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THE NEW REPRESENTATION-METROPOLITAN BOROUGHS. [1832. The grief was, that the second member, whom the corporation generally chose from the families of the marquis of Bath or the marquis Camden, was one of those "extraordinary missionaries whom Mr. Hume despatched by the several stage-coaches, labelled and ticketed, and, for aught we know, specified in the way-bill, as members to be chosen for such and such a place." What bas Bath gained by the change? asks the reviewer. It gained John Arthur Roebuck instead of the nominee of lord Bath or lord Camden.

Let us turn from what the Reform Bill destroyed in England to what it created or restored. Mr. May has pointed out that in 1776 John Wilkes proposed a scheme comprising "all the leading principles of Parliamentary Reform which were advocated for the next fifty years without success, and have been sanctioned within our own time." We refer to the "Parliamentary History," and find that the proposition of the famous demagogue, who then triumphantly sat in Parliament for Middlesex, was to give an increased representation to the metropolis; to lop off the mean, venal, and dependent boroughs; and to permit "the rich, populous, trading towns Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, and others, to send deputies to the great council of the nation." The motion of Wilkes was of course negatived without a division. The terms in which lord North told him this would happen supply an amusing contrast to the political hypocrisy of half a century later, which maintained that "the rotten part of our constitution" was "a thing of beauty"—the ornament and safety of the State. The member for Middlesex, said the frank and good-humoured minister, "would find it no easy task to prevail on those who had an interest in the boroughs, on which he bestowed so many hard names, to sacrifice to ideal schemes of reformation so beneficial a species of property."* The increased representation of the metropolis was effected by the Reform Bill in the creation of four new boroughs-Marylebone, Finsbury, the Tower Hamlets, and Lambeth. The increase of Marylebone had been going on for more than a century. After the building of Cavendish Square in the reign of George the First, Marylebone became the most aristocratic district of London. There were five hundred and seventy-seven houses in the parish in 1739, and the number of persons who kept coaches was thirty-five. In 1831 the number of houses was eleven thousand six hundred and eight. The statistics of the nineteenth century would have little regard to the number of coaches as an index of the wealth of the people. The returns of assessed taxes afford a surer criterion. In 1831 the aggregate amount so paid for each one hundred persons was 1687. in the City, 150l. in Westminster, 1207. in Marylebone. Finsbury exhibited only three-fourths of the wealth thus indicated by direct taxation, though its population was greater than that of Marylebone. The Tower Hamlets contained the poorest population, with the greatest commercial wealth. It was the seat of the docks and of ship-building yards. It was a vast maritime city, with all the inequalities of condition that belong to such a population. The Tower Hamlets paid only a fourth of the amount of assessed taxes collected in Marylebone. Lambeth was the seat of the principal manufacturing industries of London. Its population was considerably less than that of the other new metropolitan boroughs. Its large

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number of the smallest houses was balanced by its larger number of moderate-sized private houses, especially in its pleasant southern districts, which might then be called rural. Such were the populations of the metropolitan north that had succeeded "the archers of Finsbury and the citizens that come a-ducking to Islington ponds."* Such were the populations of the metropolitan south that had trodden out the memories of the bishop of Winchester's palace, of the Liberty of the Clink, of the Beargarden, and of the Globe.

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The most important of the manufacturing towns which attained to the dignity of sending two members to Parliament under the Reform Act were Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Sunderland, Wolverhampton, Bolton, Bradford, Blackburn, Halifax, Macclesfield, Oldham, Stockport, Stoke-upon-Trent, and Stroud. Brighton, a wealthy and fashionable watering-place, was included in this catalogue. Of the twenty-one less important new boroughs which were to return one member, the chief commercial towns

*Ben Jonson-"Every Man in his Humour."

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MANUFACTURING TOWNS.

[1832.

were Ashton-under-Lyne, Bury, Dudley, Frome, Gateshead, Huddersfield, Kidderminster, Kendal, Rochdale, Salford, South Shields, Tynemouth, Wakefield, Warrington, Whitby, Whitehaven, and Merthyr-Tydvil. To this catalogue were added Chatham and Cheltenham. What vast changes in the whole structure of society are indicated by this bare enumeration! With this list is associated all the history of the wondrous rise of the textile manufactures, dating from the times of Arkwright and Crompton; of the first rotatory steam-engine of Watt, erected at Warrington in 1787; of the power-loom of Cartwright. How suggestive it is of the vast changes in the smelting of iron from the time of the improved processes of Roebuck; of the opening of vast beds of coal that lay useless beneath the surface, and of the workings of copper and tin mines, whose treasures were drowned till the new power of mechanics had made them dry; of the numberless beautiful arts that had been called into life in the working of metals; of the discoveries of chemistry, which had done as much for the triumphs of industry as the inventions of machinery. If the opposers of the Reform of 1832 could have put back the dial of a nation's progress for three more decades, we may ask how the population of Manchester and Salford, which in 1831 was two hundred and twenty-seven thousand, would have endured their position in 1861, when their population was four hundred and sixty thousand; how Birmingham, which in 1831 was a hundred and forty-two thousand, would have felt in 1861 with two hundred and ninety-five thousand; how Leeds, with its hundred and twenty-three thousand would have been content when it had reached two hundred and seven thousand; how Sheffield, with its hundred and twenty-six thousand would have remained quiet when it had reached a hundred and eighty-five thousand; how Hull, with forty-nine thousand, would have rested without representation with ninety-nine thousand. Since the era of the Reform Bill there have been other changes in the relative importance of industrial communities, but not so great as those we have glanced at. Macaulay, in his speech on the second reading of the first Reform Bill, exclaimed against the doctrine of finality-" 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 ?" * This is the poetry of eloquence. But it is a significant fact, illustrative of the same principle, that another Liverpool" should have arisen on the sparsely populated south-western shore of the Mersey since Macaulay talked of industry and trade finding out new seats; that Birkenhead should have been by the statute of the 25th of Victoria constituted a parliamentary borough,-the first borough obtaining the right of representation by the energy that in twenty years produced a port that might rival those of famous cities that had been growing for centuries.

We may add to this imperfect notice a few words about the Reform Act for Scotland. The number of its representatives had been determined by the Act of Union. Wilkes shrewdly said, in 1776, "I am almost afraid the forty-five Scottish gentlemen among us represent themselves." In 1831 the

* "Speeches," p. 32.

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total number of county voters was about two thousand five hundred: the sixty-six burghs had an aggregate constituency of one thousand four hundred and forty. Edinburgh, with its population of a hundred and sixty-two thousand, had a constituency of thirty-three persons; Glasgow, with its two hundred and two thousand, rejoiced in the same number of capable men to save its inhabitants from the troublesome choice of a fit and proper person to represent them in Parliament. The great authorities who domineered over the total Scotch electoral body of four thousand were under the dominion of the minister of the day who distributed patronage for the government, and of the succession of such ministers none was more active and adroit than the second lord Melville. Those who went to Parliament acted upon the sound principle of the Scotch county member, who said, "that his invariable rule was never to be present at a debate or absent at a division, and that he had only once in his long political life ventured to vote according to his conscience, and that he found that on that occasion he had voted wrong." * Without entering minutely into a description of the wonderful local fmachinery by which this extraordinary system of representation was managed, and of which system Jeffrey, as Lord Advocate, justly boasted that he had “left not a shred or patch," it may be sufficient to say that the elective franchise in counties being enveloped in feudal and technical absurdities, and thus costing a heavy price to attain, it was beyond the reach, not only of the lower class, but even of the majority of the middle and many of the higher classes. Of the town members Edinburgh returned only one; fourteen were returned by groups of burghs, each electing a delegate, and the four or five delegates so associated electing the representative. "Whatever this system may have been originally, it had grown, in reference to the people, into as complete a mockery as if it had been invented for their degradation. The people had nothing to do with it. It was all managed by town councils, of never more than thirty-three members, and every town council was self-elected, and consequently perpetuated its own interests. The election of either the town or the county member was a matter of such utter indifference to the people, that they often only knew of it by the ringing of a bell, or by seeing it mentioned next day in a newspaper; for the farce was generally performed in an apartment from which, if convenient, the public could be excluded, and never in the open air." +

The Reform Bill for Ireland, although contributing to the general improvement of the representation of the United Kingdom, was a much milder change of system than either the English or the Scotch bills. There was the same influence of great patrons in counties and boroughs; but the mode in which that influence was principally exercised, through the right of election in many places being vested in the corporations, was taken away by the Reform Act and vested in ten pound householders. There were no disfranchising clauses in the Act. The number of members was increased from one hundred to one hundred and five. The franchise, however, was comparatively very restricted. It was somewhat extended by a statute of the 13 & 14 Victoria, 1850.

Selkirk.

Hansard, Third Series, vol. vii. col. 543, from a speech of Mr. Gillon, member for +Cockburn, "Life of Lord Jeffrey," vol. i. p. 75.

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APPROACHING MEETING OF THE REFORMED PARLIAMENT.

[1833.

The Elections were over before the close of the year. According to the estimate of a journalist of that time, who was long famous for his scrupulous attention to the accuracy of minute details, there were two hundred and fifteen gentlemen who occupied seats for England in the last Parliament who were not returned to the new one. Of these, one hundred and forty-eight were anti-reformers. In Scotland, eighteen who were formerly in Parliament were also not returned. In Ireland, forty-two of the old members ceased to sit. Thirty of those who had thus lost their seats were Reformers; but they were principally driven out by Repealers. Altogether it was estimated that five hundred and eleven ministerialists and reformers were returned; and a hundred and forty-seven who, now designated as Conservatives, were antiministerialists.*

And now the dreaded Reform Parliament was to assemble at the end of January, 1833. In 1835 a sensible traveller in England wrote to his friend in Germany, "Those who compared the Reform Parliament to the French National Assemblies have happily been greatly mistaken in their calculations; otherwise, instead of the tranquillity and satisfaction in which England lives, the guillotine would be already at work." The crisis of terror through which many of the rich and fashionable classes had passed, and from which they had not yet emerged after six months' experience had shown them that chaos was not come again, is described by one who lived in the exclusive circles. Five days after the passing of the Reform Bill, Mr. Raikes thus writes in his Diary:-"I do not think that in all my experience I ever remember such a season in London as this has been; so little gaiety, so few dinners, balls, and fêtes. The political dissensions have undermined society, and produced coolnesses between so many of the highest families, and between even near relations, who have taken opposite views of the question. Independent of this feeling, the Tory party,-whose apprehensions for the future are most desponding, who think that a complete revolution is near at hand, and that property must every day become less secure,-are glad to retrench their usual expenses, and are beginning by economy to lay by a poire pour la soif. Those who have money at command are buying funds in America, or in Denmark, which they think least exposed to political changes." One of the chief terrors of the landed aristocracy, whether Whig or Tory, was that the Corn-laws would perish under the Reform Parliament. "The Unionists," writes lord Eldon after the passing of the Bill, "are, it seems, unanimous for a repeal of the Corn-laws. The abused and misled lower orders are all for this. It will ruin them."§ The ex-Chancellor,-who held pretty much the same opinions about commercial freedom as the traders of Worcester, who denounced in a petition to parliament, "the Free-trade system " as "a reliance on the doctrines of certain speculative persons called political economists," -the great lawyer, who was the smallest of statesmen, believed that the entire prosperity of the country depended upon the

* "Spectator," January 12, 1833.

Von Raumer-" England in 1835," vol. iii. p. 309.

"Garder une poire pour la soif"-" to keep a pear in case of thirst"-is equivalent to laying up something in case of want.

§ Twiss, vol. iii. p. 181.

|| Hansard, vol. xii. col. 1278.

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