1846-52, Prime Minister; 1852-53, Foreign Secretary; 1854-55, President of the Council; 1855, Colonial Secretary; 1859-65, Foreign Secretary; 1865-66, Prime Minister.]

The Parliament of England is one of the most ancient of political inst.i.tutions. Const.i.tutional historians find its germs in the council of the wise men--"The Witenagemot"--which was summoned to give advice to the early Anglo-Saxon kings. In the thirteenth century Simon de Montfort had added to the a.s.sembly of the n.o.bles certain representatives of the counties, cities, and boroughs.

The monarchs found this gathering of the estates of the nation a useful instrument of taxation and the Parliament in turn acquired certain legislative rights. In time the n.o.bles or peers began to sit by themselves, leaving the chosen representatives to meet in a House of Commons. The story of the increasing influence of Parliament is in great part the history of the English nation.

Before the close of the seventeenth century the power of Parliament had become the leading force in the state. Yet much remained to be done in the nineteenth century to bring this supreme governing body into living touch with the heart of the nation.

The conservative habit of the English had left the const.i.tution of the House of Commons untouched for so many years that it had lost all but the semblance of a representative body. No uniform qualification for the voter existed. In one locality the franchise was closely restricted, in others every man, however poor, might exercise the right to vote. There were all manner of variations in these "fancy franchises," which had been conferred by special charters at long separated intervals. Neither was there any existing relation between population and representation. Strange as the statement will appear to American readers, accustomed to the reapportionment of congressional representation after every federal census, it is a fact that there had been no radical change in the boundaries of election districts in England for centuries. The population had meanwhile undergone enormous changes. Not only had it increased manifold, but the rise of modern industry had occasioned a redistribution of the people. London had become a swarming hive. Liverpool docks and warehouses were surrounded by a crowded city. Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and other places scarcely known to the England of Tudor and Stuart, were centers of busy industrial life, attracting to themselves mult.i.tudes of the inhabitants of the countryside. The counties, large and small, continued to have equal representation in Parliament, though some of them were many times more populous than others. In the boroughs the inequalities were most flagrant. Where a goodly village had been in Tudor times there might now be nothing visible but the crumbling tower of the parish church, yet the place still retained its right to representation in the House of Commons. Such decayed or "rotten"

boroughs existed in considerable numbers. Their few voters were controlled by the land-owning n.o.bility. McCarthy says, "The case of Old Sarum is famous. It returned members to Parliament in the days of Edward III., and from that period down to the time of the Reform Bill. But the town of Old Sarum gradually disappeared.

Owing to the rise of New Sarum (Salisbury) and to other causes the population gradually deserted it. The town became practically effaced from existence; its remains far less palpable or visible than those of any Baalbec or Palmyra. Yet it continued to be represented in Parliament. It was at one time bought by Lord Chatham's grandfather, Governor Pitt. It was coolly observed at the time that "Mr. Pitt's posterity now have an hereditary seat in the House of Commons as owners of Old Sarum," just as any earl had a seat in the House of Lords by virtue of his hereditary peerage. When the Reform Bill was pa.s.sed the member of Parliament for the borough of Ludgershall was himself the only voter in the borough and had chosen himself to Parliament on his own nomination. Another place with two members had only seven qualified voters. McCarthy is quite within the truth when he a.s.serts that two-thirds of the House of Commons was made up of the nominees of the peers and great landlords "who owned their boroughs and members just as they owned their parks and their cattle." Thus the power of the landed aristocracy, which was the House of Lords, lacked but little of being the House of Commons as well. The ma.s.s of the nation, which was now rapidly gaining in education and wealth, had no way of making its influence felt in Parliament except by the power of public opinion, to which the periodical and pamphlet press was beginning to give expression.

The condition of the representation, the rotten boroughs, as those in decay were called, and the pocket boroughs, a name applied to those which were the property of individuals, opened the way for shameless corruption. Where the electorate was small and the secret ballot unknown bribery had free rein. Seats were openly bought and sold. As early as 1770 the elder Pitt (Lord Chatham) had placed his finger upon this ailing spot in the English body politic, and had said, "Before the end of this century, either the Parliament will reform itself from within, or be reformed with a vengeance from without." His prediction was falsified by the reactionary effect of the French Revolution, which not only made the English aristocracy cautious about readjusting political arrangements, but kept the minds and hands of Englishmen so fully occupied with foreign affairs as to divert attention from their own domestic troubles. At the close of the long struggle with Napoleon the question came rapidly to the front. Financial distress and industrial depression made the populace restless and discontented. The glowing principles which had inspired the French Revolution in its early days with its watchwords of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," gained a deep lodgment in the popular mind. The dissatisfaction vented itself in attacks upon a political system which denied the right of representation to so large a proportion of the wealth-producing population.

The government at first turned a deaf ear to these appeals, then tried to suppress the agitation which swept through the great manufacturing towns. It was one of these bungling attempts to silence free speech in Manchester on August 16, 1819, which led to the trampling and sabring of many innocent persons by cavalrymen, the "Peterloo ma.s.sacre," which the populace long cherished as a b.l.o.o.d.y score against, their aristocratic oppressors. For ten years more the democratic press continued to agitate even more bitterly for reform, and a lonely "radical"

member of Parliament would bring forward his motions only to have them contemptuously thrust aside. In 1830, however, a ministry came into power which allowed nothing to stand in the way until the long awaited bill had become a law. The condition which contributed to its success, the incidents of the tremendous parliamentary struggle, and the men who carried it through, are all worthy of the most careful attention of the student of human affairs.

The death of George IV. (June 26, 1830) made way for his brother, William IV., and made necessary a general parliamentary election.

The summer had seen a liberal revolution in Paris. The Bourbons had been thrust out and Louis Philippe had been accepted as the citizen-king of the French, governing under a liberal const.i.tution. This revolution, and simultaneous movements throughout western Europe, touched an answering chord in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Englishmen, and the Tories found themselves in a minority when the new Parliament a.s.sembled in November. The Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, the last man from whom the popular cause could expect to receive any concessions. At the opening of the session the premier took occasion to declare his disbelief "that the state of representation could be improved or be rendered more satisfactory to the country at large than at the present moment." "I am fully convinced," he said, "that the country possesses a legislature which answers all the good purposes of legislation, and this to a greater degree than any legislature has answered in any other country whatever." He flatly declared his determined opposition to any measure of reform. Within a fortnight his government met its Waterloo and he resigned.

Earl Gray, the Whig premier who succeeded Wellington, came into office fully resolved to pa.s.s a Reform Bill. The responsibility of drafting the measure was intrusted to a young Whig commoner, Lord John Russell, a younger son of the Duke of Bedford, and a scion of one of the great Whig houses. Lord John Russell had entered Parliament in 1813, at the age of twenty-one, for one of the family boroughs. He was now in his thirty-seventh year, and his parliamentary career, if not brilliant for oratory, had at least been marked by intelligent devotion to high ideals. In 1819, before the echoes of Peterloo had died away, he had asked Parliament to disfranchise all boroughs of proved corruption, and transfer their representation to more deserving const.i.tuencies. A little later he proved to the House the corruption existing at Gram-pound, and secured the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of that borough and the transfer of its voting rights to the great county of York.

This was but a small step, but it opened the way to tremendous changes. He was determined, he said, to strip "the dead bones of a former state of England" of their political influence and give it to the "living energy of England of the nineteenth century, with its steam engines and its factories, its cotton and woolen cloths, its cutlery and its coal mines, its wealth and its intelligence." Session after session he returned to this text only to be as often defeated by the Tories. He was more successful in 1828 when he carried the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, relics of a bygone age when it was thought necessary to the safety of the nation to exclude from military or civil office all persons who did not take the communion in accordance with the ritual of the Established Church. "Lord John," as he came to be called in the course of his half-century of parliamentary life, would have advanced from the relief of Protestant dissenters to the emanc.i.p.ation of the Catholics, had not the Tories, in their dread of civil war in Ireland, forestalled him, and made the measure their own (April, 1829).

The first Reform Bill, which had been drafted by Russell, and worked over by Lord Durham and other ministers, was presented to the Commons on March 1, 1831. Its provisions had been kept profoundly secret, and the house was thronged to hear them explained in the low and measured tones of Lord John Russell. The nation was as eager as the immediate auditory to know how far the government would go in granting the popular demand. Touching upon some of the existing anomalies the speaker imagined a foreigner visiting England; having been impressed with British wealth, civilization, and renown, "Would not such a foreigner," he queried, "be much astonished if he were taken to a green mound and informed that it sent two members to the British Parliament?

. . . . or if he walked into a park without the vestige of a dwelling and was told that it, too, sent two members to the British Parliament? But if he was surprised at this, how much more would he be astonished if he were carried into the north of England, where he would see large, flourishing towns, full of trade, activity, and intelligence, vast magazines of wealth and manufactures, and were told that these places sent no representatives to Parliament!"

By the provisions of the bill sixty boroughs with less than two thousand members were to lose both members, and forty-seven boroughs were to be reduced to a single member. Of the seats thus vacated eight were to be given to London, thirty-four to large towns, fifty-five to English counties, five to Scotland, three to Ireland, one to Wales. The franchise was to be extended to inhabitants of houses taxed at ten pounds a year, and to leaseholders and copyholders of counties. The changes added about half a million to the number of voters in the United Kingdom.

The country followed the progress of the debate with intense interest night after night. The bill pa.s.sed to its second reading by a majority of one in the fullest house on record and the country gave itself up to illuminations and other expressions of joy. But the bill got no farther. The majority was too close for the comfort of the ministers, and having been defeated on a matter of detail, they confidently appealed to the country. The King dissolved Parliament, and writs were issued for a general election. It was at this juncture, when London was illuminating to show its satisfaction over the prospect for a reform victory, that the darkened windows of the Duke of Wellington's town house were stoned by the populace. The rallying cries of the Whigs were "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill," and "Reform, Aye or No?" Popular agitation by a.s.sociations, newspapers, speech-making, monster meetings, etc., reached an unprecedented height, and the force of public opinion was shown at the polls. In spite of pocket boroughs, family influence, and flagrant corruption, the reformers came back to Parliament with their majority increased to fully one hundred. Of the eighty-two members for the counties where the popular feeling had its freest expression, only six were opposed to Lord Russell's scheme of reform.

Lord Russell's second Reform Bill was introduced on June 24th.

The minority, hopeless of success in a stand-up fight, resorted to the obstructive tactics now known as "filibustering." After wasting three months in tedious obstruction the Commons pa.s.sed the bill by a majority of one hundred and nine, and Lord Grey laid it before the House of Lords in the most impressive speech of his career. He endeavored to persuade the aristocrats before him that only by such concessions could the Const.i.tution of England be saved. Already there were wide-spread evidences of popular discontent in the "nightly alarms, burnings, and popular disturbances." The rotten boroughs could no longer be tolerated with safety to the state. "This gangrene upon our representative system bade defiance to all remedies but that of excision." Deaf to his arguments, and blind to everything but their own privilege and immediate interest, the peers p.r.o.nounced against the bill.

The rejection of the second Reform Bill by the House of Lords brought England to the brink of revolution. As it was, the newspapers were full of signs that the patience of the nation was exhausted. Mobs and incendiary fires were reported in many districts, and the abolition of the House of Lords found strenuous advocates. It was at one of the numerous indignation meetings that Sydney Smith hit off the attempt of the Lords to stay the progress of reform by comparing it with Mrs.

Partington's attempt to check the high tide at Sidmouth with a mop. "The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up.

But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. Gentlemen, be at your ease; be quiet and steady; you will beat Mrs. Partington!"

As soon as the Parliament rea.s.sembled in December, Lord John Russell offered the third Reform Bill. It was identical in principle with the others, though the number of the affected boroughs had been slightly altered. It pa.s.sed its successive stages by ample majorities and was in due order presented to the House of Lords. The ministers were prepared to play their last card. They found the peers determined to mutilate the proposition in disregard of the popular demand, now louder than ever, for "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill." Earl Grey and his chancellor, Lord Brougham, thereupon requested King William to overcome the opposition by sanctioning the creation of new peers sufficient to insure a majority for the act. But the King held back. The ministers offered their resignations, and the King commissioned the Iron Duke to form a government. But no Tory government could stand a day in the face of the hosts of reform in the Commons and in the nation, as Wellington had reluctantly to confess. The monarch had to yield, and so doing, helped establish the principle more firmly than ever before that the chief power in the English Const.i.tution is lodged in the House of Commons, acting through its ministers. In this case it was Commons against King and Lords, and the Commons had their way. To save themselves from an inundation of new peerages the Lords whose hostility to the bill was irreconcilable absented themselves from Westminster when the vote was taken--"skulked in clubs and country houses" as Lord Russell sharply phrased it. The Duke of Wellington's words will show the temper with which the hide-bound Tories received the act. "Reform, my Lords, has triumphed. The barriers of the Const.i.tution are broken down, the waters of destruction have burst the gates of the temple, and the tempest begins to howl. Who can say where its course should stop?

Who can stay its speed? For my own part I sincerely hope that my predictions may not be fulfilled, and that my country may not be ruined."

The immediate effect of the reform was to admit the tradesmen and tenant-farmers, the st.u.r.dy English middle cla.s.s, to a share in the government. Thirty-five years later, after Lord Russell had made three or four futile endeavors to carry still further the principle of reform, his opponents, the Conservatives, led by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, pa.s.sed the Reform Bills of 1867-68, greatly reducing the property qualification of voters, and rectifying inequalities in borough representation. Under this act most of the mechanic and artisan cla.s.s gained the right to vote.

Finally, in 1884, Mr. Gladstone carried the reform another stage, conferring the franchise upon two millions of poor men, including the cla.s.s of agricultural laborers.

His contribution to the success of reform identified Lord John Russell with the cause of liberty, and made him a leading man. It is not within the scope of this sketch to follow him through the shifting scenes of the honorable career in politics and statesmanship which now opened out before him, and which continued until, when at nearly four-score, the party leadership pa.s.sed from him to his able a.s.sociate, William Ewart Gladstone.

Among the notable measures in which he had a leading hand was the Munic.i.p.al Reform Act of 1835, which put the government of cities in the hands of the taxpayers and did away with the effete and corrupt corporations which had exercised it. His "Edinburgh letter," in 1845, hastened Peel's conversion to free trade. He was ever concerned in religion and education. After the overthrow of Peel's government, in 1846, he was raised to the premiership.

He held the position until 1852, and again, from October, 1865, to June, 1866. His retirement in the latter year removed from British politics a conspicuous figure. It was a figure which had filled a large place in the affairs of the world, and for the most part filled it well, though never again in his career was it his lot to become such a popular hero as he was during the early battles for reform. Russell's death, in 1878, brought up the varied panorama of his life. McCarthy, in reviewing it, touches upon some of its points of interest. "He had a seat in the administration at his disposal when another young man might have been glad of a seat in an opera box. He must have been brought into more or less intimate a.s.sociation with all the men and women worth knowing in Europe since the early part of the century. He was a pupil of Dugald Stewart at Edinburgh, and he sat as a youth at the feet of Fox. He had accompanied Wellington in some of his peninsular campaigns; he measured swords with Canning and Peel successively through years of parliamentary warfare. He knew Metternich and Talleyrand. He had met the widow of Charles Stuart, the young chevalier, in Florence; and had conversed with Napoleon in Elba. He knew Cavour and Bismarck. He was now an ally of Daniel O'Connell, and now of Cobden and Bright. He was the close friend of Thomas Moore; he knew Byron. Lord John Russell had tastes for literature, for art, for philosophy, for history, for politics, and his aestheticism had the advantage that it made him seek the society and appreciate the worth of men of genius and letters. Thus he never remained a mere politician like Pitt or Palmerston."

No one will now claim that Earl Russell--he was raised to the peerage with this t.i.tle--is to be ranked with the few greatest of English statesmen, but that he served his country devotedly, honorably, and courageously will not be denied. His contemporary, Lord Shaftesbury, noted his death in his own journal with this just comment: "To have begun with disapprobation, to have fought through many difficulties, to have announced and acted on principles new to the day in which he lived, to have filled many important offices, to have made many speeches and written many books, and in his whole course to have done much with credit and nothing with dishonor, and so to have sustained and advanced his reputation to the very end, is a mighty commendation." And the Queen, in a letter to his widow, wrote: "You will believe that I truly regret an old friend of forty years' standing, and whose personal kindness in trying and anxious times I shall ever remember. 'Lord John,' as I knew him best, was one of my first and most distinguished ministers, and his departure recalls many eventful times."

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. In what ways did Parliament fail to be "representative"

at the opening of the nineteenth century?

2. What circ.u.mstances favored agitation of this condition?

3. What was the "Peterloo Ma.s.sacre"?

4. Who was Lord Russell, and what his early relation to the reform movement?

5. What was the Test and Corporation Act, and when repealed?

6. Describe the first Reform Bill, and its effect upon the House of Commons?

7. How was the second bill treated by the Commons and by the Lords?

8. What circ.u.mstances attended the pa.s.sage of the third bill?

9. How was the principle of reform extended in later years?

10. What peculiar privileges did Lord John Russell enjoy?

11. How is his character shown in the use which he made of them?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIFE OF EARL RUSSELL. S. J. Reid.

RECOLLECTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. Lord John Russell.

THE EPOCH OF REFORM. Justin McCarthy.

HISTORY OF THE REFORM BILL. W. N. Molesworth.

VI

COBDEN AND FREE TRADE