History of the Four Georges, and of William IV, Volume 4 — lxxvii. Peel's Forlorn Hope, Part 2

[Sidenote: 1835--William Ewart Gladstone] The debate which followed lasted through four days, and all the members of the House on both sides took part in it.

The reports of that momentous debate may be read with the deepest interest even at this day, when some of the prophecies intended as terrible warnings by some of the Conservative orators have long since been verified as facts, and are calmly accepted by all parties as the inevitable results of rational legislation.

Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham, and most others who spoke on the Ministerial side spoke with one voice, in warning the House of Commons that if it claimed a right to touch any of the revenues of the Irish State Church in order to appropriate them for the general education of the Irish people, the result must be that the time would come when the Irish Church itself would no longer be held sacred against the desecrating hand of the modern reformer, would be treated as no longer necessary to the welfare of the Irish people, and would be severed from the State and left upon a level {247} with the Roman Catholic Church and the various dissenting denominations.

One appeal which may be said to run through the whole of the speeches on the side of the Government is familiar to the readers and the audiences of all political debates, whore any manner of Reform is under discussion.

"You are asked"--so runs the argument--"to adopt this sort of policy in order to satisfy the demands of a certain class of the population; but how do you know, what guarantee can you give us, that when we have granted these demands they will be content and will not immediately begin to ask for more?

We granted Catholic Emancipation in order to satisfy Ireland, and now is Ireland satisfied?

It was only the other day we granted Catholic Emancipation, and now already Ireland declares, through her representatives, that she ought to have part of the revenues of the Irish State Church taken away from that Church and applied to the common uses of the Irish people.

If she gets even that, will Ireland be contented?

Will she not go on to demand repeal of the Union?"

We turn with peculiar interest to the speech of a young Tory member which was listened to with great attention during the debate, and was believed to contain unmistakable promise of an important political career.

So indeed it did, although the promise that career actually realized was not altogether of the kind which most of its audience were led to anticipate.

It was the speech of Mr. William Ewart Gladstone.

"The present motion," said Mr. Gladstone, "opens a boundless road--it will lead to measure after measure, to expedient after expedient, till we come to the recognition of the Roman Catholic religion as the national one.

In principle, we propose to give up the Protestant Establishment.

If so, why not abandon the political government of Ireland and concede the repeal of the legislative union."

"There is no principle," he went on to say, "on which the Protestant Church can be permanently upheld, but that it is the Church which teaches the truth."

That, he insisted, was the position which the House ought to maintain without allowing its decision to be affected by the mere {248} assertion, even if the assertion were capable of proof, that the revenues of the State Church in Ireland were entirely out of proportion to the spiritual needs of the Protestant population.

Mr. Gladstone, however, had the mind of the financier even in those early days of his career, and he was at some pains to argue that the disproportion between the numbers of the Protestant and the Catholic populations in Ireland was not so great as Lord John Russell had asserted.

He made out this part of his case ingeniously enough by including in the Protestant population in Ireland all the various members of the dissenting denominations, many or most of whom were as little likely to attend the administrations of the Established Church as the Roman Catholics themselves.

[Sidenote: 1835--Defeat of Peel's Ministry] Gladstone's speech was thoroughly consistent in its opposition to Lord John Russell's resolution on the ground that that resolution, if pressed to its legitimate conclusion, assailed the whole principle on which the State Church in Ireland was founded.

"I hope," he said, "I shall never live to see the day when such a system shall be adopted in this country, for the consequences of it to public men will be lamentable beyond all description.

If those individuals who are called on to fulfil the high function of administering public affairs should be compelled to exclude from their consideration the elements of true religion, and to view various strange and conflicting doctrines in the same light, instead of administering those noble functions, they will become helots and slaves."

The weakness of Mr. Gladstone's case was found in the fact that he insisted on regarding the State Church in Ireland as resting on precisely the same foundations as those which upheld the State Church in England.

The truth was afterwards brought home to him that every argument which could be fairly used to justify the maintenance of the State Church in England was but another argument for the abolition of the State Church in Ireland--a work which it became at last his duty to accomplish.

"I shall content myself," said Daniel O'Connell in his speech in the debate, "with laying down the broad principle that the {249} emoluments of a Church ought not to be raised from a people who do not belong to it.

Ireland does not ask for a Catholic Establishment.

The Irish desire political equality in every respect, except that they would not accept a single shilling for their Church."

Sir Robert Peel made a speech which was at once very powerful and very plausible.

It was not, perhaps, pitched in a very exalted key, but it was full of argument, at once subtle and telling.

He challenged the accuracy of Lord John Russell's figures, and declaimed against the injustice of inviting the House to pass a resolution founded on statistics which it had as yet no possible opportunity of verifying or even of examining.

He pointed out that the Government had already given notice of their intention to bring in measures to deal with the very question concerned in Lord John Russell's resolution; and he asked what sincerity there could be in the purposes of men who professed a desire to amend as quickly as possible the tithe system in Ireland, and who yet were eager to deprive the Government of any chance of bringing forward the measures which they had prepared in order to accomplish that very object.

The main argument of the speech was directed not so much against the policy embodied in the resolution of Lord John Russell, as against the manner in which it was proposed to carry out that policy.

Sir Robert Peel declared that the object of the Opposition was not to effect any improvement in the relations of the State Church of Ireland and the people of Ireland, but simply and solely to turn out the Government.

Why not, he asked, come to the point boldly and at once?

Why not bring forward a vote of censure on the Government, or a vote of want of confidence in the Government, and thus compel them, if defeated, to go out of office, instead of endeavoring to enforce on them the adoption of a resolution dealing with questions which the Government had already promised to make the subject of legislation, and without waiting to hear what manner of legislation they were prepared to introduce?

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

The great minister knew that defeat was {250} awaiting him, and he showed himself resolved to meet it half way.

At three o'clock on the morning of April 3 the division on the resolution of Lord John Russell took place.

There were 322 votes for the resolution and 289 against it.

The resolution was therefore carried by a majority of 33. The student of history will observe with interest that the abolition of the Irish State Church was the result of a series of resolutions carried by Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons in 1868, and afterwards embodied in an act of legislation.

[Sidenote: 1835--Melbourne and Brougham] The debate on Lord John Russell's resolution was carried on for a few days longer, but it was chiefly concerned with mere questions as to the form in which the Ministry were called upon to give effect to the wish of the majority, and submit the resolution to the King.

There was no heart or practical purpose in these debates, for everybody already knew what the end must be.

On April 8 Sir Robert Peel announced to the House that he could not take any part in giving effect to the resolution, and that, therefore, he and his colleagues had determined on resigning their offices.

The course taken by Peel was thoroughly honest, consistent, and upright, and Lord John Russell bore prompt and willing testimony to the constitutional propriety of the retiring Prime Minister's resolve.

The Peel Ministry had come to its end.

The country had been put to the trouble and expense of a general election, valuable time had been wasted, legislative preparations had been thrown away, and everything was now back again in just the same condition as when the King made up his mind to dismiss the Melbourne Administration.

The whole blame for the muddle rested on the King, who now found himself compelled to take up again with Lord Melbourne just as if nothing had happened.

The King, indeed, made an attempt to induce Lord Grey to come out of his retirement and form another Ministry; but Lord Grey was not to be prevailed upon to accept such an invitation, and William had to gulp down his personal objections and invite Lord Melbourne to come back once more and take charge of the Government of the country.

{251} Lord Melbourne had no difficulty in forming an Administration, and it was on the whole very much the same in its composition as that which King William had so rudely dismissed only a few months before.

But there were some new names in the list, and there was one very remarkable omission.

Lord Brougham was not one of the members of the new Government.

Lord Melbourne had made up his mind that if, perhaps, there could be no living without such a colleague, there certainly could be no living with him, and he preferred the chance to the certainty.

The greatest sensation was produced all over the country when it was found that Lord Brougham was to have nothing to do with the new Administration.

In and out of Parliament the question became a subject of keen and vehement discussion.

The energy and the eloquence of Brougham had held a commanding place among the forces by which Parliamentary reform had been effected, and the wonder was how any Reform Ministry could venture to carry on the work of government, not merely without the co-operation of such a man, but with every likelihood of his active and bitter hostility.

At one time the report went abroad, and found many ready believers, that there were periods in Brougham's life when his great intellect became clouded, as Chatham's had been at one time, and that the Liberal Ministry found it therefore impossible to avail themselves of his fitful services.

Lord Melbourne himself once made an emphatic appeal to his audience in the House of Lords, after Lord Brougham had delivered a speech there of characteristic power and eloquence.

Melbourne invited the House to consider calmly how overmastering must have been the reasons which compelled any body of rational statesmen to deprive themselves of such a man's co-operation.

It would appear, however, that the reasons which influenced Melbourne and his colleagues were given by Brougham's own passionate and ungovernable temper, his impatience of all discipline, his sudden changes of mood and purpose, his overmastering egotism, and his frequent impulse to strike out for himself and to disregard all considerations of convenience or compromise, all {252} calculations as to the effect of an individual movement on the policy of an Administration.

[Sidenote: 1835--Melbourne and the Irish Members] From that time Brougham had nothing more to do with ministerial work.

He became merely an independent, a very independent, member of the House of Lords.

To the close of his long career he was a commanding figure in the House and in the country, but it was an individual figure, an eccentric figure, whose movements must always excite interest, must often excite admiration, but from whom guidance and inspiration were never to be expected.

Even on some of the great questions with which the brightest part of his career had been especially associated he often failed to exercise the influence which might have been expected from a man of such gifts and such achievements.

Through the remainder of his life he could always arouse the attention of the country, and indeed of the civilized world, when he so willed, but his work as a political leader was done.

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

The commission was made up of the Master of the Rolls, the Vice-Chancellor, and one of the Judges.

After a time Lord Cottenham was made Lord Chancellor.

Lord John Russell became Home Secretary, and Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary.

Among the new names on the list of the Administration was that of Sir Henry Parnell, who became Paymaster-General and Paymaster of the Navy, and that of Sir George Grey, who was Under-Secretary of the Colonies, and afterwards rose to hold high office in many a Government, and had at one time the somewhat undesirable reputation of being the rapidest speaker in the House of Commons.

King William must have put a strong constraint upon himself when he found that he had to receive, on terms at least of civility, so many of the men, as ministers, whom he had abruptly dismissed from his service not long before.

For a considerable time he put up with them rather than received them, and maintained a merely official relationship with them so far even as not to invite them to dinner.

{253} After a time, however, his Majesty somewhat softened in temper; the relations between him and his advisers became less strained; and he even went so far as to invite the members of the Cabinet to dinner, and expressed in his invitation the characteristic wish that each guest would drink at least two bottles of wine.

When the construction of the new Ministry had been completed, Parliament reassembled on April 18; but that meeting was little more than of formal character, as the Houses had again to adjourn in order to enable the new members who were members of the House of Commons to resign and seek, according to constitutional usage, for re-election at the hands of their constituents.

The only public interest attaching to the meeting of Parliament on April 18 was found in an attempt, made by two Tory peers, to extract from Lord Melbourne some public explanation as to his dealings with O'Connell and the Irish party.

Lord Melbourne was quite equal to the occasion, and nothing could be drawn from him further than the declaration that he had entered into no arrangements whatever with O'Connell; that if the Irish members should, on any occasion, give him their support, he should be happy to receive it, but that he had not taken and did not mean to take any steps to secure it.

The incident is worth noting because it serves to illustrate, once again, the effect of the new condition which had been introduced into the struggles of the two great political parties by the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act, and the consequent admission of Irish Catholic members into the House of Commons.

Some of the members of the new Administration were not successful when they made their appeal to their old constituencies.

Lord John Russell, for instance, was beaten in South Devonshire by a Tory antagonist, and a vacancy had to be made for him in the little borough of Stroud, the representative of which withdrew in order to oblige the leaders of his party, and obtained, in return for his act of self-sacrifice, an office under Government.

Lord Palmerston was placed in a difficulty of the same kind, and a vacancy was made for him in the borough of {254} Tiverton by the good-nature and the public spirit of its sitting representative, and from that time to the end of his long career Lord Palmerston continued to be the member for Tiverton, which indeed won, by that fact alone, a conspicuous place in Parliamentary history.

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

Still, it was clear that the new Government had come into power as a Government of reformers, and Lord Melbourne found himself compelled to go on with the work of reform.

Nothing could be less in keeping with his habits and the inclinations of his easy-going nature.

It used to be said of him that whenever he was urged to set about any work of the kind his instinctive impulse always was to meet the suggestion with the question: "Why can't you let it alone?"

Now, however, he had in his Cabinet some men, like Lord John Russell, whose earnestness in the cause of Reform was genuine and unconquerable; and if Lord Melbourne was too indolent to press forward reforms on his own account, he was also too indolent to resist such a pressure when put on him by others.

[Sidenote: 1835--Foundation of municipal bodies] There was one great pressing and obvious reform which remained to be accomplished and ought naturally to follow on the reorganization of the Parliamentary system.

That was the reorganization of the municipal system.

The municipal work of the country, the management of all the various and complicated relations which concerned the local affairs of the whole community, had become a mere chaos of anomalies, anachronisms, and, in too many instances, of reckless mismanagement and downright corruption.

If the sort of so-called representation which prevailed in the Parliamentary constituencies was, up to 1832, an absurdity and a fraud, it was not perhaps on the whole quite so absurd or altogether so fraudulent as that which set itself up for a representative system in the arrangements of the municipal corporations.

As in the case of the {255} Parliamentary system, so in the case of the municipal system, the organization had begun with an intelligible principle to guide it; but, during the lapse of years and even of centuries, the original purpose had been swamped by the gradual and always increasing growth of confusion and corruption.

The municipal arrangements of England had begun as a practical protest against the feudal system.

While the feudal laws or customs still prevailed, the greater proportion of the working-classes were really little better than serfs at the absolute control of their feudal lords and masters.

The comparatively small proportion of men who formed the trading class of the community found themselves compelled to devise some kind of arrangement for the security of themselves, their traffic, and their property against the dominion of the ruling class.

It was practically impossible that a mere serf could devote his energies to a craft or trade with any hope of independence for himself or any chance of contributing to the prosperity of his working and trading neighbors.

The trading, manufacturing, and commercial classes in each locality began to form themselves into groups, or what might be called guilds, of their own, with the object of common protection, in order to secure an opening for their traffic and their industry, and for the preservation of the earnings and the profits which came of their skill and energy.

These trading groups asserted for themselves their right to free action in all that regarded the regulation of their work and the secure disposal of their profits, and thus they became what might be called governing bodies in each separate locality.

One common principle of these governing bodies was that no one should be allowed to become a craftsman or trader in any district if he were a serf, and they claimed, and gradually came to maintain, the right to invest others with the title and privileges of freemen.

This right of freemanship soon became hereditary, and the male children of a freeman were to be freemen themselves.

In many communities the man who married a freeman's daughter acquired, if he had not been free before, the right of freemanship.

No qualification of residence was necessary to {256} enable a man thus to become free.

The self-organized community, whatever it might be, had the right of creating any stranger a freeman according as it thought fit.

[Sidenote: 1835--Reform of municipal corporations] We find this ancient system still in harmless and graceful illustration when a public man who has distinguished himself in the service of the country is honored by admission to the freedom of some ancient city.

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

For the local traders soon began to form themselves into councils or committees for the management of the local affairs, and, in fact, became what might be described as self-elected municipal corporations;

trustees who had assumed the trust for themselves; local law-makers whose term of office was lifelong, and against whose decision there was no available court of appeal.

In some cases these local bodies actually arrogated to themselves the right of passing penal laws, and trying cases and awarding punishments.

The local municipalities sometimes exercised the power of appointing Recorders to preside over their courts of law, and it happened in many instances that the municipal body made no condition as to the Recorder being a member of any branch of the legal profession.

It is hardly necessary to point out some of the inevitable consequences of such a system.

The municipal bodies voted what salaries they pleased out of the local funds, and named according to their pleasure the persons to receive the salaries.

They disposed of the corporate revenues in any way they thought fit--and, indeed, in many cases they claimed and annexed as corporate property possessions that had always, up to the time of the annexation, been supposed to belong to the public at large.

They usurped for themselves all manner of privileges and {257} so-called rights, and, if they thought fit, offered them for purchase to the highest bidder.

The whole governing body often consisted of a very small number of residents who had elected themselves to office, and as they had the power of making themselves very disagreeable to disputants they did not often find individuals public spirited enough to challenge their right of local control.

It happened much more frequently that if any man were strong enough to make his opposition inconvenient or uncomfortable for the local rulers, they got over the trouble by prevailing on him to become one of themselves, to share their privileges and profits, and to strengthen their authority.

A local magnate, the head of some great family, a peer of old descent, was often thus "nobbled"--to use a modern colloquialism--and was allowed to make as many freemen as he pleased and to take whatever part he would in the control of municipal affairs.

It would be superfluous to say that the municipalities became a constantly working instrument in the hands of this or that political party.

Wherever the Whigs or the Tories were strong, there the constituencies, such as they were, could always be placed at the absolute disposal of some local magnate.

Even in the districts where there was but little actual corruption there was often the most extravagant waste of the public funds and public property, and the most utter neglect of all the ordinary ways of business and of economy.

For a long time the increasing evils of the system had been attracting the attention and arousing the alarm of enlightened and public-spirited men all over the country, and of course when the great measure of reform had dealt with the political system, it was obvious that the reforming hand must before long touch the municipal system as well.

Shortly after the passing of the Reform Bill Lord Althorp had appointed a commission to inquire into the whole history, growth, and working of the municipal corporations, and the report had brought out an immense amount of systematized information on which the Liberal statesmen, now once again in office, were determined to act.

Lord Melbourne intrusted the task of {258} preparing and conducting through the House of Commons a measure for this purpose to the capable hands of Lord John Russell, who was now the leader of the Government in that House.

Lord John Russell's measure was, in fact, the foundation of the whole municipal system which we see spread over the country in our times.

It proposed to begin by abolishing altogether the freeman system and placing the election of local governing bodies in the hands of residents who paid a certain amount of taxation.

In fact, it made the municipal bodies representative in just the same sense as the Parliamentary constituencies had been made representative by the Reform Act.

It remodelled altogether the local law courts and legal arrangements of the municipalities, and ordered that the appointment of Recorders should be in the hands of the Crown, that each Recorder was to be a barrister of a certain standing, and that a Recorder should be nominated for every borough which undertook to provide a suitable salary for the occupant of the office.

Provision was also made for the proper management of charitable trusts and funds.

[Sidenote: 1835--The Municipal Reform Bill] The measure was to apply to 183 boroughs, not including the metropolis, with an average of 11,000 persons to each borough.

Some of the larger boroughs were to be divided into wards, and in most cases the intention of the measure was that the boundaries of the Parliamentary borough should be the boundaries of the municipal borough as well.

The governing body of each municipality was to consist of a Mayor and Councillors, the Councillors to be elected by resident ratepayers.

It was proposed that the rights of living freemen were to be maintained, but as each life lapsed the right was to be extinguished, and thus the whole freeman system was to die out and all exclusive trading privileges were to be abolished.

The Bill, as introduced by Lord John Russell, only applied to England and Wales; but O'Connell demanded that Ireland should also be included in the reform, and it was finally agreed that a Bill of the same nature should be brought in for Ireland, and that arrangements should be made with the Scottish representatives to have the provisions of the {259} measure applied also to Scotland so far as might be consistent with the usages and the desire of the Scottish people.

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

His speech, however, was distinctly a declaration in favor of some comprehensive scheme of municipal reform, and might fairly have been regarded rather as a help than as a hinderance to the purposes of the Government.

The example set by Sir Robert Peel had naturally much influence over the greater number of the Conservative party, and only some very old-fashioned Conservatives seemed inclined to make a stand against the measure.

Mr. Grote seized the opportunity to introduce a motion for the adoption of the ballot in municipal elections, but it is hardly necessary to say that he did not secure support enough on either side of the House to win success for his proposition.

The Bill passed through the House of Commons without any important change in its character, but it met with very serious maltreatment in the House of Lords.

The majority of the peers did not see their way to compass the actual rejection of the Bill, especially after the liberal and statesmanlike spirit in which Sir Robert Peel had dealt with it; but they set themselves to work with the object of rendering it as nearly useless as they could for the purposes which its promoters had in view.

Lord Lyndhurst led the opposition to the Bill, and he could, when he so pleased, become the very narrowest of Tories, while he had ability and plausibility not included in the intellectual stock of any other Tory then in the House of Lords.

Under this leadership the Tory peers so disfigured and mangled the Bill that before long its own authors could hardly have recognized it as the work of their hands.

The peers not only restored all, or nearly all, the abuses and anomalies which the measure as it left the House of Commons had marked for utter abolition, but they even went so far as to introduce into their version of the Bill some entirely new and original suggestions for the creation of abuses up to that time unknown to the existing municipal system.

{260} The Bill thus diversified had, of course, to go back to the House of Commons, and it is hardly necessary to say that the House of Commons could not, as the Parliamentary phrase goes, agree with the Lords' amendments.

Peel once again took a statesmanlike course, and strongly advised the House of Lords not to press their absurd and objectionable alterations.

In the House of Lords itself the Duke of Wellington, acting as he almost always did under the influence of Peel, recommended the Tory peers not to carry their opposition too far, and before long Lord Lyndhurst, who was by temperament and intellect a very shrewd and practical man, with little of the visionary or the fanatic about him, thought it well to accept Wellington's advice, and to urge its acceptance on his brother Conservatives.

Lord John Russell recommended the House of Commons to accept a compromise on a few insignificant details in no wise affecting the general purposes of the measure, in order to soothe the wounded feelings of the peers and enable them to yield with the comforting belief that after all their resistance had not been wholly in vain.

The struggle was over, and on September 7, 1835, the measure became law in the same shape, to all practical purposes, as that which it wore when it left the House of Commons after its third reading there, and thus secured for Great Britain and Ireland the system of municipal government which has been working to this day.

{261} CHAPTER LXXVIII. STILL THE REIGN OF REFORM.