276

DEFEAT OF THE MINISTERS IN COMMITTEE.

[1831.

tuencies that had returned the unreformed parliament. On the 18th of April the House went into Committee on the order of the day, to consider the provisions of the bill for the amendment of the representation. General Gascoigne, following lord John Russell, moved, "that it is the opinion of this House that the total number of knights, citizens, and burgesses, returned to parliament for that part of the United Kingdom called England and Wales, ought not to be diminished." The debate was adjourned to the 19th. At a late hour the House divided; for General Gascoigne's amendment, 299; against it, 291. The ministry were beaten by a majority of eight. A man of the rarest genius, though not a striking parliamentary orator,-Francis Jeffrey has left an exquisite picture of an outdoor scene on this memorable day-break: "It was a beautiful, rosy, dead calm morning, when we broke up a little before five to-day; and I took three pensive turns along the solitude of Westminster Bridge; admiring the sharp clearness of St. Paul's, and all the city spires soaring up in a cloudless sky, the orange red light that was beginning to play on the trees of the Abbey and the old windows of the Speaker's house, and the flat, green mist of the river floating upon a few lazy hulks on the tide and moving low under the arches. It was a curious contrast with the long previous imprisonment in the stifling roaring House, amidst dying candles, and every sort of exhalation." *

On the 21st of April, in the House of Peers, lord Wharncliffe gave notice that he should the next day move that an address be presented to his Majesty praying that he would be graciously pleased not to exercise his undoubted prerogative of dissolving parliament. On the same evening in the House of Commons, ministers were again defeated by a majority of twentytwo on a question of adjournment. Mr. May states that this vote could not bear the construction which lord Brougham affirmed on the following day, that it amounted to "stopping the supplies." The question before the House was a question concerning the Liverpool election. "Late down in the list of Orders for the day a report from the Committee of Supply was to be received, which dropped by reason of the adjournment.” †

On the morning of Friday the 22nd, the Prime Minister and the Lord. Chancellor were with the King. They had come either to lay the resignations of the Ministry at his Majesty's feet, or to request him to dissolve the Parliament. The popular story of the time was that the King was reluctant to dissolve until the notice given by lord Wharncliffe was felt by him to be an interference with his prerogative; that then he was impatient to go at once to Parliament, and said, if the royal carriages were not ready send for a hackney coach. Mr. Roebuck has given a most interesting relation of "the whole scene of this interview of the King and his Ministers, as related by those who could alone describe it." The Chancellor was requested to manage the King on the occasion. His Majesty was startled at their proposition of a dissolution-how could he, after such a fashion, repay the kindness of Parliament in granting him a most liberal civil list, and giving to the Queen a splendid annuity in case she survived him. Nevertheless the Chancellor said

1831.] LORD GREY AND LORD BROUGHAM URGE THE KING TO DISSOLVE. 277 that the further existence of the present House of Commons was incompatible with the peace and safety of the kingdom. Lord Grey stated that without a dissolution they could not continue to conduct the affairs of the country. But nothing is arranged, said the King, the great officers of State are not summoned the crown and the robes are not prepared-the Guards, the troops, have had no orders, and cannot be ready in time. The "daring Chancellor," as Mr. Roebuck terms him, replied, deferentially, that the officers of State had been prepared to be summoned, and that the crown and robes would be ready. The difficulty about the troops was not so easily answered. The orders for the attendance of the troops upon such occasions always emanate from the sovereign." Pardon me, Sir," said the Chancellor, "I have given orders, and the troops are ready." The King then burst out, "You, my Lord Chancellor, ought to know that such an act is treason, high treason, my lord." The Chancellor humbly acknowledged that he did know it, and that nothing but his own solemn belief that the safety of the State depended upon that day's proceedings could have emboldened him to venture upon so improper a proceeding. The King cooled down; the speech to be read by his Majesty was in the Chancellor's pocket; and the Ministers were dismissed with something like a menace and a joke upon the audacity of their proceedings. The Lords had begun to assemble at two o'clock. At twenty minutes before three the Lord Chancellor took his seat, and almost immediately withdrew from the House, lord Shaftesbury being called to the chair. Lord Wharncliffe rose to make his motion. At the moment of completing the reading of his resolution, the Lord Chancellor entered the House, and immediately addressing it said, with great emphasis, "I never yet heard that the Crown ought not to dissolve Parliament whenever it thought fit, particularly at a moment when the House of Commons had thought fit to take the extreme and unprecedented step of stopping the supplies." * There was great confusion, with cries of "The King, the King." Lord Londonderry rose in fury, and exclaimed, "I protest, my Lords, I will not submit to" Chancellor, hearing the King approaching, clutched up the Seals and rushed again out of the House. There was again terrible confusion. The earl of Shaftesbury resumed the chair, and the earl of Mansfield proceeded to deliver a general harangue against the Reform Bill. The Lord Chancellor had met the King whilst the noise of the House was distinctly audible. "What's that ?" said his Majesty. "Only, may it please you, Sir, the House of Lords amusing themselves while awaiting your Majesty's coming." The King entered the House, cut short lord Mansfield's oration, and after the Speaker of the House of Commons and about a hundred members had attended at the bar, commenced his Speech with these very decisive words: "My Lords and Gentlemen, I have come to meet you for the purpose of proroguing this Parliament, with a view to its immediate dissolution." The House of Commons, before the Usher of the Black Rod had tapped at the door, had been a scene of turbulence and confusion-even outrivalling that of the Lords -which the Speaker had vainly endeavoured to repress. Lord Campbell, at that time member for Stafford, says, "Never shall I forget the scene then exhibited in the House of Commons, which might convey an adequate idea

* Hansard, vol. iii. col. 1807.

The

278

THE DISSOLUTION AND GENERAL ELECTION.

[1831.

of the tumultuary dissolutions in the times of the Stuarts. The most exciting moment of my public life was when we cheered the guns which announced his Majesty's approach."* Had those guns been heard a day later, the probability is that both Houses would have resolved upon an Address to the King against dissolution, and the royal prerogative would not have been exercised at all, or exercised under circumstances of great difficulty and danger.

On the dissolution of Parliament there was an illumination in London, sanctioned by the Lord Mayor, which was attended with more mischief from the turbulence of a mob-who broke the windows of the duke of Wellington and other anti-reformers,-than productive of any real advantage to the popular cause. After the Edinburgh election the Lord Provost was rudely assaulted, and was with difficulty rescued by the soldiery. These things were disclaimed by Reformers as being the acts of blackguards; but it must be acknowledged that there was a very slight approach to justice in the charge that sir Robert Peel had made against the government, that they had, “like the giant enemy of the Philistines, lighted three hundred brands and scattered through the country discord and dismay." The zeal of their supporters, we fear, was not everywhere satisfied with the formation of Political Unions; but that they read without much dissatisfaction the newspaper reports of smashed glass, and rude assaults during the elections in towns where the magistrates were supine and the police feeble. Such proceedings seriously damaged the just cause of peaceable Reform. The cry that went through the country of "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill," delighted the Government, for it set aside all minor differences of opinion amongst Reformers, and materially influenced the elections by the application of this simple test to a candidate,-would he support the Bill? But the mob-violence became to them a source of anxiety and alarm, producing distrust and desertion amongst the ranks of Reformers. "For God's sake keep the people quiet in Scotland," wrote the Lord Advocate a few months later; "nothing in the world would do such fatal mischief as riot and violence."+

The appeal to the people was signally triumphant. Parliament opened on the 14th of June, when Mr. Manners Sutton was chosen Speaker for the sixth time. The king went in state to the House of Lords on the 21st of June, and in his speech recommended the important question of reform in the representation to the earliest and most attentive consideration of parliament. On the 24th lord John Russell again brought in the Reform Bill, with a few alterations. The measure thus proposed was confined to England. There was to be a separate bill for Scotland, which was brought in by the Lord Advocate on the 1st of July; and a separate bill for Ireland, which was brought in by Mr. Stanley on the 30th of June. The discussion upon the English bill was to take place on the second reading, which was moved by lord John Russell on the 4th of July. There were three nights of debate. Mr. Macaulay's speech on the second night was described by lord Jeffrey as putting him clearly at the head of the great speakers, if not the debaters, of the House." One passage of that speech may be now read with especial interest.

* "Lives of the Chancellors," chap. ccx., note.

+ Hansard, vol. ii. col. 1356.

"Life of Jeffrey," p. 324.

1831.]

THE REFORM BILL CARRIED.

"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. Civilization 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. . . . 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 On the third night of debate the which great reforms ought to be made."* House divided: for the second reading, 367; against it, 231. On the 12th of July the House went into Committee. It was not till the 6th of September that the bill came out of this harassing stage of its progress, being the thirty-ninth sitting of the Committee. Night after night there were debates upon every clause of disfranchisement and every clause of enfranchisement. The leader of this mode of opposition was Mr. John Wilson Croker, whose power of mastering the most obscure details, whether in politics or literature, was perhaps unrivalled, and, we fear we must add, whose application of his minute researches was not always quite honest. His mind was formed by nature and habit for controversy. His acuteness and his energy were supported by his determined will, and his passionate resolve to look only at one side of the shield. He was a master of sarcasm, which, however, was not unaccompanied by a kindly spirit. Guizot, with a just discrimination between the value of set speeches and real business, assigns to this "man of vigorous, clear, precise, and practical mind," + the real leadership in the opposition to the Reform Bill in the House of Commons. The minister who was always ready to repel his attacks was one of very different character. Lord Althorp subdued his adversaries, and was a buckler to his supporters, by his singleness of purpose. Never was any one more truly described than the Chancellor of the Exchequer was by Jeffrey: "There is something to me quite delightful in his calm, clumsy, courageous, immutable probity and well-meaning, and it seems to have a charm for every body." Mr. Croker was to the last a most unyielding advocate of principles which had ceased to have any consistent application. When the Reform Bill passed, he believed, with men of more timidity and less intellectual grasp, that the time was not far distant when all that England prized would perish under a reformed. parliament. In September, 1832, it was written of Mr. Croker by one of his own party, that "no words can describe his desponding, hopeless view of all public matters; national ruin and bankruptcy with him are inevitable." § In 1836 his friends observed that he absolutely seemed to rejoice at any

THE BILL IN COMMITTEE IT IS PASSED.

[1831.

partial fulfilment of his prophecies. "Fitzgerald once said to lord Wellesley at the Castle, 'I have had a very melancholy letter from C-- this morning.' 'Aye!' said lord Wellesley, written, I suppose, in a strain of the most sanguine despondency.'"* It is satisfactory to contrast the opinions of the duke of Wellington after the passing of the Reform Bill, as reported by the same authority: "He said, we have seen great changes; we can only hope for the best; we cannot foresee what will happen; but few people will be sanguine enough to imagine that we shall ever again be as prosperous as we have been. His language breathed no bitterness, neither sunk into despondency."†

Before the Reform Bill came out of Committee, an important alteration. was carried by the marquis of Chandos,-that tenants-at-will paying fifty pounds per annum for their holdings should have a vote for the county. This proposal, which involved other amendments of a similar tendency, was carried by a majority of eighty-four. It was contended that this clause, instead of making the farmers more independent, as was alleged, would make a tenant wholly dependent upon the will of his landlord in the exercise of his franchise. Undoubtedly, before the repeal of the corn-laws, which, in freeing the farmers from the shackles of protection, gave scope for the exercise of their skill and capital, the tenant-at-will was more subservient to the commands of the owner of the soil. It may, however, be doubted now, when the interests of landlord and tenant have become more identified, because the social relations of each are better understood, whether it would be possible, as apprehended by lord Milton, that "a knot of persons, of great landed possessions, would combine for the purpose of securing the representation, and by the power which the adoption of these proposed amendments would give them, would fix the whole representation in the hands of an oligarchy." ‡ Freed from the committee; having been read a third time, after a division in a House whose diminished numbers showed how wearisome were the protracted discussions; the Reform Bill passed the House of Commons on the 21st of September, the numbers being three hundred and forty-five for the measure, and two hundred and thirty-six against it.

On the 22nd of September the House of Lords presented an unusual attendance of Peers. Peeresses were accommodated at the bar, and the space allotted to strangers was thronged to an overflow. The Lord Chancellor takes his seat at the Woolsack. The Deputy-Usher of the Black Rod announces "A Message from the Commons:" the doors are thrown open; and lord Althorp and lord John Russell, bearing the Reform Bill in their hands, appear at the head of a hundred members of the Lower House. Lord John Russell, in delivering the Bill to the Lord Chancellor, who had come to the bar, says with a firm and audible voice, "My Lords, the House of Commons have passed an Act to Amend the Representation of England and Wales, to which they desire your Lordships' concurrence."§ The words, usually of mere form and ceremony, by which a Message of the Commons is communicated to the Lords, were spoken by the Lord Chancellor with unusual

* Raikes's "Diary," vol. iii. p. 43.

Hansard, vol. vi. col. 274.

+ Ibid., vol. i. p. 68.

§ This scene forms the subject of a historical painting.