THE MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF LORD MACAULAY. 

Lord Macaulay's Speeches

By Thomas Babington Macaulay

VOLUME IV. 

LORD MACAULAY'S SPEECHES. 

 TO HENRY, MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE

 THESE SPEECHES ARE DEDICATED BY HIS GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE FRIEND

 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

PREFACE. 

It was most reluctantly that I determined to suspend, during the lastautumn, a work which is the business and the pleasure of my life, in order to prepare these Speeches for publication; and it is mostreluctantly that I now give them to the world. Even if I estimated theiroratorical merit much more highly than I do, I should not willingly haverevived, in the quiet times in which we are so happy as to live, thememory of those fierce contentions in which too many years of my publiclife were passed. Many expressions which, when society was convulsedby political dissensions, and when the foundations of government wereshaking, were heard by an excited audience with sympathy and applause, may, now that the passions of all parties have subsided, be thoughtintemperate and acrimonious. It was especially painful to me to findmyself under the necessity of recalling to my own recollection, and tothe recollection of others, the keen encounters which took place betweenthe late Sir Robert Peel and myself. Some parts of the conduct of thateminent man I must always think deserving of serious blame. But, on acalm review of his long and chequered public life, I acknowledge, withsincere pleasure, that his faults were much more than redeemed by greatvirtues, great sacrifices, and great services. My political hostility tohim was never in the smallest degree tainted by personal ill-will. Afterhis fall from power a cordial reconciliation took place between us: Iadmired the wisdom, the moderation, the disinterested patriotism, whichhe invariably showed during the last and best years of his life; Ilamented his untimely death, as both a private and a public calamity;and I earnestly wished that the sharp words which had sometimes beenexchanged between us might be forgotten. 

Unhappily an act, for which the law affords no redress, but which Ihave no hesitation in pronouncing to be a gross injury to me and a grossfraud on the public, has compelled me to do what I should never havedone willingly. A bookseller, named Vizetelly, who seems to aspire tothat sort of distinction which Curll enjoyed a hundred and twenty yearsago, thought fit, without asking my consent, without even giving me anynotice, to announce an edition of my Speeches, and was not ashamed totell the world in his advertisement that he published them by speciallicense. When the book appeared, I found that it contained fifty-sixspeeches, said to have been delivered by me in the House of Commons. Ofthese speeches a few were reprinted from reports which I had correctedfor the Mirror of Parliament or the Parliamentary Debates, and weretherefore, with the exception of some errors of the pen and the press, correctly given. The rest bear scarcely the faintest resemblance tothe speeches which I really made. The substance of what I saidis perpetually misrepresented. The connection of the arguments isaltogether lost. Extravagant blunders are put into my mouth in almostevery page. An editor who was not grossly ignorant would have perceivedthat no person to whom the House of Commons would listen could possiblyhave been guilty of such blunders. An editor who had the smallestregard for truth, or for the fame of the person whose speeches he hadundertaken to publish, would have had recourse to the various sources ofinformation which were readily accessible, and, by collating them, wouldhave produced a book which would at least have contained no absolutenonsense. But I have unfortunately had an editor whose only object wasto make a few pounds, and who was willing to sacrifice to that object myreputation and his own. He took the very worst report extant, comparedit with no other report, removed no blemish however obvious or howeverludicrous, gave to the world some hundreds of pages utterly contemptibleboth in matter and manner, and prefixed my name to them. The least thathe should have done was to consult the files of The Times newspaper. I have frequently done so, when I have noticed in his book any passagemore than ordinarily absurd; and I have almost invariably found thatin The Times newspaper, my meaning had been correctly reported, thoughoften in words different from those which I had used. 

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

Mr Vizetelly makes me say that the principle of our Statutes ofLimitation was to be found in the legislation of the Mexicans andPeruvians. That is a matter about which, as I know nothing, I certainlysaid nothing. Neither in The Times nor in the Unitarian report is thereanything about Mexico or Peru. 

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

Mr Vizetelly then represents me as giving the House of Commons some veryextraordinary information about both the Calvinistic and the ArminianMethodists. He makes me say that Whitfield held and taught that theconnection between Church and State was sinful. Whitfield never heldor taught any such thing; nor was I so grossly ignorant of the life andcharacter of that remarkable man as to impute to him a doctrine which hewould have abhorred. Here again, both in The Times and in the Unitarianreport, the substance of what I said is correctly given. 

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

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

I cannot permit myself to be exhibited, in this ridiculous and degradingmanner, for the profit of an unprincipled man. I therefore unwillingly, and in mere self-defence, give this volume to the public. I haveselected, to the best of my judgment, from among my speeches, thosewhich are the least unworthy to be preserved. Nine of them werecorrected by me while they were still fresh in my memory, and appearalmost word for word as they were spoken. They are the speech of thesecond of March 1831, the speech of the twentieth of September 1831, the speech of the tenth of October 1831, the speech of the sixteenth ofDecember 1831, the speech on the Anatomy Bill, the speech on the IndiaBill, the speech on Serjeant Talfourd's Copyright Bill, the speech onthe Sugar Duties, and the speech on the Irish Church. The substance ofthe remaining speeches I have given with perfect ingenuousness. I havenot made alterations for the purpose of saving my own reputation eitherfor consistency or for foresight. I have not softened down the strongterms in which I formerly expressed opinions which time and thought mayhave modified; nor have I retouched my predictions in order to make themcorrespond with subsequent events. Had I represented myself as speakingin 1831, in 1840, or in 1845, as I should speak in 1853, I should havedeprived my book of its chief value. This volume is now at least astrictly honest record of opinions and reasonings which were heardwith favour by a large part of the Commons of England at some importantconjunctures; and such a record, however low it may stand in theestimation of the literary critic, cannot but be of use to thehistorian. 

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

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

CONTENTS. 

Parliamentary Reform. (March 2, 1831)

Parliamentary Reform. (July 5, 1831)

Parliamentary Reform. (September 20, 1831)

Parliamentary Reform. (October 10, 1831)

Parliamentary Reform. (December 16, 1831)

Anatomy Bill. (February 27, 1832)

Parliamentary Reform. (February 28, 1832)

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

Jewish Disabilities. (April 17, 1833)

Government of India. (July 10, 1833)

Edinburgh Election, 1839. (May 29, 1839)

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

War with China. (April 7, 1840)

Copyright. (February 5, 1841)

Copyright. (April 6, 1842)

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

The Gates of Somnauth. (March 9, 1843)

The State of Ireland. (February 19, 1844)

Dissenters' Chapels Bill. (June 6, 1844)

The Sugar Duties. (February 26, 1845)

Maynooth. (April 14, 1845)

The Church of Ireland. (April 23, 1845)

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

Corn Laws. (December 2, 1845)

The Ten Hours Bill. (May 22, 1846)

The Literature of Britain. (November 4, 1846)

Education. (April 19, 1847)

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

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

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

SPEECHES, ETC. 

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. (MARCH 2, 1831) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OFCOMMONS ON THE 2D OF MARCH, 1831. 

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

It is a circumstance, Sir, of happy augury for the motion beforethe House, that almost all those who have opposed it have declaredthemselves hostile on principle to Parliamentary Reform. Two Members, I think, have confessed that, though they disapprove of the plan nowsubmitted to us, they are forced to admit the necessity of a change inthe Representative system. Yet even those gentleman have used, as far asI have observed, no arguments which would not apply as strongly to themost moderate change as to that which has been proposed by His Majesty'sGovernment. I say, Sir, that I consider this as a circumstance of happyaugury. For what I feared was, not the opposition of those who areaverse to all Reform, but the disunion of reformers. I knew that, duringthree months, every reformer had been employed in conjecturing what theplan of the Government would be. I knew that every reformer had imaginedin his own mind a scheme differing doubtless in some points from thatwhich my noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, has developed. Ifelt therefore great apprehension that one person would be dissatisfiedwith one part of the bill, that another person would be dissatisfiedwith another part, and that thus our whole strength would be wasted ininternal dissensions. That apprehension is now at an end. I have seenwith delight the perfect concord which prevails among all who deservethe name of reformers in this House; and I trust that I may consider itas an omen of the concord which will prevail among reformers throughoutthe country. I will not, Sir, at present express any opinion as to thedetails of the bill; but, having during the last twenty-four hours giventhe most diligent consideration to its general principles, I have nohesitation in pronouncing it a wise, noble, and comprehensive measure, skilfully framed for the healing of great distempers, for the securingat once of the public liberties, and of the public repose, and for thereconciling and knitting together of all the orders of the State. 

The honourable Baronet who has just sat down (Sir John Walsh. ), hastold us, that the Ministers have attempted to unite two inconsistentprinciples in one abortive measure. Those were his very words. Hethinks, if I understand him rightly, that we ought either to leavethe representative system such as it is, or to make it perfectlysymmetrical. I think, Sir, that the Ministers would have acted unwiselyif they had taken either course. Their principle is plain, rational, andconsistent. It is this, to admit the middle class to a large anddirect share in the representation, without any violent shock to theinstitutions of our country. I understand those cheers: but surely thegentlemen who utter them will allow that the change which will be madein our institutions by this bill is far less violent than that which, according to the honourable Baronet, ought to be made if we make anyReform at all. I praise the Ministers for not attempting, at the presenttime, to make the representation uniform. I praise them for not effacingthe old distinction between the towns and the counties, and for notassigning Members to districts, according to the American practice, bythe Rule of Three. The Government has, in my opinion, done all that wasnecessary for the removing of a great practical evil, and no more thanwas necessary. 

I consider this, Sir, as a practical question. I rest my opinion onno general theory of government. I distrust all general theories ofgovernment. I will not positively say, that there is any form of politywhich may not, in some conceivable circumstances, be the best possible. I believe that there are societies in which every man may safely beadmitted to vote. Gentlemen may cheer, but such is my opinion. I say, Sir, that there are countries in which the condition of the labouringclasses is such that they may safely be intrusted with the right ofelecting Members of the Legislature. If the labourers of England werein that state in which I, from my soul, wish to see them, if employmentwere always plentiful, wages always high, food always cheap, if a largefamily were considered not as an encumbrance but as a blessing, theprincipal objections to Universal Suffrage would, I think, be removed. Universal Suffrage exists in the United States, without producing anyvery frightful consequences; and I do not believe that the people ofthose States, or of any part of the world, are in any good qualitynaturally superior to our own countrymen. But, unhappily, the labouringclasses in England, and in all old countries, are occasionally in astate of great distress. Some of the causes of this distress are, Ifear, beyond the control of the Government. We know what effect distressproduces, even on people more intelligent than the great body of thelabouring classes can possibly be. We know that it makes even wise menirritable, unreasonable, credulous, eager for immediate relief, heedlessof remote consequences. There is no quackery in medicine, religion, orpolitics, which may not impose even on a powerful mind, when that mindhas been disordered by pain or fear. It is therefore no reflectionon the poorer class of Englishmen, who are not, and who cannot in thenature of things be, highly educated, to say that distress produces onthem its natural effects, those effects which it would produce on theAmericans, or on any other people, that it blinds their judgment, thatit inflames their passions, that it makes them prone to believe thosewho flatter them, and to distrust those who would serve them. For thesake, therefore, of the whole society, for the sake of the labouringclasses themselves, I hold it to be clearly expedient that, in acountry like this, the right of suffrage should depend on a pecuniaryqualification. 

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

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

To say that such a system is ancient, is no defence. My honourablefriend, the Member for the University of Oxford (Sir Robert HarryInglis. ), challenges us to show that the Constitution was ever betterthan it is. Sir, we are legislators, not antiquaries. The question forus is, not whether the Constitution was better formerly, but whether wecan make it better now. In fact, however, the system was not in ancienttimes by any means so absurd as it is in our age. One noble Lord (LordStormont. ) has to-night told us that the town of Aldborough, which herepresents, was not larger in the time of Edward the First than it is atpresent. The line of its walls, he assures us, may still be traced. Itis now built up to that line. He argues, therefore, that as the foundersof our representative institutions gave members to Aldborough when itwas as small as it now is, those who would disfranchise it on accountof its smallness have no right to say that they are recurring to theoriginal principle of our representative institutions. But does thenoble Lord remember the change which has taken place in the countryduring the last five centuries? Does he remember how much England hasgrown in population, while Aldborough has been standing still? Doeshe consider, that in the time of Edward the First, the kingdom did notcontain two millions of inhabitants? It now contains nearly fourteenmillions. A hamlet of the present day would have been a town of someimportance in the time of our early Parliaments. Aldborough may beabsolutely as considerable a place as ever. But compared with thekingdom, it is much less considerable, by the noble Lord's own showing, than when it first elected burgesses. My honourable friend, the Memberfor the University of Oxford, has collected numerous instances of thetyranny which the kings and nobles anciently exercised, both over thisHouse and over the electors. It is not strange that, in timeswhen nothing was held sacred, the rights of the people, and of therepresentatives of the people, should not have been held sacred. Theproceedings which my honourable friend has mentioned, no more provethat, by the ancient constitution of the realm, this House ought to bea tool of the king and of the aristocracy, than the Benevolences and theShipmoney prove their own legality, or than those unjustifiable arrestswhich took place long after the ratification of the great Charterand even after the Petition of Right, prove that the subject was notanciently entitled to his personal liberty. We talk of the wisdom ofour ancestors: and in one respect at least they were wiser than we. Theylegislated for their own times. They looked at the England which wasbefore them. They did not think it necessary to give twice as manyMembers to York as they gave to London, because York had been thecapital of Britain in the time of Constantius Chlorus; and they wouldhave been amazed indeed if they had foreseen, that a city of more thana hundred thousand inhabitants would be left without Representatives inthe nineteenth century, merely because it stood on ground which inthe thirteenth century had been occupied by a few huts. They frameda representative system, which, though not without defects andirregularities, was well adapted to the state of England in their time. But a great revolution took place. The character of the old corporationschanged. New forms of property came into existence. New portions ofsociety rose into importance. There were in our rural districts richcultivators, who were not freeholders. There were in our capital richtraders, who were not liverymen. Towns shrank into villages. Villagesswelled into cities larger than the London of the Plantagenets. Unhappily while the natural growth of society went on, the artificialpolity continued unchanged. The ancient form of the representationremained; and precisely because the form remained, the spirit departed. Then came that pressure almost to bursting, the new wine in the oldbottles, the new society under the old institutions. It is now time forus to pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, notby superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances, did, but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done. Allhistory is full of revolutions, produced by causes similar to thosewhich are now operating in England. A portion of the community which hadbeen of no account expands and becomes strong. It demands a place in thesystem, suited, not to its former weakness, but to its present power. If this is granted, all is well. If this is refused, then comesthe struggle between the young energy of one class and the ancientprivileges of another. Such was the struggle between the Plebeians andthe Patricians of Rome. Such was the struggle of the Italian allies foradmission to the full rights of Roman citizens. Such was the struggleof our North American colonies against the mother country. Such wasthe struggle which the Third Estate of France maintained against thearistocracy of birth. Such was the struggle which the Roman Catholicsof Ireland maintained against the aristocracy of creed. Such is thestruggle which the free people of colour in Jamaica are now maintainingagainst the aristocracy of skin. Such, finally, is the struggle whichthe middle classes in England are maintaining against an aristocracyof mere locality, against an aristocracy the principle of which is toinvest a hundred drunken potwallopers in one place, or the owner ofa ruined hovel in another, with powers which are withheld from citiesrenowned to the furthest ends of the earth, for the marvels of theirwealth and of their industry. 

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

If it be said that there is an evil in change as change, I answer thatthere is also an evil in discontent as discontent. This, indeed, is thestrongest part of our case. It is said that the system works well. Ideny it. I deny that a system works well, which the people regardwith aversion. We may say here, that it is a good system and a perfectsystem. But if any man were to say so to any six hundred and fifty-eightrespectable farmers or shopkeepers, chosen by lot in any part ofEngland, he would be hooted down, and laughed to scorn. Are these thefeelings with which any part of the government ought to be regarded?Above all, are these the feelings with which the popular branch ofthe legislature ought to be regarded? It is almost as essential to theutility of a House of Commons, that it should possess the confidence ofthe people, as that it should deserve that confidence. Unfortunately, that which is in theory the popular part of our government, is inpractice the unpopular part. Who wishes to dethrone the King? Who wishesto turn the Lords out of their House? Here and there a crazy radical, whom the boys in the street point at as he walks along. Who wishes toalter the constitution of this House? The whole people. It is naturalthat it should be so. The House of Commons is, in the language of MrBurke, a check, not on the people, but for the people. While that checkis efficient, there is no reason to fear that the King or the nobleswill oppress the people. But if the check requires checking, how is itto be checked? If the salt shall lose its savour, wherewith shall weseason it? The distrust with which the nation regards this House maybe unjust. But what then? Can you remove that distrust? That it existscannot be denied. That it is an evil cannot be denied. That it is anincreasing evil cannot be denied. One gentleman tells us that it hasbeen produced by the late events in France and Belgium; another, thatit is the effect of seditious works which have lately been published. If this feeling be of origin so recent, I have read history to littlepurpose. Sir, this alarming discontent is not the growth of a day or ofa year. If there be any symptoms by which it is possible to distinguishthe chronic diseases of the body politic from its passing inflammations, all those symptoms exist in the present case. The taint has beengradually becoming more extensive and more malignant, through the wholelifetime of two generations. We have tried anodynes. We have tried crueloperations. What are we to try now? Who flatters himself that he canturn this feeling back? Does there remain any argument which escaped thecomprehensive intellect of Mr Burke, or the subtlety of Mr Windham? Doesthere remain any species of coercion which was not tried by Mr Pitt andby Lord Londonderry? We have had laws. We have had blood. New treasonshave been created. The Press has been shackled. The Habeas Corpus Acthas been suspended. Public meetings have been prohibited. The event hasproved that these expedients were mere palliatives. You are at the endof your palliatives. The evil remains. It is more formidable than ever. What is to be done?

Under such circumstances, a great plan of reconciliation, prepared bythe Ministers of the Crown, has been brought before us in a manner whichgives additional lustre to a noble name, inseparably associated duringtwo centuries with the dearest liberties of the English people. I willnot say, that this plan is in all its details precisely such as I mightwish it to be; but it is founded on a great and a sound principle. Ittakes away a vast power from a few. It distributes that power throughthe great mass of the middle order. Every man, therefore, who thinks asI think is bound to stand firmly by Ministers who are resolved tostand or fall with this measure. Were I one of them, I would sooner, infinitely sooner, fall with such a measure than stand by any othermeans that ever supported a Cabinet. 

My honourable friend, the Member for the University of Oxford, tells us, that if we pass this law, England will soon be a republic. The reformedHouse of Commons will, according to him, before it has sate ten years, depose the King, and expel the Lords from their House. Sir, if myhonourable friend could prove this, he would have succeeded in bringingan argument for democracy, infinitely stronger than any that is to befound in the works of Paine. My honourable friend's proposition is infact this: that our monarchical and aristocratical institutions have nohold on the public mind of England; that these institutions are regardedwith aversion by a decided majority of the middle class. This, Sir, Isay, is plainly deducible from his proposition; for he tells us that theRepresentatives of the middle class will inevitably abolish royalty andnobility within ten years: and there is surely no reason to think thatthe Representatives of the middle class will be more inclined to ademocratic revolution than their constituents. Now, Sir, if I wereconvinced that the great body of the middle class in England look withaversion on monarchy and aristocracy, I should be forced, much againstmy will, to come to this conclusion, that monarchical and aristocraticalinstitutions are unsuited to my country. Monarchy and aristocracy, valuable and useful as I think them, are still valuable and useful asmeans, and not as ends. The end of government is the happiness ofthe people: and I do not conceive that, in a country like this, thehappiness of the people can be promoted by a form of government in whichthe middle classes place no confidence, and which exists only becausethe middle classes have no organ by which to make their sentimentsknown. But, Sir, I am fully convinced that the middle classes sincerelywish to uphold the Royal prerogatives and the constitutional rights ofthe Peers. What facts does my honourable friend produce in support ofhis opinion? One fact only; and that a fact which has absolutely nothingto do with the question. The effect of this Reform, he tells us, wouldbe to make the House of Commons allpowerful. It was allpowerful oncebefore, in the beginning of 1649. Then it cut off the head of the King, and abolished the House of Peers. Therefore, if it again has the supremepower, it will act in the same manner. Now, Sir, it was not the House ofCommons that cut off the head of Charles the First; nor was the Houseof Commons then allpowerful. It had been greatly reduced in numbers bysuccessive expulsions. It was under the absolute dominion of the army. Amajority of the House was willing to take the terms offered by the King. The soldiers turned out the majority; and the minority, not a sixth partof the whole House, passed those votes of which my honourable friendspeaks, votes of which the middle classes disapproved then, and of whichthey disapprove still. 

My honourable friend, and almost all the gentlemen who have taken thesame side with him in this Debate, have dwelt much on the utility ofclose and rotten boroughs. It is by means of such boroughs, they tellus, that the ablest men have been introduced into Parliament. It istrue that many distinguished persons have represented places of thisdescription. But, Sir, we must judge of a form of government by itsgeneral tendency, not by happy accidents. Every form of government hasits happy accidents. Despotism has its happy accidents. Yet we are notdisposed to abolish all constitutional checks, to place an absolutemaster over us, and to take our chance whether he may be a Caligula ora Marcus Aurelius. In whatever way the House of Commons may be chosen, some able men will be chosen in that way who would not be chosen in anyother way. If there were a law that the hundred tallest men in Englandshould be Members of Parliament, there would probably be some able menamong those who would come into the House by virtue of this law. If thehundred persons whose names stand first in the alphabetical list of theCourt Guide were made Members of Parliament, there would probably beable men among them. We read in ancient history, that a very able kingwas elected by the neighing of his horse; but we shall scarcely, Ithink, adopt this mode of election. In one of the most celebratedrepublics of antiquity, Athens, Senators and Magistrates were chosen bylot; and sometimes the lot fell fortunately. Once, for example, Socrateswas in office. A cruel and unjust proposition was made by a demagogue. Socrates resisted it at the hazard of his own life. There is no event inGrecian history more interesting than that memorable resistance. Yet whowould have officers appointed by lot, because the accident of the lotmay have given to a great and good man a power which he would probablynever have attained in any other way? We must judge, as I said, bythe general tendency of a system. No person can doubt that a House ofCommons chosen freely by the middle classes, will contain many very ablemen. I do not say, that precisely the same able men who would findtheir way into the present House of Commons will find their way intothe reformed House: but that is not the question. No particular manis necessary to the State. We may depend on it that, if we provide thecountry with popular institutions, those institutions will provide itwith great men. 

There is another objection, which, I think, was first raised by thehonourable and learned Member for Newport. (Mr Horace Twiss. ) He tellsus that the elective franchise is property; that to take it away froma man who has not been judicially convicted of malpractices is robbery;that no crime is proved against the voters in the close boroughs; thatno crime is even imputed to them in the preamble of the bill; and thattherefore to disfranchise them without compensation would be an act ofrevolutionary tyranny. The honourable and learned gentleman has comparedthe conduct of the present Ministers to that of those odious tools ofpower, who, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, seizedthe charters of the Whig corporations. Now, there was another precedent, which I wonder that he did not recollect, both because it is much morenearly in point than that to which he referred, and because my noblefriend, the Paymaster of the Forces, had previously alluded to it. Ifthe elective franchise is property, if to disfranchise voters without acrime proved, or a compensation given, be robbery, was there ever suchan act of robbery as the disfranchising of the Irish forty-shillingfreeholders? Was any pecuniary compensation given to them? Is itdeclared in the preamble of the bill which took away their franchise, that they had been convicted of any offence? Was any judicial inquiryinstituted into their conduct? Were they even accused of any crime? Orif you say that it was a crime in the electors of Clare to vote forthe honourable and learned gentleman who now represents the county ofWaterford, was a Protestant freeholder in Louth to be punished forthe crime of a Catholic freeholder in Clare? If the principle of thehonourable and learned Member for Newport be sound, the franchise of theIrish peasant was property. That franchise the Ministers under whom thehonourable and learned Member held office did not scruple to take away. Will he accuse those Ministers of robbery? If not, how can he bring suchan accusation against their successors?

Every gentleman, I think, who has spoken from the other side of theHouse, has alluded to the opinions which some of His Majesty's Ministersformerly entertained on the subject of Reform. It would be officious inme, Sir, to undertake the defence of gentlemen who are so well able todefend themselves. I will only say that, in my opinion, the country willnot think worse either of their capacity or of their patriotism, becausethey have shown that they can profit by experience, because they havelearned to see the folly of delaying inevitable changes. There areothers who ought to have learned the same lesson. I say, Sir, that thereare those who, I should have thought, must have had enough to last themall their lives of that humiliation which follows obstinate and boastfulresistance to changes rendered necessary by the progress of society, andby the development of the human mind. Is it possible that those personscan wish again to occupy a position which can neither be defended norsurrendered with honour? I well remember, Sir, a certain evening in themonth of May, 1827. I had not then the honour of a seat in this House;but I was an attentive observer of its proceedings. The right honourableBaronet opposite (Sir Robert Peel), of whom personally I desire to speakwith that high respect which I feel for his talents and his character, but of whose public conduct I must speak with the sincerity requiredby my public duty, was then, as he is now, out of office. He had justresigned the seals of the Home Department, because he conceived that therecent ministerial arrangements had been too favourable to the Catholicclaims. He rose to ask whether it was the intention of the new Cabinetto repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, and to reform the Parliament. He bound up, I well remember, those two questions together; and hedeclared that, if the Ministers should either attempt to repeal theTest and Corporation Acts, or bring forward a measure of ParliamentaryReform, he should think it his duty to oppose them to the utmost. Sincethat declaration was made four years have elapsed; and what is now thestate of the three questions which then chiefly agitated the minds ofmen? What is become of the Test and Corporation Acts? They are repealed. By whom? By the right honourable Baronet. What has become of theCatholic disabilities? They are removed. By whom? By the righthonourable Baronet. The question of Parliamentary Reform is stillbehind. But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the import, do most clearly indicate that unless that question also be speedilysettled, property, and order, and all the institutions of this greatmonarchy, will be exposed to fearful peril. Is it possible thatgentlemen long versed in high political affairs cannot read these signs?Is it possible that they can really believe that the Representativesystem of England, such as it now is, will last to the year 1860? Ifnot, for what would they have us wait? Would they have us wait merelythat we may show to all the world how little we have profited by our ownrecent experience?--Would they have us wait, that we may once again hitthe exact point where we can neither refuse with authority, norconcede with grace? Would they have us wait, that the numbers of thediscontented party may become larger, its demands higher, its feelingsmore acrimonious, its organisation more complete? Would they have uswait till the whole tragicomedy of 1827 has been acted over again?till they have been brought into office by a cry of 'No Reform, ' to bereformers, as they were once before brought into office by a cry of'No Popery, ' to be emancipators? Have they obliterated from theirminds--gladly, perhaps, would some among them obliterate from theirminds--the transactions of that year? And have they forgotten all thetransactions of the succeeding year? Have they forgotten how the spiritof liberty in Ireland, debarred from its natural outlet, found a ventby forbidden passages? Have they forgotten how we were forced to indulgethe Catholics in all the license of rebels, merely because we choseto withhold from them the liberties of subjects? Do they wait forassociations more formidable than that of the Corn Exchange, forcontributions larger than the Rent, for agitators more violent thanthose who, three years ago, divided with the King and the Parliamentthe sovereignty of Ireland? Do they wait for that last and most dreadfulparoxysm of popular rage, for that last and most cruel test of militaryfidelity? Let them wait, if their past experience shall induce them tothink that any high honour or any exquisite pleasure is to be obtainedby a policy like this. Let them wait, if this strange and fearfulinfatuation be indeed upon them, that they should not see with theireyes, or hear with their ears, or understand with their heart. But letus know our interest and our duty better. Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, thatyou may preserve. Now, therefore, while everything at home and abroadforebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against thespirit of the age, now, while the crash of the proudest throne of theContinent is still resounding in our ears, now, while the roof of aBritish palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir offorty kings, now, while we see on every side ancient institutionssubverted, and great societies dissolved, now, while the heart ofEngland is still sound, now, while old feelings and old associationsretain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away, now, in thisyour accepted time, now, in this your day of salvation, take counsel, not of prejudice, not of party spirit, not of the ignominious pride ofa fatal consistency, but of history, of reason, of the ages which arepast, of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in amanner worthy of the expectation with which this great debate has beenanticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property, divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save thegreatest, and fairest, and most highly civilised community that everexisted, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the richheritage of so many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this bill should be rejected, I pray to God thatnone of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their voteswith unavailing remorse, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion ofranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order. 

*****

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. (JULY 5, 1831) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OFCOMMONS ON THE 5TH OF JULY 1831. 

On Tuesday, the fourth of July, 1831, Lord John Russell moved the secondreading of the Bill to amend the representation of the people in Englandand Wales. Sir John Walsh, member for Sudbury, moved, as an amendment, that the bill should be read that day six months. After a discussion, which lasted three nights, the amendment was rejected by 367 votes to231, and the original motion was carried. The following Speech was madeon the second night of the debate. 

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

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

Sir, in the name of the institution of property, of that greatinstitution, for the sake of which, chiefly, all other institutionsexist, of that great institution to which we owe all knowledge, allcommerce, all industry, all civilisation, all that makes us to differfrom the tattooed savages of the Pacific Ocean, I protest against thepernicious practice of ascribing to that which is not property thesanctity which belongs to property alone. If, in order to save politicalabuses from that fate with which they are threatened by the publichatred, you claim for them the immunities of property, you must expectthat property will be regarded with some portion of the hatred which isexcited by political abuses. You bind up two very different things, inthe hope that they may stand together. Take heed that they do not falltogether. You tell the people that it is as unjust to disfranchise agreat lord's nomination borough as to confiscate his estate. Take heedthat you do not succeed in convincing weak and ignorant minds that thereis no more injustice in confiscating his estate than in disfranchisinghis borough. That this is no imaginary danger, your own speeches in thisdebate abundantly prove. You begin by ascribing to the franchises of OldSarum the sacredness of property; and you end, naturally enough, Imust own, by treating the rights of property as lightly as I should beinclined to treat the franchises of Old Sarum. When you are remindedthat you voted, only two years ago, for disfranchising great numbers offreeholders in Ireland, and when you are asked how, on the principleswhich you now profess, you can justify that vote, you answer verycoolly, "no doubt that was confiscation. No doubt we took away from thepeasants of Munster and Connaught, without giving them a farthing ofcompensation, that which was as much their property as their pigs ortheir frieze coats. But we did it for the public good. We were pressedby a great State necessity. " Sir, if that be an answer, we too may pleadthat we too have the public good in view, and that we are pressed by agreat State necessity. But I shall resort to no such plea. It fills mewith indignation and alarm to hear grave men avow what they own to bedownright robbery, and justify that robbery on the ground of politicalconvenience. No, Sir, there is one way, and only one way, in which thosegentlemen who voted for the disfranchising Act of 1829 can clear theirfame. Either they have no defence, or their defence must be this;that the elective franchise is not of the nature of property, and thattherefore disfranchisement is not spoliation. 

Having disposed, as I think, of the question of right, I come to thequestion of expediency. I listened, Sir, with much interest and pleasureto a noble Lord who spoke for the first time in this debate. (LordPorchester. ) But I must own that he did not succeed in convincing methat there is any real ground for the fears by which he is tormented. He gave us a history of France since the Restoration. He told us of theviolent ebbs and flows of public feeling in that country. He told usthat the revolutionary party was fast rising to ascendency while M. DeCazes was minister; that then came a violent reaction in favour of themonarchy and the priesthood; that then the revolutionary party againbecame dominant; that there had been a change of dynasty; and that theChamber of Peers had ceased to be a hereditary body. He then predicted, if I understood him rightly, that, if we pass this bill, we shallsuffer all that France has suffered; that we shall have violent contestsbetween extreme parties, a revolution, and an abolition of the House ofLords. I might, perhaps, dispute the accuracy of some parts of the nobleLord's narrative. But I deny that his narrative, accurate or inaccurate, is relevant. I deny that there is any analogy between the state ofFrance and the state of England. I deny that there is here anygreat party which answers either to the revolutionary or to thecounter-revolutionary party in France. I most emphatically deny thatthere is any resemblance in the character, and that there is likely tobe any resemblance in the fate, of the two Houses of Peers. I alwaysregarded the hereditary Chamber established by Louis the Eighteenthas an institution which could not last. It was not in harmony with thestate of property; it was not in harmony with the public feeling; ithad neither the strength which is derived from wealth, nor the strengthwhich is derived from prescription. It was despised as plebeian bythe ancient nobility. It was hated as patrician by the democrats. Itbelonged neither to the old France nor to the new France. It was a mereexotic transplanted from our island. Here it had struck its roots deep, and having stood during ages, was still green and vigorous. But itlanguished in the foreign soil and the foreign air, and was blowndown by the first storm. It will be no such easy task to uproot thearistocracy of England. 

With much more force, at least with much more plausibility, the nobleLord and several other members on the other side of the House haveargued against the proposed Reform on the ground that the existingsystem has worked well. How great a country, they say, is ours! Howeminent in wealth and knowledge, in arts and arms! How much admired! Howmuch envied! Is it possible to believe that we have become what we areunder a bad government! And, if we have a good government, why alterit? Now, Sir, I am very far from denying that England is great, andprosperous, and highly civilised. I am equally far from denying that sheowes much of her greatness, of her prosperity, and of her civilisationto her form of government. But is no nation ever to reform itsinstitutions because it has made great progress under thoseinstitutions? Why, Sir, the progress is the very thing which makes thereform absolutely necessary. The Czar Peter, we all know, did much forRussia. But for his rude genius and energy, that country might havestill been utterly barbarous. Yet would it be reasonable to say thatthe Russian people ought always, to the end of time, to be despoticallygoverned, because the Czar Peter was a despot? Let us remember that thegovernment and the society act and react on each other. Sometimesthe government is in advance of the society, and hurries the societyforward. So urged, the society gains on the government, comes up withthe government, outstrips the government, and begins to insist that thegovernment shall make more speed. If the government is wise, it willyield to that just and natural demand. The great cause of revolutionsis this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still. Thepeculiar happiness of England is that here, through many generations, the constitution has moved onward with the nation. Gentlemen have toldus, that the most illustrious foreigners have, in every age, spokenwith admiration of the English constitution. Comines, they say, in thefifteenth century, extolled the English constitution as the best in theworld. Montesquieu, in the eighteenth century, extolled it as the bestin the world. And would it not be madness in us to throw away whatsuch men thought the most precious of all our blessings? But was theconstitution which Montesquieu praised the same with the constitutionwhich Comines praised? No, Sir; if it had been so, Montesquieu neverwould have praised it. For how was it possible that a polity whichexactly suited the subjects of Edward the Fourth should have exactlysuited the subjects of George the Second? The English have, it is true, long been a great and a happy people. But they have been great and happybecause their history has been the history of a succession of timelyreforms. The Great Charter, the assembling of the first House ofCommons, the Petition of Right, the Declaration of Right, the Bill whichis now on our table, what are they all but steps in one great progress?To every one of those steps the same objections might have been madewhich we heard to-night, "You are better off than your neighbours are. You are better off than your fathers were. Why can you not leave wellalone?"

How copiously might a Jacobite orator have harangued on this topicin the Convention of 1688! "Why make a change of dynasty? Why troubleourselves to devise new securities for our laws and liberties? See whata nation we are. See how population and wealth have increased since whatyou call the good old times of Queen Elizabeth. You cannot deny that thecountry has been more prosperous under the kings of the House of Stuartthan under any of their predecessors. Keep that House, then, and bethankful. " Just such is the reasoning of the opponents of thisbill. They tell us that we are an ungrateful people, and that, underinstitutions from which we have derived inestimable benefits, we aremore discontented than the slaves of the Dey of Tripoli. Sir, if we hadbeen slaves of the Dey of Tripoli, we should have been too much sunkin intellectual and moral degradation to be capable of the rational andmanly discontent of freemen. It is precisely because our institutionsare so good that we are not perfectly contended with them; for they haveeducated us into a capacity for enjoying still better institutions. Thatthe English Government has generally been in advance of almost all othergovernments is true. But it is equally true that the English nation is, and has during some time been, in advance of the English Government. Oneplain proof of this is, that nothing is so ill made in our island asthe laws. In all those things which depend on the intelligence, theknowledge, the industry, the energy of individuals, or of voluntarycombinations of individuals, this country stands pre-eminent among allthe countries of the world, ancient and modern. But in those thingswhich it belongs to the State to direct, we have no such claim tosuperiority. Our fields are cultivated with a skill unknown elsewhere, with a skill which has extorted rich harvests from moors and morasses. Our houses are filled with conveniences which the kings of former timesmight have envied. Our bridges, our canals, our roads, our modes ofcommunication, fill every stranger with wonder. Nowhere are manufacturescarried to such perfection. Nowhere is so vast a mass of mechanicalpower collected. Nowhere does man exercise such a dominion over matter. These are the works of the nation. Compare them with the works of therulers of the nation. Look at the criminal law, at the civil law, at themodes of conveying lands, at the modes of conducting actions. It is bythese things that we must judge of our legislators, just as we judgeof our manufacturers by the cotton goods and the cutlery which theyproduce, just as we judge of our engineers by the suspension bridges, the tunnels, the steam carriages which they construct. Is, then, the machinery by which justice is administered framed with the sameexquisite skill which is found in other kinds of machinery? Can therebe a stronger contrast than that which exists between the beauty, thecompleteness, the speed, the precision with which every process isperformed in our factories, and the awkwardness, the rudeness, theslowness, the uncertainty of the apparatus by which offences arepunished and rights vindicated? Look at the series of penal statutes, the most bloody and the most inefficient in the world, at the puerilefictions which make every declaration and every plea unintelligible bothto plaintiff and defendant, at the mummery of fines and recoveries, atthe chaos of precedents, at the bottomless pit of Chancery. Surely wesee the barbarism of the thirteenth century and the highest civilisationof the nineteenth century side by side; and we see that the barbarismbelongs to the government, and the civilisation to the people. 

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

We have been told, indeed, that this is not the plan of Reform which thenation asked for. Be it so. But you cannot deny that it is the plan ofReform which the nation has accepted. That, though differing in manyrespects from what was asked, it has been accepted with transportsof joy and gratitude, is a decisive proof of the wisdom of timelyconcession. Never in the history of the world was there so signal anexample of that true statesmanship, which, at once animating and gentlycurbing the honest enthusiasm of millions, guides it safely and steadilyto a happy goal. It is not strange, that when men are refused what isreasonable, they should demand what is unreasonable. It is not strangethat, when they find that their opinion is contemned and neglected bythe Legislature, they should lend a too favourable ear to worthlessagitators. We have seen how discontent may be produced. We have seen, too, how it may be appeased. We have seen that the true source of thepower of demagogues is the obstinacy of rulers, and that a liberalGovernment makes a conservative people. Early in the last session, theFirst Minister of the Crown declared that he would consent to noReform; that he thought our representative system, just as it stood, themasterpiece of human wisdom; that, if he had to make it anew, he wouldmake it such as it was, with all its represented ruins and all itsunrepresented cities. What followed? Everything was tumult and panic. The funds fell. The streets were insecure. Men's hearts failed them forfear. We began to move our property into German investments and Americaninvestments. Such was the state of the public mind, that it was notthought safe to let the Sovereign pass from his palace to the Guildhallof his capital. What part of his kingdom is there in which His Majestynow needs any other guard than the affection of his loving subjects?There are, indeed, still malecontents; and they may be divided into twoclasses, the friends of corruption and the sowers of sedition. It isnatural that all who directly profit by abuses, and all who profit bythe disaffection which abuses excite, should be leagued together againsta bill which, by making the government pure, will make the nation loyal. There is, and always has been, a real alliance between the two extremeparties in this country. They play into each other's hands. They liveby each other. Neither would have any influence if the other were takenaway. The demagogue would have no audience but for the indignationexcited among the multitude by the insolence of the enemies of Reform:and the last hope of the enemies of Reform is in the uneasiness excitedamong all who have anything to lose by the ravings of the demagogue. I see, and glad I am to see, that the nation perfectly understands andjustly appreciates this coalition between those who hate all liberty andthose who hate all order. England has spoken, and spoken out. From hermost opulent seaports, from her manufacturing towns, from her capitaland its gigantic suburbs, from almost every one of her counties, hasgone forth a voice, answering in no doubtful or faltering accent to thattruly royal voice which appealed on the twenty-second of last April tothe sense of the nation. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But your great objection to this bill is that it will not be final. Iask you whether you think that any Reform Bill which you can frame willbe final? For my part I do believe that the settlement proposed by HisMajesty's Ministers will be final, in the only sense in which a wise manever uses that word. I believe that it will last during that timefor which alone we ought at present to think of legislating. Anothergeneration may find in the new representative system defects such as wefind in the old representative system. Civilisation will proceed. Wealthwill increase. Industry and trade will find out new seats. The samecauses which have turned so many villages into great towns, whichhave turned so many thousands of square miles of fir and heath intocornfields and orchards, will continue to operate. Who can say that ahundred years hence there may not be, on the shore of some desolateand silent bay in the Hebrides, another Liverpool, with its docks andwarehouses and endless forests of masts? Who can say that the hugechimneys of another Manchester may not rise in the wilds of Connemara?For our children we do not pretend to legislate. All that we can dofor them is to leave to them a memorable example of the manner in whichgreat reforms ought to be made. In the only sense, therefore, in whicha statesman ought to say that anything is final, I pronounce this billfinal. But in what sense will your bill be final? Suppose that you coulddefeat the Ministers, that you could displace them, that you couldform a Government, that you could obtain a majority in this House, what course would events take? There is no difficulty in foreseeingthe stages of the rapid progress downward. First we should have a mockreform; a Bassietlaw reform; a reform worthy of those politicians who, when a delinquent borough had forfeited its franchise, and when it wasnecessary for them to determine what they would do with two seatsin Parliament, deliberately gave those seats, not to Manchester orBirmingham or Leeds, not to Lancashire or Staffordshire or Devonshire, but to a constituent body studiously selected because it was not largeand because it was not independent; a reform worthy of those politicianswho, only twelve months ago, refused to give members to the threegreatest manufacturing towns in the world. We should have a reform whichwould produce all the evils and none of the benefits of change, whichwould take away from the representative system the foundation ofprescription, and yet would not substitute the surer foundation ofreason and public good. The people would be at once emboldened andexasperated; emboldened because they would see that they had frightenedthe Tories into making a pretence of reforming the Parliament; andexasperated because they would see that the Tory Reform was a merepretence. Then would come agitation, tumult, political associations, libels, inflammatory harangues. Coercion would only aggravate theevil. This is no age, this is no country, for the war of power againstopinion. Those Jacobin mountebanks, whom this bill would at once sendback to their native obscurity, would rise into fearful importance. Thelaw would be sometimes braved and sometimes evaded. In short, Englandwould soon be what Ireland was at the beginning of 1829. Then, atlength, as in 1829, would come the late and vain repentance. Then, Sir, amidst the generous cheers of the Whigs, who will be again occupyingtheir old seats on your left hand, and amidst the indignant murmurs ofthose stanch Tories who are now again trusting to be again betrayed, theright honourable Baronet opposite will rise from the Treasury Bench topropose that bill on which the hearts of the people are set. But willthat bill be then accepted with the delight and thankfulness with whichit was received last March? Remember Ireland. Remember how, in thatcountry, concessions too long delayed were at last received. That greatboon which in 1801, in 1813, in 1825, would have won the hearts ofmillions, given too late, and given from fear, only produced newclamours and new dangers. Is not one such lesson enough for onegeneration? A noble Lord opposite told us not to expect that this billwill have a conciliatory effect. Recollect, he said, how the Frencharistocracy surrendered their privileges in 1789, and how that surrenderwas requited. Recollect that Day of Sacrifices which was afterwardscalled the Day of Dupes. Sir, that day was afterwards called the Day ofDupes, not because it was the Day of Sacrifices, but because it wasthe Day of Sacrifices too long deferred. It was because the Frencharistocracy resisted reform in 1783, that they were unable to resistrevolution in 1789. It was because they clung too long to odiousexemptions and distinctions, that they were at last unable to servetheir lands, their mansions, their heads. They would not endure Turgot:and they had to endure Robespierre. 

I am far indeed from wishing that the Members of this House should beinfluenced by fear in the bad and unworthy sense of that word. Butthere is an honest and honourable fear, which well becomes those who areintrusted with the dearest interests of a great community; and to thatfear I am not ashamed to make an earnest appeal. It is very well to talkof confronting sedition boldly, and of enforcing the law against thosewho would disturb the public peace. No doubt a tumult caused by localand temporary irritation ought to be suppressed with promptitude andvigour. Such disturbances, for example, as those which Lord GeorgeGordon raised in 1780, should be instantly put down with the stronghand. But woe to the Government which cannot distinguish between anation and a mob! Woe to the Government which thinks that a great, asteady, a long continued movement of the public mind is to be stoppedlike a street riot! This error has been twice fatal to the great Houseof Bourbon. God be praised, our rulers have been wiser. The goldenopportunity which, if once suffered to escape, might never have beenretrieved, has been seized. Nothing, I firmly believe, can now preventthe passing of this noble law, this second Bill of Rights. ["Murmurs. "]Yes, I call it, and the nation calls it, and our posterity will longcall it, this second Bill of Rights, this Greater Charter of theLiberties of England. The year 1831 will, I trust, exhibit the firstexample of the manner in which it behoves a free and enlightened peopleto purify their polity from old and deeply seated abuses, withoutbloodshed, without violence, without rapine, all points freely debated, all the forms of senatorial deliberation punctiliously observed, industry and trade not for a moment interrupted, the authority of lawnot for a moment suspended. These are things of which we may well beproud. These are things which swell the heart up with a good hope forthe destinies of mankind. I cannot but anticipate a long series ofhappy years; of years during which a parental Government will be firmlysupported by a grateful nation: of years during which war, if war shouldbe inevitable, will find us an united people; of years pre-eminentlydistinguished by the progress of arts, by the improvement of laws, by the augmentation of the public resources, by the diminution of thepublic burdens, by all those victories of peace, in which, far more thanin any military successes, consists the true felicity of states, and thetrue glory of statesmen. With such hopes, Sir, and such feelings, I givemy cordial assent to the second reading of a bill which I consider asin itself deserving of the warmest approbation, and as indispensablynecessary, in the present temper of the public mind, to the repose ofthe country and to the stability of the throne. 

*****

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. (SEPTEMBER 20, 1831) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THEHOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 20TH OF SEPTEMBER 1831. 

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

It is not without great diffidence, Sir, that I rise to address you on asubject which has been nearly exhausted. Indeed, I should not have risenhad I not thought that, though the arguments on this question are forthe most part old, our situation at present is in a great measure new. At length the Reform Bill, having passed without vital injurythrough all the dangers which threatened it, during a long and minutediscussion, from the attacks of its enemies and from the dissensionsof its friends, comes before us for our final ratification, altered, indeed, in some of its details for the better, and in some for theworse, but in its great principles still the same bill which, on thefirst of March, was proposed to the late Parliament, the same bill whichwas received with joy and gratitude by the whole nation, the same billwhich, in an instant, took away the power of interested agitators, andunited in one firm body all the sects of sincere Reformers, the samebill which, at the late election, received the approbation of almostevery great constituent body in the empire. With a confidence whichdiscussion has only strengthened, with an assured hope of great publicblessings if the wish of the nation shall be gratified, with a deep andsolemn apprehension of great public calamities if that wish shall bedisappointed, I, for the last time, give my most hearty assent to thisnoble law, destined, I trust, to be the parent of many good laws, and, through a long series of years, to secure the repose and promote theprosperity of my country. 

When I say that I expect this bill to promote the prosperity of thecountry, I by no means intend to encourage those chimerical hopes whichthe honourable and learned Member for Rye (Mr Pemberton. ), who has somuch distinguished himself in this debate, has imputed to the Reformers. The people, he says, are for the bill, because they expect that it willimmediately relieve all their distresses. Sir, I believe that very fewof that large and respectable class which we are now about to admit toa share of political power entertain any such absurd expectation. Theyexpect relief, I doubt not; and I doubt not that they will find it:but sudden relief they are far too wise to expect. The bill, says thehonourable and learned gentleman, is good for nothing: it is merelytheoretical: it removes no real and sensible evil: it will not give thepeople more work, or higher wages, or cheaper bread. Undoubtedly, Sir, the bill will not immediately give all those things to the people. But will any institutions give them all those things? Do the presentinstitutions of the country secure to them those advantages? If we areto pronounce the Reform Bill good for nothing, because it will not atonce raise the nation from distress to prosperity, what are we to sayof that system under which the nation has been of late sinking fromprosperity into distress? The defect is not in the Reform Bill, but inthe very nature of government. On the physical condition of the greatbody of the people, government acts not as a specific, but as analternative. Its operation is powerful, indeed, and certain, but gradualand indirect. The business of government is not directly to make thepeople rich; and a government which attempts more than this is preciselythe government which is likely to perform less. Governments do not andcannot support the people. We have no miraculous powers: we have not therod of the Hebrew lawgiver: we cannot rain down bread on the multitudefrom Heaven: we cannot smite the rock and give them to drink. We cangive them only freedom to employ their industry to the best advantage, and security in the enjoyment of what their industry has acquired. Theseadvantages it is our duty to give at the smallest possible cost. Thediligence and forethought of individuals will thus have fair play; andit is only by the diligence and forethought of individuals that thecommunity can become prosperous. I am not aware that His Majesty'sMinisters, or any of the supporters of this bill, have encouraged thepeople to hope, that Reform will remove distress, in any other way thanby this indirect process. By this indirect process the bill will, Ifeel assured, conduce to the national prosperity. If it had beenpassed fifteen years ago, it would have saved us from our presentembarrassments. If we pass it now, it will gradually extricate us fromthem. It will secure to us a House of Commons, which, by preservingpeace, by destroying monopolies, by taking away unnecessary publicburthens, by judiciously distributing necessary public burthens, will, in the progress of time, greatly improve our condition. This it will do;and those who blame it for not doing more blame it for not doing whatno Constitution, no code of laws, ever did or ever will do; whatno legislator, who was not an ignorant and unprincipled quack, everventured to promise. 

But chimerical as are the hopes which the honourable and learned Memberfor Rye imputes to the people, they are not, I think, more chimericalthan the fears which he has himself avowed. Indeed, those very gentlemenwho are constantly telling us that we are taking a leap in the dark, that we pay no attention to the lessons of experience, that we are meretheorists, are themselves the despisers of experience, are themselvesthe mere theorists. They are terrified at the thought of admitting intoParliament members elected by ten pound householders. They have formedin their own imaginations a most frightful idea of these members. Myhonourable and learned friend, the Member for Cockermouth (Sir JamesScarlett. ), is certain that these members will take every opportunity ofpromoting the interests of the journeyman in opposition to those of thecapitalist. The honourable and learned Member for Rye is convincedthat none but persons who have strong local connections, will ever bereturned for such constituent bodies. My honourable friend, the Memberfor Thetford (Mr Alexander Baring. ), tells us, that none but moborators, men who are willing to pay the basest court to the multitude, will have any chance. Other speakers have gone still further, andhave described to us the future borough members as so many Marats andSanterres, low, fierce, desperate men, who will turn the House into abear-garden, and who will try to turn the monarchy into a republic, mereagitators, without honour, without sense, without education, without thefeelings or the manners of gentlemen. Whenever, during the course of thefatiguing discussions by which we have been so long occupied, there hasbeen a cry of "question, " or a noise at the bar, the orator who has beeninterrupted has remarked, that such proceedings will be quite in placein the Reformed Parliament, but that we ought to remember that the Houseof Commons is still an assembly of gentlemen. This, I say, is to set upmere theory, or rather mere prejudice, in opposition to long and ampleexperience. Are the gentlemen who talk thus ignorant that we havealready the means of judging what kind of men the ten pound householderswill send up to parliament? Are they ignorant that there are even nowlarge towns with very popular franchises, with franchises even moredemocratic than those which will be bestowed by the present bill?Ought they not, on their own principles, to look at the results ofthe experiments which have already been made, instead of predictingfrightful calamities at random? How do the facts which are before usagree with their theories? Nottingham is a city with a franchise evenmore democratic than that which this bill establishes. Does Nottinghamsend hither mere vulgar demagogues? It returns two distinguished men, one an advocate, the other a soldier, both unconnected with the town. Every man paying scot and lot has a vote at Leicester. This is a lowerfranchise than the ten pound franchise. Do we find that the Membersfor Leicester are the mere tools of the journeymen? I was at Leicesterduring the contest of 1826; and I recollect that the suffrages of thescot and lot voters were pretty equally divided between two candidates, neither of them connected with the place, neither of them a slave of themob, one a Tory Baronet from Derbyshire, the other a most respectableand excellent friend of mine, connected with the manufacturinginterest, and also an inhabitant of Derbyshire. Look at Norwich. Look atNorthampton, with a franchise more democratic than even the scot and lotfranchise. Northampton formerly returned Mr Perceval, and now returnsgentlemen of high respectability, gentlemen who have a great stake inthe prosperity and tranquillity of the country. Look at the metropolitandistricts. This is an a fortiori case. Nay it is--the expression, Ifear, is awkward--an a fortiori case at two removes. The ten poundhouseholders of the metropolis are persons in a lower station oflife than the ten pound householders of other towns. The scot and lotfranchise in the metropolis is again lower than the ten pound franchise. Yet have Westminster and Southwark been in the habit of sending usmembers of whom we have had reason to be ashamed, of whom we have nothad reason to be proud? I do not say that the inhabitants of Westminsterand Southwark have always expressed their political sentiments withproper moderation. That is not the question. The question is this: whatkind of men have they elected? The very principle of all Representativegovernment is, that men who do not judge well of public affairs may bequite competent to choose others who will judge better. Whom, then, haveWestminster and Southwark sent us during the last fifty years, yearsfull of great events, years of intense popular excitement? Take any oneof those nomination boroughs, the patrons of which have conscientiouslyendeavoured to send fit men into this House. Compare the Members forthat borough with the Members for Westminster and Southwark; and youwill have no doubt to which the preference is due. It is needless tomention Mr Fox, Mr Sheridan, Mr Tierney, Sir Samuel Romilly. Yet I mustpause at the name of Sir Samuel Romilly. Was he a mob orator? Was he aservile flatterer of the multitude? Sir, if he had any fault, ifthere was any blemish on that most serene and spotless character, thatcharacter which every public man, and especially every professionalman engaged in politics, ought to propose to himself as a model, itwas this, that he despised popularity too much and too visibly. Thehonourable Member for Thetford told us that the honourable and learnedMember for Rye, with all his talents, would have no chance of a seat inthe Reformed Parliament, for want of the qualifications which succeedon the hustings. Did Sir Samuel Romilly ever appear on the hustings ofWestminster? He never solicited one vote; he never showed himself to theelectors, till he had been returned at the head of the poll. Eventhen, as I have heard from one of his nearest relatives, it was withreluctance that he submitted to be chaired. He shrank from being madea show. He loved the people, and he served them; but Coriolanus himselfwas not less fit to canvass them. I will mention one other name, thatof a man of whom I have only a childish recollection, but who must havebeen intimately known to many of those who hear me, Mr Henry Thornton. He was a man eminently upright, honourable, and religious, a man ofstrong understanding, a man of great political knowledge; but, in allrespects, the very reverse of a mob orator. He was a man who would nothave yielded to what he considered as unreasonable clamour, I willnot say to save his seat, but to save his life. Yet he continued torepresent Southwark, Parliament after Parliament, for many years. Suchhas been the conduct of the scot and lot voters of the metropolis; andthere is clearly less reason to expect democratic violence from tenpound householders than from scot and lot householders; and from tenpound householders in the country towns than from ten pound householdersin London. Experience, I say, therefore, is on our side; and on the sideof our opponents nothing but mere conjecture and mere assertion. 

Sir, when this bill was first brought forward, I supported it, notonly on the ground of its intrinsic merits, but, also, because I wasconvinced that to reject it would be a course full of danger. I believethat the danger of that course is in no respect diminished. I believe, on the contrary, that it is increased. We are told that there is areaction. The warmth of the public feeling, it seems, has abated. Inthis story both the sections of the party opposed to Reform are agreed;those who hate Reform, because it will remove abuses, and those who hateit, because it will vert anarchy; those who wish to see the electingbody controlled by ejectments, and those who wish to see it controlledby riots. They must now, I think, be undeceived. They must have alreadydiscovered that the surest way to prevent a reaction is to talk aboutit, and that the enthusiasm of the people is at once rekindled by anyindiscreet mention of their seeming coolness. This, Sir, is not thefirst reaction which the sagacity of the Opposition has discovered sincethe Reform Bill was brought in. Every gentleman who sat in the lateParliament, every gentleman who, during the sitting of the lateParliament, paid attention to political speeches and publications, mustremember how, for some time before the debate on General Gascoyne'smotion, and during the debate on that motion, and down to the very dayof the dissolution, we were told that public feeling had cooled. Theright honourable Baronet, the member for Tamworth, told us so. All theliterary organs of the Opposition, from the Quarterly Review down to theMorning Post, told us so. All the Members of the Opposition with whomwe conversed in private told us so. I have in my eye a noble friend ofmine, who assured me, on the very night which preceded the dissolution, that the people had ceased to be zealous for the Ministerial plan, andthat we were more likely to lose than to gain by the elections. Theappeal was made to the people; and what was the result? What sign of areaction appeared among the Livery of London? What sign of a reactiondid the honourable Baronet who now represents Okehampton find among thefreeholders of Cornwall? (Sir Richard Vyvyan. ) How was it with the largerepresented towns? Had Liverpool cooled? or Bristol? or Leicester? orCoventry? or Nottingham? or Norwich? How was it with the great seats ofmanufacturing industry, Yorkshire, and Lancashire, and Staffordshire, and Warwickshire, and Cheshire? How was it with the agriculturaldistricts, Northumberland and Cumberland, Leicestershire andLincolnshire, Kent and Essex, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire? How was it with the strongholds ofaristocratical influence, Newark, and Stamford, and Hertford, and StAlban's? Never did any people display, within the limits prescribed bylaw, so generous a fervour, or so steadfast a determination, as thatvery people whose apparent languor had just before inspired the enemiesof Reform with a delusive hope. 

Such was the end of the reaction of April; and, if that lesson shall notprofit those to whom it was given, such and yet more signal will be theend of the reaction of September. The two cases are strictly analogous. In both cases the people were eager when they believed the bill to bein danger, and quiet when they believed it to be in security. During thethree or four weeks which followed the promulgation of the Ministerialplan, all was joy, and gratitude, and vigorous exertion. Everywheremeetings were held: everywhere resolutions were passed: from everyquarter were sent up petitions to this House, and addresses to theThrone: and then the nation, having given vent to its first feelings ofdelight, having clearly and strongly expressed its opinions, having seenthe principle of the bill adopted by the House of Commons on the secondreading, became composed, and awaited the result with a tranquillitywhich the Opposition mistook for indifference. All at once the aspect ofaffairs changed. General Gascoyne's amendment was carried: the bill wasagain in danger: exertions were again necessary. Then was it wellseen whether the calmness of the public mind was any indication ofindifference. The depth and sincerity of the prevailing sentiments wereproved, not by mere talking, but by actions, by votes, by sacrifices. Intimidation was defied: expenses were rejected: old ties were broken:the people struggled manfully: they triumphed gloriously: they placedthe bill in perfect security, as far as this house was concerned; andthey returned to their repose. They are now, as they were on the eve ofGeneral Gascoyne's motion, awaiting the issue of the deliberations ofParliament, without any indecent show of violence, but with anxiousinterest and immovable resolution. And because they are not exhibitingthat noisy and rapturous enthusiasm which is in its own naturetransient, because they are not as much excited as on the day when theplan of the Government was first made known to them, or on the day whenthe late Parliament was dissolved, because they do not go on week afterweek, hallooing, and holding meetings, and marching about with flags, and making bonfires, and illuminating their houses, we are again toldthat there is a reaction. To such a degree can men be deceived bytheir wishes, in spite of their own recent experience. Sir, there is noreaction; and there will be no reaction. All that has been said on thissubject convinces me only that those who are now, for the second time, raising this cry, know nothing of the crisis in which they are called onto act, or of the nation which they aspire to govern. All their opinionsrespecting this bill are founded on one great error. They imagine thatthe public feeling concerning Reform is a mere whim which sprang upsuddenly out of nothing, and which will as suddenly vanish into nothing. They, therefore, confidently expect a reaction. They are always lookingout for a reaction. Everything that they see, or that they hear, theyconstrue into a sign of the approach of this reaction. They resemble theman in Horace, who lies on the bank of the river, expecting that itwill every moment pass by and leave him a clear passage, not knowing thedepth and abundance of the fountain which feeds it, not knowing thatit flows, and will flow on for ever. They have found out a hundredingenious devices by which they deceive themselves. Sometimes they tellus that the public feeling about Reform was caused by the events whichtook place at Paris about fourteen months ago; though every observantand impartial man knows, that the excitement which the late Frenchrevolution produced in England was not the cause but the effect of thatprogress which liberal opinions had made amongst us. Sometimes theytell us that we should not have been troubled with any complaints on thesubject of the Representation, if the House of Commons had agreed to acertain motion, made in the session of 1830, for inquiry into the causesof the public distress. I remember nothing about that motion, exceptthat it gave rise to the dullest debate ever known; and the country, Iam firmly convinced, cared not one straw about it. But is it not strangethat men of real ability can deceive themselves so grossly, as to thinkthat any change in the government of a foreign nation, or the rejectionof any single motion, however popular, could all at once raise up agreat, rich, enlightened nation, against its ancient institutions? Couldsuch small drops have produced an overflowing, if the vessel had notalready been filled to the very brim? These explanations are incredible, and if they were credible, would be anything but consolatory. If it werereally true that the English people had taken a sudden aversion to arepresentative system which they had always loved and admired, because asingle division in Parliament had gone against their wishes, or because, in a foreign country, in circumstances bearing not the faintest analogyto those in which we are placed, a change of dynasty had happened, whathope could we have for such a nation of madmen? How could we expectthat the present form of government, or any form of government, would bedurable amongst them?

Sir, the public feeling concerning Reform is of no such recent origin, and springs from no such frivolous causes. Its first faint commencementmay be traced far, very far, back in our history. During seventy yearsthat feeling has had a great influence on the public mind. Through thefirst thirty years of the reign of George the Third, it was graduallyincreasing. The great leaders of the two parties in the State werefavourable to Reform. Plans of reform were supported by large and mostrespectable minorities in the House of Commons. The French Revolution, filling the higher and middle classes with an extreme dread of change, and the war calling away the public attention from internal to externalpolitics, threw the question back; but the people never lost sightof it. Peace came, and they were at leisure to think of domesticimprovements. Distress came, and they suspected, as was natural, thattheir distress was the effect of unfaithful stewardship and unskilfullegislation. An opinion favourable to Parliamentary Reform grew uprapidly, and became strong among the middle classes. But one tie, onestrong tie, still bound those classes to the Tory party. I mean theCatholic Question. It is impossible to deny that, on that subject, alarge proportion, a majority, I fear, of the middle class of Englishmen, conscientiously held opinions opposed to those which I have alwaysentertained, and were disposed to sacrifice every other consideration towhat they regarded as a religious duty. Thus the Catholic Question hid, so to speak, the question of Parliamentary Reform. The feeling in favourof Parliamentary Reform grew, but it grew in the shade. Every man, Ithink, must have observed the progress of that feeling in his own socialcircle. But few Reform meetings were held, and few petitions in favourof Reform presented. At length the Catholics were emancipated; thesolitary link of sympathy which attached the people to the Tories wasbroken; the cry of "No Popery" could no longer be opposed to the cryof "Reform. " That which, in the opinion of the two great parties inParliament, and of a vast portion of the community, had been the firstquestion, suddenly disappeared; and the question of Parliamentary Reformtook the first place. Then was put forth all the strength which had beengrowing in silence and obscurity. Then it appeared that Reform had onits side a coalition of interests and opinions unprecedented in ourhistory, all the liberality and intelligence which had supported theCatholic claims, and all the clamour which had opposed them. 

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

Thinking thus of the public opinion concerning Reform, being convincedthat this opinion is the mature product of time and of discussion, Iexpect no reaction. I no more expect to see my countrymen again contentwith the mere semblance of a Representation, than to see them againdrowning witches or burning heretics, trying causes by red hotploughshares, or offering up human sacrifices to wicker idols. I no moreexpect a reaction in favour of Gatton and Old Sarum, than a reaction infavour of Thor and Odin. I should think such a reaction almost as mucha miracle as that the shadow should go back upon the dial. Revolutionsproduced by violence are often followed by reactions; the victories ofreason once gained, are gained for eternity. 

In fact, if there be, in the present aspect of public affairs, any signpeculiarly full of evil omen to the opponents of Reform, it is that verycalmness of the public mind on which they found their expectation ofsuccess. They think that it is the calmness of indifference. It is thecalmness of confident hope: and in proportion to the confidence of hopewill be the bitterness of disappointment. Disappointment, indeed, Ido not anticipate. That we are certain of success in this House is nowacknowledged; and our opponents have, in consequence, during the wholeof this Session, and particularly during the present debate, addressedtheir arguments and exhortations rather to the Lords than to theassembly of which they are themselves Members. Their principal argumenthas always been, that the bill will destroy the peerage. The honourableand learned Member for Rye has, in plain terms, called on the Barons ofEngland to save their order from democratic encroachments, by rejectingthis measure. All these arguments, all these appeals, being interpreted, mean this: "Proclaim to your countrymen that you have no commoninterests with them, no common sympathies with them; that you can bepowerful only by their weakness, and exalted only by their degradation;that the corruption which disgusts them, and the oppression againstwhich their spirit rises up, are indispensable to your authority;that the freedom and purity of election are incompatible with the veryexistence of your House. Give them clearly to understand that yourpower rests, not as they have hitherto imagined, on their rationalconvictions, or on their habitual veneration, or on your own greatproperty, but on a system fertile of political evils, fertile also oflow iniquities of which ordinary justice take cognisance. Bind up, ininseparable union, the privileges of your estate with the grievancesof ours: resolve to stand or fall with abuses visibly marked out fordestruction: tell the people that they are attacking you in attackingthe three holes in the wall, and that they shall never get rid ofthe three holes in the wall, till they have got rid of you; that ahereditary peerage and a representative assembly, can co-exist only inname, and that, if they will have a real House of Peers, they must becontent with a mock House of Commons. " This, I say, is the advice givento the Lords by those who call themselves the friends of aristocracy. That advice so pernicious will not be followed, I am well assured; yetI cannot but listen to it with uneasiness. I cannot but wonder that itshould proceed from the lips of men who are constantly lecturing us onthe duty of consulting history and experience. Have they never heardwhat effects counsels like their own, when too faithfully followed, haveproduced? Have they never visited that neighbouring country, which stillpresents to the eye, even of a passing stranger, the signs of a greatdissolution and renovation of society? Have they never walked by thosestately mansions, now sinking into decay, and portioned out into lodgingrooms, which line the silent streets of the Faubourg St Germain? Havethey never seen the ruins of those castles whose terraces and gardensoverhang the Loire? Have they never heard that from those magnificenthotels, from those ancient castles, an aristocracy as splendid, asbrave, as proud, as accomplished, as ever Europe saw, was driven forthto exile and beggary, to implore the charity of hostile Governments andhostile creeds, to cut wood in the back settlements of America, or toteach French in the schoolrooms of London? And why were those haughtynobles destroyed with that utter destruction? Why were they scatteredover the face of the earth, their titles abolished, their escutcheonsdefaced, their parks wasted, their palaces dismantled, their heritagegiven to strangers? Because they had no sympathy with the people, no discernment of the signs of their time; because, in the pride andnarrowness of their hearts, they called those whose warnings mighthave saved them theorists and speculators; because they refused allconcession till the time had arrived when no concession would avail. Ihave no apprehension that such a fate awaits the nobles of England. Idraw no parallel between our aristocracy and that of France. Those whorepresent the peerage as a class whose power is incompatible with thejust influence of the people in the State, draw that parallel, and notI. They do all in their power to place the Lords and Commons of Englandin that position with respect to each other in which the French gentrystood with respect to the Third Estate. But I am convinced that theseadvisers will not succeed. We see, with pride and delight, among thefriends of the people, the Talbots, the Cavendishes, the princely houseof Howard. Foremost among those who have entitled themselves, by theirexertions in this House, to the lasting gratitude of their countrymen, we see the descendants of Marlborough, of Russell, and of Derby. I hope, and firmly believe, that the Lords will see what their interests andtheir honour require. I hope, and firmly believe, that they will act insuch a manner as to entitle themselves to the esteem and affection ofthe people. But if not, let not the enemies of Reform imagine that theirreign is straightway to recommence, or that they have obtained anythingmore than a short and uneasy respite. We are bound to respect theconstitutional rights of the Peers; but we are bound also not to forgetour own. We, too, have our privileges; we, too, are an estate of therealm. A House of Commons strong in the love and confidence of thepeople, a House of Commons which has nothing to fear from a dissolution, is something in the government. Some persons, I well know, indulge ahope that the rejection of the bill will at once restore the dominationof that party which fled from power last November, leaving everythingabroad and everything at home in confusion; leaving the European system, which it had built up at a vast cost of blood and treasure, falling topieces in every direction; leaving the dynasties which it had restored, hastening into exile; leaving the nations which it had joined together, breaking away from each other; leaving the fundholders in dismay;leaving the peasantry in insurrection; leaving the most fertile countieslighted up with the fires of incendiaries; leaving the capital in sucha state, that a royal procession could not pass safely through it. Dark and terrible, beyond any season within my remembrance of politicalaffairs, was the day of their flight. Far darker and far more terriblewill be the day of their return. They will return in opposition tothe whole British nation, united as it was never before united on anyinternal question; united as firmly as when the Armada was sailing upthe Channel; united as firmly as when Bonaparte pitched his camp on thecliffs of Boulogne. They will return pledged to defend evils which thepeople are resolved to destroy. They will return to a situation in whichthey can stand only by crushing and trampling down public opinion, andfrom which, if they fall, they may, in their fall, drag down with themthe whole frame of society. Against such evils, should such evils appearto threaten the country, it will be our privilege and our duty to warnour gracious and beloved Sovereign. It will be our privilege and ourduty to convey the wishes of a loyal people to the throne of a patriotking. At such a crisis the proper place for the House of Commons isin front of the nation; and in that place this House will assuredlybe found. Whatever prejudice or weakness may do elsewhere to ruin theempire, here, I trust, will not be wanting the wisdom, the virtue, andthe energy that may save it. 

*****

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. (OCTOBER 10, 1831) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSEOF COMMONS ON THE 10TH OF OCTOBER, 1831. 

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

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

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

I doubt, Sir, whether any person who had merely heard the speech of theright honourable Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr Goulburn. )would have been able to conjecture what the question is on which we arediscussing, and what the occasion on which we are assembled. For myself, I can with perfect certainty declare that never in the whole course ofmy life did I feel my mind oppressed by so deep and solemn a senseof responsibility as at the present moment. I firmly believe that thecountry is now in danger of calamities greater than ever threatened it, from domestic misgovernment or from foreign hostility. The danger is noless than this, that there may be a complete alienation of the peoplefrom their rulers. To soothe the public mind, to reconcile the people tothe delay, the short delay, which must intervene before their wishes canbe legitimately gratified, and in the meantime to avert civil discord, and to uphold the authority of law, these are, I conceive, the objectsof my noble friend, the Member for Devonshire: these ought, at thepresent crisis, to be the objects of every honest Englishman. Theyare objects which will assuredly be attained, if we rise to this greatoccasion, if we take our stand in the place which the Constitution hasassigned to us, if we employ, with becoming firmness and dignity, thepowers which belong to us as trustees of the nation, and as advisers ofthe Throne. 

Sir, the Resolution of my noble friend consists of two parts. He callsupon us to declare our undiminished attachment to the principles ofthe Reform Bill, and also our undiminished confidence in His Majesty'sMinisters. I consider these two declarations as identical. The questionof Reform is, in my opinion, of such paramount importance, that, approving the principles of the Ministerial Bill, I must think theMinisters who have brought that bill forward, although I may differfrom them on some minor points, entitled to the strongest supportof Parliament. The right honourable gentleman, the Member for theUniversity of Cambridge, has attempted to divert the course of thedebate to questions comparatively unimportant. He has said much aboutthe coal duty, about the candle duty, about the budget of the presentChancellor of the Exchequer. On most of the points to which he hasreferred, it would be easy for me, were I so inclined, to defend theMinisters; and where I could not defend them, I should find it easy torecriminate on those who preceded them. The right honourable Member forthe University of Cambridge has taunted the Ministers with the defeatwhich their plan respecting the timber trade sustained in the lastParliament. I might, perhaps, at a more convenient season, be temptedto inquire whether that defeat was more disgraceful to them or to theirpredecessors. I might, perhaps, be tempted to ask the right honourablegentleman whether, if he had not been treated, while in office, withmore fairness than he has shown while in opposition, it would have beenin his power to carry his best bill, the Beer Bill? He has accusedthe Ministers of bringing forward financial propositions, and thenwithdrawing those propositions. Did not he bring forward, during theSession of 1830, a plan respecting the sugar duties? And was not thatplan withdrawn? But, Sir, this is mere trifling. I will not be seducedfrom the matter in hand by the right honourable gentleman's example. At the present moment I can see only one question in the State, thequestion of Reform; only two parties, the friends of the Reform Bill andits enemies. 

It is not my intention, Sir, again to discuss the merits of the ReformBill. The principle of that bill received the approbation of the lateHouse of Commons after a discussion of ten nights; and the bill as itnow stands, after a long and most laborious investigation, passed thepresent House of Commons by a majority which was nearly half as largeagain as the minority. This was little more than a fortnight ago. Nothing has since occurred to change our opinion. The justice of thecase is unaltered. The public enthusiasm is undiminished. Old Sarum hasgrown no larger. Manchester has grown no smaller. In addressing thisHouse, therefore, I am entitled to assume that the bill is in itself agood bill. If so, ought we to abandon it merely because the Lords haverejected it? We ought to respect the lawful privileges of theirHouse; but we ought also to assert our own. We are constitutionally asindependent of their Lordships as their Lordships are of us. We haveprecisely as good a right to adhere to our opinion as they have todissent from it. In speaking of their decision, I will attempt to followthat example of moderation which was so judiciously set by my noblefriend, the Member for Devonshire. I will only say that I do not thinkthat they are more competent to form a correct judgment on a politicalquestion than we are. It is certain that, on all the most importantpoints on which the two Houses have for a long time past differed, the Lords have at length come over to the opinion of the Commons. I amtherefore entitled to say, that with respect to all those points, thePeers themselves being judges, the House of Commons was in the right andthe House of Lords in the wrong. It was thus with respect to the Slavetrade: it was thus with respect to Catholic Emancipation: it was thuswith several other important questions. I, therefore, cannot think thatwe ought, on the present occasion, to surrender our judgment to thosewho have acknowledged that, on former occasions of the same kind, wehave judged more correctly than they. 

Then again, Sir, I cannot forget how the majority and the minority inthis House were composed; I cannot forget that the majority containedalmost all those gentlemen who are returned by large bodies of electors. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that there were single Membersof the majority who had more constituents than the whole minority puttogether. I speak advisedly and seriously. I believe that the number offreeholders of Yorkshire exceeds that of all the electors who return theOpposition. I cannot with propriety comment here on any reports whichmay have been circulated concerning the majority and minority in theHouse of Lords. I may, however, mention these notoriously historicalfacts; that during the last forty years the powers of the executiveGovernment have been, almost without intermission, exercised by a partyopposed to Reform; and that a very great number of Peers have beencreated, and all the present Bishops raised to the bench during thoseyears. On this question, therefore, while I feel more than usual respectfor the judgment of the House of Commons, I feel less than usual respectfor the judgment of the House of Lords. Our decision is the decision ofthe nation; the decision of their Lordships can scarcely be consideredas the decision even of that class from which the Peers aregenerally selected, and of which they may be considered as virtualrepresentatives, the great landed gentlemen of England. It seems to meclear, therefore, that we ought, notwithstanding what has passed in theother House, to adhere to our opinion concerning the Reform Bill. 

The next question is this; ought we to make a formal declaration that weadhere to our opinion? I think that we ought to make such a declaration;and I am sure that we cannot make it in more temperate or moreconstitutional terms than those which my noble friend asks us to adopt. I support the Resolution which he has proposed with all my heart andsoul: I support it as a friend to Reform; but I support it still moreas a friend to law, to property, to social order. No observant andunprejudiced man can look forward without great alarm to the effectswhich the recent decision of the Lords may possibly produce. I do notpredict, I do not expect, open, armed insurrection. What I apprehendis this, that the people may engage in a silent, but extensive andpersevering war against the law. What I apprehend is, that England mayexhibit the same spectacle which Ireland exhibited three years ago, agitators stronger than the magistrate, associations stronger than thelaw, a Government powerful enough to be hated, and not powerful enoughto be feared, a people bent on indemnifying themselves by illegalexcesses for the want of legal privileges. I fear, that we may beforelong see the tribunals defied, the tax-gatherer resisted, public creditshaken, property insecure, the whole frame of society hastening todissolution. It is easy to say, "Be bold: be firm: defy intimidation:let the law have its course: the law is strong enough to put down theseditious. " Sir, we have heard all this blustering before; and we knowin what it ended. It is the blustering of little men whose lot hasfallen on a great crisis. Xerxes scourging the winds, Canute commandingthe waves to recede from his footstool, were but types of the follyof those who apply the maxims of the Quarter Sessions to the greatconvulsions of society. The law has no eyes: the law has no hands:the law is nothing, nothing but a piece of paper printed by the King'sprinter, with the King's arms at the top, till public opinion breathesthe breath of life into the dead letter. We found this in Ireland. TheCatholic Association bearded the Government. The Government resolvedto put down the Association. An indictment was brought against myhonourable and learned friend, the Member for Kerry. The Grand Jurythrew it out. Parliament met. The Lords Commissioners came down with aspeech recommending the suppression of the self-constituted legislatureof Dublin. A bill was brought in: it passed both Houses by largemajorities: it received the Royal assent. And what effect did itproduce? Exactly as much as that old Act of Queen Elizabeth, stillunrepealed, by which it is provided that every man who, without aspecial exemption, shall eat meat on Fridays and Saturdays, shall pay afine of twenty shillings or go to prison for a month. Not only was theAssociation not destroyed: its power was not for one day suspended: itflourished and waxed strong under the law which had been made for thepurpose of annihilating it. The elections of 1826, the Clare electiontwo years later, proved the folly of those who think that nations aregoverned by wax and parchment: and, at length, in the close of 1828, theGovernment had only one plain choice before it, concession or civil war. Sir, I firmly believe that, if the people of England shall lose all hopeof carrying the Reform Bill by constitutional means, they will forthwithbegin to offer to the Government the same kind of resistance whichwas offered to the late Government, three years ago, by the people ofIreland, a resistance by no means amounting to rebellion, a resistancerarely amounting to any crime defined by the law, but a resistancenevertheless which is quite sufficient to obstruct the course ofjustice, to disturb the pursuits of industry, and to prevent theaccumulation of wealth. And is not this a danger which we ought to fear?And is not this a danger which we are bound, by all means in our power, to avert? And who are those who taunt us for yielding to intimidation?Who are those who affect to speak with contempt of associations, andagitators, and public meetings? Even the very persons who, scarce twoyears ago, gave up to associations, and agitators, and public meetings, their boasted Protestant Constitution, proclaiming all the time thatthey saw the evils of Catholic Emancipation as strongly as ever. Surely, surely, the note of defiance which is now so loudly sounded in our ears, proceeds with a peculiarly bad grace from men whose highest glory itis that they abased themselves to the dust before a people whom theirpolicy had driven to madness, from men the proudest moment of whoselives was that in which they appeared in the character of persecutorsscared into toleration. Do they mean to indemnify themselves for thehumiliation of quailing before the people of Ireland by trampling on thepeople of England? If so, they deceive themselves. The case of Ireland, though a strong one, was by no means so strong a case as that with whichwe have now to deal. The Government, in its struggle with the Catholicsof Ireland, had Great Britain at its back. Whom will it have at its backin the struggle with the Reformers of Great Britain? I know only twoways in which societies can permanently be governed, by public opinion, and by the sword. A Government having at its command the armies, thefleets, and the revenues of Great Britain, might possibly hold Irelandby the sword. So Oliver Cromwell held Ireland; so William the Third heldit; so Mr Pitt held it; so the Duke of Wellington might perhaps haveheld it. But to govern Great Britain by the sword! So wild a thought hasnever, I will venture to say, occurred to any public man of any party;and, if any man were frantic enough to make the attempt, he would find, before three days had expired, that there is no better sword than thatwhich is fashioned out of a ploughshare. But, if not by the sword, howis the country to be governed? I understand how the peace is kept at NewYork. It is by the assent and support of the people. I understand alsohow the peace is kept at Milan. It is by the bayonets of the Austriansoldiers. But how the peace is to be kept when you have neither thepopular assent nor the military force, how the peace is to be keptin England by a Government acting on the principles of the presentOpposition, I do not understand. 

There is in truth a great anomaly in the relation between the Englishpeople and their Government. Our institutions are either too popular ornot popular enough. The people have not sufficient power in making thelaws; but they have quite sufficient power to impede the execution ofthe laws when made. The Legislature is almost entirely aristocratical;the machinery by which the degrees of the Legislature are carried intoeffect is almost entirely popular; and, therefore, we constantly seeall the power which ought to execute the law, employed to counteract thelaw. Thus, for example, with a criminal code which carries its rigourto the length of atrocity, we have a criminal judicature which oftencarries its lenity to the length of perjury. Our law of libel is themost absurdly severe that ever existed, so absurdly severe that, if itwere carried into full effect, it would be much more oppressive thana censorship. And yet, with this severe law of libel, we have apress which practically is as free as the air. In 1819 the Ministerscomplained of the alarming increase of seditious and blasphemouspublications. They proposed a bill of great rigour to stop the growthof the evil; and they carried their bill. It was enacted, that thepublisher of a seditious libel might, on a second conviction, bebanished, and that if he should return from banishment, he might betransported. How often was this law put in force? Not once. Last year werepealed it: but it was already dead, or rather it was dead born. Itwas obsolete before Le Roi le veut had been pronounced over it. For anyeffect which it produced it might as well have been in the Code Napoleonas in the English Statute Book. And why did the Government, havingsolicited and procured so sharp and weighty a weapon, straightway hangit up to rust? Was there less sedition, were there fewer libels, afterthe passing of the Act than before it? Sir, the very next year was theyear 1820, the year of the Bill of Pains and Penalties against QueenCaroline, the very year when the public mind was most excited, the veryyear when the public press was most scurrilous. Why then did not theMinisters use their new law? Because they durst not: because they couldnot. They had obtained it with ease; for in obtaining it they had todeal with a subservient Parliament. They could not execute it: for inexecuting it they would have to deal with a refractory people. Theseare instances of the difficulty of carrying the law into effect when thepeople are inclined to thwart their rulers. The great anomaly, or, tospeak more properly, the great evil which I have described, would, I believe, be removed by the Reform Bill. That bill would establishharmony between the people and the Legislature. It would give a fairshare in the making of laws to those without whose co-operation laws aremere waste paper. Under a reformed system we should not see, as we nowoften see, the nation repealing Acts of Parliament as fast as we andthe Lords can pass them. As I believe that the Reform Bill would producethis blessed and salutary concord, so I fear that the rejection ofthe Reform Bill, if that rejection should be considered as final, willaggravate the evil which I have been describing to an unprecedented, to a terrible extent. To all the laws which might be passed for thecollection of the revenue, or for the prevention of sedition, the peoplewould oppose the same kind of resistance by means of which they havesucceeded in mitigating, I might say in abrogating, the law of libel. There would be so many offenders that the Government would scarcely knowat whom to aim its blow. Every offender would have so many accomplicesand protectors that the blow would almost always miss the aim. The Vetoof the people, a Veto not pronounced in set form like that of the RomanTribunes, but quite as effectual as that of the Roman Tribunes for thepurpose of impeding public measures, would meet the Government at everyturn. The administration would be unable to preserve order at home, orto uphold the national honour abroad; and, at length, men who are nowmoderate, who now think of revolution with horror, would begin to wishthat the lingering agony of the State might be terminated by one fierce, sharp, decisive crisis. 

Is there a way of escape from these calamities? I believe that thereis. I believe that, if we do our duty, if we give the people reason tobelieve that the accomplishment of their wishes is only deferred, ifwe declare our undiminished attachment to the Reform Bill, and ourresolution to support no Minister who will not support that bill, weshall avert the fearful disasters which impend over the country. Thereis danger that, at this conjuncture, men of more zeal than wisdom mayobtain a fatal influence over the public mind. With these men will bejoined others, who have neither zeal nor wisdom, common barrators inpolitics, dregs of society which, in times of violent agitation, aretossed up from the bottom to the top, and which, in quiet times, sinkagain from the top to their natural place at the bottom. To these mennothing is so hateful as the prospect of a reconciliation between theorders of the State. A crisis like that which now makes every honestcitizen sad and anxious fills these men with joy, and with a detestablehope. And how is it that such men, formed by nature and education to beobjects of mere contempt, can ever inspire terror? How is it that suchmen, without talents or acquirements sufficient for the management of avestry, sometimes become dangerous to great empires? The secret of theirpower lies in the indolence or faithlessness of those who ought to takethe lead in the redress of public grievances. The whole history of lowtraders in sedition is contained in that fine old Hebrew fable which wehave all read in the Book of Judges. The trees meet to choose a king. The vine, and the fig tree, and the olive tree decline the office. Thenit is that the sovereignty of the forest devolves upon the bramble:then it is that from a base and noxious shrub goes forth the fire whichdevours the cedars of Lebanon. Let us be instructed. If we are afraidof political Unions and Reform Associations, let the House of Commonsbecome the chief point of political union: let the House of Commonsbe the great Reform Association. If we are afraid that the people mayattempt to accomplish their wishes by unlawful means, let us give thema solemn pledge that we will use in their cause all our high and ancientprivileges, so often victorious in old conflicts with tyranny; thoseprivileges which our ancestors invoked, not in vain, on the day when afaithless king filled our house with his guards, took his seat, Sir, onyour chair, and saw your predecessor kneeling on the floor beforehim. The Constitution of England, thank God, is not one of thoseconstitutions which are past all repair, and which must, for the publicwelfare, be utterly destroyed. It has a decayed part; but it has alsoa sound and precious part. It requires purification; but it containswithin itself the means by which that purification may be effected. We read that in old times, when the villeins were driven to revolt byoppression, when the castles of the nobility were burned to the ground, when the warehouses of London were pillaged, when a hundred thousandinsurgents appeared in arms on Blackheath, when a foul murderperpetrated in their presence had raised their passions to madness, whenthey were looking round for some captain to succeed and avenge him whomthey had lost, just then, before Hob Miller, or Tom Carter, or JackStraw, could place himself at their head, the King rode up to them andexclaimed, "I will be your leader!" and at once the infuriated multitudelaid down their arms, submitted to his guidance, dispersed at hiscommand. Herein let us imitate him. Our countrymen are, I fear, atthis moment, but too much disposed to lend a credulous ear to selfishimpostors. Let us say to them, "We are your leaders; we, your own houseof Commons; we, the constitutional interpreters of your wishes; theknights of forty English shires, the citizens and burgesses of all yourlargest towns. Our lawful power shall be firmly exerted to the utmostin your cause; and our lawful power is such, that when firmly exerted inyour cause, it must finally prevail. " This tone it is our interest andour duty to take. The circumstances admit of no delay. Is there oneamong us who is not looking with breathless anxiety for the next tidingswhich may arrive from the remote parts of the kingdom? Even while Ispeak, the moments are passing away, the irrevocable moments pregnantwith the destiny of a great people. The country is in danger: it may besaved: we can save it: this is the way: this is the time. In our handsare the issues of great good and great evil, the issues of the life anddeath of the State. May the result of our deliberations be the reposeand prosperity of that noble country which is entitled to all our love;and for the safety of which we are answerable to our own consciences, tothe memory of future ages, to the Judge of all hearts!

*****

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. (DECEMBER 16, 1831) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THEHOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 16TH OF DECEMBER 1831. 

On Friday, the sixteenth of December 1831, Lord Althorpe moved thesecond reading of the Bill to amend the representation of the people inEngland and Wales. Lord Porchester moved, as an amendment, that the billshould be read a second time that day six months. The debate lasted tillafter midnight, and was then adjourned till twelve at noon. The Housedid not divide till one on the Sunday morning. The amendment was thenrejected by 324 votes to 162; and the original motion was carried. Thefollowing Speech was made on the first night of the debate. 

I can assure my noble friend (Lord Mahon. ), for whom I entertainsentiments of respect and kindness which no political difference will, I trust, ever disturb, that his remarks have given me no pain, except, indeed, the pain which I feel at being compelled to say a few wordsabout myself. Those words shall be very few. I know how unpopularegotism is in this House. My noble friend says that, in the debates oflast March, I declared myself opposed to the ballot, and that I havesince recanted, for the purpose of making myself popular with theinhabitants of Leeds. My noble friend is altogether mistaken. I neversaid, in any debate, that I was opposed to the ballot. The word ballotnever passed my lips within this House. I observed strict silencerespecting it on two accounts; in the first place, because my ownopinions were, till very lately, undecided; in the second place, becauseI knew that the agitation of that question, a question of which theimportance appears to me to be greatly overrated, would divide those onwhose firm and cordial union the safety of the empire depends. My noblefriend has taken this opportunity of replying to a speech which I madelast October. The doctrines which I then laid down were, according tohim, most intemperate and dangerous. Now, Sir, it happens, curiouslyenough, that my noble friend has himself asserted, in his speech of thisnight, those very doctrines, in language so nearly resembling mine thatI might fairly accuse him of plagiarism. I said that laws have no forcein themselves, and that, unless supported by public opinion, they area mere dead letter. The noble Lord has said exactly the same thingto-night. "Keep your old Constitution, " he exclaims; "for, whatever maybe its defects in theory, it has more of the public veneration than yournew Constitution will have; and no laws can be efficient, unless theyhave the public veneration. " I said, that statutes are in themselvesonly wax and parchment; and I was called an incendiary by theopposition. The noble Lord has said to-night that statutes in themselvesare only ink and parchment; and those very persons who reviled me haveenthusiastically cheered him. I am quite at a loss to understand howdoctrines which are, in his mouth, true and constitutional, can, inmine, be false and revolutionary. 

But, Sir, it is time that I should address myself to the momentousquestion before us. I shall certainly give my best support to this bill, through all its stages; and, in so doing, I conceive that I shall act instrict conformity with the resolution by which this House, towardsthe close of the late Session, declared its unabated attachment to theprinciples and to the leading provisions of the First Reform Bill. Allthose principles, all those leading provisions, I find in thepresent measure. In the details there are, undoubtedly, considerablealterations. Most of the alterations appear to me to be improvements;and even those alterations which I cannot consider as in themselvesimprovements will yet be most useful, if their effect shall be toconciliate opponents, and to facilitate the adjustment of a questionwhich, for the sake of order, for the sake of peace, for the sake oftrade, ought to be, not only satisfactorily, but speedily settled. Wehave been told, Sir, that, if we pronounce this bill to be a better billthan the last, we recant all the doctrines which we maintained duringthe last Session, we sing our palinode; we allow that we have had agreat escape; we allow that our own conduct was deserving of censure;we allow that the party which was the minority in this House, and, mostunhappily for the country, the majority in the other House, has savedthe country from a great calamity. Sir, even if this charge were wellfounded, there are those who should have been prevented by prudence, ifnot by magnanimity, from bringing it forward. I remember an Oppositionwhich took a very different course. I remember an Opposition which, while excluded from power, taught all its doctrines to the Government;which, after labouring long, and sacrificing much, in order to effectimprovements in various parts of our political and commercial system, saw the honour of those improvements appropriated by others. But themembers of that Opposition had, I believe, a sincere desire to promotethe public good. They, therefore, raised no shout of triumph over therecantations of their proselytes. They rejoiced, but with no ungenerousjoy, when their principles of trade, of jurisprudence, of foreignpolicy, of religious liberty, became the principles of theAdministration. They were content that he who came into fellowship withthem at the eleventh hour should have a far larger share of the rewardthan those who had borne the burthen and heat of the day. In the year1828, a single division in this House changed the whole policy of theGovernment with respect to the Test and Corporation Acts. My noblefriend, the Paymaster of the Forces, then sat where the right honourableBaronet, the member for Tamworth, now sits. I do not remember that, whenthe right honourable Baronet announced his change of purpose, my noblefriend sprang up to talk about palinodes, to magnify the wisdom andvirtue of the Whigs, and to sneer at his new coadjutors. Indeed, I amnot sure that the members of the late Opposition did not carry theirindulgence too far; that they did not too easily suffer the fame ofGrattan and Romilly to be transferred to less deserving claimants; thatthey were not too ready, in the joy with which they welcomed the tardyand convenient repentance of their converts, to grant a general amnestyfor the errors of the insincerity of years. If it were true that we hadrecanted, this ought not to be made matter of charge against us by menwhom posterity will remember by nothing but recantations. But, in truth, we recant nothing. We have nothing to recant. We support this bill. Wemay possibly think it a better bill than that which preceded it. Butare we therefore bound to admit that we were in the wrong, that theOpposition was in the right, that the House of Lords has conferred agreat benefit on the nation? We saw--who did not see?--great defectsin the first bill. But did we see nothing else? Is delay no evil? Isprolonged excitement no evil? Is it no evil that the heart of a greatpeople should be made sick by deferred hope? We allow that many of thechanges which have been made are improvements. But we think that itwould have been far better for the country to have had the last bill, with all its defects, than the present bill, with all its improvements. Second thoughts are proverbially the best, but there are emergencieswhich do not admit of second thoughts. There probably never was a lawwhich might not have been amended by delay. But there have been manycases in which there would have been more mischief in the delay thanbenefit in the amendments. The first bill, however inferior it may havebeen in its details to the present bill, was yet herein far superior tothe present bill, than it was the first. If the first bill had passed, it would, I firmly believe, have produced a complete reconciliationbetween the aristocracy and the people. It is my earnest wish and prayerthat the present bill may produce this blessed effect; but I cannot saythat my hopes are so sanguine as they were at the beginning of the lastSession. The decision of the House of Lords has, I fear, excited in thepublic mind feelings of resentment which will not soon be allayed. Whatthen, it is said, would you legislate in haste? Would you legislate intimes of great excitement concerning matters of such deep concern? Yes, Sir, I would: and if any bad consequences should follow from the hasteand the excitement, let those be held answerable who, when there was noneed of haste, when there existed no excitement, refused to listen toany project of Reform, nay, who made it an argument against Reform, thatthe public mind was not excited. When few meetings were held, when fewpetitions were sent up to us, these politicians said, "Would you altera Constitution with which the people are perfectly satisfied?" And now, when the kingdom from one end to the other is convulsed by the questionof Reform, we hear it said by the very same persons, "Would you alterthe Representative system in such agitated times as these?" Half thelogic of misgovernment lies in this one sophistical dilemma: If thepeople are turbulent, they are unfit for liberty: if they are quiet, they do not want liberty. 

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

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

Touching the expense of elections I will say a few words, because thatpart of the subject has not, I think, received so much attention as itdeserves. Whenever the nomination boroughs are attacked, the opponentsof Reform produce a long list of eminent men who have sate for thoseboroughs, and who, they tell us, would never have taken any part inpublic affairs but for those boroughs. Now, Sir, I suppose no personwill maintain that a large constituent body is likely to prefer ignorantand incapable men to men of information and ability? Whatever objectionsthere may be to democratic institutions, it was never, I believe, doubted that those institutions are favourable to the development oftalents. We may prefer the constitution of Sparta to that of Athens, orthe constitution of Venice to that of Florence: but no person willdeny that Athens produced more great men than Sparta, or that Florenceproduced more great men than Venice. But to come nearer home: the fivelargest English towns which have now the right of returning two memberseach by popular election, are Westminster, Southwark, Liverpool, Bristol, and Norwich. Now let us see what members those places have sentto Parliament. I will not speak of the living, though among the livingare some of the most distinguished ornaments of the House. I willconfine myself to the dead. Among many respectable and useful membersof Parliament, whom these towns have returned, during the last halfcentury, I find Mr Burke, Mr Fox, Mr Sheridan, Mr Windham, Mr Tierney, Sir Samuel Romilly, Mr Canning, Mr Huskisson. These were eight ofthe most illustrious parliamentary leaders of the generation whichis passing away from the world. Mr Pitt was, perhaps, the onlyperson worthy to make a ninth with them. It is, surely, a remarkablecircumstance that, of the nine most distinguished Members of the Houseof Commons who have died within the last forty years, eight should havebeen returned to Parliament by the five largest represented towns. I am, therefore, warranted in saying that great constituent bodies are quiteas competent to discern merit, and quite as much disposed to rewardmerit, as the proprietors of boroughs. It is true that some of thedistinguished statesmen whom I have mentioned would never have beenknown to large constituent bodies if they had not first sate fornomination boroughs. But why is this? Simply, because the expense ofcontesting popular places, under the present system, is ruinouslygreat. A poor man cannot defray it; an untried man cannot expect hisconstituents to defray it for him. And this is the way in which ourRepresentative system is defended. Corruption vouches corruption. Everyabuse is made the plea for another abuse. We must have nomination atGatton because we have profusion at Liverpool. Sir, these argumentsconvince me, not that no Reform is required, but that a very deep andsearching Reform is required. If two evils serve in some respects tocounterbalance each other, this is a reason, not for keeping both, butfor getting rid of both together. At present you close against men oftalents that broad, that noble entrance which belongs to them, and whichought to stand wide open to them; and in exchange you open to them a byeentrance, low and narrow, always obscure, often filthy, through which, too often, they can pass only by crawling on their hands and knees, andfrom which they too often emerge sullied with stains never to be washedaway. But take the most favourable case. Suppose that the member whosits for a nomination borough owes his seat to a man of virtue andhonour, to a man whose service is perfect freedom, to a man who wouldthink himself degraded by any proof of gratitude which might degradehis nominee. Yet is it nothing that such a member comes into this Housewearing the badge, though not feeling the chain of servitude? Is itnothing that he cannot speak of his independence without exciting asmile? Is it nothing that he is considered, not as a Representative, butas an adventurer? This is what your system does for men of genius. Itadmits them to political power, not as, under better institutions, theywould be admitted to power, erect, independent, unsullied; but bymeans which corrupt the virtue of many, and in some degree diminish theauthority of all. Could any system be devised, better fitted to pervertthe principles and break the spirit of men formed to be the glory oftheir country? And, can we mention no instance in which this system hasmade such men useless, or worse than useless, to the country of whichtheir talents were the ornament, and might, in happier circumstances, have been the salvation? Ariel, the beautiful and kindly Ariel, doingthe bidding of the loathsome and malignant Sycorax, is but a fainttype of genius enslaved by the spells, and employed in the drudgery ofcorruption--

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

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

Sir, I have, from the beginning of these discussions, supported Reformon two grounds; first, because I believe it to be in itself a goodthing; and secondly, because I think the dangers of withholding it sogreat that, even if it were an evil, it would be the less of two evils. The dangers of the country have in no wise diminished. I believe thatthey have greatly increased. It is, I fear, impossible to deny thatwhat has happened with respect to almost every great question thatever divided mankind has happened also with respect to the Reform Bill. Wherever great interests are at stake there will be much excitement; andwherever there is much excitement there will be some extravagance. Thesame great stirring of the human mind which produced the Reformationproduced also the follies and crimes of the Anabaptists. The same spiritwhich resisted the Ship-money, and abolished the Star Chamber, producedthe Levellers and the Fifth Monarchy men. And so, it cannot be deniedthat bad men, availing themselves of the agitation produced by thequestion of Reform, have promulgated, and promulgated with some success, doctrines incompatible with the existence, I do not say of monarchy, orof aristocracy, but of all law, of all order, of all property, of allcivilisation, of all that makes us to differ from Mohawks or Hottentots. I bring no accusation against that portion of the working classes whichhas been imposed upon by these doctrines. Those persons are what theirsituation has made them, ignorant from want of leisure, irritablefrom the sense of distress. That they should be deluded by impudentassertions and gross sophisms; that, suffering cruel privations, theyshould give ready credence to promises of relief; that, never havinginvestigated the nature and operation of government, they should expectimpossibilities from it, and should reproach it for not performingimpossibilities; all this is perfectly natural. No errors which they maycommit ought ever to make us forget that it is in all probability owingsolely to the accident of our situation that we have not fallen intoerrors precisely similar. There are few of us who do not know fromexperience that, even with all our advantages of education, pain andsorrow can make us very querulous and very unreasonable. We ought not, therefore, to be surprised that, as the Scotch proverb says, "it shouldbe ill talking between a full man and a fasting;" that the logic ofthe rich man who vindicates the rights of property, should seem veryinconclusive to the poor man who hears his children cry for bread. I bring, I say, no accusation against the working classes. I wouldwithhold from them nothing which it might be for their good to possess. I see with pleasure that, by the provisions of the Reform Bill, the mostindustrious and respectable of our labourers will be admitted to a sharein the government of the State. If I would refuse to the working peoplethat larger share of power which some of them have demanded, I wouldrefuse it, because I am convinced that, by giving it, I should onlyincrease their distress. I admit that the end of government is theirhappiness. But, that they may be governed for their happiness, they mustnot be governed according to the doctrines which they have learned fromtheir illiterate, incapable, low-minded flatterers. 

But, Sir, the fact that such doctrines have been promulgated among themultitude is a strong argument for a speedy and effectual reform. That government is attacked is a reason for making the foundationsof government broader, and deeper, and more solid. That property isattacked is a reason for binding together all proprietors in thefirmest union. That the agitation of the question of Reform has enabledworthless demagogues to propagate their notions with some success is areason for speedily settling the question in the only way in which itcan be settled. It is difficult, Sir, to conceive any spectacle morealarming than that which presents itself to us, when we look at the twoextreme parties in this country; a narrow oligarchy above; an infuriatedmultitude below; on the one side the vices engendered by power; on theother side the vices engendered by distress; one party blindly averseto improvement; the other party blindly clamouring for destruction; oneparty ascribing to political abuses the sanctity of property; the otherparty crying out against property as a political abuse. Both theseparties are alike ignorant of their true interest. God forbid that thestate should ever be at the mercy of either, or should ever experiencethe calamities which must result from a collision between them! Ianticipate no such horrible event. For, between those two partiesstands a third party, infinitely more powerful than both the others puttogether, attacked by both, vilified by both, but destined, I trust, to save both from the fatal effects of their own folly. To that partyI have never ceased, through all the vicissitudes of public affairs, tolook with confidence and with good a hope. I speak of that great partywhich zealously and steadily supported the first Reform Bill, andwhich will, I have no doubt, support the second Reform Bill with equalsteadiness and equal zeal. That party is the middle class of England, with the flower of the aristocracy at its head, and the flower of theworking classes bringing up its rear. That great party has taken itsimmovable stand between the enemies of all order and the enemies ofall liberty. It will have Reform: it will not have revolution: it willdestroy political abuses: it will not suffer the rights of property tobe assailed: it will preserve, in spite of themselves, those who areassailing it, from the right and from the left, with contradictoryaccusations: it will be a daysman between them: it will lay its handupon them both: it will not suffer them to tear each other in pieces. While that great party continues unbroken, as it now is unbroken, Ishall not relinquish the hope that this great contest may be conducted, by lawful means, to a happy termination. But, of this I am assured, thatby means, lawful or unlawful, to a termination, happy or unhappy, thiscontest must speedily come. All that I know of the history of pasttimes, all the observations that I have been able to make on the presentstate of the country, have convinced me that the time has arrived whena great concession must be made to the democracy of England; that thequestion, whether the change be in itself good or bad, has become aquestion of secondary importance; that, good or bad, the thing mustbe done; that a law as strong as the laws of attraction and motion hasdecreed it. 

I well know that history, when we look at it in small portions, may beso construed as to mean anything, that it may be interpreted in as manyways as a Delphic oracle. "The French Revolution, " says one expositor, "was the effect of concession. " "Not so, " cries another: "The FrenchRevolution was produced by the obstinacy of an arbitrary government. ""If the French nobles, " says the first, "had refused to sit with theThird Estate, they would never have been driven from their country. ""They would never have been driven from their country, " answers theother, "if they had agreed to the reforms proposed by M. Turgot. " Thesecontroversies can never be brought to any decisive test, or to anysatisfactory conclusion. But, as I believe that history, when we look atit in small fragments, proves anything, or nothing, so I believe thatit is full of useful and precious instruction when we contemplate itin large portions, when we take in, at one view, the whole lifetime ofgreat societies. I believe that it is possible to obtain some insightinto the law which regulates the growth of communities, and someknowledge of the effects which that growth produces. They history ofEngland, in particular, is the history of a government constantlygiving way, sometimes peaceably, sometimes after a violent struggle, but constantly giving way before a nation which has been constantlyadvancing. The forest laws, the laws of villenage, the oppressive powerof the Roman Catholic Church, the power, scarcely less oppressive, which, during some time after the Reformation, was exercised by theProtestant Establishment, the prerogatives of the Crown, the censorshipof the Press, successively yielded. The abuses of the representativesystem are now yielding to the same irresistible force. It wasimpossible for the Stuarts, and it would have been impossible for themif they had possessed all the energy of Richelieu, and all the craft ofMazarin, to govern England as England had been governed by the Tudors. It was impossible for the princes of the House of Hanover to governEngland as England had been governed by the Stuarts. And so it isimpossible that England should be any longer governed as it was governedunder the four first princes of the House of Hanover. I say impossible. I believe that over the great changes of the moral world we possess aslittle power as over the great changes of the physical world. We canno more prevent time from changing the distribution of property andof intelligence, we can no more prevent property and intelligence fromaspiring to political power, than we can change the courses of theseasons and of the tides. In peace or in tumult, by means of oldinstitutions, where those institutions are flexible, over the ruinsof old institutions, where those institutions oppose an unbendingresistance, the great march of society proceeds, and must proceed. Thefeeble efforts of individuals to bear back are lost and swept away inthe mighty rush with which the species goes onward. Those who appear tolead the movement are, in fact, only whirled along before it; those whoattempt to resist it, are beaten down and crushed beneath it. 

It is because rulers do not pay sufficient attention to the stages ofthis great movement, because they underrate its force, because they areignorant of its law, that so many violent and fearful revolutions havechanged the face of society. We have heard it said a hundred timesduring these discussions, we have heard it said repeatedly in the courseof this very debate, that the people of England are more free than everthey were, that the Government is more democratic than ever it was; andthis is urged as an argument against Reform. I admit the fact; butI deny the inference. It is a principle never to be forgotten, indiscussions like this, that it is not by absolute, but by relativemisgovernment that nations are roused to madness. It is not sufficientto look merely at the form of government. We must look also to the stateof the public mind. The worst tyrant that ever had his neck wrung inmodern Europe might have passed for a paragon of clemency in Persia orMorocco. Our Indian subjects submit patiently to a monopoly of salt. Wetried a stamp duty, a duty so light as to be scarcely perceptible, on the fierce breed of the old Puritans; and we lost an empire. TheGovernment of Louis the Sixteenth was certainly a much better and milderGovernment than that of Louis the Fourteenth; yet Louis the Fourteenthwas admired, and even loved, by his people. Louis the Sixteenth died onthe scaffold. Why? Because, though the Government had made many steps inthe career of improvement, it had not advanced so rapidly as the nation. Look at our own history. The liberties of the people were at least asmuch respected by Charles the First as by Henry the Eighth, by James theSecond as by Edward the Sixth. But did this save the crown of James theSecond? Did this save the head of Charles the First? Every personwho knows the history of our civil dissensions knows that all thosearguments which are now employed by the opponents of the Reform Billmight have been employed, and were actually employed, by the unfortunateStuarts. The reasoning of Charles, and of all his apologists, runsthus:--"What new grievance does the nation suffer? What has the Kingdone more than what Henry did? more than what Elizabeth did? Did thepeople ever enjoy more freedom than at present? Did they ever enjoy somuch freedom?" But what would a wise and honest counsellor, if Charleshad been so happy as to possess such a counsellor, have replied toarguments like these? He would have said, "Sir, I acknowledge that thepeople were never more free than under your government. I acknowledgethat those who talk of restoring the old Constitution of England usean improper expression. I acknowledge that there has been a constantimprovement during those very years during which many persons imaginethat there has been a constant deterioration. But, though there has beenno change in the government for the worse, there has been a change inthe public mind which produces exactly the same effect which wouldbe produced by a change in the government for the worse. Perhaps thischange in the public mind is to be regretted. But no matter; you cannotreverse it. You cannot undo all that eighty eventful years have done. You cannot transform the Englishmen of 1640 into the Englishmen of 1560. It may be that the simple loyalty of our fathers was preferable to thatinquiring, censuring, resisting spirit which is now abroad. It may bethat the times when men paid their benevolences cheerfully were bettertimes than these, when a gentleman goes before the Exchequer Chamber toresist an assessment of twenty shillings. And so it may be that infancyis a happier time than manhood, and manhood than old age. But God hasdecreed that old age shall succeed to manhood, and manhood to infancy. Even so have societies their law of growth. As their strength becomesgreater, as their experience becomes more extensive, you can no longerconfine them within the swaddling bands, or lull them in the cradles, oramuse them with the rattles, or terrify them with the bugbears of theirinfancy. I do not say that they are better or happier than they were;but this I say, that they are different from what they were, that youcannot again make them what they were, and that you cannot safely treatthem as if they continued to be what they were. " This was the advicewhich a wise and honest Minister would have given to Charles the First. These were the principles on which that unhappy prince should haveacted. But no. He would govern, I do not say ill, I do not saytyrannically; I only say this; he would govern the men of theseventeenth century as if they had been the men of the sixteenthcentury; and therefore it was, that all his talents and all his virtuesdid not save him from unpopularity, from civil war, from a prison, froma bar, from a scaffold. These things are written for our instruction. Another great intellectual revolution has taken place; our lot hasbeen cast on a time analogous, in many respects, to the time whichimmediately preceded the meeting of the Long Parliament. There isa change in society. There must be a corresponding change in thegovernment. We are not, we cannot, in the nature of things, be, what ourfathers were. We are no more like the men of the American war, or themen of the gagging bills, than the men who cried "privilege" round thecoach of Charles the First were like the men who changed their religiononce a year at the bidding of Henry the Eighth. That there is such achange, I can no more doubt than I can doubt that we have more powerlooms, more steam engines, more gas lights, than our ancestors. Thatthere is such a change, the Minister will surely find who shall attemptto fit the yoke of Mr Pitt to the necks of the Englishmen of thenineteenth century. What then can you do to bring back those timeswhen the constitution of this House was an object of veneration to thepeople? Even as much as Strafford and Laud could do to bring back thedays of the Tudors; as much as Bonner and Gardiner could do to bringback the days of Hildebrand; as much as Villele and Polignac could doto bring back the days of Louis the Fourteenth. You may make the changetedious; you may make it violent; you may--God in his mercy forbid!--youmay make it bloody; but avert it you cannot. Agitations of the publicmind, so deep and so long continued as those which we have witnessed, donot end in nothing. In peace or in convulsion, by the law, or in spiteof the law, through the Parliament, or over the Parliament, Reform mustbe carried. Therefore be content to guide that movement which you cannotstop. Fling wide the gates to that force which else will enter throughthe breach. Then will it still be, as it has hitherto been, the peculiarglory of our Constitution that, though not exempt from the decay whichis wrought by the vicissitudes of fortune, and the lapse of time, in allthe proudest works of human power and wisdom, it yet contains withinit the means of self-reparation. Then will England add to her manifoldtitles of glory this, the noblest and the purest of all; that everyblessing which other nations have been forced to seek, and have toooften sought in vain, by means of violent and bloody revolutions, shewill have attained by a peaceful and a lawful Reform. 

*****

ANATOMY BILL. (FEBRUARY 27, 1832) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OFCOMMONS ON THE 27TH OF FEBRUARY, 1832. 

On Monday, the twenty-seventh of February, 1832, the House took intoconsideration the report of the Committee on Mr Warburton's AnatomyBill. Mr Henry Hunt attacked that bill with great asperity. In reply tohim the following Speech was made. 

Sir, I cannot, even at this late hour of the night, refrain from sayingtwo or three words. Most of the observations of the honourable Memberfor Preston I pass by, as undeserving of any answer before an audiencelike this. But on one part of his speech I must make a few remarks. Weare, he says, making a law to benefit the rich, at the expense of thepoor. Sir, the fact is the direct reverse. This is a bill which tendsespecially to the benefit of the poor. What are the evils against whichwe are attempting to make provision? Two especially; that is to say, thepractice of Burking, and bad surgery. Now to both these the poor aloneare exposed. What man, in our rank of life, runs the smallest risk ofbeing Burked? That a man has property, that he has connections, that heis likely to be missed and sought for, are circumstances which securehim against the Burker. It is curious to observe the difference betweenmurders of this kind and other murders. An ordinary murder hides thebody, and disposes of the property. Bishop and Williams dig holes andbury the property, and expose the body to sale. The more wretched, themore lonely, any human being may be, the more desirable prey is he tothese wretches. It is the man, the mere naked man, that they pursue. Again, as to bad surgery; this is, of all evils, the evil by which therich suffer least, and the poor most. If we could do all that in theopinion of the Member for Preston ought to be done, if we could destroythe English school of anatomy, if we could force every student ofmedical science to go to the expense of a foreign education, on whomwould the bad consequences fall? On the rich? Not at all. As long asthere is in France, in Italy, in Germany, a single surgeon of eminentskill, a single surgeon who is, to use the phrase of the member forPreston, addicted to dissection, that surgeon will be in attendancewhenever an English nobleman is to be cut for the stone. The higherorders in England will always be able to procure the best medicalassistance. Who suffers by the bad state of the Russian school ofsurgery? The Emperor Nicholas? By no means. The whole evil falls on thepeasantry. If the education of a surgeon should become very extensive, if the fees of surgeons should consequently rise, if the supply ofregular surgeons should diminish, the sufferers would be, not therich, but the poor in our country villages, who would again be left tomountebanks, and barbers, and old women, and charms and quack medicines. The honourable gentleman talks of sacrificing the interests of humanityto the interests of science, as if this were a question about thesquaring of the circle, or the transit of Venus. This is not a merequestion of science: it is not the unprofitable exercise of an ingeniousmind: it is a question between health and sickness, between ease andtorment, between life and death. Does the honourable gentleman know fromwhat cruel sufferings the improvement of surgical science has rescuedour species? I will tell him one story, the first that comes intomy head. He may have heard of Leopold, Duke of Austria, the same whoimprisoned our Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Leopold's horse fell under him, and crushed his leg. The surgeons said that the limb must be amputated;but none of them knew how to amputate it. Leopold, in his agony, laid ahatchet on his thigh, and ordered his servant to strike with a mallet. The leg was cut off, and the Duke died of the gush of blood. Such wasthe end of that powerful prince. Why, there is not now a bricklayer whofalls from a ladder in England, who cannot obtain surgical assistance, infinitely superior to that which the sovereign of Austria could commandin the twelfth century. I think this a bill which tends to the goodof the people, and which tends especially to the good of the poor. Therefore I support it. If it is unpopular, I am sorry for it. ButI shall cheerfully take my share of its unpopularity. For such, I amconvinced, ought to be the conduct of one whose object it is, not toflatter the people, but to serve them. 

*****

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. (FEBRUARY 28, 1832) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN ACOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 28TH OF FEBRUARY, 1832. 

On Tuesday, the twenty-eighth of February, 1832, in the Committee on theBill to amend the representation of the people in England and Wales, the question was put, "That the Tower Hamlets, Middlesex, stand part ofSchedule C. " The opponents of the Bill mustered their whole strength onthis occasion, and were joined by some members who had voted with theGovernment on the second reading. The question was carried, however, by316 votes to 236. The following Speech was made in reply to the Marquessof Chandos and Sir Edward Sugden, who, on very different grounds, objected to any increase in the number of metropolitan members. 

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

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

The honourable and learned gentleman (Sir E. Sugden. ) has tried to givesuch reasons; and, in doing so, he has completely refuted the wholespeech of the noble Marquess, with whom he means to divide. (TheMarquess of Chandos. ) The truth is that the noble Marquess and thehonourable and learned gentleman, though they agree in their votes, donot at all agree in their forebodings or in their ulterior intentions. The honourable and learned gentleman thinks it dangerous to increase thenumber of metropolitan voters. The noble Lord is perfectly willing toincrease the number of metropolitan voters, and objects only to anyincrease in the number of metropolitan members. "Will you, " says thehonourable and learned gentleman, "be so rash, so insane, as to createconstituent bodies of twenty or thirty thousand electors?" "Yes, " saysthe noble Marquess, "and much more than that. I will create constituentbodies of forty thousand, sixty thousand, a hundred thousand. I will addMarylebone to Westminster. I will add Lambeth to Southwark. I will addFinsbury and the Tower Hamlets to the City. " The noble Marquess, itis clear, is not afraid of the excitement which may be produced by thepolling of immense multitudes. Of what then is he afraid? Simply ofeight members: nay, of six members: for he is willing, he tells us, toadd two members to the two who already sit for Middlesex, and who maybe considered as metropolitan members. Are six members, then, soformidable? I could mention a single peer who now sends more than sixmembers to the House. But, says the noble Marquess, the members forthe metropolitan districts will be called to a strict account by theirconstituents: they will be mere delegates: they will be forced to speak, not their own sense, but the sense of the capital. I will answer forit, Sir, that they will not be called to a stricter account than thosegentlemen who are nominated by some great proprietors of boroughs. Isit not notorious that those who represent it as in the highest degreepernicious and degrading that a public man should be called to accountby a great city which has intrusted its dearest interests to his care, do nevertheless think that he is bound by the most sacred ties ofhonour to vote according to the wishes of his patron or to apply for theChiltern Hundreds? It is a bad thing, I fully admit, that a Member ofParliament should be a mere delegate. But it is not worse that he shouldbe the delegate of a hundred thousand people than of one too powerfulindividual. What a perverse, what an inconsistent spirit is this; tooproud to bend to the wishes of a nation, yet ready to lick the dust atthe feet of a patron! And how is it proved that a member for Lambethor Finsbury will be under a more servile awe of his constituents thana member for Leicester, or a member for Leicestershire, or a memberfor the University of Oxford? Is it not perfectly notorious that manymembers voted, year after year, against Catholic Emancipation, simplybecause they knew that, if they voted otherwise, they would lose theirseats? No doubt this is an evil. But it is an evil which will exist insome form or other as long as human nature is the same, as long asthere are men so low-minded as to prefer the gratification of a vulgarambition to the approbation of their conscience and the welfare of theircountry. Construct your representative system as you will, these menwill always be sycophants. If you give power to Marylebone, they willfawn on the householders of Marylebone. If you leave power to Gatton, they will fawn on the proprietor of Gatton. I can see no reason forbelieving that their baseness will be more mischievous in the formercase than in the latter. 

But, it is said, the power of this huge capital is even now dangerouslygreat; and will you increase that power? Now, Sir, I am far from denyingthat the power of London is, in some sense, dangerously great; but Ialtogether deny that the danger will be increased by this bill. It hasalways been found that a hundred thousand people congregated close tothe seat of government exercise a greater influence on public affairsthan five hundred thousand dispersed over a remote province. But thisinfluence is not proportioned to the number of representatives chosen bythe capital. This influence is felt at present, though the greater partof the capital is unrepresented. This influence is felt in countrieswhere there is no representative system at all. Indeed, this influenceis nowhere so great as under despotic governments. I need not remind theCommittee that the Caesars, while ruling by the sword, while puttingto death without a trial every senator, every magistrate, who incurredtheir displeasure, yet found it necessary to keep the populace of theimperial city in good humour by distributions of corn and shows of wildbeasts. Every country, from Britain to Egypt, was squeezed for the meansof filling the granaries and adorning the theatres of Rome. On more thanone occasion, long after the Cortes of Castile had become a mere name, the rabble of Madrid assembled before the royal palace, forced theirKing, their absolute King, to appear in the balcony, and exacted fromhim a promise that he would dismiss an obnoxious minister. It was inthis way that Charles the Second was forced to part with Oropesa, andthat Charles the Third was forced to part with Squillaci. If there isany country in the world where pure despotism exists, that country isTurkey; and yet there is no country in the world where the inhabitantsof the capital are so much dreaded by the government. The Sultan, whostands in awe of nothing else, stands in awe of the turbulent populace, which may, at any moment, besiege him in his Seraglio. As soon asConstantinople is up, everything is conceded. The unpopular edict isrecalled. The unpopular vizier is beheaded. This sort of power hasnothing to do with representation. It depends on physical force andon vicinity. You do not propose to take this sort of power away fromLondon. Indeed, you cannot take it away. Nothing can take it away but anearthquake more terrible than that of Lisbon, or a fire more destructivethan that of 1666. Law can do nothing against this description of power;for it is a power which is formidable only when law has ceased to exist. While the reign of law continues, eight votes in a House of six hundredand fifty-eight Members will hardly do much harm. When the reign of lawis at an end, and the reign of violence commences, the importance of amillion and a half of people, all collected within a walk of the Palace, of the Parliament House, of the Bank, of the Courts of Justice, will notbe measured by eight or by eighty votes. See, then, what you are doing. That power which is not dangerous you refuse to London. That power whichis dangerous you leave undiminished; nay, you make it more dangerousstill. For by refusing to let eight or nine hundred thousand peopleexpress their opinions and wishes in a legal and constitutional way, youincrease the risk of disaffection and of tumult. It is not necessary tohave recourse to the speeches or writings of democrats to show thata represented district is far more likely to be turbulent than anunrepresented district. Mr Burke, surely not a rash innovator, nota flatterer of the multitude, described long ago in this placewith admirable eloquence the effect produced by the law which gaverepresentative institutions to the rebellious mountaineers of Wales. That law, he said, had been to an agitated nation what the twin starscelebrated by Horace were to a stormy sea; the wind had fallen; theclouds had dispersed; the threatening waves had sunk to rest. I havementioned the commotions of Madrid and Constantinople. Why is it thatthe population of unrepresented London, though physically far morepowerful than the population of Madrid or of Constantinople, has beenfar more peaceable? Why have we never seen the inhabitants of themetropolis besiege St James's, or force their way riotously into thisHouse? Why, but because they have other means of giving vent to theirfeelings, because they enjoy the liberty of unlicensed printing, and theliberty of holding public meetings. Just as the people of unrepresentedLondon are more orderly than the people of Constantinople and Madrid, sowill the people of represented London be more orderly than the people ofunrepresented London. 

Surely, Sir, nothing can be more absurd than to withhold legal powerfrom a portion of the community because that portion of the communitypossesses natural power. Yet that is precisely what the noble Marquesswould have us do. In all ages a chief cause of the intestine disordersof states has been that the natural distribution of power and the legaldistribution of power have not corresponded with each other. This isno newly discovered truth. It was well known to Aristotle more than twothousand years ago. It is illustrated by every part of ancient and ofmodern history, and eminently by the history of England during the lastfew months. Our country has been in serious danger; and why? Becausea representative system, framed to suit the England of the thirteenthcentury, did not suit the England of the nineteenth century; because anold wall, the last relique of a departed city, retained the privilegesof that city, while great towns, celebrated all over the world forwealth and intelligence, had no more share in the government than whenthey were still hamlets. The object of this bill is to correct thosemonstrous disproportions, and to bring the legal order of society intosomething like harmony with the natural order. What, then, can be moreinconsistent with the fundamental principle of the bill than to excludeany district from a share in the representation, for no reason butbecause that district is, and must always be, one of great importance?This bill was meant to reconcile and unite. Will you frame it in such amanner that it must inevitably produce irritation and discord? This billwas meant to be final in the only rational sense of the word final. Willyou frame it in such a way that it must inevitably be shortlived? Is itto be the first business of the first reformed House of Commons to passa new Reform Bill? Gentlemen opposite have often predicted that thesettlement which we are making will not be permanent; and they are nowtaking the surest way to accomplish their own prediction. I agree withthem in disliking change merely as change. I would bear with manythings which are indefensible in theory, nay, with some things which aregrievous in practice, rather than venture on a change in the compositionof Parliament. But when such a change is necessary, --and that such achange is now necessary is admitted by men of all parties, --then I holdthat it ought to be full and effectual. A great crisis may be followedby the complete restoration of health. But no constitution will bearperpetual tampering. If the noble Marquess's amendment should unhappilybe carried, it is morally certain that the immense population ofFinsbury, of Marylebone, of Lambeth, of the Tower Hamlets, will, importunately and clamorously, demand redress from the reformedParliament. That Parliament, you tell us, will be much moredemocratically inclined than the Parliaments of past times. If so, howcan you expect that it will resist the urgent demands of a million ofpeople close to its door? These eight seats will be given. More thaneight seats will be given. The whole question of Reform will be openedagain; and the blame will rest on those who will, by mutilating thisgreat law in an essential part, cause hundreds of thousands who nowregard it as a boon to regard it as an outrage. 

Sir, our word is pledged. Let us remember the solemn promise which wegave to the nation last October at a perilous conjuncture. That promisewas that we would stand firmly by the principles and leading provisionsof the Reform Bill. Our sincerity is now brought to the test. One of theleading provisions of the bill is in danger. The question is, not merelywhether these districts shall be represented, but whether we will keepthe faith which we plighted to our countrymen. Let us be firm. Let usmake no concession to those who, having in vain tried to throw the billout, are now trying to fritter it away. An attempt has been made toinduce the Irish members to vote against the government. It has beenhinted that, perhaps, some of the seats taken from the metropolis may begiven to Ireland. Our Irish friends will, I doubt not, remember thatthe very persons who offer this bribe exerted themselves not long agoto raise a cry against the proposition to give additional members toBelfast, Limerick, Waterford, and Galway. The truth is that our enemieswish only to divide us, and care not by what means. One day they tryto excite jealousy among the English by asserting that the plan of thegovernment is too favourable to Ireland. Next day they try to bribe theIrish to desert us, by promising to give something to Ireland at theexpense of England. Let us disappoint these cunning men. Let us, fromwhatever part of the United Kingdom we come, be true to each other andto the good cause. We have the confidence of our country. We have justlyearned it. For God's sake let us not throw it away. Other occasions mayarise on which honest Reformers may fairly take different sides. Butto-night he that is not with us is against us. 

*****

REPEAL OF THE UNION WITH IRELAND. (FEBRUARY 6, 1833) A SPEECH DELIVEREDIN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 6TH OF FEBRUARY 1833. 

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

Last night, Sir, I thought that it would not be necessary for me to takeany part in the present debate: but the appeal which has this eveningbeen made to me by my honourable friend the Member for Lincoln (MrEdward Lytton Bulwer. ) has forced me to rise. I will, however, postponethe few words which I have to say in defence of my own consistency, tillI have expressed my opinion on the much more important subject which isbefore the House. 

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

We have, indeed, been told by some gentlemen, who are not themselvesrepealers, that the question of Repeal deserves a much more seriousconsideration than it has yet received. Repeal, they say, is an objecton which millions have, however unwisely, set their hearts; and menwho speak in the name of millions are not to be coughed down or sneereddown. That which a suffering nation regards, rightly or wrongly, as thesole cure for all its distempers, ought not to be treated with levity, but to be the subject of full and solemn debate. All this, Sir, is mosttrue: but I am surprised that this lecture should have been read tous who sit on your right. It would, I apprehend, have been with morepropriety addressed to a different quarter. Whose fault is it that wehave not yet had, and that there is no prospect of our having, this fulland solemn debate? Is it the fault of His Majesty's Ministers? Havenot they framed the Speech which their Royal Master delivered from thethrone, in such a manner as to invite the grave and searching discussionof the question of Repeal? and has not the invitation been declined? Isit not fresh in our recollection that the honourable and learned Memberfor Dublin spoke two hours, perhaps three hours, --nobody keeps accurateaccount of time while he speaks, --but two or three hours withoutventuring to join issue with us on this subject? In truth, he sufferedjudgment to go against him by default. We, on this side of the House, did our best to provoke him to the conflict. We called on him tomaintain here those doctrines which he had proclaimed elsewhere with somuch vehemence, and, I am sorry to be forced to add, with a scurrilityunworthy of his parts and eloquence. Never was a challenge more fairlygiven: but it was not accepted. The great champion of Repeal would notlift our glove. He shrank back; he skulked away; not, assuredly, fromdistrust of his powers, which have never been more vigorously exertedthan in this debate, but evidently from distrust of his cause. I haveseldom heard so able a speech as his: I certainly never heard a speechso evasive. From the beginning to the end he studiously avoided sayinga single word tending to raise a discussion about that Repeal which, inother places, he constantly affirms to be the sole panacea for all theevils by which his country is afflicted. Nor is this all. Yesterdaynight he placed on our order-book not less than fourteen notices; andof those notices not a single one had any reference to the Union betweenGreat Britain and Ireland. It is therefore evident to me, not only thatthe honourable and learned gentleman is not now prepared to debate thequestion in this House, but that he has no intention of debating it inthis House at all. He keeps it, and prudently keeps it, for audiences ofa very different kind. I am therefore, I repeat, surprised to hearthe Government accused of avoiding the discussion of this subject. Whyshould we avoid a battle in which the bold and skilful captain of theenemy evidently knows that we must be victorious?

One gentleman, though not a repealer, has begged us not to declareourselves decidedly adverse to repeal till we have studied the petitionswhich are coming in from Ireland. Really, Sir, this is not a subject onwhich any public man ought to be now making up his mind. My mind is madeup. My reasons are such as, I am certain, no petition from Ireland willconfute. Those reasons have long been ready to be produced; and, sincewe are accused of flinching, I will at once produce them. I am preparedto show that the Repeal of the Union would not remove the political andsocial evils which afflict Ireland, nay, that it would aggravate almostevery one of those evils. 

I understand, though I do not approve, the proceedings of poor WolfeTone and his confederates. They wished to make a complete separationbetween Great Britain and Ireland. They wished to establish a Hibernianrepublic. Their plan was a very bad one; but, to do them justice, itwas perfectly consistent; and an ingenious man might defend it by someplausible arguments. But that is not the plan of the honourable andlearned Member for Dublin. He assures us that he wishes the connectionbetween the islands to be perpetual. He is for a complete separationbetween the two Parliaments; but he is for indissoluble union betweenthe two Crowns. Nor does the honourable and learned gentleman mean, byan union between the Crowns, such an union as exists between the Crownof this kingdom and the Crown of Hanover. For I need not say that, though the same person is king of Great Britain and of Hanover, thereis no more political connection between Great Britain and Hanover thanbetween Great Britain and Hesse, or between Great Britain and Bavaria. Hanover may be at peace with a state with which Great Britain is at war. Nay, Hanover may, as a member of the Germanic body, send a contingent oftroops to cross bayonets with the King's English footguards. This is notthe relation in which the honourable and learned gentleman proposes thatGreat Britain and Ireland should stand to each other. His plan is, thateach of the two countries shall have an independent legislature, butthat both shall have the same executive government. Now, is it possiblethat a mind so acute and so well informed as his should not atonce perceive that this plan involves an absurdity, a downrightcontradiction. Two independent legislatures! One executive government!How can the thing be? No doubt, if the legislative power were quitedistinct from the executive power, England and Ireland might as easilyhave two legislatures as two Chancellors and two Courts of King's Bench. But though, in books written by theorists, the executive power and thelegislative power may be treated as things quite distinct, every manacquainted with the real working of our constitution knows that the twopowers are most closely connected, nay, intermingled with each other. During several generations, the whole administration of affairs hasbeen conducted in conformity with the sense of Parliament. Aboutevery exercise of the prerogative of the Crown it is the privilegeof Parliament to offer advice; and that advice no wise king willever slight. It is the prerogative of the Sovereign to choose his ownservants; but it is impossible for him to maintain them in office unlessParliament will support them. It is the prerogative of the Sovereign totreat with other princes; but it is impossible for him to persist in anyscheme of foreign policy which is disagreeable to Parliament. It isthe prerogative of the Sovereign to make war; but he cannot raise abattalion or man a frigate without the help of Parliament. The repealersmay therefore be refuted out of their own mouths. They say thatGreat Britain and Ireland ought to have one executive power. Butthe legislature has a most important share of the executive power. Therefore, by the confession of the repealers themselves, Great Britainand Ireland ought to have one legislature. 

Consider for one moment in what a situation the executive governmentwill be placed if you have two independent legislatures, and if thoselegislatures should differ, as all bodies which are independent of eachother will sometimes differ. Suppose the case of a commercial treatywhich is unpopular in England and popular in Ireland. The IrishParliament expresses its approbation of the terms, and passes a voteof thanks to the negotiator. We at Westminster censure the terms andimpeach the negotiator. Or are we to have two foreign offices, one inDowning Street and one in Dublin Castle? Is His Majesty to send to everycourt in Christendom two diplomatic agents, to thwart each other, andto be spies upon each other? It is inconceivable but that, in a veryfew years, disputes such as can be terminated only by arms must arisebetween communities so absurdly united and so absurdly disunited. Allhistory confirms this reasoning. Superficial observers have fancied thatthey had found cases on the other side. But as soon as you examine thosecases you will see either that they bear no analogy to the case withwhich we have to deal, or that they corroborate my argument. The caseof Ireland herself has been cited. Ireland, it has been said, had anindependent legislature from 1782 to 1800: during eighteen years therewere two coequal parliaments under one Crown; and yet there was nocollision. Sir, the reason that there was not perpetual collision was, as we all know, that the Irish parliament, though nominally independent, was generally kept in real dependence by means of the foulest corruptionthat ever existed in any assembly. But it is not true that there was nocollision. Before the Irish legislature had been six years independent, a collision did take place, a collision such as might well have produceda civil war. In the year 1788, George the Third was incapacitatedby illness from discharging his regal functions. According to theconstitution, the duty of making provision for the discharge of thosefunctions devolved on the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland. Between the government of Great Britain and the government of Irelandthere was, during the interregnum, no connection whatever. The sovereignwho was the common head of both governments had virtually ceased toexist: and the two legislatures were no more to each other thanthis House and the Chamber of Deputies at Paris. What followed? TheParliament of Great Britain resolved to offer the Regency to the Princeof Wales under many important restrictions. The Parliament of Irelandmade him an offer of the Regency without any restrictions whatever. Bythe same right by which the Irish Lords and Commons made that offer, they might, if Mr Pitt's doctrine be the constitutional doctrine, asI believe it to be, have made the Duke of York or the Duke of LeinsterRegent. To this Regent they might have given all the prerogatives of theKing. Suppose, --no extravagant supposition, --that George the Thirdhad not recovered, that the rest of his long life had been passedin seclusion, Great Britain and Ireland would then have been, duringthirty-two years, as completely separated as Great Britain and Spain. There would have been nothing in common between the governments, neitherexecutive power nor legislative power. It is plain, therefore, that atotal separation between the two islands might, in the natural course ofthings, and without the smallest violation of the constitution on eitherside, be the effect of the arrangement recommended by the honourable andlearned gentleman, who solemnly declares that he should consider such aseparation as the greatest of calamities. 

No doubt, Sir, in several continental kingdoms there have been twolegislatures, and indeed more than two legislatures, under the sameCrown. But the explanation is simple. Those legislatures were of no realweight in the government. Under Louis the Fourteenth Brittany had itsStates; Burgundy had its States; and yet there was no collision betweenthe States of Brittany and the States of Burgundy. But why? Becauseneither the States of Brittany nor the States of Burgundy imposedany real restraint on the arbitrary power of the monarch. So, inthe dominions of the House of Hapsburg, there is the semblance of alegislature in Hungary and the semblance of a legislature in the Tyrol:but all the real power is with the Emperor. I do not say that you cannothave one executive power and two mock parliaments, two parliaments whichmerely transact parish business, two parliaments which exercise no moreinfluence on great affairs of state than the vestry of St Pancras or thevestry of Marylebone. What I do say, and what common sense teaches, andwhat all history teaches, is this, that you cannot have one executivepower and two real parliaments, two parliaments possessing suchpowers as the parliament of this country has possessed ever sincethe Revolution, two parliaments to the deliberate sense of which theSovereign must conform. If they differ, how can he conform to the senseof both? The thing is as plain as a proposition in Euclid. 

It is impossible for me to believe that considerations so obvious and soimportant should not have occurred to the honourable and learned Memberfor Dublin. Doubtless they have occurred to him; and therefore itis that he shrinks from arguing the question here. Nay, even when heharangues more credulous assemblies on the subject, he carefully avoidsprecise explanations; and the hints which sometimes escape him arenot easily to be reconciled with each other. On one occasion, ifthe newspapers are to be trusted, he declared that his object was toestablish a federal union between Great Britain and Ireland. A localparliament, it seems, is to sit at Dublin, and to send deputies to animperial parliament which is to sit at Westminster. The honourable andlearned gentleman thinks, I suppose, that in this way he evades thedifficulties which I have pointed out. But he deceives himself. If, indeed, his local legislature is to be subject to his imperiallegislature, if his local legislature is to be merely what the Assemblyof Antigua or Barbadoes is, or what the Irish Parliament was before1782, the danger of collision is no doubt removed: but what, on thehonourable and learned gentleman's own principles, would Ireland gain bysuch an arrangement? If, on the other hand, his local legislature isto be for certain purposes independent, you have again the risk ofcollision. Suppose that a difference of opinion should arise between theImperial Parliament and the Irish Parliament as to the limits of theirpowers, who is to decide between them? A dispute between the House ofCommons and the House of Lords is bad enough. Yet in that case, theSovereign can, by a high exercise of his prerogative, produce harmony. He can send us back to our constituents; and, if that expedient fails, he can create more lords. When, in 1705, the dispute between theHouses about the Aylesbury men ran high, Queen Anne restored concord bydismissing the Parliament. Seven years later she put an end to anotherconflict between the Houses by making twelve peers in one day. But whois to arbitrate between two representative bodies chosen by differentconstituent bodies? Look at what is now passing in America. Of allfederal constitutions that of the United States is the best. It wasframed by a convention which contained many wise and experienced men, and over which Washington presided. Yet there is a debateable ground onthe frontier which separates the functions of Congress from those ofthe state legislatures. A dispute as to the exact boundary has latelyarisen. Neither party seems disposed to yield: and, if both persist, there can be no umpire but the sword. 

For my part, Sir, I have no hesitation in saying that I should verygreatly prefer the total separation which the honourable and learnedgentleman professes to consider as a calamity, to the partial separationwhich he has taught his countrymen to regard as a blessing. If, on afair trial, it be found that Great Britain and Ireland cannot existhappily together as parts of one empire, in God's name let themseparate. I wish to see them joined as the limbs of a well formed bodyare joined. In such a body the members assist each other: they arenourished by the same food: if one member suffer, all suffer with it:if one member rejoice, all rejoice with it. But I do not wish to see thecountries united, like those wretched twins from Siam who were exhibitedhere a little while ago, by an unnatural ligament which made each theconstant plague of the other, always in each other's way, more helplessthan others because they had twice as many hands, slower than othersbecause they had twice as many legs, sympathising with each other onlyin evil, not feeling each other's pleasures, not supported by eachother's aliments, but tormented by each other's infirmities, and certainto perish miserably by each other's dissolution. 

Ireland has undoubtedly just causes of complaint. We heard those causesrecapitulated last night by the honourable and learned Member, who tellsus that he represents not Dublin alone, but Ireland, and that he standsbetween his country and civil war. I do not deny that most of thegrievances which he recounted exist, that they are serious, and thatthey ought to be remedied as far as it is in the power of legislation toremedy them. What I do deny is that they were caused by the Union, andthat the Repeal of the Union would remove them. I listened attentivelywhile the honourable and learned gentleman went through that long andmelancholy list: and I am confident that he did not mention a singleevil which was not a subject of bitter complaint while Ireland had adomestic parliament. Is it fair, is it reasonable in the honourablegentleman to impute to the Union evils which, as he knows better thanany other man in this house, existed long before the Union? Post hoc:ergo, propter hoc is not always sound reasoning. But ante hoc: ergo, non propter hoc is unanswerable. The old rustic who told Sir ThomasMore that Tenterden steeple was the cause of Godwin sands reasoned muchbetter than the honourable and learned gentleman. For it was not tillafter Tenterden steeple was built that the frightful wrecks on theGodwin sands were heard of. But the honourable and learned gentlemanwould make Godwin sands the cause of Tenterden steeple. Some of theIrish grievances which he ascribes to the Union are not only older thanthe Union, but are not peculiarly Irish. They are common to England, Scotland, and Ireland; and it was in order to get rid of them that we, for the common benefit of England, Scotland, and Ireland, passed theReform Bill last year. Other grievances which the honourable and learnedgentleman mentioned are doubtless local; but is there to be a locallegislature wherever there is a local grievance? Wales has had localgrievances. We all remember the complaints which were made a few yearsago about the Welsh judicial system; but did anybody therefore proposethat Wales should have a distinct parliament? Cornwall has some localgrievances; but does anybody propose that Cornwall shall have its ownHouse of Lords and its own House of Commons? Leeds has local grievances. The majority of my constituents distrust and dislike the municipalgovernment to which they are subject; they therefore call loudly onus for corporation reform: but they do not ask us for a separatelegislature. Of this I am quite sure, that every argument which has beenurged for the purpose of showing that Great Britain and Ireland oughtto have two distinct parliaments may be urged with far greater forcefor the purpose of showing that the north of Ireland and the south ofIreland ought to have two distinct parliaments. The House of Commons ofthe United Kingdom, it has been said, is chiefly elected by Protestants, and therefore cannot be trusted to legislate for Catholic Ireland. If this be so, how can an Irish House of Commons, chiefly electedby Catholics, be trusted to legislate for Protestant Ulster? It isperfectly notorious that theological antipathies are stronger in Irelandthan here. I appeal to the honourable and learned gentleman himself. Hehas often declared that it is impossible for a Roman Catholic, whetherprosecutor or culprit, to obtain justice from a jury of Orangemen. Itis indeed certain that, in blood, religion, language, habits, character, the population of some of the northern counties of Ireland has muchmore in common with the population of England and Scotland than with thepopulation of Munster and Connaught. I defy the honourable and learnedMember, therefore, to find a reason for having a parliament at Dublinwhich will not be just as good a reason for having another parliament atLondonderry. 

Sir, in showing, as I think I have shown, the absurdity of this cry forRepeal, I have in a great measure vindicated myself from the charge ofinconsistency which has been brought against me by my honourable friendthe Member for Lincoln. It is very easy to bring a volume of Hansard tothe House, to read a few sentences of a speech made in very differentcircumstances, and to say, "Last year you were for pacifying England byconcession: this year you are for pacifying Ireland by coercion. How canyou vindicate your consistency?" Surely my honourable friend cannotbut know that nothing is easier than to write a theme for severity, forclemency, for order, for liberty, for a contemplative life, for a activelife, and so on. It was a common exercise in the ancient schools ofrhetoric to take an abstract question, and to harangue first on one sideand then on the other. The question, Ought popular discontents to bequieted by concession or coercion? would have been a very good subjectfor oratory of this kind. There is no lack of commonplaces on eitherside. But when we come to the real business of life, the value of thesecommonplaces depends entirely on the particular circumstances of thecase which we are discussing. Nothing is easier than to write a treatiseproving that it is lawful to resist extreme tyranny. Nothing is easierthan to write a treatise setting forth the wickedness of wantonlybringing on a great society the miseries inseparable from revolution, the bloodshed, the spoliation, the anarchy. Both treatises may containmuch that is true; but neither will enable us to decide whether aparticular insurrection is or is not justifiable without a closeexamination of the facts. There is surely no inconsistency in speakingwith respect of the memory of Lord Russell and with horror of the crimeof Thistlewood; and, in my opinion, the conduct of Russell and theconduct of Thistlewood did not differ more widely than the cry forParliamentary Reform and the cry for the Repeal of the Union. The ReformBill I believe to be a blessing to the nation. Repeal I know to be amere delusion. I know it to be impracticable: and I know that, if itwere practicable, it would be pernicious to every part of the empire, and utterly ruinous to Ireland. Is it not then absurd to say that, because I wished last year to quiet the English people by giving themthat which was beneficial to them, I am therefore bound in consistencyto quiet the Irish people this year by giving them that which willbe fatal to them? I utterly deny, too, that, in consenting to arm thegovernment with extraordinary powers for the purpose of repressingdisturbances in Ireland, I am guilty of the smallest inconsistency. Onwhat occasion did I ever refuse to support any government in repressingdisturbances? It is perfectly true that, in the debates on the ReformBill, I imputed the tumults and outrages of 1830 to misrule. But did Iever say that those tumults and outrages ought to be tolerated? I didattribute the Kentish riots, the Hampshire riots, the burning of cornstacks, the destruction of threshing machines, to the obstinacy withwhich the Ministers of the Crown had refused to listen to the demandsof the people. But did I ever say that the rioters ought not to beimprisoned, that the incendiaries ought not to be hanged? I did ascribethe disorders of Nottingham and the fearful sacking of Bristol to theunwise rejection of the Reform Bill by the Lords. But did I ever saythat such excesses as were committed at Nottingham and Bristol ought notto be put down, if necessary, by the sword?

I would act towards Ireland on the same principles on which I actedtowards England. In Ireland, as in England, I would remove every justcause of complaint; and in Ireland, as in England, I would support theGovernment in preserving the public peace. What is there inconsistentin this? My honourable friend seems to think that no person who believesthat disturbances have been caused by maladministration can consistentlylend his help to put down those disturbances. If that be so, thehonourable and learned Member for Dublin is quite as inconsistent asI am; indeed, much more so; for he thinks very much worse of theGovernment than I do; and yet he declares himself willing to assistthe Government in quelling the tumults which, as he assures us, its ownmisconduct is likely to produce. He told us yesterday that our harshpolicy might perhaps goad the unthinking populace of Ireland intoinsurrection; and he added that, if there should be insurrection, heshould, while execrating us as the authors of all the mischief, be foundin our ranks, and should be ready to support us in everything thatmight be necessary for the restoration of order. As to this part of thesubject, there is no difference in principle between the honourable andlearned gentleman and myself. In his opinion, it is probable that a timemay soon come when vigorous coercion may be necessary, and when it maybe the duty of every friend of Ireland to co-operate in the work ofcoercion. In my opinion, that time has already come. The grievances ofIreland are doubtless great, so great that I never would have connectedmyself with a Government which I did not believe to be intent onredressing those grievances. But am I, because the grievances of Irelandare great, and ought to be redressed, to abstain from redressing theworst grievance of all? Am I to look on quietly while the laws areinsulted by a furious rabble, while houses are plundered and burned, while my peaceable fellow-subjects are butchered? The distribution ofChurch property, you tell us, is unjust. Perhaps I agree with you. But what then? To what purpose is it to talk about the distribution ofChurch property, while no property is secure? Then you try to deter usfrom putting down robbery, arson, and murder, by telling us that if weresort to coercion we shall raise a civil war. We are past that fear. Recollect that, in one county alone, there have been within a fewweeks sixty murders or assaults with intent to murder and six hundredburglaries. Since we parted last summer the slaughter in Ireland hasexceeded the slaughter of a pitched battle: the destruction of propertyhas been as great as would have been caused by the storming of three orfour towns. Civil war, indeed! I would rather live in the midst of anycivil war that we have had in England during the last two hundredyears than in some parts of Ireland at the present moment. Rather, muchrather, would I have lived on the line of march of the Pretender's armyin 1745 than in Tipperary now. It is idle to threaten us with civil war;for we have it already; and it is because we are resolved to put anend to it that we are called base, and brutal, and bloody. Such are theepithets which the honourable and learned Member for Dublin thinksit becoming to pour forth against the party to which he owes everypolitical privilege that he enjoys. He need not fear that any memberof that party will be provoked into a conflict of scurrility. Usemakes even sensitive minds callous to invective: and, copious as hisvocabulary is, he will not easily find in it any foul name which has notbeen many times applied to those who sit around me, on account of thezeal and steadiness with which they supported the emancipation ofthe Roman Catholics. His reproaches are not more stinging than thereproaches which, in times not very remote, we endured unflinchingly inhis cause. I can assure him that men who faced the cry of No Popery arenot likely to be scared by the cry of Repeal. The time will come whenhistory will do justice to the Whigs of England, and will faithfullyrelate how much they did and suffered for Ireland; how, for the sake ofIreland, they quitted office in 1807; how, for the sake of Ireland, theyremained out of office more than twenty years, braving the frowns ofthe Court, braving the hisses of the multitude, renouncing power, and patronage, and salaries, and peerages, and garters, and yet notobtaining in return even a little fleeting popularity. I see on thebenches near me men who might, by uttering one word against CatholicEmancipation, nay, by merely abstaining from uttering a word in favourof Catholic Emancipation, have been returned to this House withoutdifficulty or expense, and who, rather than wrong their Irishfellow-subjects, were content to relinquish all the objects of theirhonourable ambition, and to retire into private life with conscienceand fame untarnished. As to one eminent person, who seems to be regardedwith especial malevolence by those who ought never to mention his namewithout reverence and gratitude, I will say only this: that the loudestclamour which the honourable and learned gentleman can excite againstLord Grey will be trifling when compared with the clamour which LordGrey withstood in order to place the honourable and learned gentlemanwhere he now sits. Though a young member of the Whig party, I willventure to speak in the name of the whole body. I tell the honourableand learned gentleman, that the same spirit which sustained us in a justcontest for him will sustain us in an equally just contest against him. Calumny, abuse, royal displeasure, popular fury, exclusion from office, exclusion from Parliament, we were ready to endure them all, rather thanthat he should be less than a British subject. We never will suffer himto be more. 

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

*****

JEWISH DISABILITIES. (APRIL 17, 1833) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN A COMMITTEEOF THE WHOLE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 17TH OF APRIL, 1833. 

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

"That it is the opinion of this Committee that it is expedient to removeall civil disabilities at present existing with respect to His Majesty'ssubjects professing the Jewish religion, with the like exceptions asare provided with respect to His Majesty's subjects professing the RomanCatholic religion. "

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

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

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

Now, surely my honourable friend cannot have considered to whatconclusions his reasoning leads. Those conclusions are so monstrous thathe would, I am certain, shrink from them. Does he really mean that itwould not be wrong in the legislature to enact that no man should bea judge unless he weighed twelve stone, or that no man should sit inparliament unless he were six feet high? We are about to bring in a billfor the government of India. Suppose that we were to insert in that billa clause providing that no graduate of the University of Oxfordshould be Governor General or Governor of any Presidency, would not myhonourable friend cry out against such a clause as most unjust tothe learned body which he represents? And would he think himselfsufficiently answered by being told, in his own words, that theappointment to office is a mere matter of favour, and that to excludean individual or a class from office is no injury? Surely, onconsideration, he must admit that official appointments ought not tobe subject to regulations purely arbitrary, to regulations for which noreason can be given but mere caprice, and that those who would excludeany class from public employment are bound to show some special reasonfor the exclusion. 

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

But where, he says, are you to stop, if once you admit into the House ofCommons people who deny the authority of the Gospels? Will you let ina Mussulman? Will you let in a Parsee? Will you let in a Hindoo, whoworships a lump of stone with seven heads? I will answer my honourablefriend's question by another. Where does he mean to stop? Is he ready toroast unbelievers at slow fires? If not, let him tell us why: and Iwill engage to prove that his reason is just as decisive against theintolerance which he thinks a duty, as against the intolerance which hethinks a crime. Once admit that we are bound to inflict pain on a manbecause he is not of our religion; and where are you to stop? Why stopat the point fixed by my honourable friend rather than at the pointfixed by the honourable Member for Oldham (Mr Cobbett. ), who would makethe Jews incapable of holding land? And why stop at the point fixed bythe honourable Member for Oldham rather than at the point which wouldhave been fixed by a Spanish Inquisitor of the sixteenth century? Whenonce you enter on a course of persecution, I defy you to find any reasonfor making a halt till you have reached the extreme point. When myhonourable friend tells us that he will allow the Jews to possessproperty to any amount, but that he will not allow them to possess thesmallest political power, he holds contradictory language. Propertyis power. The honourable Member for Oldham reasons better than myhonourable friend. The honourable Member for Oldham sees very clearlythat it is impossible to deprive a man of political power if yousuffer him to be the proprietor of half a county, and therefore veryconsistently proposes to confiscate the landed estates of the Jews. Buteven the honourable Member for Oldham does not go far enough. He hasnot proposed to confiscate the personal property of the Jews. Yet it isperfectly certain that any Jew who has a million may easily make himselfvery important in the State. By such steps we pass from official powerto landed property, and from landed property to personal property, andfrom property to liberty, and from liberty to life. In truth, thosepersecutors who use the rack and the stake have much to say forthemselves. They are convinced that their end is good; and it must beadmitted that they employ means which are not unlikely to attain theend. Religious dissent has repeatedly been put down by sanguinarypersecution. In that way the Albigenses were put down. In that wayProtestantism was suppressed in Spain and Italy, so that it has neversince reared its head. But I defy any body to produce an instance inwhich disabilities such as we are now considering have produced anyother effect than that of making the sufferers angry and obstinate. My honourable friend should either persecute to some purpose, or notpersecute at all. He dislikes the word persecution I know. He will notadmit that the Jews are persecuted. And yet I am confident that he wouldrather be sent to the King's Bench Prison for three months, or be fineda hundred pounds, than be subject to the disabilities under which theJews lie. How can he then say that to impose such disabilities is notpersecution, and that to fine and imprison is persecution? All hisreasoning consists in drawing arbitrary lines. What he does not wish toinflict he calls persecution. What he does wish to inflict he will notcall persecution. What he takes from the Jews he calls political power. What he is too good-natured to take from the Jews he will not callpolitical power. The Jew must not sit in Parliament: but he may be theproprietor of all the ten pound houses in a borough. He may have morefifty pound tenants than any peer in the kingdom. He may give the voterstreats to please their palates, and hire bands of gipsies to break theirheads, as if he were a Christian and a Marquess. All the rest of thissystem is of a piece. The Jew may be a juryman, but not a judge. Hemay decide issues of fact, but not issues of law. He may give a hundredthousand pounds damages; but he may not in the most trivial case grant anew trial. He may rule the money market: he may influence theexchanges: he may be summoned to congresses of Emperors and Kings. Greatpotentates, instead of negotiating a loan with him by tying him in achair and pulling out his grinders, may treat with him as with a greatpotentate, and may postpone the declaring of war or the signing of atreaty till they have conferred with him. All this is as it shouldbe: but he must not be a Privy Councillor. He must not be called RightHonourable, for that is political power. And who is it that we aretrying to cheat in this way? Even Omniscience. Yes, Sir; we have beengravely told that the Jews are under the divine displeasure, and that ifwe give them political power God will visit us in judgment. Do we thenthink that God cannot distinguish between substance and form? Does notHe know that, while we withhold from the Jews the semblance and nameof political power, we suffer them to possess the substance? The plaintruth is that my honourable friend is drawn in one direction by hisopinions, and in a directly opposite direction by his excellent heart. He halts between two opinions. He tries to make a compromise betweenprinciples which admit of no compromise. He goes a certain way inintolerance. Then he stops, without being able to give a reason forstopping. But I know the reason. It is his humanity. Those who formerlydragged the Jew at a horse's tail, and singed his beard with blazingfurzebushes, were much worse men than my honourable friend; but theywere more consistent than he. 

It has been said that it would be monstrous to see a Jew judge try a manfor blasphemy. In my opinion it is monstrous to see any judge try a manfor blasphemy under the present law. But, if the law on that subjectwere in a sound state, I do not see why a conscientious Jew might nottry a blasphemer. Every man, I think, ought to be at liberty to discussthe evidences of religion; but no man ought to be at liberty to force onthe unwilling ears and eyes of others sounds and sights which must causeannoyance and irritation. The distinction is clear. I think it wrong topunish a man for selling Paine's Age of Reason in a back-shop to thosewho choose to buy, or for delivering a Deistical lecture in a privateroom to those who choose to listen. But if a man exhibits at a windowin the Strand a hideous caricature of that which is an object of aweand adoration to nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand ofpeople who pass up and down that great thoroughfare; if a man in a placeof public resort applies opprobrious epithets to names held in reverenceby all Christians; such a man ought, in my opinion, to be severelypunished, not for differing from us in opinion, but for committing anuisance which gives us pain and disgust. He is no more entitled tooutrage our feelings by obtruding his impiety on us, and to say thathe is exercising his right of discussion, than to establish a yard forbutchering horses close to our houses, and to say that he is exercisinghis right of property, or to run naked up and down the public streets, and to say that he is exercising his right of locomotion. He has a rightof discussion, no doubt, as he has a right of property and a right oflocomotion. But he must use all his rights so as not to infringe therights of others. 

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

But, says my honourable friend, it has been prophesied that the Jews areto be wanderers on the face of the earth, and that they are not to mixon terms of equality with the people of the countries in which theysojourn. Now, Sir, I am confident that I can demonstrate that this isnot the sense of any prophecy which is part of Holy Writ. For it is anundoubted fact that, in the United States of America, Jewish citizens dopossess all the privileges possessed by Christian citizens. Therefore, if the prophecies mean that the Jews never shall, during theirwanderings, be admitted by other nations to equal participation ofpolitical rights, the prophecies are false. But the prophecies arecertainly not false. Therefore their meaning cannot be that which isattributed to them by my honourable friend. 

Another objection which has been made to this motion is that the Jewslook forward to the coming of a great deliverer, to their return toPalestine, to the rebuilding of their Temple, to the revival of theirancient worship, and that therefore they will always consider England, not their country, but merely as their place of exile. But, surely, Sir, it would be the grossest ignorance of human nature to imagine that theanticipation of an event which is to happen at some time altogetherindefinite, of an event which has been vainly expected during manycenturies, of an event which even those who confidently expect that itwill happen do not confidently expect that they or their children ortheir grandchildren will see, can ever occupy the minds of men to sucha degree as to make them regardless of what is near and present andcertain. Indeed Christians, as well as Jews, believe that the existingorder of things will come to an end. Many Christians believe that Jesuswill visibly reign on earth during a thousand years. Expositors ofprophecy have gone so far as to fix the year when the Millennial periodis to commence. The prevailing opinion is, I think, in favour of theyear 1866; but, according to some commentators, the time is close athand. Are we to exclude all millennarians from Parliament and office, onthe ground that they are impatiently looking forward to the miraculousmonarchy which is to supersede the present dynasty and the presentconstitution of England, and that therefore they cannot be heartilyloyal to King William?

In one important point, Sir, my honourable friend, the Member for theUniversity of Oxford, must acknowledge that the Jewish religion isof all erroneous religions the least mischievous. There is not theslightest chance that the Jewish religion will spread. The Jew does notwish to make proselytes. He may be said to reject them. He thinks italmost culpable in one who does not belong to his race to presume tobelong to his religion. It is therefore not strange that a conversionfrom Christianity to Judaism should be a rarer occurrence than a totaleclipse of the sun. There was one distinguished convert in the lastcentury, Lord George Gordon; and the history of his conversiondeserves to be remembered. For if ever there was a proselyte of whom aproselytising sect would have been proud, it was Lord George; not onlybecause he was a man of high birth and rank; not only because hehad been a member of the legislature; but also because he had beendistinguished by the intolerance, nay, the ferocity, of his zeal for hisown form of Christianity. But was he allured into the Synagogue? Was heeven welcomed to it? No, sir; he was coldly and reluctantly permittedto share the reproach and suffering of the chosen people; but he wassternly shut out from their privileges. He underwent the painful ritewhich their law enjoins. But when, on his deathbed, he begged hard tobe buried among them according to their ceremonial, he was told thathis request could not be granted. I understand that cry of "Hear. " Itreminds me that one of the arguments against this motion is that theJews are an unsocial people, that they draw close to each other, andstand aloof from strangers. Really, Sir, it is amusing to comparethe manner in which the question of Catholic emancipation was arguedformerly by some gentlemen with the manner in which the question of Jewemancipation is argued by the same gentlemen now. When the questionwas about Catholic emancipation, the cry was, "See how restless, howversatile, how encroaching, how insinuating, is the spirit of theChurch of Rome. See how her priests compass earth and sea to make oneproselyte, how indefatigably they toil, how attentively they study theweak and strong parts of every character, how skilfully they employliterature, arts, sciences, as engines for the propagation of theirfaith. You find them in every region and under every disguise, collatingmanuscripts in the Bodleian, fixing telescopes in the observatory ofPekin, teaching the use of the plough and the spinning-wheel to thesavages of Paraguay. Will you give power to the members of a Church sobusy, so aggressive, so insatiable?" Well, now the question is aboutpeople who never try to seduce any stranger to join them, and who do notwish anybody to be of their faith who is not also of their blood. Andnow you exclaim, "Will you give power to the members of a sect whichremains sullenly apart from other sects, which does not invite, nay, which hardly ever admits neophytes?" The truth is, that bigotry willnever want a pretence. Whatever the sect be which it is proposedto tolerate, the peculiarities of that sect will, for the time, bepronounced by intolerant men to be the most odious and dangerous thatcan be conceived. As to the Jews, that they are unsocial as respectsreligion is true; and so much the better: for, surely, as Christians, we cannot wish that they should bestir themselves to pervert us fromour own faith. But that the Jews would be unsocial members of the civilcommunity, if the civil community did its duty by them, has never beenproved. My right honourable friend who made the motion which we arediscussing has produced a great body of evidence to show that they havebeen grossly misrepresented; and that evidence has not been refuted bymy honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford. But whatif it were true that the Jews are unsocial? What if it were true thatthey do not regard England as their country? Would not the treatmentwhich they have undergone explain and excuse their antipathy to thesociety in which they live? Has not similar antipathy often been feltby persecuted Christians to the society which persecuted them? Whilethe bloody code of Elizabeth was enforced against the English RomanCatholics, what was the patriotism of Roman Catholics? Oliver Cromwellsaid that in his time they were Espaniolised. At a later period itmight have been said that they were Gallicised. It was the same with theCalvinists. What more deadly enemies had France in the days of Louisthe Fourteenth than the persecuted Huguenots? But would any rational maninfer from these facts that either the Roman Catholic as such, or theCalvinist as such, is incapable of loving the land of his birth? IfEngland were now invaded by Roman Catholics, how many English RomanCatholics would go over to the invader? If France were now attacked bya Protestant enemy, how many French Protestants would lend him help?Why not try what effect would be produced on the Jews by that tolerantpolicy which has made the English Roman Catholic a good Englishman, andthe French Calvinist a good Frenchman?

Another charge has been brought against the Jews, not by my honourablefriend the Member for the University of Oxford--he has too much learningand too much good feeling to make such a charge--but by the honourableMember for Oldham, who has, I am sorry to see, quitted his place. Thehonourable Member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are naturally a meanrace, a sordid race, a money-getting race; that they are averse to allhonourable callings; that they neither sow nor reap; that they haveneither flocks nor herds; that usury is the only pursuit for which theyare fit; that they are destitute of all elevated and amiable sentiments. Such, Sir, has in every age been the reasoning of bigots. Theynever fail to plead in justification of persecution the vices whichpersecution has engendered. England has been to the Jews less than halfa country; and we revile them because they do not feel for England morethan a half patriotism. We treat them as slaves, and wonder that they donot regard us as brethren. We drive them to mean occupations, and thenreproach them for not embracing honourable professions. We longforbade them to possess land; and we complain that they chiefly occupythemselves in trade. We shut them out from all the paths of ambition;and then we despise them for taking refuge in avarice. During many ageswe have, in all our dealings with them, abused our immense superiorityof force; and then we are disgusted because they have recourse to thatcunning which is the natural and universal defence of the weak againstthe violence of the strong. But were they always a mere money-changing, money-getting, money-hoarding race? Nobody knows better than myhonourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford that there isnothing in their national character which unfits them for the highestduties of citizens. He knows that, in the infancy of civilisation, whenour island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts werestill unknown to Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on whatwas afterwards the site of Rome, this contemned people had theirfenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets ofmerchant ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmenand soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and theirpoets. What nation ever contended more manfully against overwhelmingodds for its independence and religion? What nation ever, in its lastagonies, gave such signal proofs of what may be accomplished by abrave despair? And if, in the course of many centuries, the oppresseddescendants of warriors and sages have degenerated from the qualities oftheir fathers, if, while excluded from the blessings of law, and boweddown under the yoke of slavery, they have contracted some of the vicesof outlaws and of slaves, shall we consider this as matter of reproachto them? Shall we not rather consider it as matter of shame and remorseto ourselves? Let us do justice to them. Let us open to them the door ofthe House of Commons. Let us open to them every career in which abilityand energy can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presumeto say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, noheroism among the descendants of the Maccabees. 

Sir, in supporting the motion of my honourable friend, I am, I firmlybelieve, supporting the honour and the interests of the Christianreligion. I should think that I insulted that religion if I said thatit cannot stand unaided by intolerant laws. Without such laws it wasestablished, and without such laws it may be maintained. It triumphedover the superstitions of the most refined and of the most savagenations, over the graceful mythology of Greece and the bloody idolatryof the Northern forests. It prevailed over the power and policy ofthe Roman empire. It tamed the barbarians by whom that empire wasoverthrown. But all these victories were gained not by the help ofintolerance, but in spite of the opposition of intolerance. The wholehistory of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear frompersecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally. Mayshe long continue to bless our country with her benignant influence, strong in her sublime philosophy, strong in her spotless morality, strong in those internal and external evidences to which the mostpowerful and comprehensive of human intellects have yielded assent, the last solace of those who have outlived every earthly hope, the lastrestraint of those who are raised above every earthly fear! But let notus, mistaking her character and her interests, fight the battle of truthwith the weapons of error, and endeavour to support by oppression thatreligion which first taught the human race the great lesson of universalcharity. 

*****

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. (JULY 10, 1833) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OFCOMMONS ON THE 10TH OF JULY 1833. 

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

Having, while this bill was in preparation, enjoyed the fullest andkindest confidence of my right honourable friend, the President of theBoard of Control, agreeing with him completely in all those views whichon a former occasion he so luminously and eloquently developed, havingshared his anxieties, and feeling that in some degree I share hisresponsibility, I am naturally desirous to obtain the attention ofthe House while I attempt to defend the principles of the proposedarrangement. I wish that I could promise to be very brief; but thesubject is so extensive that I will only promise to condense what I haveto say as much as I can. 

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

The China trade is to be opened. Reason requires this. Public opinionrequires it. The Government of the Duke of Wellington felt the necessityas strongly as the Government of Lord Grey. No Minister, Whig orTory, could have been found to propose a renewal of the monopoly. No parliament, reformed or unreformed, would have listened to such aproposition. But though the opening of the trade was a matter concerningwhich the public had long made up its mind, the political consequenceswhich must necessarily follow from the opening of the trade seem to meto be even now little understood. The language which I have heard inalmost every circle where the subject was discussed was this: "Take awaythe monopoly, and leave the government of India to the Company:" avery short and convenient way of settling one of the most complicatedquestions that ever a legislature had to consider. The honourableMember for Sheffield (Mr Buckingham. ), though not disposed to retain theCompany as an organ of government, has repeatedly used language whichproves that he shares in the general misconception. The fact is thatthe abolition of the monopoly rendered it absolutely necessary to make afundamental change in the constitution of that great Corporation. 

The Company had united in itself two characters, the character of traderand the character of sovereign. Between the trader and the sovereignthere was a long and complicated account, almost every item of whichfurnished matter for litigation. While the monopoly continued, indeed, litigation was averted. The effect of the monopoly was, to satisfy theclaims both of commerce and of territory, at the expense of a thirdparty, the English people: to secure at once funds for the dividend ofthe stockholder and funds for the government of the Indian Empire, bymeans of a heavy tax on the tea consumed in this country. But, when thethird party would no longer bear this charge, all the great financialquestions which had, at the cost of that third party, been kept inabeyance, were opened in an instant. The connection between the Companyin its mercantile capacity, and the same Company in its politicalcapacity, was dissolved. Even if the Company were permitted, as has beensuggested, to govern India, and at the same time to trade with China, no advances would be made from the profits of its Chinese trade forthe support of its Indian government. It was in consideration of theexclusive privilege that the Company had hitherto been required to makethose advances; it was by the exclusive privilege that the Company hadbeen enabled to make them. When that privilege was taken away, it wouldbe unreasonable in the legislature to impose such an obligation, andimpossible for the Company to fulfil it. The whole system of loans fromcommerce to territory, and repayments from territory to commerce, mustcease. Each party must rest altogether on its own resources. It wastherefore absolutely necessary to ascertain what resources each partypossessed, to bring the long and intricate account between them to aclose, and to assign to each a fair portion of assets and liabilities. There was vast property. How much of that property was applicable topurposes of state? How much was applicable to a dividend? There weredebts to the amount of many millions. Which of these were the debts ofthe government that ruled at Calcutta? Which of the great mercantilehouse that bought tea at Canton? Were the creditors to look to theland revenues of India for their money? Or, were they entitled to putexecutions into the warehouses behind Bishopsgate Street?

There were two ways of settling these questions--adjudication andcompromise. The difficulties of adjudication were great; I thinkinsuperable. Whatever acuteness and diligence could do has been done. One person in particular, whose talents and industry peculiarly fittedhim for such investigations, and of whom I can never think withoutregret, Mr Hyde Villiers, devoted himself to the examination with anardour and a perseverance, which, I believe, shortened a life mostvaluable to his country and to his friends. The assistance of the mostskilful accountants has been called in. But the difficulties are such asno accountant, however skilful, could possibly remove. The difficultiesare not arithmetical, but political. They arise from the constitutionof the Company, from the long and intimate union of the commercial andimperial characters in one body. Suppose that the treasurer of a charitywere to mix up the money which he receives on account of the charitywith his own private rents and dividends, to pay the whole into his bankto his own private account, to draw it out again by cheques in exactlythe same form when he wanted it for his private expenses, and when hewanted it for the purposes of his public trust. Suppose that he wereto continue to act thus till he was himself ignorant whether he werein advance or in arrear; and suppose that many years after his death aquestion were to arise whether his estate were in debt to the charityor the charity in debt to his estate. Such is the question which isnow before us, with this important difference; that the accounts of anindividual could not be in such a state unless he had been guilty offraud, or of that gross negligence which is scarcely less culpable thanfraud, and that the accounts of the Company were brought into this stateby circumstances of a very peculiar kind, by circumstances unparalleledin the history of the world. 

It is a mistake to suppose that the Company was a merely commercial bodytill the middle of the last century. Commerce was its chief object; butin order to enable it to pursue that object, it had been, like the otherCompanies which were its rivals, like the Dutch India Company, like theFrench India Company, invested from a very early period with politicalfunctions. More than a hundred and twenty years ago, the Company wasin miniature precisely what it now is. It was intrusted with the veryhighest prerogatives of sovereignty. It had its forts, and its whitecaptains, and its black sepoys; it had its civil and criminal tribunals;it was authorised to proclaim martial law; it sent ambassadors to thenative governments, and concluded treaties with them; it was Zemindar ofseveral districts, and within those districts, like other Zemindars ofthe first class, it exercised the powers of a sovereign, even to theinfliction of capital punishment on the Hindoos within its jurisdiction. It is incorrect, therefore, to say, that the Company was at first a meretrader, and has since become a sovereign. It was at first a great traderand a petty prince. The political functions at first attracted littlenotice, because they were merely auxiliary to the commercial functions. By degrees, however, the political functions became more and moreimportant. The Zemindar became a great nabob, became sovereign of allIndia; the two hundred sepoys became two hundred thousand. This changewas gradually wrought, and was not immediately comprehended. It wasnatural that, while the political functions of the Company were merelyauxiliary to its commerce, the political accounts should have been mixedup with the commercial accounts. It was equally natural that this modeof keeping accounts, having once been established, should have remainedunaltered; and the more so, as the change in the situation of theCompany, though rapid, was not sudden. It is impossible to name any oneday, or any one year, as the day or the year when the Company became agreat potentate. It has been the fashion indeed to fix on the year 1765, the year in which the Mogul issued a commission authorising the Companyto administer the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, as the precisedate of the accession of this singular body to sovereignty. I am utterlyat a loss to understand why this epoch should be selected. Long before1765 the Company had the reality of political power. Long before thatyear, they made a Nabob of Arcot; they made and unmade Nabobs of Bengal;they humbled the Vizier of Oude; they braved the Emperor of Hindostanhimself; more than half the revenues of Bengal were, under one pretenceor another, administered by them. And after the grant, the Company wasnot, in form and name, an independent power. It was merely a ministerof the Court of Delhi. Its coinage bore the name of Shah Alam. Theinscription which, down to the time of the Marquess of Hastings, appeared on the seal of the Governor-General, declared that greatfunctionary to be the slave of the Mogul. Even to this day we have neverformally deposed the King of Delhi. The Company contents itself withbeing Mayor of the Palace, while the Roi Faineant is suffered to play atbeing a sovereign. In fact, it was considered, both by Lord Clive andby Warren Hastings, as a point of policy to leave the character ofthe Company thus undefined, in order that the English might treat theprinces in whose names they governed as realities or nonentities, justas might be most convenient. 

Thus the transformation of the Company from a trading body, whichpossessed some sovereign prerogatives for the purposes of trade, into asovereign body, the trade of which was auxiliary to its sovereignty, waseffected by degrees and under disguise. It is not strange, therefore, that the mercantile and political transactions of this great corporationshould be entangled together in inextricable complication. Thecommercial investments have been purchased out of the revenues of theempire. The expenses of war and government have been defrayed out ofthe profits of the trade. Commerce and territory have contributed tothe improvement of the same spot of land, to the repairs of the samebuilding. Securities have been given in precisely the same form formoney which has been borrowed for purposes of State, and for money whichhas been borrowed for purposes of traffic. It is easy, indeed, --and thisis a circumstance which has, I think, misled some gentlemen, --it is easyto see what part of the assets of the Company appears in a commercialform, and what part appears in a political or territorial form. Butthis is not the question. Assets which are commercial in form maybe territorial as respects the right of property; assets which areterritorial in form may be commercial as respects the right of property. A chest of tea is not necessarily commercial property; it may havebeen bought out of the territorial revenue. A fort is not necessarilyterritorial property; it may stand on ground which the Company bought ahundred years ago out of their commercial profits. Adjudication, if byadjudication be meant decision according to some known rule of law, wasout of the question. To leave matters like these to be determined by theordinary maxims of our civil jurisprudence would have been the height ofabsurdity and injustice. For example, the home bond debt of the Company, it is believed, was incurred partly for political and partly forcommercial purposes. But there is no evidence which would enable us toassign to each branch its proper share. The bonds all run in the sameform; and a court of justice would, therefore, of course, either lay thewhole burthen on the proprietors, or lay the whole on the territory. We have legal opinions, very respectable legal opinions, to the effect, that in strictness of law the territory is not responsible, and that thecommercial assets are responsible for every farthing of the debts whichwere incurred for the government and defence of India. But though thismay be, and I believe is, law, it is, I am sure, neither reason norjustice. On the other hand, it is urged by the advocates of the Company, that some valuable portions of the territory are the property of thatbody in its commercial capacity; that Calcutta, for example, is theprivate estate of the Company; that the Company holds the island ofBombay, in free and common socage, as of the Manor of East Greenwich. Iwill not pronounce any opinion on these points. I have considered themenough to see that there is quite difficulty enough in them to exerciseall the ingenuity of all the lawyers in the kingdom for twentyyears. But the fact is, Sir, that the municipal law was not made forcontroversies of this description. The existence of such a body as thisgigantic corporation, this political monster of two natures, subject inone hemisphere, sovereign in another, had never been contemplated by thelegislators or judges of former ages. Nothing but grotesque absurdityand atrocious injustice could have been the effect, if the claims andliabilities of such a body had been settled according to the rules ofWestminster Hall, if the maxims of conveyancers had been applied to thetitles by which flourishing cities and provinces are held, or the maximsof the law merchant to those promissory notes which are the securitiesfor a great National Debt, raised for the purpose of exterminating thePindarrees and humbling the Burmese. 

It was, as I have said, absolutely impossible to bring the questionbetween commerce and territory to a satisfactory adjudication; and Imust add that, even if the difficulties which I have mentioned couldhave been surmounted, even if there had been reason to hope that asatisfactory adjudication could have been obtained, I should stillhave wished to avoid that course. I think it desirable that the Companyshould continue to have a share in the government of India; and it wouldevidently have been impossible, pending a litigation between commerceand territory, to leave any political power to the Company. Itwould clearly have been the duty of those who were charged with thesuperintendence of India, to be the patrons of India throughout thatmomentous litigation, to scrutinise with the utmost severity every claimwhich might be made on the Indian revenues, and to oppose, with energyand perseverance, every such claim, unless its justice were manifest. If the Company was to be engaged in a suit for many millions, in a suitwhich might last for many years, against the Indian territory, could weentrust the Company with the government of that territory? Could we putthe plaintiff in the situation of prochain ami of the defendant? Couldwe appoint governors who would have an interest opposed in the mostdirect manner to the interest of the governed, whose stock would havebeen raised in value by every decision which added to the burthens oftheir subjects, and depressed by every decision which diminished thoseburthens? It would be absurd to suppose that they would efficientlydefend our Indian Empire against the claims which they were themselvesbringing against it; and it would be equally absurd to give thegovernment of the Indian Empire to those who could not be trusted todefend its interests. 

Seeing, then, that it was most difficult, if not wholly impossible, toresort to adjudication between commerce and territory, seeing that, if recourse were had to adjudication, it would be necessary to make acomplete revolution in the whole constitution of India, the Governmenthas proposed a compromise. That compromise, with some modificationswhich did not in the slightest degree affect its principle, and which, while they gave satisfaction to the Company, will eventually lay noadditional burthen on the territory, has been accepted. It has, likeall other compromises, been loudly censured by violent partisans onboth sides. It has been represented by some as far too favourable to theCompany, and by others as most unjust to the Company. Sir, I own that wecannot prove that either of these accusations is unfounded. It is of thevery essence of our case that we should not be able to show that we haveassigned, either to commerce or to territory, its precise due. For ourprincipal reason for recommending a compromise was our full convictionthat it was absolutely impossible to ascertain with precision what wasdue to commerce and what was due to territory. It is not strange thatsome people should accuse us of robbing the Company, and others ofconferring a vast boon on the Company, at the expense of India: forwe have proposed a middle course, on the very ground that there wasa chance of a result much more favourable to the Company than ourarrangement, and a chance also of a result much less favourable. If thequestions pending between the Company and India had been decided as theardent supporters of the Company predicted, India would, if I calculaterightly, have paid eleven millions more than she will now have to pay. If those questions had been decided as some violent enemies of theCompany predicted, that great body would have been utterly ruined. Thevery meaning of compromise is that each party gives up his chance ofcomplete success, in order to be secured against the chance of utterfailure. And, as men of sanguine minds always overrate the chances intheir own favour, every fair compromise is sure to be severely censuredon both sides. I conceive that, in a case so dark and complicated asthis, the compromise which we recommend is sufficiently vindicated, ifit cannot be proved to be unfair. We are not bound to prove it to befair. For it would have been unnecessary for us to resort to compromiseat all if we had been in possession of evidence which would have enabledus to pronounce, with certainty, what claims were fair and what wereunfair. It seems to me that we have acted with due consideration forevery party. The dividend which we give to the proprietors is preciselythe same dividend which they have been receiving during forty years, and which they have expected to receive permanently. The price of theirstock bears at present the same proportion to the price of other stockwhich it bore four or five years ago, before the anxiety and excitementwhich the late negotiations naturally produced had begun to operate. As to the territory, on the other hand, it is true that, if the assetswhich are now in a commercial form should not produce a fund sufficientto pay the debts and dividend of the Company, the territory must standto the loss and pay the difference. But in return for taking this risk, the territory obtains an immediate release from claims to the amount ofmany millions. I certainly do not believe that all those claimscould have been substantiated; but I know that very able men thinkdifferently. And, if only one-fourth of the sum demanded had beenawarded to the Company, India would have lost more than the largestsum which, as it seems to me, she can possibly lose under the proposedarrangement. 

In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, I conceive that we can defendthe measure as it affects the territory. But to the territory thepecuniary question is of secondary importance. If we have made a goodpecuniary bargain for India, but a bad political bargain, if we havesaved three or four millions to the finances of that country, and givento it, at the same time, pernicious institutions, we shall indeed havebeen practising a most ruinous parsimony. If, on the other hand, itshall be found that we have added fifty or a hundred thousand poundsa-year to the expenditure of an empire which yields a revenue of twentymillions, but that we have at the same time secured to that empire, asfar as in us lies, the blessings of good government, we shall have noreason to be ashamed of our profusion. I hope and believe that Indiawill have to pay nothing. But on the most unfavourable supposition thatcan be made, she will not have to pay so much to the Company as she nowpays annually to a single state pageant, to the titular Nabob of Bengal, for example, or the titular King of Delhi. What she pays to thesenominal princes, who, while they did anything, did mischief, and whonow do nothing, she may well consent to pay to her real rulers, ifshe receives from them, in return, efficient protection and goodlegislation. 

We come then to the great question. Is it desirable to retain theCompany as an organ of government for India? I think that it isdesirable. The question is, I acknowledge, beset with difficulties. Wehave to solve one of the hardest problems in politics. We are trying tomake brick without straw, to bring a clean thing out of an unclean, to give a good government to a people to whom we cannot give a freegovernment. In this country, in any neighbouring country, it is easy toframe securities against oppression. In Europe, you have the materialsof good government everywhere ready to your hands. The people areeverywhere perfectly competent to hold some share, not in every countryan equal share, but some share of political power. If the question were, What is the best mode of securing good government in Europe? the merestsmatterer in politics would answer, representative institutions. In India you cannot have representative institutions. Of all theinnumerable speculators who have offered their suggestions on Indianpolitics, not a single one, as far as I know, however democratical hisopinions may be, has ever maintained the possibility of giving, at thepresent time, such institutions to India. One gentleman, extremelywell acquainted with the affairs of our Eastern Empire, a most valuableservant of the Company, and the author of a History of India, which, though certainly not free from faults, is, I think, on the whole, thegreatest historical work which has appeared in our language since thatof Gibbon, I mean Mr Mill, was examined on this point. That gentlemanis well known to be a very bold and uncompromising politician. He haswritten strongly, far too strongly I think, in favour of pure democracy. He has gone so far as to maintain that no nation which has not arepresentative legislature, chosen by universal suffrage, enjoyssecurity against oppression. But when he was asked before the Committeeof last year, whether he thought representative government practicablein India, his answer was, "utterly out of the question. " This, then, is the state in which we are. We have to frame a good government fora country into which, by universal acknowledgment, we cannot introducethose institutions which all our habits, which all the reasonings ofEuropean philosophers, which all the history of our own part of theworld would lead us to consider as the one great security for goodgovernment. We have to engraft on despotism those blessings which arethe natural fruits of liberty. In these circumstances, Sir, it behovesus to be cautious, even to the verge of timidity. The light of politicalscience and of history are withdrawn: we are walking in darkness: we donot distinctly see whither we are going. It is the wisdom of a man, sosituated, to feel his way, and not to plant his foot till he is wellassured that the ground before him is firm. 

Some things, however, in the midst of this obscurity, I can see withclearness. I can see, for example, that it is desirable that theauthority exercised in this country over the Indian government should bedivided between two bodies, between a minister or a board appointed bythe Crown, and some other body independent of the Crown. If India isto be a dependency of England, to be at war with our enemies, to be atpeace with our allies, to be protected by the English navy from maritimeaggression, to have a portion of the English army mixed with its sepoys, it plainly follows that the King, to whom the Constitution gives thedirection of foreign affairs, and the command of the military and navalforces, ought to have a share in the direction of the Indian government. Yet, on the other hand, that a revenue of twenty millions a year, an army of two hundred thousand men, a civil service abounding withlucrative situations, should be left to the disposal of the Crownwithout any check whatever, is what no minister, I conceive, wouldventure to propose. This House is indeed the check provided by theConstitution on the abuse of the royal prerogative. But that this Houseis, or is likely ever to be, an efficient check on abuses practisedin India, I altogether deny. We have, as I believe we all feel, quitebusiness enough. If we were to undertake the task of looking into Indianaffairs as we look into British affairs, if we were to have Indianbudgets and Indian estimates, if we were to go into the Indian currencyquestion and the Indian Bank Charter, if to our disputes about Belgiumand Holland, Don Pedro and Don Miguel, were to be added disputes aboutthe debts of the Guicowar and the disorders of Mysore, the ex-king ofthe Afghans and the Maharajah Runjeet Sing; if we were to have one nightoccupied by the embezzlements of the Benares mint, and another by thepanic in the Calcutta money market; if the questions of Suttee or noSuttee, Pilgrim tax or no Pilgrim tax, Ryotwary or Zemindary, half Battaor whole Batta, were to be debated at the same length at which we havedebated Church reform and the assessed taxes, twenty-four hours a dayand three hundred and sixty-five days a year would be too short a timefor the discharge of our duties. The House, it is plain, has notthe necessary time to settle these matters; nor has it the necessaryknowledge; nor has it the motives to acquire that knowledge. The latechange in its constitution has made it, I believe, a much more faithfulrepresentative of the English people. But it is as far as ever frombeing a representative of the Indian people. A broken head in Cold BathFields produces a greater sensation among us than three pitched battlesin India. A few weeks ago we had to decide on a claim brought by anindividual against the revenues of India. If it had been an Englishquestion the walls would scarcely have held the Members who wouldhave flocked to the division. It was an Indian question; and we couldscarcely, by dint of supplication, make a House. Even when my righthonourable friend, the President of the Board of Control, gave his ableand interesting explanation of the plan which he intended to propose forthe government of a hundred millions of human beings, the attendance wasnot so large as I have often seen it on a turnpike bill or a railroadbill. 

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

It is true that the power of the Company is an anomaly in politics. It is strange, very strange, that a joint-stock society of traders, a society, the shares of which are daily passed from hand to hand, a society, the component parts of which are perpetually changing, asociety, which, judging a priori from its constitution, we shouldhave said was as little fitted for imperial functions as the MerchantTailors' Company or the New River Company, should be intrusted withthe sovereignty of a larger population, the disposal of a largerclear revenue, the command of a larger army, than are under the directmanagement of the Executive Government of the United Kingdom. Butwhat constitution can we give to our Indian Empire which shall notbe strange, which shall not be anomalous? That Empire is itself thestrangest of all political anomalies. That a handful of adventurers froman island in the Atlantic should have subjugated a vast country dividedfrom the place of their birth by half the globe; a country which at novery distant period was merely the subject of fable to the nations ofEurope; a country never before violated by the most renowned of Westernconquerors; a country which Trajan never entered; a country lying beyondthe point where the phalanx of Alexander refused to proceed; that weshould govern a territory ten thousand miles from us, a territory largerand more populous than France, Spain, Italy, and Germany put together, aterritory, the present clear revenue of which exceeds the presentclear revenue of any state in the world, France excepted; a territoryinhabited by men differing from us in race, colour, language, manners, morals, religion; these are prodigies to which the world has seennothing similar. Reason is confounded. We interrogate the past in vain. General rules are useless where the whole is one vast exception. TheCompany is an anomaly; but it is part of a system where every thing isanomaly. It is the strangest of all governments; but it is designed forthe strangest of all empires. 

If we discard the Company, we must find a substitute: and, take whatsubstitute we may, we shall find ourselves unable to give any reason forbelieving that the body which we have put in the room of the Companyis likely to acquit itself of its duties better than the Company. Commissioners appointed by the King during pleasure would be no check onthe Crown; Commissioners appointed by the King or by Parliament forlife would always be appointed by the political party which might beuppermost, and if a change of administration took place, would harassthe new Government with the most vexatious opposition. The plansuggested by the right honourable Gentleman, the Member forMontgomeryshire (Mr Charles Wynn. ), is I think the very worst that Ihave ever heard. He would have Directors nominated every four yearsby the Crown. Is it not plain that these Directors would always beappointed from among the supporters of the Ministry for the time being;that their situations would depend on the permanence of that Ministry;that therefore all their power and patronage would be employed for thepurpose of propping that Ministry, and, in case of a change, for thepurpose of molesting those who might succeed to power; that they wouldbe subservient while their friends were in, and factious when theirfriends were out? How would Lord Grey's Ministry have been situated ifthe whole body of Directors had been nominated by the Duke of Wellingtonin 1830. I mean no imputation on the Duke of Wellington. If the presentministers had to nominate Directors for four years, they would, I haveno doubt, nominate men who would give no small trouble to the Dukeof Wellington if he were to return to office. What we want is a bodyindependent of the Government, and no more than independent; not a toolof the Treasury, not a tool of the opposition. No new plan which I haveheard proposed would give us such a body. The Company, strange as itsconstitution may be, is such a body. It is, as a corporation, neitherWhig nor Tory, neither high-church nor low-church. It cannot be chargedwith having been for or against the Catholic Bill, for or againstthe Reform Bill. It has constantly acted with a view not to Englishpolitics, but to Indian politics. We have seen the country convulsedby faction. We have seen Ministers driven from office by this House, Parliament dissolved in anger, general elections of unprecedentedturbulence, debates of unprecedented interest. We have seen the twobranches of the Legislature placed in direct opposition to each other. We have seen the advisers of the Crown dismissed one day, and broughtback the next day on the shoulders of the people. And amidst all theseagitating events the Company has preserved strict and unsuspectedneutrality. This is, I think an inestimable advantage, and it is anadvantage which we must altogether forego, if we consent to adopt any ofthe schemes which I have heard proposed on the other side of the House. 

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

Now, Sir, it seems to me that, for all the evils which the honourableGentleman has so pathetically recounted, the Ministers of the Crown areas much to blame as the Company; nay, much more so: for the Board ofControl could, without the consent of the Directors, have redressedthose evils; and the Directors most certainly could not have redressedthem without the consent of the Board of Control. Take the case of thatfrightful grievance which seems to have made the deepest impression onthe mind of the honourable Gentleman, the slowness of the mail. Why, Sir, if my right honourable friend, the President of our Board thoughtfit, he might direct me to write to the Court and require them to framea dispatch on that subject. If the Court disobeyed, he might himselfframe a dispatch ordering Lord William Bentinck to put the dawksall over Bengal on horseback. If the Court refused to send out thisdispatch, the Board could apply to the King's Bench for a mandamus. If, on the other hand, the Directors wished to accelerate the journeys ofthe mail, and the Board were adverse to the project, the Directors coulddo nothing at all. For all measures of internal policy the servantsof the King are at least as deeply responsible as the Company. For allmeasures of foreign policy the servants of the King, and they alone areresponsible. I was surprised to hear the honourable Gentleman accuse theDirectors of insatiable ambition and rapacity, when he must know thatno act of aggression on any native state can be committed by the Companywithout the sanction of the Board, and that, in fact, the Board hasrepeatedly approved of warlike measures which were strenuously opposedby the Company. He must know, in particular, that, during the energeticand splendid administration of the Marquess of Wellesley, the companywas all for peace, and the Board all for conquest. If a line of conductwhich the honourable Gentleman thinks unjustifiable has been followedby the Ministers of the Crown in spite of the remonstrances ofthe Directors, this is surely a strange reason for turning off theDirectors, and giving the whole power unchecked to the Crown. 

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

In what state, then, did we find India? And what have we made India? Wefound society throughout that vast country in a state to which historyscarcely furnishes a parallel. The nearest parallel would, perhaps, bethe state of Europe during the fifth century. The Mogul empire in thetime of the successors of Aurungzebe, like the Roman empire in the timeof the successors of Theodosius, was sinking under the vices of a badinternal administration, and under the assaults of barbarous invaders. At Delhi, as at Ravenna, there was a mock sovereign, immured in agorgeous state prison. He was suffered to indulge in every sensualpleasure. He was adored with servile prostrations. He assumed andbestowed the most magnificent titles. But, in fact, he was a mere puppetin the hands of some ambitious subject. While the Honorii and Augustuliof the East, surrounded by their fawning eunuchs, reveled and dozedwithout knowing or caring what might pass beyond the walls of theirpalace gardens, the provinces had ceased to respect a government whichcould neither punish nor protect them. Society was a chaos. Its restlessand shifting elements formed themselves every moment into some newcombination, which the next moment dissolved. In the course of a singlegeneration a hundred dynasties grew up, flourished, decayed, wereextinguished, were forgotten. Every adventurer who could muster a troopof horse might aspire to a throne. Every palace was every year the sceneof conspiracies, treasons, revolutions, parricides. Meanwhile a rapidsuccession of Alarics and Attilas passed over the defenceless empire. A Persian invader penetrated to Delhi, and carried back in triumphthe most precious treasures of the House of Tamerlane. The Afghan soonfollowed by the same track, to glean whatever the Persian had spared. The Jauts established themselves on the Jumna. The Seiks devastatedLahore. Every part of India, from Tanjore to the Himalayas, was laidunder contribution by the Mahrattas. The people were ground down to thedust by the oppressor without and the oppressor within, by the robberfrom whom the Nabob was unable to protect them, by the Nabob who tookwhatever the robber had left to them. All the evils of despotism, andall the evils of anarchy, pressed at once on that miserable race. Theyknew nothing of government but its exactions. Desolation was in theirimperial cities, and famine all along the banks of their broad andredundant rivers. It seemed that a few more years would suffice toefface all traces of the opulence and civilisation of an earlier age. 

Such was the state of India when the Company began to take part in thedisputes of its ephemeral sovereigns. About eighty years have elapsedsince we appeared as auxiliaries in a contest between two rival familiesfor the sovereignty of a small corner of the Peninsula. From thatmoment commenced a great, a stupendous process, the reconstruction of adecomposed society. Two generations have passed away; and the process iscomplete. The scattered fragments of the empire of Aurungzebe have beenunited in an empire stronger and more closely knit together than thatwhich Aurungzebe ruled. The power of the new sovereigns penetrates theirdominions more completely, and is far more implicitly obeyed, than wasthat of the proudest princes of the Mogul dynasty. 

It is true that the early history of this great revolution is chequeredwith guilt and shame. It is true that the founders of our Indian Empiretoo often abused the strength which they derived from superior energyand superior knowledge. It is true that, with some of the highestqualities of the race from which they sprang, they combined some of theworst defects of the race over which they ruled. How should it havebeen otherwise? Born in humble stations, accustomed to earn a slendermaintenance by obscure industry, they found themselves transformed ina few months from clerks drudging over desks, or captains in marchingregiments, into statesmen and generals, with armies at their command, with the revenues of kingdoms at their disposal, with power to make anddepose sovereigns at their pleasure. They were what it was natural thatmen should be who had been raised by so rapid an ascent to so dizzy aneminence, profuse and rapacious, imperious and corrupt. 

It is true, then, that there was too much foundation for therepresentations of those satirists and dramatists who held up thecharacter of the English Nabob to the derision and hatred of a formergeneration. It is true that some disgraceful intrigues, some unjustand cruel wars, some instances of odious perfidy and avarice, stain theannals of our Eastern Empire. It is true that the duties of governmentand legislation were long wholly neglected or carelessly performed. Itis true that when the conquerors at length began to apply themselvesin earnest to the discharge of their high functions, they committed theerrors natural to rulers who were but imperfectly acquainted with thelanguage and manners of their subjects. It is true that some plans, which were dictated by the purest and most benevolent feelings have notbeen attended by the desired success. It is true that India suffers tothis day from a heavy burden of taxation and from a defective system oflaw. It is true, I fear, that in those states which are connected withus by subsidiary alliance, all the evils of oriental despotism havetoo frequently shown themselves in their most loathsome and destructiveform. 

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

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

I look back for many years; and I see scarcely a trace of the viceswhich blemished the splendid fame of the first conquerors of Bengal. I see peace studiously preserved. I see faith inviolably maintainedtowards feeble and dependent states. I see confidence gradually infusedinto the minds of suspicious neighbours. I see the horrors of warmitigated by the chivalrous and Christian spirit of Europe. I seeexamples of moderation and clemency, such as I should seek in vain inthe annals of any other victorious and dominant nation. I see captivetyrants, whose treachery and cruelty might have excused a severeretribution, living in security, comfort, and dignity, under theprotection of the government which they laboured to destroy. 

I see a large body of civil and military functionaries resembling innothing but capacity and valour those adventurers who, seventy yearsago, came hither, laden with wealth and infamy, to parade before ourfathers the plundered treasures of Bengal and Tanjore. I reflect withpride that to the doubtful splendour which surrounds the memory ofHastings and of Clive, we can oppose the spotless glory of Elphinstoneand Munro. I contemplate with reverence and delight the honourablepoverty which is the evidence of rectitude firmly maintained amidststrong temptations. I rejoice to see my countrymen, after rulingmillions of subjects, after commanding victorious armies, afterdictating terms of peace at the gates of hostile capitals, afteradministering the revenues of great provinces, after judging the causesof wealthy Zemindars, after residing at the courts of tributary Kings, return to their native land with no more than a decent competence. 

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

I see evils: but I see the government actively employed in the workof remedying those evils. The taxation is heavy; but the work ofretrenchment is unsparingly pursued. The mischiefs arising from thesystem of subsidiary alliance are great: but the rulers of India arefully aware of those mischiefs, and are engaged in guarding againstthem. Wherever they now interfere for the purpose of supporting a nativegovernment, they interfere also for the purpose of reforming it. 

Seeing these things, then, am I prepared to discard the Company asan organ of government? I am not. Assuredly I will never shrink frominnovation where I see reason to believe that innovation willbe improvement. That the present Government does not shrink frominnovations which it considers as improvements the bill now before theHouse sufficiently shows. But surely the burden of the proof lies on theinnovators. They are bound to show that there is a fair probabilityof obtaining some advantage before they call upon us to take up thefoundations of the Indian government. I have no superstitious venerationfor the Court of Directors or the Court of Proprietors. Find me a betterCouncil: find me a better constituent body: and I am ready for a change. But of all the substitutes for the Company which have hitherto beensuggested, not one has been proved to be better than the Company; andmost of them I could, I think, easily prove to be worse. Circumstancesmight force us to hazard a change. If the Company were to refuse toaccept of the government unless we would grant pecuniary terms which Ithought extravagant, or unless we gave up the clauses in this bill whichpermit Europeans to hold landed property and natives to hold office, Iwould take them at their word. But I will not discard them in the mererage of experiment. 

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

Some change in the constitution of the Company was, as I have shown, rendered inevitable by the opening of the China Trade; and it wasthe duty of the Government to take care that the change should notbe prejudicial to India. There were many ways in which the compromisebetween commerce and territory might have been effected. We might havetaken the assets, and paid a sum down, leaving the Company to investthat sum as they chose. We might have offered English security with alower interest. We might have taken the course which the late ministersdesigned to take. They would have left the Company in possession of themeans of carrying on its trade in competition with private merchants. Myfirm belief is that, if this course had been taken, the Company must, in a very few years, have abandoned the trade, or the trade would haveruined the Company. It was not, however, solely or principally by regardfor the interest of the Company, or of English merchants generally, thatthe Government was guided on this occasion. The course which appeared tous the most likely to promote the interests of our Eastern Empire was tomake the proprietors of India stock creditors of the Indian territory. Their interest will thus be in a great measure the same with theinterest of the people whom they are to rule. Their income will dependon the revenues of their empire. The revenues of their empirewill depend on the manner in which the affairs of that empire areadministered. We furnish them with the strongest motives to watch overthe interests of the cultivator and the trader, to maintain peace, tocarry on with vigour the work of retrenchment, to detect and punishextortion and corruption. Though they live at a distance from India, though few of them have ever seen or may ever see the people whom theyrule, they will have a great stake in the happiness of their subjects. If their misgovernment should produce disorder in the finances, theywill themselves feel the effects of that disorder in their own householdexpenses. I believe this to be, next to a representative constitution, the constitution which is the best security for good government. Arepresentative constitution India cannot at present have. And we havetherefore, I think, given her the best constitution of which she iscapable. 

One word as to the new arrangement which we propose with respect to thepatronage. It is intended to introduce the principle of competitionin the disposal of writerships; and from this change I cannot butanticipate the happiest results. The civil servants of the Company areundoubtedly a highly respectable body of men; and in that body, as inevery large body, there are some persons of very eminent ability. Irejoice most cordially to see this. I rejoice to see that the standardof morality is so high in England, that intelligence is so generallydiffused through England, that young persons who are taken from the massof society, by favour and not by merit, and who are therefore onlyfair samples of the mass, should, when placed in situations of highimportance, be so seldom found wanting. But it is not the less true thatIndia is entitled to the service of the best talents which England canspare. That the average of intelligence and virtue is very high inthis country is matter for honest exultation. But it is no reason foremploying average men where you can obtain superior men. Considertoo, Sir, how rapidly the public mind of India is advancing, how muchattention is already paid by the higher classes of the natives to thoseintellectual pursuits on the cultivation of which the superiority ofthe European race to the rest of mankind principally depends. Surely, in such circumstances, from motives of selfish policy, if from no highermotive, we ought to fill the magistracies of our Eastern Empire with menwho may do honour to their country, with men who may represent the bestpart of the English nation. This, Sir, is our object; and we believethat by the plan which is now proposed this object will be attained. Itis proposed that for every vacancy in the civil service four candidatesshall be named, and the best candidate selected by examination. Weconceive that, under this system, the persons sent out will be young menabove par, young men superior either in talents or in diligence to themass. It is said, I know, that examinations in Latin, in Greek, and inmathematics, are no tests of what men will prove to be in life. I amperfectly aware that they are not infallible tests: but that they aretests I confidently maintain. Look at every walk of life, at this House, at the other House, at the Bar, at the Bench, at the Church, and seewhether it be not true that those who attain high distinction in theworld were generally men who were distinguished in their academiccareer. Indeed, Sir, this objection would prove far too much evenfor those who use it. It would prove that there is no use at all ineducation. Why should we put boys out of their way? Why should we forcea lad, who would much rather fly a kite or trundle a hoop, to learn hisLatin Grammar? Why should we keep a young man to his Thucydides or hisLaplace, when he would much rather be shooting? Education would be mereuseless torture, if, at two or three and twenty, a man who had neglectedhis studies were exactly on a par with a man who had applied himself tothem, exactly as likely to perform all the offices of public life withcredit to himself and with advantage to society. Whether the Englishsystem of education be good or bad is not now the question. Perhaps Imay think that too much time is given to the ancient languages andto the abstract sciences. But what then? Whatever be the languages, whatever be the sciences, which it is, in any age or country, thefashion to teach, the persons who become the greatest proficients inthose languages and those sciences will generally be the flower ofthe youth, the most acute, the most industrious, the most ambitiousof honourable distinctions. If the Ptolemaic system were taughtat Cambridge instead of the Newtonian, the senior wrangler wouldnevertheless be in general a superior man to the wooden spoon. If, instead of learning Greek, we learned the Cherokee, the man whounderstood the Cherokee best, who made the most correct and melodiousCherokee verses, who comprehended most accurately the effect of theCherokee particles, would generally be a superior man to him who wasdestitute of these accomplishments. If astrology were taught at ourUniversities, the young man who cast nativities best would generallyturn out a superior man. If alchymy were taught, the young man whoshowed most activity in the pursuit of the philosopher's stone wouldgenerally turn out a superior man. 

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

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

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

The danger is that the new comers, belonging to the ruling nation, resembling in colour, in language, in manners, those who hold suprememilitary and political power, and differing in all these respects fromthe great mass of the population, may consider themselves as a superiorclass, and may trample on the indigenous race. Hitherto there have beenstrong restraints on Europeans resident in India. Licences were noteasily obtained. Those residents who were in the service of the Companyhad obvious motives for conducting themselves with propriety. If theyincurred the serious displeasure of the Government, their hopes ofpromotion were blighted. Even those who were not in the public servicewere subject to the formidable power which the Government possessed ofbanishing them at its pleasure. 

The license of the Government will now no longer be necessary to personswho desire to reside in the settled provinces of India. The power ofarbitrary deportation is withdrawn. Unless, therefore, we mean to leavethe natives exposed to the tyranny and insolence of every profligateadventurer who may visit the East, we must place the European underthe same power which legislates for the Hindoo. No man loves politicalfreedom more than I. But a privilege enjoyed by a few individuals, inthe midst of a vast population who do not enjoy it, ought not to becalled freedom. It is tyranny. In the West Indies I have not theleast doubt that the existence of the Trial by Jury and of LegislativeAssemblies has tended to make the condition of the slaves worse than itwould otherwise have been. Or, to go to India itself for an instance, though I fully believe that a mild penal code is better than a severepenal code, the worst of all systems was surely that of having a mildcode for the Brahmins, who sprang from the head of the Creator, whilethere was a severe code for the Sudras, who sprang from his feet. Indiahas suffered enough already from the distinction of castes, and fromthe deeply rooted prejudices which that distinction has engendered. Godforbid that we should inflict on her the curse of a new caste, that weshould send her a new breed of Brahmins, authorised to treat all thenative population as Parias!

With a view to the prevention of this evil, we propose to give to theSupreme Government the power of legislating for Europeans as well as fornatives. We propose that the regulations of the Government shall bindthe King's Court as they bind all other courts, and that registrationby the Judges of the King's Courts shall no longer be necessary to givevalidity to those regulations within the towns of Calcutta, Madras, andBombay. 

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

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

It is acknowledged that of late years inconvenience has arisen from therelation in which the Supreme Court stands to the Government. But, it issaid, that Court was originally instituted for the protection of nativesagainst Europeans. The wise course would therefore be to restore itsoriginal character. 

Now, Sir, the fact is, that the Supreme Court has never been somischievous as during the first ten years of its power, or sorespectable as it has lately been. Everybody who knows anything of itsearly history knows, that, during a considerable time, it was the terrorof Bengal, the scourge of the native population, the screen of Europeandelinquents, a convenient tool of the Government for all purposes ofevil, an insurmountable obstacle to the Government in all undertakingsfor the public good; that its proceedings were made up of pedantry, cruelty, and corruption; that its disputes with the Government were atone time on the point of breaking up the whole fabric of society; andthat a convulsion was averted only by the dexterous policy of WarrenHastings, who at last bought off the opposition of the Chief Justice foreight thousand pounds a year. It is notorious that, while the SupremeCourt opposed Hastings in all his best measures, it was a thoroughgoingaccomplice in his worst; that it took part in the most scandalous ofthose proceedings which, fifty years ago, roused the indignation ofParliament and of the country; that it assisted in the spoliation of theprincesses of Oude; that it passed sentence of death on Nuncomar. Andthis is the Court which we are to restore from its present state ofdegeneracy to its original purity. This is the protection which we areto give to the natives against the Europeans. Sir, so far is it frombeing true that the character of the Supreme Court has deteriorated, that it has, perhaps, improved more than any other institution in India. But the evil lies deep in the nature of the institution itself. Thejudges have in our time deserved the greatest respect. Their judgmentand integrity have done much to mitigate the vices of the system. The worst charge that can be brought against any of them is that ofpertinacity, disinterested, conscientious pertinacity, in error. Thereal evil is the state of the law. You have two supreme powers in India. There is no arbitrator except a Legislature fifteen thousand miles off. Such a system is on the face of it an absurdity in politics. Mywonder is, not that this system has several times been on the pointof producing fatal consequences to the peace and resources ofIndia;--those, I think, are the words in which Warren Hastings describedthe effect of the contest between his Government and the Judges;--butthat it has not actually produced such consequences. The mostdistinguished members of the Indian Government, the most distinguishedJudges of the Supreme Court, call upon you to reform this system. SirCharles Metcalfe, Sir Charles Grey, represent with equal urgency theexpediency of having one single paramount council armed with legislativepower. The admission of Europeans to India renders it absolutelynecessary not to delay our decision. The effect of that admission wouldbe to raise a hundred questions, to produce a hundred contests betweenthe Council and the judicature. The Government would be paralysed at theprecise moment at which all its energy was required. While the two equalpowers were acting in opposite directions, the whole machine of thestate would stand still. The Europeans would be uncontrolled. Thenatives would be unprotected. The consequences I will not pretend toforesee. Everything beyond is darkness and confusion. 

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

I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code of lawsas India; and I believe also that there never was a country in which thewant might so easily be supplied. I said that there were many points ofanalogy between the state of that country after the fall of the Mogulpower, and the state of Europe after the fall of the Roman empire. Inone respect the analogy is very striking. As there were in Europe then, so there are in India now, several systems of law widely differing fromeach other, but coexisting and coequal. The indigenous population hasits own laws. Each of the successive races of conquerors has broughtwith it its own peculiar jurisprudence: the Mussulman his Koran and theinnumerable commentators on the Koran; the Englishman his Statute Bookand his Term Reports. As there were established in Italy, at one andthe same time, the Roman Law, the Lombard law, the Ripuarian law, theBavarian law, and the Salic law, so we have now in our Eastern empireHindoo law, Mahometan law, Parsee law, English law, perpetually minglingwith each other and disturbing each other, varying with the person, varying with the place. In one and the same cause the process andpleadings are in the fashion of one nation, the judgment is accordingto the laws of another. An issue is evolved according to the rulesof Westminster, and decided according to those of Benares. The onlyMahometan book in the nature of a code is the Koran; the only Hindoobook, the Institutes. Everybody who knows those books knows that theyprovide for a very small part of the cases which must arise in everycommunity. All beyond them is comment and tradition. Our regulations incivil matters do not define rights, but merely establish remedies. Ifa point of Hindoo law arises, the Judge calls on the Pundit for anopinion. If a point of Mahometan law arises, the Judge applies to theCauzee. What the integrity of these functionaries is, we may learn fromSir William Jones. That eminent man declared that he could not answerit to his conscience to decide any point of law on the faith of a Hindooexpositor. Sir Thomas Strange confirms this declaration. Even if therewere no suspicion of corruption on the part of the interpreters of thelaw, the science which they profess is in such a state of confusion thatno reliance can be placed on their answers. Sir Francis Macnaghten tellsus, that it is a delusion to fancy that there is any known and fixed lawunder which the Hindoo people live; that texts may be produced on anyside of any question; that expositors equal in authority perpetuallycontradict each other: that the obsolete law is perpetually confoundedwith the law actually in force; and that the first lesson to beimpressed on a functionary who has to administer Hindoo law is that itis vain to think of extracting certainty from the books of the jurist. The consequence is that in practice the decisions of the tribunals arealtogether arbitrary. What is administered is not law, but a kind ofrude and capricious equity. I asked an able and excellent judge latelyreturned from India how one of our Zillah Courts would decideseveral legal questions of great importance, questions not involvingconsiderations of religion or of caste, mere questions of commerciallaw. He told me that it was a mere lottery. He knew how he shouldhimself decide them. But he knew nothing more. I asked a mostdistinguished civil servant of the Company, with reference to the clausein this Bill on the subject of slavery, whether at present, if a dancinggirl ran away from her master, the judge would force her to go back. "Some judges, " he said, "send a girl back. Others set her at liberty. The whole is a mere matter of chance. Everything depends on the temperof the individual judge. "

Even in this country we have had complaints of judge-made law; even inthis country, where the standard of morality is higher than in almostany other part of the world; where, during several generations, notone depositary of our legal traditions has incurred the suspicion ofpersonal corruption; where there are popular institutions; where everydecision is watched by a shrewd and learned audience; where there is anintelligent and observant public; where every remarkable case is fullyreported in a hundred newspapers; where, in short, there is everythingwhich can mitigate the evils of such a system. But judge-made law, wherethere is an absolute government and a lax morality, where there is nobar and no public, is a curse and a scandal not to be endured. It istime that the magistrate should know what law he is to administer, thatthe subject should know under what law he is to live. We do not meanthat all the people of India should live under the same law: far fromit: there is not a word in the bill, there was not a word in my righthonourable friend's speech, susceptible of such an interpretation. We know how desirable that object is; but we also know that it isunattainable. We know that respect must be paid to feelings generated bydifferences of religion, of nation, and of caste. Much, I am persuaded, may be done to assimilate the different systems of law without woundingthose feelings. But, whether we assimilate those systems or not, let usascertain them; let us digest them. We propose no rash innovation; wewish to give no shock to the prejudices of any part of our subjects. Ourprinciple is simply this; uniformity where you can have it: diversitywhere you must have it; but in all cases certainty. 

As I believe that India stands more in need of a code than any othercountry in the world, I believe also that there is no country on whichthat great benefit can more easily be conferred. A code is almost theonly blessing, perhaps is the only blessing, which absolute governmentsare better fitted to confer on a nation than popular governments. The work of digesting a vast and artificial system of unwrittenjurisprudence is far more easily performed, and far better performed, byfew minds than by many, by a Napoleon than by a Chamber of Deputies anda Chamber of Peers, by a government like that of Prussia or Denmarkthan by a government like that of England. A quiet knot of two or threeveteran jurists is an infinitely better machinery for such a purposethan a large popular assembly divided, as such assemblies almost alwaysare, into adverse factions. This seems to me, therefore, to be preciselythat point of time at which the advantage of a complete written code oflaws may most easily be conferred on India. It is a work which cannotbe well performed in an age of barbarism, which cannot without greatdifficulty be performed in an age of freedom. It is a work whichespecially belongs to a government like that of India, to an enlightenedand paternal despotism. 

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

I am far, very far, from wishing to proceed hastily in this mostdelicate matter. I feel that, for the good of India itself, theadmission of natives to high office must be effected by slow degrees. But that, when the fulness of time is come, when the interest of Indiarequires the change, we ought to refuse to make that change lest weshould endanger our own power, this is a doctrine of which I cannotthink without indignation. Governments, like men, may buy existence toodear. "Propter vitam vivendi perdere causas, " is a despicable policyboth in individuals and in states. In the present case, such a policywould be not only despicable, but absurd. The mere extent of empireis not necessarily an advantage. To many governments it has beencumbersome; to some it has been fatal. It will be allowed by everystatesman of our time that the prosperity of a community is made up ofthe prosperity of those who compose the community, and that it is themost childish ambition to covet dominion which adds to no man's comfortor security. To the great trading nation, to the great manufacturingnation, no progress which any portion of the human race can make inknowledge, in taste for the conveniences of life, or in the wealth bywhich those conveniences are produced, can be matter of indifference. It is scarcely possible to calculate the benefits which we might derivefrom the diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population ofthe East. It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far betterfor us that the people of India were well governed and independent ofus, than ill governed and subject to us; that they were ruled by theirown kings, but wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, than that they were performing their salams to English collectors andEnglish magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too poor to buy, English manufactures. To trade with civilised men is infinitely moreprofitable than to govern savages. That would, indeed, be a dotingwisdom, which, in order that India might remain a dependency, would makeit an useless and costly dependency, which would keep a hundred millionsof men from being our customers in order that they might continue to beour slaves. 

It was, as Bernier tells us, the practice of the miserable tyrants whomhe found in India, when they dreaded the capacity and spirit of somedistinguished subject, and yet could not venture to murder him, toadminister to him a daily dose of the pousta, a preparation of opium, the effect of which was in a few months to destroy all the bodily andmental powers of the wretch who was drugged with it, and to turn himinto a helpless idiot. The detestable artifice, more horrible thanassassination itself, was worthy of those who employed it. It is nomodel for the English nation. We shall never consent to administer thepousta to a whole community, to stupefy and paralyse a great people whomGod has committed to our charge, for the wretched purpose of renderingthem more amenable to our control. What is power worth if it isfounded on vice, on ignorance, and on misery; if we can hold it onlyby violating the most sacred duties which as governors we owe to thegoverned, and which, as a people blessed with far more than an ordinarymeasure of political liberty and of intellectual light, we owe to a racedebased by three thousand years of despotism and priestcraft? We arefree, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portionof the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation. 

Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that we may keepthem submissive? Or do we think that we can give them knowledge withoutawakening ambition? Or do we mean to awaken ambition and to provide itwith no legitimate vent? Who will answer any of these questions in theaffirmative? Yet one of them must be answered in the affirmative, byevery person who maintains that we ought permanently to exclude thenatives from high office. I have no fears. The path of duty is plainbefore us: and it is also the path of wisdom, of national prosperity, ofnational honour. 

The destinies of our Indian empire are covered with thick darkness. Itis difficult to form any conjecture as to the fate reserved for astate which resembles no other in history, and which forms by itselfa separate class of political phenomena. The laws which regulate itsgrowth and its decay are still unknown to us. It may be that the publicmind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown thatsystem; that by good government we may educate our subjects into acapacity for better government; that, having become instructed inEuropean knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand Europeaninstitutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But neverwill I attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will bethe proudest day in English history. To have found a great people sunkin the lowest depths of slavery and superstition, to have so ruledthem as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges ofcitizens, would indeed be a title to glory all our own. The sceptre maypass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profoundschemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there aretriumphs which are followed by no reverse. There is an empire exemptfrom all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacifictriumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishableempire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws. 

*****

EDINBURGH ELECTION, 1839. (MAY 29, 1839) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGHON THE 29TH OF MAY 1839. 

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

My Lord Provost and Gentlemen, --At the request of a very large andrespectable portion of your body, I appear before you as a candidatefor a high and solemn trust, which, uninvited, I should have thoughtit presumption to solicit, but which, thus invited, I should think itcowardice to decline. If I had felt myself justified in following my owninclinations, I am not sure that even a summons so honourable as thatwhich I have received would have been sufficient to draw me away frompursuits far better suited to my taste and temper than the turmoil ofpolitical warfare. But I feel that my lot is cast in times in whichno man is free to judge, merely according to his own taste and temper, whether he will devote himself to active or to contemplative life; intimes in which society has a right to demand, from every one of itsmembers, active and strenuous exertions. I have, therefore, obeyed yourcall; and I now present myself before you for the purpose of offeringto you, not, what I am sure you would reject with disdain, flattery, degrading alike to a candidate, and to a constituent body; but suchreasonable, candid, and manly explanations as become the mouth of a freeman ambitious of the confidence of a free people. 

It is hardly necessary for me to say that I stand here unconnected withthis great community. It would be mere affectation not to acknowledgethat with respect to local questions I have much to learn; but I hopethat you will find in me no sluggish or inattentive learner. From anearly age I have felt a strong interest in Edinburgh, although attachedto Edinburgh by no other ties than those which are common to me withmultitudes; that tie which attaches every man of Scottish blood to theancient and renowned capital of our race; that tie which attaches everystudent of history to the spot ennobled by so many great and memorableevents; that tie which attaches every traveller of taste to the mostbeautiful of British cities; and that tie which attaches every loverof literature to a place which, since it has ceased to be the seat ofempire, has derived from poetry, philosophy, and eloquence a far higherdistinction than empire can bestow. If to those ties it shall now beyour pleasure to add a tie still closer and more peculiar, I can onlyassure you that it shall be the study of my life so to conduct myselfin these our troubled times that you may have no reason to be ashamed ofyour choice. 

Those gentlemen who invited me to appear as a candidate before you weredoubtless acquainted with the part which I took in public affairs duringthe three first Parliaments of the late King. Circumstances have sincethat time undergone great alteration; but no alteration has taken placein my principles. I do not mean to say that thought, discussion, and thenew phenomena produced by the operation of a new representative system, have not led me to modify some of my views on questions of detail; but, with respect to the fundamental principles of government, my opinionsare still what they were when, in 1831 and 1832, I took part, accordingto the measure of my abilities, in that great pacific victory whichpurified the representative system of England, and which first gave areal representative system to Scotland. Even at that time, Gentlemen, the leaning of my mind was in favour of one measure to which theillustrious leader of the Whig party, whose name ought never to bementioned without gratitude and reverence in any assembly of Britishelectors, I mean Earl Grey, was understood to entertain strongobjections, and to which his Cabinet, as a Cabinet, was invariablyopposed. I speak of the vote by ballot. All that has passed since thattime confirms me in the view which I was then inclined to take ofthat important question. At the same time I do not think that all theadvantages are on one side and all the disadvantages on the other. Imust admit that the effect of the practice of secret voting would be towithdraw the voter from the operation of some salutary and honourable, as well as of some pernicious and degrading motives. But seeing, asI cannot help seeing, that the practice of intimidation, instead ofdiminishing, is gaining ground, I am compelled to consider whether thetime has not arrived when we are bound to apply what seems the onlyefficient remedy. And I am compelled to consider whether, in doing so, I am not strictly following the principles of the Reform Bill to thelegitimate conclusions. For surely those who supported the Reform Billintended to give the people of Britain a reality, not a delusion; todestroy nomination, and not to make an outward show of destroying it;to bestow the franchise, and not the name of the franchise; and least ofall, to give suffering and humiliation under the name of the franchise. If men are to be returned to Parliament, not by popular election, butby nomination, then I say without hesitation that the ancient system wasmuch the best. Both systems alike sent men to Parliament who were notfreely chosen by independent constituent bodies: but under the oldsystem there was little or no need of intimidation, while, under the newsystem, we have the misery and disgrace produced by intimidation addedto the process. If, therefore, we are to have nomination, I prefer thenomination which used to take place at Old Sarum to the nomination whichnow takes place at Newark. In both cases you have members returned atthe will of one landed proprietor: but at Newark you have two hundredejectments into the bargain, to say nothing of the mortification andremorse endured by all those who, though they were not ejected, yetvoted against their consciences from fear of ejectment. 

There is perhaps no point on which good men of all parties are morecompletely agreed than on the necessity of restraining and punishingcorruption in the election of Members of Parliament. The evils ofcorruption are doubtless very great; but it appears to me that thoseevils which are attributed to corruption may, with equal justice, beattributed to intimidation, and that intimidation produces also somemonstrous evils with which corruption cannot be reproached. In bothcases alike the elector commits a breach of trust. In both cases alikehe employs for his own advantage an important power which was confidedto him, that it might be used, to the best of his judgment, for thegeneral good of the community. Thus far corruption and intimidationoperate in the same manner. But there is this difference betwixt the twosystems; corruption operates by giving pleasure, intimidation by givingpain. To give a poor man five pounds causes no pain: on the contraryit produces pleasure. It is in itself no bad act: indeed, if the fivepounds were given on another occasion, and without a corrupt object, itmight pass for a benevolent act. But to tell a man that you will reducehim to a situation in which he will miss his former comforts, and inwhich his family will be forced to beg their bread, is a cruel act. Corruption has a sort of illegitimate relationship to benevolence, andengenders some feelings of a cordial and friendly nature. There is anotion of charity connected with the distribution of the money of therich among the needy, even in a corrupt manner. The comic writer whotells us that the whole system of corruption is to be considered as acommerce of generosity on one side and of gratitude on the other, hasrather exaggerated than misrepresented what really takes place inmany of these English constituent bodies where money is lavished toconciliate the favour and obtain the suffrages of the people. But inintimidation the whole process is an odious one. The whole feeling onthe part of the elector is that of shame, degradation, and hatred of theperson to whom he has given his vote. The elector is indeed placed in aworse situation than if he had no vote at all; for there is not one ofus who would not rather be without a vote than be compelled to give itto the person whom he dislikes above all others. 

Thinking, therefore, that the practice of intimidation has all the evilswhich are to be found in corruption, and that it has other evils whichare not to be found in corruption, I was naturally led to considerwhether it was possible to prevent it by any process similar to that bywhich corruption is restrained. Corruption, you all know, is the subjectof penal laws. If it is brought home to the parties, they are liable tosevere punishment. Although it is not often that it can be broughthome, yet there are instances. I remember several men of large propertyconfined in Newgate for corruption. Penalties have been awardedagainst offenders to the amount of five hundred pounds. Many members ofParliament have been unseated on account of the malpractices of theiragents. But you cannot, I am afraid, repress intimidation by penal laws. Such laws would infringe the most sacred rights of property. How can Irequire a man to deal with tradesmen who have voted against him, or torenew the leases of tenants who have voted against him? What is it thatthe Jew says in the play?

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

Or, as a Christian of our own time has expressed himself, "I have aright to do what I will with my own. " There is a great deal of weightin the reasoning of Shylock and the Duke of Newcastle. There would bean end of the right of property if you were to interdict a landlordfrom ejecting a tenant, if you were to force a gentleman to employ aparticular butcher, and to take as much beef this year as last year. The principle of the right of property is that a man is not only tobe allowed to dispose of his wealth rationally and usefully, but tobe allowed to indulge his passions and caprices, to employ whatevertradesmen and labourers he chooses, and to let, or refuse to let, hisland according to his own pleasure, without giving any reason or askinganybody's leave. I remember that, on one of the first evenings on whichI sate in the House of Commons, Mr Poulett Thompson proposed a censureon the Duke of Newcastle for His Grace's conduct towards the electors ofNewark. Sir Robert Peel opposed the motion, not only with considerableability, but with really unanswerable reasons. He asked if it was meantthat a tenant who voted against his landlord was to keep his lease forever. If so, tenants would vote against a landlord to secure themselves, as they now vote with a landlord to secure themselves. I thought, andthink, this argument unanswerable; but then it is unanswerable in favourof the ballot; for, if it be impossible to deal with intimidation bypunishment, you are bound to consider whether there be any means ofprevention; and the only mode of prevention that has ever been suggestedis the ballot. That the ballot has disadvantages to be set off againstits advantages, I admit; but it appears to me that we have only a choiceof evils, and that the evils for which the ballot is a specific remedyare greater than any which the ballot is likely to produce. Observe withwhat exquisite accuracy the ballot draws the line of distinction betweenthe power which we ought to give to the proprietor and the power whichwe ought not to give him. It leaves the proprietor the absolute powerto do what he will with his own. Nobody calls upon him to say why heejected this tenant, or took away his custom from that tradesman. Itleaves him at liberty to follow his own tastes, to follow his strangestwhims. The only thing which it puts beyond his power is the vote of thetenant, the vote of the tradesman, which it is our duty to protect. Iought at the same time to say, that there is one objection to theballot of a very serious nature, but which I think may, nevertheless, beobviated. It is quite clear that, if the ballot shall be adopted, therewill be no remedy for an undue return by a subsequent scrutiny. Unless, therefore, the registration of votes can be counted on as correct, the ballot will undoubtedly lead to great inconvenience. It seems, therefore, that a careful revision of the whole system of registration, and an improvement of the tribunal before which the rights of theelectors are to be established, should be an inseparable part of anymeasure by which the ballot is to be introduced. 

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

It must be admitted that for some years past we have had little reasonto complain of the length of Parliaments. Since the year 1830 wehave had five general elections; two occasioned by the deaths of twoSovereigns, and three by political conjunctures. As to the presentParliament, I do not think that, whatever opinion gentlemen mayentertain of the conduct of that body, they will impute its faults toany confidence which the members have that they are to sit for sevenyears; for I very much question whether there be one gentleman in theHouse of Commons who thinks, or has ever thought, that his seat is worththree years' purchase. When, therefore, we discuss this question, we must remember that we are discussing a question not immediatelypressing. I freely admit, however, that this is no reason for not fairlyconsidering the subject: for it is the part of wise men to provideagainst evils which, though not actually felt, may be reasonablyapprehended. It seems to me that here, as in the case of the ballot, there are serious considerations to be urged on both sides. Theobjections to long Parliaments are perfectly obvious. The truth is that, in very long Parliaments, you have no representation at all. The mindof the people goes on changing; and the Parliament, remaining unchanged, ceases to reflect the opinion of the constituent bodies. In the oldtimes before the Revolution, a Parliament might sit during the lifeof the monarch. Parliaments were then sometimes of eighteen or twentyyears' duration. Thus the Parliament called by Charles the Second soonafter his return from exile, and elected when the nation was drunk withhope and convulsed by a hysterical paroxysm of loyalty, continued to sitlong after two-thirds of those who had heartily welcomed the Kingback from Holland as heartily wished him in Holland again. Since theRevolution we have not felt that evil to the same extent: but it must beadmitted that the term of seven years is too long. There are, however, other considerations to set off against this. There are two very seriousevils connected with every general election: the first is, the violentpolitical excitement: the second is, the ruinous expense. Both theseevils were very greatly diminished by the Reform Act. Formerly thesewere things which you in Scotland knew nothing about; but in Englandthe injury to the peace and morals of society resulting from a generalelection was incalculable. During a fifteen days' poll in a town of onehundred thousand inhabitants, money was flowing in all directions; thestreets were running with beer; all business was suspended; and therewas nothing but disturbance and riot, and slander, and calumny, andquarrels, which left in the bosoms of private families heartburningssuch as were not extinguished in the course of many years. By limitingthe duration of the poll, the Reform Act has conferred as great ablessing on the country, --and that is saying a bold word, --as by anyother provision which it contains. Still it is not to be denied thatthere are evils inseparable from that state of political excitement intowhich every community is thrown by the preparations for an election. Astill greater evil is the expense. That evil too has been diminished bythe operation of the Reform Act; but it still exists to a considerableextent. We do not now indeed hear of such elections as that of Yorkshirein 1807, or that of Northumberland in 1827. We do not hear of electionsthat cost two hundred thousand pounds. But that the tenth part of thatsum, nay, that the hundredth part of that sum should be expended in acontest, is a great evil. Do not imagine, Gentlemen, that all this evilfalls on the candidates. It is on you that the evil falls. The effectmust necessarily be to limit you in your choice of able men to serveyou. The number of men who can advance fifty thousand pounds isnecessarily much smaller than the number of men who can advance fivethousand pounds; the number of these again is much smaller than thenumber of those who can advance five hundred pounds; and the number ofmen who can advance five hundred pounds every three years is necessarilysmaller than the number of those who can advance five hundred poundsevery seven years. Therefore it seems to me that the question is one ofcomparison. In long Parliaments the representative character is in somemeasure effaced. On the other side, if you have short Parliaments, yourchoice of men will be limited. Now in all questions of this sort, itis the part of wisdom to weigh, not indeed with minute accuracy, --forquestions of civil prudence cannot be subjected to an arithmeticaltest, --but to weigh the advantages and disadvantages carefully, and thento strike the balance. Gentlemen will probably judge according to theirhabits of mind, and according to their opportunities of observation. Those who have seen much of the evils of elections will probably inclineto long Parliaments; those who have seen little or nothing of theseevils will probably incline to a short term. Only observe this, that, whatever may be the legal term, it ought to be a year longer than thatfor which Parliaments ought ordinarily to sit. For there must be ageneral election at the end of the legal term, let the state of thecountry be what it may. There may be riot; there may be revolution;there may be famine in the country; and yet if the Minister wait tothe end of the legal term, the writs must go out. A wise Minister willtherefore always dissolve the Parliament a year before the end of thelegal term, if the country be then in a quiet state. It has now beenlong the practice not to keep a Parliament more than six years. Thusthe Parliament which was elected in 1784 sat till 1790, six years;the Parliament of 1790 till 1796, the Parliament of 1796 to 1802, theParliament of 1812 to 1818, and the Parliament of 1820 till 1826. If, therefore, you wish the duration of Parliaments to be shortened to threeyears, the proper course would be to fix the legal term at four years;and if you wish them to sit for four years, the proper course would beto fix the legal term at five years. My own inclination would be to fixthe legal term at five years, and thus to have a Parliament practicallyevery four years. I ought to add that, whenever any shortening ofParliament takes place, we ought to alter that rule which requires thatParliament shall be dissolved as often as the demise of the Crown takesplace. It is a rule for which no statesmanlike reason can be given; itis a mere technical rule; and it has already been so much relaxed that, even considered as a technical rule, it is absurd. 

I come now to another subject, of the highest and gravest importance:I mean the elective franchise; and I acknowledge that I am doubtfulwhether my opinions on this subject may be so pleasing to many herepresent as, if I may judge from your expressions, my sentiments onother subjects have been. I shall express my opinions, however, on thissubject as frankly as I have expressed them when they may have been morepleasing. I shall express them with the frankness of a man who is moredesirous to gain your esteem than to gain your votes. I am for theoriginal principle of the Reform Bill. I think that principle excellent;and I am sorry that we ever deviated from it. There were two deviationsto which I was strongly opposed, and to which the authors of the bill, hard pressed by their opponents and feebly supported by their friends, very unwillingly consented. One was the admission of the freemen to votein towns: the other was the admission of the fifty pound tenants at willto vote in counties. At the same time I must say that I despair of beingable to apply a direct remedy to either of these evils. The ballot mightperhaps be an indirect remedy for the latter. I think that the system ofregistration should be amended, that the clauses relating to the paymentof rates should be altered, or altogether removed, and that the electivefranchise should be extended to every ten pound householder, whetherhe resides within or without the limits of a town. To this extent I amprepared to go; but I should not be dealing with the ingenuousness whichyou have a right to expect, if I did not tell you that I am not preparedto go further. There are many other questions as to which you areentitled to know the opinions of your representative: but I shall onlyglance rapidly at the most important. I have ever been a most determinedenemy to the slave trade, and to personal slavery under every form. Ihave always been a friend to popular education. I have always been afriend to the right of free discussion. I have always been adverse toall restrictions on trade, and especially to those restrictions whichaffect the price of the necessaries of life. I have always been adverseto religious persecution, whether it takes the form of direct penallaws, or of civil disabilities. 

Now, having said so much upon measures, I hope you will permit me tosay something about men. If you send me as your representative toParliament, I wish you to understand that I shall go there determinedto support the present ministry. I shall do so not from any personalinterest or feeling. I have certainly the happiness to have several kindand much valued friends among the members of the Government; and thereis one member of the Government, the noble President of the Council, towhom I owe obligations which I shall always be proud to avow. That nobleLord, when I was utterly unknown in public life, and scarcely known evento himself, placed me in the House of Commons; and it is due to himto say that he never in the least interfered with the freedom of myparliamentary conduct. I have since represented a great constituentbody, for whose confidence and kindness I can never be sufficientlygrateful, I mean the populous borough of Leeds. I may possibly byyour kindness be placed in the proud situation of Representative ofEdinburgh; but I never could and never can be a more independent Memberof the House of Commons than when I sat there as the nominee of LordLansdowne. But, while I acknowledge my obligations to that noble person, while I avow the friendship which I feel for many of his colleagues, it is not on such grounds that I vindicate the support which it is myintention to give them. I have no right to sacrifice your interests tomy personal or private feelings: my principles do not permit me to doso; nor do my friends expect that I should do so. The support which Ipropose to give to the present Ministry I shall give on the followinggrounds. I believe the present Ministry to be by many degrees the bestMinistry which, in the present state of the country, can be formed. I believe that we have only one choice. I believe that our choice isbetween a Ministry substantially, --for of course I do not speak ofparticular individuals, --between a Ministry substantially the same thatwe have, and a Ministry under the direction of the Duke of Wellingtonand Sir Robert Peel. I do not hesitate to pronounce that my choice is infavour of the former. Some gentleman appears to dissent from what I say. If I knew what his objections are, I would try to remove them. But itis impossible to answer inarticulate noises. Is the objection that thegovernment is too conservative? Or is the objection that the governmentis too radical? If I understand rightly, the objection is that theGovernment does not proceed vigorously enough in the work of Reform. Tothat objection then I will address myself. Now, I am far from denyingthat the Ministers have committed faults. But, at the same time, I makeallowances for the difficulties with which they are contending; andhaving made these allowances, I confidently say that, when I look backat the past, I think them entitled to praise, and that, looking forwardto the future, I can pronounce with still more confidence that they areentitled to support. 

It is a common error, and one which I have found among men, not onlyintelligent, but much conversant in public business, to think that inpolitics, legislation is everything and administration nothing. Nothingis more usual than to hear people say, "What! another session gone andnothing done; no new bills passed; the Irish Municipal Bill stopped inthe House of Lords. How could we be worse off if the Tories were in?"My answer is that, if the Tories were in, our legislation would be in asbad a state as at present, and we should have a bad administration intothe bargain. It seems strange to me that gentlemen should not beaware that it may be better to have unreformed laws administered in areforming spirit, than reformed laws administered in a spirit hostile toall reform. We often hear the maxim, "Measures not men, " and there isa sense in which it is an excellent maxim. Measures not men, certainly:that is, we are not to oppose Sir Robert Peel simply because he is SirRobert Peel, or to support Lord John Russell simply because he is LordJohn Russell. We are not to follow our political leaders in the way inwhich my honest Highland ancestors followed their chieftains. We are notto imitate that blind devotion which led all the Campbells to take theside of George the Second because the Duke of Argyle was a Whig, andall the Camerons to take the side of the Stuarts because Lochiel was aJacobite. But if you mean that, while the laws remain the same, it isunimportant by whom they are administered, then I say that a doctrinemore absurd was never uttered. Why, what are laws? They are mere words;they are a dead letter; till a living agent comes to put life into them. This is the case even in judicial matters. You can tie up the judgesof the land much more closely than it would be right to tie up theSecretary for the Home Department or the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Yet is it immaterial whether the laws be administered by Chief JusticeHale or Chief Justice Jeffreys? And can you doubt that the case is stillstronger when you come to political questions? It would be perfectlyeasy, as many of you must be aware, to point out instances in whichsociety has prospered under defective laws, well administered, and otherinstances in which society has been miserable under institutions thatlooked well on paper. But we need not go beyond our own country and ourown times. Let us see what, within this island and in the present year, a good administration has done to mitigate bad laws. For example, let ustake the law of libel. I hold the present state of our law of libel tobe a scandal to a civilised community. Nothing more absurd can be foundin the whole history of jurisprudence. How the law of libel was abusedformerly, you all know. You all know how it was abused under theadministrations of Lord North, of Mr Pitt, of Mr Perceval, of theEarl of Liverpool; and I am sorry to say that it was abused, mostunjustifiably abused, by Lord Abinger under the administration of theDuke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. Now is there any person who willpretend to say that it has ever been abused by the Government ofLord Melbourne? That Government has enemies in abundance; it has beenattacked by Tory malcontents and by Radical malcontents; but has any oneof them ever had the effrontery to say that it has abused the power offiling ex officio informations for libel? Has this been from want ofprovocation? On the contrary, the present Government has been libelledin a way in which no Government was ever libelled before. Has the lawbeen altered? Has it been modified? Not at all. We have exactly thesame laws that we had when Mr Perry was brought to trial for saying thatGeorge the Third was unpopular, Mr Leigh Hunt for saying that George theFourth was fat, and Sir Francis Burdett for expressing, not perhaps inthe best taste, a natural and honest indignation at the slaughter whichtook place at Manchester in 1819. The law is precisely the same; but ifit had been entirely remodelled, political writers could not have hadmore liberty than they have enjoyed since Lord Melbourne came intopower. 

I have given you an instance of the power of a good administration tomitigate a bad law. Now, see how necessary it is that there should be agood administration to carry a good law into effect. An excellent billwas brought into the House of Commons by Lord John Russell in 1828, andpassed. To any other man than Lord John Russell the carrying of sucha bill would have been an enviable distinction indeed; but his nameis identified with still greater reforms. It will, however, always beaccounted one of his titles to public gratitude that he was the authorof the law which repealed the Test Act. Well, a short time since, anoble peer, the Lord Lieutenant of the county of Nottingham, thought fitto re-enact the Test Act, so far as that county was concerned. I havealready mentioned His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, and, to say truth, there is no life richer in illustrations of all forms and branches ofmisgovernment than his. His Grace very coolly informed Her Majesty'sMinisters that he had not recommended a certain gentleman for thecommission of the peace because the gentleman was a Dissenter. Now hereis a law which admits Dissenters to offices; and a Tory nobleman takesit on himself to rescind that law. But happily we have Whig Ministers. What did they do? Why, they put the Dissenter into the Commission; andthey turned the Tory nobleman out of the Lieutenancy. Do you seriouslyimagine that under a Tory administration this would have been done? Ihave no wish to say anything disrespectful of the great Tory leaders. I shall always speak with respect of the great qualities and publicservices of the Duke of Wellington: I have no other feeling about himthan one of pride that my country has produced so great a man; nor doI feel anything but respect and kindness for Sir Robert Peel, of whoseabilities no person that has had to encounter him in debate will everspeak slightingly. I do not imagine that those eminent men would haveapproved of the conduct of the Duke of Newcastle. I believe that theDuke of Wellington would as soon have thought of running away from thefield of battle as of doing the same thing in Hampshire, where he isLord Lieutenant. But do you believe that he would have turned the Dukeof Newcastle out? I believe that he would not. As Mr Pulteney, a greatpolitical leader, said a hundred years since, "The heads of parties are, like the heads of snakes, carried on by the tails. " It would have beenutterly impossible for the Tory Ministers to have discarded the powerfulTory Duke, unless they had at the same time resolved, like Mr Canning in1827, to throw themselves for support on the Whigs. 

Now I have given you these two instances to show that a change in theadministration may produce all the effects of a change in the law. Yousee that to have a Tory Government is virtually to reenact the Test Act, and that to have a Whig Government is virtually to repeal the law oflibel. And if this is the case in England and Scotland, where society isin a sound state, how much more must it be the case in the diseasedpart of the empire, in Ireland? Ask any man there, whatever may be hisreligion, whatever may be his politics, Churchman, Presbyterian, RomanCatholic, Repealer, Precursor, Orangeman, ask Mr O'Connell, ask ColonelConolly, whether it is a slight matter in whose hands the executivepower is lodged. Every Irishman will tell you that it is a matter oflife and death; that in fact more depends upon the men than upon thelaws. It disgusts me therefore to hear men of liberal politics say, "What is the use of a Whig Government? The Ministers can do nothing forthe country. They have been four years at work on an Irish MunicipalBill, without being able to pass it through the Lords. " Would any tenActs of Parliament make such a difference to Ireland as the differencebetween having Lord Ebrington for Lord Lieutenant, with Lord Morpethfor Secretary, and having the Earl of Roden for Lord Lieutenant, with MrLefroy for Secretary? Ask the popular Irish leaders whether theywould like better to remain as they are, with Lord Ebrington as LordLieutenant, or to have the Municipal Bill, and any other three billswhich they might name, with Lord Roden for Viceroy; and they will atonce answer, "Leave us Lord Ebrington; and burn your bills. " The truthis that, the more defective the legislation, the more important is agood administration, just as the personal qualities of the Sovereign areof more importance in despotic countries like Russia than in a limitedmonarchy. If we have not in our Statute Book all the securitiesnecessary for good government, it is of the more importance thatthe character of the men who administer the government should be anadditional security. 

But we are told that the Government is weak. That is most true; and Ibelieve that almost all that we are tempted to blame in the conduct ofthe Government is to be attributed to weakness. But let us consider whatthe nature of this weakness is. Is it that kind of weakness which makesit our duty to oppose the Government? Or is it that kind of weaknesswhich makes it our duty to support the Government? Is it intellectualweakness, moral weakness, the incapacity to discern, or the wantof courage to pursue, the true interest of the nation? Such was theweakness of Mr Addington, when this country was threatened with invasionfrom Boulogne. Such was the weakness of the Government which sent outthe wretched Walcheren expedition, and starved the Duke of Wellington inSpain; a government whose only strength was shown in prosecuting writerswho exposed abuses, and in slaughtering rioters whom oppression haddriven into outrage. Is that the weakness of the present Government? Ithink not. As compared with any other party capable of holding the reinsof Government, they are deficient neither in intellectual nor in moralstrength. On all great questions of difference between the Ministers andthe Opposition, I hold the Ministers to be in the right. When I considerthe difficulties with which they have to struggle, when I see howmanfully that struggle is maintained by Lord Melbourne, when I see thatLord John Russell has excited even the admiration of his opponents bythe heroic manner in which he has gone on, year after year, in sicknessand domestic sorrow, fighting the battle of Reform, I am led to theconclusion that the weakness of the Ministers is of that sort whichmakes it our duty to give them, not opposition, but support; and thatsupport it is my purpose to afford to the best of my ability. 

If, indeed, I thought myself at liberty to consult my own inclination, I should have stood aloof from the conflict. If you should be pleasedto send me to Parliament, I shall enter an assembly very differentfrom that which I quitted in 1834. I left the Wigs united and dominant, strong in the confidence and attachment of one House of Parliament, strong also in the fears of the other. I shall return to find themhelpless in the Lords, and forced almost every week to fight a battlefor existence in the Commons. Many, whom I left bound together by whatseemed indissoluble private and public ties, I shall now find assailingeach other with more than the ordinary bitterness of politicalhostility. Many with whom I sate side by side, contending through wholenights for the Reform Bill, till the sun broke over the Thames on ourundiminished ranks, I shall now find on hostile benches. I shall becompelled to engage in painful altercations with many with whom I hadhoped never to have a conflict, except in the generous and friendlystrife which should best serve the common cause. I left the LiberalGovernment strong enough to maintain itself against an adverse Court; Isee that the Liberal Government now rests for support on the preferenceof a Sovereign, in whom the country sees with delight the promise of abetter, a gentler, a happier Elizabeth, of a Sovereign in whom we hopethat our children and our grandchildren will admire the firmness, thesagacity, and the spirit which distinguished the last and greatest ofthe Tudors, tempered by the beneficent influence of more humane timesand more popular institutions. Whether royal favour, never more neededand never better deserved, will enable the government to surmount thedifficulties with which it has to deal, I cannot presume to judge. Itmay be that the blow has only been deferred for a season, and that along period of Tory domination is before us. Be it so. I entered publiclife a Whig; and a Whig I am determined to remain. I use that word, andI wish you to understand that I use it, in no narrow sense. I mean bya Whig, not one who subscribes implicitly to the contents of any book, though that book may have been written by Locke; not one who approvesthe whole conduct of any statesman, though that statesman may have beenFox; not one who adopts the opinions in fashion in any circle, thoughthat circle may be composed of the finest and noblest spirits of theage. But it seems to me that, when I look back on our history, I candiscern a great party which has, through many generations, preserved itsidentity; a party often depressed, never extinguished; a party which, though often tainted with the faults of the age, has always been inadvance of the age; a party which, though guilty of many errors andsome crimes, has the glory of having established our civil and religiousliberties on a firm foundation; and of that party I am proud to be amember. It was that party which, on the great question of monopolies, stood up against Elizabeth. It was that party which, in the reign ofJames the First, organised the earliest parliamentary opposition, whichsteadily asserted the privileges of the people, and wrested prerogativeafter prerogative from the Crown. It was that party which forcedCharles the First to relinquish the ship-money. It was that party whichdestroyed the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court. It was thatparty which, under Charles the Second, carried the Habeas Corpus Act, which effected the Revolution, which passed the Toleration Act, whichbroke the yoke of a foreign church in your country, and which savedScotland from the fate of unhappy Ireland. It was that party whichreared and maintained the constitutional throne of Hanover against thehostility of the Church and of the landed aristocracy of England. Itwas that party which opposed the war with America and the war with theFrench Republic; which imparted the blessings of our free Constitutionto the Dissenters; and which, at a later period, by unparalleledsacrifices and exertions, extended the same blessings to the RomanCatholics. To the Whigs of the seventeenth century we owe it that wehave a House of Commons. To the Whigs of the nineteenth century we oweit that the House of Commons has been purified. The abolition of theslave trade, the abolition of colonial slavery, the extension of populareducation, the mitigation of the rigour of the penal code, all, all wereeffected by that party; and of that party, I repeat, I am a member. Ilook with pride on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of humanfreedom and of human happiness. I see them now hard pressed, strugglingwith difficulties, but still fighting the good fight. At their head Isee men who have inherited the spirit and the virtues, as well as theblood, of old champions and martyrs of freedom. To those men I proposeto attach myself. Delusion may triumph: but the triumphs of delusion arebut for a day. We may be defeated: but our principles will only gatherfresh strength from defeats. Be that, however, as it may, my part istaken. While one shred of the old banner is flying, by that banner willI at least be found. The good old cause, as Sidney called it on thescaffold, vanquished or victorious, insulted or triumphant, the goodold cause is still the good old cause with me. Whether in or out ofParliament, whether speaking with that authority which must alwaysbelong to the representative of this great and enlightened community, or expressing the humble sentiments of a private citizen, I will to thelast maintain inviolate my fidelity to principles which, though they maybe borne down for a time by senseless clamour, are yet strong with thestrength and immortal with the immortality of truth, and which, howeverthey may be misunderstood or misrepresented by contemporaries, willassuredly find justice from a better age. Gentlemen, I have done. I haveonly to thank you for the kind attention with which you have heard me, and to express my hope that whether my principles have met with yourconcurrence or not, the frankness with which I have expressed them willat least obtain your approbation. 

*****

CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY OF LORD MELBOURNE. (JANUARY 29, 1840) ASPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 29TH OF JANUARY 1840. 

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

"That Her Majesty's Government, as at present constituted, does notpossess the confidence of the House. "

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

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

One of the chief accusations brought against the Government by thehonourable Baronet (Sir John Yarde Buller. ) who opened the debate, and repeated by the seconder (Alderman Thompson. ), and by almost everygentlemen who has addressed the House from the benches opposite, is thatI have been invited to take office though my opinion with respect to theBallot is known to be different from that of my colleagues. We have beenrepeatedly told that a Ministry in which there is not perfect unanimityon a subject so important must be undeserving of the public confidence. Now, Sir, it is true that I am in favour of secret voting, that my nobleand right honourable friends near me are in favour of open voting, and yet that we sit in the same Cabinet. But if, on account of thisdifference of opinion, the Government is unworthy of public confidence, then I am sure that scarcely any government which has existed within thememory of the oldest man has been deserving of public confidence. Itis well-known that in the Cabinets of Mr Pitt, of Mr Fox, of LordLiverpool, of Mr Canning, of the Duke of Wellington, there wereopen questions of great moment. Mr Pitt, while still zealous forparliamentary reform, brought into the Cabinet Lord Grenville, whowas adverse to parliamentary reform. Again, Mr Pitt, while eloquentlysupporting the abolition of the Slave Trade, brought into the CabinetMr Dundas, who was the chief defender of the Slave Trade. Mr Fox, too, intense as was his abhorrence of the Slave Trade, sat in the sameCabinet with Lord Sidmouth and Mr Windham, who voted to the last againstthe abolition of that trade. Lord Liverpool, Mr Canning, the Duke ofWellington, all left the question of Catholic Emancipation open. Andyet, of all questions, that was perhaps the very last that should havebeen left open. For it was not merely a legislative question, but aquestion which affected every part of the executive administration. But, to come to the present time, suppose that you could carry yourresolution, suppose that you could drive the present Ministers frompower, who that may succeed them will be able to form a government inwhich there will be no open questions? Can the right honourable Baronetthe member for Tamworth (Sir Robert Peel. ) form a Cabinet withoutleaving the great question of our privileges open? In what respect isthat question less important than the question of the Ballot? Is it notindeed from the privileges of the House that all questions relatingto the constitution of the House derive their importance? What does itmatter how we are chosen, if, when we meet, we do not possess thepowers necessary to enable us to perform the functions of a legislativeassembly? Yet you who would turn out the present Ministers because theydiffer from each other as to the way in which Members of this Houseshould be chosen, wish to bring in men who decidedly differ from eachother as to the relation in which this House stands to the nation, tothe other House, and to the Courts of Judicature. Will you say that thedispute between the House and the Court of Queen's Bench is a triflingdispute? Surely, in the late debates, you were all perfectly agreed asto the importance of the question, though you were agreed as to nothingelse. Some of you told us that we were contending for a power essentialto our honour and usefulness. Many of you protested against ourproceedings, and declared that we were encroaching on the province ofthe tribunals, violating the liberty of our fellow citizens, punishinghonest magistrates for not perjuring themselves. Are these trifles? Andcan we believe that you really feel a horror of open questions when wesee your Prime Minister elect sending people to prison overnight, and his law officers elect respectfully attending the levee of thoseprisoners the next morning? Observe, too, that this question ofprivileges is not merely important; it is also pressing. Something mustbe done, and that speedily. My belief is that more inconvenience wouldfollow from leaving that question open one month than from leaving thequestion of the Ballot open ten years. 

The Ballot, Sir, is not the only subject on which I am accused ofholding dangerous opinions. The right honourable Baronet the Memberfor Pembroke (Sir James Graham. ) pronounces the present Governmenta Chartist Government; and he proves his point by saying that I am amember of the government, and that I wish to give the elective franchiseto every ten pound householder, whether his house be in a town or inthe country. Is it possible, Sir, that the honourable Baronet should notknow that the fundamental principle of the plan of government called thePeople's Charter is that every male of twenty-one should have a vote?Or is it possible that he can see no difference between giving thefranchise to all ten pound householders, and giving the franchise to allmales of twenty-one? Does he think the ten pound householders a classmorally or intellectually unfit to possess the franchise, he who bore achief part in framing the law which gave them the franchise in all therepresented towns of the United Kingdom? Or will he say that the tenpound householder in a town is morally and intellectually fit to bean elector, but that the ten pound householder who lives in theopen country is morally and intellectually unfit? Is not house-rentnotoriously higher in towns than in the country? Is it not, therefore, probable that the occupant of a ten pound house in a rural hamlet willbe a man who has a greater stake in the peace and welfare of societythan a man who has a ten pound house in Manchester or Birmingham? Canyou defend on conservative principles an arrangement which gives votesto a poorer class and withholds them from a richer? For my own part, Ibelieve it to be essential to the welfare of the state, that the electorshould have a pecuniary qualification. I believe that the ten poundqualification cannot be proved to be either too high or too low. Changes, which may hereafter take place in the value of money and inthe condition of the people, may make a change of the qualificationnecessary. But the ten pound qualification is, I believe, well suited tothe present state of things. At any rate, I am unable to conceive why itshould be a sufficient qualification within the limits of a borough, andan insufficient qualification a yard beyond those limits; sufficient atKnightsbridge, but insufficient at Kensington; sufficient at Lambeth, but insufficient at Battersea? If any person calls this Chartism, hemust permit me to tell him that he does not know what Chartism is. 

A motion, Sir, such as that which we are considering, brings under ourreview the whole policy of the kingdom, domestic, foreign, and colonial. It is not strange, therefore, that there should have been severalepisodes in this debate. Something has been said about the hostilitieson the River Plata, something about the hostilities on the coast ofChina, something about Commissioner Lin, something about Captain Elliot. But on such points I shall not dwell, for it is evidently not by theopinion which the House may entertain on such points that the eventof the debate will be decided. The main argument of the gentlemen whosupport the motion, the argument on which the right honourable Baronetwho opened the debate chiefly relied, the argument which his seconderrepeated, and which has formed the substance of every speech sincedelivered from the opposite side of the House, may be fairly summedup thus, "The country is not in a satisfactory state. There is muchrecklessness, much turbulence, much craving for political change; andthe cause of these evils is the policy of the Whigs. They rose to powerby agitation in 1830: they retained power by means of agitation throughthe tempestuous months which followed: they carried the Reform Billby means of agitation: expelled from office, they forced themselves inagain by means of agitation; and now we are paying the penalty of theirmisconduct. Chartism is the natural offspring of Whiggism. From thosewho caused the evil we cannot expect the remedy. The first thing tobe done is to dismiss them, and to call to power men who, not havinginstigated the people to commit excesses, can, without incurring thecharge of inconsistency, enforce the laws. "

Now, Sir, it seems to me that this argument was completely refuted bythe able and eloquent speech of my right honourable friend the JudgeAdvocate. (Sir George Grey. ) He said, and he said most truly, that thosewho hold this language are really accusing, not the Government of LordMelbourne, but the Government of Lord Grey. I was therefore, I must say, surprised, after the speech of my right honourable friend, to hearthe right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke, himself adistinguished member of the cabinet of Lord Grey, pronounce a harangueagainst agitation. That he was himself an agitator he does not ventureto deny; but he tries to excuse himself by saying, "I liked the ReformBill; I thought it a good bill; and so I agitated for it; and, inagitating for it, I acknowledge that I went to the very utmost limit ofwhat was prudent, to the very utmost limit of what was legal. " Does notthe right honourable Baronet perceive that, by setting up this defencefor his own past conduct, he admits that agitation is good or evil, according as the objects of the agitation are good or evil? When I hearhim speak of agitation as a practice disgraceful to a public man, andespecially to a Minister of the Crown, and address his lecture in aparticular manner to me, I cannot but wonder that he should not perceivethat his reproaches, instead of wounding me, recoil on himself. I wasnot a member of the Cabinet which brought in the Reform Bill, whichdissolved the Parliament in a moment of intense excitement in orderto carry the Reform Bill, which refused to serve the Sovereign longerunless he would create peers in sufficient numbers to carry the ReformBill. I was at that time only one of those hundreds of members of thisHouse, one of those millions of Englishmen, who were deeply impressedwith the conviction that the Reform Bill was one of the best lawsthat ever had been framed, and who reposed entire confidence in theabilities, the integrity, and the patriotism of the ministers; andI must add that in no member of the administration did I place moreconfidence than in the right honourable Baronet, who was then FirstLord of the Admiralty, and in the noble lord who was then Secretary forIreland. (Lord Stanley. ) It was indeed impossible for me not to see thatthe public mind was strongly, was dangerously stirred: but I trustedthat men so able, men so upright, men who had so large a stake in thecountry, would carry us safe through the storm which they had raised. And is it not rather hard that my confidence in the right honourableBaronet and the noble lord is to be imputed to me as a crime by the verymen who are trying to raise the right honourable Baronet and the noblelord to power? The Charter, we have been told in this debate, is thechild of the Reform Bill. But whose child is the Reform Bill? If men areto be deemed unfit for office because they roused the national spiritto support that bill, because they went as far as the law permitted inorder to carry that bill, then I say that no men can be more unfit foroffice than the right honourable Baronet and the noble lord. It may bethought presumptuous in me to defend two persons who are so well able todefend themselves, and the more so, as they have a powerful ally inthe right honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth, who, having twiceoffered them high places in the Government, must be supposed to be ofopinion that they are not disqualified for being ministers by havingbeen agitators. I will, however, venture to offer some arguments invindication of the conduct of my noble and right honourable friends, as I once called them, and as, notwithstanding the asperity whichhas characterised the present debate, I should still have pleasure incalling them. I would say in their behalf that agitation ought not to beindiscriminately condemned; that great abuses ought to be removed;that in this country scarcely any great abuse was ever removed till thepublic feeling had been roused against it; and that the public feelinghas seldom been roused against abuses without exertions to which thename of agitation may be given. I altogether deny the assertion whichwe have repeatedly heard in the course of this debate, that a governmentwhich does not discountenance agitation cannot be trusted to suppressrebellion. Agitation and rebellion, you say, are in kind the same thing:they differ only in degree. Sir, they are the same thing in the sensein which to breathe a vein and to cut a throat are the same thing. Thereare many points of resemblance between the act of the surgeon and theact of the assassin. In both there is the steel, the incision, thesmart, the bloodshed. But the acts differ as widely as possible both inmoral character and in physical effect. So with agitation and rebellion. I do not believe that there has been any moment since the revolutionof 1688 at which an insurrection in this country would have beenjustifiable. On the other hand, I hold that we have owed to agitation along series of beneficent reforms which could have been effected in noother way. Nor do I understand how any person can reprobate agitation, merely as agitation, unless he is prepared to adopt the maxim of BishopHorsley, that the people have nothing to do with the laws but toobey them. The truth is that agitation is inseparable from populargovernment. If you wish to get rid of agitation, you must establish anoligarchy like that of Venice, or a despotism like that of Russia. Ifa Russian thinks that he is able to suggest an improvement in thecommercial code or the criminal code of his country, he tries to obtainan audience of the Emperor Nicholas or of Count Nesselrode. If hecan satisfy them that his plans are good, then undoubtedly, withoutagitation, without controversy in newspapers, without harangues fromhustings, without clamorous meetings in great halls and in marketplaces, without petitions signed by tens of thousands, you may have a reformeffected with one stroke of the pen. Not so here. Here the people, aselectors, have power to decide questions of the highest importance. Andought they not to hear and read before they decide? And how can theyhear if nobody speaks, or read if nobody writes? You must admit, then, that it is our right, and that it may be our duty, to attemptby speaking and writing to induce the great body of our countrymen topronounce what we think a right decision; and what else is agitation? Insaying this I am not defending one party alone. Has there been no Toryagitation? No agitation against Popery? No agitation against the newPoor Law? No agitation against the plan of education framed by thepresent Government? Or, to pass from questions about which we differ toquestions about which we all agree: Would the slave trade ever havebeen abolished without agitation? Would slavery ever have been abolishedwithout agitation? Would your prison discipline ever have been improvedwithout agitation? Would your penal code, once the scandal of theStatute Book, have been mitigated without agitation? I am far fromdenying that agitation may be abused, may be employed for bad ends, maybe carried to unjustifiable lengths. So may that freedom of speechwhich is one of the most precious privileges of this House. Indeed, the analogy is very close. What is agitation but the mode in which thepublic, the body which we represent, the great outer assembly, if I mayso speak, holds its debates? It is as necessary to the good governmentof the country that our constituents should debate as that we shoulddebate. They sometimes go wrong, as we sometimes go wrong. Thereis often much exaggeration, much unfairness, much acrimony in theirdebates. Is there none in ours? Some worthless demagogues may haveexhorted the people to resist the laws. But what member of Lord Grey'sGovernment, what member of the present Government, ever gave anycountenance to any illegal proceedings? It is perfectly true that somewords which have been uttered here and in other places, and which, whentaken together with the context and candidly construed, will appear tomean nothing but what was reasonable and constitutional and moderate, have been distorted and mutilated into something that has a seditiousaspect. But who is secure against such misrepresentation? Not, I amsure, the right honourable Baronet the Member for Pembroke. He ought toremember that his own speeches have been used by bad men for bad ends. He ought to remember that some expressions which he used in 1830, onthe subject of the emoluments divided among Privy Councillors, have beenquoted by the Chartists in vindication of their excesses. Do I blame himfor this? Not at all. He said nothing that was not justifiable. But itis impossible for a man so to guard his lips that his language shall notsometimes be misunderstood by dull men, and sometimes misrepresentedby dishonest men. I do not, I say, blame him for having used thoseexpressions: but I do say that, knowing how his own expressions had beenperverted, he should have hesitated before he threw upon men, notless attached than himself to the cause of law, of order and property, imputations certainly not better founded than those to which he ishimself liable. 

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

It has been, Sir, I will not say his fault, but his misfortune, hisfate, to be the leader of a party with which he has no sympathy. To goback to what is now matter of history, the right honourable Baronetbore a chief part in the restoration of the currency. By a verylarge proportion of his followers the restoration of the currency isconsidered as the chief cause of the distresses of the country. Theright honourable Baronet cordially supported the commercial policy of MrHuskisson. But there was no name more odious than that of Mr Huskissonto the rank and file of the Tory party. The right honourable Baronetassented to the Act which removed the disabilities of the ProtestantDissenters. But, a very short time ago, a noble Duke, one of thehighest in power and rank of the right honourable Baronet's adherents, positively refused to lend his aid to the executing of that Act. The right honourable Baronet brought in the bill which removed thedisabilities of the Roman Catholics: but his supporters make it a chiefarticle of charge against us that we have given practical effect tothe law which is his best title to public esteem. The right honourableBaronet has declared himself decidedly favourable to the new Poor Law. Yet, if a voice is raised against the Whig Bastilles and the Kings ofSomerset House, it is almost certain to be the voice of some zealousretainer of the right honourable Baronet. On the great question ofprivilege, the right honourable Baronet has taken a part which entitleshim to the gratitude of all who are solicitous for the honour and theusefulness of the popular branch of the legislature. But if any personcalls us tyrants, and calls those whom we have imprisoned martyrs, thatperson is certain to be a partisan of the right honourable Baronet. Even when the right honourable Baronet does happen to agree with hisfollowers as to a conclusion, he seldom arrives at that conclusion bythe same process of reasoning which satisfies them. Many great questionswhich they consider as questions of right and wrong, as questions ofmoral and religious principle, as questions which must, for no earthlyobject, and on no emergency, be compromised, are treated by him merelyas questions of expediency, of place, and of time. He has opposed manybills introduced by the present Government; but he has opposed them onsuch grounds that he is at perfect liberty to bring in the same billshimself next year, with perhaps some slight variation. I listened to himas I always listen to him, with pleasure, when he spoke last session onthe subject of education. I could not but be amused by the skill withwhich he performed the hard task of translating the gibberish of bigotsinto language which might not misbecome the mouth of a man of sense. Ifelt certain that he despised the prejudices of which he condescendedto make use, and that his opinion about the Normal Schools and the DouaiVersion entirely agreed with my own. I therefore do not think that, in times like these, the right honourable Baronet can conduct theadministration with honour to himself or with satisfaction to thosewho are impatient to see him in office. I will not affect to feelapprehensions from which I am entirely free. I do not fear, and I willnot pretend to fear, that the right honourable Baronet will be a tyrantand a persecutor. I do not believe that he will give up Ireland to thetender mercies of those zealots who form, I am afraid, the strongest, and I am sure the loudest, part of his retinue. I do not believe thathe will strike the names of Roman Catholics from the Privy Council book, and from the Commissions of the Peace. I do not believe that he willlay on our table a bill for the repeal of that great Act which wasintroduced by himself in 1829. What I do anticipate is this, that hewill attempt to keep his party together by means which will excitegrave discontents, and yet that he will not succeed in keeping his partytogether; that he will lose the support of the Tories without obtainingthe support of the nation; and that his government will fall from causespurely internal. 

This, Sir, is not mere conjecture. The drama is not a new one. It wasperformed a few years ago on the same stage and by most of the sameactors. In 1827 the right honourable Baronet was, as now, the head ofa powerful Tory opposition. He had, as now, the support of a strongminority in this House. He had, as now, a majority in the other House. He was, as now, the favourite of the Church and of the Universities. Allwho dreaded political change, all who hated religious liberty, ralliedround him then, as they rally round him now. Their cry was then, asnow, that a government unfriendly to the civil and ecclesiasticalconstitution of the realm was kept in power by intrigue and courtfavour, and that the right honourable Baronet was the man to whom thenation must look to defend its laws against revolutionists, and itsreligion against idolaters. At length that cry became irresistible. Tory animosity had pursued the most accomplished of Tory statesmen andorators to a resting place in Westminster Abbey. The arrangement whichwas made after his death lasted but a very few months: a Tory governmentwas formed; and the right honourable Baronet became the leading ministerof the Crown in the House of Commons. His adherents hailed his elevationwith clamorous delight, and confidently expected many years of triumphand dominion. Is it necessary to say in what disappointment, in whatsorrow, in what fury, those expectations ended? The right honourableBaronet had been raised to power by prejudices and passions in whichhe had no share. His followers were bigots. He was a statesman. He wascoolly weighing conveniences against inconveniences, while they wereready to resort to a proscription and to hazard a civil war rather thandepart from what they called their principles. For a time he tried totake a middle course. He imagined that it might be possible for him tostand well with his old friends, and yet to perform some part of hisduty to the state. But those were not times in which he could longcontinue to halt between two opinions. His elevation, as it had excitedthe hopes of the oppressors, had excited also the terror and the rage ofthe oppressed. Agitation, which had, during more than a year, slumberedin Ireland, awoke with renewed vigour, and soon became more formidablethan ever. The Roman Catholic Association began to exercise authoritysuch as the Irish Parliament, in the days of its independence, had neverpossessed. An agitator became more powerful than the Lord Lieutenant. Violence engendered violence. Every explosion of feeling on one side ofSt George's Channel was answered by a louder explosion on the other. The Clare election, the Penenden Heath meeting showed that the timefor evasion and delay was past. A crisis had arrived which made itabsolutely necessary for the Government to take one side or the other. Asimple issue was proposed to the right honourable Baronet, concessionor civil war; to disgust his party, or to ruin his country. He chosethe good part. He performed a duty, deeply painful, in some sensehumiliating, yet in truth highly honourable to him. He came down to thisHouse and proposed the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Among hisadherents were some who, like himself, had opposed the Roman Catholicclaims merely on the ground of political expediency; and these personsreadily consented to support his new policy. But not so the great bodyof his followers. Their zeal for Protestant ascendency was a rulingpassion, a passion, too, which they thought it a virtue to indulge. Theyhad exerted themselves to raise to power the man whom they regarded asthe ablest and most trusty champion of that ascendency; and he had notonly abandoned the good cause, but had become its adversary. Who canforget in what a roar of obloquy their anger burst forth? Never beforewas such a flood of calumny and invective poured on a single head. Allhistory, all fiction were ransacked by the old friends of the righthonourable Baronet, for nicknames and allusions. One right honourablegentleman, who I am sorry not to see in his place opposite, foundEnglish prose too weak to express his indignation, and pursued hisperfidious chief with reproaches borrowed from the ravings of thedeserted Dido. Another Tory explored Holy Writ for parallels, and couldfind no parallel but Judas Iscariot. The great university which had beenproud to confer on the right honourable Baronet the highest marks offavour, was foremost in affixing the brand of infamy. From Cornwall, from Northumberland, clergymen came up by hundreds to Oxford, in orderto vote against him whose presence, a few days before, would have setthe bells of their parish churches jingling. Nay, such was the violenceof this new enmity that the old enmity of the Tories to Whigs, Radicals, Dissenters, Papists, seemed to be forgotten. That Ministry which, whenit came into power at the close of 1828, was one of the strongest thatthe country ever saw, was, at the close of 1829, one of the weakest. Itlingered another year, staggering between two parties, leaning now onone, now on the other, reeling sometimes under a blow from the right, sometimes under a blow from the left, and certain to fall as soon as theTory opposition and the Whig opposition could find a question on whichto unite. Such a question was found: and that Ministry fell without astruggle. 

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

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

Toryism has now changed its character. We have lived to see a monster ofa faction made up of the worst parts of the Cavalier and the worst partsof the Roundhead. We have lived to see a race of disloyal Tories. Wehave lived to see Tories giving themselves the airs of those insolentpikemen who puffed out their tobacco smoke in the face of Charles theFirst. We have lived to see Tories who, because they are not allowed togrind the people after the fashion of Strafford, turn round and revilethe Sovereign in the style of Hugh Peters. I say, therefore, that, whilethe leader is still what he was eleven years ago, when his moderationalienated his intemperate followers, his followers are more intemperatethan ever. It is my firm belief that the majority of them desire therepeal of the Emancipation Act. You say, no. But I will give reasons, and unanswerable reasons, for what I say. How, if you really wish tomaintain the Emancipation Act, do you explain that clamour which youhave raised, and which has resounded through the whole kingdom, aboutthe three Popish Privy Councillors? You resent, as a calumny, theimputation that you wish to repeal the Emancipation Act; and yet you cryout that Church and State are in danger of ruin whenever the Governmentcarries that Act into effect. If the Emancipation Act is never to beexecuted, why should it not be repealed? I perfectly understand that anhonest man may wish it to be repealed. But I am at a loss to understandhow honest men can say, "We wish the Emancipation Act to be maintained:you who accuse us of wishing to repeal it slander us foully: we valueit as much as you do. Let it remain among our statutes, provided alwaysthat it remains as a dead letter. If you dare to put it in force, indeed, we will agitate against you; for, though we talk againstagitation, we too can practice agitation: we will denounce you in ourassociations; for, though we call associations unconstitutional, wetoo have our associations: our divines shall preach about Jezebel: ourtavern spouters shall give significant hints about James the Second. "Yes, Sir, such hints have been given, hints that a sovereign who hasmerely executed the law, ought to be treated like a sovereign whogrossly violated the law. I perfectly understand, as I said, that anhonest man may disapprove of the Emancipation Act, and may wish itrepealed. But can any man, who is of opinion that Roman Catholics oughtto be admitted to office, honestly maintain that they now enjoy morethan their fair share of power and emolument? What is the proportionof Roman Catholics to the whole population of the United Kingdom?About one-fourth. What proportion of the Privy Councillors are RomanCatholics? About one-seventieth. And what, after all, is the power of aPrivy Councillor, merely as such? Are not the right honourable gentlemenopposite Privy Councillors? If a change should take place, will not thepresent Ministers still be Privy Councillors? It is notorious that noPrivy Councillor goes to Council unless he is specially summoned. He iscalled Right Honourable, and he walks out of a room before Esquires andKnights. And can we seriously believe that men who think it monstrousthat this honorary distinction should be given to three Roman Catholics, do sincerely desire to maintain a law by which a Roman Catholic may beCommander in Chief with all the military patronage, First Lord of theAdmiralty with all the naval patronage, or First Lord of the Treasury, with the chief influence in every department of the Government. I musttherefore suppose that those who join in the cry against the three PrivyCouncillors, are either imbecile or hostile to the Emancipation Act. 

I repeat, therefore, that, while the right honourable Baronet is as freefrom bigotry as he was eleven years ago, his party is more bigotedthan it was eleven years ago. The difficulty of governing Ireland inopposition to the feelings of the great body of the Irish people is, Iapprehend, as great now as it was eleven years ago. What then must bethe fate of a government formed by the right honourable Baronet? Supposethat the event of this debate should make him Prime Minister? Should Ibe wrong if I were to prophesy that three years hence he will be morehated and vilified by the Tory party than the present advisers of theCrown have been? Should I be wrong if I were to say that all thoseliterary organs which now deafen us with praise of him, will then deafenus with abuse of him? Should I be wrong if I were to say that he willbe burned in effigy by those who now drink his health with three timesthree and one cheer more? Should I be wrong if I were to say that thosevery gentlemen who have crowded hither to-night in order to vote himinto power, will crowd hither to vote Lord Melbourne back? Once alreadyhave I seen those very persons go out into the lobby for the purpose ofdriving the right honourable Baronet from the high situation to whichthey had themselves exalted him. I went out with them myself; yes, withthe whole body of the Tory country gentlemen, with the whole body ofhigh Churchmen. All the four University Members were with us. The effectof that division was to bring Lord Grey, Lord Althorpe, Lord Brougham, Lord Durham into power. You may say that the Tories on that occasionjudged ill, that they were blinded by vindictive passion, that ifthey had foreseen all that followed they might have acted differently. Perhaps so. But what has been once may be again. I cannot think itpossible that those who are now supporting the right honourable Baronetwill continue from personal attachment to support him if they see thathis policy is in essentials the same as Lord Melbourne's. I believe thatthey have quite as much personal attachment to Lord Melbourne as tothe right honourable Baronet. They follow the right honourable Baronetbecause his abilities, his eloquence, his experience are necessary tothem; but they are but half reconciled to him. They never can forgetthat, in the most important crisis of his public life, he deliberatelychose rather to be the victim of their injustice than its instrument. It is idle to suppose that they will be satisfied by seeing a new set ofmen in power. Their maxim is most truly "Measures, not men. " They carenot before whom the sword of state is borne at Dublin, or who wears thebadge of St Patrick. What they abhor is not Lord Normanby personally orLord Ebrington personally, but the great principles in conformity withwhich Ireland has been governed by Lord Normanby and by Lord Ebrington, the principles of justice, humanity, and religious freedom. What theywish to have in Ireland is not my Lord Haddington, or any other viceroywhom the right honourable Baronet may select, but the tyranny of raceover race, and of creed over creed. Give them what they want; and youconvulse the empire. Refuse them; and you dissolve the Tory party. Ibelieve that the right honourable Baronet himself is by no means withoutapprehensions that, if he were now called to the head of affairs, hewould, very speedily, have the dilemma of 1829 again before him. Hecertainly was not without such apprehensions when, a few months ago, he was commanded by Her Majesty to submit to her the plan of anadministration. The aspect of public affairs was not at that timecheering. The Chartists were stirring in England. There were troubles inCanada. There were great discontents in the West Indies. An expedition, of which the event was still doubtful, had been sent into the heart ofAsia. Yet, among many causes of anxiety, the discerning eye of the righthonourable Baronet easily discerned the quarter where the great andimmediate danger lay. He told the House that his difficulty wouldbe Ireland. Now, Sir, that which would be the difficulty of hisadministration is the strength of the present administration. HerMajesty's Ministers enjoy the confidence of Ireland; and I believe thatwhat ought to be done for that country will excite less discontenthere if done by them than if done by him. He, I am afraid, great as hisabilities are, and good as I willingly admit his intentions to be, wouldfind it easy to lose the confidence of his partisans, but hard indeed towin the confidence of the Irish people. 

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

There was, it will then be said, a part of the kingdom of Queen Victoriawhich presented a lamentable contrast to the rest; not from the want ofnatural fruitfulness, for there was no richer soil in Europe; not fromwant of facilities for trade, for the coasts of this unhappy region wereindented by bays and estuaries capable of holding all the navies of theworld; not because the people were too dull to improve these advantagesor too pusillanimous to defend them; for in natural quickness of witand gallantry of spirit they ranked high among the nations. But all thebounty of nature had been made unavailing by the crimes and errors ofman. In the twelfth century that fair island was a conquered province. The nineteenth century found it a conquered province still. During thatlong interval many great changes had taken place which had conduced tothe general welfare of the empire: but those changes had only aggravatedthe misery of Ireland. The Reformation came, bringing to England andScotland divine truth and intellectual liberty. To Ireland it broughtonly fresh calamities. Two new war cries, Protestant and Catholic, animated the old feud between the Englishry and the Irishry. TheRevolution came, bringing to England and Scotland civil and spiritualfreedom, to Ireland subjugation, degradation, persecution. The Unioncame: but though it joined legislatures, it left hearts as widelydisjoined as ever. Catholic Emancipation came: but it came too late;it came as a concession made to fear, and, having excited unreasonablehopes, was naturally followed by unreasonable disappointment. Thencame violent irritation, and numerous errors on both sides. Agitationproduced coercion, and coercion produced fresh agitation. Difficultiesand dangers went on increasing, till a government arose which, all othermeans having failed, determined to employ the only means that had notyet been fairly tried, justice and mercy. The State, long the stepmotherof the many, and the mother only of the few, became for the first timethe common parent of all the great family. The body of the people beganto look on their rulers as friends. Battalion after battalion, squadronafter squadron was withdrawn from districts which, as it had till thenbeen thought, could be governed by the sword alone. Yet the securityof property and the authority of law became every day more complete. Symptoms of amendment, symptoms such as cannot be either concealed orcounterfeited, began to appear; and those who once despaired of thedestinies of Ireland began to entertain a confident hope that she wouldat length take among European nations that high place to which hernatural resources and the intelligence of her children entitle her toaspire. 

In words such as these, I am confident, will the next generation speakof the events in our time. Relying on the sure justice of history andposterity, I care not, as far as I am personally concerned, whether westand or fall. That issue it is for the House to decide. Whether theresult will be victory or defeat, I know not. But I know that there aredefeats not less glorious than any victory; and yet I have shared insome glorious victories. Those were proud and happy days;--some who siton the benches opposite can well remember, and must, I think, regretthem;--those were proud and happy days when, amidst the applauses andblessings of millions, my noble friend led us on in the great strugglefor the Reform Bill; when hundreds waited round our doors till sunriseto hear how we had sped; when the great cities of the north poured forththeir population on the highways to meet the mails which brought fromthe capital the tidings whether the battle of the people had been lostor won. Such days my noble friend cannot hope to see again. Two suchtriumphs would be too much for one life. But perhaps there still awaitshim a less pleasing, a less exhilarating, but a not less honourabletask, the task of contending against superior numbers, and throughyears of discomfiture, for those civil and religious liberties which areinseparably associated with the name of his illustrious house. At hisside will not be wanting men who against all odds, and through all turnsof fortune, in evil days and amidst evil tongues, will defend to thelast, with unabated spirit, the noble principles of Milton and of Locke. We may be driven from office. We may be doomed to a life of opposition. We may be made marks for the rancour of sects which, hating each otherwith a deadly hatred, yet hate toleration still more. We may be exposedto the rage of Laud on one side, and of Praise-God-Barebones on theother. But justice will be done at last: and a portion of the praisewhich we bestow on the old champions and martyrs of freedom will notbe refused by future generations to the men who have in our daysendeavoured to bind together in real union races too long estranged, andto efface, by the mild influence of a parental government, the fearfultraces which have been left by the misrule of ages. 

*****

WAR WITH CHINA. (APRIL 7, 1840) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OFCOMMONS ON THE 7TH OF APRIL, 1840. 

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

"That it appears to this House, on consideration of the papers relatingto China presented to this House by command of Her Majesty, that theinterruption in our commercial and friendly intercourse with thatcountry, and the hostilities which have since taken place, are mainly tobe attributed to the want of foresight and precaution on the part of HerMajesty's present advisers, in respect to our relations with China, andespecially to their neglect to furnish the Superintendent at Canton withpowers and instructions calculated to provide against the growing evilsconnected with the contraband trade in opium, and adapted to the noveland difficult situation in which the Superintendent was placed. "

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

The motion was rejected, after a debate of three nights, by 271 votes to261. 

Mr Speaker, --If the right honourable Baronet, in rising to make anattack on the Government, was forced to own that he was unnerved andoverpowered by his sense of the importance of the question with which hehad to deal, one who rises to repel that attack may, without any shame, confess that he feels similar emotions. And yet I must say that theanxiety, the natural and becoming anxiety, with which Her Majesty'sMinisters have awaited the judgment of the House on these papers, wasnot a little allayed by the terms of the right honourable Baronet'smotion, and has been still more allayed by his speech. It was impossiblefor us to doubt either his inclination or his ability to detect andto expose any fault which we might have committed, and we may wellcongratulate ourselves on finding that, after the closest examinationinto a long series of transactions, so extensive, so complicated, and, in some respects, so disastrous, so keen an assailant could produce onlyso futile an accusation. 

In the first place, Sir, the resolution which the right honourableBaronet has moved relates entirely to events which took place before therupture with the Chinese Government. That rupture took place in March, 1839. The right honourable Baronet therefore does not propose to passany censure on any step which has been taken by the Government withinthe last thirteen months; and it will, I think, be generally admitted, that when he abstains from censuring the proceedings of the Government, it is because the most unfriendly scrutiny can find nothing in thoseproceedings to censure. We by no means deny that he has a perfect rightto propose a vote expressing disapprobation of what was done in 1837 or1838. At the same time, we cannot but be gratified by learning that heapproves of our present policy, and of the measures which we have taken, since the rupture, for the vindication of the national honour and forthe protection of the national interests. 

It is also to be observed that the right honourable Baronet has notventured, either in his motion or in his speech, to charge Her Majesty'sMinisters with any unwise or unjust act, with any act tending to lowerthe character of England, or to give cause of offence to China. The onlysins which he imputes to them are sins of omission. His complaint ismerely that they did not foresee the course which events would take atCanton, and that consequently they did not send sufficient instructionsto the British resident who was stationed there. Now it is evident thatsuch an accusation is of all accusations that which requires the fullestand most distinct proof; for it is of all accusations that which it iseasiest to make and hardest to refute. A man charged with a culpableact which he has not committed has comparatively little difficulty inproving his innocence. But when the charge is merely this, that he hasnot, in a long and intricate series of transactions, done all that itwould have been wise to do, how is he to vindicate himself? And the casewhich we are considering has this peculiarity, that the envoy to whomthe Ministers are said to have left too large a discretion was fifteenthousand miles from them. The charge against them therefore is this, that they did not give such copious and particular directions aswere sufficient, in every possible emergency, for the guidance of afunctionary, who was fifteen thousand miles off. Now, Sir, I am ready toadmit that, if the papers on our table related to important negotiationswith a neighbouring state, if they related, for example, to anegotiation carried on with France, my noble friend the Secretary forForeign Affairs (Lord Palmerston. ) might well have been blamed forsending instructions so meagre and so vague to our ambassador at Paris. For my noble friend knows to-night what passed between our ambassadorat Paris and the French Ministers yesterday; and a messenger despatchedto-night from Downing Street will be at the Embassy in the FaubourgSaint Honore the day after to-morrow. But that constant and minutecontrol, which the Foreign Secretary is bound to exercise overdiplomatic agents who are near, becomes an useless and perniciousmeddling when exercised over agents who are separated from him by avoyage of five months. There are on both sides of the House gentlemenconversant with the affairs of India. I appeal to those gentlemen. Indiais nearer to us than China. India is far better known to us than China. Yet is it not universally acknowledged that India can be governed onlyin India? The authorities at home point out to a governor the generalline of policy which they wish him to follow; but they do not send himdirections as to the details of his administration. How indeed is itpossible that they should send him such directions? Consider in what astate the affairs of this country would be if they were to be conductedaccording to directions framed by the ablest statesman residing inBengal. A despatch goes hence asking for instructions while London isilluminating for the peace of Amiens. The instructions arrive when theFrench army is encamped at Boulogne, and when the whole island is up inarms to repel invasion. A despatch is written asking for instructionswhen Bonaparte is at Elba. The instructions come when he is at theTuilleries. A despatch is written asking for instructions when he is atthe Tuilleries. The instructions come when he is at St Helena. It wouldbe just as impossible to govern India in London as to govern England atCalcutta. While letters are preparing here on the supposition that thereis profound peace in the Carnatic, Hyder is at the gates of Fort StGeorge. While letters are preparing here on the supposition that tradeis flourishing and that the revenue exceeds the expenditure, the cropshave failed, great agency houses have broken, and the government isnegotiating a loan on hard terms. It is notorious that the great menwho founded and preserved our Indian empire, Clive and Warren Hastings, treated all particular orders which they received from home as merewaste paper. Had not those great men had the sense and spirit so totreat such orders, we should not now have had an Indian empire. But thecase of China is far stronger. For, though a person who is now writing adespatch to Fort William in Leadenhall Street or Cannon Row, cannot knowwhat events have happened in India within the last two months, he may bevery intimately acquainted with the general state of that country, withits wants, with its resources, with the habits and temper of the nativepopulation, and with the character of every prince and minister fromNepaul to Tanjore. But what does anybody here know of China? Even thoseEuropeans who have been in that empire are almost as ignorant of it asthe rest of us. Everything is covered by a veil, through which a glimpseof what is within may occasionally be caught, a glimpse just sufficientto set the imagination at work, and more likely to mislead than toinform. The right honourable Baronet has told us that an Englishman atCanton sees about as much of China as a foreigner who should land atWapping and proceed no further would see of England. Certainly thesights and sounds of Wapping would give a foreigner but a very imperfectnotion of our Government, of our manufactures, of our agriculture, ofthe state of learning and the arts among us. And yet the illustrationis but a faint one. For a foreigner may, without seeing even Wapping, without visiting England at all, study our literature, and may thenceform a vivid and correct idea of our institutions and manners. But theliterature of China affords us no such help. Obstacles unparalleled inany other country which has books must be surmounted by the studentwho is determined to master the Chinese tongue. To learn to read is thebusiness of half a life. It is easier to become such a linguist as SirWilliam Jones was than to become a good Chinese scholar. You may countupon your fingers the Europeans whose industry and genius, even whenstimulated by the most fervent religious zeal, has triumphed over thedifficulties of a language without an alphabet. Here then is a countryseparated from us physically by half the globe, separated from usstill more effectually by the barriers which the most jealous of allgovernments and the hardest of all languages oppose to the researches ofstrangers. Is it then reasonable to blame my noble friend because he hasnot sent to our envoys in such a country as this instructions as fulland precise as it would have been his duty to send to a minister atBrussels or at the Hague? The right honourable Baronet who comes forwardas the accuser on this occasion is really accusing himself. He wasa member of the Government of Lord Grey. He was himself concerned inframing the first instructions which were given by my noble friend toour first Superintendent at Canton. For those instructions the righthonourable Baronet frankly admits that he is himself responsible. Arethose instructions then very copious and minute? Not at all. They merelylay down general principles. The Resident, for example, is enjoined torespect national usages, and to avoid whatever may shock the prejudicesof the Chinese; but no orders are given him as to matters of detail. In 1834 my noble friend quitted the Foreign Office, and the Duke ofWellington went to it. Did the Duke of Wellington send out those copiousand exact directions with which, according to the right honourableBaronet, the Government is bound to furnish its agent in China? No, Sir;the Duke of Wellington, grown old in the conduct of great affairs, knowsbetter than anybody that a man of very ordinary ability at Canton islikely to be a better judge of what ought to be done on an emergencyarising at Canton than the greatest politician at Westminster canpossibly be. His Grace, therefore, like a wise man as he is, wrote onlyone letter to the Superintendent, and in that letter merely referred theSuperintendent to the general directions given by Lord Palmerston. Andhow, Sir, does the right honourable Baronet prove that, by persisting inthe course which he himself took when in office, and which the Dukeof Wellington took when in office, Her Majesty's present advisers havebrought on that rupture which we all deplore? He has read us, from thevoluminous papers which are on the table, much which has but a veryremote connection with the question. He has said much about things whichhappened before the present Ministry existed, and much about thingswhich have happened at Canton since the rupture; but very little thatis relevant to the issue raised by the resolution which he has himselfproposed. That issue is simply this, whether the mismanagement of thepresent Ministry produced the rupture. I listened to his long and ablespeech with the greatest attention, and did my best to separatethat part which had any relation to his motion from a great mass ofextraneous matter. If my analysis be correct, the charge which he bringsagainst the Government consists of four articles. 

The first article is, that the Government omitted to alter that part ofthe original instructions which directed the Superintendent to reside atCanton. 

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

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

The fourth article is, that the Government omitted to authorise andempower the Superintendent to put down the contraband trade carried onby British subjects with China. 

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

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

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

As to the third charge, I must tell the right honourable Baronet thathe has altogether misapprehended that memorandum which he so confidentlycites. The Duke of Wellington did not advise the Government to station aship of war constantly in the China seas. The Duke, writing in 1835, at a time when the regular course of the trade had been interrupted, recommended that a ship of war should be stationed near Canton, "tillthe trade should take its regular peaceable course. " Those are HisGrace's own words. Do they not imply that, when the trade had againtaken its regular peaceable course, it might be right to remove the shipof war? Well, Sir, the trade, after that memorandum was written, didresume its regular peaceable course: that the right honourable Baronethimself will admit; for it is part of his own case that Sir GeorgeRobinson had succeeded in restoring quiet and security. The third chargethen is simply this, that the Ministers did not do in a time of perfecttranquillity what the Duke of Wellington thought that it would have beenright to do in a time of trouble. 

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

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

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

For, Sir, suppose that the Superintendent had been authorised andcommanded by the Government to put forth an order prohibiting Britishsubjects from trading in opium; suppose that he had put forth such anorder; how was he to enforce it? The right honourable Baronet has hadtoo much experience of public affairs to imagine that a lucrative tradewill be suppressed by a sheet of paper and a seal. In England we have apreventive service which costs us half a million a year. We employ morethan fifty cruisers to guard our coasts. We have six thousand effectivemen whose business is to intercept smugglers. And yet everybody knowsthat every article which is much desired, which is easily concealed, andwhich is heavily taxed, is smuggled into our island to a great extent. The quantity of brandy which comes in without paying duty is known tobe not less than six hundred thousand gallons a year. Some people thinkthat the quantity of tobacco which is imported clandestinely is as greatas the quantity which goes through the custom-houses. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the illicit importation is enormous. It has beenproved before a Committee of this House that not less than four millionsof pounds of tobacco have lately been smuggled into Ireland. And allthis, observe, has been done in spite of the most efficient preventiveservice that I believe ever existed in the world. Consider too that theprice of an ounce of opium is far, very far higher than the price of apound of tobacco. Knowing this, knowing that the whole power of King, Lords, and Commons cannot here put a stop to a traffic less easy, andless profitable than the traffic in opium, can you believe that anorder prohibiting the traffic in opium would have been readily obeyed?Remember by what powerful motives both the buyer and the seller wouldhave been impelled to deal with each other. The buyer would have beendriven to the seller by something little short of torture, by a physicalcraving as fierce and impatient as any to which our race is subject. For, when stimulants of this sort have been long used, they are desiredwith a rage which resembles the rage of hunger. The seller would havebeen driven to the buyer by the hope of vast and rapid gain. And doyou imagine that the intense appetite on one side for what had become anecessary of life, and on the other for riches, would have been appeasedby a few lines signed Charles Elliot? The very utmost effect which itis possible to believe that such an order would have produced wouldhave been this, that the opium trade would have left Canton, where thedealers were under the eye of the Superintendent, and where they wouldhave run some risk of being punished by him, and would have spreaditself along the coast. If we know anything about the ChineseGovernment, we know this, that its coastguard is neither trusty norefficient; and we know that a coastguard as trusty and efficient asour own would not be able to cut off communication between the merchantlonging for silver and the smoker longing for his pipe. Whole fleetsof vessels would have managed to land their cargoes along the shore. Conflicts would have arisen between our countrymen and the localmagistrates, who would not, like the authorities of Canton, havehad some knowledge of European habits and feelings. The mere malumprohibitum would, as usual, have produced the mala in se. The unlawfultraffic would inevitably have led to a crowd of acts, not only unlawful, but immoral. The smuggler would, by the almost irresistible force ofcircumstances, have been turned into a pirate. We know that, even atCanton, where the smugglers stand in some awe of the authority of theSuperintendent and of the opinion of an English society which containsmany respectable persons, the illicit trade has caused many brawls andoutrages. What, then, was to be expected when every captain of a shipladen with opium would have been the sole judge of his own conduct? Itis easy to guess what would have happened. A boat is sent ashore to fillthe water-casks and to buy fresh provisions. The provisions are refused. The sailors take them by force. Then a well is poisoned. Two or threeof the ship's company die in agonies. The crew in a fury land, shootand stab every man whom they meet, and sack and burn a village. Is thisimprobable? Have not similar causes repeatedly produced similar effects?Do we not know that the jealous vigilance with which Spain excluded theships of other nations from her Transatlantic possessions turned men whowould otherwise have been honest merchant adventurers into buccaneers?The same causes which raised up one race of buccaneers in the Gulf ofMexico would soon have raised up another in the China Sea. And canwe doubt what would in that case have been the conduct of the Chineseauthorities at Canton? We see that Commissioner Lin has arrested andconfined men of spotless character, men whom he had not the slightestreason to suspect of being engaged in any illicit commerce. He did so onthe ground that some of their countrymen had violated the revenuelaws of China. How then would he have acted if he had learned thatthe red-headed devils had not merely been selling opium, but had beenfighting, plundering, slaying, burning? Would he not have put fortha proclamation in his most vituperative style, setting forth that theOutside Barbarians had undertaken to stop the contraband trade, but thatthey had been found deceivers, that the Superintendent's edict was amere pretence, that there was more smuggling than ever, that to thesmuggling had been added robbery and murder, and that therefore heshould detain all men of the guilty race as hostages till reparationshould be made? I say, therefore, that, if the Ministers had done thatwhich the right honourable Baronet blames them for not doing, we shouldonly have reached by a worse way the point at which we now are. 

I have now, Sir, gone through the four heads of the charge broughtagainst the Government; and I say with confidence that the interruptionof our friendly relations with China cannot justly be imputed to any oneof the omissions mentioned by the right honourable Baronet. In truth, ifI could feel assured that no gentleman would vote for the motion withoutattentively reading it, and considering whether the proposition which itaffirms has been made out, I should have no uneasiness as to theresult of this debate. But I know that no member weighs the words of aresolution for which he is asked to vote, as he would weigh the wordsof an affidavit which he was asked to swear. And I am aware thatsome persons, for whose humanity and honesty I entertain the greatestrespect, are inclined to divide with the right honourable Baronet, notbecause they think that he has proved his case, but because they havetaken up a notion that we are making war for the purpose of forcingthe Government of China to admit opium into that country, and that, therefore, we richly deserve to be censured. Certainly, Sir, if wehad been guilty of such absurdity and such atrocity as those gentlemenimpute to us, we should deserve not only censure but condign punishment. But the imputation is altogether unfounded. Our course was clear. We maydoubt indeed whether the Emperor of China judged well in listening toTchu Sing and disgracing Tang Tzee. We may doubt whether it be a wisepolicy to exclude altogether from any country a drug which is oftenfatally abused, but which to those who use it rightly is one of themost precious boons vouchsafed by Providence to man, powerful to assuagepain, to soothe irritation, and to restore health. We may doubt whetherit be a wise policy to make laws for the purpose of preventing theprecious metals from being exported in the natural course of trade. Wehave learned from all history, and from our own experience, that revenuecutters, custom-house officers, informers, will never keep out of anycountry foreign luxuries of small bulk for which consumers are willingto pay high prices, and will never prevent gold and silver from goingabroad in exchange for such luxuries. We cannot believe that whatEngland with her skilfully organised fiscal system and her giganticmarine, has never been able to effect, will be accomplished by the junkswhich are at the command of the mandarins of China. But, whatever ouropinion on these points may be, we are perfectly aware that they arepoints which it belongs not to us but to the Emperor of China to decide. He had a perfect right to keep out opium and to keep in silver, if hecould do so by means consistent with morality and public law. If hisofficers seized a chest of the forbidden drug, we were not entitled tocomplain; nor did we complain. But when, finding that they could notsuppress the contraband trade by just means, they resorted to meansflagrantly unjust, when they imprisoned our innocent countrymen, whenthey insulted our Sovereign in the person of her representative, thenit became our duty to demand satisfaction. Whether the opium trade bea pernicious trade is not the question. Take a parallel case: take themost execrable crime that ever was called a trade, the African slavetrade. You will hardly say that a contraband trade in opium is moreimmoral than a contraband trade in negroes. We prohibited slave-trading:we made it felony; we made it piracy; we invited foreign powers to joinwith us in putting it down; to some foreign powers we paid large sumsin order to obtain their co-operation; we employed our naval force tointercept the kidnappers; and yet it is notorious that, in spite of allour exertions and sacrifices, great numbers of slaves were, even aslate as ten or twelve years ago, introduced from Madagascar into ourown island of Mauritius. Assuredly it was our right, it was our duty, toguard the coasts of that island strictly, to stop slave ships, to bringthe buyers and sellers to punishment. But suppose, Sir, that a shipunder French colours was seen skulking near the island, that theGovernor was fully satisfied from her build, her rigging, and hermovements, that she was a slaver, and was only waiting for the night toput on shore the wretches who were in her hold. Suppose that, not havinga sufficient naval force to seize this vessel, he were to arrest thirtyor forty French merchants, most of whom had never been suspected ofslave-trading, and were to lock them up. Suppose that he were to layviolent hands on the French consul. Suppose that the Governor wereto threaten to starve his prisoners to death unless they produced theproprietor of the slaver. Would not the French Government in such a casehave a right to demand reparation? And, if we refused reparation, wouldnot the French Government have a right to exact reparation by arms? Andwould it be enough for us to say, "This is a wicked trade, an inhumantrade. Think of the misery of the poor creatures who are torn from theirhomes. Think of the horrors of the middle passage. Will you make war inorder to force us to admit slaves into our colonies?" Surely the answerof the French would be, "We are not making war in order to force youto admit slaves into the Mauritius. By all means keep them out. Byall means punish every man, French or English, whom you can convict ofbringing them in. What we complain of is that you have confoundedthe innocent with the guilty, and that you have acted towards therepresentative of our government in a manner inconsistent with the lawof nations. Do not, in your zeal for one great principle, trample on allthe other great principles of morality. " Just such are the grounds onwhich Her Majesty has demanded reparation from China. And was it nottime? See, Sir, see how rapidly injury has followed injury. The ImperialCommissioner, emboldened by the facility with which he had perpetratedthe first outrage, and utterly ignorant of the relative position of hiscountry and ours in the scale of power and civilisation, has risen inhis requisitions. He began by confiscating property. His next demand wasfor innocent blood. A Chinese had been slain. Careful inquiry was made;but it was impossible to ascertain who was the slayer, or even towhat nation the slayer belonged. No matter. It was notified to theSuperintendent that some subject of the Queen, innocent or guilty, mustbe delivered up to suffer death. The Superintendent refused to comply. Then our countrymen at Canton were seized. Those who were at Macaowere driven thence: not men alone, but women with child, babies at thebreast. The fugitives begged in vain for a morsel of bread. Our Lascars, people of a different colour from ours, but still our fellow-subjects, were flung into the sea. An English gentleman was barbarously mutilated. And was this to be borne? I am far from thinking that we ought, in ourdealings with such a people as the Chinese, to be litigious on pointsof etiquette. The place of our country among the nations of the world isnot so mean or so ill ascertained that we need resent mere impertinence, which is the effect of a very pitiable ignorance. Conscious of superiorpower, we can bear to hear our Sovereign described as a tributary of theCelestial Empire. Conscious of superior knowledge we can bear to hearourselves described as savages destitute of every useful art. When ourambassadors were required to perform a prostration, which in Europewould have been considered as degrading, we were rather amused thanirritated. It would have been unworthy of us to have recourse to arms onaccount of an uncivil phrase, or of a dispute about a ceremony. But thisis not a question of phrases and ceremonies. The liberties and lives ofEnglishmen are at stake: and it is fit that all nations, civilised anduncivilised, should know that, wherever the Englishman may wander, he isfollowed by the eye and guarded by the power of England. 

I was much touched, and so, I dare say, were many other gentlemen, bya passage in one of Captain Elliot's despatches. I mean that passage inwhich he describes his arrival at the factory in the moment of extremedanger. As soon as he landed he was surrounded by his countrymen, allin an agony of distress and despair. The first thing which he did wasto order the British flag to be brought from his boat and planted inthe balcony. The sight immediately revived the hearts of those who hada minute before given themselves up for lost. It was natural that theyshould look up with hope and confidence to that victorious flag. For itreminded them that they belonged to a country unaccustomed to defeat, tosubmission, or to shame; to a country which had exacted such reparationfor the wrongs of her children as had made the ears of all who heardof it to tingle; to a country which had made the Dey of Algiers humblehimself to the dust before her insulted Consul; to a country which hadavenged the victims of the Black Hole on the Field of Plassey; to acountry which had not degenerated since the Great Protector vowed thathe would make the name of Englishman as much respected as ever had beenthe name of Roman citizen. They knew that, surrounded as they were byenemies, and separated by great oceans and continents from all help, nota hair of their heads would be harmed with impunity. On this part of thesubject I believe that both the great contending parties in this Houseare agreed. I did not detect in the speech of the right honourableBaronet, --and I listened to that speech with the closest attention, --oneword indicating that he is less disposed than we to insist on fullsatisfaction for the great wrong which has been done. I cannot believethat the House will pass a vote of censure so grossly unjust as thatwhich he has moved. But I rejoice to think that, whether we are censuredor not, the national honour will still be safe. There may be a change ofmen; but, as respects China, there will be no change of measures. I havedone; and have only to express my fervent hope that this most righteousquarrel may be prosecuted to a speedy and triumphant close; that thebrave men to whom is intrusted the task of exacting reparation mayperform their duty in such a manner as to spread, throughout regionsin which the English name is hardly known, the fame not only of Englishskill and valour, but of English mercy and moderation; and that theoverruling care of that gracious Providence which has so often broughtgood out of evil may make the war to which we have been forced the meansof establishing a durable peace, beneficial alike to the victors and thevanquished. 

*****

COPYRIGHT. (FEBRUARY 5, 1841) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONSON THE 5TH OF FEBRUARY 1841. 

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

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

Though, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach a subject withwhich political animosities have nothing to do, I offer myself to yournotice with some reluctance. It is painful to me to take a course whichmay possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented as unfriendly to theinterests of literature and literary men. It is painful to me, I willadd, to oppose my honourable and learned friend on a question whichhe has taken up from the purest motives, and which he regards with aparental interest. These feelings have hitherto kept me silent whenthe law of copyright has been under discussion. But as I am, on fullconsideration, satisfied that the measure before us will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, without conferring anycompensating advantage on men of letters, I think it my duty to avowthat opinion and to defend it. 

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

Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it may. I amnot prepared, like my honourable and learned friend, to agree to acompromise between right and expediency, and to commit an injustice forthe public convenience. But I must say, that his theory soars far beyondthe reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go, on the presentoccasion, into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin of the right ofproperty; and certainly nothing but the strongest necessity would leadme to discuss a subject so likely to be distasteful to the House. Iagree, I own, with Paley in thinking that property is the creature ofthe law, and that the law which creates property can be defended onlyon this ground, that it is a law beneficial to mankind. But it isunnecessary to debate that point. For, even if I believed in a naturalright of property, independent of utility and anterior to legislation, Ishould still deny that this right could survive the original proprietor. Few, I apprehend, even of those who have studied in the most mysticaland sentimental schools of moral philosophy, will be disposed tomaintain that there is a natural law of succession older and of higherauthority than any human code. If there be, it is quite certain thatwe have abuses to reform much more serious than any connected with thequestion of copyright. For this natural law can be only one; and themodes of succession in the Queen's dominions are twenty. To go nofurther than England, land generally descends to the eldest son. In Kentthe sons share and share alike. In many districts the youngest takes thewhole. Formerly a portion of a man's personal property was secured tohis family; and it was only of the residue that he could dispose bywill. Now he can dispose of the whole by will: but you limited hispower, a few years ago, by enacting that the will should not be validunless there were two witnesses. If a man dies intestate, his personalproperty generally goes according to the statute of distributions; butthere are local customs which modify that statute. Now which of allthese systems is conformed to the eternal standard of right? Is itprimogeniture, or gavelkind, or borough English? Are wills jure divino?Are the two witnesses jure divino? Might not the pars rationabilisof our old law have a fair claim to be regarded as of celestialinstitution? Was the statute of distributions enacted in Heaven longbefore it was adopted by Parliament? Or is it to Custom of York, or toCustom of London, that this preeminence belongs? Surely, Sir, even thosewho hold that there is a natural right of property must admit that rulesprescribing the manner in which the effects of deceased persons shall bedistributed are purely arbitrary, and originate altogether in the willof the legislature. If so, Sir, there is no controversy between myhonourable and learned friend and myself as to the principles on whichthis question is to be argued. For the existing law gives an authorcopyright during his natural life; nor do I propose to invade thatprivilege, which I should, on the contrary, be prepared to defendstrenuously against any assailant. The only point in issue betweenus is, how long after an author's death the State shall recognise acopyright in his representatives and assigns; and it can, I think, hardly be disputed by any rational man that this is a point which thelegislature is free to determine in the way which may appear to be mostconducive to the general good. 

We may now, therefore, I think, descend from these high regions, wherewe are in danger of being lost in the clouds, to firm ground and clearlight. Let us look at this question like legislators, and after fairlybalancing conveniences and inconveniences, pronounce between theexisting law of copyright, and the law now proposed to us. The questionof copyright, Sir, like most questions of civil prudence, is neitherblack nor white, but grey. The system of copyright has great advantagesand great disadvantages; and it is our business to ascertain what theseare, and then to make an arrangement under which the advantages may beas far as possible secured, and the disadvantages as far as possibleexcluded. The charge which I bring against my honourable and learnedfriend's bill is this, that it leaves the advantages nearly what theyare at present, and increases the disadvantages at least fourfold. 

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

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

We have, then, only one resource left. We must betake ourselves tocopyright, be the inconveniences of copyright what they may. Thoseinconveniences, in truth, are neither few nor small. Copyright ismonopoly, and produces all the effects which the general voice ofmankind attributes to monopoly. My honourable and learned friendtalks very contemptuously of those who are led away by the theory thatmonopoly makes things dear. That monopoly makes things dear is certainlya theory, as all the great truths which have been established by theexperience of all ages and nations, and which are taken for granted inall reasonings, may be said to be theories. It is a theory in the samesense in which it is a theory that day and night follow each other, thatlead is heavier than water, that bread nourishes, that arsenic poisons, that alcohol intoxicates. If, as my honourable and learned friend seemsto think, the whole world is in the wrong on this point, if the realeffect of monopoly is to make articles good and cheap, why does he stopshort in his career of change? Why does he limit the operation of sosalutary a principle to sixty years? Why does he consent to anythingshort of a perpetuity? He told us that in consenting to anything shortof a perpetuity he was making a compromise between extreme right andexpediency. But if his opinion about monopoly be correct, extreme rightand expediency would coincide. Or rather, why should we not restore themonopoly of the East India trade to the East India Company? Why shouldwe not revive all those old monopolies which, in Elizabeth's reign, galled our fathers so severely that, maddened by intolerable wrong, theyopposed to their sovereign a resistance before which her haughty spiritquailed for the first and for the last time? Was it the cheapness andexcellence of commodities that then so violently stirred the indignationof the English people? I believe, Sir, that I may with safety take itfor granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articlesscarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with equalsafety challenge my honourable friend to find out any distinctionbetween copyright and other privileges of the same kind; any reason whya monopoly of books should produce an effect directly the reverse ofthat which was produced by the East India Company's monopoly of tea, orby Lord Essex's monopoly of sweet wines. Thus, then, stands the case. Itis good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionableway of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. Forthe sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought notto last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing thegood. 

Now, I will not affirm that the existing law is perfect, that itexactly hits the point at which the monopoly ought to cease; but thisI confidently say, that the existing law is very much nearer that pointthan the law proposed by my honourable and learned friend. For considerthis; the evil effects of the monopoly are proportioned to the lengthof its duration. But the good effects for the sake of which we bearwith the evil effects are by no means proportioned to the length of itsduration. A monopoly of sixty years produces twice as much evil asa monopoly of thirty years, and thrice as much evil as a monopoly oftwenty years. But it is by no means the fact that a posthumous monopolyof sixty years gives to an author thrice as much pleasure and thriceas strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly of twenty years. On thecontrary, the difference is so small as to be hardly perceptible. Weall know how faintly we are affected by the prospect of very distantadvantages, even when they are advantages which we may reasonably hopethat we shall ourselves enjoy. But an advantage that is to be enjoyedmore than half a century after we are dead, by somebody, we know not bywhom, perhaps by somebody unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected withus, is really no motive at all to action. It is very probable that inthe course of some generations land in the unexplored and unmapped heartof the Australasian continent will be very valuable. But there is noneof us who would lay down five pounds for a whole province in the heartof the Australasian continent. We know, that neither we, nor anybody forwhom we care, will ever receive a farthing of rent from such a province. And a man is very little moved by the thought that in the year 2000 or2100, somebody who claims through him will employ more shepherds thanPrince Esterhazy, and will have the finest house and gallery of picturesat Victoria or Sydney. Now, this is the sort of boon which my honourableand learned friend holds out to authors. Considered as a boon to them, it is a mere nullity, but considered as an impost on the public, it isno nullity, but a very serious and pernicious reality. I will take anexample. Dr Johnson died fifty-six years ago. If the law were what myhonourable and learned friend wishes to make it, somebody would now havethe monopoly of Dr Johnson's works. Who that somebody would be it isimpossible to say; but we may venture to guess. I guess, then, thatit would have been some bookseller, who was the assign of anotherbookseller, who was the grandson of a third bookseller, who had boughtthe copyright from Black Frank, the doctor's servant and residuarylegatee, in 1785 or 1786. Now, would the knowledge that this copyrightwould exist in 1841 have been a source of gratification to Johnson?Would it have stimulated his exertions? Would it have once drawn him outof his bed before noon? Would it have once cheered him under a fit ofthe spleen? Would it have induced him to give us one more allegory, onemore life of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal? I firmly believenot. I firmly believe that a hundred years ago, when he was writing ourdebates for the Gentleman's Magazine, he would very much rather have hadtwopence to buy a plate of shin of beef at a cook's shop underground. Considered as a reward to him, the difference between a twenty years'and sixty years' term of posthumous copyright would have been nothing ornext to nothing. But is the difference nothing to us? I can buy Rasselasfor sixpence; I might have had to give five shillings for it. I can buythe Dictionary, the entire genuine Dictionary, for two guineas, perhapsfor less; I might have had to give five or six guineas for it. Do Igrudge this to a man like Dr Johnson? Not at all. Show me that theprospect of this boon roused him to any vigorous effort, or sustainedhis spirits under depressing circumstances, and I am quite willing topay the price of such an object, heavy as that price is. But what I docomplain of is that my circumstances are to be worse, and Johnson's nonethe better; that I am to give five pounds for what to him was not wortha farthing. 

The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for thepurpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly badone; it is a tax on one of the most innocent and most salutary of humanpleasures; and never let us forget, that a tax on innocent pleasuresis a premium on vicious pleasures. I admit, however, the necessity ofgiving a bounty to genius and learning. In order to give such a bounty, I willingly submit even to this severe and burdensome tax. Nay, I amready to increase the tax, if it can be shown that by so doing I shouldproportionally increase the bounty. My complaint is, that my honourableand learned friend doubles, triples, quadruples, the tax, and makesscarcely any perceptible addition to the bounty. Why, Sir, what is theadditional amount of taxation which would have been levied on the publicfor Dr Johnson's works alone, if my honourable and learned friend'sbill had been the law of the land? I have not data sufficient to forman opinion. But I am confident that the taxation on his Dictionary alonewould have amounted to many thousands of pounds. In reckoning the wholeadditional sum which the holders of his copyrights would have takenout of the pockets of the public during the last half century at twentythousand pounds, I feel satisfied that I very greatly underrate it. Now, I again say that I think it but fair that we should pay twenty thousandpounds in consideration of twenty thousand pounds' worth of pleasure andencouragement received by Dr Johnson. But I think it very hard that weshould pay twenty thousand pounds for what he would not have valued atfive shillings. 

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

If, Sir, I wished to find a strong and perfect illustration of theeffects which I anticipate from long copyright, I should select, --myhonourable and learned friend will be surprised, --I should select thecase of Milton's granddaughter. As often as this bill has been underdiscussion, the fate of Milton's granddaughter has been brought forwardby the advocates of monopoly. My honourable and learned friend hasrepeatedly told the story with great eloquence and effect. He hasdilated on the sufferings, on the abject poverty, of this ill-fatedwoman, the last of an illustrious race. He tells us that, in theextremity of her distress, Garrick gave her a benefit, that Johnsonwrote a prologue, and that the public contributed some hundredsof pounds. Was it fit, he asks, that she should receive, in thiseleemosynary form, a small portion of what was in truth a debt? Why, heasks, instead of obtaining a pittance from charity, did she not live incomfort and luxury on the proceeds of the sale of her ancestor's works?But, Sir, will my honourable and learned friend tell me that this event, which he has so often and so pathetically described, was caused by theshortness of the term of copyright? Why, at that time, the duration ofcopyright was longer than even he, at present, proposes to make it. Themonopoly lasted, not sixty years, but for ever. At the time at whichMilton's granddaughter asked charity, Milton's works were the exclusiveproperty of a bookseller. Within a few months of the day on which thebenefit was given at Garrick's theatre, the holder of the copyright ofParadise Lost, --I think it was Tonson, --applied to the Court of Chanceryfor an injunction against a bookseller who had published a cheap editionof the great epic poem, and obtained the injunction. The representationof Comus was, if I remember rightly, in 1750; the injunction in 1752. Here, then, is a perfect illustration of the effect of long copyright. Milton's works are the property of a single publisher. Everybody whowants them must buy them at Tonson's shop, and at Tonson's price. Whoever attempts to undersell Tonson is harassed with legal proceedings. Thousands who would gladly possess a copy of Paradise Lost, must foregothat great enjoyment. And what, in the meantime, is the situation of theonly person for whom we can suppose that the author, protected at sucha cost to the public, was at all interested? She is reduced to utterdestitution. Milton's works are under a monopoly. Milton's granddaughteris starving. The reader is pillaged; but the writer's family is notenriched. Society is taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbitant pricefor the poems; and it has at the same time to give alms to the onlysurviving descendant of the poet. 

But this is not all. I think it right, Sir, to call the attention ofthe House to an evil, which is perhaps more to be apprehended when anauthor's copyright remains in the hands of his family, than when it istransferred to booksellers. I seriously fear that, if such a measureas this should be adopted, many valuable works will be either totallysuppressed or grievously mutilated. I can prove that this danger isnot chimerical; and I am quite certain that, if the danger be real, the safeguards which my honourable and learned friend has devised arealtogether nugatory. That the danger is not chimerical may easily beshown. Most of us, I am sure, have known persons who, very erroneouslyas I think, but from the best motives, would not choose to reprintFielding's novels, or Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of theRoman Empire. Some gentlemen may perhaps be of opinion that it would beas well if Tom Jones and Gibbon's History were never reprinted. I willnot, then, dwell on these or similar cases. I will take cases respectingwhich it is not likely that there will be any difference of opinionhere; cases, too, in which the danger of which I now speak is not matterof supposition, but matter of fact. Take Richardson's novels. WhateverI may, on the present occasion, think of my honourable and learnedfriend's judgment as a legislator, I must always respect his judgment asa critic. He will, I am sure, say that Richardson's novels are amongthe most valuable, among the most original works in our language. Nowritings have done more to raise the fame of English genius in foreigncountries. No writings are more deeply pathetic. No writings, those ofShakspeare excepted, show more profound knowledge of the human heart. Asto their moral tendency, I can cite the most respectable testimony. DrJohnson describes Richardson as one who had taught the passions to moveat the command of virtue. My dear and honoured friend, Mr Wilberforce, in his celebrated religious treatise, when speaking of the unchristiantendency of the fashionable novels of the eighteenth century, distinctlyexcepts Richardson from the censure. Another excellent person, whom Ican never mention without respect and kindness, Mrs Hannah More, oftendeclared in conversation, and has declared in one of her publishedpoems, that she first learned from the writings of Richardson thoseprinciples of piety by which her life was guided. I may safely say thatbooks celebrated as works of art through the whole civilised world, andpraised for their moral tendency by Dr Johnson, by Mr Wilberforce, byMrs Hannah More, ought not to be suppressed. Sir, it is my firm belief, that if the law had been what my honourable and learned friend proposesto make it, they would have been suppressed. I remember Richardson'sgrandson well; he was a clergyman in the city of London; he was a mostupright and excellent man; but he had conceived a strong prejudiceagainst works of fiction. He thought all novel-reading not onlyfrivolous but sinful. He said, --this I state on the authority of one ofhis clerical brethren who is now a bishop, --he said that he had neverthought it right to read one of his grandfather's books. Suppose, Sir, that the law had been what my honourable and learned friend would makeit. Suppose that the copyright of Richardson's novels had descended, asmight well have been the case, to this gentleman. I firmly believe, that he would have thought it sinful to give them a wide circulation. I firmly believe, that he would not for a hundred thousand pounds havedeliberately done what he thought sinful. He would not have reprintedthem. And what protection does my honourable and learned friend give tothe public in such a case? Why, Sir, what he proposes is this: if a bookis not reprinted during five years, any person who wishes to reprintit may give notice in the London Gazette: the advertisement must berepeated three times: a year must elapse; and then, if the proprietor ofthe copyright does not put forth a new edition, he loses his exclusiveprivilege. Now, what protection is this to the public? What is a newedition? Does the law define the number of copies that make an edition?Does it limit the price of a copy? Are twelve copies on large paper, charged at thirty guineas each, an edition? It has been usual, whenmonopolies have been granted, to prescribe numbers and to limit prices. But I did not find the my honourable and learned friend proposes to doso in the present case. And, without some such provision, the securitywhich he offers is manifestly illusory. It is my conviction that, undersuch a system as that which he recommends to us, a copy of Clarissawould have been as rare as an Aldus or a Caxton. 

I will give another instance. One of the most instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our language is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in theescutcheon of the family. He thought, not perhaps altogether withoutreason, that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous anddegrading light. And thus he became so sore and irritable that at lasthe could not bear to hear the Life of Johnson mentioned. Suppose thatthe law had been what my honourable and learned friend wishes tomake it. Suppose that the copyright of Boswell's Life of Johnson hadbelonged, as it well might, during sixty years, to Boswell's eldestson. What would have been the consequence? An unadulterated copy of thefinest biographical work in the world would have been as scarce as thefirst edition of Camden's Britannia. 

These are strong cases. I have shown you that, if the law had been whatyou are now going to make it, the finest prose work of fiction in thelanguage, the finest biographical work in the language, would veryprobably have been suppressed. But I have stated my case weakly. Thebooks which I have mentioned are singularly inoffensive books, books nottouching on any of those questions which drive even wise men beyond thebounds of wisdom. There are books of a very different kind, books whichare the rallying points of great political and religious parties. Whatis likely to happen if the copyright of one of the these books should bydescent or transfer come into the possession of some hostile zealot? Iwill take a single instance. It is only fifty years since John Wesleydied; and all his works, if the law had been what my honourable andlearned friend wishes to make it, would now have been the property ofsome person or other. The sect founded by Wesley is the most numerous, the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most zealous of sects. In everyparliamentary election it is a matter of the greatest importance toobtain the support of the Wesleyan Methodists. Their numerical strengthis reckoned by hundreds of thousands. They hold the memory of theirfounder in the greatest reverence; and not without reason, for he wasunquestionably a great and a good man. To his authority they constantlyappeal. His works are in their eyes of the highest value. His doctrinalwritings they regard as containing the best system of theology everdeduced from Scripture. His journals, interesting even to the commonreader, are peculiarly interesting to the Methodist: for they containthe whole history of that singular polity which, weak and despisedin its beginning, is now, after the lapse of a century, so strong, so flourishing, and so formidable. The hymns to which he gave hisimprimatur are a most important part of the public worship of hisfollowers. Now, suppose that the copyright of these works should belongto some person who holds the memory of Wesley and the doctrines anddiscipline of the Methodists in abhorrence. There are many such persons. The Ecclesiastical Courts are at this very time sitting on the case ofa clergyman of the Established Church who refused Christian burial to achild baptized by a Methodist preacher. I took up the other day a workwhich is considered as among the most respectable organs of a largeand growing party in the Church of England, and there I saw John Wesleydesignated as a forsworn priest. Suppose that the works of Wesley weresuppressed. Why, Sir, such a grievance would be enough to shake thefoundations of Government. Let gentlemen who are attached to the Churchreflect for a moment what their feelings would be if the Book of CommonPrayer were not to be reprinted for thirty or forty years, if the priceof a Book of Common Prayer were run up to five or ten guineas. Andthen let them determine whether they will pass a law under which it ispossible, under which it is probable, that so intolerable a wrong may bedone to some sect consisting perhaps of half a million of persons. 

I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listenedto me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that ifthe measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part ofthe evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect itto produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionablekind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game werevirtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts havebeen virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtuallyrepealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyrighthas the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright areregarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deservingmen. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, andcompelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good reputewill have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass thislaw: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the presentrace of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerablemonopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in theviolation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit;and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed shouldthe public sympathy be when the question is whether some book aspopular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in everycottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the richfor the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundredyears before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the authorwhen in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to beconsidered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, noperson can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makesnice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will sharein the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about tocreate. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonablerestraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, toa great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men frompillaging and defrauding the living. If I saw, Sir, any probability thatthis bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections mightbe removed, I would not divide the House in this stage. But I am sofully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable tomy honourable and learned friend, could render his measure supportableto me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read asecond time this day six months. 

*****

COPYRIGHT. (APRIL 6, 1842) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN A COMMITTEE OF THEHOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 6TH OF APRIL 1842. 

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

On the sixth of April the House went into Committee on the bill, and MrGreene took the Chair. Several divisions took place, of which the resultwas that the plan suggested in the following Speech was, with somemodifications, adopted. 

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

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

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

My noble friend does not propose to make any addition to the termof twenty-eight years. But he proposes that the copyright shall lasttwenty-five years after the author's death. Thus my noble friend makesno addition to that term which is certain, but makes a very largeaddition to that term which is uncertain. 

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

It must surely, Sir, be admitted that the protection which we give tobooks ought to be distributed as evenly as possible, that every bookshould have a fair share of that protection, and no book more than afair share. It would evidently be absurd to put tickets into a wheel, with different numbers marked upon them, and to make writers draw, onea term of twenty-eight years, another a term of fifty, another a term ofninety. And yet this sort of lottery is what my noble friend proposes toestablish. I know that we cannot altogether exclude chance. You have twoterms of copyright; one certain, the other uncertain; and we cannot, Iadmit, get rid of the uncertain term. It is proper, no doubt, that anauthor's copyright should last during his life. But, Sir, though wecannot altogether exclude chance, we can very much diminish the sharewhich chance must have in distributing the recompense which we wishto give to genius and learning. By every addition which we make to thecertain term we diminish the influence of chance; by every additionwhich we make to the uncertain term we increase the influence of chance. I shall make myself best understood by putting cases. Take two eminentfemale writers, who died within our own memory, Madame D'Arblay and MissAusten. As the law now stands, Miss Austen's charming novels would haveonly from twenty-eight to thirty-three years of copyright. For thatextraordinary woman died young: she died before her genius was fullyappreciated by the world. Madame D'Arblay outlived the whole generationto which she belonged. The copyright of her celebrated novel, Evelina, lasted, under the present law, sixty-two years. Surely this inequalityis sufficiently great--sixty-two years of copyright for Evelina, onlytwenty-eight for Persuasion. But to my noble friend this inequalityseems not great enough. He proposes to add twenty-five years to MadameD'Arblay's term, and not a single day to Miss Austen's term. He wouldgive to Persuasion a copyright of only twenty-eight years, as atpresent, and to Evelina a copyright more than three times as long, acopyright of eighty-seven years. Now, is this reasonable? See, on theother hand, the operation of my plan. I make no addition at all toMadame D'Arblay's term of sixty-two years, which is, in my opinion, quite long enough; but I extend Miss Austen's term to forty-two years, which is, in my opinion, not too much. You see, Sir, that at presentchance has too much sway in this matter: that at present the protectionwhich the State gives to letters is very unequally given. You see thatif my noble friend's plan be adopted, more will be left to chance thanunder the present system, and you will have such inequalities as areunknown under the present system. You see also that, under the systemwhich I recommend, we shall have, not perfect certainty, not perfectequality, but much less uncertainty and inequality than at present. 

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

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

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

Let us pass on from Milton to Dryden. My noble friend would givemore than sixty years of copyright to Dryden's worst works; to theencomiastic verses on Oliver Cromwell, to the Wild Gallant, to the RivalLadies, to other wretched pieces as bad as anything written by Flecknoeor Settle: but for Theodore and Honoria, for Tancred and Sigismunda, forCimon and Iphigenia, for Palamon and Arcite, for Alexander's Feast, mynoble friend thinks a copyright of twenty-eight years sufficient. Ofall Pope's works, that to which my noble friend would give the largestmeasure of protection is the volume of Pastorals, remarkable only as theproduction of a boy. Johnson's first work was a Translation of a Book ofTravels in Abyssinia, published in 1735. It was so poorly executed thatin his later years he did not like to hear it mentioned. Boswell oncepicked up a copy of it, and told his friend that he had done so. "Do nottalk about it, " said Johnson: "it is a thing to be forgotten. " To thisperformance my noble friend would give protection during the enormousterm of seventy-five years. To the Lives of the Poets he would giveprotection during about thirty years. Well; take Henry Fielding; itmatters not whom I take, but take Fielding. His early works are readonly by the curious, and would not be read even by the curious, but forthe fame which he acquired in the latter part of his life by works ofa very different kind. What is the value of the Temple Beau, of theIntriguing Chambermaid, of half a dozen other plays of which fewgentlemen have even heard the names? Yet to these worthless pieces mynoble friend would give a term of copyright longer by more than twentyyears than that which he would give to Tom Jones and Amelia. 

Go on to Burke. His little tract, entitled the Vindication of NaturalSociety is certainly not without merit; but it would not be rememberedin our days if it did not bear the name of Burke. To this tract my noblefriend would give a copyright of near seventy years. But to the greatwork on the French Revolution, to the Appeal from the New to the OldWhigs, to the letters on the Regicide Peace, he would give a copyrightof thirty years or little more. 

And, Sir observe that I am not selecting here and there extraordinaryinstances in order to make up the semblance of a case. I am taking thegreatest names of our literature in chronological order. Go to othernations; go to remote ages; you will still find the general rule thesame. There was no copyright at Athens or Rome; but the history of theGreek and Latin literature illustrates my argument quite as well as ifcopyright had existed in ancient times. Of all the plays of Sophocles, the one to which the plan of my noble friend would have given themost scanty recompense would have been that wonderful masterpiece, theOedipus at Colonos. Who would class together the Speech of Demosthenesagainst his Guardians, and the Speech for the Crown? My noble friend, indeed, would not class them together. For to the Speech against theGuardians he would give a copyright of near seventy years, and to theincomparable Speech for the Crown a copyright of less than half thatlength. Go to Rome. My noble friend would give more than twice as long aterm to Cicero's juvenile declamation in defence of Roscius Amerinus asto the Second Philippic. Go to France. My noble friend would give a farlonger term to Racine's Freres Ennemis than to Athalie, and to Moliere'sEtourdi than to Tartuffe. Go to Spain. My noble friend would give alonger term to forgotten works of Cervantes, works which nobody nowreads, than to Don Quixote. Go to Germany. According to my noblefriend's plan, of all the works of Schiller the Robbers would be themost favoured: of all the works of Goethe, the Sorrows of Werter wouldbe the most favoured. I thank the Committee for listening so kindly tothis long enumeration. Gentlemen will perceive, I am sure, that it isnot from pedantry that I mention the names of so many books and authors. But just as, in our debates on civil affairs, we constantly drawillustrations from civil history, we must, in a debate about literaryproperty, draw our illustrations from literary history. Now, Sir, Ihave, I think, shown from literary history that the effect of mynoble friend's plan would be to give to crude and imperfect works, tothird-rate and fourth-rate works, a great advantage over the highestproductions of genius. It is impossible to account for the facts which Ihave laid before you by attributing them to mere accident. Their numberis too great, their character too uniform. We must seek for some otherexplanation; and we shall easily find one. 

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

What I recommend is that the certain term, reckoned from the date ofpublication, shall be forty-two years instead of twenty-eight years. Inthis arrangement there is no uncertainty, no inequality. The advantagewhich I propose to give will be the same to every book. No work willhave so long a copyright as my noble friend gives to some books, or soshort a copyright as he gives to others. No copyright will last ninetyyears. No copyright will end in twenty-eight years. To every bookpublished in the course of the last seventeen years of a writer's lifeI give a longer term of copyright than my noble friend gives; and Iam confident that no person versed in literary history will denythis, --that in general the most valuable works of an author arepublished in the course of the last seventeen years of his life. I willrapidly enumerate a few, and but a few, of the great works of Englishwriters to which my plan is more favourable than my noble friend's plan. To Lear, to Macbeth, to Othello, to the Fairy Queen, to the ParadiseLost, to Bacon's Novum Organum and De Augmentis, to Locke's Essay onthe Human Understanding, to Clarendon's History, to Hume's History, toGibbon's History, to Smith's Wealth of Nations, to Addison's Spectators, to almost all the great works of Burke, to Clarissa and Sir CharlesGrandison, to Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Amelia, and, with the singleexception of Waverley, to all the novels of Sir Walter Scott, I give alonger term of copyright than my noble friend gives. Can he match thatlist? Does not that list contain what England has produced greatest inmany various ways--poetry, philosophy, history, eloquence, wit, skilfulportraiture of life and manners? I confidently therefore call on theCommittee to take my plan in preference to the plan of my noble friend. I have shown that the protection which he proposes to give to letters isunequal, and unequal in the worst way. I have shown that his plan is togive protection to books in inverse proportion to their merit. I shallmove when we come to the third clause of the bill to omit the words"twenty-five years, " and in a subsequent part of the same clause Ishall move to substitute for the words "twenty-eight years" the words"forty-two years. " I earnestly hope that the Committee will adopt theseamendments; and I feel the firmest conviction that my noble friend'sbill, so amended, will confer a great boon on men of letters with thesmallest possible inconvenience to the public. 

*****

THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER. (MAY 3, 1842) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OFCOMMONS ON THE THIRD OF MAY 1842. 

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

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

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

The motion was rejected by 287 votes to 49. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another point is the abolition of the pecuniary qualification formembers of this House. On that point I cordially agree with thepetitioners. You have established a sufficient pecuniary qualificationfor the elector; and it therefore seems to me quite superfluous torequire a pecuniary qualification from the representative. Everybodyknows that many English members have only fictitious qualifications, andthat the members for Scotch cities and boroughs are not required tohave any qualification at all. It is surely absurd to admit therepresentatives of Edinburgh and Glasgow without any qualification, andat the same time to require the representative of Finsbury or Maryleboneto possess a qualification or the semblance of one. If the qualificationreally be a security for respectability, let that security bedemanded from us who sit here for Scotch towns. If, as I believe, thequalification is no security at all, why should we require it fromanybody? It is no part of the old constitution of the realm. It wasfirst established in the reign of Anne. It was established by a badparliament for a bad purpose. It was, in fact, part of a course oflegislation which, if it had not been happily interrupted, would haveended in the repeal of the Toleration Act and of the Act of Settlement. 

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

I have no blind attachment to ancient usages. I altogether disclaim whathas been nicknamed the doctrine of finality. I have said enough to-nightto show that I do not consider the settlement made by the Reform Billas one which can last for ever. I certainly do think that an extensivechange in the polity of a nation must be attended with serious evils. Still those evils may be overbalanced by advantages: and I am perfectlyready, in every case, to weigh the evils against the advantages, and tojudge as well as I can which scale preponderates. I am bound by no tieto oppose any reform which I think likely to promote the public good. Iwill go so far as to say that I do not quite agree with those who thinkthat they have proved the People's Charter to be absurd when they haveproved that it is incompatible with the existence of the throne andof the peerage. For, though I am a faithful and loyal subject of HerMajesty, and though I sincerely wish to see the House of Lords powerfuland respected, I cannot consider either monarchy or aristocracy as theends of government. They are only means. Nations have flourished withouthereditary sovereigns or assemblies of nobles; and, though I should bevery sorry to see England a republic, I do not doubt that she might, asa republic, enjoy prosperity, tranquillity, and high consideration. The dread and aversion with which I regard universal suffrage would begreatly diminished, if I could believe that the worst effect which itwould produce would be to give us an elective first magistrate and asenate instead of a Queen and a House of Peers. My firm conviction isthat, in our country, universal suffrage is incompatible, not with thisor that form of government, but with all forms of government, and witheverything for the sake of which forms of government exist; that it isincompatible with property, and that it is consequently incompatiblewith civilisation. 

It is not necessary for me in this place to go through the argumentswhich prove beyond dispute that on the security of property civilisationdepends; that, where property is insecure, no climate however delicious, no soil however fertile, no conveniences for trade and navigation, nonatural endowments of body or of mind, can prevent a nation from sinkinginto barbarism; that where, on the other hand, men are protected inthe enjoyment of what has been created by their industry and laid upby their self-denial, society will advance in arts and in wealthnotwithstanding the sterility of the earth and the inclemency of theair, notwithstanding heavy taxes and destructive wars. Those persons whosay that England has been greatly misgoverned, that her legislation isdefective, that her wealth has been squandered in unjust and impoliticcontests with America and with France, do in fact bear the strongesttestimony to the truth of my doctrine. For that our country has made andis making great progress in all that contributes to the material comfortof man is indisputable. If that progress cannot be ascribed tothe wisdom of the Government, to what can we ascribe it but to thediligence, the energy, the thrift of individuals? And to what can weascribe that diligence, that energy, that thrift, except to the securitywhich property has during many generations enjoyed here? Such is thepower of this great principle that, even in the last war, the mostcostly war, beyond all comparison, that ever was waged in this world, the Government could not lavish wealth so fast as the productive classescreated it. 

If it be admitted that on the institution of property the wellbeingof society depends, it follows surely that it would be madness to givesupreme power in the state to a class which would not be likely torespect that institution. And, if this be conceded, it seems to me tofollow that it would be madness to grant the prayer of this petition. Ientertain no hope that, if we place the government of the kingdom in thehands of the majority of the males of one-and-twenty told by the head, the institution of property will be respected. If I am asked why Ientertain no such hope, I answer, because the hundreds of thousands ofmales of twenty-one who have signed this petition tell me to entertainno such hope; because they tell me that, if I trust them with power, thefirst use which they will make of it will be to plunder every man in thekingdom who has a good coat on his back and a good roof over his head. God forbid that I should put an unfair construction on their language!I will read their own words. This petition, be it remembered, is anauthoritative declaration of the wishes of those who, if the Charterever becomes law, will return the great majority of the House ofCommons; and these are their words: "Your petitioners complain, thatthey are enormously taxed to pay the interest of what is called thenational debt, a debt amounting at present to eight hundred millions, being only a portion of the enormous amount expended in cruel andexpensive wars for the suppression of all liberty by men not authorisedby the people, and who consequently had no right to tax posterityfor the outrages committed by them upon mankind. " If these words meananything, they mean that the present generation is not bound to pay thepublic debt incurred by our rulers in past times, and that a nationalbankruptcy would be both just and politic. For my part, I believe it tobe impossible to make any distinction between the right of a fundholderto his dividends and the right of a landowner to his rents. And, to dothe petitioners justice, I must say that they seem to be much of thesame mind. They are for dealing with fundholder and landowner alike. They tell us that nothing will "unshackle labour from its misery, untilthe people possess that power under which all monopoly and oppressionmust cease; and your petitioners respectfully mention the existingmonopolies of the suffrage, of paper money, of machinery, of land, ofthe public press, of religion, of the means of travelling and transit, and a host of other evils too numerous to mention, all arising fromclass legislation. " Absurd as this hubbub of words is, part of it isintelligible enough. What can the monopoly of land mean, except propertyin land? The only monopoly of land which exists in England is this, thatnobody can sell an acre of land which does not belong to him. And whatcan the monopoly of machinery mean but property in machinery? Anothermonopoly which is to cease is the monopoly of the means of travelling. In other words all the canal property and railway property in thekingdom is to be confiscated. What other sense do the words bear? Andthese are only specimens of the reforms which, in the language of thepetition, are to unshackle labour from its misery. There remains, it seems, a host of similar monopolies too numerous to mention; themonopoly I presume, which a draper has of his own stock of cloth; themonopoly which a hatter has of his own stock of hats; the monopolywhich we all have of our furniture, bedding, and clothes. In short, thepetitioners ask you to give them power in order that they may not leavea man of a hundred a year in the realm. 

I am far from wishing to throw any blame on the ignorant crowds whichhave flocked to the tables where this petition was exhibited. Nothingis more natural than that the labouring people should be deceived by thearts of such men as the author of this absurd and wicked composition. We ourselves, with all our advantages of education, are often verycredulous, very impatient, very shortsighted, when we are tried bypecuniary distress or bodily pain. We often resort to means of immediaterelief which, as Reason tells us, if we would listen to her, are certainto aggravate our sufferings. Men of great abilities and knowledge haveruined their estates and their constitutions in this way. How thencan we wonder that men less instructed than ourselves, and tried byprivations such as we have never known, should be easily misledby mountebanks who promise impossibilities? Imagine a well-meaninglaborious mechanic, fondly attached to his wife and children. Bad timescome. He sees the wife whom he loves grow thinner and paler every day. His little ones cry for bread, and he has none to give them. Then comethe professional agitators, the tempters, and tell him that there isenough and more than enough for everybody, and that he has too littleonly because landed gentlemen, fundholders, bankers, manufacturers, railway proprietors, shopkeepers have too much. Is it strange that thepoor man should be deluded, and should eagerly sign such a petition asthis? The inequality with which wealth is distributed forces itselfon everybody's notice. It is at once perceived by the eye. The reasonswhich irrefragably prove this inequality to be necessary to thewellbeing of all classes are not equally obvious. Our honest working manhas not received such an education as enables him to understand that theutmost distress that he has ever known is prosperity when compared withthe distress which he would have to endure if there were a single monthof general anarchy and plunder. But you say, it is not the fault of thelabourer that he is not well educated. Most true. It is not his fault. But, though he has no share in the fault, he will, if you are foolishenough to give him supreme power in the state, have a very large shareof the punishment. You say that, if the Government had not culpablyomitted to establish a good system of public instruction, thepetitioners would have been fit for the elective franchise. But is thata reason for giving them the franchise when their own petition provesthat they are not fit for it; when they give us fair notice that, if welet them have it, they will use it to our ruin and their own? It is notnecessary now to inquire whether, with universal education, we couldsafely have universal suffrage. What we are asked to do is to giveuniversal suffrage before there is universal education. Have I anyunkind feeling towards these poor people? No more than I have to asick friend who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which thephysician has forbidden. No more than a humane collector in India hasto those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity crowd round thegranaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures that the doors may beopened and the rice distributed. I would not give the draught of water, because I know that it would be poison. I would not give up the keys ofthe granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcityinto a famine. And in the same way I would not yield to the importunityof multitudes who, exasperated by suffering and blinded by ignorance, demand with wild vehemence the liberty to destroy themselves. 

But it is said, You must not attach so much importance to this petition. It is very foolish, no doubt, and disgraceful to the author, be he whohe may. But you must not suppose that those who signed it approve ofit. They have merely put their names or their marks without weighing thesense of the document which they subscribed. Surely, Sir, of all reasonsthat ever were given for receiving a petition with peculiar honours, thestrangest is that it expresses sentiments diametrically opposed tothe real sentiments of those who have signed it. And it is a not lessstrange reason for giving men supreme power in a state that they signpolitical manifestoes of the highest importance without taking thetrouble to know what the contents are. But how is it possible for us tobelieve that, if the petitioners had the power which they demand, they would not use it as they threaten? During a long course of years, numerous speakers and writers, some of them ignorant, others dishonest, have been constantly representing the Government as able to do, andbound to do, things which no Government can, without great injury to thecountry, attempt to do. Every man of sense knows that the people supportthe Government. But the doctrine of the Chartist philosophers is that itis the business of the Government to support the people. It is supposedby many that our rulers possess, somewhere or other, an inexhaustiblestorehouse of all the necessaries and conveniences of life, and, frommere hardheartedness, refuse to distribute the contents of this magazineamong the poor. We have all of us read speeches and tracts in which itseemed to be taken for granted that we who sit here have the power ofworking miracles, of sending a shower of manna on the West Riding, of striking the earth and furnishing all the towns of Lancashire withabundance of pure water, of feeding all the cotton-spinners and weaverswho are out of work with five loaves and two fishes. There is not aworking man who has not heard harangues and read newspapers in whichthese follies are taught. And do you believe that as soon as you givethe working men absolute and irresistible power they will forget allthis? Yes, Sir, absolute and irresistible power. The Charter wouldgive them no less. In every constituent body throughout the empirethe working men will, if we grant the prayer of this petition, be anirresistible majority. In every constituent body capital will be placedat the feet of labour; knowledge will be borne down by ignorance; and isit possible to doubt what the result must be? The honourable Member forBath and the honourable Member for Rochdale are now considered as verydemocratic members of Parliament. They would occupy a very differentposition in a House of Commons elected by universal suffrage, if theysucceeded in obtaining seats. They would, I believe, honestly opposeevery attempt to rob the public creditor. They would manfully say, "Justice and the public good require that this sum of thirty millionsa year should be paid;" and they would immediately be reviled asaristocrats, monopolists, oppressors of the poor, defenders of oldabuses. And as to land, is it possible to believe that the millions whohave been so long and loudly told that the land is their estate, and iswrongfully kept from them, should not, when they have supreme power, usethat power to enforce what they think their rights? What could followbut one vast spoliation? One vast spoliation! That would be bad enough. That would be the greatest calamity that ever fell on our country. Yetwould that a single vast spoliation were the worst! No, Sir; in thelowest deep there would be a lower deep. The first spoliation would notbe the last. How could it? All the causes which had produced the firstspoliation would still operate. They would operate more powerfully thanbefore. The distress would be far greater than before. The fences whichnow protect property would all have been broken through, levelled, sweptaway. The new proprietors would have no title to show to anything thatthey held except recent robbery. With what face then could they complainof being robbed? What would be the end of these things? Our experience, God be praised, does not enable us to predict it with certainty. We canonly guess. My guess is that we should see something more horrible thancan be imagined--something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far largerscale. There would be many millions of human beings, crowded in a narrowspace, deprived of all those resources which alone had made it possiblefor them to exist in so narrow a space; trade gone; manufactures gone;credit gone. What could they do but fight for the mere sustenanceof nature, and tear each other to pieces till famine, and pestilencefollowing in the train of famine, came to turn the terrible commotioninto a more terrible repose? The best event, the very best event, that Ican anticipate, --and what must the state of things be, if an Englishmanand a Whig calls such an event the very best?--the very best event, I say, that I can anticipate is that out of the confusion a strongmilitary despotism may arise, and that the sword, firmly grasped by somerough hand, may give a sort of protection to the miserable wreck of allthat immense prosperity and glory. But, as to the noble institutionsunder which our country has made such progress in liberty, in wealth, in knowledge, in arts, do not deceive yourselves into the belief thatwe should ever see them again. We should never see them again. We shouldnot deserve to see them. All those nations which envy our greatnesswould insult our downfall, a downfall which would be all our own work;and the history of our calamities would be told thus: England hadinstitutions which, though imperfect, yet contained within themselvesthe means of remedying every imperfection; those institutions herlegislators wantonly and madly threw away; nor could they urge in theirexcuse even the wretched plea that they were deceived by false promises;for, in the very petition with the prayer of which they were weak enoughto comply, they were told, in the plainest terms, that public ruin wouldbe the effect of their compliance. 

Thinking thus, Sir, I will oppose, with every faculty which God hasgiven me, every motion which directly or indirectly tends to thegranting of universal suffrage. This motion I think, tends that way. If any gentleman here is prepared to vote for universal suffrage with afull view of all the consequences of universal suffrage as they are setforth in this petition, he acts with perfect consistency in voting forthis motion. But, I must say, I heard with some surprise the honourablebaronet the Member for Leicester (Sir John Easthope. ) say that, thoughhe utterly disapproves of the petition, though he thinks of it just asI do, he wishes the petitioners to be heard at the bar in explanationof their opinions. I conceive that their opinions are quite sufficientlyexplained already; and to such opinions I am not disposed to pay anyextraordinary mark of respect. I shall give a clear and conscientiousvote against the motion of the honourable Member for Finsbury; and Iconceive that the petitioners will have much less reason to complainof my open hostility than of the conduct of the honourable Member, whotries to propitiate them by consenting to hear their oratory, but hasfully made up his mind not to comply with their demands. 

*****

THE GATES OF SOMNAUTH. (MARCH 9, 1843) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSEOF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF MARCH 1843. 

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

"That this House, having regard to the high and important functionsof the Governor General of India, the mixed character of the nativepopulation, and the recent measures of the Court of Directors fordiscontinuing any seeming sanction to idolatry in India, is of opinionthat the conduct of Lord Ellenborough in issuing the General Orders ofthe sixteenth of November 1842, and in addressing the letter of the samedate to all the chiefs, princes, and people of India, respecting therestoration of the gates of a temple to Somnauth, is unwise, indecorous, and reprehensible. "

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

The motion was rejected by 242 votes to 157. 

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

I cannot but wonder, Sir, that he who has, on this, as on formeroccasions, exhibited so much ability and acuteness, should have gravelyrepresented it as a ground of complaint, that my right honourablefriend the Member for Northampton has made this motion in the GovernorGeneral's absence. Does the honourable gentleman mean that this Houseis to be interdicted from ever considering in what manner Her Majesty'sAsiatic subjects, a hundred millions in number, are governed? And howcan we consider how they are governed without considering the conductof him who is governing them? And how can we consider the conduct of himwho is governing them, except in his absence? For my own part, I can sayfor myself, and I may, I doubt not, say for my right honourable friendthe Member for Northampton, that we both of us wish, with all our heartsand souls, that we were discussing this question in the presence ofLord Ellenborough. Would to heaven, Sir, for the sake of the credit ofEngland, and of the interests of India, that the noble lord were at thismoment under our gallery! But, Sir, if there be any Governor who hasno right to complain of remarks made on him in his absence, it is thatGovernor who, forgetting all official decorum, forgetting how importantit is that, while the individuals who serve the State are changed, theState should preserve its identity, inserted in a public proclamationreflections on his predecessor, a predecessor of whom, on the presentoccasion, I will only say that his conduct had deserved a very differentreturn. I am confident that no enemy of Lord Auckland, if Lord Aucklandhas an enemy in the House, will deny that, whatever faults he mayhave committed, he was faultless with respect to Lord Ellenborough. Nobrother could have laboured more assiduously for the interests andthe honour of a brother than Lord Auckland laboured to facilitate LordEllenborough's arduous task, to prepare for Lord Ellenborough themeans of obtaining success and glory. And what was the requital? Aproclamation by Lord Ellenborough, stigmatising the conduct of LordAuckland. And, Sir, since the honourable gentleman the Secretary of theBoard of Control has thought fit to divert the debate from its propercourse, I will venture to request that he, or the honourable directorwho sits behind him (Sir James Hogg. ), will vouchsafe to give us someexplanations on an important point to which allusion has been made. Lord Ellenborough has been accused of having publicly announced that ourtroops were about to evacuate Afghanistan before he had ascertained thatour captive countrymen and countrywomen had been restored to liberty. This accusation, which is certainly a serious one, the honourablegentleman, the Secretary of the Board of Control, pronounces to be amere calumny. Now, Sir, the proclamation which announces the withdrawingof the troops bears date the first of October 1842. What I wish to knowis, whether any member of the Government, or of the Court of Directors, will venture to affirm that on the first of October 1842, the GovernorGeneral knew that the prisoners had been set at liberty? I believe thatno member either of the Government or of the Court of Directors willventure to affirm any such thing. It seems certain that on the firstof October the Governor General could not know that the prisoners weresafe. Nevertheless, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Boardof Control assures us that, when the proclamation was drawn up, theGovernor General did know that the prisoners were safe. What is theinevitable consequence? It is this, that the date is a false date, thatthe proclamation was written after the first of October, and antedated?And for what reason was it antedated? I am almost ashamed to tellthe House what I believe to have been the reason. I believe that LordEllenborough affixed the false date of the first of October to hisproclamation because Lord Auckland's manifesto against Afghanistan wasdated on the first of October. I believe that Lord Ellenborough wishedto make the contrast between his own success and his predecessor'sfailure more striking, and that for the sake of this paltry, thischildish, triumph, he antedated his proclamation, and made it appear toall Europe and all Asia that the English Government was indifferentto the fate of Englishmen and Englishwomen who were in a miserablecaptivity. If this be so, and I shall be surprised to hear any persondeny that it is so, I must say that by this single act, by writing thosewords, the first of October, the Governor General proved himself to be aman of an ill-regulated mind, a man unfit for high public trust. 

I might, Sir, if I chose to follow the example of the honourablegentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, advert to many othermatters. I might call the attention of the House to the systematicmanner in which the Governor General has exerted himself to lowerthe character and to break the spirit of that civil service on therespectability and efficiency of which chiefly depends the happiness ofa hundred millions of human beings. I might say much about the financialcommittee which he appointed in the hope of finding out blunders of hispredecessor, but which at last found out no blunders except his own. But the question before us demands our attention. That question has twosides, a serious and a ludicrous side. Let us look first at the seriousside. Sir, I disclaim in the strongest manner all intention of raisingany fanatical outcry or of lending aid to any fanatical project. I wouldvery much rather be the victim of fanaticism than its tool. If LordEllenborough were called in question for having given an impartialprotection to the professors of different religions, or for restrainingunjustifiable excesses into which Christian missionaries might have beenhurried by their zeal, I would, widely as I have always differed fromhim in politics, have stood up in his defence, though I had stood upalone. But the charge against Lord Ellenborough is that he has insultedthe religion of his own country and the religion of millions of theQueen's Asiatic subjects in order to pay honour to an idol. And this theright honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control calls atrivial charge. Sir, I think it a very grave charge. Her Majesty is theruler of a larger heathen population than the world ever saw collectedunder the sceptre of a Christian sovereign since the days of the EmperorTheodosius. What the conduct of rulers in such circumstances ought to beis one of the most important moral questions, one of the most importantpolitical questions, that it is possible to conceive. There are subjectto the British rule in Asia a hundred millions of people who do notprofess the Christian faith. The Mahometans are a minority: but theirimportance is much more than proportioned to their number: for they arean united, a zealous, an ambitious, a warlike class. The great majorityof the population of India consists of idolaters, blindly attachedto doctrines and rites which, considered merely with reference to thetemporal interests of mankind, are in the highest degree pernicious. Inno part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable tothe moral and intellectual health of our race. The Brahminical mythologyis so absurd that it necessarily debases every mind which receives itas truth; and with this absurd mythology is bound up an absurd system ofphysics, an absurd geography, an absurd astronomy. Nor is this formof Paganism more favourable to art than to science. Through the wholeHindoo Pantheon you will look in vain for anything resembling thosebeautiful and majestic forms which stood in the shrines of ancientGreece. All is hideous, and grotesque, and ignoble. As this superstitionis of all superstitions the most irrational, and of all superstitionsthe most inelegant, so is it of all superstitions the most immoral. Emblems of vice are objects of public worship. Acts of vice are acts ofpublic worship. The courtesans are as much a part of the establishmentof the temple, as much ministers of the god, as the priests. Crimesagainst life, crimes against property, are not only permitted butenjoined by this odious theology. But for our interference human victimswould still be offered to the Ganges, and the widow would still be laidon the pile with the corpse of her husband, and burned alive by her ownchildren. It is by the command and under the especial protection of oneof the most powerful goddesses that the Thugs join themselves to theunsuspecting traveller, make friends with him, slip the noose round hisneck, plunge their knives in his eyes, hide him in the earth, and dividehis money and baggage. I have read many examinations of Thugs; and Iparticularly remember an altercation which took place between twoof those wretches in the presence of an English officer. One Thugreproached the other for having been so irreligious as to spare the lifeof a traveller when the omens indicated that their patroness requireda victim. "How could you let him go? How can you expect the goddessto protect us if you disobey her commands? That is one of your Northcountry heresies. " Now, Sir, it is a difficult matter to determinein what way Christian rulers ought to deal with such superstitions asthese. We might have acted as the Spaniards acted in the New World. Wemight have attempted to introduce our own religion by force. We mighthave sent missionaries among the natives at the public charge. We mighthave held out hopes of public employment to converts, and have imposedcivil disabilities on Mahometans and Pagans. But we did none of thesethings; and herein we judged wisely. Our duty, as rulers, was topreserve strict neutrality on all questions merely religious: and Iam not aware that we have ever swerved from strict neutrality for thepurpose of making proselytes to our own faith. But we have, I amsorry to say, sometimes deviated from the right path in the oppositedirection. Some Englishmen, who have held high office in India, seem tohave thought that the only religion which was not entitled to tolerationand to respect was Christianity. They regarded every Christianmissionary with extreme jealousy and disdain; and they suffered themost atrocious crimes, if enjoined by the Hindoo superstition, to beperpetrated in open day. It is lamentable to think how long after ourpower was firmly established in Bengal, we, grossly neglecting the firstand plainest duty of the civil magistrate, suffered the practices ofinfanticide and Suttee to continue unchecked. We decorated the templesof the false gods. We provided the dancing girls. We gilded and paintedthe images to which our ignorant subjects bowed down. We repaired andembellished the car under the wheels of which crazy devotees flungthemselves at every festival to be crushed to death. We sent guards ofhonour to escort pilgrims to the places of worship. We actually madeoblations at the shrines of idols. All this was considered, and isstill considered, by some prejudiced Anglo-Indians of the old school, asprofound policy. I believe that there never was so shallow, so senselessa policy. We gained nothing by it. We lowered ourselves in the eyes ofthose whom we meant to flatter. We led them to believe that we attachedno importance to the difference between Christianity and heathenism. Yet how vast that difference is! I altogether abstain from alluding totopics which belong to divines. I speak merely as a politician anxiousfor the morality and the temporal well-being of society. And, sospeaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and todiscountenance that religion which has done so much to promote justice, and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and sciences, and good government, anddomestic happiness, which has struck off the chains of the slave, whichhas mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women from servantsand playthings into companions and friends, is to commit high treasonagainst humanity and civilisation. 

Gradually a better system was introduced. A great man whom we havelately lost, Lord Wellesley, led the way. He prohibited the immolationof female children; and this was the most unquestionable of all histitles to the gratitude of his country. In the year 1813 Parliamentgave new facilities to persons who were desirous to proceed to Indiaas missionaries. Lord William Bentinck abolished the Suttee. Shortlyafterwards the Home Government sent out to Calcutta the important andvaluable despatch to which reference has been repeatedly made in thecourse of this discussion. That despatch Lord Glenelg wrote, --I was thenat the Board of Control, and can attest the fact, --with his own hand. One paragraph, the sixty-second, is of the highest moment. I know thatparagraph so well that I could repeat it word for word. It contains inshort compass an entire code of regulations for the guidance of Britishfunctionaries in matters relating to the idolatry of India. The ordersof the Home Government were express, that the arrangements of thetemples should be left entirely to the natives. A certain discretionwas of course left to the local authorities as to the time and mannerof dissolving that connection which had long existed between the EnglishGovernment and the Brahminical superstition. But the principle was laiddown in the clearest manner. This was in February 1833. In the year 1838another despatch was sent, which referred to the sixty-second paragraphin Lord Glenelg's despatch, and enjoined the Indian Government toobserve the rules contained in that paragraph. Again, in the year 1841, precise orders were sent out on the same subject, orders which LordEllenborough seems to me to have studied carefully for the expresspurpose of disobeying them point by point, and in the most directmanner. You murmur: but only look at the orders of the Directors and atthe proclamation of the Governor General. The orders are, distinctly andpositively, that the British authorities in India shall have nothingto do with the temples of the natives, shall make no presents to thosetemples, shall not decorate those temples, shall not pay any militaryhonour to those temples. Now, Sir, the first charge which I bringagainst Lord Ellenborough is, that he has been guilty of an act of grossdisobedience, that he has done that which was forbidden in the strongestterms by those from whom his power is derived. The Home Government says, Do not interfere in the concerns of heathen temples. Is it denied thatLord Ellenborough has interfered in the concerns of a heathen temple?The Home Government says, Make no presents to heathen temples. Isit denied that Lord Ellenborough has proclaimed to all the world hisintention to make a present to a heathen temple? The Home Governmentsays, Do not decorate heathen temples. Is it denied that LordEllenborough has proclaimed to all the world his intention to decoratea heathen temple? The Home Government says, Do not send troops to dohonour to heathen temples. Is it denied that Lord Ellenborough sent abody of troops to escort these gates to a heathen temple? To be sure, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control tries toget rid of this part of the case in rather a whimsical manner. He saysthat it is impossible to believe that, by sending troops to escort thegates, Lord Ellenborough can have meant to pay any mark of respect toan idol. And why? Because, says the honourable gentleman, the Court ofDirectors had given positive orders that troops should not be employedto pay marks of respect to idols. Why, Sir, undoubtedly, if it is to betaken for granted that Lord Ellenborough is a perfect man, if all ourreasonings are to proceed on the supposition that he cannot do wrong, then I admit the force of the honourable gentleman's argument. But itseems to me a strange and dangerous thing to infer a man's innocencemerely from the flagrancy of his guilt. It is certain that the Homeauthorities ordered the Governor General not to employ the troops in theservice of a temple. It is certain that Lord Ellenborough employed thetroops to escort a trophy, an oblation, which he sent to the restoredtemple of Somnauth. Yes, the restored temple of Somnauth. Those are hislordship's words. They have given rise to some discussion, and seem notto be understood by everybody in the same sense. We all know that thistemple is an ruins. I am confident that Lord Ellenborough knew it to bein ruins, and that his intention was to rebuild it at the public charge. That is the obvious meaning of his words. But, as this meaning is somonstrous that nobody here can venture to defend it, his friends pretendthat he believed the temple to have been already restored, and that hehad no thought of being himself the restorer. How can I believe this?How can I believe that, when he issued this proclamation, he knewnothing about the state of the temple to which he proposed to make anoffering of such importance? He evidently knew that it had once been inruins; or he would not have called it the restored temple. Why am I tosuppose that he imagined it to have been rebuilt? He had people abouthim who knew it well, and who could have told him that it was in ruinsstill. To say that he was not aware that it was in ruins is to say thathe put forth his proclamation without taking the trouble to ask a singlequestion of those who were close at hand and were perfectly competent togive him information. Why, Sir, this defence is itself an accusation. Idefy the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, Idefy all human ingenuity, to get his lordship clear off from both thehorns of this dilemma. Either way, he richly deserves a parliamentarycensure. Either he published this proclamation in the recklessness ofutter ignorance without making the smallest inquiry; or else he, anEnglish and a Christian Governor, meant to build a temple to a heathengod at the public charge, in direct defiance of the commands of hisofficial superiors. Turn and twist the matter which way you will, youcan make nothing else of it. The stain is like the stain of Blue Beard'skey, in the nursery tale. As soon as you have scoured one side clean, the spot comes out on the other. 

So much for the first charge, the charge of disobedience. It is fullymade out: but it is not the heaviest charge which I bring against LordEllenborough. I charge him with having done that which, even if it hadnot been, as it was, strictly forbidden by the Home authorities, itwould still have been a high crime to do. He ought to have known, without any instructions from home, that it was his duty not to takepart in disputes among the false religions of the East; that it was hisduty, in his official character, to show no marked preference for any ofthose religions, and to offer no marked insult to any. But, Sir, he haspaid unseemly homage to one of those religions; he has grossly insultedanother; and he has selected as the object of his homage the very worstand most degrading of those religions, and as the object of his insultsthe best and purest of them. The homage was paid to Lingamism. Theinsult was offered to Mahometanism. Lingamism is not merely idolatry, but idolatry in its most pernicious form. The honourable gentleman theSecretary of the Board of Control seemed to think that he had achieveda great victory when he had made out that his lordship's devotions hadbeen paid, not to Vishnu, but to Siva. Sir, Vishnu is the preservingDeity of the Hindoo Mythology; Siva is the destroying Deity; and, as faras I have any preference for one of your Governor General's gods overanother, I confess that my own tastes would lead me to prefer thepreserving to the destroying power. Yes, Sir; the temple of Somnauthwas sacred to Siva; and the honourable gentleman cannot but know by whatemblem Siva is represented, and with what rites he is adored. I will sayno more. The Governor General, Sir, is in some degree protected by thevery magnitude of his offence. I am ashamed to name those thingsto which he is not ashamed to pay public reverence. This god ofdestruction, whose images and whose worship it would be a violation ofdecency to describe, is selected as the object of homage. As the objectof insult is selected a religion which has borrowed much of its theologyand much of its morality from Christianity, a religion which in themidst of Polytheism teaches the unity of God, and, in the midst ofidolatry, strictly proscribes the worship of images. The duty of ourGovernment is, as I said, to take no part in the disputes betweenMahometans and idolaters. But, if our Government does take a part, therecannot be a doubt that Mahometanism is entitled to the preference. LordEllenborough is of a different opinion. He takes away the gates from aMahometan mosque, and solemnly offers them as a gift to a Pagan temple. Morally, this is a crime. Politically, it is a blunder. Nobody who knowsanything of the Mahometans of India can doubt that this affront to theirfaith will excite their fiercest indignation. Their susceptibility onsuch points is extreme. Some of the most serious disasters that haveever befallen us in India have been caused by that susceptibility. Remember what happened at Vellore in 1806, and more recently atBangalore. The mutiny of Vellore was caused by a slight shown to theMahometan turban; the mutiny of Bangalore, by disrespect said to havebeen shown to a Mahometan place of worship. If a Governor General hadbeen induced by his zeal for Christianity to offer any affront to amosque held in high veneration by Mussulmans, I should think that he hadbeen guilty of indiscretion such as proved him to be unfit for hispost. But to affront a mosque of peculiar dignity, not from zeal forChristianity, but for the sake of this loathsome god of destruction, isnothing short of madness. Some temporary popularity Lord Ellenboroughmay no doubt gain in some quarters. I hear, and I can well believe, thatsome bigoted Hindoos have hailed this proclamation with delight, andhave begun to entertain a hope that the British Government is about totake their worship under its peculiar protection. But how long will thathope last? I presume that the right honourable Baronet the First Lord ofthe Treasury does not mean to suffer India to be governed on Brahminicalprinciples. I presume that he will not allow the public revenue to beexpended in rebuilding temples, adorning idols, and hiring courtesans. I have no doubt that there is already on the way to India such anadmonition as will prevent Lord Ellenborough from persisting in thecourse on which he has entered. The consequence will be that theexultation of the Brahmins will end in mortification and anger. Seethen of what a complication of faults the Governor General is guilty. In order to curry favour with the Hindoos he has offered an inexpiableinsult to the Mahometans; and now, in order to quiet the English, heis forced to disappoint and disgust the Hindoos. But, apart from theirritating effect which these transactions must produce on every part ofthe native population, is it no evil to have this continual wavering andchanging? This is not the only case in which Lord Ellenborough has, withgreat pomp, announced intentions which he has not been able to carryinto effect. It is his Lordship's habit. He put forth a notificationthat his Durbar was to be honoured by the presence of Dost Mahomed. Then came a notification that Dost Mahomed would not make his appearancethere. In the proclamation which we are now considering his lordshipannounced to all the princes of India his resolution to set up thesegates at Somnauth. The gates, it is now universally admitted, willnot be set up there. All India will see that the Governor General haschanged his mind. The change may be imputed to mere fickleness andlevity. It may be imputed to the disapprobation with which his conducthas been regarded here. In either case he appears in a light in which itis much to be deplored that a Governor General should appear. 

So much for the serious side of this business; and now for the ludicrousside. Even in our mirth, however, there is sadness; for it is no lightthing that he who represents the British nation in India should be ajest to the people of India. We have sometimes sent them governors whomthey loved, and sometimes governors whom they feared; but they neverbefore had a governor at whom they laughed. Now, however, they laugh;and how can we blame them for laughing, when all Europe and all Americaare laughing too? You see, Sir, that the gentlemen opposite cannot keeptheir countenances. And no wonder. Was such a State paper ever seen inour language before? And what is the plea set up for all this bombast?Why, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Controlbrings down to the House some translations of Persian letters fromnative princes. Such letters, as everybody knows, are written in a mostabsurd and turgid style. The honourable gentleman forces us to heara good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if thesecretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes andhyperboles, Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sortof eloquence? The honourable gentleman might as well ask why LordEllenborough should not sit cross-legged, why he should not let hisbeard grow to his waist, why he should not wear a turban, why he shouldnot hang trinkets all about his person, why he should not ride aboutCalcutta on a horse jingling with bells and glittering with falsepearls. The native princes do these things; and why should not he? Why, Sir, simply because he is not a native prince, but an English GovernorGeneral. When the people of India see a Nabob or a Rajah in all hisgaudy finery, they bow to him with a certain respect. They know thatthe splendour of his garb indicates superior rank and wealth. But if SirCharles Metcalfe had so bedizened himself, they would have thoughtthat he was out of his wits. They are not such fools as the honourablegentleman takes them for. Simplicity is not their fashion. But theyunderstand and respect the simplicity of our fashions. Our plainclothing commands far more reverence than all the jewels which the mosttawdry Zemindar wears; and our plain language carries with it far moreweight than the florid diction of the most ingenious Persian scribe. Theplain language and the plain clothing are inseparably associated in theminds of our subjects with superior knowledge, with superior energy, with superior veracity, with all the high and commanding qualities whicherected, and which still uphold, our empire. Sir, if, as the speech ofthe honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control seems toindicate, Lord Ellenborough has adopted this style on principle, if itbe his lordship's deliberate intention to mimic, in his State papers, the Asiatic modes of thought and expression, that alone would be areason for recalling him. But the honourable gentlemen is mistaken inthinking that this proclamation is in the Oriental taste. It bears noresemblance to the very bad Oriental compositions which he has readto us, nor to any other Oriental compositions that I ever saw. It isneither English nor Indian. It is not original, however; and I will tellthe House where the Governor General found his models. He has apparentlybeen studying the rants of the French Jacobins during the period oftheir ascendency, the Carmagnoles of the Convention, the proclamationsissued by the Directory and its Proconsuls: and he has been seized witha desire to imitate those compositions. The pattern which he seems tohave especially proposed to himself is the rhodomontade in which it wasannounced that the modern Gauls were marching to Rome in order to avengethe fate of Dumnorix and Vercingetorex. Everybody remembers those linesin which revolutionary justice is described by Mr Canning:--

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

In the same spirit and in the same style our Governor General hasproclaimed his intention to retaliate on the Mussulmans beyond themountains the insults which their ancestors, eight hundred years ago, offered to the idolatry of the Hindoos. To do justice to the Jacobins, however, I must say that they had an excuse which was wanting to thenoble lord. The revolution had made almost as great a change in literarytastes as in political institutions. The old masters of French eloquencehad shared the fate of the old states and of the old parliaments. Thehighest posts in the administration were filled by persons who hadno experience of affairs, who in the general confusion had raisedthemselves by audacity and quickness of natural parts, uneducated men, or half educated men, who had no notion that the style in which they hadheard the heroes and villains of tragedies declaim on the stage wasnot the style of real warriors and statesmen. But was it for an Englishgentleman, a man of distinguished abilities and cultivated mind, a manwho had sate many years in parliament, and filled some of the highestposts in the State, to copy the productions of such a school?

But, it is said, what does it matter if the noble lord has writtena foolish rhapsody which is neither prose nor verse? Is affectedphraseology a subject for parliamentary censure? What great ruler can benamed who has not committed errors much more serious than the penning ofa few sentences of turgid nonsense? This, I admit, sounds plausible. It is quite true that very eminent men, Lord Somers, for example, SirRobert Walpole, Lord Chatham and his son, all committed faults which didmuch more harm than any fault of style can do. But I beg the House toobserve this, that an error which produces the most serious consequencesmay not necessarily prove that the man who has committed it is not avery wise man; and that, on the other hand, an error which directlyproduces no important consequences may prove the man who has committedit to be quite unfit for public trust. Walpole committed a ruinouserror when he yielded to the public cry for war with Spain. But, notwithstanding that error, he was an eminently wise man. Caligula, onthe other hand, when he marched his soldiers to the beach, made themfill their helmets with cockle-shells, and sent the shells to be placedin the Capitol as trophies of his conquests, did no great harm toanybody; but he surely proved that he was quite incapable of governingan empire. Mr Pitt's expedition to Quiberon was most ill judged, andended in defeat and disgrace. Yet Mr Pitt was a statesman of a very highorder. On the other hand, such ukases as those by which the EmperorPaul used to regulate the dress of the people of Petersburg, though theycaused much less misery than the slaughter at Quiberon, proved thatthe Emperor Paul could not safely be trusted with power over hisfellow-creatures. One day he forbade the wearing of pantaloons. Anotherday he forbade his subjects to comb their hair over their foreheads. Then he proscribed round hats. A young Englishman, the son of amerchant, thought to evade this decree by going about the city in ahunting cap. Then came out an edict which made it penal to wear on thehead a round thing such as the English merchant's son wore. Now, Sir, I say that, when I examine the substance of Lord Ellenborough'sproclamation, and consider all the consequences which that paper islikely to produce, I am forced to say that he has committed a gravemoral and political offence. When I examine the style, I see that hehas committed an act of eccentric folly, much of the same kind withCaligula's campaign against the cockles, and with the Emperor Paul'sukase against round hats. Consider what an extravagant selfconfidence, what a disdain for the examples of his great predecessors and for theopinions of the ablest and most experienced men who are now to be foundin the Indian services, this strange document indicates. Surely it mighthave occurred to Lord Ellenborough that, if this kind of eloquence hadbeen likely to produce a favourable impression on the minds of Asiatics, such Governors as Warren Hastings, Mr Elphinstone, Sir Thomas Munro, and Sir Charles Metcalfe, men who were as familiar with the language andmanners of the native population of India as any man here can bewith the language and manners of the French, would not have left thediscovery to be made by a new comer who did not know any Eastern tongue. Surely, too, it might have occurred to the noble lord that, before heput forth such a proclamation, he would do well to ask some person whoknew India intimately what the effect both on the Mahometans and Hindooswas likely to be. I firmly believe that the Governor General either didnot ask advice or acted in direct opposition to advice. Mr Maddock waswith his lordship as acting Secretary. Now I know enough of Mr Maddockto be quite certain that he never counselled the Governor General topublish such a paper. I will pawn my life that he either was nevercalled upon to give an opinion, or that he gave an opinion adverse tothe course which has been taken. No Governor General who was on goodterms with the civil service would have been, I may say, permitted toexpose himself thus. Lord William Bentinck and Lord Auckland were, to besure, the last men in the world to think of doing such a thing as this. But if either of those noble lords, at some unlucky moment when he wasnot quite himself, when his mind was thrown off the balance by the prideand delight of an extraordinary success, had proposed to put forth sucha proclamation, he would have been saved from committing so great amistake by the respectful but earnest remonstrances of those in whomhe placed confidence, and who were solicitous for his honour. From theappearance of this proclamation, therefore, I infer that the terms onwhich Lord Ellenborough is with the civil servants of the Company aresuch that those servants could not venture to offer him counsel when hemost needed it. 

For these reasons, Sir, I think the noble lord unfit for high publictrust. Let us, then, consider the nature of the public trust whichis now reposed in him. Are gentlemen aware that, even when he is atCalcutta, surrounded by his councillors, his single voice can carry anyresolution concerning the executive administration against them all?They can object: they can protest: they can record their opinionsin writing, and can require him to give in writing his reasons forpersisting in his own course: but they must then submit. On the mostimportant questions, on the question whether a war shall be declared, on the question whether a treaty shall be concluded, on the questionwhether the whole system of land revenue established in a great provinceshall be changed, his single vote weighs down the votes of all whosit at the Board with him. The right honourable Baronet opposite is apowerful minister, a more powerful minister than any that we have seenduring many years. But I will venture to say that his power over thepeople of England is nothing when compared with the power which theGovernor General possesses over the people of India. Such is LordEllenborough's power when he is with his council, and is to some extentheld in check. But where is he now? He has given his council the slip. He is alone. He has near him no person who is entitled and bound tooffer advice, asked or unasked: he asks no advice: and you cannot expectmen to outstep the strict line of their official duty by obtrudingadvice on a superior by whom it would be ungraciously received. Thedanger of having a rash and flighty Governor General is sufficientlyserious at the very best. But the danger of having such a GovernorGeneral up the country, eight or nine hundred miles from any person whohas a right to remonstrate with him, is fearful indeed. Interests sovast, that the most sober language in which they can be described soundshyperbolical, are entrusted to a single man; to a man who, whateverhis parts may be, and they are doubtless considerable, has shown anindiscretion and temerity almost beyond belief; to a man who has beenonly a few months in India; to a man who takes no counsel with those whoare well acquainted with India. 

I cannot sit down without addressing myself to those Directors of theEast India Company who are present. I exhort them to consider the heavyresponsibility which rests on them. They have the power to recall LordEllenborough; and I trust that they will not hesitate to exercise thatpower. This is the advice of one who has been their servant, who hasserved them loyally, and who is still sincerely anxious for their creditand for the welfare of the empire of which they are the guardians. Butif, from whatever cause, they are unwilling to recall the noble lord, then I implore them to take care that he be immediately ordered toreturn to Calcutta. Who can say what new freak we may hear of by thenext mail? I am quite confident that neither the Court of Directors norHer Majesty's Ministers can look forward to the arrival of that mailwithout great uneasiness. Therefore I say, send Lord Ellenborough backto Calcutta. There at least he will find persons who have a right toadvise him and to expostulate with him, and who will, I doubt not, havealso the spirit to do so. It is something that he will be forced torecord his reasons for what he does. It is something that he will beforced to hear reasons against his propositions. It is something that adelay, though only of twenty-four hours, will be interposed between thefirst conception of a wild scheme and the execution. I am afraid thatthese checks will not be sufficient to prevent much evil: but they arenot absolutely nugatory. I entreat the Directors to consider in whata position they will stand if, in consequence of their neglect, someserious calamity should befall the country which is confided to theircare. I will only say, in conclusion, that, if there be any use inhaving a Council of India, if it be not meant that the members ofCouncil should draw large salaries for doing nothing, if they are reallyappointed for the purpose of assisting and restraining the Governor, it is to the last degree absurd that their powers should be in abeyancewhen there is a Governor who, of all the Governors that ever Englandsent to the East, stands most in need both of assistance and ofrestraint. 

*****

THE STATE OF IRELAND. (FEBRUARY 19, 1844) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THEHOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 19TH OF FEBRUARY 1844. 

On the thirteenth of February 1844, Lord John Russell moved for aCommittee of the whole House to take into consideration the state ofIreland. After a discussion of nine nights the motion was rejected by324 votes to 225. On the fifth night of the debate the following Speechwas made. 

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

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

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

Secondly, I hold that for the state in which Ireland is Her Majesty'sMinisters are in a great measure accountable, and that they have notshown, either as legislators, or as administrators, that they arecapable of remedying the evils which they have caused. 

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

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

My first proposition, then, I take to be conceded. Ireland is in adangerous state. The question which remains to be considered is, whetherfor the state in which Ireland is Her Majesty's Ministers are to be heldaccountable. 

Now, Sir, I at once admit that the distempers of Ireland must in part beattributed to causes for which neither Her Majesty's present Ministersnor any public men now living can justly be held accountable. I will nottrouble the House with a long dissertation on those causes. But it isnecessary, I think, to take at least a rapid glance at them: and inorder to do so, Sir, we must go back to a period not only anterior tothe birth of the statesmen who are now arrayed against each other onthe right and left of your chair, but anterior to the birth even of thegreat parties of which those statesmen are the leaders; anterior to thedays when the names of Tory and Whig, of court party and country party, of cavalier and roundhead, came into use; anterior to the existenceof those Puritans to whom the honourable Member for Shrewsbury (MrDisraeli. ), in a very ingenious speech, ascribed all the calamities ofIreland. 

The primary cause is, no doubt, the manner in which Ireland becamesubject to the English crown. The annexation was effected by conquest, and by conquest of a peculiar kind. It was not a conquest such as wehave been accustomed to see in modern Europe. It was not a conquestlike that which united Artois and Franche Comte to France, or Silesiato Prussia. It was the conquest of a race by a race, such a conquest asthat which established the dominion of the Spaniard over the AmericanIndian, or of the Mahratta over the peasant of Guzerat or Tanjore. Ofall forms of tyranny, I believe that the worst is that of a nation overa nation. Populations separated by seas and mountain ridges may calleach other natural enemies, may wage long wars with each other, mayrecount with pride the victories which they have gained over each other, and point to the flags, the guns, the ships which they have won fromeach other. But no enmity that ever existed between such populationsapproaches in bitterness the mutual enmity felt by populations whichare locally intermingled, but which have never morally and politicallyamalgamated; and such were the Englishry and the Irishry. Yet it mighthave been hoped that the lapse of time and the progress of civilisationwould have effaced the distinction between the oppressors and theoppressed. Our island had suffered cruelly from the same evil. Here theSaxon had trampled on the Celt, the Dane on the Saxon, the Norman onCelt, Saxon, and Dane. Yet in the course of ages all the four races hadbeen fused together to form the great English people. A similar fusionwould probably have taken place in Ireland, but for the Reformation. TheEnglish settlers adopted the Protestant doctrines which were receivedin England. The Aborigines alone, among all the nations of the northof Europe, adhered to the ancient faith. Thus the line of demarcationbetween the two populations was deepened and widened. The old enmitywas reinforced by a new enmity stronger still. Then came those eventsto which the honourable Member for Shrewsbury referred. The spirit ofliberty in England was closely allied with the spirit of Puritanism, andwas mortally hostile to the Papacy. Such men as Hampden, Vane, Milton, Locke, though zealous generally for civil and spiritual freedom, yetheld that the Roman Catholic worship had no claim to toleration. On theother hand, all the four kings of the House of Stuart showed farmore favour to Roman Catholics than to any class of Protestantnonconformists. James the First at one time had some hopes of effectinga reconciliation with the Vatican. Charles the First entered into secretengagements to grant an indulgence to Roman Catholics. Charles theSecond was a concealed Roman Catholic. James the Second was an avowedRoman Catholic. Consequently, through the whole of the seventeenthcentury, the freedom of Ireland and the slavery of England meant thesame thing. The watchwords, the badges, the names, the places, the days, which in the mind of an Englishman were associated with deliverance, prosperity, national dignity, were in the mind of an Irishman associatedwith bondage, ruin, and degradation. The memory of William the Third, the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, are instances. I was muchstruck by a circumstance which occurred on a day which I have everyreason to remember with gratitude and pride, the day on which I had thehigh honour of being declared one of the first two members for the greatborough of Leeds. My chair was covered with orange ribands. The horseswhich drew it could hardly be seen for the profusion of orange-colouredfinery with which they were adorned. Orange cockades were in all thehats; orange favours at all the windows. And my supporters, I neednot say, were men who had, like myself, been zealous for Catholicemancipation. I could not help remarking that the badge seemed ratherincongruous. But I was told that the friends of Catholic emancipationin Yorkshire had always rallied under the orange banner, that orange wasthe colour of Sir George Savile, who brought in that bill which causedthe No Popery riots of 1780, and that the very chair in which I satewas the chair in which Lord Milton, now Earl Fitzwilliam, had triumphedafter the great victory which he won in 1807 over the No Popery party, then headed by the house of Harewood. I thought how different an effectthat procession would have produced at Limerick or Cork, with what howlsof rage and hatred the Roman Catholic population of those citieswould have pursued that orange flag which, to every Roman Catholic inYorkshire, was the memorial of contests maintained in favour of his owndearest rights. This circumstance, however slight, well illustratesthe singular contrast between the history of England and the history ofIreland. 

Well, Sir, twice during the seventeenth century the Irish rose upagainst the English colony. Twice they were completely put down; andtwice they were severely chastised. The first rebellion was crushed byOliver Cromwell; the second by William the Third. Those great men didnot use their victory exactly in the same way. The policy of Cromwellwas wise, and strong, and straightforward, and cruel. It was comprisedin one word, which, as Clarendon tells us, was often in the mouths ofthe Englishry of that time. That word was extirpation. The object ofCromwell was to make Ireland thoroughly Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Ifhe had lived twenty years longer he might perhaps have accomplished thatwork: but he died while it was incomplete; and it died with him. The policy of William, or to speak more correctly, of those whoseinclinations William was under the necessity of consulting, was lessable, less energetic, and, though more humane in seeming, perhaps notmore humane in reality. Extirpation was not attempted. The Irish RomanCatholics were permitted to live, to be fruitful, to replenish theearth: but they were doomed to be what the Helots were in Sparta, whatthe Greeks were under the Ottoman, what the blacks now are at New York. Every man of the subject caste was strictly excluded from public trust. Take what path he might in life, he was crossed at every step by somevexatious restriction. It was only by being obscure and inactive thathe could, on his native soil, be safe. If he aspired to be powerfuland honoured, he must begin by being an exile. If he pined for militaryglory, he might gain a cross or perhaps a Marshal's staff in thearmies of France or Austria. If his vocation was to politics, he mightdistinguish himself in the diplomacy of Italy or Spain. But at home hewas a mere Gibeonite, a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. The statutebook of Ireland was filled with enactments which furnish to the RomanCatholics but too good a ground for recriminating on us when we talkof the barbarities of Bonner and Gardiner; and the harshness of thoseodious laws was aggravated by a more odious administration. For, bad asthe legislators were, the magistrates were worse still. In those eviltimes originated that most unhappy hostility between landlord andtenant, which is one of the peculiar curses of Ireland. Oppression andturbulence reciprocally generated each other. The combination of rustictyrants was resisted by gangs of rustic banditti. Courts of law andjuries existed only for the benefit of the dominant sect. Those priestswho were revered by millions as their natural advisers and guardians, as the only authorised expositors of Christian truth, as the onlyauthorised dispensers of the Christian sacraments, were treated by thesquires and squireens of the ruling faction as no good-natured man wouldtreat the vilest beggar. In this manner a century passed away. Then camethe French Revolution and the great awakening of the mind of Europe. Itwould have been wonderful indeed if, when the happiest and most tranquilnations were agitated by vague discontents and vague hopes, Ireland hadremained at rest. Jacobinism, it is true, was not a very natural allyof the Roman Catholic religion. But common enmities produce strangecoalitions; and a strange coalition was formed. There was a third greatrising of the aboriginal population of the island against English andProtestant ascendency. That rising was put down by the sword; and itbecame the duty of those who were at the head of affairs to consider howthe victory should be used. 

I shall not be suspected of being partial to the memory of Mr Pitt. ButI cannot refuse to him the praise both of wisdom and of humanity, when Icompare the plan which he formed in that hour of triumph with the plansof those English rulers who had before him governed Ireland. Of MrPitt's plan the Union was a part, an excellent and an essential partindeed, but still only a part. We shall do great injustice both to hishead and to his heart, if we forget that he was permitted to carryinto effect only some unconnected portions of a comprehensive andwell-concerted scheme. He wished to blend, not only the parliaments, butthe nations, and to make the two islands one in interest and affection. With that view the Roman Catholic disabilities were to be removed: theRoman Catholic priests were to be placed in a comfortable and honourableposition; and measures were to be taken for the purpose of giving toRoman Catholics the benefits of liberal education. In truth, Mr Pitt'sopinions on those subjects had, to a great extent, been derived from amind even more powerful and capacious than his own, from the mind of MrBurke. If the authority of these two great men had prevailed, I believethat the Union with Ireland would now have been as secure, and asmuch beyond the reach of agitation, as the Union with Scotland. TheParliament in College Green would have been remembered as what it was, the most tyrannical, the most venal, the most unprincipled assemblythat ever sate on the face of this earth. I do not think that, by sayingthis, I can give offence to any gentleman from Ireland, however zealousfor Repeal he may be: for I only repeat the language of Wolfe Tone. Wolfe Tone said that he had seen more deliberative assemblies than mostmen; that he had seen the English Parliament, the American Congress, the French Council of Elders and Council of Five Hundred, the BatavianConvention; but that he had nowhere found anything like the baseness andimpudence of the scoundrels, as he called them, at Dublin. If Mr Pitt'swhole plan had been carried into execution, that infamous parliament, that scandal to the name of parliament, would have perished unregretted;and the last day of its existence would have been remembered by theRoman Catholics of Ireland as the first day of their civil and religiousliberty. The great boon which he would have conferred on them would havebeen gratefully received, because it could not have been ascribed tofear, because it would have been a boon bestowed by the powerful on theweak, by the victor on the vanquished. Unhappily, of all his projectsfor the benefit of Ireland the Union alone was carried into effect; andtherefore that Union was an Union only in name. The Irish found thatthey had parted with at least the name and show of independence, andthat for this sacrifice of national pride they were to receive nocompensation. The Union, which ought to have been associated in theirminds with freedom and justice, was associated only with disappointedhopes and forfeited pledges. Yet it was not even then too late. It wasnot too late in 1813. It was not too late in 1821. It was not too latein 1825. Yes: if, even in 1825, some men who then were, as they now are, high in the service of the crown, could have made up their minds todo what they were forced to do four years later, that great work ofconciliation which Mr Pitt had meditated might have been accomplished. The machinery of agitation was not yet fully organized: the Governmentwas under no strong pressure; and therefore concession might stillhave been received with thankfulness. That opportunity was suffered toescape; and it never returned. 

In 1829, at length, concessions were made, were made largely, were madewithout the conditions which Mr Pitt would undoubtedly have demanded, and to which, if demanded by Mr Pitt, the whole body of RomanCatholics would have eagerly assented. But those concessions were madereluctantly, made ungraciously, made under duress, made from the meredread of civil war. How then was it possible that they should producecontentment and repose? What could be the effect of that sudden andprofuse liberality following that long and obstinate resistance to themost reasonable demands, except to teach the Irishman that he couldobtain redress only by turbulence? Could he forget that he had been, during eight and twenty years, supplicating Parliament for justice, urging those unanswerable arguments which prove that the rights ofconscience ought to be held sacred, claiming the performance of promisesmade by ministers and princes, and that he had supplicated, argued, claimed the performance of promises in vain? Could he forget that twogenerations of the most profound thinkers, the most brilliant wits, themost eloquent orators, had written and spoken for him in vain? Could heforget that the greatest statesman who took his part had paid dear fortheir generosity? Mr Pitt endeavoured to redeem his pledge; and he wasdriven from office. Lord Grey and Lord Grenville endeavoured to do buta very small part of what Mr Pitt had thought right and expedient; andthey were driven from office. Mr Canning took the same side; and hisreward was to be worried to death by the party of which he was thebrightest ornament. At length, when he was gone, the Roman Catholicsbegan to look, not to cabinets and parliaments, but to themselves. Theydisplayed a formidable array of physical force, and yet kept within, just within, the limits of the law. The consequence was that, in twoyears, more than any prudent friend had ventured to demand for them wasgranted to them by their enemies. Yes; within two years after Mr Canninghad been laid in the transept near us, all that he would have done, andmore than he could have done, was done by his persecutors. How was itpossible that the whole Roman Catholic population of Ireland should nottake up the notion that from England, or at least from the party whichthen governed and which now governs England, nothing is to be gotby reason, by entreaty, by patient endurance, but everything byintimidation? That tardy repentance deserved no gratitude, and obtainednone. The whole machinery of agitation was complete and in perfectorder. The leaders had tasted the pleasures of popularity; the multitudehad tasted the pleasures of excitement. Both the demagogue and hisaudience felt a craving for the daily stimulant. Grievances enoughremained, God knows, to serve as pretexts for agitation: and the wholeconduct of the Government had led the sufferers to believe that byagitation alone could any grievance be removed. 

Such, Sir, is the history of the rise and progress of the disorders ofIreland. Misgovernment, lasting without interruption from the reignof Henry the Second to the reign of William the Fourth, has left us animmense mass of discontent, which will, no doubt, in ordinary times, make the task of any statesman whom the Queen may call to powersufficiently difficult. But though this be true, it is not less true, that the immediate causes of the extraordinary agitation which alarms usat this moment is to be found in the misconduct of Her Majesty's presentadvisers. For, Sir, though Ireland is always combustible, Ireland is notalways on fire. We must distinguish between the chronic complaints whichare to be attributed to remote causes, and the acute attack whichis brought on by recent imprudence. For though there is always apredisposition to disease in that unhappy society, the violent paroxysmscome only at intervals. I must own that I am indebted for some of myimagery to the right honourable Baronet the First Lord of the Treasury. When he sate on this bench, and was only a candidate for the great placewhich he now fills, he compared himself to a medical man at the bedsideof a patient. Continuing his metaphor, I may say that his prognosis, hisdiagnosis, his treatment, have all been wrong. I do not deny that thecase was difficult. The sufferer was of a very ill habit of body, andhad formerly suffered many things of many physicians, and, among others, I must say, of the right honourable Baronet himself. Still the maladyhad, a very short time ago, been got under, and kept under by thejudicious use of lenitives; and there was reason to hope that if thatsalutary regimen had been steadily followed, there would have beena speedy improvement in the general health. Unhappily, the new Statehygeist chose to apply irritants which have produced a succession ofconvulsive fits, each more violent than that which preceded it. To dropthe figure, it is impossible to doubt that Lord Melbourne's governmentwas popular with the great body of the Roman Catholics of Ireland. It isimpossible to doubt that the two Viceroys whom he sent to Ireland weremore loved and honoured by the Irish people than any Viceroys beforewhom the sword of state has ever been borne. Under the late Government, no doubt, the empire was threatened by many dangers; but, to whateverquarter the Ministers might look with uneasy apprehension, to Irelandthey could always look with confidence. When bad men raised disturbanceshere, when a Chartist rabble fired on the Queen's soldiers, numerousregiments could, without the smallest risk, be spared from Ireland. Whena rebellion broke out in one of our colonies, --a rebellion too which itmight have been expected that the Irish would regard with favour, for itwas a rebellion of Roman Catholics against Protestant rulers, --even thenIreland was true to the general interests of the empire, and troops weresent from Munster and Connaught to put down insurrection in Canada. Noperson will deny that if, in 1840, we had unhappily been forcedinto war, and if a hostile army had landed in Bantry Bay, the wholepopulation of Cork and Tipperary would have risen up to defend thethrone of Her Majesty, and would have offered to the invaders aresistance as determined as would have been offered by the men of Kentor Norfolk. And by what means was this salutary effect produced? Not bygreat legislative reforms: for, unfortunately, that Government, thoughit had the will, had not the power to carry such reforms against thesense of a strong minority in this House, and of a decided majorityof the Peers. No, Sir; this effect was produced merely by the wisdom, justice, and humanity with which the existing law, defective as it mightbe, was administered. The late Government, calumniated and thwarted atevery turn, contending against the whole influence of the EstablishedChurch, and of the great body of the nobility and landed gentry, yet didshow a disposition to act kindly and fairly towards Ireland, and did, tothe best of its power, treat Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. Ifwe had been as strong as our successors in parliamentary support, if wehad been able to induce the two Houses to follow in legislation the sameprinciples by which we were guided in administration, the Union withIreland would now have been as secure from the assaults of agitatorsas the Union with Scotland. But this was not to be. During six years anopposition, formidable in numbers, formidable in ability, selected asthe especial object of the fiercest and most pertinacious attacksthose very acts of the Government which had, after centuries of mutualanimosity, half reconciled the two islands. Those Lords Lieutenant who, in Ireland, were venerated as no preceding Lord Lieutenant had ever beenvenerated, were here reviled as no preceding Lord Lieutenant had everbeen reviled. Every action, every word which was applauded by the nationcommitted to their care, was here imputed to them as a crime. Everybill framed by the advisers of the Crown for the benefit of Ireland waseither rejected or mutilated. A few Roman Catholics of distinguishedmerit were appointed to situations which were indeed below their justclaims, but which were higher than any member of their Church had filledduring many generations. Two or three Roman Catholics were sworn ofthe Council; one took his seat at the Board of Treasury; another at theBoard of Admiralty. There was great joy in Ireland; and no wonder. What had been done was not much; but the ban had been taken off; theEmancipation Act, which had been little more than a dead letter, was atlength a reality. But in England all the underlings of the great Toryparty set up a howl of rage and hatred worthy of Lord George Gordon'sNo Popery mob. The right honourable Baronet now at the head of theTreasury, with his usual prudence, abstained from joining in the cry, and was content to listen to it, to enjoy it, and to profit by it. Butsome of those who ranked next to him among the chiefs of the opposition, did not imitate his politic reserve. One great man denounced the Irishas aliens. Another called them minions of Popery. Those teachers ofreligion to whom millions looked up with affection and reverence werecalled by the Protestant press demon priests and surpliced ruffians, andwere denounced from the Protestant pulpit as pontiffs of Baal, as falseprophets who were to be slain with the sword. We were reminded that aQueen of the chosen people had in the old time patronised the ministersof idolatry, and that her blood had been given to the dogs. Not contentwith throwing out or frittering down every law beneficial to Ireland, not content with censuring in severe terms every act of the executivegovernment which gave satisfaction in Ireland, you, yes you, who nowfill the great offices of state, assumed the offensive. From obstructionyou proceeded to aggression. You brought in a bill which you called aBill for the Registration of Electors in Ireland. We then told you thatit was a bill for the wholesale disfranchisement of the electorsof Ireland. We then proved incontrovertibly that, under pretence ofreforming the law of procedure, you were really altering the substantivelaw; that, by making it impossible for any man to vindicate his right tovote without trouble, expense, and loss of time, you were really takingaway the votes of tens of thousands. You denied all this then. You verycoolly admit it all now. Am I to believe that you did know it as wellin 1841 as in 1844? Has one new fact been brought to light? Has oneargument been discovered which was not, three or four years ago, urgedtwenty, thirty, forty times in this House? Why is it that you have, when in power, abstained from proposing that change in the mode ofregistration which, when you were out of power, you representedas indispensable? You excuse yourselves by saying that now theresponsibilities of office are upon you. In plain words, your trickhas served its purpose. Your object, --for I will do justice to yourpatriotism, --your object was not to ruin your country, but to get in;and you are in. Such public virtue deserved such a reward, a rewardwhich has turned out a punishment, a reward which ought to be, while theworld lasts, a warning to unscrupulous ambition. Many causes contributedto place you in your present situation. But the chief cause was, beyondall doubt, the prejudice which you excited amongst the English againstthe just and humane manner in which the late Ministers governed Ireland. In your impatience for office, you called up the devil of religiousintolerance, a devil more easily evoked than dismissed. He did yourwork; and he holds your bond. You once found him an useful slave: butyou have since found him a hard master. It was pleasant, no doubt, to beapplauded by high churchmen and low churchmen, by the Sheldonian Theatreand by Exeter Hall. It was pleasant to be described as the championsof the Protestant faith, as the men who stood up for the Gospel againstthat spurious liberality which made no distinction between truth andfalsehood. It was pleasant to hear your opponents called by everynickname that is to be found in the foul vocabulary of the ReverendHugh Mcneill. It was pleasant to hear that they were the allies ofAntichrist, that they were the servants of the man of sin, that theywere branded with the mark of the Beast. But when all this slanderand scurrility had raised you to power, when you found that you hadto manage millions of those who had been, year after year, constantlyinsulted and defamed by yourselves and your lacqueys, your hearts beganto fail you. Now you tell us that you have none but kind and respectfulfeelings towards the Irish Roman Catholics, that you wish to conciliatethem, that you wish to carry the Emancipation Act into full effect, that nothing would give you more pleasure than to place on the bench ofjustice a Roman Catholic lawyer of conservative politics, that nothingwould give you more pleasure than to place at the Board of Treasury, orat the Board of Admiralty, some Roman Catholic gentleman of conservativepolitics, distinguished by his talents for business or debate. Your onlyreason, you assure us, for not promoting Roman Catholics is that all theRoman Catholics are your enemies; and you ask whether any Minister canbe expected to promote his enemies. For my part I do not doubt that youwould willingly promote Roman Catholics: for, as I have said, I giveyou full credit for not wishing to do your country more harm than isnecessary for the purpose of turning out and keeping out the Whigs. I also fully admit that you cannot be blamed for not promoting yourenemies. But what I want to know is, how it happens that all the RomanCatholics in the United Kingdom are your enemies. Was such a thingever heard of before? Here are six or seven millions of people of allprofessions, of all trades, of all grades of rank, fortune, intellect, education. Begin with the premier Peer, the Earl Marshal of the realm, the chief of the Howards, the heir of the Mowbrays and Fitzalans, andgo down through earls, barons, baronets, lawyers, and merchants, to thevery poorest peasant that eats his potatoes without salt in Mayo; andall these millions to a man are arrayed against the Government. Howdo you explain this? Is there any natural connection between the RomanCatholic theology and the political theories held by Whigs and byreformers more democratical than the Whigs? Not only is there no naturalconnection, but there is a natural opposition. Of all Christian sectsthe Roman Catholic Church holds highest the authority of antiquity, oftradition, of immemorial usage. Her spirit is eminently conservative, nay, in the opinion of all Protestants, conservative to an unreasonableand pernicious extent. A man who has been taught from childhood toregard with horror all innovation in religion is surely less likely thananother man to be a bold innovator in politics. It is probable that azealous Roman Catholic, if there were no disturbing cause, would be aTory; and the Roman Catholics were all Tories till you persecuted theminto Whiggism and Radicalism. In the civil war, how many Roman Catholicswere there in Fairfax's army? I believe, not one. They were all underthe banner of Charles the First. When a reward of five thousand poundswas offered for Charles the Second alive or dead, when to concealhim was to run a most serious risk of the gallows, it was amongRoman Catholics that he found shelter. It has been the same in othercountries. When everything else in France was prostrate before theJacobins, the Roman Catholic peasantry of Brittany and Poitou stillstood up for the House of Bourbon. Against the gigantic power ofNapoleon, the Roman Catholic peasantry of the Tyrol maintained unaidedthe cause of the House of Hapsburg. It would be easy to multiplyexamples. And can we believe, in defiance of all reason and of allhistory, that, if the Roman Catholics of the United Kingdom had beentolerably well governed, they would not have been attached to theGovernment? In my opinion the Tories never committed so great an erroras when they scourged away and spurned away the Roman Catholics. MrBurke understood this well. The sentiment which, towards the closeof his life, held the entire possession of his mind, was a horror, --amorbid horror it at last became, --of Jacobinism, and of everything thatseemed to him to tend towards Jacobinism, and, like a great statesmanand philosopher, --for such he was even in his errors, --he perceived, andhe taught Mr Pitt to perceive, that, in the war against Jacobinism, theRoman Catholics were the natural allies of royalty and aristocracy. But the help of these allies was contumeliously rejected by thosepoliticians who make themselves ridiculous by carousing on Mr Pitt'sbirthday, while they abjure all Mr Pitt's principles. The consequenceis, as you are forced to own, that there is not in the whole kingdoma Roman Catholic of note who is your friend. Therefore, whatever yourinclinations may be, you must intrust power in Ireland to Protestants, to Ultra-Protestants, to men who, whether they belong to Orange lodgesor not, are in spirit Orangemen. Every appointment which you makeincreases the discontent of the Roman Catholics. The more discontentedthey are, the less you can venture to employ them. The way in whichyou treated them while you were in opposition has raised in them such adislike and distrust of you that you cannot carry the Emancipation Actinto effect, though, as you tell us, and as I believe, you sincerelydesire to do so. As respects the offices of which you dispose, that Actis null and void. Of all the boons which that Act purports to bestow onRoman Catholics they really enjoy only one, admission to Parliament: andthat they would not enjoy if you had been able three years ago to carryyour Irish Registration Bill. You have wounded national feeling: youhave wounded religious feeling: and the animosity which you have rousedshows itself in a hundred ways, some of which I abhor, some of which Ilament, but at none of which I can wonder. They are the natural effectsof insult and injury on quick and ill regulated sensibility. You, foryour own purposes, inflamed the public mind of England against Ireland;and you have no right to be surprised by finding that the public mindof Ireland is inflamed against England. You called a fourth part of thepeople of the United Kingdom aliens: and you must not blame them forfeeling and acting like aliens. You have filled every public departmentwith their enemies. What then could you expect but that they wouldset up against your Lord Lieutenant and your official hierarchy a morepowerful chief and a more powerful organization of their own? Theyremember, and it would be strange indeed if they had forgotten, whatunder the same chief, and by a similar organization, they extorted fromyou in 1829; and they are determined to try whether you are bolder andmore obstinate now than then. 

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

Your executive administration through the whole recess has been one longblunder. The way in which your Lord Lieutenant and his advisers actedabout the Clontarf meeting would alone justify a severe vote of censure. The noble lord, the Secretary for the Colonies (Lord Stanley. ), has toldus that the Government did all that was possible to caution the peopleagainst attending that meeting, and that it would be unreasonable tocensure men for not performing impossibilities. Now, Sir, the ministersthemselves acknowledge that, as early as the morning of the Friday whichpreceded the day fixed for the meeting, the Lord Lieutenant determinedto put forth a proclamation against the meeting. Yet the proclamationwas not published in Dublin and the suburbs till after nightfall onSaturday. The meeting was fixed for the Sunday morning. Will anyperson have the hardihood to assert that it was impossible to have aproclamation drawn up, printed and circulated, in twenty-four hours, nayin six hours? It is idle to talk of the necessity of weighing well thewords of such a document. The Lord Lieutenant should have weighed wellthe value of the lives of his royal mistress's subjects. Had he done so, there can be no doubt that the proclamation might have been placarded onevery wall in and near Dublin early in the forenoon of the Saturday. Thenegligence of the Government would probably have caused the loss of manylives but for the interposition of the man whom you are persecuting. Fortune stood your friend; and he stood your friend; and thus aslaughter more terrible than that which took place twenty-five years agoat Manchester was averted. 

But you were incorrigible. No sooner had you, by strange good luck, got out of one scrape, than you made haste to get into another, out ofwhich, as far as I can see, you have no chance of escape. You institutedthe most unwise, the most unfortunate of all state prosecutions. Youseem not to have at all known what you were doing. It appears never tohave occurred to you that there was any difference between a criminalproceeding which was certain to fix the attention of the whole civilisedworld and an ordinary qui tam action for a penalty. The evidence wassuch and the law such that you were likely to get a verdict and ajudgment; and that was enough for you. Now, Sir, in such a case as this, the probability of getting the verdict and the judgment is only a part, and a very small part, of what a statesman ought to consider. Before youdetermined to bring the most able, the most powerful, the most popularof your opponents to the bar as a criminal, on account of the manner inwhich he had opposed you, you ought to have asked yourselves whetherthe decision which you expected to obtain from the tribunals would beratified by the voice of your own country, of foreign countries, ofposterity; whether the general opinion of mankind might not be that, though you were legally in the right, you were morally in the wrong. Itwas no common person that you were bent on punishing. About that personI feel, I own, considerable difficulty in saying anything. He is placedin a situation which would prevent generous enemies, which has preventedall the members of this House, with one ignominious exception, fromassailing him acrimoniously. I will try, in speaking of him, to pay therespect due to eminence and to misfortune without violating the respectdue to truth. I am convinced that the end which he is pursuing is notonly mischievous but unattainable: and some of the means which he hasstooped to use for the purpose of attaining that end I regard with deepdisapprobation. But it is impossible for me not to see that the placewhich he holds in the estimation of his countrymen is such as no popularleader in our history, I might perhaps say in the history of the world, has ever attained. Nor is the interest which he inspires confined toIreland or to the United Kingdom. Go where you will on the Continent:visit any coffee house: dine at any public table: embark on board of anysteamboat: enter any diligence, any railway carriage: from the momentthat your accent shows you to be an Englishman, the very first questionasked by your companions, be they what they may, physicians, advocates, merchants, manufacturers, or what we should call yeomen, is certain tobe "What will be done with Mr O'Connell?" Look over any file of Frenchjournals; and you will see what a space he occupies in the eyes of theFrench people. It is most unfortunate, but it is a truth, and atruth which we ought always to bear in mind, that there is among ourneighbours a feeling about the connection between England and Irelandnot very much unlike the feeling which exists here about the connectionbetween Russia and Poland. All the sympathies of all continentalpoliticians are with the Irish. We are regarded as the oppressors, andthe Irish as the oppressed. An insurrection in Ireland would have thegood wishes of a great majority of the people of Europe. And, Sir, it isnatural that it should be so. For the cause of the Irish repealers hastwo different aspects, a democratic aspect, and a Roman Catholic aspect, and is therefore regarded with favour by foreigners of almostevery shade of opinion. The extreme left, --to use the Frenchnomenclature, --wishes success to a great popular movement againstthe throne and the aristocracy. The extreme right wishes success to amovement headed by the bishops and priests of the true Church against aheretical government and a heretical hierarchy. The consequence is that, in a contest with Ireland, you will not have, out of this island, a single well-wisher in the world. I do not say this in order tointimidate you. But I do say that, on an occasion on which allChristendom was watching your conduct with an unfriendly and suspiciouseye, you should have carefully avoided everything that looked like foulplay. Unhappily you were too much bent on gaining the victory; and youhave gained a victory more disgraceful and disastrous than any defeat. Mr O'Connell has been convicted: but you cannot deny that he has beenwronged: you cannot deny that irregularities have been committed, orthat the effect of those irregularities has been to put you in a bettersituation and him in a worse situation than the law contemplated. It isadmitted that names which ought to have been in the jury-list were notthere. It is admitted that all, or almost all, the names which werewrongfully excluded were the names of Roman Catholics. As to thenumber of those who were wrongfully excluded there is some dispute. Anaffidavit has been produced which puts the number at twenty-seven. Theright honourable gentleman, the Recorder of Dublin, who of course putsthe number as low as he conscientiously can, admits twenty-four. But some gentlemen maintain that this irregularity, though doubtlessblamable, cannot have had any effect on the event of the trial. What, they ask, are twenty or twenty-seven names in seven hundred and twenty?Why, Sir, a very simple arithmetical calculation will show that theirregularity was of grave importance. Of the seven hundred and twenty, forty-eight were to be selected by lot, and then reduced by alternatestriking to twelve. The forty-eighth part of seven hundred and twenty isfifteen. If, therefore, there had been fifteen more Roman Catholics inthe jury-list, it would have been an even chance that there would havebeen one Roman Catholic more among the forty-eight. If there had beentwenty-seven more Roman Catholics in the list, it would have been almostan even chance that there would have been two Roman Catholics more amongthe forty-eight. Is it impossible, is it improbable that, but for thistrick or this blunder, --I will not now inquire which, --the result of thetrial might have been different? For, remember the power which the lawgives to a single juror. He can, if his mind is fully made up, preventa conviction. I heard murmurs when I used the word trick. Am I notjustified in feeling a doubt which it is quite evident that Mr JusticePerrin feels? He is reported to have said, --and I take the report ofnewspapers favourable to the Government, --he is reported to have saidthat there had been great carelessness, great neglect of duty, thatthere were circumstances which raised grave suspicion, and that he wasnot prepared to say that the irregularity was accidental. The noble lordthe Secretary for the Colonies has admonished us to pay respect to thejudges. I am sure that I pay the greatest respect to everything thatfalls from Mr Justice Perrin. He must know much better than I, muchbetter than any Englishman, what artifices are likely to be employed byIrish functionaries for the purpose of packing a jury; and he tells usthat he is not satisfied that this irregularity was the effect of mereinadvertence. But, says the right honourable Baronet, the Secretary forthe Home Department, "I am not responsible for this irregularity. " Mosttrue: and nobody holds the right honourable Baronet responsible for it. But he goes on to say, "I lament this irregularity most sincerely: forI believe that it has raised a prejudice against the administration ofjustice. " Exactly so. That is just what I say. I say that a prejudicehas been created against the administration of justice. I say thata taint of suspicion has been thrown on the verdict which you haveobtained. And I ask whether it is right and decent in you to availyourselves of a verdict on which such a taint has been thrown? The onlywise, the only honourable course open to you was to say, "A mistake hasbeen committed: that mistake has given us an unfair advantage; and ofthat advantage we will not make use. " Unhappily, the time when you mighthave taken this course, and might thus to a great extent have repairedyour former errors, has been suffered to elapse. 

Well, you had forty-eight names taken by lot from this mutilatedjury-list: and then came the striking. You struck out all the RomanCatholic names: and you give us your reasons for striking out thesenames, reasons which I do not think it worth while to examine. The realquestion which you should have considered was this: Can a great issuebetween two hostile religions, --for such the issue was, --be tried in amanner above all suspicion by a jury composed exclusively of men of oneof those religions? I know that in striking out the Roman Catholicsyou did nothing that was not according to technical rules. But my greatcharge against you is that you have looked on this whole case in atechnical point of view, that you have been attorneys when you shouldhave been statesmen. The letter of the law was doubtless with you; butnot the noble spirit of the law. The jury de medietate linguae is ofimmemorial antiquity among us. Suppose that a Dutch sailor at Wapping isaccused of stabbing an Englishman in a brawl. The fate of the culprit isdecided by a mixed body, by six Englishmen and six Dutchmen. Such werethe securities which the wisdom and justice of our ancestors gave toaliens. You are ready enough to call Mr O'Connell an alien when itserves your purposes to do so. You are ready enough to inflict on theIrish Roman Catholic all the evils of alienage. But the one privilege, the one advantage of alienage, you deny him. In a case which of allcases most require a jury de medietate, in a case which sprang out ofthe mutual hostility of races and sects, you pack a jury all of onerace and all of one sect. Why, if you were determined to go on with thisunhappy prosecution, not have a common jury? There was no difficultyin having such a jury; and among the jurors might have been somerespectable Roman Catholics who were not members of the RepealAssociation. A verdict of Not Guilty from such a jury would have doneyou infinitely less harm than the verdict of Guilty which you havesucceeded in obtaining. Yes, you have obtained a verdict of Guilty;but you have obtained that verdict from twelve men brought together byillegal means, and selected in such a manner that their decision caninspire no confidence. You have obtained that verdict by the help of aChief Justice of whose charge I can hardly trust myself to speak. To dohim right, however, I will say that his charge was not, as it has beencalled, unprecedented; for it bears a very close resemblance to somecharges which may be found in the state trials of the reign of Charlesthe Second. However, with this jury-list, with this jury, with thisjudge, you have a verdict. And what have you gained by it? Have youpacified Ireland? No doubt there is just at the present moment anapparent tranquillity; but it is a tranquillity more alarming thanturbulence. The Irish will be quiet till you begin to put the sentenceof imprisonment into execution, because, feeling the deepest interest inthe fate of their persecuted Tribune, they will do nothing that can beprejudicial to him. But will they be quiet when the door of a gaol hasbeen closed on him? Is it possible to believe that an agitator, whomthey adored while his agitation was a source of profit to him, will losehis hold on their affections by being a martyr in what they consider astheir cause? If I, who am strongly attached to the Union, who believethat the Repeal of the Union would be fatal to the empire, and who thinkMr O'Connell's conduct highly reprehensible, cannot conscientiously saythat he has had a fair trial, if the prosecutors themselves are forcedto own that things have happened which have excited a prejudice againstthe verdict and the judgment, what must be the feelings of the people ofIreland, who believe not merely that he is guiltless, but that he is thebest friend that they ever had? He will no longer be able to haranguethem: but his wrongs will stir their blood more than his eloquence everdid; nor will he in confinement be able to exercise that influence whichhas so often restrained them, even in their most excited mood, fromproceeding to acts of violence. 

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

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

About the much agitated question of land tenure you acknowledge thatyou have at present nothing to propose. We are to have a report, but youcannot tell us when. 

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

Several gentlemen opposite have spoken of the religious discord which isthe curse of Ireland in language which does them honour; and I am onlysorry that we are not to have their votes as well as their speeches. But from the Treasury bench we have heard nothing but this, that theEstablished Church is there, and that there it must and shall remain. Asto the speech of the noble lord the Secretary for the Colonies, reallywhen we hear such a pitiable defence of a great institution from aman of such eminent abilities, what inference can we draw but that theinstitution is altogether indefensible? The noble lord tells us that theRoman Catholics, in 1757, when they were asking to be relieved from thepenal laws, and in 1792, when they were asking to be relieved from civildisabilities, professed to be quite willing that the Established Churchshould retain its endowments. What is it to us, Sir, whether they did ornot? If you can prove this Church to be a good institution, of courseit ought to be maintained. But do you mean to say that a bad institutionought to be maintained because some people who have been many years intheir graves said that they did not complain of it? What if the RomanCatholics of the present generation hold a different language onthis subject from the Roman Catholics of the last generation? Is thisinconsistency, which appears to shock the noble lord, anything but thenatural and inevitable progress of all reform? People who are oppressed, and who have no hope of obtaining entire justice, beg to be relievedfrom the most galling part of what they suffer. They assure theoppressor that if he will only relax a little of his severity they shallbe quite content; and perhaps, at the time, they believe that they shallbe content. But are expressions of this sort, are mere supplicationsuttered under duress, to estop every person who utters them, and allhis posterity to the end of time, from asking for entire justice? Am Idebarred from trying to recover property of which I have been robbed, because, when the robber's pistol was at my breast, I begged him to takeeverything that I had and to spare my life? The noble lord knowswell that, while the slave trade existed, the great men who exertedthemselves to put an end to that trade disclaimed all thought ofemancipating the negroes. In those days, Mr Pitt, Mr Fox, LordGrenville, Lord Grey, and even my dear and honoured friend of whom I cannever speak without emotion, Mr Wilberforce, always said that it was acalumny to accuse them of intending to liberate the black population ofthe sugar islands. In 1807 the present Duke of Northumberland, thenLord Percy, in the generous enthusiasm of youth, rose to propose inthis House the abolition of slavery. Mr Wilberforce interposed, nay, Ibelieve, almost pulled Lord Percy down. Nevertheless in 1833 thenoble lord the Secretary for the Colonies brought in a bill to abolishslavery. Suppose that when he resumed his seat, after making that mosteloquent speech in which he explained his plan to us, some West Indianplanter had risen, and had said that in 1792, in 1796, in 1807, all theleading philanthropists had solemnly declared that they had no intentionof emancipating the negroes; would not the noble lord have answered thatnothing that had been said by anybody in 1792 or 1807 could bind us notto do what was right in 1833?

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

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

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

And now, Sir, I must stop. I have said enough to justify the vote whichI shall give in favour of the motion of my noble friend. I have shown, unless I deceive myself, that the extraordinary disorders which nowalarm us in Ireland have been produced by the fatal policy of theGovernment. I have shown that the mode in which the Government is nowdealing with those disorders is far more likely to inflame than to allaythem. While this system lasts, Ireland can never be tranquil; and tillIreland is tranquil, England can never hold her proper place among thenations of the world. To the dignity, to the strength, to the safety ofthis great country, internal peace is indispensably necessary. In everynegotiation, whether with France on the right of search, or with Americaon the line of boundary, the fact that Ireland is discontented isuppermost in the minds of the diplomatists on both sides, making therepresentative of the British Crown timorous, and making his adversarybold. And no wonder. This is indeed a great and splendid empire, wellprovided with the means both of annoyance and of defence. England can domany things which are beyond the power of any other nation in the world. She has dictated peace to China. She rules Caffraria and Australasia. She could again sweep from the ocean all commerce but her own. She couldagain blockade every port from the Baltic to the Adriatic. She is ableto guard her vast Indian dominions against all hostility by land orsea. But in this gigantic body there is one vulnerable spot near to theheart. At that spot forty-six years ago a blow was aimed which narrowlymissed, and which, if it had not missed, might have been deadly. Thegovernment and the legislature, each in its own sphere, is deeplyresponsible for the continuance of a state of things which is fraughtwith danger to the State. From my share of that responsibility I shallclear myself by the vote which I am about to give; and I trust that thenumber and the respectability of those in whose company I shall go intothe lobby will be such as to convince the Roman Catholics of Irelandthat they need not yet relinquish all hope of obtaining relief from thewisdom and justice of an Imperial Parliament. 

*****

DISSENTERS' CHAPELS BILL. (JUNE 6, 1844) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSEOF COMMONS ON THE 6TH OF JUNE 1844. 

An attempt having been made to deprive certain dissenting congregationsof property which they had long enjoyed, on the ground that they did nothold the same religious opinions that had been held by the purchasersfrom whom they derived their title to that property, the Government ofSir Robert Peel brought in a bill fixing a time of limitation in suchcases. The time fixed was twenty-five years. 

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

The second reading was carried by 307 votes to 117. 

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

I was very desirous, Sir, to catch your eye, not because I was sopresumptuous as to hope that I should be able to add much to thepowerful and luminous argument of the honourable and learned gentlemanwho has, to our great joy, again appeared among us to-night; but becauseI thought it desirable that, at an early period in the debate, someperson whose seat is on this side of the House, some person stronglyopposed to the policy of the present Government, should say, what Inow say with all my heart, that this is a bill highly honourable tothe Government, a bill framed on the soundest principles, and evidentlyintroduced from the best and purest motives. This praise is a tributedue to Her Majesty's Ministers; and I have great pleasure in paying it. 

I have great pleasure also in bearing my testimony to the humanity, themoderation, and the decorum with which my honourable friend the Memberfor the University of Oxford has expressed his sentiments. I mustparticularly applaud the resolution which he announced, and to which hestrictly adhered, of treating this question as a question of meum andtuum, and not as a question of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. With him it ispossible to reason. But how am I to reason with the honourable Memberfor Kent, who has made a speech without one fact, one argument, oneshadow of an argument, a speech made up of nothing but vituperation? Igrieve to say that the same bitterness of theological animosity whichcharacterised that speech may be discerned in too many of the petitionswith which, as he boasts, our table has been heaped day after day. Thehonourable Member complains that those petitions have not been treatedwith proper respect. Sir, they have been treated with much more respectthan they deserved. He asks why we are to suppose that the petitionersare not competent to form a judgment on this question? My answer is, that they have certified their incompetence under their own hands. Theyhave, with scarcely one exception, treated this question as a questionof divinity, though it is purely a question of property: and when I seemen treat a question of property as if it were a question of divinity, Iam certain that, however numerous they may be, their opinion is entitledto no consideration. If the persons whom this bill is meant to relieveare orthodox, that is no reason for our plundering anybody else inorder to enrich them. If they are heretics, that is no reason for ourplundering them in order to enrich others. I should not think myselfjustified in supporting this bill, if I could not with truth declarethat, whatever sect had been in possession of these chapels, my conductwould have been precisely the same. I have no peculiar sympathy withUnitarians. If these people, instead of being Unitarians, had been RomanCatholics, or Wesleyan Methodists, or General Baptists, or ParticularBaptists, or members of the Old Secession Church of Scotland, or membersof the Free Church of Scotland, I should speak as I now speak, and voteas I now mean to vote. 

Sir, the whole dispute is about the second clause of this bill. I canhardly conceive that any gentleman will vote against the bill on accountof the error in the marginal note on the third clause. To the firstclause my honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxfordsaid, if I understood him rightly, that he had no objection; and indeeda man of his integrity and benevolence could hardly say less afterlistening to the lucid and powerful argument of the Attorney General. Itis therefore on the second clause that the whole question turns. 

The second clause, Sir, rests on a principle simple, well-known, andmost important to the welfare of all classes of the community. Thatprinciple is this, that prescription is a good title to property, thatthere ought to be a time of limitation, after which a possessor, in whatever way his possession may have originated, must not bedispossessed. Till very lately, Sir, I could not have imagined that, in any assembly of reasonable, civilised, of educated men, it could benecessary for me to stand up in defence of that principle. I should havethought it as much a waste of the public time to make a speech on sucha subject as to make a speech against burning witches, against tryingwrits of right by wager of battle, or against requiring a culprit toprove his innocence by walking over red-hot ploughshares. But I findthat I was in error. Certain sages, lately assembled in conclave atExeter Hall, have done me the honour to communicate to me the fruits oftheir profound meditations on the science of legislation. They have, it seems, passed a resolution declaring that the principle, which I hadsupposed that no man out of Bedlam would ever question, is an untenableprinciple, and altogether unworthy of a British Parliament. They havebeen pleased to add, that the present Government cannot, without grossinconsistency, call on Parliament to pass a statute of limitation. And why? Will the House believe it? Because the present Government hasappointed two new Vice Chancellors. 

Really, Sir, I do not know whether the opponents of this bill shinemore as logicians or as jurists. Standing here as the advocate ofprescription, I ought not to forget that prescriptive right of talkingnonsense which gentlemen who stand on the platform of Exeter Hall areundoubtedly entitled to claim. But, though I recognise the right, Icannot but think that it may be abused, and that it has been abused onthe present occasion. One thing at least is clear, that, if Exeter Hallbe in the right, all the masters of political philosophy, all the greatlegislators, all the systems of law by which men are and have beengoverned in all civilised countries, from the earliest times, must bein the wrong. How indeed can any society prosper, or even exist, withoutthe aid of this untenable principle, this principle unworthy of aBritish legislature? This principle was found in the Athenian law. Thisprinciple was found in the Roman law. This principle was found in thelaws of all those nations of which the jurisprudence was derived fromRome. This principle was found in the law administered by the Parliamentof Paris; and, when that Parliament and the law which it administeredhad been swept away by the revolution, this principle reappeared inthe Code Napoleon. Go westward, and you find this principle recognisedbeyond the Mississippi. Go eastward, and you find it recognised beyondthe Indus, in countries which never heard the name of Justinian, incountries to which no translation of the Pandects ever found its way. Look into our own laws, and you will see that the principle, which isnow designated as unworthy of Parliament, has guided Parliament eversince Parliament existed. Our first statute of limitation was enactedat Merton, by men some of whom had borne a part in extorting the GreatCharter and the Forest Charter from King John. From that time to thisit has been the study of a succession of great lawyers and statesmen tomake the limitation more and more stringent. The Crown and the Churchindeed were long exempted from the general rule. But experience fullyproved that every such exemption was an evil; and a remedy was at lastapplied. Sir George Savile, the model of English country gentlemen, wasthe author of the Act which barred the claims of the Crown. That eminentmagistrate, the late Lord Tenterden, was the author of the Act whichbarred the claims of the Church. Now, Sir, how is it possible to believethat the Barons, whose seals are upon our Great Charter, wouldhave perfectly agreed with the great jurists who framed the Code ofJustinian, with the great jurists who framed the Code of Napoleon, withthe most learned English lawyers of the nineteenth century, and with thePundits of Benares, unless there had been some strong and clear reasonwhich necessarily led men of sense in every age and country to the sameconclusion? Nor is it difficult to see what the reason was. For it isevident that the principle which silly and ignorant fanatics have calleduntenable is essential to the institution of property, and that, if youtake away that principle, you will produce evils resembling those whichwould be produced by a general confiscation. Imagine what would followif the maxims of Exeter Hall were introduced into Westminster Hall. Imagine a state of things in which one of us should be liable to be suedon a bill of exchange indorsed by his grandfather in 1760. Imagine aman possessed of an estate and manor house which had descended to himthrough ten or twelve generations of ancestors, and yet liable to beejected because some flaw had been detected in a deed executed threehundred years ago, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. Why, Sir, shouldwe not all cry out that it would be better to live under the rule ofa Turkish Pasha than under such a system. Is it not plain that theenforcing of an obsolete right is the inflicting of a wrong? Is itnot plain that, but for our statutes of limitation, a lawsuit would bemerely a grave, methodical robbery? I am ashamed to argue a point soclear. 

And if this be the general rule, why should the case which we arenow considering be an exception to that rule? I have done my bestto understand why. I have read much bad oratory, and many foolishpetitions. I have heard with attention the reasons of my honourablefriend the Member for the University of Oxford; and I should have heardthe reasons of the honourable Member for Kent, if there had been any tohear. Every argument by which my honourable friend the Member for theUniversity of Oxford tried to convince us that this case is an exceptionto the general rule, will be found on examination to be an argumentagainst the general rule itself. He says that the possession which wepropose to sanction was originally a wrongful possession. Why, Sir, allthe statutes of limitation that ever were made sanction possession whichwas originally wrongful. It is for the protection of possessors who arenot in condition to prove that their possession was originally rightfulthat statutes of limitation are passed. Then my honourable friendsays that this is an ex post facto law. Why, Sir, so are all our greatstatutes of limitation. Look at the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235;at the Statute of Westminster, passed in 1275; at the Statute of Jamesthe First, passed in 1623; at Sir George Savile's Act, passed in thelast century; at Lord Tenterden's Act, passed in our own time. Every oneof those Acts was retrospective. Every one of them barred claims arisingout of past transactions. Nor was any objection ever raised to whatwas so evidently just and wise, till bigotry and chicanery formed thatdisgraceful league against which we are now contending. But, it is said, it is unreasonable to grant a boon to men because they have been manyyears doing wrong. The length of the time during which they have enjoyedproperty not rightfully their own, is an aggravation of the injury whichthey have committed, and is so far from being a reason for letting themenjoy that property for ever, that it is rather a reason for compellingthem to make prompt restitution. With this childish sophistry thepetitions on our table are filled. Is it possible that any man can beso dull as not to perceive that, if this be a reason, it is a reasonagainst all our statutes of limitation? I do a greater wrong to mytailor if I withhold payment of his bill during six years than if Iwithhold payment only during two years. Yet the law says that at theend of two years he may bring an action and force me to pay him withinterest, but that after the lapse of six years he cannot force me topay him at all. It is much harder that a family should be kept out ofits hereditary estate during five generations than during five days. But if you are kept out of your estate five days you have your action ofejectment; and, after the lapse of five generations, you have no remedy. I say, therefore, with confidence, that every argument which has beenurged against this bill is an argument against the great principle ofprescription. I go further, and I say that, if there be any case which, in an especial manner, calls for the application of the principle ofprescription, this is that case. For the Unitarian congregations havelaid out so much on these little spots of ground that it is impossibleto take the soil from them without taking from them property which is ofmuch greater value than the mere soil, and which is indisputably theirown. This is not the case of a possessor who has been during many years, receiving great emoluments from land to which he had not a good title. It is the case of a possessor who has, from resources which wereundoubtedly his own, expended on the land much more than it wasoriginally worth. Even in the former case, it has been the policy of allwise lawgivers to fix a time of limitation. A fortiori, therefore, thereought to be a time of limitation in the latter case. 

And here, Sir, I cannot help asking gentlemen to compare the petitionsfor this bill with the petitions against it. Never was there such acontrast. The petitions against the bill are filled with cant, rant, scolding, scraps of bad sermons. The petitions in favour of the billset forth in the simplest manner great practical grievances. Take, forinstance, the case of Cirencester. The meeting house there was built in1730. It is certain that the Unitarian doctrines were taught there asearly as 1742. That was only twelve years after the chapel had beenfounded. Many of the original subscribers must have been living. Manyof the present congregation are lineal descendants of the originalsubscribers. Large sums have from time to time been laid out inrepairing, enlarging, and embellishing the edifice; and yet there arepeople who think it just and reasonable that this congregation should, after the lapse of more than a century, be turned out. At Norwich, again, a great dissenting meeting house was opened in 1688. It is noteasy to say how soon Anti-Trinitarian doctrines were taught there. Thechange of sentiment in the congregation seems to have been gradual: butit is quite certain that, in 1754, ninety years ago, both pastor andflock were decidedly Unitarian. Round the chapel is a cemetery filledwith the monuments of eminent Unitarians. Attached to the chapel are aschoolhouse and a library, built and fitted up by Unitarians. And nowthe occupants find that their title is disputed. They cannot venture tobuild; they cannot venture to repair; and they are anxiously awaitingour decision. I do not know that I have cited the strongest cases. Iam giving you the ordinary history of these edifices. Go to Manchester. Unitarianism has been taught there at least seventy years in a chapelon which the Unitarians have expended large sums. Go to Leeds. Fourthousand pounds have been subscribed for the repairing of the Unitarianchapel there, the chapel where, near eighty years ago, Priestly, thegreat Doctor of the sect, officiated. But these four thousand pounds arelying idle. Not a pew can be repaired till it is known whether this billwill become law. Go to Maidstone. There Unitarian doctrines have beentaught during at least seventy years; and seven hundred pounds haverecently been laid out by the congregation in repairing the chapel. Go to Exeter. It matters not where you go. But go to Exeter. ThereUnitarian doctrines have been preached more than eighty years; and twothousand pounds have been laid out on the chapel. It is the sameat Coventry, at Bath, at Yarmouth, everywhere. And will a BritishParliament rob the possessors of these buildings? I can use no otherword. How should we feel if it were proposed to deprive any other classof men of land held during so long a time, and improved at so large acost? And, if this property should be transferred to those who covet it, what would they gain in comparison with what the present occupants wouldlose? The pulpit of Priestley, the pulpit of Lardner, are objectsof reverence to congregations which hold the tenets of Priestley andLardner. To the intruders those pulpits will be nothing; nay, worse thannothing; memorials of heresiarchs. Within these chapels and all aroundthem are the tablets which the pious affection of four generationshas placed over the remains of dear mothers and sisters, wives anddaughters, of eloquent preachers, of learned theological writers. Tothe Unitarian, the building which contains these memorials is a hallowedbuilding. To the intruder it is of no more value than any other roomin which he can find a bench to sit on and a roof to cover him. If, therefore, we throw out this bill, we do not merely rob one set ofpeople in order to make a present to another set. That would be badenough. But we rob the Unitarians of that which they regard as a mostprecious treasure; of that which is endeared to them by the strongestreligious and the strongest domestic associations; of that which cannotbe wrenched from them without inflicting on them the bitterest pain andhumiliation. To the Trinitarians we give that which can to them be oflittle or no value except as a trophy of a most inglorious victory wonin a most unjust war. 

But, Sir, an imputation of fraud has been thrown on the Unitarians;not, indeed, here, but in many other places, and in one place of whichI would always wish to speak with respect. The Unitarians, it hasbeen said, knew that the original founders of these chapels wereTrinitarians; and to use, for the purpose of propagating Unitariandoctrine, a building erected for the purpose of propagating Trinitariandoctrine was grossly dishonest. One very eminent person (The Bishopof London. ) has gone so far as to maintain that the Unitarians cannotpretend to any prescription of more than sixty-three years; and heproves his point thus:--Till the year 1779, he says, no dissentingteacher was within the protection of the Toleration Act unless hesubscribed those articles of the Church of England which affirmthe Athanasian doctrine. It is evident that no honest Unitarian cansubscribe those articles. The inference is, that the persons whopreached in these chapels down to the year 1779 must have been eitherTrinitarians or rogues. Now, Sir, I believe that they were neitherTrinitarians nor rogues; and I cannot help suspecting that the greatprelate who brought this charge against them is not so well read in thehistory of the nonconformist sects as in the history of that Church ofwhich he is an ornament. The truth is that, long before the year 1779, the clause of the Toleration Act which required dissenting ministersto subscribe thirty-five or thirty-six of our thirty-nine articleshad almost become obsolete. Indeed, that clause had never been rigidlyenforced. From the very first there were some dissenting ministers whorefused to subscribe, and yet continued to preach. Calany was one; andhe was not molested. And if this could be done in the year in which theToleration Act passed, we may easily believe that, at a later period, the law would not have been very strictly observed. New brooms, asthe vulgar proverb tells us, sweep clean; and no statute is so rigidlyenforced as a statute just made. But, Sir, so long ago as the year 1711, the provisions of the Toleration Act on this subject were modified. Inthat year the Whigs, in order to humour Lord Nottingham, with whomthey had coalesced against Lord Oxford, consented to let the OccasionalConformity Bill pass; but they insisted on inserting in the bill aclause which was meant to propitiate the dissenters. By this clauseit was enacted that, if an information were laid against a dissentingminister for having omitted to subscribe the articles, the defendantmight, by subscribing at any stage of the proceedings anterior tothe judgment, defeat the information, and throw all the costs on theinformer. The House will easily believe that, when such was the state ofthe law, informers were not numerous. Indeed, during the discussions of1773, it was distinctly affirmed, both in Parliament and in manifestoesput forth by the dissenting body, that the majority of nonconformistministers then living had never subscribed. All arguments, therefore, grounded on the insincerity which has been rashly imputed to theUnitarians of former generations, fall at once to the ground. 

But, it is said, the persons who, in the reigns of James the Second, ofWilliam the Third, and of Anne, first established these chapels, heldthe doctrine of the Trinity; and therefore, when, at a later period, thepreachers and congregations departed from the doctrine of the Trinity, they ought to have departed from the chapels too. The honourable andlearned gentleman, the Attorney General, has refuted this argument soably that he has scarcely left anything for me to say about it. It iswell-known that the change which, soon after the Revolution, began totake place in the opinions of a section of the old Puritan body, was agradual, an almost imperceptible change. The principle of the EnglishPresbyterians was to have no confession of faith and no form of prayer. Their trust deeds contained no accurate theological definitions. Nonsubscription was in truth the very bond which held them together. What, then, could be more natural than that, Sunday by Sunday, the sermons should have become less and less like those of the oldCalvinistic divines, that the doctrine of the Trinity should have beenless and less frequently mentioned, that at last it should have ceasedto be mentioned, and that thus, in the course of years, preachers andhearers should, by insensible degrees, have become first Arians, then, perhaps, Socinians. I know that this explanation has been treatedwith disdain by people profoundly ignorant of the history of Englishnonconformity. I see that my right honourable friend near me (Mr FoxMaule. ) does not assent to it. Will he permit me to refer him to ananalogous case with which he cannot but be well acquainted? No personin the House is more versed than he in the ecclesiastical history ofScotland; and he will, I am sure, admit that some of the doctrines nowprofessed by the Scotch sects which sprang from the secessions of 1733and 1760 are such as the seceders of 1733 and the seceders of 1760 wouldhave regarded with horror. I have talked with some of the ablest, mostlearned, and most pious of the Scotch dissenters of our time; and theyall fully admitted that they held more than one opinion which theirpredecessors would have considered as impious. Take the question of theconnection between Church and State. The seceders of 1733 thought thatthe connection ought to be much closer than it is. They blamed thelegislature for tolerating heresy. They maintained that the Solemnleague and covenant was still binding on the kingdom. They consideredit as a national sin that the validity of the Solemn League and Covenantwas not recognised at the time of the Revolution. When George Whitfieldwent to Scotland, though they approved of his Calvinistic opinions, andthough they justly admired that natural eloquence which he possessed inso wonderful a degree, they would hold no communion with him because hewould not subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant. Is that the doctrineof their successors? Are the Scotch dissenters now averse to toleration?Are they not zealous for the voluntary system? Is it not their constantcry that it is not the business of the civil magistrate to encourage anyreligion, false or true? Does any Bishop now abhor the Solemn Leagueand Covenant more than they? Here is an instance in which numerouscongregations have, retaining their identity, passed gradually from oneopinion to another opinion. And would it be just, would it be decent inme, to impute dishonesty to them on that account? My right honourablefriend may be of opinion that the question touching the connectionbetween the Church and State is not a vital question. But was that theopinion of the divines who drew up the Secession Testimony? He wellknows that in their view a man who denied that it was the duty of thegovernment to defend religious truth with the civil sword was as much aheretic as a man who denied the doctrine of the Trinity. 

Again, Sir, take the case of the Wesleyan Methodists. They are zealousagainst this bill. They think it monstrous that a chapel originallybuilt for people holding one set of doctrines should be occupied bypeople holding a different set of doctrines. I would advise them toconsider whether they cannot find in the history of their own bodyreasons for being a little more indulgent. What were the opinions ofthat great and good man, their founder, on the question whether men notepiscopally ordained could lawfully administer the Eucharist? He toldhis followers that lay administration was a sin which he never couldtolerate. Those were the very words which he used; and I believe that, during his lifetime, the Eucharist never was administered by laymenin any place of worship which was under his control. After his death, however, the feeling in favour of lay administration became strong andgeneral among his disciples. The Conference yielded to that feeling. Theconsequence is that now, in every chapel which belonged to Wesley, thosewho glory in the name of Wesleyans commit, every Sacrament Sunday, whatWesley declared to be a sin which he would never tolerate. And yet thesevery persons are not ashamed to tell us in loud and angry tones that itis fraud, downright fraud, in a congregation which has departed from itsoriginal doctrines to retain its original endowments. I believe, Sir, that, if you refuse to pass this bill, the Courts of Law will soon haveto decide some knotty questions which, as yet, the Methodists littledream of. 

It has, I own, given me great pain to observe the unfair and acrimoniousmanner in which too many of the Protestant nonconformists haveopposed this bill. The opposition of the Established Church has beencomparatively mild and moderate; and yet from the Established Church wehad less right to expect mildness and moderation. It is certainlynot right, but it is very natural, that a church, ancient and richlyendowed, closely connected with the Crown and the aristocracy, powerfulin parliament, dominant in the universities, should sometimes forgetwhat is due to poorer and humbler Christian societies. But when I heara cry for what is nothing less than persecution set up by men who havebeen, over and over again within my own memory, forced to invoke intheir own defence the principles of toleration, I cannot but feelastonishment mingled with indignation. And what above all excites bothmy astonishment and my indignation is this, that the most noisy amongthe noisy opponents of the bill which we are considering are somesectaries who are at this very moment calling on us to pass anotherbill of just the same kind for their own benefit. I speak of those IrishPresbyterians who are asking for an ex post facto law to confirm theirmarriages. See how exact the parallel is between the case of thosemarriages and the case of these chapels. The Irish Presbyterians havegone on marrying according to their own forms during a long course ofyears. The Unitarians have gone on occupying, improving, embellishingcertain property during a long course of years. In neither case did anydoubt as to the right arise in the most honest, in the most scrupulousmind. At length, about the same time, both the validity of thePresbyterian marriages and the validity of the title by which theUnitarians held their chapels were disputed. The two questions camebefore the tribunals. The tribunals, with great reluctance, with greatpain, pronounced that, neither in the case of the marriages nor in thecase of the chapels, can prescription be set up against the letterof the law. In both cases there is a just claim to relief such as thelegislature alone can afford. In both the legislature is willing togrant that relief. But this will not satisfy the orthodox Presbyterian. He demands with equal vehemence two things, that he shall be relieved, and that nobody else shall be relieved. In the same breath he tells usthat it would be most iniquitous not to pass a retrospective law for hisbenefit, and that it would be most iniquitous to pass a retrospectivelaw for the benefit of his fellow sufferers. I never was more amusedthan by reading, the other day, a speech made by a person of great noteamong the Irish Presbyterians on the subject of these marriages. "Is itto be endured, " he says, "that the mummies of old and forgotten laws areto be dug up and unswathed for the annoyance of dissenters?" And yet afew hours later, this eloquent orator is himself hard at work in diggingup and unswathing another set of mummies for the annoyance of anotherset of dissenters. I should like to know how he and such as he wouldlook if we Churchmen were to assume the same tone towards them whichthey think it becoming to assume towards the Unitarian body; if we wereto say, "You and those whom you would oppress are alike out of our pale. If they are heretics in your opinion, you are schismatics in ours. Sinceyou insist on the letter of the law against them, we will insist on theletter of the law against you. You object to ex post facto statutes; andyou shall have none. You think it reasonable that men should, in spiteof a prescription of eighty or ninety years, be turned out of a chapelbuilt with their own money, and a cemetery where their own kindred lie, because the original title was not strictly legal. We think it equallyreasonable that those contracts which you have imagined to be marriages, but which are now adjudged not to be legal marriages, should betreated as nullities. " I wish from my soul that some of these orthodoxdissenters would recollect that the doctrine which they defend with somuch zeal against the Unitarians is not the whole sum and substance ofChristianity, and that there is a text about doing unto others as youwould that they should do unto you. 

To any intelligent man who has no object except to do justice, theTrinitarian dissenter and the Unitarian dissenter who are now asking usfor relief will appear to have exactly the same right to it. Thereis, however, I must own, one distinction between the two cases. TheTrinitarian dissenters are a strong body, and especially strong amongthe electors of towns. They are of great weight in the State. Some ofus may probably, by voting to-night against their wishes, endangerour seats in this House. The Unitarians, on the other hand, are few innumber. Their creed is unpopular. Their friendship is likely to injurea public man more than their enmity. If therefore there be among usany person of a nature at once tyrannical and cowardly, any person whodelights in persecution, but is restrained by fear from persecutingpowerful sects, now is his time. He never can have a better opportunityof gratifying his malevolence without risk of retribution. But, for mypart, I long ago espoused the cause of religious liberty, not becausethat cause was popular, but because it was just; and I am not disposedto abandon the principles to which I have been true through my wholelife in deference to a passing clamour. The day may come, and may comesoon, when those who are now loudest in raising that clamour may againbe, as they have formerly been, suppliants for justice. When that daycomes I will try to prevent others from oppressing them, as I now tryto prevent them from oppressing others. In the meantime I shallcontend against their intolerance with the same spirit with which I mayhereafter have to contend for their rights. 

*****

THE SUGAR DUTIES. (FEBRUARY 26, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OFCOMMONS ON THE 26TH OF FEBRUARY, 1845. 

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

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

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

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

Now, Sir, I deny the existence of the moral obligation pleaded by theGovernment. I deny that we are under any moral obligation to turn ourfiscal code into a penal code, for the purpose of correcting vices inthe institutions of independent states. I say that, if you suppose sucha moral obligation to be in force, the supposition leads to consequencesfrom which every one of us would recoil, to consequences which wouldthrow the whole commercial and political system of the world intoconfusion. I say that, if such a moral obligation exists, our financiallegislation is one mass of injustice and inhumanity. And I say moreespecially that, if such a moral obligation exists, the right honourableBaronet's Budget is one mass of injustice and inhumanity. 

Observe, I am not disputing the paramount authority of moralobligation. I am not setting up pecuniary considerations againstmoral considerations. I know that it would be not only a wicked buta shortsighted policy, to aim at making a nation like this great andprosperous by violating the laws of justice. To those laws, enjoin whatthey may, I am prepared to submit. But I will not palter with them: Iwill not cite them to-day in order to serve one turn, and quibble themaway to-morrow in order to serve another. I will not have two standardsof right; one to be applied when I wish to protect a favourite interestat the public cost; and another to be applied when I wish to replenishthe Exchequer, and to give an impulse to trade. I will not have twoweights or two measures. I will not blow hot and cold, play fast andloose, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Can the Government say asmuch? Are gentlemen opposite prepared to act in conformity with theirown principle? They need not look long for opportunities. The StatuteBook swarms with enactments directly opposed to the rule which theyprofess to respect. I will take a single instance from our existinglaws, and propound it to the gentlemen opposite as a test, if I must notsay of their sincerity, yet of their power of moral discrimination. Takethe article of tobacco. Not only do you admit the tobacco of the UnitedStates which is grown by slaves; not only do you admit the tobacco ofCuba which is grown by slaves, and by slaves, as you tell us, recentlyimported from Africa; but you actually interdict the free labourerof the United Kingdom from growing tobacco. You have long had in yourStatute Book laws prohibiting the cultivation of tobacco in England, andauthorising the Government to destroy all tobacco plantations except afew square yards, which are suffered to exist unmolested in botanicalgardens, for purposes of science. These laws did not extend to Ireland. The free peasantry of Ireland began to grow tobacco. The cultivationspread fast. Down came your legislation upon it; and now, if the Irishfreeman dares to engage in competition with the slaves of Virginia andHavannah, you exchequer him; you ruin him; you grub up his plantation. Here, then, we have a test by which we may try the consistency of thegentlemen opposite. I ask you, are you prepared, I do not say to excludethe slave grown tobacco, but to take away from slave grown tobacco themonopoly which you now give to it, and to permit the free labourer ofthe United Kingdom to enter into competition on equal terms, on anyterms, with the negro who works under the lash? I am confident thatthe three right honourable gentleman opposite, the First Lord of theTreasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the late President ofthe Board of Trade, will all with one voice answer "No. " And why not?"Because, " say they, "it will injure the revenue. True it is, " they willsay, "that the tobacco imported from abroad is grown by slaves, and byslaves many of whom have been recently carried across the Atlantic indefiance, not only of justice and humanity, but of law and treaty. Trueit is that the cultivators of the United Kingdom are freemen. But thenon the imported tobacco we are able to raise at the Custom House a dutyof six hundred per cent. , sometimes indeed of twelve hundred per cent. :and, if tobacco were grown here, it would be difficult to get an exciseduty of even a hundred per cent. We cannot submit to this loss ofrevenue; and therefore we must give a monopoly to the slaveholder, andmake it penal in the freeman to evade that monopoly. " You may beright; but, in the name of common sense, be consistent. If this moralobligation of which you talk so much be one which may with proprietyyield to fiscal considerations, let us have Brazilian sugars. If it beparamount to all fiscal considerations, let us at least have Britishsnuff and cigars. 

The present Ministers may indeed plead that they are not the authors ofthe laws which prohibit the cultivation of tobacco in Great Britainand Ireland. That is true. The present Government found those laws inexistence: and no doubt there is good sense in the Conservative doctrinethat many things which ought not to have been set up ought not, whenthey have been set up, to be hastily and rudely pulled down. But whatwill the right honourable Baronet urge in vindication of his own newbudget? He is not content with maintaining laws which he finds alreadyexisting in favour of produce grown by slaves. He introduces a crowdof new laws to the same effect. He comes down to the House with aproposition for entirely taking away the duties on the importation ofraw cotton. He glories in this scheme. He tells us that it is in strictaccordance with the soundest principles of legislation. He tells us thatit will be a blessing to the country. I agree with him, and I intendto vote with him. But how is all this cotton grown? Is it not grown byslaves? Again I say, you may be right; but, in the name of commonsense, be consistent. I saw, with no small amusement, a few days ago, aparagraph by one of the right honourable Baronet's eulogists, which wasto the following effect:--"Thus has this eminent statesman given to theEnglish labourer a large supply of a most important raw material, andhas manfully withstood those ravenous Whigs who wished to inundate ourcountry with sugar dyed in negro blood. " With what I should like toknow, is the right honourable Baronet's cotton dyed?

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

Then a new distinction is set up. The United States, it is said, haveslavery; but they have no slave trade. I deny that assertion. I say thatthe sugar and cotton of the United States are the fruits, not only ofslavery, but of the slave trade. And I say further that, if there be onthe surface of this earth a country which, before God and man, is moreaccountable than any other for the misery and degradation of theAfrican race, that country is not Brazil, the produce of which the righthonourable Baronet excludes, but the United States, the produce ofwhich he proposes to admit on more favourable terms than ever. I haveno pleasure in going into an argument of this nature. I do not conceivethat it is the duty of a member of the English Parliament to discussabuses which exist in other societies. Such discussion seldom tends toproduce any reform of such abuses, and has a direct tendency to woundnational pride, and to inflame national animosities. I would willinglyavoid this subject; but the right honourable Baronet leaves me nochoice. He turns this House into a Court of Judicature for the purposeof criticising and comparing the institutions of independent States. Hetells us that our Tariff is to be made an instrument for rewarding thejustice and humanity of some Foreign Governments, and for punishingthe barbarity of others. He binds up the dearest interests of myconstituents with questions with which otherwise I should, as a Memberof Parliament, have nothing to do. I would gladly keep silence on suchquestions. But it cannot be. The tradesmen and the professional menwhom I represent say to me, "Why are we to be loaded, certainly for someyears, probably for ever, with a tax, admitted by those who impose it tobe grievous, unequal, inquisitorial? Why are we to be loaded in time ofpeace with burdens heretofore reserved for the exigencies of war?" Thepaper manufacturer, the soap manufacturer, say, "Why, if the Income Taxis to be continued, are our important and suffering branches of industryto have no relief?" And the answer is, "Because Brazil does not behaveso well as the United States towards the negro race. " Can I then avoidinstituting a comparison? Am I not bound to bring to the test the truthof an assertion pregnant with consequences so momentous to those whohave sent me hither? I must speak out; and, if what I say gives offenceand produces inconvenience, for that offence and for that inconveniencethe Government is responsible. 

I affirm, then, that there exists in the United States a slave trade, not less odious or demoralising, nay, I do in my conscience believe, more odious and more demoralising than that which is carried on betweenAfrica and Brazil. North Carolina and Virginia are to Louisiana andAlabama what Congo is to Rio Janeiro. The slave States of the Union aredivided into two classes, the breeding States, where the human beasts ofburden increase and multiply and become strong for labour, and the sugarand cotton States to which those beasts of burden are sent to be workedto death. To what an extent the traffic in man is carried on we maylearn by comparing the census of 1830 with the census of 1840. NorthCarolina and Virginia are, as I have said, great breeding States. Duringthe ten years from 1830 to 1840 the slave population of North Carolinawas almost stationary. The slave population of Virginia positivelydecreased. Yet, both in North Carolina and Virginia propagation was, during those ten years, going on fast. The number of births among theslaves in those States exceeded by hundreds of thousands the number ofthe deaths. What then became of the surplus? Look to the returns fromthe Southern States, from the States whose produce the right honourableBaronet proposes to admit with reduced duty or with no duty at all; andyou will see. You will find that the increase in the breeding Stateswas barely sufficient to meet the demand of the consuming States. InLouisiana, for example, where we know that the negro population isworn down by cruel toil, and would not, if left to itself, keep up itsnumbers, there were, in 1830, one hundred and seven thousand slaves; in1840, one hundred and seventy thousand. In Alabama, the slave populationduring those ten years much more than doubled; it rose from one hundredand seventeen thousand to two hundred and fifty-three thousand. InMississippi it actually tripled. It rose from sixty-five thousand to onehundred and ninety-five thousand. So much for the extent of this slavetrade. And as to its nature, ask any Englishman who has ever travelledin the Southern States. Jobbers go about from plantation to plantationlooking out for proprietors who are not easy in their circumstances, and who are likely to sell cheap. A black boy is picked up here; a blackgirl there. The dearest ties of nature and of marriage are torn asunderas rudely as they were ever torn asunder by any slave captain on thecoast of Guinea. A gang of three or four hundred negroes is made up;and then these wretches, handcuffed, fettered, guarded by armed men, are driven southward, as you would drive, --or rather as you would notdrive, --a herd of oxen to Smithfield, that they may undergo the deadlylabour of the sugar mill near the mouth of the Mississippi. A veryfew years of that labour in that climate suffice to send the stoutestAfrican to his grave. But he can well be spared. While he is fastsinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are growing up asfast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which cruelty is making inLouisiana. God forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slavetrade in any form! But I do think this its worst form. Bad enough is itthat civilised men should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the worldwhere slavery exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and shouldcarry them away to labour in a distant land: bad enough! But that acivilised man, a baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of a freestate, a man frequenting a Christian church, should breed slaves forexportation, and, if the whole horrible truth must be told, should evenbeget slaves for exportation, should see children, sometimes his ownchildren, gambolling around him from infancy, should watch their growth, should become familiar with their faces, and should then sell them forfour or five hundred dollars a head, and send them to lead in a remotecountry a life which is a lingering death, a life about which the bestthing that can be said is that it is sure to be short; this does, I own, excite a horror exceeding even the horror excited by that slave tradewhich is the curse of the African coast. And mark: I am not speaking ofany rare case, of any instance of eccentric depravity. I am speaking ofa trade as regular as the trade in pigs between Dublin and Liverpool, oras the trade in coals between the Tyne and the Thames. 

There is another point to which I must advert. I have no wish toapologise for slavery as it exists in Brazil; but this I say, thatslavery, as it exists in Brazil, though a fearful evil, seems to me amuch less hopeless evil than slavery as it exists in the United States. In estimating the character of negro slavery we must never forget onemost important ingredient; an ingredient which was wanting to slavery asit was known to the Greeks and Romans; an ingredient which was wantingto slavery as it appeared in Europe during the middle ages; I mean theantipathy of colour. Where this antipathy exists in a high degree, it isdifficult to conceive how the white masters and the black labourers canever be mingled together, as the lords and villeins in many parts ofthe Old World have been, in one free community. Now this antipathy isnotoriously much stronger in the United States than in the Brazils. In the Brazils the free people of colour are numerous. They are notexcluded from honourable callings. You may find among them merchants, physicians, lawyers: many of them bear arms; some have been admitted toholy orders. Whoever knows what dignity, what sanctity, the Churchof Rome ascribes to the person of a priest, will at once perceive theimportant consequences which follow from this last circumstance. Itis by no means unusual to see a white penitent kneeling before thespiritual tribunal of a negro, confessing his sins to a negro, receivingabsolution from a negro. It is by no means unusual to see a negrodispensing the Eucharist to a circle of whites. I need not tell theHouse what emotions of amazement and of rage such a spectacle wouldexcite in Georgia or South Carolina. Fully admitting, therefore, as Ido, that Brazilian slavery is a horrible evil, I yet must say that, ifI were called upon to declare whether I think the chances of the Africanrace on the whole better in Brazil or in the United States, I should atonce answer that they are better in Brazil. I think it not improbablethat in eighty or a hundred years the black population of Brazil maybe free and happy. I see no reasonable prospect of such a change in theUnited States. 

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board ofTrade, has said much about that system of maritime police by which wehave attempted to sweep slave trading vessels from the great highway ofnations. Now what has been the conduct of Brazil, and what has been theconduct of the United States, as respects that system of police? Brazilhas come into the system; the United States have thrown every impedimentin the way of the system. What opinion Her Majesty's Ministers entertainrespecting the Right of Search we know from a letter of my Lord Aberdeenwhich has, within a few days, been laid on our table. I believe that Istate correctly the sense of that letter when I say that the noble Earlregards the Right of Search as an efficacious means, and as the onlyefficacious means, of preventing the maritime slave trade. He expressesmost serious doubts whether any substitute can be devised. I think thatthis check would be a most valuable one, if all nations would submitto it; and I applaud the humanity which has induced successive Britishadministrations to exert themselves for the purpose of obtaining theconcurrence of foreign Powers in so excellent a plan. Brazil consentedto admit the Right of Search; the United States refused, and by refusingdeprived the Right of Search of half its value. Not content withrefusing to admit the Right of Search, they even disputed the right ofvisit, a right which no impartial publicist in Europe will deny to bein strict conformity with the Law of Nations. Nor was this all. In everypart of the Continent of Europe the diplomatic agents of the Cabinet ofWashington have toiled to induce other nations to imitate the example ofthe United States. You cannot have forgotten General Cass's letter. Youcannot have forgotten the terms in which his Government communicated tohim its approbation of his conduct. You know as well as I do that, ifthe United States had submitted to the Right of Search, there would havebeen no outcry against that right in France. Nor do I much blame theFrench. It is but natural that, when one maritime Power makes it a pointof honour to refuse us this right, other maritime Powers should thinkthat they cannot, without degradation, take a different course. It isbut natural that a Frenchman, proud of his country, should ask why thetricolor is to be less respected then the stars and stripes. The righthonourable gentleman says that, if we assent to my noble friend'samendment, we shall no longer be able to maintain the Right of Search. Sir, he need not trouble himself about that right. It is already gone. We have agreed to negotiate on the subject with France. Everybody knowshow that negotiation will end. The French flag will be exempted fromsearch: Spain will instantly demand, if she has not already demanded, similar exemption; and you may as well let her have it with a goodgrace, and without wrangling. For a Right of Search, from which theflags of France and America are exempted, is not worth a dispute. The only system, therefore, which, in the opinion of Her Majesty'sMinisters, has yet been found efficacious for the prevention of themaritime slave trade, is in fact abandoned. And who is answerable forthis? The United States of America. The chief guilt even of the slavetrade between Africa and Brazil lies, not with the Government of Brazil, but with that of the United States. And yet the right honourable Baronetproposes to punish Brazil for the slave trade, and in the same breathproposes to show favour to the United States, because the United Statesare pure from the crime of slave trading. I thank the right honourablegentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, for reminding me ofMr Calhoun's letter. I could not have wished for a better illustrationof my argument. Let anybody who has read that letter say what is thecountry which, if we take on ourselves to avenge the wrongs of Africa, ought to be the first object of our indignation. The Government of theUnited States has placed itself on a bad eminence to which Brazil neveraspired, and which Brazil, even if aspiring to it, never could attain. The Government of the United States has formally declared itself thepatron, the champion of negro slavery all over the world, the evilgenius, the Arimanes of the African race, and seems to take pride inthis shameful and odious distinction. I well understand that an Americanstatesman may say, "Slavery is a horrible evil; but we were born to it, we see no way at present to rid ourselves of it: and we must endure itas we best may. " Good and enlightened men may hold such language;but such is not the language of the American Cabinet. That Cabinet isactuated by a propagandist spirit, and labours to spread servitude andbarbarism with an ardour such as no other Government ever showed inthe cause of freedom and civilisation. Nay more; the doctrine held atWashington is that this holy cause sanctifies the most unholy means. These zealots of slavery think themselves justified in snatching awayprovinces on the right hand and on the left, in defiance of publicfaith and international law, from neighbouring countries which havefree institutions, and this avowedly for the purpose of diffusing overa wider space the greatest curse that afflicts humanity. They putthemselves at the head of the slavedriving interest throughout theworld, just as Elizabeth put herself at the head of the Protestantinterest; and wherever their favourite institution is in danger, areready to stand by it as Elizabeth stood by the Dutch. This, then, I holdto be demonstrated, that of all societies now existing, the Republic ofthe United States is by far the most culpable as respects slavery andthe slave trade. 

Now then I come to the right honourable Baronet's Budget. He tells us, that he will not admit Brazilian sugar, because the Brazilian Governmenttolerates slavery and connives at the slave trade; and he tells us atthe same time, that he will admit the slave grown cotton and the slavegrown sugar of the United States. I am utterly at a loss to understandhow he can vindicate his consistency. He tells us that if we adopt mynoble friend's proposition, we shall give a stimulus to the slave tradebetween Africa and Brazil. Be it so. But is it not equally clear that, if we adopt the right honourable Baronet's own propositions, we shallgive a stimulus to the slave trade between Virginia and Louisiana? Ihave not the least doubt that, as soon as the contents of his Budgetare known on the other side of the Atlantic, the slave trade will becomemore active than it is at this moment; that the jobbers in human fleshand blood will be more busy than ever; that the droves of manaclednegroes, moving southward to their doom, will be more numerous onevery road. These will be the fruits of the right honourable Baronet'smeasure. Yet he tells us that this part of his Budget is framed on soundprinciples and will greatly benefit the country; and he tells us truth. I mean to vote with him; and I can perfectly, on my own principles, reconcile to my conscience the vote which I shall give. How the righthonourable Baronet can reconcile the course which he takes to hisconscience, I am at a loss to conceive, and am not a little curious toknow. No man is more capable than he of doing justice to any cause whichhe undertakes; and it would be most presumptuous in me to anticipate thedefence which he means to set up. But I hope that the House will sufferme, as one who feels deeply on this subject, now to explain thereasons which convince me that I ought to vote for the right honourableBaronet's propositions respecting the produce of the United States. Inexplaining those reasons, I at the same time explain the reasons whichinduce me to vote with my noble friend to-night. 

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

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

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

There are great evils connected with the factory system in this country. Some of those evils might, I am inclined to think, be removed ormitigated by legislation. On that point many of my friends differfrom me; but we all agree in thinking that it is the duty of a BritishLegislator to consider the subject attentively, and with a serious senseof responsibility. There are also great social evils in Russia. Thepeasants of that empire are in a state of servitude. The sovereign ofRussia is bound by the most solemn obligations to consider whether hecan do anything to improve the condition of that large portion of hissubjects. If we watch over our factory children, and he watches overhis peasants, much good may be done. But would any good be done ifthe Emperor of Russia and the British Parliament were to interchangefunctions; if he were to take under his patronage the weavers ofLancashire, if we were to take under our patronage the peasants of theVolga; if he were to say, "You shall send no cotton to Russia till youpass a ten Hours' Bill;" if we were to say, "You shall send no hemp ortallow to England till you emancipate your serfs?"

On these principles, Sir, which seem to me to be the principles of plaincommon sense, I can, without resorting to any casuistical subtilties, vindicate to my own conscience, and, I hope, to my country, the wholecourse which I have pursued with respect to slavery. When I first cameinto Parliament, slavery still existed in the British dominions. I had, as it was natural that I should have, a strong feeling on the subject. I exerted myself, according to my station and to the measure of myabilities, on the side of the oppressed. I shrank from no personalsacrifice in that cause. I do not mention this as matter of boast. Itwas no more than my duty. The right honourable gentleman, the Secretaryof State for the Home Department, knows that, in 1833, I disapprovedof one part of the measure which Lord Grey's Government proposed on thesubject of slavery. I was in office; and office was then as importantto me as it could be to any man. I put my resignation into the hands ofLord Spencer, and both spoke and voted against the Administration. To mysurprise, Lord Grey and Lord Spencer refused to accept my resignation, and I remained in office; but during some days I considered myself asout of the service of the Crown. I at the same time heartily joined inlaying a heavy burden on the country for the purpose of compensating theplanters. I acted thus, because, being a British Legislator, I thoughtmyself bound, at any cost to myself and to my constituents, to remove afoul stain from the British laws, and to redress the wrongs endured bypersons who, as British subjects, were placed under my guardianship. Butmy especial obligations in respect of negro slavery ceased when slaveryitself ceased in that part of the world for the welfare of which I, asa member of this House, was accountable. As for the blacks in the UnitedStates, I feel for them, God knows. But I am not their keeper. I do notstand in the same relation to the slaves of Louisiana and Alabama inwhich I formerly stood to the slaves of Demerara and Jamaica. I ambound, on the other hand, by the most solemn obligations, to promote theinterests of millions of my own countrymen, who are indeed by no meansin a state so miserable and degraded as that of the slaves in the UnitedStates, but who are toiling hard from sunrise to sunset in order toobtain a scanty subsistence; who are often scarcely able to procure thenecessaries of life; and whose lot would be alleviated if I could opennew markets to them, and free them from taxes which now press heavilyon their industry. I see clearly that, by excluding the produce of slavelabour from our ports, I should inflict great evil on my fellow-subjectsand constituents. But the good which, by taking such a course, I shoulddo to the negroes in the United States seems to me very problematical. That by admitting slave grown cotton and slave grown sugar we do, insome sense, encourage slavery and the Slave Trade, may be true. ButI doubt whether, by turning our fiscal code into a penal code forrestraining the cruelty of the American planters, we should not, onthe whole, injure the negroes rather than benefit them. No independentnation will endure to be told by another nation, "We are more virtuousthan you; we have sate in judgment on your institutions; we find themto be bad; and, as a punishment for your offences, we condemn you to payhigher duties at our Custom House than we demand from the rest of theworld. " Such language naturally excites the resentment of foreigners. I can make allowance for their susceptibility. For I myself sympathisewith them, I know that Ireland has been misgoverned; and I have done, and purpose to do, my best to redress her grievances. But when I take upa New York journal, and read there the rants of President Tyler's son, Ifeel so much disgusted by such insolent absurdity that I am for a momentinclined to deny that Ireland has any reason whatever to complain. Itseems to me that if ever slavery is peaceably extinguished in the UnitedStates, that great and happy change must be brought about by the effortsof those enlightened and respectable American citizens who hate slaveryas much as we hate it. Now I cannot help fearing that, if the BritishParliament were to proclaim itself the protector and avenger of theAmerican slave, the pride of those excellent persons would take thealarm. It might become a point of national honour with them to stand byan institution which they have hitherto regarded as a national disgrace. We should thus confer no benefit on the negro; and we should at the sametime inflict cruel suffering on our own countrymen. 

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

I have detained you too long, Sir; yet there is one point to which Imust refer; I mean the refining. Was such a distinction ever heard of?Is there anything like it in all Pascal's Dialogues with the old Jesuit?Not for the world are we to eat one ounce of Brazilian sugar. But weimport the accursed thing; we bond it; we employ our skill and machineryto render it more alluring to the eye and to the palate; we export itto Leghorn and Hamburg; we send it to all the coffee houses of Italyand Germany: we pocket a profit on all this; and then we put on aPharisaical air, and thank God that we are not like those wickedItalians and Germans who have no scruple about swallowing slave grownsugar. Surely this sophistry is worthy only of the worst class of falsewitnesses. "I perjure myself! Not for the world. I only kissed my thumb;I did not put my lips to the calf-skin. " I remember something very likethe right honourable Baronet's morality in a Spanish novel which Iread long ago. I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such atrifle; but the story is much to the purpose. A wandering lad, a sortof Gil Blas, is taken into the service of a rich old silversmith, a mostpious man, who is always telling his beads, who hears mass daily, and observes the feasts and fasts of the church with the utmostscrupulosity. The silversmith is always preaching honesty and piety. "Never, " he constantly repeats to his young assistant, "never touch whatis not your own; never take liberties with sacred things. " Sacrilege, asuniting theft with profaneness, is the sin of which he has the deepesthorror. One day, while he is lecturing after his usual fashion, anill-looking fellow comes into the shop with a sack under his arm. "Willyou buy these?" says the visitor, and produces from the sack some churchplate and a rich silver crucifix. "Buy them!" cries the pious man. "No, nor touch them; not for the world. I know where you got them. Wretchthat you are, have you no care for your soul?" "Well then, " says thethief, "if you will not buy them, will you melt them down for me?" "Meltthem down!" answers the silver smith, "that is quite another matter. "He takes the chalices and the crucifix with a pair of tongs; the silver, thus in bond, is dropped into the crucible, melted, and delivered to thethief, who lays down five pistoles and decamps with his booty. Theyoung servant stares at this strange scene. But the master verygravely resumes his lecture. "My son, " he says, "take warning by thatsacrilegious knave, and take example by me. Think what a load of guiltlies on his conscience. You will see him hanged before long. But as tome, you saw that I would not touch the stolen property. I keep thesetongs for such occasions. And thus I thrive in the fear of God, andmanage to turn an honest penny. " You talk of morality. What can be moreimmoral than to bring ridicule on the very name of morality, by drawingdistinctions where there are no differences? Is it not enough that thisdishonest casuistry has already poisoned our theology? Is it not enoughthat a set of quibbles has been devised, under cover of which a divinemay hold the worst doctrines of the Church of Rome, and may hold withthem the best benefice of the Church of England? Let us at least keepthe debates of this House free from the sophistry of Tract NumberNinety. 

And then the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Boardof Trade, wonders that other nations consider our abhorrence of slaveryand the Slave Trade as sheer hypocrisy. Why, Sir, how should it beotherwise? And, if the imputation annoys us, whom have we to thank forit? Numerous and malevolent as our detractors are, none of them was everso absurd as to charge us with hypocrisy because we took slave growntobacco and slave grown cotton, till the Government began to affectscruples about admitting slave grown sugar. Of course, as soon as ourMinisters ostentatiously announced to all the world that our fiscalsystem was framed on a new and sublime moral principle, everybodybegan to inquire whether we consistently adhered to that principle. Itrequired much less acuteness and much less malevolence than that of ourneighbours to discover that this hatred of slave grown produce was meregrimace. They see that we not only take tobacco produced by means ofslavery and of the Slave Trade, but that we positively interdict freemenin this country from growing tobacco. They see that we not only takecotton produced by means of slavery and of the Slave Trade, but that weare about to exempt this cotton from all duty. They see that we are atthis moment reducing the duty on the slave grown sugar of Louisiana. How can we expect them to believe that it is from a sense of justice andhumanity that we lay a prohibitory duty on the sugar of Brazil? I carelittle for the abuse which any foreign press or any foreign tribune maythrow on the Machiavelian policy of perfidious Albion. What gives mepain is, not that the charge of hypocrisy is made, but that I am unableto see how it is to be refuted. 

Yet one word more. The right honourable gentleman, the late Presidentof the Board of Trade, has quoted the opinions of two persons, highlydistinguished by the exertions which they made for the abolition ofslavery, my lamented friend, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and Sir StephenLushington. It is most true that those eminent persons did approve ofthe principle laid down by the right honourable Baronet opposite in1841. I think that they were in error; but in their error I am surethat they were sincere, and I firmly believe that they would have beenconsistent. They would have objected, no doubt, to my noble friend'samendment; but they would have objected equally to the right honourableBaronet's budget. It was not prudent, I think, in gentlemen oppositeto allude to those respectable names. The mention of those namesirresistibly carries the mind back to the days of the great struggle fornegro freedom. And it is but natural that we should ask where, duringthat struggle, were those who now profess such loathing for slave grownsugar? The three persons who are chiefly responsible for the financialand commercial policy of the present Government I take to be the righthonourable Baronet at the head of the Treasury, the right honourablegentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the right honourablegentleman the late President of the Board of Trade. Is there anythingin the past conduct of any one of the three which can lead me to believethat his sensibility to the evils of slavery is greater than mine? I amsure that the right honourable Baronet the first Lord of the Treasurywould think that I was speaking ironically if I were to compliment himon his zeal for the liberty of the negro race. Never once, during thewhole of the long and obstinate conflict which ended in the abolition ofslavery in our colonies, did he give one word, one sign of encouragementto those who suffered and laboured for the good cause. The whole weightof his great abilities and influence was in the other scale. I wellremember that, so late as 1833, he declared in this House that he couldgive his assent neither to the plan of immediate emancipation proposedby my noble friend who now represents Sunderland (Lord Howick. ), nor tothe plan of gradual emancipation proposed by Lord Grey's government. I well remember that he said, "I shall claim no credit hereafter onaccount of this bill; all that I desire is to be absolved from theresponsibility. " As to the other two right honourable gentlemen whomI have mentioned, they are West Indians; and their conduct was thatof West Indians. I do not wish to give them pain, or to throw anydisgraceful imputation on them. Personally I regard them with feelingsof goodwill and respect. I do not question their sincerity; but I knowthat the most honest men are but too prone to deceive themselves intothe belief that the path towards which they are impelled by their owninterests and passions is the path of duty. I am conscious that thismight be my own case; and I believe it to be theirs. As the righthonourable gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has left theHouse, I will only say that, with respect to the question of slavery, he acted after the fashion of the class to which he belonged. But as theright honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, is in his place, he must allow me to bring to his recollection the partwhich he took in the debates of 1833. He then said, "You raise a greatclamour about the cultivation of sugar. You say that it is a species ofindustry fatal to the health and life of the slave. I do not deny thatthere is some difference between the labour of a sugar plantation andthe labour of a cotton plantation, or a coffee plantation. But thedifference is not so great as you think. In marshy soils, the slaves whocultivate the sugar cane suffer severely. But in Barbadoes, where theair is good, they thrive and multiply. " He proceeded to say that, evenat the worst, the labour of a sugar plantation was not more unhealthythan some kinds of labour in which the manufacturers of England areemployed, and which nobody thinks of prohibiting. He particularlymentioned grinding. "See how grinding destroys the health, the sight, the life. Yet there is no outcry against grinding. " He went on to saythat the whole question ought to be left by Parliament to the WestIndian Legislature. [Mr Gladstone: "Really I never said so. You are notquoting me at all correctly. "] What, not about the sugar cultivation andthe grinding? [Mr Gladstone: "That is correct; but I never recommendedthat the question should be left to the West Indian Legislatures. "] Ihave quoted correctly. But since my right honourable friend disclaimsthe sentiment imputed to him by the reporters, I shall say no more aboutit. I have no doubt that he is quite right, and that what he said wasmisunderstood. What is undisputed is amply sufficient for my purpose. I see that the persons who now show so much zeal against slavery inforeign countries, are the same persons who formerly countenancedslavery in the British Colonies. I remember a time when they maintainedthat we were bound in justice to protect slave grown sugar against thecompetition of free grown sugar, and even of British free grown sugar. I now hear them calling on us to protect free grown sugar against thecompetition of slave grown sugar. I remember a time when they extenuatedas much as they could the evils of the sugar cultivation. I now hearthem exaggerating those evils. But, devious as their course has been, there is one clue by which I can easily track them through the wholemaze. Inconstant in everything else, they are constant in demandingprotection for the West Indian planter. While he employs slaves, theydo their best to apologise for the evils of slavery. As soon as he isforced to employ freemen, they begin to cry up the blessings of freedom. They go round the whole compass, and yet to one point they steadfastlyadhere: and that point is the interest of the West Indian proprietors. I have done, Sir; and I thank the House most sincerely for the patienceand indulgence with which I have been heard. I hope that I have atleast vindicated my own consistency. How Her Majesty's Ministers willvindicate their consistency, how they will show that their conduct hasat all times been guided by the same principles, or even that theirconduct at the present time is guided by any fixed principle at all, Iam unable to conjecture. 

*****

MAYNOOTH. (APRIL 14, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ONTHE 14TH OF APRIL, 1845. 

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

I do not mean, Sir, to follow the honourable gentleman who has just satedown into a discussion on an amendment which is not now before us. Whenmy honourable friend the Member for Sheffield shall think it expedientto make a motion on that important subject to which he has repeatedlycalled the attention of the House, I may, perhaps, ask to be heard. At present I shall content myself with explaining the reasons whichconvince me that it is my duty to vote for the second reading of thisbill; and I cannot, I think, better explain those reasons than bypassing in review, as rapidly as I can, the chief objections which havebeen made to the bill here and elsewhere. 

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

Now, Sir, of those three classes the first is evidently that whichtakes the most untenable ground. How any person can think that MaynoothCollege ought to be supported by public money, and yet can thinkthis bill too bad to be suffered to go into Committee, I do not wellunderstand. I am forced however to believe that there are many suchpersons. For I cannot but remember that the old annual vote attractedscarcely any notice; and I see that this bill has produced violentexcitement. I cannot but remember that the old annual vote used to passwith very few dissentients; and I see that great numbers of gentlemen, who never were among those dissentients, have crowded down to the Housein order to divide against this bill. It is indeed certain that a largeproportion, I believe a majority, of those members who cannot, asthey assure us, conscientiously support the plan proposed by the righthonourable Baronet at the head of the Government, would without thesmallest scruple have supported him if he had in this, as in formeryears, asked us to give nine thousand pounds for twelve months. So itis: yet I cannot help wondering that it should be so. For how canany human ingenuity turn a question between nine thousand pounds andtwenty-six thousand pounds, or between twelve months and an indefinitenumber of months, into a question of principle? Observe: I am not nowanswering those who maintain that nothing ought to be given out ofthe public purse to a corrupt church; nor am I now answering those whomaintain that nothing ought to be given out of the public purse toany church whatever. They, I admit, oppose this bill on principle. Iperfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of thezealous voluntary who says, "Whether the Roman Catholic Church teachestruth or error, she ought to have no assistance from the State. " I alsoperfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of thezealous Protestant who says, "The Roman Catholic Church teaches error, and therefore ought to have no assistance from the State. " But I cannotunderstand the reasoning of the man who says, "In spite of the errorsof the Roman Catholic Church, I think that she ought to have someassistance from the State; but I am bound to mark my abhorrence of hererrors by doling out to her a miserable pittance. Her tenets are soabsurd and noxious that I will pay the professor who teaches them wagesless than I should offer to my groom. Her rites are so superstitiousthat I will take care that they shall be performed in a chapel with aleaky roof and a dirty floor. By all means let us keep her a college, provided only that it be a shabby one. Let us support those who areintended to teach her doctrines and to administer her sacraments to thenext generation, provided only that every future priest shall cost usless than a foot soldier. Let us board her young theologians; but lettheir larder be so scantily supplied that they may be compelled to breakup before the regular vacation from mere want of food. Let us lodgethem; but let their lodging be one in which they may be packed like pigsin a stye, and be punished for their heterodoxy by feeling the snow andthe wind through the broken panes. " Is it possible to conceive anythingmore absurd or more disgraceful? Can anything be clearer than this, thatwhatever it is lawful to do it is lawful to do well? If it be right thatwe should keep up this college at all, it must be right that we shouldkeep it up respectably. Our national dignity is concerned. For thisinstitution, whether good or bad, is, beyond all dispute, a veryimportant institution. Its office is to form the character of those whoare to form the character of millions. Whether we ought to extend anypatronage to such an institution is a question about which wise andhonest men may differ. But that, as we do extend our patronage to suchan institution, our patronage ought to be worthy of the object, andworthy of the greatness of our country, is a proposition from which I amastonished to hear any person dissent. 

It is, I must say, with a peculiarly bad grace that one of the membersfor the University to which I have the honour to belong (The HonourableCharles Law, Member for the University of Cambridge. ), a gentleman whonever thought himself bound to say a word or to give a vote againstthe grant of nine thousand pounds, now vehemently opposes the grantof twenty-six thousand pounds as exorbitant. When I consider howmunificently the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford are endowed, and withwhat pomp religion and learning are there surrounded; when I call tomind the long streets of palaces, the towers and oriels, the venerablecloisters, the trim gardens, the organs, the altar pieces, the solemnlight of the stained windows, the libraries, the museums, the galleriesof painting and sculpture; when I call to mind also the physicalcomforts which are provided both for instructors and for pupils; when Ireflect that the very sizars and servitors are far better lodged and fedthan those students who are to be, a few years hence, the priests andbishops of the Irish people; when I think of the spacious and statelymansions of the heads of houses, of the commodious chambers of thefellows and scholars, of the refectories, the combination rooms, thebowling greens, the stabling, of the state and luxury of the great feastdays, of the piles of old plate on the tables, of the savoury steam ofthe kitchens, of the multitudes of geese and capons which turn at onceon the spits, of the oceans of excellent ale in the butteries; and whenI remember from whom all this splendour and plenty is derived; when Iremember what was the faith of Edward the Third and of Henry the Sixth, of Margaret of Anjou and Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham andWilliam of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley and Cardinal Wolsey; whenI remember what we have taken from the Roman Catholics, King's College, New College, Christ Church, my own Trinity; and when I look at themiserable Dotheboys Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel, I must own, less proud than I could wish of being a Protestant and aCambridge man. 

Some gentlemen, it is true, have made an attempt to show that there isa distinction of principle between the old grant which they have alwayssupported and the larger grant which they are determined to oppose. Butnever was attempt more unsuccessful. They say that, at the time of theUnion, we entered into an implied contract with Ireland to keep up thiscollege. We are therefore, they argue, bound by public faith to continuethe old grant; but we are not bound to make any addition to that grant. Now, Sir, on this point, though on no other, I do most cordially agreewith those petitioners who have, on this occasion, covered yourtable with such huge bales of spoiled paper and parchment. I deny theexistence of any such contract. I think myself perfectly free to votefor the abolition of this college, if I am satisfied that it is apernicious institution; as free as I am to vote against any item ofthe ordnance estimates; as free as I am to vote for a reduction of thenumber of marines. It is strange, too, that those who appeal to thisimaginary contract should not perceive that, even if their fiction beadmitted as true, it will by no means get them out of their difficulty. Tell us plainly what are the precise terms of the contract which yousuppose Great Britain to have made with Ireland about this college. Whatever the terms be, they will not serve your purpose. Was thecontract this, that the Imperial Parliament would do for the collegewhat the Irish Parliament had been used to do? Or was the contract this, that the Imperial Parliament would keep the college in a respectable andefficient state? If the former was the contract, nine thousand poundswould be too much. If the latter was the contract, you will not, Iam confident, be able to prove that twenty-six thousand pounds is toolittle. 

I have now, I think, said quite as much as need be said in answer tothose who maintain that we ought to give support to this college, butthat the support ought to be niggardly and precarious. I now come toanother and a much more formidable class of objectors. Their objectionsmay be simply stated thus. No man can justifiably, either asan individual or as a trustee for the public, contribute to thedissemination of religious error. But the church of Rome teachesreligious error. Therefore we cannot justifiably contribute to thesupport of an institution of which the object is the dissemination ofthe doctrines of the Church of Rome. Now, Sir, I deny the major of thissyllogism. I think that there are occasions on which we are bound tocontribute to the dissemination of doctrines with which errors areinseparably intermingled. Let me be clearly understood. The question isnot whether we should teach truth or teach error, but whether we shouldteach truth adulterated with error, or teach no truth at all. Theconstitution of the human mind is such that it is impossible to provideany machinery for the dissemination of truth which shall not, with thetruth, disseminate some error. Even those rays which come down to usfrom the great source of light, pure as they are in themselves, nosooner enter that gross and dark atmosphere in which we dwell than thethey are so much refracted, discoloured, and obscured, that they toooften lead us astray. It will be generally admitted that, if religioustruth can be anywhere found untainted by error, it is in the Scriptures. Yet is there actually on the face of the globe a single copy of theScriptures of which it can be said that it contains truth absolutelyuntainted with error? Is there any manuscript, any edition of the Old orNew Testament in the original tongues, which any scholar will pronouncefaultless? But to the vast majority of Christians the original tonguesare and always must be unintelligible. With the exception of perhaps oneman in ten thousand, we must be content with translations. And is thereany translation in which there are not numerous mistakes? Are there notnumerous mistakes even in our own authorised version, executed as thatversion was with painful diligence and care, by very able men, and undervery splendid patronage? Of course mistakes must be still more numerousin those translations which pious men have lately made into Bengalee, Hindostanee, Tamul, Canarese, and other Oriental tongues. I admire thezeal, the industry, the energy of those who, in spite of difficultieswhich to ordinary minds would seem insurmountable, accomplished thatarduous work. I applaud those benevolent societies which munificentlyencouraged that work. But I have been assured by good judges that thetranslations have many faults. And how should it have been otherwise?How should an Englishman produce a faultless translation from the Hebrewinto the Cingalese? I say, therefore, that even the Scriptures, in everyform in which men actually possess them, contain a certain portion oferror. And, if this be so, how can you look for pure undefecated truthin any other composition? You contribute, without any scruple, to theprinting of religious tracts, to the establishing of Sunday Schools, tothe sending forth of missionaries. But are your tracts perfect? Are yourschoolmasters infallible? Are your missionaries inspired? Look at thetwo churches which are established in this island. Will you say thatthey both teach truth without any mixture of error? That is impossible. For they teach different doctrines on more than one important subject. It is plain therefore, that if, as you tell us, it be a sin in a stateto patronise an institution which teaches religious error, either theChurch of England or the Church of Scotland ought to be abolished. But will anybody even venture to affirm that either of those churchesteaches truth without any mixture of error? Have there not long been inthe Church of Scotland two very different schools of theology? Duringmany years, Dr Robertson, the head of the moderate party, and DrErskine, the head of the Calvinistic party, preached under the sameroof, one in the morning, the other in the evening. They preachedtwo different religions, so different that the followers of Robertsonthought the followers of Erskine fanatics, and the followers of Erskinethought the followers of Robertson Arians or worse. And is there nomixture of error in the doctrine taught by the clergy of the Church ofEngland? Is not the whole country at this moment convulsed by disputesas to what the doctrine of the Church on some important subjects reallyis? I shall not take on myself to say who is right and who is wrong. But this I say with confidence, that, whether the Tractarians or theEvangelicals be in the right, many hundreds of those divines who everySunday occupy the pulpits of our parish churches must be very much inthe wrong. 

Now, Sir, I see that many highly respectable persons, who think it a sinto contribute to the teaching of error at Maynooth College, think it notmerely lawful, but a sacred duty, to contribute to the teaching of errorin the other cases which I have mentioned. They know that our version ofthe Bible contains some error. Yet they subscribe to the Bible Society. They know that the Serampore translations contain a still greaterquantity of error. Yet they give largely towards the printing andcirculating of those translations. My honourable friend the Member forthe University of Oxford will not deny that there is among the clergy ofthe Church of England a Puritan party, and also an Anti-puritanparty, and that one of these parties must teach some error. Yet he isconstantly urging us to grant to this Church an additional endowment ofI know not how many hundreds of thousands of pounds. He would doubtlessdefend himself by saying that nothing on earth is perfect; that thepurest religious society must consist of human beings, and must havethose defects which arise from human infirmities; and that the truthsheld by the established clergy, though not altogether unalloyed witherror, are so precious, that it is better that they should be impartedto the people with the alloy than that they should not be imparted atall. Just so say I. I am sorry that we cannot teach pure truth to theIrish people. But I think it better that they should have important andsalutary truth, polluted by some error, than that they should remainaltogether uninstructed. I heartily wish that they were Protestants. ButI had rather that they should be Roman Catholics than that they shouldhave no religion at all. Would you, says one gentleman, teach the peopleto worship Jugernaut or Kalee? Certainly not. My argument leads tono such conclusion. The worship of Jugernaut and Kalee is a curse tomankind. It is much better that people should be without any religionthan that they should believe in a religion which enjoins prostitution, suicide, robbery, assassination. But will any Protestant deny that itis better that the Irish should be Roman Catholics than that they shouldlive and die like the beasts of the field, indulge their appetiteswithout any religious restraint, suffer want and calamity without anyreligious consolation, and go to their graves without any religioushope? These considerations entirely satisfy my mind. Of course I wouldnot propagate error for its own sake. To do so would be not merelywicked, but diabolical. But, in order that I may be able to propagatetruth, I consent to propagate that portion of error which adheres totruth, and which cannot be separated from truth. I wish Christianity tohave a great influence on the peasantry of Ireland. I see no probabilitythat Christianity will have that influence except in one form. That formI consider as very corrupt. Nevertheless, the good seems to me greatlyto predominate over the evil; and therefore, being unable to get thegood alone, I am content to take the good and the evil together. 

I now come to the third class of our opponents. I mean those who taketheir stand on the voluntary principle. I will not, on this occasion, inquire whether they are right in thinking that governments ought not tocontribute to the support of any religion, true or false. For it seemsto me that, even if I were to admit that the general rule is correctlylaid down by them, the present case would be an exception to that rule. The question on which I am about to vote is not whether the State shallor shall not give any support to religion in Ireland. The State doesgive such support, and will continue to give such support, whatever maybe the issue of this debate. The only point which we have now to decideis whether, while such support is given, it shall be given exclusivelyto the religion of the minority. Here is an island with a population ofnear eight millions, and with a wealthy established church, the membersof which are little more than eight hundred thousand. There is anarchbishop with ten thousand a year. If I recollect rightly, seventythousand pounds are divided among twelve prelates. At the same time theProtestant dissenters in the north of Ireland receive, in another form, support from the State. But the great majority of the population, thepoorest part of the population, the part of the population which is mostin need of assistance, the part of the population which holds that faithfor the propagation of which the tithes were originally set apart, andthe church lands originally given, is left to maintain its own priests. Now is not this a case which stands quite by itself? And may not eventhose who hold the general proposition, that every man ought to payhis own spiritual pastor, yet vote, without any inconsistency, for thisbill? I was astonished to hear the honourable Member for Shrewsbury (MrDisraeli. ) tell us that, if we make this grant, it will be impossiblefor us to resist the claims of any dissenting sect. He particularlymentioned the Wesleyan Methodists. Are the cases analogous? Is there theslightest resemblance between them? Let the honourable gentleman showme that of the sixteen millions of people who inhabit England thirteenmillions are Wesleyan Methodists. Let him show me that the members ofthe Established Church in England are only one tenth of the population. Let him show me that English dissenters who are not Wesleyan Methodistsreceive a Regium Donum. Let him show me that immense estates bequeathedto John Wesley for the propagation of Methodism have, by Act ofParliament, been taken from the Methodists and given to the Church. If he can show me this, I promise him that, whenever the WesleyanMethodists shall ask for twenty-six thousand pounds a year to educatetheir ministers, I shall be prepared to grant their request. But neitherthe case of the Methodists nor any other case which can be mentioned, resembles the case with which we have to do. Look round Europe, roundthe world, for a parallel; and you will look in vain. Indeed the stateof things which exists in Ireland never could have existed had notIreland been closely connected with a country, which possessed a greatsuperiority of power, and which abused that superiority. The burdenwhich we are now, I hope, about to lay on ourselves is but a smallpenalty for a great injustice. Were I a staunch voluntary, I shouldstill feel that, while the church of eight hundred thousand peopleretains its great endowments, I should not be justified in refusing thissmall boon to the church of eight millions. 

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

Secondly, it seems to me that those persons who tell us that we oughtnever in any circumstances to contribute to the propagation of error doin fact lay down a rule which would altogether interdict the propagationof truth. 

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

So much, Sir, as to this bill; and now let me add a few words aboutthose by whom it has been framed and introduced. We were exhorted, on the first night of this debate, to vote against the bill, withoutinquiring into its merits, on the ground that, good or bad, it wasproposed by men who could not honestly and honourably propose it. Asimilar appeal has been made to us this evening. In these circumstances, Sir, I must, not I hope from party spirit, not, I am sure, from personalanimosity, but from a regard for the public interest, which must beinjuriously affected by everything which tends to lower the characterof public men, say plainly what I think of the conduct of Her Majesty'sMinisters. Undoubtedly it is of the highest importance that we shouldlegislate well. But it is also of the highest importance that those whogovern us should have, and should be known to have, fixed principles, and should be guided by those principles both in office and inopposition. It is of the highest importance that the world should not beunder the impression that a statesman is a person who, when he is out, will profess and promise anything in order to get in, and who, when heis in, will forget all that he professed and promised when he was out. I need not, I suppose, waste time in proving that a law may be in itselfan exceedingly good law, and yet that it may be a law which, when viewedin connection with the former conduct of those who proposed it, mayprove them to be undeserving of the confidence of their country. Whenthis is the case, our course is clear. We ought to distinguish betweenthe law and its authors. The law we ought, on account of its intrinsicmerits, to support. Of the authors of the law, it may be our duty tospeak in terms of censure. 

In such terms I feel it to be my duty to speak of Her Majesty'spresent advisers. I have no personal hostility to any of them; and thatpolitical hostility which I do not disavow has never prevented me fromdoing justice to their abilities and virtues. I have always admitted, and I now most willingly admit, that the right honourable Baronet at thehead of the Government possesses many of the qualities of an excellentminister, eminent talents for debate, eminent talents for business, great experience, great information, great skill in the management ofthis House. I will go further, and say that I give him full credit fora sincere desire to promote the welfare of his country. Nevertheless, it is impossible for me to deny that there is too much ground for thereproaches of those who, having, in spite of a bitter experience, asecond time trusted him, now find themselves a second time deluded. I cannot but see that it has been too much his practice, when inopposition, to make use of passions with which he has not the slightestsympathy, and of prejudices which he regards with profound contempt. Assoon as he is in power a change takes place. The instruments which havedone his work are flung aside. The ladder by which he has climbed iskicked down. I am forced to say that the right honourable Baronet actsthus habitually and on system. The instance before us is not a solitaryinstance. I do not wish to dwell on the events which took placeseventeen or eighteen years ago, on the language which the righthonourable Baronet held about the Catholic question when he was out ofpower in 1827, and on the change which twelve months of power produced. I will only say that one such change was quite enough for one life. Again the right honourable Baronet was in opposition; and again heemployed his old tactics. I will not minutely relate the history of themanoeuvres by which the Whig Government was overthrown. It is enoughto say that many powerful interests were united against that Governmentunder the leading of the right honourable Baronet, and that ofthose interests there is not one which is not now disappointed andcomplaining. To confine my remarks to the subject immediately beforeus--can any man deny that, of all the many cries which were raisedagainst the late administration, that which most strongly stirred thepublic mind was the cry of No Popery? Is there a single gentleman in theHouse who doubts that, if, four years ago, my noble friend the Memberfor the City of London had proposed this bill, he would have beenwithstood by every member of the present Cabinet? Four years ago, Sir, we were discussing a very different bill. The party which was then inopposition, and which is now in place, was attempting to force throughParliament a law, which bore indeed a specious name, but of which theeffect would have been to disfranchise the Roman Catholic electors ofIreland by tens of thousands. It was in vain that we argued, that weprotested, that we asked for the delay of a single session, for delaytill an inquiry could be made, for delay till a Committee should report. We were told that the case was one of extreme urgency, that every hourwas precious, that the House must, without loss of time, be purged ofthe minions of Popery. These arts succeeded. A change of administrationtook place. The right honourable Baronet came into power. He has nowbeen near four years in power. He has had a Parliament which would, beyond all doubt, have passed eagerly and gladly that RegistrationBill which he and his colleagues had pretended that they thoughtindispensable to the welfare of the State. And where is that bill now?Flung away; condemned by its own authors; pronounced by them to be sooppressive, so inconsistent with all the principles of representativegovernment, that, though they had vehemently supported it when theywere on your left hand, they could not think of proposing it from theTreasury Bench. And what substitute does the honourable Baronet give hisfollowers to console them for the loss of their favourite RegistrationBill? Even this bill for the endowment of Maynooth College. Was such afeat of legerdemain ever seen? And can we wonder that the eager, honest, hotheaded Protestants, who raised you to power in the confident hopethat you would curtail the privileges of the Roman Catholics, shouldstare and grumble when you propose to give public money to the RomanCatholics? Can we wonder that, from one end of the country to the other, everything should be ferment and uproar, that petitions should, nightafter night, whiten all our benches like a snowstorm? Can we wonder thatthe people out of doors should be exasperated by seeing the very menwho, when we were in office, voted against the old grant to Maynooth, now pushed and pulled into the House by your whippers-in to vote foran increased grant? The natural consequences follow. All those fiercespirits, whom you hallooed on to harass us, now turn round and begin toworry you. The Orangeman raises his war-whoop: Exeter Hall sets up itsbray: Mr Macneile shudders to see more costly cheer than ever providedfor the priests of Baal at the table of the Queen; and the Protestantoperatives of Dublin call for impeachments in exceedingly bad English. But what did you expect? Did you think, when, to serve your turn, youcalled the Devil up, that it was as easy to lay him as to raise him?Did you think, when you went on, session after session, thwarting andreviling those whom you knew to be in the right, and flattering all theworst passions of those whom you knew to be in the wrong, that the dayof reckoning would never come? It has come. There you sit, doing penancefor the disingenuousness of years. If it be not so, stand up manfullyand clear your fame before the House and the country. Show us that somesteady principle has guided your conduct with respect to Irish affairs. Show us how, if you are honest in 1845, you can have been honest in1841. Explain to us why, after having goaded Ireland to madness for thepurpose of ingratiating yourselves with the English, you are now settingEngland on fire for the purpose of ingratiating yourselves with theIrish. Give us some reason which shall prove that the policy which youare following, as Ministers, is entitled to support, and which shallnot equally prove you to have been the most factious and unprincipledopposition that ever this country saw. 

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

*****

THE CHURCH OF IRELAND. (APRIL 23, 1845. ) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSEOF COMMONS ON THE 23RD OF APRIL 1845. 

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

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

After a debate of two nights the amendment was rejected by 322 votes to148. On the first night the following Speech was made. 

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

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

I cannot help thinking that the speeches of those who defend this Churchsuffice of themselves to prove that my views are just. For who everheard anybody defend it on its merits? Has any gentleman to-nightdefended it on its merits? We are told of the Roman Catholic oath; asif that oath, whatever be its meaning, whatever be the extent of theobligation which it lays on the consciences of those who take it, couldpossibly prove this Church to be a good thing. We are told that RomanCatholics of note, both laymen and divines, fifty years ago, declaredthat, if they were relieved from the disabilities under which they thenlay, they should willingly see the Church of Ireland in possession ofall its endowments: as if anything that anybody said fifty years agocould absolve us from the plain duty of doing what is now best for thecountry. We are told of the Fifth Article of Union; as if the FifthArticle of Union were more sacred than the Fourth. Surely, if there beany article of the Union which ought to be regarded as inviolable, it isthe Fourth, which settles the number of members whom Great Britain andIreland respectively are to send to Parliament. Yet the provisions ofthe Fourth Article have been altered with the almost unanimous assent ofall parties in the State. The change was proposed by the noble lordwho is now Secretary for the Colonies. It was supported by the righthonourable Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department, and by othermembers of the present Administration. And so far were the opponents ofthe Reform Bill from objecting to this infraction of the Treaty of Unionthat they were disposed to go still farther. I well remember the nighton which we debated the question, whether Members should be given toFinsbury, Marylebone, Lambeth, and the Tower Hamlets. On that occasion, the Tories attempted to seduce the Irish Reformers from us by promisingthat Ireland should have a share of the plunder of the metropolitandistricts. After this, Sir, I must think it childish in gentlemenopposite to appeal to the Fifth Article of the Union. With still greatersurprise, did I hear the right honourable gentleman the Secretary forIreland say that, if we adopt this amendment, we shall make all landedand funded property insecure. I am really ashamed to answer such anargument. Nobody proposes to touch any vested interest; and surelyit cannot be necessary for me to point out to the right honourablegentleman the distinction between property in which some person has avested interest, and property in which no person has a vested interest. That distinction is part of the very rudiments of political science. Then the right honourable gentleman quarrels with the form of theamendment. Why, Sir, perhaps a more convenient form might have beenadopted. But is it by cavils like these that a great institution shouldbe defended? And who ever heard the Established Church of Irelanddefended except by cavils like these? Who ever heard any of heradvocates speak a manly and statesmanlike language? Who ever heard anyof her advocates say, "I defend this institution because it is a goodinstitution: the ends for which an Established Church exists are suchand such: and I will show you that this Church attains those ends?"Nobody says this. Nobody has the hardihood to say it. What divine, what political speculator who has written in defence of ecclesiasticalestablishments, ever defended such establishments on grounds which willsupport the Church of Ireland? What panegyric has ever been pronouncedon the Churches of England and Scotland, which is not a satire on theChurch of Ireland? What traveller comes among us who is not moved towonder and derision by the Church of Ireland? What foreign writer onBritish affairs, whether European or American, whether Protestant orCatholic, whether Conservative or Liberal, whether partial to England orprejudiced against England, ever mentions the Church of Ireland withoutexpressing his amazement that such an establishment should exist amongreasonable men?

And those who speak thus of this Church speak justly. Is there anythingelse like it? Was there ever anything else like it? The world is fullof ecclesiastical establishments: but such a portent as this Churchof Ireland is nowhere to be found. Look round the Continent of Europe. Ecclesiastical establishments from the White Sea to the Mediterranean:ecclesiastical establishments from the Wolga to the Atlantic: butnowhere the Church of a small minority enjoying exclusive establishment. Look at America. There you have all forms of Christianity, fromMormonism, if you call Mormonism Christianity, to Romanism. In someplaces you have the voluntary system. In some you have several religionsconnected with the state. In some you have the solitary ascendency of asingle Church. But nowhere, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, do youfind the Church of a small minority exclusively established. Look roundour own empire. We have an Established Church in England; it is theChurch of the majority. There is an Established Church in Scotland. Whenit was set up, it was the Church of the majority. A few months ago, itwas the Church of the majority. I am not quite sure that, even afterthe late unhappy disruption, it is the Church of the minority. In ourcolonies the State does much for the support of religion; but in nocolony, I believe, do we give exclusive support to the religion of theminority. Nay, even in those parts of empire where the great body of thepopulation is attached to absurd and immoral superstitions, you have notbeen guilty of the folly and injustice of calling on them to pay for aChurch which they do not want. We have not portioned out Bengal and theCarnatic into parishes, and scattered Christian rectors, with stipendsand glebes, among millions of Pagans and Mahometans. We keep, indeed, a small Christian establishment, or rather three small Christianestablishments, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic. But we keep themonly for the Christians in our civil and military services; and we leaveuntouched the revenues of the mosques and temples. In one country aloneis to be seen the spectacle of a community of eight millions ofhuman beings, with a Church which is the Church of only eight hundredthousand. 

It has been often said, and has been repeated to-night by the honourableMember for Radnor, that this Church, though it includes only a tenthpart of the population, has more than half the wealth of Ireland. Butis that an argument in favour of the present system? Is it not thestrongest argument that can be urged in favour of an entire change?It is true that there are many cases in which it is fit that propertyshould prevail over number. Those cases may, I think, be all arranged intwo classes. One class consists of those cases in which the preservationor improvement of property is the object in view. Thus, in a railwaycompany, nothing can be more reasonable than that one proprietor whoholds five hundred shares should have more power than five proprietorswho hold one share each. The other class of cases in which property mayjustly confer privileges is where superior intelligence is required. Property is indeed but a very imperfect test of intelligence. But, whenwe are legislating on a large scale, it is perhaps the best which wecan apply. For where there is no property, there can very seldom be anymental cultivation. It is on this principle that special jurors, whohave to try causes of peculiar nicety, are taken from a wealthier orderthan that which furnishes common jurors. But there cannot be a morefalse analogy than to reason from these cases to the case of anEstablished Church. So far is it from being true that, in establishinga Church, we ought to pay more regard to one rich man than to five poormen, that the direct reverse is the sound rule. We ought to pay moreregard to one poor man than to five rich men. For, in the first place, the public ordinances of religion are of far more importance to the poorman than to the rich man. I do not mean to say that a rich man may notbe the better for hearing sermons and joining in public prayers. Butthese things are not indispensable to him; and, if he is so situatedthat he cannot have them, he may find substitutes. He has money to buybooks, time to study them, understanding to comprehend them. Everyday he may commune with the minds of Hooker, Leighton, and Barrow. Hetherefore stands less in need of the oral instruction of a divine than apeasant who cannot read, or who, if he can read, has no money to procurebooks, or leisure to peruse them. Such a peasant, unless instructed byword of mouth, can know no more of Christianity than a wild Hottentot. Nor is this all. The poor man not only needs the help of a minister ofreligion more than the rich man, but is also less able to procure it. If there were no Established Church, people in our rank of life wouldalways be provided with preachers to their mind at an expense whichthey would scarcely feel. But when a poor man, who can hardly give hischildren their fill of potatoes, has to sell his pig in order to paysomething to his priest, the burden is a heavy one. This is, in fact, the strongest reason for having an established church in any country. Itis the one reason which prevents me from joining with the partisans ofthe voluntary system. I should think their arguments unanswerable if thequestion regarded the upper and middle classes only. If I would keep upthe Established Church of England, it is not for the sake of lords, andbaronets, and country gentlemen of five thousand pounds a-year, and richbankers in the city. I know that such people will always have churches, aye, and cathedrals, and organs, and rich communion plate. The personabout whom I am uneasy is the working man; the man who would find itdifficult to pay even five shillings or ten shillings a-year out of hissmall earnings for the ministrations of religion. What is to becomeof him under the voluntary system? Is he to go without religiousinstruction altogether? That we should all think a great evil tohimself, and a great evil to society. Is he to pay for it out of hisslender means? That would be a heavy tax. Is he to be dependent onthe liberality of others? That is a somewhat precarious and a somewhathumiliating dependence. I prefer, I own, that system under which thereis, in the rudest and most secluded district, a house of God, wherepublic worship is performed after a fashion acceptable to the greatmajority of the community, and where the poorest may partake of theordinances of religion, not as an alms, but as a right. But doesthis argument apply to a Church like the Church of Ireland? It is notnecessary on this occasion to decide whether the arguments in favourof the ecclesiastical establishments, or the arguments in favour of thevoluntary system, be the stronger. There are weighty considerations onboth sides. Balancing them as well as I can, I think that, as respectsEngland, the preponderance is on the side of the Establishment. But, as respects Ireland, there is no balancing. All the weights are in onescale. All the arguments which incline us against the Church of England, and all the arguments which incline us in favour of the Church ofEngland, are alike arguments against the Church of Ireland; against theChurch of the few; against the Church of the wealthy; against the Churchwhich, reversing every principle on which a Christian Church should befounded, fills the rich with its good things, and sends the hungry emptyaway. 

One view which has repeatedly, both in this House and out of it, beentaken of the Church of Ireland, seems to deserve notice. It is admitted, as indeed it could not well be denied, that this Church does notperform the functions which are everywhere else expected from similarinstitutions; that it does not instruct the body of the people; thatit does not administer religious consolation to the body of the people. But, it is said, we must regard this Church as an aggressive Church, a proselytising Church, a Church militant among spiritual enemies. Itsoffice is to spread Protestantism over Munster and Connaught. I rememberwell that, eleven years ago, when Lord Grey's Government proposed toreduce the number of Irish bishoprics, this language was held. It wasacknowledged that there were more bishops than the number of personsthen in communion with the Established Church required. But that number, we were assured, would not be stationary; and the hierarchy, therefore, ought to be constituted with a view to the millions of converts whowould soon require the care of Protestant pastors. I well rememberthe strong expression which was then used by my honourable friend, theMember for the University of Oxford. We must, he said, make allowancefor the expansive force of Protestantism. A few nights ago a noble lordfor whom I, in common with the whole House, feel the greatest respect, the Member for Dorsetshire (Lord Ashley. ), spoke of the missionarycharacter of the Church of Ireland. Now, Sir, if such language had beenheld at the Council Board of Queen Elizabeth when the constitution ofthis Church was first debated there, there would have been no cause forwonder. Sir William Cecil or Sir Nicholas Bacon might very naturallyhave said, "There are few Protestants now in Ireland, it is true. Butwhen we consider how rapidly the Protestant theology has spread, whenwe remember that it is little more than forty years since Martin Lutherbegan to preach against indulgences, and when we see that one half ofEurope is now emancipated from the old superstition, we may reasonablyexpect that the Irish will soon follow the example of the other nationswhich have embraced the doctrines of the Reformation. " Cecil, I say, and his colleagues might naturally entertain this expectation, and mightwithout absurdity make preparations for an event which they regardedas in the highest degree probable. But we, who have seen this system infull operation from the year 1560 to the year 1845, ought to have beentaught better, unless indeed we are past all teaching. Two hundred andeighty-five years has this Church been at work. What could have beendone for it in the way of authority, privileges, endowments, which hasnot been done? Did any other set of bishops and priests in the worldever receive so much for doing so little? Nay, did any other set ofbishops and priests in the world ever receive half as much for doingtwice as much? And what have we to show for all this lavish expenditure?What but the most zealous Roman Catholic population on the face of theearth? Where you were one hundred years ago, where you were two hundredyears ago, there you are still, not victorious over the domain of theold faith, but painfully and with dubious success defending your ownfrontier, your own English pale. Sometimes a deserter leaves you. Sometimes a deserter steals over to you. Whether your gains or lossesof this sort be the greater I do not know; nor is it worth while toinquire. On the great solid mass of the Roman Catholic population youhave made no impression whatever. There they are, as they were ages ago, ten to one against the members of your Established Church. Explain thisto me. I speak to you, the zealous Protestants on the other side of theHouse. Explain this to me on Protestant principles. If I were a RomanCatholic, I could easily account for the phenomena. If I were a RomanCatholic, I should content myself with saying that the mighty hand andthe outstretched arm had been put forth, according to the promise, indefence of the unchangeable Church; that He who in the old time turnedinto blessings the curses of Balaam, and smote the host of Sennacherib, had signally confounded the arts of heretic statesmen. But what isa Protestant to say? He holds that, through the whole of this longconflict, during which ten generations of men have been born and havedied, reason and Scripture have been on the side of the EstablishedClergy. Tell us then what we are to say of this strange war, in which, reason and Scripture backed by wealth, by dignity, by the help of thecivil power, have been found no match for oppressed and destitute error?The fuller our conviction that our doctrines are right, the fuller, ifwe are rational men, must be our conviction that our tactics have beenwrong, and that we have been encumbering the cause which we meant toaid. 

Observe, it is not only the comparative number of Roman Catholicsand Protestants that may justly furnish us with matter for seriousreflection. The quality as well as the quantity of Irish Romanismdeserves to be considered. Is there any other country inhabited by amixed population of Catholics and Protestants, any other country inwhich Protestant doctrines have long been freely promulgated from thepress and from the pulpit, where the Roman Catholics spirit is so strongas in Ireland? I believe not. The Belgians are generally considered asvery stubborn and zealous Roman Catholics. But I do not believe thateither in stubbornness or in zeal they equal the Irish. And this isthe fruit of three centuries of Protestant archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, deans, and rectors. And yet where is the wonder? Is thisa miracle that we should stand aghast at it? Not at all. It is a resultwhich human prudence ought to have long ago foreseen and long agoaverted. It is the natural succession of effect to cause. If you do notunderstand it, it is because you do not understand what the nature andoperation of a church is. There are parts of the machinery of Governmentwhich may be just as efficient when they are hated as when they areloved. An army, a navy, a preventive service, a police force, may dotheir work whether the public feeling be with them or against them. Whether we dislike the corn laws or not, your custom houses and yourcoast guard keep out foreign corn. The multitude at Manchester was notthe less effectually dispersed by the yeomanry, because the interferenceof the yeomanry excited the bitterest indignation. There the object wasto produce a material effect; the material means were sufficient; andnothing more was required. But a Church exists for moral ends. A Churchexists to be loved, to be reverenced, to be heard with docility, to reign in the understandings and hearts of men. A Church which isabhorred is useless or worse than useless; and to quarter a hostileChurch on a conquered people, as you would quarter a soldiery, istherefore the most absurd of mistakes. This mistake our ancestorscommitted. They posted a Church in Ireland just as they posted garrisonsin Ireland. The garrisons did their work. They were disliked. But thatmattered not. They had their forts and their arms; and they kept downthe aboriginal race. But the Church did not do its work. For to thatwork the love and confidence of the people were essential. 

I may remark in passing that, even under more favourable circumstancesa parochial priesthood is not a good engine for the purpose of makingproselytes. The Church of Rome, whatever we may think of her ends, hasshown no want of sagacity in the choice of means; and she knows thiswell. When she makes a great aggressive movement, --and many suchmovements she has made with signal success, --she employs, not herparochial clergy, but a very different machinery. The business of herparish priests is to defend and govern what has been won. It is bythe religious orders, and especially by the Jesuits, that the greatacquisitions have been made. In Ireland your parochial clergy lay undertwo great disadvantages. They were endowed, and they were hated; sorichly endowed that few among them cared to turn missionaries; sobitterly hated that those few had but little success. They longcontented themselves with receiving the emoluments arising from theirbenefices, and neglected those means to which, in other parts of Europe, Protestantism had owed its victory. It is well known that of all theinstruments employed by the Reformers of Germany, of England, and ofScotland, for the purpose of moving the public mind, the most powerfulwas the Bible translated into the vernacular tongues. In Ireland theProtestant Church had been established near half a century before theNew Testament was printed in Erse. The whole Bible was not printedin Erse till this Church had existed more than one hundred and twentyyears. Nor did the publication at last take place under the patronageof the lazy and wealthy hierarchy. The expense was defrayed by a layman, the illustrious Robert Boyle. So things went on century after century. Swift, more than a hundred years ago, described the prelates of hiscountry as men gorged with wealth and sunk in indolence, whose chiefbusiness was to bow and job at the Castle. The only spiritual function, he says, which they performed was ordination; and, when he saw whatpersons they ordained, he doubted whether it would not be better thatthey should neglect that function as they neglected every other. Those, Sir, are now living who can well remember how the revenues ofthe richest see in Ireland were squandered on the shores of theMediterranean by a bishop, whose epistles, very different compositionsfrom the epistles of Saint Peter and Saint John, may be found in thecorrespondence of Lady Hamilton. Such abuses as these called forthno complaint, no reprimand. And all this time the true pastors of thepeople, meanly fed and meanly clothed, frowned upon by the law, exposed to the insults of every petty squire who gloried in the nameof Protestant, were to be found in miserable cabins, amidst filth, andfamine, and contagion, instructing the young, consoling the miserable, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. Is it strangethat, in such circumstances, the Roman Catholic religion should havebeen constantly becoming dearer and dearer to an ardent and sensitivepeople, and that your Established Church should have been constantlysinking lower and lower in their estimation? I do not of course holdthe living clergy of the Irish Church answerable for the faults oftheir predecessors. God forbid! To do so would be the most flagitiousinjustice. I know that a salutary change has taken place. I have noreason to doubt that in learning and regularity of life the Protestantclergy of Ireland are on a level with the clergy of England. But in theway of making proselytes they do as little as those who preceded them. An enmity of three hundred years separates the nation from those whoshould be its teachers. In short, it is plain that the mind of Irelandhas taken its ply, and is not to be bent in a different direction, or, at all events, is not to be so bent by your present machinery. 

Well, then, this Church is inefficient as a missionary Church. But thereis yet another end which, in the opinion of some eminent men, a Churchis meant to serve. That end has been often in the minds of practicalpoliticians. But the first speculative politician who distinctly pointedit out was Mr Hume. Mr Hume, as might have been expected from his knownopinions, treated the question merely as it related to the temporalhappiness of mankind; and, perhaps, it may be doubted whether he tookquite a just view of the manner in which even the temporal happiness ofmankind is affected by the restraints and consolations of religion. Hereasoned thus:--It is dangerous to the peace of society that the publicmind should be violently excited on religious subjects. If you adopt thevoluntary system, the public mind will always be so excited. For everypreacher, knowing that his bread depends on his popularity, seasons hisdoctrine high, and practises every art for the purpose of obtaining anascendency over his hearers. But when the Government pays the ministerof religion, he has no pressing motive to inflame the zeal of hiscongregation. He will probably go through his duties in a somewhatperfunctory manner. His power will not be very formidable; and, suchas it is, it will be employed in support of that order of things underwhich he finds himself so comfortable. Now, Sir, it is not necessary toinquire whether Mr Hume's doctrine be sound or unsound. For, sound orunsound, it furnishes no ground on which you can rest the defence ofthe institution which we are now considering. It is evident that byestablishing in Ireland the Church of the minority in connection withthe State, you have produced, in the very highest degree, all thoseevils which Mr Hume considered as inseparable from the voluntary system. You may go all over the world without finding another country wherereligious differences take a form so dangerous to the peace of society;where the common people are so much under the influence of theirpriests; or where the priests who teach the common people are socompletely estranged from the civil Government. 

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

It does not, I know, necessarily follow that, because an institutionis bad, it is therefore to be immediately destroyed. Sometimes a badinstitution takes a strong hold on the hearts of mankind, intertwinesits roots with the very foundations of society, and is not to be removedwithout serious peril to order, law, and property. For example, I holdpolygamy to be one of the most pernicious practises that exist in theworld. But if the Legislative Council of India were to pass an Actprohibiting polygamy, I should think that they were out of their senses. Such a measure would bring down the vast fabric of our Indian Empirewith one crash. But is there any similar reason for dealing tenderlywith the Established Church of Ireland? That Church, Sir, is not oneof those bad institutions which ought to be spared because they arepopular, and because their fall would injure good institutions. It is, on the contrary, so odious, and its vicinage so much endangers valuableparts of our polity, that, even if it were in itself a good institution, there would be strong reasons for giving it up. 

The honourable gentleman who spoke last told us that we cannot touchthis Church without endangering the Legislative Union. Sir, I have givenmy best attention to this important point; and I have arrived at a verydifferent conclusion. The question to be determined is this:--What isthe best way of preserving political union between countries in whichdifferent religions prevail? With respect to this question we have, I think, all the light which history can give us. There is no sort ofexperiment described by Lord Bacon which we have not tried. Inductivephilosophy is of no value if we cannot trust to the lessons derived fromthe experience of more than two hundred years. England has long beenclosely connected with two countries less powerful than herself, and differing from herself in religion. The Scottish people arePresbyterians; the Irish people are Roman Catholics. We determined toforce the Anglican system on both countries. In both countries greatdiscontent was the result. At length Scotland rebelled. Then Irelandrebelled. The Scotch and Irish rebellions, taking place at a time whenthe public mind of England was greatly and justly excited, produced theGreat Rebellion here, and the downfall of the Monarchy, of the Church, and of the Aristocracy. After the Restoration we again tried the oldsystem. During twenty-eight years we persisted in the attempt toforce Prelacy on the Scotch; and the consequence was, during thosetwenty-eight years Scotland exhibited a frightful spectacle of miseryand depravity. The history of that period is made up of oppression andresistance, of insurrections, barbarous punishments, and assassinations. One day a crowd of zealous rustics stand desperately on their defence, and repel the dragoons. Next day the dragoons scatter and hew down theflying peasantry. One day the kneebones of a wretched Covenanter arebeaten flat in that accursed boot. Next day the Lord Primate is draggedout of his carriage by a band of raving fanatics, and, while screamingfor mercy, is butchered at the feet of his own daughter. So things wenton, till at last we remembered that institutions are made for men, and not men for institutions. A wise Government desisted from the vainattempt to maintain an Episcopal Establishment in a Presbyterian nation. From that moment the connection between England and Scotland becameevery year closer and closer. There were still, it is true, many causesof animosity. There was an old antipathy between the nations, theeffect of many blows given and received on both sides. All the greatestcalamities that had befallen Scotland had been inflicted by England. The proudest events in Scottish history were victories obtained overEngland. Yet all angry feelings died rapidly away. The union of thenations became complete. The oldest man living does not remember to haveheard any demagogue breathe a wish for separation. Do you believe thatthis would have happened if England had, after the Revolution, persistedin attempting to force the surplice and the Prayer Book on the Scotch?I tell you that, if you had adhered to the mad scheme of having areligious union with Scotland, you never would have had a cordialpolitical union with her. At this very day you would have had monstermeetings on the north of the Tweed, and another Conciliation Hall, andanother repeal button, with the motto, "Nemo me impune lacessit. " Infact, England never would have become the great power that she is. ForScotland would have been, not an addition to the effective strength ofthe Empire, but a deduction from it. As often as there was a war withFrance or Spain, there would have been an insurrection in Scotland. Ourcountry would have sunk into a kingdom of the second class. One suchChurch as that about which we are now debating is a serious encumbranceto the greatest empire. Two such Churches no empire could bear. Youcontinued to govern Ireland during many generations as you had governedScotland in the days of Lauderdale and Dundee. And see the result. Ireland has remained, indeed, a part of your Empire. But you know herto be a source of weakness rather than of strength. Her misery is areproach to you. Her discontent doubles the dangers of war. Can you, with such facts before you, doubt about the course which you ought totake? Imagine a physician with two patients, both afflicted with thesame disease. He applies the same sharp remedies to both. Both becomeworse and worse with the same inflammatory symptoms. Then he changeshis treatment of one case, and gives soothing medicines. The suffererrevives, grows better day by day, and is at length restored to perfecthealth. The other patient is still subjected to the old treatment, andbecomes constantly more and more disordered. How would a physician actin such a case? And are not the principles of experimental philosophythe same in politics as in medicine?

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

That some reform is at hand I cannot doubt. In a very short time weshall see the evils which I have described mitigated, if not entirelyremoved. A Liberal Administration would make this concession to Irelandfrom a sense of justice. A Conservative Administration will make it froma sense of danger. The right honourable Baronet has given the Irish alesson which will bear fruit. It is a lesson which rulers ought to beslow to teach; for it is one which nations are but too apt to learn. We have repeatedly been told by acts--we are now told almost in expresswords--that agitation and intimidation are the means which ought to beemployed by those who wish for redress of grievances from the party nowin power. Such indeed has too long been the policy of England towardsIreland; but it was surely never before avowed with such indiscreetfrankness. Every epoch which is remembered with pleasure on the otherside of St George's Channel coincides with some epoch which we hereconsider as disastrous and perilous. To the American war and thevolunteers the Irish Parliament owed its independence. To the Frenchrevolutionary war the Irish Roman Catholics owed the elective franchise. It was in vain that all the great orators and statesmen of twogenerations exerted themselves to remove the Roman Catholicdisabilities, Burke, Fox, Pitt, Windham, Grenville, Grey, Plunkett, Wellesley, Grattan, Canning, Wilberforce. Argument and expostulationwere fruitless. At length pressure of a stronger kind was boldly andskilfully applied; and soon all difficulties gave way. The CatholicAssociation, the Clare election, the dread of civil war, produced theEmancipation Act. Again, the cry of No Popery was raised. That cry wassuccessful. A faction which had reviled in the bitterest terms the mildadministration of Whig Viceroys, and which was pledged to the wholesaledisfranchisement of the Roman Catholics, rose to power. One leadingmember of that faction had drawn forth loud cheers by declaiming againstthe minions of Popery. Another had designated six millions of IrishCatholics as aliens. A third had publicly declared his conviction, thata time was at hand when all Protestants of every persuasion would findit necessary to combine firmly against the encroachments of Romanism. From such men we expected nothing but oppression and intolerance. We areagreeably disappointed to find that a series of conciliatory bills isbrought before us. But, in the midst of our delight, we cannot refrainfrom asking for some explanation of so extraordinary a change. We aretold in reply, that the monster meetings of 1843 were very formidable, and that our relations with America are in a very unsatisfactory state. The public opinion of Ireland is to be consulted, the religion ofIreland is to be treated with respect, not because equity and humanityplainly enjoin that course; for equity and humanity enjoined thatcourse as plainly when you were calumniating Lord Normanby, and hurryingforward your Registration Bill; but because Mr O'Connell and Mr Polkhave between them made you very uneasy. Sir, it is with shame, withsorrow, and, I will add, with dismay, that I listen to such language. I have hitherto disapproved of the monster meetings of 1843. I havedisapproved of the way in which Mr O'Connell and some other Irishrepresentatives have seceded from this House. I should not have chosento apply to those gentlemen the precise words which were used on aformer occasion by the honourable and learned Member for Bath. But Iagreed with him in substance. I thought it highly to the honour of myright honourable friend the Member for Dungarvon, and of my honourablefriends the Members for Kildare, for Roscommon, and for the city ofWaterford, that they had the moral courage to attend the service of thisHouse, and to give us the very valuable assistance which they are, invarious ways, so well qualified to afford. But what am I to say now? Howcan I any longer deny that the place where an Irish gentleman may bestserve his country is Conciliation Hall? How can I expect that any IrishRoman Catholic can be very sorry to learn that our foreign relations arein an alarming state, or can rejoice to hear that all danger of war hasblown over? I appeal to the Conservative Members of this House. I askthem whither we are hastening? I ask them what is to be the end of apolicy of which it is the principle to give nothing to justice, and everything to fear? We have been accused of truckling to Irishagitators. But I defy you to show us that we ever made or are now makingto Ireland a single concession which was not in strict conformity withour known principles. You may therefore trust us, when we tell youthat there is a point where we will stop. Our language to the Irish isthis:--"You ask for emancipation: it was agreeable to our principlesthat you should have it; and we assisted you to obtain it. You wishedfor a municipal system, as popular as that which exists in England: wethought your wish reasonable, and did all in our power to gratify it. This grant to Maynooth is, in our opinion, proper; and we will do ourbest to obtain it for you, though it should cost us our popularity andour seats in Parliament. The Established Church in your island, as nowconstituted, is a grievance of which you justly complain. We will striveto redress that grievance. The Repeal of the Union we regard as fatal tothe empire: and we never will consent to it; never, though the countryshould be surrounded by dangers as great as those which threatened herwhen her American colonies, and France, and Spain, and Holland, wereleagued against her, and when the armed neutrality of the Balticdisputed her maritime rights; never, though another Bonaparte shouldpitch his camp in sight of Dover Castle; never, till all has been stakedand lost; never, till the four quarters of the world have been convulsedby the last struggle of the great English people for their placeamong the nations. " This, Sir, is the true policy. When you give, givefrankly. When you withhold, withhold resolutely. Then what you give isreceived with gratitude; and, as for what you withhold, men, seeing thatto wrest it from you is no safe or easy enterprise, cease to hopefor it, and, in time, cease to wish for it. But there is a way of sowithholding as merely to excite desire, and of so giving as merely toexcite contempt; and that way the present ministry has discovered. Is itpossible for me to doubt that in a few months the same machinery whichsixteen years ago extorted from the men now in power the EmancipationAct, and which has now extorted from them the bill before us, will againbe put in motion? Who shall say what will be the next sacrifice? For myown part I firmly believe that, if the present Ministers remain in powerfive years longer, and if we should have, --which God avert!--a war withFrance or America, the Established Church of Ireland will be givenup. The right honourable Baronet will come down to make a propositionconceived in the very spirit of the Motions which have repeatedly beenmade by my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield. He will againbe deserted by his followers; he will again be dragged through hisdifficulties by his opponents. Some honest Lord of the Treasury maydetermine to quit his office rather than belie all the professions of alife. But there will be little difficulty in finding a successor readyto change all his opinions at twelve hours' notice. I may perhaps, whilecordially supporting the bill, again venture to say something aboutconsistency, and about the importance of maintaining a high standardof political morality. The right honourable Baronet will again tell me, that he is anxious only for the success of his measure, and that he doesnot choose to reply to taunts. And the right honourable gentleman theChancellor of the Exchequer will produce Hansard, will read to the Housemy speech of this night, and will most logically argue that I ought notto reproach the Ministers with their inconsistency, seeing that I had, from my knowledge of their temper and principles, predicted to a tittlethe nature and extent of that inconsistency. 

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

*****

THEOLOGICAL TESTS IN THE SCOTCH UNIVERSITIES. (JULY 9, 1845) A SPEECHDELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF JULY 1845. 

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

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

Mr Speaker, --I have been requested by my honourable and learned friend, the Member for Leith, to act as his substitute on this occasion. I amtruly sorry that any substitute should be necessary. I am truly sorrythat he is not among us to take charge of the bill which he not long agointroduced with one of the most forcible and luminous speeches that Iever had the pleasure of hearing. His audience was small; but the fewwho formed that audience cannot have forgotten the effect which hisarguments and his eloquence produced. The Ministers had come down toresist his motion: but their courage failed them: they hesitated: theyconferred together: at last they consented that he should have leaveto bring in his bill. Such, indeed, was the language which they held onthat and on a subsequent occasion, that both my honourable and learnedfriend and myself gave them more credit than they deserved. We reallybelieved that they had resolved to offer no opposition to a law which itwas quite evident that they perceived to be just and beneficial. Butwe have been disappointed. It has been notified to us that the wholeinfluence of the Government is to be exerted against our bill. In suchdiscouraging circumstances it is that I rise to move the second reading. 

Yet, Sir, I do not altogether despair of success. When I consider whatstrong, what irresistible reasons we have to urge, I can hardly thinkit possible that the mandate of the most powerful administration canprevail against them. Nay, I should consider victory, not merelyas probable, but as certain, if I did not know how imperfect is theinformation which English gentlemen generally possess concerning Scotchquestions. It is because I know this that I think it my duty to departfrom the ordinary practice, and, instead of simply moving the secondreading, to explain at some length the principles on which this bill hasbeen framed. I earnestly entreat those English Members who were not sofortunate as to hear the speech of my honourable and learned friend, theMember for Leith to favour me with their attention. They will, I think, admit, that I have a right to be heard with indulgence. I have been sentto this house by a great city which was once a capital, the abode of aSovereign, the place where the Estates of a realm held their sittings. For the general good of the empire, Edinburgh descended from that higheminence. But, ceasing to be a political metropolis, she became anintellectual metropolis. For the loss of a Court, of a Privy Council, ofa Parliament, she found compensation in the prosperity and splendour ofan University renowned to the farthest ends of the earth as a school ofphysical and moral science. This noble and beneficent institution is nowthreatened with ruin by the folly of the Government, and by the violenceof an ecclesiastical faction which is bent on persecution without havingthe miserable excuse of fanaticism. Nor is it only the University ofEdinburgh that is in danger. In pleading for that University, I pleadfor all the great academical institutions of Scotland. The fate of alldepends on the event of this debate; and, in the name of all, I demandthe attention of every man who loves either learning or religiousliberty. 

The first question which we have to consider is, whether the principlesof the bill be sound. I believe that they are sound; and I am quiteconfident that nobody who sits on the Treasury Bench will venture topronounce them unsound. It does not lie in the mouths of the Ministersto say that literary instruction and scientific instruction areinseparably connected with religious instruction. It is not for them torail against Godless Colleges. It is not for them to talk with horror ofthe danger of suffering young men to listen to the lectures of an Arianprofessor of Botany or of a Popish professor of Chemistry. They arethemselves at this moment setting up in Ireland a system exactlyresembling the system which we wish to set up in Scotland. Only a fewhours have elapsed since they were themselves labouring to prove that, in a country in which a large proportion of those who require a liberaleducation are dissenters from the Established Church, it is desirablethat there should be schools without theological tests. The righthonourable Baronet at the head of the Government proposes that in thenew colleges which he is establishing at Belfast, Cork, Limerick, andGalway, the professorships shall be open to men of every creed: andhe has strenuously defended that part of his plan against attacks fromopposite quarters, against the attacks of zealous members of the Churchof England, and of zealous members of the Church of Rome. Only the daybefore yesterday the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon (SirThomas Acland. ) ventured to suggest a test as unobjectionable as a testcould well be. He would merely have required the professors to declaretheir general belief in the divine authority of the Old and NewTestaments. But even this amendment the First Lord of the Treasuryresisted, and I think quite rightly. He told us that it was quiteunnecessary to institute an inquisition into the religious opinions ofpeople whose business was merely to teach secular knowledge, and that itwas absurd to imagine that any man of learning would disgrace and ruinhimself by preaching infidelity from the Greek chair or the Mathematicalchair. 

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

On these grounds, Sir, I have cordially supported the Irish CollegesBill. But the principle of the Irish Colleges and the principle of thebill which I hold in my hand are exactly the same: and the House and thecountry have a right to know why the authors of the former bill are theopponents of the latter bill. One distinction there is, I admit, betweenIreland and Scotland. It is true that in Scotland there is no clamouragainst the Union with England. It is true that in Scotland no demagoguecan obtain applause and riches by slandering and reviling the Englishpeople. It is true that in Scotland there is no traitor who would dareto say that he regards the enemies of the state as his allies. In everyextremity the Scottish nation will be found faithful to the common causeof the empire. But Her Majesty's Ministers will hardly I think, ventureto say that this is their reason for refusing to Scotland the boon whichthey propose to confer on Ireland. And yet, if this be not their reason, what reason can we find? Observe how strictly analogous the cases are. You give it as a reason for establishing in Ireland colleges withouttests that the Established Church of Ireland is the Church of theminority. Unhappily it may well be doubted whether the EstablishedChurch of Scotland, too, be not now, thanks to your policy, the Churchof the minority. It is true that the members of the Established Churchof Scotland are about a half of the whole population of Scotland; andthat the members of the Established Church of Ireland are not much morethan a tenth of the whole population of Ireland. But the question nowbefore us does not concern the whole population. It concerns only theclass which requires academical education: and I do not hesitate to saythat, in the class which requires academical education, in the class forthe sake of which universities exist, the proportion of persons whodo not belong to the Established Church is as great in Scotland as inIreland. You tell us that sectarian education in Ireland is an evil. Isit less an evil in Scotland? You tell us that it is desirable that theProtestant and the Roman Catholic should study together at Cork. Is itless desirable that the son of an elder of the Established Churchand the son of an elder of the Free Church should study together atEdinburgh? You tell us that it is not reasonable to require from aProfessor of Astronomy or Surgery in Connaught a declaration thathe believes in the Gospels. On what ground, then, can you think itreasonable to require from every Professor in Scotland a declarationthat he approves of the Presbyterian form of church government? I defyyou, with all your ingenuity, to find one argument, one rhetoricaltopic, against our bill which may not be used with equal effect againstyour own Irish Colleges Bill. 

Is there any peculiarity in the academical system of Scotland whichmakes these tests necessary? Certainly not. The academical system ofScotland has its peculiarities; but they are peculiarities which are notin harmony with these tests, peculiarities which jar with these tests. It is an error to imagine that, by passing this bill, we shall establisha precedent which will lead to a change in the constitution of theUniversities of Cambridge and Oxford. Whether such a change be or be notdesirable is a question which must be decided on grounds quite distinctfrom those on which we rest our case. I entreat English gentlemen not tobe misled by the word University. That word means two different thingson the two different sides of the Tweed. The academical authorities atCambridge and Oxford stand in a parental relation to the student. Theyundertake, not merely to instruct him in philology, geometry, naturalphilosophy, but to form his religious opinions, and to watch over hismorals. He is to be bred a Churchman. At Cambridge, he cannot graduate, at Oxford, I believe, he cannot matriculate, without declaring himselfa Churchman. The College is a large family. An undergraduate is lodgedeither within the gates, or in some private house licensed and regulatedby the academical authorities. He is required to attend public worshipaccording to the forms of the Church of England several times everyweek. It is the duty of one officer to note the absence of young menfrom divine service, of another to note their absence from the publictable, of another to report those who return home at unseasonably latehours. An academical police parade the streets at night to seize uponany unlucky reveller who may be found drunk or in bad company. There arepunishments of various degrees for irregularities of conduct. Sometimesthe offender has to learn a chapter of the Greek Testament; sometimeshe is confined to his college; sometimes he is publicly reprimanded:for grave offences he is rusticated or expelled. Now, Sir, whether thissystem be good or bad, efficient or inefficient, I will not now inquire. This is evident; that religious tests are perfectly in harmony with sucha system. Christ Church and King's College undertake to instruct everyyoung man who goes to them in the doctrines of the Church of England, and to see that he regularly attends the worship of the Church ofEngland. Whether this ought to be so, I repeat, I will not now inquire:but, while it is so, nothing can be more reasonable than to require fromthe rulers of Christ Church and King's College some declaration thatthey are themselves members of the Church of England. 

The character of the Scotch universities is altogether different. Thereyou have no functionaries resembling the Vice-Chancellors and Proctors, the Heads of Houses, Tutors and Deans, whom I used to cap at Cambridge. There is no chapel; there is no academical authority entitled to ask ayoung man whether he goes to the parish church or the Quaker meeting, tosynagogue or to mass. With his moral conduct the university has nothingto do. The Principal and the whole Academical Senate cannot put anyrestraint, or inflict any punishment, on a lad whom they may see lyingdead drunk in the High Street of Edinburgh. In truth, a student at aScotch university is in a situation closely resembling that of a medicalstudent in London. There are great numbers of youths in London whoattend St George's Hospital, or St Bartholomew's Hospital. One of theseyouths may also go to Albermarle Street to hear Mr Faraday lecture onchemistry, or to Willis's rooms to hear Mr Carlyle lecture on Germanliterature. On the Sunday he goes perhaps to church, perhaps to theRoman Catholic chapel, perhaps to the Tabernacle, perhaps nowhere. Noneof the gentlemen whose lectures he has attended during the week has thesmallest right to tell him where he shall worship, or to punish him forgambling in hells, or tippling in cider cellars. Surely we must all feelthat it would be the height of absurdity to require Mr Faraday and MrCarlyle to subscribe a confession of faith before they lecture; andin what does their situation differ from the situation of the Scotchprofessor. 

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

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

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

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

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

When, at the time of the Revolution, the Presbyterian worship anddiscipline were established in Scotland, the question of patronage wassettled by a compromise, which was far indeed from satisfying men ofextreme opinions, but which was generally accepted. An Act, passedat Edinburgh, in 1690, transferred what we should call in England theadvowsons from the old patrons to parochial councils, composed of theelders and the Protestant landowners. This system, however imperfectit might appear to such rigid Covenanters as Davie Deans and GiftedGilfillan, worked satisfactorily; and the Scotch nation seems to havebeen contented with its ecclesiastical polity when the Treaty of Unionwas concluded. By that treaty the ecclesiastical polity of Scotland wasdeclared to be unalterable. Nothing, therefore, can be more clearthan that the Parliament of Great Britain was bound by the most sacredobligations not to revive those rights of patronage which the Parliamentof Scotland had abolished. 

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

In 1712, Sir, the Whigs, who were the chief authors of the Union, hadbeen driven from power. The prosecution of Sacheverell had made themodious to the nation. The general election of 1710 had gone againstthem. Tory statesmen were in office. Tory squires formed more thanfive-sixths of this House. The party which was uppermost thought thatEngland had, in 1707, made a bad bargain, a bargain so bad that it couldhardly be considered as binding. The guarantee so solemnly given tothe Church of Scotland was a subject of loud and bitter complaint. The Ministers hated that Church much; and their chief supporters, thecountry gentlemen and country clergymen of England, hated it still more. Numerous petty insults were offered to the opinions, or, if you please, the prejudices of the Presbyterians. At length it was determined to gofurther, and to restore to the old patrons those rights which had beentaken away in 1690. A bill was brought into this House, the historyof which you may trace in our Journals. Some of the entries are verysignificant. In spite of all remonstrances the Tory majority would nothear of delay. The Whig minority struggled hard, appealed to the act ofUnion and the Act of Security, and insisted on having both those Actsread at the table. The bill passed this House, however, before thepeople of Scotland knew that it had been brought in. For there were thenneither reporters nor railroads; and intelligence from Westminsterwas longer in travelling to Cambridge than it now is in travellingto Aberdeen. The bill was in the House of Lords before the Churchof Scotland could make her voice heard. Then came a petition from acommittee appointed by the General Assembly to watch over the interestsof religion while the General Assembly itself was not sitting. The firstname attached to that petition is the name of Principal Carstairs, a manwho had stood high in the esteem and favour of William the Third, andwho had borne a chief part in establishing the Presbyterian Church inScotland. Carstairs and his colleagues appealed to the Act of Union, andimplored the peers not to violate that Act. But party spirit ran high;public faith was disregarded: patronage was restored. To that breachof the Treaty of Union are to be directly ascribed all the schisms thathave since rent the Church of Scotland. 

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

This, Sir, is the true history of dissent in Scotland: and, this beingso, how can any man have the front to invoke the Treaty of Union and theAct of Security against those who are devotedly attached to that systemwhich the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security were designed toprotect, and who are seceders only because the Treaty of Union and theAct of Security have been infringed? I implore gentlemen to reflect onthe manner in which they and their fathers have acted towards the ScotchPresbyterians. First you bind yourselves by the most solemn obligationsto maintain unaltered their Church as it was constituted in 1707. Five years later you alter the constitution of their Church in a pointregarded by them as essential. In consequence of your breach of faithsecession after secession takes place, till at length the Church ofthe State ceases to be the Church of the People. Then you begin to besqueamish. Then those articles of the Treaty of Union which, when theyreally were obligatory, you outrageously violated, now when they areno longer obligatory, now when it is no longer in your power to observethem according to the spirit, are represented as inviolable. You first, by breaking your word, turn hundreds of thousands of Churchmen intoDissenters; and then you punish them for being Dissenters, because, forsooth, you never break your word. If your consciences really are sotender, why do you not repeal the Act of 1712? Why do you not put theChurch of Scotland back into the same situation in which she was in1707. We have had occasion more than once in the course of this sessionto admire the casuistical skill of Her Majesty's Ministers. But I mustsay that even their scruple about slave-grown sugar, though that scrupleis the laughing-stock of all Europe and all America, is respectablewhen compared with their scruple about the Treaty of Union. Is there theslightest doubt that every compact ought to be construed according tothe sense in which it was understood by those who made it? And is therethe slightest doubt as to the sense in which the compact between Englandand Scotland was understood by those who made it? Suppose that we couldcall up from their graves the Presbyterian divines who then sate in theGeneral Assembly. Suppose that we could call up Carstairs; that we couldcall up Boston, the author of the Fourfold State; that we could relateto them the history of the ecclesiastical revolutions which have, sincetheir time, taken place in Scotland; and that we could then ask them, "Is the Established Church, or is the Free Church, identical with theChurch which existed at the time of the Union?" Is it not quite certainwhat their answer would be? They would say, "Our Church, the Churchwhich you promised to maintain unalterable, was not the Church which youprotect, but the Church which you oppress. Our Church was the Church ofChalmers and Brewster, not the Church of Bryce and Muir. "

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

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

On a sudden the law, which had long slept a deep sleep, has beenawakened, stirred up, and put into vigorous action. These obsolete testsare now, it seems, to be exacted with severity. And why? Simply becausean event has taken place which makes them ten times as unjust andoppressive as they would have been formerly. They were not requiredwhile the Established Church was the Church of the majority. They areto be required solely because a secession has taken place which has madethe Established Church the Church of the minority. While they could havedone little mischief they were suffered to lie neglected. They are nowto be used, because a time has come at which they cannot be used withoutfatal consequences. 

It is impossible for me to speak without indignation of those who havetaken the lead in the work of persecution. Yet I must give them creditfor courage. They have selected as their object of attack no less a manthan Sir David Brewster, Principal of the University of Saint Andrews. I hold in my hand the libel, as it is technically called, in which aPresbytery of the Established Church demands that Sir David, for thecrime of adhering to that ecclesiastical polity which was guaranteed tohis country by the Act of Union, shall be "removed from his office, andvisited with such other censure or punishment as the laws of theChurch enjoin, for the glory of God, the safety of the Church, andthe prosperity of the University, and to deter others holding the sameimportant office from committing the like offence in all time coming, but that others may hear and fear the danger and detriment of followingdivisive courses. " Yes; for the glory of God, the safety of the Church, and the prosperity of the University. What right, Sir, have theauthors of such an instrument as this to raise their voices against theinsolence and intolerance of the Vatican? The glory of God! As to that, I will only say that this is not the first occasion on which the gloryof God has been made a pretext for the injustice of man. The safety ofthe Church! Sir, if, which God forbid, that Church is really possessedby the evil spirit which actuates this Presbytery; if that Church, having recently lost hundreds of able ministers and hundreds ofthousands of devout hearers, shall, instead of endeavouring, bymeekness, and by redoubled diligence, to regain those whom she hasestranged, give them new provocation; if she shall sharpen against theman old law the edge of which has long rusted off, and which, when itwas first made, was made not for her defence, but for theirs; then Ipronounce the days of that Church numbered. As to the prosperity of theUniversity, is there a corner of Europe where men of science will notlaugh when they hear that the prosperity of the University of SaintAndrews is to be promoted by expelling Sir David Brewster on accountof a theological squabble? The professors of Edinburgh know betterthan this Presbytery how the prosperity of a seat of learning is to bepromoted. There the Academic Senate is almost unanimous in favour ofthe bill. And indeed it is quite certain that, unless this bill, or somesimilar bill, be passed, a new college will soon be founded and endowedwith that munificence of which the history of the Free Church furnishesso many examples. From the day on which such an university arises, theold universities must decline. Now, they are practically national, andnot sectarian, institutions. And yet, even now, the emoluments of aprofessorship are so much smaller than those which ability and industrycan obtain in other ways, that it is difficult to find eminent men tofill the chairs. And if there be this difficulty now, when students ofall religious persuasions attend the lectures, what is likely to happenwhen all the members of the Free Church go elsewhere for instruction?If there be this difficulty when you have all the world to chooseprofessors from, what is likely to happen when your choice is narrowedto less than one-half of Scotland? As the professorships become poorer, the professors will become less competent. As the professors becomeless competent, the classes will become thinner. As the classes becomethinner, the professorships will again become poorer. The declinewill become rapid and headlong. In a short time, the lectures will bedelivered to empty rooms: the grass will grow in the courts: and mennot fit to be village dominies will occupy the chairs of Adam Smith andDugald Stewart, of Reid and Black, of Playfair and Jamieson. 

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

If the Government were consistent in error, some respect might bemingled with our disapprobation. But a Government which is guided by noprinciple; a Government which, on the gravest questions, does not knowits own mind twenty-four hours together; a Government which is againsttests at Cork, and for tests at Glasgow, against tests at Belfast, andfor tests at Edinburgh, against tests on the Monday, for them on theWednesday, against them again on the Thursday--how can such a Governmentcommand esteem or confidence? How can the Ministers wonder that theiruncertain and capricious liberality fails to obtain the applause ofthe liberal party? What right have they to complain if they lose theconfidence of half the nation without gaining the confidence of theother half?

But I do not speak to the Government. I speak to the House. I appealto those who, on Monday last, voted with the Ministers against the testproposed by the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon. I knowwhat is due to party ties. But there is a mire so black and so deepthat no leader has a right to drag his followers through it. It is onlyforty-eight hours since honourable gentlemen were brought down to theHouse to vote against requiring the professors in the Irish Colleges tomake a declaration of belief in the Gospel: and now the same gentlemenare expected to come down and to vote that no man shall be a professorin a Scottish college who does not declare himself a Calvinist and aPresbyterian. Flagrant as is the injustice with which the ministers haveon this occasion treated Scotland, the injustice with which they havetreated their own supporters is more flagrant still. I call on allwho voted with the Government on Monday to consider whether they canconsistently and honourably vote with the Government to-night: I call onall members of the Church of England to ponder well before they make itpenal to be a member of the Church of England; and, lastly, I call onevery man of every sect and party who loves science and letters, who issolicitous for the public tranquillity, who respects the public faith, to stand by us in this our hard struggle to avert the ruin whichthreatens the Universities of Scotland. I move that this bill be nowread a second time. 

*****

CORN LAWS. (DECEMBER 2, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON THE 2DOF DECEMBER 1845. 

The following Speech was delivered at a public meeting held at Edinburghon the second of December, 1845, for the purpose of petitioning HerMajesty to open the ports of the United Kingdom for the free admissionof corn and other food. 

My Lord Provost and Gentlemen, --You will, I hope, believe that I amdeeply sensible of the kindness with which you have received me. I onlybeg that you will continue to extend your indulgence to me, if it shouldhappen that my voice should fail me in the attempt to address you. Ihave thought it my duty to obey your summons, though I am hardly equalto the exertion of public speaking, and though I am so situated that Ican pass only a few hours among you. But it seemed to me that this wasnot an ordinary meeting or an ordinary crisis. It seemed to me thata great era had arrived, and that, at such a conjuncture, you wereentitled to know the opinions and intentions of one who has the honourof being your representative. 

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

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

There has been, it is true, some difference of opinion between me andsome of you. We belonged to the same camp: but we did not quite agreeas to the mode of carrying on the war. I saw the immense strength of theinterests which were arrayed against us. I saw that the corn monopolywould last forever if those who defended it were united, while those whoassailed it were divided. I saw that many men of distinguished abilitiesand patriotism, such men as Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, LordMorpeth, were unwilling to relinquish all hope that the question mightbe settled by a compromise such as had been proposed in 1841. It seemedto me that the help of such men was indispensable to us, and that, ifwe drove from us such valuable allies, we should be unable to contendagainst the common enemy. Some of you thought that I was timorous, andothers that I was misled by party spirit or by personal friendship. I still think that I judged rightly. But I will not now argue thequestion. It has been set at rest for ever, and in the best possibleway. It is not necessary for us to consider what relations we ought tomaintain with the party which is for a moderate fixed duty. That partyhas disappeared. Time, and reflection, and discussion, have producedtheir natural effect on minds eminently intelligent and candid. Nointermediate shades of opinion are now left. There is no twilight. Thelight has been divided from the darkness. Two parties are ranged inbattle array against each other. There is the standard of monopoly. Here is the standard of free trade; and by the standard of free trade Ipledge myself to stand firmly. 

Gentlemen, a resolution has been put into my hands which I shall movewith the greatest pleasure. That resolution sets forth in emphaticlanguage a truth of the highest importance, namely, that the presentcorn laws press with especial severity on the poor. There was a time, gentlemen, when politicians were not ashamed to defend the corn lawsmerely as contrivances for putting the money of the many into thepockets of the few. We must, --so these men reasoned, --have a powerfuland opulent class of grandees: that we may have such grandees, the rentof land must be kept up: and that the rent of land may be kept up, theprice of bread must be kept up. There may still be people who thinkthus: but they wisely keep their thoughts to themselves. Nobody nowventures to say in public that ten thousand families ought to be put onshort allowance of food in order that one man may have a fine stud anda fine picture gallery. Our monopolists have changed their ground. They have abandoned their old argument for a new argument muchless invidious, but, I think, rather more absurd. They have turnedphilanthropists. Their hearts bleed for the misery of the poor labouringman. They constantly tell us that the cry against the corn laws has beenraised by capitalists; that the capitalist wishes to enrich himself atthe expense both of the landed gentry and of the working people; thatevery reduction of the price of food must be followed by a reduction ofthe wages of labour; and that, if bread should cost only half what itnow costs, the peasant and the artisan would be sunk in wretchedness anddegradation, and the only gainers would be the millowners and the moneychangers. It is not only by landowners, it is not only by Tories, thatthis nonsense has been talked. We have heard it from men of a verydifferent class, from demagogues who wish to keep up the corn laws, merely in order that the corn laws may make the people miserable, andthat misery may make the people turbulent. You know how assiduouslythose enemies of all order and all property have laboured to deceive theworking man into a belief that cheap bread would be a curse to him. Norhave they always laboured in vain. You remember that once, even in thisgreat and enlightened city, a public meeting called to consider the cornlaws was disturbed by a deluded populace. Now, for my own part, wheneverI hear bigots who are opposed to all reform, and anarchists who are benton universal destruction, join in the same cry, I feel certain that itis an absurd and mischievous cry; and surely never was there a cryso absurd and mischievous as this cry against cheap loaves. It seemsstrange that Conservatives, people who profess to hold new theoriesin abhorrence, people who are always talking about the wisdom of ourancestors, should insist on our receiving as an undoubted truth astrange paradox never heard of from the creation of the world till thenineteenth century. Begin with the most ancient book extant, the Book ofGenesis, and come down to the parliamentary debates of 1815; and I willventure to say that you will find that, on this point, the party whichaffects profound reverence for antiquity and prescription has against itthe unanimous voice of thirty-three centuries. If there be anythingin which all peoples, nations, and languages, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Italians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, have agreed, it has been this, thatthe dearness of food is a great evil to the poor. Surely, the argumentswhich are to counterbalance such a mass of authority ought to beweighty. What then are those arguments? I know of only one. If anygentleman is acquainted with any other, I wish that he would communicateit to us; and I will engage that he shall have a fair and full hearing. The only argument that I know of is this, that there are some countriesin the world where food is cheaper than in England, and where the peopleare more miserable than in England. Bengal has been mentioned. ButPoland is the favourite case. Whenever we ask why there should not bea free trade in corn between the Vistula and the Thames, the answeris, "Do you wish our labourers to be reduced to the condition of thepeasants of the Vistula?" Was such reasoning ever heard before? See howreadily it may be turned against those who use it. Corn is cheaper atCincinnati than here; but the wages of the labourer are much higher atCincinnati than here: therefore, the lower the price of food, the higherthe wages will be. This reasoning is just as good as the reasoning ofour adversaries: that is to say, it is good for nothing. It is notone single cause that makes nations either prosperous or miserable. Nofriend of free trade is such an idiot as to say that free trade is theonly valuable thing in the world; that religion, government, police, education, the administration of justice, public expenditure, foreignrelations, have nothing whatever to do with the well-being of nations;that people sunk in superstition, slavery, barbarism, must be happy ifthey have only cheap food. These gentlemen take the most unfortunatecountry in the world, a country which, while it had an independentgovernment, had the very worst of independent governments; the sovereigna mere phantom; the nobles defying him and quarrelling with each other;the great body of the population in a state of servitude; no middleclass; no manufactures; scarcely any trade, and that in the hands of Jewpedlars. Such was Poland while it was a separate kingdom. But foreigninvaders came down upon it. It was conquered: it was reconquered: it waspartitioned: it was repartitioned: it is now under a government of whichI will not trust myself to speak. This is the country to which thesegentlemen go to study the effect of low prices. When they wish toascertain the effect of high prices, they take our own country; acountry which has been during many generations the best governed inEurope; a country where personal slavery has been unknown during ages;a country which enjoys the blessings of a pure religion, of freedom, oforder; a country long secured by the sea against invasion; a country inwhich the oldest man living has never seen a foreign flag except as atrophy. Between these two countries our political philosophers institutea comparison. They find the Briton better off than the Pole; and theyimmediately come to the conclusion that the Briton is so well offbecause his bread is dear, and the Pole so ill off because his bread ischeap. Why, is there a single good which in this way I could not proveto be an evil, or a single evil which I could not prove to be a good?Take lameness. I will prove that it is the best thing in the world tobe lame: for I can show you men who are lame, and yet much happier thanmany men who have the full use of their legs. I will prove health to bea calamity. For I can easily find you people in excellent health whosefortunes have been wrecked, whose character has been blasted, and whoare more wretched than many invalids. But is that the way in which anyman of common sense reasons? No; the question is: Would not the lame manbe happier if you restored to him the use of his limbs? Would not thehealthy man be more wretched if he had gout and rheumatism in additionto all his other calamities? Would not the Englishman be better offif food were as cheap here as in Poland? Would not the Pole be moremiserable if food were as dear in Poland as here? More miserable indeedhe would not long be: for he would be dead in a month. 

It is evident that the true way of determining the question which weare considering, is to compare the state of a society when food is cheapwith the state of that same society when food is dear; and this is acomparison which we can very easily make. We have only to recall to ourmemory what we have ourselves seen within the last ten years. Take theyear 1835. Food was cheap then; and the capitalist prospered greatly. But was the labouring man miserable? On the contrary, it is notoriousthat work was plentiful, that wages were high, that the common peoplewere thriving and contented. Then came a change like that in Pharaoh'sdream. The thin ears had blighted the full ears; the lean kine haddevoured the fat kine; the days of plenty were over; and the days ofdearth had arrived. In 1841 the capitalist was doubtless distressed. Butwill anybody tell me that the capitalist was the only sufferer, or thechief sufferer? Have we forgotten what was the condition of theworking people in that unhappy year? So visible was the misery of themanufacturing towns that a man of sensibility could hardly bear to passthrough them. Everywhere he found filth and nakedness, and plaintivevoices, and wasted forms, and haggard faces. Politicians who had neverbeen thought alarmists began to tremble for the very foundations ofsociety. First the mills were put on short time. Then they ceased towork at all. Then went to pledge the scanty property of the artisan:first his little luxuries, then his comforts, then his necessaries. Thehovels were stripped till they were as bare as the wigwam of a DogribbedIndian. Alone, amidst the general misery, the shop with the three goldenballs prospered, and was crammed from cellar to garret with the clocks, and the tables, and the kettles, and the blankets, and the bibles ofthe poor. I remember well the effect which was produced in London by theunwonted sight of the huge pieces of cannon which were going northwardto overawe the starving population of Lancashire. These evil days passedaway. Since that time we have again had cheap bread. The capitalist hasbeen a gainer. It was fit that he should be a gainer. But has he beenthe only gainer? Will those who are always telling us that the Polishlabourer is worse off than the English labourer venture to tell us thatthe English labourer was worse off in 1844 than in 1841? Have we noteverywhere seen the goods of the poor coming back from the magazine ofthe pawnbroker? Have we not seen in the house of the working man, in hisclothing, in his very looks as he passed us in the streets, that hewas a happier being? As to his pleasures, and especially as to themost innocent, the most salutary, of his pleasures, ask your own mostintelligent and useful fellow citizen Mr Robert Chambers what salepopular books had in the year 1841, and what sale they had last year. I am assured that, in one week of 1845, the sums paid in wages withintwenty miles of Manchester exceeded by a million and a half the sumspaid in the corresponding week of 1841. 

Gentlemen, both the capitalist and the labourer have been gainers, as they ought to have been gainers, by the diminution in the price ofbread. But there is a third party, which ought not to have gained bythat diminution, and yet has gained very greatly by it; and that partyis Her Majesty's present Government. It is for the interest of rulersthat those whom they rule should be prosperous. But the prosperity whichwe have lately enjoyed was a prosperity for which we were not indebtedto our rulers. It came in spite of them. It was produced by thecheapness of that which they had laboured to render dear. Under pretenceof making us independent of foreign supply, they have established asystem which makes us dependent in the worst possible way. As my valuedfriend, the Lord Provost (Mr Adam Black. ), has justly said, there isa mutual dependence among nations of which we cannot get rid. ThatProvidence has assigned different productions to different climates is atruth with which everybody is familiar. But this is not all. Even inthe same climate different productions belong to different stages ofcivilisation. As one latitude is favourable to the vine and another tothe sugar cane, so there is, in the same latitude, a state of society inwhich it is desirable that the industry of men should be almost entirelydirected towards the cultivation of the earth, and another state ofsociety in which it is desirable that a large part of the populationshould be employed in manufactures. No dependence can be conceived morenatural, more salutary, more free from everything like degradationthan the mutual dependence which exists between a nation which has aboundless extent of fertile land, and a nation which has a boundlesscommand of machinery; between a nation whose business is to turn desertsinto corn fields, and a nation whose business is to increase tenfold byingenious processes the value of the fleece and of the rude iron ore. Even if that dependence were less beneficial than it is, we mustsubmit to it; for it is inevitable. Make what laws we will, we must bedependent on other countries for a large part of our food. That pointwas decided when England ceased to be an exporting country. For, gentlemen, it is demonstrable that none but a country which ordinarilyexports food can be independent of foreign supplies. If a manufacturerdetermines to produce ten thousand pair of stockings, he will producethe ten thousand, and neither more nor less. But an agriculturistcannot determine that he will produce ten thousand quarters of corn, and neither more nor less. That he may be sure of having ten thousandquarters in a bad year, he must sow such a quantity of land that he willhave much more than ten thousand in a good year. It is evident that, ifour island does not in ordinary years produce many more quarters than wewant, it will in bad years produce fewer quarters than we want. And itis equally evident that our cultivators will not produce more quartersof corn than we want, unless they can export the surplus at a profit. Nobody ventures to tell us that Great Britain can be ordinarily anexporting country. It follows that we must be dependent: and the onlyquestion is, Which is the best mode of dependence? That question it isnot difficult to answer. Go to Lancashire; see that multitude of cities, some of them equal in size to the capitals of large kingdoms. Look atthe warehouses, the machinery, the canals, the railways, the docks. See the stir of that hive of human beings busily employed in making, packing, conveying stuffs which are to be worn in Canada and Caffraria, in Chili and Java. You naturally ask, How is this immense population, collected on an area which will not yield food for one tenth part ofthem, to be nourished? But change the scene. Go beyond the Ohio, andthere you will see another species of industry, equally extensive andequally flourishing. You will see the wilderness receding fast beforethe advancing tide of life and civilisation, vast harvests waving roundthe black stumps of what a few months ago was a pathless forest, andcottages, barns, mills, rising amidst the haunts of the wolf and thebear. Here is more than enough corn to feed the artisans of our thicklypeopled island; and most gladly would the grower of that corn exchangeit for a Sheffield knife, a Birmingham spoon, a warm coat of Leedswoollen cloth, a light dress of Manchester cotton. But this exchange ourrulers prohibit. They say to our manufacturing population, "You wouldwillingly weave clothes for the people of America, and they would gladlysow wheat for you; but we prohibit this intercourse. We condemn bothyour looms and their ploughs to inaction. We will compel you to pay ahigh price for a stinted meal. We will compel those who would gladly beyour purveyors and your customers to be your rivals. We will compel themto turn manufacturers in self-defence; and when, in close imitation ofus, they impose high duties on British goods for the protection of theirown produce, we will, in our speeches and despatches, express wonder andpity at their strange ignorance of political economy. "

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

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

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

The prospect, gentlemen, is, doubtless, gloomy. Yet it has its brightpart. I have already congratulated you on the important fact thatLord John Russell and those who have hitherto acted on this subject inconcert with him, have given up all thoughts of fixed duty. I have tocongratulate you on another fact not less important. I am assured thatthe working people of the manufacturing districts have at last come tounderstand this question. The sharp discipline which they have undergonehas produced this good effect; that they will never again listen to anyorator who shall have the effrontery to tell them that their wages riseand fall with the price of the loaf. Thus we shall go into the contestunder such leading and with such a following as we never had before. Thebest part of the aristocracy will be at our head. Millions of labouringmen, who had been separated from us by the arts of impostors, will bein our rear. So led and so followed, we may, I think, look forward tovictory, if not in this, yet in the next Parliament. But, whether ourtriumph be near or remote, I assure you that I shall not fail as regardsthis question, to prove myself your true representative. I will now, myLord, put into your hands this resolution, "That the present corn lawpresses with especial severity on the poorer classes. "

*****

THE TEN HOURS BILL. (MAY 22, 1846) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OFCOMMONS ON THE 22D OF MAY 1846. 

On the twenty-ninth of April, 1846, Mr Fielden, Member for Oldham, movedthe second reading of a Bill for limiting the labour of young personsin factories to ten hours a day. The debate was adjourned, and wasrepeatedly resumed at long intervals. At length, on the twenty-second ofMay the Bill was rejected by 203 votes to 193. On that day the followingSpeech was made. 

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

It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to assure my honourable friend thatI utterly disapprove of those aspersions which have, both in this Houseand out of it, been thrown on the owners of factories. For that valuableclass of men I have no feeling but respect and good will. I am convincedthat with their interests the interests of the whole community, andespecially of the labouring classes, are inseparably bound up. I canalso with perfect sincerity declare that the vote which I shall giveto-night will not be a factious vote. In no circumstances indeed shouldI think that the laws of political hostility warranted me in treatingthis question as a party question. But at the present moment I wouldmuch rather strengthen than weaken the hands of Her Majesty's Ministers. It is by no means pleasant to me to be under the necessity of opposingthem. I assure them, I assure my friends on this side of the House withwhom I am so unfortunate as to differ, and especially my honourablefriend the Member for Sheffield, who spoke, I must say, in rather tooplaintive a tone, that I have no desire to obtain credit for humanity attheir expense. I fully believe that their feeling towards the labouringpeople is quite as kind as mine. There is no difference between us asto ends: there is an honest difference of opinion as to means: and wesurely ought to be able to discuss the points on which we differ withoutone angry emotion or one acrimonious word. 

The details of the bill, Sir, will be more conveniently and moreregularly discussed when we consider it in Committee. Our business atpresent is with the principle: and the principle, we are told by manygentlemen of great authority, is unsound. In their opinion, neitherthis bill, nor any other bill regulating the hours of labour, can bedefended. This, they say, is one of those matters about which we oughtnot to legislate at all; one of those matters which settle themselvesfar better than any government can settle them. Now it is most importantthat this point should be fully cleared up. We certainly ought not tousurp functions which do not properly belong to us: but, on the otherhand, we ought not to abdicate functions which do properly belong tous. I hardly know which is the greater pest to society, a paternalgovernment, that is to say a prying, meddlesome government, whichintrudes itself into every part of human life, and which thinks that itcan do everything for everybody better than anybody can do anything forhimself; or a careless, lounging government, which suffers grievances, such as it could at once remove, to grow and multiply, and which toall complaint and remonstrance has only one answer: "We must let thingsalone: we must let things take their course: we must let things findtheir level. " There is no more important problem in politics than toascertain the just mean between these two most pernicious extremes, todraw correctly the line which divides those cases in which it is theduty of the State to interfere from those cases in which it is the dutyof the State to abstain from interference. In old times the besettingsin of rulers was undoubtedly an inordinate disposition to meddle. Thelawgiver was always telling people how to keep their shops, how to tilltheir fields, how to educate their children, how many dishes to haveon their tables, how much a yard to give for the cloth which made theircoats. He was always trying to remedy some evil which did not properlyfall within his province: and the consequence was that he increasedthe evils which he attempted to remedy. He was so much shocked bythe distress inseparable from scarcity that he made statutes againstforestalling and regrating, and so turned the scarcity into a famine. Hewas so much shocked by the cunning and hardheartedness of money-lendersthat he made laws against usury; and the consequence was that theborrower, who, if he had been left unprotected, would have got money atten per cent. , could hardly, when protected, get it at fifteen per cent. Some eminent political philosophers of the last century exposed withgreat ability the folly of such legislation, and, by doing so, rendereda great service to mankind. There has been a reaction, a reaction whichhas doubtless produced much good, but which like most reactions, has notbeen without evils and dangers. Our statesmen cannot now be accused ofbeing busybodies. But I am afraid that there is, even in some of theablest and most upright among them a tendency to the opposite fault. I will give an instance of what I mean. Fifteen years ago it becameevident that railroads would soon, in every part of the kingdom, supersede to a great extent the old highways. The tracing of thenew routes which were to join all the chief cities, ports, and navalarsenals of the island was a matter of the highest national importance. But, unfortunately, those who should have acted for the nation, refusedto interfere. Consequently, numerous questions which were really public, questions which concerned the public convenience, the public prosperity, the public security, were treated as private questions. That the wholesociety was interested in having a good system of internal communicationseemed to be forgotten. The speculator who wanted a large dividendon his shares, the landowner who wanted a large price for his acres, obtained a full hearing. But nobody applied to be heard on behalf ofthe community. The effects of that great error we feel, and we shall notsoon cease to feel. Unless I am greatly mistaken, we are in danger ofcommitting to-night an error of the same kind. The honourable member forMontrose (Mr Hume. ) and my honourable friend the Member for Sheffieldthink that the question before us is merely a question between the oldand the new theories of commerce. They cannot understand how anyfriend of free trade can wish the Legislature to interfere between thecapitalist and the labourer. They say, "You do not make a law to settlethe price of gloves, or the texture of gloves, or the length of creditwhich the glover shall give. You leave it to him to determine whetherhe will charge high or low prices, whether he will use strong orflimsy materials, whether he will trust or insist on ready money. Youacknowledge that these are matters which he ought to be left to settlewith his customers, and that we ought not to interfere. It is possiblethat he may manage his shop ill. But it is certain that we shall manageit ill. On the same grounds on which you leave the seller of gloves andthe buyer of gloves to make their own contract, you ought to leave theseller of labour and the buyer of labour to make their own contract. "

I have a great respect, Sir, for those who reason thus: but I cannot seethis matter in the light in which it appears to them; and, though I maydistrust my own judgment, I must be guided by it. I am, I believe, asstrongly attached as any member of this House to the principle of freetrade, rightly understood. Trade, considered merely as trade, consideredmerely with reference to the pecuniary interest of the contractingparties, can hardly be too free. But there is a great deal of tradewhich cannot be considered merely as trade, and which affects higherthan pecuniary interests. And to say that Government never ought toregulate such trade is a monstrous proposition, a proposition at whichAdam Smith would have stood aghast. We impose some restrictions on tradefor purposes of police. Thus, we do not suffer everybody who has a caband a horse to ply for passengers in the streets of London. We do notleave the fare to be determined by the supply and the demand. We do notpermit a driver to extort a guinea for going half a mile on a rainy daywhen there is no other vehicle on the stand. We impose some restrictionson trade for the sake of revenue. Thus, we forbid a farmer to cultivatetobacco on his own ground. We impose some restrictions on trade forthe sake of national defence. Thus we compel a man who would rather beploughing or weaving to go into the militia; and we fix the amount ofpay which he shall receive without asking his consent. Nor is there inall this anything inconsistent with the soundest political economy. Forthe science of political economy teaches us only that we ought not oncommercial grounds to interfere with the liberty of commerce; and we, in the cases which I have put, interfere with the liberty of commerce onhigher than commercial grounds. 

And now, Sir, to come closer to the case with which we have to deal, Isay, first, that where the health of the community is concerned, it maybe the duty of the State to interfere with the contracts of individuals;and to this proposition I am quite sure that Her Majesty's Governmentwill cordially assent. I have just read a very interesting report signedby two members of that Government, the Duke of Buccleuch, and the nobleearl who was lately Chief Commissioner of the Woods and Forests, andwho is now Secretary for Ireland (The Earl of Lincoln. ); and, since thatreport was laid before the House, the noble earl himself has, with thesanction of the Cabinet, brought in a bill for the protection ofthe public health. By this bill it is provided that no man shall bepermitted to build a house on his own land in any great town withoutgiving notice to certain Commissioners. No man is to sink a cellarwithout the consent of these Commissioners. The house must not be ofless than a prescribed width. No new house must be built without adrain. If an old house has no drain, the Commissioners may order theowner to make a drain. If he refuses, they make a drain for him, andsend him in the bill. They may order him to whitewash his house. If herefuses, they may send people with pails and brushes to whitewash it forhim, at his charge. Now, suppose that some proprietor of houses at Leedsor Manchester were to expostulate with the Government in the language inwhich the Government has expostulated with the supporters of this billfor the regulation of factories. Suppose he were to say to the nobleearl, "Your lordship professes to be a friend to free trade. Yourlordship's doctrine is that everybody ought to be at liberty to buycheap and to sell dear. Why then may not I run up a house as cheap asI can, and let my rooms as dear as I can? Your lordship does not likehouses without drains. Do not take one of mine then. You think mybedrooms filthy. Nobody forces you to sleep in them. Use your ownliberty: but do not restrain that of your neighbours. I can find manya family willing to pay a shilling a week for leave to live in whatyou call a hovel. And why am not I to take the shilling which they arewilling to give me? And why are not they to have such shelter as, forthat shilling, I can afford them? Why did you send a man without myconsent to clean my house, and then force me to pay for what I neverordered? My tenants thought the house clean enough for them; or theywould not have been my tenants; and, if they and I were satisfied, why did you, in direct defiance of all the principles of free trade, interfere between us?" This reasoning, Sir, is exactly of a piecewith the reasoning of the honourable Member for Montrose, and of myhonourable friend the Member for Sheffield. If the noble earl willallow me to make a defence for him, I believe that he would answer theobjection thus: "I hold, " he would say, "the sound doctrine of freetrade. But your doctrine of free trade is an exaggeration, a caricatureof the sound doctrine; and by exhibiting such a caricature you bringdiscredit on the sound doctrine. We should have nothing to do with thecontracts between you and your tenants, if those contracts affected onlypecuniary interests. But higher than pecuniary interests are at stake. It concerns the commonwealth that the great body of the people shouldnot live in a way which makes life wretched and short, which enfeeblesthe body and pollutes the mind. If, by living in houses which resemblehogstyes, great numbers of our countrymen have contracted the tastesof hogs, if they have become so familiar with filth and stench andcontagion, that they burrow without reluctance in holes which would turnthe stomach of any man of cleanly habits, that is only an additionalproof that we have too long neglected our duties, and an additionalreason for our now performing them. "

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

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

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

Or will it be denied that this is a question in which public morality isconcerned? Can any one doubt, --none, I am sure, of my friends aroundme doubts, --that education is a matter of the highest importance tothe virtue and happiness of a people? Now we know that there can be noeducation without leisure. It is evident that, after deducting fromthe day twelve hours for labour in a factory, and the additional hoursnecessary for exercise, refreshment, and repose, there will not remaintime enough for education. 

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

But, it is said, this bill, though it directly limits only the labourof infants, will, by an indirect operation, limit also the labour ofadults. Now, Sir, though I am not prepared to vote for a bill directlylimiting the labour of adults, I will plainly say that I do not thinkthat the limitation of the labour of adults would necessarily produceall those frightful consequences which we have heard predicted. Youcheer me in very triumphant tones, as if I had uttered some monstrousparadox. Pray, does it not occur to any of you that the labour of adultsis now limited in this country? Are you not aware that you are living ina society in which the labour of adults is limited to six days in seven?It is you, not I, who maintain a paradox opposed to the opinions andthe practices of all nations and ages. Did you ever hear of a singlecivilised State since the beginning of the world in which a certainportion of time was not set apart for the rest and recreation of adultsby public authority? In general, this arrangement has been sanctionedby religion. The Egyptians, the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, had theirholidays: the Hindoo has his holidays: the Mussulman has his holidays:there are holidays in the Greek Church, holidays in the Church of Rome, holidays in the Church of England. Is it not amusing to hear a gentlemanpronounce with confidence that any legislation which limits the labourof adults must produce consequences fatal to society, without oncereflecting that in the society in which he lives, and in everyother society that exists, or ever has existed, there has been suchlegislation without any evil consequence? It is true that a PuritanGovernment in England, and an Atheistical Government in France, abolished the old holidays as superstitious. But those Governments feltit to be absolutely necessary to institute new holidays. Civil festivalswere substituted for religious festivals. You will find among theordinances of the Long Parliament a law providing that, in exchange forthe days of rest and amusement which the people had been used to enjoyat Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, the second Tuesday in every monthshould be given to the working man, and that any apprentice who wasforced to work on the second Tuesday of any month might have his masterup before a magistrate. The French Jacobins decreed that the Sundayshould no longer be a day of rest; but they instituted another day ofrest, the Decade. They swept away the holidays of the Roman CatholicChurch; but they instituted another set of holidays, the Sansculottides, one sacred to Genius, one to Industry, one to Opinion, and so on. I say, therefore, that the practice of limiting by law the time of the labourof adults is so far from being, as some gentlemen seem to think, anunheard of and monstrous practice, that it is a practice as universal ascookery, as the wearing of clothes, as the use of domestic animals. 

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

He says, "If this limitation be good for the working people, rely on itthat they will find it out, and that they will themselves establish itwithout any law. " Why not reason in the same way about the Sunday? Whynot say, "If it be a good thing for the people of London to shut theirshops one day in seven, they will find it out, and will shut their shopswithout a law?" Sir, the answer is obvious. I have no doubt that, ifyou were to poll the shopkeepers of London, you would find an immensemajority, probably a hundred to one, in favour of closing shops on theSunday; and yet it is absolutely necessary to give to the wish of themajority the sanction of a law; for, if there were no such law, theminority, by opening their shops, would soon force the majority to dothe same. 

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

But, it is said, you cannot legislate for all trades; and therefore youhad better not legislate for any. Look at the poor sempstress. She worksfar longer and harder than the factory child. She sometimes plies herneedle fifteen, sixteen hours in the twenty-four. See how the housemaidworks, up at six every morning, and toiling up stairs and down stairstill near midnight. You own that you cannot do anything for thesempstress and the housemaid. Why then trouble yourself about thefactory child? Take care that by protecting one class you do notaggravate the hardships endured by the classes which you cannot protect. Why, Sir, might not all this be said, word for word, against the lawswhich enjoin the observance of the Sunday? There are classes of peoplewhom you cannot prevent from working on the Sunday. There are classes ofpeople whom, if you could, you ought not to prevent from working on theSunday. Take the sempstress, of whom so much has been said. You cannotkeep her from sewing and hemming all Sunday in her garret. But youdo not think that a reason for suffering Covent Garden Market, andLeadenhall Market, and Smithfield Market, and all the shops from MileEnd to Hyde Park to be open all Sunday. Nay, these factories about whichwe are debating, --does anybody propose that they shall be allowed towork all Sunday? See then how inconsistent you are. You think it unjustto limit the labour of the factory child to ten hours a day, because youcannot limit the labour of the sempstress. And yet you see no injusticein limiting the labour of the factory child, aye, and of the factoryman, to six days in the week, though you cannot limit the labour of thesempstress. 

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

Will my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield maintain that thelaw which limits the number of working days has been injurious to theworking population? I am certain that he will not. How then can heexpect me to believe that a law which limits the number of working hoursmust necessarily be injurious to the working population? Yet he andthose who agree with him seem to wonder at our dulness because we donot at once admit the truth of the doctrine which they propound onthis subject. They reason thus. We cannot reduce the number of hours oflabour in factories without reducing the amount of production. We cannotreduce the amount of production without reducing the remuneration of thelabourer. Meanwhile, foreigners, who are at liberty to work till theydrop down dead at their looms, will soon beat us out of all the marketsof the world. Wages will go down fast. The condition of our workingpeople will be far worse than it is; and our unwise interference will, like the unwise interference of our ancestors with the dealings of thecorn factor and the money lender, increase the distress of the veryclass which we wish to relieve. 

Now, Sir, I fully admit that there might be such a limitation of thehours of labour as would produce the evil consequences with which we arethreatened; and this, no doubt, is a very good reason for legislatingwith great caution, for feeling our way, for looking well to all thedetails of this bill. But it is certainly not true that every limitationof the hours of labour must produce these consequences. And I am, I mustsay, surprised when I hear men of eminent ability and knowledge lay downthe proposition that a diminution of the time of labour must be followedby diminution of the wages of labour, as a proposition universallytrue, as a proposition capable of being strictly demonstrated, asa proposition about which there can be no more doubt than about anytheorem in Euclid. Sir, I deny the truth of the proposition; and forthis plain reason. We have already, by law, greatly reduced the time oflabour in factories. Thirty years ago, the late Sir Robert Peel told theHouse that it was a common practice to make children of eight years ofage toil in mills fifteen hours a day. A law has since been made whichprohibits persons under eighteen years of age from working in millsmore than twelve hours a day. That law was opposed on exactly the samegrounds on which the bill before us is opposed. Parliament was toldthen, as it is told now, that with the time of labour the quantity ofproduction would decrease, that with the quantity of production thewages would decrease, that our manufacturers would be unable to contendwith foreign manufacturers, and that the condition of the labouringpopulation instead of being made better by the interference of theLegislature would be made worse. Read over those debates; and you mayimagine that you are reading the debate of this evening. Parliamentdisregarded these prophecies. The time of labour was limited. Have wagesfallen? Has the cotton trade left Manchester for France or Germany? Hasthe condition of the working people become more miserable? Is it notuniversally acknowledged that the evils which were so confidentlypredicted have not come to pass? Let me be understood. I am not arguingthat, because a law which reduced the hours of daily labour from fifteento twelve did not reduce wages, a law reducing those hours from twelveto ten or eleven cannot possibly reduce wages. That would be veryinconclusive reasoning. What I say is this, that, since a law whichreduced the hours of daily labour from fifteen to twelve has not reducedwages, the proposition that every reduction of the hours of labour mustnecessarily reduce wages is a false proposition. There is evidentlysome flaw in that demonstration which my honourable friend thinks socomplete; and what the flaw is we may perhaps discover if we look at theanalogous case to which I have so often referred. 

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

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

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

One word, Sir, before I sit down, in answer to my noble friend near me. (Lord Morpeth. ) He seems to think that this bill is ill timed. I ownthat I cannot agree with him. We carried up on Monday last to the barof the Lords a bill which will remove the most hateful and perniciousrestriction that ever was laid on trade. Nothing can be more properthan to apply, in the same week, a remedy to a great evil of a directlyopposite kind. As lawgivers, we have two great faults to confess and torepair. We have done that which we ought not to have done. We have leftundone that which we ought to have done. We have regulated that which weshould have left to regulate itself. We have left unregulated that whichwe were bound to regulate. We have given to some branches of industrya protection which has proved their bane. We have withheld from publichealth and public morals the protection which was their due. We haveprevented the labourer from buying his loaf where he could get itcheapest; but we have not prevented him from ruining his body and mindby premature and immoderate toil. I hope that we have seen the lastboth of a vicious system of interference and of a vicious system ofnon-interference, and that our poorer countrymen will no longer havereason to attribute their sufferings either to our meddling or to ourneglect. 

*****

THE LITERATURE OF BRITAIN. (NOVEMBER 4, 1846) A SPEECH DELIVERED ATTHE OPENING OF THE EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION ON THE 4TH OFNOVEMBER 1846. 

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

The Directors of our Institution have requested me to propose to you asa toast the Literature of Britain. They could not have assigned to mea more agreeable duty. They chief object of this Institution is, Iconceive, to impart knowledge through the medium of our own language. Edinburgh is already rich in libraries worthy of her fame as a seatof literature and a seat of jurisprudence. A man of letters can herewithout difficulty obtain access to repositories filled with the wisdomof many ages and of many nations. But something was still wanting. We still wanted a library open to that large, that important, thatrespectable class which, though by no means destitute of liberalcuriosity or of sensibility to literary pleasures, is yet forced tobe content with what is written in our own tongue. For that classespecially, I do not say exclusively, this library is intended. Our directors, I hope, will not be satisfied, I, as a member, shallcertainly not be satisfied, till we possess a noble and completecollection of English books, till it is impossible to seek in vainon our shelves for a single English book which is valuable either onaccount of matter or on account of manner, which throws any light on ourcivil, ecclesiastical, intellectual, or social history, which, in short, can afford either useful instruction or harmless amusement. 

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

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

It is evident then that those who are afraid of superficial knowledgedo not mean by superficial knowledge knowledge which is superficial whencompared with the whole quantity of truth capable of being known. For, in that sense, all human knowledge is, and always has been, and alwaysmust be, superficial. What then is the standard? Is it the same twoyears together in any country? Is it the same, at the same moment, inany two countries? Is it not notorious that the profundity of one ageis the shallowness of the next; that the profundity of one nation is theshallowness of a neighbouring nation? Ramohun Roy passed, among Hindoos, for a man of profound Western learning; but he would have been but avery superficial member of this Institute. Strabo was justly entitledto be called a profound geographer eighteen hundred years ago. Buta teacher of geography, who had never heard of America, would now belaughed at by the girls of a boarding-school. What would now be thoughtof the greatest chemist of 1746, or of the greatest geologist of1746? The truth is that, in all experimental science, mankind is, ofnecessity, constantly advancing. Every generation, of course, has itsfront rank and its rear rank; but the rear rank of a later generationoccupies the ground which was occupied by the front rank of a formergeneration. 

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

It might be amusing to institute a comparison between one of theprofoundly learned men of the thirteenth century and one of thesuperficial students who will frequent our library. Take the greatphilosopher of the time of Henry the Third of England, or Alexander theThird of Scotland, the man renowned all over the island, and even as faras Italy and Spain, as the first of astronomers and chemists. What ishis astronomy? He is a firm believer in the Ptolemaic system. He neverheard of the law of gravitation. Tell him that the succession of day andnight is caused by the turning of the earth on its axis. Tell himthat, in consequence of this motion, the polar diameter of the earth isshorter than the equatorial diameter. Tell him that the succession ofsummer and winter is caused by the revolution of the earth round thesun. If he does not set you down for an idiot, he lays an informationagainst you before the Bishop, and has you burned for a heretic. To dohim justice, however, if he is ill informed on these points, thereare other points on which Newton and Laplace were mere children whencompared with him. He can cast your nativity. He knows what will happenwhen Saturn is in the House of Life, and what will happen when Mars isin conjunction with the Dragon's Tail. He can read in the stars whetheran expedition will be successful, whether the next harvest will beplentiful, which of your children will be fortunate in marriage, andwhich will be lost at sea. Happy the State, happy the family, whichis guided by the counsels of so profound a man! And what but mischief, public and private, can we expect from the temerity and conceit ofscolists who know no more about the heavenly bodies than what they havelearned from Sir John Herschel's beautiful little volume. But, to speakseriously, is not a little truth better than a great deal of falsehood?Is not the man who, in the evenings of a fortnight, has acquired acorrect notion of the solar system, a more profound astronomer than aman who has passed thirty years in reading lectures about the primummobile, and in drawing schemes of horoscopes?

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

As it has been in science so it has been in literature. Compare theliterary acquirements of the great men of the thirteenth century withthose which will be within the reach of many who will frequent ourreading room. As to Greek learning, the profound man of the thirteenthcentury was absolutely on a par with the superficial man of thenineteenth. In the modern languages, there was not, six hundred yearsago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profoundscholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books. We will supposehim to have had both a large and a choice collection. We will allow himthirty, nay forty manuscripts, and among them a Virgil, a Terence, aLucan, an Ovid, a Statius, a great deal of Livy, a great deal of Cicero. In allowing him all this, we are dealing most liberally with him; for itis much more likely that his shelves were filled with treaties on schooldivinity and canon law, composed by writers whose names the world hasvery wisely forgotten. But, even if we suppose him to have possessedall that is most valuable in the literature of Rome, I say with perfectconfidence that, both in respect of intellectual improvement, and inrespect of intellectual pleasures, he was far less favourably situatedthan a man who now, knowing only the English language, has a bookcasefilled with the best English works. Our great man of the Middle Agescould not form any conception of any tragedy approaching Macbeth orLear, or of any comedy equal to Henry the Fourth or Twelfth Night. Thebest epic poem that he had read was far inferior to the Paradise Lost;and all the tomes of his philosophers were not worth a page of the NovumOrganum. 

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

And thus I am brought back to the point from which I started. I havebeen requested to invite you to fill your glasses to the Literature ofBritain; to that literature, the brightest, the purest, the most durableof all the glories of our country; to that literature, so rich inprecious truth and precious fiction; to that literature which boasts ofthe prince of all poets and of the prince of all philosophers; to thatliterature which has exercised an influence wider than that of ourcommerce, and mightier than that of our arms; to that literature whichhas taught France the principles of liberty, and has furnished Germanywith models of art; to that literature which forms a tie closer than thetie of consanguinity between us and the commonwealths of the valley ofthe Mississippi; to that literature before the light of which impiousand cruel superstitions are fast taking flight on the banks of theGanges; to that literature which will, in future ages, instruct anddelight the unborn millions who will have turned the Australasianand Caffrarian deserts into cities and gardens. To the Literature ofBritain, then! And, wherever British literature spreads, may it beattended by British virtue and by British freedom!

*****

EDUCATION. (APRIL 19, 1847) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONSON THE 18TH OF APRIL 1847. 

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

In opposition to this amendment, the following Speech was made. Aftera debate of three nights, Mr Thomas Duncombe obtained permission towithdraw the latter part of his amendment. The first part was put, andnegatived by 372 votes to 47. 

You will not wonder, Sir, that I am desirous to catch your eye thisevening. The first duty which I performed, as a Member of the Committeeof Council which is charged with the superintendence of publicinstruction, was to give my hearty assent to the plan which thehonourable Member for Finsbury calls on the House to condemn. I am oneof those who have been accused in every part of the kingdom, and who arenow accused in Parliament, of aiming, under specious pretences, ablow at the civil and religious liberties of the people. It is naturaltherefore that I should seize the earliest opportunity of vindicatingmyself from so grave a charge. 

The honourable Member for Finsbury must excuse me if, in the remarkswhich I have to offer to the House, I should not follow very closely theorder of his speech. The truth is that a mere answer to his speech wouldbe no defence of myself or of my colleagues. I am surprised, I own, thata man of his acuteness and ability should, on such an occasion, havemade such a speech. The country is excited from one end to the other bya great question of principle. On that question the Government has takenone side. The honourable Member stands forth as the chosen and trustedchampion of a great party which takes the other side. We expected tohear from him a full exposition of the views of those in whose name hespeaks. But, to our astonishment, he has scarcely even alluded to thecontroversy which has divided the whole nation. He has entertained uswith sarcasms and personal anecdotes: he has talked much about mattersof mere detail: but I must say that, after listening with closeattention to all that he has said, I am quite unable to discoverwhether, on the only important point which is in issue, he agreeswith us or with that large and active body of Nonconformists which isdiametrically opposed to us. He has sate down without dropping one wordfrom which it is possible to discover whether he thinks that educationis or that it is not a matter with which the State ought to interfere. Yet that is the question about which the whole nation has, duringseveral weeks, been writing, reading, speaking, hearing, thinking, petitioning, and on which it is now the duty of Parliament to pronouncea decision. That question once settled, there will be, I believe, very little room for dispute. If it be not competent to the State tointerfere with the education of the people, the mode of interferencerecommended by the Committee of Council must of course be condemned. If it be the right and the duty of the State to make provision for theeducation of the people, the objections made to our plan will, in a veryfew words, be shown to be frivolous. 

I shall take a course very different from that which has been takenby the honourable gentleman. I shall in the clearest manner professmy opinion on that great question of principle which he has studiouslyevaded; and for my opinion I shall give what seem to me to beunanswerable reasons. 

I believe, Sir, that it is the right and the duty of the State toprovide means of education for the common people. This proposition seemsto me to be implied in every definition that has ever yet been given ofthe functions of a government. About the extent of those functions therehas been much difference of opinion among ingenious men. There are somewho hold that it is the business of a government to meddle with everypart of the system of human life, to regulate trade by bounties andprohibitions, to regulate expenditure by sumptuary laws, to regulateliterature by a censorship, to regulate religion by an inquisition. Others go to the opposite extreme, and assign to government a verynarrow sphere of action. But the very narrowest sphere that ever wasassigned to governments by any school of political philosophy is quitewide enough for my purpose. On one point all the disputants are agreed. They unanimously acknowledge that it is the duty of every governmentto take order for giving security to the persons and property of themembers of the community. 

This being admitted, can it be denied that the education of the commonpeople is a most effectual means of securing our persons and ourproperty? Let Adam Smith answer that question for me. His authority, always high, is, on this subject, entitled to peculiar respect, becausehe extremely disliked busy, prying, interfering governments. He was forleaving literature, arts, sciences, to take care of themselves. He wasnot friendly to ecclesiastical establishments. He was of opinion, thatthe State ought not to meddle with the education of the rich. But he hasexpressly told us that a distinction is to be made, particularly in acommercial and highly civilised society, between the education of therich and the education of the poor. The education of the poor, hesays, is a matter which deeply concerns the commonwealth. Just as themagistrate ought to interfere for the purpose of preventing the leprosyfrom spreading among the people, he ought to interfere for the purposeof stopping the progress of the moral distempers which are inseparablefrom ignorance. Nor can this duty be neglected without danger to thepublic peace. If you leave the multitude uninstructed, there is seriousrisk that religious animosities may produce the most dreadful disorders. The most dreadful disorders! Those are Adam Smith's own words; andprophetic words they were. Scarcely had he given this warning toour rulers when his prediction was fulfilled in a manner never to beforgotten. I speak of the No Popery riots of 1780. I do not know that Icould find in all history a stronger proof of the proposition, that theignorance of the common people makes the property, the limbs, the livesof all classes insecure. Without the shadow of a grievance, at thesummons of a madman, a hundred thousand people rise in insurrection. During a whole week, there is anarchy in the greatest and wealthiestof European cities. The parliament is besieged. Your predecessor sitstrembling in his chair, and expects every moment to see the door beatenin by the ruffians whose roar he hears all round the house. The peersare pulled out of their coaches. The bishops in their lawn are forced tofly over the tiles. The chapels of foreign ambassadors, buildings madesacred by the law of nations, are destroyed. The house of the ChiefJustice is demolished. The little children of the Prime Minister aretaken out of their beds and laid in their night clothes on the table ofthe Horse Guards, the only safe asylum from the fury of the rabble. Theprisons are opened. Highwaymen, housebreakers, murderers, come forthto swell the mob by which they have been set free. Thirty-six fires areblazing at once in London. Then comes the retribution. Count up all thewretches who were shot, who were hanged, who were crushed, who drankthemselves to death at the rivers of gin which ran down Holborn Hill;and you will find that battles have been lost and won with a smallersacrifice of life. And what was the cause of this calamity, a calamitywhich, in the history of London, ranks with the great plague and thegreat fire? The cause was the ignorance of a population which had beensuffered, in the neighbourhood of palaces, theatres, temples, to grow upas rude and stupid as any tribe of tattooed cannibals in New Zealand, Imight say as any drove of beasts in Smithfield Market. 

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

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

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

I would earnestly entreat every gentleman to look at a report whichis contained in the Appendix to the First Volume of the Minutes ofthe Committee of Council. I speak of the report made by Mr SeymourTremenheare on the state of that part of Monmouthshire which isinhabited by a population chiefly employed in mining. He found that, in this district, towards the close of 1839, out of eleven thousandchildren who were of an age to attend school, eight thousand never wentto any school at all, and that most of the remaining three thousandmight almost as well have gone to no school as to the squalid hovels inwhich men who ought themselves to have been learners pretended to teach. In general these men had only one qualification for their employment;and that was their utter unfitness for every other employment. They weredisabled miners, or broken hucksters. In their schools all was stench, and noise, and confusion. Now and then the clamour of the boys wassilenced for two minutes by the furious menaces of the master; but itsoon broke out again. The instruction given was of the lowest kind. Notone school in ten was provided with a single map. This is the way inwhich you suffered the minds of a great population to be formed. And nowfor the effects of your negligence. The barbarian inhabitants of thisregion rise in an insane rebellion against the Government. They comepouring down their valleys to Newport. They fire on the Queen's troops. They wound a magistrate. The soldiers fire in return; and too many ofthese wretched men pay with their lives the penalty of their crime. Butis the crime theirs alone? Is it strange that they should listen to theonly teaching that they had? How can you, who took no pains to instructthem, blame them for giving ear to the demagogue who took pains todelude them? We put them down, of course. We punished them. We had nochoice. Order must be maintained; property must be protected; and, sincewe had omitted to take the best way of keeping these people quiet, wewere under the necessity of keeping them quiet by the dread of the swordand the halter. But could any necessity be more cruel? And which of uswould run the risk of being placed under such necessity a second time?

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

My confidence in my opinion is strengthened when I recollect that I holdthat opinion in common with all the greatest lawgivers, statesmen, and political philosophers of all nations and ages, with all the mostillustrious champions of civil and spiritual freedom, and especiallywith those men whose names were once held in the highest venerationby the Protestant Dissenters of England. I might cite many of the mostvenerable names of the old world; but I would rather cite the exampleof that country which the supporters of the Voluntary system here arealways recommending to us as a pattern. Go back to the days when thelittle society which has expanded into the opulent and enlightenedcommonwealth of Massachusetts began to exist. Our modern Dissenters willscarcely, I think, venture to speak contumeliously of those Puritanswhose spirit Laud and his High Commission Court could not subdue, ofthose Puritans who were willing to leave home and kindred, and all thecomforts and refinements of civilised life, to cross the ocean, tofix their abode in forests among wild beasts and wild men, rather thancommit the sin of performing, in the House of God, one gesture whichthey believed to be displeasing to Him. Did those brave exiles think itinconsistent with civil or religious freedom that the State should takecharge of the education of the people? No, Sir; one of the earliest lawsenacted by the Puritan colonists was that every township, as soon as theLord had increased it to the number of fifty houses, should appoint oneto teach all children to write and read, and that every township of ahundred houses should set up a grammar school. Nor have the descendantsof those who made this law ever ceased to hold that the publicauthorities were bound to provide the means of public instruction. Noris this doctrine confined to New England. "Educate the people" wasthe first admonition addressed by Penn to the colony which he founded. "Educate the people" was the legacy of Washington to the nation whichhe had saved. "Educate the people" was the unceasing exhortation ofJefferson; and I quote Jefferson with peculiar pleasure, because of allthe eminent men that have ever lived, Adam Smith himself not excepted, Jefferson was the one who most abhorred everything like meddling on thepart of governments. Yet the chief business of his later years was toestablish a good system of State education in Virginia. 

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

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

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

Never was there a more false analogy. Whether a man is well suppliedwith sugar is a matter which concerns himself alone. But whether he iswell supplied with instruction is a matter which concerns his neighboursand the State. If he cannot afford to pay for sugar, he must go withoutsugar. But it is by no means fit that, because he cannot afford to payfor education, he should go without education. Between the rich andtheir instructors there may, as Adam Smith says, be free trade. Thesupply of music masters and Italian masters may be left to adjust itselfto the demand. But what is to become of the millions who are too poorto procure without assistance the services of a decent schoolmaster? Wehave indeed heard it said that even these millions will be supplied withteachers by the free competition of benevolent individuals who will viewith each other in rendering this service to mankind. No doubt there aremany benevolent individuals who spend their time and money most laudablyin setting up and supporting schools; and you may say, if you please, that there is, among these respectable persons, a competition to dogood. But do not be imposed upon by words. Do not believe that thiscompetition resembles the competition which is produced by the desire ofwealth and by the fear of ruin. There is a great difference, be assured, between the rivalry of philanthropists and the rivalry of grocers. Thegrocer knows that, if his wares are worse than those of other grocers, he shall soon go before the Bankrupt Court, and his wife and childrenwill have no refuge but the workhouse: he knows that, if his shopobtains an honourable celebrity, he shall be able to set up a carriageand buy a villa: and this knowledge impels him to exertions comparedwith which the exertions of even very charitable people to servethe poor are but languid. It would be strange infatuation indeed tolegislate on the supposition that a man cares for his fellow creaturesas much as he cares for himself. 

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

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

Now, is this the case? Look at the charges of the judges, at theresolutions of the grand juries, at the reports of public officers, at the reports of voluntary associations. All tell the same sad andignominious story. Take the reports of the Inspectors of Prisons. Inthe House of Correction at Hertford, of seven hundred prisoners one halfcould not read at all; only eight could read and write well. Of eightthousand prisoners who had passed through Maidstone Gaol only fiftycould read and write well. In Coldbath Fields Prison, the proportionthat could read and write well seems to have been still smaller. Turnfrom the registers of prisoners to the registers of marriages. You willfind that about a hundred and thirty thousand couples were married inthe year 1844. More than forty thousand of the bridegrooms and more thansixty thousand of the brides did not sign their names, but made theirmarks. Nearly one third of the men and nearly one half of the women, whoare in the prime of life, who are to be the parents of the Englishmen ofthe next generation, who are to bear a chief part in forming the mindsof the Englishmen of the next generation, cannot write their own names. Remember, too, that, though people who cannot write their own names mustbe grossly ignorant, people may write their own names and yet have verylittle knowledge. Tens of thousands who were able to write their nameshad in all probability received only the wretched education of a commonday school. We know what such a school too often is; a room crusted withfilth, without light, without air, with a heap of fuel in one cornerand a brood of chickens in another; the only machinery of instruction adogeared spelling-book and a broken slate; the masters the refuse of allother callings, discarded footmen, ruined pedlars, men who cannot worka sum in the rule of three, men who cannot write a common letter withoutblunders, men who do not know whether the earth is a sphere or a cube, men who do not know whether Jerusalem is in Asia or America. And to suchmen, men to whom none of us would entrust the key of his cellar, we haveentrusted the mind of the rising generation, and, with the mind of therising generation the freedom, the happiness, the glory of our country. 

Do you question the accuracy of this description? I will produceevidence to which I am sure that you will not venture to take anexception. Every gentleman here knows, I suppose, how important aplace the Congregational Union holds among the Nonconformists, andhow prominent a part Mr Edward Baines has taken in opposition to Stateeducation. A Committee of the Congregational Union drew up last yeara report on the subject of education. That report was received by theUnion; and the person who moved that it should be received was MrEdward Baines. That report contains the following passage: "If it werenecessary to disclose facts to such an assembly as this, as to theignorance and debasement of the neglected portions of our population intowns and rural districts, both adult and juvenile, it could easilybe done. Private information communicated to the Board, personalobservation and investigation of the various localities, with thepublished documents of the Registrar General, and the reports of thestate of prisons in England and Wales, published by order of the Houseof Commons, would furnish enough to make us modest in speaking of whathas been done for the humbler classes, and make us ashamed that the sonsof the soil of England should have been so long neglected, and shouldpresent to the enlightened traveller from other shores such a sadspectacle of neglected cultivation, lost mental power, and spiritualdegradation. " Nothing can be more just. All the information which Ihave been able to obtain bears out the statements of the CongregationalUnion. I do believe that the ignorance and degradation of a largepart of the community to which we belong ought to make us ashamed ofourselves. I do believe that an enlightened traveller from New York, from Geneva, or from Berlin, would be shocked to see so much barbarismin the close neighbourhood of so much wealth and civilisation. But isit not strange that the very gentlemen who tell us in such emphaticlanguage that the people are shamefully ill-educated, should yet persistin telling us that under a system of free competition the people arecertain to be excellently educated? Only this morning the opponents ofour plan circulated a paper in which they confidently predict that freecompetition will do all that is necessary, if we will only wait withpatience. Wait with patience! Why, we have been waiting ever since theHeptarchy. How much longer are we to wait? Till the year 2847? Or tillthe year 3847? That the experiment has as yet failed you do not deny. And why should it have failed? Has it been tried in unfavourablecircumstances? Not so: it has been tried in the richest and in thefreest, and in the most charitable country in all Europe. Has it beentried on too small a scale? Not so: millions have been subjected to it. Has it been tried during too short a time? Not so: it has been going onduring ages. The cause of the failure then is plain. Our whole systemhas been unsound. We have applied the principle of free competition to acase to which that principle is not applicable. 

But, Sir, if the state of the southern part of our island has furnishedme with one strong argument, the state of the northern part furnishesme with another argument, which is, if possible, still more decisive. A hundred and fifty years ago England was one of the best governed andmost prosperous countries in the world: Scotland was perhaps the rudestand poorest country that could lay any claim to civilisation. The nameof Scotchman was then uttered in this part of the island with contempt. The ablest Scotch statesmen contemplated the degraded state oftheir poorer countrymen with a feeling approaching to despair. It iswell-known that Fletcher of Saltoun, a brave and accomplished man, a manwho had drawn his sword for liberty, who had suffered proscription andexile for liberty, was so much disgusted and dismayed by the misery, theignorance, the idleness, the lawlessness of the common people, that heproposed to make many thousands of them slaves. Nothing, he thought, butthe discipline which kept order and enforced exertion among the negroesof a sugar colony, nothing but the lash and the stocks, could reclaimthe vagabonds who infested every part of Scotland from their indolentand predatory habits, and compel them to support themselves by steadylabour. He therefore, soon after the Revolution, published a pamphlet, in which he earnestly, and, as I believe, from the mere impulse ofhumanity and patriotism, recommended to the Estates of the Realm thissharp remedy, which alone, as he conceived, could remove the evil. Within a few months after the publication of that pamphlet a verydifferent remedy was applied. The Parliament which sate at Edinburghpassed an act for the establishment of parochial schools. What followed?An improvement such as the world had never seen took place in the moraland intellectual character of the people. Soon, in spite of the rigourof the climate, in spite of the sterility of the earth, Scotland becamea country which had no reason to envy the fairest portions of the globe. Wherever the Scotchman went, --and there were few parts of the world towhich he did not go, --he carried his superiority with him. If he wasadmitted into a public office, he worked his way up to the highest post. If he got employment in a brewery or a factory, he was soon the foreman. If he took a shop, his trade was the best in the street. If he enlistedin the army, he became a colour-sergeant. If he went to a colony, hewas the most thriving planter there. The Scotchman of the seventeenthcentury had been spoken of in London as we speak of the Esquimaux. TheScotchman of the eighteenth century was an object, not of scorn, but ofenvy. The cry was that, wherever he came, he got more than his share;that, mixed with Englishmen or mixed with Irishmen, he rose to the topas surely as oil rises to the top of water. And what had produced thisgreat revolution? The Scotch air was still as cold, the Scotch rockswere still as bare as ever. All the natural qualities of the Scotchmanwere still what they had been when learned and benevolent men advisedthat he should be flogged, like a beast of burden, to his daily task. But the State had given him an education. That education was not, it istrue, in all respects what it should have been. But such as it was, ithad done more for the bleak and dreary shores of the Forth and the Clydethan the richest of soils and the most genial of climates had done forCapua and Tarentum. Is there one member of this House, however stronglyhe may hold the doctrine that the Government ought not to interferewith the education of the people, who will stand up and say that, in hisopinion, the Scotch would now have been a happier and a more enlightenedpeople if they had been left, during the last five generations, to findinstruction for themselves?

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

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

First among his objections he places the cost. Surely, Sir, no personwho admits that it is our duty to train the minds of the risinggeneration can think a hundred thousand pounds too large a sum for thatpurpose. If we look at the matter in the lowest point of view, if weconsider human beings merely as producers of wealth, the differencebetween an intelligent and a stupid population, estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence, exceeds a hundredfold the proposed outlay. Noris this all. For every pound that you save in education, you will spendfive in prosecutions, in prisons, in penal settlements. I cannot believethat the House, having never grudged anything that was asked for thepurpose of maintaining order and protecting property by means of painand fear, will begin to be niggardly as soon as it is proposed to effectthe same objects by making the people wiser and better. 

The next objection made by the honourable Member to our plan is that itwill increase the influence of the Crown. This sum of a hundred thousandpounds may, he apprehends, be employed in corruption and jobbing. Thoseschoolmasters who vote for ministerial candidates will obtain a shareof the grant: those schoolmasters who vote for opponents of the ministrywill apply for assistance in vain. Sir, the honourable Member neverwould have made this objection if he had taken the trouble to understandthe minutes which he has condemned. We propose to place this part ofthe public expenditure under checks which must make such abuses as thehonourable Member anticipates morally impossible. Not only will therebe those ordinary checks which are thought sufficient to prevent themisapplication of the many millions annually granted for the army, thenavy, the ordnance, the civil government: not only must the Ministers ofthe Crown come every year to this House for a vote, and be prepared torender an account of the manner in which they have laid out what hadbeen voted in the preceding year, but, when they have satisfied theHouse, when they have got their vote, they will still be unable todistribute the money at their discretion. Whatever they may do for anyschoolmaster must be done in concert with those persons who, in thedistrict where the schoolmaster lives, take an interest in education, and contribute out of their private means to the expense of education. When the honourable gentleman is afraid that we shall corruptthe schoolmasters, he forgets, first, that we do not appoint theschoolmasters; secondly, that we cannot dismiss the schoolmasters;thirdly, that managers who are altogether independent of us can, withoutour consent, dismiss the schoolmasters; and, fourthly, that withoutthe recommendation of those managers we can give nothing to theschoolmasters. Observe, too, that such a recommendation will not be oneof those recommendations which goodnatured easy people are too aptto give to everybody who asks; nor will it at all resemble thoserecommendations which the Secretary of the Treasury is in the habit ofreceiving. For every pound which we pay on the recommendation of themanagers, the managers themselves must pay two pounds. They must alsoprovide the schoolmaster with a house out of their own funds before theycan obtain for him a grant from the public funds. What chance of jobbingis there here? It is common enough, no doubt, for a Member of Parliamentwho votes with Government to ask that one of those who zealouslysupported him at the last election may have a place in the Excise orthe Customs. But such a member would soon cease to solicit if the answerwere, "Your friend shall have a place of fifty pounds a year, if youwill give him a house and settle on him an income of a hundred a year. "What chance then, I again ask, is there of jobbing? What, say some ofthe dissenters of Leeds, is to prevent a Tory Government, a HighChurch Government, from using this parliamentary grant to corruptthe schoolmasters of our borough, and to induce them to use all theirinfluence in favour of a Tory and High Church candidate? Why, Sir, thedissenters of Leeds themselves have the power to prevent it. Let themsubscribe to the schools: let them take a share in the management of theschools: let them refuse to recommend to the committee of Council anyschoolmaster whom they suspect of having voted at any election fromcorrupt motives: and the thing is done. Our plan, in truth, is madeup of checks. My only doubt is whether the checks may not be found toonumerous and too stringent. On our general conduct there is the ordinarycheck, the parliamentary check. And, as respects those minute detailswhich it is impossible that this House can investigate, we shall bechecked, in every town and in every rural district, by boards consistingof independent men zealous in the cause of education. 

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

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

The next objection to our plans is that they interfere with thereligious convictions of Her Majesty's subjects. It has been sometimesinsinuated, but it has never been proved, that the Committee of Councilhas shown undue favour to the Established Church. Sir, I have carefullyread and considered the minutes; and I wish that every man who hasexerted his eloquence against them had done the same. I say that I havecarefully read and considered them, and that they seem to me to havebeen drawn up with exemplary impartiality. The benefits which we offerwe offer to people of all religious persuasions alike. The dissentingmanagers of schools will have equal authority with the managers whobelong to the Church. A boy who goes to meeting will be just as eligibleto be a monitor, and will receive just as large a stipend, as if hewent to the cathedral. The schoolmaster who is a nonconformist and theschoolmaster who is a conformist will enjoy the same emoluments, andwill, after the same term of service, obtain, on the same conditions, the same retiring pension. I wish that some gentleman would, insteadof using vague phrases about religious liberty and the rights ofconscience, answer this plain question. Suppose that in one of our largetowns there are four schools, a school connected with the Church, aschool connected with the Independents, a Baptist school, and a Wesleyanschool; what encouragement, pecuniary or honorary, will, by our plan, begiven to the school connected with the Church, and withheld from any ofthe other three schools? Is it not indeed plain that, if by neglect ormaladministration the Church school should get into a bad state, whilethe dissenting schools flourish, the dissenting schools will receivepublic money and the Church school will receive none?

It is true, I admit, that in rural districts which are too poor tosupport more than one school, the religious community to whichthe majority belongs will have an advantage over other religiouscommunities. But this is not our fault. If we are as impartial as itis possible to be, you surely do not expect more. If there should be aparish containing nine hundred churchmen and a hundred dissenters, ifthere should, in that parish, be a school connected with the Church, if the dissenters in that parish should be too poor to set up anotherschool, undoubtedly the school connected with the Church will, in thatparish, get all that we give; and the dissenters will get nothing. Butobserve that there is no partiality to the Church, as the Church, inthis arrangement. The churchmen get public money, not because theyare churchmen, but because they are the majority. The dissenters getnothing, not because they are dissenters, but because they are a smallminority. There are districts where the case will be reversed, wherethere will be dissenting schools, and no Church schools. In such casesthe dissenters will get what we have to give, and the churchmen will getnothing. 

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

I now come to the last words of the amendment. The honourable Memberfor Finsbury is apprehensive that our plan may interfere with thecivil rights of Her Majesty's subjects. How a man's civil rights can beprejudiced by his learning to read and write, to multiply and divide, oreven by his obtaining some knowledge of history and geography, I donot very well apprehend. One thing is clear, that persons sunk in thatignorance in which, as we are assured by the Congregational Union, greatnumbers of our countrymen are sunk, can be free only in name. It ishardly necessary for us to appoint a Select Committee for the purpose ofinquiring whether knowledge be the ally or the enemy of liberty. He is, I must say, but a short-sighted friend of the common people who is eagerto bestow on them a franchise which would make them all-powerful, andyet would withhold from them that instruction without which their powermust be a curse to themselves and to the State. 

This, Sir, is my defence. From the clamour of our accusers I appeal withconfidence to the country to which we must, in no long time, renderan account of our stewardship. I appeal with still more confidenceto future generations, which, while enjoying all the blessings of animpartial and efficient system of public instruction, will find itdifficult to believe that the authors of that system should have hadto struggle with a vehement and pertinacious opposition, and still moredifficult to believe that such an opposition was offered in the name ofcivil and religious freedom. 

*****

INAUGURAL SPEECH AT GLASGOW COLLEGE. (MARCH 21, 1849) A SPEECH DELIVEREDAT THE COLLEGE OF GLASGOW ON THE 21ST OF MARCH, 1849. 

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

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

I am not using a mere phrase of course, when I say that the feelingswith which I bear apart in the ceremony of this day are such as I findit difficult to utter in words. I do not think it strange that, whenthat great master of eloquence, Edmund Burke, stood where I now stand, he faltered and remained mute. Doubtless the multitude of thoughts whichrushed into his mind was such as even he could not easily arrange orexpress. In truth there are few spectacles more striking or affectingthan that which a great historical place of education presents on asolemn public day. There is something strangely interesting in thecontrast between the venerable antiquity of the body and the fresh andardent youth of the great majority of the members. Recollections andhopes crowd upon us together. The past and the future are at oncebrought close to us. Our thoughts wander back to the time when thefoundations of this ancient building were laid, and forward to thetime when those whom it is our office to guide and to teach will be theguides and teachers of our posterity. On the present occasion we may, with peculiar propriety, give such thoughts their course. For it haschanced that my magistracy has fallen on a great secular epoch. Thisis the four hundredth year of the existence of your University. At suchjubilees, jubilees of which no individual sees more than one, it isnatural, and it is good, that a society like this, a society whichsurvives all the transitory parts of which it is composed, a societywhich has a corporate existence and a perpetual succession, shouldreview its annals, should retrace the stages of its growth from infancyto maturity, and should try to find, in the experience of generationswhich have passed away, lessons which may be profitable to generationsyet unborn. 

The retrospect is full of interest and instruction. Perhaps it may bedoubted whether, since the Christian era, there has been any point oftime more important to the highest interests of mankind than that atwhich the existence of your University commenced. It was at the momentof a great destruction and of a great creation. Your society wasinstituted just before the empire of the East perished; that strangeempire which, dragging on a languid life through the great age ofdarkness, connected together the two great ages of light; that empirewhich, adding nothing to our stores of knowledge, and producing not oneman great in letters, in science, or in art, yet preserved, in the midstof barbarism, those masterpieces of Attic genius, which the highestminds still contemplate, and long will contemplate, with admiringdespair. And at that very time, while the fanatical Moslem wereplundering the churches and palaces of Constantinople, breaking inpieces Grecian sculptures, and giving to the flames piles of Grecianeloquence, a few humble German artisans, who little knew that they werecalling into existence a power far mightier than that of the victoriousSultan, were busied in cutting and setting the first types. TheUniversity came into existence just in time to witness the disappearanceof the last trace of the Roman empire, and to witness the publication ofthe earliest printed book. 

At this conjuncture, a conjuncture of unrivalled interest in the historyof letters, a man, never to be mentioned without reverence by everylover of letters, held the highest place in Europe. Our just attachmentto that Protestant faith to which our country owes so much must notprevent us from paying the tribute which, on this occasion, and in thisplace, justice and gratitude demand, to the founder of the Universityof Glasgow, the greatest of the restorers of learning, Pope Nicholas theFifth. He had sprung from the common people; but his abilities and hiserudition had early attracted the notice of the great. He had studiedmuch and travelled far. He had visited Britain, which, in wealth andrefinement, was to his native Tuscany what the back settlements ofAmerica now are to Britain. He had lived with the merchant princes ofFlorence, those men who first ennobled trade by making trade the allyof philosophy, of eloquence, and of taste. It was he who, under theprotection of the munificent and discerning Cosmo, arranged the firstpublic library that Modern Europe possessed. From privacy your founderrose to a throne; but on the throne he never forgot the studies whichhad been his delight in privacy. He was the centre of an illustriousgroup, composed partly of the last great scholars of Greece, and partlyof the first great scholars of Italy, Theodore Gaza and Georgeof Trebizond, Bessarion and Filelfo, Marsilio Ficino and PoggioBracciolini. By him was founded the Vatican library, then and long afterthe most precious and the most extensive collection of books in theworld. By him were carefully preserved the most valuable intellectualtreasures which had been snatched from the wreck of the Byzantineempire. His agents were to be found everywhere, in the bazaars of thefarthest East, in the monasteries of the farthest West, purchasing orcopying worm-eaten parchments, on which were traced words worthy ofimmortality. Under his patronage were prepared accurate Latin versionsof many precious remains of Greek poets and philosophers. But nodepartment of literature owes so much to him as history. By him wereintroduced to the knowledge of Western Europe two great and unrivalledmodels of historical composition, the work of Herodotus and the work ofThucydides. By him, too, our ancestors were first made acquainted withthe graceful and lucid simplicity of Xenophon and with the manly goodsense of Polybius. 

It was while he was occupied with cares like these that his attentionwas called to the intellectual wants of this region, a region nowswarming with population, rich with culture, and resounding with theclang of machinery, a region which now sends forth fleets laden with itsadmirable fabrics to the lands of which, in his days, no geographer hadever heard, then a wild, a poor, a half barbarous tract, lying on theutmost verge of the known world. He gave his sanction to the plan ofestablishing a University at Glasgow, and bestowed on the new seat oflearning all the privileges which belonged to the University of Bologna. I can conceive that a pitying smile passed over his face as he namedBologna and Glasgow together. At Bologna he had long studied. No spotin the world had been more favoured by nature or by art. The surroundingcountry was a fruitful and sunny country, a country of cornfields andvineyards. In the city, the house of Bentivoglo bore rule, a house whichvied with the house of Medici in taste and magnificence, which hasleft to posterity noble palaces and temples, and which gave a splendidpatronage to arts and letters. Glasgow your founder just knew to be apoor, a small, a rude town, a town, as he would have thought, not likelyever to be great and opulent; for the soil, compared with the richcountry at the foot of the Apennines, was barren, and the climate wassuch that an Italian shuddered at the thought of it. But it is not onthe fertility of the soil, it is not on the mildness of the atmosphere, that the prosperity of nations chiefly depends. Slavery and superstitioncan make Campania a land of beggars, and can change the plain of Ennainto a desert. Nor is it beyond the power of human intelligence andenergy, developed by civil and spiritual freedom, to turn sterile rocksand pestilential marshes into cities and gardens. Enlightened as yourfounder was, he little knew that he was himself a chief agent in a greatrevolution, physical and moral, political and religious, in a revolutiondestined to make the last first and the first last, in a revolutiondestined to invert the relative positions of Glasgow and Bologna. Wecannot, I think, better employ a few minutes than in reviewing thestages of this great change in human affairs. 

The review shall be short. Indeed I cannot do better than pass rapidlyfrom century to century. Look at the world, then, a hundred years afterthe seal of Nicholas had been affixed to the instrument whichcalled your College into existence. We find Europe, we find Scotlandespecially, in the agonies of that great revolution which weemphatically call the Reformation. The liberal patronage whichNicholas, and men like Nicholas, had given to learning, and of whichthe establishment of this seat of learning is not the least remarkableinstance, had produced an effect which they had never contemplated. Ignorance was the talisman on which their power depended; and thattalisman they had themselves broken. They had called in Knowledge as ahandmaid to decorate Superstition, and their error produced its naturaleffect. I need not tell you what a part the votaries of classicallearning, and especially the votaries of Greek learning, the Humanists, as they were then called, bore in the great movement against spiritualtyranny. They formed, in fact, the vanguard of that movement. Everyone of the chief Reformers--I do not at this moment remember a singleexception--was a Humanist. Almost every eminent Humanist in the north ofEurope was, according to the measure of his uprightness and courage, aReformer. In a Scottish University I need hardly mention the names ofKnox, of Buchanan, of Melville, of Secretary Maitland. In truth, mindsdaily nourished with the best literature of Greece and Rome necessarilygrew too strong to be trammelled by the cobwebs of the scholasticdivinity; and the influence of such minds was now rapidly felt by thewhole community; for the invention of printing had brought books withinthe reach even of yeomen and of artisans. From the Mediterranean to theFrozen Sea, therefore, the public mind was everywhere in a ferment; andnowhere was the ferment greater than in Scotland. It was in the midstof martyrdoms and proscriptions, in the midst of a war between powerand truth, that the first century of the existence of your Universityclosed. 

Pass another hundred years; and we are in the midst of anotherrevolution. The war between Popery and Protestantism had, in thisisland, been terminated by the victory of Protestantism. But from thatwar another war had sprung, the war between Prelacy and Puritanism. The hostile religious sects were allied, intermingled, confounded withhostile political parties. The monarchical element of the constitutionwas an object of almost exclusive devotion to the Prelatist. The popularelement of the constitution was especially dear to the Puritan. Atlength an appeal was made to the sword. Puritanism triumphed; butPuritanism was already divided against itself. Independency andRepublicanism were on one side, Presbyterianism and limited Monarchy onthe other. It was in the very darkest part of that dark time, it wasin the midst of battles, sieges, and executions, it was when the wholeworld was still aghast at the awful spectacle of a British King standingbefore a judgment seat, and laying his neck on a block, it was when themangled remains of the Duke of Hamilton had just been laid in the tombof his house, it was when the head of the Marquess of Montrose had justbeen fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, that your University completedher second century. 

A hundred years more; and we have at length reached the beginning of ahappier period. Our civil and religious liberties had indeed been boughtwith a fearful price. But they had been bought. The price had beenpaid. The last battle had been fought on British ground. The last blackscaffold had been set up on Tower Hill. The evil days were over. Abright and tranquil century, a century of religious toleration, ofdomestic peace, of temperate freedom, of equal justice, was beginning. That century is now closing. When we compare it with any equally longperiod in the history of any other great society, we shall find abundantcause for thankfulness to the Giver of all good. Nor is there any placein the whole kingdom better fitted to excite this feeling than the placewhere we are now assembled. For in the whole kingdom we shall find nodistrict in which the progress of trade, of manufactures, of wealth, and of the arts of life, has been more rapid than in Clydesdale. YourUniversity has partaken largely of the prosperity of this city and ofthe surrounding region. The security, the tranquillity, the liberty, which have been propitious to the industry of the merchant and of themanufacturer, have been also propitious to the industry of the scholar. To the last century belong most of the names of which you justly boast. The time would fail me if I attempted to do justice to the memory of allthe illustrious men who, during that period, taught or learned wisdomwithin these ancient walls; geometricians, anatomists, jurists, philologists, metaphysicians, poets: Simpson and Hunter, Millar andYoung, Reid and Stewart; Campbell, whose coffin was lately borne to agrave in that renowned transept which contains the dust of Chaucer, of Spenser, and of Dryden; Black, whose discoveries form an era in thehistory of chemical science; Adam Smith, the greatest of all the mastersof political science; James Watt, who perhaps did more than any singleman has done, since the New Atlantis of Bacon was written, to accomplishthat glorious prophecy. We now speak the language of humility when wesay that the University of Glasgow need not fear a comparison with theUniversity of Bologna. 

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

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

I have now given utterance to a part, and to a part only, of therecollections and anticipations of which, on this solemn occasion, mymind is full. I again thank you for the honour which you have bestowedon me; and I assure you that, while I live, I shall never cease to takea deep interest in the welfare and fame of the body with which, by yourkindness, I have this day become connected. 

*****

RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT. (NOVEMBER 2, 1852) A SPEECH DELIVERED ATEDINBURGH ON THE 2D OF NOVEMBER, 1852. 

At the General Election of 1852 the votes for the City of Edinburghstood thus:

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

On the second of November the Electors assembled in the Music Hall tomeet the representative whom they had, without any solicitation on hispart, placed at the head of the poll. On this occasion the followingSpeech was delivered. 

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

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

But, Gentlemen, it is not only here that, on entering again, at yourcall, a path of life which I believed that I had quitted forever, Ishall be painfully reminded of the changes which the last five yearshave produced. In Parliament I shall look in vain for virtues which Iloved, and for abilities which I admired. Often in debate, and nevermore than when we discuss those questions of colonial policy which areevery day acquiring a new interest, I shall remember with regret howmuch eloquence and wit, how much acuteness and knowledge, how manyengaging qualities, how many fair hopes, are buried in the grave of poorCharles Buller. There were other men, men with whom I had no politicalconnection and little personal connection, men to whom I was, during agreat part of my public life, honestly opposed, but of whom I cannotnow think without grieving that their wisdom, their experience, and theweight of their great names can never more, in the hour of need, bringhelp to the nation or to the throne. Such were those two eminent menwhom I left at the height, one of civil, the other of military fame; onethe oracle of the House of Commons, the other the oracle of the Houseof Lords. There were parts of their long public life which they wouldthemselves, I am persuaded, on a calm retrospect, have allowed to bejustly censurable. But it is impossible to deny that each in his owndepartment saved the State; that one brought to a triumphant close themost formidable conflict in which this country was ever engaged with aforeign enemy; and that the other, at an immense sacrifice of personalfeeling and personal ambition, freed us from an odious monopoly, whichcould not have existed many years longer without producing fearfulintestine discords. I regret them both: but I peculiarly regret him whois associated in my mind with the place to which you have sent me. Ishall hardly know the House of Commons without Sir Robert Peel. On thefirst evening on which I took my seat in that House, more than two andtwenty years ago, he held the highest position among the Ministersof the Crown who sate there. During all the subsequent years of myparliamentary service I scarcely remember one important discussion inwhich he did not bear a part with conspicuous ability. His figure is nowbefore me: all the tones of his voice are in my ears; and the pain withwhich I think that I shall never hear them again would be embittered bythe recollection of some sharp encounters which took place between us, were it not that at last there was an entire and cordial reconciliation, and that, only a very few days before his death, I had the pleasure ofreceiving from him marks of kindness and esteem of which I shall alwayscherish the recollection. 

But, Gentlemen, it is not only by those changes which the natural law ofmortality produces, it is not only by the successive disappearances ofeminent men that the face of the world has been changed during the fiveyears which have elapsed since we met here last. Never since the originof our race have there been five years more fertile of great events, five years which have left behind them a more awful lesson. We havelived many lives in that time. The revolutions of ages have beencompressed into a few months. France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, --whata history has theirs been! When we met here last, there was in all ofthose countries an outward show of tranquillity; and there were few, even of the wisest among us, who imagined what wild passions, what wildtheories, were fermenting under that peaceful exterior. An obstinateresistance to a reasonable reform, a resistance prolonged but forone day beyond the time, gave the signal for the explosion; and in aninstant, from the borders of Russia to the Atlantic Ocean, everythingwas confusion and terror. The streets of the greatest capitals of Europewere piled up with barricades, and were streaming with civil blood. Thehouse of Orleans fled from France: the Pope fled from Rome: the Emperorof Austria was not safe at Vienna. There were popular institutions inFlorence; popular institutions at Naples. One democratic convention satat Berlin; another democratic convention at Frankfort. You remember, Iam sure, but too well, how some of the wisest and most honest friends ofliberty, though inclined to look with great indulgence on the excessesinseparable from revolutions, began first to doubt and then to despairof the prospects of mankind. You remember how all sorts of animosity, national, religious, and social, broke forth together. You rememberhow with the hatred of discontented subjects to their governments wasmingled the hatred of race to race and of class to class. For myself, Istood aghast; and though naturally of a sanguine disposition, I did forone moment doubt whether the progress of society was not about to bearrested, nay, to be suddenly and violently turned back; whether wewere not doomed to pass in one generation from the civilisation of thenineteenth century to the barbarism of the fifth. I remembered that AdamSmith and Gibbon had told us that the dark ages were gone, never moreto return, that modern Europe was in no danger of the fate which hadbefallen the Roman empire. That flood, they said, would no more returnto cover the earth: and they seemed to reason justly: for they comparedthe immense strength of the enlightened part of the world with theweakness of the part which remained savage; and they asked whence wereto come the Huns and the Vandals, who should again destroy civilisation?It had not occurred to them that civilisation itself might engender thebarbarians who should destroy it. It had not occurred to them thatin the very heart of great capitals, in the neighbourhood of splendidpalaces, and churches, and theatres, and libraries, and museums, viceand ignorance might produce a race of Huns fiercer than those whomarched under Attila, and of Vandals more bent on destruction than thosewho followed Genseric. Such was the danger. It passed by. Civilisationwas saved, but at what a price! The tide of popular feeling turned andebbed almost as fast as it had risen. Imprudent and obstinate oppositionto reasonable demands had brought on anarchy; and as soon as men hada near view of anarchy they fled in terror to crouch at the feet ofdespotism. To the dominion of mobs armed with pikes succeeded thesterner and more lasting dominion of disciplined armies. The Papacyrose from its debasement; rose more intolerant and insolent than before;intolerant and insolent as in the days of Hildebrand; intolerant andinsolent to a degree which dismayed and disappointed those who hadfondly cherished the hope that the spirit which had animated theCrusaders and the Inquisitors had been mitigated by the lapse of yearsand by the progress of knowledge. Through all that vast region, wherelittle more than four years ago we looked in vain for any stableauthority, we now look in vain for any trace of constitutional freedom. And we, Gentlemen, in the meantime, have been exempt from both thosecalamities which have wrought ruin all around us. The madness of 1848did not subvert the British throne. The reaction which followed has notdestroyed British liberty. 

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

Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are free with servitude all aroundus, why our Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended, why our pressis still subject to no censor, why we still have the liberty ofassociation, why our representative institutions still abide in alltheir strength, I answer, It is because in the year of revolutions westood firmly by our Government in its peril; and, if I am asked whywe stood by our Government in its peril, when men all around us wereengaged in pulling Governments down, I answer, It was because we knewthat though our Government was not a perfect Government, it was a goodGovernment, that its faults admitted of peaceable and legal remedies, that it had never inflexibly opposed just demands, that we had obtainedconcessions of inestimable value, not by beating the drum, not byringing the tocsin, not by tearing up the pavement, not by running tothe gunsmiths' shops to search for arms, but by the mere force of reasonand public opinion. And, Gentlemen, preeminent among those pacificvictories of reason and public opinion, the recollection of whichchiefly, I believe, carried us safely through the year of revolutionsand through the year of counter-revolutions, I would place two greatreforms, inseparably associated, one with the memory of an illustriousman, who is now beyond the reach of envy, the other with the name ofanother illustrious man, who is still, and, I hope, long will be, aliving mark for distinction. I speak of the great commercial reform of1846, the work of Sir Robert Peel, and of the great parliamentary reformof 1832, the work of many eminent statesmen, among whom none was moreconspicuous than Lord John Russell. I particularly call your attentionto those two great reforms, because it will, in my opinion, be theespecial duty of that House of Commons in which, by your distinguishedfavour, I have a seat, to defend the commercial reform of Sir RobertPeel, and to perfect and extend the parliamentary reform of Lord JohnRussell. 

With respect to the commercial reform, though I say it will be a sacredduty to defend it, I do not apprehend that we shall find the task verydifficult. Indeed, I doubt whether we have any reason to apprehend adirect attack upon the system now established. From the expressions usedduring the last session, and during the late elections, by the Ministersand their adherents, I should, I confess, find it utterly impossible todraw any inference whatever. They have contradicted each other; and theyhave contradicted themselves. Nothing would be easier than to selectfrom their speeches passages which would prove them to be Freetraders, and passages which would prove them to be protectionists. But, in truth, the only inference which can properly be drawn from a speech of one ofthese gentlemen in favour of Free Trade is, that, when he spoke, he wasstanding for a town; and the only inference which can be drawn from thespeech of another in favour of Protection is, that, when he spoke, he was standing for a county. I quitted London in the heat of theelections. I left behind me a Tory candidate for Westminster and a Torycandidate for Middlesex, loudly proclaiming themselves Derbyites andFreetraders. All along my journey through Berkshire and Wiltshire Iheard nothing but the cry of Derby and Protection; but when I got toBristol, the cry was Derby and Free Trade again. On one side of theWash, Lord Stanley, the Under-Secretary of State for the ForeignDepartment, a young nobleman of great promise, a young nobleman whoappears to me to inherit a large portion of his father's ability andenergy, held language which was universally understood to indicate thatthe Government had altogether abandoned all thought of Protection. LordStanley was addressing the inhabitants of a town. Meanwhile, on theother side of the Wash, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster washaranguing the farmers of Lincolnshire; and, when somebody took it uponhim to ask, "What will you do, Mr Christopher, if Lord Derby abandonsProtection?" the Chancellor of the Duchy refused to answer a question somonstrous, so insulting to Lord Derby. "I will stand by Lord Derby, " hesaid, "because I know that Lord Derby will stand by Protection. " Well, these opposite declarations of two eminent persons, both likely to knowthe mind of Lord Derby on the subject, go forth, and are taken upby less distinguished adherents of the party. The Tory candidate forLeicestershire says, "I put faith in Mr Christopher: while you see MrChristopher in the Government, you may be assured that agriculture willbe protected. " But, in East Surrey, which is really a suburb of London, I find the Tory candidate saying, "Never mind Mr Christopher. I trust toLord Stanley. What should Mr Christopher know on the subject? He is notin the Cabinet: he can tell you nothing about it. " Nay, these tacticswere carried so far that Tories who had formerly been for Free Trade, turned Protectionists if they stood for counties; and Tories, who hadalways been furious Protectionists, declared for Free Trade, withoutscruple or shame, if they stood for large towns. Take for exampleLord Maidstone. He was once one of the most vehement Protectionistsin England, and put forth a small volume, which, as I am an elector ofWestminster, and as he was a candidate for Westminster, I thought it myduty to buy, in order to understand his opinions. It is entitled FreeTrade Hexameters. Of the poetical merits of Lord Maidstone's hexametersI shall not presume to give an opinion. You may all form an opinion foryourselves by ordering copies. They may easily be procured: for I wasassured, when I bought mine in Bond Street, that the supply on handwas still considerable. But of the political merits of Lord Maidstone'shexameters I can speak with confidence; and it is impossible toconceive a fiercer attack, according to the measure of the power ofthe assailant, than that which his lordship made on Sir Robert Peel'spolicy. On the other hand, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who is now SolicitorGeneral, and who was Solicitor General under Sir Robert Peel, votedsteadily with Sir Robert Peel, doubtless from a regard to the publicinterest, which would have suffered greatly by the retirement of so ablea lawyer from the service of the Crown. Sir Fitzroy did not think itnecessary to lay down his office even when Sir Robert Peel brought inthe bill which established a free trade in corn. But unfortunately, Lord Maidstone becomes a candidate for the City of Westminster, and SirFitzroy Kelly stands for an agricultural county. Instantly, therefore, Lord Maidstone forgets his verses, and Sir Fitzroy Kelly forgets hisvotes. Lord Maidstone declares himself a convert to the opinions of SirRobert Peel; and Sir Robert Peel's own Solicitor General lifts up hishead intrepidly, and makes a speech, apparently composed out of LordMaidstone's hexameters. 

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

With regard to the other question which I have mentioned, the questionof Parliamentary Reform, I think that the time is at hand when thatquestion will require the gravest consideration, when it will benecessary to reconsider the Reform Act of 1832, and to amend ittemperately and cautiously, but in a large and liberal spirit. I confessthat, in my opinion, this revision cannot be made with advantage, exceptby the Ministers of the Crown. I greatly doubt whether it will be foundpossible to carry through any plan of improvement if we have not theGovernment heartily with us; and I must say that from the presentAdministration I can, as to that matter, expect nothing good. Whatprecisely I am to expect from them I do not know, whether the mostobstinate opposition to every change, or the most insanely violentchange. If I look to their conduct, I find the gravest reasons forapprehending that they may at one time resist the most just demands, and at another time, from the merest caprice, propose the wildestinnovations. And I will tell you why I entertain this opinion. I amsorry that, in doing so, I must mention the name of a gentleman forwhom, personally, I have the highest respect; I mean Mr Walpole, theSecretary of State for the Home Department. My own acquaintance with himis slight; but I know him well by character; and I believe him to bean honourable, an excellent, an able man. No man is more esteemed inprivate life: but of his public conduct I must claim the right to speakwith freedom; and I do so with the less scruple because he has himselfset me an example of that freedom, and because I am really now standingon the defensive. Mr Walpole lately made a speech to the electors ofMidhurst; and in that speech he spoke personally of Lord John Russellas one honourable man should speak of another, and as, I am sure, Iwish always to speak of Mr Walpole. But in Lord John's public conduct MrWalpole found many faults. Chief among those faults was this, thathis lordship had re-opened the question of reform. Mr Walpole declaredhimself to be opposed on principle to organic change. He justly saidthat if, unfortunately, organic change should be necessary, whateverwas done ought to be done with much deliberation and with caution almosttimorous; and he charged Lord John with having neglected these plainrules of prudence. I was perfectly thunderstruck when I read the speech:for I could not but recollect that the most violent and democraticchange that ever was proposed within the memory of the oldest man hadbeen proposed but a few weeks before by this same Mr Walpole, as theorgan of the present Government. Do you remember the history of theMilitia Bill? In general, when a great change in our institutions isto be proposed from the Treasury Bench, the Minister announces hisintention some weeks before. There is a great attendance: there isthe most painful anxiety to know what he is going to recommend. I wellremember, --for I was present, --with what breathless suspense six hundredpersons waited, on the first of March, 1831, to hear Lord John Russellexplain the principles of his Reform Bill. But what was his Reform Billto the Reform Bill of the Derby Administration? At the end of a night, in the coolest way possible, without the smallest notice, Mr Walpoleproposed 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 havea vote for the county. What is the number of those voters who were to beentitled to vote in this way for counties? The militia of England is toconsist of eighty thousand men; and the term of service is to be fiveyears. In ten years the number will be one hundred and sixty thousand;in twenty years, three hundred and twenty thousand; and in twenty-fiveyears, four hundred thousand. Some of these new electors will, ofcourse, die off in twenty-five years, though the lives are picked lives, remarkably good lives. What the mortality is likely to be I do notaccurately know; but any actuary will easily calculate it for you. Ishould say, in round numbers, that you will have, when the system hasbeen in operation for a generation, an addition of about three hundredthousand to the county constituent bodies; that is to say, six thousandvoters on the average will be added to every county in Englandand Wales. That is surely an immense addition. And what is thequalification? Why, the first qualification is youth. These electorsare not to be above a certain age; but the nearer you can get them toeighteen the better. The second qualification is poverty. The electoris to be a person to whom a shilling a-day is an object. The thirdqualification is ignorance; for I venture to say that, if you take thetrouble to observe the appearance of those young fellows who follow therecruiting sergeant in the streets, you will at once say that, among ourlabouring classes, they are not the most educated, they are not themost intelligent. That they are brave, stout lads, I fully believe. LordHardinge tells me that he never saw a finer set of young men; and I havenot the slightest doubt that, if necessary, after a few weeks' training, they will be found standing up for our firesides against the bestdisciplined soldiers that the Continent can produce. But these are notthe qualifications which fit men to choose legislators. A young man whogoes from the ploughtail into the army is generally rather thoughtlessand disposed to idleness. Oh! but there is another qualification which Ihad forgotten: the voter must be five feet two. There is a qualificationfor you! Only think of measuring a man for the franchise! And this isthe work of a Conservative Government, this plan which would swamp allthe counties in England with electors who possess the Derby-Walpolequalifications; that is to say, youth, poverty, ignorance, a rovingdisposition, and five feet two. Why, what right have people who haveproposed such a change as this to talk about--I do not say Lord JohnRussell's imprudence--but the imprudence of Ernest Jones or of any otherChartist? The Chartists, to do them justice, would give the franchise towealth as well as to poverty, to knowledge as well as to ignorance, tomature age as well as to youth. But to make a qualification compoundedof disqualifications is a feat of which the whole glory belongs to ourConservative rulers. This astounding proposition was made, I believe, ina very thin House: but the next day the House was full enough, everybodyhaving come down to know what was going to happen. One asked, why notthis? and another, why not that? Are all the regular troops to havethe franchise? all the policemen? all the sailors? for, if you give thefranchise to ploughboys of twenty-one, what class of honest Englishmenand Scotchmen can you with decency exclude? But up gets the HomeSecretary, and informs the House that the plan had not been sufficientlyconsidered, that some of his colleagues were not satisfied, and thathe would not press his proposition. Now, if it had happened to me topropose such a reform at one sitting of the House, and at the nextsitting to withdraw it, because it had not been well considered, I dothink that, to the end of my life, I never should have talked about theexceeding imprudence of reopening the question of reform; I should neverhave ventured to read any other man a lecture about the caution withwhich 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 inconnection with this solitary instance of their legislative skill in theway of reform, I am utterly at a loss what to expect. On the whole, whatI do expect is that they will offer a pertinacious, vehement, provokingopposition to safe and reasonable change, and that then, in some momentof fear or caprice, they will bring in, and fling on the table, in afit of desperation or levity, some plan which will loosen the veryfoundations of society. 

For my own part, I think that the question of Parliamentary Reform isone which must soon be taken up; but it ought to be taken up by theGovernment; and I hope, before long, to see in office a Ministry whichwill take it up in earnest. I dare say that you will not suspect me ofsaying so from any interested feeling. In no case whatever shall I againbe 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 anygovernment, except that protection which every government owes to afaithful and loyal subject of the Queen. But I do hope to see in officebefore long a Ministry which will treat this great question as itshould be treated. It will be the duty of that Ministry to revise thedistribution of power. It will be the duty of that Ministry to considerwhether small constituent bodies, notoriously corrupt, and proved tobe corrupt, such, for example, as Harwich, ought to retain the power ofsending members to Parliament. It will be the duty of such a Ministryto consider whether small constituent bodies, even less notoriouslycorrupt, ought to have, in the counsels of the empire, a share as greatas that of the West Riding of York, and twice as great as that of thecounty of Perth. It will be the duty of such a Ministry to considerwhether it may not be possible, without the smallest danger to peace, law, and order, to extend the elective franchise to classes of thecommunity which do not now possess it. As to universal suffrage, on thatsubject you already know my opinions; and I now come before you withthose opinions strengthened by everything which, since I last professedthem, has passed in Europe. We now know, by the clearest of all proofs, that universal suffrage, even united with secret voting, is no securityagainst the establishment of arbitrary power. But, Gentlemen, I do lookforward, 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 happiestway. Perhaps I may be sanguine: but I think that good times are comingfor the labouring classes of this country. I do not entertain that hopebecause I expect that Fourierism, or Saint Simonianism, or Socialism, orany of those other "isms" for which the plain English word is "robbery, "will prevail. I know that such schemes only aggravate the misery whichthey pretend to relieve. I know that it is possible, by legislation, tomake the rich poor, but that it is utterly impossible to make the poorrich. But I believe that the progress of experimental science, thefree intercourse of nation with nation, the unrestricted influx ofcommodities from countries where they are cheap, and the unrestrictedefflux of labour towards countries where it is dear, will soon produce, nay, I believe that they are beginning to produce, a great and mostblessed social revolution. I need not tell you, Gentlemen, that in thosecolonies which have been planted by our race, --and, when I speak of ourcolonies I speak as well of those which have separated from us as ofthose which still remain united to us, --I need not tell you that inour colonies the condition of the labouring man has long been far moreprosperous than in any part of the Old World. And why is this? Somepeople tell you that the inhabitants of Pennsylvania and New Englandare better off than the inhabitants of the Old World, because theUnited States have a republican form of government. But we know that theinhabitants of Pennsylvania and New England were more prosperous thanthe inhabitants of the Old World when Pennsylvania and New England wereas loyal as any part of the dominions of George the First, George theSecond, and George the Third; and we know that in Van Diemen's Land, inNew Zealand, in Australasia, in New Brunswick, in Canada, the subjectsof Her Majesty are as prosperous as they could be under the governmentof a President. The real cause is that, in these new countries, wherethere is a boundless extent of fertile land, nothing is easier than forthe labourer to pass from the place which is overstocked with labour tothe place which is understocked; and that thus both he who moves and hewho stays always have enough. This it is which keeps up the prosperityof the Atlantic States of the Union. They pour their population back tothe Ohio, across the Ohio to the Mississippi, and beyond the Mississippito the Rocky Mountains. Everywhere the desert is receding before theadvancing flood of human life and civilisation; and, in the meantime, those who are left behind enjoy abundance, and never endure suchprivations 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 separatesour country from the new and unoccupied part of the world, and onaccount 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 allpractical purposes, nearer to us than New England was to the Puritanswho fled thither from the tyranny of Laud. Already the ports of NorthAmerica, Halifax, Boston, and New York, are nearer to us than, withinthe memory of persons now living, the Island of Skye and the county ofDonegal were to London. Already emigration is beginning to produce thesame effect here which it has produced on the Atlantic States ofthe Union. And do not imagine that our countryman who goes abroad isaltogether lost to us. Even if he goes from under the dominion of theBritish Queen and the protection of the British flag he will still, under the benignant system of free trade, continue to be bound to us byclose ties. If he ceases to be a neighbour, he is still a benefactorand a customer. Go where he may, if you will but maintain that systeminviolate, it is for us that he is turning the forests into cornfieldson the banks of the Mississippi; it is for us that he is tending hissheep and preparing his fleeces in the heart of Australasia; and inthe meantime it is from us that he receives those commodities which areproduced with most advantage in old societies, where great masses ofcapital have been accumulated. His candlesticks and his pots and hispans come from Birmingham; his knives from Sheffield; the light cottonjacket which he wears in summer from Manchester; the good cloth coatwhich 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 madethe large loaf which the British labourer divides among his children. Ibelieve that it is in these changes that we shall see the best solutionof the question of the franchise. We shall make our institutions moredemocratic than they are, not by lowering the franchise to the level ofthe great mass of the community, but by raising, in a time which will bevery short when compared with the existence of a nation, the great massup 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, Ihave always been favourable; something about triennial parliaments, towhich, as you know, I have always been honestly opposed; something aboutyour university tests; something about the cry for religious equalitywhich has lately been raised in Ireland; but I feel that I cannot wellproceed. I have only strength to thank you again, from the very bottomof 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 ourconnection; and I shall try to act in such a manner that you may not beashamed of it. 

*****

EXCLUSION OF JUDGES FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. (JUNE 1, 1853) A SPEECHDELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 1ST OF JUNE 1853. 

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

The amendment was carried by 224 votes to 123. 

I cannot, Sir, suffer the House to proceed to a division withoutexpressing the very strong opinion which I have formed on this subject. I shall give my vote, with all my heart and soul, for the amendmentmoved by my honourable friend the Member for Surrey. I never gave a votein my life with a more entire confidence that I was in the right; and Icannot but think it discreditable to us that a bill for which there isso 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 adivision. 

On what grounds, Sir, does the noble lord, the Member for Kent, askus to make this change in the law? The only ground, surely, on whicha Conservative legislator ought ever to propose a change in the law isthis, that the law, as it stands, has produced some evil. Is it thenpretended that the law, as it stands, has produced any evil? The noblelord himself tells you that it has produced no evil whatever. Nor canit be said that the experiment has not been fairly tried. This House andthe office of Master of the Rolls began to exist, probably in the samegeneration, certainly in the same century. During six hundred years thisHouse has been open to Masters of the Rolls. Many Masters of the Rollshave sate here, and have taken part, with great ability and authority, in our deliberations. To go no further back than the accession of theHouse of Hanover, Jekyll was a member of this House, and Strange, andKenyon, and Pepper Arden, and Sir William Grant, and Sir John Copley, and Sir Charles Pepys, and finally Sir John Romilly. It is not evenpretended that any one of these eminent persons was ever, on any singleoccasion, found to be the worse member of this House for being Master ofthe Rolls, or the worse Master of the Rolls for being a member of thisHouse. And if so, is it, I ask, the part of a wise statesman, is it, Iask still more emphatically, the part of a Conservative statesman, toalter a system which has lasted six centuries, and which has neveronce, during all those centuries, produced any but good effects, merelybecause it is not in harmony with an abstract principle?

And what is the abstract principle for the sake of which we are asked toinnovate in reckless defiance of all the teaching of experience? It isthis; that political functions ought to be kept distinct from judicialfunctions. So sacred, it seems, is this principle, that the union of thepolitical and judicial characters ought not to be suffered to continueeven in a case in which that union has lasted through many ages withoutproducing the smallest practical inconvenience. "Nothing is so hateful, "I quote the words of the noble lord who brought in this bill, "nothingis so hateful as a political judge. "

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

It has been asked, and very sensibly asked, why, if you exclude theMaster of the Rolls from the House, you should not also exclude theRecorder of the City of London. I should be very sorry to see theRecorder of the City of London excluded. But I must say that the reasonsfor excluding him are ten times as strong as the reasons for excludingthe Master of the Rolls. For it is well-known that political casesof the highest importance have been tried by Recorders of the City ofLondon. But why not exclude all Recorders, and all Chairmen of QuarterSessions? I venture to say that there are far stronger reasons forexcluding a Chairman of Quarter Sessions than for excluding a Master ofthe Rolls. I long ago attended, during two or three years, the QuarterSessions of a great county. There I constantly saw in the chair aneminent member of this House. An excellent criminal judge he was. Hadhe been a veteran lawyer, he could hardly have tried causes moresatisfactorily or more expeditiously. But he was a keen politician: hehad made a motion which had turned out a Government; and when he diedhe was a Cabinet Minister. Yet this gentleman, the head of the Blueinterest, as it was called, in his county, might have had to try men ofthe Orange party for rioting at a contested election. He voted for thecorn laws; and he might have had to try men for breaches of the peacewhich 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 mobof London for his conduct towards Queen Caroline; and, when he wentdown to his county, he might have had to sit in judgment on peoplefor breaking windows which had not been illuminated in honour of HerMajesty's victory. This is not a solitary instance. There are, I daresay, in this House, fifty Chairmen of Quarter Sessions. And this is anunion of judicial and political functions against which there is reallymuch to be said. For it is important, not only that the administrationof justice should be pure, but that it should be unsuspected. Now Iam willing to believe that the administration of justice by the unpaidmagistrates in political cases is pure: but unsuspected it certainly isnot. It is notorious that, in times of political excitement, the cryof the whole democratic press always is that a poor man, who has beendriven by distress to outrage, has far harder measure at the QuarterSessions than at the Assizes. So loud was this cry in 1819 that MrCanning, in one of his most eloquent speeches, pronounced it the mostalarming of all the signs of the times. See then how extravagantly, howludicrously inconsistent your legislation is. You lay down the principlethat the union of political functions and judicial functions is ahateful abuse. That abuse you determine to remove. You accordingly leavein this House a crowd of judges who, in troubled times, have to trypersons charged with political offences; of judges who have oftenbeen accused, truly or falsely, of carrying to the judgment seat theirpolitical sympathies and antipathies; and you shut out of the house asingle 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 anyof his predecessors has, in the administration of justice, favoured apolitical ally, or wronged a political opponent. 

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

But I am understating my case. I am greatly understating it. For, Sir, this union of the judicial character and the political character, inMembers of the other House of Parliament, is not a merely accidentalunion. Not only may judges be made peers; but all the peers arenecessarily judges. Surely when the noble lord told us that the unionof political functions and of judicial functions was the most hateful ofall things, he must have forgotten that, by the fundamental laws of therealm, a political assembly is the supreme court of appeal, the courtwhich finally confirms or annuls the judgments of the courts, both ofcommon law and of equity, at Westminster, of the courts of Scotland, ofthe courts of Ireland, of this very Master of the Rolls about whom weare debating. Surely, if the noble lord's principle be a sound one, itis not with the Master of the Rolls but with the House of Peers that weought to begin. For, beyond all dispute, it is more important that thecourt above should be constituted on sound principles than that thecourt below should be so constituted. If the Master of the Rolls goeswrong, the House of Peers may correct his errors. But who is to correctthe errors of the House of Peers? All these considerations the noblelord overlooks. He is quite willing that the peers shall sit in themorning as judges, shall determine questions affecting the property, theliberty, the character of the Queen's subjects, shall determine thosequestions in the last resort, shall overrule the decisions of all theother tribunals in the country; and that then, in the afternoon, these same noble persons shall meet as politicians, and shall debate, sometimes rather sharply, sometimes in a style which we dare not imitatefor fear that you, Sir, should call us to order, about the CanadianClergy Reserves, the Irish National Schools, the Disabilities of theJews, the Government of India. I do not blame the noble lord for notattempting to alter this state of things. We cannot alter it, I know, without taking up the foundations of our constitution. But is it notabsurd, while we live under such a constitution, while, throughoutour whole system from top to bottom, political functions and judicialfunctions are combined, to single out, not on any special ground, butmerely at random, one judge from a crowd of judges, and to excludehim, not from all political assemblies, but merely from one politicalassembly? Was there ever such a mummery as the carrying of this billto the other House will be, if, unfortunately, it should be carriedthither. The noble lord, himself, I have no doubt, a magistrate, himselfat once a judge and a politician, accompanied by several gentlemen whoare at once judges and politicians, will go to the bar of the Lords, whoare all at once judges and politicians, will deliver the bill into thehands of the Chancellor, who is at once the chief judge of the realm anda Cabinet Minister, and will return hither proud of having purified theadministration of justice from the taint of politics. 

No, Sir, no; for the purpose of purifying the administration of justicethis bill is utterly impotent. It will be effectual for one purpose, and for one purpose only, for the purpose of weakening and degrading theHouse of Commons. This is not the first time that an attempt has beenmade, under specious pretexts, to lower the character and impair theefficiency of the assembly which represents the great body of thenation. More than a hundred and fifty years ago there was a general crythat the number of placemen in Parliament was too great. No doubt, Sir, the number was too great: the evil required a remedy: but some rash andshort-sighted though probably well meaning men, proposed a remedy whichwould have produced far more evil than it would have removed. Theyinserted in the Act of Settlement a clause providing that no person whoheld any office under the Crown should sit in this House. The clause wasnot to take effect till the House of Hanover should come to the throne;and, happily for the country, before the House of Hanover came to thethrone, the clause was repealed. Had it not been repealed, the Act ofSettlement would have been, not a blessing, but a curse to the country. There was no want, indeed, of plausible and popular commonplaces infavour of this clause. No man, it was said, can serve two masters. Acourtier cannot be a good guardian of public liberty. A man who deriveshis subsistence from the taxes cannot be trusted to check the publicexpenditure. You will never have purity, you will never have economy, till the stewards of the nation are independent of the Crown, anddependent only on their constituents. Yes; all this sounded well: butwhat man of sense now doubts that the effect of a law excluding allofficial men from this House would have been to depress that branch ofthe legislature which springs from the people, and to increase thepower and consideration of the hereditary aristocracy? The wholeadministration would have been in the hands of peers. The chief objectof every eminent Commoner would have been to obtain a peerage. Assoon as any man had gained such distinction here by his eloquence andknowledge that he was selected to fill the post of Chancellor of theExchequer, Secretary of State, or First Lord of the Admiralty, he wouldinstantly have turned his back on what would then indeed have beenemphatically the Lower House, and would have gone to that chamber inwhich alone it would have been possible for him fully to display hisabilities and fully to gratify his ambition. Walpole and Pulteney, thefirst Pitt and the second Pitt, Fox, Windham, Canning, Peel, all the menwhose memory is inseparably associated with this House, all the men ofwhose names we think with pride as we pass through St Stephen's Hall, the place of their contentions and their triumphs, would, in the vigourand prime of life, have become Barons and Viscounts. The great conflictof parties would have been transferred from the Commons to the Lords. It would have been impossible for an assembly, in which not a singlestatesman of great fame, authority, and experience in important affairswould have been found, to hold its own against an assembly in whichall our eminent politicians and orators would have been collected. AllEngland, all Europe, would have been reading with breathless interestthe debates of the peers, and looking with anxiety for the divisions ofthe peers, while we, instead of discussing high questions of state, andgiving a general direction to the whole domestic and foreign policyof the realm, should have been settling the details of canal bills andturnpike bills. 

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

Of the duties of a legislative assembly, the noble lord, and some ofthose gentlemen who support his bill, seem to me to have formed a veryimperfect notion. They argue as if the only business of the House ofCommons was to turn one set of men out of place, and to bring anotherset into place; as if a judge could find no employment here but factiouswrangling. Sir, it is not so. There are extensive and peaceful provincesof parliamentary business far removed from the fields of battle wherehostile parties encounter each other. A great jurist, seated amongus, might, without taking any prominent part in the strife betweenthe Ministry and the Opposition, render to his country most valuableservice, and earn for himself an imperishable name. Nor was there evera time when the assistance of such a jurist was more needed, or was morelikely to be justly appreciated, than at present. No observant man canfail to perceive that there is in the public mind a general, agrowing, an earnest, and at the same time, I must say, a most sober andreasonable desire for extensive law reform. I hope and believe that, forsome time to come, no year will pass without progress in law reform;and I hold that of all law reformers the best is a learned, upright, andlarge-minded judge. At such a time it is that we are called upon to shutthe door of this House against the last great judicial functionary towhom the unwise legislation of former parliaments has left it open. Inthe meantime the other House is open to him. It is open to all the otherjudges who are not suffered to sit here. It is open to the Judge ofthe Admiralty Court, whom the noble lord, twelve or thirteen years ago, prevailed on us, in an unlucky hour, to exclude. In the other Houseis the Lord Chancellor, and several retired Chancellors, a Lord ChiefJustice, in several retired Chief Justices. The Queen may place thereto-morrow the Chief Baron, the two Lords Justices, the three ViceChancellors, the very Master of the Rolls about whom we are debating:and we, as if we were not already too weak for the discharge of ourfunctions, are trying to weaken ourselves still more. I harbour nounfriendly feeling towards the Lords. I anticipate no conflict withthem. But it is not fit that we should be unable to bear an equal partwith them in the great work of improving and digesting the law. Itis not fit that we should be under the necessity of placing implicitconfidence in their superior wisdom, and of registering withoutamendment, any bill which they may send us. To that humiliatingsituation we are, I grieve to say, fast approaching. I was much struckby a circumstance which occurred a few days ago. I heard the honourableMember for Montrose, who, by the by, is one of the supporters ofthis bill, urge the House to pass the Combination Bill, for a mostextraordinary reason. "We really, " he said, "cannot tell how the lawabout combinations of workmen at present stands; and, not knowing howthe law at present stands, we are quite incompetent to decide whetherit ought to be altered. Let us send the bill up to the Lords. Theyunderstand these things. We do not. There are Chancellors, andex-Chancellors, and Judges among them. No doubt they will do what isproper; and I shall acquiesce in their decision. " Why, Sir, did ever anylegislative assembly abdicate its functions in so humiliating a manner?Is it not strange that a gentleman, distinguished by his love of popularinstitutions, and by the jealousy with which he regards the aristocracy, should gravely propose that, on a subject which interests and exciteshundreds of thousands of our constituents, we should declare ourselvesincompetent to form an opinion, and beg the Lords to tell us what weought to do? And is it not stranger still that, while he admits theincompetence of the House to discharge some of its most importantfunctions, and while he attributes that incompetence to the want ofjudicial assistance, he should yet wish to shut out of the House theonly high judicial functionary who is now permitted to come into it?

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

Now, Sir, if this argument proves anything, it proves that the Masterof the Rolls, and indeed all the other judges, ought to be excluded fromthe House of Lords as well as from the House of Commons. But I denythat the argument is of any weight. The division of labour has itsdisadvantages as well as its advantages. In operations merely mechanicalyou can hardly carry the subdivision too far; but you may very easilycarry it too far in operations which require the exercise of highintellectual powers. It is quite true, as Adam Smith tells us, that apin will be best made when one man does nothing but cut the wire, whenanother does nothing but mould the head, when a third does nothing butsharpen the point. But it is not true that Michael Angelo would havebeen a greater painter if he had not been a sculptor: it is not truethat Newton would have been a greater experimental philosopher if he hadnot been a geometrician; and it is not true that a man will be a worselawgiver because he is a great judge. I believe that there is as closea connection between the functions of the judge and the functions of thelawgiver as between anatomy and surgery. Would it not be the height ofabsurdity to lay down the rule that nobody who dissected the dead shouldbe allowed to operate on the living? The effect of such a division oflabour would be that you would have nothing but bungling surgery; andthe effect of the division of labour which the honourable Member forMontrose recommends will be that we shall have plenty of bunglinglegislation. Who can be so well qualified to make laws and to mend lawsas a man whose business is to interpret laws and to administer laws? Asto this point I have great pleasure in citing an authority to whichthe honourable Member for Montrose will, I know, be disposed to pay thegreatest deference; the authority of Mr Bentham. Of Mr Bentham'smoral and political speculations, I entertain, I must own, a verymean opinion: but I hold him in high esteem as a jurist. Among all hiswritings there is none which I value more than the treatise on JudicialOrganization. In that excellent work he discusses the question whether aperson who holds a judicial office ought to be permitted to hold withit any other office. Mr Bentham argues strongly and convincingly againstpluralities; but he admits that there is one exception to the generalrule. A judge, he says, ought to be allowed to sit in the legislature asa representative of the people; for the best school for a legislatoris the judicial bench; and the supply of legislative skill is in allsocieties so scanty that none of it can be spared. 

My honourable friend, the Member for Surrey, has completely refutedanother argument to which the noble lord, the Member for Kent, appearsto attach considerable importance. The noble lord conceives that noperson can enter this House without stooping to practice arts whichwould ill become the gravity of the judicial character. He spokeparticularly of what he called the jollifications usual at elections. Undoubtedly the festivities at elections are sometimes disgraced byintemperance, and sometimes by buffoonery; and I wish from the bottom ofmy heart that intemperance and buffoonery were the worst means to whichmen, reputed upright and honourable in private life, have resorted inorder to obtain seats in the legislature. I should, indeed, be sorryif any Master of the Rolls should court the favour of the populace byplaying the mounttebank on the hustings or on tavern tables. Still moresorry should I be if any Master of the Rolls were to disgrace himselfand his office by employing the ministry of the Frails and the Flewkers, by sending vile emissaries with false names, false addresses, and bagsof sovereigns, to buy the votes of the poor. No doubt a Master of theRolls ought to be free, not only from guilt, but from suspicion. Ihave not hitherto mentioned the present Master of the Rolls. I have notmentioned him because, in my opinion, this question ought to be decidedby general and not by personal considerations. I cannot, however, refrain from saying, with a confidence which springs from long andintimate acquaintance, that my valued friend, Sir John Romilly, willnever again sit in this House unless he can come in by means verydifferent from those by which he was turned out. But, Sir, are weprepared to say that no person can become a representative of theEnglish people except by some sacrifice of integrity, or at least ofpersonal dignity? If it be so, we had indeed better think of settingour House in order. If it be so, the prospects of our country are darkindeed. How can England retain her place among the nations, if theassembly to which all her dearest interests are confided, the assemblywhich can, by a single vote, transfer the management of her affairs tonew hands, and give a new direction to her whole policy, foreign anddomestic, financial, commercial, and colonial, is closed against everyman who has rigid principles and a fine sense of decorum? But it isnot so. Did that great judge, Sir William Scott, lower his character byentering this House as Member for the University of Oxford? Did SirJohn Copley lower his character by entering this House as Member for theUniversity of Cambridge? But the universities, you say, are constituentbodies of a very peculiar kind. Be it so. Then, by your own admission, there are a few seats in this House which eminent judges have filledand may fill without any unseemly condescension. But it would be mostunjust, and in me, especially, most ungrateful, to compliment theuniversities at the expense of other constituent bodies. I am one ofmany members who know by experience that a generosity and a delicacyof sentiment which would do honour to any seat of learning may be foundamong the ten pound householders of our great cities. And, Sir, as tothe counties, need we look further than to your chair? It is of as muchimportance that you should punctiliously preserve your dignity as thatthe Master of the Rolls should punctiliously preserve his dignity. If you had, at the last election, done anything inconsistent withthe integrity, with the gravity, with the suavity of temper which soeminently qualify you to preside over our deliberations, your publicusefulness would have been seriously diminished. But the great countywhich does itself honour by sending you to the House required from younothing unbecoming your character, and would have felt itself degradedby your degradation. And what reason is there to doubt that otherconstituent bodies would act as justly and considerately towards a judgedistinguished by uprightness and ability as Hampshire has acted towardsyou?

One very futile argument only remains to be noticed. It is said thatwe ought to be consistent; and that, having turned the Judge of theAdmiralty out of the House, we ought to send the Master of the Rollsafter him. I admit, Sir, that our system is at present very anomalous. But it is better that a system should be anomalous than that it shouldbe uniformly and consistently bad. You have entered on a wrong course. My advice is first that you stop, and secondly that you retrace yoursteps. The time is not far distant when it will be necessary for us torevise the constitution of this House. On that occasion, it will bepart of our duty to reconsider the rule which determines whatpublic functionaries shall be admitted to sit here, and what publicfunctionaries shall be excluded. That rule is, I must say, singularlyabsurd. It is this, that no person who holds any office created sincethe twenty-fifth of October, 1705, shall be a member of the House ofCommons. Nothing can be more unreasonable or more inconvenient. In1705, there were two Secretaries of State and two Under Secretaries. Consequently, to this day, only two Secretaries of State and two UnderSecretaries can sit among us. Suppose that the Home Secretary and theColonial Secretary are members of this House, and that the office ofForeign Secretary becomes vacant. In that case, no member of this House, whatever may be his qualifications, his fame in diplomacy, his knowledgeof all the politics of the Courts of Europe, can be appointed. HerMajesty must give the Admiralty to the commoner who is, of all hersubjects, fittest for the Foreign Office, and the seals of the ForeignOffice to some peer who would perhaps be fitter for the Admiralty. Again, the Postmaster General cannot sit in this House. Yet why not? Healways comes in and goes out with the Government: he is often a memberof the Cabinet; and I believe that he is, of all public functionaries, the Chancellor of the Exchequer alone excepted, the one whom it would bemost convenient to have here. I earnestly hope that, before long, this whole subject will be taken into serious consideration. As to thejudges, the rule which I should wish to see laid down is very simple. I would admit into this House any judge whom the people might elect, unless there were some special reason against admitting him. There is aspecial reason against admitting any Irish or Scotch judge. Such a judgecannot attend this House without ceasing to attend his court. There is aspecial reason against admitting the Judges of the Queen's Bench and ofthe Common Pleas, and the Barons of the Exchequer. They are summoned tothe House of Lords; and they sit there: their assistance is absolutelynecessary to enable that House to discharge its functions as the highestcourt of appeal; and it would manifestly be both inconvenient andderogatory to our dignity that members of our body should be at the beckand call of the peers. I see no special reason for excluding the Masterof the Rolls; and I would, therefore, leave our door open to him. Iwould open it to the Judge of the Admiralty, who has been most unwiselyexcluded. I would open it to other great judicial officers who arenow excluded solely because their offices did not exist in 1705, particularly to the two Lords Justices, and the three Vice Chancellors. In this way, we should, I am convinced, greatly facilitate the importantand arduous work of law reform; we would raise the character of thisHouse: and I need not say that with the character of this House mustrise or fall the estimation in which representative institutions areheld throughout the world. But, whether the extensive changes whichI have recommended shall be thought desirable or not, I trust thatwe shall reject the bill of the noble lord. I address myself to theConservative members on your left hand; and I ask them whether they areprepared to alter, on grounds purely theoretical, a system whichhas lasted during twenty generations without producing the smallestpractical evil. I turn to the Liberal members on this side; and I askthem whether they are prepared to lower the reputation and to impairthe efficiency of that branch of the legislature which springs fromthe people. For myself, Sir, I hope that I am at once a Liberal and aConservative politician; and, in both characters, I shall give a clearand conscientious vote in favour of the amendment moved by my honourablefriend. 

*****

INDEX. 

 Absalom and Achitophel of Dryden, character of it. 

 Absolute government, theory of. 

 Absolute rulers. 

 Academy, the French, its services to literature. 

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

 Aeschines, compared by Mr Mitford to Demosthenes. 

 Aeschylus, his works, how regarded by Quintillian. 

 Agesilaus, depressed by the constitution of Lycurgus. 

 Ajax, the prayer of, in the Iliad. 

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

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

 Anatomy Bill, Speech on. 

 Antinomian barn preacher, story of the. 

 Approbation, love of. 

 Aristocratical form of government. See Oligarchy. 

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

 Arnault, A. V. , Translation from. 

 Arras, cruelties of the Jacobins at. 

 Arrian, his character as a historian. 

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

 Athenian Revels, scenes from. 

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

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

 August, lines written in. 

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

 Barbaroux, the Girondist, his execution. 

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

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

 Bearn, the constitution of. 

 Beatrice, Dante's love of. 

 Beauclerc, Topham, a member of the Literary Club. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Bourbon, Duke, character of the government of. 

 Bow Street, whiggery of. 

 Boyd, his translation of the Divine Comedy of Dante. 

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

 Boyse, the poet, his friendship with Samuel Johnson. 

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

 Brissot, the Girondist leader. His trial. 

 Brissotines, the. See Girondists. 

 Buccaneer, the Last. 

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

 Burgundy, Duke of, his theory of good government. 

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

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

 Butler, Samuel, character of his poetry. 

 Byron, Lord, his egotism and its success. 

 Caesar, accounts of his campaigns, regarded as history. 

 Camden, Lord, joins the Whig opposition. 

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

 Carey, his translation of the Divine Comedy of Dante. 

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

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

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

 Carolan, his compositions. 

 Carrier, the tyrant of Nantes, placed under arrest. 

 Casti, character of his Animali Parlanti. 

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

 Catiline, Sallust's account of the Conspiracy of. 

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

 Cervantes, delight with which his Don Quixote is read. 

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

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

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

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

 Christ Church, Oxford, cry of, against Bentley. 

 Christianity, effect of the victory of, over paganism. 

 Church of Ireland, Speech on. 

 Churchill, his insult to Johnson. 

 Civil War, the great. 

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

 Classical writers, celebrity of the great. 

 Cleomenes, causes and results of his raving cruelty. 

 Clergyman, the Country, his Trip to Cambridge. 

 Club, The, formation of. Members of the. 

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

 Coates, Romeo, the actor. 

 Cock Lane Ghost, the. 

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

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

 Confidence in Ministry of Lord Melbourne. Speech on. 

 Constantinople, empire of, its retrogression and stupefaction. 

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

 Copyright, Speeches on. 

 Corday, Charlotte, her murder of Marat. 

 Corn Laws, Speech on. 

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

 Cornwallis, General, his surrender to the Americans. 

 Cottabus, the Athenian game of. 

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

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

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

 Cyrus, Xenophon's Life of, its character. 

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

 Danton, character of. His death. 

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

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

 Demerville, the Jacobin, betrayed by his friend Barere. 

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

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

 Denham, Sir John, character of his poetry. 

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

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

 Deserted Village of Oliver Goldsmith. 

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

 Desmoulins, Mrs, in Dr Johnson's house. 

 Despotic rulers. Theory of a despotic government. 

 Dies Irae. 

 Dionysius, his criticisms. 

 Diplomatic language used by the French Convention. 

 Directory, the Executive, of France, formation of. 

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

 Dissenters' Chapels Bill, Speech on. 

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

 Djezzar Pasha, his cruelty. 

 Doddington, Bubb, his kindness to Samuel Johnson. 

 Don Quixote, delight with which it is read. 

 Dorset, Earl of, his poetry. 

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

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

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

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

 Dumourier, his Girondist sympathies. His defection. 

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

 Dunning, Mr, joins the Whig opposition. 

 Duroc, General, his letter to Barere. 

 Eady, Dr, his advertisements. 

 Edinburgh Election, speech at. 

 Education, Speech on. 

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

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

 Eleusinian mysteries, the. 

 Ellenborough, Lord, his Carmagnoles. 

 Ellis, Welbore. 

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

 Epistles, Petrarch's. 

 Epitaph on Henry Martyn. 

 Epitaph on Lord William Bentinck. 

 Epitaph on Sir Benjamin Heath Malkin. 

 Epitaph on Lord Metcalfe. 

 Euphuism in England. 

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

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

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

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

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

 Fluxions, discovery of the method of. 

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

 Fowler, Edward, John Bunyan's answer to. 

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

 Fragments of a Roman Tale. 

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

 French Academy, its services to literature. 

 Froissart, character of his history. 

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

 Garth, Dr, insults Bentley and extols Boyle. 

 Gates of Somnauth, the Speech on. 

 Gaudet, the Girondist, his execution. 

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

 Geologist, Bishop Watson's description of a. 

 George III. , his treatment of his ministers. 

 Georgics, Political. 

 Germaine, Lord George. 

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

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

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

 Gomer Chephoraod, King of Babylon, apologue of. 

 Goodnatured Man, the, of Oliver Goldsmith. 

 Government of India, Speech on. 

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

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

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

 Hall, Robert, his eloquence. 

 Hamlet, causes of its power and influence. 

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

 Hayley, his translation of the Divine Comedy of Dante. 

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

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

 Hebrides, Johnson's visit to the. 

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

 Heron, Robert, his drama of News from Camperdown. 

 Hervey, Henry, his kindness to Samuel Johnson. 

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

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

 Holy War, Bunyan's. 

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

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

 Horace, his comparison of poems to certain paintings. 

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

 Hyder Aly, his successes. 

 Idler, Johnston's publication of the. 

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

 Inaugural Speech at Glasgow College. 

 India Bill, Fox's. 

 Inferno, Dante's, character of the. 

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

 Isocrates, his defence of oligarchy and tyranny. 

 Italian language, Dante's first work on the. 

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

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

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

 Jacobite, Epitaph on a. 

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

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

 Jewish Disabilities, Speech on. 

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

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

 Johnson, Michael of Lichfield. 

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

 Judgment and imagination. 

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

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

 Juryman, the stipend of an Athenian. 

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

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

 King, the, in the Athenian democracy. 

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

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

 Langton, Bennet, a member of the Literary Club. 

 Latin works of Petrarch, the. 

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

 Levett, Robert, the quack doctor. 

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

 Lies, various kinds of. 

 Lincoln Cathedral, story of the painted window of. 

 Literary Magazine, Johnson's contributions to the. 

 Literature, on the Royal Society of. 

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

 Literature of Britain, the, Speech on. 

 Livy, his faults and merits as a historian. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Lysander, depressed by the constitution of Lycyrgus. 

 Macflecnoe, of Dryden, character of the. 

 Machiavelli, character of his history. 

 Macpherson, his forgery of Fingal. Threatens Dr Johnson. 

 Malkin, Sir Benjamin Heath, epitaph on. 

 Malthus, Mr, attacked by Mr Sadler. 

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

 Marat, his murmurs against Barere. His death. 

 Marcellus, the counterfeit oration for. 

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

 Martyn, Henry, epitaph on. 

 Maynooth, Speech on. 

 Medical science, Petrarch's invectives on the. 

 Melville, Lord, his impeachment. 

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

 "Memorial Antibritannique, " the, of Barere. 

 Metaphors, Dante's. 

 Metcalfe, Lord, Epitaph on. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Naseby, the Battle of. 

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

 Nollekens, his cenotaph of Oliver Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. 

 Nonconformists, relief of, by Charles II. 

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

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

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

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

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

 Orators, Athenian. 

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

 Orestes, the Greek highwayman. 

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

 Ossian, character of the poems of. 

 Ostracism, practice of, among the Athenians. 

 Othello, causes of the power of. 

 Paganism, effect of the overthrow of, by Christianity. 

 Pallas, the birthplace of Oliver Goldsmith. 

 Paradise, Dante's, its principal merit. 

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

 Paris, policy of the Jacobins of. Their excesses. 

 Parliamentary government, its advantages and disadvantages. 

 Parliamentary Reform, Speeches on. 

 Patronage, effect of, on literature. 

 Pausanias, his insanity. 

 Pauson, the Athenian painter. 

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

 Peiraeus, disreputable character of. 

 People's Charter, the, Speech on. 

 Pericles, his eloquence. 

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

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

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

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

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

 Pilnitz, League of, effect of the. 

 Piozzi, Mrs. 

 Pisistratus, his eloquence. 

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

 Plautus, translation from his Rudens. 

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

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

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

 Police officers of Athens. 

 Polybius, his character as a historian. 

 Pomponius Atticus, his veneration for Greek literature. 

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

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

 Portland, Duke of, formation of his Administration. 

 Portrait-painting compared with history. 

 Posterity, Epistle to, Petrarch's. 

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

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

 Printing, influence of, on modern history. 

 Prior, Matthew, his intimacy with Bishop Atterbury. 

 Prize poems, character of. 

 Provencal poets, their amatory compositions. 

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

 Psalmanazar, George, his friendship with Samuel Johnson. 

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

 Puritans, their prohibition of theatrical representations. 

 Quakers, Bunyan's abhorrence of the. 

 Quintillian, his principles of criticism. 

 Quixote, the Spiritual. 

 Radical War Song, a. 

 Rambler, Johnson's, publication of the. 

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

 Re-election to Parliament, Speech on. 

 Reform Bill, mildness of the revolution of the. 

 Reform, Parliamentary, Speeches on. 

 Regent, the Prince, and the King. 

 Rent, Doctrine of. 

 Repeal of Union with Ireland, Speech on. 

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

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

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

 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, his part in the Club. 

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

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

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

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

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

 Roland, the Girondist, his wife. His fate. 

 Roman Tale, Fragments of a. 

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

 Rousseau, his egotism and its success. 

 Royal Society of Literature, on the. 

 Rumford, Count, his proposition for feeding soldiers cheaply. 

 Russell, Lord William, his last saying. 

 Sacheverell, prosecution of. 

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

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

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

 Satire of Juvenal and Dryden. 

 Savage, Richard, his career. 

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

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

 Sermon in a Churchyard. 

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

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

 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, his repartee to Pitt. 

 Sidney, Sir Philip, his dying thanksgiving. 

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

 Similitudes, Dante's. 

 Simon, Saint, his character and opinions. 

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

 Smalridge, Dean of Carlisle and Christ Church. 

 Song. 

 Sonnet-fanciers. 

 Spain, revolution of the poetry of. 

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

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

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

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

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

 State of Ireland, the Speech on. 

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

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

 Suffrage, Universal. 

 Sugar Duties, the, Speech on. 

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

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

 Tallien, his attack on Robespierre in the Convention. 

 Tasso, character of his "Secchia Rapita. "

 Telephus, the, of Euripides. 

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

 Ten Hours Bill, the Speech on. 

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

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

 Themistocles, his eloquence. 

 Theological Tests in the Scotch Universities, the Speech on. 

 Theo-philanthropy in France. 

 Thermidor, the memorable ninth of. 

 Thrales, Dr Johnson's connection with the. 

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

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

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

 Tinkers in the seventeenth century. 

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

 Tirzah and Ahirad, marriage of. 

 Toulon, Barere's proposal to destroy it. 

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

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

 Universal Suffrage. 

 Uses, Statute of, its practical value. 

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

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

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

 Vienna, the deliverance of. 

 Virgil, idolatry of Dante for the writings of. 

 Virgin, Ode to the Petrarch's. 

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

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

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

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

 Waller, Edward, character of his poetry. 

 Walmesley, Gilbert, his kindness to Samuel Johnson. 

 War, difference between, in large and small communities. 

 War with China, the, Speech on. 

 Waterloo, battle of. 

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

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

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

 Westminster Hall compared with the Roman Forum. 

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

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

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

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

 Wilkes, John, compared to Mirabeau. 

 Williams, Mrs, in Dr Johnson's house. 

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

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

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

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