History of the Four Georges, and of William IV, Volume 4 — lxxiii. The Triumph of Reform, Part 2

Lord Grey introduced the third Reform Bill on March 27, 1832. The first reading passed, as a matter of course, but when the division on the motion for the second reading came on on April 14, there was only a majority of 9 votes for the Bill: 184 peers voted for it and 175 against it.

Of course Lord Grey and his colleagues saw, at once, that unless the conditions were to be completely altered there would be no chance whatever in the House of Lords for a measure of reform which had passed its second reading by a majority of only 9. The moment the Bill got into committee there would be endless opportunities afforded for its mutilation, and if it were to get through the House at all, it would be only in such a form as to render it wholly useless for the objects which its promoters desired it to accomplish.

This dismal conviction was very speedily {174} verified.

When the Bill got into committee, Lord Lyndhurst moved an amendment to the effect that the question of enfranchisement should precede that of disfranchisement.

Now this proposal was not in itself one necessarily hostile to the principle of the Bill.

It is quite easy to understand that a sincere friend to reform might have, under certain conditions, adopted the views that Lord Lyndhurst professed to advocate.

But the Ministry knew very well that the adoption of such a proposal would mean simply that the whole conduct of the measure was to be taken out of their hands and put into unfriendly hands--in other words, that it would be utterly futile to go any further with the measure if the hostile majority were thus allowed to deal with it according to their own designs and their own class interest.

[Sidenote: 1832--The Peers and the third Reform Bill] Lord Lyndhurst was a man of great ability, eloquence, and astuteness.

He was one of the comparatively few men in our modern history who have made a mark in the Law Courts and in Parliament.

As a Parliamentary orator he was the rival of Brougham, and the rivalry was all the more exciting to the observers because it was a rivalry of styles as well as of capacities.

Lyndhurst was always polished, smooth, refined, endowed with a gift of argumentative eloquence, which appealed to the intellect rather than to the feelings, was seldom impassioned, and even when impassioned kept his passion well within conventional bounds.

Brougham was thrilling, impetuous, overwhelming, often extravagant, scorning conventionality of phrase or manner, revelling in his own exuberant strength and plunging at opponents as a bull might do in a Spanish arena.

Lyndhurst's amendment was one especially suited to bring to his side the majority of the Waverers.

It was plausible enough in itself, and gave to many a Waverer, who must have had in his mind a very clear perception of its real object, some excuse for persuading himself that, in voting for it, he was not voting against the principle of reform.

When the division came to be taken on May 7, 151 peers voted for the amendment and 116 against it, thus showing a majority of 35 against {175} the Government, by whom of course the amendment had been unreservedly opposed.

The country saw that a new crisis had come, and a crisis more serious than any which had gone before.

There was only one constitutional course by which the difficulty could be got over, and that was by the King giving his consent to the creation of a number of new peers large enough to carry the Reform Bill through all its subsequent stages in the House of Lords.

Other outlet of safety through peaceful means there was none.

Lord Grey's Ministry could not possibly remain in office and see the measure, on which they believed the peace and prosperity of the country to depend, left at the mercy of an irresponsible majority of Tory peers.

The King was most unwilling to help his ministers out of the trouble, especially by such a process as they had suggested, and in his heart would have been very glad to be rid of them and the Reform Bill at the same time.

Charles Greville in his Memoirs makes several allusions to the King's well-known dislike for the Whig ministers and his anxiety to get the Duke of Wellington back again.

Lord Grey and his colleagues, finding it hard to get the King to recognize the gravity of the situation, and to adopt the advice they had offered to him, felt that there was nothing left for them but to resign office.

And the King was delighted to have a chance of recalling the Duke of Wellington to the position of Prime Minister.

Under the date of May 17, 1832, Greville has some notes which well deserve quotation: "The joy of the King at what he thought to be his deliverance from the Whigs was unbounded.

He lost no time in putting the Duke of Wellington in possession of everything which had taken place between him and them upon the subject of reform and with regard to the creation of peers, admitting that he had consented, but saying he had been subjected to every species of persecution.

His ignorance and levity put him in a miserable light and proved him to be one of the silliest old gentlemen in his dominions."

Greville goes on to say: "But I believe he is mad, for yesterday he gave a dinner to the Jockey Club, {176} at which, notwithstanding his cares, he seemed to be in excellent spirits, and after dinner he made a number of speeches so ridiculous and nonsensical beyond all belief but to those who heard them, rambling from one subject to another, repeating the same thing over and over again, and altogether such a mass of confusion, trash, and imbecility, as made one laugh and blush at the same time."

[Sidenote: 1832--The King seeks a Prime Minister] The poor muddled-headed old King in fact could not understand that the question submitted to him allowed of no middle course of compromise.

He seemed to think he had gone far enough in the way of conciliation when he offered to allow his ministers to create a certain number of peers.

No concession, however, could be of the slightest use to the Ministry unless the power were conceded to them to create as many new peers as might be necessary to overbear all opposition to the Reform Bill.

The struggle was in fact between the existing House of Lords and the vast majority of the nation.

One or other must conquer.

The only constitutional way in which the existing opposition of the House of Lords could be overborne was by the creation of a number of new peers great enough to turn the majority of the House of Lords into a minority.

Lord Grey and Lord Althorp were not, it is hardly necessary to say, men who shared in the popular sentiment, which would, if it could, have abolished altogether the hereditary principle in legislation.

But Lord Grey and Lord Althorp read the signs of the times, and saw clearly enough that if the House of Lords were allowed to stand much longer in the way of the Reform Bill the result would be probably a political revolution which would abolish the House of Lords altogether.

Therefore the ministers could make no terms with the King short of those which they had offered, and as the King did not see his way to accept their conditions there was nothing left for them but to resign office.

Accordingly Lord Grey tendered his resignation and that of his colleagues, and the King, after much indecision and mental flurry, thought he could do nothing better than to accept the resignation, and try to find a set of ministers more suitable to his {177} inclinations.

He sent for Lord Lyndhurst and entered into conversation with that astute lawyer and politician, and Lord Lyndhurst advised him to send for the Duke of Wellington.

The Duke was sent for, but the Duke had not much to say which could lend any help to the King in his difficulties.

Wellington saw distinctly enough that there was no alternative but that which lay in the choice between reform and some sort of popular revolution.

We have seen already in these volumes how Wellington preferred to accept Catholic Emancipation rather than take the risk of plunging the country into civil war.

In the case of the Reform Bill he would have acted, no doubt, upon the same principle if driven to the choice, but after the repeated and energetic denunciations of reform which he had delivered in the House of Lords he did not think that it would be a fitting part for him, even for the sake of helping the sovereign out of his constitutional trouble, to be the Prime Minister by whom any manner of Reform Bill should be introduced.

Wellington therefore strongly urged the King to send for Sir Robert Peel, and declared that he himself would lend all the support he possibly could to a Peel Administration.

Peel was sent for accordingly, but Peel was too far-seeing a statesman to believe that he could possibly hold office for many weeks unless he yielded to the full demands of the country, and his political principles would not have allowed him to go so far as that.

He did his best to make it clear to the King that no administration but a reform administration could stand, and that, if a reform administration had to be accepted, there was nothing better to be done than to invite Lord Grey and Lord John Russell back again to office.

Meanwhile the country was aroused to a fervor of enthusiasm in favor of reform, which seemed only to increase with every delay and to grow stronger with every opposition.

Public meetings were held in Birmingham of larger size than had ever been gathered together in England before, and resolutions were passed by acclamation which were almost revolutionary in their character.

In many cities and towns appeals were made for a run on the {178} bank, a run for gold, and there were alarming signs that the advice was likely to be followed to such a degree as to bring about utter confusion in the money market.

In the City of London an immense meeting was held, at which resolutions were passed calling on the House of Commons to stop the supplies unless the King accepted the councils of the Whig statesmen and gave them authority for the election of new peers.

The overwhelming strength of the demand for reform may be easily estimated when it is remembered that the majority in the great cities and towns, and also in the counties, were for once of the same opinion.

In more than one great political controversy of modern times, as in the free-trade agitation for example, it has happened that the town population were of one opinion and the county population of another.

But at the time which we are now describing the great cities and towns were all nearly unrepresented, and in their demand for representation they were of one mind and one spirit with the county populations, which called out for a real and not a sham representation.

There will probably always be a question of curious speculation and deep interest to the students of history as to the possibility of a great revolution in England if the King had made up his mind to hold out against the advice of the Whig statesmen and to try the last chance.

It is certain that the leading Whig nobles were considering, with profound earnestness, what course it might be necessary for them to take if the King were absolutely to refuse all concession and to stand by what he believed to be his sovereign right to set up his own authority as supreme.

If the choice should be forced on them, would these Whig nobles stand by the obstinate King or throw in their lot with the people?

This grave question must have been considered again and again in all its bearings by the Whig leaders during that time of terrible national crisis.

[Sidenote: 1832--The Whig nobles and the military] It would seem to be beyond all question that some, at least, of the Whig nobles were contemplating the possibility of their having to choose between the King and the people, and that their minds were made up, should the worst come {179} to the worst, to side with the people.

Many years afterwards, during the State trials at Clonmel which followed the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848, evidence was brought forward by the counsel for the defence of Mr. Smith O'Brien and his fellow-prisoners to prove that the Whig nobles during the reform crisis in England had been in communication with Sir Charles Napier, the great soldier, for the purpose of ascertaining how the army would act if there should come to be a struggle between the sovereign claiming despotic rights and the people standing up for constitutional government.

All this, however, is now merely a question of interesting historical speculation.

The King had tried Wellington, had tried Peel, had sent for Wellington a second time, and found that Wellington, though he dared do all that might become a man, saw nothing to be gained for sovereign or State by an attempt to accomplish the impossible, and William at last gave way.

It was about time that he did so.

William was becoming utterly unpopular with the great mass of his subjects.

He who had been endowed with the title of the Patriot King was now to be an object of hatred and contempt to the crowds in the streets with whom from day to day he could not avoid being brought into contact.

When his carriage appeared in one of the great London thoroughfares it was followed again and again by jeering and furious mobs, who hissed and groaned at him, and it was always necessary for his protection that a strong escort of cavalry should interpose between him and his subjects.

Even in the London newspapers of the day, those at least that were in favor of reform, and which constituted the large majority, language was sometimes used about the King which it would be impossible to use in our days about some unpopular Lord Mayor or member for the City.

All this told heavily upon poor King William, who was a good-natured sort of man in his own way if his ministers and others would only let him alone, and who rather fancied himself in the light of a popular sovereign.

He therefore made up his mind at last to accept the advice {180} of his Whig ministers and grant them the power of creating as many new peers as they thought fit, for the purpose of passing their importunate Reform Bill.

The consent was given at an interview which the King had with Lord Grey and Lord Brougham, Lord Brougham as keeper of the royal conscience taking the principal conduct of the negotiations on behalf of the Government.

The King, as usual on such occasions, was flurried, awkward, and hot-tempered, and when he had made up his mind to yield to the advice of his ministers he could not so far master his temper as to make his decision seem a graceful concession.

Even when he announced that the concession was to be made the trouble was not yet quite over.

Lord Brougham thought it necessary to ask the King for his consent in writing to the creation of the new peers, and hereupon the wrath of the sovereign blazed out afresh.

The King seemed to think that such a demand showed a want of confidence in him which amounted to something like an insult, and he fretted and stormed for a while as though he had been like Petruchio "aboard carousing to his mates."

After a while, however, he came into a better humor, and perhaps saw the reasonableness of the plea that Lord Grey and Lord Brougham could not undertake the task now confided to them without the written warrant of the King's authority.

William therefore turned away and scratched off at once a brief declaration conferring on his ministers the power to create the necessary number of peers, qualifying it merely with the condition that the sons of living peers were to be called upon in the first instance.

The meaning of this condition was obvious, and its object was not unreasonable from the King's point of view, or, indeed, from the point of view of any statesman who was anxious that the House of Lords should be kept as long as possible in its existing form.

Nobody certainly wanted to increase the number of peers to any great extent, and if only the eldest sons of the living peers were to be called to the House of Lords each would succeed in process of time to his father's title and the roll of the peerage would become once again as it had been before.

{181} [Sidenote: 1832--Passage of the third Reform Bill] The political crisis was over now.

When once the royal authority had been given for the unlimited creation of new peers there was an end of all the trouble.

Of course, there was no necessity to manufacture any new batches of peers.

As the Reform Bill was to be carried one way or the other, whether with the aid of new peers or without it, the Tory members of the House of Lords could not see any possible advantage in taking steps which must only end in filling their crimson benches with new men who might outvote them on all future occasions.

The Reform Bill passed through all its stages in the House of Lords, not without some angry and vehement discussions, during which personal recriminations were made that would have been considered disorderly at the meeting of a parish vestry.

One noble lord denounced the conduct of Lord Grey as atrocious, and even the stately Lord Grey was roused to so much anger by this expression that he forgot his habitual self-control and dignity and replied that he flung back the noble lord's atrocious words with the utmost scorn and contempt.

The Bill passed its third reading in the House of Lords on June 4, 1832, and received the royal assent on June 7. The royal assent, however, was somewhat ungraciously given.

King William declined to give his assent in person, a performance which, at the time, seemed to be expected from him, and it was signified only by the medium of a formal committee.

The Bill, however, was passed, the third Reform Bill that had been introduced since Lord Grey had come into office.

The Reform Bills for Ireland and Scotland which had gone through their stages in the House of Commons immediately after the Bills relating to England and Wales were then carried through the House of Lords.

The great triumph was accomplished.

It is not without historical interest to notice the fact that a long discussion sprang up at this time and was revived again and again, during many successive years, with regard to certain words used by Lord John Russell in expressing his satisfaction at the passing of the Reform Bill.

He was endeavoring to calm the apprehensions of timid {182} people throughout the country who feared that the whole time of Parliament would thenceforward be taken up with the passing of new and newer Reform Bills, and he declared that the Government of which he was a member had no intention but that the Reform Act should be a final measure.

It might have seemed clear to any reasonable mind that Lord John had no idea of proclaiming his faith in the absolute finality of any measure passed, or to be passed, by human statesmanship, but was merely expressing the confident belief of his colleagues and himself that the Bill they had passed would satisfy the needs and the demands of the existing generation.

At the time, however, a storm of remonstrance from the more advanced Liberals broke around Lord John Russell's head, and he was charged with having declared that the Reform Act was meant to be a measure for all times, and that he and his colleagues would never more set their hands to any measure intended to broaden or deepen its influence.

There were indeed popular caricatures of Lord John to be seen in which he was exhibited with the title of "Finality Jack."

Lord John's public career proved many times, in later days, how completely his meaning had been misunderstood by some of those whose cause he had been espousing, for all through his honored life he continued to be a leader of reform.

But the common misunderstanding of the phrase was in itself significant, for it seemed to foretell the fact that the Bill, with all the great changes it had introduced and the new foundations it had laid for the future system of constitutional government, was in itself indeed far from being a final measure.

The authors of the Reform Bill had left what might now be called "the masses" almost altogether out of their calculations.

The rate at which the franchise was fixed for town and country rendered it practically impossible that the artisan in the town or the laborer in the country could have any chance whatever of obtaining a vote.

[Sidenote: 1832--Some defects in the Reform Bill] This was the one great defect of the Reform Bill introduced by Lord Grey and Lord John Russell.

Perhaps it would not have been prudent for these statesmen, at that {183} time, to enter on the introduction of a more comprehensive measure.

Perhaps Lord Grey and Lord John Russell would have preferred of their own judgment not to introduce too comprehensive a reform measure all at once, and to allow the franchise to broaden slowly down.

But it is certain that almost immediately after the passing of the Reform Bill a profound feeling of disappointment began to grow and spread among the classes who found themselves excluded from any of its benefits, and who believed, with good reason, that they had rendered much practical service in the carrying of the measure.

The feeling prevailed especially among the artisans in the cities and towns.

In some of the towns the Reform Bill had distinctly operated as a measure of disfranchisement rather than of enfranchisement.

In Preston, for instance, there had been so large a number of what we have called, adopting a more modern phrase, "fancy franchises" that something not very far removed from universal suffrage was attainable by the male population.

These fancy franchises could not be justified on any principle commending itself to rational minds, and it was, moreover, an obvious absurdity to have one system of voting prevailing in this constituency and a totally different system prevailing in another.

Therefore Lord Grey and Lord John Russell cannot be censured for their resolve to abolish the fancy franchises altogether.

They were introducing an entirely new constitutional system, and it was evident that in the new system there must be some uniform principle as to the franchise.

But it is none the less certain that the men who were disfranchised by an Act professedly brought in to extend the suffrage must have felt that they had good reason to complain of its direct effect upon themselves and upon what they believed to be their rights.

Nearly forty years of agitation had yet to be gone through before the principal deficiencies in the Reform Act of 1833 were supplied by Liberal and Tory legislation.

Before closing this chapter of history it is fitting to take notice of the fact that the debates on the Reform Bill gave opportunity for the public opening of a great career in {184} politics and in literature--the career of Lord Macaulay.

[Sidenote: 1832--Thomas Babington Macaulay] Thomas Babington Macaulay was a new member of the House of Commons when the first Reform Bill was introduced by Lord John Russell.

He was the son of Zachary Macaulay, who was famous in his day, and will always be remembered as the high-minded philanthropist and the energetic and consistent opponent of slavery and the slave trade.

Macaulay the son had, from his earliest years, given evidence of precocious and extraordinary intelligence and versatility.

When he entered Parliament he found that his fame had gone before him, but his friends were not quite certain whether he was to be poet, essayist, historian, or political orator.

As years went on, he proved that he could write brilliant and captivating poems; that he could turn out essays which had a greater fascination for the public than many of the cleverest novels; that he could write history which set critics disputing, but which everybody had to read; and that he could deliver political speeches in the House of Commons which, when correctly reproduced from the newspapers, appeared to belong to the highest class of Parliamentary eloquence.

It may well be questioned whether any man could possibly attain supreme success in the four fields in which, from time to time, Macaulay appeared to be successful.

At present we are only concerned with the speeches which he delivered in the House of Commons during the debates on the Reform Bills.

Macaulay's appearance was not impressive, and he had a gift of fluency, a rapidity of utterance which continued, from first to last, to be a most serious difficulty in the way of his success as a Parliamentary orator.

He appears to have committed his speeches to memory, and his memory was one of the most amazing of all his gifts; and when he rose to deliver an oration he rattled it off at such a rate of speed that the sense ached in trying to follow him, and the reporters for the newspapers found it almost impossible to get a full note of what he said.

This was all the more embarrassing because his speeches abounded in illustrations and citations from all manner of authorities, authors, and historical incidents, and the bewildered {185} reporter found himself entangled in proper names which shorthand in the pre-phonetic days could but slowly reproduce.

The speeches, when revised by the author, were read with intense delight by the educated public, and with all the defects of the orator's utterance he soon acquired such a fame in the House of Commons that no one ever attracted a more crowded and eager audience than he did when it became known that he was about to make a speech.

We may quote here a characteristic description given by Greville of his first meeting with Macaulay in the early February of 1833, while the struggle over Lord Russell's third Reform Bill was still going on.

"Dined yesterday," says Greville, "with Lord Holland;

came very late and found a vacant place between Sir George Robinson and a common-looking man in black.

As soon as I had time to look at my neighbor, I began to speculate, as one usually does, as to who he might be, and as he did not for some time open his lips except to eat, I settled that he was some obscure man of letters, or of medicine, perhaps a cholera doctor.

In a short time the conversation turned on early and late education, and Lord Holland said he had always remarked that self-educated men were peculiarly conceited and arrogant, and apt to look down on the generality of mankind from their being ignorant of how much other people knew; not having been at public schools, they are uninformed of the course of general education.

My neighbor observed that he thought the most remarkable example of self-education that of Alfieri, who had reached the age of thirty without having acquired any accomplishment save that of driving, and who was so ignorant of his own language that he had to learn it like a child, beginning with elementary books.

Lord Holland quoted Julius Caesar and Scaliger as examples of late education, said that the latter had been wounded, and that he had been married and commenced learning Greek the same day, when my neighbor remarked 'that he supposed his learning Greek was not an instantaneous act like his marriage.'

This remark and the manner of it gave me the notion that he was a dull fellow, for it came out in a {186} way which bordered on the ridiculous so as to excite something like a sneer.

I was a little surprised to hear him continue the thread of conversation, from Scaliger's wound, and talk of Loyola having been wounded at Pampeluna.

I wondered how he happened to know anything about Loyola's wound.

Having thus settled my opinion I went on eating my dinner, when Auckland, who was sitting opposite to me, addressed my neighbor: 'Mr. Macaulay, will you drink a glass of wine?'

I thought I should have dropped off my chair.

It was Macaulay, the man I had been so long most curious to see and to hear, whose genius, eloquence, astonishing knowledge, and diversified talents have excited my wonder and admiration for such a length of time, and here I had been sitting next to him, hearing him talk, and setting him down for a dull fellow."

We are here only at the opening of Macaulay's great career.

Even at this time the world seemed to have made up its mind that Macaulay had a great career before him.

At the present day, when more than forty years have passed over his tomb in Westminster Abbey, it is a question still keenly contested every now and then, whether Macaulay fully realized or barely failed to realize the expectations which men were forming of him on that day when Charles Greville met him for the first time, and was amazed to find, as the conversation went on, that he was sitting next to Macaulay.

[Sidenote: 1832--Death of Sir Walter Scott] The year of the Reform Bill was marked by an event forever memorable in the history of literature.

That event was the death of Sir Walter Scott.

The later years of Scott's life, as we all know, had been darkened by the failure of his publishers, by the money troubles in which that failure had involved him, by the exhausting efforts he had to make to force his wearied mind into redoubled literary exertion, and, more than all, by the loss of the wife who had been his devoted companion for so many years.

No words could be more sorrowful and more touching in their simplicity than those in which Scott declared that after his wife's death he never knew what to do with that large share of his thoughts which always, in other {187} days, used to be given to her.

He had gone out to Italy, obeying the advice of his friends, in the hope of recovering his health under warmer skies than those of his native land, but the effort was futile.

It was of no use his trying to shake off his malady of heart and body by a change of air.

He carried his giant about with him, if we may apply to his condition the expressive and melancholy words which Emerson used with a different application.

Scott was little over sixty years of age when he died--a time of life at which, according to our ideas of longevity at the present day, we should regard a man as having hardly passed the zenith of his powers and his possibilities.

He had added a new chapter to a history of the world's literature.

He had opened a new school of romance which soon found brilliant pupils in all countries where romance could charm.

There have been many revolutions in literary rulership since his time, but Walter Scott has not been dethroned.

{188} CHAPTER LXXIV. THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR.