THE MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES

OF

LORD MACAULAY.


VOLUME IV.


LORD MACAULAY'S SPEECHES.


TO HENRY, MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE

THESE SPEECHES ARE DEDICATED BY HIS GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE
FRIEND

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.


PREFACE.

It was most reluctantly that I determined to suspend, during the
last autumn, a work which is the business and the pleasure of my
life, in order to prepare these Speeches for publication; and it
is most reluctantly that I now give them to the world.  Even if I
estimated their oratorical merit much more highly than I do, I
should not willingly have revived, in the quiet times in which we
are so happy as to live, the memory of those fierce contentions
in which too many years of my public life were passed.  Many
expressions which, when society was convulsed by political
dissensions, and when the foundations of government were shaking,
were heard by an excited audience with sympathy and applause,
may, now that the passions of all parties have subsided, be
thought intemperate and acrimonious.  It was especially painful
to me to find myself under the necessity of recalling to my own
recollection, and to the recollection of others, the keen
encounters which took place between the late Sir Robert Peel and
myself.  Some parts of the conduct of that eminent man I must
always think deserving of serious blame.  But, on a calm review
of his long and chequered public life, I acknowledge, with
sincere pleasure, that his faults were much more than redeemed by
great virtues, great sacrifices, and great services.  My
political hostility to him was never in the smallest degree
tainted by personal ill-will.  After his fall from power a
cordial reconciliation took place between us:  I admired the
wisdom, the moderation, the disinterested patriotism, which he
invariably showed during the last and best years of his life; I
lamented his untimely death, as both a private and a public
calamity; and I earnestly wished that the sharp words which had
sometimes been exchanged between us might be forgotten.

Unhappily an act, for which the law affords no redress, but which
I have no hesitation in pronouncing to be a gross injury to me
and a gross fraud on the public, has compelled me to do what I
should never have done willingly.  A bookseller, named Vizetelly,
who seems to aspire to that sort of distinction which Curll
enjoyed a hundred and twenty years ago, thought fit, without
asking my consent, without even giving me any notice, to announce
an edition of my Speeches, and was not ashamed to tell the world
in his advertisement that he published them by special license.
When the book appeared, I found that it contained fifty-six
speeches, said to have been delivered by me in the House of
Commons.  Of these speeches a few were reprinted from reports
which I had corrected for the Mirror of Parliament or the
Parliamentary Debates, and were therefore, with the exception of
some errors of the pen and the press, correctly given.  The rest
bear scarcely the faintest resemblance to the speeches which I
really made.  The substance of what I said is perpetually
misrepresented.  The connection of the arguments is altogether
lost.  Extravagant blunders are put into my mouth in almost every
page.  An editor who was not grossly ignorant would have
perceived that no person to whom the House of Commons would
listen could possibly have been guilty of such blunders.  An
editor who had the smallest regard for truth, or for the fame of
the person whose speeches he had undertaken to publish, would
have had recourse to the various sources of information which
were readily accessible, and, by collating them, would have
produced a book which would at least have contained no absolute
nonsense.  But I have unfortunately had an editor whose only
object was to make a few pounds, and who was willing to sacrifice
to that object my reputation and his own.  He took the very worst
report extant, compared it with no other report, removed no
blemish however obvious or however ludicrous, gave to the world
some hundreds of pages utterly contemptible both in matter and
manner, and prefixed my name to them.  The least that he should
have done was to consult the files of The Times newspaper.  I
have frequently done so, when I have noticed in his book any
passage more than ordinarily absurd; and I have almost invariably
found that in The Times newspaper, my meaning had been correctly
reported, though often in words different from those which I had
used.

I could fill a volume with instances of the injustice with which
I have been treated.  But I will confine myself to a single
speech, the speech on the Dissenters' Chapels Bill.  I have
selected that speech, not because Mr Vizetelly's version of that
speech is worse than his versions of thirty or forty other
speeches, but because I have before me a report of that speech
which an honest and diligent editor would have thought it his
first duty to consult.  The report of which I speak was published
by the Unitarian Dissenters, who were naturally desirous that
there should be an accurate record of what had passed in a debate
deeply interesting to them.  It was not corrected by me:  but it
generally, though not uniformly, exhibits with fidelity the
substance of what I said.

Mr Vizetelly makes me say that the principle of our Statutes of
Limitation was to be found in the legislation of the Mexicans and
Peruvians.  That is a matter about which, as I know nothing, I
certainly said nothing.  Neither in The Times nor in the
Unitarian report is there anything about Mexico or Peru.

Mr Vizetelly next makes me say that the principle of limitation
is found "amongst the Pandects of the Benares."  Did my editor
believe that I uttered these words, and that the House of Commons
listened patiently to them?  If he did, what must be thought of
his understanding?  If he did not, was it the part of an honest
man to publish such gibberish as mine?  The most charitable
supposition, which I therefore gladly adopt, is that Mr Vizetelly
saw nothing absurd in the expression which he has attributed to
me.  The Benares he probably supposes to be some Oriental nation.
What he supposes their Pandects to be I shall not presume to
guess.  If he had examined The Times, he would have found no
trace of the passage.  The reporter, probably, did not catch what
I said, and, being more veracious than Mr Vizetelly, did not
choose to ascribe to me what I did not say.  If Mr Vizetelly had
consulted the Unitarian report, he would have seen that I spoke
of the Pundits of Benares; and he might, without any very long or
costly research, have learned where Benares is, and what a Pundit
is.

Mr Vizetelly then represents me as giving the House of Commons
some very extraordinary information about both the Calvinistic
and the Arminian Methodists.  He makes me say that Whitfield held
and taught that the connection between Church and State was
sinful.  Whitfield never held or taught any such thing; nor was I
so grossly ignorant of the life and character of that remarkable
man as to impute to him a doctrine which he would have abhorred.
Here again, both in The Times and in the Unitarian report, the
substance of what I said is correctly given.

Mr Vizetelly proceeds to put into my mouth a curious account of
the polity of the Wesleyan Methodists.  He makes me say that,
after John Wesley's death, "the feeling in favour of the lay
administration of the Sacrament became very strong and very
general:  a Conference was applied for, was constituted, and,
after some discussion, it was determined that the request should
be granted."  Such folly could have been uttered only by a person
profoundly ignorant of the history of Methodism.  Certainly
nothing of the sort was ever uttered by me; and nothing of the
sort will be found either in The Times or in the Unitarian
report.

Mr Vizetelly makes me say that the Great Charter recognises the
principle of limitation, a thing which everybody who has read the
Great Charter knows not to be true.  He makes me give an utterly
false history of Lord Nottingham's Occasional Conformity Bill.
But I will not weary my readers by proceeding further.  These
samples will probably be thought sufficient.  They all lie within
a compass of seven or eight pages.  It will be observed that all
the faults which I have pointed out are grave faults of
substance.  Slighter faults of substance are numerous.  As to
faults of syntax and of style, hardly one sentence in a hundred
is free from them.

I cannot permit myself to be exhibited, in this ridiculous and
degrading manner, for the profit of an unprincipled man.  I
therefore unwillingly, and in mere self-defence, give this volume
to the public.  I have selected, to the best of my judgment, from
among my speeches, those which are the least unworthy to be
preserved.  Nine of them were corrected by me while they were
still fresh in my memory, and appear almost word for word as they
were spoken.  They are the speech of the second of March 1831,
the speech of the twentieth of September 1831, the speech of the
tenth of October 1831, the speech of the sixteenth of December
1831, the speech on the Anatomy Bill, the speech on the India
Bill, the speech on Serjeant Talfourd's Copyright Bill, the
speech on the Sugar Duties, and the speech on the Irish Church.
The substance of the remaining speeches I have given with perfect
ingenuousness.  I have not made alterations for the purpose of
saving my own reputation either for consistency or for foresight.
I have not softened down the strong terms in which I formerly
expressed opinions which time and thought may have modified; nor
have I retouched my predictions in order to make them correspond
with subsequent events.  Had I represented myself as speaking in
1831, in 1840, or in 1845, as I should speak in 1853, I should
have deprived my book of its chief value.  This volume is now at
least a strictly honest record of opinions and reasonings which
were heard with favour by a large part of the Commons of England
at some important conjunctures; and such a record, however low it
may stand in the estimation of the literary critic, cannot but be
of use to the historian.

I do not pretend to give with accuracy the diction of those
speeches which I did not myself correct within a week after they
were delivered.  Many expressions, and a few paragraphs, linger
in my memory.  But the rest, including much that had been
carefully premeditated, is irrecoverably lost.  Nor have I, in
this part of my task, derived much assistance from any report.
My delivery is, I believe, too rapid.  Very able shorthand
writers have sometimes complained that they could not follow me,
and have contented themselves with setting down the substance of
what I said.  As I am unable to recall the precise words which I
used, I have done my best to put my meaning into words which I
might have used.

I have only, in conclusion, to beg that the readers of this
Preface will pardon an egotism which a great wrong has made
necessary, and which is quite as disagreeable to myself as it can
be to them.


CONTENTS.

Parliamentary Reform.  (March 2, 1831)

Parliamentary Reform.  (July 5, 1831)

Parliamentary Reform.  (September 20, 1831)

Parliamentary Reform.  (October 10, 1831)

Parliamentary Reform.  (December 16, 1831)

Anatomy Bill.  (February 27, 1832)

Parliamentary Reform.  (February 28, 1832)

Repeal of the Union with Ireland.  (February 6, 1833)

Jewish Disabilities.  (April 17, 1833)

Government of India.  (July 10, 1833)

Edinburgh Election, 1839.  (May 29, 1839)

Confidence in the Ministry of Lord Melbourne.  (January 29, 1840)

War with China.  (April 7, 1840)

Copyright.  (February 5, 1841)

Copyright.  (April 6, 1842)

The People's Charter.  (May 3, 1842)

The Gates of Somnauth.  (March 9, 1843)

The State of Ireland.  (February 19, 1844)

Dissenters' Chapels Bill.  (June 6, 1844)

The Sugar Duties.  (February 26, 1845)

Maynooth.  (April 14, 1845)

The Church of Ireland.  (April 23, 1845)

Theological Tests in the Scotch Universities.  (July 9, 1845)

Corn Laws.  (December 2, 1845)

The Ten Hours Bill.  (May 22, 1846)

The Literature of Britain.  (November 4, 1846)

Education.  (April 19, 1847)

Inaugural Speech at Glasgow College.  (March 21, 1849)

Re-election to Parliament.  (November 2, 1852)

Exclusion of Judges from the House of Commons.  (June 1, 1853)



SPEECHES, ETC.


PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.  (MARCH 2, 1831)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 2D OF MARCH,
1831.

On Tuesday, the first of March, 1831, Lord John Russell moved the
House of Commons for leave to bring in a bill to amend the
representation of the people in England and Wales.  The
discussion occupied seven nights.  At length, on the morning of
Thursday, the tenth of March, the motion was carried without a
division.  The following speech was made on the second night of
the debate.

It is a circumstance, Sir, of happy augury for the motion before
the House, that almost all those who have opposed it have
declared themselves hostile on principle to Parliamentary Reform.
Two Members, I think, have confessed that, though they disapprove
of the plan now submitted to us, they are forced to admit the
necessity of a change in the Representative system.  Yet even
those gentleman have used, as far as I have observed, no
arguments which would not apply as strongly to the most moderate
change as to that which has been proposed by His Majesty's
Government.  I say, Sir, that I consider this as a circumstance
of happy augury.  For what I feared was, not the opposition of
those who are averse to all Reform, but the disunion of
reformers.  I knew that, during three months, every reformer had
been employed in conjecturing what the plan of the Government
would be.  I knew that every reformer had imagined in his own
mind a scheme differing doubtless in some points from that which
my noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, has developed.  I
felt therefore great apprehension that one person would be
dissatisfied with one part of the bill, that another person would
be dissatisfied with another part, and that thus our whole
strength would be wasted in internal dissensions.  That
apprehension is now at an end.  I have seen with delight the
perfect concord which prevails among all who deserve the name of
reformers in this House; and I trust that I may consider it as an
omen of the concord which will prevail among reformers throughout
the country.  I will not, Sir, at present express any opinion as
to the details of the bill; but, having during the last twenty-
four hours given the most diligent consideration to its general
principles, I have no hesitation in pronouncing it a wise, noble,
and comprehensive measure, skilfully framed for the healing of
great distempers, for the securing at once of the public
liberties, and of the public repose, and for the reconciling and
knitting together of all the orders of the State.

The honourable Baronet who has just sat down (Sir John Walsh.),
has told us, that the Ministers have attempted to unite two
inconsistent principles in one abortive measure.  Those were his
very words.  He thinks, if I understand him rightly, that we
ought either to leave the representative system such as it is, or
to make it perfectly symmetrical.  I think, Sir, that the
Ministers would have acted unwisely if they had taken either
course.  Their principle is plain, rational, and consistent.  It
is this, to admit the middle class to a large and direct share in
the representation, without any violent shock to the institutions
of our country.  I understand those cheers:  but surely the
gentlemen who utter them will allow that the change which will be
made in our institutions by this bill is far less violent than
that which, according to the honourable Baronet, ought to be made
if we make any Reform at all.  I praise the Ministers for not
attempting, at the present time, to make the representation
uniform.  I praise them for not effacing the old distinction
between the towns and the counties, and for not assigning Members
to districts, according to the American practice, by the Rule of
Three.  The Government has, in my opinion, done all that was
necessary for the removing of a great practical evil, and no more
than was necessary.

I consider this, Sir, as a practical question.  I rest my opinion
on no general theory of government.  I distrust all general
theories of government.  I will not positively say, that there is
any form of polity which may not, in some conceivable
circumstances, be the best possible.  I believe that there are
societies in which every man may safely be admitted to vote.
Gentlemen may cheer, but such is my opinion.  I say, Sir, that
there are countries in which the condition of the labouring
classes is such that they may safely be intrusted with the right
of electing Members of the Legislature.  If the labourers of
England were in that state in which I, from my soul, wish to see
them, if employment were always plentiful, wages always high,
food always cheap, if a large family were considered not as an
encumbrance but as a blessing, the principal objections to
Universal Suffrage would, I think, be removed.  Universal
Suffrage exists in the United States, without producing any very
frightful consequences; and I do not believe that the people of
those States, or of any part of the world, are in any good
quality naturally superior to our own countrymen.  But,
unhappily, the labouring classes in England, and in all old
countries, are occasionally in a state of great distress.  Some
of the causes of this distress are, I fear, beyond the control of
the Government.  We know what effect distress produces, even on
people more intelligent than the great body of the labouring
classes can possibly be.  We know that it makes even wise men
irritable, unreasonable, credulous, eager for immediate relief,
heedless of remote consequences.  There is no quackery in
medicine, religion, or politics, which may not impose even on a
powerful mind, when that mind has been disordered by pain or
fear.  It is therefore no reflection on the poorer class of
Englishmen, who are not, and who cannot in the nature of things
be, highly educated, to say that distress produces on them its
natural effects, those effects which it would produce on the
Americans, or on any other people, that it blinds their judgment,
that it inflames their passions, that it makes them prone to
believe those who flatter them, and to distrust those who would
serve them.  For the sake, therefore, of the whole society, for
the sake of the labouring classes themselves, I hold it to be
clearly expedient that, in a country like this, the right of
suffrage should depend on a pecuniary qualification.

But, Sir, every argument which would induce me to oppose
Universal Suffrage, induces me to support the plan which is now
before us.  I am opposed to Universal Suffrage, because I think
that it would produce a destructive revolution.  I support this
plan, because I am sure that it is our best security against a
revolution.  The noble Paymaster of the Forces hinted, delicately
indeed and remotely, at this subject.  He spoke of the danger of
disappointing the expectations of the nation; and for this he was
charged with threatening the House.  Sir, in the year 1817, the
late Lord Londonderry proposed a suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act.  On that occasion he told the House that, unless the
measures which he recommended were adopted, the public peace
could not be preserved.  Was he accused of threatening the House?
Again, in the year 1819, he proposed the laws known by the name
of the Six Acts.  He then told the House that, unless the
executive power were reinforced, all the institutions of the
country would be overturned by popular violence.  Was he then
accused of threatening the House?  Will any gentleman say that it
is parliamentary and decorous to urge the danger arising from
popular discontent as an argument for severity; but that it is
unparliamentary and indecorous to urge that same danger as an
argument for conciliation?  I, Sir, do entertain great
apprehension for the fate of my country.  I do in my conscience
believe that, unless the plan proposed, or some similar plan, be
speedily adopted, great and terrible calamities will befall us.
Entertaining this opinion, I think myself bound to state it, not
as a threat, but as a reason.  I support this bill because it
will improve our institutions; but I support it also because it
tends to preserve them.  That we may exclude those whom it is
necessary to exclude, we must admit those whom it may be safe to
admit.  At present we oppose the schemes of revolutionists with
only one half, with only one quarter of our proper force.  We
say, and we say justly, that it is not by mere numbers, but by
property and intelligence, that the nation ought to be governed.
Yet, saying this, we exclude from all share in the government
great masses of property and intelligence, great numbers of those
who are most interested in preserving tranquillity, and who know
best how to preserve it.  We do more.  We drive over to the side
of revolution those whom we shut out from power.  Is this a time
when the cause of law and order can spare one of its natural
allies?

My noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, happily described
the effect which some parts of our representative system would
produce on the mind of a foreigner, who had heard much of our
freedom and greatness.  If, Sir, I wished to make such a
foreigner clearly understand what I consider as the great defects
of our system, I would conduct him through that immense city
which lies to the north of Great Russell Street and Oxford
Street, a city superior in size and in population to the capitals
of many mighty kingdoms; and probably superior in opulence,
intelligence, and general respectability, to any city in the
world.  I would conduct him through that interminable succession
of streets and squares, all consisting of well built and well
furnished houses.  I would make him observe the brilliancy of the
shops, and the crowd of well-appointed equipages.  I would show
him that magnificent circle of palaces which surrounds the
Regent's Park.  I would tell him that the rental of this district
was far greater than that of the whole kingdom of Scotland, at
the time of the Union.  And then I would tell him that this was
an unrepresented district.  It is needless to give any more
instances.  It is needless to speak of Manchester, Birmingham,
Leeds, Sheffield, with no representation, or of Edinburgh and
Glasgow with a mock representation.  If a property tax were now
imposed on the principle that no person who had less than a
hundred and fifty pounds a year should contribute, I should not
be surprised to find that one half in number and value of the
contributors had no votes at all; and it would, beyond all doubt,
be found that one fiftieth part in number and value of the
contributors had a larger share of the representation than the
other forty-nine fiftieths.  This is not government by property.
It is government by certain detached portions and fragments of
property, selected from the rest, and preferred to the rest, on
no rational principle whatever.

To say that such a system is ancient, is no defence.  My
honourable friend, the Member for the University of Oxford (Sir
Robert Harry Inglis.), challenges us to show that the
Constitution was ever better than it is.  Sir, we are
legislators, not antiquaries.  The question for us is, not
whether the Constitution was better formerly, but whether we can
make it better now.  In fact, however, the system was not in
ancient times by any means so absurd as it is in our age.  One
noble Lord (Lord Stormont.) has to-night told us that the town of
Aldborough, which he represents, was not larger in the time of
Edward the First than it is at present.  The line of its walls,
he assures us, may still be traced.  It is now built up to that
line.  He argues, therefore, that as the founders of our
representative institutions gave members to Aldborough when it
was as small as it now is, those who would disfranchise it on
account of its smallness have no right to say that they are
recurring to the original principle of our representative
institutions.  But does the noble Lord remember the change which
has taken place in the country during the last five centuries?
Does he remember how much England has grown in population, while
Aldborough has been standing still?  Does he consider, that in
the time of Edward the First, the kingdom did not contain two
millions of inhabitants?  It now contains nearly fourteen
millions.  A hamlet of the present day would have been a town of
some importance in the time of our early Parliaments.  Aldborough
may be absolutely as considerable a place as ever.  But compared
with the kingdom, it is much less considerable, by the noble
Lord's own showing, than when it first elected burgesses.  My
honourable friend, the Member for the University of Oxford, has
collected numerous instances of the tyranny which the kings and
nobles anciently exercised, both over this House and over the
electors.  It is not strange that, in times when nothing was held
sacred, the rights of the people, and of the representatives of
the people, should not have been held sacred.  The proceedings
which my honourable friend has mentioned, no more prove that, by
the ancient constitution of the realm, this House ought to be a
tool of the king and of the aristocracy, than the Benevolences
and the Shipmoney prove their own legality, or than those
unjustifiable arrests which took place long after the
ratification of the great Charter and even after the Petition of
Right, prove that the subject was not anciently entitled to his
personal liberty.  We talk of the wisdom of our ancestors:  and
in one respect at least they were wiser than we.  They legislated
for their own times.  They looked at the England which was before
them.  They did not think it necessary to give twice as many
Members to York as they gave to London, because York had been the
capital of Britain in the time of Constantius Chlorus; and they
would have been amazed indeed if they had foreseen, that a city
of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants would be left without
Representatives in the nineteenth century, merely because it
stood on ground which in the thirteenth century had been occupied
by a few huts.  They framed a representative system, which,
though not without defects and irregularities, was well adapted
to the state of England in their time.  But a great revolution
took place.  The character of the old corporations changed.  New
forms of property came into existence.  New portions of society
rose into importance.  There were in our rural districts rich
cultivators, who were not freeholders.  There were in our capital
rich traders, who were not liverymen.  Towns shrank into
villages.  Villages swelled into cities larger than the London of
the Plantagenets.  Unhappily while the natural growth of society
went on, the artificial polity continued unchanged.  The ancient
form of the representation remained; and precisely because the
form remained, the spirit departed.  Then came that pressure
almost to bursting, the new wine in the old bottles, the new
society under the old institutions.  It is now time for us to pay
a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, not by
superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances,
did, but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have
done.  All history is full of revolutions, produced by causes
similar to those which are now operating in England.  A portion
of the community which had been of no account expands and becomes
strong.  It demands a place in the system, suited, not to its
former weakness, but to its present power.  If this is granted,
all is well.  If this is refused, then comes the struggle between
the young energy of one class and the ancient privileges of
another.  Such was the struggle between the Plebeians and the
Patricians of Rome.  Such was the struggle of the Italian allies
for admission to the full rights of Roman citizens.  Such was the
struggle of our North American colonies against the mother
country.  Such was the struggle which the Third Estate of France
maintained against the aristocracy of birth.  Such was the
struggle which the Roman Catholics of Ireland maintained against
the aristocracy of creed.  Such is the struggle which the free
people of colour in Jamaica are now maintaining against the
aristocracy of skin.  Such, finally, is the struggle which the
middle classes in England are maintaining against an aristocracy
of mere locality, against an aristocracy the principle of which
is to invest a hundred drunken potwallopers in one place, or the
owner of a ruined hovel in another, with powers which are
withheld from cities renowned to the furthest ends of the earth,
for the marvels of their wealth and of their industry.

But these great cities, says my honourable friend the Member for
the University of Oxford, are virtually, though not directly,
represented.  Are not the wishes of Manchester, he asks, as much
consulted as those of any town which sends Members to Parliament?
Now, Sir, I do not understand how a power which is salutary when
exercised virtually can be noxious when exercised directly.  If
the wishes of Manchester have as much weight with us as they
would have under a system which should give Representatives to
Manchester, how can there be any danger in giving Representatives
to Manchester?  A virtual Representative is, I presume, a man who
acts as a direct Representative would act:  for surely it would
be absurd to say that a man virtually represents the people of
Manchester, who is in the habit of saying No, when a man directly
representing the people of Manchester would say Aye.  The utmost
that can be expected from virtual Representation is that it may
be as good as direct Representation.  If so, why not grant direct
Representation to places which, as everybody allows, ought, by
some process or other, to be represented?

If it be said that there is an evil in change as change, I answer
that there is also an evil in discontent as discontent.  This,
indeed, is the strongest part of our case.  It is said that the
system works well.  I deny it.  I deny that a system works well,
which the people regard with aversion.  We may say here, that it
is a good system and a perfect system.  But if any man were to
say so to any six hundred and fifty-eight respectable farmers or
shopkeepers, chosen by lot in any part of England, he would be
hooted down, and laughed to scorn.  Are these the feelings with
which any part of the government ought to be regarded?  Above
all, are these the feelings with which the popular branch of the
legislature ought to be regarded?  It is almost as essential to
the utility of a House of Commons, that it should possess the
confidence of the people, as that it should deserve that
confidence.  Unfortunately, that which is in theory the popular
part of our government, is in practice the unpopular part.  Who
wishes to dethrone the King?  Who wishes to turn the Lords out of
their House?  Here and there a crazy radical, whom the boys in
the street point at as he walks along.  Who wishes to alter the
constitution of this House?  The whole people.  It is natural
that it should be so.  The House of Commons is, in the language
of Mr Burke, a check, not on the people, but for the people.
While that check is efficient, there is no reason to fear that
the King or the nobles will oppress the people.  But if the check
requires checking, how is it to be checked?  If the salt shall
lose its savour, wherewith shall we season it?  The distrust with
which the nation regards this House may be unjust.  But what
then?  Can you remove that distrust?  That it exists cannot be
denied.  That it is an evil cannot be denied.  That it is an
increasing evil cannot be denied.  One gentleman tells us that it
has been produced by the late events in France and Belgium;
another, that it is the effect of seditious works which have
lately been published.  If this feeling be of origin so recent, I
have read history to little purpose.  Sir, this alarming
discontent is not the growth of a day or of a year.  If there be
any symptoms by which it is possible to distinguish the chronic
diseases of the body politic from its passing inflammations, all
those symptoms exist in the present case.  The taint has been
gradually becoming more extensive and more malignant, through the
whole lifetime of two generations.  We have tried anodynes.  We
have tried cruel operations.  What are we to try now?  Who
flatters himself that he can turn this feeling back?  Does there
remain any argument which escaped the comprehensive intellect of
Mr Burke, or the subtlety of Mr Windham?  Does there remain any
species of coercion which was not tried by Mr Pitt and by Lord
Londonderry?  We have had laws.  We have had blood.  New treasons
have been created.  The Press has been shackled.  The Habeas
Corpus Act has been suspended.  Public meetings have been
prohibited.  The event has proved that these expedients were mere
palliatives.  You are at the end of your palliatives.  The evil
remains.  It is more formidable than ever.  What is to be done?

Under such circumstances, a great plan of reconciliation,
prepared by the Ministers of the Crown, has been brought before
us in a manner which gives additional lustre to a noble name,
inseparably associated during two centuries with the dearest
liberties of the English people.  I will not say, that this plan
is in all its details precisely such as I might wish it to be;
but it is founded on a great and a sound principle.  It takes
away a vast power from a few.  It distributes that power through
the great mass of the middle order.  Every man, therefore, who
thinks as I think is bound to stand firmly by Ministers who are
resolved to stand or fall with this measure.  Were I one of them,
I would sooner, infinitely sooner, fall with such a measure than
stand by any other means that ever supported a Cabinet.

My honourable friend, the Member for the University of Oxford,
tells us, that if we pass this law, England will soon be a
republic.  The reformed House of Commons will, according to him,
before it has sate ten years, depose the King, and expel the
Lords from their House.  Sir, if my honourable friend could prove
this, he would have succeeded in bringing an argument for
democracy, infinitely stronger than any that is to be found in
the works of Paine.  My honourable friend's proposition is in
fact this:  that our monarchical and aristocratical institutions
have no hold on the public mind of England; that these
institutions are regarded with aversion by a decided majority of
the middle class.  This, Sir, I say, is plainly deducible from
his proposition; for he tells us that the Representatives of the
middle class will inevitably abolish royalty and nobility within
ten years:  and there is surely no reason to think that the
Representatives of the middle class will be more inclined to a
democratic revolution than their constituents.  Now, Sir, if I
were convinced that the great body of the middle class in England
look with aversion on monarchy and aristocracy, I should be
forced, much against my will, to come to this conclusion, that
monarchical and aristocratical institutions are unsuited to my
country.  Monarchy and aristocracy, valuable and useful as I
think them, are still valuable and useful as means, and not as
ends.  The end of government is the happiness of the people:  and
I do not conceive that, in a country like this, the happiness of
the people can be promoted by a form of government in which the
middle classes place no confidence, and which exists only because
the middle classes have no organ by which to make their
sentiments known.  But, Sir, I am fully convinced that the middle
classes sincerely wish to uphold the Royal prerogatives and the
constitutional rights of the Peers.  What facts does my
honourable friend produce in support of his opinion?  One fact
only; and that a fact which has absolutely nothing to do with the
question.  The effect of this Reform, he tells us, would be to
make the House of Commons allpowerful.  It was allpowerful once
before, in the beginning of 1649.  Then it cut off the head of
the King, and abolished the House of Peers.  Therefore, if it
again has the supreme power, it will act in the same manner.
Now, Sir, it was not the House of Commons that cut off the head
of Charles the First; nor was the House of Commons then
allpowerful.  It had been greatly reduced in numbers by
successive expulsions.  It was under the absolute dominion of the
army.  A majority of the House was willing to take the terms
offered by the King.  The soldiers turned out the majority; and
the minority, not a sixth part of the whole House, passed those
votes of which my honourable friend speaks, votes of which the
middle classes disapproved then, and of which they disapprove
still.

My honourable friend, and almost all the gentlemen who have taken
the same side with him in this Debate, have dwelt much on the
utility of close and rotten boroughs.  It is by means of such
boroughs, they tell us, that the ablest men have been introduced
into Parliament.  It is true that many distinguished persons have
represented places of this description.  But, Sir, we must judge
of a form of government by its general tendency, not by happy
accidents.  Every form of government has its happy accidents.
Despotism has its happy accidents.  Yet we are not disposed to
abolish all constitutional checks, to place an absolute master
over us, and to take our chance whether he may be a Caligula or a
Marcus Aurelius.  In whatever way the House of Commons may be
chosen, some able men will be chosen in that way who would not be
chosen in any other way.  If there were a law that the hundred
tallest men in England should be Members of Parliament, there
would probably be some able men among those who would come into
the House by virtue of this law.  If the hundred persons whose
names stand first in the alphabetical list of the Court Guide
were made Members of Parliament, there would probably be able men
among them.  We read in ancient history, that a very able king
was elected by the neighing of his horse; but we shall scarcely,
I think, adopt this mode of election.  In one of the most
celebrated republics of antiquity, Athens, Senators and
Magistrates were chosen by lot; and sometimes the lot fell
fortunately.  Once, for example, Socrates was in office.  A cruel
and unjust proposition was made by a demagogue.  Socrates
resisted it at the hazard of his own life.  There is no event in
Grecian history more interesting than that memorable resistance.
Yet who would have officers appointed by lot, because the
accident of the lot may have given to a great and good man a
power which he would probably never have attained in any other
way?  We must judge, as I said, by the general tendency of a
system.  No person can doubt that a House of Commons chosen
freely by the middle classes, will contain many very able men.  I
do not say, that precisely the same able men who would find their
way into the present House of Commons will find their way into
the reformed House:  but that is not the question.  No particular
man is necessary to the State.  We may depend on it that, if we
provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions
will provide it with great men.

There is another objection, which, I think, was first raised by
the honourable and learned Member for Newport.  (Mr Horace
Twiss.)  He tells us that the elective franchise is property;
that to take it away from a man who has not been judicially
convicted of malpractices is robbery; that no crime is proved
against the voters in the close boroughs; that no crime is even
imputed to them in the preamble of the bill; and that therefore
to disfranchise them without compensation would be an act of
revolutionary tyranny.  The honourable and learned gentleman has
compared the conduct of the present Ministers to that of those
odious tools of power, who, towards the close of the reign of
Charles the Second, seized the charters of the Whig corporations.
Now, there was another precedent, which I wonder that he did not
recollect, both because it is much more nearly in point than that
to which he referred, and because my noble friend, the Paymaster
of the Forces, had previously alluded to it.  If the elective
franchise is property, if to disfranchise voters without a crime
proved, or a compensation given, be robbery, was there ever such
an act of robbery as the disfranchising of the Irish forty-
shilling freeholders?  Was any pecuniary compensation given to
them?  Is it declared in the preamble of the bill which took away
their franchise, that they had been convicted of any offence?
Was any judicial inquiry instituted into their conduct?  Were
they even accused of any crime?  Or if you say that it was a
crime in the electors of Clare to vote for the honourable and
learned gentleman who now represents the county of Waterford, was
a Protestant freeholder in Louth to be punished for the crime of
a Catholic freeholder in Clare?  If the principle of the
honourable and learned Member for Newport be sound, the franchise
of the Irish peasant was property.  That franchise the Ministers
under whom the honourable and learned Member held office did not
scruple to take away.  Will he accuse those Ministers of robbery?
If not, how can he bring such an accusation against their
successors?

Every gentleman, I think, who has spoken from the other side of
the House, has alluded to the opinions which some of His
Majesty's Ministers formerly entertained on the subject of
Reform.  It would be officious in me, Sir, to undertake the
defence of gentlemen who are so well able to defend themselves.
I will only say that, in my opinion, the country will not think
worse either of their capacity or of their patriotism, because
they have shown that they can profit by experience, because they
have learned to see the folly of delaying inevitable changes.
There are others who ought to have learned the same lesson.  I
say, Sir, that there are those who, I should have thought, must
have had enough to last them all their lives of that humiliation
which follows obstinate and boastful resistance to changes
rendered necessary by the progress of society, and by the
development of the human mind.  Is it possible that those persons
can wish again to occupy a position which can neither be defended
nor surrendered with honour?  I well remember, Sir, a certain
evening in the month of May, 1827.  I had not then the honour of
a seat in this House; but I was an attentive observer of its
proceedings.  The right honourable Baronet opposite (Sir Robert
Peel), of whom personally I desire to speak with that high
respect which I feel for his talents and his character, but of
whose public conduct I must speak with the sincerity required by
my public duty, was then, as he is now, out of office.  He had
just resigned the seals of the Home Department, because he
conceived that the recent ministerial arrangements had been too
favourable to the Catholic claims.  He rose to ask whether it was
the intention of the new Cabinet to repeal the Test and
Corporation Acts, and to reform the Parliament.  He bound up, I
well remember, those two questions together; and he declared
that, if the Ministers should either attempt to repeal the Test
and Corporation Acts, or bring forward a measure of Parliamentary
Reform, he should think it his duty to oppose them to the utmost.
Since that declaration was made four years have elapsed; and what
is now the state of the three questions which then chiefly
agitated the minds of men?  What is become of the Test and
Corporation Acts?  They are repealed.  By whom?  By the right
honourable Baronet.  What has become of the Catholic
disabilities?  They are removed.  By whom?  By the right
honourable Baronet.  The question of Parliamentary Reform is
still behind.  But signs, of which it is impossible to
misconceive the import, do most clearly indicate that unless that
question also be speedily settled, property, and order, and all
the institutions of this great monarchy, will be exposed to
fearful peril.  Is it possible that gentlemen long versed in high
political affairs cannot read these signs?  Is it possible that
they can really believe that the Representative system of
England, such as it now is, will last to the year 1860?  If not,
for what would they have us wait?  Would they have us wait merely
that we may show to all the world how little we have profited by
our own recent experience?--Would they have us wait, that we may
once again hit the exact point where we can neither refuse with
authority, nor concede with grace?  Would they have us wait, that
the numbers of the discontented party may become larger, its
demands higher, its feelings more acrimonious, its organisation
more complete?  Would they have us wait till the whole
tragicomedy of 1827 has been acted over again? till they have
been brought into office by a cry of 'No Reform,' to be
reformers, as they were once before brought into office by a cry
of 'No Popery,' to be emancipators?  Have they obliterated from
their minds--gladly, perhaps, would some among them obliterate
from their minds--the transactions of that year?  And have they
forgotten all the transactions of the succeeding year?  Have they
forgotten how the spirit of liberty in Ireland, debarred from its
natural outlet, found a vent by forbidden passages?  Have they
forgotten how we were forced to indulge the Catholics in all the
license of rebels, merely because we chose to withhold from them
the liberties of subjects?  Do they wait for associations more
formidable than that of the Corn Exchange, for contributions
larger than the Rent, for agitators more violent than those who,
three years ago, divided with the King and the Parliament the
sovereignty of Ireland?  Do they wait for that last and most
dreadful paroxysm of popular rage, for that last and most cruel
test of military fidelity?  Let them wait, if their past
experience shall induce them to think that any high honour or any
exquisite pleasure is to be obtained by a policy like this.  Let
them wait, if this strange and fearful infatuation be indeed upon
them, that they should not see with their eyes, or hear with
their ears, or understand with their heart.  But let us know our
interest and our duty better.  Turn where we may, within, around,
the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you
may preserve.  Now, therefore, while everything at home and
abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle
against the spirit of the age, now, while the crash of the
proudest throne of the Continent is still resounding in our ears,
now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious
shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings, now, while we see on
every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies
dissolved, now, while the heart of England is still sound, now,
while old feelings and old associations retain a power and a
charm which may too soon pass away, now, in this your accepted
time, now, in this your day of salvation, take counsel, not of
prejudice, not of party spirit, not of the ignominious pride of a
fatal consistency, but of history, of reason, of the ages which
are past, of the signs of this most portentous time.  Pronounce
in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great
debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it
will leave behind.  Renew the youth of the State.  Save property,
divided against itself.  Save the multitude, endangered by its
own unpopular power.  Save the greatest, and fairest, and most
highly civilised community that ever existed, from calamities
which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of so
many ages of wisdom and glory.  The danger is terrible.  The time
is short.  If this bill should be rejected, I pray to God that
none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their
votes with unavailing remorse, amidst the wreck of laws, the
confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the
dissolution of social order.

...


PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.  (JULY 5, 1831)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 5TH OF JULY
1831.

On Tuesday, the fourth of July, 1831, Lord John Russell moved the
second reading of the Bill to amend the representation of the
people in England and Wales.  Sir John Walsh, member for Sudbury,
moved, as an amendment, that the bill should be read that day six
months.  After a discussion, which lasted three nights, the
amendment was rejected by 367 votes to 231, and the original
motion was carried.  The following Speech was made on the second
night of the debate.

Nobody, Sir, who has watched the course of the debate can have
failed to observe that the gentlemen who oppose this bill have
chiefly relied on a preliminary objection, which it is necessary
to clear away before we proceed to examine whether the proposed
changes in our representative system would or would not be
improvements.  The elective franchise, we are told, is private
property.  It belongs to this freeman, to that potwalloper, to
the owner of this house, to the owner of that old wall; and you
have no more right to take it away without compensation than to
confiscate the dividends of a fundholder or the rents of a
landholder.

Now, Sir, I admit that, if this objection be well founded, it is
decisive against the plan of Reform which has been submitted to
us.  If the franchise be really private property, we have no more
right to take members away from Gatton because Gatton is small,
and to give them to Manchester because Manchester is large, than
Cyrus, in the old story, had to take away the big coat from the
little boy and to put it on the big boy.  In no case, and under
no pretext however specious, would I take away from any member of
the community anything which is of the nature of property,
without giving him full compensation.  But I deny that the
elective franchise is of the nature of property; and I believe
that, on this point, I have with me all reason, all precedent,
and all authority.  This at least is certain, that, if
disfranchisement really be robbery, the representative system
which now exists is founded on robbery.  How was the franchise in
the English counties fixed?  By the act of Henry the Sixth, which
disfranchised tens of thousands of electors who had not forty
shilling freeholds.  Was that robbery?  How was the franchise in
the Irish counties fixed?  By the act of George the Fourth, which
disfranchised tens of thousands of electors who had not ten pound
freeholds.  Was that robbery?  Or was the great parliamentary
reform made by Oliver Cromwell ever designated as robbery, even
by those who most abhorred his name?  Everybody knows that the
unsparing manner in which he disfranchised small boroughs was
emulously applauded, by royalists, who hated him for having
pulled down one dynasty, and by republicans, who hated him for
having founded another.  Take Sir Harry Vane and Lord Clarendon,
both wise men, both, I believe, in the main, honest men, but as
much opposed to each other in politics as wise and honest men
could be.  Both detested Oliver; yet both approved of Oliver's
plan of parliamentary reform.  They grieved only that so salutary
a change should have been made by an usurper.  Vane wished it to
have been made by the Rump; Clarendon wished it to be made by the
King.  Clarendon's language on this subject is most remarkable.
For he was no rash innovator.  The bias of his mind was
altogether on the side of antiquity and prescription.  Yet he
describes that great disfranchisement of boroughs as an
improvement fit to be made in a more warrantable method and at a
better time.  This is that better time.  What Cromwell attempted
to effect by an usurped authority, in a country which had lately
been convulsed by civil war, and which was with difficulty kept
in a state of sullen tranquillity by military force, it has
fallen to our lot to accomplish in profound peace, and under the
rule of a prince whose title is unquestioned, whose office is
reverenced, and whose person is beloved.  It is easy to conceive
with what scorn and astonishment Clarendon would have heard it
said that the reform which seemed to him so obviously just and
reasonable that he praised it, even when made by a regicide,
could not, without the grossest iniquity, be made even by a
lawful King and a lawful Parliament.

Sir, in the name of the institution of property, of that great
institution, for the sake of which, chiefly, all other
institutions exist, of that great institution to which we owe all
knowledge, all commerce, all industry, all civilisation, all that
makes us to differ from the tattooed savages of the Pacific
Ocean, I protest against the pernicious practice of ascribing to
that which is not property the sanctity which belongs to property
alone.  If, in order to save political abuses from that fate with
which they are threatened by the public hatred, you claim for
them the immunities of property, you must expect that property
will be regarded with some portion of the hatred which is excited
by political abuses.  You bind up two very different things, in
the hope that they may stand together.  Take heed that they do
not fall together.  You tell the people that it is as unjust to
disfranchise a great lord's nomination borough as to confiscate
his estate.  Take heed that you do not succeed in convincing weak
and ignorant minds that there is no more injustice in
confiscating his estate than in disfranchising his borough.  That
this is no imaginary danger, your own speeches in this debate
abundantly prove.  You begin by ascribing to the franchises of
Old Sarum the sacredness of property; and you end, naturally
enough, I must own, by treating the rights of property as lightly
as I should be inclined to treat the franchises of Old Sarum.
When you are reminded that you voted, only two years ago, for
disfranchising great numbers of freeholders in Ireland, and when
you are asked how, on the principles which you now profess, you
can justify that vote, you answer very coolly, "no doubt that was
confiscation.  No doubt we took away from the peasants of Munster
and Connaught, without giving them a farthing of compensation,
that which was as much their property as their pigs or their
frieze coats.  But we did it for the public good.  We were
pressed by a great State necessity."  Sir, if that be an answer,
we too may plead that we too have the public good in view, and
that we are pressed by a great State necessity.  But I shall
resort to no such plea.  It fills me with indignation and alarm
to hear grave men avow what they own to be downright robbery, and
justify that robbery on the ground of political convenience.  No,
Sir, there is one way, and only one way, in which those gentlemen
who voted for the disfranchising Act of 1829 can clear their
fame.  Either they have no defence, or their defence must be
this; that the elective franchise is not of the nature of
property, and that therefore disfranchisement is not spoliation.

Having disposed, as I think, of the question of right, I come to
the question of expediency.  I listened, Sir, with much interest
and pleasure to a noble Lord who spoke for the first time in this
debate.  (Lord Porchester.)  But I must own that he did not
succeed in convincing me that there is any real ground for the
fears by which he is tormented.  He gave us a history of France
since the Restoration.  He told us of the violent ebbs and flows
of public feeling in that country.  He told us that the
revolutionary party was fast rising to ascendency while M. De
Cazes was minister; that then came a violent reaction in favour
of the monarchy and the priesthood; that then the revolutionary
party again became dominant; that there had been a change of
dynasty; and that the Chamber of Peers had ceased to be a
hereditary body.  He then predicted, if I understood him rightly,
that, if we pass this bill, we shall suffer all that France has
suffered; that we shall have violent contests between extreme
parties, a revolution, and an abolition of the House of Lords.  I
might, perhaps, dispute the accuracy of some parts of the noble
Lord's narrative.  But I deny that his narrative, accurate or
inaccurate, is relevant.  I deny that there is any analogy
between the state of France and the state of England.  I deny
that there is here any great party which answers either to the
revolutionary or to the counter-revolutionary party in France.  I
most emphatically deny that there is any resemblance in the
character, and that there is likely to be any resemblance in the
fate, of the two Houses of Peers.  I always regarded the
hereditary Chamber established by Louis the Eighteenth as an
institution which could not last.  It was not in harmony with the
state of property; it was not in harmony with the public feeling;
it had neither the strength which is derived from wealth, nor the
strength which is derived from prescription.  It was despised as
plebeian by the ancient nobility.  It was hated as patrician by
the democrats.  It belonged neither to the old France nor to the
new France.  It was a mere exotic transplanted from our island.
Here it had struck its roots deep, and having stood during ages,
was still green and vigorous.  But it languished in the foreign
soil and the foreign air, and was blown down by the first storm.
It will be no such easy task to uproot the aristocracy of
England.

With much more force, at least with much more plausibility, the
noble Lord and several other members on the other side of the
House have argued against the proposed Reform on the ground that
the existing system has worked well.  How great a country, they
say, is ours!  How eminent in wealth and knowledge, in arts and
arms!  How much admired!  How much envied!  Is it possible to
believe that we have become what we are under a bad government!
And, if we have a good government, why alter it?  Now, Sir, I am
very far from denying that England is great, and prosperous, and
highly civilised.  I am equally far from denying that she owes
much of her greatness, of her prosperity, and of her civilisation
to her form of government.  But is no nation ever to reform its
institutions because it has made great progress under those
institutions?  Why, Sir, the progress is the very thing which
makes the reform absolutely necessary.  The Czar Peter, we all
know, did much for Russia.  But for his rude genius and energy,
that country might have still been utterly barbarous.  Yet would
it be reasonable to say that the Russian people ought always, to
the end of time, to be despotically governed, because the Czar
Peter was a despot?  Let us remember that the government and the
society act and react on each other.  Sometimes the government is
in advance of the society, and hurries the society forward.  So
urged, the society gains on the government, comes up with the
government, outstrips the government, and begins to insist that
the government shall make more speed.  If the government is wise,
it will yield to that just and natural demand.  The great cause
of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward,
constitutions stand still.  The peculiar happiness of England is
that here, through many generations, the constitution has moved
onward with the nation.  Gentlemen have told us, that the most
illustrious foreigners have, in every age, spoken with admiration
of the English constitution.  Comines, they say, in the fifteenth
century, extolled the English constitution as the best in the
world.  Montesquieu, in the eighteenth century, extolled it as
the best in the world.  And would it not be madness in us to
throw away what such men thought the most precious of all our
blessings?  But was the constitution which Montesquieu praised
the same with the constitution which Comines praised?  No, Sir;
if it had been so, Montesquieu never would have praised it.  For
how was it possible that a polity which exactly suited the
subjects of Edward the Fourth should have exactly suited the
subjects of George the Second?  The English have, it is true,
long been a great and a happy people.  But they have been great
and happy because their history has been the history of a
succession of timely reforms.  The Great Charter, the assembling
of the first House of Commons, the Petition of Right, the
Declaration of Right, the Bill which is now on our table, what
are they all but steps in one great progress?  To every one of
those steps the same objections might have been made which we
heard to-night, "You are better off than your neighbours are.
You are better off than your fathers were.  Why can you not leave
well alone?"

How copiously might a Jacobite orator have harangued on this
topic in the Convention of 1688!  "Why make a change of dynasty?
Why trouble ourselves to devise new securities for our laws and
liberties?  See what a nation we are.  See how population and
wealth have increased since what you call the good old times of
Queen Elizabeth.  You cannot deny that the country has been more
prosperous under the kings of the House of Stuart than under any
of their predecessors.  Keep that House, then, and be thankful."
Just such is the reasoning of the opponents of this bill.  They
tell us that we are an ungrateful people, and that, under
institutions from which we have derived inestimable benefits, we
are more discontented than the slaves of the Dey of Tripoli.
Sir, if we had been slaves of the Dey of Tripoli, we should have
been too much sunk in intellectual and moral degradation to be
capable of the rational and manly discontent of freemen.  It is
precisely because our institutions are so good that we are not
perfectly contended with them; for they have educated us into a
capacity for enjoying still better institutions.  That the
English Government has generally been in advance of almost all
other governments is true.  But it is equally true that the
English nation is, and has during some time been, in advance of
the English Government.  One plain proof of this is, that nothing
is so ill made in our island as the laws.  In all those things
which depend on the intelligence, the knowledge, the industry,
the energy of individuals, or of voluntary combinations of
individuals, this country stands pre-eminent among all the
countries of the world, ancient and modern.  But in those things
which it belongs to the State to direct, we have no such claim to
superiority.  Our fields are cultivated with a skill unknown
elsewhere, with a skill which has extorted rich harvests from
moors and morasses.  Our houses are filled with conveniences
which the kings of former times might have envied.  Our bridges,
our canals, our roads, our modes of communication, fill every
stranger with wonder.  Nowhere are manufactures carried to such
perfection.  Nowhere is so vast a mass of mechanical power
collected.  Nowhere does man exercise such a dominion over
matter.  These are the works of the nation.  Compare them with
the works of the rulers of the nation.  Look at the criminal law,
at the civil law, at the modes of conveying lands, at the modes
of conducting actions.  It is by these things that we must judge
of our legislators, just as we judge of our manufacturers by the
cotton goods and the cutlery which they produce, just as we judge
of our engineers by the suspension bridges, the tunnels, the
steam carriages which they construct.  Is, then, the machinery by
which justice is administered framed with the same exquisite
skill which is found in other kinds of machinery?  Can there be a
stronger contrast than that which exists between the beauty, the
completeness, the speed, the precision with which every process
is performed in our factories, and the awkwardness, the rudeness,
the slowness, the uncertainty of the apparatus by which offences
are punished and rights vindicated?  Look at the series of penal
statutes, the most bloody and the most inefficient in the world,
at the puerile fictions which make every declaration and every
plea unintelligible both to plaintiff and defendant, at the
mummery of fines and recoveries, at the chaos of precedents, at
the bottomless pit of Chancery.  Surely we see the barbarism of
the thirteenth century and the highest civilisation of the
nineteenth century side by side; and we see that the barbarism
belongs to the government, and the civilisation to the people.

This is a state of things which cannot last.  If it be not
terminated by wisdom, it will be terminated by violence.  A time
has come at which it is not merely desirable, but indispensable
to the public safety, that the government should be brought into
harmony with the people; and it is because this bill seems to me
likely to bring the government into harmony with the people, that
I feel it to be my duty to give my hearty support to His
Majesty's Ministers.

We have been told, indeed, that this is not the plan of Reform
which the nation asked for.  Be it so.  But you cannot deny that
it is the plan of Reform which the nation has accepted.  That,
though differing in many respects from what was asked, it has
been accepted with transports of joy and gratitude, is a decisive
proof of the wisdom of timely concession.  Never in the history
of the world was there so signal an example of that true
statesmanship, which, at once animating and gently curbing the
honest enthusiasm of millions, guides it safely and steadily to a
happy goal.  It is not strange, that when men are refused what is
reasonable, they should demand what is unreasonable.  It is not
strange that, when they find that their opinion is contemned and
neglected by the Legislature, they should lend a too favourable
ear to worthless agitators.  We have seen how discontent may be
produced.  We have seen, too, how it may be appeased.  We have
seen that the true source of the power of demagogues is the
obstinacy of rulers, and that a liberal Government makes a
conservative people.  Early in the last session, the First
Minister of the Crown declared that he would consent to no
Reform; that he thought our representative system, just as it
stood, the masterpiece of human wisdom; that, if he had to make
it anew, he would make it such as it was, with all its
represented ruins and all its unrepresented cities.  What
followed?  Everything was tumult and panic.  The funds fell.  The
streets were insecure.  Men's hearts failed them for fear.  We
began to move our property into German investments and American
investments.  Such was the state of the public mind, that it was
not thought safe to let the Sovereign pass from his palace to the
Guildhall of his capital.  What part of his kingdom is there in
which His Majesty now needs any other guard than the affection of
his loving subjects?  There are, indeed, still malecontents; and
they may be divided into two classes, the friends of corruption
and the sowers of sedition.  It is natural that all who directly
profit by abuses, and all who profit by the disaffection which
abuses excite, should be leagued together against a bill which,
by making the government pure, will make the nation loyal.  There
is, and always has been, a real alliance between the two extreme
parties in this country.  They play into each other's hands.
They live by each other.  Neither would have any influence if the
other were taken away.  The demagogue would have no audience but
for the indignation excited among the multitude by the insolence
of the enemies of Reform:  and the last hope of the enemies of
Reform is in the uneasiness excited among all who have anything
to lose by the ravings of the demagogue.  I see, and glad I am to
see, that the nation perfectly understands and justly appreciates
this coalition between those who hate all liberty and those who
hate all order.  England has spoken, and spoken out.  From her
most opulent seaports, from her manufacturing towns, from her
capital and its gigantic suburbs, from almost every one of her
counties, has gone forth a voice, answering in no doubtful or
faltering accent to that truly royal voice which appealed on the
twenty-second of last April to the sense of the nation.

So clearly, indeed, has the sense of the nation been expressed,
that scarcely any person now ventures to declare himself hostile
to all Reform.  We are, it seems, a House of Reformers.  Those
very gentlemen who, a few months ago, were vehement against all
change, now own that some change may be proper, may be necessary.
They assure us that their opposition is directed, not against
Parliamentary Reform, but against the particular plan which is
now before us, and that a Tory Ministry would devise a much
better plan.  I cannot but think that these tactics are
unskilful.  I cannot but think that, when our opponents defended
the existing system in every part, they occupied a stronger
position than at present.  As my noble friend the Paymaster-
General said, they have committed an error resembling that of the
Scotch army at Dunbar.  They have left the high ground from which
we might have had some difficulty in dislodging them.  They have
come down to low ground, where they are at our mercy.  Surely, as
Cromwell said, surely the Lord hath delivered them into our hand.

For, Sir, it is impossible not to perceive that almost every
argument which they have urged against this Reform Bill may be
urged with equal force, or with greater force, against any Reform
Bill which they can themselves bring in.

First take, what, indeed, are not arguments, but wretched
substitutes for arguments, those vague terms of reproach, which
have been so largely employed, here and elsewhere, by our
opponents; revolutionary, anarchical, traitorous, and so forth.
It will, I apprehend, hardly be disputed that these epithets can
be just as easily applied to one Reform Bill as to another.

But, you say, intimidation has been used to promote the passing
of this bill; and it would be disgraceful, and of evil example,
that Parliament should yield to intimidation.  But surely, if
that argument be of any force against the present bill, it will
be of tenfold force against any Reform Bill proposed by you.  For
this bill is the work of men who are Reformers from conscientious
conviction, of men, some of whom were Reformers when Reformer was
a name of reproach, of men, all of whom were Reformers before the
nation had begun to demand Reform in imperative and menacing
tones.  But you are notoriously Reformers merely from fear.  You
are Reformers under duress.  If a concession is to be made to the
public importunity, you can hardly deny that it will be made with
more grace and dignity by Lord Grey than by you.

Then you complain of the anomalies of the bill.  One county, you
say, will have twelve members; and another county, which is
larger and more populous, will have only ten.  Some towns, which
are to have only one member, are more considerable than other
towns which are to have two.  Do those who make these objections,
objections which by the by will be more in place when the bill is
in committee, seriously mean to say that a Tory Reform Bill will
leave no anomalies in the representative system?  For my own
part, I trouble myself not at all about anomalies, considered
merely as anomalies.  I would not take the trouble of lifting up
my hand to get rid of an anomaly that was not also a grievance.
But if gentlemen have such a horror of anomalies, it is strange
that they should so long have persisted in upholding a system
made up of anomalies far greater than any that can be found in
this bill (a cry of "No!").  Yes; far greater.  Answer me, if you
can; but do not interrupt me.  On this point, indeed, it is much
easier to interrupt than to answer.  For who can answer plain
arithmetical demonstration?  Under the present system,
Manchester, with two hundred thousand inhabitants, has no
members.  Old Sarum, with no inhabitants, has two members.  Find
me such an anomaly in the schedules which are now on the table.
But is it possible that you, that Tories, can seriously mean to
adopt the only plan which can remove all anomalies from the
representative system?  Are you prepared to have, after every
decennial census, a new distribution of members among electoral
districts?  Is your plan of Reform that which Mr Canning
satirised as the most crazy of all the projects of the disciples
of Tom Paine?  Do you really mean

"That each fair burgh, numerically free,
Shall choose its members by the rule of three?"

If not, let us hear no more of the anomalies of the Reform Bill.

But your great objection to this bill is that it will not be
final.  I ask you whether you think that any Reform Bill which
you can frame will be final?  For my part I do believe that the
settlement proposed by His Majesty's Ministers will be final, in
the only sense in which a wise man ever uses that word.  I
believe that it will last during that time for which alone we
ought at present to think of legislating.  Another generation may
find in the new representative system defects such as we find in
the old representative system.  Civilisation will proceed.
Wealth will increase.  Industry and trade will find out new
seats.  The same causes which have turned so many villages into
great towns, which have turned so many thousands of square miles
of fir and heath into cornfields and orchards, will continue to
operate.  Who can say that a hundred years hence there may not
be, on the shore of some desolate and silent bay in the Hebrides,
another Liverpool, with its docks and warehouses and endless
forests of masts?  Who can say that the huge chimneys of another
Manchester may not rise in the wilds of Connemara?  For our
children we do not pretend to legislate.  All that we can do for
them is to leave to them a memorable example of the manner in
which great reforms ought to be made.  In the only sense,
therefore, in which a statesman ought to say that anything is
final, I pronounce this bill final.  But in what sense will your
bill be final?  Suppose that you could defeat the Ministers, that
you could displace them, that you could form a Government, that
you could obtain a majority in this House, what course would
events take?  There is no difficulty in foreseeing the stages of
the rapid progress downward.  First we should have a mock reform;
a Bassietlaw reform; a reform worthy of those politicians who,
when a delinquent borough had forfeited its franchise, and when
it was necessary for them to determine what they would do with
two seats in Parliament, deliberately gave those seats, not to
Manchester or Birmingham or Leeds, not to Lancashire or
Staffordshire or Devonshire, but to a constituent body studiously
selected because it was not large and because it was not
independent; a reform worthy of those politicians who, only
twelve months ago, refused to give members to the three greatest
manufacturing towns in the world.  We should have a reform which
would produce all the evils and none of the benefits of change,
which would take away from the representative system the
foundation of prescription, and yet would not substitute the
surer foundation of reason and public good.  The people would be
at once emboldened and exasperated; emboldened because they would
see that they had frightened the Tories into making a pretence of
reforming the Parliament; and exasperated because they would see
that the Tory Reform was a mere pretence.  Then would come
agitation, tumult, political associations, libels, inflammatory
harangues.  Coercion would only aggravate the evil.  This is no
age, this is no country, for the war of power against opinion.
Those Jacobin mountebanks, whom this bill would at once send back
to their native obscurity, would rise into fearful importance.
The law would be sometimes braved and sometimes evaded.  In
short, England would soon be what Ireland was at the beginning of
1829.  Then, at length, as in 1829, would come the late and vain
repentance.  Then, Sir, amidst the generous cheers of the Whigs,
who will be again occupying their old seats on your left hand,
and amidst the indignant murmurs of those stanch Tories who are
now again trusting to be again betrayed, the right honourable
Baronet opposite will rise from the Treasury Bench to propose
that bill on which the hearts of the people are set.  But will
that bill be then accepted with the delight and thankfulness with
which it was received last March?  Remember Ireland.  Remember
how, in that country, concessions too long delayed were at last
received.  That great boon which in 1801, in 1813, in 1825, would
have won the hearts of millions, given too late, and given from
fear, only produced new clamours and new dangers.  Is not one
such lesson enough for one generation?  A noble Lord opposite
told us not to expect that this bill will have a conciliatory
effect.  Recollect, he said, how the French aristocracy
surrendered their privileges in 1789, and how that surrender was
requited.  Recollect that Day of Sacrifices which was afterwards
called the Day of Dupes.  Sir, that day was afterwards called the
Day of Dupes, not because it was the Day of Sacrifices, but
because it was the Day of Sacrifices too long deferred.  It was
because the French aristocracy resisted reform in 1783, that they
were unable to resist revolution in 1789.  It was because they
clung too long to odious exemptions and distinctions, that they
were at last unable to serve their lands, their mansions, their
heads.  They would not endure Turgot:  and they had to endure
Robespierre.

I am far indeed from wishing that the Members of this House
should be influenced by fear in the bad and unworthy sense of
that word.  But there is an honest and honourable fear, which
well becomes those who are intrusted with the dearest interests
of a great community; and to that fear I am not ashamed to make
an earnest appeal.  It is very well to talk of confronting
sedition boldly, and of enforcing the law against those who would
disturb the public peace.  No doubt a tumult caused by local and
temporary irritation ought to be suppressed with promptitude and
vigour.  Such disturbances, for example, as those which Lord
George Gordon raised in 1780, should be instantly put down with
the strong hand.  But woe to the Government which cannot
distinguish between a nation and a mob!  Woe to the Government
which thinks that a great, a steady, a long continued movement of
the public mind is to be stopped like a street riot!  This error
has been twice fatal to the great House of Bourbon.  God be
praised, our rulers have been wiser.  The golden opportunity
which, if once suffered to escape, might never have been
retrieved, has been seized.  Nothing, I firmly believe, can now
prevent the passing of this noble law, this second Bill of
Rights.  ["Murmurs."]  Yes, I call it, and the nation calls it,
and our posterity will long call it, this second Bill of Rights,
this Greater Charter of the Liberties of England.  The year 1831
will, I trust, exhibit the first example of the manner in which
it behoves a free and enlightened people to purify their polity
from old and deeply seated abuses, without bloodshed, without
violence, without rapine, all points freely debated, all the
forms of senatorial deliberation punctiliously observed, industry
and trade not for a moment interrupted, the authority of law not
for a moment suspended.  These are things of which we may well be
proud.  These are things which swell the heart up with a good
hope for the destinies of mankind.  I cannot but anticipate a
long series of happy years; of years during which a parental
Government will be firmly supported by a grateful nation:  of
years during which war, if war should be inevitable, will find us
an united people; of years pre-eminently distinguished by the
progress of arts, by the improvement of laws, by the augmentation
of the public resources, by the diminution of the public burdens,
by all those victories of peace, in which, far more than in any
military successes, consists the true felicity of states, and the
true glory of statesmen.  With such hopes, Sir, and such
feelings, I give my cordial assent to the second reading of a
bill which I consider as in itself deserving of the warmest
approbation, and as indispensably necessary, in the present
temper of the public mind, to the repose of the country and to
the stability of the throne.

...


PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.  (SEPTEMBER 20, 1831)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 20TH OF
SEPTEMBER 1831.

On Monday, the nineteenth of September, 1831, the Bill to amend
the representation of the people in England and Wales was read a
third time, at an early hour and in a thin house, without any
debate.  But on the question whether the Bill should pass a
discussion arose which lasted three nights.  On the morning of
the twenty-second of September the House divided; and the Bill
passed by 345 votes to 236.  The following Speech was made on the
second night of the debate.

It is not without great diffidence, Sir, that I rise to address
you on a subject which has been nearly exhausted.  Indeed, I
should not have risen had I not thought that, though the
arguments on this question are for the most part old, our
situation at present is in a great measure new.  At length the
Reform Bill, having passed without vital injury through all the
dangers which threatened it, during a long and minute discussion,
from the attacks of its enemies and from the dissensions of its
friends, comes before us for our final ratification, altered,
indeed, in some of its details for the better, and in some for
the worse, but in its great principles still the same bill which,
on the first of March, was proposed to the late Parliament, the
same bill which was received with joy and gratitude by the whole
nation, the same bill which, in an instant, took away the power
of interested agitators, and united in one firm body all the
sects of sincere Reformers, the same bill which, at the late
election, received the approbation of almost every great
constituent body in the empire.  With a confidence which
discussion has only strengthened, with an assured hope of great
public blessings if the wish of the nation shall be gratified,
with a deep and solemn apprehension of great public calamities if
that wish shall be disappointed, I, for the last time, give my
most hearty assent to this noble law, destined, I trust, to be
the parent of many good laws, and, through a long series of
years, to secure the repose and promote the prosperity of my
country.

When I say that I expect this bill to promote the prosperity of
the country, I by no means intend to encourage those chimerical
hopes which the honourable and learned Member for Rye (Mr
Pemberton.), who has so much distinguished himself in this
debate, has imputed to the Reformers.  The people, he says, are
for the bill, because they expect that it will immediately
relieve all their distresses.  Sir, I believe that very few of
that large and respectable class which we are now about to admit
to a share of political power entertain any such absurd
expectation.  They expect relief, I doubt not; and I doubt not
that they will find it:  but sudden relief they are far too wise
to expect.  The bill, says the honourable and learned gentleman,
is good for nothing:  it is merely theoretical:  it removes no
real and sensible evil:  it will not give the people more work,
or higher wages, or cheaper bread.  Undoubtedly, Sir, the bill
will not immediately give all those things to the people.  But
will any institutions give them all those things?  Do the present
institutions of the country secure to them those advantages?  If
we are to pronounce the Reform Bill good for nothing, because it
will not at once raise the nation from distress to prosperity,
what are we to say of that system under which the nation has been
of late sinking from prosperity into distress?  The defect is not
in the Reform Bill, but in the very nature of government.  On the
physical condition of the great body of the people, government
acts not as a specific, but as an alternative.  Its operation is
powerful, indeed, and certain, but gradual and indirect.  The
business of government is not directly to make the people rich;
and a government which attempts more than this is precisely the
government which is likely to perform less.  Governments do not
and cannot support the people.  We have no miraculous powers:  we
have not the rod of the Hebrew lawgiver:  we cannot rain down
bread on the multitude from Heaven:  we cannot smite the rock and
give them to drink.  We can give them only freedom to employ
their industry to the best advantage, and security in the
enjoyment of what their industry has acquired.  These advantages
it is our duty to give at the smallest possible cost.  The
diligence and forethought of individuals will thus have fair
play; and it is only by the diligence and forethought of
individuals that the community can become prosperous.  I am not
aware that His Majesty's Ministers, or any of the supporters of
this bill, have encouraged the people to hope, that Reform will
remove distress, in any other way than by this indirect process.
By this indirect process the bill will, I feel assured, conduce
to the national prosperity.  If it had been passed fifteen years
ago, it would have saved us from our present embarrassments.  If
we pass it now, it will gradually extricate us from them.  It
will secure to us a House of Commons, which, by preserving peace,
by destroying monopolies, by taking away unnecessary public
burthens, by judiciously distributing necessary public burthens,
will, in the progress of time, greatly improve our condition.
This it will do; and those who blame it for not doing more blame
it for not doing what no Constitution, no code of laws, ever did
or ever will do; what no legislator, who was not an ignorant and
unprincipled quack, ever ventured to promise.

But chimerical as are the hopes which the honourable and learned
Member for Rye imputes to the people, they are not, I think, more
chimerical than the fears which he has himself avowed.  Indeed,
those very gentlemen who are constantly telling us that we are
taking a leap in the dark, that we pay no attention to the
lessons of experience, that we are mere theorists, are themselves
the despisers of experience, are themselves the mere theorists.
They are terrified at the thought of admitting into Parliament
members elected by ten pound householders.  They have formed in
their own imaginations a most frightful idea of these members.
My honourable and learned friend, the Member for Cockermouth (Sir
James Scarlett.), is certain that these members will take every
opportunity of promoting the interests of the journeyman in
opposition to those of the capitalist.  The honourable and
learned Member for Rye is convinced that none but persons who
have strong local connections, will ever be returned for such
constituent bodies.  My honourable friend, the Member for
Thetford (Mr Alexander Baring.), tells us, that none but mob
orators, men who are willing to pay the basest court to the
multitude, will have any chance.  Other speakers have gone still
further, and have described to us the future borough members as
so many Marats and Santerres, low, fierce, desperate men, who
will turn the House into a bear-garden, and who will try to turn
the monarchy into a republic, mere agitators, without honour,
without sense, without education, without the feelings or the
manners of gentlemen.  Whenever, during the course of the
fatiguing discussions by which we have been so long occupied,
there has been a cry of "question," or a noise at the bar, the
orator who has been interrupted has remarked, that such
proceedings will be quite in place in the Reformed Parliament,
but that we ought to remember that the House of Commons is still
an assembly of gentlemen.  This, I say, is to set up mere theory,
or rather mere prejudice, in opposition to long and ample
experience.  Are the gentlemen who talk thus ignorant that we
have already the means of judging what kind of men the ten pound
householders will send up to parliament?  Are they ignorant that
there are even now large towns with very popular franchises, with
franchises even more democratic than those which will be bestowed
by the present bill?  Ought they not, on their own principles, to
look at the results of the experiments which have already been
made, instead of predicting frightful calamities at random?  How
do the facts which are before us agree with their theories?
Nottingham is a city with a franchise even more democratic than
that which this bill establishes.  Does Nottingham send hither
mere vulgar demagogues?  It returns two distinguished men, one an
advocate, the other a soldier, both unconnected with the town.
Every man paying scot and lot has a vote at Leicester.  This is a
lower franchise than the ten pound franchise.  Do we find that
the Members for Leicester are the mere tools of the journeymen?
I was at Leicester during the contest of 1826; and I recollect
that the suffrages of the scot and lot voters were pretty equally
divided between two candidates, neither of them connected with
the place, neither of them a slave of the mob, one a Tory Baronet
from Derbyshire, the other a most respectable and excellent
friend of mine, connected with the manufacturing interest, and
also an inhabitant of Derbyshire.  Look at Norwich.  Look at
Northampton, with a franchise more democratic than even the scot
and lot franchise.  Northampton formerly returned Mr Perceval,
and now returns gentlemen of high respectability, gentlemen who
have a great stake in the prosperity and tranquillity of the
country.  Look at the metropolitan districts.  This is an a
fortiori case.  Nay it is--the expression, I fear, is awkward--an
a fortiori case at two removes.  The ten pound householders of
the metropolis are persons in a lower station of life than the
ten pound householders of other towns.  The scot and lot
franchise in the metropolis is again lower than the ten pound
franchise.  Yet have Westminster and Southwark been in the habit
of sending us members of whom we have had reason to be ashamed,
of whom we have not had reason to be proud?  I do not say that
the inhabitants of Westminster and Southwark have always
expressed their political sentiments with proper moderation.
That is not the question.  The question is this:  what kind of
men have they elected?  The very principle of all Representative
government is, that men who do not judge well of public affairs
may be quite competent to choose others who will judge better.
Whom, then, have Westminster and Southwark sent us during the
last fifty years, years full of great events, years of intense
popular excitement?  Take any one of those nomination boroughs,
the patrons of which have conscientiously endeavoured to send fit
men into this House.  Compare the Members for that borough with
the Members for Westminster and Southwark; and you will have no
doubt to which the preference is due.  It is needless to mention
Mr Fox, Mr Sheridan, Mr Tierney, Sir Samuel Romilly.  Yet I must
pause at the name of Sir Samuel Romilly.  Was he a mob orator?
Was he a servile flatterer of the multitude?  Sir, if he had any
fault, if there was any blemish on that most serene and spotless
character, that character which every public man, and especially
every professional man engaged in politics, ought to propose to
himself as a model, it was this, that he despised popularity too
much and too visibly.  The honourable Member for Thetford told us
that the honourable and learned Member for Rye, with all his
talents, would have no chance of a seat in the Reformed
Parliament, for want of the qualifications which succeed on the
hustings.  Did Sir Samuel Romilly ever appear on the hustings of
Westminster?  He never solicited one vote; he never showed
himself to the electors, till he had been returned at the head of
the poll.  Even then, as I have heard from one of his nearest
relatives, it was with reluctance that he submitted to be
chaired.  He shrank from being made a show.  He loved the people,
and he served them; but Coriolanus himself was not less fit to
canvass them.  I will mention one other name, that of a man of
whom I have only a childish recollection, but who must have been
intimately known to many of those who hear me, Mr Henry Thornton.
He was a man eminently upright, honourable, and religious, a man
of strong understanding, a man of great political knowledge; but,
in all respects, the very reverse of a mob orator.  He was a man
who would not have yielded to what he considered as unreasonable
clamour, I will not say to save his seat, but to save his life.
Yet he continued to represent Southwark, Parliament after
Parliament, for many years.  Such has been the conduct of the
scot and lot voters of the metropolis; and there is clearly less
reason to expect democratic violence from ten pound householders
than from scot and lot householders; and from ten pound
householders in the country towns than from ten pound
householders in London.  Experience, I say, therefore, is on our
side; and on the side of our opponents nothing but mere
conjecture and mere assertion.

Sir, when this bill was first brought forward, I supported it,
not only on the ground of its intrinsic merits, but, also,
because I was convinced that to reject it would be a course full
of danger.  I believe that the danger of that course is in no
respect diminished.  I believe, on the contrary, that it is
increased.  We are told that there is a reaction.  The warmth of
the public feeling, it seems, has abated.  In this story both the
sections of the party opposed to Reform are agreed; those who
hate Reform, because it will remove abuses, and those who hate
it, because it will vert anarchy; those who wish to see the
electing body controlled by ejectments, and those who wish to see
it controlled by riots.  They must now, I think, be undeceived.
They must have already discovered that the surest way to prevent
a reaction is to talk about it, and that the enthusiasm of the
people is at once rekindled by any indiscreet mention of their
seeming coolness.  This, Sir, is not the first reaction which the
sagacity of the Opposition has discovered since the Reform Bill
was brought in.  Every gentleman who sat in the late Parliament,
every gentleman who, during the sitting of the late Parliament,
paid attention to political speeches and publications, must
remember how, for some time before the debate on General
Gascoyne's motion, and during the debate on that motion, and down
to the very day of the dissolution, we were told that public
feeling had cooled.  The right honourable Baronet, the member for
Tamworth, told us so.  All the literary organs of the Opposition,
from the Quarterly Review down to the Morning Post, told us so.
All the Members of the Opposition with whom we conversed in
private told us so.  I have in my eye a noble friend of mine, who
assured me, on the very night which preceded the dissolution,
that the people had ceased to be zealous for the Ministerial
plan, and that we were more likely to lose than to gain by the
elections.  The appeal was made to the people; and what was the
result?  What sign of a reaction appeared among the Livery of
London?  What sign of a reaction did the honourable Baronet who
now represents Okehampton find among the freeholders of Cornwall?
(Sir Richard Vyvyan.)  How was it with the large represented
towns?  Had Liverpool cooled? or Bristol? or Leicester? or
Coventry? or Nottingham? or Norwich?  How was it with the great
seats of manufacturing industry, Yorkshire, and Lancashire, and
Staffordshire, and Warwickshire, and Cheshire?  How was it with
the agricultural districts, Northumberland and Cumberland,
Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, Kent and Essex, Oxfordshire,
Hampshire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire?  How was it
with the strongholds of aristocratical influence, Newark, and
Stamford, and Hertford, and St Alban's?  Never did any people
display, within the limits prescribed by law, so generous a
fervour, or so steadfast a determination, as that very people
whose apparent languor had just before inspired the enemies of
Reform with a delusive hope.

Such was the end of the reaction of April; and, if that lesson
shall not profit those to whom it was given, such and yet more
signal will be the end of the reaction of September.  The two
cases are strictly analogous.  In both cases the people were
eager when they believed the bill to be in danger, and quiet when
they believed it to be in security.  During the three or four
weeks which followed the promulgation of the Ministerial plan,
all was joy, and gratitude, and vigorous exertion.  Everywhere
meetings were held:  everywhere resolutions were passed:  from
every quarter were sent up petitions to this House, and addresses
to the Throne:  and then the nation, having given vent to its
first feelings of delight, having clearly and strongly expressed
its opinions, having seen the principle of the bill adopted by
the House of Commons on the second reading, became composed, and
awaited the result with a tranquillity which the Opposition
mistook for indifference.  All at once the aspect of affairs
changed.  General Gascoyne's amendment was carried:  the bill was
again in danger:  exertions were again necessary.  Then was it
well seen whether the calmness of the public mind was any
indication of indifference.  The depth and sincerity of the
prevailing sentiments were proved, not by mere talking, but by
actions, by votes, by sacrifices.  Intimidation was defied:
expenses were rejected: old ties were broken:  the people
struggled manfully:  they triumphed gloriously:  they placed the
bill in perfect security, as far as this house was concerned; and
they returned to their repose.  They are now, as they were on the
eve of General Gascoyne's motion, awaiting the issue of the
deliberations of Parliament, without any indecent show of
violence, but with anxious interest and immovable resolution.
And because they are not exhibiting that noisy and rapturous
enthusiasm which is in its own nature transient, because they are
not as much excited as on the day when the plan of the Government
was first made known to them, or on the day when the late
Parliament was dissolved, because they do not go on week after
week, hallooing, and holding meetings, and marching about with
flags, and making bonfires, and illuminating their houses, we are
again told that there is a reaction.  To such a degree can men be
deceived by their wishes, in spite of their own recent
experience.  Sir, there is no reaction; and there will be no
reaction.  All that has been said on this subject convinces me
only that those who are now, for the second time, raising this
cry, know nothing of the crisis in which they are called on to
act, or of the nation which they aspire to govern.  All their
opinions respecting this bill are founded on one great error.
They imagine that the public feeling concerning Reform is a mere
whim which sprang up suddenly out of nothing, and which will as
suddenly vanish into nothing.  They, therefore, confidently
expect a reaction.  They are always looking out for a reaction.
Everything that they see, or that they hear, they construe into a
sign of the approach of this reaction.  They resemble the man in
Horace, who lies on the bank of the river, expecting that it will
every moment pass by and leave him a clear passage, not knowing
the depth and abundance of the fountain which feeds it, not
knowing that it flows, and will flow on for ever.  They have
found out a hundred ingenious devices by which they deceive
themselves.  Sometimes they tell us that the public feeling about
Reform was caused by the events which took place at Paris about
fourteen months ago; though every observant and impartial man
knows, that the excitement which the late French revolution
produced in England was not the cause but the effect of that
progress which liberal opinions had made amongst us.  Sometimes
they tell us that we should not have been troubled with any
complaints on the subject of the Representation, if the House of
Commons had agreed to a certain motion, made in the session of
1830, for inquiry into the causes of the public distress.  I
remember nothing about that motion, except that it gave rise to
the dullest debate ever known; and the country, I am firmly
convinced, cared not one straw about it.  But is it not strange
that men of real ability can deceive themselves so grossly, as to
think that any change in the government of a foreign nation, or
the rejection of any single motion, however popular, could all at
once raise up a great, rich, enlightened nation, against its
ancient institutions?  Could such small drops have produced an
overflowing, if the vessel had not already been filled to the
very brim?  These explanations are incredible, and if they were
credible, would be anything but consolatory.  If it were really
true that the English people had taken a sudden aversion to a
representative system which they had always loved and admired,
because a single division in Parliament had gone against their
wishes, or because, in a foreign country, in circumstances
bearing not the faintest analogy to those in which we are placed,
a change of dynasty had happened, what hope could we have for
such a nation of madmen?  How could we expect that the present
form of government, or any form of government, would be durable
amongst them?

Sir, the public feeling concerning Reform is of no such recent
origin, and springs from no such frivolous causes.  Its first
faint commencement may be traced far, very far, back in our
history.  During seventy years that feeling has had a great
influence on the public mind.  Through the first thirty years of
the reign of George the Third, it was gradually increasing.  The
great leaders of the two parties in the State were favourable to
Reform.  Plans of reform were supported by large and most
respectable minorities in the House of Commons.  The French
Revolution, filling the higher and middle classes with an extreme
dread of change, and the war calling away the public attention
from internal to external politics, threw the question back; but
the people never lost sight of it.  Peace came, and they were at
leisure to think of domestic improvements.  Distress came, and
they suspected, as was natural, that their distress was the
effect of unfaithful stewardship and unskilful legislation.  An
opinion favourable to Parliamentary Reform grew up rapidly, and
became strong among the middle classes.  But one tie, one strong
tie, still bound those classes to the Tory party.  I mean the
Catholic Question.  It is impossible to deny that, on that
subject, a large proportion, a majority, I fear, of the middle
class of Englishmen, conscientiously held opinions opposed to
those which I have always entertained, and were disposed to
sacrifice every other consideration to what they regarded as a
religious duty.  Thus the Catholic Question hid, so to speak, the
question of Parliamentary Reform.  The feeling in favour of
Parliamentary Reform grew, but it grew in the shade.  Every man,
I think, must have observed the progress of that feeling in his
own social circle.  But few Reform meetings were held, and few
petitions in favour of Reform presented.  At length the Catholics
were emancipated; the solitary link of sympathy which attached
the people to the Tories was broken; the cry of "No Popery" could
no longer be opposed to the cry of "Reform."  That which, in the
opinion of the two great parties in Parliament, and of a vast
portion of the community, had been the first question, suddenly
disappeared; and the question of Parliamentary Reform took the
first place.  Then was put forth all the strength which had been
growing in silence and obscurity.  Then it appeared that Reform
had on its side a coalition of interests and opinions
unprecedented in our history, all the liberality and intelligence
which had supported the Catholic claims, and all the clamour
which had opposed them.

This, I believe, is the true history of that public feeling on
the subject of Reform which had been ascribed to causes quite
inadequate to the production of such an effect.  If ever there
was in the history of mankind a national sentiment which was the
very opposite of a caprice, with which accident had nothing to
do, which was produced by the slow, steady, certain progress of
the human mind, it is the sentiment of the English people on the
subject of Reform.  Accidental circumstances may have brought
that feeling to maturity in a particular year, or a particular
month.  That point I will not dispute; for it is not worth
disputing.  But those accidental circumstances have brought on
Reform, only as the circumstance that, at a particular time,
indulgences were offered for sale in a particular town in Saxony,
brought on the great separation from the Church of Rome.  In both
cases the public mind was prepared to move on the slightest
impulse.

Thinking thus of the public opinion concerning Reform, being
convinced that this opinion is the mature product of time and of
discussion, I expect no reaction.  I no more expect to see my
countrymen again content with the mere semblance of a
Representation, than to see them again drowning witches or
burning heretics, trying causes by red hot ploughshares, or
offering up human sacrifices to wicker idols.  I no more expect a
reaction in favour of Gatton and Old Sarum, than a reaction in
favour of Thor and Odin.  I should think such a reaction almost
as much a miracle as that the shadow should go back upon the
dial.  Revolutions produced by violence are often followed by
reactions; the victories of reason once gained, are gained for
eternity.

In fact, if there be, in the present aspect of public affairs,
any sign peculiarly full of evil omen to the opponents of Reform,
it is that very calmness of the public mind on which they found
their expectation of success.  They think that it is the calmness
of indifference.  It is the calmness of confident hope:  and in
proportion to the confidence of hope will be the bitterness of
disappointment.  Disappointment, indeed, I do not anticipate.
That we are certain of success in this House is now acknowledged;
and our opponents have, in consequence, during the whole of this
Session, and particularly during the present debate, addressed
their arguments and exhortations rather to the Lords than to the
assembly of which they are themselves Members.  Their principal
argument has always been, that the bill will destroy the peerage.
The honourable and learned Member for Rye has, in plain terms,
called on the Barons of England to save their order from
democratic encroachments, by rejecting this measure.  All these
arguments, all these appeals, being interpreted, mean this:
"Proclaim to your countrymen that you have no common interests
with them, no common sympathies with them; that you can be
powerful only by their weakness, and exalted only by their
degradation; that the corruption which disgusts them, and the
oppression against which their spirit rises up, are indispensable
to your authority; that the freedom and purity of election are
incompatible with the very existence of your House.  Give them
clearly to understand that your power rests, not as they have
hitherto imagined, on their rational convictions, or on their
habitual veneration, or on your own great property, but on a
system fertile of political evils, fertile also of low iniquities
of which ordinary justice take cognisance.  Bind up, in
inseparable union, the privileges of your estate with the
grievances of ours:  resolve to stand or fall with abuses visibly
marked out for destruction:  tell the people that they are
attacking you in attacking the three holes in the wall, and that
they shall never get rid of the three holes in the wall, till
they have got rid of you; that a hereditary peerage and a
representative assembly, can co-exist only in name, and that, if
they will have a real House of Peers, they must be content with a
mock House of Commons."  This, I say, is the advice given to the
Lords by those who call themselves the friends of aristocracy.
That advice so pernicious will not be followed, I am well
assured; yet I cannot but listen to it with uneasiness.  I cannot
but wonder that it should proceed from the lips of men who are
constantly lecturing us on the duty of consulting history and
experience.  Have they never heard what effects counsels like
their own, when too faithfully followed, have produced?  Have
they never visited that neighbouring country, which still
presents to the eye, even of a passing stranger, the signs of a
great dissolution and renovation of society?  Have they never
walked by those stately mansions, now sinking into decay, and
portioned out into lodging rooms, which line the silent streets
of the Faubourg St Germain?  Have they never seen the ruins of
those castles whose terraces and gardens overhang the Loire?
Have they never heard that from those magnificent hotels, from
those ancient castles, an aristocracy as splendid, as brave, as
proud, as accomplished, as ever Europe saw, was driven forth to
exile and beggary, to implore the charity of hostile Governments
and hostile creeds, to cut wood in the back settlements of
America, or to teach French in the schoolrooms of London?  And
why were those haughty nobles destroyed with that utter
destruction?  Why were they scattered over the face of the earth,
their titles abolished, their escutcheons defaced, their parks
wasted, their palaces dismantled, their heritage given to
strangers?  Because they had no sympathy with the people, no
discernment of the signs of their time; because, in the pride and
narrowness of their hearts, they called those whose warnings
might have saved them theorists and speculators; because they
refused all concession till the time had arrived when no
concession would avail.  I have no apprehension that such a fate
awaits the nobles of England.  I draw no parallel between our
aristocracy and that of France.  Those who represent the peerage
as a class whose power is incompatible with the just influence of
the people in the State, draw that parallel, and not I.  They do
all in their power to place the Lords and Commons of England in
that position with respect to each other in which the French
gentry stood with respect to the Third Estate.  But I am
convinced that these advisers will not succeed.  We see, with
pride and delight, among the friends of the people, the Talbots,
the Cavendishes, the princely house of Howard.  Foremost among
those who have entitled themselves, by their exertions in this
House, to the lasting gratitude of their countrymen, we see the
descendants of Marlborough, of Russell, and of Derby.  I hope,
and firmly believe, that the Lords will see what their interests
and their honour require.  I hope, and firmly believe, that they
will act in such a manner as to entitle themselves to the esteem
and affection of the people.  But if not, let not the enemies of
Reform imagine that their reign is straightway to recommence, or
that they have obtained anything more than a short and uneasy
respite.  We are bound to respect the constitutional rights of
the Peers; but we are bound also not to forget our own.  We, too,
have our privileges; we, too, are an estate of the realm.  A
House of Commons strong in the love and confidence of the people,
a House of Commons which has nothing to fear from a dissolution,
is something in the government.  Some persons, I well know,
indulge a hope that the rejection of the bill will at once
restore the domination of that party which fled from power last
November, leaving everything abroad and everything at home in
confusion; leaving the European system, which it had built up at
a vast cost of blood and treasure, falling to pieces in every
direction; leaving the dynasties which it had restored, hastening
into exile; leaving the nations which it had joined together,
breaking away from each other; leaving the fundholders in dismay;
leaving the peasantry in insurrection; leaving the most fertile
counties lighted up with the fires of incendiaries; leaving the
capital in such a state, that a royal procession could not pass
safely through it.  Dark and terrible, beyond any season within
my remembrance of political affairs, was the day of their flight.
Far darker and far more terrible will be the day of their return.
They will return in opposition to the whole British nation,
united as it was never before united on any internal question;
united as firmly as when the Armada was sailing up the Channel;
united as firmly as when Bonaparte pitched his camp on the cliffs
of Boulogne.  They will return pledged to defend evils which the
people are resolved to destroy.  They will return to a situation
in which they can stand only by crushing and trampling down
public opinion, and from which, if they fall, they may, in their
fall, drag down with them the whole frame of society.  Against
such evils, should such evils appear to threaten the country, it
will be our privilege and our duty to warn our gracious and
beloved Sovereign.  It will be our privilege and our duty to
convey the wishes of a loyal people to the throne of a patriot
king.  At such a crisis the proper place for the House of Commons
is in front of the nation; and in that place this House will
assuredly be found.  Whatever prejudice or weakness may do
elsewhere to ruin the empire, here, I trust, will not be wanting
the wisdom, the virtue, and the energy that may save it.

...


PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.  (OCTOBER 10, 1831)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 10TH OF
OCTOBER, 1831.

On the morning of Saturday, the eighth of October, 1831, the
House of Lords, by a majority of 190 to 158, rejected the Reform
Bill.  On the Monday following, Lord Ebrington, member for
Devonshire, moved the following resolution in the House of
Commons:

"That while this House deeply laments the present fate of a bill
for amending the representation of the people in England and
Wales, in favour of which the opinion of the country stands
unequivocally pronounced, and which has been matured by
discussions the most anxious and laborious, it feels itself
called upon to reassert its firm adherence to the principle and
leading provisions of that great measure, and to express its
unabated confidence in the integrity, perseverance, and ability
of those Ministers, who, in introducing and conducting it, have
so well consulted the best interests of the country."

The resolution was carried by 329 votes to 198.  The following
speech was made early in the debate.

I doubt, Sir, whether any person who had merely heard the speech
of the right honourable Member for the University of Cambridge
(Mr Goulburn.) would have been able to conjecture what the
question is on which we are discussing, and what the occasion on
which we are assembled.  For myself, I can with perfect certainty
declare that never in the whole course of my life did I feel my
mind oppressed by so deep and solemn a sense of responsibility as
at the present moment.  I firmly believe that the country is now
in danger of calamities greater than ever threatened it, from
domestic misgovernment or from foreign hostility.  The danger is
no less than this, that there may be a complete alienation of the
people from their rulers.  To soothe the public mind, to
reconcile the people to the delay, the short delay, which must
intervene before their wishes can be legitimately gratified, and
in the meantime to avert civil discord, and to uphold the
authority of law, these are, I conceive, the objects of my noble
friend, the Member for Devonshire:  these ought, at the present
crisis, to be the objects of every honest Englishman.  They are
objects which will assuredly be attained, if we rise to this
great occasion, if we take our stand in the place which the
Constitution has assigned to us, if we employ, with becoming
firmness and dignity, the powers which belong to us as trustees
of the nation, and as advisers of the Throne.

Sir, the Resolution of my noble friend consists of two parts.  He
calls upon us to declare our undiminished attachment to the
principles of the Reform Bill, and also our undiminished
confidence in His Majesty's Ministers.  I consider these two
declarations as identical.  The question of Reform is, in my
opinion, of such paramount importance, that, approving the
principles of the Ministerial Bill, I must think the Ministers
who have brought that bill forward, although I may differ from
them on some minor points, entitled to the strongest support of
Parliament.  The right honourable gentleman, the Member for the
University of Cambridge, has attempted to divert the course of
the debate to questions comparatively unimportant.  He has said
much about the coal duty, about the candle duty, about the budget
of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer.  On most of the
points to which he has referred, it would be easy for me, were I
so inclined, to defend the Ministers; and where I could not
defend them, I should find it easy to recriminate on those who
preceded them.  The right honourable Member for the University of
Cambridge has taunted the Ministers with the defeat which their
plan respecting the timber trade sustained in the last
Parliament.  I might, perhaps, at a more convenient season, be
tempted to inquire whether that defeat was more disgraceful to
them or to their predecessors.  I might, perhaps, be tempted to
ask the right honourable gentleman whether, if he had not been
treated, while in office, with more fairness than he has shown
while in opposition, it would have been in his power to carry his
best bill, the Beer Bill?  He has accused the Ministers of
bringing forward financial propositions, and then withdrawing
those propositions.  Did not he bring forward, during the Session
of 1830, a plan respecting the sugar duties?  And was not that
plan withdrawn?  But, Sir, this is mere trifling.  I will not be
seduced from the matter in hand by the right honourable
gentleman's example.  At the present moment I can see only one
question in the State, the question of Reform; only two parties,
the friends of the Reform Bill and its enemies.

It is not my intention, Sir, again to discuss the merits of the
Reform Bill.  The principle of that bill received the approbation
of the late House of Commons after a discussion of ten nights;
and the bill as it now stands, after a long and most laborious
investigation, passed the present House of Commons by a majority
which was nearly half as large again as the minority.  This was
little more than a fortnight ago.  Nothing has since occurred to
change our opinion.  The justice of the case is unaltered.  The
public enthusiasm is undiminished.  Old Sarum has grown no
larger.  Manchester has grown no smaller.  In addressing this
House, therefore, I am entitled to assume that the bill is in
itself a good bill.  If so, ought we to abandon it merely because
the Lords have rejected it?  We ought to respect the lawful
privileges of their House; but we ought also to assert our own.
We are constitutionally as independent of their Lordships as
their Lordships are of us.  We have precisely as good a right to
adhere to our opinion as they have to dissent from it.  In
speaking of their decision, I will attempt to follow that example
of moderation which was so judiciously set by my noble friend,
the Member for Devonshire.  I will only say that I do not think
that they are more competent to form a correct judgment on a
political question than we are.  It is certain that, on all the
most important points on which the two Houses have for a long
time past differed, the Lords have at length come over to the
opinion of the Commons.  I am therefore entitled to say, that
with respect to all those points, the Peers themselves being
judges, the House of Commons was in the right and the House of
Lords in the wrong.  It was thus with respect to the Slave trade:
it was thus with respect to Catholic Emancipation:  it was thus
with several other important questions.  I, therefore, cannot
think that we ought, on the present occasion, to surrender our
judgment to those who have acknowledged that, on former occasions
of the same kind, we have judged more correctly than they.

Then again, Sir, I cannot forget how the majority and the
minority in this House were composed; I cannot forget that the
majority contained almost all those gentlemen who are returned by
large bodies of electors.  It is, I believe, no exaggeration to
say, that there were single Members of the majority who had more
constituents than the whole minority put together.  I speak
advisedly and seriously.  I believe that the number of
freeholders of Yorkshire exceeds that of all the electors who
return the Opposition.  I cannot with propriety comment here on
any reports which may have been circulated concerning the
majority and minority in the House of Lords.  I may, however,
mention these notoriously historical facts; that during the last
forty years the powers of the executive Government have been,
almost without intermission, exercised by a party opposed to
Reform; and that a very great number of Peers have been created,
and all the present Bishops raised to the bench during those
years.  On this question, therefore, while I feel more than usual
respect for the judgment of the House of Commons, I feel less
than usual respect for the judgment of the House of Lords.  Our
decision is the decision of the nation; the decision of their
Lordships can scarcely be considered as the decision even of that
class from which the Peers are generally selected, and of which
they may be considered as virtual representatives, the great
landed gentlemen of England.  It seems to me clear, therefore,
that we ought, notwithstanding what has passed in the other
House, to adhere to our opinion concerning the Reform Bill.

The next question is this; ought we to make a formal declaration
that we adhere to our opinion?  I think that we ought to make
such a declaration; and I am sure that we cannot make it in more
temperate or more constitutional terms than those which my noble
friend asks us to adopt.  I support the Resolution which he has
proposed with all my heart and soul:  I support it as a friend to
Reform; but I support it still more as a friend to law, to
property, to social order.  No observant and unprejudiced man can
look forward without great alarm to the effects which the recent
decision of the Lords may possibly produce.  I do not predict, I
do not expect, open, armed insurrection.  What I apprehend is
this, that the people may engage in a silent, but extensive and
persevering war against the law.  What I apprehend is, that
England may exhibit the same spectacle which Ireland exhibited
three years ago, agitators stronger than the magistrate,
associations stronger than the law, a Government powerful enough
to be hated, and not powerful enough to be feared, a people bent
on indemnifying themselves by illegal excesses for the want of
legal privileges.  I fear, that we may before long see the
tribunals defied, the tax-gatherer resisted, public credit
shaken, property insecure, the whole frame of society hastening
to dissolution.  It is easy to say, "Be bold:  be firm:  defy
intimidation:  let the law have its course:  the law is strong
enough to put down the seditious."  Sir, we have heard all this
blustering before; and we know in what it ended.  It is the
blustering of little men whose lot has fallen on a great crisis.
Xerxes scourging the winds, Canute commanding the waves to recede
from his footstool, were but types of the folly of those who
apply the maxims of the Quarter Sessions to the great convulsions
of society.  The law has no eyes:  the law has no hands:  the law
is nothing, nothing but a piece of paper printed by the King's
printer, with the King's arms at the top, till public opinion
breathes the breath of life into the dead letter.  We found this
in Ireland.  The Catholic Association bearded the Government.
The Government resolved to put down the Association.  An
indictment was brought against my honourable and learned friend,
the Member for Kerry.  The Grand Jury threw it out.  Parliament
met.  The Lords Commissioners came down with a speech
recommending the suppression of the self-constituted legislature
of Dublin.  A bill was brought in:  it passed both Houses by
large majorities:  it received the Royal assent.  And what effect
did it produce?  Exactly as much as that old Act of Queen
Elizabeth, still unrepealed, by which it is provided that every
man who, without a special exemption, shall eat meat on Fridays
and Saturdays, shall pay a fine of twenty shillings or go to
prison for a month.  Not only was the Association not destroyed:
its power was not for one day suspended:  it flourished and waxed
strong under the law which had been made for the purpose of
annihilating it.  The elections of 1826, the Clare election two
years later, proved the folly of those who think that nations are
governed by wax and parchment:  and, at length, in the close of
1828, the Government had only one plain choice before it,
concession or civil war.  Sir, I firmly believe that, if the
people of England shall lose all hope of carrying the Reform Bill
by constitutional means, they will forthwith begin to offer to
the Government the same kind of resistance which was offered to
the late Government, three years ago, by the people of Ireland, a
resistance by no means amounting to rebellion, a resistance
rarely amounting to any crime defined by the law, but a
resistance nevertheless which is quite sufficient to obstruct the
course of justice, to disturb the pursuits of industry, and to
prevent the accumulation of wealth.  And is not this a danger
which we ought to fear?  And is not this a danger which we are
bound, by all means in our power, to avert?  And who are those
who taunt us for yielding to intimidation?  Who are those who
affect to speak with contempt of associations, and agitators, and
public meetings?  Even the very persons who, scarce two years
ago, gave up to associations, and agitators, and public meetings,
their boasted Protestant Constitution, proclaiming all the time
that they saw the evils of Catholic Emancipation as strongly as
ever.  Surely, surely, the note of defiance which is now so
loudly sounded in our ears, proceeds with a peculiarly bad grace
from men whose highest glory it is that they abased themselves to
the dust before a people whom their policy had driven to madness,
from men the proudest moment of whose lives was that in which
they appeared in the character of persecutors scared into
toleration.  Do they mean to indemnify themselves for the
humiliation of quailing before the people of Ireland by trampling
on the people of England?  If so, they deceive themselves.  The
case of Ireland, though a strong one, was by no means so strong a
case as that with which we have now to deal.  The Government, in
its struggle with the Catholics of Ireland, had Great Britain at
its back.  Whom will it have at its back in the struggle with the
Reformers of Great Britain?  I know only two ways in which
societies can permanently be governed, by public opinion, and by
the sword.  A Government having at its command the armies, the
fleets, and the revenues of Great Britain, might possibly hold
Ireland by the sword.  So Oliver Cromwell held Ireland; so
William the Third held it; so Mr Pitt held it; so the Duke of
Wellington might perhaps have held it.  But to govern Great
Britain by the sword!  So wild a thought has never, I will
venture to say, occurred to any public man of any party; and, if
any man were frantic enough to make the attempt, he would find,
before three days had expired, that there is no better sword than
that which is fashioned out of a ploughshare.  But, if not by the
sword, how is the country to be governed?  I understand how the
peace is kept at New York.  It is by the assent and support of
the people.  I understand also how the peace is kept at Milan.
It is by the bayonets of the Austrian soldiers.  But how the
peace is to be kept when you have neither the popular assent nor
the military force, how the peace is to be kept in England by a
Government acting on the principles of the present Opposition, I
do not understand.

There is in truth a great anomaly in the relation between the
English people and their Government.  Our institutions are either
too popular or not popular enough.  The people have not
sufficient power in making the laws; but they have quite
sufficient power to impede the execution of the laws when made.
The Legislature is almost entirely aristocratical; the machinery
by which the degrees of the Legislature are carried into effect
is almost entirely popular; and, therefore, we constantly see all
the power which ought to execute the law, employed to counteract
the law.  Thus, for example, with a criminal code which carries
its rigour to the length of atrocity, we have a criminal
judicature which often carries its lenity to the length of
perjury.  Our law of libel is the most absurdly severe that ever
existed, so absurdly severe that, if it were carried into full
effect, it would be much more oppressive than a censorship.  And
yet, with this severe law of libel, we have a press which
practically is as free as the air.  In 1819 the Ministers
complained of the alarming increase of seditious and blasphemous
publications.  They proposed a bill of great rigour to stop the
growth of the evil; and they carried their bill.  It was enacted,
that the publisher of a seditious libel might, on a second
conviction, be banished, and that if he should return from
banishment, he might be transported.  How often was this law put
in force?  Not once.  Last year we repealed it:  but it was
already dead, or rather it was dead born.  It was obsolete before
Le Roi le veut had been pronounced over it.  For any effect which
it produced it might as well have been in the Code Napoleon as in
the English Statute Book.  And why did the Government, having
solicited and procured so sharp and weighty a weapon, straightway
hang it up to rust?  Was there less sedition, were there fewer
libels, after the passing of the Act than before it?  Sir, the
very next year was the year 1820, the year of the Bill of Pains
and Penalties against Queen Caroline, the very year when the
public mind was most excited, the very year when the public press
was most scurrilous.  Why then did not the Ministers use their
new law?  Because they durst not:  because they could not.  They
had obtained it with ease; for in obtaining it they had to deal
with a subservient Parliament.  They could not execute it:  for
in executing it they would have to deal with a refractory people.
These are instances of the difficulty of carrying the law into
effect when the people are inclined to thwart their rulers.  The
great anomaly, or, to speak more properly, the great evil which I
have described, would, I believe, be removed by the Reform Bill.
That bill would establish harmony between the people and the
Legislature.  It would give a fair share in the making of laws to
those without whose co-operation laws are mere waste paper.
Under a reformed system we should not see, as we now often see,
the nation repealing Acts of Parliament as fast as we and the
Lords can pass them.  As I believe that the Reform Bill would
produce this blessed and salutary concord, so I fear that the
rejection of the Reform Bill, if that rejection should be
considered as final, will aggravate the evil which I have been
describing to an unprecedented, to a terrible extent.  To all the
laws which might be passed for the collection of the revenue, or
for the prevention of sedition, the people would oppose the same
kind of resistance by means of which they have succeeded in
mitigating, I might say in abrogating, the law of libel.  There
would be so many offenders that the Government would scarcely
know at whom to aim its blow.  Every offender would have so many
accomplices and protectors that the blow would almost always miss
the aim.  The Veto of the people, a Veto not pronounced in set
form like that of the Roman Tribunes, but quite as effectual as
that of the Roman Tribunes for the purpose of impeding public
measures, would meet the Government at every turn.  The
administration would be unable to preserve order at home, or to
uphold the national honour abroad; and, at length, men who are
now moderate, who now think of revolution with horror, would
begin to wish that the lingering agony of the State might be
terminated by one fierce, sharp, decisive crisis.

Is there a way of escape from these calamities?  I believe that
there is.  I believe that, if we do our duty, if we give the
people reason to believe that the accomplishment of their wishes
is only deferred, if we declare our undiminished attachment to
the Reform Bill, and our resolution to support no Minister who
will not support that bill, we shall avert the fearful disasters
which impend over the country.  There is danger that, at this
conjuncture, men of more zeal than wisdom may obtain a fatal
influence over the public mind.  With these men will be joined
others, who have neither zeal nor wisdom, common barrators in
politics, dregs of society which, in times of violent agitation,
are tossed up from the bottom to the top, and which, in quiet
times, sink again from the top to their natural place at the
bottom.  To these men nothing is so hateful as the prospect of a
reconciliation between the orders of the State.  A crisis like
that which now makes every honest citizen sad and anxious fills
these men with joy, and with a detestable hope.  And how is it
that such men, formed by nature and education to be objects of
mere contempt, can ever inspire terror?  How is it that such men,
without talents or acquirements sufficient for the management of
a vestry, sometimes become dangerous to great empires?  The
secret of their power lies in the indolence or faithlessness of
those who ought to take the lead in the redress of public
grievances.  The whole history of low traders in sedition is
contained in that fine old Hebrew fable which we have all read in
the Book of Judges.  The trees meet to choose a king.  The vine,
and the fig tree, and the olive tree decline the office.  Then it
is that the sovereignty of the forest devolves upon the bramble:
then it is that from a base and noxious shrub goes forth the fire
which devours the cedars of Lebanon.  Let us be instructed.  If
we are afraid of political Unions and Reform Associations, let
the House of Commons become the chief point of political union:
let the House of Commons be the great Reform Association.  If we
are afraid that the people may attempt to accomplish their wishes
by unlawful means, let us give them a solemn pledge that we will
use in their cause all our high and ancient privileges, so often
victorious in old conflicts with tyranny; those privileges which
our ancestors invoked, not in vain, on the day when a faithless
king filled our house with his guards, took his seat, Sir, on
your chair, and saw your predecessor kneeling on the floor before
him.  The Constitution of England, thank God, is not one of those
constitutions which are past all repair, and which must, for the
public welfare, be utterly destroyed.  It has a decayed part; but
it has also a sound and precious part.  It requires purification;
but it contains within itself the means by which that
purification may be effected.  We read that in old times, when
the villeins were driven to revolt by oppression, when the
castles of the nobility were burned to the ground, when the
warehouses of London were pillaged, when a hundred thousand
insurgents appeared in arms on Blackheath, when a foul murder
perpetrated in their presence had raised their passions to
madness, when they were looking round for some captain to succeed
and avenge him whom they had lost, just then, before Hob Miller,
or Tom Carter, or Jack Straw, could place himself at their head,
the King rode up to them and exclaimed, "I will be your leader!"
and at once the infuriated multitude laid down their arms,
submitted to his guidance, dispersed at his command.  Herein let
us imitate him.  Our countrymen are, I fear, at this moment, but
too much disposed to lend a credulous ear to selfish impostors.
Let us say to them, "We are your leaders; we, your own house of
Commons; we, the constitutional interpreters of your wishes; the
knights of forty English shires, the citizens and burgesses of
all your largest towns.  Our lawful power shall be firmly exerted
to the utmost in your cause; and our lawful power is such, that
when firmly exerted in your cause, it must finally prevail."
This tone it is our interest and our duty to take.  The
circumstances admit of no delay.  Is there one among us who is
not looking with breathless anxiety for the next tidings which
may arrive from the remote parts of the kingdom?  Even while I
speak, the moments are passing away, the irrevocable moments
pregnant with the destiny of a great people.  The country is in
danger:  it may be saved:  we can save it:  this is the way:
this is the time.  In our hands are the issues of great good and
great evil, the issues of the life and death of the State.  May
the result of our deliberations be the repose and prosperity of
that noble country which is entitled to all our love; and for the
safety of which we are answerable to our own consciences, to the
memory of future ages, to the Judge of all hearts!

...


PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.  (DECEMBER 16, 1831)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 16TH OF
DECEMBER 1831.

On Friday, the sixteenth of December 1831, Lord Althorpe moved
the second reading of the Bill to amend the representation of the
people in England and Wales.  Lord Porchester moved, as an
amendment, that the bill should be read a second time that day
six months.  The debate lasted till after midnight, and was then
adjourned till twelve at noon.  The House did not divide till one
on the Sunday morning.  The amendment was then rejected by 324
votes to 162; and the original motion was carried.  The following
Speech was made on the first night of the debate.

I can assure my noble friend (Lord Mahon.), for whom I entertain
sentiments of respect and kindness which no political difference
will, I trust, ever disturb, that his remarks have given me no
pain, except, indeed, the pain which I feel at being compelled to
say a few words about myself.  Those words shall be very few.  I
know how unpopular egotism is in this House.  My noble friend
says that, in the debates of last March, I declared myself
opposed to the ballot, and that I have since recanted, for the
purpose of making myself popular with the inhabitants of Leeds.
My noble friend is altogether mistaken.  I never said, in any
debate, that I was opposed to the ballot.  The word ballot never
passed my lips within this House.  I observed strict silence
respecting it on two accounts; in the first place, because my own
opinions were, till very lately, undecided; in the second place,
because I knew that the agitation of that question, a question of
which the importance appears to me to be greatly overrated, would
divide those on whose firm and cordial union the safety of the
empire depends.  My noble friend has taken this opportunity of
replying to a speech which I made last October.  The doctrines
which I then laid down were, according to him, most intemperate
and dangerous.  Now, Sir, it happens, curiously enough, that my
noble friend has himself asserted, in his speech of this night,
those very doctrines, in language so nearly resembling mine that
I might fairly accuse him of plagiarism.  I said that laws have
no force in themselves, and that, unless supported by public
opinion, they are a mere dead letter.  The noble Lord has said
exactly the same thing to-night.  "Keep your old Constitution,"
he exclaims; "for, whatever may be its defects in theory, it has
more of the public veneration than your new Constitution will
have; and no laws can be efficient, unless they have the public
veneration."  I said, that statutes are in themselves only wax
and parchment; and I was called an incendiary by the opposition.
The noble Lord has said to-night that statutes in themselves are
only ink and parchment; and those very persons who reviled me
have enthusiastically cheered him.  I am quite at a loss to
understand how doctrines which are, in his mouth, true and
constitutional, can, in mine, be false and revolutionary.

But, Sir, it is time that I should address myself to the
momentous question before us.  I shall certainly give my best
support to this bill, through all its stages; and, in so doing, I
conceive that I shall act in strict conformity with the
resolution by which this House, towards the close of the late
Session, declared its unabated attachment to the principles and
to the leading provisions of the First Reform Bill.  All those
principles, all those leading provisions, I find in the present
measure.  In the details there are, undoubtedly, considerable
alterations.  Most of the alterations appear to me to be
improvements; and even those alterations which I cannot consider
as in themselves improvements will yet be most useful, if their
effect shall be to conciliate opponents, and to facilitate the
adjustment of a question which, for the sake of order, for the
sake of peace, for the sake of trade, ought to be, not only
satisfactorily, but speedily settled.  We have been told, Sir,
that, if we pronounce this bill to be a better bill than the
last, we recant all the doctrines which we maintained during the
last Session, we sing our palinode; we allow that we have had a
great escape; we allow that our own conduct was deserving of
censure; we allow that the party which was the minority in this
House, and, most unhappily for the country, the majority in the
other House, has saved the country from a great calamity.  Sir,
even if this charge were well founded, there are those who should
have been prevented by prudence, if not by magnanimity, from
bringing it forward.  I remember an Opposition which took a very
different course.  I remember an Opposition which, while excluded
from power, taught all its doctrines to the Government; which,
after labouring long, and sacrificing much, in order to effect
improvements in various parts of our political and commercial
system, saw the honour of those improvements appropriated by
others.  But the members of that Opposition had, I believe, a
sincere desire to promote the public good.  They, therefore,
raised no shout of triumph over the recantations of their
proselytes.  They rejoiced, but with no ungenerous joy, when
their principles of trade, of jurisprudence, of foreign policy,
of religious liberty, became the principles of the
Administration.  They were content that he who came into
fellowship with them at the eleventh hour should have a far
larger share of the reward than those who had borne the burthen
and heat of the day.  In the year 1828, a single division in this
House changed the whole policy of the Government with respect to
the Test and Corporation Acts.  My noble friend, the Paymaster of
the Forces, then sat where the right honourable Baronet, the
member for Tamworth, now sits.  I do not remember that, when the
right honourable Baronet announced his change of purpose, my
noble friend sprang up to talk about palinodes, to magnify the
wisdom and virtue of the Whigs, and to sneer at his new
coadjutors.  Indeed, I am not sure that the members of the late
Opposition did not carry their indulgence too far; that they did
not too easily suffer the fame of Grattan and Romilly to be
transferred to less deserving claimants; that they were not too
ready, in the joy with which they welcomed the tardy and
convenient repentance of their converts, to grant a general
amnesty for the errors of the insincerity of years.  If it were
true that we had recanted, this ought not to be made matter of
charge against us by men whom posterity will remember by nothing
but recantations.  But, in truth, we recant nothing.  We have
nothing to recant.  We support this bill.  We may possibly think
it a better bill than that which preceded it.  But are we
therefore bound to admit that we were in the wrong, that the
Opposition was in the right, that the House of Lords has
conferred a great benefit on the nation?  We saw--who did not
see?--great defects in the first bill.  But did we see nothing
else?  Is delay no evil?  Is prolonged excitement no evil?  Is it
no evil that the heart of a great people should be made sick by
deferred hope?  We allow that many of the changes which have been
made are improvements.  But we think that it would have been far
better for the country to have had the last bill, with all its
defects, than the present bill, with all its improvements.
Second thoughts are proverbially the best, but there are
emergencies which do not admit of second thoughts.  There
probably never was a law which might not have been amended by
delay.  But there have been many cases in which there would have
been more mischief in the delay than benefit in the amendments.
The first bill, however inferior it may have been in its details
to the present bill, was yet herein far superior to the present
bill, than it was the first.  If the first bill had passed, it
would, I firmly believe, have produced a complete reconciliation
between the aristocracy and the people.  It is my earnest wish
and prayer that the present bill may produce this blessed effect;
but I cannot say that my hopes are so sanguine as they were at
the beginning of the last Session.  The decision of the House of
Lords has, I fear, excited in the public mind feelings of
resentment which will not soon be allayed.  What then, it is
said, would you legislate in haste?  Would you legislate in times
of great excitement concerning matters of such deep concern?
Yes, Sir, I would:  and if any bad consequences should follow
from the haste and the excitement, let those be held answerable
who, when there was no need of haste, when there existed no
excitement, refused to listen to any project of Reform, nay, who
made it an argument against Reform, that the public mind was not
excited.  When few meetings were held, when few petitions were
sent up to us, these politicians said, "Would you alter a
Constitution with which the people are perfectly satisfied?"  And
now, when the kingdom from one end to the other is convulsed by
the question of Reform, we hear it said by the very same persons,
"Would you alter the Representative system in such agitated times
as these?"  Half the logic of misgovernment lies in this one
sophistical dilemma:  If the people are turbulent, they are unfit
for liberty:  if they are quiet, they do not want liberty.

I allow that hasty legislation is an evil.  I allow that there
are great objections to legislating in troubled times.  But
reformers are compelled to legislate fast, because bigots will
not legislate early.  Reformers are compelled to legislate in
times of excitement, because bigots will not legislate in times
of tranquillity.  If, ten years ago, nay, if only two years ago,
there had been at the head of affairs men who understood the
signs of the times and the temper of the nation, we should not
have been forced to hurry now.  If we cannot take our time, it is
because we have to make up for their lost time.  If they had
reformed gradually, we might have reformed gradually; but we are
compelled to move fast, because they would not move at all.

Though I admit, Sir, that this bill is in its details superior to
the former bill, I must say that the best parts of this bill,
those parts for the sake of which principally I support it, those
parts for the sake of which I would support it, however imperfect
its details might be, are parts which it has in common with the
former bill.  It destroys nomination; it admits the great body of
the middle orders to a share in the government; and it contains
provisions which will, as I conceive, greatly diminish the
expense of elections.

Touching the expense of elections I will say a few words, because
that part of the subject has not, I think, received so much
attention as it deserves.  Whenever the nomination boroughs are
attacked, the opponents of Reform produce a long list of eminent
men who have sate for those boroughs, and who, they tell us,
would never have taken any part in public affairs but for those
boroughs.  Now, Sir, I suppose no person will maintain that a
large constituent body is likely to prefer ignorant and incapable
men to men of information and ability?  Whatever objections there
may be to democratic institutions, it was never, I believe,
doubted that those institutions are favourable to the development
of talents.  We may prefer the constitution of Sparta to that of
Athens, or the constitution of Venice to that of Florence:  but
no person will deny that Athens produced more great men than
Sparta, or that Florence produced more great men than Venice.
But to come nearer home:  the five largest English towns which
have now the right of returning two members each by popular
election, are Westminster, Southwark, Liverpool, Bristol, and
Norwich.  Now let us see what members those places have sent to
Parliament.  I will not speak of the living, though among the
living are some of the most distinguished ornaments of the House.
I will confine myself to the dead.  Among many respectable and
useful members of Parliament, whom these towns have returned,
during the last half century, I find Mr Burke, Mr Fox, Mr
Sheridan, Mr Windham, Mr Tierney, Sir Samuel Romilly, Mr Canning,
Mr Huskisson.  These were eight of the most illustrious
parliamentary leaders of the generation which is passing away
from the world.  Mr Pitt was, perhaps, the only person worthy to
make a ninth with them.  It is, surely, a remarkable circumstance
that, of the nine most distinguished Members of the House of
Commons who have died within the last forty years, eight should
have been returned to Parliament by the five largest represented
towns.  I am, therefore, warranted in saying that great
constituent bodies are quite as competent to discern merit, and
quite as much disposed to reward merit, as the proprietors of
boroughs.  It is true that some of the distinguished statesmen
whom I have mentioned would never have been known to large
constituent bodies if they had not first sate for nomination
boroughs.  But why is this?  Simply, because the expense of
contesting popular places, under the present system, is ruinously
great.  A poor man cannot defray it; an untried man cannot expect
his constituents to defray it for him.  And this is the way in
which our Representative system is defended.  Corruption vouches
corruption.  Every abuse is made the plea for another abuse.  We
must have nomination at Gatton because we have profusion at
Liverpool.  Sir, these arguments convince me, not that no Reform
is required, but that a very deep and searching Reform is
required.  If two evils serve in some respects to counterbalance
each other, this is a reason, not for keeping both, but for
getting rid of both together.  At present you close against men
of talents that broad, that noble entrance which belongs to them,
and which ought to stand wide open to them; and in exchange you
open to them a bye entrance, low and narrow, always obscure,
often filthy, through which, too often, they can pass only by
crawling on their hands and knees, and from which they too often
emerge sullied with stains never to be washed away.  But take the
most favourable case.  Suppose that the member who sits for a
nomination borough owes his seat to a man of virtue and honour,
to a man whose service is perfect freedom, to a man who would
think himself degraded by any proof of gratitude which might
degrade his nominee.  Yet is it nothing that such a member comes
into this House wearing the badge, though not feeling the chain
of servitude?  Is it nothing that he cannot speak of his
independence without exciting a smile?  Is it nothing that he is
considered, not as a Representative, but as an adventurer?  This
is what your system does for men of genius.  It admits them to
political power, not as, under better institutions, they would be
admitted to power, erect, independent, unsullied; but by means
which corrupt the virtue of many, and in some degree diminish the
authority of all.  Could any system be devised, better fitted to
pervert the principles and break the spirit of men formed to be
the glory of their country?  And, can we mention no instance in
which this system has made such men useless, or worse than
useless, to the country of which their talents were the ornament,
and might, in happier circumstances, have been the salvation?
Ariel, the beautiful and kindly Ariel, doing the bidding of the
loathsome and malignant Sycorax, is but a faint type of genius
enslaved by the spells, and employed in the drudgery of
corruption--

"A spirit too delicate
To act those earthy and abhorred commands."

We cannot do a greater service to men of real merit than by
destroying that which has been called their refuge, which is
their house of bondage; by taking from them the patronage of the
great, and giving to them in its stead the respect and confidence
of the people.  The bill now before us will, I believe, produce
that happy effect.  It facilitates the canvass; it reduces the
expense of legal agency; it shortens the poll; above all, it
disfranchises the outvoters.  It is not easy to calculate the
precise extent to which these changes will diminish the cost of
elections.  I have attempted, however, to obtain some information
on this subject.  I have applied to a gentleman of great
experience in affairs of this kind, a gentleman who, at the last
three general elections, managed the finances of the popular
party in one of the largest boroughs in the kingdom.  He tells
me, that at the general election of 1826, when that borough was
contested, the expenses of the popular candidate amounted to
eighteen thousand pounds; and that, by the best estimate which
can now be made, the borough may, under the reformed system, be
as effectually contested for one tenth part of that sum.  In the
new constituent bodies there are no ancient rights reserved.  In
those bodies, therefore, the expense of an election will be still
smaller.  I firmly believe, that it will be possible to poll out
Manchester for less than the market price of Old Sarum.

Sir, I have, from the beginning of these discussions, supported
Reform on two grounds; first, because I believe it to be in
itself a good thing; and secondly, because I think the dangers of
withholding it so great that, even if it were an evil, it would
be the less of two evils.  The dangers of the country have in no
wise diminished.  I believe that they have greatly increased.  It
is, I fear, impossible to deny that what has happened with
respect to almost every great question that ever divided mankind
has happened also with respect to the Reform Bill.  Wherever
great interests are at stake there will be much excitement; and
wherever there is much excitement there will be some
extravagance.  The same great stirring of the human mind which
produced the Reformation produced also the follies and crimes of
the Anabaptists.  The same spirit which resisted the Ship-money,
and abolished the Star Chamber, produced the Levellers and the
Fifth Monarchy men.  And so, it cannot be denied that bad men,
availing themselves of the agitation produced by the question of
Reform, have promulgated, and promulgated with some success,
doctrines incompatible with the existence, I do not say of
monarchy, or of aristocracy, but of all law, of all order, of all
property, of all civilisation, of all that makes us to differ
from Mohawks or Hottentots.  I bring no accusation against that
portion of the working classes which has been imposed upon by
these doctrines.  Those persons are what their situation has made
them, ignorant from want of leisure, irritable from the sense of
distress.  That they should be deluded by impudent assertions and
gross sophisms; that, suffering cruel privations, they should
give ready credence to promises of relief; that, never having
investigated the nature and operation of government, they should
expect impossibilities from it, and should reproach it for not
performing impossibilities; all this is perfectly natural.  No
errors which they may commit ought ever to make us forget that it
is in all probability owing solely to the accident of our
situation that we have not fallen into errors precisely similar.
There are few of us who do not know from experience that, even
with all our advantages of education, pain and sorrow can make us
very querulous and very unreasonable.  We ought not, therefore,
to be surprised that, as the Scotch proverb says, "it should be
ill talking between a full man and a fasting;" that the logic of
the rich man who vindicates the rights of property, should seem
very inconclusive to the poor man who hears his children cry for
bread.  I bring, I say, no accusation against the working
classes.  I would withhold from them nothing which it might be
for their good to possess.  I see with pleasure that, by the
provisions of the Reform Bill, the most industrious and
respectable of our labourers will be admitted to a share in the
government of the State.  If I would refuse to the working people
that larger share of power which some of them have demanded, I
would refuse it, because I am convinced that, by giving it, I
should only increase their distress.  I admit that the end of
government is their happiness.  But, that they may be governed
for their happiness, they must not be governed according to the
doctrines which they have learned from their illiterate,
incapable, low-minded flatterers.

But, Sir, the fact that such doctrines have been promulgated
among the multitude is a strong argument for a speedy and
effectual reform.  That government is attacked is a reason for
making the foundations of government broader, and deeper, and
more solid.  That property is attacked is a reason for binding
together all proprietors in the firmest union.  That the
agitation of the question of Reform has enabled worthless
demagogues to propagate their notions with some success is a
reason for speedily settling the question in the only way in
which it can be settled.  It is difficult, Sir, to conceive any
spectacle more alarming than that which presents itself to us,
when we look at the two extreme parties in this country; a narrow
oligarchy above; an infuriated multitude below; on the one side
the vices engendered by power; on the other side the vices
engendered by distress; one party blindly averse to improvement;
the other party blindly clamouring for destruction; one party
ascribing to political abuses the sanctity of property; the other
party crying out against property as a political abuse.  Both
these parties are alike ignorant of their true interest.  God
forbid that the state should ever be at the mercy of either, or
should ever experience the calamities which must result from a
collision between them!  I anticipate no such horrible event.
For, between those two parties stands a third party, infinitely
more powerful than both the others put together, attacked by
both, vilified by both, but destined, I trust, to save both from
the fatal effects of their own folly.  To that party I have never
ceased, through all the vicissitudes of public affairs, to look
with confidence and with good a hope.  I speak of that great
party which zealously and steadily supported the first Reform
Bill, and which will, I have no doubt, support the second Reform
Bill with equal steadiness and equal zeal.  That party is the
middle class of England, with the flower of the aristocracy at
its head, and the flower of the working classes bringing up its
rear.  That great party has taken its immovable stand between the
enemies of all order and the enemies of all liberty.  It will
have Reform:  it will not have revolution:  it will destroy
political abuses:  it will not suffer the rights of property to
be assailed:  it will preserve, in spite of themselves, those who
are assailing it, from the right and from the left, with
contradictory accusations:  it will be a daysman between them:
it will lay its hand upon them both:  it will not suffer them to
tear each other in pieces.  While that great party continues
unbroken, as it now is unbroken, I shall not relinquish the hope
that this great contest may be conducted, by lawful means, to a
happy termination.  But, of this I am assured, that by means,
lawful or unlawful, to a termination, happy or unhappy, this
contest must speedily come.  All that I know of the history of
past times, all the observations that I have been able to make on
the present state of the country, have convinced me that the time
has arrived when a great concession must be made to the democracy
of England; that the question, whether the change be in itself
good or bad, has become a question of secondary importance; that,
good or bad, the thing must be done; that a law as strong as the
laws of attraction and motion has decreed it.

I well know that history, when we look at it in small portions,
may be so construed as to mean anything, that it may be
interpreted in as many ways as a Delphic oracle.  "The French
Revolution," says one expositor, "was the effect of concession."
"Not so," cries another:  "The French Revolution was produced by
the obstinacy of an arbitrary government."  "If the French
nobles," says the first, "had refused to sit with the Third
Estate, they would never have been driven from their country."
"They would never have been driven from their country," answers
the other, "if they had agreed to the reforms proposed by M.
Turgot."  These controversies can never be brought to any
decisive test, or to any satisfactory conclusion.  But, as I
believe that history, when we look at it in small fragments,
proves anything, or nothing, so I believe that it is full of
useful and precious instruction when we contemplate it in large
portions, when we take in, at one view, the whole lifetime of
great societies.  I believe that it is possible to obtain some
insight into the law which regulates the growth of communities,
and some knowledge of the effects which that growth produces.
They history of England, in particular, is the history of a
government constantly giving way, sometimes peaceably, sometimes
after a violent struggle, but constantly giving way before a
nation which has been constantly advancing.  The forest laws, the
laws of villenage, the oppressive power of the Roman Catholic
Church, the power, scarcely less oppressive, which, during some
time after the Reformation, was exercised by the Protestant
Establishment, the prerogatives of the Crown, the censorship of
the Press, successively yielded.  The abuses of the
representative system are now yielding to the same irresistible
force.  It was impossible for the Stuarts, and it would have been
impossible for them if they had possessed all the energy of
Richelieu, and all the craft of Mazarin, to govern England as
England had been governed by the Tudors.  It was impossible for
the princes of the House of Hanover to govern England as England
had been governed by the Stuarts.  And so it is impossible that
England should be any longer governed as it was governed under
the four first princes of the House of Hanover.  I say
impossible.  I believe that over the great changes of the moral
world we possess as little power as over the great changes of the
physical world.  We can no more prevent time from changing the
distribution of property and of intelligence, we can no more
prevent property and intelligence from aspiring to political
power, than we can change the courses of the seasons and of the
tides.  In peace or in tumult, by means of old institutions,
where those institutions are flexible, over the ruins of old
institutions, where those institutions oppose an unbending
resistance, the great march of society proceeds, and must
proceed.  The feeble efforts of individuals to bear back are lost
and swept away in the mighty rush with which the species goes
onward.  Those who appear to lead the movement are, in fact, only
whirled along before it; those who attempt to resist it, are
beaten down and crushed beneath it.

It is because rulers do not pay sufficient attention to the
stages of this great movement, because they underrate its force,
because they are ignorant of its law, that so many violent and
fearful revolutions have changed the face of society.  We have
heard it said a hundred times during these discussions, we have
heard it said repeatedly in the course of this very debate, that
the people of England are more free than ever they were, that the
Government is more democratic than ever it was; and this is urged
as an argument against Reform.  I admit the fact; but I deny the
inference.  It is a principle never to be forgotten, in
discussions like this, that it is not by absolute, but by
relative misgovernment that nations are roused to madness.  It is
not sufficient to look merely at the form of government.  We must
look also to the state of the public mind.  The worst tyrant that
ever had his neck wrung in modern Europe might have passed for a
paragon of clemency in Persia or Morocco.  Our Indian subjects
submit patiently to a monopoly of salt.  We tried a stamp duty, a
duty so light as to be scarcely perceptible, on the fierce breed
of the old Puritans; and we lost an empire.  The Government of
Louis the Sixteenth was certainly a much better and milder
Government than that of Louis the Fourteenth; yet Louis the
Fourteenth was admired, and even loved, by his people.  Louis the
Sixteenth died on the scaffold.  Why?  Because, though the
Government had made many steps in the career of improvement, it
had not advanced so rapidly as the nation.  Look at our own
history.  The liberties of the people were at least as much
respected by Charles the First as by Henry the Eighth, by James
the Second as by Edward the Sixth.  But did this save the crown
of James the Second?  Did this save the head of Charles the
First?  Every person who knows the history of our civil
dissensions knows that all those arguments which are now employed
by the opponents of the Reform Bill might have been employed, and
were actually employed, by the unfortunate Stuarts.  The
reasoning of Charles, and of all his apologists, runs thus:--
"What new grievance does the nation suffer?  What has the King
done more than what Henry did? more than what Elizabeth did?  Did
the people ever enjoy more freedom than at present?  Did they
ever enjoy so much freedom?"  But what would a wise and honest
counsellor, if Charles had been so happy as to possess such a
counsellor, have replied to arguments like these?  He would have
said, "Sir, I acknowledge that the people were never more free
than under your government.  I acknowledge that those who talk of
restoring the old Constitution of England use an improper
expression.  I acknowledge that there has been a constant
improvement during those very years during which many persons
imagine that there has been a constant deterioration.  But,
though there has been no change in the government for the worse,
there has been a change in the public mind which produces exactly
the same effect which would be produced by a change in the
government for the worse.  Perhaps this change in the public mind
is to be regretted.  But no matter; you cannot reverse it.  You
cannot undo all that eighty eventful years have done.  You cannot
transform the Englishmen of 1640 into the Englishmen of 1560.  It
may be that the simple loyalty of our fathers was preferable to
that inquiring, censuring, resisting spirit which is now abroad.
It may be that the times when men paid their benevolences
cheerfully were better times than these, when a gentleman goes
before the Exchequer Chamber to resist an assessment of twenty
shillings.  And so it may be that infancy is a happier time than
manhood, and manhood than old age.  But God has decreed that old
age shall succeed to manhood, and manhood to infancy.  Even so
have societies their law of growth.  As their strength becomes
greater, as their experience becomes more extensive, you can no
longer confine them within the swaddling bands, or lull them in
the cradles, or amuse them with the rattles, or terrify them with
the bugbears of their infancy.  I do not say that they are better
or happier than they were; but this I say, that they are
different from what they were, that you cannot again make them
what they were, and that you cannot safely treat them as if they
continued to be what they were."  This was the advice which a
wise and honest Minister would have given to Charles the First.
These were the principles on which that unhappy prince should
have acted.  But no.  He would govern, I do not say ill, I do not
say tyrannically; I only say this; he would govern the men of the
seventeenth century as if they had been the men of the sixteenth
century; and therefore it was, that all his talents and all his
virtues did not save him from unpopularity, from civil war, from
a prison, from a bar, from a scaffold.  These things are written
for our instruction.  Another great intellectual revolution has
taken place; our lot has been cast on a time analogous, in many
respects, to the time which immediately preceded the meeting of
the Long Parliament.  There is a change in society.  There must
be a corresponding change in the government.  We are not, we
cannot, in the nature of things, be, what our fathers were.  We
are no more like the men of the American war, or the men of the
gagging bills, than the men who cried "privilege" round the coach
of Charles the First were like the men who changed their religion
once a year at the bidding of Henry the Eighth.  That there is
such a change, I can no more doubt than I can doubt that we have
more power looms, more steam engines, more gas lights, than our
ancestors.  That there is such a change, the Minister will surely
find who shall attempt to fit the yoke of Mr Pitt to the necks of
the Englishmen of the nineteenth century.  What then can you do
to bring back those times when the constitution of this House was
an object of veneration to the people?  Even as much as Strafford
and Laud could do to bring back the days of the Tudors; as much
as Bonner and Gardiner could do to bring back the days of
Hildebrand; as much as Villele and Polignac could do to bring
back the days of Louis the Fourteenth.  You may make the change
tedious; you may make it violent; you may--God in his mercy
forbid!--you may make it bloody; but avert it you cannot.
Agitations of the public mind, so deep and so long continued as
those which we have witnessed, do not end in nothing.  In peace
or in convulsion, by the law, or in spite of the law, through the
Parliament, or over the Parliament, Reform must be carried.
Therefore be content to guide that movement which you cannot
stop.  Fling wide the gates to that force which else will enter
through the breach.  Then will it still be, as it has hitherto
been, the peculiar glory of our Constitution that, though not
exempt from the decay which is wrought by the vicissitudes of
fortune, and the lapse of time, in all the proudest works of
human power and wisdom, it yet contains within it the means of
self-reparation.  Then will England add to her manifold titles of
glory this, the noblest and the purest of all; that every
blessing which other nations have been forced to seek, and have
too often sought in vain, by means of violent and bloody
revolutions, she will have attained by a peaceful and a lawful
Reform.

...


ANATOMY BILL.  (FEBRUARY 27, 1832)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 27TH OF
FEBRUARY, 1832.

On Monday, the twenty-seventh of February, 1832, the House took
into consideration the report of the Committee on Mr Warburton's
Anatomy Bill.  Mr Henry Hunt attacked that bill with great
asperity.  In reply to him the following Speech was made.

Sir, I cannot, even at this late hour of the night, refrain from
saying two or three words.  Most of the observations of the
honourable Member for Preston I pass by, as undeserving of any
answer before an audience like this.  But on one part of his
speech I must make a few remarks.  We are, he says, making a law
to benefit the rich, at the expense of the poor.  Sir, the fact
is the direct reverse.  This is a bill which tends especially to
the benefit of the poor.  What are the evils against which we are
attempting to make provision?  Two especially; that is to say,
the practice of Burking, and bad surgery.  Now to both these the
poor alone are exposed.  What man, in our rank of life, runs the
smallest risk of being Burked?  That a man has property, that he
has connections, that he is likely to be missed and sought for,
are circumstances which secure him against the Burker.  It is
curious to observe the difference between murders of this kind
and other murders.  An ordinary murder hides the body, and
disposes of the property.  Bishop and Williams dig holes and bury
the property, and expose the body to sale.  The more wretched,
the more lonely, any human being may be, the more desirable prey
is he to these wretches.  It is the man, the mere naked man, that
they pursue.  Again, as to bad surgery; this is, of all evils,
the evil by which the rich suffer least, and the poor most.  If
we could do all that in the opinion of the Member for Preston
ought to be done, if we could destroy the English school of
anatomy, if we could force every student of medical science to go
to the expense of a foreign education, on whom would the bad
consequences fall?  On the rich?  Not at all.  As long as there
is in France, in Italy, in Germany, a single surgeon of eminent
skill, a single surgeon who is, to use the phrase of the member
for Preston, addicted to dissection, that surgeon will be in
attendance whenever an English nobleman is to be cut for the
stone.  The higher orders in England will always be able to
procure the best medical assistance.  Who suffers by the bad
state of the Russian school of surgery?  The Emperor Nicholas?
By no means.  The whole evil falls on the peasantry.  If the
education of a surgeon should become very extensive, if the fees
of surgeons should consequently rise, if the supply of regular
surgeons should diminish, the sufferers would be, not the rich,
but the poor in our country villages, who would again be left to
mountebanks, and barbers, and old women, and charms and quack
medicines.  The honourable gentleman talks of sacrificing the
interests of humanity to the interests of science, as if this
were a question about the squaring of the circle, or the transit
of Venus.  This is not a mere question of science:  it is not the
unprofitable exercise of an ingenious mind:  it is a question
between health and sickness, between ease and torment, between
life and death.  Does the honourable gentleman know from what
cruel sufferings the improvement of surgical science has rescued
our species?  I will tell him one story, the first that comes
into my head.  He may have heard of Leopold, Duke of Austria, the
same who imprisoned our Richard Coeur-de-Lion.  Leopold's horse
fell under him, and crushed his leg.  The surgeons said that the
limb must be amputated; but none of them knew how to amputate it.
Leopold, in his agony, laid a hatchet on his thigh, and ordered
his servant to strike with a mallet.  The leg was cut off, and
the Duke died of the gush of blood.  Such was the end of that
powerful prince.  Why, there is not now a bricklayer who falls
from a ladder in England, who cannot obtain surgical assistance,
infinitely superior to that which the sovereign of Austria could
command in the twelfth century.  I think this a bill which tends
to the good of the people, and which tends especially to the good
of the poor.  Therefore I support it.  If it is unpopular, I am
sorry for it.  But I shall cheerfully take my share of its
unpopularity.  For such, I am convinced, ought to be the conduct
of one whose object it is, not to flatter the people, but to
serve them.

...


PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.  (FEBRUARY 28, 1832)


A SPEECH DELIVERED IN A COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE
28TH OF FEBRUARY, 1832.

On Tuesday, the twenty-eighth of February, 1832, in the Committee
on the Bill to amend the representation of the people in England
and Wales, the question was put, "That the Tower Hamlets,
Middlesex, stand part of Schedule C."  The opponents of the Bill
mustered their whole strength on this occasion, and were joined
by some members who had voted with the Government on the second
reading.  The question was carried, however, by 316 votes to 236.
The following Speech was made in reply to the Marquess of Chandos
and Sir Edward Sugden, who, on very different grounds, objected
to any increase in the number of metropolitan members.

Mr Bernal,--I have spoken so often on the question of
Parliamentary Reform, that I am very unwilling to occupy the time
of the Committee.  But the importance of the amendment proposed
by the noble Marquess, and the peculiar circumstances in which we
are placed to-night, make me so anxious that I cannot remain
silent.

In this debate, as in every other debate, our first object should
be to ascertain on which side the burden of the proof lies.  Now,
it seems to me quite clear that the burden of the proof lies on
those who support the amendment.  I am entitled to take it for
granted that it is right and wise to give representatives to some
wealthy and populous places which have hitherto been
unrepresented.  To this extent, at least, we all, with scarcely
an exception, now profess ourselves Reformers.  There is, indeed,
a great party which still objects to the disfranchising even of
the smallest boroughs.  But all the most distinguished chiefs of
that party have, here and elsewhere, admitted that the elective
franchise ought to be given to some great towns which have risen
into importance since our representative system took its present
form.  If this be so, on what ground can it be contended that
these metropolitan districts ought not to be represented?  Are
they inferior in importance to the other places to which we are
all prepared to give members?  I use the word importance with
perfect confidence:  for, though in our recent debates there has
been some dispute as to the standard by which the importance of
towns is to be measured, there is no room for dispute here.
Here, take what standard you will, the result will be the same.
Take population:  take the rental:  take the number of ten pound
houses:  take the amount of the assessed taxes:  take any test in
short:  take any number of tests, and combine those tests in any
of the ingenious ways which men of science have suggested:
multiply:  divide:  subtract:  add:  try squares or cubes:  try
square roots or cube roots:  you will never be able to find a
pretext for excluding these districts from Schedule C.  If, then,
it be acknowledged that the franchise ought to be given to
important places which are at present unrepresented, and if it be
acknowledged that these districts are in importance not inferior
to any place which is at present unrepresented, you are bound to
give us strong reasons for withholding the franchise from these
districts.

The honourable and learned gentleman (Sir E. Sugden.) has tried
to give such reasons; and, in doing so, he has completely refuted
the whole speech of the noble Marquess, with whom he means to
divide.  (The Marquess of Chandos.)  The truth is that the noble
Marquess and the honourable and learned gentleman, though they
agree in their votes, do not at all agree in their forebodings or
in their ulterior intentions.  The honourable and learned
gentleman thinks it dangerous to increase the number of
metropolitan voters.  The noble Lord is perfectly willing to
increase the number of metropolitan voters, and objects only to
any increase in the number of metropolitan members.  "Will you,"
says the honourable and learned gentleman, "be so rash, so
insane, as to create constituent bodies of twenty or thirty
thousand electors?"  "Yes," says the noble Marquess, "and much
more than that.  I will create constituent bodies of forty
thousand, sixty thousand, a hundred thousand.  I will add
Marylebone to Westminster.  I will add Lambeth to Southwark.  I
will add Finsbury and the Tower Hamlets to the City."  The noble
Marquess, it is clear, is not afraid of the excitement which may
be produced by the polling of immense multitudes.  Of what then
is he afraid?  Simply of eight members:  nay, of six members:
for he is willing, he tells us, to add two members to the two who
already sit for Middlesex, and who may be considered as
metropolitan members.  Are six members, then, so formidable?  I
could mention a single peer who now sends more than six members
to the House.  But, says the noble Marquess, the members for the
metropolitan districts will be called to a strict account by
their constituents:  they will be mere delegates:  they will be
forced to speak, not their own sense, but the sense of the
capital.  I will answer for it, Sir, that they will not be called
to a stricter account than those gentlemen who are nominated by
some great proprietors of boroughs.  Is it not notorious that
those who represent it as in the highest degree pernicious and
degrading that a public man should be called to account by a
great city which has intrusted its dearest interests to his care,
do nevertheless think that he is bound by the most sacred ties of
honour to vote according to the wishes of his patron or to apply
for the Chiltern Hundreds?  It is a bad thing, I fully admit,
that a Member of Parliament should be a mere delegate.  But it is
not worse that he should be the delegate of a hundred thousand
people than of one too powerful individual.  What a perverse,
what an inconsistent spirit is this; too proud to bend to the
wishes of a nation, yet ready to lick the dust at the feet of a
patron!  And how is it proved that a member for Lambeth or
Finsbury will be under a more servile awe of his constituents
than a member for Leicester, or a member for Leicestershire, or a
member for the University of Oxford?  Is it not perfectly
notorious that many members voted, year after year, against
Catholic Emancipation, simply because they knew that, if they
voted otherwise, they would lose their seats?  No doubt this is
an evil.  But it is an evil which will exist in some form or
other as long as human nature is the same, as long as there are
men so low-minded as to prefer the gratification of a vulgar
ambition to the approbation of their conscience and the welfare
of their country.  Construct your representative system as you
will, these men will always be sycophants.  If you give power to
Marylebone, they will fawn on the householders of Marylebone.  If
you leave power to Gatton, they will fawn on the proprietor of
Gatton.  I can see no reason for believing that their baseness
will be more mischievous in the former case than in the latter.

But, it is said, the power of this huge capital is even now
dangerously great; and will you increase that power?  Now, Sir, I
am far from denying that the power of London is, in some sense,
dangerously great; but I altogether deny that the danger will be
increased by this bill.  It has always been found that a hundred
thousand people congregated close to the seat of government
exercise a greater influence on public affairs than five hundred
thousand dispersed over a remote province.  But this influence is
not proportioned to the number of representatives chosen by the
capital.  This influence is felt at present, though the greater
part of the capital is unrepresented.  This influence is felt in
countries where there is no representative system at all.
Indeed, this influence is nowhere so great as under despotic
governments.  I need not remind the Committee that the Caesars,
while ruling by the sword, while putting to death without a trial
every senator, every magistrate, who incurred their displeasure,
yet found it necessary to keep the populace of the imperial city
in good humour by distributions of corn and shows of wild beasts.
Every country, from Britain to Egypt, was squeezed for the means
of filling the granaries and adorning the theatres of Rome.  On
more than one occasion, long after the Cortes of Castile had
become a mere name, the rabble of Madrid assembled before the
royal palace, forced their King, their absolute King, to appear
in the balcony, and exacted from him a promise that he would
dismiss an obnoxious minister.  It was in this way that Charles
the Second was forced to part with Oropesa, and that Charles the
Third was forced to part with Squillaci.  If there is any country
in the world where pure despotism exists, that country is Turkey;
and yet there is no country in the world where the inhabitants of
the capital are so much dreaded by the government.  The Sultan,
who stands in awe of nothing else, stands in awe of the turbulent
populace, which may, at any moment, besiege him in his Seraglio.
As soon as Constantinople is up, everything is conceded.  The
unpopular edict is recalled.  The unpopular vizier is beheaded.
This sort of power has nothing to do with representation.  It
depends on physical force and on vicinity.  You do not propose to
take this sort of power away from London.  Indeed, you cannot
take it away.  Nothing can take it away but an earthquake more
terrible than that of Lisbon, or a fire more destructive than
that of 1666.  Law can do nothing against this description of
power; for it is a power which is formidable only when law has
ceased to exist.  While the reign of law continues, eight votes
in a House of six hundred and fifty-eight Members will hardly do
much harm.  When the reign of law is at an end, and the reign of
violence commences, the importance of a million and a half of
people, all collected within a walk of the Palace, of the
Parliament House, of the Bank, of the Courts of Justice, will not
be measured by eight or by eighty votes.  See, then, what you are
doing.  That power which is not dangerous you refuse to London.
That power which is dangerous you leave undiminished; nay, you
make it more dangerous still.  For by refusing to let eight or
nine hundred thousand people express their opinions and wishes in
a legal and constitutional way, you increase the risk of
disaffection and of tumult.  It is not necessary to have recourse
to the speeches or writings of democrats to show that a
represented district is far more likely to be turbulent than an
unrepresented district.  Mr Burke, surely not a rash innovator,
not a flatterer of the multitude, described long ago in this
place with admirable eloquence the effect produced by the law
which gave representative institutions to the rebellious
mountaineers of Wales.  That law, he said, had been to an
agitated nation what the twin stars celebrated by Horace were to
a stormy sea; the wind had fallen; the clouds had dispersed; the
threatening waves had sunk to rest.  I have mentioned the
commotions of Madrid and Constantinople.  Why is it that the
population of unrepresented London, though physically far more
powerful than the population of Madrid or of Constantinople, has
been far more peaceable?  Why have we never seen the inhabitants
of the metropolis besiege St James's, or force their way
riotously into this House?  Why, but because they have other
means of giving vent to their feelings, because they enjoy the
liberty of unlicensed printing, and the liberty of holding public
meetings.  Just as the people of unrepresented London are more
orderly than the people of Constantinople and Madrid, so will the
people of represented London be more orderly than the people of
unrepresented London.

Surely, Sir, nothing can be more absurd than to withhold legal
power from a portion of the community because that portion of the
community possesses natural power.  Yet that is precisely what
the noble Marquess would have us do.  In all ages a chief cause
of the intestine disorders of states has been that the natural
distribution of power and the legal distribution of power have
not corresponded with each other.  This is no newly discovered
truth.  It was well known to Aristotle more than two thousand
years ago.  It is illustrated by every part of ancient and of
modern history, and eminently by the history of England during
the last few months.  Our country has been in serious danger; and
why?  Because a representative system, framed to suit the England
of the thirteenth century, did not suit the England of the
nineteenth century; because an old wall, the last relique of a
departed city, retained the privileges of that city, while great
towns, celebrated all over the world for wealth and intelligence,
had no more share in the government than when they were still
hamlets.  The object of this bill is to correct those monstrous
disproportions, and to bring the legal order of society into
something like harmony with the natural order.  What, then, can
be more inconsistent with the fundamental principle of the bill
than to exclude any district from a share in the representation,
for no reason but because that district is, and must always be,
one of great importance?  This bill was meant to reconcile and
unite.  Will you frame it in such a manner that it must
inevitably produce irritation and discord?  This bill was meant
to be final in the only rational sense of the word final.  Will
you frame it in such a way that it must inevitably be shortlived?
Is it to be the first business of the first reformed House of
Commons to pass a new Reform Bill?  Gentlemen opposite have often
predicted that the settlement which we are making will not be
permanent; and they are now taking the surest way to accomplish
their own prediction.  I agree with them in disliking change
merely as change.  I would bear with many things which are
indefensible in theory, nay, with some things which are grievous
in practice, rather than venture on a change in the composition
of Parliament.  But when such a change is necessary,--and that
such a change is now necessary is admitted by men of all
parties,--then I hold that it ought to be full and effectual.  A
great crisis may be followed by the complete restoration of
health.  But no constitution will bear perpetual tampering.  If
the noble Marquess's amendment should unhappily be carried, it is
morally certain that the immense population of Finsbury, of
Marylebone, of Lambeth, of the Tower Hamlets, will, importunately
and clamorously, demand redress from the reformed Parliament.
That Parliament, you tell us, will be much more democratically
inclined than the Parliaments of past times.  If so, how can you
expect that it will resist the urgent demands of a million of
people close to its door?  These eight seats will be given.  More
than eight seats will be given.  The whole question of Reform
will be opened again; and the blame will rest on those who will,
by mutilating this great law in an essential part, cause hundreds
of thousands who now regard it as a boon to regard it as an
outrage.

Sir, our word is pledged.  Let us remember the solemn promise
which we gave to the nation last October at a perilous
conjuncture.  That promise was that we would stand firmly by the
principles and leading provisions of the Reform Bill.  Our
sincerity is now brought to the test.  One of the leading
provisions of the bill is in danger.  The question is, not merely
whether these districts shall be represented, but whether we will
keep the faith which we plighted to our countrymen.  Let us be
firm.  Let us make no concession to those who, having in vain
tried to throw the bill out, are now trying to fritter it away.
An attempt has been made to induce the Irish members to vote
against the government.  It has been hinted that, perhaps, some
of the seats taken from the metropolis may be given to Ireland.
Our Irish friends will, I doubt not, remember that the very
persons who offer this bribe exerted themselves not long ago to
raise a cry against the proposition to give additional members to
Belfast, Limerick, Waterford, and Galway.  The truth is that our
enemies wish only to divide us, and care not by what means.  One
day they try to excite jealousy among the English by asserting
that the plan of the government is too favourable to Ireland.
Next day they try to bribe the Irish to desert us, by promising
to give something to Ireland at the expense of England.  Let us
disappoint these cunning men.  Let us, from whatever part of the
United Kingdom we come, be true to each other and to the good
cause.  We have the confidence of our country.  We have justly
earned it.  For God's sake let us not throw it away.  Other
occasions may arise on which honest Reformers may fairly take
different sides.  But to-night he that is not with us is against
us.

...


REPEAL OF THE UNION WITH IRELAND.  (FEBRUARY 6, 1833)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 6TH OF FEBRUARY
1833.

On the twenty-ninth of January 1833, the first Parliament elected
under the Reform Act of 1832 met at Westminster.  On the fifth of
February, King William the Fourth made a speech from the throne,
in which he expressed his hope that the Houses would entrust him
with such powers as might be necessary for maintaining order in
Ireland and for preserving and strengthening the union between
that country and Great Britain.  An Address, assuring His Majesty
of the concurrence and support of the Commons, was moved by Lord
Ormelie and seconded by Mr John Marshall.  Mr O'Connell opposed
the Address, and moved, as an amendment, that the House should
resolve itself into a Committee.  After a discussion of four
nights the amendment was rejected by 428 votes to 40.  On the
second night of the debate the following Speech was made.

Last night, Sir, I thought that it would not be necessary for me
to take any part in the present debate:  but the appeal which has
this evening been made to me by my honourable friend the Member
for Lincoln (Mr Edward Lytton Bulwer.) has forced me to rise.  I
will, however, postpone the few words which I have to say in
defence of my own consistency, till I have expressed my opinion
on the much more important subject which is before the House.

My honourable friend tells us that we are now called upon to make
a choice between two modes of pacifying Ireland; that the
government recommends coercion; that the honourable and learned
Member for Dublin (Mr O'Connell.) recommends redress; and that it
is our duty to try the effect of redress before we have recourse
to coercion.  The antithesis is framed with all the ingenuity
which is characteristic of my honourable friend's style; but I
cannot help thinking that, on this occasion, his ingenuity has
imposed on himself, and that he has not sufficiently considered
the meaning of the pointed phrase which he used with so much
effect.  Redress is no doubt a very well sounding word.  What can
be more reasonable than to ask for redress?  What more unjust
than to refuse redress?  But my honourable friend will perceive,
on reflection, that, though he and the honourable and learned
Member for Dublin agree in pronouncing the word redress, they
agree in nothing else.  They utter the same sound; but they
attach to it two diametrically opposite meanings.  The honourable
and learned Member for Dublin means by redress simply the Repeal
of the Union.  Now, to the Repeal of the Union my honourable
friend the Member for Lincoln is decidedly adverse.  When we get
at his real meaning, we find that he is just as unwilling as we
are to give the redress which the honourable and learned Member
for Dublin demands.  Only a small minority of the House will, I
hope, and believe, vote with that honourable and learned member;
but the minority which thinks with him will be very much smaller.

We have, indeed, been told by some gentlemen, who are not
themselves repealers, that the question of Repeal deserves a much
more serious consideration than it has yet received.  Repeal,
they say, is an object on which millions have, however unwisely,
set their hearts; and men who speak in the name of millions are
not to be coughed down or sneered down.  That which a suffering
nation regards, rightly or wrongly, as the sole cure for all its
distempers, ought not to be treated with levity, but to be the
subject of full and solemn debate.  All this, Sir, is most true:
but I am surprised that this lecture should have been read to us
who sit on your right.  It would, I apprehend, have been with
more propriety addressed to a different quarter.  Whose fault is
it that we have not yet had, and that there is no prospect of our
having, this full and solemn debate?  Is it the fault of His
Majesty's Ministers?  Have not they framed the Speech which their
Royal Master delivered from the throne, in such a manner as to
invite the grave and searching discussion of the question of
Repeal? and has not the invitation been declined?  Is it not
fresh in our recollection that the honourable and learned Member
for Dublin spoke two hours, perhaps three hours,--nobody keeps
accurate account of time while he speaks,--but two or three hours
without venturing to join issue with us on this subject?  In
truth, he suffered judgment to go against him by default.  We, on
this side of the House, did our best to provoke him to the
conflict.  We called on him to maintain here those doctrines
which he had proclaimed elsewhere with so much vehemence, and, I
am sorry to be forced to add, with a scurrility unworthy of his
parts and eloquence.  Never was a challenge more fairly given:
but it was not accepted.  The great champion of Repeal would not
lift our glove.  He shrank back; he skulked away; not, assuredly,
from distrust of his powers, which have never been more
vigorously exerted than in this debate, but evidently from
distrust of his cause.  I have seldom heard so able a speech as
his:  I certainly never heard a speech so evasive.  From the
beginning to the end he studiously avoided saying a single word
tending to raise a discussion about that Repeal which, in other
places, he constantly affirms to be the sole panacea for all the
evils by which his country is afflicted.  Nor is this all.
Yesterday night he placed on our order-book not less than
fourteen notices; and of those notices not a single one had any
reference to the Union between Great Britain and Ireland.  It is
therefore evident to me, not only that the honourable and learned
gentleman is not now prepared to debate the question in this
House, but that he has no intention of debating it in this House
at all.  He keeps it, and prudently keeps it, for audiences of a
very different kind.  I am therefore, I repeat, surprised to hear
the Government accused of avoiding the discussion of this
subject.  Why should we avoid a battle in which the bold and
skilful captain of the enemy evidently knows that we must be
victorious?

One gentleman, though not a repealer, has begged us not to
declare ourselves decidedly adverse to repeal till we have
studied the petitions which are coming in from Ireland.  Really,
Sir, this is not a subject on which any public man ought to be
now making up his mind.  My mind is made up.  My reasons are such
as, I am certain, no petition from Ireland will confute.  Those
reasons have long been ready to be produced; and, since we are
accused of flinching, I will at once produce them.  I am prepared
to show that the Repeal of the Union would not remove the
political and social evils which afflict Ireland, nay, that it
would aggravate almost every one of those evils.

I understand, though I do not approve, the proceedings of poor
Wolfe Tone and his confederates.  They wished to make a complete
separation between Great Britain and Ireland.  They wished to
establish a Hibernian republic.  Their plan was a very bad one;
but, to do them justice, it was perfectly consistent; and an
ingenious man might defend it by some plausible arguments.  But
that is not the plan of the honourable and learned Member for
Dublin.  He assures us that he wishes the connection between the
islands to be perpetual.  He is for a complete separation between
the two Parliaments; but he is for indissoluble union between the
two Crowns.  Nor does the honourable and learned gentleman mean,
by an union between the Crowns, such an union as exists between
the Crown of this kingdom and the Crown of Hanover.  For I need
not say that, though the same person is king of Great Britain and
of Hanover, there is no more political connection between Great
Britain and Hanover than between Great Britain and Hesse, or
between Great Britain and Bavaria.  Hanover may be at peace with
a state with which Great Britain is at war.  Nay, Hanover may, as
a member of the Germanic body, send a contingent of troops to
cross bayonets with the King's English footguards.  This is not
the relation in which the honourable and learned gentleman
proposes that Great Britain and Ireland should stand to each
other.  His plan is, that each of the two countries shall have an
independent legislature, but that both shall have the same
executive government.  Now, is it possible that a mind so acute
and so well informed as his should not at once perceive that this
plan involves an absurdity, a downright contradiction.  Two
independent legislatures!  One executive government!  How can the
thing be?  No doubt, if the legislative power were quite distinct
from the executive power, England and Ireland might as easily
have two legislatures as two Chancellors and two Courts of King's
Bench.  But though, in books written by theorists, the executive
power and the legislative power may be treated as things quite
distinct, every man acquainted with the real working of our
constitution knows that the two powers are most closely
connected, nay, intermingled with each other.  During several
generations, the whole administration of affairs has been
conducted in conformity with the sense of Parliament.  About
every exercise of the prerogative of the Crown it is the
privilege of Parliament to offer advice; and that advice no wise
king will ever slight.  It is the prerogative of the Sovereign to
choose his own servants; but it is impossible for him to maintain
them in office unless Parliament will support them.  It is the
prerogative of the Sovereign to treat with other princes; but it
is impossible for him to persist in any scheme of foreign policy
which is disagreeable to Parliament.  It is the prerogative of
the Sovereign to make war; but he cannot raise a battalion or man
a frigate without the help of Parliament.  The repealers may
therefore be refuted out of their own mouths.  They say that
Great Britain and Ireland ought to have one executive power.  But
the legislature has a most important share of the executive
power.  Therefore, by the confession of the repealers themselves,
Great Britain and Ireland ought to have one legislature.

Consider for one moment in what a situation the executive
government will be placed if you have two independent
legislatures, and if those legislatures should differ, as all
bodies which are independent of each other will sometimes differ.
Suppose the case of a commercial treaty which is unpopular in
England and popular in Ireland.  The Irish Parliament expresses
its approbation of the terms, and passes a vote of thanks to the
negotiator.  We at Westminster censure the terms and impeach the
negotiator.  Or are we to have two foreign offices, one in
Downing Street and one in Dublin Castle?  Is His Majesty to send
to every court in Christendom two diplomatic agents, to thwart
each other, and to be spies upon each other?  It is inconceivable
but that, in a very few years, disputes such as can be terminated
only by arms must arise between communities so absurdly united
and so absurdly disunited.  All history confirms this reasoning.
Superficial observers have fancied that they had found cases on
the other side.  But as soon as you examine those cases you will
see either that they bear no analogy to the case with which we
have to deal, or that they corroborate my argument.  The case of
Ireland herself has been cited.  Ireland, it has been said, had
an independent legislature from 1782 to 1800:  during eighteen
years there were two coequal parliaments under one Crown; and yet
there was no collision.  Sir, the reason that there was not
perpetual collision was, as we all know, that the Irish
parliament, though nominally independent, was generally kept in
real dependence by means of the foulest corruption that ever
existed in any assembly.  But it is not true that there was no
collision.  Before the Irish legislature had been six years
independent, a collision did take place, a collision such as
might well have produced a civil war.  In the year 1788, George
the Third was incapacitated by illness from discharging his regal
functions.  According to the constitution, the duty of making
provision for the discharge of those functions devolved on the
parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland.  Between the government
of Great Britain and the government of Ireland there was, during
the interregnum, no connection whatever.  The sovereign who was
the common head of both governments had virtually ceased to
exist:  and the two legislatures were no more to each other than
this House and the Chamber of Deputies at Paris.  What followed?
The Parliament of Great Britain resolved to offer the Regency to
the Prince of Wales under many important restrictions.  The
Parliament of Ireland made him an offer of the Regency without
any restrictions whatever.  By the same right by which the Irish
Lords and Commons made that offer, they might, if Mr Pitt's
doctrine be the constitutional doctrine, as I believe it to be,
have made the Duke of York or the Duke of Leinster Regent.  To
this Regent they might have given all the prerogatives of the
King.  Suppose,--no extravagant supposition,--that George the
Third had not recovered, that the rest of his long life had been
passed in seclusion, Great Britain and Ireland would then have
been, during thirty-two years, as completely separated as Great
Britain and Spain.  There would have been nothing in common
between the governments, neither executive power nor legislative
power.  It is plain, therefore, that a total separation between
the two islands might, in the natural course of things, and
without the smallest violation of the constitution on either
side, be the effect of the arrangement recommended by the
honourable and learned gentleman, who solemnly declares that he
should consider such a separation as the greatest of calamities.

No doubt, Sir, in several continental kingdoms there have been
two legislatures, and indeed more than two legislatures, under
the same Crown.  But the explanation is simple.  Those
legislatures were of no real weight in the government.  Under
Louis the Fourteenth Brittany had its States; Burgundy had its
States; and yet there was no collision between the States of
Brittany and the States of Burgundy.  But why?  Because neither
the States of Brittany nor the States of Burgundy imposed any
real restraint on the arbitrary power of the monarch.  So, in the
dominions of the House of Hapsburg, there is the semblance of a
legislature in Hungary and the semblance of a legislature in the
Tyrol:  but all the real power is with the Emperor.  I do not say
that you cannot have one executive power and two mock
parliaments, two parliaments which merely transact parish
business, two parliaments which exercise no more influence on
great affairs of state than the vestry of St Pancras or the
vestry of Marylebone.  What I do say, and what common sense
teaches, and what all history teaches, is this, that you cannot
have one executive power and two real parliaments, two
parliaments possessing such powers as the parliament of this
country has possessed ever since the Revolution, two parliaments
to the deliberate sense of which the Sovereign must conform.  If
they differ, how can he conform to the sense of both?  The thing
is as plain as a proposition in Euclid.

It is impossible for me to believe that considerations so obvious
and so important should not have occurred to the honourable and
learned Member for Dublin.  Doubtless they have occurred to him;
and therefore it is that he shrinks from arguing the question
here.  Nay, even when he harangues more credulous assemblies on
the subject, he carefully avoids precise explanations; and the
hints which sometimes escape him are not easily to be reconciled
with each other.  On one occasion, if the newspapers are to be
trusted, he declared that his object was to establish a federal
union between Great Britain and Ireland.  A local parliament, it
seems, is to sit at Dublin, and to send deputies to an imperial
parliament which is to sit at Westminster.  The honourable and
learned gentleman thinks, I suppose, that in this way he evades
the difficulties which I have pointed out.  But he deceives
himself.  If, indeed, his local legislature is to be subject to
his imperial legislature, if his local legislature is to be
merely what the Assembly of Antigua or Barbadoes is, or what the
Irish Parliament was before 1782, the danger of collision is no
doubt removed:  but what, on the honourable and learned
gentleman's own principles, would Ireland gain by such an
arrangement?  If, on the other hand, his local legislature is to
be for certain purposes independent, you have again the risk of
collision.  Suppose that a difference of opinion should arise
between the Imperial Parliament and the Irish Parliament as to
the limits of their powers, who is to decide between them?  A
dispute between the House of Commons and the House of Lords is
bad enough.  Yet in that case, the Sovereign can, by a high
exercise of his prerogative, produce harmony.  He can send us
back to our constituents; and, if that expedient fails, he can
create more lords.  When, in 1705, the dispute between the Houses
about the Aylesbury men ran high, Queen Anne restored concord by
dismissing the Parliament.  Seven years later she put an end to
another conflict between the Houses by making twelve peers in one
day.  But who is to arbitrate between two representative bodies
chosen by different constituent bodies?  Look at what is now
passing in America.  Of all federal constitutions that of the
United States is the best.  It was framed by a convention which
contained many wise and experienced men, and over which
Washington presided.  Yet there is a debateable ground on the
frontier which separates the functions of Congress from those of
the state legislatures.  A dispute as to the exact boundary has
lately arisen.  Neither party seems disposed to yield:  and, if
both persist, there can be no umpire but the sword.

For my part, Sir, I have no hesitation in saying that I should
very greatly prefer the total separation which the honourable and
learned gentleman professes to consider as a calamity, to the
partial separation which he has taught his countrymen to regard
as a blessing.  If, on a fair trial, it be found that Great
Britain and Ireland cannot exist happily together as parts of one
empire, in God's name let them separate.  I wish to see them
joined as the limbs of a well formed body are joined.  In such a
body the members assist each other:  they are nourished by the
same food:  if one member suffer, all suffer with it:  if one
member rejoice, all rejoice with it.  But I do not wish to see
the countries united, like those wretched twins from Siam who
were exhibited here a little while ago, by an unnatural ligament
which made each the constant plague of the other, always in each
other's way, more helpless than others because they had twice as
many hands, slower than others because they had twice as many
legs, sympathising with each other only in evil, not feeling each
other's pleasures, not supported by each other's aliments, but
tormented by each other's infirmities, and certain to perish
miserably by each other's dissolution.

Ireland has undoubtedly just causes of complaint.  We heard those
causes recapitulated last night by the honourable and learned
Member, who tells us that he represents not Dublin alone, but
Ireland, and that he stands between his country and civil war.  I
do not deny that most of the grievances which he recounted exist,
that they are serious, and that they ought to be remedied as far
as it is in the power of legislation to remedy them.  What I do
deny is that they were caused by the Union, and that the Repeal
of the Union would remove them.  I listened attentively while the
honourable and learned gentleman went through that long and
melancholy list:  and I am confident that he did not mention a
single evil which was not a subject of bitter complaint while
Ireland had a domestic parliament.  Is it fair, is it reasonable
in the honourable gentleman to impute to the Union evils which,
as he knows better than any other man in this house, existed long
before the Union?  Post hoc:  ergo, propter hoc is not always
sound reasoning.  But ante hoc:  ergo, non propter hoc is
unanswerable.  The old rustic who told Sir Thomas More that
Tenterden steeple was the cause of Godwin sands reasoned much
better than the honourable and learned gentleman.  For it was not
till after Tenterden steeple was built that the frightful wrecks
on the Godwin sands were heard of.  But the honourable and
learned gentleman would make Godwin sands the cause of Tenterden
steeple.  Some of the Irish grievances which he ascribes to the
Union are not only older than the Union, but are not peculiarly
Irish.  They are common to England, Scotland, and Ireland; and it
was in order to get rid of them that we, for the common benefit
of England, Scotland, and Ireland, passed the Reform Bill last
year.  Other grievances which the honourable and learned
gentleman mentioned are doubtless local; but is there to be a
local legislature wherever there is a local grievance?  Wales has
had local grievances.  We all remember the complaints which were
made a few years ago about the Welsh judicial system; but did
anybody therefore propose that Wales should have a distinct
parliament?  Cornwall has some local grievances; but does anybody
propose that Cornwall shall have its own House of Lords and its
own House of Commons?  Leeds has local grievances.  The majority
of my constituents distrust and dislike the municipal government
to which they are subject; they therefore call loudly on us for
corporation reform:  but they do not ask us for a separate
legislature.  Of this I am quite sure, that every argument which
has been urged for the purpose of showing that Great Britain and
Ireland ought to have two distinct parliaments may be urged with
far greater force for the purpose of showing that the north of
Ireland and the south of Ireland ought to have two distinct
parliaments.  The House of Commons of the United Kingdom, it has
been said, is chiefly elected by Protestants, and therefore
cannot be trusted to legislate for Catholic Ireland.  If this be
so, how can an Irish House of Commons, chiefly elected by
Catholics, be trusted to legislate for Protestant Ulster?  It is
perfectly notorious that theological antipathies are stronger in
Ireland than here.  I appeal to the honourable and learned
gentleman himself.  He has often declared that it is impossible
for a Roman Catholic, whether prosecutor or culprit, to obtain
justice from a jury of Orangemen.  It is indeed certain that, in
blood, religion, language, habits, character, the population of
some of the northern counties of Ireland has much more in common
with the population of England and Scotland than with the
population of Munster and Connaught.  I defy the honourable and
learned Member, therefore, to find a reason for having a
parliament at Dublin which will not be just as good a reason for
having another parliament at Londonderry.

Sir, in showing, as I think I have shown, the absurdity of this
cry for Repeal, I have in a great measure vindicated myself from
the charge of inconsistency which has been brought against me by
my honourable friend the Member for Lincoln.  It is very easy to
bring a volume of Hansard to the House, to read a few sentences
of a speech made in very different circumstances, and to say,
"Last year you were for pacifying England by concession:  this
year you are for pacifying Ireland by coercion.  How can you
vindicate your consistency?"  Surely my honourable friend cannot
but know that nothing is easier than to write a theme for
severity, for clemency, for order, for liberty, for a
contemplative life, for a active life, and so on.  It was a
common exercise in the ancient schools of rhetoric to take an
abstract question, and to harangue first on one side and then on
the other.  The question, Ought popular discontents to be quieted
by concession or coercion? would have been a very good subject
for oratory of this kind.  There is no lack of commonplaces on
either side.  But when we come to the real business of life, the
value of these commonplaces depends entirely on the particular
circumstances of the case which we are discussing.  Nothing is
easier than to write a treatise proving that it is lawful to
resist extreme tyranny.  Nothing is easier than to write a
treatise setting forth the wickedness of wantonly bringing on a
great society the miseries inseparable from revolution, the
bloodshed, the spoliation, the anarchy.  Both treatises may
contain much that is true; but neither will enable us to decide
whether a particular insurrection is or is not justifiable
without a close examination of the facts.  There is surely no
inconsistency in speaking with respect of the memory of Lord
Russell and with horror of the crime of Thistlewood; and, in my
opinion, the conduct of Russell and the conduct of Thistlewood
did not differ more widely than the cry for Parliamentary Reform
and the cry for the Repeal of the Union.  The Reform Bill I
believe to be a blessing to the nation.  Repeal I know to be a
mere delusion.  I know it to be impracticable:  and I know that,
if it were practicable, it would be pernicious to every part of
the empire, and utterly ruinous to Ireland.  Is it not then
absurd to say that, because I wished last year to quiet the
English people by giving them that which was beneficial to them,
I am therefore bound in consistency to quiet the Irish people
this year by giving them that which will be fatal to them?  I
utterly deny, too, that, in consenting to arm the government with
extraordinary powers for the purpose of repressing disturbances
in Ireland, I am guilty of the smallest inconsistency.  On what
occasion did I ever refuse to support any government in
repressing disturbances?  It is perfectly true that, in the
debates on the Reform Bill, I imputed the tumults and outrages of
1830 to misrule.  But did I ever say that those tumults and
outrages ought to be tolerated?  I did attribute the Kentish
riots, the Hampshire riots, the burning of corn stacks, the
destruction of threshing machines, to the obstinacy with which
the Ministers of the Crown had refused to listen to the demands
of the people.  But did I ever say that the rioters ought not to
be imprisoned, that the incendiaries ought not to be hanged?  I
did ascribe the disorders of Nottingham and the fearful sacking
of Bristol to the unwise rejection of the Reform Bill by the
Lords.  But did I ever say that such excesses as were committed
at Nottingham and Bristol ought not to be put down, if necessary,
by the sword?

I would act towards Ireland on the same principles on which I
acted towards England.  In Ireland, as in England, I would remove
every just cause of complaint; and in Ireland, as in England, I
would support the Government in preserving the public peace.
What is there inconsistent in this?  My honourable friend seems
to think that no person who believes that disturbances have been
caused by maladministration can consistently lend his help to put
down those disturbances.  If that be so, the honourable and
learned Member for Dublin is quite as inconsistent as I am;
indeed, much more so; for he thinks very much worse of the
Government than I do; and yet he declares himself willing to
assist the Government in quelling the tumults which, as he
assures us, its own misconduct is likely to produce.  He told us
yesterday that our harsh policy might perhaps goad the unthinking
populace of Ireland into insurrection; and he added that, if
there should be insurrection, he should, while execrating us as
the authors of all the mischief, be found in our ranks, and
should be ready to support us in everything that might be
necessary for the restoration of order.  As to this part of the
subject, there is no difference in principle between the
honourable and learned gentleman and myself.  In his opinion, it
is probable that a time may soon come when vigorous coercion may
be necessary, and when it may be the duty of every friend of
Ireland to co-operate in the work of coercion.  In my opinion,
that time has already come.  The grievances of Ireland are
doubtless great, so great that I never would have connected
myself with a Government which I did not believe to be intent on
redressing those grievances.  But am I, because the grievances of
Ireland are great, and ought to be redressed, to abstain from
redressing the worst grievance of all?  Am I to look on quietly
while the laws are insulted by a furious rabble, while houses are
plundered and burned, while my peaceable fellow-subjects are
butchered?  The distribution of Church property, you tell us, is
unjust.  Perhaps I agree with you.  But what then?  To what
purpose is it to talk about the distribution of Church property,
while no property is secure?  Then you try to deter us from
putting down robbery, arson, and murder, by telling us that if we
resort to coercion we shall raise a civil war.  We are past that
fear.  Recollect that, in one county alone, there have been
within a few weeks sixty murders or assaults with intent to
murder and six hundred burglaries.  Since we parted last summer
the slaughter in Ireland has exceeded the slaughter of a pitched
battle:  the destruction of property has been as great as would
have been caused by the storming of three or four towns.  Civil
war, indeed!  I would rather live in the midst of any civil war
that we have had in England during the last two hundred years
than in some parts of Ireland at the present moment.  Rather,
much rather, would I have lived on the line of march of the
Pretender's army in 1745 than in Tipperary now.  It is idle to
threaten us with civil war; for we have it already; and it is
because we are resolved to put an end to it that we are called
base, and brutal, and bloody.  Such are the epithets which the
honourable and learned Member for Dublin thinks it becoming to
pour forth against the party to which he owes every political
privilege that he enjoys.  He need not fear that any member of
that party will be provoked into a conflict of scurrility.  Use
makes even sensitive minds callous to invective:  and, copious as
his vocabulary is, he will not easily find in it any foul name
which has not been many times applied to those who sit around me,
on account of the zeal and steadiness with which they supported
the emancipation of the Roman Catholics.  His reproaches are not
more stinging than the reproaches which, in times not very
remote, we endured unflinchingly in his cause.  I can assure him
that men who faced the cry of No Popery are not likely to be
scared by the cry of Repeal.  The time will come when history
will do justice to the Whigs of England, and will faithfully
relate how much they did and suffered for Ireland; how, for the
sake of Ireland, they quitted office in 1807; how, for the sake
of Ireland, they remained out of office more than twenty years,
braving the frowns of the Court, braving the hisses of the
multitude, renouncing power, and patronage, and salaries, and
peerages, and garters, and yet not obtaining in return even a
little fleeting popularity.  I see on the benches near me men who
might, by uttering one word against Catholic Emancipation, nay,
by merely abstaining from uttering a word in favour of Catholic
Emancipation, have been returned to this House without difficulty
or expense, and who, rather than wrong their Irish fellow-
subjects, were content to relinquish all the objects of their
honourable ambition, and to retire into private life with
conscience and fame untarnished.  As to one eminent person, who
seems to be regarded with especial malevolence by those who ought
never to mention his name without reverence and gratitude, I will
say only this:  that the loudest clamour which the honourable and
learned gentleman can excite against Lord Grey will be trifling
when compared with the clamour which Lord Grey withstood in order
to place the honourable and learned gentleman where he now sits.
Though a young member of the Whig party, I will venture to speak
in the name of the whole body.  I tell the honourable and learned
gentleman, that the same spirit which sustained us in a just
contest for him will sustain us in an equally just contest
against him.  Calumny, abuse, royal displeasure, popular fury,
exclusion from office, exclusion from Parliament, we were ready
to endure them all, rather than that he should be less than a
British subject.  We never will suffer him to be more.

I stand here, Sir, for the first time as the representative of a
new constituent body, one of the largest, most prosperous, and
most enlightened towns in the kingdom.  The electors of Leeds,
believing that at this time the service of the people is not
incompatible with the service of the Crown, have sent me to this
House charged, in the language of His Majesty's writ, to do and
consent, in their name and in their behalf, to such things as
shall be proposed in the great Council of the nation.  In the
name, then, and on the behalf of my constituents, I give my full
assent to that part of the Address wherein the House declares its
resolution to maintain inviolate, by the help of God, the
connection between Great Britain and Ireland, and to intrust to
the Sovereign such powers as shall be necessary to secure
property, to restore order, and to preserve the integrity of the
empire.

...


JEWISH DISABILITIES.  (APRIL 17, 1833)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN A COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE HOUSE OF COMMONS
ON THE 17TH OF APRIL, 1833.

On the seventeenth of April, 1833, the House of Commons resolved
itself into a Committee to consider of the civil disabilities of
the Jews.  Mr Warburton took the chair.  Mr Robert Grant moved
the following resolution:--

"That it is the opinion of this Committee that it is expedient to
remove all civil disabilities at present existing with respect to
His Majesty's subjects professing the Jewish religion, with the
like exceptions as are provided with respect to His Majesty's
subjects professing the Roman Catholic religion."

The resolution passed without a division, after a warm debate, in
the course of which the following Speech was made.

Mr Warburton,--I recollect, and my honourable friend the Member
for the University of Oxford will recollect, that when this
subject was discussed three years ago, it was remarked, by one
whom we both loved and whom we both regret, that the strength of
the case of the Jews was a serious inconvenience to their
advocate, for that it was hardly possible to make a speech for
them without wearying the audience by repeating truths which were
universally admitted.  If Sir James Mackintosh felt this
difficulty when the question was first brought forward in this
House, I may well despair of being able now to offer any
arguments which have a pretence to novelty.

My honourable friend, the Member for the University of Oxford,
began his speech by declaring that he had no intention of calling
in question the principles of religious liberty.  He utterly
disclaims persecution, that is to say, persecution as defined by
himself.  It would, in his opinion, be persecution to hang a Jew,
or to flay him, or to draw his teeth, or to imprison him, or to
fine him; for every man who conducts himself peaceably has a
right to his life and his limbs, to his personal liberty and his
property.  But it is not persecution, says my honourable friend,
to exclude any individual or any class from office; for nobody
has a right to office:  in every country official appointments
must be subject to such regulations as the supreme authority may
choose to make; nor can any such regulations be reasonably
complained of by any member of the society as unjust.  He who
obtains an office obtains it, not as matter of right, but as
matter of favour.  He who does not obtain an office is not
wronged; he is only in that situation in which the vast majority
of every community must necessarily be.  There are in the United
Kingdom five and twenty million Christians without places; and,
if they do not complain, why should five and twenty thousand Jews
complain of being in the same case?  In this way my honourable
friend has convinced himself that, as it would be most absurd in
him and me to say that we are wronged because we are not
Secretaries of State, so it is most absurd in the Jews to say
that they are wronged, because they are, as a people, excluded
from public employment.

Now, surely my honourable friend cannot have considered to what
conclusions his reasoning leads.  Those conclusions are so
monstrous that he would, I am certain, shrink from them.  Does he
really mean that it would not be wrong in the legislature to
enact that no man should be a judge unless he weighed twelve
stone, or that no man should sit in parliament unless he were six
feet high?  We are about to bring in a bill for the government of
India.  Suppose that we were to insert in that bill a clause
providing that no graduate of the University of Oxford should be
Governor General or Governor of any Presidency, would not my
honourable friend cry out against such a clause as most unjust to
the learned body which he represents?  And would he think himself
sufficiently answered by being told, in his own words, that the
appointment to office is a mere matter of favour, and that to
exclude an individual or a class from office is no injury?
Surely, on consideration, he must admit that official
appointments ought not to be subject to regulations purely
arbitrary, to regulations for which no reason can be given but
mere caprice, and that those who would exclude any class from
public employment are bound to show some special reason for the
exclusion.

My honourable friend has appealed to us as Christians.  Let me
then ask him how he understands that great commandment which
comprises the law and the prophets.  Can we be said to do unto
others as we would that they should do unto us if we wantonly
inflict on them even the smallest pain?  As Christians, surely we
are bound to consider, first, whether, by excluding the Jews from
all public trust, we give them pain; and, secondly, whether it be
necessary to give them that pain in order to avert some greater
evil.  That by excluding them from public trust we inflict pain
on them my honourable friend will not dispute.  As a Christian,
therefore, he is bound to relieve them from that pain, unless he
can show, what I am sure he has not yet shown, that it is
necessary to the general good that they should continue to
suffer.

But where, he says, are you to stop, if once you admit into the
House of Commons people who deny the authority of the Gospels?
Will you let in a Mussulman?  Will you let in a Parsee?  Will you
let in a Hindoo, who worships a lump of stone with seven heads?
I will answer my honourable friend's question by another.  Where
does he mean to stop?  Is he ready to roast unbelievers at slow
fires?  If not, let him tell us why:  and I will engage to prove
that his reason is just as decisive against the intolerance which
he thinks a duty, as against the intolerance which he thinks a
crime.  Once admit that we are bound to inflict pain on a man
because he is not of our religion; and where are you to stop?
Why stop at the point fixed by my honourable friend rather than
at the point fixed by the honourable Member for Oldham (Mr
Cobbett.), who would make the Jews incapable of holding land?
And why stop at the point fixed by the honourable Member for
Oldham rather than at the point which would have been fixed by a
Spanish Inquisitor of the sixteenth century?  When once you enter
on a course of persecution, I defy you to find any reason for
making a halt till you have reached the extreme point.  When my
honourable friend tells us that he will allow the Jews to possess
property to any amount, but that he will not allow them to
possess the smallest political power, he holds contradictory
language.  Property is power.  The honourable Member for Oldham
reasons better than my honourable friend.  The honourable Member
for Oldham sees very clearly that it is impossible to deprive a
man of political power if you suffer him to be the proprietor of
half a county, and therefore very consistently proposes to
confiscate the landed estates of the Jews.  But even the
honourable Member for Oldham does not go far enough.  He has not
proposed to confiscate the personal property of the Jews.  Yet it
is perfectly certain that any Jew who has a million may easily
make himself very important in the State.  By such steps we pass
from official power to landed property, and from landed property
to personal property, and from property to liberty, and from
liberty to life.  In truth, those persecutors who use the rack
and the stake have much to say for themselves.  They are
convinced that their end is good; and it must be admitted that
they employ means which are not unlikely to attain the end.
Religious dissent has repeatedly been put down by sanguinary
persecution.  In that way the Albigenses were put down.  In that
way Protestantism was suppressed in Spain and Italy, so that it
has never since reared its head.  But I defy any body to produce
an instance in which disabilities such as we are now considering
have produced any other effect than that of making the sufferers
angry and obstinate.  My honourable friend should either
persecute to some purpose, or not persecute at all.  He dislikes
the word persecution I know.  He will not admit that the Jews are
persecuted.  And yet I am confident that he would rather be sent
to the King's Bench Prison for three months, or be fined a
hundred pounds, than be subject to the disabilities under which
the Jews lie.  How can he then say that to impose such
disabilities is not persecution, and that to fine and imprison is
persecution?  All his reasoning consists in drawing arbitrary
lines.  What he does not wish to inflict he calls persecution.
What he does wish to inflict he will not call persecution.  What
he takes from the Jews he calls political power.  What he is too
good-natured to take from the Jews he will not call political
power.  The Jew must not sit in Parliament:  but he may be the
proprietor of all the ten pound houses in a borough.  He may have
more fifty pound tenants than any peer in the kingdom.  He may
give the voters treats to please their palates, and hire bands of
gipsies to break their heads, as if he were a Christian and a
Marquess.  All the rest of this system is of a piece.  The Jew
may be a juryman, but not a judge.  He may decide issues of fact,
but not issues of law.  He may give a hundred thousand pounds
damages; but he may not in the most trivial case grant a new
trial.  He may rule the money market:  he may influence the
exchanges:  he may be summoned to congresses of Emperors and
Kings.  Great potentates, instead of negotiating a loan with him
by tying him in a chair and pulling out his grinders, may treat
with him as with a great potentate, and may postpone the
declaring of war or the signing of a treaty till they have
conferred with him.  All this is as it should be:  but he must
not be a Privy Councillor.  He must not be called Right
Honourable, for that is political power.  And who is it that we
are trying to cheat in this way?  Even Omniscience.  Yes, Sir; we
have been gravely told that the Jews are under the divine
displeasure, and that if we give them political power God will
visit us in judgment.  Do we then think that God cannot
distinguish between substance and form?  Does not He know that,
while we withhold from the Jews the semblance and name of
political power, we suffer them to possess the substance?  The
plain truth is that my honourable friend is drawn in one
direction by his opinions, and in a directly opposite direction
by his excellent heart.  He halts between two opinions.  He tries
to make a compromise between principles which admit of no
compromise.  He goes a certain way in intolerance.  Then he
stops, without being able to give a reason for stopping.  But I
know the reason.  It is his humanity.  Those who formerly dragged
the Jew at a horse's tail, and singed his beard with blazing
furzebushes, were much worse men than my honourable friend; but
they were more consistent than he.

It has been said that it would be monstrous to see a Jew judge
try a man for blasphemy.  In my opinion it is monstrous to see
any judge try a man for blasphemy under the present law.  But, if
the law on that subject were in a sound state, I do not see why a
conscientious Jew might not try a blasphemer.  Every man, I
think, ought to be at liberty to discuss the evidences of
religion; but no man ought to be at liberty to force on the
unwilling ears and eyes of others sounds and sights which must
cause annoyance and irritation.  The distinction is clear.  I
think it wrong to punish a man for selling Paine's Age of Reason
in a back-shop to those who choose to buy, or for delivering a
Deistical lecture in a private room to those who choose to
listen.  But if a man exhibits at a window in the Strand a
hideous caricature of that which is an object of awe and
adoration to nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand
of people who pass up and down that great thoroughfare; if a man
in a place of public resort applies opprobrious epithets to names
held in reverence by all Christians; such a man ought, in my
opinion, to be severely punished, not for differing from us in
opinion, but for committing a nuisance which gives us pain and
disgust.  He is no more entitled to outrage our feelings by
obtruding his impiety on us, and to say that he is exercising his
right of discussion, than to establish a yard for butchering
horses close to our houses, and to say that he is exercising his
right of property, or to run naked up and down the public
streets, and to say that he is exercising his right of
locomotion.  He has a right of discussion, no doubt, as he has a
right of property and a right of locomotion.  But he must use all
his rights so as not to infringe the rights of others.

These, Sir, are the principles on which I would frame the law of
blasphemy; and if the law were so framed, I am at a loss to
understand why a Jew might not enforce it as well as a Christian.
I am not a Roman Catholic; but if I were a judge at Malta, I
should have no scruple about punishing a bigoted Protestant who
should burn the Pope in effigy before the eyes of thousands of
Roman Catholics.  I am not a Mussulman; but if I were a judge in
India, I should have no scruple about punishing a Christian who
should pollute a mosque.  Why, then, should I doubt that a Jew,
raised by his ability, learning, and integrity to the judicial
bench, would deal properly with any person who, in a Christian
country, should insult the Christian religion?

But, says my honourable friend, it has been prophesied that the
Jews are to be wanderers on the face of the earth, and that they
are not to mix on terms of equality with the people of the
countries in which they sojourn.  Now, Sir, I am confident that I
can demonstrate that this is not the sense of any prophecy which
is part of Holy Writ.  For it is an undoubted fact that, in the
United States of America, Jewish citizens do possess all the
privileges possessed by Christian citizens.  Therefore, if the
prophecies mean that the Jews never shall, during their
wanderings, be admitted by other nations to equal participation
of political rights, the prophecies are false.  But the
prophecies are certainly not false.  Therefore their meaning
cannot be that which is attributed to them by my honourable
friend.

Another objection which has been made to this motion is that the
Jews look forward to the coming of a great deliverer, to their
return to Palestine, to the rebuilding of their Temple, to the
revival of their ancient worship, and that therefore they will
always consider England, not their country, but merely as their
place of exile.  But, surely, Sir, it would be the grossest
ignorance of human nature to imagine that the anticipation of an
event which is to happen at some time altogether indefinite, of
an event which has been vainly expected during many centuries, of
an event which even those who confidently expect that it will
happen do not confidently expect that they or their children or
their grandchildren will see, can ever occupy the minds of men to
such a degree as to make them regardless of what is near and
present and certain.  Indeed Christians, as well as Jews, believe
that the existing order of things will come to an end.  Many
Christians believe that Jesus will visibly reign on earth during
a thousand years.  Expositors of prophecy have gone so far as to
fix the year when the Millennial period is to commence.  The
prevailing opinion is, I think, in favour of the year 1866; but,
according to some commentators, the time is close at hand.  Are
we to exclude all millennarians from Parliament and office, on
the ground that they are impatiently looking forward to the
miraculous monarchy which is to supersede the present dynasty and
the present constitution of England, and that therefore they
cannot be heartily loyal to King William?

In one important point, Sir, my honourable friend, the Member for
the University of Oxford, must acknowledge that the Jewish
religion is of all erroneous religions the least mischievous.
There is not the slightest chance that the Jewish religion will
spread.  The Jew does not wish to make proselytes.  He may be
said to reject them.  He thinks it almost culpable in one who
does not belong to his race to presume to belong to his religion.
It is therefore not strange that a conversion from Christianity
to Judaism should be a rarer occurrence than a total eclipse of
the sun.  There was one distinguished convert in the last
century, Lord George Gordon; and the history of his conversion
deserves to be remembered.  For if ever there was a proselyte of
whom a proselytising sect would have been proud, it was Lord
George; not only because he was a man of high birth and rank; not
only because he had been a member of the legislature; but also
because he had been distinguished by the intolerance, nay, the
ferocity, of his zeal for his own form of Christianity.  But was
he allured into the Synagogue?  Was he even welcomed to it?  No,
sir; he was coldly and reluctantly permitted to share the
reproach and suffering of the chosen people; but he was sternly
shut out from their privileges.  He underwent the painful rite
which their law enjoins.  But when, on his deathbed, he begged
hard to be buried among them according to their ceremonial, he
was told that his request could not be granted.  I understand
that cry of "Hear."  It reminds me that one of the arguments
against this motion is that the Jews are an unsocial people, that
they draw close to each other, and stand aloof from strangers.
Really, Sir, it is amusing to compare the manner in which the
question of Catholic emancipation was argued formerly by some
gentlemen with the manner in which the question of Jew
emancipation is argued by the same gentlemen now.  When the
question was about Catholic emancipation, the cry was, "See how
restless, how versatile, how encroaching, how insinuating, is the
spirit of the Church of Rome.  See how her priests compass earth
and sea to make one proselyte, how indefatigably they toil, how
attentively they study the weak and strong parts of every
character, how skilfully they employ literature, arts, sciences,
as engines for the propagation of their faith.  You find them in
every region and under every disguise, collating manuscripts in
the Bodleian, fixing telescopes in the observatory of Pekin,
teaching the use of the plough and the spinning-wheel to the
savages of Paraguay.  Will you give power to the members of a
Church so busy, so aggressive, so insatiable?"  Well, now the
question is about people who never try to seduce any stranger to
join them, and who do not wish anybody to be of their faith who
is not also of their blood.  And now you exclaim, "Will you give
power to the members of a sect which remains sullenly apart from
other sects, which does not invite, nay, which hardly ever admits
neophytes?"  The truth is, that bigotry will never want a
pretence.  Whatever the sect be which it is proposed to tolerate,
the peculiarities of that sect will, for the time, be pronounced
by intolerant men to be the most odious and dangerous that can be
conceived.  As to the Jews, that they are unsocial as respects
religion is true; and so much the better:  for, surely, as
Christians, we cannot wish that they should bestir themselves to
pervert us from our own faith.  But that the Jews would be
unsocial members of the civil community, if the civil community
did its duty by them, has never been proved.  My right honourable
friend who made the motion which we are discussing has produced a
great body of evidence to show that they have been grossly
misrepresented; and that evidence has not been refuted by my
honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford.  But
what if it were true that the Jews are unsocial?  What if it were
true that they do not regard England as their country?  Would not
the treatment which they have undergone explain and excuse their
antipathy to the society in which they live?  Has not similar
antipathy often been felt by persecuted Christians to the society
which persecuted them?  While the bloody code of Elizabeth was
enforced against the English Roman Catholics, what was the
patriotism of Roman Catholics?  Oliver Cromwell said that in his
time they were Espaniolised.  At a later period it might have
been said that they were Gallicised.  It was the same with the
Calvinists.  What more deadly enemies had France in the days of
Louis the Fourteenth than the persecuted Huguenots?  But would
any rational man infer from these facts that either the Roman
Catholic as such, or the Calvinist as such, is incapable of
loving the land of his birth?  If England were now invaded by
Roman Catholics, how many English Roman Catholics would go over
to the invader?  If France were now attacked by a Protestant
enemy, how many French Protestants would lend him help?  Why not
try what effect would be produced on the Jews by that tolerant
policy which has made the English Roman Catholic a good
Englishman, and the French Calvinist a good Frenchman?

Another charge has been brought against the Jews, not by my
honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford--he has
too much learning and too much good feeling to make such a
charge--but by the honourable Member for Oldham, who has, I am
sorry to see, quitted his place.  The honourable Member for
Oldham tells us that the Jews are naturally a mean race, a sordid
race, a money-getting race; that they are averse to all
honourable callings; that they neither sow nor reap; that they
have neither flocks nor herds; that usury is the only pursuit for
which they are fit; that they are destitute of all elevated and
amiable sentiments.  Such, Sir, has in every age been the
reasoning of bigots.  They never fail to plead in justification
of persecution the vices which persecution has engendered.
England has been to the Jews less than half a country; and we
revile them because they do not feel for England more than a half
patriotism.  We treat them as slaves, and wonder that they do not
regard us as brethren.  We drive them to mean occupations, and
then reproach them for not embracing honourable professions.  We
long forbade them to possess land; and we complain that they
chiefly occupy themselves in trade.  We shut them out from all
the paths of ambition; and then we despise them for taking refuge
in avarice.  During many ages we have, in all our dealings with
them, abused our immense superiority of force; and then we are
disgusted because they have recourse to that cunning which is the
natural and universal defence of the weak against the violence of
the strong.  But were they always a mere money-changing, money-
getting, money-hoarding race?  Nobody knows better than my
honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford that
there is nothing in their national character which unfits them
for the highest duties of citizens.  He knows that, in the
infancy of civilisation, when our island was as savage as New
Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to Athens, when
scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the site of
Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar
palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships,
their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and
soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and their
poets.  What nation ever contended more manfully against
overwhelming odds for its independence and religion?  What nation
ever, in its last agonies, gave such signal proofs of what may be
accomplished by a brave despair?  And if, in the course of many
centuries, the oppressed descendants of warriors and sages have
degenerated from the qualities of their fathers, if, while
excluded from the blessings of law, and bowed down under the yoke
of slavery, they have contracted some of the vices of outlaws and
of slaves, shall we consider this as matter of reproach to them?
Shall we not rather consider it as matter of shame and remorse to
ourselves?  Let us do justice to them.  Let us open to them the
door of the House of Commons.  Let us open to them every career
in which ability and energy can be displayed.  Till we have done
this, let us not presume to say that there is no genius among the
countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism among the descendants of the
Maccabees.

Sir, in supporting the motion of my honourable friend, I am, I
firmly believe, supporting the honour and the interests of the
Christian religion.  I should think that I insulted that religion
if I said that it cannot stand unaided by intolerant laws.
Without such laws it was established, and without such laws it
may be maintained.  It triumphed over the superstitions of the
most refined and of the most savage nations, over the graceful
mythology of Greece and the bloody idolatry of the Northern
forests.  It prevailed over the power and policy of the Roman
empire.  It tamed the barbarians by whom that empire was
overthrown.  But all these victories were gained not by the help
of intolerance, but in spite of the opposition of intolerance.
The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little
indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from
persecution as an ally.  May she long continue to bless our
country with her benignant influence, strong in her sublime
philosophy, strong in her spotless morality, strong in those
internal and external evidences to which the most powerful and
comprehensive of human intellects have yielded assent, the last
solace of those who have outlived every earthly hope, the last
restraint of those who are raised above every earthly fear!  But
let not us, mistaking her character and her interests, fight the
battle of truth with the weapons of error, and endeavour to
support by oppression that religion which first taught the human
race the great lesson of universal charity.

...


GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.  (JULY 10, 1833)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 10TH OF JULY
1833.

On Wednesday, the tenth of July 1833, Mr Charles Grant, President
of the Board of Control, moved that the Bill for effecting an
arrangement with the India Company, and for the better government
of His Majesty's Indian territories, should be read a second
time.  The motion was carried without a division, but not without
a long debate, in the course of which the following Speech was
made.

Having, while this bill was in preparation, enjoyed the fullest
and kindest confidence of my right honourable friend, the
President of the Board of Control, agreeing with him completely
in all those views which on a former occasion he so luminously
and eloquently developed, having shared his anxieties, and
feeling that in some degree I share his responsibility, I am
naturally desirous to obtain the attention of the House while I
attempt to defend the principles of the proposed arrangement.  I
wish that I could promise to be very brief; but the subject is so
extensive that I will only promise to condense what I have to say
as much as I can.

I rejoice, Sir, that I am completely dispensed, by the turn which
our debates have taken, from the necessity of saying anything in
favour of one part of our plan, the opening of the China trade.
No voice, I believe, has yet been raised here in support of the
monopoly.  On that subject all public men of all parties seem to
be agreed.  The resolution proposed by the Ministers has received
the unanimous assent of both Houses, and the approbation of the
whole kingdom.  I will not, therefore, Sir, detain you by
vindicating what no gentleman has yet ventured to attack, but
will proceed to call your attention to those effects which this
great commercial revolution necessarily produced on the system of
Indian government and finance.

The China trade is to be opened.  Reason requires this.  Public
opinion requires it.  The Government of the Duke of Wellington
felt the necessity as strongly as the Government of Lord Grey.
No Minister, Whig or Tory, could have been found to propose a
renewal of the monopoly.  No parliament, reformed or unreformed,
would have listened to such a proposition.  But though the
opening of the trade was a matter concerning which the public had
long made up its mind, the political consequences which must
necessarily follow from the opening of the trade seem to me to be
even now little understood.  The language which I have heard in
almost every circle where the subject was discussed was this:
"Take away the monopoly, and leave the government of India to the
Company:"  a very short and convenient way of settling one of the
most complicated questions that ever a legislature had to
consider.  The honourable Member for Sheffield (Mr Buckingham.),
though not disposed to retain the Company as an organ of
government, has repeatedly used language which proves that he
shares in the general misconception.  The fact is that the
abolition of the monopoly rendered it absolutely necessary to
make a fundamental change in the constitution of that great
Corporation.

The Company had united in itself two characters, the character of
trader and the character of sovereign.  Between the trader and
the sovereign there was a long and complicated account, almost
every item of which furnished matter for litigation.  While the
monopoly continued, indeed, litigation was averted.  The effect
of the monopoly was, to satisfy the claims both of commerce and
of territory, at the expense of a third party, the English
people:  to secure at once funds for the dividend of the
stockholder and funds for the government of the Indian Empire, by
means of a heavy tax on the tea consumed in this country.  But,
when the third party would no longer bear this charge, all the
great financial questions which had, at the cost of that third
party, been kept in abeyance, were opened in an instant.  The
connection between the Company in its mercantile capacity, and
the same Company in its political capacity, was dissolved.  Even
if the Company were permitted, as has been suggested, to govern
India, and at the same time to trade with China, no advances
would be made from the profits of its Chinese trade for the
support of its Indian government.  It was in consideration of the
exclusive privilege that the Company had hitherto been required
to make those advances; it was by the exclusive privilege that
the Company had been enabled to make them.  When that privilege
was taken away, it would be unreasonable in the legislature to
impose such an obligation, and impossible for the Company to
fulfil it.  The whole system of loans from commerce to territory,
and repayments from territory to commerce, must cease.  Each
party must rest altogether on its own resources.  It was
therefore absolutely necessary to ascertain what resources each
party possessed, to bring the long and intricate account between
them to a close, and to assign to each a fair portion of assets
and liabilities.  There was vast property.  How much of that
property was applicable to purposes of state?  How much was
applicable to a dividend?  There were debts to the amount of many
millions.  Which of these were the debts of the government that
ruled at Calcutta?  Which of the great mercantile house that
bought tea at Canton?  Were the creditors to look to the land
revenues of India for their money?  Or, were they entitled to put
executions into the warehouses behind Bishopsgate Street?

There were two ways of settling these questions--adjudication and
compromise.  The difficulties of adjudication were great; I think
insuperable.  Whatever acuteness and diligence could do has been
done.  One person in particular, whose talents and industry
peculiarly fitted him for such investigations, and of whom I can
never think without regret, Mr Hyde Villiers, devoted himself to
the examination with an ardour and a perseverance, which, I
believe, shortened a life most valuable to his country and to his
friends.  The assistance of the most skilful accountants has been
called in.  But the difficulties are such as no accountant,
however skilful, could possibly remove.  The difficulties are not
arithmetical, but political.  They arise from the constitution of
the Company, from the long and intimate union of the commercial
and imperial characters in one body.  Suppose that the treasurer
of a charity were to mix up the money which he receives on
account of the charity with his own private rents and dividends,
to pay the whole into his bank to his own private account, to
draw it out again by cheques in exactly the same form when he
wanted it for his private expenses, and when he wanted it for the
purposes of his public trust.  Suppose that he were to continue
to act thus till he was himself ignorant whether he were in
advance or in arrear; and suppose that many years after his death
a question were to arise whether his estate were in debt to the
charity or the charity in debt to his estate.  Such is the
question which is now before us, with this important difference;
that the accounts of an individual could not be in such a state
unless he had been guilty of fraud, or of that gross negligence
which is scarcely less culpable than fraud, and that the accounts
of the Company were brought into this state by circumstances of a
very peculiar kind, by circumstances unparalleled in the history
of the world.

It is a mistake to suppose that the Company was a merely
commercial body till the middle of the last century.  Commerce
was its chief object; but in order to enable it to pursue that
object, it had been, like the other Companies which were its
rivals, like the Dutch India Company, like the French India
Company, invested from a very early period with political
functions.  More than a hundred and twenty years ago, the Company
was in miniature precisely what it now is.  It was intrusted with
the very highest prerogatives of sovereignty.  It had its forts,
and its white captains, and its black sepoys; it had its civil
and criminal tribunals; it was authorised to proclaim martial
law; it sent ambassadors to the native governments, and concluded
treaties with them; it was Zemindar of several districts, and
within those districts, like other Zemindars of the first class,
it exercised the powers of a sovereign, even to the infliction of
capital punishment on the Hindoos within its jurisdiction.  It is
incorrect, therefore, to say, that the Company was at first a
mere trader, and has since become a sovereign.  It was at first a
great trader and a petty prince.  The political functions at
first attracted little notice, because they were merely auxiliary
to the commercial functions.  By degrees, however, the political
functions became more and more important.  The Zemindar became a
great nabob, became sovereign of all India; the two hundred
sepoys became two hundred thousand.  This change was gradually
wrought, and was not immediately comprehended.  It was natural
that, while the political functions of the Company were merely
auxiliary to its commerce, the political accounts should have
been mixed up with the commercial accounts.  It was equally
natural that this mode of keeping accounts, having once been
established, should have remained unaltered; and the more so, as
the change in the situation of the Company, though rapid, was not
sudden.  It is impossible to name any one day, or any one year,
as the day or the year when the Company became a great potentate.
It has been the fashion indeed to fix on the year 1765, the year
in which the Mogul issued a commission authorising the Company to
administer the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, as the
precise date of the accession of this singular body to
sovereignty.  I am utterly at a loss to understand why this epoch
should be selected.  Long before 1765 the Company had the reality
of political power.  Long before that year, they made a Nabob of
Arcot; they made and unmade Nabobs of Bengal; they humbled the
Vizier of Oude; they braved the Emperor of Hindostan himself;
more than half the revenues of Bengal were, under one pretence or
another, administered by them.  And after the grant, the Company
was not, in form and name, an independent power.  It was merely a
minister of the Court of Delhi.  Its coinage bore the name of
Shah Alam.  The inscription which, down to the time of the
Marquess of Hastings, appeared on the seal of the Governor-
General, declared that great functionary to be the slave of the
Mogul.  Even to this day we have never formally deposed the King
of Delhi.  The Company contents itself with being Mayor of the
Palace, while the Roi Faineant is suffered to play at being a
sovereign.  In fact, it was considered, both by Lord Clive and by
Warren Hastings, as a point of policy to leave the character of
the Company thus undefined, in order that the English might treat
the princes in whose names they governed as realities or
nonentities, just as might be most convenient.

Thus the transformation of the Company from a trading body, which
possessed some sovereign prerogatives for the purposes of trade,
into a sovereign body, the trade of which was auxiliary to its
sovereignty, was effected by degrees and under disguise.  It is
not strange, therefore, that the mercantile and political
transactions of this great corporation should be entangled
together in inextricable complication.  The commercial
investments have been purchased out of the revenues of the
empire.  The expenses of war and government have been defrayed
out of the profits of the trade.  Commerce and territory have
contributed to the improvement of the same spot of land, to the
repairs of the same building.  Securities have been given in
precisely the same form for money which has been borrowed for
purposes of State, and for money which has been borrowed for
purposes of traffic.  It is easy, indeed,--and this is a
circumstance which has, I think, misled some gentlemen,--it is
easy to see what part of the assets of the Company appears in a
commercial form, and what part appears in a political or
territorial form.  But this is not the question.  Assets which
are commercial in form may be territorial as respects the right
of property; assets which are territorial in form may be
commercial as respects the right of property.  A chest of tea is
not necessarily commercial property; it may have been bought out
of the territorial revenue.  A fort is not necessarily
territorial property; it may stand on ground which the Company
bought a hundred years ago out of their commercial profits.
Adjudication, if by adjudication be meant decision according to
some known rule of law, was out of the question.  To leave
matters like these to be determined by the ordinary maxims of our
civil jurisprudence would have been the height of absurdity and
injustice.  For example, the home bond debt of the Company, it is
believed, was incurred partly for political and partly for
commercial purposes.  But there is no evidence which would enable
us to assign to each branch its proper share.  The bonds all run
in the same form; and a court of justice would, therefore, of
course, either lay the whole burthen on the proprietors, or lay
the whole on the territory.  We have legal opinions, very
respectable legal opinions, to the effect, that in strictness of
law the territory is not responsible, and that the commercial
assets are responsible for every farthing of the debts which were
incurred for the government and defence of India.  But though
this may be, and I believe is, law, it is, I am sure, neither
reason nor justice.  On the other hand, it is urged by the
advocates of the Company, that some valuable portions of the
territory are the property of that body in its commercial
capacity; that Calcutta, for example, is the private estate of
the Company; that the Company holds the island of Bombay, in free
and common socage, as of the Manor of East Greenwich.  I will not
pronounce any opinion on these points.  I have considered them
enough to see that there is quite difficulty enough in them to
exercise all the ingenuity of all the lawyers in the kingdom for
twenty years.  But the fact is, Sir, that the municipal law was
not made for controversies of this description.  The existence of
such a body as this gigantic corporation, this political monster
of two natures, subject in one hemisphere, sovereign in another,
had never been contemplated by the legislators or judges of
former ages.  Nothing but grotesque absurdity and atrocious
injustice could have been the effect, if the claims and
liabilities of such a body had been settled according to the
rules of Westminster Hall, if the maxims of conveyancers had been
applied to the titles by which flourishing cities and provinces
are held, or the maxims of the law merchant to those promissory
notes which are the securities for a great National Debt, raised
for the purpose of exterminating the Pindarrees and humbling the
Burmese.

It was, as I have said, absolutely impossible to bring the
question between commerce and territory to a satisfactory
adjudication; and I must add that, even if the difficulties which
I have mentioned could have been surmounted, even if there had
been reason to hope that a satisfactory adjudication could have
been obtained, I should still have wished to avoid that course.
I think it desirable that the Company should continue to have a
share in the government of India; and it would evidently have
been impossible, pending a litigation between commerce and
territory, to leave any political power to the Company.  It would
clearly have been the duty of those who were charged with the
superintendence of India, to be the patrons of India throughout
that momentous litigation, to scrutinise with the utmost severity
every claim which might be made on the Indian revenues, and to
oppose, with energy and perseverance, every such claim, unless
its justice were manifest.  If the Company was to be engaged in a
suit for many millions, in a suit which might last for many
years, against the Indian territory, could we entrust the Company
with the government of that territory?  Could we put the
plaintiff in the situation of prochain ami of the defendant?
Could we appoint governors who would have an interest opposed in
the most direct manner to the interest of the governed, whose
stock would have been raised in value by every decision which
added to the burthens of their subjects, and depressed by every
decision which diminished those burthens?  It would be absurd to
suppose that they would efficiently defend our Indian Empire
against the claims which they were themselves bringing against
it; and it would be equally absurd to give the government of the
Indian Empire to those who could not be trusted to defend its
interests.

Seeing, then, that it was most difficult, if not wholly
impossible, to resort to adjudication between commerce and
territory, seeing that, if recourse were had to adjudication, it
would be necessary to make a complete revolution in the whole
constitution of India, the Government has proposed a compromise.
That compromise, with some modifications which did not in the
slightest degree affect its principle, and which, while they gave
satisfaction to the Company, will eventually lay no additional
burthen on the territory, has been accepted.  It has, like all
other compromises, been loudly censured by violent partisans on
both sides.  It has been represented by some as far too
favourable to the Company, and by others as most unjust to the
Company.  Sir, I own that we cannot prove that either of these
accusations is unfounded.  It is of the very essence of our case
that we should not be able to show that we have assigned, either
to commerce or to territory, its precise due.  For our principal
reason for recommending a compromise was our full conviction that
it was absolutely impossible to ascertain with precision what was
due to commerce and what was due to territory.  It is not strange
that some people should accuse us of robbing the Company, and
others of conferring a vast boon on the Company, at the expense
of India:  for we have proposed a middle course, on the very
ground that there was a chance of a result much more favourable
to the Company than our arrangement, and a chance also of a
result much less favourable.  If the questions pending between
the Company and India had been decided as the ardent supporters
of the Company predicted, India would, if I calculate rightly,
have paid eleven millions more than she will now have to pay.  If
those questions had been decided as some violent enemies of the
Company predicted, that great body would have been utterly
ruined.  The very meaning of compromise is that each party gives
up his chance of complete success, in order to be secured against
the chance of utter failure.  And, as men of sanguine minds
always overrate the chances in their own favour, every fair
compromise is sure to be severely censured on both sides.  I
conceive that, in a case so dark and complicated as this, the
compromise which we recommend is sufficiently vindicated, if it
cannot be proved to be unfair.  We are not bound to prove it to
be fair.  For it would have been unnecessary for us to resort to
compromise at all if we had been in possession of evidence which
would have enabled us to pronounce, with certainty, what claims
were fair and what were unfair.  It seems to me that we have
acted with due consideration for every party.  The dividend which
we give to the proprietors is precisely the same dividend which
they have been receiving during forty years, and which they have
expected to receive permanently.  The price of their stock bears
at present the same proportion to the price of other stock which
it bore four or five years ago, before the anxiety and excitement
which the late negotiations naturally produced had begun to
operate.  As to the territory, on the other hand, it is true
that, if the assets which are now in a commercial form should not
produce a fund sufficient to pay the debts and dividend of the
Company, the territory must stand to the loss and pay the
difference.  But in return for taking this risk, the territory
obtains an immediate release from claims to the amount of many
millions.  I certainly do not believe that all those claims could
have been substantiated; but I know that very able men think
differently.  And, if only one-fourth of the sum demanded had
been awarded to the Company, India would have lost more than the
largest sum which, as it seems to me, she can possibly lose under
the proposed arrangement.

In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, I conceive that we can
defend the measure as it affects the territory.  But to the
territory the pecuniary question is of secondary importance.  If
we have made a good pecuniary bargain for India, but a bad
political bargain, if we have saved three or four millions to the
finances of that country, and given to it, at the same time,
pernicious institutions, we shall indeed have been practising a
most ruinous parsimony.  If, on the other hand, it shall be found
that we have added fifty or a hundred thousand pounds a-year to
the expenditure of an empire which yields a revenue of twenty
millions, but that we have at the same time secured to that
empire, as far as in us lies, the blessings of good government,
we shall have no reason to be ashamed of our profusion.  I hope
and believe that India will have to pay nothing.  But on the most
unfavourable supposition that can be made, she will not have to
pay so much to the Company as she now pays annually to a single
state pageant, to the titular Nabob of Bengal, for example, or
the titular King of Delhi.  What she pays to these nominal
princes, who, while they did anything, did mischief, and who now
do nothing, she may well consent to pay to her real rulers, if
she receives from them, in return, efficient protection and good
legislation.

We come then to the great question.  Is it desirable to retain
the Company as an organ of government for India?  I think that it
is desirable.  The question is, I acknowledge, beset with
difficulties.  We have to solve one of the hardest problems in
politics.  We are trying to make brick without straw, to bring a
clean thing out of an unclean, to give a good government to a
people to whom we cannot give a free government.  In this
country, in any neighbouring country, it is easy to frame
securities against oppression.  In Europe, you have the materials
of good government everywhere ready to your hands.  The people
are everywhere perfectly competent to hold some share, not in
every country an equal share, but some share of political power.
If the question were, What is the best mode of securing good
government in Europe? the merest smatterer in politics would
answer, representative institutions.  In India you cannot have
representative institutions.  Of all the innumerable speculators
who have offered their suggestions on Indian politics, not a
single one, as far as I know, however democratical his opinions
may be, has ever maintained the possibility of giving, at the
present time, such institutions to India.  One gentleman,
extremely well acquainted with the affairs of our Eastern Empire,
a most valuable servant of the Company, and the author of a
History of India, which, though certainly not free from faults,
is, I think, on the whole, the greatest historical work which has
appeared in our language since that of Gibbon, I mean Mr Mill,
was examined on this point.  That gentleman is well known to be a
very bold and uncompromising politician.  He has written
strongly, far too strongly I think, in favour of pure democracy.
He has gone so far as to maintain that no nation which has not a
representative legislature, chosen by universal suffrage, enjoys
security against oppression.  But when he was asked before the
Committee of last year, whether he thought representative
government practicable in India, his answer was, "utterly out of
the question."  This, then, is the state in which we are.  We
have to frame a good government for a country into which, by
universal acknowledgment, we cannot introduce those institutions
which all our habits, which all the reasonings of European
philosophers, which all the history of our own part of the world
would lead us to consider as the one great security for good
government.  We have to engraft on despotism those blessings
which are the natural fruits of liberty.  In these circumstances,
Sir, it behoves us to be cautious, even to the verge of timidity.
The light of political science and of history are withdrawn:  we
are walking in darkness:  we do not distinctly see whither we are
going.  It is the wisdom of a man, so situated, to feel his way,
and not to plant his foot till he is well assured that the ground
before him is firm.

Some things, however, in the midst of this obscurity, I can see
with clearness.  I can see, for example, that it is desirable
that the authority exercised in this country over the Indian
government should be divided between two bodies, between a
minister or a board appointed by the Crown, and some other body
independent of the Crown.  If India is to be a dependency of
England, to be at war with our enemies, to be at peace with our
allies, to be protected by the English navy from maritime
aggression, to have a portion of the English army mixed with its
sepoys, it plainly follows that the King, to whom the
Constitution gives the direction of foreign affairs, and the
command of the military and naval forces, ought to have a share
in the direction of the Indian government.  Yet, on the other
hand, that a revenue of twenty millions a year, an army of two
hundred thousand men, a civil service abounding with lucrative
situations, should be left to the disposal of the Crown without
any check whatever, is what no minister, I conceive, would
venture to propose.  This House is indeed the check provided by
the Constitution on the abuse of the royal prerogative.  But that
this House is, or is likely ever to be, an efficient check on
abuses practised in India, I altogether deny.  We have, as I
believe we all feel, quite business enough.  If we were to
undertake the task of looking into Indian affairs as we look into
British affairs, if we were to have Indian budgets and Indian
estimates, if we were to go into the Indian currency question and
the Indian Bank Charter, if to our disputes about Belgium and
Holland, Don Pedro and Don Miguel, were to be added disputes
about the debts of the Guicowar and the disorders of Mysore, the
ex-king of the Afghans and the Maharajah Runjeet Sing; if we were
to have one night occupied by the embezzlements of the Benares
mint, and another by the panic in the Calcutta money market; if
the questions of Suttee or no Suttee, Pilgrim tax or no Pilgrim
tax, Ryotwary or Zemindary, half Batta or whole Batta, were to be
debated at the same length at which we have debated Church reform
and the assessed taxes, twenty-four hours a day and three hundred
and sixty-five days a year would be too short a time for the
discharge of our duties.  The House, it is plain, has not the
necessary time to settle these matters; nor has it the necessary
knowledge; nor has it the motives to acquire that knowledge.  The
late change in its constitution has made it, I believe, a much
more faithful representative of the English people.  But it is as
far as ever from being a representative of the Indian people.  A
broken head in Cold Bath Fields produces a greater sensation
among us than three pitched battles in India.  A few weeks ago we
had to decide on a claim brought by an individual against the
revenues of India.  If it had been an English question the walls
would scarcely have held the Members who would have flocked to
the division.  It was an Indian question; and we could scarcely,
by dint of supplication, make a House.  Even when my right
honourable friend, the President of the Board of Control, gave
his able and interesting explanation of the plan which he
intended to propose for the government of a hundred millions of
human beings, the attendance was not so large as I have often
seen it on a turnpike bill or a railroad bill.

I then take these things as proved, that the Crown must have a
certain authority over India, that there must be an efficient
check on the authority of the Crown, and that the House of
Commons cannot be that efficient check.  We must then find some
other body to perform that important office.  We have such a
body, the Company.  Shall we discard it?

It is true that the power of the Company is an anomaly in
politics.  It is strange, very strange, that a joint-stock
society of traders, a society, the shares of which are daily
passed from hand to hand, a society, the component parts of which
are perpetually changing, a society, which, judging a priori from
its constitution, we should have said was as little fitted for
imperial functions as the Merchant Tailors' Company or the New
River Company, should be intrusted with the sovereignty of a
larger population, the disposal of a larger clear revenue, the
command of a larger army, than are under the direct management of
the Executive Government of the United Kingdom.  But what
constitution can we give to our Indian Empire which shall not be
strange, which shall not be anomalous?  That Empire is itself the
strangest of all political anomalies.  That a handful of
adventurers from an island in the Atlantic should have subjugated
a vast country divided from the place of their birth by half the
globe; a country which at no very distant period was merely the
subject of fable to the nations of Europe; a country never before
violated by the most renowned of Western conquerors; a country
which Trajan never entered; a country lying beyond the point
where the phalanx of Alexander refused to proceed; that we should
govern a territory ten thousand miles from us, a territory larger
and more populous than France, Spain, Italy, and Germany put
together, a territory, the present clear revenue of which exceeds
the present clear revenue of any state in the world, France
excepted; a territory inhabited by men differing from us in race,
colour, language, manners, morals, religion; these are prodigies
to which the world has seen nothing similar.  Reason is
confounded.  We interrogate the past in vain.  General rules are
useless where the whole is one vast exception.  The Company is an
anomaly; but it is part of a system where every thing is anomaly.
It is the strangest of all governments; but it is designed for
the strangest of all empires.

If we discard the Company, we must find a substitute:  and, take
what substitute we may, we shall find ourselves unable to give
any reason for believing that the body which we have put in the
room of the Company is likely to acquit itself of its duties
better than the Company.  Commissioners appointed by the King
during pleasure would be no check on the Crown; Commissioners
appointed by the King or by Parliament for life would always be
appointed by the political party which might be uppermost, and if
a change of administration took place, would harass the new
Government with the most vexatious opposition.  The plan
suggested by the right honourable Gentleman, the Member for
Montgomeryshire (Mr Charles Wynn.), is I think the very worst
that I have ever heard.  He would have Directors nominated every
four years by the Crown.  Is it not plain that these Directors
would always be appointed from among the supporters of the
Ministry for the time being; that their situations would depend
on the permanence of that Ministry; that therefore all their
power and patronage would be employed for the purpose of propping
that Ministry, and, in case of a change, for the purpose of
molesting those who might succeed to power; that they would be
subservient while their friends were in, and factious when their
friends were out?  How would Lord Grey's Ministry have been
situated if the whole body of Directors had been nominated by the
Duke of Wellington in 1830.  I mean no imputation on the Duke of
Wellington.  If the present ministers had to nominate Directors
for four years, they would, I have no doubt, nominate men who
would give no small trouble to the Duke of Wellington if he were
to return to office.  What we want is a body independent of the
Government, and no more than independent; not a tool of the
Treasury, not a tool of the opposition.  No new plan which I have
heard proposed would give us such a body.  The Company, strange
as its constitution may be, is such a body.  It is, as a
corporation, neither Whig nor Tory, neither high-church nor low-
church.  It cannot be charged with having been for or against the
Catholic Bill, for or against the Reform Bill.  It has constantly
acted with a view not to English politics, but to Indian
politics.  We have seen the country convulsed by faction.  We
have seen Ministers driven from office by this House, Parliament
dissolved in anger, general elections of unprecedented
turbulence, debates of unprecedented interest.  We have seen the
two branches of the Legislature placed in direct opposition to
each other.  We have seen the advisers of the Crown dismissed one
day, and brought back the next day on the shoulders of the
people.  And amidst all these agitating events the Company has
preserved strict and unsuspected neutrality.  This is, I think an
inestimable advantage, and it is an advantage which we must
altogether forego, if we consent to adopt any of the schemes
which I have heard proposed on the other side of the House.

We must judge of the Indian government, as of all other
governments, by its practical effects.  According to the
honourable Member for Sheffield, India is ill governed; and the
whole fault is with the Company.  Innumerable accusations, great
and small, are brought by him against the Directors.  They are
fond of war:  they are fond of dominion:  the taxation is
burthensome:  the laws are undigested:  the roads are rough:  the
post goes on foot:  and for everything the Company is answerable.
From the dethronement of the Mogul princes to the mishaps of Sir
Charles Metcalfe's courier, every disaster that has taken place
in the East during sixty years is laid to the charge of this
Corporation.  And the inference is, that all the power which they
possess ought to be taken out of their hands, and transferred at
once to the Crown.

Now, Sir, it seems to me that, for all the evils which the
honourable Gentleman has so pathetically recounted, the Ministers
of the Crown are as much to blame as the Company; nay, much more
so:  for the Board of Control could, without the consent of the
Directors, have redressed those evils; and the Directors most
certainly could not have redressed them without the consent of
the Board of Control.  Take the case of that frightful grievance
which seems to have made the deepest impression on the mind of
the honourable Gentleman, the slowness of the mail.  Why, Sir, if
my right honourable friend, the President of our Board thought
fit, he might direct me to write to the Court and require them to
frame a dispatch on that subject.  If the Court disobeyed, he
might himself frame a dispatch ordering Lord William Bentinck to
put the dawks all over Bengal on horseback.  If the Court refused
to send out this dispatch, the Board could apply to the King's
Bench for a mandamus.  If, on the other hand, the Directors
wished to accelerate the journeys of the mail, and the Board were
adverse to the project, the Directors could do nothing at all.
For all measures of internal policy the servants of the King are
at least as deeply responsible as the Company.  For all measures
of foreign policy the servants of the King, and they alone are
responsible.  I was surprised to hear the honourable Gentleman
accuse the Directors of insatiable ambition and rapacity, when he
must know that no act of aggression on any native state can be
committed by the Company without the sanction of the Board, and
that, in fact, the Board has repeatedly approved of warlike
measures which were strenuously opposed by the Company.  He must
know, in particular, that, during the energetic and splendid
administration of the Marquess of Wellesley, the company was all
for peace, and the Board all for conquest.  If a line of conduct
which the honourable Gentleman thinks unjustifiable has been
followed by the Ministers of the Crown in spite of the
remonstrances of the Directors, this is surely a strange reason
for turning off the Directors, and giving the whole power
unchecked to the Crown.

The honourable Member tells us that India, under the present
system, is not so rich and flourishing as she was two hundred
years ago.  Really, Sir, I doubt whether we are in possession of
sufficient data to enable us to form a judgment on that point.
But the matter is of little importance.  We ought to compare
India under our government, not with India under Acbar and his
immediate successors, but with India as we found it.  The
calamities through which that country passed during the interval
between the fall of the Mogul power and the establishment of the
English supremacy were sufficient to throw the people back whole
centuries.  It would surely be unjust to say, that Alfred was a
bad king because Britain, under his government, was not so rich
or so civilised as in the time of the Romans.

In what state, then, did we find India?  And what have we made
India?  We found society throughout that vast country in a state
to which history scarcely furnishes a parallel.  The nearest
parallel would, perhaps, be the state of Europe during the fifth
century.  The Mogul empire in the time of the successors of
Aurungzebe, like the Roman empire in the time of the successors
of Theodosius, was sinking under the vices of a bad internal
administration, and under the assaults of barbarous invaders.  At
Delhi, as at Ravenna, there was a mock sovereign, immured in a
gorgeous state prison.  He was suffered to indulge in every
sensual pleasure.  He was adored with servile prostrations.  He
assumed and bestowed the most magnificent titles.  But, in fact,
he was a mere puppet in the hands of some ambitious subject.
While the Honorii and Augustuli of the East, surrounded by their
fawning eunuchs, reveled and dozed without knowing or caring what
might pass beyond the walls of their palace gardens, the
provinces had ceased to respect a government which could neither
punish nor protect them.  Society was a chaos.  Its restless and
shifting elements formed themselves every moment into some new
combination, which the next moment dissolved.  In the course of a
single generation a hundred dynasties grew up, flourished,
decayed, were extinguished, were forgotten.  Every adventurer who
could muster a troop of horse might aspire to a throne.  Every
palace was every year the scene of conspiracies, treasons,
revolutions, parricides.  Meanwhile a rapid succession of Alarics
and Attilas passed over the defenceless empire.  A Persian
invader penetrated to Delhi, and carried back in triumph the most
precious treasures of the House of Tamerlane.  The Afghan soon
followed by the same track, to glean whatever the Persian had
spared.  The Jauts established themselves on the Jumna.  The
Seiks devastated Lahore.  Every part of India, from Tanjore to
the Himalayas, was laid under contribution by the Mahrattas.  The
people were ground down to the dust by the oppressor without and
the oppressor within, by the robber from whom the Nabob was
unable to protect them, by the Nabob who took whatever the robber
had left to them.  All the evils of despotism, and all the evils
of anarchy, pressed at once on that miserable race.  They knew
nothing of government but its exactions.  Desolation was in their
imperial cities, and famine all along the banks of their broad
and redundant rivers.  It seemed that a few more years would
suffice to efface all traces of the opulence and civilisation of
an earlier age.

Such was the state of India when the Company began to take part
in the disputes of its ephemeral sovereigns.  About eighty years
have elapsed since we appeared as auxiliaries in a contest
between two rival families for the sovereignty of a small corner
of the Peninsula.  From that moment commenced a great, a
stupendous process, the reconstruction of a decomposed society.
Two generations have passed away; and the process is complete.
The scattered fragments of the empire of Aurungzebe have been
united in an empire stronger and more closely knit together than
that which Aurungzebe ruled.  The power of the new sovereigns
penetrates their dominions more completely, and is far more
implicitly obeyed, than was that of the proudest princes of the
Mogul dynasty.

It is true that the early history of this great revolution is
chequered with guilt and shame.  It is true that the founders of
our Indian Empire too often abused the strength which they
derived from superior energy and superior knowledge.  It is true
that, with some of the highest qualities of the race from which
they sprang, they combined some of the worst defects of the race
over which they ruled.  How should it have been otherwise?  Born
in humble stations, accustomed to earn a slender maintenance by
obscure industry, they found themselves transformed in a few
months from clerks drudging over desks, or captains in marching
regiments, into statesmen and generals, with armies at their
command, with the revenues of kingdoms at their disposal, with
power to make and depose sovereigns at their pleasure.  They were
what it was natural that men should be who had been raised by so
rapid an ascent to so dizzy an eminence, profuse and rapacious,
imperious and corrupt.

It is true, then, that there was too much foundation for the
representations of those satirists and dramatists who held up the
character of the English Nabob to the derision and hatred of a
former generation.  It is true that some disgraceful intrigues,
some unjust and cruel wars, some instances of odious perfidy and
avarice, stain the annals of our Eastern Empire.  It is true that
the duties of government and legislation were long wholly
neglected or carelessly performed.  It is true that when the
conquerors at length began to apply themselves in earnest to the
discharge of their high functions, they committed the errors
natural to rulers who were but imperfectly acquainted with the
language and manners of their subjects.  It is true that some
plans, which were dictated by the purest and most benevolent
feelings have not been attended by the desired success.  It is
true that India suffers to this day from a heavy burden of
taxation and from a defective system of law.  It is true, I fear,
that in those states which are connected with us by subsidiary
alliance, all the evils of oriental despotism have too frequently
shown themselves in their most loathsome and destructive form.

All this is true.  Yet in the history and in the present state of
our Indian Empire I see ample reason for exultation and for a
good hope.

I see that we have established order where we found confusion.  I
see that the petty dynasties which were generated by the
corruption of the great Mahometan Empire, and which, a century
ago, kept all India in constant agitation, have been quelled by
one overwhelming power.  I see that the predatory tribes, which,
in the middle of the last century, passed annually over the
harvests of India with the destructive rapidity of a hurricane,
have quailed before the valour of a braver and sterner race, have
been vanquished, scattered, hunted to their strongholds, and
either extirpated by the English sword, or compelled to exchange
the pursuits of rapine for those of industry.

I look back for many years; and I see scarcely a trace of the
vices which blemished the splendid fame of the first conquerors
of Bengal.  I see peace studiously preserved.  I see faith
inviolably maintained towards feeble and dependent states.  I see
confidence gradually infused into the minds of suspicious
neighbours.  I see the horrors of war mitigated by the chivalrous
and Christian spirit of Europe.  I see examples of moderation and
clemency, such as I should seek in vain in the annals of any
other victorious and dominant nation.  I see captive tyrants,
whose treachery and cruelty might have excused a severe
retribution, living in security, comfort, and dignity, under the
protection of the government which they laboured to destroy.

I see a large body of civil and military functionaries resembling
in nothing but capacity and valour those adventurers who, seventy
years ago, came hither, laden with wealth and infamy, to parade
before our fathers the plundered treasures of Bengal and Tanjore.
I reflect with pride that to the doubtful splendour which
surrounds the memory of Hastings and of Clive, we can oppose the
spotless glory of Elphinstone and Munro.  I contemplate with
reverence and delight the honourable poverty which is the
evidence of rectitude firmly maintained amidst strong
temptations.  I rejoice to see my countrymen, after ruling
millions of subjects, after commanding victorious armies, after
dictating terms of peace at the gates of hostile capitals, after
administering the revenues of great provinces, after judging the
causes of wealthy Zemindars, after residing at the courts of
tributary Kings, return to their native land with no more than a
decent competence.

I see a government anxiously bent on the public good.  Even in
its errors I recognise a paternal feeling towards the great
people committed to its charge.  I see toleration strictly
maintained:  yet I see bloody and degrading superstitions
gradually losing their power.  I see the morality, the
philosophy, the taste of Europe, beginning to produce a salutary
effect on the hearts and understandings of our subjects.  I see
the public mind of India, that public mind which we found debased
and contracted by the worst forms of political and religious
tyranny, expanding itself to just and noble views of the ends of
government and of the social duties of man.

I see evils:  but I see the government actively employed in the
work of remedying those evils.  The taxation is heavy; but the
work of retrenchment is unsparingly pursued.  The mischiefs
arising from the system of subsidiary alliance are great:  but
the rulers of India are fully aware of those mischiefs, and are
engaged in guarding against them.  Wherever they now interfere
for the purpose of supporting a native government, they interfere
also for the purpose of reforming it.

Seeing these things, then, am I prepared to discard the Company
as an organ of government?  I am not.  Assuredly I will never
shrink from innovation where I see reason to believe that
innovation will be improvement.  That the present Government does
not shrink from innovations which it considers as improvements
the bill now before the House sufficiently shows.  But surely the
burden of the proof lies on the innovators.  They are bound to
show that there is a fair probability of obtaining some advantage
before they call upon us to take up the foundations of the Indian
government.  I have no superstitious veneration for the Court of
Directors or the Court of Proprietors.  Find me a better Council:
find me a better constituent body:  and I am ready for a change.
But of all the substitutes for the Company which have hitherto
been suggested, not one has been proved to be better than the
Company; and most of them I could, I think, easily prove to be
worse.  Circumstances might force us to hazard a change.  If the
Company were to refuse to accept of the government unless we
would grant pecuniary terms which I thought extravagant, or
unless we gave up the clauses in this bill which permit Europeans
to hold landed property and natives to hold office, I would take
them at their word.  But I will not discard them in the mere rage
of experiment.

Do I call the government of India a perfect government?  Very far
from it.  No nation can be perfectly well governed till it is
competent to govern itself.  I compare the Indian government with
other governments of the same class, with despotisms, with
military despotisms, with foreign military despotisms; and I find
none that approaches it in excellence.  I compare it with the
government of the Roman provinces, with the government of the
Spanish colonies; and I am proud of my country and my age.  Here
are a hundred millions of people under the absolute rule of a few
strangers, differing from them physically, differing from them
morally, mere Mamelukes, not born in the country which they rule,
not meaning to lay their bones in it.  If you require me to make
this government as good as that of England, France, or the United
States of America, I own frankly that I can do no such thing.
Reasoning a priori, I should have come to the conclusion that
such a government must be a horrible tyranny.  It is a source of
constant amazement to me that it is so good as I find it to be.
I will not, therefore, in a case in which I have neither
principles nor precedents to guide me, pull down the existing
system on account of its theoretical defects.  For I know that
any system which I could put in its place would be equally
condemned by theory, while it would not be equally sanctioned by
experience.

Some change in the constitution of the Company was, as I have
shown, rendered inevitable by the opening of the China Trade; and
it was the duty of the Government to take care that the change
should not be prejudicial to India.  There were many ways in
which the compromise between commerce and territory might have
been effected.  We might have taken the assets, and paid a sum
down, leaving the Company to invest that sum as they chose.  We
might have offered English security with a lower interest.  We
might have taken the course which the late ministers designed to
take.  They would have left the Company in possession of the
means of carrying on its trade in competition with private
merchants.  My firm belief is that, if this course had been
taken, the Company must, in a very few years, have abandoned the
trade, or the trade would have ruined the Company.  It was not,
however, solely or principally by regard for the interest of the
Company, or of English merchants generally, that the Government
was guided on this occasion.  The course which appeared to us the
most likely to promote the interests of our Eastern Empire was to
make the proprietors of India stock creditors of the Indian
territory.  Their interest will thus be in a great measure the
same with the interest of the people whom they are to rule.
Their income will depend on the revenues of their empire.  The
revenues of their empire will depend on the manner in which the
affairs of that empire are administered.  We furnish them with
the strongest motives to watch over the interests of the
cultivator and the trader, to maintain peace, to carry on with
vigour the work of retrenchment, to detect and punish extortion
and corruption.  Though they live at a distance from India,
though few of them have ever seen or may ever see the people whom
they rule, they will have a great stake in the happiness of their
subjects.  If their misgovernment should produce disorder in the
finances, they will themselves feel the effects of that disorder
in their own household expenses.  I believe this to be, next to a
representative constitution, the constitution which is the best
security for good government.  A representative constitution
India cannot at present have.  And we have therefore, I think,
given her the best constitution of which she is capable.

One word as to the new arrangement which we propose with respect
to the patronage.  It is intended to introduce the principle of
competition in the disposal of writerships; and from this change
I cannot but anticipate the happiest results.  The civil servants
of the Company are undoubtedly a highly respectable body of men;
and in that body, as in every large body, there are some persons
of very eminent ability.  I rejoice most cordially to see this.
I rejoice to see that the standard of morality is so high in
England, that intelligence is so generally diffused through
England, that young persons who are taken from the mass of
society, by favour and not by merit, and who are therefore only
fair samples of the mass, should, when placed in situations of
high importance, be so seldom found wanting.  But it is not the
less true that India is entitled to the service of the best
talents which England can spare.  That the average of
intelligence and virtue is very high in this country is matter
for honest exultation.  But it is no reason for employing average
men where you can obtain superior men.  Consider too, Sir, how
rapidly the public mind of India is advancing, how much attention
is already paid by the higher classes of the natives to those
intellectual pursuits on the cultivation of which the superiority
of the European race to the rest of mankind principally depends.
Surely, in such circumstances, from motives of selfish policy, if
from no higher motive, we ought to fill the magistracies of our
Eastern Empire with men who may do honour to their country, with
men who may represent the best part of the English nation.  This,
Sir, is our object; and we believe that by the plan which is now
proposed this object will be attained.  It is proposed that for
every vacancy in the civil service four candidates shall be
named, and the best candidate selected by examination.  We
conceive that, under this system, the persons sent out will be
young men above par, young men superior either in talents or in
diligence to the mass.  It is said, I know, that examinations in
Latin, in Greek, and in mathematics, are no tests of what men
will prove to be in life.  I am perfectly aware that they are not
infallible tests:  but that they are tests I confidently
maintain.  Look at every walk of life, at this House, at the
other House, at the Bar, at the Bench, at the Church, and see
whether it be not true that those who attain high distinction in
the world were generally men who were distinguished in their
academic career.  Indeed, Sir, this objection would prove far too
much even for those who use it.  It would prove that there is no
use at all in education.  Why should we put boys out of their
way?  Why should we force a lad, who would much rather fly a kite
or trundle a hoop, to learn his Latin Grammar?  Why should we
keep a young man to his Thucydides or his Laplace, when he would
much rather be shooting?  Education would be mere useless
torture, if, at two or three and twenty, a man who had neglected
his studies were exactly on a par with a man who had applied
himself to them, exactly as likely to perform all the offices of
public life with credit to himself and with advantage to society.
Whether the English system of education be good or bad is not now
the question.  Perhaps I may think that too much time is given to
the ancient languages and to the abstract sciences.  But what
then?  Whatever be the languages, whatever be the sciences, which
it is, in any age or country, the fashion to teach, the persons
who become the greatest proficients in those languages and those
sciences will generally be the flower of the youth, the most
acute, the most industrious, the most ambitious of honourable
distinctions.  If the Ptolemaic system were taught at Cambridge
instead of the Newtonian, the senior wrangler would nevertheless
be in general a superior man to the wooden spoon.  If, instead of
learning Greek, we learned the Cherokee, the man who understood
the Cherokee best, who made the most correct and melodious
Cherokee verses, who comprehended most accurately the effect of
the Cherokee particles, would generally be a superior man to him
who was destitute of these accomplishments.  If astrology were
taught at our Universities, the young man who cast nativities
best would generally turn out a superior man.  If alchymy were
taught, the young man who showed most activity in the pursuit of
the philosopher's stone would generally turn out a superior man.

I will only add one other observation on this subject.  Although
I am inclined to think that too exclusive an attention is paid in
the education of young English gentlemen to the dead languages, I
conceive that when you are choosing men to fill situations for
which the very first and most indispensable qualification is
familiarity with foreign languages, it would be difficult to find
a better test of their fitness than their classical acquirements.

Some persons have expressed doubts as to the possibility of
procuring fair examinations.  I am quite sure that no person who
has been either at Cambridge or at Oxford can entertain such
doubts.  I feel, indeed, that I ought to apologise for even
noticing an objection so frivolous.

Next to the opening of the China trade, Sir, the change most
eagerly demanded by the English people was, that the restrictions
on the admission of Europeans to India should be removed.  In
this change there are undoubtedly very great advantages.  The
chief advantage is, I think, the improvement which the minds of
our native subjects may be expected to derive from free
intercourse with a people far advanced beyond themselves in
intellectual cultivation.  I cannot deny, however, that the
advantages are attended with some danger.

The danger is that the new comers, belonging to the ruling
nation, resembling in colour, in language, in manners, those who
hold supreme military and political power, and differing in all
these respects from the great mass of the population, may
consider themselves as a superior class, and may trample on the
indigenous race.  Hitherto there have been strong restraints on
Europeans resident in India.  Licences were not easily obtained.
Those residents who were in the service of the Company had
obvious motives for conducting themselves with propriety.  If
they incurred the serious displeasure of the Government, their
hopes of promotion were blighted.  Even those who were not in the
public service were subject to the formidable power which the
Government possessed of banishing them at its pleasure.

The license of the Government will now no longer be necessary to
persons who desire to reside in the settled provinces of India.
The power of arbitrary deportation is withdrawn.  Unless,
therefore, we mean to leave the natives exposed to the tyranny
and insolence of every profligate adventurer who may visit the
East, we must place the European under the same power which
legislates for the Hindoo.  No man loves political freedom more
than I.  But a privilege enjoyed by a few individuals, in the
midst of a vast population who do not enjoy it, ought not to be
called freedom.  It is tyranny.  In the West Indies I have not
the least doubt that the existence of the Trial by Jury and of
Legislative Assemblies has tended to make the condition of the
slaves worse than it would otherwise have been.  Or, to go to
India itself for an instance, though I fully believe that a mild
penal code is better than a severe penal code, the worst of all
systems was surely that of having a mild code for the Brahmins,
who sprang from the head of the Creator, while there was a severe
code for the Sudras, who sprang from his feet.  India has
suffered enough already from the distinction of castes, and from
the deeply rooted prejudices which that distinction has
engendered.  God forbid that we should inflict on her the curse
of a new caste, that we should send her a new breed of Brahmins,
authorised to treat all the native population as Parias!

With a view to the prevention of this evil, we propose to give to
the Supreme Government the power of legislating for Europeans as
well as for natives.  We propose that the regulations of the
Government shall bind the King's Court as they bind all other
courts, and that registration by the Judges of the King's Courts
shall no longer be necessary to give validity to those
regulations within the towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay.

I could scarcely, Sir, believe my ears when I heard this part of
our plan condemned in another place.  I should have thought that
it would have been received with peculiar favour in that quarter
where it has met with the most severe condemnation.  What, at
present, is the case?  If the Supreme Court and the Government
differ on a question of jurisdiction, or on a question of
legislation within the towns which are the seats of Government,
there is absolutely no umpire but the Imperial Parliament.  The
device of putting one wild elephant between two tame elephants
was ingenious:  but it may not always be practicable.  Suppose a
tame elephant between two wild elephants, or suppose that the
whole herd should run wild together.  The thing is not without
example.  And is it not most unjust and ridiculous that, on one
side of a ditch, the edict of the Governor General should have
the force of law, and that on the other side it should be of no
effect unless registered by the Judges of the Supreme Court?  If
the registration be a security for good legislation, we are bound
to give that security to all classes of our subjects.  If the
registration be not a security for good legislation, why give it
to any?  Is the system good?  Extend it.  Is it bad!  Abolish it.
But in the name of common sense do not leave it as it is.  It is
as absurd as our old law of sanctuary.  The law which authorises
imprisonment for debt may be good or bad.  But no man in his
senses can approve of the ancient system under which a debtor who
might be arrested in Fleet Street was safe as soon as he had
scampered into Whitefriars.  Just in the same way, doubts may
fairly be entertained about the expediency of allowing four or
five persons to make laws for India; but to allow them to make
laws for all India without the Mahratta ditch, and to except
Calcutta, is the height of absurdity.

I say, therefore, that either you must enlarge the power of the
Supreme Court, and give it a general veto on laws, or you must
enlarge the power of the Government, and make its regulations
binding on all Courts without distinction.  The former course no
person has ventured to propose.  To the latter course objections
have been made; but objections which to me, I must own, seem
altogether frivolous.

It is acknowledged that of late years inconvenience has arisen
from the relation in which the Supreme Court stands to the
Government.  But, it is said, that Court was originally
instituted for the protection of natives against Europeans.  The
wise course would therefore be to restore its original character.

Now, Sir, the fact is, that the Supreme Court has never been so
mischievous as during the first ten years of its power, or so
respectable as it has lately been.  Everybody who knows anything
of its early history knows, that, during a considerable time, it
was the terror of Bengal, the scourge of the native population,
the screen of European delinquents, a convenient tool of the
Government for all purposes of evil, an insurmountable obstacle
to the Government in all undertakings for the public good; that
its proceedings were made up of pedantry, cruelty, and
corruption; that its disputes with the Government were at one
time on the point of breaking up the whole fabric of society; and
that a convulsion was averted only by the dexterous policy of
Warren Hastings, who at last bought off the opposition of the
Chief Justice for eight thousand pounds a year.  It is notorious
that, while the Supreme Court opposed Hastings in all his best
measures, it was a thoroughgoing accomplice in his worst; that it
took part in the most scandalous of those proceedings which,
fifty years ago, roused the indignation of Parliament and of the
country; that it assisted in the spoliation of the princesses of
Oude; that it passed sentence of death on Nuncomar.  And this is
the Court which we are to restore from its present state of
degeneracy to its original purity.  This is the protection which
we are to give to the natives against the Europeans.  Sir, so far
is it from being true that the character of the Supreme Court has
deteriorated, that it has, perhaps, improved more than any other
institution in India.  But the evil lies deep in the nature of
the institution itself.  The judges have in our time deserved the
greatest respect.  Their judgment and integrity have done much to
mitigate the vices of the system.  The worst charge that can be
brought against any of them is that of pertinacity,
disinterested, conscientious pertinacity, in error.  The real
evil is the state of the law.  You have two supreme powers in
India.  There is no arbitrator except a Legislature fifteen
thousand miles off.  Such a system is on the face of it an
absurdity in politics.  My wonder is, not that this system has
several times been on the point of producing fatal consequences
to the peace and resources of India;--those, I think, are the
words in which Warren Hastings described the effect of the
contest between his Government and the Judges;--but that it has
not actually produced such consequences.  The most distinguished
members of the Indian Government, the most distinguished Judges
of the Supreme Court, call upon you to reform this system.  Sir
Charles Metcalfe, Sir Charles Grey, represent with equal urgency
the expediency of having one single paramount council armed with
legislative power.  The admission of Europeans to India renders
it absolutely necessary not to delay our decision.  The effect of
that admission would be to raise a hundred questions, to produce
a hundred contests between the Council and the judicature.  The
Government would be paralysed at the precise moment at which all
its energy was required.  While the two equal powers were acting
in opposite directions, the whole machine of the state would
stand still.  The Europeans would be uncontrolled.  The natives
would be unprotected.  The consequences I will not pretend to
foresee.  Everything beyond is darkness and confusion.

Having given to the Government supreme legislative power, we next
propose to give to it for a time the assistance of a commission
for the purpose of digesting and reforming the laws of India, so
that those laws may, as soon as possible, be formed into a Code.
Gentleman of whom I wish to speak with the highest respect have
expressed a doubt whether India be at present in a fit state to
receive a benefit which is not yet enjoyed by this free and
highly civilised country.  Sir, I can allow to this argument very
little weight beyond that which it derives from the personal
authority of those who use it.  For, in the first place, our
freedom and our high civilisation make this improvement,
desirable as it must always be, less indispensably necessary to
us than to our Indian subjects; and in the next place, our
freedom and civilisation, I fear, make it far more difficult for
us to obtain this benefit for ourselves than to bestow it on
them.

I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code of
laws as India; and I believe also that there never was a country
in which the want might so easily be supplied.  I said that there
were many points of analogy between the state of that country
after the fall of the Mogul power, and the state of Europe after
the fall of the Roman empire.  In one respect the analogy is very
striking.  As there were in Europe then, so there are in India
now, several systems of law widely differing from each other, but
coexisting and coequal.  The indigenous population has its own
laws.  Each of the successive races of conquerors has brought
with it its own peculiar jurisprudence:  the Mussulman his Koran
and the innumerable commentators on the Koran; the Englishman his
Statute Book and his Term Reports.  As there were established in
Italy, at one and the same time, the Roman Law, the Lombard law,
the Ripuarian law, the Bavarian law, and the Salic law, so we
have now in our Eastern empire Hindoo law, Mahometan law, Parsee
law, English law, perpetually mingling with each other and
disturbing each other, varying with the person, varying with the
place.  In one and the same cause the process and pleadings are
in the fashion of one nation, the judgment is according to the
laws of another.  An issue is evolved according to the rules of
Westminster, and decided according to those of Benares.  The only
Mahometan book in the nature of a code is the Koran; the only
Hindoo book, the Institutes.  Everybody who knows those books
knows that they provide for a very small part of the cases which
must arise in every community.  All beyond them is comment and
tradition.  Our regulations in civil matters do not define
rights, but merely establish remedies.  If a point of Hindoo law
arises, the Judge calls on the Pundit for an opinion.  If a point
of Mahometan law arises, the Judge applies to the Cauzee.  What
the integrity of these functionaries is, we may learn from Sir
William Jones.  That eminent man declared that he could not
answer it to his conscience to decide any point of law on the
faith of a Hindoo expositor.  Sir Thomas Strange confirms this
declaration.  Even if there were no suspicion of corruption on
the part of the interpreters of the law, the science which they
profess is in such a state of confusion that no reliance can be
placed on their answers.  Sir Francis Macnaghten tells us, that
it is a delusion to fancy that there is any known and fixed law
under which the Hindoo people live; that texts may be produced on
any side of any question; that expositors equal in authority
perpetually contradict each other:  that the obsolete law is
perpetually confounded with the law actually in force; and that
the first lesson to be impressed on a functionary who has to
administer Hindoo law is that it is vain to think of extracting
certainty from the books of the jurist.  The consequence is that
in practice the decisions of the tribunals are altogether
arbitrary.  What is administered is not law, but a kind of rude
and capricious equity.  I asked an able and excellent judge
lately returned from India how one of our Zillah Courts would
decide several legal questions of great importance, questions not
involving considerations of religion or of caste, mere questions
of commercial law.  He told me that it was a mere lottery.  He
knew how he should himself decide them.  But he knew nothing
more.  I asked a most distinguished civil servant of the Company,
with reference to the clause in this Bill on the subject of
slavery, whether at present, if a dancing girl ran away from her
master, the judge would force her to go back.  "Some judges," he
said, "send a girl back.  Others set her at liberty.  The whole
is a mere matter of chance.  Everything depends on the temper of
the individual judge."

Even in this country we have had complaints of judge-made law;
even in this country, where the standard of morality is higher
than in almost any other part of the world; where, during several
generations, not one depositary of our legal traditions has
incurred the suspicion of personal corruption; where there are
popular institutions; where every decision is watched by a shrewd
and learned audience; where there is an intelligent and observant
public; where every remarkable case is fully reported in a
hundred newspapers; where, in short, there is everything which
can mitigate the evils of such a system.  But judge-made law,
where there is an absolute government and a lax morality, where
there is no bar and no public, is a curse and a scandal not to be
endured.  It is time that the magistrate should know what law he
is to administer, that the subject should know under what law he
is to live.  We do not mean that all the people of India should
live under the same law:  far from it:  there is not a word in
the bill, there was not a word in my right honourable friend's
speech, susceptible of such an interpretation.  We know how
desirable that object is; but we also know that it is
unattainable.  We know that respect must be paid to feelings
generated by differences of religion, of nation, and of caste.
Much, I am persuaded, may be done to assimilate the different
systems of law without wounding those feelings.  But, whether we
assimilate those systems or not, let us ascertain them; let us
digest them.  We propose no rash innovation; we wish to give no
shock to the prejudices of any part of our subjects.  Our
principle is simply this; uniformity where you can have it:
diversity where you must have it; but in all cases certainty.

As I believe that India stands more in need of a code than any
other country in the world, I believe also that there is no
country on which that great benefit can more easily be conferred.
A code is almost the only blessing, perhaps is the only blessing,
which absolute governments are better fitted to confer on a
nation than popular governments.  The work of digesting a vast
and artificial system of unwritten jurisprudence is far more
easily performed, and far better performed, by few minds than by
many, by a Napoleon than by a Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber
of Peers, by a government like that of Prussia or Denmark than by
a government like that of England.  A quiet knot of two or three
veteran jurists is an infinitely better machinery for such a
purpose than a large popular assembly divided, as such assemblies
almost always are, into adverse factions.  This seems to me,
therefore, to be precisely that point of time at which the
advantage of a complete written code of laws may most easily be
conferred on India.  It is a work which cannot be well performed
in an age of barbarism, which cannot without great difficulty be
performed in an age of freedom.  It is a work which especially
belongs to a government like that of India, to an enlightened and
paternal despotism.

I have detained the House so long, Sir, that I will defer what I
had to say on some parts of this measure, important parts,
indeed, but far less important, as I think, than those to which I
have adverted, till we are in Committee.  There is, however, one
part of the bill on which, after what has recently passed
elsewhere, I feel myself irresistibly impelled to say a few
words.  I allude to that wise, that benevolent, that noble clause
which enacts that no native of our Indian empire shall, by reason
of his colour, his descent, or his religion, be incapable of
holding office.  At the risk of being called by that nickname
which is regarded as the most opprobrious of all nicknames by men
of selfish hearts and contracted minds, at the risk of being
called a philosopher, I must say that, to the last day of my
life, I shall be proud of having been one of those who assisted
in the framing of the bill which contains that clause.  We are
told that the time can never come when the natives of India can
be admitted to high civil and military office.  We are told that
this is the condition on which we hold our power.  We are told
that we are bound to confer on our subjects every benefit--which
they are capable of enjoying?--no;--which it is in our power to
confer on them?--no;--but which we can confer on them without
hazard to the perpetuity of our own domination.  Against that
proposition I solemnly protest as inconsistent alike with sound
policy and sound morality.

I am far, very far, from wishing to proceed hastily in this most
delicate matter.  I feel that, for the good of India itself, the
admission of natives to high office must be effected by slow
degrees.  But that, when the fulness of time is come, when the
interest of India requires the change, we ought to refuse to make
that change lest we should endanger our own power, this is a
doctrine of which I cannot think without indignation.
Governments, like men, may buy existence too dear.  "Propter
vitam vivendi perdere causas," is a despicable policy both in
individuals and in states.  In the present case, such a policy
would be not only despicable, but absurd.  The mere extent of
empire is not necessarily an advantage.  To many governments it
has been cumbersome; to some it has been fatal.  It will be
allowed by every statesman of our time that the prosperity of a
community is made up of the prosperity of those who compose the
community, and that it is the most childish ambition to covet
dominion which adds to no man's comfort or security.  To the
great trading nation, to the great manufacturing nation, no
progress which any portion of the human race can make in
knowledge, in taste for the conveniences of life, or in the
wealth by which those conveniences are produced, can be matter of
indifference.  It is scarcely possible to calculate the benefits
which we might derive from the diffusion of European civilisation
among the vast population of the East.  It would be, on the most
selfish view of the case, far better for us that the people of
India were well governed and independent of us, than ill governed
and subject to us; that they were ruled by their own kings, but
wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, than that
they were performing their salams to English collectors and
English magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too poor
to buy, English manufactures.  To trade with civilised men is
infinitely more profitable than to govern savages.  That would,
indeed, be a doting wisdom, which, in order that India might
remain a dependency, would make it an useless and costly
dependency, which would keep a hundred millions of men from being
our customers in order that they might continue to be our slaves.

It was, as Bernier tells us, the practice of the miserable
tyrants whom he found in India, when they dreaded the capacity
and spirit of some distinguished subject, and yet could not
venture to murder him, to administer to him a daily dose of the
pousta, a preparation of opium, the effect of which was in a few
months to destroy all the bodily and mental powers of the wretch
who was drugged with it, and to turn him into a helpless idiot.
The detestable artifice, more horrible than assassination itself,
was worthy of those who employed it.  It is no model for the
English nation.  We shall never consent to administer the pousta
to a whole community, to stupefy and paralyse a great people whom
God has committed to our charge, for the wretched purpose of
rendering them more amenable to our control.  What is power worth
if it is founded on vice, on ignorance, and on misery; if we can
hold it only by violating the most sacred duties which as
governors we owe to the governed, and which, as a people blessed
with far more than an ordinary measure of political liberty and
of intellectual light, we owe to a race debased by three thousand
years of despotism and priestcraft?  We are free, we are
civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the
human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation.

Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that we may
keep them submissive?  Or do we think that we can give them
knowledge without awakening ambition?  Or do we mean to awaken
ambition and to provide it with no legitimate vent?  Who will
answer any of these questions in the affirmative?  Yet one of
them must be answered in the affirmative, by every person who
maintains that we ought permanently to exclude the natives from
high office.  I have no fears.  The path of duty is plain before
us:  and it is also the path of wisdom, of national prosperity,
of national honour.

The destinies of our Indian empire are covered with thick
darkness.  It is difficult to form any conjecture as to the fate
reserved for a state which resembles no other in history, and
which forms by itself a separate class of political phenomena.
The laws which regulate its growth and its decay are still
unknown to us.  It may be that the public mind of India may
expand under our system till it has outgrown that system; that by
good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for
better government; that, having become instructed in European
knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European
institutions.  Whether such a day will ever come I know not.  But
never will I attempt to avert or to retard it.  Whenever it
comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.  To have
found a great people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery and
superstition, to have so ruled them as to have made them desirous
and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would indeed be a
title to glory all our own.  The sceptre may pass away from us.
Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profound schemes of
policy.  Victory may be inconstant to our arms.  But there are
triumphs which are followed by no reverse.  There is an empire
exempt from all natural causes of decay.  Those triumphs are the
pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the
imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature
and our laws.

...


EDINBURGH ELECTION, 1839.  (MAY 29, 1839)

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON THE 29TH OF MAY 1839.

The elevation of Mr Abercromby to the peerage in May 1839, caused
a vacancy in the representation of the city of Edinburgh.  A
meeting of the electors was called to consider of the manner in
which the vacancy should be supplied.  At this meeting the
following Speech was made.

My Lord Provost and Gentlemen,--At the request of a very large
and respectable portion of your body, I appear before you as a
candidate for a high and solemn trust, which, uninvited, I should
have thought it presumption to solicit, but which, thus invited,
I should think it cowardice to decline.  If I had felt myself
justified in following my own inclinations, I am not sure that
even a summons so honourable as that which I have received would
have been sufficient to draw me away from pursuits far better
suited to my taste and temper than the turmoil of political
warfare.  But I feel that my lot is cast in times in which no man
is free to judge, merely according to his own taste and temper,
whether he will devote himself to active or to contemplative
life; in times in which society has a right to demand, from every
one of its members, active and strenuous exertions.  I have,
therefore, obeyed your call; and I now present myself before you
for the purpose of offering to you, not, what I am sure you would
reject with disdain, flattery, degrading alike to a candidate,
and to a constituent body; but such reasonable, candid, and manly
explanations as become the mouth of a free man ambitious of the
confidence of a free people.

It is hardly necessary for me to say that I stand here
unconnected with this great community.  It would be mere
affectation not to acknowledge that with respect to local
questions I have much to learn; but I hope that you will find in
me no sluggish or inattentive learner.  From an early age I have
felt a strong interest in Edinburgh, although attached to
Edinburgh by no other ties than those which are common to me with
multitudes; that tie which attaches every man of Scottish blood
to the ancient and renowned capital of our race; that tie which
attaches every student of history to the spot ennobled by so many
great and memorable events; that tie which attaches every
traveller of taste to the most beautiful of British cities; and
that tie which attaches every lover of literature to a place
which, since it has ceased to be the seat of empire, has derived
from poetry, philosophy, and eloquence a far higher distinction
than empire can bestow.  If to those ties it shall now be your
pleasure to add a tie still closer and more peculiar, I can only
assure you that it shall be the study of my life so to conduct
myself in these our troubled times that you may have no reason to
be ashamed of your choice.

Those gentlemen who invited me to appear as a candidate before
you were doubtless acquainted with the part which I took in
public affairs during the three first Parliaments of the late
King.  Circumstances have since that time undergone great
alteration; but no alteration has taken place in my principles.
I do not mean to say that thought, discussion, and the new
phenomena produced by the operation of a new representative
system, have not led me to modify some of my views on questions
of detail; but, with respect to the fundamental principles of
government, my opinions are still what they were when, in 1831
and 1832, I took part, according to the measure of my abilities,
in that great pacific victory which purified the representative
system of England, and which first gave a real representative
system to Scotland.  Even at that time, Gentlemen, the leaning of
my mind was in favour of one measure to which the illustrious
leader of the Whig party, whose name ought never to be mentioned
without gratitude and reverence in any assembly of British
electors, I mean Earl Grey, was understood to entertain strong
objections, and to which his Cabinet, as a Cabinet, was
invariably opposed.  I speak of the vote by ballot.  All that has
passed since that time confirms me in the view which I was then
inclined to take of that important question.  At the same time I
do not think that all the advantages are on one side and all the
disadvantages on the other.  I must admit that the effect of the
practice of secret voting would be to withdraw the voter from the
operation of some salutary and honourable, as well as of some
pernicious and degrading motives.  But seeing, as I cannot help
seeing, that the practice of intimidation, instead of
diminishing, is gaining ground, I am compelled to consider
whether the time has not arrived when we are bound to apply what
seems the only efficient remedy.  And I am compelled to consider
whether, in doing so, I am not strictly following the principles
of the Reform Bill to the legitimate conclusions.  For surely
those who supported the Reform Bill intended to give the people
of Britain a reality, not a delusion; to destroy nomination, and
not to make an outward show of destroying it; to bestow the
franchise, and not the name of the franchise; and least of all,
to give suffering and humiliation under the name of the
franchise.  If men are to be returned to Parliament, not by
popular election, but by nomination, then I say without
hesitation that the ancient system was much the best.  Both
systems alike sent men to Parliament who were not freely chosen
by independent constituent bodies:  but under the old system
there was little or no need of intimidation, while, under the new
system, we have the misery and disgrace produced by intimidation
added to the process.  If, therefore, we are to have nomination,
I prefer the nomination which used to take place at Old Sarum to
the nomination which now takes place at Newark.  In both cases
you have members returned at the will of one landed proprietor:
but at Newark you have two hundred ejectments into the bargain,
to say nothing of the mortification and remorse endured by all
those who, though they were not ejected, yet voted against their
consciences from fear of ejectment.

There is perhaps no point on which good men of all parties are
more completely agreed than on the necessity of restraining and
punishing corruption in the election of Members of Parliament.
The evils of corruption are doubtless very great; but it appears
to me that those evils which are attributed to corruption may,
with equal justice, be attributed to intimidation, and that
intimidation produces also some monstrous evils with which
corruption cannot be reproached.  In both cases alike the elector
commits a breach of trust.  In both cases alike he employs for
his own advantage an important power which was confided to him,
that it might be used, to the best of his judgment, for the
general good of the community.  Thus far corruption and
intimidation operate in the same manner.  But there is this
difference betwixt the two systems; corruption operates by giving
pleasure, intimidation by giving pain.  To give a poor man five
pounds causes no pain:  on the contrary it produces pleasure.  It
is in itself no bad act:  indeed, if the five pounds were given
on another occasion, and without a corrupt object, it might pass
for a benevolent act.  But to tell a man that you will reduce him
to a situation in which he will miss his former comforts, and in
which his family will be forced to beg their bread, is a cruel
act.  Corruption has a sort of illegitimate relationship to
benevolence, and engenders some feelings of a cordial and
friendly nature.  There is a notion of charity connected with the
distribution of the money of the rich among the needy, even in a
corrupt manner.  The comic writer who tells us that the whole
system of corruption is to be considered as a commerce of
generosity on one side and of gratitude on the other, has rather
exaggerated than misrepresented what really takes place in many
of these English constituent bodies where money is lavished to
conciliate the favour and obtain the suffrages of the people.
But in intimidation the whole process is an odious one.  The
whole feeling on the part of the elector is that of shame,
degradation, and hatred of the person to whom he has given his
vote.  The elector is indeed placed in a worse situation than if
he had no vote at all; for there is not one of us who would not
rather be without a vote than be compelled to give it to the
person whom he dislikes above all others.

Thinking, therefore, that the practice of intimidation has all
the evils which are to be found in corruption, and that it has
other evils which are not to be found in corruption, I was
naturally led to consider whether it was possible to prevent it
by any process similar to that by which corruption is restrained.
Corruption, you all know, is the subject of penal laws.  If it is
brought home to the parties, they are liable to severe
punishment.  Although it is not often that it can be brought
home, yet there are instances.  I remember several men of large
property confined in Newgate for corruption.  Penalties have been
awarded against offenders to the amount of five hundred pounds.
Many members of Parliament have been unseated on account of the
malpractices of their agents.  But you cannot, I am afraid,
repress intimidation by penal laws.  Such laws would infringe the
most sacred rights of property.  How can I require a man to deal
with tradesmen who have voted against him, or to renew the leases
of tenants who have voted against him?  What is it that the Jew
says in the play?

"I'll not answer that,
But say it is my humour."

Or, as a Christian of our own time has expressed himself, "I have
a right to do what I will with my own."  There is a great deal of
weight in the reasoning of Shylock and the Duke of Newcastle.
There would be an end of the right of property if you were to
interdict a landlord from ejecting a tenant, if you were to force
a gentleman to employ a particular butcher, and to take as much
beef this year as last year.  The principle of the right of
property is that a man is not only to be allowed to dispose of
his wealth rationally and usefully, but to be allowed to indulge
his passions and caprices, to employ whatever tradesmen and
labourers he chooses, and to let, or refuse to let, his land
according to his own pleasure, without giving any reason or
asking anybody's leave.  I remember that, on one of the first
evenings on which I sate in the House of Commons, Mr Poulett
Thompson proposed a censure on the Duke of Newcastle for His
Grace's conduct towards the electors of Newark.  Sir Robert Peel
opposed the motion, not only with considerable ability, but with
really unanswerable reasons.  He asked if it was meant that a
tenant who voted against his landlord was to keep his lease for
ever.  If so, tenants would vote against a landlord to secure
themselves, as they now vote with a landlord to secure
themselves.  I thought, and think, this argument unanswerable;
but then it is unanswerable in favour of the ballot; for, if it
be impossible to deal with intimidation by punishment, you are
bound to consider whether there be any means of prevention; and
the only mode of prevention that has ever been suggested is the
ballot.  That the ballot has disadvantages to be set off against
its advantages, I admit; but it appears to me that we have only a
choice of evils, and that the evils for which the ballot is a
specific remedy are greater than any which the ballot is likely
to produce.  Observe with what exquisite accuracy the ballot
draws the line of distinction between the power which we ought to
give to the proprietor and the power which we ought not to give
him.  It leaves the proprietor the absolute power to do what he
will with his own.  Nobody calls upon him to say why he ejected
this tenant, or took away his custom from that tradesman.  It
leaves him at liberty to follow his own tastes, to follow his
strangest whims.  The only thing which it puts beyond his power
is the vote of the tenant, the vote of the tradesman, which it is
our duty to protect.  I ought at the same time to say, that there
is one objection to the ballot of a very serious nature, but
which I think may, nevertheless, be obviated.  It is quite clear
that, if the ballot shall be adopted, there will be no remedy for
an undue return by a subsequent scrutiny.  Unless, therefore, the
registration of votes can be counted on as correct, the ballot
will undoubtedly lead to great inconvenience.  It seems,
therefore, that a careful revision of the whole system of
registration, and an improvement of the tribunal before which the
rights of the electors are to be established, should be an
inseparable part of any measure by which the ballot is to be
introduced.

As to those evils which we have been considering, they are evils
which are practically felt; they are evils which press hard upon
a large portion of the constituent body; and it is not therefore
strange, that the cry for a remedy should be loud and urgent.
But there is another subject respecting which I am told that many
among you are anxious, a subject of a very different description.
I allude to the duration of Parliaments.

It must be admitted that for some years past we have had little
reason to complain of the length of Parliaments.  Since the year
1830 we have had five general elections; two occasioned by the
deaths of two Sovereigns, and three by political conjunctures.
As to the present Parliament, I do not think that, whatever
opinion gentlemen may entertain of the conduct of that body, they
will impute its faults to any confidence which the members have
that they are to sit for seven years; for I very much question
whether there be one gentleman in the House of Commons who
thinks, or has ever thought, that his seat is worth three years'
purchase.  When, therefore, we discuss this question, we must
remember that we are discussing a question not immediately
pressing.  I freely admit, however, that this is no reason for
not fairly considering the subject:  for it is the part of wise
men to provide against evils which, though not actually felt, may
be reasonably apprehended.  It seems to me that here, as in the
case of the ballot, there are serious considerations to be urged
on both sides.  The objections to long Parliaments are perfectly
obvious.  The truth is that, in very long Parliaments, you have
no representation at all.  The mind of the people goes on
changing; and the Parliament, remaining unchanged, ceases to
reflect the opinion of the constituent bodies.  In the old times
before the Revolution, a Parliament might sit during the life of
the monarch.  Parliaments were then sometimes of eighteen or
twenty years' duration.  Thus the Parliament called by Charles
the Second soon after his return from exile, and elected when the
nation was drunk with hope and convulsed by a hysterical paroxysm
of loyalty, continued to sit long after two-thirds of those who
had heartily welcomed the King back from Holland as heartily
wished him in Holland again.  Since the Revolution we have not
felt that evil to the same extent:  but it must be admitted that
the term of seven years is too long.  There are, however, other
considerations to set off against this.  There are two very
serious evils connected with every general election:  the first
is, the violent political excitement:  the second is, the ruinous
expense.  Both these evils were very greatly diminished by the
Reform Act.  Formerly these were things which you in Scotland
knew nothing about; but in England the injury to the peace and
morals of society resulting from a general election was
incalculable.  During a fifteen days' poll in a town of one
hundred thousand inhabitants, money was flowing in all
directions; the streets were running with beer; all business was
suspended; and there was nothing but disturbance and riot, and
slander, and calumny, and quarrels, which left in the bosoms of
private families heartburnings such as were not extinguished in
the course of many years.  By limiting the duration of the poll,
the Reform Act has conferred as great a blessing on the country,
--and that is saying a bold word,--as by any other provision
which it contains.  Still it is not to be denied that there are
evils inseparable from that state of political excitement into
which every community is thrown by the preparations for an
election.  A still greater evil is the expense.  That evil too
has been diminished by the operation of the Reform Act; but it
still exists to a considerable extent.  We do not now indeed hear
of such elections as that of Yorkshire in 1807, or that of
Northumberland in 1827.  We do not hear of elections that cost
two hundred thousand pounds.  But that the tenth part of that
sum, nay, that the hundredth part of that sum should be expended
in a contest, is a great evil.  Do not imagine, Gentlemen, that
all this evil falls on the candidates.  It is on you that the
evil falls.  The effect must necessarily be to limit you in your
choice of able men to serve you.  The number of men who can
advance fifty thousand pounds is necessarily much smaller than
the number of men who can advance five thousand pounds; the
number of these again is much smaller than the number of those
who can advance five hundred pounds; and the number of men who
can advance five hundred pounds every three years is necessarily
smaller than the number of those who can advance five hundred
pounds every seven years.  Therefore it seems to me that the
question is one of comparison.  In long Parliaments the
representative character is in some measure effaced.  On the
other side, if you have short Parliaments, your choice of men
will be limited.  Now in all questions of this sort, it is the
part of wisdom to weigh, not indeed with minute accuracy,--for
questions of civil prudence cannot be subjected to an
arithmetical test,--but to weigh the advantages and disadvantages
carefully, and then to strike the balance.  Gentlemen will
probably judge according to their habits of mind, and according
to their opportunities of observation.  Those who have seen much
of the evils of elections will probably incline to long
Parliaments; those who have seen little or nothing of these evils
will probably incline to a short term.  Only observe this, that,
whatever may be the legal term, it ought to be a year longer than
that for which Parliaments ought ordinarily to sit.  For there
must be a general election at the end of the legal term, let the
state of the country be what it may.  There may be riot; there
may be revolution; there may be famine in the country; and yet if
the Minister wait to the end of the legal term, the writs must go
out.  A wise Minister will therefore always dissolve the
Parliament a year before the end of the legal term, if the
country be then in a quiet state.  It has now been long the
practice not to keep a Parliament more than six years.  Thus the
Parliament which was elected in 1784 sat till 1790, six years;
the Parliament of 1790 till 1796, the Parliament of 1796 to 1802,
the Parliament of 1812 to 1818, and the Parliament of 1820 till
1826.  If, therefore, you wish the duration of Parliaments to be
shortened to three years, the proper course would be to fix the
legal term at four years; and if you wish them to sit for four
years, the proper course would be to fix the legal term at five
years.  My own inclination would be to fix the legal term at five
years, and thus to have a Parliament practically every four
years.  I ought to add that, whenever any shortening of
Parliament takes place, we ought to alter that rule which
requires that Parliament shall be dissolved as often as the
demise of the Crown takes place.  It is a rule for which no
statesmanlike reason can be given; it is a mere technical rule;
and it has already been so much relaxed that, even considered as
a technical rule, it is absurd.

I come now to another subject, of the highest and gravest
importance:  I mean the elective franchise; and I acknowledge
that I am doubtful whether my opinions on this subject may be so
pleasing to many here present as, if I may judge from your
expressions, my sentiments on other subjects have been.  I shall
express my opinions, however, on this subject as frankly as I
have expressed them when they may have been more pleasing.  I
shall express them with the frankness of a man who is more
desirous to gain your esteem than to gain your votes.  I am for
the original principle of the Reform Bill.  I think that
principle excellent; and I am sorry that we ever deviated from
it.  There were two deviations to which I was strongly opposed,
and to which the authors of the bill, hard pressed by their
opponents and feebly supported by their friends, very unwillingly
consented.  One was the admission of the freemen to vote in
towns:  the other was the admission of the fifty pound tenants at
will to vote in counties.  At the same time I must say that I
despair of being able to apply a direct remedy to either of these
evils.  The ballot might perhaps be an indirect remedy for the
latter.  I think that the system of registration should be
amended, that the clauses relating to the payment of rates should
be altered, or altogether removed, and that the elective
franchise should be extended to every ten pound householder,
whether he resides within or without the limits of a town.  To
this extent I am prepared to go; but I should not be dealing with
the ingenuousness which you have a right to expect, if I did not
tell you that I am not prepared to go further.  There are many
other questions as to which you are entitled to know the opinions
of your representative:  but I shall only glance rapidly at the
most important.  I have ever been a most determined enemy to the
slave trade, and to personal slavery under every form.  I have
always been a friend to popular education.  I have always been a
friend to the right of free discussion.  I have always been
adverse to all restrictions on trade, and especially to those
restrictions which affect the price of the necessaries of life.
I have always been adverse to religious persecution, whether it
takes the form of direct penal laws, or of civil disabilities.

Now, having said so much upon measures, I hope you will permit me
to say something about men.  If you send me as your
representative to Parliament, I wish you to understand that I
shall go there determined to support the present ministry.  I
shall do so not from any personal interest or feeling.  I have
certainly the happiness to have several kind and much valued
friends among the members of the Government; and there is one
member of the Government, the noble President of the Council, to
whom I owe obligations which I shall always be proud to avow.
That noble Lord, when I was utterly unknown in public life, and
scarcely known even to himself, placed me in the House of
Commons; and it is due to him to say that he never in the least
interfered with the freedom of my parliamentary conduct.  I have
since represented a great constituent body, for whose confidence
and kindness I can never be sufficiently grateful, I mean the
populous borough of Leeds.  I may possibly by your kindness be
placed in the proud situation of Representative of Edinburgh; but
I never could and never can be a more independent Member of the
House of Commons than when I sat there as the nominee of Lord
Lansdowne.  But, while I acknowledge my obligations to that noble
person, while I avow the friendship which I feel for many of his
colleagues, it is not on such grounds that I vindicate the
support which it is my intention to give them.  I have no right
to sacrifice your interests to my personal or private feelings:
my principles do not permit me to do so; nor do my friends expect
that I should do so.  The support which I propose to give to the
present Ministry I shall give on the following grounds.  I
believe the present Ministry to be by many degrees the best
Ministry which, in the present state of the country, can be
formed.  I believe that we have only one choice.  I believe that
our choice is between a Ministry substantially,--for of course I
do not speak of particular individuals,--between a Ministry
substantially the same that we have, and a Ministry under the
direction of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel.  I do
not hesitate to pronounce that my choice is in favour of the
former.  Some gentleman appears to dissent from what I say.  If I
knew what his objections are, I would try to remove them.  But it
is impossible to answer inarticulate noises.  Is the objection
that the government is too conservative?  Or is the objection
that the government is too radical?  If I understand rightly, the
objection is that the Government does not proceed vigorously
enough in the work of Reform.  To that objection then I will
address myself.  Now, I am far from denying that the Ministers
have committed faults.  But, at the same time, I make allowances
for the difficulties with which they are contending; and having
made these allowances, I confidently say that, when I look back
at the past, I think them entitled to praise, and that, looking
forward to the future, I can pronounce with still more confidence
that they are entitled to support.

It is a common error, and one which I have found among men, not
only intelligent, but much conversant in public business, to
think that in politics, legislation is everything and
administration nothing.  Nothing is more usual than to hear
people say, "What! another session gone and nothing done; no new
bills passed; the Irish Municipal Bill stopped in the House of
Lords.  How could we be worse off if the Tories were in?"  My
answer is that, if the Tories were in, our legislation would be
in as bad a state as at present, and we should have a bad
administration into the bargain.  It seems strange to me that
gentlemen should not be aware that it may be better to have
unreformed laws administered in a reforming spirit, than reformed
laws administered in a spirit hostile to all reform.  We often
hear the maxim, "Measures not men," and there is a sense in which
it is an excellent maxim.  Measures not men, certainly:  that is,
we are not to oppose Sir Robert Peel simply because he is Sir
Robert Peel, or to support Lord John Russell simply because he is
Lord John Russell.  We are not to follow our political leaders in
the way in which my honest Highland ancestors followed their
chieftains.  We are not to imitate that blind devotion which led
all the Campbells to take the side of George the Second because
the Duke of Argyle was a Whig, and all the Camerons to take the
side of the Stuarts because Lochiel was a Jacobite.  But if you
mean that, while the laws remain the same, it is unimportant by
whom they are administered, then I say that a doctrine more
absurd was never uttered.  Why, what are laws?  They are mere
words; they are a dead letter; till a living agent comes to put
life into them.  This is the case even in judicial matters.  You
can tie up the judges of the land much more closely than it would
be right to tie up the Secretary for the Home Department or the
Secretary for Foreign Affairs.  Yet is it immaterial whether the
laws be administered by Chief Justice Hale or Chief Justice
Jeffreys?  And can you doubt that the case is still stronger when
you come to political questions?  It would be perfectly easy, as
many of you must be aware, to point out instances in which
society has prospered under defective laws, well administered,
and other instances in which society has been miserable under
institutions that looked well on paper.  But we need not go
beyond our own country and our own times.  Let us see what,
within this island and in the present year, a good administration
has done to mitigate bad laws.  For example, let us take the law
of libel.  I hold the present state of our law of libel to be a
scandal to a civilised community.  Nothing more absurd can be
found in the whole history of jurisprudence.  How the law of
libel was abused formerly, you all know.  You all know how it was
abused under the administrations of Lord North, of Mr Pitt, of Mr
Perceval, of the Earl of Liverpool; and I am sorry to say that it
was abused, most unjustifiably abused, by Lord Abinger under the
administration of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel.
Now is there any person who will pretend to say that it has ever
been abused by the Government of Lord Melbourne?  That Government
has enemies in abundance; it has been attacked by Tory
malcontents and by Radical malcontents; but has any one of them
ever had the effrontery to say that it has abused the power of
filing ex officio informations for libel?  Has this been from
want of provocation?  On the contrary, the present Government has
been libelled in a way in which no Government was ever libelled
before.  Has the law been altered?  Has it been modified?  Not at
all.  We have exactly the same laws that we had when Mr Perry was
brought to trial for saying that George the Third was unpopular,
Mr Leigh Hunt for saying that George the Fourth was fat, and Sir
Francis Burdett for expressing, not perhaps in the best taste, a
natural and honest indignation at the slaughter which took place
at Manchester in 1819.  The law is precisely the same; but if it
had been entirely remodelled, political writers could not have
had more liberty than they have enjoyed since Lord Melbourne came
into power.

I have given you an instance of the power of a good
administration to mitigate a bad law.  Now, see how necessary it
is that there should be a good administration to carry a good law
into effect.  An excellent bill was brought into the House of
Commons by Lord John Russell in 1828, and passed.  To any other
man than Lord John Russell the carrying of such a bill would have
been an enviable distinction indeed; but his name is identified
with still greater reforms.  It will, however, always be
accounted one of his titles to public gratitude that he was the
author of the law which repealed the Test Act.  Well, a short
time since, a noble peer, the Lord Lieutenant of the county of
Nottingham, thought fit to re-enact the Test Act, so far as that
county was concerned.  I have already mentioned His Grace the
Duke of Newcastle, and, to say truth, there is no life richer in
illustrations of all forms and branches of misgovernment than
his.  His Grace very coolly informed Her Majesty's Ministers that
he had not recommended a certain gentleman for the commission of
the peace because the gentleman was a Dissenter.  Now here is a
law which admits Dissenters to offices; and a Tory nobleman takes
it on himself to rescind that law.  But happily we have Whig
Ministers.  What did they do?  Why, they put the Dissenter into
the Commission; and they turned the Tory nobleman out of the
Lieutenancy.  Do you seriously imagine that under a Tory
administration this would have been done?  I have no wish to say
anything disrespectful of the great Tory leaders.  I shall always
speak with respect of the great qualities and public services of
the Duke of Wellington:  I have no other feeling about him than
one of pride that my country has produced so great a man; nor do
I feel anything but respect and kindness for Sir Robert Peel, of
whose abilities no person that has had to encounter him in debate
will ever speak slightingly.  I do not imagine that those eminent
men would have approved of the conduct of the Duke of Newcastle.
I believe that the Duke of Wellington would as soon have thought
of running away from the field of battle as of doing the same
thing in Hampshire, where he is Lord Lieutenant.  But do you
believe that he would have turned the Duke of Newcastle out?  I
believe that he would not.  As Mr Pulteney, a great political
leader, said a hundred years since, "The heads of parties are,
like the heads of snakes, carried on by the tails."  It would
have been utterly impossible for the Tory Ministers to have
discarded the powerful Tory Duke, unless they had at the same
time resolved, like Mr Canning in 1827, to throw themselves for
support on the Whigs.

Now I have given you these two instances to show that a change in
the administration may produce all the effects of a change in the
law.  You see that to have a Tory Government is virtually to re-
enact the Test Act, and that to have a Whig Government is
virtually to repeal the law of libel.  And if this is the case in
England and Scotland, where society is in a sound state, how much
more must it be the case in the diseased part of the empire, in
Ireland?  Ask any man there, whatever may be his religion,
whatever may be his politics, Churchman, Presbyterian, Roman
Catholic, Repealer, Precursor, Orangeman, ask Mr O'Connell, ask
Colonel Conolly, whether it is a slight matter in whose hands the
executive power is lodged.  Every Irishman will tell you that it
is a matter of life and death; that in fact more depends upon the
men than upon the laws.  It disgusts me therefore to hear men of
liberal politics say, "What is the use of a Whig Government?  The
Ministers can do nothing for the country.  They have been four
years at work on an Irish Municipal Bill, without being able to
pass it through the Lords."  Would any ten Acts of Parliament
make such a difference to Ireland as the difference between
having Lord Ebrington for Lord Lieutenant, with Lord Morpeth for
Secretary, and having the Earl of Roden for Lord Lieutenant, with
Mr Lefroy for Secretary?  Ask the popular Irish leaders whether
they would like better to remain as they are, with Lord Ebrington
as Lord Lieutenant, or to have the Municipal Bill, and any other
three bills which they might name, with Lord Roden for Viceroy;
and they will at once answer, "Leave us Lord Ebrington; and burn
your bills."  The truth is that, the more defective the
legislation, the more important is a good administration, just as
the personal qualities of the Sovereign are of more importance in
despotic countries like Russia than in a limited monarchy.  If we
have not in our Statute Book all the securities necessary for
good government, it is of the more importance that the character
of the men who administer the government should be an additional
security.

But we are told that the Government is weak.  That is most true;
and I believe that almost all that we are tempted to blame in the
conduct of the Government is to be attributed to weakness.  But
let us consider what the nature of this weakness is.  Is it that
kind of weakness which makes it our duty to oppose the
Government?  Or is it that kind of weakness which makes it our
duty to support the Government?  Is it intellectual weakness,
moral weakness, the incapacity to discern, or the want of courage
to pursue, the true interest of the nation?  Such was the
weakness of Mr Addington, when this country was threatened with
invasion from Boulogne.  Such was the weakness of the Government
which sent out the wretched Walcheren expedition, and starved the
Duke of Wellington in Spain; a government whose only strength was
shown in prosecuting writers who exposed abuses, and in
slaughtering rioters whom oppression had driven into outrage.  Is
that the weakness of the present Government?  I think not.  As
compared with any other party capable of holding the reins of
Government, they are deficient neither in intellectual nor in
moral strength.  On all great questions of difference between the
Ministers and the Opposition, I hold the Ministers to be in the
right.  When I consider the difficulties with which they have to
struggle, when I see how manfully that struggle is maintained by
Lord Melbourne, when I see that Lord John Russell has excited
even the admiration of his opponents by the heroic manner in
which he has gone on, year after year, in sickness and domestic
sorrow, fighting the battle of Reform, I am led to the conclusion
that the weakness of the Ministers is of that sort which makes it
our duty to give them, not opposition, but support; and that
support it is my purpose to afford to the best of my ability.

If, indeed, I thought myself at liberty to consult my own
inclination, I should have stood aloof from the conflict.  If you
should be pleased to send me to Parliament, I shall enter an
assembly very different from that which I quitted in 1834.  I
left the Wigs united and dominant, strong in the confidence and
attachment of one House of Parliament, strong also in the fears
of the other.  I shall return to find them helpless in the Lords,
and forced almost every week to fight a battle for existence in
the Commons.  Many, whom I left bound together by what seemed
indissoluble private and public ties, I shall now find assailing
each other with more than the ordinary bitterness of political
hostility.  Many with whom I sate side by side, contending
through whole nights for the Reform Bill, till the sun broke over
the Thames on our undiminished ranks, I shall now find on hostile
benches.  I shall be compelled to engage in painful altercations
with many with whom I had hoped never to have a conflict, except
in the generous and friendly strife which should best serve the
common cause.  I left the Liberal Government strong enough to
maintain itself against an adverse Court; I see that the Liberal
Government now rests for support on the preference of a
Sovereign, in whom the country sees with delight the promise of a
better, a gentler, a happier Elizabeth, of a Sovereign in whom we
hope that our children and our grandchildren will admire the
firmness, the sagacity, and the spirit which distinguished the
last and greatest of the Tudors, tempered by the beneficent
influence of more humane times and more popular institutions.
Whether royal favour, never more needed and never better
deserved, will enable the government to surmount the difficulties
with which it has to deal, I cannot presume to judge.  It may be
that the blow has only been deferred for a season, and that a
long period of Tory domination is before us.  Be it so.  I
entered public life a Whig; and a Whig I am determined to remain.
I use that word, and I wish you to understand that I use it, in
no narrow sense.  I mean by a Whig, not one who subscribes
implicitly to the contents of any book, though that book may have
been written by Locke; not one who approves the whole conduct of
any statesman, though that statesman may have been Fox; not one
who adopts the opinions in fashion in any circle, though that
circle may be composed of the finest and noblest spirits of the
age.  But it seems to me that, when I look back on our history, I
can discern a great party which has, through many generations,
preserved its identity; a party often depressed, never
extinguished; a party which, though often tainted with the faults
of the age, has always been in advance of the age; a party which,
though guilty of many errors and some crimes, has the glory of
having established our civil and religious liberties on a firm
foundation; and of that party I am proud to be a member.  It was
that party which, on the great question of monopolies, stood up
against Elizabeth.  It was that party which, in the reign of
James the First, organised the earliest parliamentary opposition,
which steadily asserted the privileges of the people, and wrested
prerogative after prerogative from the Crown.  It was that party
which forced Charles the First to relinquish the ship-money.  It
was that party which destroyed the Star Chamber and the High
Commission Court.  It was that party which, under Charles the
Second, carried the Habeas Corpus Act, which effected the
Revolution, which passed the Toleration Act, which broke the yoke
of a foreign church in your country, and which saved Scotland
from the fate of unhappy Ireland.  It was that party which reared
and maintained the constitutional throne of Hanover against the
hostility of the Church and of the landed aristocracy of England.
It was that party which opposed the war with America and the war
with the French Republic; which imparted the blessings of our
free Constitution to the Dissenters; and which, at a later
period, by unparalleled sacrifices and exertions, extended the
same blessings to the Roman Catholics.  To the Whigs of the
seventeenth century we owe it that we have a House of Commons.
To the Whigs of the nineteenth century we owe it that the House
of Commons has been purified.  The abolition of the slave trade,
the abolition of colonial slavery, the extension of popular
education, the mitigation of the rigour of the penal code, all,
all were effected by that party; and of that party, I repeat, I
am a member.  I look with pride on all that the Whigs have done
for the cause of human freedom and of human happiness.  I see
them now hard pressed, struggling with difficulties, but still
fighting the good fight.  At their head I see men who have
inherited the spirit and the virtues, as well as the blood, of
old champions and martyrs of freedom.  To those men I propose to
attach myself.  Delusion may triumph:  but the triumphs of
delusion are but for a day.  We may be defeated:  but our
principles will only gather fresh strength from defeats.  Be
that, however, as it may, my part is taken.  While one shred of
the old banner is flying, by that banner will I at least be
found.  The good old cause, as Sidney called it on the scaffold,
vanquished or victorious, insulted or triumphant, the good old
cause is still the good old cause with me.  Whether in or out of
Parliament, whether speaking with that authority which must
always belong to the representative of this great and enlightened
community, or expressing the humble sentiments of a private
citizen, I will to the last maintain inviolate my fidelity to
principles which, though they may be borne down for a time by
senseless clamour, are yet strong with the strength and immortal
with the immortality of truth, and which, however they may be
misunderstood or misrepresented by contemporaries, will assuredly
find justice from a better age.  Gentlemen, I have done.  I have
only to thank you for the kind attention with which you have
heard me, and to express my hope that whether my principles have
met with your concurrence or not, the frankness with which I have
expressed them will at least obtain your approbation.

...


CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY OF LORD MELBOURNE.  (JANUARY 29, 1840)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 29TH OF JANUARY
1840.

On the twenty-eighth of January 1840, Sir John Yarde Buller moved
the following resolution:

"That Her Majesty's Government, as at present constituted, does
not possess the confidence of the House."

After a discussion of four nights the motion was rejected by 308
votes to 287.  The following Speech was made on the second night
of the debate.

The House, Sir, may possibly imagine that I rise under some
little feeling of irritation to reply to the personal reflections
which have been introduced into the discussion.  It would be easy
to reply to these reflections.  It would be still easier to
retort them:  but I should think either course unworthy of me and
of this great occasion.  If ever I should so far forget myself as
to wander from the subject of debate to matters concerning only
myself, it will not, I hope, be at a time when the dearest
interests of our country are staked on the result of our
deliberations.  I rise under feelings of anxiety which leave no
room in my mind for selfish vanity or petty vindictiveness.  I
believe with the most intense conviction that, in pleading for
the Government to which I belong, I am pleading for the safety of
the Commonwealth, for the reformation of abuses, and at the same
time for the preservation of august and venerable institutions:
and I trust, Mr Speaker, that when the question is whether a
Cabinet be or be not worthy of the confidence of Parliament, the
first Member of that Cabinet who comes forward to defend himself
and his colleagues will find here some portion of that generosity
and good feeling which once distinguished English gentlemen.  But
be this as it may, my voice shall be heard.  I repeat, that I am
pleading at once for the reformation and for the preservation of
our institutions, for liberty and order, for justice administered
in mercy, for equal laws, for the rights of conscience, and for
the real union of Great Britain and Ireland.  If, on so grave an
occasion, I should advert to one or two of the charges which have
been brought against myself personally, I shall do so only
because I conceive that those charges affect in some degree the
character of the Government to which I belong.

One of the chief accusations brought against the Government by
the honourable Baronet (Sir John Yarde Buller.) who opened the
debate, and repeated by the seconder (Alderman Thompson.), and by
almost every gentlemen who has addressed the House from the
benches opposite, is that I have been invited to take office
though my opinion with respect to the Ballot is known to be
different from that of my colleagues.  We have been repeatedly
told that a Ministry in which there is not perfect unanimity on a
subject so important must be undeserving of the public
confidence.  Now, Sir, it is true that I am in favour of secret
voting, that my noble and right honourable friends near me are in
favour of open voting, and yet that we sit in the same Cabinet.
But if, on account of this difference of opinion, the Government
is unworthy of public confidence, then I am sure that scarcely
any government which has existed within the memory of the oldest
man has been deserving of public confidence.  It is well-known
that in the Cabinets of Mr Pitt, of Mr Fox, of Lord Liverpool, of
Mr Canning, of the Duke of Wellington, there were open questions
of great moment.  Mr Pitt, while still zealous for parliamentary
reform, brought into the Cabinet Lord Grenville, who was adverse
to parliamentary reform.  Again, Mr Pitt, while eloquently
supporting the abolition of the Slave Trade, brought into the
Cabinet Mr Dundas, who was the chief defender of the Slave Trade.
Mr Fox, too, intense as was his abhorrence of the Slave Trade,
sat in the same Cabinet with Lord Sidmouth and Mr Windham, who
voted to the last against the abolition of that trade.  Lord
Liverpool, Mr Canning, the Duke of Wellington, all left the
question of Catholic Emancipation open.  And yet, of all
questions, that was perhaps the very last that should have been
left open.  For it was not merely a legislative question, but a
question which affected every part of the executive
administration.  But, to come to the present time, suppose that
you could carry your resolution, suppose that you could drive the
present Ministers from power, who that may succeed them will be
able to form a government in which there will be no open
questions?  Can the right honourable Baronet the member for
Tamworth (Sir Robert Peel.) form a Cabinet without leaving the
great question of our privileges open?  In what respect is that
question less important than the question of the Ballot?  Is it
not indeed from the privileges of the House that all questions
relating to the constitution of the House derive their
importance?  What does it matter how we are chosen, if, when we
meet, we do not possess the powers necessary to enable us to
perform the functions of a legislative assembly?  Yet you who
would turn out the present Ministers because they differ from
each other as to the way in which Members of this House should be
chosen, wish to bring in men who decidedly differ from each other
as to the relation in which this House stands to the nation, to
the other House, and to the Courts of Judicature.  Will you say
that the dispute between the House and the Court of Queen's Bench
is a trifling dispute?  Surely, in the late debates, you were all
perfectly agreed as to the importance of the question, though you
were agreed as to nothing else.  Some of you told us that we were
contending for a power essential to our honour and usefulness.
Many of you protested against our proceedings, and declared that
we were encroaching on the province of the tribunals, violating
the liberty of our fellow citizens, punishing honest magistrates
for not perjuring themselves.  Are these trifles?  And can we
believe that you really feel a horror of open questions when we
see your Prime Minister elect sending people to prison overnight,
and his law officers elect respectfully attending the levee of
those prisoners the next morning?  Observe, too, that this
question of privileges is not merely important; it is also
pressing.  Something must be done, and that speedily.  My belief
is that more inconvenience would follow from leaving that
question open one month than from leaving the question of the
Ballot open ten years.

The Ballot, Sir, is not the only subject on which I am accused of
holding dangerous opinions.  The right honourable Baronet the
Member for Pembroke (Sir James Graham.) pronounces the present
Government a Chartist Government; and he proves his point by
saying that I am a member of the government, and that I wish to
give the elective franchise to every ten pound householder,
whether his house be in a town or in the country.  Is it
possible, Sir, that the honourable Baronet should not know that
the fundamental principle of the plan of government called the
People's Charter is that every male of twenty-one should have a
vote?  Or is it possible that he can see no difference between
giving the franchise to all ten pound householders, and giving
the franchise to all males of twenty-one?  Does he think the ten
pound householders a class morally or intellectually unfit to
possess the franchise, he who bore a chief part in framing the
law which gave them the franchise in all the represented towns of
the United Kingdom?  Or will he say that the ten pound
householder in a town is morally and intellectually fit to be an
elector, but that the ten pound householder who lives in the open
country is morally and intellectually unfit?  Is not house-rent
notoriously higher in towns than in the country?  Is it not,
therefore, probable that the occupant of a ten pound house in a
rural hamlet will be a man who has a greater stake in the peace
and welfare of society than a man who has a ten pound house in
Manchester or Birmingham?  Can you defend on conservative
principles an arrangement which gives votes to a poorer class and
withholds them from a richer?  For my own part, I believe it to
be essential to the welfare of the state, that the elector should
have a pecuniary qualification.  I believe that the ten pound
qualification cannot be proved to be either too high or too low.
Changes, which may hereafter take place in the value of money and
in the condition of the people, may make a change of the
qualification necessary.  But the ten pound qualification is, I
believe, well suited to the present state of things.  At any
rate, I am unable to conceive why it should be a sufficient
qualification within the limits of a borough, and an insufficient
qualification a yard beyond those limits; sufficient at
Knightsbridge, but insufficient at Kensington; sufficient at
Lambeth, but insufficient at Battersea?  If any person calls this
Chartism, he must permit me to tell him that he does not know
what Chartism is.

A motion, Sir, such as that which we are considering, brings
under our review the whole policy of the kingdom, domestic,
foreign, and colonial.  It is not strange, therefore, that there
should have been several episodes in this debate.  Something has
been said about the hostilities on the River Plata, something
about the hostilities on the coast of China, something about
Commissioner Lin, something about Captain Elliot.  But on such
points I shall not dwell, for it is evidently not by the opinion
which the House may entertain on such points that the event of
the debate will be decided.  The main argument of the gentlemen
who support the motion, the argument on which the right
honourable Baronet who opened the debate chiefly relied, the
argument which his seconder repeated, and which has formed the
substance of every speech since delivered from the opposite side
of the House, may be fairly summed up thus, "The country is not
in a satisfactory state.  There is much recklessness, much
turbulence, much craving for political change; and the cause of
these evils is the policy of the Whigs.  They rose to power by
agitation in 1830:  they retained power by means of agitation
through the tempestuous months which followed:  they carried the
Reform Bill by means of agitation:  expelled from office, they
forced themselves in again by means of agitation; and now we are
paying the penalty of their misconduct.  Chartism is the natural
offspring of Whiggism.  From those who caused the evil we cannot
expect the remedy.  The first thing to be done is to dismiss
them, and to call to power men who, not having instigated the
people to commit excesses, can, without incurring the charge of
inconsistency, enforce the laws."

Now, Sir, it seems to me that this argument was completely
refuted by the able and eloquent speech of my right honourable
friend the Judge Advocate.  (Sir George Grey.)  He said, and he
said most truly, that those who hold this language are really
accusing, not the Government of Lord Melbourne, but the
Government of Lord Grey.  I was therefore, I must say, surprised,
after the speech of my right honourable friend, to hear the right
honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke, himself a
distinguished member of the cabinet of Lord Grey, pronounce a
harangue against agitation.  That he was himself an agitator he
does not venture to deny; but he tries to excuse himself by
saying, "I liked the Reform Bill; I thought it a good bill; and
so I agitated for it; and, in agitating for it, I acknowledge
that I went to the very utmost limit of what was prudent, to the
very utmost limit of what was legal."  Does not the right
honourable Baronet perceive that, by setting up this defence for
his own past conduct, he admits that agitation is good or evil,
according as the objects of the agitation are good or evil?  When
I hear him speak of agitation as a practice disgraceful to a
public man, and especially to a Minister of the Crown, and
address his lecture in a particular manner to me, I cannot but
wonder that he should not perceive that his reproaches, instead
of wounding me, recoil on himself.  I was not a member of the
Cabinet which brought in the Reform Bill, which dissolved the
Parliament in a moment of intense excitement in order to carry
the Reform Bill, which refused to serve the Sovereign longer
unless he would create peers in sufficient numbers to carry the
Reform Bill.  I was at that time only one of those hundreds of
members of this House, one of those millions of Englishmen, who
were deeply impressed with the conviction that the Reform Bill
was one of the best laws that ever had been framed, and who
reposed entire confidence in the abilities, the integrity, and
the patriotism of the ministers; and I must add that in no member
of the administration did I place more confidence than in the
right honourable Baronet, who was then First Lord of the
Admiralty, and in the noble lord who was then Secretary for
Ireland.  (Lord Stanley.)  It was indeed impossible for me not to
see that the public mind was strongly, was dangerously stirred:
but I trusted that men so able, men so upright, men who had so
large a stake in the country, would carry us safe through the
storm which they had raised.  And is it not rather hard that my
confidence in the right honourable Baronet and the noble lord is
to be imputed to me as a crime by the very men who are trying to
raise the right honourable Baronet and the noble lord to power?
The Charter, we have been told in this debate, is the child of
the Reform Bill.  But whose child is the Reform Bill?  If men are
to be deemed unfit for office because they roused the national
spirit to support that bill, because they went as far as the law
permitted in order to carry that bill, then I say that no men can
be more unfit for office than the right honourable Baronet and
the noble lord.  It may be thought presumptuous in me to defend
two persons who are so well able to defend themselves, and the
more so, as they have a powerful ally in the right honourable
Baronet the Member for Tamworth, who, having twice offered them
high places in the Government, must be supposed to be of opinion
that they are not disqualified for being ministers by having been
agitators.  I will, however, venture to offer some arguments in
vindication of the conduct of my noble and right honourable
friends, as I once called them, and as, notwithstanding the
asperity which has characterised the present debate, I should
still have pleasure in calling them.  I would say in their behalf
that agitation ought not to be indiscriminately condemned; that
great abuses ought to be removed; that in this country scarcely
any great abuse was ever removed till the public feeling had been
roused against it; and that the public feeling has seldom been
roused against abuses without exertions to which the name of
agitation may be given.  I altogether deny the assertion which we
have repeatedly heard in the course of this debate, that a
government which does not discountenance agitation cannot be
trusted to suppress rebellion.  Agitation and rebellion, you say,
are in kind the same thing:  they differ only in degree.  Sir,
they are the same thing in the sense in which to breathe a vein
and to cut a throat are the same thing.  There are many points of
resemblance between the act of the surgeon and the act of the
assassin.  In both there is the steel, the incision, the smart,
the bloodshed.  But the acts differ as widely as possible both in
moral character and in physical effect.  So with agitation and
rebellion.  I do not believe that there has been any moment since
the revolution of 1688 at which an insurrection in this country
would have been justifiable.  On the other hand, I hold that we
have owed to agitation a long series of beneficent reforms which
could have been effected in no other way.  Nor do I understand
how any person can reprobate agitation, merely as agitation,
unless he is prepared to adopt the maxim of Bishop Horsley, that
the people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them.
The truth is that agitation is inseparable from popular
government.  If you wish to get rid of agitation, you must
establish an oligarchy like that of Venice, or a despotism like
that of Russia.  If a Russian thinks that he is able to suggest
an improvement in the commercial code or the criminal code of his
country, he tries to obtain an audience of the Emperor Nicholas
or of Count Nesselrode.  If he can satisfy them that his plans
are good, then undoubtedly, without agitation, without
controversy in newspapers, without harangues from hustings,
without clamorous meetings in great halls and in marketplaces,
without petitions signed by tens of thousands, you may have a
reform effected with one stroke of the pen.  Not so here.  Here
the people, as electors, have power to decide questions of the
highest importance.  And ought they not to hear and read before
they decide?  And how can they hear if nobody speaks, or read if
nobody writes?  You must admit, then, that it is our right, and
that it may be our duty, to attempt by speaking and writing to
induce the great body of our countrymen to pronounce what we
think a right decision; and what else is agitation?  In saying
this I am not defending one party alone.  Has there been no Tory
agitation?  No agitation against Popery?  No agitation against
the new Poor Law?  No agitation against the plan of education
framed by the present Government?  Or, to pass from questions
about which we differ to questions about which we all agree:
Would the slave trade ever have been abolished without agitation?
Would slavery ever have been abolished without agitation?  Would
your prison discipline ever have been improved without agitation?
Would your penal code, once the scandal of the Statute Book, have
been mitigated without agitation?  I am far from denying that
agitation may be abused, may be employed for bad ends, may be
carried to unjustifiable lengths.  So may that freedom of speech
which is one of the most precious privileges of this House.
Indeed, the analogy is very close.  What is agitation but the
mode in which the public, the body which we represent, the great
outer assembly, if I may so speak, holds its debates?  It is as
necessary to the good government of the country that our
constituents should debate as that we should debate.  They
sometimes go wrong, as we sometimes go wrong.  There is often
much exaggeration, much unfairness, much acrimony in their
debates.  Is there none in ours?  Some worthless demagogues may
have exhorted the people to resist the laws.  But what member of
Lord Grey's Government, what member of the present Government,
ever gave any countenance to any illegal proceedings?  It is
perfectly true that some words which have been uttered here and
in other places, and which, when taken together with the context
and candidly construed, will appear to mean nothing but what was
reasonable and constitutional and moderate, have been distorted
and mutilated into something that has a seditious aspect.  But
who is secure against such misrepresentation?  Not, I am sure,
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke.  He ought
to remember that his own speeches have been used by bad men for
bad ends.  He ought to remember that some expressions which he
used in 1830, on the subject of the emoluments divided among
Privy Councillors, have been quoted by the Chartists in
vindication of their excesses.  Do I blame him for this?  Not at
all.  He said nothing that was not justifiable.  But it is
impossible for a man so to guard his lips that his language shall
not sometimes be misunderstood by dull men, and sometimes
misrepresented by dishonest men.  I do not, I say, blame him for
having used those expressions:  but I do say that, knowing how
his own expressions had been perverted, he should have hesitated
before he threw upon men, not less attached than himself to the
cause of law, of order and property, imputations certainly not
better founded than those to which he is himself liable.

And now, Sir, to pass by many topics to which, but for the
lateness of the hour, I would willingly advert, let me remind the
House that the question before us is not a positive question, but
a question of comparison.  No man, though he may disapprove of
some part of the conduct of the present Ministers, is justified
in voting for the motion which we are considering, unless he
believes that a change would, on the whole, be beneficial.  No
government is perfect:  but some government there must be; and if
the present government were worse than its enemies think it, it
ought to exist until it can be succeeded by a better.  Now I take
it to be perfectly clear that, in the event of the removal of Her
Majesty's present advisers, an administration must be formed of
which the right honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth will
be the head.  Towards that right honourable Baronet, and towards
many of the noblemen and gentlemen who would probably in that
event be associated with him, I entertain none but kind and
respectful feelings.  I am far, I hope, from that narrowness of
mind which makes a man unable to see merit in any party but his
own.  If I may venture to parody the old Venetian proverb, I
would be "First an Englishman; and then a Whig."  I feel proud of
my country when I think how much ability, uprightness, and
patriotism may be found on both sides of the House.  Among our
opponents stands forth, eminently distinguished by parts,
eloquence, knowledge, and, I willingly admit, by public spirit,
the right honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth.  Having
said this, I shall offer no apology for the remarks which, in the
discharge of my public duty, I shall make, without, I hope, any
personal discourtesy, on his past conduct, and his present
position.

It has been, Sir, I will not say his fault, but his misfortune,
his fate, to be the leader of a party with which he has no
sympathy.  To go back to what is now matter of history, the right
honourable Baronet bore a chief part in the restoration of the
currency.  By a very large proportion of his followers the
restoration of the currency is considered as the chief cause of
the distresses of the country.  The right honourable Baronet
cordially supported the commercial policy of Mr Huskisson.  But
there was no name more odious than that of Mr Huskisson to the
rank and file of the Tory party.  The right honourable Baronet
assented to the Act which removed the disabilities of the
Protestant Dissenters.  But, a very short time ago, a noble Duke,
one of the highest in power and rank of the right honourable
Baronet's adherents, positively refused to lend his aid to the
executing of that Act.  The right honourable Baronet brought in
the bill which removed the disabilities of the Roman Catholics:
but his supporters make it a chief article of charge against us
that we have given practical effect to the law which is his best
title to public esteem.  The right honourable Baronet has
declared himself decidedly favourable to the new Poor Law.  Yet,
if a voice is raised against the Whig Bastilles and the Kings of
Somerset House, it is almost certain to be the voice of some
zealous retainer of the right honourable Baronet.  On the great
question of privilege, the right honourable Baronet has taken a
part which entitles him to the gratitude of all who are
solicitous for the honour and the usefulness of the popular
branch of the legislature.  But if any person calls us tyrants,
and calls those whom we have imprisoned martyrs, that person is
certain to be a partisan of the right honourable Baronet.  Even
when the right honourable Baronet does happen to agree with his
followers as to a conclusion, he seldom arrives at that
conclusion by the same process of reasoning which satisfies them.
Many great questions which they consider as questions of right
and wrong, as questions of moral and religious principle, as
questions which must, for no earthly object, and on no emergency,
be compromised, are treated by him merely as questions of
expediency, of place, and of time.  He has opposed many bills
introduced by the present Government; but he has opposed them on
such grounds that he is at perfect liberty to bring in the same
bills himself next year, with perhaps some slight variation.  I
listened to him as I always listen to him, with pleasure, when he
spoke last session on the subject of education.  I could not but
be amused by the skill with which he performed the hard task of
translating the gibberish of bigots into language which might not
misbecome the mouth of a man of sense.  I felt certain that he
despised the prejudices of which he condescended to make use, and
that his opinion about the Normal Schools and the Douai Version
entirely agreed with my own.  I therefore do not think that, in
times like these, the right honourable Baronet can conduct the
administration with honour to himself or with satisfaction to
those who are impatient to see him in office.  I will not affect
to feel apprehensions from which I am entirely free.  I do not
fear, and I will not pretend to fear, that the right honourable
Baronet will be a tyrant and a persecutor.  I do not believe that
he will give up Ireland to the tender mercies of those zealots
who form, I am afraid, the strongest, and I am sure the loudest,
part of his retinue.  I do not believe that he will strike the
names of Roman Catholics from the Privy Council book, and from
the Commissions of the Peace.  I do not believe that he will lay
on our table a bill for the repeal of that great Act which was
introduced by himself in 1829.  What I do anticipate is this,
that he will attempt to keep his party together by means which
will excite grave discontents, and yet that he will not succeed
in keeping his party together; that he will lose the support of
the Tories without obtaining the support of the nation; and that
his government will fall from causes purely internal.

This, Sir, is not mere conjecture.  The drama is not a new one.
It was performed a few years ago on the same stage and by most of
the same actors.  In 1827 the right honourable Baronet was, as
now, the head of a powerful Tory opposition.  He had, as now, the
support of a strong minority in this House.  He had, as now, a
majority in the other House.  He was, as now, the favourite of
the Church and of the Universities.  All who dreaded political
change, all who hated religious liberty, rallied round him then,
as they rally round him now.  Their cry was then, as now, that a
government unfriendly to the civil and ecclesiastical
constitution of the realm was kept in power by intrigue and court
favour, and that the right honourable Baronet was the man to whom
the nation must look to defend its laws against revolutionists,
and its religion against idolaters.  At length that cry became
irresistible.  Tory animosity had pursued the most accomplished
of Tory statesmen and orators to a resting place in Westminster
Abbey.  The arrangement which was made after his death lasted but
a very few months:  a Tory government was formed; and the right
honourable Baronet became the leading minister of the Crown in
the House of Commons.  His adherents hailed his elevation with
clamorous delight, and confidently expected many years of triumph
and dominion.  Is it necessary to say in what disappointment, in
what sorrow, in what fury, those expectations ended?  The right
honourable Baronet had been raised to power by prejudices and
passions in which he had no share.  His followers were bigots.
He was a statesman.  He was coolly weighing conveniences against
inconveniences, while they were ready to resort to a proscription
and to hazard a civil war rather than depart from what they
called their principles.  For a time he tried to take a middle
course.  He imagined that it might be possible for him to stand
well with his old friends, and yet to perform some part of his
duty to the state.  But those were not times in which he could
long continue to halt between two opinions.  His elevation, as it
had excited the hopes of the oppressors, had excited also the
terror and the rage of the oppressed.  Agitation, which had,
during more than a year, slumbered in Ireland, awoke with renewed
vigour, and soon became more formidable than ever.  The Roman
Catholic Association began to exercise authority such as the
Irish Parliament, in the days of its independence, had never
possessed.  An agitator became more powerful than the Lord
Lieutenant.  Violence engendered violence.  Every explosion of
feeling on one side of St George's Channel was answered by a
louder explosion on the other.  The Clare election, the Penenden
Heath meeting showed that the time for evasion and delay was
past.  A crisis had arrived which made it absolutely necessary
for the Government to take one side or the other.  A simple issue
was proposed to the right honourable Baronet, concession or civil
war; to disgust his party, or to ruin his country.  He chose the
good part.  He performed a duty, deeply painful, in some sense
humiliating, yet in truth highly honourable to him.  He came down
to this House and proposed the emancipation of the Roman
Catholics.  Among his adherents were some who, like himself, had
opposed the Roman Catholic claims merely on the ground of
political expediency; and these persons readily consented to
support his new policy.  But not so the great body of his
followers.  Their zeal for Protestant ascendency was a ruling
passion, a passion, too, which they thought it a virtue to
indulge.  They had exerted themselves to raise to power the man
whom they regarded as the ablest and most trusty champion of that
ascendency; and he had not only abandoned the good cause, but had
become its adversary.  Who can forget in what a roar of obloquy
their anger burst forth?  Never before was such a flood of
calumny and invective poured on a single head.  All history, all
fiction were ransacked by the old friends of the right honourable
Baronet, for nicknames and allusions.  One right honourable
gentleman, who I am sorry not to see in his place opposite, found
English prose too weak to express his indignation, and pursued
his perfidious chief with reproaches borrowed from the ravings of
the deserted Dido.  Another Tory explored Holy Writ for
parallels, and could find no parallel but Judas Iscariot.  The
great university which had been proud to confer on the right
honourable Baronet the highest marks of favour, was foremost in
affixing the brand of infamy.  From Cornwall, from
Northumberland, clergymen came up by hundreds to Oxford, in order
to vote against him whose presence, a few days before, would have
set the bells of their parish churches jingling.  Nay, such was
the violence of this new enmity that the old enmity of the Tories
to Whigs, Radicals, Dissenters, Papists, seemed to be forgotten.
That Ministry which, when it came into power at the close of
1828, was one of the strongest that the country ever saw, was, at
the close of 1829, one of the weakest.  It lingered another year,
staggering between two parties, leaning now on one, now on the
other, reeling sometimes under a blow from the right, sometimes
under a blow from the left, and certain to fall as soon as the
Tory opposition and the Whig opposition could find a question on
which to unite.  Such a question was found:  and that Ministry
fell without a struggle.

Now what I wish to know is this.  What reason have we to believe
that any administration which the right honourable Baronet can
now form will have a different fate?  Is he changed since 1829?
Is his party changed?  He is, I believe, still the same, still a
statesman, moderate in opinions, cautious in temper, perfectly
free from that fanaticism which inflames so many of his
supporters.  As to his party, I admit that it is not the same;
for it is very much worse.  It is decidedly fiercer and more
unreasonable than it was eleven years ago.  I judge by its public
meetings; I judge by its journals; I judge by its pulpits,
pulpits which every week resound with ribaldry and slander such
as would disgrace the hustings.  A change has come over the
spirit of a part, I hope not the larger part, of the Tory body.
It was once the glory of the Tories that, through all changes of
fortune, they were animated by a steady and fervent loyalty which
made even error respectable, and gave to what might otherwise
have been called servility something of the manliness and
nobleness of freedom.  A great Tory poet, whose eminent services
to the cause of monarchy had been ill requited by an ungrateful
Court, boasted that

"Loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shined upon."

Toryism has now changed its character.  We have lived to see a
monster of a faction made up of the worst parts of the Cavalier
and the worst parts of the Roundhead.  We have lived to see a
race of disloyal Tories.  We have lived to see Tories giving
themselves the airs of those insolent pikemen who puffed out
their tobacco smoke in the face of Charles the First.  We have
lived to see Tories who, because they are not allowed to grind
the people after the fashion of Strafford, turn round and revile
the Sovereign in the style of Hugh Peters.  I say, therefore,
that, while the leader is still what he was eleven years ago,
when his moderation alienated his intemperate followers, his
followers are more intemperate than ever.  It is my firm belief
that the majority of them desire the repeal of the Emancipation
Act.  You say, no.  But I will give reasons, and unanswerable
reasons, for what I say.  How, if you really wish to maintain the
Emancipation Act, do you explain that clamour which you have
raised, and which has resounded through the whole kingdom, about
the three Popish Privy Councillors?  You resent, as a calumny,
the imputation that you wish to repeal the Emancipation Act; and
yet you cry out that Church and State are in danger of ruin
whenever the Government carries that Act into effect.  If the
Emancipation Act is never to be executed, why should it not be
repealed?  I perfectly understand that an honest man may wish it
to be repealed.  But I am at a loss to understand how honest men
can say, "We wish the Emancipation Act to be maintained:  you who
accuse us of wishing to repeal it slander us foully:  we value it
as much as you do.  Let it remain among our statutes, provided
always that it remains as a dead letter.  If you dare to put it
in force, indeed, we will agitate against you; for, though we
talk against agitation, we too can practice agitation:  we will
denounce you in our associations; for, though we call
associations unconstitutional, we too have our associations:  our
divines shall preach about Jezebel:  our tavern spouters shall
give significant hints about James the Second."  Yes, Sir, such
hints have been given, hints that a sovereign who has merely
executed the law, ought to be treated like a sovereign who
grossly violated the law.  I perfectly understand, as I said,
that an honest man may disapprove of the Emancipation Act, and
may wish it repealed.  But can any man, who is of opinion that
Roman Catholics ought to be admitted to office, honestly maintain
that they now enjoy more than their fair share of power and
emolument?  What is the proportion of Roman Catholics to the
whole population of the United Kingdom?  About one-fourth.  What
proportion of the Privy Councillors are Roman Catholics?  About
one-seventieth.  And what, after all, is the power of a Privy
Councillor, merely as such?  Are not the right honourable
gentlemen opposite Privy Councillors?  If a change should take
place, will not the present Ministers still be Privy Councillors?
It is notorious that no Privy Councillor goes to Council unless
he is specially summoned.  He is called Right Honourable, and he
walks out of a room before Esquires and Knights.  And can we
seriously believe that men who think it monstrous that this
honorary distinction should be given to three Roman Catholics, do
sincerely desire to maintain a law by which a Roman Catholic may
be Commander in Chief with all the military patronage, First Lord
of the Admiralty with all the naval patronage, or First Lord of
the Treasury, with the chief influence in every department of the
Government.  I must therefore suppose that those who join in the
cry against the three Privy Councillors, are either imbecile or
hostile to the Emancipation Act.

I repeat, therefore, that, while the right honourable Baronet is
as free from bigotry as he was eleven years ago, his party is
more bigoted than it was eleven years ago.  The difficulty of
governing Ireland in opposition to the feelings of the great body
of the Irish people is, I apprehend, as great now as it was
eleven years ago.  What then must be the fate of a government
formed by the right honourable Baronet?  Suppose that the event
of this debate should make him Prime Minister?  Should I be wrong
if I were to prophesy that three years hence he will be more
hated and vilified by the Tory party than the present advisers of
the Crown have been?  Should I be wrong if I were to say that all
those literary organs which now deafen us with praise of him,
will then deafen us with abuse of him?  Should I be wrong if I
were to say that he will be burned in effigy by those who now
drink his health with three times three and one cheer more?
Should I be wrong if I were to say that those very gentlemen who
have crowded hither to-night in order to vote him into power,
will crowd hither to vote Lord Melbourne back?  Once already have
I seen those very persons go out into the lobby for the purpose
of driving the right honourable Baronet from the high situation
to which they had themselves exalted him.  I went out with them
myself; yes, with the whole body of the Tory country gentlemen,
with the whole body of high Churchmen.  All the four University
Members were with us.  The effect of that division was to bring
Lord Grey, Lord Althorpe, Lord Brougham, Lord Durham into power.
You may say that the Tories on that occasion judged ill, that
they were blinded by vindictive passion, that if they had
foreseen all that followed they might have acted differently.
Perhaps so.  But what has been once may be again.  I cannot think
it possible that those who are now supporting the right
honourable Baronet will continue from personal attachment to
support him if they see that his policy is in essentials the same
as Lord Melbourne's.  I believe that they have quite as much
personal attachment to Lord Melbourne as to the right honourable
Baronet.  They follow the right honourable Baronet because his
abilities, his eloquence, his experience are necessary to them;
but they are but half reconciled to him.  They never can forget
that, in the most important crisis of his public life, he
deliberately chose rather to be the victim of their injustice
than its instrument.  It is idle to suppose that they will be
satisfied by seeing a new set of men in power.  Their maxim is
most truly "Measures, not men."  They care not before whom the
sword of state is borne at Dublin, or who wears the badge of St
Patrick.  What they abhor is not Lord Normanby personally or Lord
Ebrington personally, but the great principles in conformity with
which Ireland has been governed by Lord Normanby and by Lord
Ebrington, the principles of justice, humanity, and religious
freedom.  What they wish to have in Ireland is not my Lord
Haddington, or any other viceroy whom the right honourable
Baronet may select, but the tyranny of race over race, and of
creed over creed.  Give them what they want; and you convulse the
empire.  Refuse them; and you dissolve the Tory party.  I believe
that the right honourable Baronet himself is by no means without
apprehensions that, if he were now called to the head of affairs,
he would, very speedily, have the dilemma of 1829 again before
him.  He certainly was not without such apprehensions when, a few
months ago, he was commanded by Her Majesty to submit to her the
plan of an administration.  The aspect of public affairs was not
at that time cheering.  The Chartists were stirring in England.
There were troubles in Canada.  There were great discontents in
the West Indies.  An expedition, of which the event was still
doubtful, had been sent into the heart of Asia.  Yet, among many
causes of anxiety, the discerning eye of the right honourable
Baronet easily discerned the quarter where the great and
immediate danger lay.  He told the House that his difficulty
would be Ireland.  Now, Sir, that which would be the difficulty
of his administration is the strength of the present
administration.  Her Majesty's Ministers enjoy the confidence of
Ireland; and I believe that what ought to be done for that
country will excite less discontent here if done by them than if
done by him.  He, I am afraid, great as his abilities are, and
good as I willingly admit his intentions to be, would find it
easy to lose the confidence of his partisans, but hard indeed to
win the confidence of the Irish people.

It is indeed principally on account of Ireland that I feel
solicitous about the issue of the present debate.  I well know
how little chance he who speaks on that theme has of obtaining a
fair hearing.  Would to God that I were addressing an audience
which would judge this great controversy as it is judged by
foreign nations, and as it will be judged by future ages.  The
passions which inflame us, the sophisms which delude us, will not
last for ever.  The paroxysms of faction have their appointed
season.  Even the madness of fanaticism is but for a day.  The
time is coming when our conflicts will be to others what the
conflicts of our forefathers are to us; when the preachers who
now disturb the State, and the politicians who now make a
stalking horse of the Church, will be no more than Sacheverel and
Harley.  Then will be told, in language very different from that
which now calls forth applause from the mob of Exeter Hall, the
true story of these troubled years.

There was, it will then be said, a part of the kingdom of Queen
Victoria which presented a lamentable contrast to the rest; not
from the want of natural fruitfulness, for there was no richer
soil in Europe; not from want of facilities for trade, for the
coasts of this unhappy region were indented by bays and estuaries
capable of holding all the navies of the world; not because the
people were too dull to improve these advantages or too
pusillanimous to defend them; for in natural quickness of wit and
gallantry of spirit they ranked high among the nations.  But all
the bounty of nature had been made unavailing by the crimes and
errors of man.  In the twelfth century that fair island was a
conquered province.  The nineteenth century found it a conquered
province still.  During that long interval many great changes had
taken place which had conduced to the general welfare of the
empire:  but those changes had only aggravated the misery of
Ireland.  The Reformation came, bringing to England and Scotland
divine truth and intellectual liberty.  To Ireland it brought
only fresh calamities.  Two new war cries, Protestant and
Catholic, animated the old feud between the Englishry and the
Irishry.  The Revolution came, bringing to England and Scotland
civil and spiritual freedom, to Ireland subjugation, degradation,
persecution.  The Union came:  but though it joined legislatures,
it left hearts as widely disjoined as ever.  Catholic
Emancipation came:  but it came too late; it came as a concession
made to fear, and, having excited unreasonable hopes, was
naturally followed by unreasonable disappointment.  Then came
violent irritation, and numerous errors on both sides.  Agitation
produced coercion, and coercion produced fresh agitation.
Difficulties and dangers went on increasing, till a government
arose which, all other means having failed, determined to employ
the only means that had not yet been fairly tried, justice and
mercy.  The State, long the stepmother of the many, and the
mother only of the few, became for the first time the common
parent of all the great family.  The body of the people began to
look on their rulers as friends.  Battalion after battalion,
squadron after squadron was withdrawn from districts which, as it
had till then been thought, could be governed by the sword alone.
Yet the security of property and the authority of law became
every day more complete.  Symptoms of amendment, symptoms such as
cannot be either concealed or counterfeited, began to appear; and
those who once despaired of the destinies of Ireland began to
entertain a confident hope that she would at length take among
European nations that high place to which her natural resources
and the intelligence of her children entitle her to aspire.

In words such as these, I am confident, will the next generation
speak of the events in our time.  Relying on the sure justice of
history and posterity, I care not, as far as I am personally
concerned, whether we stand or fall.  That issue it is for the
House to decide.  Whether the result will be victory or defeat, I
know not.  But I know that there are defeats not less glorious
than any victory; and yet I have shared in some glorious
victories.  Those were proud and happy days;--some who sit on the
benches opposite can well remember, and must, I think, regret
them;--those were proud and happy days when, amidst the applauses
and blessings of millions, my noble friend led us on in the great
struggle for the Reform Bill; when hundreds waited round our
doors till sunrise to hear how we had sped; when the great cities
of the north poured forth their population on the highways to
meet the mails which brought from the capital the tidings whether
the battle of the people had been lost or won.  Such days my
noble friend cannot hope to see again.  Two such triumphs would
be too much for one life.  But perhaps there still awaits him a
less pleasing, a less exhilarating, but a not less honourable
task, the task of contending against superior numbers, and
through years of discomfiture, for those civil and religious
liberties which are inseparably associated with the name of his
illustrious house.  At his side will not be wanting men who
against all odds, and through all turns of fortune, in evil days
and amidst evil tongues, will defend to the last, with unabated
spirit, the noble principles of Milton and of Locke.  We may be
driven from office.  We may be doomed to a life of opposition.
We may be made marks for the rancour of sects which, hating each
other with a deadly hatred, yet hate toleration still more.  We
may be exposed to the rage of Laud on one side, and of Praise-
God-Barebones on the other.  But justice will be done at last:
and a portion of the praise which we bestow on the old champions
and martyrs of freedom will not be refused by future generations
to the men who have in our days endeavoured to bind together in
real union races too long estranged, and to efface, by the mild
influence of a parental government, the fearful traces which have
been left by the misrule of ages.

...


WAR WITH CHINA.  (APRIL 7, 1840)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 7TH OF APRIL,
1840.

On the seventh of April, 1840, Sir James Graham moved the
following resolution:

"That it appears to this House, on consideration of the papers
relating to China presented to this House by command of Her
Majesty, that the interruption in our commercial and friendly
intercourse with that country, and the hostilities which have
since taken place, are mainly to be attributed to the want of
foresight and precaution on the part of Her Majesty's present
advisers, in respect to our relations with China, and especially
to their neglect to furnish the Superintendent at Canton with
powers and instructions calculated to provide against the growing
evils connected with the contraband trade in opium, and adapted
to the novel and difficult situation in which the Superintendent
was placed."

As soon as the question had been put from the Chair the following
Speech was made.

The motion was rejected, after a debate of three nights, by 271
votes to 261.

Mr Speaker,--If the right honourable Baronet, in rising to make
an attack on the Government, was forced to own that he was
unnerved and overpowered by his sense of the importance of the
question with which he had to deal, one who rises to repel that
attack may, without any shame, confess that he feels similar
emotions.  And yet I must say that the anxiety, the natural and
becoming anxiety, with which Her Majesty's Ministers have awaited
the judgment of the House on these papers, was not a little
allayed by the terms of the right honourable Baronet's motion,
and has been still more allayed by his speech.  It was impossible
for us to doubt either his inclination or his ability to detect
and to expose any fault which we might have committed, and we may
well congratulate ourselves on finding that, after the closest
examination into a long series of transactions, so extensive, so
complicated, and, in some respects, so disastrous, so keen an
assailant could produce only so futile an accusation.

In the first place, Sir, the resolution which the right
honourable Baronet has moved relates entirely to events which
took place before the rupture with the Chinese Government.  That
rupture took place in March, 1839.  The right honourable Baronet
therefore does not propose to pass any censure on any step which
has been taken by the Government within the last thirteen months;
and it will, I think, be generally admitted, that when he
abstains from censuring the proceedings of the Government, it is
because the most unfriendly scrutiny can find nothing in those
proceedings to censure.  We by no means deny that he has a
perfect right to propose a vote expressing disapprobation of what
was done in 1837 or 1838.  At the same time, we cannot but be
gratified by learning that he approves of our present policy, and
of the measures which we have taken, since the rupture, for the
vindication of the national honour and for the protection of the
national interests.

It is also to be observed that the right honourable Baronet has
not ventured, either in his motion or in his speech, to charge
Her Majesty's Ministers with any unwise or unjust act, with any
act tending to lower the character of England, or to give cause
of offence to China.  The only sins which he imputes to them are
sins of omission.  His complaint is merely that they did not
foresee the course which events would take at Canton, and that
consequently they did not send sufficient instructions to the
British resident who was stationed there.  Now it is evident that
such an accusation is of all accusations that which requires the
fullest and most distinct proof; for it is of all accusations
that which it is easiest to make and hardest to refute.  A man
charged with a culpable act which he has not committed has
comparatively little difficulty in proving his innocence.  But
when the charge is merely this, that he has not, in a long and
intricate series of transactions, done all that it would have
been wise to do, how is he to vindicate himself?  And the case
which we are considering has this peculiarity, that the envoy to
whom the Ministers are said to have left too large a discretion
was fifteen thousand miles from them.  The charge against them
therefore is this, that they did not give such copious and
particular directions as were sufficient, in every possible
emergency, for the guidance of a functionary, who was fifteen
thousand miles off.  Now, Sir, I am ready to admit that, if the
papers on our table related to important negotiations with a
neighbouring state, if they related, for example, to a
negotiation carried on with France, my noble friend the Secretary
for Foreign Affairs (Lord Palmerston.) might well have been
blamed for sending instructions so meagre and so vague to our
ambassador at Paris.  For my noble friend knows to-night what
passed between our ambassador at Paris and the French Ministers
yesterday; and a messenger despatched to-night from Downing
Street will be at the Embassy in the Faubourg Saint Honore the
day after to-morrow.  But that constant and minute control, which
the Foreign Secretary is bound to exercise over diplomatic agents
who are near, becomes an useless and pernicious meddling when
exercised over agents who are separated from him by a voyage of
five months.  There are on both sides of the House gentlemen
conversant with the affairs of India.  I appeal to those
gentlemen.  India is nearer to us than China.  India is far
better known to us than China.  Yet is it not universally
acknowledged that India can be governed only in India?  The
authorities at home point out to a governor the general line of
policy which they wish him to follow; but they do not send him
directions as to the details of his administration.  How indeed
is it possible that they should send him such directions?
Consider in what a state the affairs of this country would be if
they were to be conducted according to directions framed by the
ablest statesman residing in Bengal.  A despatch goes hence
asking for instructions while London is illuminating for the
peace of Amiens.  The instructions arrive when the French army is
encamped at Boulogne, and when the whole island is up in arms to
repel invasion.  A despatch is written asking for instructions
when Bonaparte is at Elba.  The instructions come when he is at
the Tuilleries.  A despatch is written asking for instructions
when he is at the Tuilleries.  The instructions come when he is
at St Helena.  It would be just as impossible to govern India in
London as to govern England at Calcutta.  While letters are
preparing here on the supposition that there is profound peace in
the Carnatic, Hyder is at the gates of Fort St George.  While
letters are preparing here on the supposition that trade is
flourishing and that the revenue exceeds the expenditure, the
crops have failed, great agency houses have broken, and the
government is negotiating a loan on hard terms.  It is notorious
that the great men who founded and preserved our Indian empire,
Clive and Warren Hastings, treated all particular orders which
they received from home as mere waste paper.  Had not those great
men had the sense and spirit so to treat such orders, we should
not now have had an Indian empire.  But the case of China is far
stronger.  For, though a person who is now writing a despatch to
Fort William in Leadenhall Street or Cannon Row, cannot know what
events have happened in India within the last two months, he may
be very intimately acquainted with the general state of that
country, with its wants, with its resources, with the habits and
temper of the native population, and with the character of every
prince and minister from Nepaul to Tanjore.  But what does
anybody here know of China?  Even those Europeans who have been
in that empire are almost as ignorant of it as the rest of us.
Everything is covered by a veil, through which a glimpse of what
is within may occasionally be caught, a glimpse just sufficient
to set the imagination at work, and more likely to mislead than
to inform.  The right honourable Baronet has told us that an
Englishman at Canton sees about as much of China as a foreigner
who should land at Wapping and proceed no further would see of
England.  Certainly the sights and sounds of Wapping would give a
foreigner but a very imperfect notion of our Government, of our
manufactures, of our agriculture, of the state of learning and
the arts among us.  And yet the illustration is but a faint one.
For a foreigner may, without seeing even Wapping, without
visiting England at all, study our literature, and may thence
form a vivid and correct idea of our institutions and manners.
But the literature of China affords us no such help.  Obstacles
unparalleled in any other country which has books must be
surmounted by the student who is determined to master the Chinese
tongue.  To learn to read is the business of half a life.  It is
easier to become such a linguist as Sir William Jones was than to
become a good Chinese scholar.  You may count upon your fingers
the Europeans whose industry and genius, even when stimulated by
the most fervent religious zeal, has triumphed over the
difficulties of a language without an alphabet.  Here then is a
country separated from us physically by half the globe, separated
from us still more effectually by the barriers which the most
jealous of all governments and the hardest of all languages
oppose to the researches of strangers.  Is it then reasonable to
blame my noble friend because he has not sent to our envoys in
such a country as this instructions as full and precise as it
would have been his duty to send to a minister at Brussels or at
the Hague?  The right honourable Baronet who comes forward as the
accuser on this occasion is really accusing himself.  He was a
member of the Government of Lord Grey.  He was himself concerned
in framing the first instructions which were given by my noble
friend to our first Superintendent at Canton.  For those
instructions the right honourable Baronet frankly admits that he
is himself responsible.  Are those instructions then very copious
and minute?  Not at all.  They merely lay down general
principles.  The Resident, for example, is enjoined to respect
national usages, and to avoid whatever may shock the prejudices
of the Chinese; but no orders are given him as to matters of
detail.  In 1834 my noble friend quitted the Foreign Office, and
the Duke of Wellington went to it.  Did the Duke of Wellington
send out those copious and exact directions with which, according
to the right honourable Baronet, the Government is bound to
furnish its agent in China?  No, Sir; the Duke of Wellington,
grown old in the conduct of great affairs, knows better than
anybody that a man of very ordinary ability at Canton is likely
to be a better judge of what ought to be done on an emergency
arising at Canton than the greatest politician at Westminster can
possibly be.  His Grace, therefore, like a wise man as he is,
wrote only one letter to the Superintendent, and in that letter
merely referred the Superintendent to the general directions
given by Lord Palmerston.  And how, Sir, does the right
honourable Baronet prove that, by persisting in the course which
he himself took when in office, and which the Duke of Wellington
took when in office, Her Majesty's present advisers have brought
on that rupture which we all deplore?  He has read us, from the
voluminous papers which are on the table, much which has but a
very remote connection with the question.  He has said much about
things which happened before the present Ministry existed, and
much about things which have happened at Canton since the
rupture; but very little that is relevant to the issue raised by
the resolution which he has himself proposed.  That issue is
simply this, whether the mismanagement of the present Ministry
produced the rupture.  I listened to his long and able speech
with the greatest attention, and did my best to separate that
part which had any relation to his motion from a great mass of
extraneous matter.  If my analysis be correct, the charge which
he brings against the Government consists of four articles.

The first article is, that the Government omitted to alter that
part of the original instructions which directed the
Superintendent to reside at Canton.

The second article is, that the Government omitted to alter that
part of the original instructions which directed the
Superintendent to communicate directly with the representatives
of the Emperor.

The third article is, that the Government omitted to follow the
advice of the Duke of Wellington, who had left at the Foreign
Office a memorandum recommending that a British ship of war
should be stationed in the China sea.

The fourth article is, that the Government omitted to authorise
and empower the Superintendent to put down the contraband trade
carried on by British subjects with China.

Such, Sir, are the counts of this indictment.  Of these counts,
the fourth is the only one which will require a lengthened
defence.  The first three may be disposed of in very few words.

As to the first, the answer is simple.  It is true that the
Government did not revoke that part of the instructions which
directed the Superintendent to reside at Canton; and it is true
that this part of the instructions did at one time cause a
dispute between the Superintendent and the Chinese authorities.
But it is equally true that this dispute was accommodated early
in 1837; that the Chinese Government furnished the Superintendent
with a passport authorising him to reside at Canton; that, during
the two years which preceded the rupture, the Chinese Government
made no objection to his residing at Canton; and that there is
not in all this huge blue book one word indicating that the
rupture was caused, directly or indirectly, by his residing at
Canton.  On the first count, therefore, I am confident that the
verdict must be, Not Guilty.

To the second count we have a similar answer.  It is true that
there was a dispute with the authorities of Canton about the mode
of communication.  But it is equally true that this dispute was
settled by a compromise.  The Chinese made a concession as to the
channel of communication.  The Superintendent made a concession
as to the form of communication.  The question had been thus set
at rest before the rupture, and had absolutely nothing to do with
the rupture.

As to the third charge, I must tell the right honourable Baronet
that he has altogether misapprehended that memorandum which he so
confidently cites.  The Duke of Wellington did not advise the
Government to station a ship of war constantly in the China seas.
The Duke, writing in 1835, at a time when the regular course of
the trade had been interrupted, recommended that a ship of war
should be stationed near Canton, "till the trade should take its
regular peaceable course."  Those are His Grace's own words.  Do
they not imply that, when the trade had again taken its regular
peaceable course, it might be right to remove the ship of war?
Well, Sir, the trade, after that memorandum was written, did
resume its regular peaceable course:  that the right honourable
Baronet himself will admit; for it is part of his own case that
Sir George Robinson had succeeded in restoring quiet and
security.  The third charge then is simply this, that the
Ministers did not do in a time of perfect tranquillity what the
Duke of Wellington thought that it would have been right to do in
a time of trouble.

And now, Sir, I come to the fourth charge, the only real charge;
for the other three are so futile that I hardly understand how
the right honourable Baronet should have ventured to bring them
forward.  The fourth charge is, that the Ministers omitted to
send to the Superintendent orders and powers to suppress the
contraband trade, and that this omission was the cause of the
rupture.

Now, Sir, let me ask whether it was not notorious, when the right
honourable Baronet was in office, that British subjects carried
on an extensive contraband trade with China?  Did the right
honourable Baronet and his colleagues instruct the Superintendent
to put down that trade?  Never.  That trade went on while the
Duke of Wellington was at the Foreign Office.  Did the Duke of
Wellington instruct the Superintendent to put down that trade?
No, Sir, never.  Are then the followers of the right honourable
Baronet, are the followers of the Duke of Wellington, prepared to
pass a vote of censure on us for following the example of the
right honourable Baronet and of the Duke of Wellington?  But I am
understating my case.  Since the present Ministers came into
office, the reasons against sending out such instructions were
much stronger than when the right honourable Baronet was in
office, or when the Duke of Wellington was in office.  Down to
the month of May 1838, my noble friend had good grounds for
believing that the Chinese Government was about to legalise the
trade in opium.  It is by no means easy to follow the windings of
Chinese politics.  But, it is certain that about four years ago
the whole question was taken into serious consideration at Pekin.
The attention of the Emperor was called to the undoubted fact,
that the law which forbade the trade in opium was a dead letter.
That law had been intended to guard against two evils, which the
Chinese legislators seem to have regarded with equal horror, the
importation of a noxious drug, and the exportation of the
precious metals.  It was found, however, that as many pounds of
opium came in, and that as many pounds of silver went out, as if
there had been no such law.  The only effect of the prohibition
was that the people learned to think lightly of imperial edicts,
and that no part of the great sums expended in the purchase of
the forbidden luxury came into the imperial treasury.  These
considerations were set forth in a most luminous and judicious
state paper, drawn by Tang Tzee, President of the Sacrificial
Offices.  I am sorry to hear that this enlightened Minister has
been turned out of office on account of his liberality:  for to
be turned out of office is, I apprehend, a much more serious
misfortune in China than in England.  Tang Tzee argued that it
was unwise to attempt to exclude opium, for that, while millions
desired to have it, no law would keep it out, and that the manner
in which it had long been brought in had produced an injurious
effect both on the revenues of the state and on the morals of the
people.  Opposed to Tang Tzee was Tchu Sing, a statesman of a
very different class, of a class which, I am sorry to say, is not
confined to China.  Tchu Sing appears to be one of those staunch
conservatives who, when they find that a law is inefficient
because it is too severe, imagine that they can make it efficient
by making it more severe still.  His historical knowledge is much
on a par with his legislative wisdom.  He seems to have paid
particular attention to the rise and progress of our Indian
Empire, and he informs his imperial master that opium is the
weapon by which England effects her conquests.  She had, it
seems, persuaded the people of Hindostan to smoke and swallow
this besotting drug, till they became so feeble in body and mind,
that they were subjugated without difficulty.  Some time appears
to have elapsed before the Emperor made up his mind on the point
in dispute between Tang Tzee and Tchu Sing.  Our Superintendent,
Captain Elliot, was of opinion that the decision would be in
favour of the rational view taken by Tang Tzee; and such, as I
can myself attest, was, during part of the year 1837, the opinion
of the whole mercantile community of Calcutta.  Indeed, it was
expected that every ship which arrived in the Hoogley from Canton
would bring the news that the opium trade had been declared
legal.  Nor was it known in London till May 1838, that the
arguments of Tchu Sing had prevailed.  Surely, Sir, it would have
been most absurd to order Captain Elliot to suppress this trade
at a time when everybody expected that it would soon cease to be
contraband.  The right honourable Baronet must, I think, himself
admit that, till the month of May 1838, the Government here
omitted nothing that ought to have been done.

The question before us is therefore reduced to very narrow
limits.  It is merely this:  Ought my noble friend, in May 1838,
to have sent out a despatch commanding and empowering Captain
Elliot to put down the opium trade?  I do not think that it would
have been right or wise to send out such a despatch.  Consider,
Sir, with what powers it would have been necessary to arm the
Superintendent.  He must have been authorised to arrest, to
confine, to send across the sea any British subject whom he might
believe to have been concerned in introducing opium into China.
I do not deny that, under the Act of Parliament, the Government
might have invested him with this dictatorship.  But I do say
that the Government ought not lightly to invest any man with such
a dictatorship, and, that if, in consequence of directions sent
out by the Government, numerous subjects of Her Majesty had been
taken into custody and shipped off to Bengal or to England
without being permitted to wind up their affairs, this House
would in all probability have called the Ministers to a strict
account.  Nor do I believe that by sending such directions the
Government would have averted the rupture which has taken place.
I will go further.  I believe that, if such directions had been
sent, we should now have been, as we are, at war with China; and
that we should have been at war in circumstances singularly
dishonourable and disastrous.

For, Sir, suppose that the Superintendent had been authorised and
commanded by the Government to put forth an order prohibiting
British subjects from trading in opium; suppose that he had put
forth such an order; how was he to enforce it?  The right
honourable Baronet has had too much experience of public affairs
to imagine that a lucrative trade will be suppressed by a sheet
of paper and a seal.  In England we have a preventive service
which costs us half a million a year.  We employ more than fifty
cruisers to guard our coasts.  We have six thousand effective men
whose business is to intercept smugglers.  And yet everybody
knows that every article which is much desired, which is easily
concealed, and which is heavily taxed, is smuggled into our
island to a great extent.  The quantity of brandy which comes in
without paying duty is known to be not less than six hundred
thousand gallons a year.  Some people think that the quantity of
tobacco which is imported clandestinely is as great as the
quantity which goes through the custom-houses.  Be this as it
may, there is no doubt that the illicit importation is enormous.
It has been proved before a Committee of this House that not less
than four millions of pounds of tobacco have lately been smuggled
into Ireland.  And all this, observe, has been done in spite of
the most efficient preventive service that I believe ever existed
in the world.  Consider too that the price of an ounce of opium
is far, very far higher than the price of a pound of tobacco.
Knowing this, knowing that the whole power of King, Lords, and
Commons cannot here put a stop to a traffic less easy, and less
profitable than the traffic in opium, can you believe that an
order prohibiting the traffic in opium would have been readily
obeyed?  Remember by what powerful motives both the buyer and the
seller would have been impelled to deal with each other.  The
buyer would have been driven to the seller by something little
short of torture, by a physical craving as fierce and impatient
as any to which our race is subject.  For, when stimulants of
this sort have been long used, they are desired with a rage which
resembles the rage of hunger.  The seller would have been driven
to the buyer by the hope of vast and rapid gain.  And do you
imagine that the intense appetite on one side for what had become
a necessary of life, and on the other for riches, would have been
appeased by a few lines signed Charles Elliot?  The very utmost
effect which it is possible to believe that such an order would
have produced would have been this, that the opium trade would
have left Canton, where the dealers were under the eye of the
Superintendent, and where they would have run some risk of being
punished by him, and would have spread itself along the coast.
If we know anything about the Chinese Government, we know this,
that its coastguard is neither trusty nor efficient; and we know
that a coastguard as trusty and efficient as our own would not be
able to cut off communication between the merchant longing for
silver and the smoker longing for his pipe.  Whole fleets of
vessels would have managed to land their cargoes along the shore.
Conflicts would have arisen between our countrymen and the local
magistrates, who would not, like the authorities of Canton, have
had some knowledge of European habits and feelings.  The mere
malum prohibitum would, as usual, have produced the mala in se.
The unlawful traffic would inevitably have led to a crowd of
acts, not only unlawful, but immoral.  The smuggler would, by the
almost irresistible force of circumstances, have been turned into
a pirate.  We know that, even at Canton, where the smugglers
stand in some awe of the authority of the Superintendent and of
the opinion of an English society which contains many respectable
persons, the illicit trade has caused many brawls and outrages.
What, then, was to be expected when every captain of a ship laden
with opium would have been the sole judge of his own conduct?  It
is easy to guess what would have happened.  A boat is sent ashore
to fill the water-casks and to buy fresh provisions.  The
provisions are refused.  The sailors take them by force.  Then a
well is poisoned.  Two or three of the ship's company die in
agonies.  The crew in a fury land, shoot and stab every man whom
they meet, and sack and burn a village.  Is this improbable?
Have not similar causes repeatedly produced similar effects?  Do
we not know that the jealous vigilance with which Spain excluded
the ships of other nations from her Transatlantic possessions
turned men who would otherwise have been honest merchant
adventurers into buccaneers?  The same causes which raised up one
race of buccaneers in the Gulf of Mexico would soon have raised
up another in the China Sea.  And can we doubt what would in that
case have been the conduct of the Chinese authorities at Canton?
We see that Commissioner Lin has arrested and confined men of
spotless character, men whom he had not the slightest reason to
suspect of being engaged in any illicit commerce.  He did so on
the ground that some of their countrymen had violated the revenue
laws of China.  How then would he have acted if he had learned
that the red-headed devils had not merely been selling opium, but
had been fighting, plundering, slaying, burning?  Would he not
have put forth a proclamation in his most vituperative style,
setting forth that the Outside Barbarians had undertaken to stop
the contraband trade, but that they had been found deceivers,
that the Superintendent's edict was a mere pretence, that there
was more smuggling than ever, that to the smuggling had been
added robbery and murder, and that therefore he should detain all
men of the guilty race as hostages till reparation should be
made?  I say, therefore, that, if the Ministers had done that
which the right honourable Baronet blames them for not doing, we
should only have reached by a worse way the point at which we now
are.

I have now, Sir, gone through the four heads of the charge
brought against the Government; and I say with confidence that
the interruption of our friendly relations with China cannot
justly be imputed to any one of the omissions mentioned by the
right honourable Baronet.  In truth, if I could feel assured that
no gentleman would vote for the motion without attentively
reading it, and considering whether the proposition which it
affirms has been made out, I should have no uneasiness as to the
result of this debate.  But I know that no member weighs the
words of a resolution for which he is asked to vote, as he would
weigh the words of an affidavit which he was asked to swear.  And
I am aware that some persons, for whose humanity and honesty I
entertain the greatest respect, are inclined to divide with the
right honourable Baronet, not because they think that he has
proved his case, but because they have taken up a notion that we
are making war for the purpose of forcing the Government of China
to admit opium into that country, and that, therefore, we richly
deserve to be censured.  Certainly, Sir, if we had been guilty of
such absurdity and such atrocity as those gentlemen impute to us,
we should deserve not only censure but condign punishment.  But
the imputation is altogether unfounded.  Our course was clear.
We may doubt indeed whether the Emperor of China judged well in
listening to Tchu Sing and disgracing Tang Tzee.  We may doubt
whether it be a wise policy to exclude altogether from any
country a drug which is often fatally abused, but which to those
who use it rightly is one of the most precious boons vouchsafed
by Providence to man, powerful to assuage pain, to soothe
irritation, and to restore health.  We may doubt whether it be a
wise policy to make laws for the purpose of preventing the
precious metals from being exported in the natural course of
trade.  We have learned from all history, and from our own
experience, that revenue cutters, custom-house officers,
informers, will never keep out of any country foreign luxuries of
small bulk for which consumers are willing to pay high prices,
and will never prevent gold and silver from going abroad in
exchange for such luxuries.  We cannot believe that what England
with her skilfully organised fiscal system and her gigantic
marine, has never been able to effect, will be accomplished by
the junks which are at the command of the mandarins of China.
But, whatever our opinion on these points may be, we are
perfectly aware that they are points which it belongs not to us
but to the Emperor of China to decide.  He had a perfect right to
keep out opium and to keep in silver, if he could do so by means
consistent with morality and public law.  If his officers seized
a chest of the forbidden drug, we were not entitled to complain;
nor did we complain.  But when, finding that they could not
suppress the contraband trade by just means, they resorted to
means flagrantly unjust, when they imprisoned our innocent
countrymen, when they insulted our Sovereign in the person of her
representative, then it became our duty to demand satisfaction.
Whether the opium trade be a pernicious trade is not the
question.  Take a parallel case:  take the most execrable crime
that ever was called a trade, the African slave trade.  You will
hardly say that a contraband trade in opium is more immoral than
a contraband trade in negroes.  We prohibited slave-trading:  we
made it felony; we made it piracy; we invited foreign powers to
join with us in putting it down; to some foreign powers we paid
large sums in order to obtain their co-operation; we employed our
naval force to intercept the kidnappers; and yet it is notorious
that, in spite of all our exertions and sacrifices, great numbers
of slaves were, even as late as ten or twelve years ago,
introduced from Madagascar into our own island of Mauritius.
Assuredly it was our right, it was our duty, to guard the coasts
of that island strictly, to stop slave ships, to bring the buyers
and sellers to punishment.  But suppose, Sir, that a ship under
French colours was seen skulking near the island, that the
Governor was fully satisfied from her build, her rigging, and her
movements, that she was a slaver, and was only waiting for the
night to put on shore the wretches who were in her hold.  Suppose
that, not having a sufficient naval force to seize this vessel,
he were to arrest thirty or forty French merchants, most of whom
had never been suspected of slave-trading, and were to lock them
up.  Suppose that he were to lay violent hands on the French
consul.  Suppose that the Governor were to threaten to starve his
prisoners to death unless they produced the proprietor of the
slaver.  Would not the French Government in such a case have a
right to demand reparation?  And, if we refused reparation, would
not the French Government have a right to exact reparation by
arms?  And would it be enough for us to say, "This is a wicked
trade, an inhuman trade.  Think of the misery of the poor
creatures who are torn from their homes.  Think of the horrors of
the middle passage.  Will you make war in order to force us to
admit slaves into our colonies?"  Surely the answer of the French
would be, "We are not making war in order to force you to admit
slaves into the Mauritius.  By all means keep them out.  By all
means punish every man, French or English, whom you can convict
of bringing them in.  What we complain of is that you have
confounded the innocent with the guilty, and that you have acted
towards the representative of our government in a manner
inconsistent with the law of nations.  Do not, in your zeal for
one great principle, trample on all the other great principles of
morality."  Just such are the grounds on which Her Majesty has
demanded reparation from China.  And was it not time?  See, Sir,
see how rapidly injury has followed injury.  The Imperial
Commissioner, emboldened by the facility with which he had
perpetrated the first outrage, and utterly ignorant of the
relative position of his country and ours in the scale of power
and civilisation, has risen in his requisitions.  He began by
confiscating property.  His next demand was for innocent blood.
A Chinese had been slain.  Careful inquiry was made; but it was
impossible to ascertain who was the slayer, or even to what
nation the slayer belonged.  No matter.  It was notified to the
Superintendent that some subject of the Queen, innocent or
guilty, must be delivered up to suffer death.  The Superintendent
refused to comply.  Then our countrymen at Canton were seized.
Those who were at Macao were driven thence:  not men alone, but
women with child, babies at the breast.  The fugitives begged in
vain for a morsel of bread.  Our Lascars, people of a different
colour from ours, but still our fellow-subjects, were flung into
the sea.  An English gentleman was barbarously mutilated.  And
was this to be borne?  I am far from thinking that we ought, in
our dealings with such a people as the Chinese, to be litigious
on points of etiquette.  The place of our country among the
nations of the world is not so mean or so ill ascertained that we
need resent mere impertinence, which is the effect of a very
pitiable ignorance.  Conscious of superior power, we can bear to
hear our Sovereign described as a tributary of the Celestial
Empire.  Conscious of superior knowledge we can bear to hear
ourselves described as savages destitute of every useful art.
When our ambassadors were required to perform a prostration,
which in Europe would have been considered as degrading, we were
rather amused than irritated.  It would have been unworthy of us
to have recourse to arms on account of an uncivil phrase, or of a
dispute about a ceremony.  But this is not a question of phrases
and ceremonies.  The liberties and lives of Englishmen are at
stake:  and it is fit that all nations, civilised and
uncivilised, should know that, wherever the Englishman may
wander, he is followed by the eye and guarded by the power of
England.

I was much touched, and so, I dare say, were many other
gentlemen, by a passage in one of Captain Elliot's despatches.  I
mean that passage in which he describes his arrival at the
factory in the moment of extreme danger.  As soon as he landed he
was surrounded by his countrymen, all in an agony of distress and
despair.  The first thing which he did was to order the British
flag to be brought from his boat and planted in the balcony.  The
sight immediately revived the hearts of those who had a minute
before given themselves up for lost.  It was natural that they
should look up with hope and confidence to that victorious flag.
For it reminded them that they belonged to a country unaccustomed
to defeat, to submission, or to shame; to a country which had
exacted such reparation for the wrongs of her children as had
made the ears of all who heard of it to tingle; to a country
which had made the Dey of Algiers humble himself to the dust
before her insulted Consul; to a country which had avenged the
victims of the Black Hole on the Field of Plassey; to a country
which had not degenerated since the Great Protector vowed that he
would make the name of Englishman as much respected as ever had
been the name of Roman citizen.  They knew that, surrounded as
they were by enemies, and separated by great oceans and
continents from all help, not a hair of their heads would be
harmed with impunity.  On this part of the subject I believe that
both the great contending parties in this House are agreed.  I
did not detect in the speech of the right honourable Baronet,--
and I listened to that speech with the closest attention,--one
word indicating that he is less disposed than we to insist on
full satisfaction for the great wrong which has been done.  I
cannot believe that the House will pass a vote of censure so
grossly unjust as that which he has moved.  But I rejoice to
think that, whether we are censured or not, the national honour
will still be safe.  There may be a change of men; but, as
respects China, there will be no change of measures.  I have
done; and have only to express my fervent hope that this most
righteous quarrel may be prosecuted to a speedy and triumphant
close; that the brave men to whom is intrusted the task of
exacting reparation may perform their duty in such a manner as to
spread, throughout regions in which the English name is hardly
known, the fame not only of English skill and valour, but of
English mercy and moderation; and that the overruling care of
that gracious Providence which has so often brought good out of
evil may make the war to which we have been forced the means of
establishing a durable peace, beneficial alike to the victors and
the vanquished.

...


COPYRIGHT.  (FEBRUARY 5, 1841)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 5TH OF FEBRUARY
1841.

On the twenty-ninth of January 1841, Mr Serjeant Talfourd
obtained leave to bring in a bill to amend the law of copyright.
The object of this bill was to extend the term of copyright in a
book to sixty years, reckoned from the death of the writer.

On the fifth of February Mr Serjeant Talfourd moved that the bill
should be read a second time.  In reply to him the following
Speech was made.  The bill was rejected by 45 votes to 38.

Though, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach a subject
with which political animosities have nothing to do, I offer
myself to your notice with some reluctance.  It is painful to me
to take a course which may possibly be misunderstood or
misrepresented as unfriendly to the interests of literature and
literary men.  It is painful to me, I will add, to oppose my
honourable and learned friend on a question which he has taken up
from the purest motives, and which he regards with a parental
interest.  These feelings have hitherto kept me silent when the
law of copyright has been under discussion.  But as I am, on full
consideration, satisfied that the measure before us will, if
adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, without
conferring any compensating advantage on men of letters, I think
it my duty to avow that opinion and to defend it.

The first thing to be done, Sir, is to settle on what principles
the question is to be argued.  Are we free to legislate for the
public good, or are we not?  Is this a question of expediency, or
is it a question of right?  Many of those who have written and
petitioned against the existing state of things treat the
question as one of right.  The law of nature, according to them,
gives to every man a sacred and indefeasible property in his own
ideas, in the fruits of his own reason and imagination.  The
legislature has indeed the power to take away this property, just
as it has the power to pass an act of attainder for cutting off
an innocent man's head without a trial.  But, as such an act of
attainder would be legal murder, so would an act invading the
right of an author to his copy be, according to these gentlemen,
legal robbery.

Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it may.
I am not prepared, like my honourable and learned friend, to
agree to a compromise between right and expediency, and to commit
an injustice for the public convenience.  But I must say, that
his theory soars far beyond the reach of my faculties.  It is not
necessary to go, on the present occasion, into a metaphysical
inquiry about the origin of the right of property; and certainly
nothing but the strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a
subject so likely to be distasteful to the House.  I agree, I
own, with Paley in thinking that property is the creature of the
law, and that the law which creates property can be defended only
on this ground, that it is a law beneficial to mankind.  But it
is unnecessary to debate that point.  For, even if I believed in
a natural right of property, independent of utility and anterior
to legislation, I should still deny that this right could survive
the original proprietor.  Few, I apprehend, even of those who
have studied in the most mystical and sentimental schools of
moral philosophy, will be disposed to maintain that there is a
natural law of succession older and of higher authority than any
human code.  If there be, it is quite certain that we have abuses
to reform much more serious than any connected with the question
of copyright.  For this natural law can be only one; and the
modes of succession in the Queen's dominions are twenty.  To go
no further than England, land generally descends to the eldest
son.  In Kent the sons share and share alike.  In many districts
the youngest takes the whole.  Formerly a portion of a man's
personal property was secured to his family; and it was only of
the residue that he could dispose by will.  Now he can dispose of
the whole by will:  but you limited his power, a few years ago,
by enacting that the will should not be valid unless there were
two witnesses.  If a man dies intestate, his personal property
generally goes according to the statute of distributions; but
there are local customs which modify that statute.  Now which of
all these systems is conformed to the eternal standard of right?
Is it primogeniture, or gavelkind, or borough English?  Are wills
jure divino?  Are the two witnesses jure divino?  Might not the
pars rationabilis of our old law have a fair claim to be regarded
as of celestial institution?  Was the statute of distributions
enacted in Heaven long before it was adopted by Parliament?  Or
is it to Custom of York, or to Custom of London, that this pre-
eminence belongs?  Surely, Sir, even those who hold that there is
a natural right of property must admit that rules prescribing the
manner in which the effects of deceased persons shall be
distributed are purely arbitrary, and originate altogether in the
will of the legislature.  If so, Sir, there is no controversy
between my honourable and learned friend and myself as to the
principles on which this question is to be argued.  For the
existing law gives an author copyright during his natural life;
nor do I propose to invade that privilege, which I should, on the
contrary, be prepared to defend strenuously against any
assailant.  The only point in issue between us is, how long after
an author's death the State shall recognise a copyright in his
representatives and assigns; and it can, I think, hardly be
disputed by any rational man that this is a point which the
legislature is free to determine in the way which may appear to
be most conducive to the general good.

We may now, therefore, I think, descend from these high regions,
where we are in danger of being lost in the clouds, to firm
ground and clear light.  Let us look at this question like
legislators, and after fairly balancing conveniences and
inconveniences, pronounce between the existing law of copyright,
and the law now proposed to us.  The question of copyright, Sir,
like most questions of civil prudence, is neither black nor
white, but grey.  The system of copyright has great advantages
and great disadvantages; and it is our business to ascertain what
these are, and then to make an arrangement under which the
advantages may be as far as possible secured, and the
disadvantages as far as possible excluded.  The charge which I
bring against my honourable and learned friend's bill is this,
that it leaves the advantages nearly what they are at present,
and increases the disadvantages at least fourfold.

The advantages arising from a system of copyright are obvious.
It is desirable that we should have a supply of good books; we
cannot have such a supply unless men of letters are liberally
remunerated; and the least objectionable way of remunerating them
is by means of copyright.  You cannot depend for literary
instruction and amusement on the leisure of men occupied in the
pursuits of active life.  Such men may occasionally produce
compositions of great merit.  But you must not look to such men
for works which require deep meditation and long research.  Works
of that kind you can expect only from persons who make literature
the business of their lives.  Of these persons few will be found
among the rich and the noble.  The rich and the noble are not
impelled to intellectual exertion by necessity.  They may be
impelled to intellectual exertion by the desire of distinguishing
themselves, or by the desire of benefiting the community.  But it
is generally within these walls that they seek to signalise
themselves and to serve their fellow-creatures.  Both their
ambition and their public spirit, in a country like this,
naturally take a political turn.  It is then on men whose
profession is literature, and whose private means are not ample,
that you must rely for a supply of valuable books.  Such men must
be remunerated for their literary labour.  And there are only two
ways in which they can be remunerated.  One of those ways is
patronage; the other is copyright.

There have been times in which men of letters looked, not to the
public, but to the government, or to a few great men, for the
reward of their exertions.  It was thus in the time of Maecenas
and Pollio at Rome, of the Medici at Florence, of Louis the
Fourteenth in France, of Lord Halifax and Lord Oxford in this
country.  Now, Sir, I well know that there are cases in which it
is fit and graceful, nay, in which it is a sacred duty to reward
the merits or to relieve the distresses of men of genius by the
exercise of this species of liberality.  But these cases are
exceptions.  I can conceive no system more fatal to the integrity
and independence of literary men than one under which they should
be taught to look for their daily bread to the favour of
ministers and nobles.  I can conceive no system more certain to
turn those minds which are formed by nature to be the blessings
and ornaments of our species into public scandals and pests.

We have, then, only one resource left.  We must betake ourselves
to copyright, be the inconveniences of copyright what they may.
Those inconveniences, in truth, are neither few nor small.
Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the effects which the
general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly.  My honourable
and learned friend talks very contemptuously of those who are led
away by the theory that monopoly makes things dear.  That
monopoly makes things dear is certainly a theory, as all the
great truths which have been established by the experience of all
ages and nations, and which are taken for granted in all
reasonings, may be said to be theories.  It is a theory in the
same sense in which it is a theory that day and night follow each
other, that lead is heavier than water, that bread nourishes,
that arsenic poisons, that alcohol intoxicates.  If, as my
honourable and learned friend seems to think, the whole world is
in the wrong on this point, if the real effect of monopoly is to
make articles good and cheap, why does he stop short in his
career of change?  Why does he limit the operation of so salutary
a principle to sixty years?  Why does he consent to anything
short of a perpetuity?  He told us that in consenting to anything
short of a perpetuity he was making a compromise between extreme
right and expediency.  But if his opinion about monopoly be
correct, extreme right and expediency would coincide.  Or rather,
why should we not restore the monopoly of the East India trade to
the East India Company?  Why should we not revive all those old
monopolies which, in Elizabeth's reign, galled our fathers so
severely that, maddened by intolerable wrong, they opposed to
their sovereign a resistance before which her haughty spirit
quailed for the first and for the last time?  Was it the
cheapness and excellence of commodities that then so violently
stirred the indignation of the English people?  I believe, Sir,
that I may with safety take it for granted that the effect of
monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear,
and to make them bad.  And I may with equal safety challenge my
honourable friend to find out any distinction between copyright
and other privileges of the same kind; any reason why a monopoly
of books should produce an effect directly the reverse of that
which was produced by the East India Company's monopoly of tea,
or by Lord Essex's monopoly of sweet wines.  Thus, then, stands
the case.  It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the
least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly.
Yet monopoly is an evil.  For the sake of the good we must submit
to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is
necessary for the purpose of securing the good.

Now, I will not affirm that the existing law is perfect, that it
exactly hits the point at which the monopoly ought to cease; but
this I confidently say, that the existing law is very much nearer
that point than the law proposed by my honourable and learned
friend.  For consider this; the evil effects of the monopoly are
proportioned to the length of its duration.  But the good effects
for the sake of which we bear with the evil effects are by no
means proportioned to the length of its duration.  A monopoly of
sixty years produces twice as much evil as a monopoly of thirty
years, and thrice as much evil as a monopoly of twenty years.
But it is by no means the fact that a posthumous monopoly of
sixty years gives to an author thrice as much pleasure and thrice
as strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly of twenty years.  On
the contrary, the difference is so small as to be hardly
perceptible.  We all know how faintly we are affected by the
prospect of very distant advantages, even when they are
advantages which we may reasonably hope that we shall ourselves
enjoy.  But an advantage that is to be enjoyed more than half a
century after we are dead, by somebody, we know not by whom,
perhaps by somebody unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected with
us, is really no motive at all to action.  It is very probable
that in the course of some generations land in the unexplored and
unmapped heart of the Australasian continent will be very
valuable.  But there is none of us who would lay down five pounds
for a whole province in the heart of the Australasian continent.
We know, that neither we, nor anybody for whom we care, will ever
receive a farthing of rent from such a province.  And a man is
very little moved by the thought that in the year 2000 or 2100,
somebody who claims through him will employ more shepherds than
Prince Esterhazy, and will have the finest house and gallery of
pictures at Victoria or Sydney.  Now, this is the sort of boon
which my honourable and learned friend holds out to authors.
Considered as a boon to them, it is a mere nullity, but
considered as an impost on the public, it is no nullity, but a
very serious and pernicious reality.  I will take an example.  Dr
Johnson died fifty-six years ago.  If the law were what my
honourable and learned friend wishes to make it, somebody would
now have the monopoly of Dr Johnson's works.  Who that somebody
would be it is impossible to say; but we may venture to guess.  I
guess, then, that it would have been some bookseller, who was the
assign of another bookseller, who was the grandson of a third
bookseller, who had bought the copyright from Black Frank, the
doctor's servant and residuary legatee, in 1785 or 1786.  Now,
would the knowledge that this copyright would exist in 1841 have
been a source of gratification to Johnson?  Would it have
stimulated his exertions?  Would it have once drawn him out of
his bed before noon?  Would it have once cheered him under a fit
of the spleen?  Would it have induced him to give us one more
allegory, one more life of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal?
I firmly believe not.  I firmly believe that a hundred years ago,
when he was writing our debates for the Gentleman's Magazine, he
would very much rather have had twopence to buy a plate of shin
of beef at a cook's shop underground.  Considered as a reward to
him, the difference between a twenty years' and sixty years' term
of posthumous copyright would have been nothing or next to
nothing.  But is the difference nothing to us?  I can buy
Rasselas for sixpence; I might have had to give five shillings
for it.  I can buy the Dictionary, the entire genuine Dictionary,
for two guineas, perhaps for less; I might have had to give five
or six guineas for it.  Do I grudge this to a man like Dr
Johnson?  Not at all.  Show me that the prospect of this boon
roused him to any vigorous effort, or sustained his spirits under
depressing circumstances, and I am quite willing to pay the price
of such an object, heavy as that price is.  But what I do
complain of is that my circumstances are to be worse, and
Johnson's none the better; that I am to give five pounds for what
to him was not worth a farthing.

The principle of copyright is this.  It is a tax on readers for
the purpose of giving a bounty to writers.  The tax is an
exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most innocent and
most salutary of human pleasures; and never let us forget, that a
tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures.  I
admit, however, the necessity of giving a bounty to genius and
learning.  In order to give such a bounty, I willingly submit
even to this severe and burdensome tax.  Nay, I am ready to
increase the tax, if it can be shown that by so doing I should
proportionally increase the bounty.  My complaint is, that my
honourable and learned friend doubles, triples, quadruples, the
tax, and makes scarcely any perceptible addition to the bounty.
Why, Sir, what is the additional amount of taxation which would
have been levied on the public for Dr Johnson's works alone, if
my honourable and learned friend's bill had been the law of the
land?  I have not data sufficient to form an opinion.  But I am
confident that the taxation on his Dictionary alone would have
amounted to many thousands of pounds.  In reckoning the whole
additional sum which the holders of his copyrights would have
taken out of the pockets of the public during the last half
century at twenty thousand pounds, I feel satisfied that I very
greatly underrate it.  Now, I again say that I think it but fair
that we should pay twenty thousand pounds in consideration of
twenty thousand pounds' worth of pleasure and encouragement
received by Dr Johnson.  But I think it very hard that we should
pay twenty thousand pounds for what he would not have valued at
five shillings.

My honourable and learned friend dwells on the claims of the
posterity of great writers.  Undoubtedly, Sir, it would be very
pleasing to see a descendant of Shakespeare living in opulence on
the fruits of his great ancestor's genius.  A house maintained in
splendour by such a patrimony would be a more interesting and
striking object than Blenheim is to us, or than Strathfieldsaye
will be to our children.  But, unhappily, it is scarcely possible
that, under any system, such a thing can come to pass.  My
honourable and learned friend does not propose that copyright
shall descend to the eldest son, or shall be bound up by
irrecoverable entail.  It is to be merely personal property.  It
is therefore highly improbable that it will descend during sixty
years or half that term from parent to child.  The chance is that
more people than one will have an interest in it.  They will in
all probability sell it and divide the proceeds.  The price which
a bookseller will give for it will bear no proportion to the sum
which he will afterwards draw from the public, if his speculation
proves successful.  He will give little, if anything, more for a
term of sixty years than for a term of thirty or five and twenty.
The present value of a distant advantage is always small; but
when there is great room to doubt whether a distant advantage
will be any advantage at all, the present value sink to almost
nothing.  Such is the inconstancy of the public taste that no
sensible man will venture to pronounce, with confidence, what the
sale of any book published in our days will be in the years
between 1890 and 1900.  The whole fashion of thinking and writing
has often undergone a change in a much shorter period than that
to which my honourable and learned friend would extend posthumous
copyright.  What would have been considered the best literary
property in the earlier part of Charles the Second's reign?  I
imagine Cowley's Poems.  Overleap sixty years, and you are in the
generation of which Pope asked, "Who now reads Cowley?"  What
works were ever expected with more impatience by the public than
those of Lord Bolingbroke, which appeared, I think, in 1754?  In
1814, no bookseller would have thanked you for the copyright of
them all, if you had offered it to him for nothing.  What would
Paternoster Row give now for the copyright of Hayley's Triumphs
of Temper, so much admired within the memory of many people still
living?  I say, therefore, that, from the very nature of literary
property, it will almost always pass away from an author's
family; and I say, that the price given for it to the family will
bear a very small proportion to the tax which the purchaser, if
his speculation turns out well, will in the course of a long
series of years levy on the public.

If, Sir, I wished to find a strong and perfect illustration of
the effects which I anticipate from long copyright, I should
select,--my honourable and learned friend will be surprised,--I
should select the case of Milton's granddaughter.  As often as
this bill has been under discussion, the fate of Milton's
granddaughter has been brought forward by the advocates of
monopoly.  My honourable and learned friend has repeatedly told
the story with great eloquence and effect.  He has dilated on the
sufferings, on the abject poverty, of this ill-fated woman, the
last of an illustrious race.  He tells us that, in the extremity
of her distress, Garrick gave her a benefit, that Johnson wrote a
prologue, and that the public contributed some hundreds of
pounds.  Was it fit, he asks, that she should receive, in this
eleemosynary form, a small portion of what was in truth a debt?
Why, he asks, instead of obtaining a pittance from charity, did
she not live in comfort and luxury on the proceeds of the sale of
her ancestor's works?  But, Sir, will my honourable and learned
friend tell me that this event, which he has so often and so
pathetically described, was caused by the shortness of the term
of copyright?  Why, at that time, the duration of copyright was
longer than even he, at present, proposes to make it.  The
monopoly lasted, not sixty years, but for ever.  At the time at
which Milton's granddaughter asked charity, Milton's works were
the exclusive property of a bookseller.  Within a few months of
the day on which the benefit was given at Garrick's theatre, the
holder of the copyright of Paradise Lost,--I think it was
Tonson,--applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction
against a bookseller who had published a cheap edition of the
great epic poem, and obtained the injunction.  The representation
of Comus was, if I remember rightly, in 1750; the injunction in
1752.  Here, then, is a perfect illustration of the effect of
long copyright.  Milton's works are the property of a single
publisher.  Everybody who wants them must buy them at Tonson's
shop, and at Tonson's price.  Whoever attempts to undersell
Tonson is harassed with legal proceedings.  Thousands who would
gladly possess a copy of Paradise Lost, must forego that great
enjoyment.  And what, in the meantime, is the situation of the
only person for whom we can suppose that the author, protected at
such a cost to the public, was at all interested?  She is reduced
to utter destitution.  Milton's works are under a monopoly.
Milton's granddaughter is starving.  The reader is pillaged; but
the writer's family is not enriched.  Society is taxed doubly.
It has to give an exorbitant price for the poems; and it has at
the same time to give alms to the only surviving descendant of
the poet.

But this is not all.  I think it right, Sir, to call the
attention of the House to an evil, which is perhaps more to be
apprehended when an author's copyright remains in the hands of
his family, than when it is transferred to booksellers.  I
seriously fear that, if such a measure as this should be adopted,
many valuable works will be either totally suppressed or
grievously mutilated.  I can prove that this danger is not
chimerical; and I am quite certain that, if the danger be real,
the safeguards which my honourable and learned friend has devised
are altogether nugatory.  That the danger is not chimerical may
easily be shown.  Most of us, I am sure, have known persons who,
very erroneously as I think, but from the best motives, would not
choose to reprint Fielding's novels, or Gibbon's History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Some gentlemen may perhaps
be of opinion that it would be as well if Tom Jones and Gibbon's
History were never reprinted.  I will not, then, dwell on these
or similar cases.  I will take cases respecting which it is not
likely that there will be any difference of opinion here; cases,
too, in which the danger of which I now speak is not matter of
supposition, but matter of fact.  Take Richardson's novels.
Whatever I may, on the present occasion, think of my honourable
and learned friend's judgment as a legislator, I must always
respect his judgment as a critic.  He will, I am sure, say that
Richardson's novels are among the most valuable, among the most
original works in our language.  No writings have done more to
raise the fame of English genius in foreign countries.  No
writings are more deeply pathetic.  No writings, those of
Shakspeare excepted, show more profound knowledge of the human
heart.  As to their moral tendency, I can cite the most
respectable testimony.  Dr Johnson describes Richardson as one
who had taught the passions to move at the command of virtue.  My
dear and honoured friend, Mr Wilberforce, in his celebrated
religious treatise, when speaking of the unchristian tendency of
the fashionable novels of the eighteenth century, distinctly
excepts Richardson from the censure.  Another excellent person,
whom I can never mention without respect and kindness, Mrs Hannah
More, often declared in conversation, and has declared in one of
her published poems, that she first learned from the writings of
Richardson those principles of piety by which her life was
guided.  I may safely say that books celebrated as works of art
through the whole civilised world, and praised for their moral
tendency by Dr Johnson, by Mr Wilberforce, by Mrs Hannah More,
ought not to be suppressed.  Sir, it is my firm belief, that if
the law had been what my honourable and learned friend proposes
to make it, they would have been suppressed.  I remember
Richardson's grandson well; he was a clergyman in the city of
London; he was a most upright and excellent man; but he had
conceived a strong prejudice against works of fiction.  He
thought all novel-reading not only frivolous but sinful.  He
said,--this I state on the authority of one of his clerical
brethren who is now a bishop,--he said that he had never thought
it right to read one of his grandfather's books.  Suppose, Sir,
that the law had been what my honourable and learned friend would
make it.  Suppose that the copyright of Richardson's novels had
descended, as might well have been the case, to this gentleman.
I firmly believe, that he would have thought it sinful to give
them a wide circulation.  I firmly believe, that he would not for
a hundred thousand pounds have deliberately done what he thought
sinful.  He would not have reprinted them.  And what protection
does my honourable and learned friend give to the public in such
a case?  Why, Sir, what he proposes is this:  if a book is not
reprinted during five years, any person who wishes to reprint it
may give notice in the London Gazette:  the advertisement must be
repeated three times:  a year must elapse; and then, if the
proprietor of the copyright does not put forth a new edition, he
loses his exclusive privilege.  Now, what protection is this to
the public?  What is a new edition?  Does the law define the
number of copies that make an edition?  Does it limit the price
of a copy?  Are twelve copies on large paper, charged at thirty
guineas each, an edition?  It has been usual, when monopolies
have been granted, to prescribe numbers and to limit prices.  But
I did not find the my honourable and learned friend proposes to
do so in the present case.  And, without some such provision, the
security which he offers is manifestly illusory.  It is my
conviction that, under such a system as that which he recommends
to us, a copy of Clarissa would have been as rare as an Aldus or
a Caxton.

I will give another instance.  One of the most instructive,
interesting, and delightful books in our language is Boswell's
Life of Johnson.  Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son
considered this book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to
Johnson, as a blot in the escutcheon of the family.  He thought,
not perhaps altogether without reason, that his father had
exhibited himself in a ludicrous and degrading light.  And thus
he became so sore and irritable that at last he could not bear to
hear the Life of Johnson mentioned.  Suppose that the law had
been what my honourable and learned friend wishes to make it.
Suppose that the copyright of Boswell's Life of Johnson had
belonged, as it well might, during sixty years, to Boswell's
eldest son.  What would have been the consequence?  An
unadulterated copy of the finest biographical work in the world
would have been as scarce as the first edition of Camden's
Britannia.

These are strong cases.  I have shown you that, if the law had
been what you are now going to make it, the finest prose work of
fiction in the language, the finest biographical work in the
language, would very probably have been suppressed.  But I have
stated my case weakly.  The books which I have mentioned are
singularly inoffensive books, books not touching on any of those
questions which drive even wise men beyond the bounds of wisdom.
There are books of a very different kind, books which are the
rallying points of great political and religious parties.  What
is likely to happen if the copyright of one of the these books
should by descent or transfer come into the possession of some
hostile zealot?  I will take a single instance.  It is only fifty
years since John Wesley died; and all his works, if the law had
been what my honourable and learned friend wishes to make it,
would now have been the property of some person or other.  The
sect founded by Wesley is the most numerous, the wealthiest, the
most powerful, the most zealous of sects.  In every parliamentary
election it is a matter of the greatest importance to obtain the
support of the Wesleyan Methodists.  Their numerical strength is
reckoned by hundreds of thousands.  They hold the memory of their
founder in the greatest reverence; and not without reason, for he
was unquestionably a great and a good man.  To his authority they
constantly appeal.  His works are in their eyes of the highest
value.  His doctrinal writings they regard as containing the best
system of theology ever deduced from Scripture.  His journals,
interesting even to the common reader, are peculiarly interesting
to the Methodist:  for they contain the whole history of that
singular polity which, weak and despised in its beginning, is
now, after the lapse of a century, so strong, so flourishing, and
so formidable.  The hymns to which he gave his imprimatur are a
most important part of the public worship of his followers.  Now,
suppose that the copyright of these works should belong to some
person who holds the memory of Wesley and the doctrines and
discipline of the Methodists in abhorrence.  There are many such
persons.  The Ecclesiastical Courts are at this very time sitting
on the case of a clergyman of the Established Church who refused
Christian burial to a child baptized by a Methodist preacher.  I
took up the other day a work which is considered as among the
most respectable organs of a large and growing party in the
Church of England, and there I saw John Wesley designated as a
forsworn priest.  Suppose that the works of Wesley were
suppressed.  Why, Sir, such a grievance would be enough to shake
the foundations of Government.  Let gentlemen who are attached to
the Church reflect for a moment what their feelings would be if
the Book of Common Prayer were not to be reprinted for thirty or
forty years, if the price of a Book of Common Prayer were run up
to five or ten guineas.  And then let them determine whether they
will pass a law under which it is possible, under which it is
probable, that so intolerable a wrong may be done to some sect
consisting perhaps of half a million of persons.

I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has
listened to me, that I will not detain you longer.  I will only
say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should
produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to
produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon
be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind.  Just as the
absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually
repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have
been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be
virtually repealed by piratical booksellers.  At present the
holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side.  Those
who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread
out of the mouths of deserving men.  Everybody is well pleased to
see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their
ill-gotten gains.  No tradesman of good repute will have anything
to do with such disgraceful transactions.  Pass this law:  and
that feeling is at an end.  Men very different from the present
race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable
monopoly.  Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in
the violation of the law.  Every art will be employed to evade
legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot.  On
which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question
is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the
Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it
shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage
of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years
before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author
when in great distress?  Remember too that, when once it ceases
to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary
property, no person can say where the invasion will stop.  The
public seldom makes nice distinctions.  The wholesome copyright
which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new
copyright which you are about to create.  And you will find that,
in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting
of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled
those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and
defrauding the living.  If I saw, Sir, any probability that this
bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections
might be removed, I would not divide the House in this stage.
But I am so fully convinced that no alteration which would not
seem insupportable to my honourable and learned friend, could
render his measure supportable to me, that I must move, though
with regret, that this bill be read a second time this day six
months.

...


COPYRIGHT.  (APRIL 6, 1842)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN A COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE
6TH OF APRIL 1842.

On the third of March 1842, Lord Mahon obtained permission to
bring in a bill to amend the Law of Copyright.  This bill
extended the term of Copyright in a book to twenty-five years,
reckoned from the death of the author.

On the sixth of April the House went into Committee on the bill,
and Mr Greene took the Chair.  Several divisions took place, of
which the result was that the plan suggested in the following
Speech was, with some modifications, adopted.

Mr Greene,--I have been amused and gratified by the remarks which
my noble friend (Lord Mahon.) has made on the arguments by which
I prevailed on the last House of Commons to reject the bill
introduced by a very able and accomplished man, Mr Serjeant
Talfourd.  My noble friend has done me a high and rare honour.
For this is, I believe, the first occasion on which a speech made
in one Parliament has been answered in another.  I should not
find it difficult to vindicate the soundness of the reasons which
I formerly urged, to set them in a clearer light, and to fortify
them by additional facts.  But it seems to me that we had better
discuss the bill which is now on our table than the bill which
was there fourteen months ago.  Glad I am to find that there is a
very wide difference between the two bills, and that my noble
friend, though he has tried to refute my arguments, has acted as
if he had been convinced by them.  I objected to the term of
sixty years as far too long.  My noble friend has cut that term
down to twenty-five years.  I warned the House that, under the
provisions of Mr Serjeant Talfourd's bill, valuable works might
not improbably be suppressed by the representatives of authors.
My noble friend has prepared a clause which, as he thinks, will
guard against that danger.  I will not, therefore, waste the time
of the Committee by debating points which he has conceded, but
will proceed at once to the proper business of this evening.

Sir, I have no objection to the principle of my noble friend's
bill.  Indeed, I had no objection to the principle of the bill of
last year.  I have long thought that the term of copyright ought
to be extended.  When Mr Serjeant Talfourd moved for leave to
bring in his bill, I did not oppose the motion.  Indeed I meant
to vote for the second reading, and to reserve what I had to say
for the Committee.  But the learned Serjeant left me no choice.
He, in strong language, begged that nobody who was disposed to
reduce the term of sixty years would divide with him.  "Do not,"
he said, "give me your support, if all that you mean to grant to
men of letters is a miserable addition of fourteen or fifteen
years to the present term.  I do not wish for such support.  I
despise it."  Not wishing to obtrude on the learned Serjeant a
support which he despised, I had no course left but to take the
sense of the House on the second reading.  The circumstances are
now different.  My noble friend's bill is not at present a good
bill; but it may be improved into a very good bill; nor will he,
I am persuaded, withdraw it if it should be so improved.  He and
I have the same object in view; but we differ as to the best mode
of attaining that object.  We are equally desirous to extend the
protection now enjoyed by writers.  In what way it may be
extended with most benefit to them and with least inconvenience
to the public, is the question.

The present state of the law is this.  The author of a work has a
certain copyright in that work for a term of twenty-eight years.
If he should live more than twenty-eight years after the
publication of the work, he retains the copyright to the end of
his life.

My noble friend does not propose to make any addition to the term
of twenty-eight years.  But he proposes that the copyright shall
last twenty-five years after the author's death.  Thus my noble
friend makes no addition to that term which is certain, but makes
a very large addition to that term which is uncertain.

My plan is different.  I would made no addition to the uncertain
term; but I would make a large addition to the certain term.  I
propose to add fourteen years to the twenty-eight years which the
law now allows to an author.  His copyright will, in this way,
last till his death, or till the expiration of forty-two years,
whichever shall first happen.  And I think that I shall be able
to prove to the satisfaction of the Committee that my plan will
be more beneficial to literature and to literary men than the
plan of my noble friend.

It must surely, Sir, be admitted that the protection which we
give to books ought to be distributed as evenly as possible, that
every book should have a fair share of that protection, and no
book more than a fair share.  It would evidently be absurd to put
tickets into a wheel, with different numbers marked upon them,
and to make writers draw, one a term of twenty-eight years,
another a term of fifty, another a term of ninety.  And yet this
sort of lottery is what my noble friend proposes to establish.  I
know that we cannot altogether exclude chance.  You have two
terms of copyright; one certain, the other uncertain; and we
cannot, I admit, get rid of the uncertain term.  It is proper, no
doubt, that an author's copyright should last during his life.
But, Sir, though we cannot altogether exclude chance, we can very
much diminish the share which chance must have in distributing
the recompense which we wish to give to genius and learning.  By
every addition which we make to the certain term we diminish the
influence of chance; by every addition which we make to the
uncertain term we increase the influence of chance.  I shall make
myself best understood by putting cases.  Take two eminent female
writers, who died within our own memory, Madame D'Arblay and Miss
Austen.  As the law now stands, Miss Austen's charming novels
would have only from twenty-eight to thirty-three years of
copyright.  For that extraordinary woman died young:  she died
before her genius was fully appreciated by the world.  Madame
D'Arblay outlived the whole generation to which she belonged.
The copyright of her celebrated novel, Evelina, lasted, under the
present law, sixty-two years.  Surely this inequality is
sufficiently great--sixty-two years of copyright for Evelina,
only twenty-eight for Persuasion.  But to my noble friend this
inequality seems not great enough.  He proposes to add twenty-
five years to Madame D'Arblay's term, and not a single day to
Miss Austen's term.  He would give to Persuasion a copyright of
only twenty-eight years, as at present, and to Evelina a
copyright more than three times as long, a copyright of eighty-
seven years.  Now, is this reasonable?  See, on the other hand,
the operation of my plan.  I make no addition at all to Madame
D'Arblay's term of sixty-two years, which is, in my opinion,
quite long enough; but I extend Miss Austen's term to forty-two
years, which is, in my opinion, not too much.  You see, Sir, that
at present chance has too much sway in this matter:  that at
present the protection which the State gives to letters is very
unequally given.  You see that if my noble friend's plan be
adopted, more will be left to chance than under the present
system, and you will have such inequalities as are unknown under
the present system.  You see also that, under the system which I
recommend, we shall have, not perfect certainty, not perfect
equality, but much less uncertainty and inequality than at
present.

But this is not all.  My noble friend's plan is not merely to
institute a lottery in which some writers will draw prizes and
some will draw blanks.  It is much worse than this.  His lottery
is so contrived that, in the vast majority of cases, the blanks
will fall to the best books, and the prizes to books of inferior
merit.

Take Shakspeare.  My noble friend gives a longer protection than
I should give to Love's Labour's Lost, and Pericles, Prince of
Tyre; but he gives a shorter protection than I should give to
Othello and Macbeth.

Take Milton.  Milton died in 1674.  The copyrights of Milton's
great works would, according to my noble friend's plan, expire in
1699.  Comus appeared in 1634, the Paradise Lost in 1668.  To
Comus, then, my noble friend would give sixty-five years of
copyright, and to the Paradise Lost only thirty-one years.  Is
that reasonable?  Comus is a noble poem:  but who would rank it
with the Paradise Lost?  My plan would give forty-two years both
to the Paradise Lost and to Comus.

Let us pass on from Milton to Dryden.  My noble friend would give
more than sixty years of copyright to Dryden's worst works; to
the encomiastic verses on Oliver Cromwell, to the Wild Gallant,
to the Rival Ladies, to other wretched pieces as bad as anything
written by Flecknoe or Settle:  but for Theodore and Honoria, for
Tancred and Sigismunda, for Cimon and Iphigenia, for Palamon and
Arcite, for Alexander's Feast, my noble friend thinks a copyright
of twenty-eight years sufficient.  Of all Pope's works, that to
which my noble friend would give the largest measure of
protection is the volume of Pastorals, remarkable only as the
production of a boy.  Johnson's first work was a Translation of a
Book of Travels in Abyssinia, published in 1735.  It was so
poorly executed that in his later years he did not like to hear
it mentioned.  Boswell once picked up a copy of it, and told his
friend that he had done so.  "Do not talk about it," said
Johnson:  "it is a thing to be forgotten."  To this performance
my noble friend would give protection during the enormous term of
seventy-five years.  To the Lives of the Poets he would give
protection during about thirty years.  Well; take Henry Fielding;
it matters not whom I take, but take Fielding.  His early works
are read only by the curious, and would not be read even by the
curious, but for the fame which he acquired in the latter part of
his life by works of a very different kind.  What is the value of
the Temple Beau, of the Intriguing Chambermaid, of half a dozen
other plays of which few gentlemen have even heard the names?
Yet to these worthless pieces my noble friend would give a term
of copyright longer by more than twenty years than that which he
would give to Tom Jones and Amelia.

Go on to Burke.  His little tract, entitled the Vindication of
Natural Society is certainly not without merit; but it would not
be remembered in our days if it did not bear the name of Burke.
To this tract my noble friend would give a copyright of near
seventy years.  But to the great work on the French Revolution,
to the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, to the letters on
the Regicide Peace, he would give a copyright of thirty years or
little more.

And, Sir observe that I am not selecting here and there
extraordinary instances in order to make up the semblance of a
case.  I am taking the greatest names of our literature in
chronological order.  Go to other nations; go to remote ages; you
will still find the general rule the same.  There was no
copyright at Athens or Rome; but the history of the Greek and
Latin literature illustrates my argument quite as well as if
copyright had existed in ancient times.  Of all the plays of
Sophocles, the one to which the plan of my noble friend would
have given the most scanty recompense would have been that
wonderful masterpiece, the Oedipus at Colonos.  Who would class
together the Speech of Demosthenes against his Guardians, and the
Speech for the Crown?  My noble friend, indeed, would not class
them together.  For to the Speech against the Guardians he would
give a copyright of near seventy years, and to the incomparable
Speech for the Crown a copyright of less than half that length.
Go to Rome.  My noble friend would give more than twice as long a
term to Cicero's juvenile declamation in defence of Roscius
Amerinus as to the Second Philippic.  Go to France.  My noble
friend would give a far longer term to Racine's Freres Ennemis
than to Athalie, and to Moliere's Etourdi than to Tartuffe.  Go
to Spain.  My noble friend would give a longer term to forgotten
works of Cervantes, works which nobody now reads, than to Don
Quixote.  Go to Germany.  According to my noble friend's plan, of
all the works of Schiller the Robbers would be the most favoured:
of all the works of Goethe, the Sorrows of Werter would be the
most favoured.  I thank the Committee for listening so kindly to
this long enumeration.  Gentlemen will perceive, I am sure, that
it is not from pedantry that I mention the names of so many books
and authors.  But just as, in our debates on civil affairs, we
constantly draw illustrations from civil history, we must, in a
debate about literary property, draw our illustrations from
literary history.  Now, Sir, I have, I think, shown from literary
history that the effect of my noble friend's plan would be to
give to crude and imperfect works, to third-rate and fourth-rate
works, a great advantage over the highest productions of genius.
It is impossible to account for the facts which I have laid
before you by attributing them to mere accident.  Their number is
too great, their character too uniform.  We must seek for some
other explanation; and we shall easily find one.

It is the law of our nature that the mind shall attain its full
power by slow degrees; and this is especially true of the most
vigorous minds.  Young men, no doubt, have often produced works
of great merit; but it would be impossible to name any writer of
the first order whose juvenile performances were his best.  That
all the most valuable books of history, of philology, of physical
and metaphysical science, of divinity, of political economy, have
been produced by men of mature years will hardly be disputed.
The case may not be quite so clear as respects works of the
imagination.  And yet I know no work of the imagination of the
very highest class that was ever, in any age or country, produced
by a man under thirty-five.  Whatever powers a youth may have
received from nature, it is impossible that his taste and
judgment can be ripe, that his mind can be richly stored with
images, that he can have observed the vicissitudes of life, that
he can have studied the nicer shades of character.  How, as
Marmontel very sensibly said, is a person to paint portraits who
has never seen faces?  On the whole, I believe that I may,
without fear of contradiction, affirm this, that of the good
books now extant in the world more than nineteen-twentieths were
published after the writers had attained the age of forty.  If
this be so, it is evident that the plan of my noble friend is
framed on a vicious principle.  For, while he gives to juvenile
productions a very much larger protection than they now enjoy, he
does comparatively little for the works of men in the full
maturity of their powers, and absolutely nothing for any work
which is published during the last three years of the life of the
writer.  For, by the existing law, the copyright of such a work
lasts twenty-eight years from the publication; and my noble
friend gives only twenty-five years, to be reckoned from the
writer's death.

What I recommend is that the certain term, reckoned from the date
of publication, shall be forty-two years instead of twenty-eight
years.  In this arrangement there is no uncertainty, no
inequality.  The advantage which I propose to give will be the
same to every book.  No work will have so long a copyright as my
noble friend gives to some books, or so short a copyright as he
gives to others.  No copyright will last ninety years.  No
copyright will end in twenty-eight years.  To every book
published in the course of the last seventeen years of a writer's
life I give a longer term of copyright than my noble friend
gives; and I am confident that no person versed in literary
history will deny this,--that in general the most valuable works
of an author are published in the course of the last seventeen
years of his life.  I will rapidly enumerate a few, and but a
few, of the great works of English writers to which my plan is
more favourable than my noble friend's plan.  To Lear, to
Macbeth, to Othello, to the Fairy Queen, to the Paradise Lost, to
Bacon's Novum Organum and De Augmentis, to Locke's Essay on the
Human Understanding, to Clarendon's History, to Hume's History,
to Gibbon's History, to Smith's Wealth of Nations, to Addison's
Spectators, to almost all the great works of Burke, to Clarissa
and Sir Charles Grandison, to Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and
Amelia, and, with the single exception of Waverley, to all the
novels of Sir Walter Scott, I give a longer term of copyright
than my noble friend gives.  Can he match that list?  Does not
that list contain what England has produced greatest in many
various ways--poetry, philosophy, history, eloquence, wit,
skilful portraiture of life and manners?  I confidently therefore
call on the Committee to take my plan in preference to the plan
of my noble friend.  I have shown that the protection which he
proposes to give to letters is unequal, and unequal in the worst
way.  I have shown that his plan is to give protection to books
in inverse proportion to their merit.  I shall move when we come
to the third clause of the bill to omit the words "twenty-five
years," and in a subsequent part of the same clause I shall move
to substitute for the words "twenty-eight years" the words
"forty-two years."  I earnestly hope that the Committee will
adopt these amendments; and I feel the firmest conviction that my
noble friend's bill, so amended, will confer a great boon on men
of letters with the smallest possible inconvenience to the
public.

...


THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER.  (MAY 3, 1842)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE THIRD OF MAY
1842.

On the second of May 1842, Mr Thomas Duncombe, Member for
Finsbury, presented a petition, very numerously signed, of which
the prayer was as follows:

"Your petitioners, therefore, exercising their just
constitutional right, demand that your Honourable House, to
remedy the many gross and manifest evils of which your
petitioners complain, do immediately, without alteration,
deduction, or addition, pass into a law the document entitled the
People's Charter."

On the following day Mr Thomas Duncombe moved that the
petitioners should be heard by themselves or their Counsel at the
Bar of the House.  The following Speech was made in opposition to
the motion.

The motion was rejected by 287 votes to 49.

Mr Speaker,--I was particularly desirous to catch your eye this
evening, because, when the motion of the honourable Member of
Rochdale (Mr Sharman Crawford.) was under discussion, I was
unable to be in my place.  I understand that, on that occasion,
the absence of some members of the late Government was noticed in
severe terms, and was attributed to discreditable motives.  As
for myself, Sir, I was prevented from coming down to the House by
illness:  a noble friend of mine, to whom particular allusion was
made, was detained elsewhere by pure accident; and I am convinced
that no member of the late administration was withheld by any
unworthy feeling from avowing his opinions.  My own opinions I
could have no motive for disguising.  They have been frequently
avowed, and avowed before audiences which were not likely to
regard them with much favour.

I should wish, Sir, to say what I have to say in the temperate
tone which has with so much propriety been preserved by the right
honourable Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department (Sir
James Graham.); but, if I should use any warm expression, I trust
that the House will attribute it to the strength of my
convictions and to my solicitude for the public interests.  No
person who knows me will, I am quite sure, suspect me of
regarding the hundreds of thousands who have signed the petition
which we are now considering, with any other feeling than cordial
goodwill.

Sir, I cannot conscientiously assent to this motion.  And yet I
must admit that the honourable Member for Finsbury (Mr Thomas
Duncombe.) has framed it with considerable skill.  He has done
his best to obtain the support of all those timid and interested
politicians who think much more about the security of their seats
than about the security of their country.  It would be very
convenient to me to give a silent vote with him.  I should then
have it in my power to say to the Chartists of Edinburgh, "When
your petition was before the House I was on your side:  I was for
giving you a full hearing."  I should at the same time be able to
assure my Conservative constituents that I never had supported
and never would support the Charter.  But, Sir, though this
course would be very convenient, it is one which my sense of duty
will not suffer me to take.  When questions of private right are
before us, we hear, and we ought to hear, the arguments of the
parties interested in those questions.  But it has never been,
and surely it ought not to be, our practice to grant a hearing to
persons who petition for or against a law in which they have no
other interest than that which is common between them and the
whole nation.  Of the many who petitioned against slavery,
against the Roman Catholic claims, against the corn laws, none
was suffered to harangue us at the bar in support of his views.
If in the present case we depart from a general rule which
everybody must admit to be a very wholesome one, what inference
can reasonably be drawn from our conduct, except this, that we
think the petition which we are now considering entitled to
extraordinary respect, and that we have not fully made up our
minds to refuse what the petitioners ask?  Now, Sir, I have fully
made up my mind to resist to the last the change which they urge
us to make in the constitution of the kingdom.  I therefore think
that I should act disingenuously if I gave my voice for calling
in orators whose eloquence, I am certain, will make no alteration
in my opinion.  I think too that if, after voting for hearing the
petitioners, I should then vote against granting their prayer, I
should give them just ground for accusing me of having first
encouraged and then deserted them.  That accusation, at least,
they shall never bring against me.

The honourable Member for Westminster (Mr Leader.) has expressed
a hope that the language of the petition will not be subjected to
severe criticism.  If he means literary criticism, I entirely
agree with him.  The style of this composition is safe from any
censure of mine; but the substance it is absolutely necessary
that we should closely examine.  What the petitioners demand is
this, that we do forthwith pass what is called the People's
Charter into a law without alteration, diminution, or addition.
This is the prayer in support of which the honourable Member for
Finsbury would have us hear an argument at the bar.  Is it then
reasonable to say, as some gentlemen have said, that, in voting
for the honourable Member's motion, they mean to vote merely for
an inquiry into the causes of the public distress?  If any
gentleman thinks that an inquiry into the causes of the public
distress would be useful, let him move for such an inquiry.  I
will not oppose it.  But this petition does not tell us to
inquire.  It tells us that we are not to inquire.  It directs us
to pass a certain law word for word, and to pass it without the
smallest delay.

I shall, Sir, notwithstanding the request or command of the
petitioners, venture to exercise my right of free speech on the
subject of the People's Charter.  There is, among the six points
of the Charter, one for which I have voted.  There is another of
which I decidedly approve.  There are others as to which, though
I do not agree with the petitioners, I could go some way to meet
them.  In fact, there is only one of the six points on which I am
diametrically opposed to them:  but unfortunately that point
happens to be infinitely the most important of the six.

One of the six points is the ballot.  I have voted for the
ballot; and I have seen no reason to change my opinion on that
subject.

Another point is the abolition of the pecuniary qualification for
members of this House.  On that point I cordially agree with the
petitioners.  You have established a sufficient pecuniary
qualification for the elector; and it therefore seems to me quite
superfluous to require a pecuniary qualification from the
representative.  Everybody knows that many English members have
only fictitious qualifications, and that the members for Scotch
cities and boroughs are not required to have any qualification at
all.  It is surely absurd to admit the representatives of
Edinburgh and Glasgow without any qualification, and at the same
time to require the representative of Finsbury or Marylebone to
possess a qualification or the semblance of one.  If the
qualification really be a security for respectability, let that
security be demanded from us who sit here for Scotch towns.  If,
as I believe, the qualification is no security at all, why should
we require it from anybody?  It is no part of the old
constitution of the realm.  It was first established in the reign
of Anne.  It was established by a bad parliament for a bad
purpose.  It was, in fact, part of a course of legislation which,
if it had not been happily interrupted, would have ended in the
repeal of the Toleration Act and of the Act of Settlement.

The Chartists demand annual parliaments.  There, certainly, I
differ from them; but I might, perhaps, be willing to consent to
some compromise.  I differ from them also as to the expediency of
paying the representatives of the people, and of dividing the
country into electoral districts.  But I do not consider these
matters as vital.  The kingdom might, I acknowledge, be free,
great, and happy, though the members of this house received
salaries, and though the present boundaries of counties and
boroughs were superseded by new lines of demarcation.  These,
Sir, are subordinate questions.  I do not of course mean that
they are not important.  But they are subordinate when compared
with that question which still remains to be considered.  The
essence of the Charter is universal suffrage.  If you withhold
that, it matters not very much what else you grant.  If you grant
that, it matters not at all what else you withhold.  If you grant
that, the country is lost.

I have no blind attachment to ancient usages.  I altogether
disclaim what has been nicknamed the doctrine of finality.  I
have said enough to-night to show that I do not consider the
settlement made by the Reform Bill as one which can last for
ever.  I certainly do think that an extensive change in the
polity of a nation must be attended with serious evils.  Still
those evils may be overbalanced by advantages:  and I am
perfectly ready, in every case, to weigh the evils against the
advantages, and to judge as well as I can which scale
preponderates.  I am bound by no tie to oppose any reform which I
think likely to promote the public good.  I will go so far as to
say that I do not quite agree with those who think that they have
proved the People's Charter to be absurd when they have proved
that it is incompatible with the existence of the throne and of
the peerage.  For, though I am a faithful and loyal subject of
Her Majesty, and though I sincerely wish to see the House of
Lords powerful and respected, I cannot consider either monarchy
or aristocracy as the ends of government.  They are only means.
Nations have flourished without hereditary sovereigns or
assemblies of nobles; and, though I should be very sorry to see
England a republic, I do not doubt that she might, as a republic,
enjoy prosperity, tranquillity, and high consideration.  The
dread and aversion with which I regard universal suffrage would
be greatly diminished, if I could believe that the worst effect
which it would produce would be to give us an elective first
magistrate and a senate instead of a Queen and a House of Peers.
My firm conviction is that, in our country, universal suffrage is
incompatible, not with this or that form of government, but with
all forms of government, and with everything for the sake of
which forms of government exist; that it is incompatible with
property, and that it is consequently incompatible with
civilisation.

It is not necessary for me in this place to go through the
arguments which prove beyond dispute that on the security of
property civilisation depends; that, where property is insecure,
no climate however delicious, no soil however fertile, no
conveniences for trade and navigation, no natural endowments of
body or of mind, can prevent a nation from sinking into
barbarism; that where, on the other hand, men are protected in
the enjoyment of what has been created by their industry and laid
up by their self-denial, society will advance in arts and in
wealth notwithstanding the sterility of the earth and the
inclemency of the air, notwithstanding heavy taxes and
destructive wars.  Those persons who say that England has been
greatly misgoverned, that her legislation is defective, that her
wealth has been squandered in unjust and impolitic contests with
America and with France, do in fact bear the strongest testimony
to the truth of my doctrine.  For that our country has made and
is making great progress in all that contributes to the material
comfort of man is indisputable.  If that progress cannot be
ascribed to the wisdom of the Government, to what can we ascribe
it but to the diligence, the energy, the thrift of individuals?
And to what can we ascribe that diligence, that energy, that
thrift, except to the security which property has during many
generations enjoyed here?  Such is the power of this great
principle that, even in the last war, the most costly war, beyond
all comparison, that ever was waged in this world, the Government
could not lavish wealth so fast as the productive classes created
it.

If it be admitted that on the institution of property the well-
being of society depends, it follows surely that it would be
madness to give supreme power in the state to a class which would
not be likely to respect that institution.  And, if this be
conceded, it seems to me to follow that it would be madness to
grant the prayer of this petition.  I entertain no hope that, if
we place the government of the kingdom in the hands of the
majority of the males of one-and-twenty told by the head, the
institution of property will be respected.  If I am asked why I
entertain no such hope, I answer, because the hundreds of
thousands of males of twenty-one who have signed this petition
tell me to entertain no such hope; because they tell me that, if
I trust them with power, the first use which they will make of it
will be to plunder every man in the kingdom who has a good coat
on his back and a good roof over his head.  God forbid that I
should put an unfair construction on their language!  I will read
their own words.  This petition, be it remembered, is an
authoritative declaration of the wishes of those who, if the
Charter ever becomes law, will return the great majority of the
House of Commons; and these are their words:  "Your petitioners
complain, that they are enormously taxed to pay the interest of
what is called the national debt, a debt amounting at present to
eight hundred millions, being only a portion of the enormous
amount expended in cruel and expensive wars for the suppression
of all liberty by men not authorised by the people, and who
consequently had no right to tax posterity for the outrages
committed by them upon mankind."  If these words mean anything,
they mean that the present generation is not bound to pay the
public debt incurred by our rulers in past times, and that a
national bankruptcy would be both just and politic.  For my part,
I believe it to be impossible to make any distinction between the
right of a fundholder to his dividends and the right of a
landowner to his rents.  And, to do the petitioners justice, I
must say that they seem to be much of the same mind.  They are
for dealing with fundholder and landowner alike.  They tell us
that nothing will "unshackle labour from its misery, until the
people possess that power under which all monopoly and oppression
must cease; and your petitioners respectfully mention the
existing monopolies of the suffrage, of paper money, of
machinery, of land, of the public press, of religion, of the
means of travelling and transit, and a host of other evils too
numerous to mention, all arising from class legislation."  Absurd
as this hubbub of words is, part of it is intelligible enough.
What can the monopoly of land mean, except property in land?  The
only monopoly of land which exists in England is this, that
nobody can sell an acre of land which does not belong to him.
And what can the monopoly of machinery mean but property in
machinery?  Another monopoly which is to cease is the monopoly of
the means of travelling.  In other words all the canal property
and railway property in the kingdom is to be confiscated.  What
other sense do the words bear?  And these are only specimens of
the reforms which, in the language of the petition, are to
unshackle labour from its misery.  There remains, it seems, a
host of similar monopolies too numerous to mention; the monopoly
I presume, which a draper has of his own stock of cloth; the
monopoly which a hatter has of his own stock of hats; the
monopoly which we all have of our furniture, bedding, and
clothes.  In short, the petitioners ask you to give them power in
order that they may not leave a man of a hundred a year in the
realm.

I am far from wishing to throw any blame on the ignorant crowds
which have flocked to the tables where this petition was
exhibited.  Nothing is more natural than that the labouring
people should be deceived by the arts of such men as the author
of this absurd and wicked composition.  We ourselves, with all
our advantages of education, are often very credulous, very
impatient, very shortsighted, when we are tried by pecuniary
distress or bodily pain.  We often resort to means of immediate
relief which, as Reason tells us, if we would listen to her, are
certain to aggravate our sufferings.  Men of great abilities and
knowledge have ruined their estates and their constitutions in
this way.  How then can we wonder that men less instructed than
ourselves, and tried by privations such as we have never known,
should be easily misled by mountebanks who promise
impossibilities?  Imagine a well-meaning laborious mechanic,
fondly attached to his wife and children.  Bad times come.  He
sees the wife whom he loves grow thinner and paler every day.
His little ones cry for bread, and he has none to give them.
Then come the professional agitators, the tempters, and tell him
that there is enough and more than enough for everybody, and that
he has too little only because landed gentlemen, fundholders,
bankers, manufacturers, railway proprietors, shopkeepers have too
much.  Is it strange that the poor man should be deluded, and
should eagerly sign such a petition as this?  The inequality with
which wealth is distributed forces itself on everybody's notice.
It is at once perceived by the eye.  The reasons which
irrefragably prove this inequality to be necessary to the well-
being of all classes are not equally obvious.  Our honest working
man has not received such an education as enables him to
understand that the utmost distress that he has ever known is
prosperity when compared with the distress which he would have to
endure if there were a single month of general anarchy and
plunder.  But you say, it is not the fault of the labourer that
he is not well educated.  Most true.  It is not his fault.  But,
though he has no share in the fault, he will, if you are foolish
enough to give him supreme power in the state, have a very large
share of the punishment.  You say that, if the Government had not
culpably omitted to establish a good system of public
instruction, the petitioners would have been fit for the elective
franchise.  But is that a reason for giving them the franchise
when their own petition proves that they are not fit for it; when
they give us fair notice that, if we let them have it, they will
use it to our ruin and their own?  It is not necessary now to
inquire whether, with universal education, we could safely have
universal suffrage.  What we are asked to do is to give universal
suffrage before there is universal education.  Have I any unkind
feeling towards these poor people?  No more than I have to a sick
friend who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which
the physician has forbidden.  No more than a humane collector in
India has to those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity
crowd round the granaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures
that the doors may be opened and the rice distributed.  I would
not give the draught of water, because I know that it would be
poison.  I would not give up the keys of the granary, because I
know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcity into a famine.
And in the same way I would not yield to the importunity of
multitudes who, exasperated by suffering and blinded by
ignorance, demand with wild vehemence the liberty to destroy
themselves.

But it is said, You must not attach so much importance to this
petition.  It is very foolish, no doubt, and disgraceful to the
author, be he who he may.  But you must not suppose that those
who signed it approve of it.  They have merely put their names or
their marks without weighing the sense of the document which they
subscribed.  Surely, Sir, of all reasons that ever were given for
receiving a petition with peculiar honours, the strangest is that
it expresses sentiments diametrically opposed to the real
sentiments of those who have signed it.  And it is a not less
strange reason for giving men supreme power in a state that they
sign political manifestoes of the highest importance without
taking the trouble to know what the contents are.  But how is it
possible for us to believe that, if the petitioners had the power
which they demand, they would not use it as they threaten?
During a long course of years, numerous speakers and writers,
some of them ignorant, others dishonest, have been constantly
representing the Government as able to do, and bound to do,
things which no Government can, without great injury to the
country, attempt to do.  Every man of sense knows that the people
support the Government.  But the doctrine of the Chartist
philosophers is that it is the business of the Government to
support the people.  It is supposed by many that our rulers
possess, somewhere or other, an inexhaustible storehouse of all
the necessaries and conveniences of life, and, from mere
hardheartedness, refuse to distribute the contents of this
magazine among the poor.  We have all of us read speeches and
tracts in which it seemed to be taken for granted that we who sit
here have the power of working miracles, of sending a shower of
manna on the West Riding, of striking the earth and furnishing
all the towns of Lancashire with abundance of pure water, of
feeding all the cotton-spinners and weavers who are out of work
with five loaves and two fishes.  There is not a working man who
has not heard harangues and read newspapers in which these
follies are taught.  And do you believe that as soon as you give
the working men absolute and irresistible power they will forget
all this?  Yes, Sir, absolute and irresistible power.  The
Charter would give them no less.  In every constituent body
throughout the empire the working men will, if we grant the
prayer of this petition, be an irresistible majority.  In every
constituent body capital will be placed at the feet of labour;
knowledge will be borne down by ignorance; and is it possible to
doubt what the result must be?  The honourable Member for Bath
and the honourable Member for Rochdale are now considered as very
democratic members of Parliament.  They would occupy a very
different position in a House of Commons elected by universal
suffrage, if they succeeded in obtaining seats.  They would, I
believe, honestly oppose every attempt to rob the public
creditor.  They would manfully say, "Justice and the public good
require that this sum of thirty millions a year should be paid;"
and they would immediately be reviled as aristocrats,
monopolists, oppressors of the poor, defenders of old abuses.
And as to land, is it possible to believe that the millions who
have been so long and loudly told that the land is their estate,
and is wrongfully kept from them, should not, when they have
supreme power, use that power to enforce what they think their
rights?  What could follow but one vast spoliation?  One vast
spoliation!  That would be bad enough.  That would be the
greatest calamity that ever fell on our country.  Yet would that
a single vast spoliation were the worst!  No, Sir; in the lowest
deep there would be a lower deep.  The first spoliation would not
be the last.  How could it?  All the causes which had produced
the first spoliation would still operate.  They would operate
more powerfully than before.  The distress would be far greater
than before.  The fences which now protect property would all
have been broken through, levelled, swept away.  The new
proprietors would have no title to show to anything that they
held except recent robbery.  With what face then could they
complain of being robbed?  What would be the end of these things?
Our experience, God be praised, does not enable us to predict it
with certainty.  We can only guess.  My guess is that we should
see something more horrible than can be imagined--something like
the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger scale.  There would be
many millions of human beings, crowded in a narrow space,
deprived of all those resources which alone had made it possible
for them to exist in so narrow a space; trade gone; manufactures
gone; credit gone.  What could they do but fight for the mere
sustenance of nature, and tear each other to pieces till famine,
and pestilence following in the train of famine, came to turn the
terrible commotion into a more terrible repose?  The best event,
the very best event, that I can anticipate,--and what must the
state of things be, if an Englishman and a Whig calls such an
event the very best?--the very best event, I say, that I can
anticipate is that out of the confusion a strong military
despotism may arise, and that the sword, firmly grasped by some
rough hand, may give a sort of protection to the miserable wreck
of all that immense prosperity and glory.  But, as to the noble
institutions under which our country has made such progress in
liberty, in wealth, in knowledge, in arts, do not deceive
yourselves into the belief that we should ever see them again.
We should never see them again.  We should not deserve to see
them.  All those nations which envy our greatness would insult
our downfall, a downfall which would be all our own work; and the
history of our calamities would be told thus:  England had
institutions which, though imperfect, yet contained within
themselves the means of remedying every imperfection; those
institutions her legislators wantonly and madly threw away; nor
could they urge in their excuse even the wretched plea that they
were deceived by false promises; for, in the very petition with
the prayer of which they were weak enough to comply, they were
told, in the plainest terms, that public ruin would be the effect
of their compliance.

Thinking thus, Sir, I will oppose, with every faculty which God
has given me, every motion which directly or indirectly tends to
the granting of universal suffrage.  This motion I think, tends
that way.  If any gentleman here is prepared to vote for
universal suffrage with a full view of all the consequences of
universal suffrage as they are set forth in this petition, he
acts with perfect consistency in voting for this motion.  But, I
must say, I heard with some surprise the honourable baronet the
Member for Leicester (Sir John Easthope.) say that, though he
utterly disapproves of the petition, though he thinks of it just
as I do, he wishes the petitioners to be heard at the bar in
explanation of their opinions.  I conceive that their opinions
are quite sufficiently explained already; and to such opinions I
am not disposed to pay any extraordinary mark of respect.  I
shall give a clear and conscientious vote against the motion of
the honourable Member for Finsbury; and I conceive that the
petitioners will have much less reason to complain of my open
hostility than of the conduct of the honourable Member, who tries
to propitiate them by consenting to hear their oratory, but has
fully made up his mind not to comply with their demands.

...


THE GATES OF SOMNAUTH.  (MARCH 9, 1843)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF MARCH
1843.

On the ninth of March 1843, Mr Vernon Smith, Member for
Northampton, made the following motion:

"That this House, having regard to the high and important
functions of the Governor General of India, the mixed character
of the native population, and the recent measures of the Court of
Directors for discontinuing any seeming sanction to idolatry in
India, is of opinion that the conduct of Lord Ellenborough in
issuing the General Orders of the sixteenth of November 1842, and
in addressing the letter of the same date to all the chiefs,
princes, and people of India, respecting the restoration of the
gates of a temple to Somnauth, is unwise, indecorous, and
reprehensible."

Mr Emerson Tennent, Secretary of the Board of Control, opposed
the motion.  In reply to him the following Speech was made.

The motion was rejected by 242 votes to 157.

Mr Speaker,--If the practice of the honourable gentleman, the
Secretary of the Board of Control, had been in accordance with
his precepts, if he had not, after exhorting us to confine
ourselves strictly to the subject before us, rambled far from
that subject, I should have refrained from all digression.  For
and truth there is abundance to be said touching both the
substance and the style of this Proclamation.  I cannot, however,
leave the honourable gentleman's peroration entirely unnoticed.
But I assure him that I do not mean to wander from the question
before us to any great distance or for any long time.

I cannot but wonder, Sir, that he who has, on this, as on former
occasions, exhibited so much ability and acuteness, should have
gravely represented it as a ground of complaint, that my right
honourable friend the Member for Northampton has made this motion
in the Governor General's absence.  Does the honourable gentleman
mean that this House is to be interdicted from ever considering
in what manner Her Majesty's Asiatic subjects, a hundred millions
in number, are governed?  And how can we consider how they are
governed without considering the conduct of him who is governing
them?  And how can we consider the conduct of him who is
governing them, except in his absence?  For my own part, I can
say for myself, and I may, I doubt not, say for my right
honourable friend the Member for Northampton, that we both of us
wish, with all our hearts and souls, that we were discussing this
question in the presence of Lord Ellenborough.  Would to heaven,
Sir, for the sake of the credit of England, and of the interests
of India, that the noble lord were at this moment under our
gallery!  But, Sir, if there be any Governor who has no right to
complain of remarks made on him in his absence, it is that
Governor who, forgetting all official decorum, forgetting how
important it is that, while the individuals who serve the State
are changed, the State should preserve its identity, inserted in
a public proclamation reflections on his predecessor, a
predecessor of whom, on the present occasion, I will only say
that his conduct had deserved a very different return.  I am
confident that no enemy of Lord Auckland, if Lord Auckland has an
enemy in the House, will deny that, whatever faults he may have
committed, he was faultless with respect to Lord Ellenborough.
No brother could have laboured more assiduously for the interests
and the honour of a brother than Lord Auckland laboured to
facilitate Lord Ellenborough's arduous task, to prepare for Lord
Ellenborough the means of obtaining success and glory.  And what
was the requital?  A proclamation by Lord Ellenborough,
stigmatising the conduct of Lord Auckland.  And, Sir, since the
honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control has
thought fit to divert the debate from its proper course, I will
venture to request that he, or the honourable director who sits
behind him (Sir James Hogg.), will vouchsafe to give us some
explanations on an important point to which allusion has been
made.  Lord Ellenborough has been accused of having publicly
announced that our troops were about to evacuate Afghanistan
before he had ascertained that our captive countrymen and
countrywomen had been restored to liberty.  This accusation,
which is certainly a serious one, the honourable gentleman, the
Secretary of the Board of Control, pronounces to be a mere
calumny.  Now, Sir, the proclamation which announces the
withdrawing of the troops bears date the first of October 1842.
What I wish to know is, whether any member of the Government, or
of the Court of Directors, will venture to affirm that on the
first of October 1842, the Governor General knew that the
prisoners had been set at liberty?  I believe that no member
either of the Government or of the Court of Directors will
venture to affirm any such thing.  It seems certain that on the
first of October the Governor General could not know that the
prisoners were safe.  Nevertheless, the honourable gentleman the
Secretary of the Board of Control assures us that, when the
proclamation was drawn up, the Governor General did know that the
prisoners were safe.  What is the inevitable consequence?  It is
this, that the date is a false date, that the proclamation was
written after the first of October, and antedated?  And for what
reason was it antedated?  I am almost ashamed to tell the House
what I believe to have been the reason.  I believe that Lord
Ellenborough affixed the false date of the first of October to
his proclamation because Lord Auckland's manifesto against
Afghanistan was dated on the first of October.  I believe that
Lord Ellenborough wished to make the contrast between his own
success and his predecessor's failure more striking, and that for
the sake of this paltry, this childish, triumph, he antedated his
proclamation, and made it appear to all Europe and all Asia that
the English Government was indifferent to the fate of Englishmen
and Englishwomen who were in a miserable captivity.  If this be
so, and I shall be surprised to hear any person deny that it is
so, I must say that by this single act, by writing those words,
the first of October, the Governor General proved himself to be a
man of an ill-regulated mind, a man unfit for high public trust.

I might, Sir, if I chose to follow the example of the honourable
gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, advert to many
other matters.  I might call the attention of the House to the
systematic manner in which the Governor General has exerted
himself to lower the character and to break the spirit of that
civil service on the respectability and efficiency of which
chiefly depends the happiness of a hundred millions of human
beings.  I might say much about the financial committee which he
appointed in the hope of finding out blunders of his predecessor,
but which at last found out no blunders except his own.  But the
question before us demands our attention.  That question has two
sides, a serious and a ludicrous side.  Let us look first at the
serious side.  Sir, I disclaim in the strongest manner all
intention of raising any fanatical outcry or of lending aid to
any fanatical project.  I would very much rather be the victim of
fanaticism than its tool.  If Lord Ellenborough were called in
question for having given an impartial protection to the
professors of different religions, or for restraining
unjustifiable excesses into which Christian missionaries might
have been hurried by their zeal, I would, widely as I have always
differed from him in politics, have stood up in his defence,
though I had stood up alone.  But the charge against Lord
Ellenborough is that he has insulted the religion of his own
country and the religion of millions of the Queen's Asiatic
subjects in order to pay honour to an idol.  And this the right
honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control calls
a trivial charge.  Sir, I think it a very grave charge.  Her
Majesty is the ruler of a larger heathen population than the
world ever saw collected under the sceptre of a Christian
sovereign since the days of the Emperor Theodosius.  What the
conduct of rulers in such circumstances ought to be is one of the
most important moral questions, one of the most important
political questions, that it is possible to conceive.  There are
subject to the British rule in Asia a hundred millions of people
who do not profess the Christian faith.  The Mahometans are a
minority:  but their importance is much more than proportioned to
their number:  for they are an united, a zealous, an ambitious, a
warlike class.  The great majority of the population of India
consists of idolaters, blindly attached to doctrines and rites
which, considered merely with reference to the temporal interests
of mankind, are in the highest degree pernicious.  In no part of
the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable to the
moral and intellectual health of our race.  The Brahminical
mythology is so absurd that it necessarily debases every mind
which receives it as truth; and with this absurd mythology is
bound up an absurd system of physics, an absurd geography, an
absurd astronomy.  Nor is this form of Paganism more favourable
to art than to science.  Through the whole Hindoo Pantheon you
will look in vain for anything resembling those beautiful and
majestic forms which stood in the shrines of ancient Greece.  All
is hideous, and grotesque, and ignoble.  As this superstition is
of all superstitions the most irrational, and of all
superstitions the most inelegant, so is it of all superstitions
the most immoral.  Emblems of vice are objects of public worship.
Acts of vice are acts of public worship.  The courtesans are as
much a part of the establishment of the temple, as much ministers
of the god, as the priests.  Crimes against life, crimes against
property, are not only permitted but enjoined by this odious
theology.  But for our interference human victims would still be
offered to the Ganges, and the widow would still be laid on the
pile with the corpse of her husband, and burned alive by her own
children.  It is by the command and under the especial protection
of one of the most powerful goddesses that the Thugs join
themselves to the unsuspecting traveller, make friends with him,
slip the noose round his neck, plunge their knives in his eyes,
hide him in the earth, and divide his money and baggage.  I have
read many examinations of Thugs; and I particularly remember an
altercation which took place between two of those wretches in the
presence of an English officer.  One Thug reproached the other
for having been so irreligious as to spare the life of a
traveller when the omens indicated that their patroness required
a victim.  "How could you let him go?  How can you expect the
goddess to protect us if you disobey her commands?  That is one
of your North country heresies."  Now, Sir, it is a difficult
matter to determine in what way Christian rulers ought to deal
with such superstitions as these.  We might have acted as the
Spaniards acted in the New World.  We might have attempted to
introduce our own religion by force.  We might have sent
missionaries among the natives at the public charge.  We might
have held out hopes of public employment to converts, and have
imposed civil disabilities on Mahometans and Pagans.  But we did
none of these things; and herein we judged wisely.  Our duty, as
rulers, was to preserve strict neutrality on all questions merely
religious:  and I am not aware that we have ever swerved from
strict neutrality for the purpose of making proselytes to our own
faith.  But we have, I am sorry to say, sometimes deviated from
the right path in the opposite direction.  Some Englishmen, who
have held high office in India, seem to have thought that the
only religion which was not entitled to toleration and to respect
was Christianity.  They regarded every Christian missionary with
extreme jealousy and disdain; and they suffered the most
atrocious crimes, if enjoined by the Hindoo superstition, to be
perpetrated in open day.  It is lamentable to think how long
after our power was firmly established in Bengal, we, grossly
neglecting the first and plainest duty of the civil magistrate,
suffered the practices of infanticide and Suttee to continue
unchecked.  We decorated the temples of the false gods.  We
provided the dancing girls.  We gilded and painted the images to
which our ignorant subjects bowed down.  We repaired and
embellished the car under the wheels of which crazy devotees
flung themselves at every festival to be crushed to death.  We
sent guards of honour to escort pilgrims to the places of
worship.  We actually made oblations at the shrines of idols.
All this was considered, and is still considered, by some
prejudiced Anglo-Indians of the old school, as profound policy.
I believe that there never was so shallow, so senseless a policy.
We gained nothing by it.  We lowered ourselves in the eyes of
those whom we meant to flatter.  We led them to believe that we
attached no importance to the difference between Christianity and
heathenism.  Yet how vast that difference is!  I altogether
abstain from alluding to topics which belong to divines.  I speak
merely as a politician anxious for the morality and the temporal
well-being of society.  And, so speaking, I say that to
countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and to discountenance that
religion which has done so much to promote justice, and mercy,
and freedom, and arts, and sciences, and good government, and
domestic happiness, which has struck off the chains of the slave,
which has mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women
from servants and playthings into companions and friends, is to
commit high treason against humanity and civilisation.

Gradually a better system was introduced.  A great man whom we
have lately lost, Lord Wellesley, led the way.  He prohibited the
immolation of female children; and this was the most
unquestionable of all his titles to the gratitude of his country.
In the year 1813 Parliament gave new facilities to persons who
were desirous to proceed to India as missionaries.  Lord William
Bentinck abolished the Suttee.  Shortly afterwards the Home
Government sent out to Calcutta the important and valuable
despatch to which reference has been repeatedly made in the
course of this discussion.  That despatch Lord Glenelg wrote,--I
was then at the Board of Control, and can attest the fact,--with
his own hand.  One paragraph, the sixty-second, is of the highest
moment.  I know that paragraph so well that I could repeat it
word for word.  It contains in short compass an entire code of
regulations for the guidance of British functionaries in matters
relating to the idolatry of India.  The orders of the Home
Government were express, that the arrangements of the temples
should be left entirely to the natives.  A certain discretion was
of course left to the local authorities as to the time and manner
of dissolving that connection which had long existed between the
English Government and the Brahminical superstition.  But the
principle was laid down in the clearest manner.  This was in
February 1833.  In the year 1838 another despatch was sent, which
referred to the sixty-second paragraph in Lord Glenelg's
despatch, and enjoined the Indian Government to observe the rules
contained in that paragraph.  Again, in the year 1841, precise
orders were sent out on the same subject, orders which Lord
Ellenborough seems to me to have studied carefully for the
express purpose of disobeying them point by point, and in the
most direct manner.  You murmur:  but only look at the orders of
the Directors and at the proclamation of the Governor General.
The orders are, distinctly and positively, that the British
authorities in India shall have nothing to do with the temples of
the natives, shall make no presents to those temples, shall not
decorate those temples, shall not pay any military honour to
those temples.  Now, Sir, the first charge which I bring against
Lord Ellenborough is, that he has been guilty of an act of gross
disobedience, that he has done that which was forbidden in the
strongest terms by those from whom his power is derived.  The
Home Government says, Do not interfere in the concerns of heathen
temples.  Is it denied that Lord Ellenborough has interfered in
the concerns of a heathen temple?  The Home Government says, Make
no presents to heathen temples.  Is it denied that Lord
Ellenborough has proclaimed to all the world his intention to
make a present to a heathen temple?  The Home Government says, Do
not decorate heathen temples.  Is it denied that Lord
Ellenborough has proclaimed to all the world his intention to
decorate a heathen temple?  The Home Government says, Do not send
troops to do honour to heathen temples.  Is it denied that Lord
Ellenborough sent a body of troops to escort these gates to a
heathen temple?  To be sure, the honourable gentleman the
Secretary of the Board of Control tries to get rid of this part
of the case in rather a whimsical manner.  He says that it is
impossible to believe that, by sending troops to escort the
gates, Lord Ellenborough can have meant to pay any mark of
respect to an idol.  And why?  Because, says the honourable
gentleman, the Court of Directors had given positive orders that
troops should not be employed to pay marks of respect to idols.
Why, Sir, undoubtedly, if it is to be taken for granted that Lord
Ellenborough is a perfect man, if all our reasonings are to
proceed on the supposition that he cannot do wrong, then I admit
the force of the honourable gentleman's argument.  But it seems
to me a strange and dangerous thing to infer a man's innocence
merely from the flagrancy of his guilt.  It is certain that the
Home authorities ordered the Governor General not to employ the
troops in the service of a temple.  It is certain that Lord
Ellenborough employed the troops to escort a trophy, an oblation,
which he sent to the restored temple of Somnauth.  Yes, the
restored temple of Somnauth.  Those are his lordship's words.
They have given rise to some discussion, and seem not to be
understood by everybody in the same sense.  We all know that this
temple is an ruins.  I am confident that Lord Ellenborough knew
it to be in ruins, and that his intention was to rebuild it at
the public charge.  That is the obvious meaning of his words.
But, as this meaning is so monstrous that nobody here can venture
to defend it, his friends pretend that he believed the temple to
have been already restored, and that he had no thought of being
himself the restorer.  How can I believe this?  How can I believe
that, when he issued this proclamation, he knew nothing about the
state of the temple to which he proposed to make an offering of
such importance?  He evidently knew that it had once been in
ruins; or he would not have called it the restored temple.  Why
am I to suppose that he imagined it to have been rebuilt?  He had
people about him who knew it well, and who could have told him
that it was in ruins still.  To say that he was not aware that it
was in ruins is to say that he put forth his proclamation without
taking the trouble to ask a single question of those who were
close at hand and were perfectly competent to give him
information.  Why, Sir, this defence is itself an accusation.  I
defy the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of
Control, I defy all human ingenuity, to get his lordship clear
off from both the horns of this dilemma.  Either way, he richly
deserves a parliamentary censure.  Either he published this
proclamation in the recklessness of utter ignorance without
making the smallest inquiry; or else he, an English and a
Christian Governor, meant to build a temple to a heathen god at
the public charge, in direct defiance of the commands of his
official superiors.  Turn and twist the matter which way you
will, you can make nothing else of it.  The stain is like the
stain of Blue Beard's key, in the nursery tale.  As soon as you
have scoured one side clean, the spot comes out on the other.

So much for the first charge, the charge of disobedience.  It is
fully made out:  but it is not the heaviest charge which I bring
against Lord Ellenborough.  I charge him with having done that
which, even if it had not been, as it was, strictly forbidden by
the Home authorities, it would still have been a high crime to
do.  He ought to have known, without any instructions from home,
that it was his duty not to take part in disputes among the false
religions of the East; that it was his duty, in his official
character, to show no marked preference for any of those
religions, and to offer no marked insult to any.  But, Sir, he
has paid unseemly homage to one of those religions; he has
grossly insulted another; and he has selected as the object of
his homage the very worst and most degrading of those religions,
and as the object of his insults the best and purest of them.
The homage was paid to Lingamism.  The insult was offered to
Mahometanism.  Lingamism is not merely idolatry, but idolatry in
its most pernicious form.  The honourable gentleman the Secretary
of the Board of Control seemed to think that he had achieved a
great victory when he had made out that his lordship's devotions
had been paid, not to Vishnu, but to Siva.  Sir, Vishnu is the
preserving Deity of the Hindoo Mythology; Siva is the destroying
Deity; and, as far as I have any preference for one of your
Governor General's gods over another, I confess that my own
tastes would lead me to prefer the preserving to the destroying
power.  Yes, Sir; the temple of Somnauth was sacred to Siva; and
the honourable gentleman cannot but know by what emblem Siva is
represented, and with what rites he is adored.  I will say no
more.  The Governor General, Sir, is in some degree protected by
the very magnitude of his offence.  I am ashamed to name those
things to which he is not ashamed to pay public reverence.  This
god of destruction, whose images and whose worship it would be a
violation of decency to describe, is selected as the object of
homage.  As the object of insult is selected a religion which has
borrowed much of its theology and much of its morality from
Christianity, a religion which in the midst of Polytheism teaches
the unity of God, and, in the midst of idolatry, strictly
proscribes the worship of images.  The duty of our Government is,
as I said, to take no part in the disputes between Mahometans and
idolaters.  But, if our Government does take a part, there cannot
be a doubt that Mahometanism is entitled to the preference.  Lord
Ellenborough is of a different opinion.  He takes away the gates
from a Mahometan mosque, and solemnly offers them as a gift to a
Pagan temple.  Morally, this is a crime.  Politically, it is a
blunder.  Nobody who knows anything of the Mahometans of India
can doubt that this affront to their faith will excite their
fiercest indignation.  Their susceptibility on such points is
extreme.  Some of the most serious disasters that have ever
befallen us in India have been caused by that susceptibility.
Remember what happened at Vellore in 1806, and more recently at
Bangalore.  The mutiny of Vellore was caused by a slight shown to
the Mahometan turban; the mutiny of Bangalore, by disrespect said
to have been shown to a Mahometan place of worship.  If a
Governor General had been induced by his zeal for Christianity to
offer any affront to a mosque held in high veneration by
Mussulmans, I should think that he had been guilty of
indiscretion such as proved him to be unfit for his post.  But to
affront a mosque of peculiar dignity, not from zeal for
Christianity, but for the sake of this loathsome god of
destruction, is nothing short of madness.  Some temporary
popularity Lord Ellenborough may no doubt gain in some quarters.
I hear, and I can well believe, that some bigoted Hindoos have
hailed this proclamation with delight, and have begun to
entertain a hope that the British Government is about to take
their worship under its peculiar protection.  But how long will
that hope last?  I presume that the right honourable Baronet the
First Lord of the Treasury does not mean to suffer India to be
governed on Brahminical principles.  I presume that he will not
allow the public revenue to be expended in rebuilding temples,
adorning idols, and hiring courtesans.  I have no doubt that
there is already on the way to India such an admonition as will
prevent Lord Ellenborough from persisting in the course on which
he has entered.  The consequence will be that the exultation of
the Brahmins will end in mortification and anger.  See then of
what a complication of faults the Governor General is guilty.  In
order to curry favour with the Hindoos he has offered an
inexpiable insult to the Mahometans; and now, in order to quiet
the English, he is forced to disappoint and disgust the Hindoos.
But, apart from the irritating effect which these transactions
must produce on every part of the native population, is it no
evil to have this continual wavering and changing?  This is not
the only case in which Lord Ellenborough has, with great pomp,
announced intentions which he has not been able to carry into
effect.  It is his Lordship's habit.  He put forth a notification
that his Durbar was to be honoured by the presence of Dost
Mahomed.  Then came a notification that Dost Mahomed would not
make his appearance there.  In the proclamation which we are now
considering his lordship announced to all the princes of India
his resolution to set up these gates at Somnauth.  The gates, it
is now universally admitted, will not be set up there.  All India
will see that the Governor General has changed his mind.  The
change may be imputed to mere fickleness and levity.  It may be
imputed to the disapprobation with which his conduct has been
regarded here.  In either case he appears in a light in which it
is much to be deplored that a Governor General should appear.

So much for the serious side of this business; and now for the
ludicrous side.  Even in our mirth, however, there is sadness;
for it is no light thing that he who represents the British
nation in India should be a jest to the people of India.  We have
sometimes sent them governors whom they loved, and sometimes
governors whom they feared; but they never before had a governor
at whom they laughed.  Now, however, they laugh; and how can we
blame them for laughing, when all Europe and all America are
laughing too?  You see, Sir, that the gentlemen opposite cannot
keep their countenances.  And no wonder.  Was such a State paper
ever seen in our language before?  And what is the plea set up
for all this bombast?  Why, the honourable gentleman the
Secretary of the Board of Control brings down to the House some
translations of Persian letters from native princes.  Such
letters, as everybody knows, are written in a most absurd and
turgid style.  The honourable gentleman forces us to hear a good
deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the
secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these
tropes and hyperboles, Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in
the same sort of eloquence?  The honourable gentleman might as
well ask why Lord Ellenborough should not sit cross-legged, why
he should not let his beard grow to his waist, why he should not
wear a turban, why he should not hang trinkets all about his
person, why he should not ride about Calcutta on a horse jingling
with bells and glittering with false pearls.  The native princes
do these things; and why should not he?  Why, Sir, simply because
he is not a native prince, but an English Governor General.  When
the people of India see a Nabob or a Rajah in all his gaudy
finery, they bow to him with a certain respect.  They know that
the splendour of his garb indicates superior rank and wealth.
But if Sir Charles Metcalfe had so bedizened himself, they would
have thought that he was out of his wits.  They are not such
fools as the honourable gentleman takes them for.  Simplicity is
not their fashion.  But they understand and respect the
simplicity of our fashions.  Our plain clothing commands far more
reverence than all the jewels which the most tawdry Zemindar
wears; and our plain language carries with it far more weight
than the florid diction of the most ingenious Persian scribe.
The plain language and the plain clothing are inseparably
associated in the minds of our subjects with superior knowledge,
with superior energy, with superior veracity, with all the high
and commanding qualities which erected, and which still uphold,
our empire.  Sir, if, as the speech of the honourable gentleman
the Secretary of the Board of Control seems to indicate, Lord
Ellenborough has adopted this style on principle, if it be his
lordship's deliberate intention to mimic, in his State papers,
the Asiatic modes of thought and expression, that alone would be
a reason for recalling him.  But the honourable gentlemen is
mistaken in thinking that this proclamation is in the Oriental
taste.  It bears no resemblance to the very bad Oriental
compositions which he has read to us, nor to any other Oriental
compositions that I ever saw.  It is neither English nor Indian.
It is not original, however; and I will tell the House where the
Governor General found his models.  He has apparently been
studying the rants of the French Jacobins during the period of
their ascendency, the Carmagnoles of the Convention, the
proclamations issued by the Directory and its Proconsuls:  and he
has been seized with a desire to imitate those compositions.  The
pattern which he seems to have especially proposed to himself is
the rhodomontade in which it was announced that the modern Gauls
were marching to Rome in order to avenge the fate of Dumnorix and
Vercingetorex.  Everybody remembers those lines in which
revolutionary justice is described by Mr Canning:--

"Not she in British courts who takes her stand,
The dawdling balance dangling in her hand;
But firm, erect, with keen reverted glance,
The avenging angel of regenerate France,
Who visits ancient sins on modern times,
And punishes the Pope for Caesar's crimes."

In the same spirit and in the same style our Governor General has
proclaimed his intention to retaliate on the Mussulmans beyond
the mountains the insults which their ancestors, eight hundred
years ago, offered to the idolatry of the Hindoos.  To do justice
to the Jacobins, however, I must say that they had an excuse
which was wanting to the noble lord.  The revolution had made
almost as great a change in literary tastes as in political
institutions.  The old masters of French eloquence had shared the
fate of the old states and of the old parliaments.  The highest
posts in the administration were filled by persons who had no
experience of affairs, who in the general confusion had raised
themselves by audacity and quickness of natural parts, uneducated
men, or half educated men, who had no notion that the style in
which they had heard the heroes and villains of tragedies declaim
on the stage was not the style of real warriors and statesmen.
But was it for an English gentleman, a man of distinguished
abilities and cultivated mind, a man who had sate many years in
parliament, and filled some of the highest posts in the State, to
copy the productions of such a school?

But, it is said, what does it matter if the noble lord has
written a foolish rhapsody which is neither prose nor verse?  Is
affected phraseology a subject for parliamentary censure?  What
great ruler can be named who has not committed errors much more
serious than the penning of a few sentences of turgid nonsense?
This, I admit, sounds plausible.  It is quite true that very
eminent men, Lord Somers, for example, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord
Chatham and his son, all committed faults which did much more
harm than any fault of style can do.  But I beg the House to
observe this, that an error which produces the most serious
consequences may not necessarily prove that the man who has
committed it is not a very wise man; and that, on the other hand,
an error which directly produces no important consequences may
prove the man who has committed it to be quite unfit for public
trust.  Walpole committed a ruinous error when he yielded to the
public cry for war with Spain.  But, notwithstanding that error,
he was an eminently wise man.  Caligula, on the other hand, when
he marched his soldiers to the beach, made them fill their
helmets with cockle-shells, and sent the shells to be placed in
the Capitol as trophies of his conquests, did no great harm to
anybody; but he surely proved that he was quite incapable of
governing an empire.  Mr Pitt's expedition to Quiberon was most
ill judged, and ended in defeat and disgrace.  Yet Mr Pitt was a
statesman of a very high order.  On the other hand, such ukases
as those by which the Emperor Paul used to regulate the dress of
the people of Petersburg, though they caused much less misery
than the slaughter at Quiberon, proved that the Emperor Paul
could not safely be trusted with power over his fellow-creatures.
One day he forbade the wearing of pantaloons.  Another day he
forbade his subjects to comb their hair over their foreheads.
Then he proscribed round hats.  A young Englishman, the son of a
merchant, thought to evade this decree by going about the city in
a hunting cap.  Then came out an edict which made it penal to
wear on the head a round thing such as the English merchant's son
wore.  Now, Sir, I say that, when I examine the substance of Lord
Ellenborough's proclamation, and consider all the consequences
which that paper is likely to produce, I am forced to say that he
has committed a grave moral and political offence.  When I
examine the style, I see that he has committed an act of
eccentric folly, much of the same kind with Caligula's campaign
against the cockles, and with the Emperor Paul's ukase against
round hats.  Consider what an extravagant selfconfidence, what a
disdain for the examples of his great predecessors and for the
opinions of the ablest and most experienced men who are now to be
found in the Indian services, this strange document indicates.
Surely it might have occurred to Lord Ellenborough that, if this
kind of eloquence had been likely to produce a favourable
impression on the minds of Asiatics, such Governors as Warren
Hastings, Mr Elphinstone, Sir Thomas Munro, and Sir Charles
Metcalfe, men who were as familiar with the language and manners
of the native population of India as any man here can be with the
language and manners of the French, would not have left the
discovery to be made by a new comer who did not know any Eastern
tongue.  Surely, too, it might have occurred to the noble lord
that, before he put forth such a proclamation, he would do well
to ask some person who knew India intimately what the effect both
on the Mahometans and Hindoos was likely to be.  I firmly believe
that the Governor General either did not ask advice or acted in
direct opposition to advice.  Mr Maddock was with his lordship as
acting Secretary.  Now I know enough of Mr Maddock to be quite
certain that he never counselled the Governor General to publish
such a paper.  I will pawn my life that he either was never
called upon to give an opinion, or that he gave an opinion
adverse to the course which has been taken.  No Governor General
who was on good terms with the civil service would have been, I
may say, permitted to expose himself thus.  Lord William Bentinck
and Lord Auckland were, to be sure, the last men in the world to
think of doing such a thing as this.  But if either of those
noble lords, at some unlucky moment when he was not quite
himself, when his mind was thrown off the balance by the pride
and delight of an extraordinary success, had proposed to put
forth such a proclamation, he would have been saved from
committing so great a mistake by the respectful but earnest
remonstrances of those in whom he placed confidence, and who were
solicitous for his honour.  From the appearance of this
proclamation, therefore, I infer that the terms on which Lord
Ellenborough is with the civil servants of the Company are such
that those servants could not venture to offer him counsel when
he most needed it.

For these reasons, Sir, I think the noble lord unfit for high
public trust.  Let us, then, consider the nature of the public
trust which is now reposed in him.  Are gentlemen aware that,
even when he is at Calcutta, surrounded by his councillors, his
single voice can carry any resolution concerning the executive
administration against them all?  They can object:  they can
protest:  they can record their opinions in writing, and can
require him to give in writing his reasons for persisting in his
own course:  but they must then submit.  On the most important
questions, on the question whether a war shall be declared, on
the question whether a treaty shall be concluded, on the question
whether the whole system of land revenue established in a great
province shall be changed, his single vote weighs down the votes
of all who sit at the Board with him.  The right honourable
Baronet opposite is a powerful minister, a more powerful minister
than any that we have seen during many years.  But I will venture
to say that his power over the people of England is nothing when
compared with the power which the Governor General possesses over
the people of India.  Such is Lord Ellenborough's power when he
is with his council, and is to some extent held in check.  But
where is he now?  He has given his council the slip.  He is
alone.  He has near him no person who is entitled and bound to
offer advice, asked or unasked:  he asks no advice:  and you
cannot expect men to outstep the strict line of their official
duty by obtruding advice on a superior by whom it would be
ungraciously received.  The danger of having a rash and flighty
Governor General is sufficiently serious at the very best.  But
the danger of having such a Governor General up the country,
eight or nine hundred miles from any person who has a right to
remonstrate with him, is fearful indeed.  Interests so vast, that
the most sober language in which they can be described sounds
hyperbolical, are entrusted to a single man; to a man who,
whatever his parts may be, and they are doubtless considerable,
has shown an indiscretion and temerity almost beyond belief; to a
man who has been only a few months in India; to a man who takes
no counsel with those who are well acquainted with India.

I cannot sit down without addressing myself to those Directors of
the East India Company who are present.  I exhort them to
consider the heavy responsibility which rests on them.  They have
the power to recall Lord Ellenborough; and I trust that they will
not hesitate to exercise that power.  This is the advice of one
who has been their servant, who has served them loyally, and who
is still sincerely anxious for their credit and for the welfare
of the empire of which they are the guardians.  But if, from
whatever cause, they are unwilling to recall the noble lord, then
I implore them to take care that he be immediately ordered to
return to Calcutta.  Who can say what new freak we may hear of by
the next mail?  I am quite confident that neither the Court of
Directors nor Her Majesty's Ministers can look forward to the
arrival of that mail without great uneasiness.  Therefore I say,
send Lord Ellenborough back to Calcutta.  There at least he will
find persons who have a right to advise him and to expostulate
with him, and who will, I doubt not, have also the spirit to do
so.  It is something that he will be forced to record his reasons
for what he does.  It is something that he will be forced to hear
reasons against his propositions.  It is something that a delay,
though only of twenty-four hours, will be interposed between the
first conception of a wild scheme and the execution.  I am afraid
that these checks will not be sufficient to prevent much evil:
but they are not absolutely nugatory.  I entreat the Directors to
consider in what a position they will stand if, in consequence of
their neglect, some serious calamity should befall the country
which is confided to their care.  I will only say, in conclusion,
that, if there be any use in having a Council of India, if it be
not meant that the members of Council should draw large salaries
for doing nothing, if they are really appointed for the purpose
of assisting and restraining the Governor, it is to the last
degree absurd that their powers should be in abeyance when there
is a Governor who, of all the Governors that ever England sent to
the East, stands most in need both of assistance and of
restraint.

...


THE STATE OF IRELAND.  (FEBRUARY 19, 1844)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 19TH OF
FEBRUARY 1844.

On the thirteenth of February 1844, Lord John Russell moved for a
Committee of the whole House to take into consideration the state
of Ireland.  After a discussion of nine nights the motion was
rejected by 324 votes to 225.  On the fifth night of the debate
the following Speech was made.

I cannot refrain, Sir, from congratulating you and the House that
I did not catch your eye when I rose before.  I should have been
extremely sorry to have prevented any Irish member from
addressing the House on a question so interesting to Ireland, but
peculiarly sorry to have stood in the way of the honourable
gentleman who to-night pleaded the cause of his country with so
much force and eloquence.  (Mr J. O'Brien.)

I am sorry to say that I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to
follow the advice which has been just given me by my honourable
friend the Member for Pomfret (Mr R. Milnes.), with all the
authority which, as he has reminded us, belongs to his venerable
youth.  I cannot at all agree with him in thinking that the
wisest thing that we can do is to suffer Her Majesty's Ministers
to go on in their own way, seeing that the way in which they have
long been going on is an exceedingly bad one.  I support the
motion of my noble friend for these plain reasons.

First, I hold that Ireland is in a most unsatisfactory, indeed in
a most dangerous, state.

Secondly, I hold that for the state in which Ireland is Her
Majesty's Ministers are in a great measure accountable, and that
they have not shown, either as legislators, or as administrators,
that they are capable of remedying the evils which they have
caused.

Now, Sir, if I make out these two propositions, it will follow
that it is the constitutional right and duty of the
representatives of the nation to interfere; and I conceive that
my noble friend, by moving for a Committee of the whole House,
has proposed a mode of interference which is both parliamentary
and convenient.

My first proposition, Sir, will scarcely be disputed.  Both sides
of the House are fully agreed in thinking that the condition of
Ireland may well excite great anxiety and apprehension.  That
island, in extent about one fourth of the United Kingdom, in
population more than one-fourth, superior probably in natural
fertility to any area of equal size in Europe, possessed of
natural facilities for trade such as can nowhere else be found in
an equal extent of coast, an inexhaustible nursery of gallant
soldiers, a country far more important to the prosperity, the
strength, the dignity of this great empire than all our distant
dependencies together, than the Canadas and the West Indies added
to Southern Africa, to Australasia, to Ceylon, and to the vast
dominions of the Moguls, that island, Sir, is acknowledged by all
to be so ill affected and so turbulent that it must, in any
estimate of our power, be not added but deducted.  You admit that
you govern that island, not as you govern England and Scotland,
but as you govern your new conquests in Scinde; not by means of
the respect which the people feel for the laws, but by means of
bayonets, of artillery, of entrenched camps.

My first proposition, then, I take to be conceded.  Ireland is in
a dangerous state.  The question which remains to be considered
is, whether for the state in which Ireland is Her Majesty's
Ministers are to be held accountable.

Now, Sir, I at once admit that the distempers of Ireland must in
part be attributed to causes for which neither Her Majesty's
present Ministers nor any public men now living can justly be
held accountable.  I will not trouble the House with a long
dissertation on those causes.  But it is necessary, I think, to
take at least a rapid glance at them:  and in order to do so,
Sir, we must go back to a period not only anterior to the birth
of the statesmen who are now arrayed against each other on the
right and left of your chair, but anterior to the birth even of
the great parties of which those statesmen are the leaders;
anterior to the days when the names of Tory and Whig, of court
party and country party, of cavalier and roundhead, came into
use; anterior to the existence of those Puritans to whom the
honourable Member for Shrewsbury (Mr Disraeli.), in a very
ingenious speech, ascribed all the calamities of Ireland.

The primary cause is, no doubt, the manner in which Ireland
became subject to the English crown.  The annexation was effected
by conquest, and by conquest of a peculiar kind.  It was not a
conquest such as we have been accustomed to see in modern Europe.
It was not a conquest like that which united Artois and Franche
Comte to France, or Silesia to Prussia.  It was the conquest of a
race by a race, such a conquest as that which established the
dominion of the Spaniard over the American Indian, or of the
Mahratta over the peasant of Guzerat or Tanjore.  Of all forms of
tyranny, I believe that the worst is that of a nation over a
nation.  Populations separated by seas and mountain ridges may
call each other natural enemies, may wage long wars with each
other, may recount with pride the victories which they have
gained over each other, and point to the flags, the guns, the
ships which they have won from each other.  But no enmity that
ever existed between such populations approaches in bitterness
the mutual enmity felt by populations which are locally
intermingled, but which have never morally and politically
amalgamated; and such were the Englishry and the Irishry.  Yet it
might have been hoped that the lapse of time and the progress of
civilisation would have effaced the distinction between the
oppressors and the oppressed.  Our island had suffered cruelly
from the same evil.  Here the Saxon had trampled on the Celt, the
Dane on the Saxon, the Norman on Celt, Saxon, and Dane.  Yet in
the course of ages all the four races had been fused together to
form the great English people.  A similar fusion would probably
have taken place in Ireland, but for the Reformation.  The
English settlers adopted the Protestant doctrines which were
received in England.  The Aborigines alone, among all the nations
of the north of Europe, adhered to the ancient faith.  Thus the
line of demarcation between the two populations was deepened and
widened.  The old enmity was reinforced by a new enmity stronger
still.  Then came those events to which the honourable Member for
Shrewsbury referred.  The spirit of liberty in England was
closely allied with the spirit of Puritanism, and was mortally
hostile to the Papacy.  Such men as Hampden, Vane, Milton, Locke,
though zealous generally for civil and spiritual freedom, yet
held that the Roman Catholic worship had no claim to toleration.
On the other hand, all the four kings of the House of Stuart
showed far more favour to Roman Catholics than to any class of
Protestant nonconformists.  James the First at one time had some
hopes of effecting a reconciliation with the Vatican.  Charles
the First entered into secret engagements to grant an indulgence
to Roman Catholics.  Charles the Second was a concealed Roman
Catholic.  James the Second was an avowed Roman Catholic.
Consequently, through the whole of the seventeenth century, the
freedom of Ireland and the slavery of England meant the same
thing.  The watchwords, the badges, the names, the places, the
days, which in the mind of an Englishman were associated with
deliverance, prosperity, national dignity, were in the mind of an
Irishman associated with bondage, ruin, and degradation.  The
memory of William the Third, the anniversary of the battle of the
Boyne, are instances.  I was much struck by a circumstance which
occurred on a day which I have every reason to remember with
gratitude and pride, the day on which I had the high honour of
being declared one of the first two members for the great borough
of Leeds.  My chair was covered with orange ribands.  The horses
which drew it could hardly be seen for the profusion of orange-
coloured finery with which they were adorned.  Orange cockades
were in all the hats; orange favours at all the windows.  And my
supporters, I need not say, were men who had, like myself, been
zealous for Catholic emancipation.  I could not help remarking
that the badge seemed rather incongruous.  But I was told that
the friends of Catholic emancipation in Yorkshire had always
rallied under the orange banner, that orange was the colour of
Sir George Savile, who brought in that bill which caused the No
Popery riots of 1780, and that the very chair in which I sate was
the chair in which Lord Milton, now Earl Fitzwilliam, had
triumphed after the great victory which he won in 1807 over the
No Popery party, then headed by the house of Harewood.  I thought
how different an effect that procession would have produced at
Limerick or Cork, with what howls of rage and hatred the Roman
Catholic population of those cities would have pursued that
orange flag which, to every Roman Catholic in Yorkshire, was the
memorial of contests maintained in favour of his own dearest
rights.  This circumstance, however slight, well illustrates the
singular contrast between the history of England and the history
of Ireland.

Well, Sir, twice during the seventeenth century the Irish rose up
against the English colony.  Twice they were completely put down;
and twice they were severely chastised.  The first rebellion was
crushed by Oliver Cromwell; the second by William the Third.
Those great men did not use their victory exactly in the same
way.  The policy of Cromwell was wise, and strong, and
straightforward, and cruel.  It was comprised in one word, which,
as Clarendon tells us, was often in the mouths of the Englishry
of that time.  That word was extirpation.  The object of Cromwell
was to make Ireland thoroughly Anglo-Saxon and Protestant.  If he
had lived twenty years longer he might perhaps have accomplished
that work:  but he died while it was incomplete; and it died with
him.  The policy of William, or to speak more correctly, of those
whose inclinations William was under the necessity of consulting,
was less able, less energetic, and, though more humane in
seeming, perhaps not more humane in reality.  Extirpation was not
attempted.  The Irish Roman Catholics were permitted to live, to
be fruitful, to replenish the earth:  but they were doomed to be
what the Helots were in Sparta, what the Greeks were under the
Ottoman, what the blacks now are at New York.  Every man of the
subject caste was strictly excluded from public trust.  Take what
path he might in life, he was crossed at every step by some
vexatious restriction.  It was only by being obscure and inactive
that he could, on his native soil, be safe.  If he aspired to be
powerful and honoured, he must begin by being an exile.  If he
pined for military glory, he might gain a cross or perhaps a
Marshal's staff in the armies of France or Austria.  If his
vocation was to politics, he might distinguish himself in the
diplomacy of Italy or Spain.  But at home he was a mere
Gibeonite, a hewer of wood and a drawer of water.  The statute
book of Ireland was filled with enactments which furnish to the
Roman Catholics but too good a ground for recriminating on us
when we talk of the barbarities of Bonner and Gardiner; and the
harshness of those odious laws was aggravated by a more odious
administration.  For, bad as the legislators were, the
magistrates were worse still.  In those evil times originated
that most unhappy hostility between landlord and tenant, which is
one of the peculiar curses of Ireland.  Oppression and turbulence
reciprocally generated each other.  The combination of rustic
tyrants was resisted by gangs of rustic banditti.  Courts of law
and juries existed only for the benefit of the dominant sect.
Those priests who were revered by millions as their natural
advisers and guardians, as the only authorised expositors of
Christian truth, as the only authorised dispensers of the
Christian sacraments, were treated by the squires and squireens
of the ruling faction as no good-natured man would treat the
vilest beggar.  In this manner a century passed away.  Then came
the French Revolution and the great awakening of the mind of
Europe.  It would have been wonderful indeed if, when the
happiest and most tranquil nations were agitated by vague
discontents and vague hopes, Ireland had remained at rest.
Jacobinism, it is true, was not a very natural ally of the Roman
Catholic religion.  But common enmities produce strange
coalitions; and a strange coalition was formed.  There was a
third great rising of the aboriginal population of the island
against English and Protestant ascendency.  That rising was put
down by the sword; and it became the duty of those who were at
the head of affairs to consider how the victory should be used.

I shall not be suspected of being partial to the memory of Mr
Pitt.  But I cannot refuse to him the praise both of wisdom and
of humanity, when I compare the plan which he formed in that hour
of triumph with the plans of those English rulers who had before
him governed Ireland.  Of Mr Pitt's plan the Union was a part, an
excellent and an essential part indeed, but still only a part.
We shall do great injustice both to his head and to his heart, if
we forget that he was permitted to carry into effect only some
unconnected portions of a comprehensive and well-concerted
scheme.  He wished to blend, not only the parliaments, but the
nations, and to make the two islands one in interest and
affection.  With that view the Roman Catholic disabilities were
to be removed:  the Roman Catholic priests were to be placed in a
comfortable and honourable position; and measures were to be
taken for the purpose of giving to Roman Catholics the benefits
of liberal education.  In truth, Mr Pitt's opinions on those
subjects had, to a great extent, been derived from a mind even
more powerful and capacious than his own, from the mind of Mr
Burke.  If the authority of these two great men had prevailed, I
believe that the Union with Ireland would now have been as
secure, and as much beyond the reach of agitation, as the Union
with Scotland.  The Parliament in College Green would have been
remembered as what it was, the most tyrannical, the most venal,
the most unprincipled assembly that ever sate on the face of this
earth.  I do not think that, by saying this, I can give offence
to any gentleman from Ireland, however zealous for Repeal he may
be:  for I only repeat the language of Wolfe Tone.  Wolfe Tone
said that he had seen more deliberative assemblies than most men;
that he had seen the English Parliament, the American Congress,
the French Council of Elders and Council of Five Hundred, the
Batavian Convention; but that he had nowhere found anything like
the baseness and impudence of the scoundrels, as he called them,
at Dublin.  If Mr Pitt's whole plan had been carried into
execution, that infamous parliament, that scandal to the name of
parliament, would have perished unregretted; and the last day of
its existence would have been remembered by the Roman Catholics
of Ireland as the first day of their civil and religious liberty.
The great boon which he would have conferred on them would have
been gratefully received, because it could not have been ascribed
to fear, because it would have been a boon bestowed by the
powerful on the weak, by the victor on the vanquished.
Unhappily, of all his projects for the benefit of Ireland the
Union alone was carried into effect; and therefore that Union was
an Union only in name.  The Irish found that they had parted with
at least the name and show of independence, and that for this
sacrifice of national pride they were to receive no compensation.
The Union, which ought to have been associated in their minds
with freedom and justice, was associated only with disappointed
hopes and forfeited pledges.  Yet it was not even then too late.
It was not too late in 1813.  It was not too late in 1821.  It
was not too late in 1825.  Yes:  if, even in 1825, some men who
then were, as they now are, high in the service of the crown,
could have made up their minds to do what they were forced to do
four years later, that great work of conciliation which Mr Pitt
had meditated might have been accomplished.  The machinery of
agitation was not yet fully organized:  the Government was under
no strong pressure; and therefore concession might still have
been received with thankfulness.  That opportunity was suffered
to escape; and it never returned.

In 1829, at length, concessions were made, were made largely,
were made without the conditions which Mr Pitt would undoubtedly
have demanded, and to which, if demanded by Mr Pitt, the whole
body of Roman Catholics would have eagerly assented.  But those
concessions were made reluctantly, made ungraciously, made under
duress, made from the mere dread of civil war.  How then was it
possible that they should produce contentment and repose?  What
could be the effect of that sudden and profuse liberality
following that long and obstinate resistance to the most
reasonable demands, except to teach the Irishman that he could
obtain redress only by turbulence?  Could he forget that he had
been, during eight and twenty years, supplicating Parliament for
justice, urging those unanswerable arguments which prove that the
rights of conscience ought to be held sacred, claiming the
performance of promises made by ministers and princes, and that
he had supplicated, argued, claimed the performance of promises
in vain?  Could he forget that two generations of the most
profound thinkers, the most brilliant wits, the most eloquent
orators, had written and spoken for him in vain?  Could he forget
that the greatest statesman who took his part had paid dear for
their generosity?  Mr Pitt endeavoured to redeem his pledge; and
he was driven from office.  Lord Grey and Lord Grenville
endeavoured to do but a very small part of what Mr Pitt had
thought right and expedient; and they were driven from office.
Mr Canning took the same side; and his reward was to be worried
to death by the party of which he was the brightest ornament.  At
length, when he was gone, the Roman Catholics began to look, not
to cabinets and parliaments, but to themselves.  They displayed a
formidable array of physical force, and yet kept within, just
within, the limits of the law.  The consequence was that, in two
years, more than any prudent friend had ventured to demand for
them was granted to them by their enemies.  Yes; within two years
after Mr Canning had been laid in the transept near us, all that
he would have done, and more than he could have done, was done by
his persecutors.  How was it possible that the whole Roman
Catholic population of Ireland should not take up the notion that
from England, or at least from the party which then governed and
which now governs England, nothing is to be got by reason, by
entreaty, by patient endurance, but everything by intimidation?
That tardy repentance deserved no gratitude, and obtained none.
The whole machinery of agitation was complete and in perfect
order.  The leaders had tasted the pleasures of popularity; the
multitude had tasted the pleasures of excitement.  Both the
demagogue and his audience felt a craving for the daily
stimulant.  Grievances enough remained, God knows, to serve as
pretexts for agitation:  and the whole conduct of the Government
had led the sufferers to believe that by agitation alone could
any grievance be removed.

Such, Sir, is the history of the rise and progress of the
disorders of Ireland.  Misgovernment, lasting without
interruption from the reign of Henry the Second to the reign of
William the Fourth, has left us an immense mass of discontent,
which will, no doubt, in ordinary times, make the task of any
statesman whom the Queen may call to power sufficiently
difficult.  But though this be true, it is not less true, that
the immediate causes of the extraordinary agitation which alarms
us at this moment is to be found in the misconduct of Her
Majesty's present advisers.  For, Sir, though Ireland is always
combustible, Ireland is not always on fire.  We must distinguish
between the chronic complaints which are to be attributed to
remote causes, and the acute attack which is brought on by recent
imprudence.  For though there is always a predisposition to
disease in that unhappy society, the violent paroxysms come only
at intervals.  I must own that I am indebted for some of my
imagery to the right honourable Baronet the First Lord of the
Treasury.  When he sate on this bench, and was only a candidate
for the great place which he now fills, he compared himself to a
medical man at the bedside of a patient.  Continuing his
metaphor, I may say that his prognosis, his diagnosis, his
treatment, have all been wrong.  I do not deny that the case was
difficult.  The sufferer was of a very ill habit of body, and had
formerly suffered many things of many physicians, and, among
others, I must say, of the right honourable Baronet himself.
Still the malady had, a very short time ago, been got under, and
kept under by the judicious use of lenitives; and there was
reason to hope that if that salutary regimen had been steadily
followed, there would have been a speedy improvement in the
general health.  Unhappily, the new State hygeist chose to apply
irritants which have produced a succession of convulsive fits,
each more violent than that which preceded it.  To drop the
figure, it is impossible to doubt that Lord Melbourne's
government was popular with the great body of the Roman Catholics
of Ireland.  It is impossible to doubt that the two Viceroys whom
he sent to Ireland were more loved and honoured by the Irish
people than any Viceroys before whom the sword of state has ever
been borne.  Under the late Government, no doubt, the empire was
threatened by many dangers; but, to whatever quarter the
Ministers might look with uneasy apprehension, to Ireland they
could always look with confidence.  When bad men raised
disturbances here, when a Chartist rabble fired on the Queen's
soldiers, numerous regiments could, without the smallest risk, be
spared from Ireland.  When a rebellion broke out in one of our
colonies,--a rebellion too which it might have been expected that
the Irish would regard with favour, for it was a rebellion of
Roman Catholics against Protestant rulers,--even then Ireland was
true to the general interests of the empire, and troops were sent
from Munster and Connaught to put down insurrection in Canada.
No person will deny that if, in 1840, we had unhappily been
forced into war, and if a hostile army had landed in Bantry Bay,
the whole population of Cork and Tipperary would have risen up to
defend the throne of Her Majesty, and would have offered to the
invaders a resistance as determined as would have been offered by
the men of Kent or Norfolk.  And by what means was this salutary
effect produced?  Not by great legislative reforms:  for,
unfortunately, that Government, though it had the will, had not
the power to carry such reforms against the sense of a strong
minority in this House, and of a decided majority of the Peers.
No, Sir; this effect was produced merely by the wisdom, justice,
and humanity with which the existing law, defective as it might
be, was administered.  The late Government, calumniated and
thwarted at every turn, contending against the whole influence of
the Established Church, and of the great body of the nobility and
landed gentry, yet did show a disposition to act kindly and
fairly towards Ireland, and did, to the best of its power, treat
Protestants and Roman Catholics alike.  If we had been as strong
as our successors in parliamentary support, if we had been able
to induce the two Houses to follow in legislation the same
principles by which we were guided in administration, the Union
with Ireland would now have been as secure from the assaults of
agitators as the Union with Scotland.  But this was not to be.
During six years an opposition, formidable in numbers, formidable
in ability, selected as the especial object of the fiercest and
most pertinacious attacks those very acts of the Government which
had, after centuries of mutual animosity, half reconciled the two
islands.  Those Lords Lieutenant who, in Ireland, were venerated
as no preceding Lord Lieutenant had ever been venerated, were
here reviled as no preceding Lord Lieutenant had ever been
reviled.  Every action, every word which was applauded by the
nation committed to their care, was here imputed to them as a
crime.  Every bill framed by the advisers of the Crown for the
benefit of Ireland was either rejected or mutilated.  A few Roman
Catholics of distinguished merit were appointed to situations
which were indeed below their just claims, but which were higher
than any member of their Church had filled during many
generations.  Two or three Roman Catholics were sworn of the
Council; one took his seat at the Board of Treasury; another at
the Board of Admiralty.  There was great joy in Ireland; and no
wonder.  What had been done was not much; but the ban had been
taken off; the Emancipation Act, which had been little more than
a dead letter, was at length a reality.  But in England all the
underlings of the great Tory party set up a howl of rage and
hatred worthy of Lord George Gordon's No Popery mob.  The right
honourable Baronet now at the head of the Treasury, with his
usual prudence, abstained from joining in the cry, and was
content to listen to it, to enjoy it, and to profit by it.  But
some of those who ranked next to him among the chiefs of the
opposition, did not imitate his politic reserve.  One great man
denounced the Irish as aliens.  Another called them minions of
Popery.  Those teachers of religion to whom millions looked up
with affection and reverence were called by the Protestant press
demon priests and surpliced ruffians, and were denounced from the
Protestant pulpit as pontiffs of Baal, as false prophets who were
to be slain with the sword.  We were reminded that a Queen of the
chosen people had in the old time patronised the ministers of
idolatry, and that her blood had been given to the dogs.  Not
content with throwing out or frittering down every law beneficial
to Ireland, not content with censuring in severe terms every act
of the executive government which gave satisfaction in Ireland,
you, yes you, who now fill the great offices of state, assumed
the offensive.  From obstruction you proceeded to aggression.
You brought in a bill which you called a Bill for the
Registration of Electors in Ireland.  We then told you that it
was a bill for the wholesale disfranchisement of the electors of
Ireland.  We then proved incontrovertibly that, under pretence of
reforming the law of procedure, you were really altering the
substantive law; that, by making it impossible for any man to
vindicate his right to vote without trouble, expense, and loss of
time, you were really taking away the votes of tens of thousands.
You denied all this then.  You very coolly admit it all now.  Am
I to believe that you did know it as well in 1841 as in 1844?
Has one new fact been brought to light?  Has one argument been
discovered which was not, three or four years ago, urged twenty,
thirty, forty times in this House?  Why is it that you have, when
in power, abstained from proposing that change in the mode of
registration which, when you were out of power, you represented
as indispensable?  You excuse yourselves by saying that now the
responsibilities of office are upon you.  In plain words, your
trick has served its purpose.  Your object,--for I will do
justice to your patriotism,--your object was not to ruin your
country, but to get in; and you are in.  Such public virtue
deserved such a reward, a reward which has turned out a
punishment, a reward which ought to be, while the world lasts, a
warning to unscrupulous ambition.  Many causes contributed to
place you in your present situation.  But the chief cause was,
beyond all doubt, the prejudice which you excited amongst the
English against the just and humane manner in which the late
Ministers governed Ireland.  In your impatience for office, you
called up the devil of religious intolerance, a devil more easily
evoked than dismissed.  He did your work; and he holds your bond.
You once found him an useful slave:  but you have since found him
a hard master.  It was pleasant, no doubt, to be applauded by
high churchmen and low churchmen, by the Sheldonian Theatre and
by Exeter Hall.  It was pleasant to be described as the champions
of the Protestant faith, as the men who stood up for the Gospel
against that spurious liberality which made no distinction
between truth and falsehood.  It was pleasant to hear your
opponents called by every nickname that is to be found in the
foul vocabulary of the Reverend Hugh Mcneill.  It was pleasant to
hear that they were the allies of Antichrist, that they were the
servants of the man of sin, that they were branded with the mark
of the Beast.  But when all this slander and scurrility had
raised you to power, when you found that you had to manage
millions of those who had been, year after year, constantly
insulted and defamed by yourselves and your lacqueys, your hearts
began to fail you.  Now you tell us that you have none but kind
and respectful feelings towards the Irish Roman Catholics, that
you wish to conciliate them, that you wish to carry the
Emancipation Act into full effect, that nothing would give you
more pleasure than to place on the bench of justice a Roman
Catholic lawyer of conservative politics, that nothing would give
you more pleasure than to place at the Board of Treasury, or at
the Board of Admiralty, some Roman Catholic gentleman of
conservative politics, distinguished by his talents for business
or debate.  Your only reason, you assure us, for not promoting
Roman Catholics is that all the Roman Catholics are your enemies;
and you ask whether any Minister can be expected to promote his
enemies.  For my part I do not doubt that you would willingly
promote Roman Catholics:  for, as I have said, I give you full
credit for not wishing to do your country more harm than is
necessary for the purpose of turning out and keeping out the
Whigs.  I also fully admit that you cannot be blamed for not
promoting your enemies.  But what I want to know is, how it
happens that all the Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom are
your enemies.  Was such a thing ever heard of before?  Here are
six or seven millions of people of all professions, of all
trades, of all grades of rank, fortune, intellect, education.
Begin with the premier Peer, the Earl Marshal of the realm, the
chief of the Howards, the heir of the Mowbrays and Fitzalans, and
go down through earls, barons, baronets, lawyers, and merchants,
to the very poorest peasant that eats his potatoes without salt
in Mayo; and all these millions to a man are arrayed against the
Government.  How do you explain this?  Is there any natural
connection between the Roman Catholic theology and the political
theories held by Whigs and by reformers more democratical than
the Whigs?  Not only is there no natural connection, but there is
a natural opposition.  Of all Christian sects the Roman Catholic
Church holds highest the authority of antiquity, of tradition, of
immemorial usage.  Her spirit is eminently conservative, nay, in
the opinion of all Protestants, conservative to an unreasonable
and pernicious extent.  A man who has been taught from childhood
to regard with horror all innovation in religion is surely less
likely than another man to be a bold innovator in politics.  It
is probable that a zealous Roman Catholic, if there were no
disturbing cause, would be a Tory; and the Roman Catholics were
all Tories till you persecuted them into Whiggism and Radicalism.
In the civil war, how many Roman Catholics were there in
Fairfax's army?  I believe, not one.  They were all under the
banner of Charles the First.  When a reward of five thousand
pounds was offered for Charles the Second alive or dead, when to
conceal him was to run a most serious risk of the gallows, it was
among Roman Catholics that he found shelter.  It has been the
same in other countries.  When everything else in France was
prostrate before the Jacobins, the Roman Catholic peasantry of
Brittany and Poitou still stood up for the House of Bourbon.
Against the gigantic power of Napoleon, the Roman Catholic
peasantry of the Tyrol maintained unaided the cause of the House
of Hapsburg.  It would be easy to multiply examples.  And can we
believe, in defiance of all reason and of all history, that, if
the Roman Catholics of the United Kingdom had been tolerably well
governed, they would not have been attached to the Government?
In my opinion the Tories never committed so great an error as
when they scourged away and spurned away the Roman Catholics.  Mr
Burke understood this well.  The sentiment which, towards the
close of his life, held the entire possession of his mind, was a
horror,--a morbid horror it at last became,--of Jacobinism, and
of everything that seemed to him to tend towards Jacobinism, and,
like a great statesman and philosopher,--for such he was even in
his errors,--he perceived, and he taught Mr Pitt to perceive,
that, in the war against Jacobinism, the Roman Catholics were the
natural allies of royalty and aristocracy.  But the help of these
allies was contumeliously rejected by those politicians who make
themselves ridiculous by carousing on Mr Pitt's birthday, while
they abjure all Mr Pitt's principles.  The consequence is, as you
are forced to own, that there is not in the whole kingdom a Roman
Catholic of note who is your friend.  Therefore, whatever your
inclinations may be, you must intrust power in Ireland to
Protestants, to Ultra-Protestants, to men who, whether they
belong to Orange lodges or not, are in spirit Orangemen.  Every
appointment which you make increases the discontent of the Roman
Catholics.  The more discontented they are, the less you can
venture to employ them.  The way in which you treated them while
you were in opposition has raised in them such a dislike and
distrust of you that you cannot carry the Emancipation Act into
effect, though, as you tell us, and as I believe, you sincerely
desire to do so.  As respects the offices of which you dispose,
that Act is null and void.  Of all the boons which that Act
purports to bestow on Roman Catholics they really enjoy only one,
admission to Parliament:  and that they would not enjoy if you
had been able three years ago to carry your Irish Registration
Bill.  You have wounded national feeling:  you have wounded
religious feeling:  and the animosity which you have roused shows
itself in a hundred ways, some of which I abhor, some of which I
lament, but at none of which I can wonder.  They are the natural
effects of insult and injury on quick and ill regulated
sensibility.  You, for your own purposes, inflamed the public
mind of England against Ireland; and you have no right to be
surprised by finding that the public mind of Ireland is inflamed
against England.  You called a fourth part of the people of the
United Kingdom aliens:  and you must not blame them for feeling
and acting like aliens.  You have filled every public department
with their enemies.  What then could you expect but that they
would set up against your Lord Lieutenant and your official
hierarchy a more powerful chief and a more powerful organization
of their own?  They remember, and it would be strange indeed if
they had forgotten, what under the same chief, and by a similar
organization, they extorted from you in 1829; and they are
determined to try whether you are bolder and more obstinate now
than then.

Such are the difficulties of this crisis.  To a great extent they
are of your own making.  And what have you done in order to get
out of them?  Great statesmen have sometimes committed great
mistakes, and yet have by wisdom and firmness extricated
themselves from the embarrassments which those mistakes had
caused.  Let us see whether you are entitled to rank among such
statesmen.  And first, what,--commanding, as you do, a great
majority in this and in the other House of Parliament,--what have
you done in the way of legislation?  The answer is very short and
simple.  The beginning and end of all your legislation for
Ireland will be found in the Arms Act of last session.  You will
hardly call that conciliation; and I shall not call it coercion.
It was mere petty annoyance.  It satisfied nobody.  We called on
you to redress the wrongs of Ireland.  Many of your own friends
called on you to stifle her complaints.  One noble and learned
person was so much disgusted by your remissness that he employed
his own great abilities and his own valuable time in framing a
new coercion bill for you.  You were deaf alike to us and to him.
The whole fruit of your legislative wisdom was this one paltry
teasing police regulation.

Your executive administration through the whole recess has been
one long blunder.  The way in which your Lord Lieutenant and his
advisers acted about the Clontarf meeting would alone justify a
severe vote of censure.  The noble lord, the Secretary for the
Colonies (Lord Stanley.), has told us that the Government did all
that was possible to caution the people against attending that
meeting, and that it would be unreasonable to censure men for not
performing impossibilities.  Now, Sir, the ministers themselves
acknowledge that, as early as the morning of the Friday which
preceded the day fixed for the meeting, the Lord Lieutenant
determined to put forth a proclamation against the meeting.  Yet
the proclamation was not published in Dublin and the suburbs till
after nightfall on Saturday.  The meeting was fixed for the
Sunday morning.  Will any person have the hardihood to assert
that it was impossible to have a proclamation drawn up, printed
and circulated, in twenty-four hours, nay in six hours?  It is
idle to talk of the necessity of weighing well the words of such
a document.  The Lord Lieutenant should have weighed well the
value of the lives of his royal mistress's subjects.  Had he done
so, there can be no doubt that the proclamation might have been
placarded on every wall in and near Dublin early in the forenoon
of the Saturday.  The negligence of the Government would probably
have caused the loss of many lives but for the interposition of
the man whom you are persecuting.  Fortune stood your friend; and
he stood your friend; and thus a slaughter more terrible than
that which took place twenty-five years ago at Manchester was
averted.

But you were incorrigible.  No sooner had you, by strange good
luck, got out of one scrape, than you made haste to get into
another, out of which, as far as I can see, you have no chance of
escape.  You instituted the most unwise, the most unfortunate of
all state prosecutions.  You seem not to have at all known what
you were doing.  It appears never to have occurred to you that
there was any difference between a criminal proceeding which was
certain to fix the attention of the whole civilised world and an
ordinary qui tam action for a penalty.  The evidence was such and
the law such that you were likely to get a verdict and a
judgment; and that was enough for you.  Now, Sir, in such a case
as this, the probability of getting the verdict and the judgment
is only a part, and a very small part, of what a statesman ought
to consider.  Before you determined to bring the most able, the
most powerful, the most popular of your opponents to the bar as a
criminal, on account of the manner in which he had opposed you,
you ought to have asked yourselves whether the decision which you
expected to obtain from the tribunals would be ratified by the
voice of your own country, of foreign countries, of posterity;
whether the general opinion of mankind might not be that, though
you were legally in the right, you were morally in the wrong.  It
was no common person that you were bent on punishing.  About that
person I feel, I own, considerable difficulty in saying anything.
He is placed in a situation which would prevent generous enemies,
which has prevented all the members of this House, with one
ignominious exception, from assailing him acrimoniously.  I will
try, in speaking of him, to pay the respect due to eminence and
to misfortune without violating the respect due to truth.  I am
convinced that the end which he is pursuing is not only
mischievous but unattainable:  and some of the means which he has
stooped to use for the purpose of attaining that end I regard
with deep disapprobation.  But it is impossible for me not to see
that the place which he holds in the estimation of his countrymen
is such as no popular leader in our history, I might perhaps say
in the history of the world, has ever attained.  Nor is the
interest which he inspires confined to Ireland or to the United
Kingdom.  Go where you will on the Continent:  visit any coffee
house:  dine at any public table:  embark on board of any
steamboat:  enter any diligence, any railway carriage:  from the
moment that your accent shows you to be an Englishman, the very
first question asked by your companions, be they what they may,
physicians, advocates, merchants, manufacturers, or what we
should call yeomen, is certain to be "What will be done with Mr
O'Connell?"  Look over any file of French journals; and you will
see what a space he occupies in the eyes of the French people.
It is most unfortunate, but it is a truth, and a truth which we
ought always to bear in mind, that there is among our neighbours
a feeling about the connection between England and Ireland not
very much unlike the feeling which exists here about the
connection between Russia and Poland.  All the sympathies of all
continental politicians are with the Irish.  We are regarded as
the oppressors, and the Irish as the oppressed.  An insurrection
in Ireland would have the good wishes of a great majority of the
people of Europe.  And, Sir, it is natural that it should be so.
For the cause of the Irish repealers has two different aspects, a
democratic aspect, and a Roman Catholic aspect, and is therefore
regarded with favour by foreigners of almost every shade of
opinion.  The extreme left,--to use the French nomenclature,--
wishes success to a great popular movement against the throne and
the aristocracy.  The extreme right wishes success to a movement
headed by the bishops and priests of the true Church against a
heretical government and a heretical hierarchy.  The consequence
is that, in a contest with Ireland, you will not have, out of
this island, a single well-wisher in the world.  I do not say
this in order to intimidate you.  But I do say that, on an
occasion on which all Christendom was watching your conduct with
an unfriendly and suspicious eye, you should have carefully
avoided everything that looked like foul play.  Unhappily you
were too much bent on gaining the victory; and you have gained a
victory more disgraceful and disastrous than any defeat.  Mr
O'Connell has been convicted:  but you cannot deny that he has
been wronged:  you cannot deny that irregularities have been
committed, or that the effect of those irregularities has been to
put you in a better situation and him in a worse situation than
the law contemplated.  It is admitted that names which ought to
have been in the jury-list were not there.  It is admitted that
all, or almost all, the names which were wrongfully excluded were
the names of Roman Catholics.  As to the number of those who were
wrongfully excluded there is some dispute.  An affidavit has been
produced which puts the number at twenty-seven.  The right
honourable gentleman, the Recorder of Dublin, who of course puts
the number as low as he conscientiously can, admits twenty-four.
But some gentlemen maintain that this irregularity, though
doubtless blamable, cannot have had any effect on the event of
the trial.  What, they ask, are twenty or twenty-seven names in
seven hundred and twenty?  Why, Sir, a very simple arithmetical
calculation will show that the irregularity was of grave
importance.  Of the seven hundred and twenty, forty-eight were to
be selected by lot, and then reduced by alternate striking to
twelve.  The forty-eighth part of seven hundred and twenty is
fifteen.  If, therefore, there had been fifteen more Roman
Catholics in the jury-list, it would have been an even chance
that there would have been one Roman Catholic more among the
forty-eight.  If there had been twenty-seven more Roman Catholics
in the list, it would have been almost an even chance that there
would have been two Roman Catholics more among the forty-eight.
Is it impossible, is it improbable that, but for this trick or
this blunder,--I will not now inquire which,--the result of the
trial might have been different?  For, remember the power which
the law gives to a single juror.  He can, if his mind is fully
made up, prevent a conviction.  I heard murmurs when I used the
word trick.  Am I not justified in feeling a doubt which it is
quite evident that Mr Justice Perrin feels?  He is reported to
have said,--and I take the report of newspapers favourable to the
Government,--he is reported to have said that there had been
great carelessness, great neglect of duty, that there were
circumstances which raised grave suspicion, and that he was not
prepared to say that the irregularity was accidental.  The noble
lord the Secretary for the Colonies has admonished us to pay
respect to the judges.  I am sure that I pay the greatest respect
to everything that falls from Mr Justice Perrin.  He must know
much better than I, much better than any Englishman, what
artifices are likely to be employed by Irish functionaries for
the purpose of packing a jury; and he tells us that he is not
satisfied that this irregularity was the effect of mere
inadvertence.  But, says the right honourable Baronet, the
Secretary for the Home Department, "I am not responsible for this
irregularity."  Most true:  and nobody holds the right honourable
Baronet responsible for it.  But he goes on to say, "I lament
this irregularity most sincerely:  for I believe that it has
raised a prejudice against the administration of justice."
Exactly so.  That is just what I say.  I say that a prejudice has
been created against the administration of justice.  I say that a
taint of suspicion has been thrown on the verdict which you have
obtained.  And I ask whether it is right and decent in you to
avail yourselves of a verdict on which such a taint has been
thrown?  The only wise, the only honourable course open to you
was to say, "A mistake has been committed:  that mistake has
given us an unfair advantage; and of that advantage we will not
make use."  Unhappily, the time when you might have taken this
course, and might thus to a great extent have repaired your
former errors, has been suffered to elapse.

Well, you had forty-eight names taken by lot from this mutilated
jury-list:  and then came the striking.  You struck out all the
Roman Catholic names:  and you give us your reasons for striking
out these names, reasons which I do not think it worth while to
examine.  The real question which you should have considered was
this:  Can a great issue between two hostile religions,--for such
the issue was,--be tried in a manner above all suspicion by a
jury composed exclusively of men of one of those religions?  I
know that in striking out the Roman Catholics you did nothing
that was not according to technical rules.  But my great charge
against you is that you have looked on this whole case in a
technical point of view, that you have been attorneys when you
should have been statesmen.  The letter of the law was doubtless
with you; but not the noble spirit of the law.  The jury de
medietate linguae is of immemorial antiquity among us.  Suppose
that a Dutch sailor at Wapping is accused of stabbing an
Englishman in a brawl.  The fate of the culprit is decided by a
mixed body, by six Englishmen and six Dutchmen.  Such were the
securities which the wisdom and justice of our ancestors gave to
aliens.  You are ready enough to call Mr O'Connell an alien when
it serves your purposes to do so.  You are ready enough to
inflict on the Irish Roman Catholic all the evils of alienage.
But the one privilege, the one advantage of alienage, you deny
him.  In a case which of all cases most require a jury de
medietate, in a case which sprang out of the mutual hostility of
races and sects, you pack a jury all of one race and all of one
sect.  Why, if you were determined to go on with this unhappy
prosecution, not have a common jury?  There was no difficulty in
having such a jury; and among the jurors might have been some
respectable Roman Catholics who were not members of the Repeal
Association.  A verdict of Not Guilty from such a jury would have
done you infinitely less harm than the verdict of Guilty which
you have succeeded in obtaining.  Yes, you have obtained a
verdict of Guilty; but you have obtained that verdict from twelve
men brought together by illegal means, and selected in such a
manner that their decision can inspire no confidence.  You have
obtained that verdict by the help of a Chief Justice of whose
charge I can hardly trust myself to speak.  To do him right,
however, I will say that his charge was not, as it has been
called, unprecedented; for it bears a very close resemblance to
some charges which may be found in the state trials of the reign
of Charles the Second.  However, with this jury-list, with this
jury, with this judge, you have a verdict.  And what have you
gained by it?  Have you pacified Ireland?  No doubt there is just
at the present moment an apparent tranquillity; but it is a
tranquillity more alarming than turbulence.  The Irish will be
quiet till you begin to put the sentence of imprisonment into
execution, because, feeling the deepest interest in the fate of
their persecuted Tribune, they will do nothing that can be
prejudicial to him.  But will they be quiet when the door of a
gaol has been closed on him?  Is it possible to believe that an
agitator, whom they adored while his agitation was a source of
profit to him, will lose his hold on their affections by being a
martyr in what they consider as their cause?  If I, who am
strongly attached to the Union, who believe that the Repeal of
the Union would be fatal to the empire, and who think Mr
O'Connell's conduct highly reprehensible, cannot conscientiously
say that he has had a fair trial, if the prosecutors themselves
are forced to own that things have happened which have excited a
prejudice against the verdict and the judgment, what must be the
feelings of the people of Ireland, who believe not merely that he
is guiltless, but that he is the best friend that they ever had?
He will no longer be able to harangue them:  but his wrongs will
stir their blood more than his eloquence ever did; nor will he in
confinement be able to exercise that influence which has so often
restrained them, even in their most excited mood, from proceeding
to acts of violence.

Turn where we will, the prospect is gloomy; and that which of all
things most disturbs me is this, that your experience, sharp as
it has been, does not seem to have made you wiser.  All that I
have been able to collect from your declarations leads me to
apprehend that, while you continue to hold power, the future will
be of a piece with the past.  As to your executive
administration, you hold out no hope that it will be other than
it has been.  If we look back, your only remedies for the
disorders of Ireland have been an impolitic state prosecution, an
unfair state trial, barracks and soldiers.  If we look forward,
you promise us no remedies but an unjust sentence, the harsh
execution of that sentence, more barracks and more soldiers.

You do indeed try to hold out hopes of one or two legislative
reforms beneficial to Ireland; but these hopes, I am afraid, will
prove delusive.  You hint that you have prepared a Registration
bill, of which the effect will be to extend the elective
franchise.  What the provisions of that bill may be we do not
know.  But this we know, that the matter is one about which it is
utterly impossible for you to do anything that shall be at once
honourable to yourselves and useful to the country.  Before we
see your plan, we can say with perfect confidence that it must
either destroy the last remnant of the representative system in
Ireland, or the last remnant of your own character for
consistency.

About the much agitated question of land tenure you acknowledge
that you have at present nothing to propose.  We are to have a
report, but you cannot tell us when.

The Irish Church, as at present constituted and endowed, you are
fully determined to uphold.  On some future occasion, I hope to
be able to explain at large my views on that subject.  To-night I
have exhausted my own strength, and I have exhausted also, I am
afraid, the kind indulgence of the House.  I will therefore only
advert very briefly to some things which have been said about the
Church in the course of the present debate.

Several gentlemen opposite have spoken of the religious discord
which is the curse of Ireland in language which does them honour;
and I am only sorry that we are not to have their votes as well
as their speeches.  But from the Treasury bench we have heard
nothing but this, that the Established Church is there, and that
there it must and shall remain.  As to the speech of the noble
lord the Secretary for the Colonies, really when we hear such a
pitiable defence of a great institution from a man of such
eminent abilities, what inference can we draw but that the
institution is altogether indefensible?  The noble lord tells us
that the Roman Catholics, in 1757, when they were asking to be
relieved from the penal laws, and in 1792, when they were asking
to be relieved from civil disabilities, professed to be quite
willing that the Established Church should retain its endowments.
What is it to us, Sir, whether they did or not?  If you can prove
this Church to be a good institution, of course it ought to be
maintained.  But do you mean to say that a bad institution ought
to be maintained because some people who have been many years in
their graves said that they did not complain of it?  What if the
Roman Catholics of the present generation hold a different
language on this subject from the Roman Catholics of the last
generation?  Is this inconsistency, which appears to shock the
noble lord, anything but the natural and inevitable progress of
all reform?  People who are oppressed, and who have no hope of
obtaining entire justice, beg to be relieved from the most
galling part of what they suffer.  They assure the oppressor that
if he will only relax a little of his severity they shall be
quite content; and perhaps, at the time, they believe that they
shall be content.  But are expressions of this sort, are mere
supplications uttered under duress, to estop every person who
utters them, and all his posterity to the end of time, from
asking for entire justice?  Am I debarred from trying to recover
property of which I have been robbed, because, when the robber's
pistol was at my breast, I begged him to take everything that I
had and to spare my life?  The noble lord knows well that, while
the slave trade existed, the great men who exerted themselves to
put an end to that trade disclaimed all thought of emancipating
the negroes.  In those days, Mr Pitt, Mr Fox, Lord Grenville,
Lord Grey, and even my dear and honoured friend of whom I can
never speak without emotion, Mr Wilberforce, always said that it
was a calumny to accuse them of intending to liberate the black
population of the sugar islands.  In 1807 the present Duke of
Northumberland, then Lord Percy, in the generous enthusiasm of
youth, rose to propose in this House the abolition of slavery.
Mr Wilberforce interposed, nay, I believe, almost pulled Lord
Percy down.  Nevertheless in 1833 the noble lord the Secretary
for the Colonies brought in a bill to abolish slavery.  Suppose
that when he resumed his seat, after making that most eloquent
speech in which he explained his plan to us, some West Indian
planter had risen, and had said that in 1792, in 1796, in 1807,
all the leading philanthropists had solemnly declared that they
had no intention of emancipating the negroes; would not the noble
lord have answered that nothing that had been said by anybody in
1792 or 1807 could bind us not to do what was right in 1833?

This is not the only point on which the noble lord's speech is
quite at variance with his own conduct.  He appeals to the fifth
article of the Treaty of Union.  He says that, if we touch the
revenues and privileges of the Established Church, we shall
violate that article; and to violate an article of the Treaty of
Union is, it seems, a breach of public faith of which he cannot
bear to think.  But, Sir, why is the fifth article to be held
more sacred than the fourth, which fixes the number of Irish
members who are to sit in this House?  The fourth article, we all
know, has been altered.  And who brought in the bill which
altered that article?  The noble lord himself.

Then the noble lord adverts to the oath taken by Roman Catholic
members of this House.  They bind themselves, he says, not to use
their power for the purpose of injuring the Established Church.
I am sorry that the noble lord is not at this moment in the
House.  Had he been here I should have made some remarks which I
now refrain from making on one or two expressions which fell from
him.  But, Sir, let us allow to his argument all the weight which
he can himself claim for it.  What does it prove?  Not that the
Established Church of Ireland is a good institution; not that it
ought to be maintained; but merely this, that, when we are about
to divide on the question whether it shall be maintained, the
Roman Catholic members ought to walk away to the library.  The
oath which they have taken is nothing to me and to the other
Protestant members who have not taken it.  Suppose then our Roman
Catholic friends withdrawn.  Suppose that we, the six hundred and
twenty or thirty Protestant members remain in the House.  Then
there is an end of this argument about the oath.  Will the noble
lord then be able to give us any reason for maintaining the
Church of Ireland on the present footing?

I hope, Sir, that the right honourable Baronet the first Lord of
the Treasury will not deal with this subject as his colleagues
have dealt with it.  We have a right to expect that a man of his
capacity, placed at the head of government, will attempt to
defend the Irish Church in a manly and rational way.  I would beg
him to consider these questions:--For what ends do Established
Churches exist?  Does the Established Church of Ireland
accomplish those ends or any one of those ends?  Can an
Established Church which has no hold on the hearts of the body of
the people be otherwise than useless, or worse than useless?  Has
the Established Church of Ireland any hold on the hearts of the
body of the people?  Has it been successful in making proselytes?
Has it been what the Established Church of England has been with
justice called, what the Established Church of Scotland was once
with at least equal justice called, the poor man's Church?  Has
it trained the great body of the people to virtue, consoled them
in affliction, commanded their reverence, attached them to itself
and to the State?  Show that these questions can be answered in
the affirmative; and you will have made, what I am sure has never
yet been made, a good defence of the Established Church of
Ireland.  But it is mere mockery to bring us quotations from
forgotten speeches, and from mouldy petitions presented to George
the Second at a time when the penal laws were still in full
force.

And now, Sir, I must stop.  I have said enough to justify the
vote which I shall give in favour of the motion of my noble
friend.  I have shown, unless I deceive myself, that the
extraordinary disorders which now alarm us in Ireland have been
produced by the fatal policy of the Government.  I have shown
that the mode in which the Government is now dealing with those
disorders is far more likely to inflame than to allay them.
While this system lasts, Ireland can never be tranquil; and till
Ireland is tranquil, England can never hold her proper place
among the nations of the world.  To the dignity, to the strength,
to the safety of this great country, internal peace is
indispensably necessary.  In every negotiation, whether with
France on the right of search, or with America on the line of
boundary, the fact that Ireland is discontented is uppermost in
the minds of the diplomatists on both sides, making the
representative of the British Crown timorous, and making his
adversary bold.  And no wonder.  This is indeed a great and
splendid empire, well provided with the means both of annoyance
and of defence.  England can do many things which are beyond the
power of any other nation in the world.  She has dictated peace
to China.  She rules Caffraria and Australasia.  She could again
sweep from the ocean all commerce but her own.  She could again
blockade every port from the Baltic to the Adriatic.  She is able
to guard her vast Indian dominions against all hostility by land
or sea.  But in this gigantic body there is one vulnerable spot
near to the heart.  At that spot forty-six years ago a blow was
aimed which narrowly missed, and which, if it had not missed,
might have been deadly.  The government and the legislature, each
in its own sphere, is deeply responsible for the continuance of a
state of things which is fraught with danger to the State.  From
my share of that responsibility I shall clear myself by the vote
which I am about to give; and I trust that the number and the
respectability of those in whose company I shall go into the
lobby will be such as to convince the Roman Catholics of Ireland
that they need not yet relinquish all hope of obtaining relief
from the wisdom and justice of an Imperial Parliament.

...


DISSENTERS' CHAPELS BILL.  (JUNE 6, 1844)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 6TH OF JUNE
1844.

An attempt having been made to deprive certain dissenting
congregations of property which they had long enjoyed, on the
ground that they did not hold the same religious opinions that
had been held by the purchasers from whom they derived their
title to that property, the Government of Sir Robert Peel brought
in a bill fixing a time of limitation in such cases.  The time
fixed was twenty-five years.

The bill, having passed the Lords, came down to the House of
Commons.  On the sixth of June 1844, the second reading was moved
by the Attorney General, Sir William Follett.  Sir Robert Inglis,
Member for the University of Oxford, moved that the bill should
be read a second time that day six months:  and the amendment was
seconded by Mr Plumptre, Member for Kent.  Early in the debate
the following Speech was made.

The second reading was carried by 307 votes to 117.

If, Sir, I should unhappily fail in preserving that tone in which
the question before us ought to be debated, it will assuredly not
be for want either of an example or of a warning.  The honourable
and learned Member who moved the second reading has furnished me
with a model which I cannot too closely imitate; and from the
honourable Member for Kent, if I can learn nothing else, I may at
least learn what temper and what style I ought most carefully to
avoid.

I was very desirous, Sir, to catch your eye, not because I was so
presumptuous as to hope that I should be able to add much to the
powerful and luminous argument of the honourable and learned
gentleman who has, to our great joy, again appeared among us to-
night; but because I thought it desirable that, at an early
period in the debate, some person whose seat is on this side of
the House, some person strongly opposed to the policy of the
present Government, should say, what I now say with all my heart,
that this is a bill highly honourable to the Government, a bill
framed on the soundest principles, and evidently introduced from
the best and purest motives.  This praise is a tribute due to Her
Majesty's Ministers; and I have great pleasure in paying it.

I have great pleasure also in bearing my testimony to the
humanity, the moderation, and the decorum with which my
honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford has
expressed his sentiments.  I must particularly applaud the
resolution which he announced, and to which he strictly adhered,
of treating this question as a question of meum and tuum, and not
as a question of orthodoxy and heterodoxy.  With him it is
possible to reason.  But how am I to reason with the honourable
Member for Kent, who has made a speech without one fact, one
argument, one shadow of an argument, a speech made up of nothing
but vituperation?  I grieve to say that the same bitterness of
theological animosity which characterised that speech may be
discerned in too many of the petitions with which, as he boasts,
our table has been heaped day after day.  The honourable Member
complains that those petitions have not been treated with proper
respect.  Sir, they have been treated with much more respect than
they deserved.  He asks why we are to suppose that the
petitioners are not competent to form a judgment on this
question?  My answer is, that they have certified their
incompetence under their own hands.  They have, with scarcely one
exception, treated this question as a question of divinity,
though it is purely a question of property:  and when I see men
treat a question of property as if it were a question of
divinity, I am certain that, however numerous they may be, their
opinion is entitled to no consideration.  If the persons whom
this bill is meant to relieve are orthodox, that is no reason for
our plundering anybody else in order to enrich them.  If they are
heretics, that is no reason for our plundering them in order to
enrich others.  I should not think myself justified in supporting
this bill, if I could not with truth declare that, whatever sect
had been in possession of these chapels, my conduct would have
been precisely the same.  I have no peculiar sympathy with
Unitarians.  If these people, instead of being Unitarians, had
been Roman Catholics, or Wesleyan Methodists, or General
Baptists, or Particular Baptists, or members of the Old Secession
Church of Scotland, or members of the Free Church of Scotland, I
should speak as I now speak, and vote as I now mean to vote.

Sir, the whole dispute is about the second clause of this bill.
I can hardly conceive that any gentleman will vote against the
bill on account of the error in the marginal note on the third
clause.  To the first clause my honourable friend the Member for
the University of Oxford said, if I understood him rightly, that
he had no objection; and indeed a man of his integrity and
benevolence could hardly say less after listening to the lucid
and powerful argument of the Attorney General.  It is therefore
on the second clause that the whole question turns.

The second clause, Sir, rests on a principle simple, well-known,
and most important to the welfare of all classes of the
community.  That principle is this, that prescription is a good
title to property, that there ought to be a time of limitation,
after which a possessor, in whatever way his possession may have
originated, must not be dispossessed.  Till very lately, Sir, I
could not have imagined that, in any assembly of reasonable,
civilised, of educated men, it could be necessary for me to stand
up in defence of that principle.  I should have thought it as
much a waste of the public time to make a speech on such a
subject as to make a speech against burning witches, against
trying writs of right by wager of battle, or against requiring a
culprit to prove his innocence by walking over red-hot
ploughshares.  But I find that I was in error.  Certain sages,
lately assembled in conclave at Exeter Hall, have done me the
honour to communicate to me the fruits of their profound
meditations on the science of legislation.  They have, it seems,
passed a resolution declaring that the principle, which I had
supposed that no man out of Bedlam would ever question, is an
untenable principle, and altogether unworthy of a British
Parliament.  They have been pleased to add, that the present
Government cannot, without gross inconsistency, call on
Parliament to pass a statute of limitation.  And why?  Will the
House believe it?  Because the present Government has appointed
two new Vice Chancellors.

Really, Sir, I do not know whether the opponents of this bill
shine more as logicians or as jurists.  Standing here as the
advocate of prescription, I ought not to forget that prescriptive
right of talking nonsense which gentlemen who stand on the
platform of Exeter Hall are undoubtedly entitled to claim.  But,
though I recognise the right, I cannot but think that it may be
abused, and that it has been abused on the present occasion.  One
thing at least is clear, that, if Exeter Hall be in the right,
all the masters of political philosophy, all the great
legislators, all the systems of law by which men are and have
been governed in all civilised countries, from the earliest
times, must be in the wrong.  How indeed can any society prosper,
or even exist, without the aid of this untenable principle, this
principle unworthy of a British legislature?  This principle was
found in the Athenian law.  This principle was found in the Roman
law.  This principle was found in the laws of all those nations
of which the jurisprudence was derived from Rome.  This principle
was found in the law administered by the Parliament of Paris;
and, when that Parliament and the law which it administered had
been swept away by the revolution, this principle reappeared in
the Code Napoleon.  Go westward, and you find this principle
recognised beyond the Mississippi.  Go eastward, and you find it
recognised beyond the Indus, in countries which never heard the
name of Justinian, in countries to which no translation of the
Pandects ever found its way.  Look into our own laws, and you
will see that the principle, which is now designated as unworthy
of Parliament, has guided Parliament ever since Parliament
existed.  Our first statute of limitation was enacted at Merton,
by men some of whom had borne a part in extorting the Great
Charter and the Forest Charter from King John.  From that time to
this it has been the study of a succession of great lawyers and
statesmen to make the limitation more and more stringent.  The
Crown and the Church indeed were long exempted from the general
rule.  But experience fully proved that every such exemption was
an evil; and a remedy was at last applied.  Sir George Savile,
the model of English country gentlemen, was the author of the Act
which barred the claims of the Crown.  That eminent magistrate,
the late Lord Tenterden, was the author of the Act which barred
the claims of the Church.  Now, Sir, how is it possible to
believe that the Barons, whose seals are upon our Great Charter,
would have perfectly agreed with the great jurists who framed the
Code of Justinian, with the great jurists who framed the Code of
Napoleon, with the most learned English lawyers of the nineteenth
century, and with the Pundits of Benares, unless there had been
some strong and clear reason which necessarily led men of sense
in every age and country to the same conclusion?  Nor is it
difficult to see what the reason was.  For it is evident that the
principle which silly and ignorant fanatics have called untenable
is essential to the institution of property, and that, if you
take away that principle, you will produce evils resembling those
which would be produced by a general confiscation.  Imagine what
would follow if the maxims of Exeter Hall were introduced into
Westminster Hall.  Imagine a state of things in which one of us
should be liable to be sued on a bill of exchange indorsed by his
grandfather in 1760.  Imagine a man possessed of an estate and
manor house which had descended to him through ten or twelve
generations of ancestors, and yet liable to be ejected because
some flaw had been detected in a deed executed three hundred
years ago, in the reign of Henry the Eighth.  Why, Sir, should we
not all cry out that it would be better to live under the rule of
a Turkish Pasha than under such a system.  Is it not plain that
the enforcing of an obsolete right is the inflicting of a wrong?
Is it not plain that, but for our statutes of limitation, a
lawsuit would be merely a grave, methodical robbery?  I am
ashamed to argue a point so clear.

And if this be the general rule, why should the case which we are
now considering be an exception to that rule?  I have done my
best to understand why.  I have read much bad oratory, and many
foolish petitions.  I have heard with attention the reasons of my
honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford; and I
should have heard the reasons of the honourable Member for Kent,
if there had been any to hear.  Every argument by which my
honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford tried
to convince us that this case is an exception to the general
rule, will be found on examination to be an argument against the
general rule itself.  He says that the possession which we
propose to sanction was originally a wrongful possession.  Why,
Sir, all the statutes of limitation that ever were made sanction
possession which was originally wrongful.  It is for the
protection of possessors who are not in condition to prove that
their possession was originally rightful that statutes of
limitation are passed.  Then my honourable friend says that this
is an ex post facto law.  Why, Sir, so are all our great statutes
of limitation.  Look at the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235; at
the Statute of Westminster, passed in 1275; at the Statute of
James the First, passed in 1623; at Sir George Savile's Act,
passed in the last century; at Lord Tenterden's Act, passed in
our own time.  Every one of those Acts was retrospective.  Every
one of them barred claims arising out of past transactions.  Nor
was any objection ever raised to what was so evidently just and
wise, till bigotry and chicanery formed that disgraceful league
against which we are now contending.  But, it is said, it is
unreasonable to grant a boon to men because they have been many
years doing wrong.  The length of the time during which they have
enjoyed property not rightfully their own, is an aggravation of
the injury which they have committed, and is so far from being a
reason for letting them enjoy that property for ever, that it is
rather a reason for compelling them to make prompt restitution.
With this childish sophistry the petitions on our table are
filled.  Is it possible that any man can be so dull as not to
perceive that, if this be a reason, it is a reason against all
our statutes of limitation?  I do a greater wrong to my tailor if
I withhold payment of his bill during six years than if I
withhold payment only during two years.  Yet the law says that at
the end of two years he may bring an action and force me to pay
him with interest, but that after the lapse of six years he
cannot force me to pay him at all.  It is much harder that a
family should be kept out of its hereditary estate during five
generations than during five days.  But if you are kept out of
your estate five days you have your action of ejectment; and,
after the lapse of five generations, you have no remedy.  I say,
therefore, with confidence, that every argument which has been
urged against this bill is an argument against the great
principle of prescription.  I go further, and I say that, if
there be any case which, in an especial manner, calls for the
application of the principle of prescription, this is that case.
For the Unitarian congregations have laid out so much on these
little spots of ground that it is impossible to take the soil
from them without taking from them property which is of much
greater value than the mere soil, and which is indisputably their
own.  This is not the case of a possessor who has been during
many years, receiving great emoluments from land to which he had
not a good title.  It is the case of a possessor who has, from
resources which were undoubtedly his own, expended on the land
much more than it was originally worth.  Even in the former case,
it has been the policy of all wise lawgivers to fix a time of
limitation.  A fortiori, therefore, there ought to be a time of
limitation in the latter case.

And here, Sir, I cannot help asking gentlemen to compare the
petitions for this bill with the petitions against it.  Never was
there such a contrast.  The petitions against the bill are filled
with cant, rant, scolding, scraps of bad sermons.  The petitions
in favour of the bill set forth in the simplest manner great
practical grievances.  Take, for instance, the case of
Cirencester.  The meeting house there was built in 1730.  It is
certain that the Unitarian doctrines were taught there as early
as 1742.  That was only twelve years after the chapel had been
founded.  Many of the original subscribers must have been living.
Many of the present congregation are lineal descendants of the
original subscribers.  Large sums have from time to time been
laid out in repairing, enlarging, and embellishing the edifice;
and yet there are people who think it just and reasonable that
this congregation should, after the lapse of more than a century,
be turned out.  At Norwich, again, a great dissenting meeting
house was opened in 1688.  It is not easy to say how soon Anti-
Trinitarian doctrines were taught there.  The change of sentiment
in the congregation seems to have been gradual:  but it is quite
certain that, in 1754, ninety years ago, both pastor and flock
were decidedly Unitarian.  Round the chapel is a cemetery filled
with the monuments of eminent Unitarians.  Attached to the chapel
are a schoolhouse and a library, built and fitted up by
Unitarians.  And now the occupants find that their title is
disputed.  They cannot venture to build; they cannot venture to
repair; and they are anxiously awaiting our decision.  I do not
know that I have cited the strongest cases.  I am giving you the
ordinary history of these edifices.  Go to Manchester.
Unitarianism has been taught there at least seventy years in a
chapel on which the Unitarians have expended large sums.  Go to
Leeds.  Four thousand pounds have been subscribed for the
repairing of the Unitarian chapel there, the chapel where, near
eighty years ago, Priestly, the great Doctor of the sect,
officiated.  But these four thousand pounds are lying idle.  Not
a pew can be repaired till it is known whether this bill will
become law.  Go to Maidstone.  There Unitarian doctrines have
been taught during at least seventy years; and seven hundred
pounds have recently been laid out by the congregation in
repairing the chapel.  Go to Exeter.  It matters not where you
go.  But go to Exeter.  There Unitarian doctrines have been
preached more than eighty years; and two thousand pounds have
been laid out on the chapel.  It is the same at Coventry, at
Bath, at Yarmouth, everywhere.  And will a British Parliament rob
the possessors of these buildings?  I can use no other word.  How
should we feel if it were proposed to deprive any other class of
men of land held during so long a time, and improved at so large
a cost?  And, if this property should be transferred to those who
covet it, what would they gain in comparison with what the
present occupants would lose?  The pulpit of Priestley, the
pulpit of Lardner, are objects of reverence to congregations
which hold the tenets of Priestley and Lardner.  To the intruders
those pulpits will be nothing; nay, worse than nothing; memorials
of heresiarchs.  Within these chapels and all around them are the
tablets which the pious affection of four generations has placed
over the remains of dear mothers and sisters, wives and
daughters, of eloquent preachers, of learned theological writers.
To the Unitarian, the building which contains these memorials is
a hallowed building.  To the intruder it is of no more value than
any other room in which he can find a bench to sit on and a roof
to cover him.  If, therefore, we throw out this bill, we do not
merely rob one set of people in order to make a present to
another set.  That would be bad enough.  But we rob the
Unitarians of that which they regard as a most precious treasure;
of that which is endeared to them by the strongest religious and
the strongest domestic associations; of that which cannot be
wrenched from them without inflicting on them the bitterest pain
and humiliation.  To the Trinitarians we give that which can to
them be of little or no value except as a trophy of a most
inglorious victory won in a most unjust war.

But, Sir, an imputation of fraud has been thrown on the
Unitarians; not, indeed, here, but in many other places, and in
one place of which I would always wish to speak with respect.
The Unitarians, it has been said, knew that the original founders
of these chapels were Trinitarians; and to use, for the purpose
of propagating Unitarian doctrine, a building erected for the
purpose of propagating Trinitarian doctrine was grossly
dishonest.  One very eminent person (The Bishop of London.) has
gone so far as to maintain that the Unitarians cannot pretend to
any prescription of more than sixty-three years; and he proves
his point thus:--Till the year 1779, he says, no dissenting
teacher was within the protection of the Toleration Act unless he
subscribed those articles of the Church of England which affirm
the Athanasian doctrine.  It is evident that no honest Unitarian
can subscribe those articles.  The inference is, that the persons
who preached in these chapels down to the year 1779 must have
been either Trinitarians or rogues.  Now, Sir, I believe that
they were neither Trinitarians nor rogues; and I cannot help
suspecting that the great prelate who brought this charge against
them is not so well read in the history of the nonconformist
sects as in the history of that Church of which he is an
ornament.  The truth is that, long before the year 1779, the
clause of the Toleration Act which required dissenting ministers
to subscribe thirty-five or thirty-six of our thirty-nine
articles had almost become obsolete.  Indeed, that clause had
never been rigidly enforced.  From the very first there were some
dissenting ministers who refused to subscribe, and yet continued
to preach.  Calany was one; and he was not molested.  And if this
could be done in the year in which the Toleration Act passed, we
may easily believe that, at a later period, the law would not
have been very strictly observed.  New brooms, as the vulgar
proverb tells us, sweep clean; and no statute is so rigidly
enforced as a statute just made.  But, Sir, so long ago as the
year 1711, the provisions of the Toleration Act on this subject
were modified.  In that year the Whigs, in order to humour Lord
Nottingham, with whom they had coalesced against Lord Oxford,
consented to let the Occasional Conformity Bill pass; but they
insisted on inserting in the bill a clause which was meant to
propitiate the dissenters.  By this clause it was enacted that,
if an information were laid against a dissenting minister for
having omitted to subscribe the articles, the defendant might, by
subscribing at any stage of the proceedings anterior to the
judgment, defeat the information, and throw all the costs on the
informer.  The House will easily believe that, when such was the
state of the law, informers were not numerous.  Indeed, during
the discussions of 1773, it was distinctly affirmed, both in
Parliament and in manifestoes put forth by the dissenting body,
that the majority of nonconformist ministers then living had
never subscribed.  All arguments, therefore, grounded on the
insincerity which has been rashly imputed to the Unitarians of
former generations, fall at once to the ground.

But, it is said, the persons who, in the reigns of James the
Second, of William the Third, and of Anne, first established
these chapels, held the doctrine of the Trinity; and therefore,
when, at a later period, the preachers and congregations departed
from the doctrine of the Trinity, they ought to have departed
from the chapels too.  The honourable and learned gentleman, the
Attorney General, has refuted this argument so ably that he has
scarcely left anything for me to say about it.  It is well-known
that the change which, soon after the Revolution, began to take
place in the opinions of a section of the old Puritan body, was a
gradual, an almost imperceptible change.  The principle of the
English Presbyterians was to have no confession of faith and no
form of prayer.  Their trust deeds contained no accurate
theological definitions.  Nonsubscription was in truth the very
bond which held them together.  What, then, could be more natural
than that, Sunday by Sunday, the sermons should have become less
and less like those of the old Calvinistic divines, that the
doctrine of the Trinity should have been less and less frequently
mentioned, that at last it should have ceased to be mentioned,
and that thus, in the course of years, preachers and hearers
should, by insensible degrees, have become first Arians, then,
perhaps, Socinians.  I know that this explanation has been
treated with disdain by people profoundly ignorant of the history
of English nonconformity.  I see that my right honourable friend
near me (Mr Fox Maule.) does not assent to it.  Will he permit me
to refer him to an analogous case with which he cannot but be
well acquainted?  No person in the House is more versed than he
in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland; and he will, I am
sure, admit that some of the doctrines now professed by the
Scotch sects which sprang from the secessions of 1733 and 1760
are such as the seceders of 1733 and the seceders of 1760 would
have regarded with horror.  I have talked with some of the
ablest, most learned, and most pious of the Scotch dissenters of
our time; and they all fully admitted that they held more than
one opinion which their predecessors would have considered as
impious.  Take the question of the connection between Church and
State.  The seceders of 1733 thought that the connection ought to
be much closer than it is.  They blamed the legislature for
tolerating heresy.  They maintained that the Solemn league and
covenant was still binding on the kingdom.  They considered it as
a national sin that the validity of the Solemn League and
Covenant was not recognised at the time of the Revolution.  When
George Whitfield went to Scotland, though they approved of his
Calvinistic opinions, and though they justly admired that natural
eloquence which he possessed in so wonderful a degree, they would
hold no communion with him because he would not subscribe the
Solemn League and Covenant.  Is that the doctrine of their
successors?  Are the Scotch dissenters now averse to toleration?
Are they not zealous for the voluntary system?  Is it not their
constant cry that it is not the business of the civil magistrate
to encourage any religion, false or true?  Does any Bishop now
abhor the Solemn League and Covenant more than they?  Here is an
instance in which numerous congregations have, retaining their
identity, passed gradually from one opinion to another opinion.
And would it be just, would it be decent in me, to impute
dishonesty to them on that account?  My right honourable friend
may be of opinion that the question touching the connection
between the Church and State is not a vital question.  But was
that the opinion of the divines who drew up the Secession
Testimony?  He well knows that in their view a man who denied
that it was the duty of the government to defend religious truth
with the civil sword was as much a heretic as a man who denied
the doctrine of the Trinity.

Again, Sir, take the case of the Wesleyan Methodists.  They are
zealous against this bill.  They think it monstrous that a chapel
originally built for people holding one set of doctrines should
be occupied by people holding a different set of doctrines.  I
would advise them to consider whether they cannot find in the
history of their own body reasons for being a little more
indulgent.  What were the opinions of that great and good man,
their founder, on the question whether men not episcopally
ordained could lawfully administer the Eucharist?  He told his
followers that lay administration was a sin which he never could
tolerate.  Those were the very words which he used; and I believe
that, during his lifetime, the Eucharist never was administered
by laymen in any place of worship which was under his control.
After his death, however, the feeling in favour of lay
administration became strong and general among his disciples.
The Conference yielded to that feeling.  The consequence is that
now, in every chapel which belonged to Wesley, those who glory in
the name of Wesleyans commit, every Sacrament Sunday, what Wesley
declared to be a sin which he would never tolerate.  And yet
these very persons are not ashamed to tell us in loud and angry
tones that it is fraud, downright fraud, in a congregation which
has departed from its original doctrines to retain its original
endowments.  I believe, Sir, that, if you refuse to pass this
bill, the Courts of Law will soon have to decide some knotty
questions which, as yet, the Methodists little dream of.

It has, I own, given me great pain to observe the unfair and
acrimonious manner in which too many of the Protestant
nonconformists have opposed this bill.  The opposition of the
Established Church has been comparatively mild and moderate; and
yet from the Established Church we had less right to expect
mildness and moderation.  It is certainly not right, but it is
very natural, that a church, ancient and richly endowed, closely
connected with the Crown and the aristocracy, powerful in
parliament, dominant in the universities, should sometimes forget
what is due to poorer and humbler Christian societies.  But when
I hear a cry for what is nothing less than persecution set up by
men who have been, over and over again within my own memory,
forced to invoke in their own defence the principles of
toleration, I cannot but feel astonishment mingled with
indignation.  And what above all excites both my astonishment and
my indignation is this, that the most noisy among the noisy
opponents of the bill which we are considering are some sectaries
who are at this very moment calling on us to pass another bill of
just the same kind for their own benefit.  I speak of those Irish
Presbyterians who are asking for an ex post facto law to confirm
their marriages.  See how exact the parallel is between the case
of those marriages and the case of these chapels.  The Irish
Presbyterians have gone on marrying according to their own forms
during a long course of years.  The Unitarians have gone on
occupying, improving, embellishing certain property during a long
course of years.  In neither case did any doubt as to the right
arise in the most honest, in the most scrupulous mind.  At
length, about the same time, both the validity of the
Presbyterian marriages and the validity of the title by which the
Unitarians held their chapels were disputed.  The two questions
came before the tribunals.  The tribunals, with great reluctance,
with great pain, pronounced that, neither in the case of the
marriages nor in the case of the chapels, can prescription be set
up against the letter of the law.  In both cases there is a just
claim to relief such as the legislature alone can afford.  In
both the legislature is willing to grant that relief.  But this
will not satisfy the orthodox Presbyterian.  He demands with
equal vehemence two things, that he shall be relieved, and that
nobody else shall be relieved.  In the same breath he tells us
that it would be most iniquitous not to pass a retrospective law
for his benefit, and that it would be most iniquitous to pass a
retrospective law for the benefit of his fellow sufferers.  I
never was more amused than by reading, the other day, a speech
made by a person of great note among the Irish Presbyterians on
the subject of these marriages.  "Is it to be endured," he says,
"that the mummies of old and forgotten laws are to be dug up and
unswathed for the annoyance of dissenters?"  And yet a few hours
later, this eloquent orator is himself hard at work in digging up
and unswathing another set of mummies for the annoyance of
another set of dissenters.  I should like to know how he and such
as he would look if we Churchmen were to assume the same tone
towards them which they think it becoming to assume towards the
Unitarian body; if we were to say, "You and those whom you would
oppress are alike out of our pale.  If they are heretics in your
opinion, you are schismatics in ours.  Since you insist on the
letter of the law against them, we will insist on the letter of
the law against you.  You object to ex post facto statutes; and
you shall have none.  You think it reasonable that men should, in
spite of a prescription of eighty or ninety years, be turned out
of a chapel built with their own money, and a cemetery where
their own kindred lie, because the original title was not
strictly legal.  We think it equally reasonable that those
contracts which you have imagined to be marriages, but which are
now adjudged not to be legal marriages, should be treated as
nullities."  I wish from my soul that some of these orthodox
dissenters would recollect that the doctrine which they defend
with so much zeal against the Unitarians is not the whole sum and
substance of Christianity, and that there is a text about doing
unto others as you would that they should do unto you.

To any intelligent man who has no object except to do justice,
the Trinitarian dissenter and the Unitarian dissenter who are now
asking us for relief will appear to have exactly the same right
to it.  There is, however, I must own, one distinction between
the two cases.  The Trinitarian dissenters are a strong body, and
especially strong among the electors of towns.  They are of great
weight in the State.  Some of us may probably, by voting to-night
against their wishes, endanger our seats in this House.  The
Unitarians, on the other hand, are few in number.  Their creed is
unpopular.  Their friendship is likely to injure a public man
more than their enmity.  If therefore there be among us any
person of a nature at once tyrannical and cowardly, any person
who delights in persecution, but is restrained by fear from
persecuting powerful sects, now is his time.  He never can have a
better opportunity of gratifying his malevolence without risk of
retribution.  But, for my part, I long ago espoused the cause of
religious liberty, not because that cause was popular, but
because it was just; and I am not disposed to abandon the
principles to which I have been true through my whole life in
deference to a passing clamour.  The day may come, and may come
soon, when those who are now loudest in raising that clamour may
again be, as they have formerly been, suppliants for justice.
When that day comes I will try to prevent others from oppressing
them, as I now try to prevent them from oppressing others.  In
the meantime I shall contend against their intolerance with the
same spirit with which I may hereafter have to contend for their
rights.

...


THE SUGAR DUTIES.  (FEBRUARY 26, 1845)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 26TH OF
FEBRUARY, 1845.

On the twenty-sixth of February, 1845, on the question that the
order of the day for going into Committee of Ways and Means
should be read, Lord John Russell moved the following amendment:
--"That it is the opinion of this House that the plan proposed by
Her Majesty's Government, in reference to the Sugar Duties,
professes to keep up a distinction between foreign free labour
sugar and foreign slave labour sugar, which is impracticable and
illusory; and, without adequate benefit to the consumer, tends so
greatly to impair the revenue as to render the removal of the
Income and Property Tax at the end of three years extremely
uncertain and improbable."  The amendment was rejected by 236
votes to 142.  In the debate the following Speech was made.

Sir, if the question now at issue were merely a financial or a
commercial question, I should be unwilling to offer myself to
your notice:  for I am well aware that there are, both on your
right and on your left hand, many gentlemen far more deeply
versed in financial and commercial science than myself; and I
should think that I discharged my duty better by listening to
them than by assuming the office of a teacher.  But, Sir, the
question on which we are at issue with Her Majesty's Ministers is
neither a financial nor a commercial question.  I do not
understand it to be disputed that, if we were to pronounce our
decision with reference merely to fiscal and mercantile
considerations, we should at once adopt the plan recommended by
my noble friend.  Indeed the right honourable gentleman, the late
President of the Board of Trade (Mr Gladstone.), has distinctly
admitted this.  He says that the Ministers of the Crown call upon
us to sacrifice great pecuniary advantages and great commercial
facilities, for the purpose of maintaining a moral principle.
Neither in any former debate nor in the debate of this night has
any person ventured to deny that, both as respects the public
purse and as respects the interests of trade, the course
recommended by my noble friend is preferable to the course
recommended by the Government.

The objections to my noble friend's amendment, then, are purely
moral objections.  We lie, it seems, under a moral obligation to
make a distinction between the produce of free labour and the
produce of slave labour.  Now I should be very unwilling to incur
the imputation of being indifferent to moral obligations.  I do,
however, think that it is in my power to show strong reasons for
believing that the moral obligation pleaded by the Ministers has
no existence.  If there be no such moral obligation, then, as it
is conceded on the other side that all fiscal and commercial
arguments are on the side of my noble friend, it follows that we
ought to adopt his amendment.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board
of Trade, has said that the Government does not pretend to act
with perfect consistency as to this distinction between free
labour and slave labour.  It was, indeed, necessary that he
should say this; for the policy of the Government is obviously
most inconsistent.  Perfect consistency, I admit, we are not to
expect in human affairs.  But, surely, there is a decent
consistency which ought to be observed; and of this the right
honourable gentleman himself seems to be sensible; for he asks
how, if we admit sugar grown by Brazilian slaves, we can with
decency continue to stop Brazilian vessels engaged in the slave
trade.  This argument, whatever be its value, proceeds on the
very correct supposition that the test of sincerity in
individuals, in parties, and in governments, is consistency.  The
right honourable gentleman feels, as we must all feel, that it is
impossible to give credit for good faith to a man who on one
occasion pleads a scruple of conscience as an excuse for not
doing a certain thing, and who on other occasions, where there is
no essential difference of circumstances, does that very thing
without any scruple at all.  I do not wish to use such a word as
hypocrisy, or to impute that odious vice to any gentleman on
either side of the House.  But whoever declares one moment that
he feels himself bound by a certain moral rule, and the next
moment, in a case strictly similar, acts in direct defiance of
that rule, must submit to have, if not his honesty, yet at least
his power of discriminating right from wrong very gravely
questioned.

Now, Sir, I deny the existence of the moral obligation pleaded by
the Government.  I deny that we are under any moral obligation to
turn our fiscal code into a penal code, for the purpose of
correcting vices in the institutions of independent states.  I
say that, if you suppose such a moral obligation to be in force,
the supposition leads to consequences from which every one of us
would recoil, to consequences which would throw the whole
commercial and political system of the world into confusion.  I
say that, if such a moral obligation exists, our financial
legislation is one mass of injustice and inhumanity.  And I say
more especially that, if such a moral obligation exists, the
right honourable Baronet's Budget is one mass of injustice and
inhumanity.

Observe, I am not disputing the paramount authority of moral
obligation.  I am not setting up pecuniary considerations against
moral considerations.  I know that it would be not only a wicked
but a shortsighted policy, to aim at making a nation like this
great and prosperous by violating the laws of justice.  To those
laws, enjoin what they may, I am prepared to submit.  But I will
not palter with them:  I will not cite them to-day in order to
serve one turn, and quibble them away to-morrow in order to serve
another.  I will not have two standards of right; one to be
applied when I wish to protect a favourite interest at the public
cost; and another to be applied when I wish to replenish the
Exchequer, and to give an impulse to trade.  I will not have two
weights or two measures.  I will not blow hot and cold, play fast
and loose, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.  Can the
Government say as much?  Are gentlemen opposite prepared to act
in conformity with their own principle?  They need not look long
for opportunities.  The Statute Book swarms with enactments
directly opposed to the rule which they profess to respect.  I
will take a single instance from our existing laws, and propound
it to the gentlemen opposite as a test, if I must not say of
their sincerity, yet of their power of moral discrimination.
Take the article of tobacco.  Not only do you admit the tobacco
of the United States which is grown by slaves; not only do you
admit the tobacco of Cuba which is grown by slaves, and by
slaves, as you tell us, recently imported from Africa; but you
actually interdict the free labourer of the United Kingdom from
growing tobacco.  You have long had in your Statute Book laws
prohibiting the cultivation of tobacco in England, and
authorising the Government to destroy all tobacco plantations
except a few square yards, which are suffered to exist unmolested
in botanical gardens, for purposes of science.  These laws did
not extend to Ireland.  The free peasantry of Ireland began to
grow tobacco.  The cultivation spread fast.  Down came your
legislation upon it; and now, if the Irish freeman dares to
engage in competition with the slaves of Virginia and Havannah,
you exchequer him; you ruin him; you grub up his plantation.
Here, then, we have a test by which we may try the consistency of
the gentlemen opposite.  I ask you, are you prepared, I do not
say to exclude the slave grown tobacco, but to take away from
slave grown tobacco the monopoly which you now give to it, and to
permit the free labourer of the United Kingdom to enter into
competition on equal terms, on any terms, with the negro who
works under the lash?  I am confident that the three right
honourable gentleman opposite, the First Lord of the Treasury,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the late President of the
Board of Trade, will all with one voice answer "No."  And why
not?  "Because," say they, "it will injure the revenue.  True it
is," they will say, "that the tobacco imported from abroad is
grown by slaves, and by slaves many of whom have been recently
carried across the Atlantic in defiance, not only of justice and
humanity, but of law and treaty.  True it is that the cultivators
of the United Kingdom are freemen.  But then on the imported
tobacco we are able to raise at the Custom House a duty of six
hundred per cent., sometimes indeed of twelve hundred per cent.:
and, if tobacco were grown here, it would be difficult to get an
excise duty of even a hundred per cent.  We cannot submit to this
loss of revenue; and therefore we must give a monopoly to the
slaveholder, and make it penal in the freeman to evade that
monopoly."  You may be right; but, in the name of common sense,
be consistent.  If this moral obligation of which you talk so
much be one which may with propriety yield to fiscal
considerations, let us have Brazilian sugars.  If it be paramount
to all fiscal considerations, let us at least have British snuff
and cigars.

The present Ministers may indeed plead that they are not the
authors of the laws which prohibit the cultivation of tobacco in
Great Britain and Ireland.  That is true.  The present Government
found those laws in existence:  and no doubt there is good sense
in the Conservative doctrine that many things which ought not to
have been set up ought not, when they have been set up, to be
hastily and rudely pulled down.  But what will the right
honourable Baronet urge in vindication of his own new budget?  He
is not content with maintaining laws which he finds already
existing in favour of produce grown by slaves.  He introduces a
crowd of new laws to the same effect.  He comes down to the House
with a proposition for entirely taking away the duties on the
importation of raw cotton.  He glories in this scheme.  He tells
us that it is in strict accordance with the soundest principles
of legislation.  He tells us that it will be a blessing to the
country.  I agree with him, and I intend to vote with him.  But
how is all this cotton grown?  Is it not grown by slaves?  Again
I say, you may be right; but, in the name of common sense, be
consistent.  I saw, with no small amusement, a few days ago, a
paragraph by one of the right honourable Baronet's eulogists,
which was to the following effect:--"Thus has this eminent
statesman given to the English labourer a large supply of a most
important raw material, and has manfully withstood those ravenous
Whigs who wished to inundate our country with sugar dyed in negro
blood."  With what I should like to know, is the right honourable
Baronet's cotton dyed?

Formerly, indeed, an attempt was made to distinguish between the
cultivation of cotton and the cultivation of sugar.  The
cultivation of sugar, it was said, was peculiarly fatal to the
health and life of the slave.  But that plea, whatever it may
have been worth, must now be abandoned; for the right honourable
Baronet now proposes to reduce, to a very great extent, the duty
on slave grown sugar imported from the United States.

Then a new distinction is set up.  The United States, it is said,
have slavery; but they have no slave trade.  I deny that
assertion.  I say that the sugar and cotton of the United States
are the fruits, not only of slavery, but of the slave trade.  And
I say further that, if there be on the surface of this earth a
country which, before God and man, is more accountable than any
other for the misery and degradation of the African race, that
country is not Brazil, the produce of which the right honourable
Baronet excludes, but the United States, the produce of which he
proposes to admit on more favourable terms than ever.  I have no
pleasure in going into an argument of this nature.  I do not
conceive that it is the duty of a member of the English
Parliament to discuss abuses which exist in other societies.
Such discussion seldom tends to produce any reform of such
abuses, and has a direct tendency to wound national pride, and to
inflame national animosities.  I would willingly avoid this
subject; but the right honourable Baronet leaves me no choice.
He turns this House into a Court of Judicature for the purpose of
criticising and comparing the institutions of independent States.
He tells us that our Tariff is to be made an instrument for
rewarding the justice and humanity of some Foreign Governments,
and for punishing the barbarity of others.  He binds up the
dearest interests of my constituents with questions with which
otherwise I should, as a Member of Parliament, have nothing to
do.  I would gladly keep silence on such questions.  But it
cannot be.  The tradesmen and the professional men whom I
represent say to me, "Why are we to be loaded, certainly for some
years, probably for ever, with a tax, admitted by those who
impose it to be grievous, unequal, inquisitorial?  Why are we to
be loaded in time of peace with burdens heretofore reserved for
the exigencies of war?"  The paper manufacturer, the soap
manufacturer, say, "Why, if the Income Tax is to be continued,
are our important and suffering branches of industry to have no
relief?"  And the answer is, "Because Brazil does not behave so
well as the United States towards the negro race."  Can I then
avoid instituting a comparison?  Am I not bound to bring to the
test the truth of an assertion pregnant with consequences so
momentous to those who have sent me hither?  I must speak out;
and, if what I say gives offence and produces inconvenience, for
that offence and for that inconvenience the Government is
responsible.

I affirm, then, that there exists in the United States a slave
trade, not less odious or demoralising, nay, I do in my
conscience believe, more odious and more demoralising than that
which is carried on between Africa and Brazil.  North Carolina
and Virginia are to Louisiana and Alabama what Congo is to Rio
Janeiro.  The slave States of the Union are divided into two
classes, the breeding States, where the human beasts of burden
increase and multiply and become strong for labour, and the sugar
and cotton States to which those beasts of burden are sent to be
worked to death.  To what an extent the traffic in man is carried
on we may learn by comparing the census of 1830 with the census
of 1840.  North Carolina and Virginia are, as I have said, great
breeding States.  During the ten years from 1830 to 1840 the
slave population of North Carolina was almost stationary.  The
slave population of Virginia positively decreased.  Yet, both in
North Carolina and Virginia propagation was, during those ten
years, going on fast.  The number of births among the slaves in
those States exceeded by hundreds of thousands the number of the
deaths.  What then became of the surplus?  Look to the returns
from the Southern States, from the States whose produce the right
honourable Baronet proposes to admit with reduced duty or with no
duty at all; and you will see.  You will find that the increase
in the breeding States was barely sufficient to meet the demand
of the consuming States.  In Louisiana, for example, where we
know that the negro population is worn down by cruel toil, and
would not, if left to itself, keep up its numbers, there were, in
1830, one hundred and seven thousand slaves; in 1840, one hundred
and seventy thousand.  In Alabama, the slave population during
those ten years much more than doubled; it rose from one hundred
and seventeen thousand to two hundred and fifty-three thousand.
In Mississippi it actually tripled.  It rose from sixty-five
thousand to one hundred and ninety-five thousand.  So much for
the extent of this slave trade.  And as to its nature, ask any
Englishman who has ever travelled in the Southern States.
Jobbers go about from plantation to plantation looking out for
proprietors who are not easy in their circumstances, and who are
likely to sell cheap.  A black boy is picked up here; a black
girl there.  The dearest ties of nature and of marriage are torn
asunder as rudely as they were ever torn asunder by any slave
captain on the coast of Guinea.  A gang of three or four hundred
negroes is made up; and then these wretches, handcuffed,
fettered, guarded by armed men, are driven southward, as you
would drive,--or rather as you would not drive,--a herd of oxen
to Smithfield, that they may undergo the deadly labour of the
sugar mill near the mouth of the Mississippi.  A very few years
of that labour in that climate suffice to send the stoutest
African to his grave.  But he can well be spared.  While he is
fast sinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are
growing up as fast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which
cruelty is making in Louisiana.  God forbid that I should
extenuate the horrors of the slave trade in any form!  But I do
think this its worst form.  Bad enough is it that civilised men
should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the world where slavery
exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should carry
them away to labour in a distant land:  bad enough!  But that a
civilised man, a baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of
a free state, a man frequenting a Christian church, should breed
slaves for exportation, and, if the whole horrible truth must be
told, should even beget slaves for exportation, should see
children, sometimes his own children, gambolling around him from
infancy, should watch their growth, should become familiar with
their faces, and should then sell them for four or five hundred
dollars a head, and send them to lead in a remote country a life
which is a lingering death, a life about which the best thing
that can be said is that it is sure to be short; this does, I
own, excite a horror exceeding even the horror excited by that
slave trade which is the curse of the African coast.  And mark:
I am not speaking of any rare case, of any instance of eccentric
depravity.  I am speaking of a trade as regular as the trade in
pigs between Dublin and Liverpool, or as the trade in coals
between the Tyne and the Thames.

There is another point to which I must advert.  I have no wish to
apologise for slavery as it exists in Brazil; but this I say,
that slavery, as it exists in Brazil, though a fearful evil,
seems to me a much less hopeless evil than slavery as it exists
in the United States.  In estimating the character of negro
slavery we must never forget one most important ingredient; an
ingredient which was wanting to slavery as it was known to the
Greeks and Romans; an ingredient which was wanting to slavery as
it appeared in Europe during the middle ages; I mean the
antipathy of colour.  Where this antipathy exists in a high
degree, it is difficult to conceive how the white masters and the
black labourers can ever be mingled together, as the lords and
villeins in many parts of the Old World have been, in one free
community.  Now this antipathy is notoriously much stronger in
the United States than in the Brazils.  In the Brazils the free
people of colour are numerous.  They are not excluded from
honourable callings.  You may find among them merchants,
physicians, lawyers:  many of them bear arms; some have been
admitted to holy orders.  Whoever knows what dignity, what
sanctity, the Church of Rome ascribes to the person of a priest,
will at once perceive the important consequences which follow
from this last circumstance.  It is by no means unusual to see a
white penitent kneeling before the spiritual tribunal of a negro,
confessing his sins to a negro, receiving absolution from a
negro.  It is by no means unusual to see a negro dispensing the
Eucharist to a circle of whites.  I need not tell the House what
emotions of amazement and of rage such a spectacle would excite
in Georgia or South Carolina.  Fully admitting, therefore, as I
do, that Brazilian slavery is a horrible evil, I yet must say
that, if I were called upon to declare whether I think the
chances of the African race on the whole better in Brazil or in
the United States, I should at once answer that they are better
in Brazil.  I think it not improbable that in eighty or a hundred
years the black population of Brazil may be free and happy.  I
see no reasonable prospect of such a change in the United States.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board
of Trade, has said much about that system of maritime police by
which we have attempted to sweep slave trading vessels from the
great highway of nations.  Now what has been the conduct of
Brazil, and what has been the conduct of the United States, as
respects that system of police?  Brazil has come into the system;
the United States have thrown every impediment in the way of the
system.  What opinion Her Majesty's Ministers entertain
respecting the Right of Search we know from a letter of my Lord
Aberdeen which has, within a few days, been laid on our table.  I
believe that I state correctly the sense of that letter when I
say that the noble Earl regards the Right of Search as an
efficacious means, and as the only efficacious means, of
preventing the maritime slave trade.  He expresses most serious
doubts whether any substitute can be devised.  I think that this
check would be a most valuable one, if all nations would submit
to it; and I applaud the humanity which has induced successive
British administrations to exert themselves for the purpose of
obtaining the concurrence of foreign Powers in so excellent a
plan.  Brazil consented to admit the Right of Search; the United
States refused, and by refusing deprived the Right of Search of
half its value.  Not content with refusing to admit the Right of
Search, they even disputed the right of visit, a right which no
impartial publicist in Europe will deny to be in strict
conformity with the Law of Nations.  Nor was this all.  In every
part of the Continent of Europe the diplomatic agents of the
Cabinet of Washington have toiled to induce other nations to
imitate the example of the United States.  You cannot have
forgotten General Cass's letter.  You cannot have forgotten the
terms in which his Government communicated to him its approbation
of his conduct.  You know as well as I do that, if the United
States had submitted to the Right of Search, there would have
been no outcry against that right in France.  Nor do I much blame
the French.  It is but natural that, when one maritime Power
makes it a point of honour to refuse us this right, other
maritime Powers should think that they cannot, without
degradation, take a different course.  It is but natural that a
Frenchman, proud of his country, should ask why the tricolor is
to be less respected then the stars and stripes.  The right
honourable gentleman says that, if we assent to my noble friend's
amendment, we shall no longer be able to maintain the Right of
Search.  Sir, he need not trouble himself about that right.  It
is already gone.  We have agreed to negotiate on the subject with
France.  Everybody knows how that negotiation will end.  The
French flag will be exempted from search:  Spain will instantly
demand, if she has not already demanded, similar exemption; and
you may as well let her have it with a good grace, and without
wrangling.  For a Right of Search, from which the flags of France
and America are exempted, is not worth a dispute.  The only
system, therefore, which, in the opinion of Her Majesty's
Ministers, has yet been found efficacious for the prevention of
the maritime slave trade, is in fact abandoned.  And who is
answerable for this?  The United States of America.  The chief
guilt even of the slave trade between Africa and Brazil lies, not
with the Government of Brazil, but with that of the United
States.  And yet the right honourable Baronet proposes to punish
Brazil for the slave trade, and in the same breath proposes to
show favour to the United States, because the United States are
pure from the crime of slave trading.  I thank the right
honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade,
for reminding me of Mr Calhoun's letter.  I could not have wished
for a better illustration of my argument.  Let anybody who has
read that letter say what is the country which, if we take on
ourselves to avenge the wrongs of Africa, ought to be the first
object of our indignation.  The Government of the United States
has placed itself on a bad eminence to which Brazil never
aspired, and which Brazil, even if aspiring to it, never could
attain.  The Government of the United States has formally
declared itself the patron, the champion of negro slavery all
over the world, the evil genius, the Arimanes of the African
race, and seems to take pride in this shameful and odious
distinction.  I well understand that an American statesman may
say, "Slavery is a horrible evil; but we were born to it, we see
no way at present to rid ourselves of it:  and we must endure it
as we best may."  Good and enlightened men may hold such
language; but such is not the language of the American Cabinet.
That Cabinet is actuated by a propagandist spirit, and labours to
spread servitude and barbarism with an ardour such as no other
Government ever showed in the cause of freedom and civilisation.
Nay more; the doctrine held at Washington is that this holy cause
sanctifies the most unholy means.  These zealots of slavery think
themselves justified in snatching away provinces on the right
hand and on the left, in defiance of public faith and
international law, from neighbouring countries which have free
institutions, and this avowedly for the purpose of diffusing over
a wider space the greatest curse that afflicts humanity.  They
put themselves at the head of the slavedriving interest
throughout the world, just as Elizabeth put herself at the head
of the Protestant interest; and wherever their favourite
institution is in danger, are ready to stand by it as Elizabeth
stood by the Dutch.  This, then, I hold to be demonstrated, that
of all societies now existing, the Republic of the United States
is by far the most culpable as respects slavery and the slave
trade.

Now then I come to the right honourable Baronet's Budget.  He
tells us, that he will not admit Brazilian sugar, because the
Brazilian Government tolerates slavery and connives at the slave
trade; and he tells us at the same time, that he will admit the
slave grown cotton and the slave grown sugar of the United
States.  I am utterly at a loss to understand how he can
vindicate his consistency.  He tells us that if we adopt my noble
friend's proposition, we shall give a stimulus to the slave trade
between Africa and Brazil.  Be it so.  But is it not equally
clear that, if we adopt the right honourable Baronet's own
propositions, we shall give a stimulus to the slave trade between
Virginia and Louisiana?  I have not the least doubt that, as soon
as the contents of his Budget are known on the other side of the
Atlantic, the slave trade will become more active than it is at
this moment; that the jobbers in human flesh and blood will be
more busy than ever; that the droves of manacled negroes, moving
southward to their doom, will be more numerous on every road.
These will be the fruits of the right honourable Baronet's
measure.  Yet he tells us that this part of his Budget is framed
on sound principles and will greatly benefit the country; and he
tells us truth.  I mean to vote with him; and I can perfectly, on
my own principles, reconcile to my conscience the vote which I
shall give.  How the right honourable Baronet can reconcile the
course which he takes to his conscience, I am at a loss to
conceive, and am not a little curious to know.  No man is more
capable than he of doing justice to any cause which he
undertakes; and it would be most presumptuous in me to anticipate
the defence which he means to set up.  But I hope that the House
will suffer me, as one who feels deeply on this subject, now to
explain the reasons which convince me that I ought to vote for
the right honourable Baronet's propositions respecting the
produce of the United States.  In explaining those reasons, I at
the same time explain the reasons which induce me to vote with my
noble friend to-night.

I say then, Sir, that I fully admit the paramount authority of
moral obligations.  But it is important that we should accurately
understand the nature and extent of those obligations.  We are
clearly bound to wrong no man.  Nay, more, we are bound to regard
all men with benevolence.  But to every individual, and to every
society, Providence has assigned a sphere within which
benevolence ought to be peculiarly active; and if an individual
or a society neglects what lies within that sphere in order to
attend to what lies without, the result is likely to be harm and
not good.

It is thus in private life.  We should not be justified in
injuring a stranger in order to benefit ourselves or those who
are dearest to us.  Every stranger is entitled, by the laws of
humanity, to claim from us certain reasonable good offices.  But
it is not true that we are bound to exert ourselves to serve a
mere stranger as we are bound to exert ourselves to serve our own
relations.  A man would not be justified in subjecting his wife
and children to disagreeable privations, in order to save even
from utter ruin some foreigner whom he never saw.  And if a man
were so absurd and perverse as to starve his own family in order
to relieve people with whom he had no acquaintance, there can be
little doubt that his crazy charity would produce much more
misery than happiness.

It is the same with nations.  No statesmen ought to injure other
countries in order to benefit his own country.  No statesman
ought to lose any fair opportunity of rendering to foreign
nations such good offices as he can render without a breach of
the duty which he owes to the society of which he is a member.
But, after all, our country is our country, and has the first
claim on our attention.  There is nothing, I conceive, of narrow-
mindedness in this patriotism.  I do not say that we ought to
prefer the happiness of one particular society to the happiness
of mankind; but I say that, by exerting ourselves to promote the
happiness of the society with which we are most nearly connected,
and with which we are best acquainted, we shall do more to
promote the happiness of mankind than by busying ourselves about
matters which we do not fully understand, and cannot efficiently
control.

There are great evils connected with the factory system in this
country.  Some of those evils might, I am inclined to think, be
removed or mitigated by legislation.  On that point many of my
friends differ from me; but we all agree in thinking that it is
the duty of a British Legislator to consider the subject
attentively, and with a serious sense of responsibility.  There
are also great social evils in Russia.  The peasants of that
empire are in a state of servitude.  The sovereign of Russia is
bound by the most solemn obligations to consider whether he can
do anything to improve the condition of that large portion of his
subjects.  If we watch over our factory children, and he watches
over his peasants, much good may be done.  But would any good be
done if the Emperor of Russia and the British Parliament were to
interchange functions; if he were to take under his patronage the
weavers of Lancashire, if we were to take under our patronage the
peasants of the Volga; if he were to say, "You shall send no
cotton to Russia till you pass a ten Hours' Bill;" if we were to
say, "You shall send no hemp or tallow to England till you
emancipate your serfs?"

On these principles, Sir, which seem to me to be the principles
of plain common sense, I can, without resorting to any
casuistical subtilties, vindicate to my own conscience, and, I
hope, to my country, the whole course which I have pursued with
respect to slavery.  When I first came into Parliament, slavery
still existed in the British dominions.  I had, as it was natural
that I should have, a strong feeling on the subject.  I exerted
myself, according to my station and to the measure of my
abilities, on the side of the oppressed.  I shrank from no
personal sacrifice in that cause.  I do not mention this as
matter of boast.  It was no more than my duty.  The right
honourable gentleman, the Secretary of State for the Home
Department, knows that, in 1833, I disapproved of one part of the
measure which Lord Grey's Government proposed on the subject of
slavery.  I was in office; and office was then as important to me
as it could be to any man.  I put my resignation into the hands
of Lord Spencer, and both spoke and voted against the
Administration.  To my surprise, Lord Grey and Lord Spencer
refused to accept my resignation, and I remained in office; but
during some days I considered myself as out of the service of the
Crown.  I at the same time heartily joined in laying a heavy
burden on the country for the purpose of compensating the
planters.  I acted thus, because, being a British Legislator, I
thought myself bound, at any cost to myself and to my
constituents, to remove a foul stain from the British laws, and
to redress the wrongs endured by persons who, as British
subjects, were placed under my guardianship.  But my especial
obligations in respect of negro slavery ceased when slavery
itself ceased in that part of the world for the welfare of which
I, as a member of this House, was accountable.  As for the blacks
in the United States, I feel for them, God knows.  But I am not
their keeper.  I do not stand in the same relation to the slaves
of Louisiana and Alabama in which I formerly stood to the slaves
of Demerara and Jamaica.  I am bound, on the other hand, by the
most solemn obligations, to promote the interests of millions of
my own countrymen, who are indeed by no means in a state so
miserable and degraded as that of the slaves in the United
States, but who are toiling hard from sunrise to sunset in order
to obtain a scanty subsistence; who are often scarcely able to
procure the necessaries of life; and whose lot would be
alleviated if I could open new markets to them, and free them
from taxes which now press heavily on their industry.  I see
clearly that, by excluding the produce of slave labour from our
ports, I should inflict great evil on my fellow-subjects and
constituents.  But the good which, by taking such a course, I
should do to the negroes in the United States seems to me very
problematical.  That by admitting slave grown cotton and slave
grown sugar we do, in some sense, encourage slavery and the Slave
Trade, may be true.  But I doubt whether, by turning our fiscal
code into a penal code for restraining the cruelty of the
American planters, we should not, on the whole, injure the
negroes rather than benefit them.  No independent nation will
endure to be told by another nation, "We are more virtuous than
you; we have sate in judgment on your institutions; we find them
to be bad; and, as a punishment for your offences, we condemn you
to pay higher duties at our Custom House than we demand from the
rest of the world."  Such language naturally excites the
resentment of foreigners.  I can make allowance for their
susceptibility.  For I myself sympathise with them, I know that
Ireland has been misgoverned; and I have done, and purpose to do,
my best to redress her grievances.  But when I take up a New York
journal, and read there the rants of President Tyler's son, I
feel so much disgusted by such insolent absurdity that I am for a
moment inclined to deny that Ireland has any reason whatever to
complain.  It seems to me that if ever slavery is peaceably
extinguished in the United States, that great and happy change
must be brought about by the efforts of those enlightened and
respectable American citizens who hate slavery as much as we hate
it.  Now I cannot help fearing that, if the British Parliament
were to proclaim itself the protector and avenger of the American
slave, the pride of those excellent persons would take the alarm.
It might become a point of national honour with them to stand by
an institution which they have hitherto regarded as a national
disgrace.  We should thus confer no benefit on the negro; and we
should at the same time inflict cruel suffering on our own
countrymen.

On these grounds, Sir, I can, with a clear conscience, vote for
the right honourable Baronet's propositions respecting the cotton
and sugar of the United States.  But on exactly the same grounds
I can, with a clear conscience, vote for the amendment of my
noble friend.  And I confess that I shall be much surprised if
the right honourable Baronet shall be able to point out any
distinction between the cases.

I have detained you too long, Sir; yet there is one point to
which I must refer; I mean the refining.  Was such a distinction
ever heard of?  Is there anything like it in all Pascal's
Dialogues with the old Jesuit?  Not for the world are we to eat
one ounce of Brazilian sugar.  But we import the accursed thing;
we bond it; we employ our skill and machinery to render it more
alluring to the eye and to the palate; we export it to Leghorn
and Hamburg; we send it to all the coffee houses of Italy and
Germany:  we pocket a profit on all this; and then we put on a
Pharisaical air, and thank God that we are not like those wicked
Italians and Germans who have no scruple about swallowing slave
grown sugar.  Surely this sophistry is worthy only of the worst
class of false witnesses.  "I perjure myself!  Not for the world.
I only kissed my thumb; I did not put my lips to the calf-skin."
I remember something very like the right honourable Baronet's
morality in a Spanish novel which I read long ago.  I beg pardon
of the House for detaining them with such a trifle; but the story
is much to the purpose.  A wandering lad, a sort of Gil Blas, is
taken into the service of a rich old silversmith, a most pious
man, who is always telling his beads, who hears mass daily, and
observes the feasts and fasts of the church with the utmost
scrupulosity.  The silversmith is always preaching honesty and
piety.  "Never," he constantly repeats to his young assistant,
"never touch what is not your own; never take liberties with
sacred things."  Sacrilege, as uniting theft with profaneness, is
the sin of which he has the deepest horror.  One day, while he is
lecturing after his usual fashion, an ill-looking fellow comes
into the shop with a sack under his arm.  "Will you buy these?"
says the visitor, and produces from the sack some church plate
and a rich silver crucifix.  "Buy them!" cries the pious man.
"No, nor touch them; not for the world.  I know where you got
them.  Wretch that you are, have you no care for your soul?"
"Well then," says the thief, "if you will not buy them, will you
melt them down for me?"  "Melt them down!" answers the silver
smith, "that is quite another matter."  He takes the chalices and
the crucifix with a pair of tongs; the silver, thus in bond, is
dropped into the crucible, melted, and delivered to the thief,
who lays down five pistoles and decamps with his booty.  The
young servant stares at this strange scene.  But the master very
gravely resumes his lecture.  "My son," he says, "take warning by
that sacrilegious knave, and take example by me.  Think what a
load of guilt lies on his conscience.  You will see him hanged
before long.  But as to me, you saw that I would not touch the
stolen property.  I keep these tongs for such occasions.  And
thus I thrive in the fear of God, and manage to turn an honest
penny."  You talk of morality.  What can be more immoral than to
bring ridicule on the very name of morality, by drawing
distinctions where there are no differences?  Is it not enough
that this dishonest casuistry has already poisoned our theology?
Is it not enough that a set of quibbles has been devised, under
cover of which a divine may hold the worst doctrines of the
Church of Rome, and may hold with them the best benefice of the
Church of England?  Let us at least keep the debates of this
House free from the sophistry of Tract Number Ninety.

And then the right honourable gentleman, the late President of
the Board of Trade, wonders that other nations consider our
abhorrence of slavery and the Slave Trade as sheer hypocrisy.
Why, Sir, how should it be otherwise?  And, if the imputation
annoys us, whom have we to thank for it?  Numerous and malevolent
as our detractors are, none of them was ever so absurd as to
charge us with hypocrisy because we took slave grown tobacco and
slave grown cotton, till the Government began to affect scruples
about admitting slave grown sugar.  Of course, as soon as our
Ministers ostentatiously announced to all the world that our
fiscal system was framed on a new and sublime moral principle,
everybody began to inquire whether we consistently adhered to
that principle.  It required much less acuteness and much less
malevolence than that of our neighbours to discover that this
hatred of slave grown produce was mere grimace.  They see that we
not only take tobacco produced by means of slavery and of the
Slave Trade, but that we positively interdict freemen in this
country from growing tobacco.  They see that we not only take
cotton produced by means of slavery and of the Slave Trade, but
that we are about to exempt this cotton from all duty.  They see
that we are at this moment reducing the duty on the slave grown
sugar of Louisiana.  How can we expect them to believe that it is
from a sense of justice and humanity that we lay a prohibitory
duty on the sugar of Brazil?  I care little for the abuse which
any foreign press or any foreign tribune may throw on the
Machiavelian policy of perfidious Albion.  What gives me pain is,
not that the charge of hypocrisy is made, but that I am unable to
see how it is to be refuted.

Yet one word more.  The right honourable gentleman, the late
President of the Board of Trade, has quoted the opinions of two
persons, highly distinguished by the exertions which they made
for the abolition of slavery, my lamented friend, Sir Thomas
Fowell Buxton, and Sir Stephen Lushington.  It is most true that
those eminent persons did approve of the principle laid down by
the right honourable Baronet opposite in 1841.  I think that they
were in error; but in their error I am sure that they were
sincere, and I firmly believe that they would have been
consistent.  They would have objected, no doubt, to my noble
friend's amendment; but they would have objected equally to the
right honourable Baronet's budget.  It was not prudent, I think,
in gentlemen opposite to allude to those respectable names.  The
mention of those names irresistibly carries the mind back to the
days of the great struggle for negro freedom.  And it is but
natural that we should ask where, during that struggle, were
those who now profess such loathing for slave grown sugar?  The
three persons who are chiefly responsible for the financial and
commercial policy of the present Government I take to be the
right honourable Baronet at the head of the Treasury, the right
honourable gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the
right honourable gentleman the late President of the Board of
Trade.  Is there anything in the past conduct of any one of the
three which can lead me to believe that his sensibility to the
evils of slavery is greater than mine?  I am sure that the right
honourable Baronet the first Lord of the Treasury would think
that I was speaking ironically if I were to compliment him on his
zeal for the liberty of the negro race.  Never once, during the
whole of the long and obstinate conflict which ended in the
abolition of slavery in our colonies, did he give one word, one
sign of encouragement to those who suffered and laboured for the
good cause.  The whole weight of his great abilities and
influence was in the other scale.  I well remember that, so late
as 1833, he declared in this House that he could give his assent
neither to the plan of immediate emancipation proposed by my
noble friend who now represents Sunderland (Lord Howick.), nor to
the plan of gradual emancipation proposed by Lord Grey's
government.  I well remember that he said, "I shall claim no
credit hereafter on account of this bill; all that I desire is to
be absolved from the responsibility."  As to the other two right
honourable gentlemen whom I have mentioned, they are West
Indians; and their conduct was that of West Indians.  I do not
wish to give them pain, or to throw any disgraceful imputation on
them.  Personally I regard them with feelings of goodwill and
respect.  I do not question their sincerity; but I know that the
most honest men are but too prone to deceive themselves into the
belief that the path towards which they are impelled by their own
interests and passions is the path of duty.  I am conscious that
this might be my own case; and I believe it to be theirs.  As the
right honourable gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has
left the House, I will only say that, with respect to the
question of slavery, he acted after the fashion of the class to
which he belonged.  But as the right honourable gentleman, the
late President of the Board of Trade, is in his place, he must
allow me to bring to his recollection the part which he took in
the debates of 1833.  He then said, "You raise a great clamour
about the cultivation of sugar.  You say that it is a species of
industry fatal to the health and life of the slave.  I do not
deny that there is some difference between the labour of a sugar
plantation and the labour of a cotton plantation, or a coffee
plantation.  But the difference is not so great as you think.  In
marshy soils, the slaves who cultivate the sugar cane suffer
severely.  But in Barbadoes, where the air is good, they thrive
and multiply."  He proceeded to say that, even at the worst, the
labour of a sugar plantation was not more unhealthy than some
kinds of labour in which the manufacturers of England are
employed, and which nobody thinks of prohibiting.  He
particularly mentioned grinding.  "See how grinding destroys the
health, the sight, the life.  Yet there is no outcry against
grinding."  He went on to say that the whole question ought to be
left by Parliament to the West Indian Legislature.  [Mr
Gladstone:  "Really I never said so.  You are not quoting me at
all correctly."]   What, not about the sugar cultivation and the
grinding?  [Mr Gladstone:  "That is correct; but I never
recommended that the question should be left to the West Indian
Legislatures."]  I have quoted correctly.  But since my right
honourable friend disclaims the sentiment imputed to him by the
reporters, I shall say no more about it.  I have no doubt that he
is quite right, and that what he said was misunderstood.  What is
undisputed is amply sufficient for my purpose.  I see that the
persons who now show so much zeal against slavery in foreign
countries, are the same persons who formerly countenanced slavery
in the British Colonies.  I remember a time when they maintained
that we were bound in justice to protect slave grown sugar
against the competition of free grown sugar, and even of British
free grown sugar.  I now hear them calling on us to protect free
grown sugar against the competition of slave grown sugar.  I
remember a time when they extenuated as much as they could the
evils of the sugar cultivation.  I now hear them exaggerating
those evils.  But, devious as their course has been, there is one
clue by which I can easily track them through the whole maze.
Inconstant in everything else, they are constant in demanding
protection for the West Indian planter.  While he employs slaves,
they do their best to apologise for the evils of slavery.  As
soon as he is forced to employ freemen, they begin to cry up the
blessings of freedom.  They go round the whole compass, and yet
to one point they steadfastly adhere:  and that point is the
interest of the West Indian proprietors.  I have done, Sir; and I
thank the House most sincerely for the patience and indulgence
with which I have been heard.  I hope that I have at least
vindicated my own consistency.  How Her Majesty's Ministers will
vindicate their consistency, how they will show that their
conduct has at all times been guided by the same principles, or
even that their conduct at the present time is guided by any
fixed principle at all, I am unable to conjecture.

...


MAYNOOTH.  (APRIL 14, 1845)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 14TH OF APRIL,
1845.

On Saturday the eleventh of April, 1845, Sir Robert Peel moved
the second reading of the Maynooth College Bill.  After a debate
of six nights the motion was carried by 323 votes to 176.  On the
second night the following Speech was made.

I do not mean, Sir, to follow the honourable gentleman who has
just sate down into a discussion on an amendment which is not now
before us.  When my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield
shall think it expedient to make a motion on that important
subject to which he has repeatedly called the attention of the
House, I may, perhaps, ask to be heard.  At present I shall
content myself with explaining the reasons which convince me that
it is my duty to vote for the second reading of this bill; and I
cannot, I think, better explain those reasons than by passing in
review, as rapidly as I can, the chief objections which have been
made to the bill here and elsewhere.

The objectors, Sir, may be divided into three classes.  The first
class consists of those persons who object, not to the principle
of the grant to Maynooth College, but merely to the amount.  The
second class consists of persons who object on principle to all
grants made to a church which they regard as corrupt.  The third
class consists of persons who object on principle to all grants
made to churches, whether corrupt or pure.

Now, Sir, of those three classes the first is evidently that
which takes the most untenable ground.  How any person can think
that Maynooth College ought to be supported by public money, and
yet can think this bill too bad to be suffered to go into
Committee, I do not well understand.  I am forced however to
believe that there are many such persons.  For I cannot but
remember that the old annual vote attracted scarcely any notice;
and I see that this bill has produced violent excitement.  I
cannot but remember that the old annual vote used to pass with
very few dissentients; and I see that great numbers of gentlemen,
who never were among those dissentients, have crowded down to the
House in order to divide against this bill.  It is indeed certain
that a large proportion, I believe a majority, of those members
who cannot, as they assure us, conscientiously support the plan
proposed by the right honourable Baronet at the head of the
Government, would without the smallest scruple have supported him
if he had in this, as in former years, asked us to give nine
thousand pounds for twelve months.  So it is:  yet I cannot help
wondering that it should be so.  For how can any human ingenuity
turn a question between nine thousand pounds and twenty-six
thousand pounds, or between twelve months and an indefinite
number of months, into a question of principle?  Observe:  I am
not now answering those who maintain that nothing ought to be
given out of the public purse to a corrupt church; nor am I now
answering those who maintain that nothing ought to be given out
of the public purse to any church whatever.  They, I admit,
oppose this bill on principle.  I perfectly understand, though I
do not myself hold, the opinion of the zealous voluntary who
says, "Whether the Roman Catholic Church teaches truth or error,
she ought to have no assistance from the State."  I also
perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of
the zealous Protestant who says, "The Roman Catholic Church
teaches error, and therefore ought to have no assistance from the
State."  But I cannot understand the reasoning of the man who
says, "In spite of the errors of the Roman Catholic Church, I
think that she ought to have some assistance from the State; but
I am bound to mark my abhorrence of her errors by doling out to
her a miserable pittance.  Her tenets are so absurd and noxious
that I will pay the professor who teaches them wages less than I
should offer to my groom.  Her rites are so superstitious that I
will take care that they shall be performed in a chapel with a
leaky roof and a dirty floor.  By all means let us keep her a
college, provided only that it be a shabby one.  Let us support
those who are intended to teach her doctrines and to administer
her sacraments to the next generation, provided only that every
future priest shall cost us less than a foot soldier.  Let us
board her young theologians; but let their larder be so scantily
supplied that they may be compelled to break up before the
regular vacation from mere want of food.  Let us lodge them; but
let their lodging be one in which they may be packed like pigs in
a stye, and be punished for their heterodoxy by feeling the snow
and the wind through the broken panes."  Is it possible to
conceive anything more absurd or more disgraceful?  Can anything
be clearer than this, that whatever it is lawful to do it is
lawful to do well?  If it be right that we should keep up this
college at all, it must be right that we should keep it up
respectably.  Our national dignity is concerned.  For this
institution, whether good or bad, is, beyond all dispute, a very
important institution.  Its office is to form the character of
those who are to form the character of millions.  Whether we
ought to extend any patronage to such an institution is a
question about which wise and honest men may differ.  But that,
as we do extend our patronage to such an institution, our
patronage ought to be worthy of the object, and worthy of the
greatness of our country, is a proposition from which I am
astonished to hear any person dissent.

It is, I must say, with a peculiarly bad grace that one of the
members for the University to which I have the honour to belong
(The Honourable Charles Law, Member for the University of
Cambridge.), a gentleman who never thought himself bound to say a
word or to give a vote against the grant of nine thousand pounds,
now vehemently opposes the grant of twenty-six thousand pounds as
exorbitant.  When I consider how munificently the colleges of
Cambridge and Oxford are endowed, and with what pomp religion and
learning are there surrounded; when I call to mind the long
streets of palaces, the towers and oriels, the venerable
cloisters, the trim gardens, the organs, the altar pieces, the
solemn light of the stained windows, the libraries, the museums,
the galleries of painting and sculpture; when I call to mind also
the physical comforts which are provided both for instructors and
for pupils; when I reflect that the very sizars and servitors are
far better lodged and fed than those students who are to be, a
few years hence, the priests and bishops of the Irish people;
when I think of the spacious and stately mansions of the heads of
houses, of the commodious chambers of the fellows and scholars,
of the refectories, the combination rooms, the bowling greens,
the stabling, of the state and luxury of the great feast days, of
the piles of old plate on the tables, of the savoury steam of the
kitchens, of the multitudes of geese and capons which turn at
once on the spits, of the oceans of excellent ale in the
butteries; and when I remember from whom all this splendour and
plenty is derived; when I remember what was the faith of Edward
the Third and of Henry the Sixth, of Margaret of Anjou and
Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham and William of
Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley and Cardinal Wolsey; when I
remember what we have taken from the Roman Catholics, King's
College, New College, Christ Church, my own Trinity; and when I
look at the miserable Dotheboys Hall which we have given them in
exchange, I feel, I must own, less proud than I could wish of
being a Protestant and a Cambridge man.

Some gentlemen, it is true, have made an attempt to show that
there is a distinction of principle between the old grant which
they have always supported and the larger grant which they are
determined to oppose.  But never was attempt more unsuccessful.
They say that, at the time of the Union, we entered into an
implied contract with Ireland to keep up this college.  We are
therefore, they argue, bound by public faith to continue the old
grant; but we are not bound to make any addition to that grant.
Now, Sir, on this point, though on no other, I do most cordially
agree with those petitioners who have, on this occasion, covered
your table with such huge bales of spoiled paper and parchment.
I deny the existence of any such contract.  I think myself
perfectly free to vote for the abolition of this college, if I am
satisfied that it is a pernicious institution; as free as I am to
vote against any item of the ordnance estimates; as free as I am
to vote for a reduction of the number of marines.  It is strange,
too, that those who appeal to this imaginary contract should not
perceive that, even if their fiction be admitted as true, it will
by no means get them out of their difficulty.  Tell us plainly
what are the precise terms of the contract which you suppose
Great Britain to have made with Ireland about this college.
Whatever the terms be, they will not serve your purpose.  Was the
contract this, that the Imperial Parliament would do for the
college what the Irish Parliament had been used to do?  Or was
the contract this, that the Imperial Parliament would keep the
college in a respectable and efficient state?  If the former was
the contract, nine thousand pounds would be too much.  If the
latter was the contract, you will not, I am confident, be able to
prove that twenty-six thousand pounds is too little.

I have now, I think, said quite as much as need be said in answer
to those who maintain that we ought to give support to this
college, but that the support ought to be niggardly and
precarious.  I now come to another and a much more formidable
class of objectors.  Their objections may be simply stated thus.
No man can justifiably, either as an individual or as a trustee
for the public, contribute to the dissemination of religious
error.  But the church of Rome teaches religious error.
Therefore we cannot justifiably contribute to the support of an
institution of which the object is the dissemination of the
doctrines of the Church of Rome.  Now, Sir, I deny the major of
this syllogism.  I think that there are occasions on which we are
bound to contribute to the dissemination of doctrines with which
errors are inseparably intermingled.  Let me be clearly
understood.  The question is not whether we should teach truth or
teach error, but whether we should teach truth adulterated with
error, or teach no truth at all.  The constitution of the human
mind is such that it is impossible to provide any machinery for
the dissemination of truth which shall not, with the truth,
disseminate some error.  Even those rays which come down to us
from the great source of light, pure as they are in themselves,
no sooner enter that gross and dark atmosphere in which we dwell
than the they are so much refracted, discoloured, and obscured,
that they too often lead us astray.  It will be generally
admitted that, if religious truth can be anywhere found untainted
by error, it is in the Scriptures.  Yet is there actually on the
face of the globe a single copy of the Scriptures of which it can
be said that it contains truth absolutely untainted with error?
Is there any manuscript, any edition of the Old or New Testament
in the original tongues, which any scholar will pronounce
faultless?  But to the vast majority of Christians the original
tongues are and always must be unintelligible.  With the
exception of perhaps one man in ten thousand, we must be content
with translations.  And is there any translation in which there
are not numerous mistakes?  Are there not numerous mistakes even
in our own authorised version, executed as that version was with
painful diligence and care, by very able men, and under very
splendid patronage?  Of course mistakes must be still more
numerous in those translations which pious men have lately made
into Bengalee, Hindostanee, Tamul, Canarese, and other Oriental
tongues.  I admire the zeal, the industry, the energy of those
who, in spite of difficulties which to ordinary minds would seem
insurmountable, accomplished that arduous work.  I applaud those
benevolent societies which munificently encouraged that work.
But I have been assured by good judges that the translations have
many faults.  And how should it have been otherwise?  How should
an Englishman produce a faultless translation from the Hebrew
into the Cingalese?  I say, therefore, that even the Scriptures,
in every form in which men actually possess them, contain a
certain portion of error.  And, if this be so, how can you look
for pure undefecated truth in any other composition?  You
contribute, without any scruple, to the printing of religious
tracts, to the establishing of Sunday Schools, to the sending
forth of missionaries.  But are your tracts perfect?  Are your
schoolmasters infallible?  Are your missionaries inspired?  Look
at the two churches which are established in this island.  Will
you say that they both teach truth without any mixture of error?
That is impossible.  For they teach different doctrines on more
than one important subject.  It is plain therefore, that if, as
you tell us, it be a sin in a state to patronise an institution
which teaches religious error, either the Church of England or
the Church of Scotland ought to be abolished.  But will anybody
even venture to affirm that either of those churches teaches
truth without any mixture of error?  Have there not long been in
the Church of Scotland two very different schools of theology?
During many years, Dr Robertson, the head of the moderate party,
and Dr Erskine, the head of the Calvinistic party, preached under
the same roof, one in the morning, the other in the evening.
They preached two different religions, so different that the
followers of Robertson thought the followers of Erskine fanatics,
and the followers of Erskine thought the followers of Robertson
Arians or worse.  And is there no mixture of error in the
doctrine taught by the clergy of the Church of England?  Is not
the whole country at this moment convulsed by disputes as to what
the doctrine of the Church on some important subjects really is?
I shall not take on myself to say who is right and who is wrong.
But this I say with confidence, that, whether the Tractarians or
the Evangelicals be in the right, many hundreds of those divines
who every Sunday occupy the pulpits of our parish churches must
be very much in the wrong.

Now, Sir, I see that many highly respectable persons, who think
it a sin to contribute to the teaching of error at Maynooth
College, think it not merely lawful, but a sacred duty, to
contribute to the teaching of error in the other cases which I
have mentioned.  They know that our version of the Bible contains
some error.  Yet they subscribe to the Bible Society.  They know
that the Serampore translations contain a still greater quantity
of error.  Yet they give largely towards the printing and
circulating of those translations.  My honourable friend the
Member for the University of Oxford will not deny that there is
among the clergy of the Church of England a Puritan party, and
also an Anti-puritan party, and that one of these parties must
teach some error.  Yet he is constantly urging us to grant to
this Church an additional endowment of I know not how many
hundreds of thousands of pounds.  He would doubtless defend
himself by saying that nothing on earth is perfect; that the
purest religious society must consist of human beings, and must
have those defects which arise from human infirmities; and that
the truths held by the established clergy, though not altogether
unalloyed with error, are so precious, that it is better that
they should be imparted to the people with the alloy than that
they should not be imparted at all.  Just so say I.  I am sorry
that we cannot teach pure truth to the Irish people.  But I think
it better that they should have important and salutary truth,
polluted by some error, than that they should remain altogether
uninstructed.  I heartily wish that they were Protestants.  But I
had rather that they should be Roman Catholics than that they
should have no religion at all.  Would you, says one gentleman,
teach the people to worship Jugernaut or Kalee?  Certainly not.
My argument leads to no such conclusion.  The worship of
Jugernaut and Kalee is a curse to mankind.  It is much better
that people should be without any religion than that they should
believe in a religion which enjoins prostitution, suicide,
robbery, assassination.  But will any Protestant deny that it is
better that the Irish should be Roman Catholics than that they
should live and die like the beasts of the field, indulge their
appetites without any religious restraint, suffer want and
calamity without any religious consolation, and go to their
graves without any religious hope?  These considerations entirely
satisfy my mind.  Of course I would not propagate error for its
own sake.  To do so would be not merely wicked, but diabolical.
But, in order that I may be able to propagate truth, I consent to
propagate that portion of error which adheres to truth, and which
cannot be separated from truth.  I wish Christianity to have a
great influence on the peasantry of Ireland.  I see no
probability that Christianity will have that influence except in
one form.  That form I consider as very corrupt.  Nevertheless,
the good seems to me greatly to predominate over the evil; and
therefore, being unable to get the good alone, I am content to
take the good and the evil together.

I now come to the third class of our opponents.  I mean those who
take their stand on the voluntary principle.  I will not, on this
occasion, inquire whether they are right in thinking that
governments ought not to contribute to the support of any
religion, true or false.  For it seems to me that, even if I were
to admit that the general rule is correctly laid down by them,
the present case would be an exception to that rule.  The
question on which I am about to vote is not whether the State
shall or shall not give any support to religion in Ireland.  The
State does give such support, and will continue to give such
support, whatever may be the issue of this debate.  The only
point which we have now to decide is whether, while such support
is given, it shall be given exclusively to the religion of the
minority.  Here is an island with a population of near eight
millions, and with a wealthy established church, the members of
which are little more than eight hundred thousand.  There is an
archbishop with ten thousand a year.  If I recollect rightly,
seventy thousand pounds are divided among twelve prelates.  At
the same time the Protestant dissenters in the north of Ireland
receive, in another form, support from the State.  But the great
majority of the population, the poorest part of the population,
the part of the population which is most in need of assistance,
the part of the population which holds that faith for the
propagation of which the tithes were originally set apart, and
the church lands originally given, is left to maintain its own
priests.  Now is not this a case which stands quite by itself?
And may not even those who hold the general proposition, that
every man ought to pay his own spiritual pastor, yet vote,
without any inconsistency, for this bill?  I was astonished to
hear the honourable Member for Shrewsbury (Mr Disraeli.) tell us
that, if we make this grant, it will be impossible for us to
resist the claims of any dissenting sect.  He particularly
mentioned the Wesleyan Methodists.  Are the cases analogous?  Is
there the slightest resemblance between them?  Let the honourable
gentleman show me that of the sixteen millions of people who
inhabit England thirteen millions are Wesleyan Methodists.  Let
him show me that the members of the Established Church in England
are only one tenth of the population.  Let him show me that
English dissenters who are not Wesleyan Methodists receive a
Regium Donum.  Let him show me that immense estates bequeathed to
John Wesley for the propagation of Methodism have, by Act of
Parliament, been taken from the Methodists and given to the
Church.  If he can show me this, I promise him that, whenever the
Wesleyan Methodists shall ask for twenty-six thousand pounds a
year to educate their ministers, I shall be prepared to grant
their request.  But neither the case of the Methodists nor any
other case which can be mentioned, resembles the case with which
we have to do.  Look round Europe, round the world, for a
parallel; and you will look in vain.  Indeed the state of things
which exists in Ireland never could have existed had not Ireland
been closely connected with a country, which possessed a great
superiority of power, and which abused that superiority.  The
burden which we are now, I hope, about to lay on ourselves is but
a small penalty for a great injustice.  Were I a staunch
voluntary, I should still feel that, while the church of eight
hundred thousand people retains its great endowments, I should
not be justified in refusing this small boon to the church of
eight millions.

To sum up shortly what I have said; it is clear to me in the
first place that, if we have no religious scruple about granting
to this College nine thousand pounds for one year, we ought to
have no religious scruple about granting twenty-six thousand
pounds a year for an indefinite term.

Secondly, it seems to me that those persons who tell us that we
ought never in any circumstances to contribute to the propagation
of error do in fact lay down a rule which would altogether
interdict the propagation of truth.

Thirdly, it seems to me that, even on the hypothesis that the
voluntary principle is the sound principle, the present case is
an excepted case, to which it would be unjust and unwise to apply
that principle.

So much, Sir, as to this bill; and now let me add a few words
about those by whom it has been framed and introduced.  We were
exhorted, on the first night of this debate, to vote against the
bill, without inquiring into its merits, on the ground that, good
or bad, it was proposed by men who could not honestly and
honourably propose it.  A similar appeal has been made to us this
evening.  In these circumstances, Sir, I must, not I hope from
party spirit, not, I am sure, from personal animosity, but from a
regard for the public interest, which must be injuriously
affected by everything which tends to lower the character of
public men, say plainly what I think of the conduct of Her
Majesty's Ministers.  Undoubtedly it is of the highest importance
that we should legislate well.  But it is also of the highest
importance that those who govern us should have, and should be
known to have, fixed principles, and should be guided by those
principles both in office and in opposition.  It is of the
highest importance that the world should not be under the
impression that a statesman is a person who, when he is out, will
profess and promise anything in order to get in, and who, when he
is in, will forget all that he professed and promised when he was
out.  I need not, I suppose, waste time in proving that a law may
be in itself an exceedingly good law, and yet that it may be a
law which, when viewed in connection with the former conduct of
those who proposed it, may prove them to be undeserving of the
confidence of their country.  When this is the case, our course
is clear.  We ought to distinguish between the law and its
authors.  The law we ought, on account of its intrinsic merits,
to support.  Of the authors of the law, it may be our duty to
speak in terms of censure.

In such terms I feel it to be my duty to speak of Her Majesty's
present advisers.  I have no personal hostility to any of them;
and that political hostility which I do not disavow has never
prevented me from doing justice to their abilities and virtues.
I have always admitted, and I now most willingly admit, that the
right honourable Baronet at the head of the Government possesses
many of the qualities of an excellent minister, eminent talents
for debate, eminent talents for business, great experience, great
information, great skill in the management of this House.  I will
go further, and say that I give him full credit for a sincere
desire to promote the welfare of his country.  Nevertheless, it
is impossible for me to deny that there is too much ground for
the reproaches of those who, having, in spite of a bitter
experience, a second time trusted him, now find themselves a
second time deluded.  I cannot but see that it has been too much
his practice, when in opposition, to make use of passions with
which he has not the slightest sympathy, and of prejudices which
he regards with profound contempt.  As soon as he is in power a
change takes place.  The instruments which have done his work are
flung aside.  The ladder by which he has climbed is kicked down.
I am forced to say that the right honourable Baronet acts thus
habitually and on system.  The instance before us is not a
solitary instance.  I do not wish to dwell on the events which
took place seventeen or eighteen years ago, on the language which
the right honourable Baronet held about the Catholic question
when he was out of power in 1827, and on the change which twelve
months of power produced.  I will only say that one such change
was quite enough for one life.  Again the right honourable
Baronet was in opposition; and again he employed his old tactics.
I will not minutely relate the history of the manoeuvres by which
the Whig Government was overthrown.  It is enough to say that
many powerful interests were united against that Government under
the leading of the right honourable Baronet, and that of those
interests there is not one which is not now disappointed and
complaining.  To confine my remarks to the subject immediately
before us--can any man deny that, of all the many cries which
were raised against the late administration, that which most
strongly stirred the public mind was the cry of No Popery?  Is
there a single gentleman in the House who doubts that, if, four
years ago, my noble friend the Member for the City of London had
proposed this bill, he would have been withstood by every member
of the present Cabinet?  Four years ago, Sir, we were discussing
a very different bill.  The party which was then in opposition,
and which is now in place, was attempting to force through
Parliament a law, which bore indeed a specious name, but of which
the effect would have been to disfranchise the Roman Catholic
electors of Ireland by tens of thousands.  It was in vain that we
argued, that we protested, that we asked for the delay of a
single session, for delay till an inquiry could be made, for
delay till a Committee should report.  We were told that the case
was one of extreme urgency, that every hour was precious, that
the House must, without loss of time, be purged of the minions of
Popery.  These arts succeeded.  A change of administration took
place.  The right honourable Baronet came into power.  He has now
been near four years in power.  He has had a Parliament which
would, beyond all doubt, have passed eagerly and gladly that
Registration Bill which he and his colleagues had pretended that
they thought indispensable to the welfare of the State.  And
where is that bill now?  Flung away; condemned by its own
authors; pronounced by them to be so oppressive, so inconsistent
with all the principles of representative government, that,
though they had vehemently supported it when they were on your
left hand, they could not think of proposing it from the Treasury
Bench.  And what substitute does the honourable Baronet give his
followers to console them for the loss of their favourite
Registration Bill?  Even this bill for the endowment of Maynooth
College.  Was such a feat of legerdemain ever seen?  And can we
wonder that the eager, honest, hotheaded Protestants, who raised
you to power in the confident hope that you would curtail the
privileges of the Roman Catholics, should stare and grumble when
you propose to give public money to the Roman Catholics?  Can we
wonder that, from one end of the country to the other, everything
should be ferment and uproar, that petitions should, night after
night, whiten all our benches like a snowstorm?  Can we wonder
that the people out of doors should be exasperated by seeing the
very men who, when we were in office, voted against the old grant
to Maynooth, now pushed and pulled into the House by your
whippers-in to vote for an increased grant?  The natural
consequences follow.  All those fierce spirits, whom you hallooed
on to harass us, now turn round and begin to worry you.  The
Orangeman raises his war-whoop:  Exeter Hall sets up its bray:
Mr Macneile shudders to see more costly cheer than ever provided
for the priests of Baal at the table of the Queen; and the
Protestant operatives of Dublin call for impeachments in
exceedingly bad English.  But what did you expect?  Did you
think, when, to serve your turn, you called the Devil up, that it
was as easy to lay him as to raise him?  Did you think, when you
went on, session after session, thwarting and reviling those whom
you knew to be in the right, and flattering all the worst
passions of those whom you knew to be in the wrong, that the day
of reckoning would never come?  It has come.  There you sit,
doing penance for the disingenuousness of years.  If it be not
so, stand up manfully and clear your fame before the House and
the country.  Show us that some steady principle has guided your
conduct with respect to Irish affairs.  Show us how, if you are
honest in 1845, you can have been honest in 1841.  Explain to us
why, after having goaded Ireland to madness for the purpose of
ingratiating yourselves with the English, you are now setting
England on fire for the purpose of ingratiating yourselves with
the Irish.  Give us some reason which shall prove that the policy
which you are following, as Ministers, is entitled to support,
and which shall not equally prove you to have been the most
factious and unprincipled opposition that ever this country saw.

But, Sir, am I, because I think thus of the conduct of Her
Majesty's Ministers, to take the counsel of the honourable member
for Shrewsbury and to vote against their bill?  Not so.  I know
well that the fate of this bill and the fate of the
administration are in our hands.  But far be it from us to
imitate the arts by which we were overthrown.  The spectacle
exhibited on the bench opposite will do quite mischief enough.
That mischief will not be lessened, but doubled, if there should
be an answering display of inconsistency on this side of the
House.  If this bill, having been introduced by Tories, shall be
rejected by Whigs, both the great parties in the State will be
alike discredited.  There will be one vast shipwreck of all the
public character in the country.  Therefore, making up my mind to
sacrifices which are not unattended with pain, and repressing
some feelings which stir strongly within me, I have determined to
give my strenuous support to this bill.  Yes, Sir, to this bill,
and to every bill which shall seem to me likely to promote the
real Union of Great Britain and Ireland, I will give my support,
regardless of obloquy, regardless of the risk which I may run of
losing my seat in Parliament.  For such obloquy I have learned to
consider as true glory; and as to my seat I am determined that it
never shall be held by an ignominious tenure; and I am sure that
it can never be lost in a more honourable cause.

...


THE CHURCH OF IRELAND.  (APRIL 23, 1845.)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 23RD OF APRIL
1845.

On the twenty-third of April 1845, the order of the day for going
into Committee on the Maynooth College Bill was read.  On the
motion that the Speaker should leave the chair, Mr Ward, Member
for Sheffield, proposed the following amendment:--

"That it is the opinion of this House that any provision to be
made for the purposes of the present Bill ought to be taken from
the funds already applicable to ecclesiastical purposes in
Ireland."

After a debate of two nights the amendment was rejected by 322
votes to 148.  On the first night the following Speech was made.

I was desirous, Sir, to catch your eye this evening, because it
happens that I have never yet found an opportunity of fully
explaining my views on the important subject of the Irish Church.
Indeed, I was not in this country when that subject for a time
threw every other into the shade, disturbed the whole political
world, produced a schism in the Administration of Lord Grey, and
overthrew the short Administration of the right honourable
Baronet opposite.  The motion now before us opens, I conceive,
the whole question.  My honourable friend the Member for
Sheffield, indeed, asks us only to transfer twenty-six thousand
pounds a year from the Established Church of Ireland to the
College of Maynooth.  But this motion, I think, resembles an
action of ejectment brought for a single farm, with the view of
trying the title to a large estate.  Whoever refuses to assent to
what is now proposed must be considered as holding the opinion
that the property of the Irish Church ought to be held inviolate:
and I can scarcely think that any person will vote for what is
now proposed, who is not prepared to go very much farther.  The
point at issue, I take, therefore, to be this; whether the Irish
Church, as now constituted, shall be maintained or not?

Now, Sir, when a legislator is called up to decide whether an
institution shall be maintained or not, it seems to me that he
ought in the first place to examine whether it be a good or a bad
institution.  This may sound like a truism; but if I am to judge
by the speeches which, on this and former occasions, have been
made by gentlemen opposite, it is no truism, but an exceedingly
recondite truth.  I, Sir, think the Established Church of Ireland
a bad institution.  I will go farther.  I am not speaking in
anger, or with any wish to excite anger in others; I am not
speaking with rhetorical exaggeration:  I am calmly and
deliberately expressing, in the only appropriate terms, an
opinion which I formed many years ago, which all my observations
and reflections have confirmed, and which I am prepared to
support by reasons, when I say that, of all the institutions now
existing in the civilised world, the Established Church of
Ireland seems to me the most absurd.

I cannot help thinking that the speeches of those who defend this
Church suffice of themselves to prove that my views are just.
For who ever heard anybody defend it on its merits?  Has any
gentleman to-night defended it on its merits?  We are told of the
Roman Catholic oath; as if that oath, whatever be its meaning,
whatever be the extent of the obligation which it lays on the
consciences of those who take it, could possibly prove this
Church to be a good thing.  We are told that Roman Catholics of
note, both laymen and divines, fifty years ago, declared that, if
they were relieved from the disabilities under which they then
lay, they should willingly see the Church of Ireland in
possession of all its endowments:  as if anything that anybody
said fifty years ago could absolve us from the plain duty of
doing what is now best for the country.  We are told of the Fifth
Article of Union; as if the Fifth Article of Union were more
sacred than the Fourth.  Surely, if there be any article of the
Union which ought to be regarded as inviolable, it is the Fourth,
which settles the number of members whom Great Britain and
Ireland respectively are to send to Parliament.  Yet the
provisions of the Fourth Article have been altered with the
almost unanimous assent of all parties in the State.  The change
was proposed by the noble lord who is now Secretary for the
Colonies.  It was supported by the right honourable Baronet the
Secretary for the Home Department, and by other members of the
present Administration.  And so far were the opponents of the
Reform Bill from objecting to this infraction of the Treaty of
Union that they were disposed to go still farther.  I well
remember the night on which we debated the question, whether
Members should be given to Finsbury, Marylebone, Lambeth, and the
Tower Hamlets.  On that occasion, the Tories attempted to seduce
the Irish Reformers from us by promising that Ireland should have
a share of the plunder of the metropolitan districts.  After
this, Sir, I must think it childish in gentlemen opposite to
appeal to the Fifth Article of the Union.  With still greater
surprise, did I hear the right honourable gentleman the Secretary
for Ireland say that, if we adopt this amendment, we shall make
all landed and funded property insecure.  I am really ashamed to
answer such an argument.  Nobody proposes to touch any vested
interest; and surely it cannot be necessary for me to point out
to the right honourable gentleman the distinction between
property in which some person has a vested interest, and property
in which no person has a vested interest.  That distinction is
part of the very rudiments of political science.  Then the right
honourable gentleman quarrels with the form of the amendment.
Why, Sir, perhaps a more convenient form might have been adopted.
But is it by cavils like these that a great institution should be
defended?  And who ever heard the Established Church of Ireland
defended except by cavils like these?  Who ever heard any of her
advocates speak a manly and statesmanlike language?  Who ever
heard any of her advocates say, "I defend this institution
because it is a good institution:  the ends for which an
Established Church exists are such and such:  and I will show you
that this Church attains those ends?"  Nobody says this.  Nobody
has the hardihood to say it.  What divine, what political
speculator who has written in defence of ecclesiastical
establishments, ever defended such establishments on grounds
which will support the Church of Ireland?  What panegyric has
ever been pronounced on the Churches of England and Scotland,
which is not a satire on the Church of Ireland?  What traveller
comes among us who is not moved to wonder and derision by the
Church of Ireland?  What foreign writer on British affairs,
whether European or American, whether Protestant or Catholic,
whether Conservative or Liberal, whether partial to England or
prejudiced against England, ever mentions the Church of Ireland
without expressing his amazement that such an establishment
should exist among reasonable men?

And those who speak thus of this Church speak justly.  Is there
anything else like it?  Was there ever anything else like it?
The world is full of ecclesiastical establishments:  but such a
portent as this Church of Ireland is nowhere to be found.  Look
round the Continent of Europe.  Ecclesiastical establishments
from the White Sea to the Mediterranean:  ecclesiastical
establishments from the Wolga to the Atlantic:  but nowhere the
Church of a small minority enjoying exclusive establishment.
Look at America.  There you have all forms of Christianity, from
Mormonism, if you call Mormonism Christianity, to Romanism.  In
some places you have the voluntary system.  In some you have
several religions connected with the state.  In some you have the
solitary ascendency of a single Church.  But nowhere, from the
Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, do you find the Church of a small
minority exclusively established.  Look round our own empire.  We
have an Established Church in England; it is the Church of the
majority.  There is an Established Church in Scotland.  When it
was set up, it was the Church of the majority.  A few months ago,
it was the Church of the majority.  I am not quite sure that,
even after the late unhappy disruption, it is the Church of the
minority.  In our colonies the State does much for the support of
religion; but in no colony, I believe, do we give exclusive
support to the religion of the minority.  Nay, even in those
parts of empire where the great body of the population is
attached to absurd and immoral superstitions, you have not been
guilty of the folly and injustice of calling on them to pay for a
Church which they do not want.  We have not portioned out Bengal
and the Carnatic into parishes, and scattered Christian rectors,
with stipends and glebes, among millions of Pagans and
Mahometans.  We keep, indeed, a small Christian establishment, or
rather three small Christian establishments, Anglican,
Presbyterian, and Catholic.  But we keep them only for the
Christians in our civil and military services; and we leave
untouched the revenues of the mosques and temples.  In one
country alone is to be seen the spectacle of a community of eight
millions of human beings, with a Church which is the Church of
only eight hundred thousand.

It has been often said, and has been repeated to-night by the
honourable Member for Radnor, that this Church, though it
includes only a tenth part of the population, has more than half
the wealth of Ireland.  But is that an argument in favour of the
present system?  Is it not the strongest argument that can be
urged in favour of an entire change?  It is true that there are
many cases in which it is fit that property should prevail over
number.  Those cases may, I think, be all arranged in two
classes.  One class consists of those cases in which the
preservation or improvement of property is the object in view.
Thus, in a railway company, nothing can be more reasonable than
that one proprietor who holds five hundred shares should have
more power than five proprietors who hold one share each.  The
other class of cases in which property may justly confer
privileges is where superior intelligence is required.  Property
is indeed but a very imperfect test of intelligence.  But, when
we are legislating on a large scale, it is perhaps the best which
we can apply.  For where there is no property, there can very
seldom be any mental cultivation.  It is on this principle that
special jurors, who have to try causes of peculiar nicety, are
taken from a wealthier order than that which furnishes common
jurors.  But there cannot be a more false analogy than to reason
from these cases to the case of an Established Church.  So far is
it from being true that, in establishing a Church, we ought to
pay more regard to one rich man than to five poor men, that the
direct reverse is the sound rule.  We ought to pay more regard to
one poor man than to five rich men.  For, in the first place, the
public ordinances of religion are of far more importance to the
poor man than to the rich man.  I do not mean to say that a rich
man may not be the better for hearing sermons and joining in
public prayers.  But these things are not indispensable to him;
and, if he is so situated that he cannot have them, he may find
substitutes.  He has money to buy books, time to study them,
understanding to comprehend them.  Every day he may commune with
the minds of Hooker, Leighton, and Barrow.  He therefore stands
less in need of the oral instruction of a divine than a peasant
who cannot read, or who, if he can read, has no money to procure
books, or leisure to peruse them.  Such a peasant, unless
instructed by word of mouth, can know no more of Christianity
than a wild Hottentot.  Nor is this all.  The poor man not only
needs the help of a minister of religion more than the rich man,
but is also less able to procure it.  If there were no
Established Church, people in our rank of life would always be
provided with preachers to their mind at an expense which they
would scarcely feel.  But when a poor man, who can hardly give
his children their fill of potatoes, has to sell his pig in order
to pay something to his priest, the burden is a heavy one.  This
is, in fact, the strongest reason for having an established
church in any country.  It is the one reason which prevents me
from joining with the partisans of the voluntary system.  I
should think their arguments unanswerable if the question
regarded the upper and middle classes only.  If I would keep up
the Established Church of England, it is not for the sake of
lords, and baronets, and country gentlemen of five thousand
pounds a-year, and rich bankers in the city.  I know that such
people will always have churches, aye, and cathedrals, and
organs, and rich communion plate.  The person about whom I am
uneasy is the working man; the man who would find it difficult to
pay even five shillings or ten shillings a-year out of his small
earnings for the ministrations of religion.  What is to become of
him under the voluntary system?  Is he to go without religious
instruction altogether?  That we should all think a great evil to
himself, and a great evil to society.  Is he to pay for it out of
his slender means?  That would be a heavy tax.  Is he to be
dependent on the liberality of others?  That is a somewhat
precarious and a somewhat humiliating dependence.  I prefer, I
own, that system under which there is, in the rudest and most
secluded district, a house of God, where public worship is
performed after a fashion acceptable to the great majority of the
community, and where the poorest may partake of the ordinances of
religion, not as an alms, but as a right.  But does this argument
apply to a Church like the Church of Ireland?  It is not
necessary on this occasion to decide whether the arguments in
favour of the ecclesiastical establishments, or the arguments in
favour of the voluntary system, be the stronger.  There are
weighty considerations on both sides.  Balancing them as well as
I can, I think that, as respects England, the preponderance is on
the side of the Establishment.  But, as respects Ireland, there
is no balancing.  All the weights are in one scale.  All the
arguments which incline us against the Church of England, and all
the arguments which incline us in favour of the Church of
England, are alike arguments against the Church of Ireland;
against the Church of the few; against the Church of the wealthy;
against the Church which, reversing every principle on which a
Christian Church should be founded, fills the rich with its good
things, and sends the hungry empty away.

One view which has repeatedly, both in this House and out of it,
been taken of the Church of Ireland, seems to deserve notice.  It
is admitted, as indeed it could not well be denied, that this
Church does not perform the functions which are everywhere else
expected from similar institutions; that it does not instruct the
body of the people; that it does not administer religious
consolation to the body of the people.  But, it is said, we must
regard this Church as an aggressive Church, a proselytising
Church, a Church militant among spiritual enemies.  Its office is
to spread Protestantism over Munster and Connaught.  I remember
well that, eleven years ago, when Lord Grey's Government proposed
to reduce the number of Irish bishoprics, this language was held.
It was acknowledged that there were more bishops than the number
of persons then in communion with the Established Church
required.  But that number, we were assured, would not be
stationary; and the hierarchy, therefore, ought to be constituted
with a view to the millions of converts who would soon require
the care of Protestant pastors.  I well remember the strong
expression which was then used by my honourable friend, the
Member for the University of Oxford.  We must, he said, make
allowance for the expansive force of Protestantism.  A few nights
ago a noble lord for whom I, in common with the whole House, feel
the greatest respect, the Member for Dorsetshire (Lord Ashley.),
spoke of the missionary character of the Church of Ireland.  Now,
Sir, if such language had been held at the Council Board of Queen
Elizabeth when the constitution of this Church was first debated
there, there would have been no cause for wonder.  Sir William
Cecil or Sir Nicholas Bacon might very naturally have said,
"There are few Protestants now in Ireland, it is true.  But when
we consider how rapidly the Protestant theology has spread, when
we remember that it is little more than forty years since Martin
Luther began to preach against indulgences, and when we see that
one half of Europe is now emancipated from the old superstition,
we may reasonably expect that the Irish will soon follow the
example of the other nations which have embraced the doctrines of
the Reformation."  Cecil, I say, and his colleagues might
naturally entertain this expectation, and might without absurdity
make preparations for an event which they regarded as in the
highest degree probable.  But we, who have seen this system in
full operation from the year 1560 to the year 1845, ought to have
been taught better, unless indeed we are past all teaching.  Two
hundred and eighty-five years has this Church been at work.  What
could have been done for it in the way of authority, privileges,
endowments, which has not been done?  Did any other set of
bishops and priests in the world ever receive so much for doing
so little?  Nay, did any other set of bishops and priests in the
world ever receive half as much for doing twice as much?  And
what have we to show for all this lavish expenditure?  What but
the most zealous Roman Catholic population on the face of the
earth?  Where you were one hundred years ago, where you were two
hundred years ago, there you are still, not victorious over the
domain of the old faith, but painfully and with dubious success
defending your own frontier, your own English pale.  Sometimes a
deserter leaves you.  Sometimes a deserter steals over to you.
Whether your gains or losses of this sort be the greater I do not
know; nor is it worth while to inquire.  On the great solid mass
of the Roman Catholic population you have made no impression
whatever.  There they are, as they were ages ago, ten to one
against the members of your Established Church.  Explain this to
me.  I speak to you, the zealous Protestants on the other side of
the House.  Explain this to me on Protestant principles.  If I
were a Roman Catholic, I could easily account for the phenomena.
If I were a Roman Catholic, I should content myself with saying
that the mighty hand and the outstretched arm had been put forth,
according to the promise, in defence of the unchangeable Church;
that He who in the old time turned into blessings the curses of
Balaam, and smote the host of Sennacherib, had signally
confounded the arts of heretic statesmen.  But what is a
Protestant to say?  He holds that, through the whole of this long
conflict, during which ten generations of men have been born and
have died, reason and Scripture have been on the side of the
Established Clergy.  Tell us then what we are to say of this
strange war, in which, reason and Scripture backed by wealth, by
dignity, by the help of the civil power, have been found no match
for oppressed and destitute error?  The fuller our conviction
that our doctrines are right, the fuller, if we are rational men,
must be our conviction that our tactics have been wrong, and that
we have been encumbering the cause which we meant to aid.

Observe, it is not only the comparative number of Roman Catholics
and Protestants that may justly furnish us with matter for
serious reflection.  The quality as well as the quantity of Irish
Romanism deserves to be considered.  Is there any other country
inhabited by a mixed population of Catholics and Protestants, any
other country in which Protestant doctrines have long been freely
promulgated from the press and from the pulpit, where the Roman
Catholics spirit is so strong as in Ireland?  I believe not.  The
Belgians are generally considered as very stubborn and zealous
Roman Catholics.  But I do not believe that either in
stubbornness or in zeal they equal the Irish.  And this is the
fruit of three centuries of Protestant archbishops, bishops,
archdeacons, deans, and rectors.  And yet where is the wonder?
Is this a miracle that we should stand aghast at it?  Not at all.
It is a result which human prudence ought to have long ago
foreseen and long ago averted.  It is the natural succession of
effect to cause.  If you do not understand it, it is because you
do not understand what the nature and operation of a church is.
There are parts of the machinery of Government which may be just
as efficient when they are hated as when they are loved.  An
army, a navy, a preventive service, a police force, may do their
work whether the public feeling be with them or against them.
Whether we dislike the corn laws or not, your custom houses and
your coast guard keep out foreign corn.  The multitude at
Manchester was not the less effectually dispersed by the
yeomanry, because the interference of the yeomanry excited the
bitterest indignation.  There the object was to produce a
material effect; the material means were sufficient; and nothing
more was required.  But a Church exists for moral ends.  A Church
exists to be loved, to be reverenced, to be heard with docility,
to reign in the understandings and hearts of men.  A Church which
is abhorred is useless or worse than useless; and to quarter a
hostile Church on a conquered people, as you would quarter a
soldiery, is therefore the most absurd of mistakes.  This mistake
our ancestors committed.  They posted a Church in Ireland just as
they posted garrisons in Ireland.  The garrisons did their work.
They were disliked.  But that mattered not.  They had their forts
and their arms; and they kept down the aboriginal race.  But the
Church did not do its work.  For to that work the love and
confidence of the people were essential.

I may remark in passing that, even under more favourable
circumstances a parochial priesthood is not a good engine for the
purpose of making proselytes.  The Church of Rome, whatever we
may think of her ends, has shown no want of sagacity in the
choice of means; and she knows this well.  When she makes a great
aggressive movement,--and many such movements she has made with
signal success,--she employs, not her parochial clergy, but a
very different machinery.  The business of her parish priests is
to defend and govern what has been won.  It is by the religious
orders, and especially by the Jesuits, that the great
acquisitions have been made.  In Ireland your parochial clergy
lay under two great disadvantages.  They were endowed, and they
were hated; so richly endowed that few among them cared to turn
missionaries; so bitterly hated that those few had but little
success.  They long contented themselves with receiving the
emoluments arising from their benefices, and neglected those
means to which, in other parts of Europe, Protestantism had owed
its victory.  It is well known that of all the instruments
employed by the Reformers of Germany, of England, and of
Scotland, for the purpose of moving the public mind, the most
powerful was the Bible translated into the vernacular tongues.
In Ireland the Protestant Church had been established near half a
century before the New Testament was printed in Erse.  The whole
Bible was not printed in Erse till this Church had existed more
than one hundred and twenty years.  Nor did the publication at
last take place under the patronage of the lazy and wealthy
hierarchy.  The expense was defrayed by a layman, the illustrious
Robert Boyle.  So things went on century after century.  Swift,
more than a hundred years ago, described the prelates of his
country as men gorged with wealth and sunk in indolence, whose
chief business was to bow and job at the Castle.  The only
spiritual function, he says, which they performed was ordination;
and, when he saw what persons they ordained, he doubted whether
it would not be better that they should neglect that function as
they neglected every other.  Those, Sir, are now living who can
well remember how the revenues of the richest see in Ireland were
squandered on the shores of the Mediterranean by a bishop, whose
epistles, very different compositions from the epistles of Saint
Peter and Saint John, may be found in the correspondence of Lady
Hamilton.  Such abuses as these called forth no complaint, no
reprimand.  And all this time the true pastors of the people,
meanly fed and meanly clothed, frowned upon by the law, exposed
to the insults of every petty squire who gloried in the name of
Protestant, were to be found in miserable cabins, amidst filth,
and famine, and contagion, instructing the young, consoling the
miserable, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying.
Is it strange that, in such circumstances, the Roman Catholic
religion should have been constantly becoming dearer and dearer
to an ardent and sensitive people, and that your Established
Church should have been constantly sinking lower and lower in
their estimation?  I do not of course hold the living clergy of
the Irish Church answerable for the faults of their predecessors.
God forbid!  To do so would be the most flagitious injustice.  I
know that a salutary change has taken place.  I have no reason to
doubt that in learning and regularity of life the Protestant
clergy of Ireland are on a level with the clergy of England.  But
in the way of making proselytes they do as little as those who
preceded them.  An enmity of three hundred years separates the
nation from those who should be its teachers.  In short, it is
plain that the mind of Ireland has taken its ply, and is not to
be bent in a different direction, or, at all events, is not to be
so bent by your present machinery.

Well, then, this Church is inefficient as a missionary Church.
But there is yet another end which, in the opinion of some
eminent men, a Church is meant to serve.  That end has been often
in the minds of practical politicians.  But the first speculative
politician who distinctly pointed it out was Mr Hume.  Mr Hume,
as might have been expected from his known opinions, treated the
question merely as it related to the temporal happiness of
mankind; and, perhaps, it may be doubted whether he took quite a
just view of the manner in which even the temporal happiness of
mankind is affected by the restraints and consolations of
religion.  He reasoned thus:--It is dangerous to the peace of
society that the public mind should be violently excited on
religious subjects.  If you adopt the voluntary system, the
public mind will always be so excited.  For every preacher,
knowing that his bread depends on his popularity, seasons his
doctrine high, and practises every art for the purpose of
obtaining an ascendency over his hearers.  But when the
Government pays the minister of religion, he has no pressing
motive to inflame the zeal of his congregation.  He will probably
go through his duties in a somewhat perfunctory manner.  His
power will not be very formidable; and, such as it is, it will be
employed in support of that order of things under which he finds
himself so comfortable.  Now, Sir, it is not necessary to inquire
whether Mr Hume's doctrine be sound or unsound.  For, sound or
unsound, it furnishes no ground on which you can rest the defence
of the institution which we are now considering.  It is evident
that by establishing in Ireland the Church of the minority in
connection with the State, you have produced, in the very highest
degree, all those evils which Mr Hume considered as inseparable
from the voluntary system.  You may go all over the world without
finding another country where religious differences take a form
so dangerous to the peace of society; where the common people are
so much under the influence of their priests; or where the
priests who teach the common people are so completely estranged
from the civil Government.

And now, Sir, I will sum up what I have said.  For what end does
the Church of Ireland exist?  Is that end the instruction and
solace of the great body of the people?  You must admit that the
Church of Ireland has not attained that end.  Is the end which
you have in view the conversion of the great body of the people
from the Roman Catholic religion to a purer form of Christianity?
You must admit that the Church of Ireland has not attained that
end.  Or do you propose to yourselves the end contemplated by Mr
Hume, the peace and security of civil society?  You must admit
that the Church of Ireland has not attained that end.  In the
name of common sense, then, tell us what good end this Church has
attained; or suffer us to conclude, as I am forced to conclude,
that it is emphatically a bad institution.

It does not, I know, necessarily follow that, because an
institution is bad, it is therefore to be immediately destroyed.
Sometimes a bad institution takes a strong hold on the hearts of
mankind, intertwines its roots with the very foundations of
society, and is not to be removed without serious peril to order,
law, and property.  For example, I hold polygamy to be one of the
most pernicious practises that exist in the world.  But if the
Legislative Council of India were to pass an Act prohibiting
polygamy, I should think that they were out of their senses.
Such a measure would bring down the vast fabric of our Indian
Empire with one crash.  But is there any similar reason for
dealing tenderly with the Established Church of Ireland?  That
Church, Sir, is not one of those bad institutions which ought to
be spared because they are popular, and because their fall would
injure good institutions.  It is, on the contrary, so odious, and
its vicinage so much endangers valuable parts of our polity,
that, even if it were in itself a good institution, there would
be strong reasons for giving it up.

The honourable gentleman who spoke last told us that we cannot
touch this Church without endangering the Legislative Union.
Sir, I have given my best attention to this important point; and
I have arrived at a very different conclusion.  The question to
be determined is this:--What is the best way of preserving
political union between countries in which different religions
prevail?  With respect to this question we have, I think, all the
light which history can give us.  There is no sort of experiment
described by Lord Bacon which we have not tried.  Inductive
philosophy is of no value if we cannot trust to the lessons
derived from the experience of more than two hundred years.
England has long been closely connected with two countries less
powerful than herself, and differing from herself in religion.
The Scottish people are Presbyterians; the Irish people are Roman
Catholics.  We determined to force the Anglican system on both
countries.  In both countries great discontent was the result.
At length Scotland rebelled.  Then Ireland rebelled.  The Scotch
and Irish rebellions, taking place at a time when the public mind
of England was greatly and justly excited, produced the Great
Rebellion here, and the downfall of the Monarchy, of the Church,
and of the Aristocracy.  After the Restoration we again tried the
old system.  During twenty-eight years we persisted in the
attempt to force Prelacy on the Scotch; and the consequence was,
during those twenty-eight years Scotland exhibited a frightful
spectacle of misery and depravity.  The history of that period is
made up of oppression and resistance, of insurrections, barbarous
punishments, and assassinations.  One day a crowd of zealous
rustics stand desperately on their defence, and repel the
dragoons.  Next day the dragoons scatter and hew down the flying
peasantry.  One day the kneebones of a wretched Covenanter are
beaten flat in that accursed boot.  Next day the Lord Primate is
dragged out of his carriage by a band of raving fanatics, and,
while screaming for mercy, is butchered at the feet of his own
daughter.  So things went on, till at last we remembered that
institutions are made for men, and not men for institutions.  A
wise Government desisted from the vain attempt to maintain an
Episcopal Establishment in a Presbyterian nation.  From that
moment the connection between England and Scotland became every
year closer and closer.  There were still, it is true, many
causes of animosity.  There was an old antipathy between the
nations, the effect of many blows given and received on both
sides.  All the greatest calamities that had befallen Scotland
had been inflicted by England.  The proudest events in Scottish
history were victories obtained over England.  Yet all angry
feelings died rapidly away.  The union of the nations became
complete.  The oldest man living does not remember to have heard
any demagogue breathe a wish for separation.  Do you believe that
this would have happened if England had, after the Revolution,
persisted in attempting to force the surplice and the Prayer Book
on the Scotch?  I tell you that, if you had adhered to the mad
scheme of having a religious union with Scotland, you never would
have had a cordial political union with her.  At this very day
you would have had monster meetings on the north of the Tweed,
and another Conciliation Hall, and another repeal button, with
the motto, "Nemo me impune lacessit."  In fact, England never
would have become the great power that she is.  For Scotland
would have been, not an addition to the effective strength of the
Empire, but a deduction from it.  As often as there was a war
with France or Spain, there would have been an insurrection in
Scotland.  Our country would have sunk into a kingdom of the
second class.  One such Church as that about which we are now
debating is a serious encumbrance to the greatest empire.  Two
such Churches no empire could bear.  You continued to govern
Ireland during many generations as you had governed Scotland in
the days of Lauderdale and Dundee.  And see the result.  Ireland
has remained, indeed, a part of your Empire.  But you know her to
be a source of weakness rather than of strength.  Her misery is a
reproach to you.  Her discontent doubles the dangers of war.  Can
you, with such facts before you, doubt about the course which you
ought to take?  Imagine a physician with two patients, both
afflicted with the same disease.  He applies the same sharp
remedies to both.  Both become worse and worse with the same
inflammatory symptoms.  Then he changes his treatment of one
case, and gives soothing medicines.  The sufferer revives, grows
better day by day, and is at length restored to perfect health.
The other patient is still subjected to the old treatment, and
becomes constantly more and more disordered.  How would a
physician act in such a case?  And are not the principles of
experimental philosophy the same in politics as in medicine?

Therefore, Sir, I am fully prepared to take strong measures with
regard to the Established Church of Ireland.  It is not necessary
for me to say precisely how far I would go.  I am aware that it
may be necessary, in this as in other cases, to consent to a
compromise.  But the more complete the reform which may be
proposed, provided always that vested rights be, as I am sure
they will be, held strictly sacred, the more cordially shall I
support it.

That some reform is at hand I cannot doubt.  In a very short time
we shall see the evils which I have described mitigated, if not
entirely removed.  A Liberal Administration would make this
concession to Ireland from a sense of justice.  A Conservative
Administration will make it from a sense of danger.  The right
honourable Baronet has given the Irish a lesson which will bear
fruit.  It is a lesson which rulers ought to be slow to teach;
for it is one which nations are but too apt to learn.  We have
repeatedly been told by acts--we are now told almost in express
words--that agitation and intimidation are the means which ought
to be employed by those who wish for redress of grievances from
the party now in power.  Such indeed has too long been the policy
of England towards Ireland; but it was surely never before avowed
with such indiscreet frankness.  Every epoch which is remembered
with pleasure on the other side of St George's Channel coincides
with some epoch which we here consider as disastrous and
perilous.  To the American war and the volunteers the Irish
Parliament owed its independence.  To the French revolutionary
war the Irish Roman Catholics owed the elective franchise.  It
was in vain that all the great orators and statesmen of two
generations exerted themselves to remove the Roman Catholic
disabilities, Burke, Fox, Pitt, Windham, Grenville, Grey,
Plunkett, Wellesley, Grattan, Canning, Wilberforce.  Argument and
expostulation were fruitless.  At length pressure of a stronger
kind was boldly and skilfully applied; and soon all difficulties
gave way.  The Catholic Association, the Clare election, the
dread of civil war, produced the Emancipation Act.  Again, the
cry of No Popery was raised.  That cry was successful.  A faction
which had reviled in the bitterest terms the mild administration
of Whig Viceroys, and which was pledged to the wholesale
disfranchisement of the Roman Catholics, rose to power.  One
leading member of that faction had drawn forth loud cheers by
declaiming against the minions of Popery.  Another had designated
six millions of Irish Catholics as aliens.  A third had publicly
declared his conviction, that a time was at hand when all
Protestants of every persuasion would find it necessary to
combine firmly against the encroachments of Romanism.  From such
men we expected nothing but oppression and intolerance.  We are
agreeably disappointed to find that a series of conciliatory
bills is brought before us.  But, in the midst of our delight, we
cannot refrain from asking for some explanation of so
extraordinary a change.  We are told in reply, that the monster
meetings of 1843 were very formidable, and that our relations
with America are in a very unsatisfactory state.  The public
opinion of Ireland is to be consulted, the religion of Ireland is
to be treated with respect, not because equity and humanity
plainly enjoin that course; for equity and humanity enjoined that
course as plainly when you were calumniating Lord Normanby, and
hurrying forward your Registration Bill; but because Mr O'Connell
and Mr Polk have between them made you very uneasy.  Sir, it is
with shame, with sorrow, and, I will add, with dismay, that I
listen to such language.  I have hitherto disapproved of the
monster meetings of 1843.  I have disapproved of the way in which
Mr O'Connell and some other Irish representatives have seceded
from this House.  I should not have chosen to apply to those
gentlemen the precise words which were used on a former occasion
by the honourable and learned Member for Bath.  But I agreed with
him in substance.  I thought it highly to the honour of my right
honourable friend the Member for Dungarvon, and of my honourable
friends the Members for Kildare, for Roscommon, and for the city
of Waterford, that they had the moral courage to attend the
service of this House, and to give us the very valuable
assistance which they are, in various ways, so well qualified to
afford.  But what am I to say now?  How can I any longer deny
that the place where an Irish gentleman may best serve his
country is Conciliation Hall?  How can I expect that any Irish
Roman Catholic can be very sorry to learn that our foreign
relations are in an alarming state, or can rejoice to hear that
all danger of war has blown over?  I appeal to the Conservative
Members of this House.  I ask them whither we are hastening?  I
ask them what is to be the end of a policy of which it is the
principle to give nothing to justice, and everything to fear?  We
have been accused of truckling to Irish agitators.  But I defy
you to show us that we ever made or are now making to Ireland a
single concession which was not in strict conformity with our
known principles.  You may therefore trust us, when we tell you
that there is a point where we will stop.  Our language to the
Irish is this:--"You ask for emancipation:  it was agreeable to
our principles that you should have it; and we assisted you to
obtain it.  You wished for a municipal system, as popular as that
which exists in England:  we thought your wish reasonable, and
did all in our power to gratify it.  This grant to Maynooth is,
in our opinion, proper; and we will do our best to obtain it for
you, though it should cost us our popularity and our seats in
Parliament.  The Established Church in your island, as now
constituted, is a grievance of which you justly complain.  We
will strive to redress that grievance.  The Repeal of the Union
we regard as fatal to the empire:  and we never will consent to
it; never, though the country should be surrounded by dangers as
great as those which threatened her when her American colonies,
and France, and Spain, and Holland, were leagued against her, and
when the armed neutrality of the Baltic disputed her maritime
rights; never, though another Bonaparte should pitch his camp in
sight of Dover Castle; never, till all has been staked and lost;
never, till the four quarters of the world have been convulsed by
the last struggle of the great English people for their place
among the nations."  This, Sir, is the true policy.  When you
give, give frankly.  When you withhold, withhold resolutely.
Then what you give is received with gratitude; and, as for what
you withhold, men, seeing that to wrest it from you is no safe or
easy enterprise, cease to hope for it, and, in time, cease to
wish for it.  But there is a way of so withholding as merely to
excite desire, and of so giving as merely to excite contempt; and
that way the present ministry has discovered.  Is it possible for
me to doubt that in a few months the same machinery which sixteen
years ago extorted from the men now in power the Emancipation
Act, and which has now extorted from them the bill before us,
will again be put in motion?  Who shall say what will be the next
sacrifice?  For my own part I firmly believe that, if the present
Ministers remain in power five years longer, and if we should
have,--which God avert!--a war with France or America, the
Established Church of Ireland will be given up.  The right
honourable Baronet will come down to make a proposition conceived
in the very spirit of the Motions which have repeatedly been made
by my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield.  He will again
be deserted by his followers; he will again be dragged through
his difficulties by his opponents.  Some honest Lord of the
Treasury may determine to quit his office rather than belie all
the professions of a life.  But there will be little difficulty
in finding a successor ready to change all his opinions at twelve
hours' notice.  I may perhaps, while cordially supporting the
bill, again venture to say something about consistency, and about
the importance of maintaining a high standard of political
morality.  The right honourable Baronet will again tell me, that
he is anxious only for the success of his measure, and that he
does not choose to reply to taunts.  And the right honourable
gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer will produce Hansard,
will read to the House my speech of this night, and will most
logically argue that I ought not to reproach the Ministers with
their inconsistency, seeing that I had, from my knowledge of
their temper and principles, predicted to a tittle the nature and
extent of that inconsistency.

Sir, I have thought it my duty to brand with strong terms of
reprehension the practice of conceding, in time of public danger,
what is obstinately withheld in time of public tranquillity.  I
am prepared, and have long been prepared, to grant much, very
much, to Ireland.  But if the Repeal Association were to dissolve
itself to-morrow, and if the next steamer were to bring news that
all our differences with the United States were adjusted in the
most honourable and friendly manner, I would grant to Ireland
neither more nor less than I would grant if we were on the eve of
a rebellion like that of 1798; if war were raging all along the
Canadian frontier; and if thirty French sail of the line were
confronting our fleet in St George's Channel.  I give my vote
from my heart and soul for the amendment of my honourable friend.
He calls on us to make to Ireland a concession, which ought in
justice to have been made long ago, and which may be made with
grace and dignity even now.  I well know that you will refuse to
make it now.  I know as well that you will make it hereafter.
You will make it as every concession to Ireland has been made.
You will make it when its effect will be, not to appease, but to
stimulate agitation.  You will make it when it will be regarded,
not as a great act of national justice, but as a confession of
national weakness.  You will make it in such a way, and at such a
time, that there will be but too much reason to doubt whether
more mischief has been done by your long refusal, or by your
tardy and enforced compliance.

...


THEOLOGICAL TESTS IN THE SCOTCH UNIVERSITIES.  (JULY 9, 1845)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF JULY
1845.

On the first of May, 1845, Mr Rutherford, Member for Leith,
obtained leave to bring in a bill to regulate admission to the
Secular Chairs in the Universities of Scotland.  On the morning
of the sixth of May the bill was read a first time, and remained
two months on the table of the House.  At length the second
reading was fixed for the ninth of July.  Mr Rutherfurd was
unable to attend on that day:  and it was necessary that one of
his friends should supply his place.  Accordingly, as soon as the
Order of the Day had been read, the following Speech was made.

On a division the bill was rejected by 116 votes to 108.  But, in
the state in which parties then were, this defeat was generally
considered as a victory.

Mr Speaker,--I have been requested by my honourable and learned
friend, the Member for Leith, to act as his substitute on this
occasion.  I am truly sorry that any substitute should be
necessary.  I am truly sorry that he is not among us to take
charge of the bill which he not long ago introduced with one of
the most forcible and luminous speeches that I ever had the
pleasure of hearing.  His audience was small; but the few who
formed that audience cannot have forgotten the effect which his
arguments and his eloquence produced.  The Ministers had come
down to resist his motion:  but their courage failed them:  they
hesitated:  they conferred together:  at last they consented that
he should have leave to bring in his bill.  Such, indeed, was the
language which they held on that and on a subsequent occasion,
that both my honourable and learned friend and myself gave them
more credit than they deserved.  We really believed that they had
resolved to offer no opposition to a law which it was quite
evident that they perceived to be just and beneficial.  But we
have been disappointed.  It has been notified to us that the
whole influence of the Government is to be exerted against our
bill.  In such discouraging circumstances it is that I rise to
move the second reading.

Yet, Sir, I do not altogether despair of success.  When I
consider what strong, what irresistible reasons we have to urge,
I can hardly think it possible that the mandate of the most
powerful administration can prevail against them.  Nay, I should
consider victory, not merely as probable, but as certain, if I
did not know how imperfect is the information which English
gentlemen generally possess concerning Scotch questions.  It is
because I know this that I think it my duty to depart from the
ordinary practice, and, instead of simply moving the second
reading, to explain at some length the principles on which this
bill has been framed.  I earnestly entreat those English Members
who were not so fortunate as to hear the speech of my honourable
and learned friend, the Member for Leith to favour me with their
attention.  They will, I think, admit, that I have a right to be
heard with indulgence.  I have been sent to this house by a great
city which was once a capital, the abode of a Sovereign, the
place where the Estates of a realm held their sittings.  For the
general good of the empire, Edinburgh descended from that high
eminence.  But, ceasing to be a political metropolis, she became
an intellectual metropolis.  For the loss of a Court, of a Privy
Council, of a Parliament, she found compensation in the
prosperity and splendour of an University renowned to the
farthest ends of the earth as a school of physical and moral
science.  This noble and beneficent institution is now threatened
with ruin by the folly of the Government, and by the violence of
an ecclesiastical faction which is bent on persecution without
having the miserable excuse of fanaticism.  Nor is it only the
University of Edinburgh that is in danger.  In pleading for that
University, I plead for all the great academical institutions of
Scotland.  The fate of all depends on the event of this debate;
and, in the name of all, I demand the attention of every man who
loves either learning or religious liberty.

The first question which we have to consider is, whether the
principles of the bill be sound.  I believe that they are sound;
and I am quite confident that nobody who sits on the Treasury
Bench will venture to pronounce them unsound.  It does not lie in
the mouths of the Ministers to say that literary instruction and
scientific instruction are inseparably connected with religious
instruction.  It is not for them to rail against Godless
Colleges.  It is not for them to talk with horror of the danger
of suffering young men to listen to the lectures of an Arian
professor of Botany or of a Popish professor of Chemistry.  They
are themselves at this moment setting up in Ireland a system
exactly resembling the system which we wish to set up in
Scotland.  Only a few hours have elapsed since they were
themselves labouring to prove that, in a country in which a large
proportion of those who require a liberal education are
dissenters from the Established Church, it is desirable that
there should be schools without theological tests.  The right
honourable Baronet at the head of the Government proposes that in
the new colleges which he is establishing at Belfast, Cork,
Limerick, and Galway, the professorships shall be open to men of
every creed:  and he has strenuously defended that part of his
plan against attacks from opposite quarters, against the attacks
of zealous members of the Church of England, and of zealous
members of the Church of Rome.  Only the day before yesterday the
honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon (Sir Thomas
Acland.) ventured to suggest a test as unobjectionable as a test
could well be.  He would merely have required the professors to
declare their general belief in the divine authority of the Old
and New Testaments.  But even this amendment the First Lord of
the Treasury resisted, and I think quite rightly.  He told us
that it was quite unnecessary to institute an inquisition into
the religious opinions of people whose business was merely to
teach secular knowledge, and that it was absurd to imagine that
any man of learning would disgrace and ruin himself by preaching
infidelity from the Greek chair or the Mathematical chair.

Some members of this House certainly held very different
language:  but their arguments made as little impression on Her
Majesty's Ministers as on me.  We were told with the utmost
earnestness that secular knowledge, unaccompanied by a sound
religious faith, and unsanctified by religious feeling, was not
only useless, but positively noxious, a curse to the possessor, a
curse to society.  I feel the greatest personal kindness and
respect for some gentlemen who hold this language.  But they must
pardon me if I say that the proposition which they have so
confidently laid down, however well it may sound in pious ears
while it is expressed in general terms, to be too monstrous, too
ludicrous, for grave refutation.  Is it seriously meant that, if
the Captain of an Indiaman is a Socinian, it would be better for
himself, his crew, and his passengers, that he should not know
how to use his quadrant and his chronometers?  Is it seriously
meant that, if a druggist is a Swedenborgian, it would be better
for himself and his customers that he should not know the
difference between Epsom salts and oxalic acid?  A hundred
millions of the Queen's Asiatic subjects are Mahometans and
Pagans.  Is it seriously meant that it is desirable that they
should be as ignorant as the aboriginal inhabitants of New South
Wales, that they should have no alphabet, that they should have
no arithmetic, that they should not know how to build a bridge,
how to sink a well, how to irrigate a field?  If it be true that
secular knowledge, unsanctified by true religion, is a positive
evil, all these consequences follow.  Yet surely they are
consequences from which every sane mind must recoil.  It is a
great evil, no doubt, that a man should be a heretic or an
atheist.  But I am quite at a loss to understand how this evil is
mitigated by his not knowing that the earth moves round the sun,
that by the help of a lever, a small power will lift a great
weight, that Virginia is a republic, or that Paris is the capital
of France.

On these grounds, Sir, I have cordially supported the Irish
Colleges Bill.  But the principle of the Irish Colleges and the
principle of the bill which I hold in my hand are exactly the
same:  and the House and the country have a right to know why the
authors of the former bill are the opponents of the latter bill.
One distinction there is, I admit, between Ireland and Scotland.
It is true that in Scotland there is no clamour against the Union
with England.  It is true that in Scotland no demagogue can
obtain applause and riches by slandering and reviling the English
people.  It is true that in Scotland there is no traitor who
would dare to say that he regards the enemies of the state as his
allies.  In every extremity the Scottish nation will be found
faithful to the common cause of the empire.  But Her Majesty's
Ministers will hardly I think, venture to say that this is their
reason for refusing to Scotland the boon which they propose to
confer on Ireland.  And yet, if this be not their reason, what
reason can we find?  Observe how strictly analogous the cases
are.  You give it as a reason for establishing in Ireland
colleges without tests that the Established Church of Ireland is
the Church of the minority.  Unhappily it may well be doubted
whether the Established Church of Scotland, too, be not now,
thanks to your policy, the Church of the minority.  It is true
that the members of the Established Church of Scotland are about
a half of the whole population of Scotland; and that the members
of the Established Church of Ireland are not much more than a
tenth of the whole population of Ireland.  But the question now
before us does not concern the whole population.  It concerns
only the class which requires academical education:  and I do not
hesitate to say that, in the class which requires academical
education, in the class for the sake of which universities exist,
the proportion of persons who do not belong to the Established
Church is as great in Scotland as in Ireland.  You tell us that
sectarian education in Ireland is an evil.  Is it less an evil in
Scotland?  You tell us that it is desirable that the Protestant
and the Roman Catholic should study together at Cork.  Is it less
desirable that the son of an elder of the Established Church and
the son of an elder of the Free Church should study together at
Edinburgh?  You tell us that it is not reasonable to require from
a Professor of Astronomy or Surgery in Connaught a declaration
that he believes in the Gospels.  On what ground, then, can you
think it reasonable to require from every Professor in Scotland a
declaration that he approves of the Presbyterian form of church
government?  I defy you, with all your ingenuity, to find one
argument, one rhetorical topic, against our bill which may not be
used with equal effect against your own Irish Colleges Bill.

Is there any peculiarity in the academical system of Scotland
which makes these tests necessary?  Certainly not.  The
academical system of Scotland has its peculiarities; but they are
peculiarities which are not in harmony with these tests,
peculiarities which jar with these tests.  It is an error to
imagine that, by passing this bill, we shall establish a
precedent which will lead to a change in the constitution of the
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford.  Whether such a change be
or be not desirable is a question which must be decided on
grounds quite distinct from those on which we rest our case.  I
entreat English gentlemen not to be misled by the word
University.  That word means two different things on the two
different sides of the Tweed.  The academical authorities at
Cambridge and Oxford stand in a parental relation to the student.
They undertake, not merely to instruct him in philology,
geometry, natural philosophy, but to form his religious opinions,
and to watch over his morals.  He is to be bred a Churchman.  At
Cambridge, he cannot graduate, at Oxford, I believe, he cannot
matriculate, without declaring himself a Churchman.  The College
is a large family.  An undergraduate is lodged either within the
gates, or in some private house licensed and regulated by the
academical authorities.  He is required to attend public worship
according to the forms of the Church of England several times
every week.  It is the duty of one officer to note the absence of
young men from divine service, of another to note their absence
from the public table, of another to report those who return home
at unseasonably late hours.  An academical police parade the
streets at night to seize upon any unlucky reveller who may be
found drunk or in bad company.  There are punishments of various
degrees for irregularities of conduct.  Sometimes the offender
has to learn a chapter of the Greek Testament; sometimes he is
confined to his college; sometimes he is publicly reprimanded:
for grave offences he is rusticated or expelled.  Now, Sir,
whether this system be good or bad, efficient or inefficient, I
will not now inquire.  This is evident; that religious tests are
perfectly in harmony with such a system.  Christ Church and
King's College undertake to instruct every young man who goes to
them in the doctrines of the Church of England, and to see that
he regularly attends the worship of the Church of England.
Whether this ought to be so, I repeat, I will not now inquire:
but, while it is so, nothing can be more reasonable than to
require from the rulers of Christ Church and King's College some
declaration that they are themselves members of the Church of
England.

The character of the Scotch universities is altogether different.
There you have no functionaries resembling the Vice-Chancellors
and Proctors, the Heads of Houses, Tutors and Deans, whom I used
to cap at Cambridge.  There is no chapel; there is no academical
authority entitled to ask a young man whether he goes to the
parish church or the Quaker meeting, to synagogue or to mass.
With his moral conduct the university has nothing to do.  The
Principal and the whole Academical Senate cannot put any
restraint, or inflict any punishment, on a lad whom they may see
lying dead drunk in the High Street of Edinburgh.  In truth, a
student at a Scotch university is in a situation closely
resembling that of a medical student in London.  There are great
numbers of youths in London who attend St George's Hospital, or
St Bartholomew's Hospital.  One of these youths may also go to
Albermarle Street to hear Mr Faraday lecture on chemistry, or to
Willis's rooms to hear Mr Carlyle lecture on German literature.
On the Sunday he goes perhaps to church, perhaps to the Roman
Catholic chapel, perhaps to the Tabernacle, perhaps nowhere.
None of the gentlemen whose lectures he has attended during the
week has the smallest right to tell him where he shall worship,
or to punish him for gambling in hells, or tippling in cider
cellars.  Surely we must all feel that it would be the height of
absurdity to require Mr Faraday and Mr Carlyle to subscribe a
confession of faith before they lecture; and in what does their
situation differ from the situation of the Scotch professor.

In the peculiar character of the Scotch universities, therefore,
I find a strong reason for the passing of this bill.  I find a
reason stronger still when I look at the terms of the engagements
which exist between the English and Scotch nations.

Some gentlemen, I see, think that I am venturing on dangerous
ground.  We have been told, in confident tones, that, if we pass
this bill, we shall commit a gross breach of public faith, we
shall violate the Treaty of Union, and the Act of Security.  With
equal confidence, and with confidence much better grounded, I
affirm that the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security not only
do not oblige us to reject this bill, but do oblige us to pass
this bill, or some bill nearly resembling this.

This proposition seems to be regarded by the Ministers as
paradoxical:  but I undertake to prove it by the plainest and
fairest argument.  I shall resort to no chicanery.  If I did
think that the safety of the commonwealth required that we should
violate the Treaty of Union, I would violate it openly, and
defend my conduct on the ground of necessity.  It may, in an
extreme case, be our duty to break our compacts.  It never can be
our duty to quibble them away.  What I say is that the Treaty of
Union, construed, not with the subtlety of a pettifogger, but
according to the spirit, binds us to pass this bill or some
similar bill.

By the Treaty of Union it was covenanted that no person should be
a teacher or office-bearer in the Scotch Universities who should
not declare that he conformed to the worship and polity of the
Established Church of Scotland.  What Church was meant by the two
contracting parties?  What Church was meant, more especially, by
the party to the side of which we ought always to lean, I mean
the weaker party?  Surely the Church established in 1707, when
the Union took place.  Is then, the Church of Scotland at the
present moment constituted, on all points which the members of
that Church think essential, exactly as it was constituted in
1707?  Most assuredly not.

Every person who knows anything of the ecclesiastical history of
Scotland knows that, ever since the Reformation, the great body
of the Presbyterians of that country have held that congregations
ought to have a share in the appointment of their ministers.
This principle is laid down most distinctly in the First Book of
Discipline, drawn up by John Knox.  It is laid down, though not
quite so strongly, in the Second Book of Discipline, drawn up by
Andrew Melville.  And I beg gentlemen, English gentlemen, to
observe that in Scotland this is not regarded as a matter of mere
expediency.  All staunch Presbyterians think that the flock is
entitled, jure divino, to a voice in the appointment of the
pastor, and that to force a pastor on a parish to which he is
unacceptable is a sin as much forbidden by the Word of God as
idolatry or perjury.  I am quite sure that I do not exaggerate
when I say that the highest of our high churchmen at Oxford
cannot attach more importance to episcopal government and
episcopal ordination than many thousands of Scotchmen, shrewd
men, respectable men, men who fear God and honour the Queen,
attach to this right of the people.

When, at the time of the Revolution, the Presbyterian worship and
discipline were established in Scotland, the question of
patronage was settled by a compromise, which was far indeed from
satisfying men of extreme opinions, but which was generally
accepted.  An Act, passed at Edinburgh, in 1690, transferred what
we should call in England the advowsons from the old patrons to
parochial councils, composed of the elders and the Protestant
landowners.  This system, however imperfect it might appear to
such rigid Covenanters as Davie Deans and Gifted Gilfillan,
worked satisfactorily; and the Scotch nation seems to have been
contented with its ecclesiastical polity when the Treaty of Union
was concluded.  By that treaty the ecclesiastical polity of
Scotland was declared to be unalterable.  Nothing, therefore, can
be more clear than that the Parliament of Great Britain was bound
by the most sacred obligations not to revive those rights of
patronage which the Parliament of Scotland had abolished.

But, Sir, the Union had not lasted five years when our ancestors
were guilty of a great violation of public faith.  The history of
that great fault and of its consequences is full of interest and
instruction.  The wrong was committed hastily, and with
contumelious levity.  The offenders were doubtless far from
foreseeing that their offence would be visited on the third and
fourth generation; that we should be paying in 1845 the penalty
of what they did in 1712.

In 1712, Sir, the Whigs, who were the chief authors of the Union,
had been driven from power.  The prosecution of Sacheverell had
made them odious to the nation.  The general election of 1710 had
gone against them.  Tory statesmen were in office.  Tory squires
formed more than five-sixths of this House.  The party which was
uppermost thought that England had, in 1707, made a bad bargain,
a bargain so bad that it could hardly be considered as binding.
The guarantee so solemnly given to the Church of Scotland was a
subject of loud and bitter complaint.  The Ministers hated that
Church much; and their chief supporters, the country gentlemen
and country clergymen of England, hated it still more.  Numerous
petty insults were offered to the opinions, or, if you please,
the prejudices of the Presbyterians.  At length it was determined
to go further, and to restore to the old patrons those rights
which had been taken away in 1690.  A bill was brought into this
House, the history of which you may trace in our Journals.  Some
of the entries are very significant.  In spite of all
remonstrances the Tory majority would not hear of delay.  The
Whig minority struggled hard, appealed to the act of Union and
the Act of Security, and insisted on having both those Acts read
at the table.  The bill passed this House, however, before the
people of Scotland knew that it had been brought in.  For there
were then neither reporters nor railroads; and intelligence from
Westminster was longer in travelling to Cambridge than it now is
in travelling to Aberdeen.  The bill was in the House of Lords
before the Church of Scotland could make her voice heard.  Then
came a petition from a committee appointed by the General
Assembly to watch over the interests of religion while the
General Assembly itself was not sitting.  The first name attached
to that petition is the name of Principal Carstairs, a man who
had stood high in the esteem and favour of William the Third, and
who had borne a chief part in establishing the Presbyterian
Church in Scotland.  Carstairs and his colleagues appealed to the
Act of Union, and implored the peers not to violate that Act.
But party spirit ran high; public faith was disregarded:
patronage was restored.  To that breach of the Treaty of Union
are to be directly ascribed all the schisms that have since rent
the Church of Scotland.

I will not detain the House by giving a minute account of those
schisms.  It is enough to say that the law of patronage produced,
first the secession of 1733 and the establishment of the
Associate Synod, then the secession of 1752 and the establishment
of the Relief Synod, and finally the great secession of 1843 and
the establishment of the Free Church.  Only two years have
elapsed since we saw, with mingled admiration and pity, a
spectacle worthy of the best ages of the Church.  Four hundred
and seventy ministers resigned their stipends, quitted their
manses, and went forth committing themselves, their wives, their
children, to the care of Providence.  Their congregations
followed them by thousands, and listened eagerly to the Word of
Life in tents, in barns, or on those hills and moors where the
stubborn Presbyterians of a former generation had prayed and sung
their psalms in defiance of the boot of Lauderdale and of the
sword of Dundee.  The rich gave largely of their riches.  The
poor contributed with the spirit of her who put her two mites
into the treasury of Jerusalem.  Meanwhile, in all the churches
of large towns, of whole counties, the established clergy were
preaching to empty benches.  And of these secessions every one
may be distinctly traced to that violation of the Treaty of Union
which was committed in 1712.

This, Sir, is the true history of dissent in Scotland:  and, this
being so, how can any man have the front to invoke the Treaty of
Union and the Act of Security against those who are devotedly
attached to that system which the Treaty of Union and the Act of
Security were designed to protect, and who are seceders only
because the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security have been
infringed?  I implore gentlemen to reflect on the manner in which
they and their fathers have acted towards the Scotch
Presbyterians.  First you bind yourselves by the most solemn
obligations to maintain unaltered their Church as it was
constituted in 1707.  Five years later you alter the constitution
of their Church in a point regarded by them as essential.  In
consequence of your breach of faith secession after secession
takes place, till at length the Church of the State ceases to be
the Church of the People.  Then you begin to be squeamish.  Then
those articles of the Treaty of Union which, when they really
were obligatory, you outrageously violated, now when they are no
longer obligatory, now when it is no longer in your power to
observe them according to the spirit, are represented as
inviolable.  You first, by breaking your word, turn hundreds of
thousands of Churchmen into Dissenters; and then you punish them
for being Dissenters, because, forsooth, you never break your
word.  If your consciences really are so tender, why do you not
repeal the Act of 1712?  Why do you not put the Church of
Scotland back into the same situation in which she was in 1707.
We have had occasion more than once in the course of this session
to admire the casuistical skill of Her Majesty's Ministers.  But
I must say that even their scruple about slave-grown sugar,
though that scruple is the laughing-stock of all Europe and all
America, is respectable when compared with their scruple about
the Treaty of Union.  Is there the slightest doubt that every
compact ought to be construed according to the sense in which it
was understood by those who made it?  And is there the slightest
doubt as to the sense in which the compact between England and
Scotland was understood by those who made it?  Suppose that we
could call up from their graves the Presbyterian divines who then
sate in the General Assembly.  Suppose that we could call up
Carstairs; that we could call up Boston, the author of the
Fourfold State; that we could relate to them the history of the
ecclesiastical revolutions which have, since their time, taken
place in Scotland; and that we could then ask them, "Is the
Established Church, or is the Free Church, identical with the
Church which existed at the time of the Union?"  Is it not quite
certain what their answer would be?  They would say, "Our Church,
the Church which you promised to maintain unalterable, was not
the Church which you protect, but the Church which you oppress.
Our Church was the Church of Chalmers and Brewster, not the
Church of Bryce and Muir."

It is true, Sir, that the Presbyterian dissenters are not the
only dissenters whom this bill will relieve.  By the law, as it
now stands, all persons who refuse to declare their approbation
of the synodical polity, that is to say, all persons who refuse
to declare that they consider episcopal government and episcopal
ordination as, at least, matters altogether indifferent, are
incapable of holding academical office in Scotland.  Now, Sir,
will any gentleman who loves the Church of England vote for
maintaining this law?  If, indeed, he were bound by public faith
to maintain this law, I admit that he would have no choice.  But
I have proved, unless I greatly deceive myself, that he is not
bound by public faith to maintain this law?  Can he then
conscientiously support the Ministers to-night?  If he votes with
them, he votes for persecuting what he himself believes to be the
truth.  He holds out to the members of his own Church lures to
tempt them to renounce that Church, and to join themselves to a
Church which he considers as less pure.  We may differ as to the
propriety of imposing penalties and disabilities on heretics.
But surely we shall agree in thinking that we ought not to punish
men for orthodoxy.

I know, Sir, that there are many gentlemen who dislike innovation
merely as innovation, and would be glad always to keep things as
they are now.  Even to this class of persons I will venture to
appeal.  I assure them that we are not the innovators.  I assure
them that our object is to keep things as they are and as they
have long been.  In form, I own, we are proposing a change; but
in truth we are resisting a change.  The question really is, not
whether we shall remove old tests, but whether we shall impose
new ones.  The law which we seek to repeal has long been
obsolete.  So completely have the tests been disused that, only
the other day, the right honourable Baronet, the Secretary for
the Home Department, when speaking in favour of the Irish
Colleges Bill, told us that the Government was not making a rash
experiment.  "Our plan," he said, "has already been tried at
Edinburgh and has succeeded.  At Edinburgh the tests have been
disused near a hundred years."  As to Glasgow the gentlemen
opposite can give us full information from their own experience.
For there are at least three members of the Cabinet who have been
Lords Rectors; the First Lord of the Treasury, and the
Secretaries for the Home Department and the Colonial Department.
They never took the test.  They probably would not have taken it;
for they are all Episcopalians.  In fact, they belong to the very
class which the test was especially meant to exclude.  The test
was not meant to exclude Presbyterian dissenters; for the
Presbyterian Church was not yet rent by any serious schism.  Nor
was the test meant to exclude the Roman Catholics; for against
the Roman Catholics there was already abundant security.  The
Protestant Episcopalian was the enemy against whom it was, in
1707, thought peculiarly necessary to take precautions.  That
those precautions have long been disused the three members of the
Cabinet whom I mentioned can certify.

On a sudden the law, which had long slept a deep sleep, has been
awakened, stirred up, and put into vigorous action.  These
obsolete tests are now, it seems, to be exacted with severity.
And why?  Simply because an event has taken place which makes
them ten times as unjust and oppressive as they would have been
formerly.  They were not required while the Established Church
was the Church of the majority.  They are to be required solely
because a secession has taken place which has made the
Established Church the Church of the minority.  While they could
have done little mischief they were suffered to lie neglected.
They are now to be used, because a time has come at which they
cannot be used without fatal consequences.

It is impossible for me to speak without indignation of those who
have taken the lead in the work of persecution.  Yet I must give
them credit for courage.  They have selected as their object of
attack no less a man than Sir David Brewster, Principal of the
University of Saint Andrews.  I hold in my hand the libel, as it
is technically called, in which a Presbytery of the Established
Church demands that Sir David, for the crime of adhering to that
ecclesiastical polity which was guaranteed to his country by the
Act of Union, shall be "removed from his office, and visited with
such other censure or punishment as the laws of the Church
enjoin, for the glory of God, the safety of the Church, and the
prosperity of the University, and to deter others holding the
same important office from committing the like offence in all
time coming, but that others may hear and fear the danger and
detriment of following divisive courses."  Yes; for the glory of
God, the safety of the Church, and the prosperity of the
University.  What right, Sir, have the authors of such an
instrument as this to raise their voices against the insolence
and intolerance of the Vatican?  The glory of God!  As to that, I
will only say that this is not the first occasion on which the
glory of God has been made a pretext for the injustice of man.
The safety of the Church!  Sir, if, which God forbid, that Church
is really possessed by the evil spirit which actuates this
Presbytery; if that Church, having recently lost hundreds of able
ministers and hundreds of thousands of devout hearers, shall,
instead of endeavouring, by meekness, and by redoubled diligence,
to regain those whom she has estranged, give them new
provocation; if she shall sharpen against them an old law the
edge of which has long rusted off, and which, when it was first
made, was made not for her defence, but for theirs; then I
pronounce the days of that Church numbered.  As to the prosperity
of the University, is there a corner of Europe where men of
science will not laugh when they hear that the prosperity of the
University of Saint Andrews is to be promoted by expelling Sir
David Brewster on account of a theological squabble?  The
professors of Edinburgh know better than this Presbytery how the
prosperity of a seat of learning is to be promoted.  There the
Academic Senate is almost unanimous in favour of the bill.  And
indeed it is quite certain that, unless this bill, or some
similar bill, be passed, a new college will soon be founded and
endowed with that munificence of which the history of the Free
Church furnishes so many examples.  From the day on which such an
university arises, the old universities must decline.  Now, they
are practically national, and not sectarian, institutions.  And
yet, even now, the emoluments of a professorship are so much
smaller than those which ability and industry can obtain in other
ways, that it is difficult to find eminent men to fill the
chairs.  And if there be this difficulty now, when students of
all religious persuasions attend the lectures, what is likely to
happen when all the members of the Free Church go elsewhere for
instruction?  If there be this difficulty when you have all the
world to choose professors from, what is likely to happen when
your choice is narrowed to less than one-half of Scotland?  As
the professorships become poorer, the professors will become less
competent.  As the professors become less competent, the classes
will become thinner.  As the classes become thinner, the
professorships will again become poorer.  The decline will become
rapid and headlong.  In a short time, the lectures will be
delivered to empty rooms:  the grass will grow in the courts:
and men not fit to be village dominies will occupy the chairs of
Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart, of Reid and Black, of Playfair and
Jamieson.

How do Her Majesty's Ministers like such a prospect as this!
Already they have, whether by their fault or their misfortune I
will not now inquire, secured for themselves an unenviable place
in the history of Scotland.  Their names are already inseparably
associated with the disruption of her Church.  Are those names to
be as inseparably associated with the ruin of her Universities?

If the Government were consistent in error, some respect might be
mingled with our disapprobation.  But a Government which is
guided by no principle; a Government which, on the gravest
questions, does not know its own mind twenty-four hours together;
a Government which is against tests at Cork, and for tests at
Glasgow, against tests at Belfast, and for tests at Edinburgh,
against tests on the Monday, for them on the Wednesday, against
them again on the Thursday--how can such a Government command
esteem or confidence?  How can the Ministers wonder that their
uncertain and capricious liberality fails to obtain the applause
of the liberal party?  What right have they to complain if they
lose the confidence of half the nation without gaining the
confidence of the other half?

But I do not speak to the Government.  I speak to the House.  I
appeal to those who, on Monday last, voted with the Ministers
against the test proposed by the honourable Baronet the Member
for North Devon.  I know what is due to party ties.  But there is
a mire so black and so deep that no leader has a right to drag
his followers through it.  It is only forty-eight hours since
honourable gentlemen were brought down to the House to vote
against requiring the professors in the Irish Colleges to make a
declaration of belief in the Gospel:  and now the same gentlemen
are expected to come down and to vote that no man shall be a
professor in a Scottish college who does not declare himself a
Calvinist and a Presbyterian.  Flagrant as is the injustice with
which the ministers have on this occasion treated Scotland, the
injustice with which they have treated their own supporters is
more flagrant still.  I call on all who voted with the Government
on Monday to consider whether they can consistently and
honourably vote with the Government to-night:  I call on all
members of the Church of England to ponder well before they make
it penal to be a member of the Church of England; and, lastly, I
call on every man of every sect and party who loves science and
letters, who is solicitous for the public tranquillity, who
respects the public faith, to stand by us in this our hard
struggle to avert the ruin which threatens the Universities of
Scotland.  I move that this bill be now read a second time.

...


CORN LAWS.  (DECEMBER 2, 1845)

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON THE 2D OF DECEMBER 1845.

The following Speech was delivered at a public meeting held at
Edinburgh on the second of December, 1845, for the purpose of
petitioning Her Majesty to open the ports of the United Kingdom
for the free admission of corn and other food.

My Lord Provost and Gentlemen,--You will, I hope, believe that I
am deeply sensible of the kindness with which you have received
me.  I only beg that you will continue to extend your indulgence
to me, if it should happen that my voice should fail me in the
attempt to address you.  I have thought it my duty to obey your
summons, though I am hardly equal to the exertion of public
speaking, and though I am so situated that I can pass only a few
hours among you.  But it seemed to me that this was not an
ordinary meeting or an ordinary crisis.  It seemed to me that a
great era had arrived, and that, at such a conjuncture, you were
entitled to know the opinions and intentions of one who has the
honour of being your representative.

With respect to the past, gentlemen, I have perhaps a little to
explain, but certainly nothing to repent or to retract.  My
opinions, from the day on which I entered public life, have never
varied.  I have always considered the principle of protection of
agriculture as a vicious principle.  I have always thought that
this vicious principle took, in the Act of 1815, in the Act of
1828, and in the Act of 1842, a singularly vicious form.  This I
declared twelve years ago, when I stood for Leeds:  this I
declared in May 1839, when I first presented myself before you;
and when, a few months later, Lord Melbourne invited me to become
a member of his Government, I distinctly told him that, in office
or out of office, I must vote for the total repeal of the corn
laws.

But in the year 1841 a very peculiar crisis arrived.  There was
reason to hope that it might be possible to effect a compromise,
which would not indeed wholly remove the evils inseparable from a
system of protection, but which would greatly mitigate them.
There were some circumstances in the financial situation of the
country which led those who were then the advisers of the Crown
to hope that they might be able to get rid of the sliding scale,
and to substitute for it a moderate fixed duty.  We proposed a
duty of eight shillings a quarter on wheat.  The Parliament
refused even to consider our plan.  Her Majesty appealed to the
people.  I presented myself before you; and you will bear me
witness that I disguised nothing.  I said, "I am for a perfectly
free trade in corn:  but I think that, situated as we are, we
should do well to consent to a compromise.  If you return me to
Parliament, I shall vote for the eight shilling duty.  It is for
you to determine whether, on those terms, you will return me or
not."  You agreed with me.  You sent me back to the House of
Commons on the distinct understanding that I was to vote for the
plan proposed by the Government of which I was a member.  As soon
as the new Parliament met, a change of administration took place.
But it seemed to me that it was my duty to support, when out of
place, that proposition to which I had been a party when I was in
place.  I therefore did not think myself justified in voting for
a perfectly free trade, till Parliament had decided against our
fixed duty, and in favour of Sir Robert Peel's new sliding scale.
As soon as that decision had been pronounced, I conceived that I
was no longer bound by the terms of the compromise which I had,
with many misgivings, consented to offer to the agriculturists,
and which the agriculturists had refused to accept.  I have ever
since voted in favour of every motion which has been made for the
total abolition of the duties on corn.

There has been, it is true, some difference of opinion between me
and some of you.  We belonged to the same camp:  but we did not
quite agree as to the mode of carrying on the war.  I saw the
immense strength of the interests which were arrayed against us.
I saw that the corn monopoly would last forever if those who
defended it were united, while those who assailed it were
divided.  I saw that many men of distinguished abilities and
patriotism, such men as Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, Lord
Morpeth, were unwilling to relinquish all hope that the question
might be settled by a compromise such as had been proposed in
1841.  It seemed to me that the help of such men was
indispensable to us, and that, if we drove from us such valuable
allies, we should be unable to contend against the common enemy.
Some of you thought that I was timorous, and others that I was
misled by party spirit or by personal friendship.  I still think
that I judged rightly.  But I will not now argue the question.
It has been set at rest for ever, and in the best possible way.
It is not necessary for us to consider what relations we ought to
maintain with the party which is for a moderate fixed duty.  That
party has disappeared.  Time, and reflection, and discussion,
have produced their natural effect on minds eminently intelligent
and candid.  No intermediate shades of opinion are now left.
There is no twilight.  The light has been divided from the
darkness.  Two parties are ranged in battle array against each
other.  There is the standard of monopoly.  Here is the standard
of free trade; and by the standard of free trade I pledge myself
to stand firmly.

Gentlemen, a resolution has been put into my hands which I shall
move with the greatest pleasure.  That resolution sets forth in
emphatic language a truth of the highest importance, namely, that
the present corn laws press with especial severity on the poor.
There was a time, gentlemen, when politicians were not ashamed to
defend the corn laws merely as contrivances for putting the money
of the many into the pockets of the few.  We must,--so these men
reasoned,--have a powerful and opulent class of grandees:  that
we may have such grandees, the rent of land must be kept up:  and
that the rent of land may be kept up, the price of bread must be
kept up.  There may still be people who think thus:  but they
wisely keep their thoughts to themselves.  Nobody now ventures to
say in public that ten thousand families ought to be put on short
allowance of food in order that one man may have a fine stud and
a fine picture gallery.  Our monopolists have changed their
ground.  They have abandoned their old argument for a new
argument much less invidious, but, I think, rather more absurd.
They have turned philanthropists.  Their hearts bleed for the
misery of the poor labouring man.  They constantly tell us that
the cry against the corn laws has been raised by capitalists;
that the capitalist wishes to enrich himself at the expense both
of the landed gentry and of the working people; that every
reduction of the price of food must be followed by a reduction of
the wages of labour; and that, if bread should cost only half
what it now costs, the peasant and the artisan would be sunk in
wretchedness and degradation, and the only gainers would be the
millowners and the money changers.  It is not only by landowners,
it is not only by Tories, that this nonsense has been talked.  We
have heard it from men of a very different class, from demagogues
who wish to keep up the corn laws, merely in order that the corn
laws may make the people miserable, and that misery may make the
people turbulent.  You know how assiduously those enemies of all
order and all property have laboured to deceive the working man
into a belief that cheap bread would be a curse to him.  Nor have
they always laboured in vain.  You remember that once, even in
this great and enlightened city, a public meeting called to
consider the corn laws was disturbed by a deluded populace.  Now,
for my own part, whenever I hear bigots who are opposed to all
reform, and anarchists who are bent on universal destruction,
join in the same cry, I feel certain that it is an absurd and
mischievous cry; and surely never was there a cry so absurd and
mischievous as this cry against cheap loaves.  It seems strange
that Conservatives, people who profess to hold new theories in
abhorrence, people who are always talking about the wisdom of our
ancestors, should insist on our receiving as an undoubted truth a
strange paradox never heard of from the creation of the world
till the nineteenth century.  Begin with the most ancient book
extant, the Book of Genesis, and come down to the parliamentary
debates of 1815; and I will venture to say that you will find
that, on this point, the party which affects profound reverence
for antiquity and prescription has against it the unanimous voice
of thirty-three centuries.  If there be anything in which all
peoples, nations, and languages, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Italians,
Frenchmen, Englishmen, have agreed, it has been this, that the
dearness of food is a great evil to the poor.  Surely, the
arguments which are to counterbalance such a mass of authority
ought to be weighty.  What then are those arguments?  I know of
only one.  If any gentleman is acquainted with any other, I wish
that he would communicate it to us; and I will engage that he
shall have a fair and full hearing.  The only argument that I
know of is this, that there are some countries in the world where
food is cheaper than in England, and where the people are more
miserable than in England.  Bengal has been mentioned.  But
Poland is the favourite case.  Whenever we ask why there should
not be a free trade in corn between the Vistula and the Thames,
the answer is, "Do you wish our labourers to be reduced to the
condition of the peasants of the Vistula?"  Was such reasoning
ever heard before?  See how readily it may be turned against
those who use it.  Corn is cheaper at Cincinnati than here; but
the wages of the labourer are much higher at Cincinnati than
here:  therefore, the lower the price of food, the higher the
wages will be.  This reasoning is just as good as the reasoning
of our adversaries:  that is to say, it is good for nothing.  It
is not one single cause that makes nations either prosperous or
miserable.  No friend of free trade is such an idiot as to say
that free trade is the only valuable thing in the world; that
religion, government, police, education, the administration of
justice, public expenditure, foreign relations, have nothing
whatever to do with the well-being of nations; that people sunk
in superstition, slavery, barbarism, must be happy if they have
only cheap food.  These gentlemen take the most unfortunate
country in the world, a country which, while it had an
independent government, had the very worst of independent
governments; the sovereign a mere phantom; the nobles defying him
and quarrelling with each other; the great body of the population
in a state of servitude; no middle class; no manufactures;
scarcely any trade, and that in the hands of Jew pedlars.  Such
was Poland while it was a separate kingdom.  But foreign invaders
came down upon it.  It was conquered:  it was reconquered:  it
was partitioned:  it was repartitioned:  it is now under a
government of which I will not trust myself to speak.  This is
the country to which these gentlemen go to study the effect of
low prices.  When they wish to ascertain the effect of high
prices, they take our own country; a country which has been
during many generations the best governed in Europe; a country
where personal slavery has been unknown during ages; a country
which enjoys the blessings of a pure religion, of freedom, of
order; a country long secured by the sea against invasion; a
country in which the oldest man living has never seen a foreign
flag except as a trophy.  Between these two countries our
political philosophers institute a comparison.  They find the
Briton better off than the Pole; and they immediately come to the
conclusion that the Briton is so well off because his bread is
dear, and the Pole so ill off because his bread is cheap.  Why,
is there a single good which in this way I could not prove to be
an evil, or a single evil which I could not prove to be a good?
Take lameness.  I will prove that it is the best thing in the
world to be lame:  for I can show you men who are lame, and yet
much happier than many men who have the full use of their legs.
I will prove health to be a calamity.  For I can easily find you
people in excellent health whose fortunes have been wrecked,
whose character has been blasted, and who are more wretched than
many invalids.  But is that the way in which any man of common
sense reasons?  No; the question is:  Would not the lame man be
happier if you restored to him the use of his limbs?  Would not
the healthy man be more wretched if he had gout and rheumatism in
addition to all his other calamities?  Would not the Englishman
be better off if food were as cheap here as in Poland?  Would not
the Pole be more miserable if food were as dear in Poland as
here?  More miserable indeed he would not long be:  for he would
be dead in a month.

It is evident that the true way of determining the question which
we are considering, is to compare the state of a society when
food is cheap with the state of that same society when food is
dear; and this is a comparison which we can very easily make.  We
have only to recall to our memory what we have ourselves seen
within the last ten years.  Take the year 1835.  Food was cheap
then; and the capitalist prospered greatly.  But was the
labouring man miserable?  On the contrary, it is notorious that
work was plentiful, that wages were high, that the common people
were thriving and contented.  Then came a change like that in
Pharaoh's dream.  The thin ears had blighted the full ears; the
lean kine had devoured the fat kine; the days of plenty were
over; and the days of dearth had arrived.  In 1841 the capitalist
was doubtless distressed.  But will anybody tell me that the
capitalist was the only sufferer, or the chief sufferer?  Have we
forgotten what was the condition of the working people in that
unhappy year?  So visible was the misery of the manufacturing
towns that a man of sensibility could hardly bear to pass through
them.  Everywhere he found filth and nakedness, and plaintive
voices, and wasted forms, and haggard faces.  Politicians who had
never been thought alarmists began to tremble for the very
foundations of society.  First the mills were put on short time.
Then they ceased to work at all.  Then went to pledge the scanty
property of the artisan:  first his little luxuries, then his
comforts, then his necessaries.  The hovels were stripped till
they were as bare as the wigwam of a Dogribbed Indian.  Alone,
amidst the general misery, the shop with the three golden balls
prospered, and was crammed from cellar to garret with the clocks,
and the tables, and the kettles, and the blankets, and the bibles
of the poor.  I remember well the effect which was produced in
London by the unwonted sight of the huge pieces of cannon which
were going northward to overawe the starving population of
Lancashire.  These evil days passed away.  Since that time we
have again had cheap bread.  The capitalist has been a gainer.
It was fit that he should be a gainer.  But has he been the only
gainer?  Will those who are always telling us that the Polish
labourer is worse off than the English labourer venture to tell
us that the English labourer was worse off in 1844 than in 1841?
Have we not everywhere seen the goods of the poor coming back
from the magazine of the pawnbroker?  Have we not seen in the
house of the working man, in his clothing, in his very looks as
he passed us in the streets, that he was a happier being?  As to
his pleasures, and especially as to the most innocent, the most
salutary, of his pleasures, ask your own most intelligent and
useful fellow citizen Mr Robert Chambers what sale popular books
had in the year 1841, and what sale they had last year.  I am
assured that, in one week of 1845, the sums paid in wages within
twenty miles of Manchester exceeded by a million and a half the
sums paid in the corresponding week of 1841.

Gentlemen, both the capitalist and the labourer have been
gainers, as they ought to have been gainers, by the diminution in
the price of bread.  But there is a third party, which ought not
to have gained by that diminution, and yet has gained very
greatly by it; and that party is Her Majesty's present
Government.  It is for the interest of rulers that those whom
they rule should be prosperous.  But the prosperity which we have
lately enjoyed was a prosperity for which we were not indebted to
our rulers.  It came in spite of them.  It was produced by the
cheapness of that which they had laboured to render dear.  Under
pretence of making us independent of foreign supply, they have
established a system which makes us dependent in the worst
possible way.  As my valued friend, the Lord Provost (Mr Adam
Black.), has justly said, there is a mutual dependence among
nations of which we cannot get rid.  That Providence has assigned
different productions to different climates is a truth with which
everybody is familiar.  But this is not all.  Even in the same
climate different productions belong to different stages of
civilisation.  As one latitude is favourable to the vine and
another to the sugar cane, so there is, in the same latitude, a
state of society in which it is desirable that the industry of
men should be almost entirely directed towards the cultivation of
the earth, and another state of society in which it is desirable
that a large part of the population should be employed in
manufactures.  No dependence can be conceived more natural, more
salutary, more free from everything like degradation than the
mutual dependence which exists between a nation which has a
boundless extent of fertile land, and a nation which has a
boundless command of machinery; between a nation whose business
is to turn deserts into corn fields, and a nation whose business
is to increase tenfold by ingenious processes the value of the
fleece and of the rude iron ore.  Even if that dependence were
less beneficial than it is, we must submit to it; for it is
inevitable.  Make what laws we will, we must be dependent on
other countries for a large part of our food.  That point was
decided when England ceased to be an exporting country.  For,
gentlemen, it is demonstrable that none but a country which
ordinarily exports food can be independent of foreign supplies.
If a manufacturer determines to produce ten thousand pair of
stockings, he will produce the ten thousand, and neither more nor
less.  But an agriculturist cannot determine that he will produce
ten thousand quarters of corn, and neither more nor less.  That
he may be sure of having ten thousand quarters in a bad year, he
must sow such a quantity of land that he will have much more than
ten thousand in a good year.  It is evident that, if our island
does not in ordinary years produce many more quarters than we
want, it will in bad years produce fewer quarters than we want.
And it is equally evident that our cultivators will not produce
more quarters of corn than we want, unless they can export the
surplus at a profit.  Nobody ventures to tell us that Great
Britain can be ordinarily an exporting country.  It follows that
we must be dependent:  and the only question is, Which is the
best mode of dependence?  That question it is not difficult to
answer.  Go to Lancashire; see that multitude of cities, some of
them equal in size to the capitals of large kingdoms.  Look at
the warehouses, the machinery, the canals, the railways, the
docks.  See the stir of that hive of human beings busily employed
in making, packing, conveying stuffs which are to be worn in
Canada and Caffraria, in Chili and Java.  You naturally ask, How
is this immense population, collected on an area which will not
yield food for one tenth part of them, to be nourished?  But
change the scene.  Go beyond the Ohio, and there you will see
another species of industry, equally extensive and equally
flourishing.  You will see the wilderness receding fast before
the advancing tide of life and civilisation, vast harvests waving
round the black stumps of what a few months ago was a pathless
forest, and cottages, barns, mills, rising amidst the haunts of
the wolf and the bear.  Here is more than enough corn to feed the
artisans of our thickly peopled island; and most gladly would the
grower of that corn exchange it for a Sheffield knife, a
Birmingham spoon, a warm coat of Leeds woollen cloth, a light
dress of Manchester cotton.  But this exchange our rulers
prohibit.  They say to our manufacturing population, "You would
willingly weave clothes for the people of America, and they would
gladly sow wheat for you; but we prohibit this intercourse.  We
condemn both your looms and their ploughs to inaction.  We will
compel you to pay a high price for a stinted meal.  We will
compel those who would gladly be your purveyors and your
customers to be your rivals.  We will compel them to turn
manufacturers in self-defence; and when, in close imitation of
us, they impose high duties on British goods for the protection
of their own produce, we will, in our speeches and despatches,
express wonder and pity at their strange ignorance of political
economy."

Such has been the policy of Her Majesty's Ministers; but it has
not yet been fairly brought to the trial.  Good harvests have
prevented bad laws from producing their full effect.  The
Government has had a run of luck; and vulgar observers have
mistaken luck for wisdom.  But such runs of luck do not last
forever.  Providence will not always send the rain and the
sunshine just at such a time and in such a quantity as to save
the reputation of shortsighted statesmen.  There is too much
reason to believe that evil days are approaching.  On such a
subject it is a sacred duty to avoid exaggeration; and I shall do
so.  I observe that the writers,--wretched writers they are,--who
defend the present Administration, assert that there is no
probability of a considerable rise in the price of provisions,
and that the Whigs and the Anti-Corn-Law League are busily
engaged in circulating false reports for the vile purpose of
raising a panic.  Now, gentlemen, it shall not be in the power of
anybody to throw any such imputation on me; for I shall describe
our prospects in the words of the Ministers themselves.  I hold
in my hand a letter in which Sir Thomas Freemantle, Secretary for
Ireland, asks for information touching the potato crop in that
country.  His words are these.  "Her Majesty's Government is
seeking to learn the opinion of judges and well informed persons
in every part of Ireland regarding the probability of the supply
being sufficient for the support of the people during the ensuing
winter and spring, provided care be taken in preserving the
stock, and economy used in its consumption."  Here, you will
observe, it is taken for granted that the supply is not
sufficient for a year's consumption:  it is taken for granted
that, without care and economy, the supply will not last to the
end of the spring; and a doubt is expressed whether, with care
and economy, the supply will last even through the winter.  In
this letter the Ministers of the Crown tell us that famine is
close at hand; and yet, when this letter was written, the duty on
foreign corn was seventeen shillings a quarter.  Is it necessary
to say more about the merits of the sliding scale?  We were
assured that this wonderful piece of machinery would secure us
against all danger of scarcity.  But unhappily we find that there
is a hitch; the sliding scale will not slide; the Ministers are
crying "Famine," while the index which they themselves devised is
still pointing to "Plenty."

And thus, Sir, I come back to the resolution which I hold in my
hand, A dear year is before us.  The price of meal is already, I
believe, half as much again as it was a few months ago.  Again,
unhappily, we are able to bring to the test of facts the
doctrine, that the dearness of food benefits the labourer and
injures only the capitalist.  The price of food is rising.  Are
wages rising?  On the contrary, they are falling.  In numerous
districts the symptoms of distress are already perceptible.  The
manufacturers are already beginning to work short time.  Warned
by repeated experience, they know well what is coming, and expect
that 1846 will be a second 1841.

If these things do not teach us wisdom, we are past all teaching.
Twice in ten years we have seen the price of corn go up; and, as
it went up, the wages of the labouring classes went down.  Twice
in the same period we have seen the price of corn go down; and,
as it went down, the wages of the labouring classes went up.
Surely such experiments as these would in any science be
considered as decisive.

The prospect, gentlemen, is, doubtless, gloomy.  Yet it has its
bright part.  I have already congratulated you on the important
fact that Lord John Russell and those who have hitherto acted on
this subject in concert with him, have given up all thoughts of
fixed duty.  I have to congratulate you on another fact not less
important.  I am assured that the working people of the
manufacturing districts have at last come to understand this
question.  The sharp discipline which they have undergone has
produced this good effect; that they will never again listen to
any orator who shall have the effrontery to tell them that their
wages rise and fall with the price of the loaf.  Thus we shall go
into the contest under such leading and with such a following as
we never had before.  The best part of the aristocracy will be at
our head.  Millions of labouring men, who had been separated from
us by the arts of impostors, will be in our rear.  So led and so
followed, we may, I think, look forward to victory, if not in
this, yet in the next Parliament.  But, whether our triumph be
near or remote, I assure you that I shall not fail as regards
this question, to prove myself your true representative.  I will
now, my Lord, put into your hands this resolution, "That the
present corn law presses with especial severity on the poorer
classes."

...


THE TEN HOURS BILL.  (MAY 22, 1846)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 22D OF MAY
1846.

On the twenty-ninth of April, 1846, Mr Fielden, Member for
Oldham, moved the second reading of a Bill for limiting the
labour of young persons in factories to ten hours a day.  The
debate was adjourned, and was repeatedly resumed at long
intervals.  At length, on the twenty-second of May the Bill was
rejected by 203 votes to 193.  On that day the following Speech
was made.

It is impossible, Sir, that I can remain silent after the appeal
which has been made to me in so pointed a manner by my honourable
friend, the Member for Sheffield (Mr Ward.), and even if that
appeal had not been made to me, I should have been very desirous
to have an opportunity of explaining the grounds on which I shall
vote for the second reading of this bill.

It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to assure my honourable friend
that I utterly disapprove of those aspersions which have, both in
this House and out of it, been thrown on the owners of factories.
For that valuable class of men I have no feeling but respect and
good will.  I am convinced that with their interests the
interests of the whole community, and especially of the labouring
classes, are inseparably bound up.  I can also with perfect
sincerity declare that the vote which I shall give to-night will
not be a factious vote.  In no circumstances indeed should I
think that the laws of political hostility warranted me in
treating this question as a party question.  But at the present
moment I would much rather strengthen than weaken the hands of
Her Majesty's Ministers.  It is by no means pleasant to me to be
under the necessity of opposing them.  I assure them, I assure my
friends on this side of the House with whom I am so unfortunate
as to differ, and especially my honourable friend the Member for
Sheffield, who spoke, I must say, in rather too plaintive a tone,
that I have no desire to obtain credit for humanity at their
expense.  I fully believe that their feeling towards the
labouring people is quite as kind as mine.  There is no
difference between us as to ends:  there is an honest difference
of opinion as to means:  and we surely ought to be able to
discuss the points on which we differ without one angry emotion
or one acrimonious word.

The details of the bill, Sir, will be more conveniently and more
regularly discussed when we consider it in Committee.  Our
business at present is with the principle:  and the principle, we
are told by many gentlemen of great authority, is unsound.  In
their opinion, neither this bill, nor any other bill regulating
the hours of labour, can be defended.  This, they say, is one of
those matters about which we ought not to legislate at all; one
of those matters which settle themselves far better than any
government can settle them.  Now it is most important that this
point should be fully cleared up.  We certainly ought not to
usurp functions which do not properly belong to us:  but, on the
other hand, we ought not to abdicate functions which do properly
belong to us.  I hardly know which is the greater pest to
society, a paternal government, that is to say a prying,
meddlesome government, which intrudes itself into every part of
human life, and which thinks that it can do everything for
everybody better than anybody can do anything for himself; or a
careless, lounging government, which suffers grievances, such as
it could at once remove, to grow and multiply, and which to all
complaint and remonstrance has only one answer:  "We must let
things alone:  we must let things take their course:  we must let
things find their level."  There is no more important problem in
politics than to ascertain the just mean between these two most
pernicious extremes, to draw correctly the line which divides
those cases in which it is the duty of the State to interfere
from those cases in which it is the duty of the State to abstain
from interference.  In old times the besetting sin of rulers was
undoubtedly an inordinate disposition to meddle.  The lawgiver
was always telling people how to keep their shops, how to till
their fields, how to educate their children, how many dishes to
have on their tables, how much a yard to give for the cloth which
made their coats.  He was always trying to remedy some evil which
did not properly fall within his province:  and the consequence
was that he increased the evils which he attempted to remedy.  He
was so much shocked by the distress inseparable from scarcity
that he made statutes against forestalling and regrating, and so
turned the scarcity into a famine.  He was so much shocked by the
cunning and hardheartedness of money-lenders that he made laws
against usury; and the consequence was that the borrower, who, if
he had been left unprotected, would have got money at ten per
cent., could hardly, when protected, get it at fifteen per cent.
Some eminent political philosophers of the last century exposed
with great ability the folly of such legislation, and, by doing
so, rendered a great service to mankind.  There has been a
reaction, a reaction which has doubtless produced much good, but
which like most reactions, has not been without evils and
dangers.  Our statesmen cannot now be accused of being
busybodies.  But I am afraid that there is, even in some of the
ablest and most upright among them a tendency to the opposite
fault.  I will give an instance of what I mean.  Fifteen years
ago it became evident that railroads would soon, in every part of
the kingdom, supersede to a great extent the old highways.  The
tracing of the new routes which were to join all the chief
cities, ports, and naval arsenals of the island was a matter of
the highest national importance.  But, unfortunately, those who
should have acted for the nation, refused to interfere.
Consequently, numerous questions which were really public,
questions which concerned the public convenience, the public
prosperity, the public security, were treated as private
questions.  That the whole society was interested in having a
good system of internal communication seemed to be forgotten.
The speculator who wanted a large dividend on his shares, the
landowner who wanted a large price for his acres, obtained a full
hearing.  But nobody applied to be heard on behalf of the
community.  The effects of that great error we feel, and we shall
not soon cease to feel.  Unless I am greatly mistaken, we are in
danger of committing to-night an error of the same kind.  The
honourable member for Montrose (Mr Hume.) and my honourable
friend the Member for Sheffield think that the question before us
is merely a question between the old and the new theories of
commerce.  They cannot understand how any friend of free trade
can wish the Legislature to interfere between the capitalist and
the labourer.  They say, "You do not make a law to settle the
price of gloves, or the texture of gloves, or the length of
credit which the glover shall give.  You leave it to him to
determine whether he will charge high or low prices, whether he
will use strong or flimsy materials, whether he will trust or
insist on ready money.  You acknowledge that these are matters
which he ought to be left to settle with his customers, and that
we ought not to interfere.  It is possible that he may manage his
shop ill.  But it is certain that we shall manage it ill.  On the
same grounds on which you leave the seller of gloves and the
buyer of gloves to make their own contract, you ought to leave
the seller of labour and the buyer of labour to make their own
contract."

I have a great respect, Sir, for those who reason thus:  but I
cannot see this matter in the light in which it appears to them;
and, though I may distrust my own judgment, I must be guided by
it.  I am, I believe, as strongly attached as any member of this
House to the principle of free trade, rightly understood.  Trade,
considered merely as trade, considered merely with reference to
the pecuniary interest of the contracting parties, can hardly be
too free.  But there is a great deal of trade which cannot be
considered merely as trade, and which affects higher than
pecuniary interests.  And to say that Government never ought to
regulate such trade is a monstrous proposition, a proposition at
which Adam Smith would have stood aghast.  We impose some
restrictions on trade for purposes of police.  Thus, we do not
suffer everybody who has a cab and a horse to ply for passengers
in the streets of London.  We do not leave the fare to be
determined by the supply and the demand.  We do not permit a
driver to extort a guinea for going half a mile on a rainy day
when there is no other vehicle on the stand.  We impose some
restrictions on trade for the sake of revenue.  Thus, we forbid a
farmer to cultivate tobacco on his own ground.  We impose some
restrictions on trade for the sake of national defence.  Thus we
compel a man who would rather be ploughing or weaving to go into
the militia; and we fix the amount of pay which he shall receive
without asking his consent.  Nor is there in all this anything
inconsistent with the soundest political economy.  For the
science of political economy teaches us only that we ought not on
commercial grounds to interfere with the liberty of commerce; and
we, in the cases which I have put, interfere with the liberty of
commerce on higher than commercial grounds.

And now, Sir, to come closer to the case with which we have to
deal, I say, first, that where the health of the community is
concerned, it may be the duty of the State to interfere with the
contracts of individuals; and to this proposition I am quite sure
that Her Majesty's Government will cordially assent.  I have just
read a very interesting report signed by two members of that
Government, the Duke of Buccleuch, and the noble earl who was
lately Chief Commissioner of the Woods and Forests, and who is
now Secretary for Ireland (The Earl of Lincoln.); and, since that
report was laid before the House, the noble earl himself has,
with the sanction of the Cabinet, brought in a bill for the
protection of the public health.  By this bill it is provided
that no man shall be permitted to build a house on his own land
in any great town without giving notice to certain Commissioners.
No man is to sink a cellar without the consent of these
Commissioners.  The house must not be of less than a prescribed
width.  No new house must be built without a drain.  If an old
house has no drain, the Commissioners may order the owner to make
a drain.  If he refuses, they make a drain for him, and send him
in the bill.  They may order him to whitewash his house.  If he
refuses, they may send people with pails and brushes to whitewash
it for him, at his charge.  Now, suppose that some proprietor of
houses at Leeds or Manchester were to expostulate with the
Government in the language in which the Government has
expostulated with the supporters of this bill for the regulation
of factories.  Suppose he were to say to the noble earl, "Your
lordship professes to be a friend to free trade.  Your lordship's
doctrine is that everybody ought to be at liberty to buy cheap
and to sell dear.  Why then may not I run up a house as cheap as
I can, and let my rooms as dear as I can?  Your lordship does not
like houses without drains.  Do not take one of mine then.  You
think my bedrooms filthy.  Nobody forces you to sleep in them.
Use your own liberty:  but do not restrain that of your
neighbours.  I can find many a family willing to pay a shilling a
week for leave to live in what you call a hovel.  And why am not
I to take the shilling which they are willing to give me?  And
why are not they to have such shelter as, for that shilling, I
can afford them?  Why did you send a man without my consent to
clean my house, and then force me to pay for what I never
ordered?  My tenants thought the house clean enough for them; or
they would not have been my tenants; and, if they and I were
satisfied, why did you, in direct defiance of all the principles
of free trade, interfere between us?"  This reasoning, Sir, is
exactly of a piece with the reasoning of the honourable Member
for Montrose, and of my honourable friend the Member for
Sheffield.  If the noble earl will allow me to make a defence for
him, I believe that he would answer the objection thus:  "I
hold," he would say, "the sound doctrine of free trade.  But your
doctrine of free trade is an exaggeration, a caricature of the
sound doctrine; and by exhibiting such a caricature you bring
discredit on the sound doctrine.  We should have nothing to do
with the contracts between you and your tenants, if those
contracts affected only pecuniary interests.  But higher than
pecuniary interests are at stake.  It concerns the commonwealth
that the great body of the people should not live in a way which
makes life wretched and short, which enfeebles the body and
pollutes the mind.  If, by living in houses which resemble
hogstyes, great numbers of our countrymen have contracted the
tastes of hogs, if they have become so familiar with filth and
stench and contagion, that they burrow without reluctance in
holes which would turn the stomach of any man of cleanly habits,
that is only an additional proof that we have too long neglected
our duties, and an additional reason for our now performing
them."

Secondly, I say that where the public morality is concerned it
may be the duty of the State to interfere with the contracts of
individuals.  Take the traffic in licentious books and pictures.
Will anybody deny that the State may, with propriety, interdict
that traffic?  Or take the case of lotteries.  I have, we will
suppose, an estate for which I wish to get twenty thousand
pounds.  I announce my intention to issue a thousand tickets at
twenty pounds each.  The holder of the number which is first
drawn is to have the estate.  But the magistrate interferes; the
contract between me and the purchasers of my tickets is annulled;
and I am forced to pay a heavy penalty for having made such a
contract.  I appeal to the principle of free trade, as expounded
by the honourable gentlemen the Members for Montrose and
Sheffield.  I say to you, the legislators who have restricted my
liberty, "What business have you to interfere between a buyer and
a seller?  If you think the speculation a bad one, do not take
tickets.  But do not interdict other people from judging for
themselves."  Surely you would answer, "You would be right if
this were a mere question of trade:  but it is a question of
morality.  We prohibit you from disposing of your property in
this particular mode, because it is a mode which tends to
encourage a most pernicious habit of mind, a habit of mind
incompatible with all the qualities on which the well-being of
individuals and of nations depends."

It must then, I think, be admitted that, where health is
concerned, and where morality is concerned, the State is
justified in interfering with the contracts of individuals.  And,
if this be admitted, it follows that the case with which we now
have to do is a case for interference.

Will it be denied that the health of a large part of the rising
generation may be seriously affected by the contracts which this
bill is intended to regulate?  Can any man who has read the
evidence which is before us, can any man who has ever observed
young people, can any man who remembers his own sensations when
he was young, doubt that twelve hours a day of labour in a
factory is too much for a lad of thirteen?

Or will it be denied that this is a question in which public
morality is concerned?  Can any one doubt,--none, I am sure, of
my friends around me doubts,--that education is a matter of the
highest importance to the virtue and happiness of a people?  Now
we know that there can be no education without leisure.  It is
evident that, after deducting from the day twelve hours for
labour in a factory, and the additional hours necessary for
exercise, refreshment, and repose, there will not remain time
enough for education.

I have now, I think, shown that this bill is not in principle
objectionable; and yet I have not touched the strongest part of
our case.  I hold that, where public health is concerned, and
where public morality is concerned, the State may be justified in
regulating even the contracts of adults.  But we propose to
regulate only the contracts of infants.  Now, was there ever a
civilised society in which the contracts of infants were not
under some regulation?  Is there a single member of this House
who will say that a wealthy minor of thirteen ought to be at
perfect liberty to execute a conveyance of his estate, or to give
a bond for fifty thousand pounds?  If anybody were so absurd as
to say, "What has the Legislature to do with the matter?  Why
cannot you leave trade free?  Why do you pretend to understand
the boy's interest better than he understands it?"--you would
answer; "When he grows up, he may squander his fortune away if he
likes:  but at present the State is his guardian; and he shall
not ruin himself till he is old enough to know what he is about."
The minors whom we wish to protect have not indeed large property
to throw away:  but they are not the less our wards.  Their only
inheritance, the only fund to which they must look for their
subsistence through life, is the sound mind in the sound body.
And is it not our duty to prevent them from wasting their most
precious wealth before they know its value?

But, it is said, this bill, though it directly limits only the
labour of infants, will, by an indirect operation, limit also the
labour of adults.  Now, Sir, though I am not prepared to vote for
a bill directly limiting the labour of adults, I will plainly say
that I do not think that the limitation of the labour of adults
would necessarily produce all those frightful consequences which
we have heard predicted.  You cheer me in very triumphant tones,
as if I had uttered some monstrous paradox.  Pray, does it not
occur to any of you that the labour of adults is now limited in
this country?  Are you not aware that you are living in a society
in which the labour of adults is limited to six days in seven?
It is you, not I, who maintain a paradox opposed to the opinions
and the practices of all nations and ages.  Did you ever hear of
a single civilised State since the beginning of the world in
which a certain portion of time was not set apart for the rest
and recreation of adults by public authority?  In general, this
arrangement has been sanctioned by religion.  The Egyptians, the
Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, had their holidays:  the Hindoo has
his holidays:  the Mussulman has his holidays:  there are
holidays in the Greek Church, holidays in the Church of Rome,
holidays in the Church of England.  Is it not amusing to hear a
gentleman pronounce with confidence that any legislation which
limits the labour of adults must produce consequences fatal to
society, without once reflecting that in the society in which he
lives, and in every other society that exists, or ever has
existed, there has been such legislation without any evil
consequence?  It is true that a Puritan Government in England,
and an Atheistical Government in France, abolished the old
holidays as superstitious.  But those Governments felt it to be
absolutely necessary to institute new holidays.  Civil festivals
were substituted for religious festivals.  You will find among
the ordinances of the Long Parliament a law providing that, in
exchange for the days of rest and amusement which the people had
been used to enjoy at Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, the
second Tuesday in every month should be given to the working man,
and that any apprentice who was forced to work on the second
Tuesday of any month might have his master up before a
magistrate.  The French Jacobins decreed that the Sunday should
no longer be a day of rest; but they instituted another day of
rest, the Decade.  They swept away the holidays of the Roman
Catholic Church; but they instituted another set of holidays, the
Sansculottides, one sacred to Genius, one to Industry, one to
Opinion, and so on.  I say, therefore, that the practice of
limiting by law the time of the labour of adults is so far from
being, as some gentlemen seem to think, an unheard of and
monstrous practice, that it is a practice as universal as
cookery, as the wearing of clothes, as the use of domestic
animals.

And has this practice been proved by experience to be pernicious?
Let us take the instance with which we are most familiar.  Let us
inquire what has been the effect of those laws which, in our own
country, limit the labour of adults to six days in every seven.
It is quite unnecessary to discuss the question whether
Christians be or be not bound by a divine command to observe the
Sunday.  For it is evident that, whether our weekly holiday be of
divine or of human institution, the effect on the temporal
interests of Society will be exactly the same.  Now, is there a
single argument in the whole Speech of my honourable friend the
Member for Sheffield which does not tell just as strongly against
the laws which enjoin the observance of the Sunday as against the
bill on our table?  Surely, if his reasoning is good for hours,
it must be equally good for days.

He says, "If this limitation be good for the working people, rely
on it that they will find it out, and that they will themselves
establish it without any law."  Why not reason in the same way
about the Sunday?  Why not say, "If it be a good thing for the
people of London to shut their shops one day in seven, they will
find it out, and will shut their shops without a law?"  Sir, the
answer is obvious.  I have no doubt that, if you were to poll the
shopkeepers of London, you would find an immense majority,
probably a hundred to one, in favour of closing shops on the
Sunday; and yet it is absolutely necessary to give to the wish of
the majority the sanction of a law; for, if there were no such
law, the minority, by opening their shops, would soon force the
majority to do the same.

But, says my honourable friend, you cannot limit the labour of
adults unless you fix wages.  This proposition he lays down
repeatedly, assures us that it is incontrovertible, and indeed
seems to think it self-evident; for he has not taken the trouble
to prove it.  Sir, my answer shall be very short.  We have,
during many centuries, limited the labour of adults to six days
in seven; and yet we have not fixed the rate of wages.

But, it is said, you cannot legislate for all trades; and
therefore you had better not legislate for any.  Look at the poor
sempstress.  She works far longer and harder than the factory
child.  She sometimes plies her needle fifteen, sixteen hours in
the twenty-four.  See how the housemaid works, up at six every
morning, and toiling up stairs and down stairs till near
midnight.  You own that you cannot do anything for the sempstress
and the housemaid.  Why then trouble yourself about the factory
child?  Take care that by protecting one class you do not
aggravate the hardships endured by the classes which you cannot
protect.  Why, Sir, might not all this be said, word for word,
against the laws which enjoin the observance of the Sunday?
There are classes of people whom you cannot prevent from working
on the Sunday.  There are classes of people whom, if you could,
you ought not to prevent from working on the Sunday.  Take the
sempstress, of whom so much has been said.  You cannot keep her
from sewing and hemming all Sunday in her garret.  But you do not
think that a reason for suffering Covent Garden Market, and
Leadenhall Market, and Smithfield Market, and all the shops from
Mile End to Hyde Park to be open all Sunday.  Nay, these
factories about which we are debating,--does anybody propose that
they shall be allowed to work all Sunday?  See then how
inconsistent you are.  You think it unjust to limit the labour of
the factory child to ten hours a day, because you cannot limit
the labour of the sempstress.  And yet you see no injustice in
limiting the labour of the factory child, aye, and of the factory
man, to six days in the week, though you cannot limit the labour
of the sempstress.

But, you say, by protecting one class we shall aggravate the
sufferings of all the classes which we cannot protect.  You say
this; but you do not prove it; and all experience proves the
contrary.  We interfere on the Sunday to close the shops.  We do
not interfere with the labour of the housemaid.  But are the
housemaids of London more severely worked on the Sunday than on
other days?  The fact notoriously is the reverse.  For your
legislation keeps the public feeling in a right state, and thus
protects indirectly those whom it cannot protect directly.

Will my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield maintain that
the law which limits the number of working days has been
injurious to the working population?  I am certain that he will
not.  How then can he expect me to believe that a law which
limits the number of working hours must necessarily be injurious
to the working population?  Yet he and those who agree with him
seem to wonder at our dulness because we do not at once admit the
truth of the doctrine which they propound on this subject.  They
reason thus.  We cannot reduce the number of hours of labour in
factories without reducing the amount of production.  We cannot
reduce the amount of production without reducing the remuneration
of the labourer.  Meanwhile, foreigners, who are at liberty to
work till they drop down dead at their looms, will soon beat us
out of all the markets of the world.  Wages will go down fast.
The condition of our working people will be far worse than it is;
and our unwise interference will, like the unwise interference of
our ancestors with the dealings of the corn factor and the money
lender, increase the distress of the very class which we wish to
relieve.

Now, Sir, I fully admit that there might be such a limitation of
the hours of labour as would produce the evil consequences with
which we are threatened; and this, no doubt, is a very good
reason for legislating with great caution, for feeling our way,
for looking well to all the details of this bill.  But it is
certainly not true that every limitation of the hours of labour
must produce these consequences.  And I am, I must say, surprised
when I hear men of eminent ability and knowledge lay down the
proposition that a diminution of the time of labour must be
followed by diminution of the wages of labour, as a proposition
universally true, as a proposition capable of being strictly
demonstrated, as a proposition about which there can be no more
doubt than about any theorem in Euclid.  Sir, I deny the truth of
the proposition; and for this plain reason.  We have already, by
law, greatly reduced the time of labour in factories.  Thirty
years ago, the late Sir Robert Peel told the House that it was a
common practice to make children of eight years of age toil in
mills fifteen hours a day.  A law has since been made which
prohibits persons under eighteen years of age from working in
mills more than twelve hours a day.  That law was opposed on
exactly the same grounds on which the bill before us is opposed.
Parliament was told then, as it is told now, that with the time
of labour the quantity of production would decrease, that with
the quantity of production the wages would decrease, that our
manufacturers would be unable to contend with foreign
manufacturers, and that the condition of the labouring population
instead of being made better by the interference of the
Legislature would be made worse.  Read over those debates; and
you may imagine that you are reading the debate of this evening.
Parliament disregarded these prophecies.  The time of labour was
limited.  Have wages fallen?  Has the cotton trade left
Manchester for France or Germany?  Has the condition of the
working people become more miserable?  Is it not universally
acknowledged that the evils which were so confidently predicted
have not come to pass?  Let me be understood.  I am not arguing
that, because a law which reduced the hours of daily labour from
fifteen to twelve did not reduce wages, a law reducing those
hours from twelve to ten or eleven cannot possibly reduce wages.
That would be very inconclusive reasoning.  What I say is this,
that, since a law which reduced the hours of daily labour from
fifteen to twelve has not reduced wages, the proposition that
every reduction of the hours of labour must necessarily reduce
wages is a false proposition.  There is evidently some flaw in
that demonstration which my honourable friend thinks so complete;
and what the flaw is we may perhaps discover if we look at the
analogous case to which I have so often referred.

Sir, exactly three hundred years ago, great religious changes
were taking place in England.  Much was said and written, in that
inquiring and innovating age, about the question whether
Christians were under a religious obligation to rest from labour
on one day in the week; and it is well known that the chief
Reformers, both here and on the Continent, denied the existence
of any such obligation.  Suppose then that, in 1546, Parliament
had made a law that they should thenceforth be no distinction
between the Sunday and any other day.  Now, Sir, our opponents,
if they are consistent with themselves, must hold that such a law
would have immensely increased the wealth of the country and the
remuneration of the working man.  What an effect, if their
principles be sound, must have been produced by the addition of
one sixth to the time of labour!  What an increase of production!
What a rise of wages!  How utterly unable must the foreign
artisan, who still had his days of festivity and of repose, have
found himself to maintain a competition with a people whose shops
were open, whose markets were crowded, whose spades and axes, and
planes, and hods, and anvils, and looms were at work from morning
till night on three hundred and sixty-five days a year!  The
Sundays of three hundred years make up fifty years of our working
days.  We know what the industry of fifty years can do.  We know
what marvels the industry of the last fifty years has wrought.
The arguments of my honourable friend irresistibly lead us to
this conclusion, that if, during the last three centuries, the
Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest, we should have
been a far richer, a far more highly civilised people than we now
are, and that the labouring classes especially would have been
far better off than at present.  But does he, does any Member of
the House, seriously believe that this would have been the case?
For my own part, I have not the smallest doubt that, if we and
our ancestors had, during the last three centuries, worked just
as hard on the Sunday as on the week days, we should have been at
this moment a poorer people and a less civilised people than we
are; that there would have been less production than there has
been, that the wages of the labourer would have been lower than
they are, and that some other nation would have been now making
cotton stuffs and woollen stuffs and cutlery for the whole world.

Of course, Sir, I do not mean to say that a man will not produce
more in a week by working seven days than by working six days.
But I very much doubt whether, at the end of a year, he will
generally have produced more by working seven days a week than by
working six days a week; and I firmly believe that, at the end of
twenty years, he will have produced much less by working seven
days a week than by working six days a week.  In the same manner
I do not deny that a factory child will produce more, in a single
day, by working twelve hours than by working ten hours, and by
working fifteen hours than by working twelve hours.  But I do
deny that a great society in which children work fifteen, or even
twelve hours a day will, in the lifetime of a generation, produce
as much as if those children had worked less.  If we consider man
merely in a commercial point of view, if we consider him merely
as a machine for the production of worsted and calico, let us not
forget what a piece of mechanism he is, how fearfully and
wonderfully made.  We do not treat a fine horse or a sagacious
dog exactly as we treat a spinning jenny.  Nor will any
slaveholder, who has sense enough to know his own interest, treat
his human chattels exactly as he treats his horses and his dogs.
And would you treat the free labourer of England like a mere
wheel or pulley?  Rely on it that intense labour, beginning too
early in life, continued too long every day, stunting the growth
of the body, stunting the growth of the mind, leaving no time for
healthful exercise, leaving no time for intellectual culture,
must impair all those high qualities which have made our country
great.  Your overworked boys will become a feeble and ignoble
race of men, the parents of a more feeble and more ignoble
progeny; nor will it be long before the deterioration of the
labourer will injuriously affect those very interests to which
his physical and moral energies have been sacrificed.  On the
other hand, a day of rest recurring in every week, two or three
hours of leisure, exercise, innocent amusement or useful study,
recurring every day, must improve the whole man, physically,
morally, intellectually; and the improvement of the man will
improve all that the man produces.  Why is it, Sir, that the
Hindoo cotton manufacturer, close to whose door the cotton grows,
cannot, in the bazaar of his own town, maintain a competition
with the English cotton manufacturer, who has to send thousands
of miles for the raw material, and who has then to send the
wrought material thousands of miles to market?  You will say that
it is owing to the excellence of our machinery.  And to what is
the excellence of our machinery owing?  How many of the
improvements which have been made in our machinery do we owe to
the ingenuity and patient thought of working men?  Adam Smith
tells us in the first chapter of his great work, that you can
hardly go to a factory without seeing some very pretty machine,--
that is his expression,--devised by some labouring man.
Hargraves, the inventor of the spinning jenny, was a common
artisan.  Crompton, the inventor of the mule jenny, was a working
man.  How many hours of the labour of children would do so much
for our manufactures as one of these improvements has done?  And
in what sort of society are such improvements most likely to be
made?  Surely in a society in which the faculties of the working
people are developed by education.  How long will you wait before
any negro, working under the lash in Louisiana, will contrive a
better machinery for squeezing the sugar canes?  My honourable
friend seems to me, in all his reasonings about the commercial
prosperity of nations, to overlook entirely the chief cause on
which that prosperity depends.  What is it, Sir, that makes the
great difference between country and country?  Not the exuberance
of soil; not the mildness of climate; not mines, nor havens, nor
rivers.  These things are indeed valuable when put to their
proper use by human intelligence:  but human intelligence can do
much without them; and they without human intelligence can do
nothing.  They exist in the highest degree in regions of which
the inhabitants are few, and squalid, and barbarous, and naked,
and starving; while on sterile rocks, amidst unwholesome marshes,
and under inclement skies, may be found immense populations, well
fed, well lodged, well clad, well governed.  Nature meant Egypt
and Sicily to be the gardens of the world.  They once were so.
Is it anything in the earth or in the air that makes Scotland
more prosperous than Egypt, that makes Holland more prosperous
than Sicily?  No; it was the Scotchman that made Scotland; it was
the Dutchman that made Holland.  Look at North America.  Two
centuries ago the sites on which now arise mills, and hotels, and
banks, and colleges, and churches, and the Senate Houses of
flourishing commonwealths, were deserts abandoned to the panther
and the bear.  What has made the change?  Was it the rich mould,
or the redundant rivers?  No:  the prairies were as fertile, the
Ohio and the Hudson were as broad and as full then as now.  Was
the improvement the effect of some great transfer of capital from
the old world to the new?  No, the emigrants generally carried
out with them no more than a pittance; but they carried out the
English heart, and head, and arm; and the English heart and head
and arm turned the wilderness into cornfield and orchard, and the
huge trees of the primeval forest into cities and fleets.  Man,
man is the great instrument that produces wealth.  The natural
difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling, when
compared with the difference between a country inhabited by men
full of bodily and mental vigour, and a country inhabited by men
sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude.  Therefore it is that we
are not poorer but richer, because we have, through many ages,
rested from our labour one day in seven.  That day is not lost.
While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow,
while the Exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the
factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth
of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days.
Man, the machine of machines, the machine compared with which all
the contrivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless,
is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labours on
the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with
renewed corporal vigour.  Never will I believe that what makes a
population stronger, and healthier, and wiser, and better, can
ultimately make it poorer.  You try to frighten us by telling us,
that in some German factories, the young work seventeen hours in
the twenty-four, that they work so hard that among thousands
there is not one who grows to such a stature that he can be
admitted into the army; and you ask whether, if we pass this
bill, we can possibly hold our own against such competition as
this?  Sir, I laugh at the thought of such competition.  If ever
we are forced to yield the foremost place among commercial
nations, we shall yield it, not to a race of degenerate dwarfs,
but to some people pre-eminently vigorous in body and in mind.

For these reasons, Sir, I approve of the principle of this bill,
and shall, without hesitation, vote for the second reading.  To
what extent we ought to reduce the hours of labour is a question
of more difficulty.  I think that we are in the situation of a
physician who has satisfied himself that there is a disease, and
that there is a specific medicine for the disease, but who is not
certain what quantity of that medicine the patient's constitution
will bear.  Such a physician would probably administer his remedy
by small doses, and carefully watch its operation.  I cannot help
thinking that, by at once reducing the hours of labour from
twelve to ten, we should hazard too much.  The change is great,
and ought to be cautiously and gradually made.  Suppose that
there should be an immediate fall of wages, which is not
impossible.  Might there not be a violent reaction?  Might not
the public take up a notion that our legislation had been
erroneous in principle, though, in truth, our error would have
been an error, not of principle, but merely of degree?  Might not
Parliament be induced to retrace its steps?  Might we not find it
difficult to maintain even the present limitation?  The wisest
course would, in my opinion, be to reduce the hours of labour
from twelve to eleven, to observe the effect of that experiment,
and if, as I hope and believe, the result should be satisfactory,
then to make a further reduction from eleven to ten.  This is a
question, however, which will be with more advantage considered
when we are in Committee.

One word, Sir, before I sit down, in answer to my noble friend
near me.  (Lord Morpeth.)  He seems to think that this bill is
ill timed.  I own that I cannot agree with him.  We carried up on
Monday last to the bar of the Lords a bill which will remove the
most hateful and pernicious restriction that ever was laid on
trade.  Nothing can be more proper than to apply, in the same
week, a remedy to a great evil of a directly opposite kind.  As
lawgivers, we have two great faults to confess and to repair.  We
have done that which we ought not to have done.  We have left
undone that which we ought to have done.  We have regulated that
which we should have left to regulate itself.  We have left
unregulated that which we were bound to regulate.  We have given
to some branches of industry a protection which has proved their
bane.  We have withheld from public health and public morals the
protection which was their due.  We have prevented the labourer
from buying his loaf where he could get it cheapest; but we have
not prevented him from ruining his body and mind by premature and
immoderate toil.  I hope that we have seen the last both of a
vicious system of interference and of a vicious system of non-
interference, and that our poorer countrymen will no longer have
reason to attribute their sufferings either to our meddling or to
our neglect.

...


THE LITERATURE OF BRITAIN.  (NOVEMBER 4, 1846)

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL
INSTITUTION ON THE 4TH OF NOVEMBER 1846.

I thank you, Gentlemen, for this cordial reception.  I have
thought it right to steal a short time from duties not
unimportant for the purpose of lending my aid to a an undertaking
calculated, as I think, to raise the credit and to promote the
best interests of the city which has so many claims on my
gratitude.

The Directors of our Institution have requested me to propose to
you as a toast the Literature of Britain.  They could not have
assigned to me a more agreeable duty.  They chief object of this
Institution is, I conceive, to impart knowledge through the
medium of our own language.  Edinburgh is already rich in
libraries worthy of her fame as a seat of literature and a seat
of jurisprudence.  A man of letters can here without difficulty
obtain access to repositories filled with the wisdom of many ages
and of many nations.  But something was still wanting.  We still
wanted a library open to that large, that important, that
respectable class which, though by no means destitute of liberal
curiosity or of sensibility to literary pleasures, is yet forced
to be content with what is written in our own tongue.  For that
class especially, I do not say exclusively, this library is
intended.  Our directors, I hope, will not be satisfied, I, as a
member, shall certainly not be satisfied, till we possess a noble
and complete collection of English books, till it is impossible
to seek in vain on our shelves for a single English book which is
valuable either on account of matter or on account of manner,
which throws any light on our civil, ecclesiastical,
intellectual, or social history, which, in short, can afford
either useful instruction or harmless amusement.

From such a collection, placed within the reach of that large and
valuable class which I have mentioned, I am disposed to expect
great good.  And when I say this, I do not take into the account
those rare cases to which my valued friend, the Lord Provost (Mr
Adam Black.), so happily alluded.  It is indeed not impossible
that some man of genius who may enrich our literature with
imperishable eloquence or song, or who may extend the empire of
our race over matter, may feel in our reading room, for the first
time the consciousness of powers yet undeveloped.  It is not
impossible that our volumes may suggest the first thought of
something great to some future Burns, or Watt, or Arkwright.  But
I do not speak of these extraordinary cases.  What I confidently
anticipate is that, through the whole of that class whose benefit
we have peculiarly in view, there will be a moral and an
intellectual improvement; that many hours, which might otherwise
be wasted in folly or in vice, will be employed in pursuits
which, while they afford the highest and most lasting pleasure,
are not only harmless, but purifying and elevating.  My own
experience, my own observation, justifies me in entertaining this
hope.  I have had opportunities, both in this and in other
countries, of forming some estimate of the effect which is likely
to be produced by a good collection of books on a society of
young men.  There is, I will venture to say, no judicious
commanding officer of a regiment who will not tell you that the
vicinity of a valuable library will improve perceptibly the whole
character of a mess.  I well knew one eminent military servant of
the East India Company, a man of great and various
accomplishments, a man honourably distinguished both in war and
in diplomacy, a man who enjoyed the confidence of some of the
greatest generals and statesmen of our time.  When I asked him
how, having left his country while still a boy, and having passed
his youth at military stations in India, he had been able to
educate himself, his answer was, that he had been stationed in
the neighbourhood of an excellent library, that he had been
allowed free access to the books, and that they had, at the most
critical time of his life, decided his character, and saved him
from being a mere smoking, card-playing, punch-drinking lounger.

Some of the objections which have been made to such institutions
as ours have been so happily and completely refuted by my friend
the Lord Provost, and by the Most Reverend Prelate who has
honoured us with his presence this evening (Archbishop
Whateley.), that it would be idle to say again what has been so
well said.  There is, however, one objection which, with your
permission, I will notice.  Some men, of whom I wish to speak
with great respect, are haunted, as it seems to me, with an
unreasonable fear of what they call superficial knowledge.
Knowledge, they say, which really deserves the name, is a great
blessing to mankind, the ally of virtue, the harbinger of
freedom.  But such knowledge must be profound.  A crowd of people
who have a smattering of mathematics, a smattering of astronomy,
a smattering of chemistry, who have read a little poetry and a
little history, is dangerous to the commonwealth.  Such half-
knowledge is worse than ignorance.  And then the authority of
Pope is vouched.  Drink deep or taste not; shallow draughts
intoxicate:  drink largely; and that will sober you.  I must
confess that the danger which alarms these gentlemen never seemed
to me very serious:  and my reason is this; that I never could
prevail on any person who pronounced superficial knowledge a
curse, and profound knowledge a blessing, to tell me what was his
standard of profundity.  The argument proceeds on the supposition
that there is some line between profound and superficial
knowledge similar to that which separates truth from falsehood.
I know of no such line.  When we talk of men of deep science, do
we mean that they have got to the bottom or near the bottom of
science?  Do we mean that they know all that is capable of being
known?  Do we mean even that they know, in their own especial
department, all that the smatterers of the next generation will
know?  Why, if we compare the little truth that we know with the
infinite mass of truth which we do not know, we are all shallow
together; and the greatest philosophers that ever lived would be
the first to confess their shallowness.  If we could call up the
first of human beings, if we could call up Newton, and ask him
whether, even in those sciences in which he had no rival, he
considered himself as profoundly knowing, he would have told us
that he was but a smatterer like ourselves, and that the
difference between his knowledge and ours vanished, when compared
with the quantity of truth still undiscovered, just as the
distance between a person at the foot of Ben Lomond and at the
top of Ben Lomond vanishes when compared with the distance of the
fixed stars.

It is evident then that those who are afraid of superficial
knowledge do not mean by superficial knowledge knowledge which is
superficial when compared with the whole quantity of truth
capable of being known.  For, in that sense, all human knowledge
is, and always has been, and always must be, superficial.  What
then is the standard?  Is it the same two years together in any
country?  Is it the same, at the same moment, in any two
countries?  Is it not notorious that the profundity of one age is
the shallowness of the next; that the profundity of one nation is
the shallowness of a neighbouring nation?  Ramohun Roy passed,
among Hindoos, for a man of profound Western learning; but he
would have been but a very superficial member of this Institute.
Strabo was justly entitled to be called a profound geographer
eighteen hundred years ago.  But a teacher of geography, who had
never heard of America, would now be laughed at by the girls of a
boarding-school.  What would now be thought of the greatest
chemist of 1746, or of the greatest geologist of 1746?  The truth
is that, in all experimental science, mankind is, of necessity,
constantly advancing.  Every generation, of course, has its front
rank and its rear rank; but the rear rank of a later generation
occupies the ground which was occupied by the front rank of a
former generation.

You remember Gulliver's adventures.  First he is shipwrecked in a
country of little men; and he is a Colossus among them.  He
strides over the walls of their capital:  he stands higher than
the cupola of their great temple:  he tugs after him a royal
fleet:  he stretches his legs; and a royal army, with drums
beating and colours flying, marches through the gigantic arch:
he devours a whole granary for breakfast, eats a herd of cattle
for dinner, and washes down his meal with all the hogsheads of a
cellar.  In his next voyage he is among men sixty feet high.  He
who, in Lilliput, used to take people up in his hand in order
that he might be able to hear them, is himself taken up in the
hands and held to the ears of his masters.  It is all that he can
do to defend himself with his hanger against the rats and mice.
The court ladies amuse themselves with seeing him fight wasps and
frogs:  the monkey runs off with him to the chimney top:  the
dwarf drops him into the cream jug and leaves him to swim for his
life.  Now, was Gulliver a tall or a short man?  Why, in his own
house at Rotherhithe, he was thought a man of the ordinary
stature.  Take him to Lilliput; and he is Quinbus Flestrin, the
Man Mountain.  Take him to Brobdingnag, and he is Grildrig, the
little Manikin.  It is the same in science.  The pygmies of one
society would have passed for giants in another.

It might be amusing to institute a comparison between one of the
profoundly learned men of the thirteenth century and one of the
superficial students who will frequent our library.  Take the
great philosopher of the time of Henry the Third of England, or
Alexander the Third of Scotland, the man renowned all over the
island, and even as far as Italy and Spain, as the first of
astronomers and chemists.  What is his astronomy?  He is a firm
believer in the Ptolemaic system.  He never heard of the law of
gravitation.  Tell him that the succession of day and night is
caused by the turning of the earth on its axis.  Tell him that,
in consequence of this motion, the polar diameter of the earth is
shorter than the equatorial diameter.  Tell him that the
succession of summer and winter is caused by the revolution of
the earth round the sun.  If he does not set you down for an
idiot, he lays an information against you before the Bishop, and
has you burned for a heretic.  To do him justice, however, if he
is ill informed on these points, there are other points on which
Newton and Laplace were mere children when compared with him.  He
can cast your nativity.  He knows what will happen when Saturn is
in the House of Life, and what will happen when Mars is in
conjunction with the Dragon's Tail.  He can read in the stars
whether an expedition will be successful, whether the next
harvest will be plentiful, which of your children will be
fortunate in marriage, and which will be lost at sea.  Happy the
State, happy the family, which is guided by the counsels of so
profound a man!  And what but mischief, public and private, can
we expect from the temerity and conceit of scolists who know no
more about the heavenly bodies than what they have learned from
Sir John Herschel's beautiful little volume.  But, to speak
seriously, is not a little truth better than a great deal of
falsehood?  Is not the man who, in the evenings of a fortnight,
has acquired a correct notion of the solar system, a more
profound astronomer than a man who has passed thirty years in
reading lectures about the primum mobile, and in drawing schemes
of horoscopes?

Or take chemistry.  Our philosopher of the thirteenth century
shall be, if you please, an universal genius, chemist as well as
astronomer.  He has perhaps got so far as to know, that if he
mixes charcoal and saltpetre in certain proportions and then
applies fire, there will be an explosion which will shatter all
his retorts and aludels; and he is proud of knowing what will in
a later age be familiar to all the idle boys in the kingdom.  But
there are departments of science in which he need not fear the
rivalry of Black, or Lavoisier, or Cavendish, or Davy.  He is in
hot pursuit of the philosopher's stone, of the stone that is to
bestow wealth, and health, and longevity.  He has a long array of
strangely shaped vessels, filled with red oil and white oil,
constantly boiling.  The moment of projection is at hand; and
soon all his kettles and gridirons will be turned into pure gold.
Poor Professor Faraday can do nothing of the sort.  I should
deceive you if I held out to you the smallest hope that he will
ever turn your halfpence into sovereigns.  But if you can induce
him to give at our Institute a course of lectures such as I once
heard him give at the Royal Institution to children in the
Christmas holidays, I can promise you that you will know more
about the effects produced on bodies by heat and moisture than
was known to some alchemists who, in the middle ages, were
thought worthy of the patronage of kings.

As it has been in science so it has been in literature.  Compare
the literary acquirements of the great men of the thirteenth
century with those which will be within the reach of many who
will frequent our reading room.  As to Greek learning, the
profound man of the thirteenth century was absolutely on a par
with the superficial man of the nineteenth.  In the modern
languages, there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume
which is now read.  The library of our profound scholar must have
consisted entirely of Latin books.  We will suppose him to have
had both a large and a choice collection.  We will allow him
thirty, nay forty manuscripts, and among them a Virgil, a
Terence, a Lucan, an Ovid, a Statius, a great deal of Livy, a
great deal of Cicero.  In allowing him all this, we are dealing
most liberally with him; for it is much more likely that his
shelves were filled with treaties on school divinity and canon
law, composed by writers whose names the world has very wisely
forgotten.  But, even if we suppose him to have possessed all
that is most valuable in the literature of Rome, I say with
perfect confidence that, both in respect of intellectual
improvement, and in respect of intellectual pleasures, he was far
less favourably situated than a man who now, knowing only the
English language, has a bookcase filled with the best English
works.  Our great man of the Middle Ages could not form any
conception of any tragedy approaching Macbeth or Lear, or of any
comedy equal to Henry the Fourth or Twelfth Night.  The best epic
poem that he had read was far inferior to the Paradise Lost; and
all the tomes of his philosophers were not worth a page of the
Novum Organum.

The Novum Organum, it is true, persons who know only English must
read in a translation:  and this reminds me of one great
advantage which such persons will derive from our Institution.
They will, in our library, be able to form some acquaintance with
the master minds of remote ages and foreign countries.  A large
part of what is best worth knowing in ancient literature, and in
the literature of France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, has been
translated into our own tongue.  It is scarcely possible that the
translation of any book of the highest class can be equal to the
original.  But, though the finer touches may be lost in the copy,
the great outlines will remain.  An Englishman who never saw the
frescoes in the Vatican may yet, from engravings, form some
notion of the exquisite grace of Raphael, and of the sublimity
and energy of Michael Angelo.  And so the genius of Homer is seen
in the poorest version of the Iliad; the genius of Cervantes is
seen in the poorest version of Don Quixote.  Let it not be
supposed that I wish to dissuade any person from studying either
the ancient languages or the languages of modern Europe.  Far
from it.  I prize most highly those keys of knowledge; and I
think that no man who has leisure for study ought to be content
until he possesses several of them.  I always much admired a
saying of the Emperor Charles the Fifth.  "When I learn a new
language," he said, "I feel as if I had got a new soul."  But I
would console those who have not time to make themselves
linguists by assuring them that, by means of their own mother
tongue, they may obtain ready access to vast intellectual
treasures, to treasures such as might have been envied by the
greatest linguists of the age of Charles the Fifth, to treasures
surpassing those which were possessed by Aldus, by Erasmus, and
by Melancthon.

And thus I am brought back to the point from which I started.  I
have been requested to invite you to fill your glasses to the
Literature of Britain; to that literature, the brightest, the
purest, the most durable of all the glories of our country; to
that literature, so rich in precious truth and precious fiction;
to that literature which boasts of the prince of all poets and of
the prince of all philosophers; to that literature which has
exercised an influence wider than that of our commerce, and
mightier than that of our arms; to that literature which has
taught France the principles of liberty, and has furnished
Germany with models of art; to that literature which forms a tie
closer than the tie of consanguinity between us and the
commonwealths of the valley of the Mississippi; to that
literature before the light of which impious and cruel
superstitions are fast taking flight on the banks of the Ganges;
to that literature which will, in future ages, instruct and
delight the unborn millions who will have turned the Australasian
and Caffrarian deserts into cities and gardens.  To the
Literature of Britain, then!  And, wherever British literature
spreads, may it be attended by British virtue and by British
freedom!

...


EDUCATION.  (APRIL 19, 1847)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 18TH OF APRIL
1847.

In the year 1847 the Government asked from the House of Commons a
grant of one hundred thousand pounds for the education of the
people.  On the nineteenth of April, Lord John Russell, having
explained the reasons for this application, moved the order of
the day for a Committee of Supply.  Mr Thomas Duncombe, Member
for Finsbury, moved the following amendment:  "That previous to
any grant of public money being assented to by this House, for
the purpose of carrying out the scheme of national education, as
developed in the Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education
in August and December last, which minutes have been presented to
both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty, a select
Committee be appointed to inquire into the justice and expediency
of such a scheme, and its probable annual cost; also to inquire
whether the regulations attached thereto do not unduly increase
the influence of the Crown, invade the constitutional functions
of Parliament, and interfere with the religious convictions and
civil rights of Her Majesty's subjects."

In opposition to this amendment, the following Speech was made.
After a debate of three nights, Mr Thomas Duncombe obtained
permission to withdraw the latter part of his amendment.  The
first part was put, and negatived by 372 votes to 47.

You will not wonder, Sir, that I am desirous to catch your eye
this evening.  The first duty which I performed, as a Member of
the Committee of Council which is charged with the
superintendence of public instruction, was to give my hearty
assent to the plan which the honourable Member for Finsbury calls
on the House to condemn.  I am one of those who have been accused
in every part of the kingdom, and who are now accused in
Parliament, of aiming, under specious pretences, a blow at the
civil and religious liberties of the people.  It is natural
therefore that I should seize the earliest opportunity of
vindicating myself from so grave a charge.

The honourable Member for Finsbury must excuse me if, in the
remarks which I have to offer to the House, I should not follow
very closely the order of his speech.  The truth is that a mere
answer to his speech would be no defence of myself or of my
colleagues.  I am surprised, I own, that a man of his acuteness
and ability should, on such an occasion, have made such a speech.
The country is excited from one end to the other by a great
question of principle.  On that question the Government has taken
one side.  The honourable Member stands forth as the chosen and
trusted champion of a great party which takes the other side.  We
expected to hear from him a full exposition of the views of those
in whose name he speaks.  But, to our astonishment, he has
scarcely even alluded to the controversy which has divided the
whole nation.  He has entertained us with sarcasms and personal
anecdotes:  he has talked much about matters of mere detail:  but
I must say that, after listening with close attention to all that
he has said, I am quite unable to discover whether, on the only
important point which is in issue, he agrees with us or with that
large and active body of Nonconformists which is diametrically
opposed to us.  He has sate down without dropping one word from
which it is possible to discover whether he thinks that education
is or that it is not a matter with which the State ought to
interfere.  Yet that is the question about which the whole nation
has, during several weeks, been writing, reading, speaking,
hearing, thinking, petitioning, and on which it is now the duty
of Parliament to pronounce a decision.  That question once
settled, there will be, I believe, very little room for dispute.
If it be not competent to the State to interfere with the
education of the people, the mode of interference recommended by
the Committee of Council must of course be condemned.  If it be
the right and the duty of the State to make provision for the
education of the people, the objections made to our plan will, in
a very few words, be shown to be frivolous.

I shall take a course very different from that which has been
taken by the honourable gentleman.  I shall in the clearest
manner profess my opinion on that great question of principle
which he has studiously evaded; and for my opinion I shall give
what seem to me to be unanswerable reasons.

I believe, Sir, that it is the right and the duty of the State to
provide means of education for the common people.  This
proposition seems to me to be implied in every definition that
has ever yet been given of the functions of a government.  About
the extent of those functions there has been much difference of
opinion among ingenious men.  There are some who hold that it is
the business of a government to meddle with every part of the
system of human life, to regulate trade by bounties and
prohibitions, to regulate expenditure by sumptuary laws, to
regulate literature by a censorship, to regulate religion by an
inquisition.  Others go to the opposite extreme, and assign to
government a very narrow sphere of action.  But the very
narrowest sphere that ever was assigned to governments by any
school of political philosophy is quite wide enough for my
purpose.  On one point all the disputants are agreed.  They
unanimously acknowledge that it is the duty of every government
to take order for giving security to the persons and property of
the members of the community.

This being admitted, can it be denied that the education of the
common people is a most effectual means of securing our persons
and our property?  Let Adam Smith answer that question for me.
His authority, always high, is, on this subject, entitled to
peculiar respect, because he extremely disliked busy, prying,
interfering governments.  He was for leaving literature, arts,
sciences, to take care of themselves.  He was not friendly to
ecclesiastical establishments.  He was of opinion, that the State
ought not to meddle with the education of the rich.  But he has
expressly told us that a distinction is to be made, particularly
in a commercial and highly civilised society, between the
education of the rich and the education of the poor.  The
education of the poor, he says, is a matter which deeply concerns
the commonwealth.  Just as the magistrate ought to interfere for
the purpose of preventing the leprosy from spreading among the
people, he ought to interfere for the purpose of stopping the
progress of the moral distempers which are inseparable from
ignorance.  Nor can this duty be neglected without danger to the
public peace.  If you leave the multitude uninstructed, there is
serious risk that religious animosities may produce the most
dreadful disorders.  The most dreadful disorders!  Those are Adam
Smith's own words; and prophetic words they were.  Scarcely had
he given this warning to our rulers when his prediction was
fulfilled in a manner never to be forgotten.  I speak of the No
Popery riots of 1780.  I do not know that I could find in all
history a stronger proof of the proposition, that the ignorance
of the common people makes the property, the limbs, the lives of
all classes insecure.  Without the shadow of a grievance, at the
summons of a madman, a hundred thousand people rise in
insurrection.  During a whole week, there is anarchy in the
greatest and wealthiest of European cities.  The parliament is
besieged.  Your predecessor sits trembling in his chair, and
expects every moment to see the door beaten in by the ruffians
whose roar he hears all round the house.  The peers are pulled
out of their coaches.  The bishops in their lawn are forced to
fly over the tiles.  The chapels of foreign ambassadors,
buildings made sacred by the law of nations, are destroyed.  The
house of the Chief Justice is demolished.  The little children of
the Prime Minister are taken out of their beds and laid in their
night clothes on the table of the Horse Guards, the only safe
asylum from the fury of the rabble.  The prisons are opened.
Highwaymen, housebreakers, murderers, come forth to swell the mob
by which they have been set free.  Thirty-six fires are blazing
at once in London.  Then comes the retribution.  Count up all the
wretches who were shot, who were hanged, who were crushed, who
drank themselves to death at the rivers of gin which ran down
Holborn Hill; and you will find that battles have been lost and
won with a smaller sacrifice of life.  And what was the cause of
this calamity, a calamity which, in the history of London, ranks
with the great plague and the great fire?  The cause was the
ignorance of a population which had been suffered, in the
neighbourhood of palaces, theatres, temples, to grow up as rude
and stupid as any tribe of tattooed cannibals in New Zealand, I
might say as any drove of beasts in Smithfield Market.

The instance is striking:  but it is not solitary.  To the same
cause are to be ascribed the riots of Nottingham, the sack of
Bristol, all the outrages of Ludd, and Swing, and Rebecca,
beautiful and costly machinery broken to pieces in Yorkshire,
barns and haystacks blazing in Kent, fences and buildings pulled
down in Wales.  Could such things have been done in a country in
which the mind of the labourer had been opened by education, in
which he had been taught to find pleasure in the exercise of his
intellect, taught to revere his Maker, taught to respect
legitimate authority, and taught at the same time to seek the
redress of real wrongs by peaceful and constitutional means?

This then is my argument.  It is the duty of Government to
protect our persons and property from danger.  The gross
ignorance of the common people is a principal cause of danger to
our persons and property.  Therefore, it is the duty of
Government to take care that the common people shall not be
grossly ignorant.

And what is the alternative?  It is universally allowed that, by
some means, Government must protect our persons and property.  If
you take away education, what means do you leave?  You leave
means such as only necessity can justify, means which inflict a
fearful amount of pain, not only on the guilty, but on the
innocent who are connected with the guilty.  You leave guns and
bayonets, stocks and whipping-posts, treadmills, solitary cells,
penal colonies, gibbets.  See then how the case stands.  Here is
an end which, as we all agree, governments are bound to attain.
There are only two ways of attaining it.  One of those ways is by
making men better, and wiser, and happier.  The other way is by
making them infamous and miserable.  Can it be doubted which way
we ought to prefer?  Is it not strange, is it not almost
incredible, that pious and benevolent men should gravely propound
the doctrine that the magistrate is bound to punish and at the
same time bound not to teach?  To me it seems quite clear that
whoever has a right to hang has a right to educate.  Can we think
without shame and remorse that more than half of those wretches
who have been tied up at Newgate in our time might have been
living happily, that more than half of those who are now in our
gaols might have been enjoying liberty and using that liberty
well, that such a hell on earth as Norfolk Island, need never
have existed, if we had expended in training honest men but a
small part of what we have expended in hunting and torturing
rogues.

I would earnestly entreat every gentleman to look at a report
which is contained in the Appendix to the First Volume of the
Minutes of the Committee of Council.  I speak of the report made
by Mr Seymour Tremenheare on the state of that part of
Monmouthshire which is inhabited by a population chiefly employed
in mining.  He found that, in this district, towards the close of
1839, out of eleven thousand children who were of an age to
attend school, eight thousand never went to any school at all,
and that most of the remaining three thousand might almost as
well have gone to no school as to the squalid hovels in which men
who ought themselves to have been learners pretended to teach.
In general these men had only one qualification for their
employment; and that was their utter unfitness for every other
employment.  They were disabled miners, or broken hucksters.  In
their schools all was stench, and noise, and confusion.  Now and
then the clamour of the boys was silenced for two minutes by the
furious menaces of the master; but it soon broke out again.  The
instruction given was of the lowest kind.  Not one school in ten
was provided with a single map.  This is the way in which you
suffered the minds of a great population to be formed.  And now
for the effects of your negligence.  The barbarian inhabitants of
this region rise in an insane rebellion against the Government.
They come pouring down their valleys to Newport.  They fire on
the Queen's troops.  They wound a magistrate.  The soldiers fire
in return; and too many of these wretched men pay with their
lives the penalty of their crime.  But is the crime theirs alone?
Is it strange that they should listen to the only teaching that
they had?  How can you, who took no pains to instruct them, blame
them for giving ear to the demagogue who took pains to delude
them?  We put them down, of course.  We punished them.  We had no
choice.  Order must be maintained; property must be protected;
and, since we had omitted to take the best way of keeping these
people quiet, we were under the necessity of keeping them quiet
by the dread of the sword and the halter.  But could any
necessity be more cruel?  And which of us would run the risk of
being placed under such necessity a second time?

I say, therefore, that the education of the people is not only a
means, but the best means, of attaining that which all allow to
be a chief end of government; and, if this be so, it passes my
faculties to understand how any man can gravely contend that
Government has nothing to do with the education of the people.

My confidence in my opinion is strengthened when I recollect that
I hold that opinion in common with all the greatest lawgivers,
statesmen, and political philosophers of all nations and ages,
with all the most illustrious champions of civil and spiritual
freedom, and especially with those men whose names were once held
in the highest veneration by the Protestant Dissenters of
England.  I might cite many of the most venerable names of the
old world; but I would rather cite the example of that country
which the supporters of the Voluntary system here are always
recommending to us as a pattern.  Go back to the days when the
little society which has expanded into the opulent and
enlightened commonwealth of Massachusetts began to exist.  Our
modern Dissenters will scarcely, I think, venture to speak
contumeliously of those Puritans whose spirit Laud and his High
Commission Court could not subdue, of those Puritans who were
willing to leave home and kindred, and all the comforts and
refinements of civilised life, to cross the ocean, to fix their
abode in forests among wild beasts and wild men, rather than
commit the sin of performing, in the House of God, one gesture
which they believed to be displeasing to Him.  Did those brave
exiles think it inconsistent with civil or religious freedom that
the State should take charge of the education of the people?  No,
Sir; one of the earliest laws enacted by the Puritan colonists
was that every township, as soon as the Lord had increased it to
the number of fifty houses, should appoint one to teach all
children to write and read, and that every township of a hundred
houses should set up a grammar school.  Nor have the descendants
of those who made this law ever ceased to hold that the public
authorities were bound to provide the means of public
instruction.  Nor is this doctrine confined to New England.
"Educate the people" was the first admonition addressed by Penn
to the colony which he founded.  "Educate the people" was the
legacy of Washington to the nation which he had saved.  "Educate
the people" was the unceasing exhortation of Jefferson; and I
quote Jefferson with peculiar pleasure, because of all the
eminent men that have ever lived, Adam Smith himself not
excepted, Jefferson was the one who most abhorred everything like
meddling on the part of governments.  Yet the chief business of
his later years was to establish a good system of State education
in Virginia.

And, against such authority as this, what have you who take the
other side to show?  Can you mention a single great philosopher,
a single man distinguished by his zeal for liberty, humanity, and
truth, who, from the beginning of the world down to the time of
this present Parliament, ever held your doctrines?  You can
oppose to the unanimous voice of all the wise and good, of all
ages, and of both hemispheres, nothing but a clamour which was
first heard a few months ago, a clamour in which you cannot join
without condemning, not only all whose memory you profess to hold
in reverence, but even your former selves.

This new theory of politics has at least the merit of
originality.  It may be fairly stated thus.  All men have
hitherto been utterly in the wrong as to the nature and objects
of civil government.  The great truth, hidden from every
preceding generation, and at length revealed, in the year 1846,
to some highly respectable ministers and elders of dissenting
congregations, is this.  Government is simply a great hangman.
Government ought to do nothing except by harsh and degrading
means.  The one business of Government is to handcuff, and lock
up, and scourge, and shoot, and stab, and strangle.  It is odious
tyranny in a government to attempt to prevent crime by informing
the understanding and elevating the moral feeling of a people.  A
statesman may see hamlets turned, in the course of one
generation, into great seaport towns and manufacturing towns.  He
may know that on the character of the vast population which is
collected in those wonderful towns, depends the prosperity, the
peace, the very existence of society.  But he must not think of
forming that character.  He is an enemy of public liberty if he
attempts to prevent those hundreds of thousands of his countrymen
from becoming mere Yahoos.  He may, indeed, build barrack after
barrack to overawe them.  If they break out into insurrection, he
may send cavalry to sabre them:  he may mow them down with grape
shot:  he may hang them, draw them, quarter them, anything but
teach them.  He may see, and may shudder as he sees, throughout
large rural districts, millions of infants growing up from
infancy to manhood as ignorant, as mere slaves of sensual
appetite, as the beasts that perish.  No matter.  He is a traitor
to the cause of civil and religious freedom if he does not look
on with folded arms, while absurd hopes and evil passions ripen
in that rank soil.  He must wait for the day of his harvest.  He
must wait till the Jaquerie comes, till farm houses are burning,
till threshing machines are broken in pieces; and then begins his
business, which is simply to send one poor ignorant savage to the
county gaol, and another to the antipodes, and a third to the
gallows.

Such, Sir, is the new theory of government which was first
propounded, in the year 1846, by some men of high note among the
Nonconformists of England.  It is difficult to understand how men
of excellent abilities and excellent intentions--and there are, I
readily admit, such men among those who hold this theory--can
have fallen into so absurd and pernicious an error.  One
explanation only occurs to me.  This is, I am inclined to
believe, an instance of the operation of the great law of
reaction.  We have just come victorious out of a long and fierce
contest for the liberty of trade.  While that contest was
undecided, much was said and written about the advantages of free
competition, and about the danger of suffering the State to
regulate matters which should be left to individuals.  There has
consequently arisen in the minds of persons who are led by words,
and who are little in the habit of making distinctions, a
disposition to apply to political questions and moral questions
principles which are sound only when applied to commercial
questions.  These people, not content with having forced the
Government to surrender a province wrongfully usurped, now wish
to wrest from the Government a domain held by a right which was
never before questioned, and which cannot be questioned with the
smallest show of reason.  "If," they say, "free competition is a
good thing in trade, it must surely be a good thing in education.
The supply of other commodities, of sugar, for example, is left
to adjust itself to the demand; and the consequence is, that we
are better supplied with sugar than if the Government undertook
to supply us.  Why then should we doubt that the supply of
instruction will, without the intervention of the Government, be
found equal to the demand?"

Never was there a more false analogy.  Whether a man is well
supplied with sugar is a matter which concerns himself alone.
But whether he is well supplied with instruction is a matter
which concerns his neighbours and the State.  If he cannot afford
to pay for sugar, he must go without sugar.  But it is by no
means fit that, because he cannot afford to pay for education, he
should go without education.  Between the rich and their
instructors there may, as Adam Smith says, be free trade.  The
supply of music masters and Italian masters may be left to adjust
itself to the demand.  But what is to become of the millions who
are too poor to procure without assistance the services of a
decent schoolmaster?  We have indeed heard it said that even
these millions will be supplied with teachers by the free
competition of benevolent individuals who will vie with each
other in rendering this service to mankind.  No doubt there are
many benevolent individuals who spend their time and money most
laudably in setting up and supporting schools; and you may say,
if you please, that there is, among these respectable persons, a
competition to do good.  But do not be imposed upon by words.  Do
not believe that this competition resembles the competition which
is produced by the desire of wealth and by the fear of ruin.
There is a great difference, be assured, between the rivalry of
philanthropists and the rivalry of grocers.  The grocer knows
that, if his wares are worse than those of other grocers, he
shall soon go before the Bankrupt Court, and his wife and
children will have no refuge but the workhouse:  he knows that,
if his shop obtains an honourable celebrity, he shall be able to
set up a carriage and buy a villa:  and this knowledge impels him
to exertions compared with which the exertions of even very
charitable people to serve the poor are but languid.  It would be
strange infatuation indeed to legislate on the supposition that a
man cares for his fellow creatures as much as he cares for
himself.

Unless, Sir, I greatly deceive myself, those arguments, which
show that the Government ought not to leave to private people the
task of providing for the national defence, will equally show
that the Government ought not to leave to private people the task
of providing for national education.  On this subject, Mr Hume
has laid down the general law with admirable good sense and
perspicuity.  I mean David Hume, not the Member for Montrose,
though that honourable gentleman will, I am confident, assent to
the doctrine propounded by his illustrious namesake.  David Hume,
Sir, justly says that most of the arts and trades which exist in
the world produce so much advantage and pleasure to individuals,
that the magistrate may safely leave it to individuals to
encourage those arts and trades.  But he adds that there are
callings which, though they are highly useful, nay, absolutely
necessary to society, yet do not administer to the peculiar
pleasure or profit of any individual.  The military calling is an
instance.  Here, says Hume, the Government must interfere.  It
must take on itself to regulate these callings, and to stimulate
the industry of the persons who follow these callings by
pecuniary and honorary rewards.

Now, Sir, it seems to me that, on the same principle on which
Government ought to superintend and to reward the soldier,
Government ought to superintend and to reward the schoolmaster.
I mean, of course, the schoolmaster of the common people.  That
his calling is useful, that his calling is necessary, will hardly
be denied.  Yet it is clear that his services will not be
adequately remunerated if he is left to be remunerated by those
whom he teaches, or by the voluntary contributions of the
charitable.  Is this disputed?  Look at the facts.  You tell us
that schools will multiply and flourish exceedingly, if the
Government will only abstain from interfering with them.  Has not
the Government long abstained from interfering with them?  Has
not everything been left, through many years, to individual
exertion?  If it were true that education, like trade, thrives
most where the magistrate meddles least, the common people of
England would now be the best educated in the world.  Our schools
would be model schools.  Every one would have a well chosen
little library, excellent maps, a small but neat apparatus for
experiments in natural philosophy.  A grown person unable to read
and write would be pointed at like Giant O'Brien or the Polish
Count.  Our schoolmasters would be as eminently expert in all
that relates to teaching as our cutlers, our cotton-spinners, our
engineers are allowed to be in their respective callings.  They
would, as a class, be held in high consideration; and their gains
would be such that it would be easy to find men of respectable
character and attainments to fill up vacancies.

Now, is this the case?  Look at the charges of the judges, at the
resolutions of the grand juries, at the reports of public
officers, at the reports of voluntary associations.  All tell the
same sad and ignominious story.  Take the reports of the
Inspectors of Prisons.  In the House of Correction at Hertford,
of seven hundred prisoners one half could not read at all; only
eight could read and write well.  Of eight thousand prisoners who
had passed through Maidstone Gaol only fifty could read and write
well.  In Coldbath Fields Prison, the proportion that could read
and write well seems to have been still smaller.  Turn from the
registers of prisoners to the registers of marriages.  You will
find that about a hundred and thirty thousand couples were
married in the year 1844.  More than forty thousand of the
bridegrooms and more than sixty thousand of the brides did not
sign their names, but made their marks.  Nearly one third of the
men and nearly one half of the women, who are in the prime of
life, who are to be the parents of the Englishmen of the next
generation, who are to bear a chief part in forming the minds of
the Englishmen of the next generation, cannot write their own
names.  Remember, too, that, though people who cannot write their
own names must be grossly ignorant, people may write their own
names and yet have very little knowledge.  Tens of thousands who
were able to write their names had in all probability received
only the wretched education of a common day school.  We know what
such a school too often is; a room crusted with filth, without
light, without air, with a heap of fuel in one corner and a brood
of chickens in another; the only machinery of instruction a
dogeared spelling-book and a broken slate; the masters the refuse
of all other callings, discarded footmen, ruined pedlars, men who
cannot work a sum in the rule of three, men who cannot write a
common letter without blunders, men who do not know whether the
earth is a sphere or a cube, men who do not know whether
Jerusalem is in Asia or America.  And to such men, men to whom
none of us would entrust the key of his cellar, we have entrusted
the mind of the rising generation, and, with the mind of the
rising generation the freedom, the happiness, the glory of our
country.

Do you question the accuracy of this description?  I will produce
evidence to which I am sure that you will not venture to take an
exception.  Every gentleman here knows, I suppose, how important
a place the Congregational Union holds among the Nonconformists,
and how prominent a part Mr Edward Baines has taken in opposition
to State education.  A Committee of the Congregational Union drew
up last year a report on the subject of education.  That report
was received by the Union; and the person who moved that it
should be received was Mr Edward Baines.  That report contains
the following passage:  "If it were necessary to disclose facts
to such an assembly as this, as to the ignorance and debasement
of the neglected portions of our population in towns and rural
districts, both adult and juvenile, it could easily be done.
Private information communicated to the Board, personal
observation and investigation of the various localities, with the
published documents of the Registrar General, and the reports of
the state of prisons in England and Wales, published by order of
the House of Commons, would furnish enough to make us modest in
speaking of what has been done for the humbler classes, and make
us ashamed that the sons of the soil of England should have been
so long neglected, and should present to the enlightened
traveller from other shores such a sad spectacle of neglected
cultivation, lost mental power, and spiritual degradation."
Nothing can be more just.  All the information which I have been
able to obtain bears out the statements of the Congregational
Union.  I do believe that the ignorance and degradation of a
large part of the community to which we belong ought to make us
ashamed of ourselves.  I do believe that an enlightened traveller
from New York, from Geneva, or from Berlin, would be shocked to
see so much barbarism in the close neighbourhood of so much
wealth and civilisation.  But is it not strange that the very
gentlemen who tell us in such emphatic language that the people
are shamefully ill-educated, should yet persist in telling us
that under a system of free competition the people are certain to
be excellently educated?  Only this morning the opponents of our
plan circulated a paper in which they confidently predict that
free competition will do all that is necessary, if we will only
wait with patience.  Wait with patience!  Why, we have been
waiting ever since the Heptarchy.  How much longer are we to
wait?  Till the year 2847?  Or till the year 3847?  That the
experiment has as yet failed you do not deny.  And why should it
have failed?  Has it been tried in unfavourable circumstances?
Not so:  it has been tried in the richest and in the freest, and
in the most charitable country in all Europe.  Has it been tried
on too small a scale?  Not so:  millions have been subjected to
it.  Has it been tried during too short a time?  Not so:  it has
been going on during ages.  The cause of the failure then is
plain.  Our whole system has been unsound.  We have applied the
principle of free competition to a case to which that principle
is not applicable.

But, Sir, if the state of the southern part of our island has
furnished me with one strong argument, the state of the northern
part furnishes me with another argument, which is, if possible,
still more decisive.  A hundred and fifty years ago England was
one of the best governed and most prosperous countries in the
world:  Scotland was perhaps the rudest and poorest country that
could lay any claim to civilisation.  The name of Scotchman was
then uttered in this part of the island with contempt.  The
ablest Scotch statesmen contemplated the degraded state of their
poorer countrymen with a feeling approaching to despair.  It is
well-known that Fletcher of Saltoun, a brave and accomplished
man, a man who had drawn his sword for liberty, who had suffered
proscription and exile for liberty, was so much disgusted and
dismayed by the misery, the ignorance, the idleness, the
lawlessness of the common people, that he proposed to make many
thousands of them slaves.  Nothing, he thought, but the
discipline which kept order and enforced exertion among the
negroes of a sugar colony, nothing but the lash and the stocks,
could reclaim the vagabonds who infested every part of Scotland
from their indolent and predatory habits, and compel them to
support themselves by steady labour.  He therefore, soon after
the Revolution, published a pamphlet, in which he earnestly, and,
as I believe, from the mere impulse of humanity and patriotism,
recommended to the Estates of the Realm this sharp remedy, which
alone, as he conceived, could remove the evil.  Within a few
months after the publication of that pamphlet a very different
remedy was applied.  The Parliament which sate at Edinburgh
passed an act for the establishment of parochial schools.  What
followed?  An improvement such as the world had never seen took
place in the moral and intellectual character of the people.
Soon, in spite of the rigour of the climate, in spite of the
sterility of the earth, Scotland became a country which had no
reason to envy the fairest portions of the globe.  Wherever the
Scotchman went,--and there were few parts of the world to which
he did not go,--he carried his superiority with him.  If he was
admitted into a public office, he worked his way up to the
highest post.  If he got employment in a brewery or a factory, he
was soon the foreman.  If he took a shop, his trade was the best
in the street.  If he enlisted in the army, he became a colour-
sergeant.  If he went to a colony, he was the most thriving
planter there.  The Scotchman of the seventeenth century had been
spoken of in London as we speak of the Esquimaux.  The Scotchman
of the eighteenth century was an object, not of scorn, but of
envy.  The cry was that, wherever he came, he got more than his
share; that, mixed with Englishmen or mixed with Irishmen, he
rose to the top as surely as oil rises to the top of water.  And
what had produced this great revolution?  The Scotch air was
still as cold, the Scotch rocks were still as bare as ever.  All
the natural qualities of the Scotchman were still what they had
been when learned and benevolent men advised that he should be
flogged, like a beast of burden, to his daily task.  But the
State had given him an education.  That education was not, it is
true, in all respects what it should have been.  But such as it
was, it had done more for the bleak and dreary shores of the
Forth and the Clyde than the richest of soils and the most genial
of climates had done for Capua and Tarentum.  Is there one member
of this House, however strongly he may hold the doctrine that the
Government ought not to interfere with the education of the
people, who will stand up and say that, in his opinion, the
Scotch would now have been a happier and a more enlightened
people if they had been left, during the last five generations,
to find instruction for themselves?

I say then, Sir, that, if the science of Government be an
experimental science, this question is decided.  We are in a
condition to perform the inductive process according to the rules
laid down in the Novum Organum.  We have two nations closely
connected, inhabiting the same island, sprung from the same
blood, speaking the same language, governed by the same Sovereign
and the same Legislature, holding essentially the same religious
faith, having the same allies and the same enemies.  Of these two
nations one was, a hundred and fifty years ago, as respects
opulence and civilisation, in the highest rank among European
communities, the other in the lowest rank.  The opulent and
highly civilised nation leaves the education of the people to
free competition.  In the poor and half barbarous nation the
education of the people is undertaken by the State.  The result
is that the first are last and the last first.  The common people
of Scotland,--it is vain to disguise the truth,--have passed the
common people of England.  Free competition, tried with every
advantage, has produced effects of which, as the Congregational
Union tells us, we ought to be ashamed, and which must lower us
in the opinion of every intelligent foreigner.  State education,
tried under every disadvantage, has produced an improvement to
which it would be difficult to find a parallel in any age or
country.  Such an experiment as this would be regarded as
conclusive in surgery or chemistry, and ought, I think, to be
regarded as equally conclusive in politics.

These, Sir, are the reasons which have satisfied me that it is
the duty of the State to educate the people.  Being firmly
convinced of that truth, I shall not shrink from proclaiming it
here and elsewhere, in defiance of the loudest clamour that
agitators can raise.  The remainder of my task is easy.  For, if
the great principle for which I have been contending is admitted,
the objections which have been made to the details of our plan
will vanish fast.  I will deal with those objections in the order
in which they stand in the amendment moved by the honourable
Member for Finsbury.

First among his objections he places the cost.  Surely, Sir, no
person who admits that it is our duty to train the minds of the
rising generation can think a hundred thousand pounds too large a
sum for that purpose.  If we look at the matter in the lowest
point of view, if we consider human beings merely as producers of
wealth, the difference between an intelligent and a stupid
population, estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence, exceeds a
hundredfold the proposed outlay.  Nor is this all.  For every
pound that you save in education, you will spend five in
prosecutions, in prisons, in penal settlements.  I cannot believe
that the House, having never grudged anything that was asked for
the purpose of maintaining order and protecting property by means
of pain and fear, will begin to be niggardly as soon as it is
proposed to effect the same objects by making the people wiser
and better.

The next objection made by the honourable Member to our plan is
that it will increase the influence of the Crown.  This sum of a
hundred thousand pounds may, he apprehends, be employed in
corruption and jobbing.  Those schoolmasters who vote for
ministerial candidates will obtain a share of the grant:  those
schoolmasters who vote for opponents of the ministry will apply
for assistance in vain.  Sir, the honourable Member never would
have made this objection if he had taken the trouble to
understand the minutes which he has condemned.  We propose to
place this part of the public expenditure under checks which must
make such abuses as the honourable Member anticipates morally
impossible.  Not only will there be those ordinary checks which
are thought sufficient to prevent the misapplication of the many
millions annually granted for the army, the navy, the ordnance,
the civil government:  not only must the Ministers of the Crown
come every year to this House for a vote, and be prepared to
render an account of the manner in which they have laid out what
had been voted in the preceding year, but, when they have
satisfied the House, when they have got their vote, they will
still be unable to distribute the money at their discretion.
Whatever they may do for any schoolmaster must be done in concert
with those persons who, in the district where the schoolmaster
lives, take an interest in education, and contribute out of their
private means to the expense of education.  When the honourable
gentleman is afraid that we shall corrupt the schoolmasters, he
forgets, first, that we do not appoint the schoolmasters;
secondly, that we cannot dismiss the schoolmasters; thirdly, that
managers who are altogether independent of us can, without our
consent, dismiss the schoolmasters; and, fourthly, that without
the recommendation of those managers we can give nothing to the
schoolmasters.  Observe, too, that such a recommendation will not
be one of those recommendations which goodnatured easy people are
too apt to give to everybody who asks; nor will it at all
resemble those recommendations which the Secretary of the
Treasury is in the habit of receiving.  For every pound which we
pay on the recommendation of the managers, the managers
themselves must pay two pounds.  They must also provide the
schoolmaster with a house out of their own funds before they can
obtain for him a grant from the public funds.  What chance of
jobbing is there here?  It is common enough, no doubt, for a
Member of Parliament who votes with Government to ask that one of
those who zealously supported him at the last election may have a
place in the Excise or the Customs.  But such a member would soon
cease to solicit if the answer were, "Your friend shall have a
place of fifty pounds a year, if you will give him a house and
settle on him an income of a hundred a year."  What chance then,
I again ask, is there of jobbing?  What, say some of the
dissenters of Leeds, is to prevent a Tory Government, a High
Church Government, from using this parliamentary grant to corrupt
the schoolmasters of our borough, and to induce them to use all
their influence in favour of a Tory and High Church candidate?
Why, Sir, the dissenters of Leeds themselves have the power to
prevent it.  Let them subscribe to the schools:  let them take a
share in the management of the schools:  let them refuse to
recommend to the committee of Council any schoolmaster whom they
suspect of having voted at any election from corrupt motives:
and the thing is done.  Our plan, in truth, is made up of checks.
My only doubt is whether the checks may not be found too numerous
and too stringent.  On our general conduct there is the ordinary
check, the parliamentary check.  And, as respects those minute
details which it is impossible that this House can investigate,
we shall be checked, in every town and in every rural district,
by boards consisting of independent men zealous in the cause of
education.

The truth is, Sir, that those who clamour most loudly against our
plan, have never thought of ascertaining what it is.  I see that
a gentleman, who ought to have known better, has not been ashamed
publicly to tell the world that our plan will cost the nation two
millions a year, and will paralyse all the exertions of
individuals to educate the people.  These two assertions are
uttered in one breath.  And yet, if he who made them had read our
minutes before he railed at them, he would have seen that his
predictions are contradictory; that they cannot both be
fulfilled; that, if individuals do not exert themselves, the
country will have to pay nothing; and that, if the country has to
pay two millions, it will be because individuals have exerted
themselves with such wonderful, such incredible vigour, as to
raise four millions by voluntary contributions.

The next objection made by the honourable Member for Finsbury is
that we have acted unconstitutionally, and have encroached on the
functions of Parliament.  The Committee of Council he seems to
consider as an unlawful assembly.  He calls it sometimes a self-
elected body and sometimes a self-appointed body.  Sir, these are
words without meaning.  The Committee is no more a self-elected
body than the Board of Trade.  It is a body appointed by the
Queen; and in appointing it Her Majesty has exercised, under the
advice of her responsible Ministers, a prerogative as old as the
monarchy.  But, says the honourable Member, the constitutional
course would have been to apply for an Act of Parliament.  On
what ground?  Nothing but an Act of Parliament can legalise that
which is illegal.  But whoever heard of an Act of Parliament to
legalise what was already beyond all dispute legal?  Of course,
if we wished to send aliens out of the country, or to retain
disaffected persons in custody without bringing them to trial, we
must obtain an Act of Parliament empowering us to do so.  But why
should we ask for an Act of Parliament to empower us to do what
anybody may do, what the honourable Member for Finsbury may do?
Is there any doubt that he or anybody else may subscribe to a
school, give a stipend to a monitor, or settle a retiring pension
on a preceptor who has done good service?  What any of the
Queen's subjects may do the Queen may do.  Suppose that her privy
purse were so large that she could afford to employ a hundred
thousand pounds in this beneficent manner; would an Act of
Parliament be necessary to enable her to do so?  Every part of
our plan may lawfully be carried into execution by any person,
Sovereign or subject, who has the inclination and the money.  We
have not the money; and for the money we come, in a strictly
constitutional manner, to the House of Commons.  The course which
we have taken is in conformity with all precedent, as well as
with all principle.  There are military schools.  No Act of
Parliament was necessary to authorise the establishing of such
schools.  All that was necessary was a grant of money to defray
the charge.  When I was Secretary at War it was my duty to bring
under Her Majesty's notice the situation of the female children
of her soldiers.  Many such children accompanied every regiment,
and their education was grievously neglected.  Her Majesty was
graciously pleased to sign a warrant by which a girls' school was
attached to each corps.  No Act of Parliament was necessary.  For
to set up a school where girls might be taught to read, and
write, and sew, and cook, was perfectly legal already.  I might
have set it up myself, if I had been rich enough.  All that I had
to ask from Parliament was the money.  But I ought to beg pardon
for arguing a point so clear.

The next objection to our plans is that they interfere with the
religious convictions of Her Majesty's subjects.  It has been
sometimes insinuated, but it has never been proved, that the
Committee of Council has shown undue favour to the Established
Church.  Sir, I have carefully read and considered the minutes;
and I wish that every man who has exerted his eloquence against
them had done the same.  I say that I have carefully read and
considered them, and that they seem to me to have been drawn up
with exemplary impartiality.  The benefits which we offer we
offer to people of all religious persuasions alike.  The
dissenting managers of schools will have equal authority with the
managers who belong to the Church.  A boy who goes to meeting
will be just as eligible to be a monitor, and will receive just
as large a stipend, as if he went to the cathedral.  The
schoolmaster who is a nonconformist and the schoolmaster who is a
conformist will enjoy the same emoluments, and will, after the
same term of service, obtain, on the same conditions, the same
retiring pension.  I wish that some gentleman would, instead of
using vague phrases about religious liberty and the rights of
conscience, answer this plain question.  Suppose that in one of
our large towns there are four schools, a school connected with
the Church, a school connected with the Independents, a Baptist
school, and a Wesleyan school; what encouragement, pecuniary or
honorary, will, by our plan, be given to the school connected
with the Church, and withheld from any of the other three
schools?  Is it not indeed plain that, if by neglect or
maladministration the Church school should get into a bad state,
while the dissenting schools flourish, the dissenting schools
will receive public money and the Church school will receive
none?

It is true, I admit, that in rural districts which are too poor
to support more than one school, the religious community to which
the majority belongs will have an advantage over other religious
communities.  But this is not our fault.  If we are as impartial
as it is possible to be, you surely do not expect more.  If there
should be a parish containing nine hundred churchmen and a
hundred dissenters, if there should, in that parish, be a school
connected with the Church, if the dissenters in that parish
should be too poor to set up another school, undoubtedly the
school connected with the Church will, in that parish, get all
that we give; and the dissenters will get nothing.  But observe
that there is no partiality to the Church, as the Church, in this
arrangement.  The churchmen get public money, not because they
are churchmen, but because they are the majority.  The dissenters
get nothing, not because they are dissenters, but because they
are a small minority.  There are districts where the case will be
reversed, where there will be dissenting schools, and no Church
schools.  In such cases the dissenters will get what we have to
give, and the churchmen will get nothing.

But, Sir, I ought not to say that a churchman gets nothing by a
system which gives a good education to dissenters, or that a
dissenter gets nothing by a system which gives a good education
to churchmen.  We are not, I hope, so much conformists, or so
much nonconformists, as to forget that we are Englishmen and
Christians.  We all, Churchmen, Presbyterians, Independents,
Baptists, Methodists, have an interest in this, that the great
body of the people should be rescued from ignorance and
barbarism.  I mentioned Lord George Gordon's mob.  That mob
began, it is true, with the Roman Catholics:  but, long before
the tumults were over, there was not a respectable Protestant in
London who was not in fear for his house, for his limbs, for his
life, for the lives of those who were dearest to him.  The
honourable Member for Finsbury says that we call on men to pay
for an education from which they derive no benefit.  I deny that
there is one honest and industrious man in the country who
derives no benefit from living among honest and industrious
neighbours rather than among rioters and vagabonds.  This matter
is as much a matter of common concern as the defence of our
coast.  Suppose that I were to say, "Why do you tax me to fortify
Portsmouth?  If the people of Portsmouth think that they cannot
be safe without bastions and ravelins, let the people of
Portsmouth pay the engineers and masons.  Why am I to bear the
charge of works from which I derive no advantage?"  You would
answer, and most justly, that there is no man in the island who
does not derive advantage from these works, whether he resides
within them or not.  And, as every man, in whatever part of the
island he may live, is bound to contribute to the support of
those arsenals which are necessary for our common security, so is
every man, to whatever sect he may belong, bound to contribute to
the support of those schools on which, not less than on our
arsenals, our common security depends.

I now come to the last words of the amendment.  The honourable
Member for Finsbury is apprehensive that our plan may interfere
with the civil rights of Her Majesty's subjects.  How a man's
civil rights can be prejudiced by his learning to read and write,
to multiply and divide, or even by his obtaining some knowledge
of history and geography, I do not very well apprehend.  One
thing is clear, that persons sunk in that ignorance in which, as
we are assured by the Congregational Union, great numbers of our
countrymen are sunk, can be free only in name.  It is hardly
necessary for us to appoint a Select Committee for the purpose of
inquiring whether knowledge be the ally or the enemy of liberty.
He is, I must say, but a short-sighted friend of the common
people who is eager to bestow on them a franchise which would
make them all-powerful, and yet would withhold from them that
instruction without which their power must be a curse to
themselves and to the State.

This, Sir, is my defence.  From the clamour of our accusers I
appeal with confidence to the country to which we must, in no
long time, render an account of our stewardship.  I appeal with
still more confidence to future generations, which, while
enjoying all the blessings of an impartial and efficient system
of public instruction, will find it difficult to believe that the
authors of that system should have had to struggle with a
vehement and pertinacious opposition, and still more difficult to
believe that such an opposition was offered in the name of civil
and religious freedom.

...


INAUGURAL SPEECH AT GLASGOW COLLEGE.  (MARCH 21, 1849)

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE COLLEGE OF GLASGOW ON THE 21ST OF
MARCH, 1849.

At the election of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, in
November, 1848, the votes stood thus:  Mr Macaulay, 255; Colonel
Mure, 203.  The installation took place on the twenty-first of
March, 1849; and after that ceremony had been performed, the
following Speech was delivered.

My first duty, Gentlemen, is to return you my thanks for the
honour which you have conferred on me.  You well know that it was
wholly unsolicited; and I can assure you that it was wholly
unexpected.  I may add that, if I had been invited to become a
candidate for your suffrages, I should respectfully have declined
the invitation.  My predecessor, whom I am so happy as to be able
to call my friend, declared from this place last year in language
which well became him, that he would not have come forward to
displace so eminent a statesman as Lord John Russell.  I can with
equal truth affirm that I would not have come forward to displace
so estimable a gentleman and so accomplished a scholar as Colonel
Mure.  But Colonel Mure felt last year that it was not for him,
and I now feel that it is not for me, to question the propriety
of your decision on a point of which, by the constitution of your
body, you are the judges.  I therefore gratefully accept the
office to which I have been called, fully purposing to use
whatever powers belong to it with a single view to the welfare
and credit of your society.

I am not using a mere phrase of course, when I say that the
feelings with which I bear apart in the ceremony of this day are
such as I find it difficult to utter in words.  I do not think it
strange that, when that great master of eloquence, Edmund Burke,
stood where I now stand, he faltered and remained mute.
Doubtless the multitude of thoughts which rushed into his mind
was such as even he could not easily arrange or express.  In
truth there are few spectacles more striking or affecting than
that which a great historical place of education presents on a
solemn public day.  There is something strangely interesting in
the contrast between the venerable antiquity of the body and the
fresh and ardent youth of the great majority of the members.
Recollections and hopes crowd upon us together.  The past and the
future are at once brought close to us.  Our thoughts wander back
to the time when the foundations of this ancient building were
laid, and forward to the time when those whom it is our office to
guide and to teach will be the guides and teachers of our
posterity.  On the present occasion we may, with peculiar
propriety, give such thoughts their course.  For it has chanced
that my magistracy has fallen on a great secular epoch.  This is
the four hundredth year of the existence of your University.  At
such jubilees, jubilees of which no individual sees more than
one, it is natural, and it is good, that a society like this, a
society which survives all the transitory parts of which it is
composed, a society which has a corporate existence and a
perpetual succession, should review its annals, should retrace
the stages of its growth from infancy to maturity, and should try
to find, in the experience of generations which have passed away,
lessons which may be profitable to generations yet unborn.

The retrospect is full of interest and instruction.  Perhaps it
may be doubted whether, since the Christian era, there has been
any point of time more important to the highest interests of
mankind than that at which the existence of your University
commenced.  It was at the moment of a great destruction and of a
great creation.  Your society was instituted just before the
empire of the East perished; that strange empire which, dragging
on a languid life through the great age of darkness, connected
together the two great ages of light; that empire which, adding
nothing to our stores of knowledge, and producing not one man
great in letters, in science, or in art, yet preserved, in the
midst of barbarism, those masterpieces of Attic genius, which the
highest minds still contemplate, and long will contemplate, with
admiring despair.  And at that very time, while the fanatical
Moslem were plundering the churches and palaces of
Constantinople, breaking in pieces Grecian sculptures, and giving
to the flames piles of Grecian eloquence, a few humble German
artisans, who little knew that they were calling into existence a
power far mightier than that of the victorious Sultan, were
busied in cutting and setting the first types.  The University
came into existence just in time to witness the disappearance of
the last trace of the Roman empire, and to witness the
publication of the earliest printed book.

At this conjuncture, a conjuncture of unrivalled interest in the
history of letters, a man, never to be mentioned without
reverence by every lover of letters, held the highest place in
Europe.  Our just attachment to that Protestant faith to which
our country owes so much must not prevent us from paying the
tribute which, on this occasion, and in this place, justice and
gratitude demand, to the founder of the University of Glasgow,
the greatest of the restorers of learning, Pope Nicholas the
Fifth.  He had sprung from the common people; but his abilities
and his erudition had early attracted the notice of the great.
He had studied much and travelled far.  He had visited Britain,
which, in wealth and refinement, was to his native Tuscany what
the back settlements of America now are to Britain.  He had lived
with the merchant princes of Florence, those men who first
ennobled trade by making trade the ally of philosophy, of
eloquence, and of taste.  It was he who, under the protection of
the munificent and discerning Cosmo, arranged the first public
library that Modern Europe possessed.  From privacy your founder
rose to a throne; but on the throne he never forgot the studies
which had been his delight in privacy.  He was the centre of an
illustrious group, composed partly of the last great scholars of
Greece, and partly of the first great scholars of Italy, Theodore
Gaza and George of Trebizond, Bessarion and Filelfo, Marsilio
Ficino and Poggio Bracciolini.  By him was founded the Vatican
library, then and long after the most precious and the most
extensive collection of books in the world.  By him were
carefully preserved the most valuable intellectual treasures
which had been snatched from the wreck of the Byzantine empire.
His agents were to be found everywhere, in the bazaars of the
farthest East, in the monasteries of the farthest West,
purchasing or copying worm-eaten parchments, on which were traced
words worthy of immortality.  Under his patronage were prepared
accurate Latin versions of many precious remains of Greek poets
and philosophers.  But no department of literature owes so much
to him as history.  By him were introduced to the knowledge of
Western Europe two great and unrivalled models of historical
composition, the work of Herodotus and the work of Thucydides.
By him, too, our ancestors were first made acquainted with the
graceful and lucid simplicity of Xenophon and with the manly good
sense of Polybius.

It was while he was occupied with cares like these that his
attention was called to the intellectual wants of this region, a
region now swarming with population, rich with culture, and
resounding with the clang of machinery, a region which now sends
forth fleets laden with its admirable fabrics to the lands of
which, in his days, no geographer had ever heard, then a wild, a
poor, a half barbarous tract, lying on the utmost verge of the
known world.  He gave his sanction to the plan of establishing a
University at Glasgow, and bestowed on the new seat of learning
all the privileges which belonged to the University of Bologna.
I can conceive that a pitying smile passed over his face as he
named Bologna and Glasgow together.  At Bologna he had long
studied.  No spot in the world had been more favoured by nature
or by art.  The surrounding country was a fruitful and sunny
country, a country of cornfields and vineyards.  In the city, the
house of Bentivoglo bore rule, a house which vied with the house
of Medici in taste and magnificence, which has left to posterity
noble palaces and temples, and which gave a splendid patronage to
arts and letters.  Glasgow your founder just knew to be a poor, a
small, a rude town, a town, as he would have thought, not likely
ever to be great and opulent; for the soil, compared with the
rich country at the foot of the Apennines, was barren, and the
climate was such that an Italian shuddered at the thought of it.
But it is not on the fertility of the soil, it is not on the
mildness of the atmosphere, that the prosperity of nations
chiefly depends.  Slavery and superstition can make Campania a
land of beggars, and can change the plain of Enna into a desert.
Nor is it beyond the power of human intelligence and energy,
developed by civil and spiritual freedom, to turn sterile rocks
and pestilential marshes into cities and gardens.  Enlightened as
your founder was, he little knew that he was himself a chief
agent in a great revolution, physical and moral, political and
religious, in a revolution destined to make the last first and
the first last, in a revolution destined to invert the relative
positions of Glasgow and Bologna.  We cannot, I think, better
employ a few minutes than in reviewing the stages of this great
change in human affairs.

The review shall be short.  Indeed I cannot do better than pass
rapidly from century to century.  Look at the world, then, a
hundred years after the seal of Nicholas had been affixed to the
instrument which called your College into existence.  We find
Europe, we find Scotland especially, in the agonies of that great
revolution which we emphatically call the Reformation.  The
liberal patronage which Nicholas, and men like Nicholas, had
given to learning, and of which the establishment of this seat of
learning is not the least remarkable instance, had produced an
effect which they had never contemplated.  Ignorance was the
talisman on which their power depended; and that talisman they
had themselves broken.  They had called in Knowledge as a
handmaid to decorate Superstition, and their error produced its
natural effect.  I need not tell you what a part the votaries of
classical learning, and especially the votaries of Greek
learning, the Humanists, as they were then called, bore in the
great movement against spiritual tyranny.  They formed, in fact,
the vanguard of that movement.  Every one of the chief Reformers
--I do not at this moment remember a single exception--was a
Humanist.  Almost every eminent Humanist in the north of Europe
was, according to the measure of his uprightness and courage, a
Reformer.  In a Scottish University I need hardly mention the
names of Knox, of Buchanan, of Melville, of Secretary Maitland.
In truth, minds daily nourished with the best literature of
Greece and Rome necessarily grew too strong to be trammelled by
the cobwebs of the scholastic divinity; and the influence of such
minds was now rapidly felt by the whole community; for the
invention of printing had brought books within the reach even of
yeomen and of artisans.  From the Mediterranean to the Frozen
Sea, therefore, the public mind was everywhere in a ferment; and
nowhere was the ferment greater than in Scotland.  It was in the
midst of martyrdoms and proscriptions, in the midst of a war
between power and truth, that the first century of the existence
of your University closed.

Pass another hundred years; and we are in the midst of another
revolution.  The war between Popery and Protestantism had, in
this island, been terminated by the victory of Protestantism.
But from that war another war had sprung, the war between Prelacy
and Puritanism.  The hostile religious sects were allied,
intermingled, confounded with hostile political parties.  The
monarchical element of the constitution was an object of almost
exclusive devotion to the Prelatist.  The popular element of the
constitution was especially dear to the Puritan.  At length an
appeal was made to the sword.  Puritanism triumphed; but
Puritanism was already divided against itself.  Independency and
Republicanism were on one side, Presbyterianism and limited
Monarchy on the other.  It was in the very darkest part of that
dark time, it was in the midst of battles, sieges, and
executions, it was when the whole world was still aghast at the
awful spectacle of a British King standing before a judgment
seat, and laying his neck on a block, it was when the mangled
remains of the Duke of Hamilton had just been laid in the tomb of
his house, it was when the head of the Marquess of Montrose had
just been fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, that your
University completed her second century.

A hundred years more; and we have at length reached the beginning
of a happier period.  Our civil and religious liberties had
indeed been bought with a fearful price.  But they had been
bought.  The price had been paid.  The last battle had been
fought on British ground.  The last black scaffold had been set
up on Tower Hill.  The evil days were over.  A bright and
tranquil century, a century of religious toleration, of domestic
peace, of temperate freedom, of equal justice, was beginning.
That century is now closing.  When we compare it with any equally
long period in the history of any other great society, we shall
find abundant cause for thankfulness to the Giver of all good.
Nor is there any place in the whole kingdom better fitted to
excite this feeling than the place where we are now assembled.
For in the whole kingdom we shall find no district in which the
progress of trade, of manufactures, of wealth, and of the arts of
life, has been more rapid than in Clydesdale.  Your University
has partaken largely of the prosperity of this city and of the
surrounding region.  The security, the tranquillity, the liberty,
which have been propitious to the industry of the merchant and of
the manufacturer, have been also propitious to the industry of
the scholar.  To the last century belong most of the names of
which you justly boast.  The time would fail me if I attempted to
do justice to the memory of all the illustrious men who, during
that period, taught or learned wisdom within these ancient walls;
geometricians, anatomists, jurists, philologists, metaphysicians,
poets:  Simpson and Hunter, Millar and Young, Reid and Stewart;
Campbell, whose coffin was lately borne to a grave in that
renowned transept which contains the dust of Chaucer, of Spenser,
and of Dryden; Black, whose discoveries form an era in the
history of chemical science; Adam Smith, the greatest of all the
masters of political science; James Watt, who perhaps did more
than any single man has done, since the New Atlantis of Bacon was
written, to accomplish that glorious prophecy.  We now speak the
language of humility when we say that the University of Glasgow
need not fear a comparison with the University of Bologna.

A fifth secular period is about to commence.  There is no lack of
alarmists who will tell you that it is about to commence under
evil auspices.  But from me you must expect no such gloomy
prognostications.  I have heard them too long and too constantly
to be scared by them.  Ever since I began to make observations on
the state of my country, I have been seeing nothing but growth,
and hearing of nothing but decay.  The more I contemplate our
noble institutions, the more convinced I am that they are sound
at heart, that they have nothing of age but its dignity, and that
their strength is still the strength of youth.  The hurricane,
which has recently overthrown so much that was great and that
seemed durable, has only proved their solidity.  They still
stand, august and immovable, while dynasties and churches are
lying in heaps of ruin all around us.  I see no reason to doubt
that, by the blessing of God on a wise and temperate policy, on a
policy of which the principle is to preserve what is good by
reforming in time what is evil, our civil institutions may be
preserved unimpaired to a late posterity, and that, under the
shade of our civil institutions, our academical institutions may
long continue to flourish.

I trust, therefore, that, when a hundred years more have run out,
this ancient College will still continue to deserve well of our
country and of mankind.  I trust that the installation of 1949
will be attended by a still greater assembly of students than I
have the happiness now to see before me.  That assemblage,
indeed, may not meet in the place where we have met.  These
venerable halls may have disappeared.  My successor may speak to
your successors in a more stately edifice, in a edifice which,
even among the magnificent buildings of the future Glasgow, will
still be admired as a fine specimen of the architecture which
flourished in the days of the good Queen Victoria.  But, though
the site and the walls may be new, the spirit of the institution
will, I hope, be still the same.  My successor will, I hope, be
able to boast that the fifth century of the University has even
been more glorious than the fourth.  He will be able to vindicate
that boast by citing a long list of eminent men, great masters of
experimental science, of ancient learning, of our native
eloquence, ornaments of the senate, the pulpit and the bar.  He
will, I hope, mention with high honour some of my young friends
who now hear me; and he will, I also hope, be able to add that
their talents and learning were not wasted on selfish or ignoble
objects, but were employed to promote the physical and moral good
of their species, to extend the empire of man over the material
world, to defend the cause of civil and religious liberty against
tyrants and bigots, and to defend the cause of virtue and order
against the enemies of all divine and human laws.

I have now given utterance to a part, and to a part only, of the
recollections and anticipations of which, on this solemn
occasion, my mind is full.  I again thank you for the honour
which you have bestowed on me; and I assure you that, while I
live, I shall never cease to take a deep interest in the welfare
and fame of the body with which, by your kindness, I have this
day become connected.

...


RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT.  (NOVEMBER 2, 1852)

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON THE 2D OF NOVEMBER, 1852.

At the General Election of 1852 the votes for the City of
Edinburgh stood thus:

Mr Macaulay........1872
Mr Cowan...........1754
The Lord Provost...1559
Mr Bruce...........1066
Mr Campbell.........686

On the second of November the Electors assembled in the Music
Hall to meet the representative whom they had, without any
solicitation on his part, placed at the head of the poll.  On
this occasion the following Speech was delivered.

Gentlemen,--I thank you from my heart for this kind reception.
In truth, it has almost overcome me.  Your good opinion and your
good will were always very valuable to me, far more valuable than
any vulgar object of ambition, far more valuable than any office,
however lucrative or dignified.  In truth, no office, however
lucrative or dignified, would have tempted me to do what I have
done at your summons, to leave again the happiest and most
tranquil of all retreats for the bustle of political life.  But
the honour which you have conferred upon me, an honour of which
the greatest men might well be proud, an honour which it is in
the power only of a free people to bestow, has laid on me such an
obligation that I should have thought it ingratitude, I should
have thought it pusillanimity, not to make at least an effort to
serve you.

And here, Gentlemen, we meet again in kindness after a long
separation.  It is more than five years since I last stood in
this very place; a large part of human life.  There are few of us
on whom those five years have not set their mark, few circles
from which those five years have not taken away what can never be
replaced.  Even in this multitude of friendly faces I look in
vain for some which would on this day have been lighted up with
joy and kindness.  I miss one venerable man, who, before I was
born, in evil times, in times of oppression and of corruption,
had adhered, with almost solitary fidelity, to the cause of
freedom, and whom I knew in advanced age, but still in the full
vigour of mind and body, enjoying the respect and gratitude of
his fellow citizens.  I should, indeed, be most ungrateful if I
could, on this day, forget Sir James Craig, his public spirit,
his judicious counsel, his fatherly kindness to myself.  And
Jeffrey--with what an effusion of generous affection he would on
this day, have welcomed me back to Edinburgh!  He too is gone;
but the remembrance of him is one of the many ties which bind me
to the city once dear to his heart, and still inseparably
associated with his fame.

But, Gentlemen, it is not only here that, on entering again, at
your call, a path of life which I believed that I had quitted
forever, I shall be painfully reminded of the changes which the
last five years have produced.  In Parliament I shall look in
vain for virtues which I loved, and for abilities which I
admired.  Often in debate, and never more than when we discuss
those questions of colonial policy which are every day acquiring
a new interest, I shall remember with regret how much eloquence
and wit, how much acuteness and knowledge, how many engaging
qualities, how many fair hopes, are buried in the grave of poor
Charles Buller.  There were other men, men with whom I had no
political connection and little personal connection, men to whom
I was, during a great part of my public life, honestly opposed,
but of whom I cannot now think without grieving that their
wisdom, their experience, and the weight of their great names can
never more, in the hour of need, bring help to the nation or to
the throne.  Such were those two eminent men whom I left at the
height, one of civil, the other of military fame; one the oracle
of the House of Commons, the other the oracle of the House of
Lords.  There were parts of their long public life which they
would themselves, I am persuaded, on a calm retrospect, have
allowed to be justly censurable.  But it is impossible to deny
that each in his own department saved the State; that one brought
to a triumphant close the most formidable conflict in which this
country was ever engaged with a foreign enemy; and that the
other, at an immense sacrifice of personal feeling and personal
ambition, freed us from an odious monopoly, which could not have
existed many years longer without producing fearful intestine
discords.  I regret them both:  but I peculiarly regret him who
is associated in my mind with the place to which you have sent
me.  I shall hardly know the House of Commons without Sir Robert
Peel.  On the first evening on which I took my seat in that
House, more than two and twenty years ago, he held the highest
position among the Ministers of the Crown who sate there.  During
all the subsequent years of my parliamentary service I scarcely
remember one important discussion in which he did not bear a part
with conspicuous ability.  His figure is now before me:  all the
tones of his voice are in my ears; and the pain with which I
think that I shall never hear them again would be embittered by
the recollection of some sharp encounters which took place
between us, were it not that at last there was an entire and
cordial reconciliation, and that, only a very few days before his
death, I had the pleasure of receiving from him marks of kindness
and esteem of which I shall always cherish the recollection.

But, Gentlemen, it is not only by those changes which the natural
law of mortality produces, it is not only by the successive
disappearances of eminent men that the face of the world has been
changed during the five years which have elapsed since we met
here last.  Never since the origin of our race have there been
five years more fertile of great events, five years which have
left behind them a more awful lesson.  We have lived many lives
in that time.  The revolutions of ages have been compressed into
a few months.  France, Germany, Hungary, Italy,--what a history
has theirs been!  When we met here last, there was in all of
those countries an outward show of tranquillity; and there were
few, even of the wisest among us, who imagined what wild
passions, what wild theories, were fermenting under that peaceful
exterior.  An obstinate resistance to a reasonable reform, a
resistance prolonged but for one day beyond the time, gave the
signal for the explosion; and in an instant, from the borders of
Russia to the Atlantic Ocean, everything was confusion and
terror.  The streets of the greatest capitals of Europe were
piled up with barricades, and were streaming with civil blood.
The house of Orleans fled from France:  the Pope fled from Rome:
the Emperor of Austria was not safe at Vienna.  There were
popular institutions in Florence; popular institutions at Naples.
One democratic convention sat at Berlin; another democratic
convention at Frankfort.  You remember, I am sure, but too well,
how some of the wisest and most honest friends of liberty, though
inclined to look with great indulgence on the excesses
inseparable from revolutions, began first to doubt and then to
despair of the prospects of mankind.  You remember how all sorts
of animosity, national, religious, and social, broke forth
together.  You remember how with the hatred of discontented
subjects to their governments was mingled the hatred of race to
race and of class to class.  For myself, I stood aghast; and
though naturally of a sanguine disposition, I did for one moment
doubt whether the progress of society was not about to be
arrested, nay, to be suddenly and violently turned back; whether
we were not doomed to pass in one generation from the
civilisation of the nineteenth century to the barbarism of the
fifth.  I remembered that Adam Smith and Gibbon had told us that
the dark ages were gone, never more to return, that modern Europe
was in no danger of the fate which had befallen the Roman empire.
That flood, they said, would no more return to cover the earth:
and they seemed to reason justly:  for they compared the immense
strength of the enlightened part of the world with the weakness
of the part which remained savage; and they asked whence were to
come the Huns and the Vandals, who should again destroy
civilisation?  It had not occurred to them that civilisation
itself might engender the barbarians who should destroy it.  It
had not occurred to them that in the very heart of great
capitals, in the neighbourhood of splendid palaces, and churches,
and theatres, and libraries, and museums, vice and ignorance
might produce a race of Huns fiercer than those who marched under
Attila, and of Vandals more bent on destruction than those who
followed Genseric.  Such was the danger.  It passed by.
Civilisation was saved, but at what a price!  The tide of popular
feeling turned and ebbed almost as fast as it had risen.
Imprudent and obstinate opposition to reasonable demands had
brought on anarchy; and as soon as men had a near view of anarchy
they fled in terror to crouch at the feet of despotism.  To the
dominion of mobs armed with pikes succeeded the sterner and more
lasting dominion of disciplined armies.  The Papacy rose from its
debasement; rose more intolerant and insolent than before;
intolerant and insolent as in the days of Hildebrand; intolerant
and insolent to a degree which dismayed and disappointed those
who had fondly cherished the hope that the spirit which had
animated the Crusaders and the Inquisitors had been mitigated by
the lapse of years and by the progress of knowledge.  Through all
that vast region, where little more than four years ago we looked
in vain for any stable authority, we now look in vain for any
trace of constitutional freedom.  And we, Gentlemen, in the
meantime, have been exempt from both those calamities which have
wrought ruin all around us.  The madness of 1848 did not subvert
the British throne.  The reaction which followed has not
destroyed British liberty.

And why is this?  Why has our country, with all the ten plagues
raging around her, been a land of Goshen?  Everywhere else was
the thunder and the fire running along the ground,--a very
grievous storm,--a storm such as there was none like it since man
was on the earth; yet everything tranquil here; and then again
thick night, darkness that might be felt; and yet light in all
our dwellings.  We owe this singular happiness, under the
blessing of God, to a wise and noble constitution, the work of
many generations of great men.  Let us profit by experience; and
let us be thankful that we profit by the experience of others,
and not by our own.  Let us prize our constitution:  let us
purify it:  let us amend it; but let us not destroy it.  Let us
shun extremes, not only because each extreme is in itself a
positive evil, but also because each extreme necessarily
engenders its opposite.  If we love civil and religious freedom,
let us in the day of danger uphold law and order.  If we are
zealous for law and order, let us prize, as the best safeguard of
law and order, civil and religious freedom.

Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are free with servitude all
around us, why our Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended, why
our press is still subject to no censor, why we still have the
liberty of association, why our representative institutions still
abide in all their strength, I answer, It is because in the year
of revolutions we stood firmly by our Government in its peril;
and, if I am asked why we stood by our Government in its peril,
when men all around us were engaged in pulling Governments down,
I answer, It was because we knew that though our Government was
not a perfect Government, it was a good Government, that its
faults admitted of peaceable and legal remedies, that it had
never inflexibly opposed just demands, that we had obtained
concessions of inestimable value, not by beating the drum, not by
ringing the tocsin, not by tearing up the pavement, not by
running to the gunsmiths' shops to search for arms, but by the
mere force of reason and public opinion.  And, Gentlemen, pre-
eminent among those pacific victories of reason and public
opinion, the recollection of which chiefly, I believe, carried us
safely through the year of revolutions and through the year of
counter-revolutions, I would place two great reforms, inseparably
associated, one with the memory of an illustrious man, who is now
beyond the reach of envy, the other with the name of another
illustrious man, who is still, and, I hope, long will be, a
living mark for distinction.  I speak of the great commercial
reform of 1846, the work of Sir Robert Peel, and of the great
parliamentary reform of 1832, the work of many eminent statesmen,
among whom none was more conspicuous than Lord John Russell.  I
particularly call your attention to those two great reforms,
because it will, in my opinion, be the especial duty of that
House of Commons in which, by your distinguished favour, I have a
seat, to defend the commercial reform of Sir Robert Peel, and to
perfect and extend the parliamentary reform of Lord John Russell.

With respect to the commercial reform, though I say it will be a
sacred duty to defend it, I do not apprehend that we shall find
the task very difficult.  Indeed, I doubt whether we have any
reason to apprehend a direct attack upon the system now
established.  From the expressions used during the last session,
and during the late elections, by the Ministers and their
adherents, I should, I confess, find it utterly impossible to
draw any inference whatever.  They have contradicted each other;
and they have contradicted themselves.  Nothing would be easier
than to select from their speeches passages which would prove
them to be Freetraders, and passages which would prove them to be
protectionists.  But, in truth, the only inference which can
properly be drawn from a speech of one of these gentlemen in
favour of Free Trade is, that, when he spoke, he was standing for
a town; and the only inference which can be drawn from the speech
of another in favour of Protection is, that, when he spoke, he
was standing for a county.  I quitted London in the heat of the
elections.  I left behind me a Tory candidate for Westminster and
a Tory candidate for Middlesex, loudly proclaiming themselves
Derbyites and Freetraders.  All along my journey through
Berkshire and Wiltshire I heard nothing but the cry of Derby and
Protection; but when I got to Bristol, the cry was Derby and Free
Trade again.  On one side of the Wash, Lord Stanley, the Under-
Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, a young nobleman
of great promise, a young nobleman who appears to me to inherit a
large portion of his father's ability and energy, held language
which was universally understood to indicate that the Government
had altogether abandoned all thought of Protection.  Lord Stanley
was addressing the inhabitants of a town.  Meanwhile, on the
other side of the Wash, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
was haranguing the farmers of Lincolnshire; and, when somebody
took it upon him to ask, "What will you do, Mr Christopher, if
Lord Derby abandons Protection?" the Chancellor of the Duchy
refused to answer a question so monstrous, so insulting to Lord
Derby.  "I will stand by Lord Derby," he said, "because I know
that Lord Derby will stand by Protection."  Well, these opposite
declarations of two eminent persons, both likely to know the mind
of Lord Derby on the subject, go forth, and are taken up by less
distinguished adherents of the party.  The Tory candidate for
Leicestershire says, "I put faith in Mr Christopher:  while you
see Mr Christopher in the Government, you may be assured that
agriculture will be protected."  But, in East Surrey, which is
really a suburb of London, I find the Tory candidate saying,
"Never mind Mr Christopher.  I trust to Lord Stanley.  What
should Mr Christopher know on the subject?  He is not in the
Cabinet:  he can tell you nothing about it.  Nay, these tactics
were carried so far that Tories who had formerly been for Free
Trade, turned Protectionists if they stood for counties; and
Tories, who had always been furious Protectionists, declared for
Free Trade, without scruple or shame, if they stood for large
towns.  Take for example Lord Maidstone.  He was once one of the
most vehement Protectionists in England, and put forth a small
volume, which, as I am an elector of Westminster, and as he was a
candidate for Westminster, I thought it my duty to buy, in order
to understand his opinions.  It is entitled Free Trade
Hexameters.  Of the poetical merits of Lord Maidstone's
hexameters I shall not presume to give an opinion.  You may all
form an opinion for yourselves by ordering copies.  They may
easily be procured:  for I was assured, when I bought mine in
Bond Street, that the supply on hand was still considerable.  But
of the political merits of Lord Maidstone's hexameters I can
speak with confidence; and it is impossible to conceive a fiercer
attack, according to the measure of the power of the assailant,
than that which his lordship made on Sir Robert Peel's policy.
On the other hand, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who is now Solicitor
General, and who was Solicitor General under Sir Robert Peel,
voted steadily with Sir Robert Peel, doubtless from a regard to
the public interest, which would have suffered greatly by the
retirement of so able a lawyer from the service of the Crown.
Sir Fitzroy did not think it necessary to lay down his office
even when Sir Robert Peel brought in the bill which established a
free trade in corn.  But unfortunately, Lord Maidstone becomes a
candidate for the City of Westminster, and Sir Fitzroy Kelly
stands for an agricultural county.  Instantly, therefore, Lord
Maidstone forgets his verses, and Sir Fitzroy Kelly forgets his
votes.  Lord Maidstone declares himself a convert to the opinions
of Sir Robert Peel; and Sir Robert Peel's own Solicitor General
lifts up his head intrepidly, and makes a speech, apparently
composed out of Lord Maidstone's hexameters.

It is therefore, Gentlemen, utterly impossible for me to pretend
to infer, from the language held by the members of the
Government, and their adherents, what course they will take on
the subject of Protection.  Nevertheless, I confidently say that
the system established by Sir Robert Peel is perfectly safe.  The
law which repealed the Corn Laws stands now on a much firmer
foundation than when it was first passed.  We are stronger than
ever in reason; and we are stronger than ever in numbers.  We are
stronger than ever in reason, because what was only prophecy is
now history.  No person can now question the salutary effect
which the repeal of the Corn Laws has had on our trade and
industry.  We are stronger than ever in numbers.  You, I am sure,
recollect the time when a formidable opposition to the repeal of
the Corn Laws was made by a class which was most deeply
interested in that repeal; I mean the labouring classes.  You
recollect that, in many large towns, ten years ago, the friends
of Free Trade could not venture to call meetings for the purpose
of petitioning against the Corn Laws, for fear of being
interrupted by a crowd of working people, who had been taught by
a certain class of demagogues to say that the question was one in
which working people had no interest, that it was purely a
capitalist's question, that, if the poor man got a large loaf
instead of a small one, he would get from the capitalist only a
sixpence instead of a shilling.  I never had the slightest faith
in those doctrines.  Experience even then seemed to me completely
to confute them.  I compared place with place; and I found that,
though bread was dearer in England than in Ohio, wages were
higher in Ohio than in England.  I compared time with time; and I
saw that those times when bread was cheapest in England, within
my own memory, were also the times in which the condition of the
labouring classes was the happiest.  But now the experiment has
been tried in a manner which admits of no dispute.  I should be
glad to know, if there were now an attempt made to impose a tax
on corn, what demagogue would be able to bring a crowd of working
men to hold up their hands in favour of such a tax.  Thus strong,
Gentlemen, in reason, and thus strong in numbers, we need, I
believe, apprehend no direct attack on the principles of Free
Trade.  It will, however, be one of the first duties of your
representatives to be vigilant that no indirect attack shall be
made on these principles; and to take care that in our financial
arrangements no undue favour shall be shown to any class.

With regard to the other question which I have mentioned, the
question of Parliamentary Reform, I think that the time is at
hand when that question will require the gravest consideration,
when it will be necessary to reconsider the Reform Act of 1832,
and to amend it temperately and cautiously, but in a large and
liberal spirit.  I confess that, in my opinion, this revision
cannot be made with advantage, except by the Ministers of the
Crown.  I greatly doubt whether it will be found possible to
carry through any plan of improvement if we have not the
Government heartily with us; and I must say that from the present
Administration I can, as to that matter, expect nothing good.
What precisely I am to expect from them I do not know, whether
the most obstinate opposition to every change, or the most
insanely violent change.  If I look to their conduct, I find the
gravest reasons for apprehending that they may at one time resist
the most just demands, and at another time, from the merest
caprice, propose the wildest innovations.  And I will tell you
why I entertain this opinion.  I am sorry that, in doing so, I
must mention the name of a gentleman for whom, personally, I have
the highest respect; I mean Mr Walpole, the Secretary of State
for the Home Department.  My own acquaintance with him is slight;
but I know him well by character; and I believe him to be an
honourable, an excellent, an able man.  No man is more esteemed
in private life:  but of his public conduct I must claim the
right to speak with freedom; and I do so with the less scruple
because he has himself set me an example of that freedom, and
because I am really now standing on the defensive.  Mr Walpole
lately made a speech to the electors of Midhurst; and in that
speech he spoke personally of Lord John Russell as one honourable
man should speak of another, and as, I am sure, I wish always to
speak of Mr Walpole.  But in Lord John's public conduct Mr
Walpole found many faults.  Chief among those faults was this,
that his lordship had re-opened the question of reform.  Mr
Walpole declared himself to be opposed on principle to organic
change.  He justly said that if, unfortunately, organic change
should be necessary, whatever was done ought to be done with much
deliberation and with caution almost timorous; and he charged
Lord John with having neglected these plain rules of prudence.  I
was perfectly thunderstruck when I read the speech:  for I could
not but recollect that the most violent and democratic change
that ever was proposed within the memory of the oldest man had
been proposed but a few weeks before by this same Mr Walpole, as
the organ of the present Government.  Do you remember the history
of the Militia Bill?  In general, when a great change in our
institutions is to be proposed from the Treasury Bench, the
Minister announces his intention some weeks before.  There is a
great attendance:  there is the most painful anxiety to know what
he is going to recommend.  I well remember,--for I was present,--
with what breathless suspense six hundred persons waited, on the
first of March, 1831, to hear Lord John Russell explain the
principles of his Reform Bill.  But what was his Reform Bill to
the Reform Bill of the Derby Administration?  At the end of a
night, in the coolest way possible, without the smallest notice,
Mr Walpole proposed to add to the tail of the Militia Bill a
clause to the effect, that every man who had served in the
militia for two years should have a vote for the county.  What is
the number of those voters who were to be entitled to vote in
this way for counties?  The militia of England is to consist of
eighty thousand men; and the term of service is to be five years.
In ten years the number will be one hundred and sixty thousand;
in twenty years, three hundred and twenty thousand; and in
twenty-five years, four hundred thousand.  Some of these new
electors will, of course, die off in twenty-five years, though
the lives are picked lives, remarkably good lives.  What the
mortality is likely to be I do not accurately know; but any
actuary will easily calculate it for you.  I should say, in round
numbers, that you will have, when the system has been in
operation for a generation, an addition of about three hundred
thousand to the county constituent bodies; that is to say, six
thousand voters on the average will be added to every county in
England and Wales.  That is surely an immense addition.  And what
is the qualification?  Why, the first qualification is youth.
These electors are not to be above a certain age; but the nearer
you can get them to eighteen the better.  The second
qualification is poverty.  The elector is to be a person to whom
a shilling a-day is an object.  The third qualification is
ignorance; for I venture to say that, if you take the trouble to
observe the appearance of those young fellows who follow the
recruiting sergeant in the streets, you will at once say that,
among our labouring classes, they are not the most educated, they
are not the most intelligent.  That they are brave, stout lads, I
fully believe.  Lord Hardinge tells me that he never saw a finer
set of young men; and I have not the slightest doubt that, if
necessary, after a few weeks' training, they will be found
standing up for our firesides against the best disciplined
soldiers that the Continent can produce.  But these are not the
qualifications which fit men to choose legislators.  A young man
who goes from the ploughtail into the army is generally rather
thoughtless and disposed to idleness.  Oh! but there is another
qualification which I had forgotten:  the voter must be five feet
two.  There is a qualification for you!  Only think of measuring
a man for the franchise!  And this is the work of a Conservative
Government, this plan which would swamp all the counties in
England with electors who possess the Derby-Walpole
qualifications; that is to say, youth, poverty, ignorance, a
roving disposition, and five feet two.  Why, what right have
people who have proposed such a change as this to talk about--I
do not say Lord John Russell's imprudence--but the imprudence of
Ernest Jones or of any other Chartist?  The Chartists, to do them
justice, would give the franchise to wealth as well as to
poverty, to knowledge as well as to ignorance, to mature age as
well as to youth.  But to make a qualification compounded of
disqualifications is a feat of which the whole glory belongs to
our Conservative rulers.  This astounding proposition was made, I
believe, in a very thin House:  but the next day the House was
full enough, everybody having come down to know what was going to
happen.  One asked, why not this? and another, why not that?  Are
all the regular troops to have the franchise? all the policemen?
all the sailors? for, if you give the franchise to ploughboys of
twenty-one, what class of honest Englishmen and Scotchmen can you
with decency exclude?  But up gets the Home Secretary, and
informs the House that the plan had not been sufficiently
considered, that some of his colleagues were not satisfied, and
that he would not press his proposition.  Now, if it had happened
to me to propose such a reform at one sitting of the House, and
at the next sitting to withdraw it, because it had not been well
considered, I do think that, to the end of my life, I never
should have talked about the exceeding imprudence of reopening
the question of reform; I should never have ventured to read any
other man a lecture about the caution with which all plans of
organic change ought to be framed.  I repeat that, if I am to
judge from the language of the present Ministers, taken in
connection with this solitary instance of their legislative skill
in the way of reform, I am utterly at a loss what to expect.  On
the whole, what I do expect is that they will offer a
pertinacious, vehement, provoking opposition to safe and
reasonable change, and that then, in some moment of fear or
caprice, they will bring in, and fling on the table, in a fit of
desperation or levity, some plan which will loosen the very
foundations of society.

For my own part, I think that the question of Parliamentary
Reform is one which must soon be taken up; but it ought to be
taken up by the Government; and I hope, before long, to see in
office a Ministry which will take it up in earnest.  I dare say
that you will not suspect me of saying so from any interested
feeling.  In no case whatever shall I again be a member of any
Ministry.  During what may remain of my public life, I shall be
the servant of none but you.  I have nothing to ask of any
government, except that protection which every government owes to
a faithful and loyal subject of the Queen.  But I do hope to see
in office before long a Ministry which will treat this great
question as it should be treated.  It will be the duty of that
Ministry to revise the distribution of power.  It will be the
duty of that Ministry to consider whether small constituent
bodies, notoriously corrupt, and proved to be corrupt, such, for
example, as Harwich, ought to retain the power of sending members
to Parliament.  It will be the duty of such a Ministry to
consider whether small constituent bodies, even less notoriously
corrupt, ought to have, in the counsels of the empire, a share as
great as that of the West Riding of York, and twice as great as
that of the county of Perth.  It will be the duty of such a
Ministry to consider whether it may not be possible, without the
smallest danger to peace, law, and order, to extend the elective
franchise to classes of the community which do not now possess
it.  As to universal suffrage, on that subject you already know
my opinions; and I now come before you with those opinions
strengthened by everything which, since I last professed them,
has passed in Europe.  We now know, by the clearest of all
proofs, that universal suffrage, even united with secret voting,
is no security against the establishment of arbitrary power.
But, Gentlemen, I do look forward, and at no very remote period,
to an extension of the franchise, such as I once thought unsafe.
I believe that such an extension will, by the course of events,
be brought about in the very best and happiest way.  Perhaps I
may be sanguine:  but I think that good times are coming for the
labouring classes of this country.  I do not entertain that hope
because I expect that Fourierism, or Saint Simonianism, or
Socialism, or any of those other "isms" for which the plain
English word is "robbery," will prevail.  I know that such
schemes only aggravate the misery which they pretend to relieve.
I know that it is possible, by legislation, to make the rich
poor, but that it is utterly impossible to make the poor rich.
But I believe that the progress of experimental science, the free
intercourse of nation with nation, the unrestricted influx of
commodities from countries where they are cheap, and the
unrestricted efflux of labour towards countries where it is dear,
will soon produce, nay, I believe that they are beginning to
produce, a great and most blessed social revolution.  I need not
tell you, Gentlemen, that in those colonies which have been
planted by our race,--and, when I speak of our colonies I speak
as well of those which have separated from us as of those which
still remain united to us,--I need not tell you that in our
colonies the condition of the labouring man has long been far
more prosperous than in any part of the Old World.  And why is
this?  Some people tell you that the inhabitants of Pennsylvania
and New England are better off than the inhabitants of the Old
World, because the United States have a republican form of
government.  But we know that the inhabitants of Pennsylvania and
New England were more prosperous than the inhabitants of the Old
World when Pennsylvania and New England were as loyal as any part
of the dominions of George the First, George the Second, and
George the Third; and we know that in Van Diemen's Land, in New
Zealand, in Australasia, in New Brunswick, in Canada, the
subjects of Her Majesty are as prosperous as they could be under
the government of a President.  The real cause is that, in these
new countries, where there is a boundless extent of fertile land,
nothing is easier than for the labourer to pass from the place
which is overstocked with labour to the place which is
understocked; and that thus both he who moves and he who stays
always have enough.  This it is which keeps up the prosperity of
the Atlantic States of the Union.  They pour their population
back to the Ohio, across the Ohio to the Mississippi, and beyond
the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains.  Everywhere the desert is
receding before the advancing flood of human life and
civilisation; and, in the meantime, those who are left behind
enjoy abundance, and never endure such privations as in old
countries too often befall the labouring classes.  And why has
not the condition of our labourers been equally fortunate?
Simply, as I believe, on account of the great distance which
separates our country from the new and unoccupied part of the
world, and on account of the expense of traversing that distance.
Science, however, has abridged, and is abridging, that distance:
science has diminished, and is diminishing, that expense.
Already New Zealand is, for all practical purposes, nearer to us
than New England was to the Puritans who fled thither from the
tyranny of Laud.  Already the ports of North America, Halifax,
Boston, and New York, are nearer to us than, within the memory of
persons now living, the Island of Skye and the county of Donegal
were to London.  Already emigration is beginning to produce the
same effect here which it has produced on the Atlantic States of
the Union.  And do not imagine that our countryman who goes
abroad is altogether lost to us.  Even if he goes from under the
dominion of the British Queen and the protection of the British
flag he will still, under the benignant system of free trade,
continue to be bound to us by close ties.  If he ceases to be a
neighbour, he is still a benefactor and a customer.  Go where he
may, if you will but maintain that system inviolate, it is for us
that he is turning the forests into cornfields on the banks of
the Mississippi; it is for us that he is tending his sheep and
preparing his fleeces in the heart of Australasia; and in the
meantime it is from us that he receives those commodities which
are produced with most advantage in old societies, where great
masses of capital have been accumulated.  His candlesticks and
his pots and his pans come from Birmingham; his knives from
Sheffield; the light cotton jacket which he wears in summer from
Manchester; the good cloth coat which he wears in winter from
Leeds; and in return he sends us back, from what was lately a
wilderness, the good flour out of which is made the large loaf
which the British labourer divides among his children.  I believe
that it is in these changes that we shall see the best solution
of the question of the franchise.  We shall make our institutions
more democratic than they are, not by lowering the franchise to
the level of the great mass of the community, but by raising, in
a time which will be very short when compared with the existence
of a nation, the great mass up to the level of the franchise.

I feel that I must stop.  I had meant to advert to some other
subjects.  I had meant to say something about the ballot, to
which, as you know, I have always been favourable; something
about triennial parliaments, to which, as you know, I have always
been honestly opposed; something about your university tests;
something about the cry for religious equality which has lately
been raised in Ireland; but I feel that I cannot well proceed.  I
have only strength to thank you again, from the very bottom of my
heart, for the great honour which you have done me in choosing
me, without solicitation, to represent you in Parliament.  I am
proud of our connection; and I shall try to act in such a manner
that you may not be ashamed of it.

...


EXCLUSION OF JUDGES FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.  (JUNE 1, 1853)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 1ST OF JUNE
1853.

On the first of June 1853, Lord Hotham, Member for Kent, moved
the third reading of a bill of which the chief object was to make
the Master of the Rolls incapable of sitting in the House of
Commons.  Mr Henry Drummond, Member for Surrey, moved that the
bill should be read a third time that day six months.  In support
of Mr Drummond's amendment the following Speech was made.

The amendment was carried by 224 votes to 123.

I cannot, Sir, suffer the House to proceed to a division without
expressing the very strong opinion which I have formed on this
subject.  I shall give my vote, with all my heart and soul, for
the amendment moved by my honourable friend the Member for
Surrey.  I never gave a vote in my life with a more entire
confidence that I was in the right; and I cannot but think it
discreditable to us that a bill for which there is so little to
be said, and against which there is so much to be said, should
have been permitted to pass through so many stages without a
division.

On what grounds, Sir, does the noble lord, the Member for Kent,
ask us to make this change in the law?  The only ground, surely,
on which a Conservative legislator ought ever to propose a change
in the law is this, that the law, as it stands, has produced some
evil.  Is it then pretended that the law, as it stands, has
produced any evil?  The noble lord himself tells you that it has
produced no evil whatever.  Nor can it be said that the
experiment has not been fairly tried.  This House and the office
of Master of the Rolls began to exist, probably in the same
generation, certainly in the same century.  During six hundred
years this House has been open to Masters of the Rolls.  Many
Masters of the Rolls have sate here, and have taken part, with
great ability and authority, in our deliberations.  To go no
further back than the accession of the House of Hanover, Jekyll
was a member of this House, and Strange, and Kenyon, and Pepper
Arden, and Sir William Grant, and Sir John Copley, and Sir
Charles Pepys, and finally Sir John Romilly.  It is not even
pretended that any one of these eminent persons was ever, on any
single occasion, found to be the worse member of this House for
being Master of the Rolls, or the worse Master of the Rolls for
being a member of this House.  And if so, is it, I ask, the part
of a wise statesman, is it, I ask still more emphatically, the
part of a Conservative statesman, to alter a system which has
lasted six centuries, and which has never once, during all those
centuries, produced any but good effects, merely because it is
not in harmony with an abstract principle?

And what is the abstract principle for the sake of which we are
asked to innovate in reckless defiance of all the teaching of
experience?  It is this; that political functions ought to be
kept distinct from judicial functions.  So sacred, it seems, is
this principle, that the union of the political and judicial
characters ought not to be suffered to continue even in a case in
which that union has lasted through many ages without producing
the smallest practical inconvenience.  "Nothing is so hateful," I
quote the words of the noble lord who brought in this bill,
"nothing is so hateful as a political judge."

Now, Sir, if I assent to the principle laid down by the noble
lord, I must pronounce his bill the most imbecile, the most
pitiful, attempt at reform that ever was made.  The noble lord is
a homoeopathist in state medicine.  His remedies are administered
in infinitesimal doses.  If he will, for a moment, consider how
our tribunals are constituted, and how our parliament is
constituted, he will perceive that the judicial and political
character are, through all grades, everywhere combined,
everywhere interwoven, and that therefore the evil which he
proposes to remove vanishes, as the mathematicians say, when
compared with the immense mass of evil which he leaves behind.

It has been asked, and very sensibly asked, why, if you exclude
the Master of the Rolls from the House, you should not also
exclude the Recorder of the City of London.  I should be very
sorry to see the Recorder of the City of London excluded.  But I
must say that the reasons for excluding him are ten times as
strong as the reasons for excluding the Master of the Rolls.  For
it is well-known that political cases of the highest importance
have been tried by Recorders of the City of London.  But why not
exclude all Recorders, and all Chairmen of Quarter Sessions?  I
venture to say that there are far stronger reasons for excluding
a Chairman of Quarter Sessions than for excluding a Master of the
Rolls.  I long ago attended, during two or three years, the
Quarter Sessions of a great county.  There I constantly saw in
the chair an eminent member of this House.  An excellent criminal
judge he was.  Had he been a veteran lawyer, he could hardly have
tried causes more satisfactorily or more expeditiously.  But he
was a keen politician:  he had made a motion which had turned out
a Government; and when he died he was a Cabinet Minister.  Yet
this gentleman, the head of the Blue interest, as it was called,
in his county, might have had to try men of the Orange party for
rioting at a contested election.  He voted for the corn laws; and
he might have had to try men for breaches of the peace which had
originated in the discontent caused by the corn laws.  He was, as
I well remember, hooted, and, I rather think, pelted too, by the
mob of London for his conduct towards Queen Caroline; and, when
he went down to his county, he might have had to sit in judgment
on people for breaking windows which had not been illuminated in
honour of Her Majesty's victory.  This is not a solitary
instance.  There are, I dare say, in this House, fifty Chairmen
of Quarter Sessions.  And this is an union of judicial and
political functions against which there is really much to be
said.  For it is important, not only that the administration of
justice should be pure, but that it should be unsuspected.  Now I
am willing to believe that the administration of justice by the
unpaid magistrates in political cases is pure:  but unsuspected
it certainly is not.  It is notorious that, in times of political
excitement, the cry of the whole democratic press always is that
a poor man, who has been driven by distress to outrage, has far
harder measure at the Quarter Sessions than at the Assizes.  So
loud was this cry in 1819 that Mr Canning, in one of his most
eloquent speeches, pronounced it the most alarming of all the
signs of the times.  See then how extravagantly, how ludicrously
inconsistent your legislation is.  You lay down the principle
that the union of political functions and judicial functions is a
hateful abuse.  That abuse you determine to remove.  You
accordingly leave in this House a crowd of judges who, in
troubled times, have to try persons charged with political
offences; of judges who have often been accused, truly or
falsely, of carrying to the judgment seat their political
sympathies and antipathies; and you shut out of the house a
single judge, whose duties are of such a nature that it has never
once, since the time of Edward the First, been even suspected
that he or any of his predecessors has, in the administration of
justice, favoured a political ally, or wronged a political
opponent.

But even if I were to admit, what I altogether deny, that there
is something in the functions of the Master of the Rolls which
makes it peculiarly desirable that he should not take any part in
politics, I should still vote against this bill, as most
inconsistent and inefficient.  If you think that he ought to be
excluded from political assemblies, why do not you exclude him?
You do no such thing.  You exclude him from the House of Commons,
but you leave the House of Lords open to him.  Is not the House
of Lords a political assembly?  And is it not certain that,
during several generations, judges have generally had a great
ascendency in the House of Lords?  A hundred years ago a great
judge, Lord Hardwicke, possessed an immense influence there.  He
bequeathed his power to another great judge, Lord Mansfield.
When age had impaired the vigour of Lord Mansfield, the authority
which he had, during many years, enjoyed, passed to a third
judge, Lord Thurlow.  Everybody knows what a dominion that
eminent judge, Lord Eldon, exercised over the peers, what a share
he took in making and unmaking ministries, with what idolatrous
veneration he was regarded by one great party in the State, with
what dread and aversion he was regarded by the other.  When the
long reign of Lord Eldon had terminated, other judges, Whig and
Tory, appeared at the head of contending factions.  Some of us
can well remember the first ten days of October, 1831.  Who,
indeed, that lived through those days can ever forget them?  It
was the most exciting, the most alarming political conjuncture of
my time.  On the morning of the eighth of October, the Reform
Bill, after a discussion which had lasted through many nights,
was rejected by the Lords.  God forbid that I should again see
such a crisis!  I can never hope again to hear such a debate.  It
was indeed a splendid display of various talents and
acquirements.  There are, I dare say, some here who, like myself,
watched through the last night of that conflict till the late
autumnal dawn, sometimes walking up and down the long gallery,
sometimes squeezing ourselves in behind the throne, or below the
bar, to catch the eloquence of the great orators who, on that
great occasion, surpassed themselves.  There I saw, in the
foremost ranks, confronting each other, two judges, on one side
Lord Brougham, Chancellor of the realm, on the other Lord
Lyndhurst, Chief Baron of the Exchequer.  How eagerly we hung on
their words!  How eagerly those words were read before noon by
hundreds of thousands in the capital, and within forty-eight
hours, by millions in every part of the kingdom!  With what a
burst of popular fury the decision of the House was received by
the nation!  The ruins of Nottingham Castle, the ruins of whole
streets and squares at Bristol, proved but too well to what a
point the public feeling had been wound up.  If it be true that
nothing is so hateful to the noble lord, the Member for Kent, as
a judge who takes part in political contentions, why does he not
bring in a bill to prevent judges from entering those lists in
which Lord Brougham and Lord Lyndhurst then encountered each
other?  But no:  the noble lord is perfectly willing to leave
those lists open to the Master of the Rolls.  The noble lord's
objection is not to the union of the judicial character and the
political character.  He is quite willing that anywhere but here
judges should be politicians.  The Master of the Rolls may be the
soul of a great party, the head of a great party, the favourite
tribune of a stormy democracy, the chief spokesman of a haughty
aristocracy.  He may do all that declamation and sophistry can do
to inflame the passions or mislead the judgment of a senate.  But
it must not be in this room.  He must go a hundred and fifty
yards hence.  He must sit on a red bench, and not on a green one.
He must say, "My Lords," and not "Mr Speaker."  He must say,
"Content," and not "Aye."  And then he may, without at all
shocking the noble lord, be the most stirring politician in the
kingdom.

But I am understating my case.  I am greatly understating it.
For, Sir, this union of the judicial character and the political
character, in Members of the other House of Parliament, is not a
merely accidental union.  Not only may judges be made peers; but
all the peers are necessarily judges.  Surely when the noble lord
told us that the union of political functions and of judicial
functions was the most hateful of all things, he must have
forgotten that, by the fundamental laws of the realm, a political
assembly is the supreme court of appeal, the court which finally
confirms or annuls the judgments of the courts, both of common
law and of equity, at Westminster, of the courts of Scotland, of
the courts of Ireland, of this very Master of the Rolls about
whom we are debating.  Surely, if the noble lord's principle be a
sound one, it is not with the Master of the Rolls but with the
House of Peers that we ought to begin.  For, beyond all dispute,
it is more important that the court above should be constituted
on sound principles than that the court below should be so
constituted.  If the Master of the Rolls goes wrong, the House of
Peers may correct his errors.  But who is to correct the errors
of the House of Peers?  All these considerations the noble lord
overlooks.  He is quite willing that the peers shall sit in the
morning as judges, shall determine questions affecting the
property, the liberty, the character of the Queen's subjects,
shall determine those questions in the last resort, shall
overrule the decisions of all the other tribunals in the country;
and that then, in the afternoon, these same noble persons shall
meet as politicians, and shall debate, sometimes rather sharply,
sometimes in a style which we dare not imitate for fear that you,
Sir, should call us to order, about the Canadian Clergy Reserves,
the Irish National Schools, the Disabilities of the Jews, the
Government of India.  I do not blame the noble lord for not
attempting to alter this state of things.  We cannot alter it, I
know, without taking up the foundations of our constitution.  But
is it not absurd, while we live under such a constitution, while,
throughout our whole system from top to bottom, political
functions and judicial functions are combined, to single out, not
on any special ground, but merely at random, one judge from a
crowd of judges, and to exclude him, not from all political
assemblies, but merely from one political assembly?  Was there
ever such a mummery as the carrying of this bill to the other
House will be, if, unfortunately, it should be carried thither.
The noble lord, himself, I have no doubt, a magistrate, himself
at once a judge and a politician, accompanied by several
gentlemen who are at once judges and politicians, will go to the
bar of the Lords, who are all at once judges and politicians,
will deliver the bill into the hands of the Chancellor, who is at
once the chief judge of the realm and a Cabinet Minister, and
will return hither proud of having purified the administration of
justice from the taint of politics.

No, Sir, no; for the purpose of purifying the administration of
justice this bill is utterly impotent.  It will be effectual for
one purpose, and for one purpose only, for the purpose of
weakening and degrading the House of Commons.  This is not the
first time that an attempt has been made, under specious
pretexts, to lower the character and impair the efficiency of the
assembly which represents the great body of the nation.  More
than a hundred and fifty years ago there was a general cry that
the number of placemen in Parliament was too great.  No doubt,
Sir, the number was too great:  the evil required a remedy:  but
some rash and short-sighted though probably well meaning men,
proposed a remedy which would have produced far more evil than it
would have removed.  They inserted in the Act of Settlement a
clause providing that no person who held any office under the
Crown should sit in this House.  The clause was not to take
effect till the House of Hanover should come to the throne; and,
happily for the country, before the House of Hanover came to the
throne, the clause was repealed.  Had it not been repealed, the
Act of Settlement would have been, not a blessing, but a curse to
the country.  There was no want, indeed, of plausible and popular
commonplaces in favour of this clause.  No man, it was said, can
serve two masters.  A courtier cannot be a good guardian of
public liberty.  A man who derives his subsistence from the taxes
cannot be trusted to check the public expenditure.  You will
never have purity, you will never have economy, till the stewards
of the nation are independent of the Crown, and dependent only on
their constituents.  Yes; all this sounded well:  but what man of
sense now doubts that the effect of a law excluding all official
men from this House would have been to depress that branch of the
legislature which springs from the people, and to increase the
power and consideration of the hereditary aristocracy?  The whole
administration would have been in the hands of peers.  The chief
object of every eminent Commoner would have been to obtain a
peerage.  As soon as any man had gained such distinction here by
his eloquence and knowledge that he was selected to fill the post
of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State, or First Lord
of the Admiralty, he would instantly have turned his back on what
would then indeed have been emphatically the Lower House, and
would have gone to that chamber in which alone it would have been
possible for him fully to display his abilities and fully to
gratify his ambition.  Walpole and Pulteney, the first Pitt and
the second Pitt, Fox, Windham, Canning, Peel, all the men whose
memory is inseparably associated with this House, all the men of
whose names we think with pride as we pass through St Stephen's
Hall, the place of their contentions and their triumphs, would,
in the vigour and prime of life, have become Barons and
Viscounts.  The great conflict of parties would have been
transferred from the Commons to the Lords.  It would have been
impossible for an assembly, in which not a single statesman of
great fame, authority, and experience in important affairs would
have been found, to hold its own against an assembly in which all
our eminent politicians and orators would have been collected.
All England, all Europe, would have been reading with breathless
interest the debates of the peers, and looking with anxiety for
the divisions of the peers, while we, instead of discussing high
questions of state, and giving a general direction to the whole
domestic and foreign policy of the realm, should have been
settling the details of canal bills and turnpike bills.

The noble lord, the Member for Kent does not, it is true, propose
so extensive and important a change as that which the authors of
the Act of Settlement wished to make.  But the tendency of this
bill is, beyond all doubt, to make this House less capable than
it once was, and less capable than the other House now is, of
discharging some of the most important duties of a legislative
assembly.

Of the duties of a legislative assembly, the noble lord, and some
of those gentlemen who support his bill, seem to me to have
formed a very imperfect notion.  They argue as if the only
business of the House of Commons was to turn one set of men out
of place, and to bring another set into place; as if a judge
could find no employment here but factious wrangling.  Sir, it is
not so.  There are extensive and peaceful provinces of
parliamentary business far removed from the fields of battle
where hostile parties encounter each other.  A great jurist,
seated among us, might, without taking any prominent part in the
strife between the Ministry and the Opposition, render to his
country most valuable service, and earn for himself an
imperishable name.  Nor was there ever a time when the assistance
of such a jurist was more needed, or was more likely to be justly
appreciated, than at present.  No observant man can fail to
perceive that there is in the public mind a general, a growing,
an earnest, and at the same time, I must say, a most sober and
reasonable desire for extensive law reform.  I hope and believe
that, for some time to come, no year will pass without progress
in law reform; and I hold that of all law reformers the best is a
learned, upright, and large-minded judge.  At such a time it is
that we are called upon to shut the door of this House against
the last great judicial functionary to whom the unwise
legislation of former parliaments has left it open.  In the
meantime the other House is open to him.  It is open to all the
other judges who are not suffered to sit here.  It is open to the
Judge of the Admiralty Court, whom the noble lord, twelve or
thirteen years ago, prevailed on us, in an unlucky hour, to
exclude.  In the other House is the Lord Chancellor, and several
retired Chancellors, a Lord Chief Justice, in several retired
Chief Justices.  The Queen may place there to-morrow the Chief
Baron, the two Lords Justices, the three Vice Chancellors, the
very Master of the Rolls about whom we are debating:  and we, as
if we were not already too weak for the discharge of our
functions, are trying to weaken ourselves still more.  I harbour
no unfriendly feeling towards the Lords.  I anticipate no
conflict with them.  But it is not fit that we should be unable
to bear an equal part with them in the great work of improving
and digesting the law.  It is not fit that we should be under the
necessity of placing implicit confidence in their superior
wisdom, and of registering without amendment, any bill which they
may send us.  To that humiliating situation we are, I grieve to
say, fast approaching.  I was much struck by a circumstance which
occurred a few days ago.  I heard the honourable Member for
Montrose, who, by the by, is one of the supporters of this bill,
urge the House to pass the Combination Bill, for a most
extraordinary reason.  "We really," he said, "cannot tell how the
law about combinations of workmen at present stands; and, not
knowing how the law at present stands, we are quite incompetent
to decide whether it ought to be altered.  Let us send the bill
up to the Lords.  They understand these things.  We do not.
There are Chancellors, and ex-Chancellors, and Judges among them.
No doubt they will do what is proper; and I shall acquiesce in
their decision."  Why, Sir, did ever any legislative assembly
abdicate its functions in so humiliating a manner?  Is it not
strange that a gentleman, distinguished by his love of popular
institutions, and by the jealousy with which he regards the
aristocracy, should gravely propose that, on a subject which
interests and excites hundreds of thousands of our constituents,
we should declare ourselves incompetent to form an opinion, and
beg the Lords to tell us what we ought to do?  And is it not
stranger still that, while he admits the incompetence of the
House to discharge some of its most important functions, and
while he attributes that incompetence to the want of judicial
assistance, he should yet wish to shut out of the House the only
high judicial functionary who is now permitted to come into it?

But, says the honourable Member for Montrose, the Master of the
Rolls has duties to perform which, if properly performed, will
leave him no leisure for attendance in this House:  it is
important that there should be a division of labour:  no man can
do two things well; and, if we suffer a judge to be a member of
Parliament, we shall have both a bad member of Parliament and a
bad judge.

Now, Sir, if this argument proves anything, it proves that the
Master of the Rolls, and indeed all the other judges, ought to be
excluded from the House of Lords as well as from the House of
Commons.  But I deny that the argument is of any weight.  The
division of labour has its disadvantages as well as its
advantages.  In operations merely mechanical you can hardly carry
the subdivision too far; but you may very easily carry it too far
in operations which require the exercise of high intellectual
powers.  It is quite true, as Adam Smith tells us, that a pin
will be best made when one man does nothing but cut the wire,
when another does nothing but mould the head, when a third does
nothing but sharpen the point.  But it is not true that Michael
Angelo would have been a greater painter if he had not been a
sculptor:  it is not true that Newton would have been a greater
experimental philosopher if he had not been a geometrician; and
it is not true that a man will be a worse lawgiver because he is
a great judge.  I believe that there is as close a connection
between the functions of the judge and the functions of the
lawgiver as between anatomy and surgery.  Would it not be the
height of absurdity to lay down the rule that nobody who
dissected the dead should be allowed to operate on the living?
The effect of such a division of labour would be that you would
have nothing but bungling surgery; and the effect of the division
of labour which the honourable Member for Montrose recommends
will be that we shall have plenty of bungling legislation.  Who
can be so well qualified to make laws and to mend laws as a man
whose business is to interpret laws and to administer laws?  As
to this point I have great pleasure in citing an authority to
which the honourable Member for Montrose will, I know, be
disposed to pay the greatest deference; the authority of Mr
Bentham.  Of Mr Bentham's moral and political speculations, I
entertain, I must own, a very mean opinion:  but I hold him in
high esteem as a jurist.  Among all his writings there is none
which I value more than the treatise on Judicial Organization.
In that excellent work he discusses the question whether a person
who holds a judicial office ought to be permitted to hold with it
any other office.  Mr Bentham argues strongly and convincingly
against pluralities; but he admits that there is one exception to
the general rule.  A judge, he says, ought to be allowed to sit
in the legislature as a representative of the people; for the
best school for a legislator is the judicial bench; and the
supply of legislative skill is in all societies so scanty that
none of it can be spared.

My honourable friend, the Member for Surrey, has completely
refuted another argument to which the noble lord, the Member for
Kent, appears to attach considerable importance.  The noble lord
conceives that no person can enter this House without stooping to
practice arts which would ill become the gravity of the judicial
character.  He spoke particularly of what he called the
jollifications usual at elections.  Undoubtedly the festivities
at elections are sometimes disgraced by intemperance, and
sometimes by buffoonery; and I wish from the bottom of my heart
that intemperance and buffoonery were the worst means to which
men, reputed upright and honourable in private life, have
resorted in order to obtain seats in the legislature.  I should,
indeed, be sorry if any Master of the Rolls should court the
favour of the populace by playing the mounttebank on the hustings
or on tavern tables.  Still more sorry should I be if any Master
of the Rolls were to disgrace himself and his office by employing
the ministry of the Frails and the Flewkers, by sending vile
emissaries with false names, false addresses, and bags of
sovereigns, to buy the votes of the poor.  No doubt a Master of
the Rolls ought to be free, not only from guilt, but from
suspicion.  I have not hitherto mentioned the present Master of
the Rolls.  I have not mentioned him because, in my opinion, this
question ought to be decided by general and not by personal
considerations.  I cannot, however, refrain from saying, with a
confidence which springs from long and intimate acquaintance,
that my valued friend, Sir John Romilly, will never again sit in
this House unless he can come in by means very different from
those by which he was turned out.  But, Sir, are we prepared to
say that no person can become a representative of the English
people except by some sacrifice of integrity, or at least of
personal dignity?  If it be so, we had indeed better think of
setting our House in order.  If it be so, the prospects of our
country are dark indeed.  How can England retain her place among
the nations, if the assembly to which all her dearest interests
are confided, the assembly which can, by a single vote, transfer
the management of her affairs to new hands, and give a new
direction to her whole policy, foreign and domestic, financial,
commercial, and colonial, is closed against every man who has
rigid principles and a fine sense of decorum?  But it is not so.
Did that great judge, Sir William Scott, lower his character by
entering this House as Member for the University of Oxford?  Did
Sir John Copley lower his character by entering this House as
Member for the University of Cambridge?  But the universities,
you say, are constituent bodies of a very peculiar kind.  Be it
so.  Then, by your own admission, there are a few seats in this
House which eminent judges have filled and may fill without any
unseemly condescension.  But it would be most unjust, and in me,
especially, most ungrateful, to compliment the universities at
the expense of other constituent bodies.  I am one of many
members who know by experience that a generosity and a delicacy
of sentiment which would do honour to any seat of learning may be
found among the ten pound householders of our great cities.  And,
Sir, as to the counties, need we look further than to your chair?
It is of as much importance that you should punctiliously
preserve your dignity as that the Master of the Rolls should
punctiliously preserve his dignity.  If you had, at the last
election, done anything inconsistent with the integrity, with the
gravity, with the suavity of temper which so eminently qualify
you to preside over our deliberations, your public usefulness
would have been seriously diminished.  But the great county which
does itself honour by sending you to the House required from you
nothing unbecoming your character, and would have felt itself
degraded by your degradation.  And what reason is there to doubt
that other constituent bodies would act as justly and
considerately towards a judge distinguished by uprightness and
ability as Hampshire has acted towards you?

One very futile argument only remains to be noticed.  It is said
that we ought to be consistent; and that, having turned the Judge
of the Admiralty out of the House, we ought to send the Master of
the Rolls after him.  I admit, Sir, that our system is at present
very anomalous.  But it is better that a system should be
anomalous than that it should be uniformly and consistently bad.
You have entered on a wrong course.  My advice is first that you
stop, and secondly that you retrace your steps.  The time is not
far distant when it will be necessary for us to revise the
constitution of this House.  On that occasion, it will be part of
our duty to reconsider the rule which determines what public
functionaries shall be admitted to sit here, and what public
functionaries shall be excluded.  That rule is, I must say,
singularly absurd.  It is this, that no person who holds any
office created since the twenty-fifth of October, 1705, shall be
a member of the House of Commons.  Nothing can be more
unreasonable or more inconvenient.  In 1705, there were two
Secretaries of State and two Under Secretaries.  Consequently, to
this day, only two Secretaries of State and two Under Secretaries
can sit among us.  Suppose that the Home Secretary and the
Colonial Secretary are members of this House, and that the office
of Foreign Secretary becomes vacant.  In that case, no member of
this House, whatever may be his qualifications, his fame in
diplomacy, his knowledge of all the politics of the Courts of
Europe, can be appointed.  Her Majesty must give the Admiralty to
the commoner who is, of all her subjects, fittest for the Foreign
Office, and the seals of the Foreign Office to some peer who
would perhaps be fitter for the Admiralty.  Again, the Postmaster
General cannot sit in this House.  Yet why not?  He always comes
in and goes out with the Government:  he is often a member of the
Cabinet; and I believe that he is, of all public functionaries,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer alone excepted, the one whom it
would be most convenient to have here.  I earnestly hope that,
before long, this whole subject will be taken into serious
consideration.  As to the judges, the rule which I should wish to
see laid down is very simple.  I would admit into this House any
judge whom the people might elect, unless there were some special
reason against admitting him.  There is a special reason against
admitting any Irish or Scotch judge.  Such a judge cannot attend
this House without ceasing to attend his court.  There is a
special reason against admitting the Judges of the Queen's Bench
and of the Common Pleas, and the Barons of the Exchequer.  They
are summoned to the House of Lords; and they sit there:  their
assistance is absolutely necessary to enable that House to
discharge its functions as the highest court of appeal; and it
would manifestly be both inconvenient and derogatory to our
dignity that members of our body should be at the beck and call
of the peers.  I see no special reason for excluding the Master
of the Rolls; and I would, therefore, leave our door open to him.
I would open it to the Judge of the Admiralty, who has been most
unwisely excluded.  I would open it to other great judicial
officers who are now excluded solely because their offices did
not exist in 1705, particularly to the two Lords Justices, and
the three Vice Chancellors.  In this way, we should, I am
convinced, greatly facilitate the important and arduous work of
law reform; we would raise the character of this House:  and I
need not say that with the character of this House must rise or
fall the estimation in which representative institutions are held
throughout the world.  But, whether the extensive changes which I
have recommended shall be thought desirable or not, I trust that
we shall reject the bill of the noble lord.  I address myself to
the Conservative members on your left hand; and I ask them
whether they are prepared to alter, on grounds purely
theoretical, a system which has lasted during twenty generations
without producing the smallest practical evil.  I turn to the
Liberal members on this side; and I ask them whether they are
prepared to lower the reputation and to impair the efficiency of
that branch of the legislature which springs from the people.
For myself, Sir, I hope that I am at once a Liberal and a
Conservative politician; and, in both characters, I shall give a
clear and conscientious vote in favour of the amendment moved by
my honourable friend.

...


INDEX.

Absalom and Achitophel of Dryden, character of it.

Absolute government, theory of.

Absolute rulers.

Academy, the French, its services to literature.

Addington, Henry, formation of his administration.
His position as Prime Minister.
Resigns.
Raised to the peerage.

Aeschines, compared by Mr Mitford to Demosthenes.

Aeschylus, his works, how regarded by Quintillian.

Agesilaus, depressed by the constitution of Lycurgus.

Ajax, the prayer of, in the Iliad.

Aldrich, Dean, his mode of instructing the youths of his college.
Employs Charles Boyle to edit the letters of Phalaris.

Alfieri, Vittorio, character of his works.
His great fault in his compositions.

Anatomy Bill, Speech on.

Antinomian barn preacher, story of the.

Approbation, love of.

Aristocratical form of government.  See Oligarchy.

Aristotle, his unrivalled excellence in analysis and combination.
Value of his general propositions.
His enlightened and profound criticism.

Arnault, A.V., Translation from.

Arras, cruelties of the Jacobins at.

Arrian, his character as a historian.

Arts, the fine, laws on which the progress and decline of depend.

Athenian Revels, scenes from.

Athens; disreputable character of Peiraeus.
Police officers of the city.
Favourite epithet of the city.
The Athenian orators.
Excellence to which eloquence attained at.
Dr Johnson's contemptuous derision of the civilisation of the
people of.
Their books and book education.
An Athenian day.
Defects of the Athenians' conversational education.
The law of ostracism at Athens.
Happiness of the Athenians in their term of government.
Their naval superiority.
Ferocity of the Athenians in war.
And of their dependencies in seditions.
Cause of the violence of faction in that age.
Influence of Athenian genius on the human intellect and on
private happiness.
The gifts of Athens to man.
Character of the great dramas of Athens.
Change in the temper of the Athenians in the time of
Aristophanes.

Atterbury, Francis, his birth and early life.
Defends Martin Luther against the aspersions of Obadiah Walker.
Enters the church and becomes one of the royal chaplains.
Assists Charles Boyle in preparing an edition of the letters of
Phalaris.
His answer to Bentley's dissertation on the letters of Phalaris.
Bentley's reply.
Atterbury's defence of the clergy against the prelates.
Created a D.D. and promoted to the Deanery of Carlisle.
His pamphlets against the Whigs.
Appointed to the Deanery of Christ Church.
Removed to the Bishopric of Rochester.
His opposition to the Government of George I.
His private life.
His taste in literature and literary friends.
Thrown into prison for treason.
Deprived of his dignities and banished for life.
Calls Pope as a witness to his innocence.
Goes to Paris, and becomes Prime Minister of King James.
Retires from the court of the ex-King.
Death of his daughter.
Induced by the Pretender to return to Paris.
His defence of the charge of having garbled Clarendon's History
of the Rebellion.
His death.

August, lines written in.

Bacon, Lord, his description of the logomachies of the schoolmen.
And of the Utilitarian philosophy.
His mode of tracking the principle of heat.

Barbaroux, the Girondist, his execution.

Barere, Bertrand, Memoires de, of Carnot and David, review of
the.
Barere's true character.
His lies.
His talents as an author.
Sketch of his life.
Votes against the King.
His federal views and ultra Girondism.
His apparent zeal for the cause of order and humanity.
His motion for punishing the Jacobins.
Defeat of the Girondists.
Retains his seat at the Board of the Triumphant Mountain.
His infamous motion against the chiefs of the Girondists.
Moves that the Queen be brought before the Revolutionary
Tribunal.
Regales Robespierre and other Jacobins at a tavern on the day of
the death of the Queen.
Formation of his peculiar style of oratory.
His Carmagnoles.
Effect produced by his discourses.
Seconds Robespierre's atrocious motion in the Convention.
Becomes one of the six members of the Committee of Public Safety.
The first to proclaim terror as the order of the day.
Recommends Fouquier Tinville to the Revolutionary Committee of
Paris.
His proposal to destroy Lyons and Toulon.
His opposition to the personal defence of Danton.
His support of the wretch Lebon.
His war against learning, art, and history.
His sensual excesses.
Becomes a really cruel man.
His morning audiences and mode of treating petitions.
His orders against certain head-dresses.
Nicknames given to him.
Obtains a decree that no quarter should be given to any English
or Hanoverian soldier.
M. Carnot's defence of this barbarity.
Barere's support of Robespierre's fiendish decree.
His panegyric on Robespierre.
His motion that Robespierre and his accomplices should be put to
death.
Destruction of the power of the Jacobins.
Report on his conduct voted by the Convention.
Condemned to be removed to a distant place of confinement.
His perilous journey.
Imprisoned at Oleron.
Removed to Saintes.
Escapes to Bordeaux.
Chosen a member of the Council of Five Hundred, which refuses to
admit him.
His libel on England.
The Liberty of the Seas.
His flight to St Ouen.
Sends a copy of his work to the First Consul.
Allowed by Bonaparte to remain in Paris.
Refuses; becomes a writer and a spy to Bonaparte.
Sends his friend Demerville to the guillotine.
Spies set to watch the spy.
Ordered to quit Paris.
Employed in the lowest political drudgery.
His "Memorial Antibritannique" and pamphlets.
His fulsome adulation of the Emperor.
Causes of his failure as a journalist.
Treated with contempt by Napoleon.
His treachery to his Imperial master.
Becomes a royalist on the return of the Bourbons.
Compelled to leave France.
Returns in July 1830.
Joins the extreme left.
His last years and death.
Summary of his character.
His hatred of England.
His MS. works on divinity.

Barre, Colonel, joins the Whig opposition.
Appointed by Pitt Clerk of the Pells.

Bearn, the constitution of.

Beatrice, Dante's love of.

Beauclerc, Topham, a member of the Literary Club.

Bentham, Mr, his defence of Mr Mill.
His merits and shortcomings.
Examination of his views.
His account of the manner in which he arrived at the "greatest
happiness principle."
Testimony to his merits.

Bentinck, Lord William, inscription on the statue of, at
Calcutta.

Bentley, Richard, his dissertation on the letters of Phalaris.
His answer to the attack of Atterbury.

Bible, the English translation of the, regarded as a specimen of
the beauty and power of the English language.

Billaud, M., becomes a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
Opposes Robespierre.
Himself brought to trial.
Condemned to be removed to a distant place of confinement.
Transported to Guiana.
His subsequent life.

Bonaparte, Napoleon, his detestation of the cruel decree of the
Convention respecting English prisoners.
His return from Egypt, and assumption of absolute power as First
Consul.
His policy at this period.
Allows Barere to reside in Pairs.
Employs Barere as a writer and spy.
Establishes the Imperial government.
His opinion of Barere's journalism.
His defeat and abdication.

Boswell, James, becomes a member of The Club.
His character.
His life of Johnson.

Bourbon, Duke, character of the government of.

Bow Street, whiggery of.

Boyd, his translation of the Divine Comedy of Dante.

Boyle, Charles, his college edition of the letters of Phalaris.
The answer to Bentley attributed to him.

Boyse, the poet, his friendship with Samuel Johnson.

Brasidas, great only when he ceased to be a Lacedaemonian.

Brissot, the Girondist leader.
His trial.

Brissotines, the.  See Girondists.

Buccaneer, the Last.

Bunyan, John, age in which he produced his Pilgrim's Progress.
His birth and early life.
His notions of good and evil.
Enlists in the parliamentary army.
Returns home and marries.
His fantasies and internal sufferings.
Thrown into gaol.
His prison life.
His intimate knowledge of the Bible.
His early writings.
His abhorrence of the Quakers.
His controversies.
His answer to Edward Fowler.
His dispute with some of his own sect.
His liberation from prison.
His Pilgrim's Progress.
His Holy War.
Difficulties of.
His death and burial-place.
Fame of his Pilgrim's Progress.

Burgundy, Duke of, his theory of good government.

Burke, Edmund, his character of the first French republic.
And of the French National Assembly.
His vindication of himself from the charge of inconsistency.
His part in The Club.
His position in the Whig opposition.

Burns, Robert, age in which he produced his works.

Butler, Samuel, character of his poetry.

Byron, Lord, his egotism and its success.

Caesar, accounts of his campaigns, regarded as history.

Camden, Lord, joins the Whig opposition.

Canning, George, popular comparison of, with Mr Pitt.
His activity in Pitt's cause.

Carey, his translation of the Divine Comedy of Dante.

Carmagnoles, the, of Barere.
Lord Ellenborough's.

Carmichael, Miss, or Polly, in Dr Johnson's house.

Carnot, M. Hippolyte, his part in the Memoirs of Bertrand Barere.

Carolan, his compositions.

Carrier, the tyrant of Nantes, placed under arrest.

Casti, character of his Animali Parlanti.

Catholicism, Roman, the most poetical of all religions.
Its great revival at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
Treaty concluded by Charles II. by which he bound himself to set
up Catholicism in England.

Catiline, Sallust's account of the Conspiracy of.

Cavendish, Lord John, becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Resigns.

Cervantes, delight with which his Don Quixote is read.

Charles II., King of England.
Influence of his residence abroad upon his character and tastes.
His treaty respecting Roman Catholics.

Chatham, first Earl of, compared by Mirabeau.
His declining years.
His last appearance in the House of Lords.

Chatham, second Earl of, his mismanagement of the Admiralty.

Chaumette, one of the accusers of the Girondists before the
Revolutionary Tribunal.

Christ Church, Oxford, cry of, against Bentley.

Christianity, effect of the victory of, over paganism.

Church of Ireland, Speech on.

Churchill, his insult to Johnson.

Civil War, the great.

Clarendon, his history of the Rebellion, charge of garbling it.

Classical writers, celebrity of the great.

Cleomenes, causes and results of his raving cruelty.

Clergyman, the Country, his Trip to Cambridge.

Club, The, formation of.
Members of the.

"Coalition," formation of the.
Universal disgust.
End of the Coalition.

Coates, Romeo, the actor.

Cock Lane Ghost, the.

Collot, d'Herbois, becomes a member of the Committee of Public
Safety.
Attacked in the streets.
Brought to trial.
Condemned by the Convention to be removed to a distant place of
confinement.
His end.

Condorcet, strength brought by him to the Girondist party.
His melancholy end.

Confidence in Ministry of Lord Melbourne.
Speech on.

Constantinople, empire of, its retrogression and stupefaction.

Convention, the French, of.
The Girondists.
The Mountain.
Character of the diplomatic language during the reign of the
Convention.

Copyright, Speeches on.

Corday, Charlotte, her murder of Marat.

Corn Laws, Speech on.

Corneille, attempts of the Academy to depress the rising fame of.

Cornwallis, General, his surrender to the Americans.

Cottabus, the Athenian game of.

Couthon, becomes a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
His execution.

Cowley, Mr Abraham, and Mr John Milton, conversation between,
touching the great Civil War.

Criticism, verbal.
Improvement of the science of criticism.
The critical and poetical faculty distinct and incompatible.

Cyrus, Xenophon's Life of, its character.

Dante, criticism on.
His first adventure in the popular tongue.
Influences of the times in which he lived upon his works.
His love of Beatrice.
His despair of happiness on earth.
Close connection between his intellectual and moral character.
Compared with Milton.
His metaphors and comparisons.
Little impression made by the forms of the external world upon
him.
Fascination revolting and nauseous images had for his mind.
His use of ancient mythology in his poems.
His idolatry of Virgil.
Excellence of his style.
Remarks upon the translations of the Divine Comedy.
His veneration for writers inferior to himself.
How regarded by the Italians of the fourteenth century.

Danton, character of.
His death.

David, M. d'Angers, the sculptor, his part in the Memoirs of
Bertrand Barere.

De Foe, effect of his Robinson Crusoe on the imagination of the
child and the judgment of the man.

Demerville, the Jacobin, betrayed by his friend Barere.

Democracy, a pure.
Mr Mill's view of a pure and direct.

Demosthenes, compared by Mr Mitford to Aeschines.
His irresistible eloquence.

Denham, Sir John, character of his poetry.

Denis, St, Abbey of, laid waste by Barere.

"Dennis, St, and St George, in the Water, some Account of the
Lawsuit between the Parishes of."

Deserted Village of Oliver Goldsmith.

Desmoulins, Camille, his attack on the Reign of Terror.
Reply of Barere.

Desmoulins, Mrs, in Dr Johnson's house.

Despotic rulers.
Theory of a despotic government.

Dies Irae.

Dionysius, his criticisms.

Diplomatic language used by the French Convention.

Directory, the Executive, of France, formation of.

Dissenters, persecution of the, by the Cavaliers.
Relieved by Charles II.
Prosecutions consequent on the enterprise of Monmouth.
The Dissenters courted by the government of James II.

Dissenters' Chapels Bill, Speech on.

Divine Comedy of Dante, the great source of the power of the.
Remarks on the translations of the.

Djezzar Pasha, his cruelty.

Doddington, Bubb, his kindness to Samuel Johnson.

Don Quixote, delight with which it is read.

Dorset, Earl of, his poetry.

Drama, the old English.
Compared with that of Athens and France.
Causes of the excellence of the English drama.
Superiority of dramatic to other works of imagination.
Extinction of the drama by the Puritans.
The drama of the time of Charles II.
Dryden's plays.

Dryden, John, place assigned to him as a poet.
His merits and defects.
Influence exercised by him on his age.
Two parts into which his life divides itself.
His small pieces presented to patrons.
Character of his Annus Mirabilis.
His rhyming plays.
His impossible men and women.
His tendency to bombast.
His attempts at fairy imagery.
His incomparable reasonings in verse.
His art of producing rich effects by familiar words.
Catholicity of his literary creed.
Causes of the exaggeration which disfigure his panegyrics.
Character of his Hind and Panther.
And of his Absalom and Achitophel.
Compared with Juvenal.
What he would probably have accomplished in an epic poem.
Compared with Milton.

Dubois, Cardinal, his mode of dealing with public petitions.

Dumont, M., review of his Souvenirs sur Mirabeau.
Services rendered by him to society.
His interpretation of Bentham's works.
His view of the French Revolution.
His efforts to instruct the French in political knowledge.
Sketch of the character of Mirabeau.
Of Sieyes and Talleyrand.
And of his own character.

Dumourier, his Girondist sympathies.
His defection.

Dundas, Henry, Lord Advocate, commencement of his friendship with
Pitt.

Dunning, Mr, joins the Whig opposition.

Duroc, General, his letter to Barere.

Eady, Dr, his advertisements.

Edinburgh Election, speech at.

Education, Speech on.

Education, the, of the Athenians.
Defects of their conversational education.

Egotism, the pest of conversation.
Zest given by it to writing.

Eleusinian mysteries, the.

Ellenborough, Lord, his Carmagnoles.

Ellis, Welbore.

England, revolution in the poetry of.
Mr Mill's remarks on the British Constitution.
His view of the constitution of the English Government.
Mr Sadler's statement of the law of population in England.
The English Revolution compared with the French.
Mildness of the revolution caused by the Reform Bill.
Makes war against France.

Epistles, Petrarch's.

Epitaph on Henry Martyn.

Epitaph on Lord William Bentinck.

Epitaph on Sir Benjamin Heath Malkin.

Epitaph on Lord Metcalfe.

Euphuism in England.

Euripides, mother of.
His jesuitical morality.
How regarded by Quintillian.

Evil, question of the origin of, in the world.

Exclusion of Judges from the House of Commons, Speech on.

Federalism, the new crime of, in France.
Federalism as entertained by Barere.

Fenelon, his principles of good government, as shown in his
Telemachus.

Fluxions, discovery of the method of.

Fortune, remedies for Good and Evil, Petrarch's.

Fowler, Edward, John Bunyan's answer to.

Fox, Charles James, his character.
His great political error.
The King's detestation of him.
Becomes Secretary of State under the Duke of Portland.
His India Bill.
His speeches.

Fragments of a Roman Tale.

France, character of the poetry of.
Characteristics of the personifications of the drama of.
Spirit excited in France at the time of the Revolution by some of
the ancient historians.
Burke's character of the French Republic.
Population of.
Condition of the government of, in 1799.
Strictures of M. Dumont on the National Assembly.
Infancy of political knowledge of the French at the period of the
Revolution.
The English Revolution compared with the French.
Arguments against the old monarchy of France.
The first compared with the second French Revolution.
Causes of the first Revolution.
Condition of France for eighty years previous to the Revolution.
Causes which immediately led to that event.
Difficulties of the Constitution of 1791.
The war with the continental coalition.
Effect of the League of Pilnitz on the position of the King.
Formation and meeting of the Convention.
The two great parties of the Convention--the Girondists and the
Mountain.
Death of the King.
Policy of the Jacobins.
The new crime of federalism.
Defection of Dumourier and appointment of the Committee of Public
Safety.
Irruption of the mob into the palace of the Tuileries.
Destruction of the Girondists.
Establishment of the Reign of Terror.
Condition of France during the reign of Louis XIV.
And during that of Louis XV.
Fenelon's principles of good government.
His views incomprehensible to his countrymen.
Loss to France on the death of the Duke of Burgundy.
The Regency of Philip of Orleans.
The Duke of Bourbon.
Downward course of the monarchy, and indications of the
forthcoming revolution.
The Greek and Roman models of the French legislators.
Victories of France in 1794.
The memorable ninth of Thermidor.
Execution of Robespierre and his accomplices.
End of the Jacobin dominion in France.
Condition of the nation at this period.
Formation of the Constitution of 1795.
Bonaparte's return from Egypt and assumption of absolute power.
Political spies in France.
Defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.
The Chamber of Representatives.
The Royalist Chamber under the Bourbons.
Review of the policy of the Jacobins.
War declared by England against.

French Academy, its services to literature.

Froissart, character of his history.

Garrick, David, relation between him and his old master Johnson.
A member of the Literary Club.

Garth, Dr, insults Bentley and extols Boyle.

Gates of Somnauth, the Speech on.

Gaudet, the Girondist, his execution.

Gensonne, the Girondist leader.
His trial.
His death.

Geologist, Bishop Watson's description of a.

George III., his treatment of his ministers.

Georgics, Political.

Germaine, Lord George.

Gibbon, Edward, charges brought against him as a historian.
His part in The Club.

Girondists, or Brissotines, Barere's account of the proceedings
against the.
Sketch of the political party so called.
Its struggles with the Mountain.
Accusation brought against the leaders of the party.
Defeated by the Mountain.
Impeached by their late colleague Barere.
Their trial.
Their fate.

Goldsmith, Oliver, his birth and early life.
His first schoolmaster.
His personal appearance.
His college life.
Death of his father.
His attempts at the church, law, and physic.
His rambles on foot through Flanders, France, and Switzerland.
His disregard of truth.
His return to England, and desperate expedients to obtain a
living.
His literary drudgery.
Character of his works.
Introduced to Johnson.
One of the original members of The Club.
Removes from Breakneck Steps to the Temple.
Story of the publication of the Vicar of Wakefield.
His Traveller.
His Dramas.
His Deserted Village.
His She Stoops to Conquer.
His Histories.
His arts of selection and condensation.
His intimacy with the great talkers of the day.
His conversational powers.
How regarded by his associates.
His virtues and vices.
His death.
His cenotaph in Westminster Abbey.
His biographers.
His part in The Club.

Gomer Chephoraod, King of Babylon, apologue of.

Goodnatured Man, the, of Oliver Goldsmith.

Government of India, Speech on.

Government, proper conditions of a good.
Review of Mr Mill's Essays on, etc.
His chapter on the ends of government.
And on the means.
His view of a pure and direct democracy.
Of an oligarchy.
And of a monarchy.
Deduction of a theory of politics in the mathematical form.
Government according to Mr Mill only necessary to prevent men
from plundering each other.
His argument that no combination of the three simple forms of
government can exist.
His remarks on the British constitution.
His hope for mankind in the government of a representative body.
The real security of men against bad government.
Mr Mill's views as to the qualifications of voters for
representatives.
The desire of the poor majority to plunder the rich minority.
Effects which a general spoliation of the rich would produce.
Method of arriving at a just conclusion on the subject of the
science of government.
Mr Bentham's defence of Mr Mill's Essays.
Deduction of the theory of government from the principles of
human nature.
Remarks on the Utilitarian theory of government.
Mode of tracking the latent principle of good government.
Checks in political institutions.
Power.
Constitution of the English government.

Greece, review of Mr Mitford's History of.
Gross ignorance of the modern historians of Greece.
The imaginative and critical schools of poetry in.

Greeks, domestic habits of the.
Change in their temper at the close of the Peloponnesian war.
Character of their fashionable logic.
Causes of the exclusive spirit of the Greeks.

Hall, Robert, his eloquence.

Hamlet, causes of its power and influence.

Happiness, principle of the greatest, of the greatest number
examined.
The most elevated station the principle is ever likely to attain.
The Westminster Reviewer's defence of the "greatest happiness
principle."

Hayley, his translation of the Divine Comedy of Dante.

Heat, Lord Bacon's mode of tracking the principle of.

Hebert, the Jacobin, his vile character.
Accuses the Girondists before the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Hebrides, Johnson's visit to the.

Herodotus, character of his history.
His faults.
Character of the people for whom the book was composed.
His history compared with that of Thucydides.
Herodotus regarded as a delineator of character.

Heron, Robert, his drama of News from Camperdown.

Hervey, Henry, his kindness to Samuel Johnson.

History, Mr Mitford's views of.
The true domain of history.
Qualifications necessary for writing.
The history of Herodotus.
That of Thucydides.
Johnson's remarks on history.
Xenophon's history.
Polybius and Arrian.
Character of the historians of the Plutarch class.
English classical associations and names compared with those of
the ancients.
Spirit excited in England and in France by the writers of the
Plutarch class.
Livy.
Caesar.
Sallust.
Tacitus.
Merits and defects of modern historians.
Froissart, Machiavelli, and Guicciardine.
Effect of the invention of printing.
Causes of the exclusiveness of the Greeks and Romans.
Effect of the victory of Christianity over paganism.
Establishment of the balance of moral and intellectual influence
in Europe.
The species of misrepresentation which abounds most in modern
historians.
Hume, Gibbon, and Mitford.
Neglect of the art of narration.
Effect of historical reading compared to that produced by foreign
travel.
Character of the perfect historian.
Instruction derived from the productions of such a writer.

Hoche, General, refuses to obey the cruel decree of the
Convention.

Holy War, Bunyan's.

Homer, intense desire to know something of him.
Quintillian's criticisms on.
His inappropriate epithets.
His description of Hector at the Grecian wall.

Hoole, the metaphysical tailor, his friendship with Samuel
Johnson.

Horace, his comparison of poems to certain paintings.

Hume, David, charges brought against him as a historian.

Hyder Aly, his successes.

Idler, Johnston's publication of the.

Imagination and judgment.
Power of the imagination in a barbarous age.

Inaugural Speech at Glasgow College.

India Bill, Fox's.

Inferno, Dante's, character of the.

Ireland, William Pitt the first English minister who formed great
designs for the benefit of Ireland.

Isocrates, his defence of oligarchy and tyranny.

Italian language, Dante's first work on the.

Italian Writers, Criticisms on the Principal.
Dante.
Petrarch.

Italy, revolution of the poetry of.
Monti's imitation of the style of Dante.

Jacobins of Paris, policy of the.
Excesses of the.
Materials of which the party was composed.
Their cruelties in Paris and in the provinces.
Review of the policy of the Jacobins.

Jacobite, Epitaph on a.

Jacobites, revival of their spirits in 1721.
Plan for a Jacobite insurrection.

Jenyns, Soame, Dr Johnson's review of his Inquiry into the Nature
and Origin of Evil.

Jewish Disabilities, Speech on.

Jews, the sacred books of the, unknown to the Romans.

Johnson, Dr Samuel, his contemptuous derision of the civilisation
of the Athenians.
His remark on history and historians.
Oliver Goldsmith introduced to.
Story of the publication of the Vicar of Wakefield.
Johnson's birth and early life.
His father.
Goes to Oxford.
His attainments at this time.
His struggles with poverty.
Becomes an incurable hypochondriac.
His literary drudgery.
His marriage.
His school near Lichfield.
Sets out for London.
Effect of his privations on his temper and deportment.
Engaged on the "Gentleman's Magazine."
His political opinions.
His Jacobite views.
His poem of London.
His associates.
His life of Richard Savage.
His dictionary.
His treatment by Lord Chesterfield.
His Vanity of Human Wishes compared with the Satire of Juvenal.
Relation between him and his pupil David Garrick.
Irene brought out.
Publication and reception of the Rambler.
Death of Mrs Johnson.
Publication of the Dictionary.
His review of Soame Jenyn's Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of
Evil.
His Idler.
Death of his mother.
Circumstances under which Rasselas was published.
His hatred of the Whigs.
Accepts a pension of three hundred a year.
His belief in ghosts.
Publication of his edition of Shakespeare's works.
Honours conferred upon him.
His colloquial talents.
His predominance in The Club.
His biographer, James Boswell.
The inmates of his house near Fleet Street.
His visit to the Hebrides.
His prejudice against the Scotch.
His exposure of Macpherson's forgery of Fingal.
His Taxation no Tyranny.
His lives of the Poets.
His declining years.
His death.

Johnson, Michael of Lichfield.

Jones, Sir William, his part in the Literary Club.

Judgment and imagination.

Julian, the Emperor, his partiality for the Greek language.

Jurisprudence, Mr Bentham's reduction of, to a science.

Juryman, the stipend of an Athenian.

Just, Saint, expatiates on the guilt of Vergniaud and Petion.
Becomes a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
His doom.
His execution.

Juvenal compared with Dryden.
His satire compared with that of Samuel Johnson.

King, the, in the Athenian democracy.

Kleber, General, refuses to obey the cruel decree of the
Convention.

Lacedaemon, causes of the silent but rapid downfall of.
The development of merit prevented by the laws of.
Her foreign policy and domestic institutions.
Her government compared with that of Athens.
Her helots.

Langton, Bennet, a member of the Literary Club.

Latin works of Petrarch, the.

Lebon, the Jacobin, his crimes defended by Barere.
Placed under arrest.

Levett, Robert, the quack doctor.

Liberty, how regarded by the later ancient writers.
How regarded by historians of the Plutarch class.
Peculiar and essentially English character of English liberty.
Political, views with which it was regarded by the French
legislators of the Revolution.

Lies, various kinds of.

Lincoln Cathedral, story of the painted window of.

Literary Magazine, Johnson's contributions to the.

Literature, on the Royal Society of.

Literature, ancient, proper examination of.
State of literature as a calling, in the last century.

Literature of Britain, the, Speech on.

Livy, his faults and merits as a historian.

London, blessing of the great fire of.
Riots in, in 1780.

Longinus, criticism on his work on the "Sublime."

Louis XIV., his bitter lamentations of his former extravagances.
His character as a king.

Louis XV., condition of France when he came to the throne.

Louis XVI., his character.
His position in 1792.
His death.

Louis XVIII., leniency of his government at the Restoration.

Love, honourable and chivalrous, unknown to the Greeks.
The passion as delineated in the Roman poets.
What is implied in the modern sense of the word love.
Change undergone in the nature of the passion of love in the
middle ages.

Lycurgus, his mistaken principles of legislation.
His system of domestic slavery.

Lyons, cruelties of the Jacobins at.
Barere's proposal to utterly annihilate it.

Lysander, depressed by the constitution of Lycyrgus.

Macflecnoe, of Dryden, character of the.

Machiavelli, character of his history.

Macpherson, his forgery of Fingal.
Threatens Dr Johnson.

Malkin, Sir Benjamin Heath, epitaph on.

Malthus, Mr, attacked by Mr Sadler.

Man, the contemplation of, the noblest earthly object of man.

Marat, his murmurs against Barere.
His death.

Marcellus, the counterfeit oration for.

Marie Antoinette, Queen, Barere's account of the death of.
Brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the motion of
Barere.
Her execution.

Martyn, Henry, epitaph on.

Maynooth, Speech on.

Medical science, Petrarch's invectives on the.

Melville, Lord, his impeachment.

Memoirs, popularity of, as compared with that of history.

"Memorial Antibritannique," the, of Barere.

Metaphors, Dante's.

Metcalfe, Lord, Epitaph on.

Mill, Mr, review of his Essays on Government, etc.
His utilitarianism.
False principles upon which his theory rests.
Precision of his arguments and dryness of his style.
His a priori method of reasoning.
Curious instances of his peculiar turn of mind.
His views of democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy.
His fallacies.
His proposed government by a representative body.
His proposal of universal suffrage, but for males only.
The effects which a general spoliation of the rich would
engender.
His remarks on the influence of the middle rank.
Review of the Westminster Reviewer's defence of Mr Mill.

Milton, John, compared with Dante.
Milton, Mr John, and Mr Abraham Cowley, conversation between,
touching the great Civil War.
His great modern epic.
Dryden's admiration for his genius.

Mirabeau, Souvenirs sur, etc., M. Dumont's review of.
M. Dumont's picture of Mirabeau in the National Assembly.
Mirabeau compared to Wilkes.
And to the Earl of Chatham.

Mitford, Mr, criticism on his History of Greece.
His principal characteristic as a historian.
Errors of almost all the most modern historians of Greece.
Estimation in which the later ancient writers have been held.
Differences between Mr Mitford and the historians who have
preceded him.
His love of singularity.
His hatred of democracy.
And love of the oligarchical form of government.
His illogical inferences and false statements.
His inconsistency with himself.
His deficiencies.
Charges of misrepresentation brought against him as a historian.

Monarchical form of government, Mr Mill's view of a.
Moncontour, the Battle of.

Mountain, sketch of the party in the French Convention so called.
Votes for the death of the King.
Its victory over the Girondists.
Tyranny of the Mountain.
Violence of public opinion against it.

Naseby, the Battle of.

National Assembly, the French.
Mr Burke's character of them.
M. Dumont's picture of the Assembly.

Nollekens, his cenotaph of Oliver Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey.

Nonconformists, relief of, by Charles II.

North, Lord, and the American difficulties.
Resignation of his ministry.
The Coalition.
End of the Coalition.

Ode on St Cecilia's Day of Dryden; its character.

Oleron, Barere, Billaud, and Collot d'Herbois imprisoned at.

Oligarchy, Mr Mitford's love of pure.
Examination of this sentiment.
The growth of genius always stunted by oligarchy.
Mr Mill's view of an oligarchical form of government.

Opinion, good, of the public, causes of our regard for the.

Orators, Athenian.

Oratory:  Excellence to which eloquence attained at Athens.
Circumstances favourable to this result.
Principles upon which poetry is to be estimated.
Causes of the difference between the English and Athenian
orators.
The history of eloquence at Athens.
Speeches of the ancients, as transmitted to us by Thucydides.
Period during which eloquence flourished most at Athens.
Coincidence between the progress of the art of war and that of
oratory.
The irresistible eloquence of Demosthenes.
The oratory of Pitt and Fox.

Orestes, the Greek highwayman.

Orleans, Philip, Duke of, character of him and of his Regency.

Ossian, character of the poems of.

Ostracism, practice of, among the Athenians.

Othello, causes of the power of.

Paganism, effect of the overthrow of, by Christianity.

Pallas, the birthplace of Oliver Goldsmith.

Paradise, Dante's, its principal merit.

Paraphrase of a passage in the Chronicle of the Monk of St Gall.

Paris, policy of the Jacobins of.
Their excesses.

Parliamentary government, its advantages and disadvantages.

Parliamentary Reform, Speeches on.

Patronage, effect of, on literature.

Pausanias, his insanity.

Pauson, the Athenian painter.

Peers, question of the sterility of the, as a class.

Peiraeus, disreputable character of.

People's Charter, the, Speech on.

Pericles, his eloquence.

Petion, the Girondist.
Saint Just's speech on his guilt.
His unfortunate end.

Petrarch, influence of his poems on the literature of Italy.
Criticism on the works of.
Celebrity as a writer.
Causes of this.
Extraordinary sensation caused by his amatory verses.
Causes co-operating to spread his renown.
His coronation at Rome.
His poetical powers.
His genius.
Paucity of his thoughts.
His energy when speaking of the wrongs and degradation of Italy.
His poems on religious subjects.
Prevailing defect of his best compositions.
Remarks on his Latin writings.

Phalaris of Agrigentari, the spurious letters of.
Sir W. Temple's opinion of them.
Their worthlessness shown by Bentley.

Phillips, John, his monument refused admission into Westminster
Abbey.

Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan's history of the.
Its fame.
Attempts to improve and imitate it.

Pilnitz, League of, effect of the.

Piozzi, Mrs.

Pisistratus, his eloquence.

Pitt, William, popular comparison of, with Mr Canning.
His birth and early life.
His preceptor Pretyman.
His fondness for mathematics.
His knowledge of Greek and Latin.
And of modern literature.
His delight in oratory.
Studies the law.
Goes into parliament for Appleby.
Condition of the country at this period.
Pitt's first speech in Parliament.
Declines the Vice-Treasurership of Ireland.
Courts the ultra-Whig party.
His advocacy of reform.
Becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer at twenty-three years of age.
Pitt's speech and Sheridan's repartee.
His visit to the Continent with William Wilberforce.
Appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
His difficulties and dangers.
His power.
Review of his merits and defects.
His reported speeches.
Character of his oratory.
His private life.
His popularity.
His neglect of authors.
His talents as a leader.
Effect of the French Revolution.
His love of peace and freedom.
Unjustly charged with apostasy.
Beginning of his misfortunes.
His domestic policy.
His great designs for the benefit of Ireland.
His rupture with Addington.
His speech on the opening of the Session of 1803.
Reconstructs the government on the resignation of the Addington
ministry.
Decline of his health.
His death.
His public funeral.
Vote for paying his debts.
Review of his life.
Lines to his memory.

Plautus, translation from his Rudens.

Plutarch, class of historians of which he may be regarded as the
head.
His delineation of character.

Poetry; Horace's comparison of poems to certain paintings.
Principles upon which poetry is to be estimated.
Element by which poetry is poetry.
Frame of mind required by poetry.
Absurdities of writers who attempt to give general rules for
composition.
The mechanical part of the art of poetry.
Power of the imagination in a barbarous age.
Periods of consummate excellence and of the decline of poetry.
Age of critical poetry.
The imaginative school gradually fading into the critical.
The poets of Greece.
And of Rome.
Revolution of the poetry of Italy, Spain, and England.
The critical and poetical faculties, distinct and incompatible.
Excellence of English dramatic poetry.
Extinction of the dramatic and ascendency of the fashionable
school of poetry.
Changes in the time of Charles II.
John Dryden.

Poets, the favourite themes of the, of the present day.
Catholicity of the orthodox poetical creed.
Why good poets are bad critics.

Police officers of Athens.

Polybius, his character as a historian.

Pomponius Atticus, his veneration for Greek literature.

Pope, Alexander, condensation of the sense in his couplets.
His friendship with Bishop Atterbury.
Appears as a witness in favour of his friend.
His epitaph on Atterbury.

Population, review of Mr Sadler's work on the law of.
His attack of Mr Malthus.
His statement of the law of population.
Extremes of population and fecundity in well-known countries.
Population of England.
Of the United States of America.
Of France.
And of Prussia.

Portland, Duke of, formation of his Administration.

Portrait-painting compared with history.

Posterity, Epistle to, Petrarch's.

Power, senses in which the word may be used.
Dependence of the happiness of nations on the real distribution
of power.

Pretyman, Bishop of Lincoln.
His life of William Pitt.

Printing, influence of, on modern history.

Prior, Matthew, his intimacy with Bishop Atterbury.

Prize poems, character of.

Provencal poets, their amatory compositions.

Prussia, Mr Sadler's law of population, as illustrated by the
census of Prussia.

Psalmanazar, George, his friendship with Samuel Johnson.

Purgatorio, Dante's, the simile of the sheep in the.
Incomparable style of the sixth canto of.

Puritans, their prohibition of theatrical representations.

Quakers, Bunyan's abhorrence of the.

Quintillian, his principles of criticism.

Quixote, the Spiritual.

Radical War Song, a.

Rambler, Johnson's, publication of the.

Rasselas, Johnson's, circumstances under which it was written.
Plan of the work.

Re-election to Parliament, Speech on.

Reform Bill, mildness of the revolution of the.

Reform, Parliamentary, Speeches on.

Regent, the Prince, and the King.

Rent, Doctrine of.

Repeal of Union with Ireland, Speech on.

Representation, its value as a check on the governing few.

Revolution, the French, terms in which it is spoken of by M.
Dumont.

Revolution, the first and second French.
Compared with the English.
And with the American.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, his part in the Club.

Rich:  desire of the poor majority to plunder the rich minority.
Effects which a general spoliation would produce.

Richardson, Samuel, his opinion of the Rambler.
His kindness to Johnson.

Robespierre, his power over the lives of his fellow-citizens.
His character.
Regaled by Barere at a tavern on the day of the Queen's death.
Atrocious decree of the Convention proposed by him.
Becomes one of the Committee of Public Safety.
Purpose of his celebrated fiendish decree.
Barere's panegyric on Robespierre.
Barere's motion to put Robespierre and his accomplices to death.
Robespierre's execution.
His character.

Rockingham, Charles Marquis of, at the head of the Whig
opposition.
His adherents in the House of Commons.
Becomes Prime Minister.
His death.

Roland, Madame, her courage and force of thought.
Her execution.

Roland, the Girondist, his wife.
His fate.

Roman Tale, Fragments of a.

Romans, domestic habits of the.
Character of the poetry of the Romans.
Their regard for the language and literature of Greece.
Their disregard of the sacred books of the Hebrews.
Their exclusive spirit.
The Roman empire of the time of Diocletian compared with the
Chinese empire.
Effect of the victory of Christianity over paganism.
Purification of the Roman world by the invasion of the
Barbarians.

Rousseau, his egotism and its success.

Royal Society of Literature, on the.

Rumford, Count, his proposition for feeding soldiers cheaply.

Russell, Lord William, his last saying.

Sacheverell, prosecution of.

Sadler, Mr, review of his work on the Law of Population.
His style.
And spirit.
His attack on Mr Malthus.
His distinctions without a difference.
The great discovery by which he has vindicated the ways of
Providence.
His refutation refuted.
The motto on his title-page.
His statements examined and refuted.

Safety, Committee of Public, formation of the, in Paris.
Names of the persons composing the.
Character of the men composing the Committee.
Its crimes and blunders.
Robespierre's fiendish motion.

Sallust, his merits as a historian.
His conspiracy of Catiline.

Satire of Juvenal and Dryden.

Savage, Richard, his career.

Schoolmen, Lord Bacon's description of the logomachies of the, of
his time.

Scott, Sir Walter, his use of the rejected fragments of history.

Sermon in a Churchyard.

Shakspeare, William, language he gives to his superhuman beings.
His euphuism.
His dramas miracles of art.
His exquisite imagery.
Publication of Johnson's edition of the works of.
Character of the work.

Shelburne, William, Earl of, in the Whig opposition.
Placed by the King at the head of the Treasury.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, his repartee to Pitt.

Sidney, Sir Philip, his dying thanksgiving.

Sieyes, the Abbe, M. Dumont's sketch of the character of.

Similitudes, Dante's.

Simon, Saint, his character and opinions.

Slavery, Domestic, the cause of the violence of factions in
ancient times.

Smalridge, Dean of Carlisle and Christ Church.

Song.

Sonnet-fanciers.

Spain, revolution of the poetry of.

Sparta, the great men of.
Mr Mitford's admiration of the stability of the institutions of.
Real character of the Spartans.
Their kind of liberty.

Spectator, Addison's, crowds of imitations of the.

SPEECHES--
Anatomy Bill.
Church of Ireland, the.
Confidence in Lord Melbourne's Ministry.
Copyright.
Corn Laws, the.
Dissenters' Chapels Bill.
Edinburgh Election.
Education.
Exclusion of Judges from the House of Commons.
Gates of Somnauth, the.
Government of India, the.
Inaugural Speech at Glasgow College.
Jewish Disabilities.
Literature of Britain, the.
Maynooth.
Parliamentary Reform.
People's Charter, the.
Re-election to Parliament.
Repeal of the Union with Ireland.
State of Ireland, the.
Sugar Duties, the.
Ten Hours Bill, the.
Theological Tests in the Scotch Universities.
War with China, the.

Spencer, George Earl, his able administration of the Admiralty.

Spies, political, in France.
Their unpopularity in England.
The modus operandi of a spy.

State of Ireland, the Speech on.

Stories, good, fondness of the later ancient writers for.

"Sublime, Longinus on the."
Burke and Dugald Stewart's discussions.

Suffrage, Universal.

Sugar Duties, the, Speech on.

Tacitus, his eminence as a historian.
As a delineator of character.

Talleyrand, M. Dumont's sketch of the character of.

Tallien, his attack on Robespierre in the Convention.

Tasso, character of his "Secchia Rapita."

Telephus, the, of Euripides.

Temple, Sir William, his essay in praise of the ancient writers.

Ten Hours Bill, the Speech on.

Ten Thousand, Xenophon's Expedition of the, its character.

Terror, Reign of, commencement of the, in France.
Members of the Committee of Public Safety.
Robespierre's fiendish decree.
End of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Themistocles, his eloquence.

Theological Tests in the Scotch Universities, the Speech on.

Theo-philanthropy in France.

Thermidor, the memorable ninth of.

Thrales, Dr Johnson's connection with the.

Thucydides, character of the speeches of the ancients, as
transmitted to us by him.
His historical shortcomings.
His history compared with that of Herodotus.
Management of his perspective in history.
His speeches put into the mouths of his characters.
His deficiencies.
School in which he studied.
His style and philosophy.
Regarded as a delineator of character.

Thurlow, Lord, retains the Great Seal under Lord Rockingham.
Dismissed.
Again Lord Chancellor.

Tiberius Caesar, Tacitus's delineation of the character of.

Tinkers in the seventeenth century.

Tinville, Fouquier, his introduction to the Revolutionary
Tribunal of Paris.
Placed under arrest.

Tirzah and Ahirad, marriage of.

Toulon, Barere's proposal to destroy it.

Traveller, Goldsmith's, publication of the.
Its noble and simple design.

United States of America, rapid increase of the human race in
the.
Causes of this.
Results of four censuses.
Number of slaves in the Union in 1810.
And of emigrants to the United States in 1817.
Recognition of the independence of the States.
Surrender of Cornwallis.

Universal Suffrage.

Uses, Statute of, its practical value.

Utilitarianism.
One of the principal tenets of.
Style of writing admired by Utilitarians.
Barren theories of the Utilitarians.
Duty of exposing the fallacy of their arguments.
Lord Bacon's description of the Utilitarian philosophy.
Mr Bentham's exposition of the Utilitarian principle.
Remarks on the Utilitarian theory of government.
Delusion of the Utilitarians.
Origin of their faults.
Real character of the sect.
Their summum bonum.

Venice, an example of the sterility of an oligarchical form of
government.

Vergniaud, the Girondist leader, his eloquence.
His melancholy duty in the Convention.
Charged by the Mountain before the Revolutionary Committee.
His last speech.
His death.

Vienna, the deliverance of.

Virgil, idolatry of Dante for the writings of.

Virgin, Ode to the Petrarch's.

Voltaire, reluctance of the French Academy to acknowledge the
genius of.

Voters, qualifications of, Mr Mill's views regarding.

Wakefield, Vicar of, story of the publication of the.

Walker, Obadiah, the apostate.
His aspersions on Martin Luther.

Waller, Edward, character of his poetry.

Walmesley, Gilbert, his kindness to Samuel Johnson.

War, difference between, in large and small communities.

War with China, the, Speech on.

Waterloo, battle of.

"We," the editorial, its fatal influence on rising genius.

Wellesley, Sir Arthur, William Pitt's remark on.

"Wellingtoniad, a Prophetical Account of a Grand National Epic
Poem, to be entitled."

Westminster Hall compared with the Roman Forum.

Westminster Review, its defence of Mill reviewed.
And of the Utilitarian theory of government.

Wharton, Duke of, his speech in defence of Atterbury.

Whigs, the party of opposition in 1780.
Their accession to power.

Wilberforce, William, his visit to the Continent with William
Pitt.
Returned for York.

Wilkes, John, compared to Mirabeau.

Williams, Mrs, in Dr Johnson's house.

Women, condition of, among the Greeks.
Among the Romans.
Superstitious veneration with which they were regarded by the
warriors of the north of Europe.
Their insight into motives.
Rejected by Mr Mill from all share in government.
Identity of interest between the sexes.
Right of women to vote as well as men.

Wordsworth, William, his egotism as exhibited in his writings.

World, The.
Its remarks on the literary genius of Johnson.

Xenophon, historical value of his treatise on Domestic Economy.
Character of his history.
His life of Cyrus.
His expedition of the Ten Thousand and History of Grecian
Affairs.
His superstition and horror of popular turbulence.
Regarded as a delineator of character.