JOHN WADE,
Appendix to the Black Book: An Exposition of the Principles and Practices of the Reform Ministry and Parliament ... (1835)

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF THE REFORM MINISTRY.↩

The Tories, or, according to their new designation, the conservators of abuses, have become, like the Jacobites, little more than an historical name. The mind and motive force of the country have left them, and it is impossible they can again exercise political power. If they are wise, they will seek obscurity rather than keep alive the remembrance of their misdeeds. They cannot complain that their reign was short, nor dissolution premature. They lived the full natural term of authority, that is, they survived till they fairly sank under the re-active energies of the corruptions they had patronized, and by which their sway had been perpetuated.

If we revert to the state of public institutions, it is manifest they could not have been longer carried on without the corrective of new principles. The seeds of decay had extended to the secondary as well as primary departments of administration. Abuses were not more rife in the church, public offices, and pension list, than in the courts of law and great corporations of the kingdom. Under a pertinacious system of non-inquiry and non-reform the gangrene had spread through the entire body politic. What is more, the Tories had lost their moral influence. A pretended respect for antiquity, a dread of innovation, and other plausibilities under which they had carried on their plunderings, failed to delude the community; it was found that the superstition of toryism, like other superstitions, was bottomed on mere selfishness and spoliation.

The Whigs succeeded under circumstances well calculated to inspire hope and confidence in the nation. First, they had been reared in the salutary school of adversity; with claims to power equal to their opponents, they had been long excluded from the sweets of enjoyment. [2] Of course they entered office with a tempered and even humiliated spirit, and with no little ostentation of devotion to the popular will.

Secondly, they were bound by previous pledges; during a long course of opposition they had placed on record sentiments which they could not belie without the forfeiture of all claim to principle and character.

But the third and best guarantee of their conduct was in the state of the public mind. The people had been awakened to the defects of their institutions; they were unanimous and energetic in the determination that no pretext, no factious illusion, should avert their efficient reformation. While this spirit lasted, the Whigs could not swerve from the path of patriotism without endangering their official existence; and it was only as popular excitement subsided that their own zeal in well-doing abated. That such a change has come over them we will show by their acts; but before we do this, we shall advert to some leading measures as illustrative of the principles of whig government.

We pass over such acts as had no characteristic feature about them, and the course of which would have been similar whether directed by a whig or tory administration. Such were the renewal of the charters of the Bank of England and East India Company. The only thing we shall remark, on the agreements concluded with these great public bodies, is that ministers made an improvident bargain for the public; that they conceded advantages to these corporations, (especially to the Bank in the legal tender clause,) for which they ought to have obtained a higher price. That this was the case is proved by the rise in the price of the stocks of the two companies immediately after the arrangements had been completed. As respects the Bank, too, the opportunity ought not to have been lost of placing the whole trade of banking on a better foundation—of securing a currency of unchangeable value—and obtaining for the public not only the profit, but the security of a national circulation, issued under the authority and guarantee of the state.

The settlement of the West-India question is another great measure of the whig ministers. We pass over the ludicrous part of this business—namely, ministers first proposing to grant a loan of fifteen millions to the planters, and then suddenly transmuting the loan into a gift of twenty millions; let us attend to the principle of this transaction.

Had the planters a fair claim to compensation for the emancipation of their slaves? We say decidedly no. The ground on which the claim has been most plausibly defended is the fact that a vast property in slaves had grown up, if not under the sanction, at least under the connivance of acts of parliament, and that, as this property was about to be destroyed by another act of parliament, the owners of slaves had a just claim to compensation against the legislature, though none against the slaves themselves.

Our first reply to this is, that though acts of parliament had been passed to regulate the slave-trade, none had been passed recognizing a right of property in human beings. Quite the reverse; since it is a well-known maxim of the English law, that the moment a slave touches the British soil he is free, our laws repudiating the idea of a property [3] in the person of an individual. Even a negro enlisting in the British army thereby becomes free by statute, (10 Geo. IV. c. 6, s. 37), as a native of England. Against the colonial legislatures the planters may have had a valid claim to compensation; they may have admitted a property in slaves, but the statute and common law of England are exempt from the opprobrium.

If government was right in its treatment of the planters, it has been unjust towards other classes. We will cite two cases in illustration. Under the authority of the law the great brewers acquired a valuable property in public-houses; by an act of parliament opening the beer-trade the property was destroyed or depreciated, and no compensation was granted for the injury sustained. Prohibiting the beer-houses to retail beer to be consumed on the premises will inflict great injury on their proprietors. Yet, though these houses were opened under the express guarantee of an act of parliament, and the property therein may be greatly impaired by another act of parliament, no compensation will be given to the owners for the loss they have suffered.

The property in newspapers has become a great property; it has been created under, and its value may depend on the continuance of the existing stamp laws. It is impossible to foresee what might be the effect of the repeal of the stamp duties, but whatever this effect may be, however greatly newspaper property may be depreciated thereby, we will venture to say the owners would neither ask nor obtain indemnification.

Why ought such different measures of justice to be dealt to the different classes of the community? We can only ascribe it to the aristocracy still predominant in the government. Members of the House of Commons, members of the Cabinet, were interested in the slave question; they were owners of slaves, and so their losses must be compensated! It was not, therefore, for the maintenance of a principle, nor to do an act of impartial justice, but for the maintenance of a caste, that a permanent encumbrance has been entailed on the country of upwards of £600,000 a year,—a sum equal to the taxes on knowledge, and one-tenth of all the money levied for the relief of the poor of England.

The same selfish policy, the same devotion to aristocratic interests, maintains the discriminating duties between East and West India produce, by which the people of England have been taxed four millions annually for the benefit of the trans-Atlantic planters.

An injustice or abuse ought to be abated without compensation. It is contrary to law, as well as reason, that a man should profit by his own wrong-doing. But the Whigs have been constantly doing violence to this principle; they have not sought to reform, but to buy up the fee-simple of abuses at their full value. They have sought to change, not lighten the burden. An overgrown salary has been commuted into a superannuation, and a sinecure into a pension. The maxim acted upon is, that whoever has once had the fingering of the public money shall for ever after be maintained out of the public purse. It is the principle of the poor-laws; let a man obtain a settlement, and he thenceforward [4] claims support from the parish, and let a placeman once get into a government office, and he immediately and for ever sets up the pauper’s claim of being fed and clothed at the charge of the community. Some pensions have been granted on the most objectionable practice of the poor-law administration—namely, the allowance system. We have before us a parliamentary return of persons who receive compensation allowances for the loss of their offices until otherwise provided for; that is, while out of work they shall receive something less than full wages. According to this rule we are now maintaining a mass of tory ex-placemen. Mr. Goulburn receives £2000 a year; Mr. Croker, £1500; Mr. Planta, £1000; Mr. Courtenay, £1000; with many others. The condition on which all these pensions are received is that when they hold offices—that is, get into full employment—their pauper allowances shall cease. But why did not the Poor Law Bill abolish state allowances as well as parish allowances to the able-bodied but unemployed poor. Is it not as reasonable that John Wilson Croker and William Goulburn should have made provision for the vicissitudes of life out of their earnings as Jem Styles and Matthew Dawson?

In their Judicial Reforms the Whigs have gone on the tory maxim, that the holders of sinecures in the courts of law shall receive full pecuniary compensation. But we must protest against its justice; we can never admit of ‘vested rights’ in public abuses; we can never admit that the holders of life or reversionary interests in abuses in church or state are entitled to their full yearly value like the holders of a copyhold or freehold estate. But this favoured class seem even exempt from the changes in the value of property to which other classes are liable. Sinecures, whether lay or spiritual, are no longer sacred in public estimation—they are depreciated in value—they are, in fact, exposed to entire confiscation by the progress of opinion; yet they still continue to be bought up by government at their full nominal worth, in lieu of being extinguished by a compromise or dividend. In this way the great legal sinecures held by lord Ellenborough, the duke of Grafton, and others, ought to be got rid of. But the late reforms in the Court of Chancery have established a mischievous precedent. The monstrous sinecures of £11,000 a year, held by the rev. Thomas Thurlow, were purchased by an equivalent life-annuity payable out of bankrupt estates. The purse-bearer to the lord chancellor, and other officers in the court, were compensated in a similar manner. Lord Brougham received, as an equivalent for the loss of a portion of his sinecure patronage, an addition of one-fourth part to his retiring pension, making it £5000, in lieu of £4000, the highest sum paid to his predecessors.

Lord Brougham is a bitter enemy to the Poor Laws, as encouraging idleness and improvidence; but why does he countenance the application of principles to himself which he reprobates when applied to the less instructed portion of society? What is his pension but a compulsory rate levied on the community as a provision for old age, a large family, or scarcity of employment? These are, in truth, the very pretexts on which it has been justified. By a loss of patronage it is assumed his [5] lordship has not the same means of providing for his children, and his pension is deemed a provision to fall back on in old age or when unemployed. But surely this “great Westmoreland pauper” might provide for the casualties of life out of his enormous income as well as the poor man out of his wretched pittance. As to absolute want of employment there does not appear much to apprehend, as lord Lyndhurst has overcome that difficulty by descending to a chief-justiceship after being chancellor; or why not even descend to practise again at the bar, after the example of chief-justice Pemberton.* At all events there seems little need of a pension: the practice of granting pensions to ex-chancellors is one of the excrescences of the “Pitt and plunder” system, and ought to have disappeared with the first session of the Reformed Parliament.

By-the-by we might as well remark here on the enormous salary awarded to the lord chancellor by his whig friends, and which his lordship, up to this time, has condescended to receive. We do this without any personal ill-will, for we will readily admit no one deserves to be better paid than lord Brougham. But we look to principle and former professions. On examination before a parliamentary committee lord Brougham remarked on the almost impossibility that some of the tory ministers should not have been favourable to the continuance of the late war, seeing it added so enormously to their official gains. Lord Eldon was cited as an instance. Upon an average of three years during the war his lordship’s net income was £19,233, and in one year, 1811, it was £22,737. (Parliamentary Paper, No. 322, session 1831.) Lord Stowell lost £8000 a year by the cessation of hostilities as judge of the admiralty court. Even the king lost by the peace, as he had no longer the plunder of the droits of the crown and admiralty to supply his extravagance. It is inconceivable men would act so detestable a part with their eyes open, as to continue the miseries of war for mere official spoil; yet as lord Brougham most justly observed, “human frailty operates so, that without stating to ourselves the points we are erring upon, our interests work upon us unknown to ourselves.”

Now is lord Brougham more favourably circumstanced than his predecessor? Is he not surrounded by the same interest-begotten motives of action? By the establishment of the Bankruptcy Court his duties are considerably less than former chancellors; yet, allowing for the change in the value of money, his emoluments are greater than the average emoluments of lord Eldon during the war, and he has a retiring pension equal to the salary of the president of the United States of America. It is hardly possible, therefore, that he can see great defects in a system by which he so greatly profits, or be zealous in the reform of abuses. Hence his procrastinated, illusive, and abortive legal reforms. During the four years of his chancellorship not more has been effected than would have been effected under a tory or any other administration. The defects in our judicial system, and the chaos of absurdities in the statute [6] and common law of the realm, continue unredressed. Even the Court of Chancery is still pre-eminent for delay, cost, and circuity. And why not disintegrate the mass of incompatible duties in his lordship’s own office, by separating judicial from political functions, and removing the opprobrious farce of appealing from lord Brougham on the bench to lord Brougham on the woolsack? A love of patronage, of power, and emolument, are the lurking motives.*

In their Ecclesiastial Reforms the Whigs have been singularly unsuccessful, and the second session of the reformed parliament has terminated without any substantial improvement being effected either in the Irish or English branch of the United Church. It would occupy too much space to exhibit at length the abortions in principle and detail that have been propounded, still it is essential to give the reader an outline of what has been proposed, as illustrative of the views of ministers on church reform and indicative of future proceedings.

The Act (3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 37.) for regulating the temporalities of the Irish Church was the chief measure of the first session. By it the number of bishops is reduced from twenty-two to twelve, by the union of sees as the present incumbents die off. After the death of the present incumbents also, the enormous revenues of some of the sees are to be reduced; that of Armagh from its present amount of £14,500 to £10,000; that of Derry from £12,000 to £6,000; and all the other sees which may be worth more than £4000 to that sum. The exaction of vestry cess is abolished. So is also that of first fruits, in the stead of which there is to be imposed upon all livings above the actual yearly value of £300 an annual tax, varying in its rate according to the value of the living. Lastly, the leases of bishops’ lands are to be converted [7] into perpetuities, by which it is supposed a sum of £1,200,000 (it was originally calculated at three times that amount) will be realized. The fund arising from these prospective reductions and savings—for mind, it is all in future—is to be vested in commissioners, consisting of six prelates of the Irish Church and the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and under their direction it is to be applied to the augmentation of small benefices, the building of churches and glebe houses, the meeting of the expenses hitherto defrayed out of the vestry cess, and other purely ecclesiastical objects. The fund so created it is calculated will ultimately yield a revenue of £155,000 a year.

Upon this first measure of reform two observations may be made. 1. It effected (with the exception of the see of Derry) no immediate reduction in the enormous revenues of the Irish clergy. 2. With the exception of the vestry cess, amounting to about £35,000 a year, not a single farthing is saved to the community; an enormous sinecure church establishment is still left to levy the same amount of revenue from the industry and property of Ireland. So far, then, as the people are concerned, the reform is totally valueless; it saves nothing for the poor, for education, nor for local improvements.

In lieu of a measure of this sort a very different proceeding was demanded. A crisis had happened in the affairs of Ireland; by what may be termed the natural course of events, the clergy had lost their tithes, and the church, instituted for the benefit of the people, had become alien and useless to them. Here, then, was an opportunity for getting rid of the entire grievance. Abolish the Irish Church as a national establishment; share among the clergy the remnant of property which events had left to them; let them have life stipends out of the produce of the bishops’ and other church lands. In lieu of tithe let a land-tax be levied for the maintenance of the destitute, for education, and for the extinction of those territorial rights which are the great obstacle to the reclamation of the bogs and wastes of Ireland.

By such a plan of reform the ecclesiastical establishment, which has been the principal source of impoverishment and civil strife, might have been made the great instrument for improving and tranquillizing the country.

Two other acts were passed relative to the Irish Church; one for effecting a compulsory composition for tithes payable by the landlord, and the other empowering government to make advances to the amount of one million to such of the clergy as had not been able to recover the tithes due to them, to be repaid by five annual instalments. The landlords are now the parties from whom the repayment of these instalments may be demanded, who have of course their remedy against occupiers of the soil. It is not improbable the money advanced to the Irish clergy will never be repaid except out of the pockets of the people of Great Britain. But we must leave this to come to the schemes introduced last session for the extinction of tithe.

First it was resolved, before any final arrangement took place, the law [8] itself should be restored, and the right of the clergy vindicated by enforcing the payment of tithe. In the execution of this preliminary essay, that noted person the Right Hon. E. G. Stanley most signally failed. After bringing into play all the resources of his vast genius—after employing horse, foot, and artillery, to collect the pigs, poultry, cattle, and chattels of the peasantry, the most energetic of secretaries could only raise £12,000, and this after an expenditure of £60,000.* Failing in this project, the next position assumed was that whatever might be the fate of tithes, the landlords had no right to a farthing of them. This was lord Althorp’s own explicit, firm, and decided declaration. Mr. Littleton followed with his celebrated resolution of the 20th of February, for the conversion of tithe into a land-tax, payable to the crown and redeemable by the landlords, the produce of such redemption to be invested in land for the benefit of the clergy.

To this proposition the objections were weighty and manifold. First, the policy of tying up in mortmain a mass of real property in the hands of the church or government, was not sanctioned by the experience of history. Secondly, the making the clergy stipendiaries of the state would not tend to elevate their office in public estimation, and gave a sanction to some of the popular notions respecting them. Lastly, it was not likely many of the Irish landlords would have money to spare to redeem their tithes, poor as they were known to be, and burdened as their estates mostly are with mortgages and settlements.

To surmount these difficulties the Great Agitator came forth, July 30th, with his famous proposition for at once giving a bonus of 40 per cent. to the landlords on condition that they would, in place of their tenantry, charge themselves with the payment of the remaining 60 per cent. of tithe. The plan was that the clergy should abate 221/2 per cent. of their full due,—namely, 21/2 per cent. for the expenses of collection, and 20 per cent for better security. Every incumbent therefore would receive 771. 10s. certain in lieu of £100 nominal income. Of this 771. 10s. the sum of £60 would be paid by the landlord, and the remainder, 171. 10s., be charged on the consolidated fund, that is, on general revenue of the empire. Ultimately, indeed, it was held forth [9] that the difference of £17 was to be paid out of what is called the Perpetuity Fund, that is, the fund already alluded to, arising from the sale of bishops’ leases in perpetuity; but as this fund is not likely to be realized during the present generation, it may be concluded that the tax-ridden people of England and Scotland would be saddled with the payment of nearly one-fifth of the tithes of the Irish clergy!

The plan we have last indicated is that which passed the House of Commons, but was rejected by the Lords as too unfavourable to the Church; but a plan more favourable to the Church and less favourable to the people is not, in our opinion, likely to be again submitted for their acceptance.

That it was favourable to the clergy may be easily illustrated. By the defection or hostility of the people tithe had become extinct as a property, as much so as if it had been swallowed up by the sea or an earthquake. Under such circumstances were not 771/2 per cent. a most bountiful equivalent? In our opinion it was too much. Few persons would give £77 for £100 tithe even in England, to be saddled with its insecurities and the expenses of collection. Many landlords would gladly accept £77 certain, indisputable, and in perpetuity, in place of a nominal £100 of their rents. Whether the Irish clergy were entitled to anything may be doubted. They had lost their property by the course of events, and how many other persons have lost their incomes by the vicissitudes of the times without receiving compensation? To wit, those who have been ruined or injured by tamperings with the currency, the Bank Restriction Act, and the reduction of the Five and Four per Cents. Stock of the National Debt. Government showed no sympathy for the sufferers in these instances, though it was, in fact, the author of their misfortunes. We repeat, then, that the tender to the Irish clergy was most liberal—more liberal, we are sure, than will ever be again offered.

Let us next advert to this plan of ecclesiastical reform as it would have affected the community. It is of importance to examine it with attention, as it may be made the foundation of ulterior projects for the extinction of tithe in England.

Two-fifths of the tithes were to be at once swamped in a bonus to the landlords. This was the most indefensible part of the scheme. If there were any point on which all men were agreed, it was on the fact that, come what might, no portion of the tithe ought to devolve to the owners of the soil. This was the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s own explicit and apparently unchangeable declaration. Next to the clergy no class was so deeply interested in the settlement of the tithe question as the landlords. It gave value, peace, and security to their possessions. In lieu of a bribe they ought to have made a sacrifice. But the source whence the bribe was to be taken outrages belief. It was not to be taken from the vast possessions of the Irish Church, but to be charged on the general revenue of the empire. Of the £40 out of every £100 to be given to the landlords, nearly one half was in great part to come out of the pockets of the dissenters of England and presbyterians of [10] Scotland. Here was ecclesiastical regeneration with a vengeance! In lieu of the reform of the rich sinecure church of Ireland opening new sources of public revenue, it would have entailed additional burdens on the community. The question of the secular appropriation of the surplus wealth of the church was perverted into a question for appropriating more money for its maintenance—and of which a whig aristocracy, who had with alacrity adopted this new scheme of public spoliation, and who are among the principal landowners of Ireland—and the rest of an absent proprietary, who had been the chief causes of the miseries of the country—were to have the sole benefit and advantage!

One of the most objectionable measures of last session—Poor Law Bill excepted—is the Civil Offices Pension Act. This act is founded on an act passed during the odious administration of lord Castlereagh. In 1817 the call for retrenchment was loud and unceasing, and in order to silence the popular cry a committee of the House of Commons recommended that certain of the most obnoxious sinecures should be abolished. But as this took away a portion of the corrupt matter at the disposal of the minister, it was proposed that the crown should be empowered to grant certain equivalent pensions to its adherents in lieu of the abolished sinecures. Accordingly the 57 Geo. III. c. 67, provided that all the chief and subaltern officers of government, from the first lord of the treasury down to the clerk of the ordnance and first and second secretaries of the Admiralty should be entitled to retiring pensions, varying from £3000 to £1000 per annum.

This, it must be confessed, was an odd mode of economical reform. The sinecures were abuses, and ought to have been swept away without placing another equivalent abuse at the disposal of the crown. The principle assumed was that sinecures were the property of our hereditary legislators and their dependents, and as this property was taken from them they had a right to be provided for in some other way; that either as sinecurists or pensioners they were entitled to a perpetual maintenance from the public!

Upon this bill of 1817—so base in its origin and so indefensible in principle—the Whig act of the present session for granting pensions to themselves is founded. The Act 4 and 5 Will. IV. c. 24 provides that the first lord of the treasury, the secretaries of state, the chancellor of the exchequer, first lord of the admiralty, president of the India board, and president of the board of trade, may each claim £2000 a year pension after two years’ service at one or different times; that the chief secretary of Ireland and secretary at war may claim £1400 a year after five years’ service, and that joint secretaries of the treasury, vice-president of board of trade, under secretaries of state, first and second secretary of the admiralty, and secretaries of India board, may each claim pensions from £1200 to £1000 for terms of service, varying from five to ten years.

Neither the public press nor the radical members of the House of Commons appear to have taken notice of this extraordinary measure [11] of a reform ministry. We shall, however, offer a few observations, first on the extravagance of this provision, and, secondly, on the principle of placing such a power of rewarding the high and efficient officers of government in the hands of the crown.

According to the act, the first lord of the treasury, after two years’ service, may claim a pension of £2000 for life, and the president of the board of trade a like sum after the same term of service. Supposing now these officers forty years of age, and that they retire from office after two or three years and live to the age of eighty they will receive, exclusive of interest, £80,000 of the public money, or £40,000 for each year of actual labour. A pretty reward this to lord Melbourne or Mr. Poulett Thomson for submitting for a couple of years to the drudgery of public life, exclusive of their official salaries and patronage while in office, and which we should have thought ample remuneration.

But why should the power of rewarding public services be vested in the crown, and not in the House of Commons? It is plain enough that it is only the favourites of the court or of the ministers that will receive pensions under this act. No servant of the people, however necessitous, will ever be benefited by it—only the parasites of power. It is in fact bribes for servility, so much additional influence to the crown, and a further provision for titled pauperism. Lord Brougham, however, concurred in the measure as well as the duke of Wellington, and the chief objection to it entertained by earl Grey was, that “it did not sufficiently enable the crown to reward public functionaries.”

There is another observation connected with this extraordinary provision of the Whigs,—namely, that it holds out a temptation to ministers to desert their employment without reasonable and adequate occasion. We do not mean to insinuate that the chance of £2000 a year for doing nothing was the cause of the retirement of lord Grey, Mr. Stanley, and sir James Graham; we do not mean to say that they acted from the same unworthy motives that lord Brougham says the paupers do—that they prefer one-half or one-third wages in idleness rather than whole wages and industry; still, as the same learned personage remarked, selfish motives do exert such an unerring influence over human conduct, unknown even to the parties themselves, that it is impossible to say to what extent they may have influenced the individuals mentioned. It cannot be denied that during last session ministers were always ready to withdraw from office; indeed, having made such a comfortable provision for themselves, and having placed in lucrative appointments their relatives and dependents, they had scarcely any motive longer to undergo the toils and anxieties of official life. They had, as the late premier recommended the bishops to do, put their ‘houses in order,’ and were prepared for the worst. The threat of retirement was really the talisman by which they governed the country. If the independent portion of the House of Commons was likely to prove refractory, a ministerial ‘strike’ was held in terrorem, which instantly procured implicit obedience.

Now to those honourable Members who really consider the services of [12] lord Althorp and colleagues essential to the government of this great empire—a necessity we confess we do not ourselves perceive—we would vouchsafe a word of advice. Why do they not take away from ministers all temptation to retirement?—why do they not obtain the repeal of an act which holds out a direct inducement to withdraw from office, and apply to them the same principle they are seeking to apply to the poor, that those who do not work neither shall they eat—at the public expense!

As our purpose is not to present a detailed history of the Whig Ministry merely to illustrate principles, we shall only indicate minor delinquencies. Of this sort was the grant of a pension of £2000 a year to Mr. Abercromby. The appointment of this gentleman to a Scotch sinecure judgeship of the Court of Exchequer, just on the eve of its abolition, was itself a mere job; and then on the reduction of the court to settle the honourable member on the country for life was an indefensible mode of providing for a friend totally unworthy of a reform government. Of the same character, or worse, was the creation of a new office for Mr. Macaulay—his father and other relatives having before been provided for—with a salary of £10,000 a year, and an ample retiring pension after four or five years service, as a means of paying him for half a dozen clever speeches, reviews, and party pamphlets. Not less objectionable was the appointment of sir John Byng to the governorship of Londonderry—a sinecure of £1200 a year. The Russo-Dutch loan and the guarantee given to Otho, king of Greece, were measures of questionable policy, by which a serious burden and responsibility have been imposed on the country. Then, one cannot forget their defence of naval and military sinecures—their opposition to a revision of the pension list—to the abolition of flogging in the army—to naval impressment—to the repeal of the septennial act—the stamp duties on newspapers—and the introduction of the ballot.

The measures on which the Whigs may justly pride themselves are their Reform Bill, their economical reductions in the public expenditure, their improvement of the constitution of the Scotch Burghs, and their foreign policy. They have also instituted many salutary inquiries into the civil and judicial administration of the country. But their foreign policy, next to the reform bill, is their proudest boast. They have not only preserved peace—so essential to the thorough reform of our institutions and the progress of constitutional liberty abroad—but they have severed the country from its tory connexions with the continental despotisms, and united her destinies to the free governments of France and the Peninsula. The union of the naval power of Britain with the military power of France is the guarantee of peace, or, if war should come, of victory against Tyrants!

CHAPTER II.

THE PLOUGH AND THE LOOM.↩

There is obviously a strong disposition in ministers and the reformed parliament to show special favour to agriculture. On the opening of the late session his Majesty is made to lament “the continuance of distress amongst the proprietors and occupiers of land.” All the more important measures subsequently introduced, as the repeal of taxes on husbandry and the reform of the tithe and poor laws, appear to have been deemed chiefly valuable as modes of rural relief. Now an important question offers,—is there any thing in the present state of agriculture, or its relative importance as a branch of national industry, that fairly gives precedency to the Plough over the Loom? or is the preference merely a feudal prejudice, or selfish desire on the part of the territorial classes to forward those pursuits in which they are most deeply interested?

As to the existence of agricultural distress, that is a condition inseparable from the cultivation of the soil. But that there is general and unusual distress among the farming classes, we deny, and for proof refer to the evidence (not Sir James Graham’s Report) given before the Agricultural Committee of last year. Relative distress will always subsist in agriculture. Farming is and always must be a poor trade. The inducements to invest capital in land are such, that the profits of farming must always be depressed below the profits of commerce and manufactures. This is not the only cause of depression. In England, where two-thirds of the land occupied are held by tenants-at-will, if a farmer’s profits increase, his rent will be proportionately increased. So that, pressed on one side by the greater competition of capital in his employment, and on the other by the increasing exactions of his landlord, it is obvious that he can never enjoy, for a lengthened period, an exuberant state of prosperity.

From this dilemma no protection can save him. Were the price of corn, by restrictions on importation, artificially forced up to 120s. a quarter, his condition would not be permanently bettered. There would still be agricultural distress for him. The exorbitant price of corn would force inferior land into cultivation, the produce of which, owing to the greater outlay in its cultivation, would barely remunerate the grower; so that the occupier would be still only able to obtain a bare [14] subsistence; and as to those occupying the richer soils, they would be reduced to their wonted level by the increase of rents.*

The partial distress of landlords, though it originates in different causes, seems as inevitable as that of their tenants. In Poland, in Russia, in Spain, and in every European community, the landed interest is in a state of pecuniary embarrassment. Every where estates are encumbered by debts, mortgages, and settlements. This, however, is not because their revenues are small, but because they are enormous. It is men of moderate, not of large incomes, that live within them. The former are compelled to practice economy, to look after their affairs, and live according to rule; the latter are exempt from these precautions. George IV. had a million a-year and was constantly in debt, and many of the great landholders, from similar improvident courses, are involved in a like predicament.

It follows that the mere existence of poverty among the proprietors and occupiers of land is no proof of the existence of general agricultural distress entitled to legislative relief. The landed interest has always been the favoured interest in this country; it has been favoured by the [15] progress of commercial and manufacturing industry, and it has been favoured by a most partial allocation of public burdens, and the general course of legislation. After shortly elucidating these circumstances in the progress of agriculture, we will proceed to show that, from changes in society, the time has passed when the landed interest ought to be considered the primary interest of the community.

Notwithstanding the complaints of the decay of agriculture, of farmers living on their capital, and of whole parishes being abandoned from the pressure of poor-rates, there can be little doubt that agriculture has been constantly extending. How otherwise can we account for the comparatively low prices of produce? Population has been steadily increasing, and unless the increase of food had kept pace with the increase of consumers, prices must have been enhanced by competition. It may be alleged that prices have been kept down by importation from abroad, but this is refuted by facts. In the last two years the foreign wheat and flour entered for home consumption have been very inconsiderable. The quantity of foreign wheat and flour kept for consumption in Britain, in the ten years ending in 1820, amounted to 5,206,321 quarters; and in the ten years ending in 1830, it amounted to 5,349,927 quarters.* No great difference. Yet in the interval from 1820 to 1831, population had increased two millions. Now whence has the food been obtained for this vast addition to the number of consumers? Certainly not from Ireland. The imports from Ireland during the last ten years do not exceed on the average 350,000 quarters a-year. But an increase of two millions of consumers requires an increase of at least two millions of quarters of wheat for their sustenance, and that the supply has been obtained is evident from the fact of the steadiness of prices. It may be concluded, therefore, that as this supply has neither been obtained from Ireland nor abroad, it has been obtained from the increasing produce of our own soil.

General facts of this nature entirely negative the idea of the decline of agriculture. They are much more satisfactory than the testimony of individuals; since the last, when honestly given, can only be founded on a limited observance and their own peculiar circumstances. Even witnesses examined by the Agricultural Committee of last year testified to the thriving state of husbandry. In Norfolk, Mr. Wright, an extensive land-agent, bore testimony to the progressive improvement in farming; and in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk the land is as well cultivated as ever, (p. 96.) In Cornwall, Mr. Coode stated that agriculture had improved. In Lancashire, Mr. Reed said (p. 179) the quantity of arable land had increased within the last seven years. Other witnesses testified to the same effect.

No doubt the profits of farming have fallen since the war, but the depression extends to every other department of industry. Taken as a body, in no other country do the agricultural classes enjoy such pre-eminent [16] advantages. Their estates have been fertilized by the wealth flowing from the successful pursuit of commerce and manufactures. They have better turnpike-roads to roll their carriages on, and canals to transport their produce, than can be found any where else. By the help of unrivalled mechanical inventions, they are enabled to buy their wearing apparel, their woollens, linens, silks, and calicoes, cheaper than in any other country. The possession of vast colonies brings within their reach all the choicest luxuries of the earth. Through these and other advantages the English aristocracy has become the richest and most favourably circumstanced in the world. It is remarked of lord Clive, (Universal Magazine, July, 1760,) who had killed himself, that he had £70,000 a-year, and was the richest subject of the king. Many individuals at present have four or five times that income. Foreigners view with astonishment the splendid seats of the nobility, their gorgeous and crowded assemblies, their massive sideboards of plate, splendid equipages, and other indications of territorial opulence!

Mere wealth, however, constitutes only a tithe of the social and political advantages enjoyed by the landed interest. 1. A landed qualification is the basis of eligibility to most civil and legislative functions. Without a qualification in land, no person is eligible to be a member of parliament, a sheriff, a justice of peace for the county, or a commissioner of land and assessed taxes. 2. By the law of entail, their property is protected from the just demands of creditors, when that of persons engaged in trade would be liable. 3. Their possessions are exempt from the legacy and auction duties. 4. A mass of sinecures in church and state are kept up solely for their profit and emolument. 5. In the levy of the assessed taxes and the imposition of turnpike-tolls, special favour is shown to all interests connected with agriculture. Lastly, it is now admitted by sir R. Peel and sir James Graham, that the cornlaws, which levy a tax of twenty or thirty millions on the people, are kept up solely for the preservation of the landed aristocracy as essential parts of the community.

The only drawbacks of the landed interest are tithes, poor-rates, and county-rates. The unfairness of representing these as peculiar burdens on land has been so often exposed, that it appears superfluous to advert to them. For a landowner to complain of tithes, it has been justly observed he might as well complain that his neighbour’s field is not his own, or that he is lord of only 900 in lieu of 1000 acres. For 1000 years at least the tithe-owner has been co-proprietor of the soil, and subject to his claim the landlord has succeeded to his possessions. The lien of the poor is hardly less inalienable; they have always been a charge upon the land, and justly so in return for their services. Then, again, as to the county-rates, the burden properly falls on the landowners, as it is chiefly for their convenience and security that the highways, prisons, and bridges are kept in repair.

Leaving these matters, let us come to the allocation of public burdens. The progress of taxation is a most instructive lesson in the science of government; it shows how a class, enjoying a monopoly of political [17] power, will pervert that power to its own selfish purposes, and to the neglect or depression of all the non-represented interests of the community.

The land-tax is a practical illustration of this truth. This impost has been stationary for a hundred and forty years, notwithstanding the vast increase in the value of landed property. Of forty-nine millions raised by taxes in the thirteen years of the reign of William III. the land-tax furnished £19,174,000. The landowners of that day, therefore bore two-fifths of the whole public revenue, and paid a direct tax to government, which was nominally one-fifth, and might be in reality one-sixth of their entire income.

As the old valuation and rate of assessment of 1692 have been continued to the present, the produce of the land-tax at this day, including the value of what has been redeemed, is the same as it was at the end of the seventeenth century, namely, two millions a-year. But two millions at the former period was about one-fifth of the land-rents, whereas it is now only one-fifteenth. It then formed nearly one-half the public revenue; it now constitutes about the twenty-fifth part. Here, then, is a striking instance of the dexterity with which the landowners have evaded their fair proportion of taxation, and this without being subjected to any countervailing burdens; for it must be borne in mind that when contributing one-fourth of their incomes to the state, they were subject then as now to the additional assessment of tithes, poor-rates, and county-rates.*

Let us now advert for a moment to the continental landowner. More the subject is investigated, and more enviable and favoured will appear the position of the British agriculturist; less ground there will appear for perpetuating the injustice of corn-laws, and seeking relief from existing burdens.

In France, the fonciere, or land-tax, produces about one-fourth part of the entire revenue of the country. The landowners of Austria are supposed to pay at least one-fourth, probably one-third of the entire mass of national taxation. From the statements of Mr. Jacob, it appears that in Hanover, Mecklenberg, Holstein, and Sleswick, the land-tax on the owner’s net profits varies from 20 to 25 per cent. including, however, tithes and school and poor rates, which are generally trifling in amount. In Prussia, the king’s tax on rent is 25 per cent.

It thus appears that in the most improved and civilized countries of the continent, about one-fourth of the whole public revenue is derived from a direct tax on land, while in Britain the land-tax supplies only one twenty-fifth part of the revenue. The landowners of the continent pay about one-fourth of their incomes to government, those of Britain about one fifteenth part.

It is worthy of remark, too, that while the land-tax in this country has been stationary since the reign of William III. it has been in a state [18] of progressive increase on the continent, the cadastres, or valuations, being raised or altered, from time to time, or superseded by new ones.

Having adverted to the privileges, exemptions, and special favour extended to agriculture, let us next inquire whether there is any ground for this preference, either in the superior numbers, industrial character, fiscal contributions, or intelligence and moral power of the agricultural classes: in a word, let us ascertain whether agriculture is, as heretofore considered, the primary, or only the secondary interest of the empire. A solution of these questions will determine the soundness of the policy, which has long been predominant in the legislature, of rendering the interests of the town subservient to the country population.

First as to numbers. In England, the proportion of the population employed in agriculture is smaller, perhaps, than in any other European community. In Italy, the proportion of agriculturists to non-agriculturists is as 100 to 31; in France, as 100 to 50; in England, rather more than as 27 to 100. It is a remarkable fact, that the proportion of persons employed in agriculture during the last thirty years has been gradually decreasing, while the proportion employed in trades has been increasing. A similar change in the industrial character of society is observable in Scotland and Wales, as will appear from the following statement of Mr. Rickman, inserted in the Appendix to the Report of the Agricultural Committee.

[19]

Table: COMPARATIVE STATEMENT of the NUMBER and OCCUPATION of FAMILIES in England, Wales, and Scotland, in the Years 1811, 1821, and 1831; also the Proportions expressed in Centesimal Parts.

[To view this wide table in HTML format open it in a new window.]

[20]

Mr. Marshall, in his Statistics of the British Empire, has classed the counties of England into the agricultural, manufacturing, and metropolitan, and given the following table of the increase per cent. in the population of each.

From this and the preceding table, we derive two important facts:—First, that the number of persons employed in trade and manufactures far exceeds the number employed in agriculture, and, secondly, that the disproportion is rapidly augmenting. From 1700 to 1831, the population of the agricultural counties increased only 84 per cent., while the population of the manufacturing counties increased 295 per cent. Or, if we limit attention to the more authentic censuses taken from 1801 to 1831, it is obvious how rapidly manufacturing has been gaining on agricultural industry at each decennary enumeration.

So far then as numerical superiority is involved, the loom may claim decided precedency over the plough. This determines the most important consideration, for it is obviously men and not things that ought mainly to decide the course of legislation. But we shall find that trades and manufactures have another point of superiority, namely, in their power to augment the wealth of the community.

There are no authentic data for determining the relative proportion in which the different branches of industry add to the national income. Mr. Colquhoun, with his usual hardihood, has attempted to solve this question. He has given an estimate of the wealth annually realised in Great Britain and Ireland; we give his statement more as a curiosity and the conjectures of a shrewd calculator, than any thing else.

[21]

This estimate is chiefly valuable, as shewing the relative productive power of the several branches of national industry in the opinion of an ingenious writer; it is not applicable to existing circumstances, being prepared when the country was involved in war and paper-money, and when agriculture was of far greater relative importance than at present. We have no data for correcting the estimate up to the present. But the superior productive power of manufactures over agriculture may be readily inferred from the obvious facts of the greater number of persons employed therein, and the higher wages and profits realised. These are infallible criteria for determining the amount of wealth annually created in the two branches of national industry. Agriculture barely provides the community with its coarser food; all our luxuries, clothing, domestic conveniences, tools and machinery, shipping, navigation, and vast exports and imports are the results of commerce and manufactures. They have been the source even of agricultural wealth, as well as provided the means for internal improvements and a vast government expenditure.

The third point of superiority we claim for manufacturing industry is, that it contributes in a greater proportion to the public revenue of the country; agriculture not only contributes less to the mass of taxes in proportion to the smaller number of persons connected therewith, but absolutely less as will appear from a representation which appeared in the Times newspaper, April 2, 1834.

Our population in round numbers is 24,300,000, of which one-third or 8,100,000 is engaged in agriculture, and the remaining two-thirds, or 16,200,000, are engaged in other pursuits.

By the English scheme of taxation, the government taxes are for the most part common, and apply uniformly, and are paid by all classes of the community.*

[22]

These taxes may be ranged under the following heads:—

And the agriculturists being one-third of the population, the proportion of this sum of £51,040,351, which they ought to pay according to their numbers, is £17,013,450: and now let us see what these men actually do pay, and then:—

So that the agriculturists not only contribute in a small degree to the general revenue, but less by £3,418,018 than they ought to contribute in proportion to their numbers. Yet mirabile dictu! these men are considered the mainstay of the country, and the class for whose interests, in the opinions of a majority of a reformed Parliament, the interests of all other classes should be sacrificed.

Let us advert to the fourth and last consideration—the superior intelligence [23] and moral power of the trading and manufacturing population.

The entire mind and soul no less than the industrial activity and physical power of the community are concentrated in the metropolis and great towns of the kingdom. It is here where institutions of science, of education, and benevolence are founded and maintained. It was here even where civil liberty had its origin, was first claimed and conquered for the entire nation. Among the scattered population of the country, there is as little intelligence as combination for accomplishing objects of general utility. There is hardly any thing like personal independence—from the land-owners down to the farmer and mere labourer, it is a gradation of comparative slavery without the freedom either of thought or action which animates the manufacturer and operative. Hence it is that all great political movements, all great social ameliorations have had their origin and achievement in towns, not in the rural districts. It is commerce and manufactures, not agriculture that have impelled nations onward in the career of improvement. They have been the foundation of the freedom, glory, and magnificence of all great communities, of Tyre, Carthage, and Palmyra, no less than of Venice, Genoa, and the Netherlands. Wherever we find agriculture the sole or predominant industry of a state, there we may be well assured the people are poor and abject in spirit—poor in all the comforts and luxuries of living—women socially and physically degraded—and the whole frame of society debased by tyranny and superstition. Before our eyes, it is so even now in Italy, Spain, Poland, and Hungary. Without Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles, France would have had no revolution,—she would have still groaned under the double yoke of regal and ecclesiastical bondage. Without London, Birmingham, and Manchester, England would neither have had religious freedom nor parliamentary reform, but would have still been in the trammels of a plundering oligarchy and intolerant church.

Pursuing the contrast in its moral and municipal bearings, we are led to similar conclusions. The most degraded part of the population are the cultivators of the soil. Among them it is we find the cases of improvidence, vice, and illegitimate births most numerous. It is not in Leeds, Liverpool, or Manchester, but in the domain of the squire and parson that have been found the worst examples of parochial misgovernment.

But enough: with such facts, moral, statistical, and historical, does it not appear like national infatuation to tolerate the ostentatious imbecillities propounded by sir James Graham and sir R. Peel of the superior importance of agriculture, and that the landed aristocracy is the most essential interest of the community, in whose favour not only the great principle of commercial freedom should be violated, but every man, woman, and child in the country barefacedly and openly robbed!

CHAPTER III.

THE CHURCH AND DISSENTERS.↩

CHAPTER IV.

WORKING OF THE EXCISE LAWS.↩

It can hardly be denied that during the last one hundred and forty years by far the largest portion of the active talent and intelligence of the government has been directed, not to objects of national improvement, but to picking the pockets of the people, to the watching with the vigilance of a Turkish pacha their growing riches, and then carrying off with remorseless gripe the fruits of their toil and skill, to be wasted in exhausting wars, regal pomp, and aristocratic profusion. The genius of the people has been commercial; the policy of their rulers anti-commercial. Trades’ unions have been obnoxious to the charge of interfering with the freedom of industry; but the annoyances from this source are insignificant when contrasted with the vexatious impediments resulting from the unceasing inquisitions of our fiscal administration.

For proof of this we shall only refer to one department, that of the Excise;—a term giving rise to similar imaginings of judicial tyranny as the Court of Star Chamber or Holy Inquisition, and which is no less repugnant to sound principles of finance than of commercial legislation. The laws therein are for the most part unintelligible, and subjecting the individuals obnoxious to them to harassing domiciliary visits and spiteful persecutions. They are also mischievous by interfering with the conduct of business, and thereby imposing restraint on skill, enterprise, and improvement. As a tax the excise is generally unequal, being levied on commodities used by the bulk of the people, but on which the rich spend little or nothing. To get rid of it altogether is perhaps neither possible nor desirable, but we shall select a few examples to illustrate the working of the system, in which improvement would not be difficult, and which would involve no great sacrifice of revenue,—certainly not more than has been squandered in indemnifying the West Indian planters, and clearing out judicial nuisances in the courts of law.

1. Paper.—The duty on paper varies from 50 to 150 per cent. on the different kinds of paper. Except the very coarsest wrapping paper all paper is subject to a first-class duty; and even wrapping paper, to be charged at the lowest rate, must be manufactured wholly of tarred ropes, a regulation which causes the refuse of the finer paper to be wasted. The duty is a tax on science, on the diffusion of education and useful information. But the tax forms a small part of the expense [35] to which the public is put in order to repay the manufacturer for the trouble and annoyance to which he is subject in carrying on his business. There are sixteen acts of parliament regulating his trade, commencing with the 10 Ann, c. 19, and ending with 6 Geo. IV. c. 111. By one of these he is required to take out a license, and to enter his presses and engines, vats and chests, at the Excise Office. He must only carry on his business in certain places, and a maker of paper must not be a maker of pasteboard. He must letter each room of his manufactory; he must fold his paper in quires, reams, and bundles, and tie it up in a form prescribed by statute: he must give twenty-four or forty-eight hours’ notice of weighing, and after weighing paper must not be removed in less than twenty-four hours. Errors in weighing to the extent of five per cent. subject paper to forfeiture. The penalties vary from £20 to £500. An excise label must be pasted on each ream or parcel; and if the maker do not account for every label received he is liable to a penalty of £200 for each. A master will sometimes send for 500 labels at once to the excise, and should any person get into the mill and steal or destroy them the penalties would amount of £100,000.

2. Glass.—The direct duty on glass varies from £100 to £200 per cent. Little more than half the gross duty levied is brought into the exchequer; the remained being either returned or lost in the collection. On flint glass the officers may charge the duty either at 3d. per pound in the pot or 6d. out. It is thought more advantageous to the revenue to exact the duty in the pot; and the tax is by this means virtually raised to 7d., whilst the manufacturer who makes the fine glass from the middle, and the coarser from the bottom and top, is compelled, whether he requires it or not, to manufacture the whole from having paid the duty, whereas he would often remelt the coarser parts.

This is only one vexation of the manufacturer. The laws regulating his trade are scattered through twenty-nine acts of parliament. He must take out an annual license, and enter at the excise all his workshops, furnaces, pots, pot chambers, annealing arches, &c. He must provide locks, fastenings, trays, windlasses, scales, and weights, as approved by the officer, and keep them in repair. Before filling any pot he must give twelve hours’ notice, with an account of the weight of the materials and species of glass intended to be made. Officers may enter at any hour, guage, mark, and number the pots: counterfeiting or altering marks penalty £500. Officer may forbid fires to be stirred, or smoke raised, lest he be annoyed in the discharge of his duty, on pain of £100. Refusing to assist officer, penalty £100. Removing flint-glass before weighing, or any way attempting to evade the duty, subjects to a penalty of £500. The structure of the annealing arches, the number of entrances, and the different processes and stages of manufacture are all prescribed under heavy penalties. Exclusive of forfeitures there are fifty-eight penalties, amounting in the aggregate to £9740. So tied down and watched, the manufacturer neither attempts improvement nor experiment in his business.

3. Soap.—The manufacture of soap is peculiarly a chemical process, [36] but notwithstanding the discoveries in chemical science, there has been no improvement in the making of soap during the present century. The number and complexity of the excise regulations render deviations from the established routine almost impossible. There are twenty-nine acts of parlinment regulating the manufacture, beginning with 10 Ann, c. 19, and ending with 3 Will. IV. c. 16.

A soap-maker must occupy a tenement assessed to the parish rates. If he alter any boiling-house, warehouse, room, or other place, or use any copper, vat, or other vessel, without giving notice, he is liable to penalty. All materials and utensils for soap-making found in an unentered place become forfeited. He must provide covers, locks, fastenings, and keys, as approved by the excise, and opening any copper, furnace, or ash-hole door, without twelve hours’ notice, or if in the country twenty-four hours’, subjects to penalty. Officers may break up the ground, or remove any wall or partition to search for a private pipe. If any hole be found for privately conveying away soap the fine is £500. Notices must be given of cleaning and beginning to work; failing to begin at the time mentioned notices must be renewed. The form of soap-frames, the depth of soap therein, and the time to elapse before it is divided into cakes or bars, are all minutely prescribed by statute. Hard soap must be sold in bars or cakes, or ball soap, and the scraps and parings, immediately after it is divided, must be put into the boiler in presence of an officer on pain of £100. Removing soap without notice is finable; or, if the quantity exceed twenty-eight pounds, without inscribing the word “soap” in letters two inches long on the package, and three inches long on the carriage. Dealers are liable to sundry penalties, and any person, not being an entered soap-maker, having barilla, kelp, or other materials in possession, they may be seized.

4. Malt.—The act by which the forty statutes regulating the malt-trade were consolidated imposed no fewer than one hundred and six penalties, amounting altogether to £13,500. The number and complexity of these provisions were such that neither excisemen nor maltsters could proceed in their business till they had been explained and amended by orders issued from the Treasury. By a subsequent act some of the penalties are repealed, leaving however the manufacture of malt sufficiently restricted by precautions as to the structure of cisterns and couch-frames, notice of wetting—keeping of grain in steep—the number of floors, &c.

An officer may enter a maltster’s premises at any hour, by night or day. If officer suspect corn to have been condensed in the couch or cistern, by treading or otherwise, he may have it turned out; if, on laying the corn level again in the cistern or couch, an increase to a certain amount is found, the maltster is subject to a penalty of £100. A like penalty is imposed on the maltster if he refuse to assist the officer in making the trial of his own honesty!

5. British Spirits.—The importance of these to the revenue afforda at least some extenuation of the severity of the excise-regulations. But really the act on the distilleries seems the acme of fiscal refinement and policy. It has one hundred and fifty-three sections; the number of penalties [37] inflicted is eighty-nine, varying in amount from £100 to £500. It is quite impossible to give even an outline of this masterpiece of excise genius, and we must refer to The Book of Penalties for particulars.

In extenuation of the number and severity of the excise-laws it is urged that they are not strictly enforced: like capital punishments, they are only held up in terrorem. But this is an aggravation of their iniquity. Laws to be enforced or not at the pleasure of individuals, are equivalent to no laws at all—it is living under a mere despotism. Whether or not the excise penalties are inflicted depends on the whim, temper, or spite of the revenue officers, or perhaps an unfriendly neighbour. They are snares and scorpions to an honest man, whilst rogues escape them by cunning and bribery.

For examples of the oppressive and arbitrary administration of the Excise Laws, see the cases collected under that head in the last edition of The Black Book, page 321.

CHAPTER V.

POOR LAWS’ AMENDMENT ACT.↩

The Poor Law Commissioners have not treated the public fairly in their Reports. They have given a partial, and, in many instances, an exaggerated representation of the working of the poor laws; they have pointed out their evils, but not described their countervailing advantages. Instead of mainly confining their exposition to a few agricultural parishes, which have been in the hands of the parsons and squirearchy, why did they not advert to the state of the poor in the great towns of the kingdom, in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, &c. where they would have found fine examples of administering the national charity with economy and intelligence, realizing all the benefits that the admirers of a compulsory assessment for the relief of indigence could desire?

Secondly, why did not they advert to the decline of pauperism during the ten years from 1820 (the period of improvement under Sturges Bourne’s Acts) to 1830? It is a fact that, during the period mentioned, the poor-rates have not increased in so fast a ratio as the population; that there has been a relative decline of pauperism; and in the period prior to 1820, the increase was occasioned, in a much greater degree, by the increase of law charges than an additional expenditure on the poor. In some of the principal parishes there have been great and successful efforts made to effect a diminution in the poor expenditure; it has been so in the principal parishes of the metropolis, and at Leeds, Liverpool, and other places.

Thirdly, why did not the Commissioners bring down the history of the poor and the poor laws to the present time, instead of stopping at the reign of Elizabeth? Had they done so, they would have found that all their more important suggestions have been already tried; that the project for incorporating parishes has been tried; that for refusing relief to able-bodied poor, except in a workhouse; and for attaching wages for advances previously made to paupers out of the rates. Mention may be found of all these plans, and their failure or abandonment, in Eden’s History of the Poor and Wade’s History of the Middle and Working Classes. But a notice of them might have weakened their case, and lessened the confidence of the public in any schemes founded upon them.

[39]

In the reports of the Commissioners there is a singular want of comprehensiveness of view—a disregard of general principles—and an absence of correct information on the character and condition of the labouring classes. Their plans of amendment are founded chiefly on experiments made in the parishes of Southwell, Cookham, Bingham, and Swallowfield.

These are their pattern parishes, according to which all other parishes ought to conform in their parochial administration. But with what propriety can these places be adduced as examples for the entire kingdom? Their population is diminutive; they are entirely agricultural; and have been in the hands of zealous individuals, who by great personal sacrifices, and enforcing a strict system of parochial relief, succeeded in lessening the amount of pauperism, most probably at the expense of the adjoining districts. But are such insulated and peculiar examples sufficient to warrant the extension of similar principles of management to the entire country? Certainly not. With as much reason Mr. Owen might seek to establish his co-operative parallelograms throughout England, from the success of his individual experiment at New Lanark. Of the disregard of general principles by the Commissioners, and of their reckless determination to make out a case, the pattern parishes afford an illustration. The system pursued in these parishes was that of non-relief, except in the workhouse. The effect of this no doubt was, in part, as intended to be, to compel the able bodied to accept work on any terms, and in any sort of employment, rather than forego personal freedom in a poor-house. But strange to say, this forced increase of competition for work had, according to the Commissioners’ representations, the effect of raising its price! An effect so paradoxical, so contrary to the best established principles of economical science, evinces a zeal in behalf of the anti-pauper system, that reminds us of those nostrums of sovereign efficacy which cure the most opposite disorders.*

It seems not less contrary to general principles to anticipate, for a lengthened period, a reduction of parish expenditure by the operation of the Poor Law Act. The poor-laws are administered by the rate-payers, who are locally and personally acquainted with the state of their parishes, and directly interested in checking abuses and a lavish expenditure. [40] Will the Central Board sitting in London, or the Assistant Commissioners, in their occasional visitations, act under greater motives to to economy, or bring greater local and practical information to their task; and if they do not, what benefits are we to anticipate from their parochial superintendence? It strikes us that, after a time, (for we will give credit for demonstrations of zeal at the beginning,) the superintendence exercised by them over paupers will be like that exercised by the lord chancellor, in right of his office, over public charities, or of the bishops over some of our collegiate foundations; it will exist in name, but have no practical or executive efficiency.

Both the Commissioners and the late Ministers committed a great mistake in confounding the present state of society with the age of Queen Elizabeth. Lord Althorp, during the debates in the House of Commons, repeatedly declared that the main object of the Poor-Law Bill was to bring back the administration of the poor laws to the legitimate purposes of their first institution. Now the two great objects embraced by the 43d of Elizabeth are to relieve the impotent, and to set to work the able-bodied. The act of Elizabeth was chiefly an act for the enforcement of industry, intended to meet the mass of vagrancy that grew out of the abolition of the religious houses, and the transition from slave to free labour. But mark the difference of the two periods. Such a monstrous anomaly as an able-bodied man willing to labour, but unable to get employment, was unknown in the time of lord Burleigh; the great difficulty then was to overcome the propensity to idleness and vagabondage, not to find remunerative labour. At present the case is reversed; there is no lack of industry in the country, but of profitable employment. Yet the framers of the Poor Act have overlooked this fundamental distinction. They have prescribed a remedy more applicable to the age of Elizabeth than of William the Fourth. They seem to think that the main source of pauperism now as then is idleness, and as a corrective of this, have propounded their grand panacea for subjecting all the able-bodied poor to the ordeal of a workhouse.

Here we think they have committed a grievous error. There is, we apprehend, a permanent redundancy of labour; there are more people than can be employed on the terms they have been accustomed to be employed, and to compel them, by any legislative machinery, to be employed on lower terms, we hold to be highly impolitic—impolitic as not tending to the improvement, but the moral and physical degradation of the community.

That there is a redundancy of labour, the low wages which have been long paid in some of the agricultural parishes are conclusive proof. For this evil the workhouse project is no remedy. It opens no new source of employment, it only provides a sort of Bridewell punishment for an offence which is not the predominant vice of the age.

We have not yet brought before the reader our main objection to this new-fangled scheme. A great deal has been urged on the irresponsible powers vested in the Central Board. We should care little for this if we thought they would be exercised for a salutary purpose. Irresponsible [41] power is not so dangerous in subordinate bodies as in the state. In the former, if it becomes an oppressive nuisance it may be promptly abated; in the latter it may rise above control.

What we most strongly object to the Poor Law project is its tendency to deteriorate, not to better the condition of the people. If such be its real tendency—and that it is such, we will by and by show—then we say that no benefit which can possibly arise from it would compensate for the social injury it will inflict. No economic savings in poor rates would be an equivalent for a permanent deterioration in the diet, clothing, and lodging of the mass of the community. Pauperism is a great evil, but there may be greater. The general insecurity of property and persons would be greater. A pauper is a bad member of society, but a beggar, a thief, an assassin, or incendiary is worse. By rigid persecution we may get rid of pauperism, but by converting pauperism into mendicity, or criminality, or into Irish or Russian helotism, we effect a social change certainly, but no improvement in the condition of society.

That some or all the evils to which we allude may result from a rigid enforcement of the New Act, we will speedily demonstrate.

The leading principle upon which it is founded is that the condition of no pauper shall be as eligible as that of the independent labourer; and for carrying out this principle, it is proposed relief shall only be given in a workhouse. Such a plan every body knows to be impracticable, and that to erect and maintain workhouses for all the paupers in the kingdom would, in lieu of diminishing, quadruple the poor assessment. We have heard, indeed, some of the strenuous advocates of the measure slily insinuate that it is really not intended to make any great addition to the number of workhouses, but to introduce such discipline there, to render them places of so much discomfort that the poor shall be deterred from seeking parish aid at all. This is the real secret we believe, but let us see the influence the working of such a system will have on the future state of the labouring population.

The state of the pauper it is assumed shall be inferior to that of the free labourer, however bad that may be. If the wages of the independent labourer are so low that he is compelled to live on potatoes and salt fish, to clothe himself in the coarsest garments, to sleep on straw, to live in a cabin, and labour sixteen hours a day—bad as all this may be, something worse shall be provided—‘a lower deep’ still awaits the unfortunate wretch who is compelled to resort to the parish for assistance. Although he may be already as poor in comfort and as degraded in condition as the Russian serf or the Irish cotter, a still worse fate awaits him in a workhouse. Now, we crave attention to the effects of this system on the price of labour and the condition of the labouring classes. Rather than accept relief in a workhouse on such onerous conditions—what will not the working man do?—he will submit to work for any wages, however small the pittance, to feed on any garbage, to live in any hovel; in a word, to be screwed down to a level with the most miserable peasantry in Europe. And is this a consummation to be [42] wished? Is this an enlightened mode of raising the character of the people and improving the condition of society? The greatest calamity that can befal the working people is the submitting to an inferior standard of living. This is the opinion of every writer of authority. From the writings of Ricardo, Malthus, Macculloch, Torrens, and lord Brougham himself, we might quote passages without number to show the hopeless degradation of a people who once submit to a low standard of diet, clothing, and lodging. Physical discomfort precludes all hope and desire of personal independence, moral and intellectual improvement. Yet this is the vital principle of the Poor Law project—it is its sole talisman of reform—a lower scale of relief for the pauper as a preliminary to a lower scale of living for the independent labourer; it is, in short, a screw for lowering wages and abridging the comforts of the poor.

The discipline of the workhouse is to be such as to be held in terrorem of all paupers. Applications for relief are to be discouraged by hard labour, coarse fare, degrading attire, and other contrivances of pain and ignominy. Pauperism for the first time is to be made a crime; it is to be a crime in any man to be in want and unemployed; and the workhouse is to be converted into a house of correction for his reception—with this difference—that in the former he will have to work harder and fare worse; so that in future it will be the interest of every man to be a criminal rather than a pauper—to steal rather than resort to the parish for assistance. What enlightened principles of legislation to confound misfortune with delinquency; what benevolent projects of the Whigs for bettering the state of society! How consistent, too, is their philanthropy, for while they are mitigating the punishments for housebreaking and forgery, they are devising new punishments for that which never since the world began was deemed an offence at all, but an object of commiseration!

The pretexts on which the workhouse ordeal is introduced, are to get rid of the abuses of the allowance system and the impositions of the able-bodied poor. That evils have arisen from both sources is indisputable. They afford strong reason for improving the administration of the poor laws, but none for acting unjustly. If parishes have been imposed upon, apply a test, establish a tribunal for separating the pauper from necessity from the worthless vagabond, but do not confound the innocent with the guilty by subjecting both to indiscriminate punishment.

Looking at the workhouse scheme in another point of view, it appears only an adoption of the plan of the Dutch pauper colonies. The object of these is to find work and economically maintain the indigent. This has been objected to by Dr. Chalmers and others as having no tendency to eradicate the seeds of pauperism, only permanently to create a new and degraded caste in society. Such is precisely the tendency of workhouses; it shuts out a section of society from community of right and feeling with their fellow-men; it permanently degrades them without either instructing them or warning others to avoid a similar fate.

Such, then, is our chief objection to the Poor Law Act,—if vigorously [43] carried through in the spirit in which it has been framed, it will operate as a powerful engine of social degradation. It will effect no reform in the habits, character, or condition of the poor, but will merely compel them to accept lower wages and accommodate themselves to a lower standard of living. If such be really the result—if it will really tend to the moral and physical degradation of the people—no accompanying advantages can countervail its evil tendency, and the Whigs have inflicted a greater national calamity by its introduction than can be counterbalanced by all the public improvements they have effected.

We see little to object to in the establishment of a Central Board of Commissioners acting on sound views; the magnitude of our pauper administration requires the superintendence of an exclusive tribunal, whose functions shall be to suggest improvements and enforce uniformity of practice: but we object to the principles on which they propose to proceed. They seem to have mistaken the disease and the tendency of their own remedies. Of the rashness of their conclusions, the suggestions adopted for the reform of the Bastardy Laws are a pertinent example. A few instances had occurred of lewd women having more bastards than one, for which they received the parish allowance; hence it was concluded a general trade was carried on in bastardy, and, as a preventive, the burden of maintaining an illegitimate child has been thrown entirely on the mother. The ordinary parish allowance for a bastard in the metropolis is eighteen-pence weekly; it is not more—most likely less—in the country;—can any one suppose such a pittance holds out a bounty to incontinence? But see how many principles have been outraged by the new law! First, it violates one of the most general maxims of jurisprudence, namely, that which imposes on both parents, equally, the obligation to maintain their offspring whether legitimate or not. Secondly, it violates natural justice; for, if incontinence be an offence at all, it is equally so in both parties, and equally ought the punishment to be apportioned. Lastly, it is monstrous and inhuman to throw the entire burden on the weaker, and, in our opinion, more venial transgressor.

Notwithstanding these obvious objections to this strange innovation on pre-established principles and feelings, it is urged that the alteration is expedient, that it will work well in practice. We deny it. It will impose no additional restraint on females, while it will give greater license to the low and profligate of our own sex, who may now spawn away with impunity at the parish expense. That it will not impose further restraint on women, one observation will suffice. If the destitution and pains of child-birth, coupled with the shame of public exposure—the dread of which, in the present state of moral feeling, often leads to frightful crimes—fail to curb female indiscretion—how can it be supposed that superadding thereto the mere pecuniary penalty of the maintenance of the child can have any such tendency? It is a poor, hasty, and impotent piece of legislation, bottomed on gross ignorance of society and human nature; and the worst of it is, that its evil consequences [44] may eat long and far into the core of domestic life before they become manifest to the public eye.

The alterations in the Settlement Laws are good as far as they go, but why such piece-meal legislation? Were the Whigs afraid to take too large a slice from the fat emoluments of lawyers? Litigation arising out of settlement claims has been the fruitful source of parish expense, and it is to this and similar defects in the Poor-Laws themselves rather than the increase of pauperism that the oppression of poor-rates may be traced. Residence seems the only fair ground of eligibility to parish relief. The law about removals and the distinctions kept up about each parish keeping only its own poor are absolutely ridiculous when applied to a community living under the same institutions and government.*

By the new act the Whigs have dealt a harsh measure to the poor, and stripped them of their most valued rights. First, in case of want, they have lost their old and undeniable claim to parish aid. They have no general right of appeal from an unjust or hardhearted overseer to the magistrate; nor can the magistrate order relief except in special and extreme cases.

Secondly, by the introduction of a plurality of votes—by giving votes both to owners and occupiers—and by allowing the former to vote by proxy, it is sought to vest the management of the poor and the administration of the poor-laws in a rich and absentee proprietary.

It has always been represented as a pre-eminent advantage of the poor-laws that they created community of interest between the several classes of society—that neither prosperity nor adversity could visit one without effecting a corresponding influence on the other—and that the rich were identified with the poor themselves in every circumstance influencing their condition. Such ties will be weakened, if not dissolved, by the operation of the poor-act;—first, by the interference of non-resident landlords and their agents in parish affairs; and, secondly, by the interference of the Poor-Law Commissioners, who, partly assuming the powers, will also assume the responsibilities formerly borne by the middle ranks, and who will thereby feel relieved from that concern hitherto felt in the welfare of their poorer neighbours.

But this may turn out an exaggerated apprehension. Our own opinion is that the Commissioners’ operations will be chiefly limited to [45] the rural districts. Indeed, the entire scheme may be chiefly intended as another mode of affording relief to the agricultural interest at the general expense of the community. Under the auspices of the squires, the farmers, and parsons, flagrant abuses had crept into the administration of the poor-laws, and the plan may be to supply their remissness and incapacity by the establishment of a corps of commissioners, secretaries, messengers, and so forth, payable out of the general revenue of the empire!

But we must hasten to conclude. Both in the general Report of the Commissioners and in the act of parliament founded upon it, grievous errors have been committed. In neither is there much benevolence or science; nor do they evince an intimate acquaintance with the history or causes of pauperism, nor a practical knowledge of the habits and state of the people. In the chief remedies suggested, we recognize only a revival of an old system—a new attempt to apply the barbarous machinery of despotism;—do not seek to instruct, reform, and make the poor wise to their true interests,—that is too troublesome a task; adopt the olden process—punish! punish!—punish!—degrade, torture, and incarcerate, and if they do not submit quietly, at least they will assume some other shape than the detested one of a burden on their richer neighbours. For one vicious system another vicious system is substituted; it is not a social reform, but a transmutation of social evil!

But though the main provisions of the Poor-Law Act are bad—for we concede there are good points in it—our comfort is that it is only a sort of paper constitution, and, like other paper constitutions, its practical working will be controlled by the action of public opinion. Fortunately there exists in this country a standard of humanity and love of justice—more omnipotent than the boasted laws—that will not long suffer any wrong without a remedy. For this guarantee of the rights of all we are not indebted to a sinecure Church, nor a “bread-tax fed” Aristocracy; but to an ever-watchful Press. Further we have a guarantee against extensive mischief in the intelligence of the Commissioners themselves. It is obvious they cannot act without the concurrence of the rate-payers by whom the funds raised for the poor are paid and disbursed. Any thing like a general collision with popular feeling would at once terminate their official career. For their own sakes therefore they will proceed cautiously. They will promulgate their “rules, orders, and regulations;”—if opposed, impracticable, or mischievous, they will cease to meddle, their duties will become nominal, and chiefly exist, like those of the mob of commissioners appointed by the Whig ministry, in the receipt of their salaries.

So that after all there is “balm in Gilead!” The ominous thunder cloud may pass over without consuming, or even seriously scotching the pauper world: but no thanks to the framers of this savage and aristocratic law.

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CHAPTER VI.

CATASTROPHE OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.↩

It is not the dilatory illusiveness of a Whig, nor the direct hostility of a Tory administration, with which the people have principally to combat; their great foe is in the House of Lords, and until that foe be subdued—until the constitution of the second estate of the realm be so far modified as to be brought into harmony with the Reform Parliament—it is plain the government of this country cannot go on. There is a conflict of antagonist forces in the state; in the Lords there is a spirit and power of anti-reform that baffles and defeats the reform spirit of the Commons. The experiment has been tried; all the salutary measures of last session—the Jewish Disabilities Bill—the University Admission Bill—the Warwick Bill—the Prevention of Bribery Bill—and the Coroners’ Court Bill, were either so mutilated as to be made totally inefficient or entirely frustrated by the Lords. It was only in measures which had the semblance of abridging popular liberty and comforts—the Poor Law Bill and the Sale of Beer Bill, for instance—that the Upper concurred with the Lower House.

The question then is, shall this state of things continue—shall all the benefits anticipated from reform in the representation be defeated? In our opinion the constitution is still unsettled—we are still in the course of revolution. It is quite an historical blunder to suppose that the government of this country ever consisted of three branches, possessing equal and co-ordinate powers. Such a form of rule, when conflicting interests intervene, is and ever must be a chimera as fabulous as the phœnix. In England, one estate of the realm has always possessed predominant authority, to which the others have been subservient. Until the Orange revolution of 1688, the crown was paramount; thenceforward the aristocracy, and the great object of the Reform Bill was to abase their power. But see the issue; they have indeed been driven from the lower house, but have entrenched themselves on an adjoining eminence, where they are as omnipotent for mischief as ever. Thus the friends of reform—those who battled so long and stoutly for the amendment of parliamentary representation—have only achieved an absurdity—they have covered themselves with ridicule!

But is their error irretrievable? By the altered constitution of the house of commons the people have obtained an engine of vast power, [50] when backed by the public voice, and shall not this engine be brought to bear on their old enemy in his altered position? What are the Lords that the nation should be mindful of them? They consist, for the most part, of hereditary imbeciles, steeped in the prejudices of birth, education, rank, and association. If we look into their history, as the Spectator has suggested, what is the result? Who are they that have generally been made peers—and why? Is a peerage the reward of virtue, of talent, of patriotism, of a long course of noble doings? Can any one say that, even in the selection of a virtuous man for a peer, his virtue has been the cause of his ennoblement; or, if a man of talent, that he has been chosen because his talent has been patriotically directed? No; the actual peerage is chiefly the result of Tory misrule—‘an efflorescence of war and taxation.’ It has been one of the means by which the great job of government has been carried on. If a patriot was troublesome, he was bought off by a peerage; if a powerful individual was importunate, he was quieted by a peerage; if votes were in demand, the possessor or manager was paid by a peerage; if a minister’s place was desired, he vacated it for a peerage. The lawyer, who proved the ablest tool of power, was rewarded by a peerage. Next to the public exchequer, the peerage has mostly been the treasury of Corruption.

The peers represent only themselves, not any great element of the social state; neither its property, intelligence, nor population. Even in personal income they are insignificant, not possessing above three or four millions of territorial revenue, which is not one-hundredth part of the national income, and this diminutive share of the general wealth is every year growing less in proportion to the increasing wealth of the other classes of society: for, be it remembered, that the income of the peerage, being derived principally from the soil, is comparatively limited in amount, and unlike the income derived from trade and manufactures, which, by skill and industry, admits of almost indefinite augmentation. Shall then a caste like this—stunted in its physical as well as moral developments—mostly ignoble in origin—belonging to nothing nor nobody—poor in purse as in intelligence—be allowed to be an obstacle to a nation’s progress—be suffered to delay, fritter down, or stifle every project of national amendment? The question admits of only one reply—the grievance must be abated:—it is monstrous that an irresponsible conclave, thrown up by chance, unconnected with and not deriving its powers from the great interests of the empire, should be able to thwart the people’s representatives, who really embody, are amenable for, and, of course, without let or hindrance, ought to direct the weal of the state. Unless reform has given this supremacy and directive power to the house of commons, it is an entire failure. We are still in the grasp of the Boroughmongers, as much so as when they filled the lower house with their nominees. In lieu of the substance we have embraced a shadow. The end sought was the triumph of the democratic branch of the constitution—the placing the commons on the pedestal of power heretofore occupied by the Lords, and making the third estate, that had been subservient, paramount to the two other estates of the realm, [51] which, in future, were to be tolerated, as we conceive, rather in deference to old habits and prejudices, as ‘monarchical forms surrounding republican institutions,’ than as integral branches of authority, having a veto on the national will expressed through its constitutional organs.

To this state, both in name and reality, the government must be brought, otherwise it will not work. There was manifestly a hitch in affairs under the Melbourne ministry. The last session terminated abruptly with the question, arising out of Irish tithes, ripe for decision, namely, whether lords or commons should be the ascendant? This point must be decided before we can permanently hope for a liberal administration. If the Conservatives, of which there appear strong indications, prefer a fair stand-up fight, be it so. We will again back the Roundheads against the Cavaliers, commanded even by the hero of the Malpurba (see The Black Book, last edition, p. 405.) We have no fear of the issue—the organized masses of this vast metropolis and great towns of the kingdom would soon dispose of a scattered military, (many of whom, smarting under their own wrongs, sympathise with the popular cause,) aided, though they might be, by a stupid yeomanry, the raff of the club-houses, the Horse-guards, and universities. Victory would not long be in suspense, and after victory there is spoil—there would be confiscation and forfeiture—the pensioners and dead-weight people would disappear in the turmoil—and in the escheated domains of a defeated Oligarchy, it is possible resources might be found for compromising those monstrous incumbrances which now weigh heavily on the springs of national industry!

Whether, however, the nation’s difficulties be surmounted by a moral or physical struggle—the former is our prayer—it behoves the people in the existing crisis to be awake. Above all it is important they should look forward to the coming session. The last year of the Whig administration has been ‘mere fooling.’ They fairly succumbed to in lieu of facing the enemy. Their measures were framed, not in accordance with the wishes of the people, nor of their representatives, nor even according to their own estimate of the public wants, but absolutely according to what they thought might be agreeable to the interests and prejudices of the House of Lords. They even went lower than this in their prostration to the Tories and bench of bishops. They not only kept back all measures that were unlikely to pass the straight gate of the upper house, but actually did their utmost to take upon themselves and shield from their opponents the unpopularity of their rejection!

With a Ministry that obviously quailed before the public foe the people could feel little sympathy. The men they sought, and which the times required, were such as would be totally regardless of the upper house—who would consider it non-existent—and pursue a policy, not in accordance with the views of a few prejudiced nobles and ecclesiastics, but of the commons of England. This alone would have been the consummation of parliamentary reform: without it we have only the theory, not the practice, of good government—we are still writhing in the fetters of Gatton and Old Sarum.

[52]

The test, then, of a Reform Ministry really in keeping with a reform parliament, is short and simple—it is its determination to frame its measures in accordance with the lower not the upper chamber. If such measures are pertinaciously rejected by the upper house, this shows that the several parts of the government are incompatible with each other—that the branch which represents the property, intelligence, and population of the empire is thwarted in its course by that which represents none of these social elements. Hence the issue would be forced onward—the obstacle to the common weal removed—and the question so often asked—What must be done with the lords?—be at once solved!

As we have not yet answered this question, we might as well do it in this place. Its solution is unavoidable, and will be hastened rather than retarded by the startling re-apparition of the Tory plunderers. Only one leg of the constitutional tripod has undergone a curative process, and at least one more remains to be subjected to medical treatment. Let us see how this may be best accomplished.

It seldom happens that constitutional changes can be effected by constitutional means. As the object sought is a new disposition of political power, a little violence and departure from ordinary forms are usually essential to its achievement. The Reform Bill itself was not carried without coercion. An intimation, not to say a menace, was conveyed from a high quarter that constrained the refractory peers to withdraw their opposition. But a threat arbitrarily to increase the peerage is just as strong a measure, and as wide a departure from the constitutional objects for which the power to create peers is vested in the crown—as a threat arbitrarily to diminish their number. As, however, a sudden augmentation of the number of the lords is a change not at all to be desired, let us see whether the other alternative—a reduction—may not be adopted.

About the utility of ejecting the thirty bishops from the Lords no doubt is entertained by any sane and disinterested observer. They have long disgraced themselves and the church by their presence. Besides, it would only be an act of justice to the great body of Dissenters, who are not represented in either branch of the legislature.*

But supposing the bishops got rid of, there would still be too much Toryism in the upper house for the wholesome and practical working of the government. Lord Grey reckoned up a majority of eighty tory peers always lying in ambush ready to crush him and his measures; it was this, more than divisions in the cabinet, which gave such a feeble [53] and wavering character to the noble lord’s administration. Let us then see how this phalanx of evil can be further and least offensively reduced. Our purpose is to avert civil strife by a timely restoration of the balance of the constitution, which has been disturbed by the extinction of the nomination boroughs—by the abstraction of an aristocratic mass from one end of the beam without a corresponding diminution of weight at the other.

Next to the episcopal bench the chief strength of the Tories lies among the representative peers of Ireland and Scotland. It was the bishops and the Irish and Scotch peers, who had obtained their promotions or been elected under Tory influence, that defeated the Reform Bill on its first introduction into the House of Lords. Of twenty-three bishops who voted, twenty-one were against and two for the bill; of the sixteen representative peers of Scotland twelve were against and four for the bill; of twenty-three Irish peers nineteen voted against and four for the bill: thus, of fifty-four votes against the Reform Bill forty-three were the votes of bishops and Irish and Scotch peers; the proportion of Scotch peers being as three to one, of the Irish nearly five to one. So palpable an anti-reform spirit shows the utility of excluding from the lords the representative peers, along with their right reverend brethren.

For this mode of reduction two substantial reasons may be given.

First, a representative peerage is an anomaly in the constitution of recent introduction. Constitutionally, a peer is supposed to sit in his own right, by descent or creation, and to represent only himself, not others. Upon this principle he exercises the right of voting by proxy, which is a privilege denied to the members of the House of Commons, as inconsistent with their representative functions. To exclude the Irish and Scotch representative peers would therefore be a renovation of the constitution of the House of Lords, by bringing it back to that state of consistency and integrity in which it subsisted prior to the innovations introduced at the unions with Scotland and Ireland.

Secondly, the exclusion of the Scotch and Irish peers would be an improvement scarcely attended with personal sacrifice. The Irish peers sit only for life; the Scotch are chosen only for one parliament; so that the interests of both are terminable, unlike the legislative functions held by the hereditary peerage.

Against this proceeding it may be urged that the nobility of Scotland and Ireland would be unrepresented in the legislature. No such thing. If not sufficiently represented in the upper house, they have recently gained an indirect representation in the lower, by that clause of the Reform Act which gives the elective franchise to their dependents as leaseholders and tenants-at-will.

By the exclusion of thirty spiritual peers, and the forty-four temporal peers of Ireland and Scotland, a reduction would be effected to the amount of seventy-four members. If this should not be enough to bring the Lords into due keeping with the Commons, we would next suggest that all pauper peers be excluded from the upper house. There is an instance, mentioned in The Cabinet Lawyer, in the reign of [54] Edward IV. of the degradation of George Nevile, duke of Bedford, on account of his poverty, which rendered him unable to support his dignity. Acting on this precedent, aided by the pension list, names might easily be selected, the exclusion of which from parliament would tend materially to elevate its character as well as harmonize the two branches of the legislature.

But if all these reductions should not suffice, we must resort to the peers created during the ministry of Mr. Pitt. In the two last reigns, there was a clear addition of two hundred and twenty-five members to the House of Lords.* Toryism being the ascendant school of politics, the character of the peers created was, of course, determined by that of the minister from whom the honours were obtained. The effect of this was evinced on the introduction of the Reform Bill in 1831. Of the old peers of the United Kingdom, there was a majority of two for the second reading of the bill. Of the new peers of the United Kingdom created subsequent to 1792, the majority was against the second reading of the bill, and their number was only balanced by the creations under the Whig ministry. The entire subject will be made manifest from the following statement, copied from a tract ‘On the Adjustment of the Peerage.’

How to make a selection from the Pitt peers we are unable to suggest, unless they be at once black-balled by name, by a vote of the House of Commons, and declared ineligible to sit in parliament. It may be urged there is no precedent for this. But, in great emergencies, every age creates its own precedents. There was no precedent for the reduction of the French Chamber of Peers on the accession of Louis Philippe. There was no precedent for declaring the throne vacant when James II. was alive and well, and had only stepped over into Ireland: but it was done by the Whig revolutionists of 1688. A legislature which has disfranchised the rotten boroughs may, without greater violence, disfranchise their proprietors, who are alike unsuited to the times and an obstacle to the common weal.

[55]

The constitution is manifestly in a dilemma, and neither his “Highness” of Waterloo, sir R. Peel, nor any body else, can rescue it, except by the adoption of expedients analagous to those we have indicated, No Tory ministry can go on with the present House of Commons; nor can any liberal ministry go on with the present House of Lords. What, then, is to be done? Must the nation or a junta give way? Must the Reform Act be repealed, and Gatton and Sarum be re-established in their ancient glory, or must the House of Lords be adjusted? The last appears the most rational alternative. The peerage must be brought into that position of subserviency to the other branches of the legislature which the commons, previously to the Reform Bill, occupied. It would still have full power to discuss and debate public measures, but no power vexatiously to oppose the proceedings of the Reformed Parliament. As a liberal ministry would always have the means for preserving the liberal character once given to the Lords, there would be no danger of deterioration, or necessity for a second application of the first remedy.

Such appears the most natural solution of existing difficulties, and the final issue of the much-talked-of “collision.” It is the catastrophe of the House of Lords,—the hand-writing on the wall,—the fulfilment of which neither Whig nor Tory ministry can avert. From the passing of the Reform Act, the aristocracy lost their supremacy; the deed was then executed, though possession not fully given, by which political power was transferred to the great and increasing middle ranks of England. The people only now claim that for which they virtually stipulated, and which if timely conceded, the Lords may subsist a century longer, though not as hereditary legislators. As the yearly convocation of the Clergy subsists as a type of bygone ecclesiastical domination, so may the Peerage, as a type of lost feudal sovereignty.

CHAPTER VII.

CHARACTER AND COMPOSITION OF THE FIRST REFORM PARLIAMENT.↩

The House of Commons, backed by the people, is the medium through which we look forward for the ultimate attainment of good government; but whether its composition is such—so independent of aristocratic influence and prejudice—as to be prepared to adopt the remedial suggestions of the last chapter, is a point we are unable to determine. We do not yet despair of the reformed representation. Although the ballot, triennial parliaments, and alterations in the elective suffrage are points which ought not to be delayed, practical ameliorations claim the first consideration. Both the people and their representatives have still much to learn. That there is a large body of independent men in the House we infer from two facts; first, that in spite of the contrary disposition of government, a majority of the members were determined to support Mr. Ward’s motion (May 27th) for the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical property; and secondly, they were determined to throw out the more objectionable clauses of the Irish Coercion Bill: in the one we had evidence of a sound and firm judgment in regard to a great economical question; in the other of a constitutional jealousy, which would not, without imperative necessity, submit to abridge the civil liberties of the people. That they were not disposed to support other popular measures may be ascribed to an impression that they were premature, or were unseasonably introduced, or had a tendency to embarrass—perhaps to cause a change of ministers!

The last is a consideration, we confess, that always puzzled us amazingly; it does, indeed, appear an astounding fact that a majority of the honourable members should have laboured under the strange delusion that no ‘great men’ could be found capable of governing this vast empire save Thomas Spring Rice and my lords Lansdowne, Auckland, and Melbourne. The thought never seems to have occurred that great occasions always produce their great men to direct them. So far from sharing in this infatuation, our opinion is that if the whole of the late cabinet,—or, indeed, the three estates of the realm, as Guy Fawkes intended,—had disappeared in the recent combustion of the parliamentary walls, the entire community would have gone on much in the same way as if no such catastrophe had happened. We are quite sure the ‘Collective [57] Wisdom’ (we cannot forget old names) will look back to this part of their conduct with the same ludicrous feelings that they look back to the phantasmagoria of the nightmare, occasioned by swallowing too much of Bellamy’s old port and rump-steaks.

A second hallucination under which the Reformed Parliament laboured, and which gave a wrong direction to their legislation, was mistaken notions of the importance of the agricultural interest. Hence their negative vote on the corn-laws and their dealings with fiscal burdens. In our chapter on the ‘Plough and the Loom’ we have tried to place this question in its true light. The middle classes, as well as their representatives, share in the misapprehension of the national importance of rural industry, and it is a fact which may partly account for the proceedings of the House of Commons in this respect, that nothing like an energetic and consentaneous expression of public opinion on the injustice and impolicy of the bread-tax could be elicited.

There is another subject on which we think the people are quite as much at fault as their representatives,—namely, the projected dealings with church property. The idea of giving upwards of one-third part of the tithes to the landlords instead of applying as much of the redundant revenues of the clergy to some purpose of public utility, surpasses our comprehension. Yet this intended spoliation, of what we consider the national resources, did not call forth any loud expression of disapprobation. The truth is, the people did not generally comprehend it; many of them, we verily believe, conceived it to be a generous act of the landlords to undertake to pay, in lieu of their tenants, three-fifths of the tithes on consideration that the remaining two-fifths should be abated; not reflecting or not knowing that the whole tithe is a rent-charge on the land belonging to the public, and which the public has as much right to exact to the full amount from the owners of the soil as a mortgagee has to exact the amount of his mortgage.

Much of the other business which has been before parliament has been of the same character as the commutation of tithes. Referring to property rather than personal rights, it has not excited a high degree of popular interest. If a pension is lavished on the cast-off mistress of a minister, attention is excited to the profligacy of the transaction from the Land’s End to John-o’-Groat’s; but legal reform, the slave-question, and the renewal of the charters of the Bank and East India Company have been more interesting to lawyers and political economists than the mass of the people. Hence the House of Commons has been left, as we may say, to itself, and its members have been influenced neither by the watchfulness nor excitement of their constituents.

Another circumstance tended to give flatness and inefficiency to the proceedings of the Reform Parliament. There is nothing like a regular opposition in the House of Commons. The Tories never reckon to exert themselves unless they are amply paid for it, and having no expectation of the recent turn-up in their favour, they were mostly content during the late sessions lo look on and laugh while the Whigs tried to wriggle out of the difficulties created by their long course of [58] misgovernment. Exclusive of Tories there is a somewhat numerous corps of Radicals—one hundred and twenty at the least—a number far exceeding that of the old opposition, which under Charles James Fox struggled against the war faction, and the profligate administrations of Liverpool and Castlereagh. With discipline and the support of the towns the Radicals in the house might make the English aristocracy quail for their corn-laws, church abuses, and hereditary privileges, but they are a body without a soul; having no leader in whose superior character and ability they can acquiesce, they are a disorganized mass, many of whom had no higher object of ambition than the dinners of lord Althorp!

While we are on the popular party, we might as well drop an observation on the conduct of some of its chief members. Mr. Hume appears to have been amalgamated, in part at least, with the late ministers, and his economical vocation became so diminutive, that at the end of the session he had only to complain of the wastefulness of using gilt instead of plain edged paper. The conduct of the member for Middlesex on agricultural questions has puzzled us exceedingly. His motion for a fixed duty on corn at the high rate fixed by him was more favourable to the landlords than the existing graduated scale. If such were the intention of the honourable member, we cannot reconcile it with our notion of a popular representative, and that it was so may be inferred from Mr. Hume’s subsequent vote in favour of the marquis of Chandos’s motion, that ‘agriculture be specially considered in any reduction of taxation.’ Mr. Buckingham too, (proh pudor!)—the representative of the operatives and tradespeople of Sheffield—voted (disinterestedly we suspect) with the ‘lords of the soil’!

Knowing Mr. Hume’s sentiments on the slave question, we were not surprised to find him among the foremost supporters of the Poor Law bill—a measure which certainly required the stomach of a Scotchman to swallow whole and undivided. It may be inferred from this that he is a disciple of that school which has long been labouring to substitute a heartless selfishness for the more generous impulses of our nature. We have before adverted to the tendency of this mis-named philosophy, and which in substance amounts to this:—that the miseries of life result from the absence of individual prudence, and that this prudence will be best taught by abandoning the destitute to the consequences of their vices or misfortunes; thereby extinguishing all the charities which hitherto it has been the business of science and religion to inculcate, and bringing society into that primæval state in which the predominant rule is—Take care of yourself without regard to any body else! A man who thinks that social existence can be bettered by the dissemination of such a doctrine must have a very peculiar organization himself, and have had a very limited and peculiar observance of human nature.

Mr. O’Connell is usually enrolled in the popular file, but with little pretension to popular principles. His idea of church reform is limited to the transfer of tithe to the landlords; he is opposed to poor laws and to popular education, which last he identifies with the spread [59] of deism; thus covertly insinuating that Christianity is incompatible with the diffusion of general intelligence. His quarrel with government is a personal quarrel merely; it is a dispute about the disposal of the ‘loaves and fishes,’ not about popular rights and benefits. Ireland is the patrimony of O’Connell and his heirs, and the away of the ‘Saxon’ is in the way of his ambition.

Two truths are satisfactorily illustrated in the career of this redoubtable agitator,—first the power of a clever man to mislead a community; secondly, the deplorable ignorance of the Irish, who can be duped by so palpable an adventurer, who fights not for them but himself only.

It is one of the imputed weaknesses of the late administration that it sought to open a negotiation with O’Connell; or, as we understood it, to buy him over. But how was this possible? Like the Times newspaper, O’Connell may boast of being placed by circumstances in such a position that he is above the price of any ministry. What pension or place could they give him which would be an equivalent for the ‘rint’ and professional gains? There is only one—the kingly office—and that is not yet vacant.

The position of sir Francis Burdett in the reform calendar cannot be overlooked. For some reason—we know no good one—the Baronet has fallen to leeward. This may be the mere caprice of popular favour, which posterity will correct. We shall, however, stick to first impressions; we shall not transfer our allegiance from those who cherished reform in its weakness and nonage to those who have only adopted it in its triumph and maturity. It is often painful to observe how the ‘honours are divided.’ The Whigs claim all the laud of reform, but what did they do for the cause during the thirty years’ public life of sir Francis Burdett save treat its advocates with sneers, revilings, and contumelious silence? Not many years since there appeared in the organ of the party, the Edinburgh Review, an article recommending to the people to withdraw from the pursuit of parliamentary reform as a primary object, and concentrate attention on retrenchment in the public expenditure. Even so late as 1830 (Nov. 2d) earl Grey declared in the House of Lords that he was ‘unprepared with any plan of reform,’ and perhaps would have long continued unprepared had he not had at his elbow lord Durham, lord John Russell, and one or two more who loved the cause more with the heartiness of a first love than the ex-Premier.

We have no taste for minute retrospections into public conduct, for we have an aversion to try men either by words or deeds, having their own by-gone circumstances to justify them. We will never deny—it cannot be denied—that the Whigs at length, as soon perhaps as they had the power—gave the people a measure of reform ample beyond their expectation. For this they owe them forgiveness and perhaps gratitude. But if it comes to the apportionment of individual merit, we say that of living men—we pass over the early martyrs, Wyvil, Sharpe, Jebb, Wakefield, Cartwright, and Walter Fawkes—we repeat, of living men there is none to whom the cause is so much indebted as to sir Francis Burdett, and next to him a few honest and indefatigable men of Westminster. [60] Among the upper ranks sir Francis long fought the good fight single-handed, and for the achievement of what he conceived the birthright of Englishmen he sacrificed that which is most painful to bear—the friendship and association of his equals. For a long time the Baronet was sent to Coventry by Whigs and Tories, and when he walked into the House of Commons not a member would speak to him. He had committed high treason against the usurping few by identifying himself with the rights and interests of the oppressed many:—

From kings and nobles will I seek no more
Aid, friendship, nor alliance. With the poor
I make my treaty, and the heart of man
Sets the broad seal of its allegiance there,
And ratifies the compact. —Philip von Artevelde.

The present inertia of sir Francis may be easily explained. His task is done. He never sought more than the constitutional immunities of his countrymen. Fiscal, commercial, and economical questions, which now form the chief topics of parliamentary discussion are not in his department; but if he takes no further share in public affairs, he has well earned a life interest in the representation of Westminster and the gratitude of his country after.

It is not our purpose to go through the entire roll of ‘good men and true’ in the House of Commons. They are a formidable body, and will, no doubt, be ultimately omnipotent there, but they cannot accomplish national objects unless they have the zealous support of the people. If we look to the composition of the lower house, we shall find that what may be termed aristocratic interests have still a numerical preponderance. On the first meeting of the reformed parliament, the sons and heirs presumptive of peers returned amounted to seventy-three; of other relatives of peers there were seventy-eight, making one hundred and fifty-one members united by consanguineous ties with the House of Lords. Besides the direct influence of the aristocracy, there is the influence of the crown. From the returns of 1833, (Parl. Pap. No. 671,) it appears there are sixty members holding offices and receiving emoluments from civil appointments, pensions, and sinecures to the amount of £86,291 (exclusive of eighty-three members holding naval and military commissions.) There are four members holding offices at the pleasure of public officers, the emoluments of which are £7,500; ten members holding offices or pensions for life under the crown, £1,311; four members hold offices under the chief justice or other public officers, of which the emoluments are £9,233; four members with pensions, or sinecures, or offices executed by deputy, the annual emoluments of which are £5,764. One member (the speaker!) has the reversion of an office after one or more lives, the annual value of which is £4,000. Sixty-four members hold commissions in the army, and nineteen in the navy. In the militia and yeomanry there are forty-five members who receive pay and emolument when their corps are on service. Seventy-five members have church patronage.

It is worthy to be remarked that in the house there are only forty-nine [61] merchants, manufacturers, and traders, while there are seventy-one lawyers. The Whig administration was the harvest of gentlemen of the long robe, and this was the spring of a good deal of the scribbling and talking support it received. Of four hundred and twenty-four new offices created by the late ministers, one hundred and five were given to barristers. When one million had been voted by parliament to assist the Irish clergy, no fewer than seventy-two barristers, at five guineas per diem, aided by seventy clerks, were immediately put into active service to distribute the loan. The lavishness of this creation was the more palpable, as only sixty persons had been appointed to distribute the twenty millions among the slave-holders in the West-India colonies. But patronage at home is more valuable than patronage abroad, and the advantages derived from confining it to legalists are obvious enough. Lawyers usually move in the better circles; they are educated men—have the power of explaining and diffusing their opinions—and they are accustomed to advocate causes of all descriptions. Set them to make a report on any public subject—give them, for example, a brief to fill up against the Poor and the Poor-Laws, and they will do it to their employer’s satisfaction: it is their vocation faithfully to serve those by whom they are paid, or hope to be paid, and little of conscientious responsibility to truth or justice is felt in the execution of the appointed task.*

But the elective bodies of the kingdom must see what injury they are doing the public cause by returning so many hungry Swiss to parliament. Lawyers are eaten up by mutual rivalry and ambition; it is a profession into which no one enters without views of aggrandizement; if by any contrivance or clap-traps the representative function be obtained, it is mostly used only as a stepping-stone to wider practice at the bar or to government employment. As legislators they seek only to serve themselves, not their constituents, and their course is rarely marked by patriotic independence. If their connexions lie among the opposition, it is mere factious hostility to government; if among ministers, it is either silent acquiescence or clamorous advocacy of all their measures, according to the bribes of office received or expected. But the mischief they openly do by impeding or misdirecting public affairs is only a part of the evil. It is among the vulgar errors of common life to consider barristers more competent and better informed than other men; in grammar and elocution, and in Coke and Littleton no doubt they are, but not in the mass of questions which ought to occupy parliamentary attention,—connected with trade, manufactures, commerce, currency, and the condition of the several classes of the population. [62] Yet owing to this false estimate of legislative fitness, they are at all times looked up to as guides and finger-posts; by their speeches in the house, and their promptings and whisperings out of it, on the back benches, and in the lobby, smoking-room and supper-rooms, members of plain minds and honest purposes are overlaid and misled by them.

It is to this preponderance of legal influence we ascribe much that has been wrong or inefficient in the proceedings of the Reformed Parliament. But this is another evil in addition to those already suggested, which may be traced to the conduct of the people themselves. Why have the manufacturing towns and some of the more populous boroughs returned lawyers to parliament? What have they got by it? Have they got vigilant attention to the conduct of ministers, or zealous watchfulness over their local interests or the more general interests of the community? To these inquiries we fear the answer, in most cases, must be a very simple figure of arithmetic. Some of the popular law representatives have not even vouchsafed a speech in return for the favour of their constituents; others have deserted their trust for valuable appointments in the colonies; others are fructifying at home on commissionerships or Treasury practice; others again have been reposing on the file of king’s counsel, waiting in silence a joyful resurrection as solicitor or attorney general, master of the rolls, vice-chancellor, or judge of the superior courts: but few or none have laboriously served the people.

But the error of misplaced confidence may be corrected. As a general election seems inevitable, if the projected formation of a Tory ministry is persisted in, the electors will soon have an opportunity of getting rid of faithless and negligent servants, and of not again accepting their services unless it be under such guarantees of devotion to the public, and not their own gains, as even lawyers cannot evade.*

CHAPTER VIII.

DISSOLUTION AND CHARACTER OF THE REFORM MINISTRY.↩

The abrupt dismissal of the Reform Ministry had more resemblance to the capricious movements which happen within the courtly atmosphere of despotism than of a constitutional monarchy. So far as has yet transpired, the blow was unexpected, and at least undeserved, from the quarter it came. Like Cardinal Wolsey, the errors of the Whigs consisted rather in excess of devotion to the service of their ‘royal master’ than of their country. Whatever may have been the cause of their downfall, the change in the king’s councils augurs no good to the people. If the design were to form a more popular administration, the court would not have resorted to the chancellor of Oxford, but to Lord Durham, Lord John Russell, Mr. Hume, or some other of the more thorough-going reformers. As the Soldier has been called in, it is plain a retrograde movement is intended—the repeal of the Reform-Act, or some other desperate effort of expiring conservatism. It is a mad resolve, as events will prove; but before endeavouring to ‘trammel up its issue,’ let us advert to the position and character of the displaced ministry. As they have been suddenly dismissed, they may be suddenly recalled; in the latter case it is important to ascertain their claims to the confidence of the nation.

It must be conceded that the difficulties which beset the late go-government were of no ordinary character. If the measures they brought forward had any thing of a radical hue about them, they were immediately at issue with the House of Lords; and if they were not of a popular character, they were at issue with the people: so that between both their situations were both precarious and uncomfortable.

It may be urged that they might easily have escaped the dilemma by allying themselves heart and soul with the popular cause and boldly leading on the battle against the Peerage. So they might. This is what they ought to have done, and what must be done, as we have shown in the chapter on the House of Lords, before the constitution can be brought into equilibrium. But, to say nothing of the obstacles which might have been opposed in a higher quarter, there are two reasons why the late government was not so patriotically devoted. First, it was much too aristocratic in its composition; many of the ministers [64] were peers themselves, and to have joined in an attack like that to which we have alluded, they, doubtless, considered would be to attack themselves, and terminate in the extinction or humiliation of their own order. Besides motives of self-preservation there were others. In the opinion of some of them, no doubt, they had already gone as near the quick as they safely could without coming into the jaws of democracy; they thought, therefore, it was time to make a stand,—at least they were not disposed individually to share the responsibility of any farther advance into radicalism.

Besides these, which may be considered the external difficulties of ministers, there were others of an internal character, originating among themselves. Upon the great questions impending relative to church, corporation, and law reform, it would perhaps be impossible to find in the united kingdom twelve persons exactly agreed in opinion; we do not mean as to the necessity of reform at all, but as to the degree, kind, and extent. For shades of difference, therefore, excuses may be found; but there were important differences in the Cabinet, especially as regards the Church;* and this was a constant source of weakness and disunion. In fact the original Whig ministry had been constantly sloughing away ever since its formation.

The first cast-off was earl Durham, whose general inability to agree with his colleagues called into play a portion of Whig wit, and he was designated the ‘dissenting minister.’ His retirement was ascribed, in the newspapers, to indisposition. Indisposition no doubt—indisposition to co-operate with wavering apostacy! The plain and straightforward mind of his lordship could not comprehend the policy of neglecting the tried friends of the people to keep up a sort of bribery and coquetry with their old and irreclaimable foes. Neither could the noble lord understand the sophistries by which it was sought to substitute illusive procrastination for the prompt and substantial removal of ‘recognised abuses.’

The next swarming away from the ministerial hive consisted of the Stanleyites. By the secession of Mr. Stanley, the earl of Ripon, the duke of Richmond, and sir James Graham, a positive improvement was effected in the sentiment if not in the speaking organs of the administration. These gentlemen were infected with a semi-conservatism that much impeded the full development of the reform principle. Besides entertaining very exalted notions of the social importance of the landed interest, they were opposed to the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical [65] property, and maintained, as part of their creed, the very fantastical conceit that the revenues of the church ought not to be graduated to the number of its members but of its ministers—the clergy themselves, forsooth! Dogmas like these are irreconcileable with reason; and the ministry must have felt greatly relieved by the withdrawal of the political mystics who held them. An opportunity was thus afforded of infusing more common sense and robustness into the ministry, but it was thrown away; instead of recalling lord Durham, and strengthening themselves in public confidence by bringing forward Mr. Hume and sir H. Parnell, they filled up the vacuum with such unmeaning and unknown things as lord Auckland, and the marquis of Conyngham, and thus put together ‘the lath-and-plaster’ administration.

After this what could be expected? Next and closely after followed the Littleton mess, and embroilment with Mr. O’Connell, which terminated first in the resignation of lord Althorp, and then of the premier himself. The retirement of the last has been ascribed to an intrigue. We believe, however, there is no ground for this imputation. According to the statement of the Chancellor (House of Lords, July 29th) earl Grey had six times during the preceding twelve months expressed a wish to resign, and it was only by the earnest entreaty of his colleagues that he had been prevailed upon to remain in office. The testimony, too, of lord Lansdowne on the same occasion is decisive of the charge of ‘treachery.’ There is no need, indeed, of resorting to the mysteries of a conspiracy, to account for the resignation of the premier. The noble lord’s case was palpable enough. He shrunk from carrying out the principle of the Reform Acts; he must have felt that he could not successfully carry through the practical ameliorations the country expected from him without a ‘collision’ with the House of Lords, and this was an alternative he seems to have declined either from the morgue aristocratique, or unwillingness to falsify his previous pledge to ‘stick by his order.’ To escape from so equivocal a position and secure his own retreat, he availed himself of the hasty retirement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The difficulties which beset the ministry of lord Grey descended to his successor. In the approaching session of parliament only two courses were open to the Melbourne ministry—either they must face the peers or the people. Upon these alternatives, differences of opinion may have subsisted; one part of the cabinet may have inclined this, and the other that way, and there may have been a third portion that inclined to neither, but preferred leaving the task to the duke: and hence may have originated the break-up of the administration; or it may have originated solely in royal caprice, or in the desire to get rid of one unruly member, and which could only be effected by an internal effort, like that with which the lobster is said to cast off its shell.

Leaving these surmises to be confirmed or not by subsequent disclosures, we shall here observe that the Melbourne ministry was perhaps as good as any of its predecessors under the Reform Act. There [66] was a great deal of rubbish in it certainly, but there were also good materials. There was merit even in its errors. Although the Poor Law Act and the Irish Tithe Bill were both, as we have shewn, highly objectionable in principle and detail, yet they were bold measures, and the way they were adjusted and forced through parliament evinced an energy—a determination to go on, without which it is impossible the difficulties of the country can be surmounted. As a Tory government would be a complete upsetting of all that has been done during the last four years, we consider its permanent existence an utter impossibility; it is likely, therefore, that the whole, or a portion of the late ministry will be recalled: let us ascertain then by personal analysis the good and evil in its composition, so that the people may be apprised of what they ought to wish for and what they ought to reject in its possible reconstruction.

We shall begin with the noble ex-Premier, about whom the public knows little, and whom we had always considered rather in the light of an epicurean aristocrat than a man of business. He certainly left a favourable impression of talent as Home Secretary, having evinced good sense and firmness in the little he had to do during his fair-weather administration of that mostly irksome department. But his lordship is an ‘old stager’ in public life, and he has not, to our knowledge, placed on record either word or deed calculated to inspire very exalted hopes of future development as an enlightened and very superior statesman. Some years since we remember sir F. Burdett took him to task for an attempt to apply the arbitrary principles he had deduced from a recent study of Roman history to the government of this country. Our impression is that he has more of the inertness of conservatism in him than his predecessor. He obviously views with no favourable eye the admission of Dissenters into the Universities; and if his recent declarations in respect of the church may be trusted, great things need not be expected in that direction.

On the 9th of August lord Melbourne said, ‘He reverenced and loved the mild and tolerant spirit of the church:’—of course he did; all lords love the church because it is a church for lords, not for the people. On the same occasion he said, ‘If he were to speak his own individual opinion, he would say that he for one was not dissatisfied with the church as it stood at present.’—No, my lord, not dissatisfied with the legislation of the bishops, nor with the dignitaries, pluralists, and non-residents! This is disheartening enough in all conscience; the only three great reforms remaining are ecclesiastical, municipal, and legal, and if the Whigs do not intend to come up to the mark on the first and most important, we shall say, in the language of Portia, they are ‘no men for us,’ nor we believe the country.

Some allowance may be made for the atmosphere in which the preceding morceaux were delivered. The ex-premier, as well as his colleagues, was often compelled to throw a kind of verbal dust into the eyes of his opponents, in order, if possible, to steal a march upon them. We have heard that lord Melbourne is more a man of expediency [67] than inflexible principle. It may savour perhaps of laxity to observe that, in the existing crisis, we do not like him the worse for it. Our opinion is that no set of men can cut through present difficulties unless they will adapt the means to the end. Tithes, and other great and complicated questions, can never be settled on principles of strict equity, no more then a man can walk the crowded pathways of the metropolis in a direct line. If ministers cannot go straight, they must go awry;—at all events they must do the thing and get on!

As to the poor ex-Chancellor, he is politically dead, and we shall allow him the privilege of dead men, by speaking of him tenderly. He has sinned against all the proprieties; as minister, legislator, judge, and ci-devant reformer. His ‘lark’ in the North cleared up whatever mystery attached to his character, and his name is no longer a ‘tower of strength.’ He is obviously a man of the most pitiable foibles, a lover of vulgar notorieties of all sorts, and which wise men mostly despise. That he has done much for liberal government—has exposed and helped to amend many devouring public abuses—and possesses great industry and cleverness are undoubted facts; but he grievously lacks the discretion, steadiness, and comprehension which constitute a safe and leading mind. If a vague desire of the premiership ever flitted across his ambitious thoughts, he may erase it from remembrance, for we verily believe not one person—save one—in the united kingdom would countenance his pretensions.

Lord Brougham, like Napoleon, sinned against the ‘spirit of the age’ and has fallen. In his latter days he affected conservative principles—lauded the duke of Wellington, and prostrated himself before sir Edward Sugden, both of whom he had reviled. At one place in Scotland he told his hearers that he was no radical, (he had been though, as well as an admirer of Mr. Pitt and many other things,) and that he could hold no disputation with persons who denied the utility of a House of Lords. How could he? he ought to have been sworn on a voire dire first; of course the parvenu and vain Henry Brougham considered himself, as well as Brougham Hall, pieces of the ‘order,’ without which this great empire could not hold together.

The fatal delusion of this unhappy man appears to have been, that he alone was the Atlas to support the tottering throne and peerage of England; that he could say to the march of reform, as Canute said to the waves,—‘so far shalt thou go and no further.’ Hence, like another Peter the Hermit, he went to and fro in the country declaiming against republicans and rash innovations. But what an ungrateful return for his conservative labours—for all his fulsome eulogies of prince and peers to receive only a most ungracious kick-out!

In one respect we rejoice at the unceremonious turn out of the Whigs; it has given that proud aristocracy a taste of the sweets of monarchy, as well as the people who pay half a million a year for it, and three or four times as much more for its trappings. The fall of their chief has had one bad consequence, it has thrown discredit on science by showing how much learning may subsist—though the remark is [68] trite—with little sense. We had always our misgivings of lord Brougham; a certain etourderie of organization conjoined with mental impetuosity, precluded all nice discrimination of both men and things. On his first assumption of the great seal we said of him (Black Book, edit. 1831, p. 426.) that,—“It is the judgment more than anything else we distrust in the noble and learned lord, and if he does not bring his resolves to wait on a more patient discretion, it is probable his chancellorship will be signalised by some very unusual eccentricities.” All we apprehended has come to pass; but we trust the noble lord’s pension will be saved. The Tories may not think him a fit person to be keeper of the king’s conscience, for, in truth, he needs a keeper himself; but why not put him into the Exchequer agreeably to his own desire, in room of Lyndhurst, who received the appointment from the Whigs, in part at least from the economical consideration of saying his retiring allowance?

Lord Brougham has been so fully dissected by the public press, that it is needless to enlarge further in his illustration. His lordship said, “the school-master is abroad,” and he did something to set him forth, therefore he cannot complain that he has had a wipe of his birch. Among his evil and faulty deeds we shall not forget all his good ones, for we are not of that class who are constantly seeking out bad motives for virtuous actions.—Let us proceed to the next.

We heard so little of the noble ex-President of the council during the reform ministries, that he reminded us of the lady Egeria, who was better known as an oracle of wisdom in private than a speaker in public. Lord Lansdowne always recommended himself to us by his junction with George Canning; for though the last was a trickster, the union with him was a fortunate jostling or breaking up of the relations of the two great factions, and the first shove to perdition the hulk of Toryism received. Earl Grey was well nigh making a shipwreck of his reputation by some unseasonable, not to say envious speeches directed against the coalition ministry, and which, as a step towards a more enlightened administration and consistently with his own principles, he ought to have steadily supported. In some sort the marquis appears to have an orbit of his own, and though as liberal perhaps as a lord may be, he has not always mixed himself up with the party combinations of the Whigs. He is reputed to be the foster-father of the first brood of Edinburgh Reviewers, who during the last four years have virtually grasped the government of the country. A dubiousness about consequences, which results from viewing questions too abstractedly and on all sides, will prevent him, we apprehend, as well as lord Holland, from going very far or fast in the way of effective reformation.

Of lord Duncannon we know little, and of lord Auckland nothing at all, nor have we ever met any body that did. The last, we had concluded, was dead and the title extinct, till we met the names of his sisters and himself on the Court Pension List as a pauper peer. He seems to have been thrust into the ‘arm-chair’ of the Admiralty as a short and easy way (two years’ sitting only) of acquiring for life the £2000 retiring pension, under the infamous Civil Offices Pension Act.

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The late Chancellor of the Exchequer had long subsisted rather on an indulgent system of public credit, than any thing great or brilliant actually performed by him. The dogged manner he stood to the worst parts of that curious ‘boon (query bone?) to the female population’ as he called the Poor Law Bill, was more like the bite of a mastiff than any thing else. Still we cannot help thinking well of a man so highly esteemed by all who intimately know him. If there is really any thing good in him, and we are inclined to think there is, we trust in the new sphere into which his lordship is removed it will be produced, and in such a way that the reporters may be able to transmit it to the public. The little that has been usually given of earl Spencer’s speeches is mostly distinguished by brevity and good sense, and in honesty of purpose he is unsuspected.

Little need be said of the right hon. Thomas Spring Rice. Every body knows that the ex-secretary of the Colonies is a keen landlord and a first-rate artist* in politics. He disposed satisfactorily of Mr. O’Connell on the ‘repale’ question, but was not so successful in his encounter with the honourable M. P. for Oldham on the stamp duties.

The motion of lord John Russell at the end of the session for postponing the issue of the writ for the corrupt borough of Warwick, and his prompt abandonment of the Bribery Bill after its maltreatment by the Lords, show that he is not disposed to acquiesce in all the freaks of hereditary wisdom. The name of Russell is a guarantee of attachment to constitutional rights, but has his lordship truly interpreted the change effected by the Reform Acts? It is no longer king, lords, and commons, but in the inverse order—commons, lords, and king!

The hearty and straightforward speech of sir John Hobhouse at the Edinburgh festival ought to be accepted as a peace-offering for prior transgressions. Bating a little petulance, the Baronet possesses sterling qualities, and we are glad to see him again in parliament, though the absence of his opponent, Mr. Eagle, is a real loss to the country; inasmuch as his learning, acuteness, and popular principles would have been of essential use in the approaching discussion of ecclesiastical matters. We cannot, however, forget old services; the rejection of sir John by the electors of Westminster always appeared to us a harsh and hasty measure of justice. What claims his opponent had to supersede him we could never discover. Colonel Evans seems to us a revival of that famous knight-errant sir Robert Wilson,—one very fond of leaving his name at the palace, and of asking questions about our ‘foreign relations!’ Now we have a great contempt for M.P.’s whose diffusive patriotism is such that it extends to Turkey, Russia, or Mehemet Ali, rather than to Lancashire, Yorkshire, or the southern counties. If the Westminster people will have a colonel, why not take colonel Jones,—a man who has really done the cause some service, and against whom, in our opinion, there prevails a very undeserved prejudice?

Notwithstanding the startling advent of the Duke and his myrmidons, [70] we are progressing in good government. Democracy is the advancing flood which must ultimately level all monopolies. The times have marvellously changed! Lord Brougham, after his rejection by the universal-suffrage men of Westminster, always affected a great distaste for men of low politics, and we remember, during a pending election for that city, he thought there was little to choose between Hobhouse and the devil—and said as much. Yet the would-be premier has lived to sit in the same cabinet with the despised radical!

We pass over that ‘pure old Whig,’ lord Palmerston. If the noble lord, by any sort of jockeyship, can manage to keep the saddle under the contemplated ducal ministry, he may be considered a second Talleyrand, destined to survive all vicissitudes of rule. Under the ex-secretary the foreign policy of the Whigs has been the best part of their administration, as their Irish has been the worst. What weakness to send a doting voluptuary to preside over a country that has never yet known the blessings of civil government—that is a complete scene of want, violence, and rapine—a moral and physical chaos which nothing less than the genius of a Peter the Great or some such master-mind could rescue from its complicated maladies!* It was this, and the pensioning, salarying, place-finding, and church-jobbing for sycophants, dependents, and undeserving relatives, that abated public zeal in favour of the fallen ministry.

We come to the lower and best stratum, consisting of Messrs. Abercrombie, Ellice, and Poulett Thomson, all of whom are plain men of honest purposes, and we wish the defunct government by incorporating lord Durham, sir H. Parnell, and some others, had consisted more of the same description. They are not shining characters, but they are free from the aristocratic prestige and historical associations which were the chief source of bewilderment of the higher section of the cabinet on the great questions of church and state reform. They are men of the age we live in; whereas the others belong to the by-gone times of Bubb Doddington, Rockingham, Shelburne, Pitt, Fox, and other magnates of the Georgian period. Poulett Thomson’s dividing with Mr. Hume on the corn laws shows that he is not only a person of sound and consistent principles, but of independence, and his rated scale of tea duties deserves public support.

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Sir John Campbell was a great promiser of legal reforms, but except laying the first stone and giving a name, he perfected nothing. There were one or two more, which we forget, on the Whig roll, but as late events have rendered the whole, in lieu of a living calendar, a mere bill of mortality, it is not a matter of consequence.

Having thus gone through the ex-Ministry rather in the line manner than with fulness of detail, the important inquiry is—What prospect did it hold out of good government? Our opinion, as before hinted, is, that it was too aristocratic, that it did not sufficiently represent the Commons of England. It consisted of respectable functionaries—liberal in the abstract—intelligent, and within a certain pale, of good intentions—but not intently bent on great practical ameliorations. Unless acted upon by a strong pressure from without, they would have stood still; if they had moved, it would only have been when every excuse for delay had been exhausted, and then with the least possible momentum against abuses. Their prevailing disposition was not to change—for they had no interest in change—but to maintain, with a few unimportant amendments, things as they are—a church with a gorgeous hierarchy—a privileged peerage with an extortionate rental and irresponsible power—and a House of Commons with freedom of debate, but no efficient power of action. What good there was in them had been nearly extracted, and for the future, we believe, they had determined (as lord Brougham prematurely, and to the great mortification of his colleagues, divulged) to incline to a conservative rather than a more radical course. But as all men of ‘woman born’ are the creatures of circumstances, it is impossible to predicate the precise track they would have taken; it would have depended on the spirit of the community—on the relative force of the two great conflicting parties between which they stood—and to the most potent of which they would doubtless have felt the necessity as well as policy of yielding.

We may further observe that the preceding remarks apply in their full extent only to the upper, and not to that lower and better section of the ministry to which allusion has been made, and which, besides the names already mentioned, included those of sir John Hobhouse, earl Spencer* and lord John Russell, and perhaps of lords Duncannon and Mulgrave. From these there was ground to hope for substantial reform, and had it not been for the intervention of the Duke it is possible they might have succeeded, backed by a Reform Parliament, in ejecting their timid and more fastidious colleagues, and then formed a really popular administration.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND THE TORIES.↩

The irruption of the Duke and his pandours, like the invasion of the French people by the duke of Brunswick, has united all classes of reformers. Differences of opinion may have subsisted among us, but there can be none as to the claims of a reforming and totally unreforming ministry. The Whigs may have been slow and niggardly in their concessions; but they were pledged to do something, and would have done something; whereas the Duke comes before us in no ‘questionable shape,’ but as an open, avowed, an out-and-out champion of abuse—an incarnation of the principle of evil—a foe to the freedom of his own and every European community.

Insidious attempts have been made to bring in the Duke, like sir George Murray and the Lord Mayor, under false pledges and representations. So silly a device scarcely merits notice. Reynard is Reynard still though he put on a surplice. But his Highness himself is not a man to counterfeit any more than change sentiments; nor is any man who has attained the age of the Duke prone to alter his political creed, especially from a love of despotism to liberty.

But supposing such a miracle, as a conversion from Toryism to liberality, then why bring him forward at all? It cannot be imagined that the Duke or sir R. Peel is prepared to go farther in reform even than Spring Rice, or lords Melbourne and Lansdowne, and if not, why turn them out—why agitate the whole country for a change without an amendment? Never since Britain became an isle was it in a more hopeful state, so well-disposed to wait for salutary but efficient ameliorations, and so little in need of a coercive government. A spirit of watchfulness is abroad, but there is no political excitement, no plots nor revolutionary designs. Intelligence and moderation are spreading, and all the great branches of industry are rapidly extending Why then should the cheering prospect be blighted—be broken in upon for the mere purpose of an experiment, to try whether an old soldier has repented him of his errors?

But it is no experiment—nobody thinks it is—every one knows that the Duke is and ever must be hostile to popular reforms. For this he is brought forward—the Tories have resolved to make a stand, and the old battering ram is again brought forth in defence of the church and corporations. [73] It is a hopeless struggle. The Whigs were doing their best for the Tories, and much better than they will be able to do for themselves, and their true policy was to remain quiet. We thought the hated faction had been disposed of now and for ever, but as it is has once more taken the field, we trust the next onset will be final—that its discomfiture and overthrow will be such that it will never again venture to show itself in hostile array. There can be no doubt of the result. Scotland will rise almost to a man. That country, by the amendment of her representation, her burghs and police institutions, has been almost created under the Reform Acts, and she will never see the benefits she has derived endangered by Tory misrule. The vast mass of English Dissenters is with us, and in Ireland there are seven millions.

Were not great national reforms in jeopardy, the Duke is not qualified for the civil government of the country in ordinary times. He is great in war, but mediocre in peace. He is shrewd certainly, and a selfish man, but his endowments are not various. In tact and judgment, as a minister, he has often shewn himself as defective as the late chancellor. With the mind and great social interests of the empire he is not conversant. We could cite examples of want of information of which a Lancashire weaver would be ashamed. It is not long since (April 20th) he classed ‘Atheists’ in the number of English Dissenters. In political economy he is barely so far learnt as to see the superiority of machinery to manual labour. Notwithstanding the schooling he received from Mr. Huskisson, he does not fully appreciate the policy of free trade, and is disposed to increase the duty on foreign silks, to give, as he says, a ‘change to the home market.’ His external policy is notorious; it is that of Don Miguel, of Nicholas, and Metternich. The old pragmatical Dutch king is the duke’s beau ideal of a monarch. But it is unnecessary to proceed—the reader will find in the Addenda extracts from the speeches of his highness, illustrative of his sentiments on nearly all public questions.

It is said that the influence of the Duke with his party is such that he will be able to carry measures that nobody else could, that the peers will follow him when they would not follow earl Grey or lord Melbourne. The hereditaries are a queer set certainly, and it is impossible to say who they will follow. Gibbon relates that the Crusaders had the emblem of a goose at their head, and they always followed that in full confidence of victory. We do not mean that his highness is a goose, or any thing like it; he is something very different. But we know that the liberal and enlightened portion of the British community will not follow him, nor will that portion which is the reverse of liberal and enlightened—for it is notorious that there is a section of the Tories for whom even the duke is too expansive in his views, and there is another section who think him a very good Ajax, but no Nestor, in politics:—so that between them his party is far from multitudinous. There is one faithful band we dare say will follow him to the world’s end, provided he has any thing to give them;—we mean that corps of attaches, male and female, whom his highness, to save his own pocket, threw on the pension list at the [74] close of his last administration. The Grevilles and William Holmes will come forth again no doubt, as well as John Wilson Croker, Peregrine Courtenay, Joseph Planta, and other survivors of that plundering phalanx who abetted Castlereagh and Sidmouth in all their atrocities. Besides these, the duke will have other adjuncts even after death—namely, the glories of the Malpurba, and of the death of the brave marshal Ney!

As the Duke’s chance of success has become dubious, a new candidate has been started in the person of sir Robert Peel, and posterity will scarcely believe that the government of this vast empire has been suspended—laid on the shelf we may say—to wait the return of this great personage from a tour of pleasure in Italy.

Sir Robert is a respectable man—he is a scholar and a gentleman, and that is saying much for any one in private life, but they are not the qualities to constitute a great public character. He is a good debater—the best, perhaps, in the House, save Stanley; and though inferior to Stanley in energy, he is superior to him in the arrangement of his matter, and a discreet and balanced mind. But after all he is only a second or third-rate statesman, well enough in ordinary times, but not fit for the existing crisis, and in a country that contains as many sects, parties, and divisions, as the Roman empire contained tribes and nations. A long speech on an important subject will mostly set forth the grasp of a person’s mind, and if any one wishes to appreciate sir Robert’s, let them read his oration of December 20th, 1830:—it comprises what may be termed his general views at that critical period; but a more brainless exhibition of common-place, conceit, Joseph Surface candour, and dowager politics we never before witnessed. Sir Robert is a timid and accomplished man, and would grace a peerage much better than the premiership. Moreover, he is—saving a slight and recent amendment—a regular university Tory, therefore quite out of season; and, besides, has always been a slow learner: he only discovered the policy of Catholic emancipation when too late—when the concession could only be made without grace, and was received as no favour. Of the two we prefer the bold, blunt, blundering, Duke; but our fervent prayer is for neither, and this we are confident is the prayer of the united British people.

From some cause the country has been convulsed by anticipation, and most unexpectedly; for it is plain even the Tories did not anticipate the sudden turn in their favour, otherwise they would not have been to collect from all parts of the continent. In the course of the ensuing session, a change of ministry or rather of ministers may have become necessary, but it was yet premature. The people might have their misgivings about a portion of the cabinet; indications may have got abroad of the secession of a squad of alarmists like that of the Portland clan in 1793; but as a body the Melbourne ministry was untried, and the people were not so unreasonable as to wish its dismissal before being subjected to that ordeal. That it possessed energy we have shown, and that the larger part of it was of a sterling kind, we have the cheering testimony of its opponents. According to the Quarterly Review,—“There were two parties in the [75] cabinet: one—the majority, we fear—thought that they could not meet Parliament without announcing some strong measures of what they called church reform, or to speak more truly and plainly church spoliation; the other (to which lord Melbourne himself is said to have inclined) were reluctant to pledge themselves to this extent, and declared that they must resign if such measures were proposed.”—Postcript, Nov. 19, 1834. Very well, they could have resigned; if they were so very opinionated that they could not agree with a majority of their colleagues, supported by a Reform Parliament, their best course was to take up their bag and walk, as the Stanleyites had done before them. Perhaps their places might have been supplied when the time came without a break-up of the ministry, and why not wait and see? Our opinion of the intelligence of the Lansdowne party and its notions of civil government is such, that if it found the mind and strength of the community, expressed through constitutional organs, were really bent on searching ecclesiastical reforms, it would have succumbed and not withdrawn. But if it had, successors might have been found, and then we should have had a ministry in harmony with the Reform Parliament, and together, backed by the people, they would have been in a state to speak to their high mightinesses of the upper chamber.

This in truth is the real dilemma of the British constitution. A liberal or illiberal ministry is only prefatory matter. Take which you will, there is a ‘lion in the way.’ With a reforming ministry the question is—What shall be done with the Lords? With an unreforming one—What shall be done with the Commons? But is it possible—can it be believed that this great empire, more lofty than ever in its elevation, and looking forward to a still better futurity—bursting with energy at every pore—and enlightened by the immortal Black Book on the causes of past misrule and present difficulties;—can it be believed, we repeat, that this empire will go backwards? Never! Up, then, Britons! one victory more and you have done. You fight not for Whigs nor for Tories, but for yourselves. The hated faction which has again reared its head, and which for a century plundered, duped, and misled you, will be for ever exterminated. By your noble efforts in 1831 you reformed the lower house, and by another such struggle—if the Duke vouchsafe the opportunity—you will reform the upper—and then rest in peace!

A portion of the public press has adopted a very silly, not to say insidious course. The Times and Morning Herald never made a weaker point than to attempt to write up the Duke—to induce the people quietly to let his Highness get into the saddle to see how he would go; just as if he had not been there before.

“Pray, Mr. Speaker, shall we let him in,
To—try if we can turn him out again?”

It is easier to keep the devil out than to turn him out,—so the people thought, and with their characteristic good sense, they were not to be misled even by the ‘leading journal’—the changeling Times, which, not long since, was called ‘Brougham’s Gazette,’ then the anti-Brougham, and now it is the Duke’s or Peel’s Gazette as it may best turn up!

I.—: REVENUES OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH.↩

II. Remarks on the Ecclesiastical Report.↩

The preceding outline is the only result, known to the public, of the two years’ labours of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and, meagre as it is, was only conceded after urgent inquiries in parliament by Messrs. Hume and Baines. Between the industry of the Church Commissioners and Poor-Law Commissioners the contrast is as striking as the objects of their respective investigations. But the delay in making a full report by the former is the more extraordinary as the returns from the clergy appear to have been received so early as April 17th, 1833; lord Althorp on that day having prefaced his motion for a commutation of tithes in England by a general statement of the revenues of the church, as now given to the public. Surely in the long interval that had elapsed between the date of the report and of his lordship’s speech there was sufficient time to ‘digest and arrange the materials,’ without keeping them back until the untoward advent of the Duke, who may deem it unnecessary to have any further report at all on the Church.

Leaving these mysteries to be solved by the commissioners, we shall submit a few brief remarks on the matter of the Report such as it is. We have no enmity to the church, only we desire all the good that can be obtained from it at a less cost to the public.

Archbishops and Bishops.—The net average income of these is £5,930. But the Primate of all England has an income of £32,000, according to the statement of Dr. Lushington, and the right reverend bishop of London an income of £15,000, according to his own admission. Such incomes are exorbitant, and quite out of keeping with the incomes of other public servants; as of military and naval officers; or of the first lord of the treasury, and chancellor of the exchequer. In France an archbishop has only £1041, and a bishop £625 a year. A cardinal at Rome, next in dignity to the pope, has between £400 and £500 per annum. These latter sums are enough for Christian pastors. The English bishops have not, we suspect, included in their returns of revenue the annual value of their parks, and ‘palaces,’ and their ‘thrones!’

Deans and Chapters.—The gross revenue of these is £350,861. They were deemed a ‘superfluous condition,’ even in popish times, by archbishop Cranmer; and, in a letter to Henry VIII. he says, a prebendary is neither a ‘learner nor a teacher, but a good viander who wastes his substance in superfluous belly cheer.’ By a reform of the cathedral and collegiate churches a saving of a quarter of a million might at once be effected.

Rectories and Vicarages.—The net average income of these is £285. If there were as many incumbents as benefices, and each received only this very moderate stipend, there would be no complaint that the clergy are overpaid. But the waste and injustice consist in the disproportion between the number of livings and the number of individuals among whom they are shared. From authentic returns it appears that the number of incumbents in England and Wales, among whom the 10,498 benefices are divided, is under 7,000; so that some fortunate persons, with good connexions, have two, three, or four livings, [79] or more, besides dignities in cathedrals, preacherships, chaplainships, and other tit-bits of preferment too numerous to mention, but which together swell the incomes of favoured individuals to an enormous amount. It is not only the aggregate revenues of the church, but their unequal and partial distribution which excites public indignation. In this consists its chief iniquity; but, for a complete elucidation of the subjects of Patronage, Sinecurism, and Pluralism, we must refer to The Black Book itself, especially the edition of 1832, pages 29, 31, and 56.

Curates.—From the incomes of these we may form an estimate of the expense really necessary to the maintenance of an efficient church establishment. It is notorious that the curates and poor clergy who are unable to bear the charge of curates, form nearly the only labouring bees, and that it is by them that the chief business of preaching, burying, baptizing, and marrying is performed. The 5,282 curates, it seems, have an average salary of £80, amounting for the whole to £424,796; so that, for about double that sum an efficient clergy might be maintained, adequate to the discharge of all the practical offices of the national worship.

Poor Clergy.—It seems there are 4,506 benefices with cure of souls, having incomes under £150. The worst of the poor livings is, that they are mostly held single, while the ‘fat ones’ are held double, treble, or quadruple, and often with a stall or some other good thing appended. But there is no help for this class of incumbents any more than for the curates, until they obtain a radical ecclesiastical reform. All we can do for them is to recommend their case to the merciful consideration of the bishop of London, who, now that he has got through his poor-law duties, and perhaps, too, his jobbing and exchanging of church preferment with a brother prelate—of which such curious examples were recently given in the Morning Chronicle—may have leisure to attend to their situation.

We shall not enter into the subject of the total revenues of the established clergy, having already done that in another place; but shall only remark, that the exclusion from the returns of the income derived from college and school foundations, and from lectureships, chaplainships, and other sources, renders the estimate of the commissioners far from satisfactory. Why, too, ought not church rates to be included in ecclesiastical revenue, and which, according to the last return, amounted to £554,295? Are surplice-fees, mortuaries, Easterdues, &c. included in the returns of the clergy?

If the Clergy, from sinister motives, have understated their real incomes, we trust they will hereafter be bound by their own returns, should the Legislature determine on a plan of composition for the church revenues.

III.—: THE CHURCH AND THE DISSENTERS.↩

IV.—: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS.↩

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V.—: REPRESENTATION OF ENGLAND AND WALES.↩

VII.—: LISTS OF MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES.↩