A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume IV Part 11

[Sidenote: 1834--The difficulties that beset Peel]

Peel himself tells us in his memoirs that the long travel had at least the advantage of giving him time enough to think out his course of action and the best way of serving his sovereign and his country. The journey, he says, {237} allowed him to do this coolly and without interruption. He certainly had time enough for the purpose, but it must have needed all Peel's strength of character to enable him to give his mind up to such considerations during a course so toilsome, so rugged, so dangerous, and often so rudely interrupted. He arrived in London at an early hour on the morning of December 9, 1834, and he set off at once to present himself to the King, by whom, it need hardly be said, he was very cordially welcomed. The welcome became all the more warm because he was willing to accept the important task which the King desired to intrust to him, and would enter without delay on the work of endeavoring to form a Ministry. Now, in order to do justice to Peel's patriotic purpose in undertaking this difficult task, we have to bear in mind that he did not personally approve of the King's action in breaking up the Melbourne Administration, or even of the manner in which it had been broken up. He knew well enough that the King had grown tired of the Whig Ministry, but he did not think the King's personal feelings were a complete justification for William's dismissal of a set of men whom he had consented to place in power. Peel did not regard the mere necessity for a rearrangement consequent on Lord Althorp's removal to the House of Lords as anything like a fitting excuse for the break-up of the whole Government. More than that, Peel had no confidence in the chances of a new Conservative Administration just then. It was not encouraging to a statesman about to form his first Cabinet to have to believe, as Peel did, that such a Government would be left very much at the mercy of the Opposition, and in more than one important or even impending question might at any time be outvoted in the House of Commons. None the less, however, was Peel resolved to stand by his sovereign, who appeared to be in a difficulty.

The same sense of public duty, according to his conception of public duty, which guided him at every great crisis of his political career decided his action in this instance. He set himself to the work of forming an Administration in which he proposed to take under his own charge the functions of {238} Prime Minister and the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. He knew that he could count on the support of the Duke of Wellington, and to Wellington he offered the post of Secretary for Foreign Affairs, which was at once accepted.

Then he wrote to Sir James Graham and to Lord Stanley. Both refused.

Sir James Graham, although he declined to accept office, promised Peel all the support he could give consistently with his own judgment and his own political views. Lord Stanley wrote a letter to Peel which has even still both historical and personal interest. Its historical interest consists in the clear exposition it contains of the various questions which then divided the two great parties in the State. Its personal interest is found in the fact that it shows Lord Stanley as the convinced reformer, who sees no possibility of his joining an Administration about to be created by a statesman whose whole career has been antagonistic to political reform. Those of us who remember the brilliant orator Lord Derby, by whom the office of Prime Minister was three times held, find it hard to think of him as anything but a steady-going Conservative at heart, and may be excused a shock of surprise when they are bidden to remember that in 1834 the same man, then Lord Stanley, declared that he could not serve under Peel because Peel was not reformer enough all round to secure his co-operation.

Lord Stanley pointed out, in his letter, that between Peel and himself there had been a complete difference of opinion on almost every great public question except that which concerned the State Church, and he reminded Peel that so lately as on the occasion of Lord Grey's retirement from office the Duke of Wellington had seized the opportunity of publicly condemning the whole policy of the Whig Administration. Under these circ.u.mstances Lord Stanley declared that, in his opinion, it would be injurious to his own character and injurious to the new Government as well if he were to accept the offer of a place in such an Administration. He had left Lord Grey's Government because he differed with Lord Grey on one question alone, which then had to be dealt with, and he could not join a Government of which {239} Peel and Wellington were to be the leaders, from whom he had differed on almost every great political question that had engaged the attention of the country during his time.

[Sidenote: 1834--Peel forms his Ministry]

Peel had nothing for it but to go on with his task and form the best Administration he could. Lord Lyndhurst was once again to be Lord Chancellor, and in such a man Peel certainly found a colleague who had no superior either as a lawyer or a debater in the House of Lords.

Some of us who can still remember having heard Lord Lyndhurst deliver long and powerful speeches in the House of Lords, compelling the attention and the admiration of every listener when the orator himself had long left his eightieth year behind him, will feel sure that Sir Robert Peel's first Administration was adequately represented in the hereditary chamber. It is not necessary to introduce here a full list of the new Ministry, but there are three names which call for special mention. These are the names of three young men who then entered ministerial office for the first time, and with whom the world afterwards became well acquainted, each according to his different way.

One was William Ewart Gladstone, who became Junior Lord of the Treasury, and whom the world has long since recognized as the greatest statesman and the greatest master of the House of Commons known to the reign of Queen Victoria. The second was Sidney Herbert, who was for many years one of the most ready, accomplished, and brilliant debaters in that House, and whose premature death cut short a career that had seemed to be steadily rising from day to day. The third was a man whose political life has long since been forgotten, but whose name is well remembered because of his success in quite a different field--Winthrop Mackworth Praed, the charming author of delightful verses, the founder of that English school of minstrelsy which sings for the drawing-room and the club-room, the feasts and the fas.h.i.+ons, the joys and the well-ordered troubles of the West-End. Sidney Herbert and Praed were made joint Secretaries to the Board of Control, the department established by Pitt for directing the Government of India.

{240}

The new Prime Minister believed that it would be in every way more suitable to the convenience of the country that he and his colleagues should submit their political claims and purposes to the judgment of the const.i.tuencies by means of a general election. A dissolution accordingly took place, and Peel issued an address to the electors of Tamworth, which will always be regarded as an important political doc.u.ment. Although Peel had been an opponent of the principles embodied in the Reform Bill, no reformer in the country understood better than he did the impossibility, at such a time, of carrying on the work of the Government without a thorough understanding between the Ministry and the Parliament, between the Parliament and the public out-of-doors. No one knew better than Peel that the time had gone by, never to return, when an English minister could rule as an English minister even so lately as in the days of Pitt had done, merely by the approval and the support of a monarch without the approval and support of a majority of the electors. When, therefore, Peel prepared his address to his Tamworth const.i.tuents he knew perfectly well that his words were meant, not merely for the friendly ears of the little const.i.tuency, but for the consideration of the whole country. The same feeling actuated the great statesman during the entire course of his subsequent career, and the const.i.tuency of Tamworth had therefore the advantage of being favored from time to time with election addresses which form chapters of the highest interest and importance in the historical literature of the country. The address which he issued to his const.i.tuents before the general election in December, 1834, proclaimed, in fact, the opening of a new political era in England.

[Sidenote: 1834-34--Peel's Tamworth address]

Peel made frank announcement that, so far as he and his friends were concerned, the controversy about Parliamentary reform had come to an end. By him and by them the decision of Parliament, which sanctioned the introduction of the Reform Bill of 1832, was accepted as a final settlement of the question. Peel declared that he regarded it as "a settlement which no friend to the peace {241} of the country would attempt to disturb, either by direct or by insidious means." Of course it was not to be understood that Peel had any intention of describing the Reform Act of 1832 as the last word of the Reformers' creed, and the close of all possible controversy with regard to the construction of the whole Parliamentary system. Peel no more meant to convey any idea of this kind than did Lord John Russell, when he used the word finality in connection with the Reform Act, mean to convey the idea that, according to his conviction, Parliament was never again to be invited to extend the electoral franchise or to modify the conditions under which the votes of the electors were to be given. The announcement which Peel made to the electors of Tamworth, and to the world in general, was that he and his friends recognized the establishment of the representative principle in English political life, accepted the new order of things as a result of a lawful decree, and separated themselves altogether from the antiquated Toryism which enshrined the old ideas of government as a religious faith, and revered the memory of the nomination boroughs, as the Jacobites revered the memory of the Stuarts. With the issue of Peel's Tamworth address in the December of 1834, the antique Tory, the Tory who made Toryism of the ante-reform days a creed and a cult, may be said to disappear altogether from the ranks of practical English politicians. The Tory of the old school appears, no doubt, here and there through all Parliamentary days down to our own time. We saw him in both Houses of Parliament as a heroic, unteachable opponent of Peel himself, of Bright and Cobden, of Gladstone, and sometimes even of Lord Derby and of Lord Salisbury, but he was merely a living protest against the succession of new ideas, and was no longer to be counted as a practical politician.

Sir Robert Peel soon saw that he had not gained much by his appeal to the const.i.tuencies. The results of the general election showed that the Conservatives had made a considerable addition to their numbers in the House of Commons, but showed also that they were still in a disheartening minority. The return of the first Reform {242} Parliament had, indeed, exhibited them for the time as completely down in the dust, for there was a majority of more than three hundred against them, and now the Liberal majority was hardly more than one hundred. A very hopeful Conservative, or a Conservative who had a profound faith in the principles of antique Toryism, might fill himself with the fond belief that this increase in the Conservative vote foretold a gradual return to the good old days. But Peel was too practical a statesman to be touched for a moment by any such illusion.

He had fully expected some increase in the Tory vote. He knew, as well as anybody could know, that there had been some disappointment among the more advanced and impatient reformers all over the country with the achievements of the first reformed Parliament, and, indeed, with the Act of Reform itself. After victory in a long-contested political battle there comes, almost as a matter of course, a season of relaxed effort among the ranks of the victors, for which allowance would have to be made in the mind of such a statesman as Peel, and, in this instance, allowance also had to be made for a falling off in the enthusiasm of those who had helped to carry the Reform movement to success, and found themselves in the end left out of all its direct advantages.

[Sidenote: 1835--The Office of Speaker]

Peel saw at once that his Government must be absolutely at the mercy of the Opposition when any question arose on which it suited the purposes of the Opposition leaders to rally their whole forces around them and take a party division. So far as the ordinary business of the session was concerned, the Ministry might get on well enough, for there must have been a considerable amount of routine work which would not provoke the Opposition to a trial of strength; but if chance or hostile strategy should bring about at any moment a controversy which called for a strictly party division, then the Government must go down.

Nothing can be more trying to a proud-spirited statesman in office than the knowledge that he can only maintain his Government, from day to day, because, for one reason or another, it does not suit the convenience of the Opposition to press some vote which must leave him and his colleagues {243} in a distinct minority. Peel had not long to wait before he found substantial evidence to justify his most gloomy forebodings.

The new Parliament met on February 19, 1835. The first trial of strength was on the election of a new Speaker. The former occupant of the office having been put forward for re-election, the Government were beaten by a majority of ten. Now this was a very damaging event for the ministers, and also an event somewhat unusual in the House of Commons. There is generally a sort of understanding, more or less distinctly expressed, that the candidate put forward by the Government for the office of Speaker is to be a man on whom both sides of the House can agree. It is obviously undesirable that there should be a party struggle over the appointment of the official who is a.s.sumed to hold an absolutely impartial position and is not supposed to be the mere favorite of either side of the House. In later years there has often been a distinct arrangement, or, at all events, a clear understanding, between the Government and the Opposition on this subject, and a candidate is not put forward unless there is good reason to a.s.sume that he will be acceptable to the two great political parties. In this instance no such understanding existed, or had been sought for. The Opposition set up a candidate of their own, and the nominee of the Government was defeated. There was, however, one condition in this defeat which, although it did not take away from the ominous character of the event, might, to a certain extent, have relieved Peel from the necessity of regarding it as an absolute party defeat. The majority had been obtained for the Opposition by the support of the Irish members who followed the leaders.h.i.+p of Daniel O'Connell, and thus Sir Robert Peel saw himself outvoted by a combination of two parties, one of them regarded with peculiar disfavor by the majority of the English public on both sides of the political field. It was something for the followers of the Government to be able to say that their Liberal opponents had only been able to score a success by the help of the unpopular Irish vote, and it became, in fact, a new accusation against the {244} Liberals that they had traded on the favor of O'Connell and his Irish followers. From about this time the Irish vote has always played an important part in all the struggles of parties in the House of Commons; and it will be observed that the English Party, whether Liberal or Tory, against which that vote is directed is always ready with epithets of scorn and anger for the English Party for whom that vote has been given.

[Sidenote: 1835--Peel and the Opposition]

Several other humiliations awaited Peel as the session went on.

Sometimes he was saved from defeat on a question of finance by the help of the more advanced Liberals, who came to his a.s.sistance when certain of his own Tory followers were prepared to desert him because his views on some question of taxation were much too new-fas.h.i.+oned for their own old-fas.h.i.+oned notions. Every one who has paid any attention to Parliamentary history can understand how distressing is the position of a minister who has no absolute majority at his command, and how more distressing still is the position of a minister who can only look to chance disruptions and combinations of parties for any possible majority. Peel bore himself throughout all the trials of that most trying time with indomitable courage and with unfailing skill. Never during his whole career did he prove himself more brilliant and more full of resource than as the leader of what might be called an utterly hopeless struggle. The highest tribute has been paid to his never-failing tact and temper during that trying ordeal by his princ.i.p.al opponent in the House of Commons, Lord John Russell. Russell was now the leader of the Liberal Opposition in the House of Commons, and the struggle of parties was once again ill.u.s.trated by a sort of continuous Parliamentary duel between two rival leaders. The same phenomenon had been seen, from time to time, in the days of Queen Anne and in the days of the Georges; and it was seen again, at intervals, during some of the most vivid and fascinating pa.s.sages of Parliamentary history in the reign of Queen Victoria.

The crisis, however, came soon to this first Ministry of Sir Robert Peel. Peel had announced, in a reasonable and {245} manful spirit, considering how the task of holding together a Ministry had been imposed on him and the temptation which it afforded for the attacks of irresponsible enemies, that he would not resign office on any side issue or question of purely fact.i.tious importance, and that he would hold his place unless defeated by a vote of want of confidence or a vote of censure. He challenged the leader of the Opposition to test the feeling of the House by a division on a question of that nature.

Lord John Russell refused to take any such course, declaring that he believed it his duty to wait and see what might be the nature of the measures of reform which the Government had promised to introduce before inviting the House to say whether the Government deserved or did not deserve its confidence. Some of the measures announced by the Government had to do with the reform of the ecclesiastical courts and the maintenance of Church discipline, and Sir Robert Peel had himself given notice of a measure to deal with the Irish t.i.the system, the princ.i.p.al object of which was understood to be the transfer of the liability of the payment of t.i.thes from the shoulders of the tenant to the shoulders of the landlord. It was not unreasonable that the Opposition should proclaim it their policy to wait and see what the Tory ministers really proposed to do before a.s.sailing them with a direct and general vote of want of confidence. Even, however, if the Opposition had been inclined to linger before inviting a real trial of strength, there was a feeling growing up all over the country which seemed impatient of mere episodical encounters leading to nothing in particular. The leaders of the Opposition had a very distinct policy in their minds, and on March 30, 1835, it found its formal expression.

Lord John Russell moved a resolution which called upon the House to resolve itself into a committee "in order to consider the present state of the Church established in Ireland, with the view of applying any surplus of revenues not required for the spiritual care of its members to the general education of all cla.s.ses of the people without distinction of religious persuasion." Now here, it will be seen, {246} was the battle-ground distinctly marked out on which the two political parties must come, sooner or later, to a decisive struggle. About the collection of t.i.thes, about the imposition of t.i.thes, about the cla.s.s of the community on whom the direct responsibility for the payment of t.i.thes ought to fall, there might possibly be a basis of agreement found between Tories and Whigs. But when there arose a question as to the appropriation of the Church revenues, there the old doctrines and the new, the old Tories and the new Reformers, came into irreconcilable antagonism. The creed of the Tories was that the revenues of the Church belonged to the Church itself, and that if the Church had a surplus of funds here or there for any one particular purpose that surplus could be applied by it to some of its other purposes, but that no legislature had any right to say to the Church, "You have more money here than is needed for your own rights, and we have a right to take part of it away from you and apply it for the uses of the general public." The Government, therefore, accepted Lord John Russell's resolution as a distinct challenge to a trial of strength on an essential question of policy.

[Sidenote: 1835--William Ewart Gladstone]

The debate which followed lasted through four days, and all the members of the House on both sides took part in it. The reports of that momentous debate may be read with the deepest interest even at this day, when some of the prophecies intended as terrible warnings by some of the Conservative orators have long since been verified as facts, and are calmly accepted by all parties as the inevitable results of rational legislation. Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham, and most others who spoke on the Ministerial side spoke with one voice, in warning the House of Commons that if it claimed a right to touch any of the revenues of the Irish State Church in order to appropriate them for the general education of the Irish people, the result must be that the time would come when the Irish Church itself would no longer be held sacred against the desecrating hand of the modern reformer, would be treated as no longer necessary to the welfare of the Irish people, and would be severed from the State and left upon a level {247} with the Roman Catholic Church and the various dissenting denominations.

One appeal which may be said to run through the whole of the speeches on the side of the Government is familiar to the readers and the audiences of all political debates, wh.o.r.e any manner of Reform is under discussion. "You are asked"--so runs the argument--"to adopt this sort of policy in order to satisfy the demands of a certain cla.s.s of the population; but how do you know, what guarantee can you give us, that when we have granted these demands they will be content and will not immediately begin to ask for more? We granted Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation in order to satisfy Ireland, and now is Ireland satisfied? It was only the other day we granted Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, and now already Ireland declares, through her representatives, that she ought to have part of the revenues of the Irish State Church taken away from that Church and applied to the common uses of the Irish people. If she gets even that, will Ireland be contented? Will she not go on to demand repeal of the Union?" We turn with peculiar interest to the speech of a young Tory member which was listened to with great attention during the debate, and was believed to contain unmistakable promise of an important political career. So indeed it did, although the promise that career actually realized was not altogether of the kind which most of its audience were led to antic.i.p.ate. It was the speech of Mr. William Ewart Gladstone. "The present motion," said Mr. Gladstone, "opens a boundless road--it will lead to measure after measure, to expedient after expedient, till we come to the recognition of the Roman Catholic religion as the national one. In principle, we propose to give up the Protestant Establishment. If so, why not abandon the political government of Ireland and concede the repeal of the legislative union."

"There is no principle," he went on to say, "on which the Protestant Church can be permanently upheld, but that it is the Church which teaches the truth." That, he insisted, was the position which the House ought to maintain without allowing its decision to be affected by the mere {248} a.s.sertion, even if the a.s.sertion were capable of proof, that the revenues of the State Church in Ireland were entirely out of proportion to the spiritual needs of the Protestant population. Mr.

Gladstone, however, had the mind of the financier even in those early days of his career, and he was at some pains to argue that the disproportion between the numbers of the Protestant and the Catholic populations in Ireland was not so great as Lord John Russell had a.s.serted. He made out this part of his case ingeniously enough by including in the Protestant population in Ireland all the various members of the dissenting denominations, many or most of whom were as little likely to attend the administrations of the Established Church as the Roman Catholics themselves.

[Sidenote: 1835--Defeat of Peel's Ministry]

Gladstone's speech was thoroughly consistent in its opposition to Lord John Russell's resolution on the ground that that resolution, if pressed to its legitimate conclusion, a.s.sailed the whole principle on which the State Church in Ireland was founded. "I hope," he said, "I shall never live to see the day when such a system shall be adopted in this country, for the consequences of it to public men will be lamentable beyond all description. If those individuals who are called on to fulfil the high function of administering public affairs should be compelled to exclude from their consideration the elements of true religion, and to view various strange and conflicting doctrines in the same light, instead of administering those n.o.ble functions, they will become helots and slaves." The weakness of Mr. Gladstone's case was found in the fact that he insisted on regarding the State Church in Ireland as resting on precisely the same foundations as those which upheld the State Church in England. The truth was afterwards brought home to him that every argument which could be fairly used to justify the maintenance of the State Church in England was but another argument for the abolition of the State Church in Ireland--a work which it became at last his duty to accomplish. "I shall content myself," said Daniel O'Connell in his speech in the debate, "with laying down the broad principle that the {249} emoluments of a Church ought not to be raised from a people who do not belong to it. Ireland does not ask for a Catholic Establishment. The Irish desire political equality in every respect, except that they would not accept a single s.h.i.+lling for their Church."

Sir Robert Peel made a speech which was at once very powerful and very plausible. It was not, perhaps, pitched in a very exalted key, but it was full of argument, at once subtle and telling. He challenged the accuracy of Lord John Russell's figures, and declaimed against the injustice of inviting the House to pa.s.s a resolution founded on statistics which it had as yet no possible opportunity of verifying or even of examining. He pointed out that the Government had already given notice of their intention to bring in measures to deal with the very question concerned in Lord John Russell's resolution; and he asked what sincerity there could be in the purposes of men who professed a desire to amend as quickly as possible the t.i.the system in Ireland, and who yet were eager to deprive the Government of any chance of bringing forward the measures which they had prepared in order to accomplish that very object. The main argument of the speech was directed not so much against the policy embodied in the resolution of Lord John Russell, as against the manner in which it was proposed to carry out that policy. Sir Robert Peel declared that the object of the Opposition was not to effect any improvement in the relations of the State Church of Ireland and the people of Ireland, but simply and solely to turn out the Government. Why not, he asked, come to the point boldly and at once? Why not bring forward a vote of censure on the Government, or a vote of want of confidence in the Government, and thus compel them, if defeated, to go out of office, instead of endeavoring to enforce on them the adoption of a resolution dealing with questions which the Government had already promised to make the subject of legislation, and without waiting to hear what manner of legislation they were prepared to introduce?

There was an eloquent defiance in the closing words of Peel's speech.

The great minister knew that defeat was {250} awaiting him, and he showed himself resolved to meet it half way. At three o'clock on the morning of April 3 the division on the resolution of Lord John Russell took place. There were 322 votes for the resolution and 289 against it. The resolution was therefore carried by a majority of 33. The student of history will observe with interest that the abolition of the Irish State Church was the result of a series of resolutions carried by Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons in 1868, and afterwards embodied in an act of legislation.

[Sidenote: 1835--Melbourne and Brougham]

The debate on Lord John Russell's resolution was carried on for a few days longer, but it was chiefly concerned with mere questions as to the form in which the Ministry were called upon to give effect to the wish of the majority, and submit the resolution to the King. There was no heart or practical purpose in these debates, for everybody already knew what the end must be. On April 8 Sir Robert Peel announced to the House that he could not take any part in giving effect to the resolution, and that, therefore, he and his colleagues had determined on resigning their offices. The course taken by Peel was thoroughly honest, consistent, and upright, and Lord John Russell bore prompt and willing testimony to the const.i.tutional propriety of the retiring Prime Minister's resolve. The Peel Ministry had come to its end. The country had been put to the trouble and expense of a general election, valuable time had been wasted, legislative preparations had been thrown away, and everything was now back again in just the same condition as when the King made up his mind to dismiss the Melbourne Administration.

The whole blame for the muddle rested on the King, who now found himself compelled to take up again with Lord Melbourne just as if nothing had happened. The King, indeed, made an attempt to induce Lord Grey to come out of his retirement and form another Ministry; but Lord Grey was not to be prevailed upon to accept such an invitation, and William had to gulp down his personal objections and invite Lord Melbourne to come back once more and take charge of the Government of the country.

{251}

Lord Melbourne had no difficulty in forming an Administration, and it was on the whole very much the same in its composition as that which King William had so rudely dismissed only a few months before. But there were some new names in the list, and there was one very remarkable omission. Lord Brougham was not one of the members of the new Government. Lord Melbourne had made up his mind that if, perhaps, there could be no living without such a colleague, there certainly could be no living with him, and he preferred the chance to the certainty. The greatest sensation was produced all over the country when it was found that Lord Brougham was to have nothing to do with the new Administration. In and out of Parliament the question became a subject of keen and vehement discussion. The energy and the eloquence of Brougham had held a commanding place among the forces by which Parliamentary reform had been effected, and the wonder was how any Reform Ministry could venture to carry on the work of government, not merely without the co-operation of such a man, but with every likelihood of his active and bitter hostility. At one time the report went abroad, and found many ready believers, that there were periods in Brougham's life when his great intellect became clouded, as Chatham's had been at one time, and that the Liberal Ministry found it therefore impossible to avail themselves of his fitful services. Lord Melbourne himself once made an emphatic appeal to his audience in the House of Lords, after Lord Brougham had delivered a speech there of characteristic power and eloquence. Melbourne invited the House to consider calmly how overmastering must have been the reasons which compelled any body of rational statesmen to deprive themselves of such a man's co-operation. It would appear, however, that the reasons which influenced Melbourne and his colleagues were given by Brougham's own pa.s.sionate and ungovernable temper, his impatience of all discipline, his sudden changes of mood and purpose, his overmastering egotism, and his frequent impulse to strike out for himself and to disregard all considerations of convenience or compromise, all {252} calculations as to the effect of an individual movement on the policy of an Administration.

[Sidenote: 1835--Melbourne and the Irish Members]

From that time Brougham had nothing more to do with ministerial work.

He became merely an independent, a very independent, member of the House of Lords. To the close of his long career he was a commanding figure in the House and in the country, but it was an individual figure, an eccentric figure, whose movements must always excite interest, must often excite admiration, but from whom guidance and inspiration were never to be expected. Even on some of the great questions with which the brightest part of his career had been especially a.s.sociated he often failed to exercise the influence which might have been expected from a man of such gifts and such achievements. Through the remainder of his life he could always arouse the attention of the country, and indeed of the civilized world, when he so willed, but his work as a political leader was done.

The office of Lord Chancellor was left for a while vacant, or, to describe the fact in more technical language, was put into commission.

The commission was made up of the Master of the Rolls, the Vice-Chancellor, and one of the Judges. After a time Lord Cottenham was made Lord Chancellor. Lord John Russell became Home Secretary, and Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary. Among the new names on the list of the Administration was that of Sir Henry Parnell, who became Paymaster-General and Paymaster of the Navy, and that of Sir George Grey, who was Under-Secretary of the Colonies, and afterwards rose to hold high office in many a Government, and had at one time the somewhat undesirable reputation of being the rapidest speaker in the House of Commons.

King William must have put a strong constraint upon himself when he found that he had to receive, on terms at least of civility, so many of the men, as ministers, whom he had abruptly dismissed from his service not long before. For a considerable time he put up with them rather than received them, and maintained a merely official relations.h.i.+p with them so far even as not to invite them to dinner. {253} After a time, however, his Majesty somewhat softened in temper; the relations between him and his advisers became less strained; and he even went so far as to invite the members of the Cabinet to dinner, and expressed in his invitation the characteristic wish that each guest would drink at least two bottles of wine. When the construction of the new Ministry had been completed, Parliament rea.s.sembled on April 18; but that meeting was little more than of formal character, as the Houses had again to adjourn in order to enable the new members who were members of the House of Commons to resign and seek, according to const.i.tutional usage, for re-election at the hands of their const.i.tuents. The only public interest attaching to the meeting of Parliament on April 18 was found in an attempt, made by two Tory peers, to extract from Lord Melbourne some public explanation as to his dealings with O'Connell and the Irish party. Lord Melbourne was quite equal to the occasion, and nothing could be drawn from him further than the declaration that he had entered into no arrangements whatever with O'Connell; that if the Irish members should, on any occasion, give him their support, he should be happy to receive it, but that he had not taken and did not mean to take any steps to secure it. The incident is worth noting because it serves to ill.u.s.trate, once again, the effect of the new condition which had been introduced into the struggles of the two great political parties by the pa.s.sing of the Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation Act, and the consequent admission of Irish Catholic members into the House of Commons.

Some of the members of the new Administration were not successful when they made their appeal to their old const.i.tuencies. Lord John Russell, for instance, was beaten in South Devons.h.i.+re by a Tory antagonist, and a vacancy had to be made for him in the little borough of Stroud, the representative of which withdrew in order to oblige the leaders of his party, and obtained, in return for his act of self-sacrifice, an office under Government. Lord Palmerston was placed in a difficulty of the same kind, and a vacancy was made for him in the borough of {254} Tiverton by the good-nature and the public spirit of its sitting representative, and from that time to the end of his long career Lord Palmerston continued to be the member for Tiverton, which indeed won, by that fact alone, a conspicuous place in Parliamentary history.

There were other disturbances of the same kind in the relations of the members of the new Government and their former const.i.tuents, and it was clear enough that a certain reaction was still working against the political impulse which had carried the Reform measures to success.

Still, it was clear that the new Government had come into power as a Government of reformers, and Lord Melbourne found himself compelled to go on with the work of reform. Nothing could be less in keeping with his habits and the inclinations of his easy-going nature. It used to be said of him that whenever he was urged to set about any work of the kind his instinctive impulse always was to meet the suggestion with the question: "Why can't you let it alone?" Now, however, he had in his Cabinet some men, like Lord John Russell, whose earnestness in the cause of Reform was genuine and unconquerable; and if Lord Melbourne was too indolent to press forward reforms on his own account, he was also too indolent to resist such a pressure when put on him by others.

[Sidenote: 1835--Foundation of munic.i.p.al bodies]

There was one great pressing and obvious reform which remained to be accomplished and ought naturally to follow on the reorganization of the Parliamentary system. That was the reorganization of the munic.i.p.al system. The munic.i.p.al work of the country, the management of all the various and complicated relations which concerned the local affairs of the whole community, had become a mere chaos of anomalies, anachronisms, and, in too many instances, of reckless mismanagement and downright corruption. If the sort of so-called representation which prevailed in the Parliamentary const.i.tuencies was, up to 1832, an absurdity and a fraud, it was not perhaps on the whole quite so absurd or altogether so fraudulent as that which set itself up for a representative system in the arrangements of the munic.i.p.al corporations. As in the case of the {255} Parliamentary system, so in the case of the munic.i.p.al system, the organization had begun with an intelligible principle to guide it; but, during the lapse of years and even of centuries, the original purpose had been swamped by the gradual and always increasing growth of confusion and corruption. The munic.i.p.al arrangements of England had begun as a practical protest against the feudal system. While the feudal laws or customs still prevailed, the greater proportion of the working-cla.s.ses were really little better than serfs at the absolute control of their feudal lords and masters. The comparatively small proportion of men who formed the trading cla.s.s of the community found themselves compelled to devise some kind of arrangement for the security of themselves, their traffic, and their property against the dominion of the ruling cla.s.s. It was practically impossible that a mere serf could devote his energies to a craft or trade with any hope of independence for himself or any chance of contributing to the prosperity of his working and trading neighbors.

The trading, manufacturing, and commercial cla.s.ses in each locality began to form themselves into groups, or what might be called guilds, of their own, with the object of common protection, in order to secure an opening for their traffic and their industry, and for the preservation of the earnings and the profits which came of their skill and energy. These trading groups a.s.serted for themselves their right to free action in all that regarded the regulation of their work and the secure disposal of their profits, and thus they became what might be called governing bodies in each separate locality. One common principle of these governing bodies was that no one should be allowed to become a craftsman or trader in any district if he were a serf, and they claimed, and gradually came to maintain, the right to invest others with the t.i.tle and privileges of freemen. This right of freemans.h.i.+p soon became hereditary, and the male children of a freeman were to be freemen themselves. In many communities the man who married a freeman's daughter acquired, if he had not been free before, the right of freemans.h.i.+p. No qualification of residence was necessary to {256} enable a man thus to become free. The self-organized community, whatever it might be, had the right of creating any stranger a freeman according as it thought fit.

[Sidenote: 1835--Reform of munic.i.p.al corporations]

We find this ancient system still in harmless and graceful ill.u.s.tration when a public man who has distinguished himself in the service of the country is honored by admission to the freedom of some ancient city.

But in the far-off days, when the system was in practical operation, the unlimited right of creating freemen came to mean that in many cities, towns, and localities of all descriptions a number of outsiders who had no connection by residence, property, or local interest of any kind with the district, and who were wholly irresponsible to the public opinion of the local community, had the right to interfere in the management of its affairs and to become members of its munic.i.p.al body.

For the local traders soon began to form themselves into councils or committees for the management of the local affairs, and, in fact, became what might be described as self-elected munic.i.p.al corporations; trustees who had a.s.sumed the trust for themselves; local law-makers whose term of office was lifelong, and against whose decision there was no available court of appeal. In some cases these local bodies actually arrogated to themselves the right of pa.s.sing penal laws, and trying cases and awarding punishments. The local munic.i.p.alities sometimes exercised the power of appointing Recorders to preside over their courts of law, and it happened in many instances that the munic.i.p.al body made no condition as to the Recorder being a member of any branch of the legal profession. It is hardly necessary to point out some of the inevitable consequences of such a system. The munic.i.p.al bodies voted what salaries they pleased out of the local funds, and named according to their pleasure the persons to receive the salaries. They disposed of the corporate revenues in any way they thought fit--and, indeed, in many cases they claimed and annexed as corporate property possessions that had always, up to the time of the annexation, been supposed to belong to the public at large. They usurped for themselves all manner of privileges and {257} so-called rights, and, if they thought fit, offered them for purchase to the highest bidder. The whole governing body often consisted of a very small number of residents who had elected themselves to office, and as they had the power of making themselves very disagreeable to disputants they did not often find individuals public spirited enough to challenge their right of local control. It happened much more frequently that if any man were strong enough to make his opposition inconvenient or uncomfortable for the local rulers, they got over the trouble by prevailing on him to become one of themselves, to share their privileges and profits, and to strengthen their authority. A local magnate, the head of some great family, a peer of old descent, was often thus "n.o.bbled"--to use a modern colloquialism--and was allowed to make as many freemen as he pleased and to take whatever part he would in the control of munic.i.p.al affairs.

It would be superfluous to say that the munic.i.p.alities became a constantly working instrument in the hands of this or that political party. Wherever the Whigs or the Tories were strong, there the const.i.tuencies, such as they were, could always be placed at the absolute disposal of some local magnate. Even in the districts where there was but little actual corruption there was often the most extravagant waste of the public funds and public property, and the most utter neglect of all the ordinary ways of business and of economy. For a long time the increasing evils of the system had been attracting the attention and arousing the alarm of enlightened and public-spirited men all over the country, and of course when the great measure of reform had dealt with the political system, it was obvious that the reforming hand must before long touch the munic.i.p.al system as well. Shortly after the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill Lord Althorp had appointed a commission to inquire into the whole history, growth, and working of the munic.i.p.al corporations, and the report had brought out an immense amount of systematized information on which the Liberal statesmen, now once again in office, were determined to act. Lord Melbourne intrusted the task of {258} preparing and conducting through the House of Commons a measure for this purpose to the capable hands of Lord John Russell, who was now the leader of the Government in that House. Lord John Russell's measure was, in fact, the foundation of the whole munic.i.p.al system which we see spread over the country in our times. It proposed to begin by abolis.h.i.+ng altogether the freeman system and placing the election of local governing bodies in the hands of residents who paid a certain amount of taxation. In fact, it made the munic.i.p.al bodies representative in just the same sense as the Parliamentary const.i.tuencies had been made representative by the Reform Act. It remodelled altogether the local law courts and legal arrangements of the munic.i.p.alities, and ordered that the appointment of Recorders should be in the hands of the Crown, that each Recorder was to be a barrister of a certain standing, and that a Recorder should be nominated for every borough which undertook to provide a suitable salary for the occupant of the office. Provision was also made for the proper management of charitable trusts and funds.

[Sidenote: 1835--The Munic.i.p.al Reform Bill]

The measure was to apply to 183 boroughs, not including the metropolis, with an average of 11,000 persons to each borough. Some of the larger boroughs were to be divided into wards, and in most cases the intention of the measure was that the boundaries of the Parliamentary borough should be the boundaries of the munic.i.p.al borough as well. The governing body of each munic.i.p.ality was to consist of a Mayor and Councillors, the Councillors to be elected by resident ratepayers. It was proposed that the rights of living freemen were to be maintained, but as each life lapsed the right was to be extinguished, and thus the whole freeman system was to die out and all exclusive trading privileges were to be abolished. The Bill, as introduced by Lord John Russell, only applied to England and Wales; but O'Connell demanded that Ireland should also be included in the reform, and it was finally agreed that a Bill of the same nature should be brought in for Ireland, and that arrangements should be made with the Scottish representatives to have the provisions of the {259} measure applied also to Scotland so far as might be consistent with the usages and the desire of the Scottish people.

Sir Robert Peel did not offer any direct opposition to the measure, although he criticised it severely enough in some of its provisions.