Chapter 47

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.

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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.