Part 4 (2/2)
Nottingham Castle was burnt down by an infuriated mob; newspapers appeared in mourning; the bells of some of the churches rang m.u.f.fled peals; the Marquis of Londonderry and other Peers who had made themselves peculiarly obnoxious were a.s.saulted in the streets; and the Bishops could not stir abroad without being followed by the jeers and execrations of the mult.i.tude. Quiet middle-cla.s.s people talked of refusing to pay the taxes, and showed unmistakably that they had caught the revolutionary spirit of the hour. Birmingham, which was the head-quarters of the Political Union, held a vast open-air meeting, at which one hundred and fifty thousand people were present, and resolutions were pa.s.sed, beseeching the King to create as many new Peers as might be necessary to ensure the triumph of Reform. Lord Althorp and Lord John Russell were publicly thanked at this gathering for their action, and the reply of the latter is historic: 'Our prospects are obscured for a moment, but, I trust, only for a moment; it is impossible that the whisper of a faction should prevail against the voice of a nation.'
Meanwhile Lord Ebrington, Lord John's colleague in the representation of Devons.h.i.+re, came to the rescue of the Government with a vote of confidence, which was carried by a sweeping majority. Two days later, on Wednesday, October 12, many of the shops of the metropolis were closed in token of political mourning, and on that day sixty thousand men marched in procession to St. James's Palace, bearing a pet.i.tion to the King in favour of the retention of the Grey Administration. Hume presented it, and when he returned to the waiting crowd in the Park, he was able to tell them that their prayer would not pa.s.s unheeded. No wonder that Croker wrote shortly afterwards: 'The four M's--the Monarch, the Ministry, the Members, and the Mult.i.tude--all against us. The King stands on his Government, the Government on the House of Commons, the House of Commons on the people. How can we attack a line thus linked and supported?' Indignation meetings were held in all parts of the country, and at one of them, held at Taunton, Sydney Smith delivered the famous speech in which he compared the attempt of the House of Lords to restrain the rising tide of Democracy to the frantic but futile battle which Dame Partington waged with her mop, during a storm at Sidmouth, when the Atlantic invaded her threshold. 'The Atlantic was roused. Mrs.
Partington's spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. Gentlemen, be at your ease, be quiet and steady; you will beat--Mrs. Partington.' The newspapers carried the witty allusion everywhere. It tickled the public fancy, and did much to relax the bitter mood of the nation, and vapouring heroics were forgotten in laughter, and indignation gave way to amused contempt.
Parliament, which had been prorogued towards the end of October, rea.s.sembled in the first week of December, and on the 12th of that month Lord John once more introduced--for the third time in twelve months--the Reform Bill. A few alterations had been made in its text, the outcome chiefly of the facts which the new census had brought to light. In order to meet certain anomalies in the original scheme, Ministers, with the help of Thomas Drummond, who shortly afterwards honourably distinguished himself in Irish affairs, drew up two lists of boroughs, one for total disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt and the other for semi-disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt; and the principle on which fifty-six towns were included in the first list, and thirty in the second, was determined by the number of houses in each borough and the value of the a.s.sessed taxes. Six days later the second reading was pa.s.sed, after three nights' discussion, by a majority of 324 to 162. The House rose immediately for the Christmas recess, and on January 20 the bill reached the committee stage, and there it remained till March 14. The third reading took place on March 23, and the bill was pa.s.sed by a majority of 116. Althorp, as the leader of the Commons, and Russell, as the Minister in charge of the measure, carried the Reform Bill promptly to the House of Lords, and made formal request for the 'concurrence of their lords.h.i.+ps to the same.' Other men had laboured to bring about this result; but the nation felt that, but for the pluck and persistency of Russell, and the judgment and tact of Althorp, failure would have attended their efforts.
[Sidenote: LORD ALTHORP'S TACT]
It is difficult now to understand the secret of the influence which Althorp wielded in the Grey Administration, but it was great enough to lead the Premier to ask him to accept a peerage, in order--in the crisis which was now at hand--to bring the Lords to their senses. Althorp was in no sense of the word a great statesman; in fact, his career was the triumph of character rather than capacity. All through the struggle, when controversy grew furious and pa.s.sion rose high, Althorp kept a cool head, and his adroitness in conciliatory speech was remarkable. He was a moderate man, who never failed to do justice to his opponent's case, and his influence was not merely in the Commons; it made itself felt to good purpose in the Court, as well as in the country. He was a man of chivalrous instincts and unchallenged probity. It was one of his political opponents, Sir Henry Hardinge, who exclaimed, 'Althorp carried the bill. His fine temper did it!'
Lord John Russell, like his colleagues, was fully alive to the gravity of the crisis. He made no secret of his conviction that, if another deadlock arose, the consequence would be bloodshed, and the outbreak of a conflict in which the British Const.i.tution would probably perish.
Twelve months before, the cry in the country had been, 'What will the Lords do?' but now an altogether different question was on men's lips, 'What must be done with the Lords?' Government knew that the real struggle over the bill would be in Committee, and therefore they refused to be unduly elated when the second reading was carried on April 14 with a majority of nine, in spite of the Duke of Wellington's bl.u.s.tering heroics. Three weeks later, Lord Lyndhurst carried, by a majority of thirty-five, a motion for the mutilation of the bill, in spite of Lord Grey's a.s.surance that it dealt a fatal blow at the measure. The Premier immediately moved the adjournment of the debate, and the situation grew suddenly dramatic. The Cabinet had made its last concession; Ministers determined, in Lord Durham's words, that a 'sufficient creation of Peers was absolutely necessary' if their resignation was not to take immediate effect, and they laid their views before the King. William IV., like his predecessor, lived in a narrow world; he was surrounded by gossips who played upon his fears of revolution, and took care to appeal to his prejudices. His zeal for Reform had already cooled, and Queen Adelaide was hostile to Lord Grey's measure.
When, therefore, Lord Grey and Lord Brougham went down to Windsor to urge the creation of new Peers, they met with a chilling reception. The King refused his sanction, and the Ministry had no other alternative than to resign. William IV. took counsel with Lord Lyndhurst, and summoned the Duke of Wellington. Meanwhile the House of Commons at the instance of Lord Ebrington, again pa.s.sed a vote of confidence in the Grey Administration, and adopted an address to His Majesty, begging him to call to his councils such persons only as 'will carry into effect unimpaired in all its essential provisions that bill for reforming the representation of the people which has recently pa.s.sed the House of Commons.' Wellington tried to form a Ministry in order to carry out some emasculated scheme of Reform, but Peel was inexorable, and refused to have part or lot in the project.
[Sidenote: THE FIERCE CRY OF THE STREETS]
Meanwhile the cry rang through the country, 'The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill!' William IV. was hissed as he pa.s.sed through the streets, and the walls blazed with insulting lampoons and caricatures. Signboards which displayed the King's portrait were framed with c.r.a.pe, and Queen Adelaide's likeness was disfigured with lampblack.
Rumours of projected riots filled the town, and whispers of a plot for seizing the wives and children of the aristocracy led the authorities to order the swords of the Scots Greys to be rough-sharpened. At the last moment, when the att.i.tude of the country was menacing, the King yielded, on May 17, and sent for Lord Grey. 'Only think,' wrote Joseph Parkes on May 18, 'that at three yesterday all was gloomy foreboding in the Cabinet, and at twenty-five minutes before five last night Lord Althorp did not know the King's answer till Lord Grey returned at half-past five--”All right.” Thus on the decision of one man rests the fate of nations.'[8]
Instead of creating new Peers, the King addressed a letter to members of the House of Lords who were hostile to the bill, urging them to withdraw their opposition. A hint from Windsor went further with the aristocracy in those days than any number of appeals, reasonable or just, from the country. About a hundred of the Peers, in angry sullen mood, shook off the dust of Westminster, and, in Lord John's words, 'skulked in clubs and country houses.' Sindbad, to borrow Albany Fonblanque's vigorous simile, was getting rid of the old man of the sea, not permanently, alas! but at least for the occasion. During the progress of these negotiations, the nation, now confident of victory, stood not merely at attention but on the alert. 'I say,' exclaimed Attwood at Birmingham--and the phrase expressed the situation--'the people of England stand at this moment like greyhounds on the slip!' Triumph was only a matter of time. 'Pray beg of Lord Grey to keep well,' wrote Sydney Smith to the Countess; 'I have no doubt of a favourable issue. I see an open sea beyond the icebergs.' At length the open sea was reached, and on June 7 the Reform Bill received the Royal a.s.sent and became the law of the land, and with it the era of government by public opinion began. The mode by which the country at last obtained this great measure of redress did not commend itself to Lord John's judgment. He did not disguise his opinion that the creation of many new Peers favourable to Reform would have been a more dignified proceeding than the request from Windsor to n.o.ble lords to dissemble and cloak their disappointment. 'Whether twelve or one hundred be the number requisite to enable the Peers to give their votes in conformity with public opinion,' were his words, 'it seems to me that the House of Lords, sympathising with the people at large, and acting in concurrence with the enlightened state of the prevailing wish, represents far better the dignity of the House, and its share in legislation, than a majority got together by the long supremacy of one party in the State, eager to show its ill-will by rejecting bills of small importance, but afraid to appear, and skulking in clubs and country houses, in face of a measure which has attracted the ardent sympathy of public opinion.'
[Sidenote: BOWING BEFORE THE STORM]
'G.o.d may and, I hope, will forgive you for this bill,' was Lord Sidmouth's plaintive lament to Earl Grey, 'but I do not think I ever can!' There lives no record of reply. The last protest of the Duke of Wellington, delivered just before the measure became law, was characteristic in many respects, and not least in its blunt honesty.
'Reform, my lords, has triumphed, the barriers of the Const.i.tution are broken down, the waters of destruction have burst the gates of the temple, and the tempest begins to howl. Who can say where its course should stop? who can stay its speed? For my own part, I earnestly hope that my predictions may not be fulfilled, and that my country may not be ruined by the measure which the n.o.ble earl and his colleagues have sanctioned.' Lord John Russell, on the contrary, held then the view which he afterwards expressed: 'It is the right of a people to represent its grievances: it is the business of a statesman to devise remedies.'
In the first quarter of the present century the people made their grievances known. Lord Grey and his Cabinet in 1831-2 devised remedies, and, in Lord John's memorable phrase, 'popular enthusiasm rose in its strength and converted them into law.'
The Reform Bill, as Walter Bagehot has shown, did nothing to remove the worst evils from which the nation suffered, for the simple reason that those evils were not political but economical. But if it left unchallenged the reign of protection and much else in the way of palpable and glaring injustice, it ushered in a new temper in regard to public questions. It recognised the new conditions of English society, and gave the mercantile and manufacturing cla.s.ses, with their wealth, intelligence, and energy, not only the consciousness of power, but the sense of responsibility.
[Sidenote: A GENEROUS TRIBUTE]
The political struggle under Pitt had been between the aristocracy and the monarchy, but that under Grey was between the aristocracy and the middle cla.s.ses, for the claims of the democracy in the broad sense of the word lay outside the scope of the measure. In spite of its halting confidence in the people, men felt that former things of harsh oppression had pa.s.sed away, and that the Reform Bill rendered their return impossible. It was at best only a half measure, but it broke the old exclusive traditions and diminished to a remarkable degree the power of the landed interest in Parliament. It has been said that it was the business of Lord John Russell at that crisis to save England from copying the example of the French Revolution, and there can be no doubt whatever that the measure was a safety-valve at a moment when political excitement a.s.sumed a menacing form. The public rejoicings were inspired as much by hope as by gladness. A new era had dawned, the will of the nation had prevailed, the spirit of progress was abroad, and the mult.i.tudes knew that other reforms less showy perhaps but not less substantial, were at hand. 'Look at England before the Reform Bill, and look at it now,' wrote Mr. Froude in 1874. 'Its population almost doubled; its commerce quadrupled; every individual in the kingdom lifted to a high level of comfort and intelligence--the speed quickening every year; the advance so enormous, the increase so splendid, that language turns to rhetoric in describing it.' When due allowance is made for the rhetoric of such a description--for alas! the 'high level of comfort'
for every individual in the kingdom is still unattained--the substantial truth of such a statement cannot be gainsaid. When the battle was fought, Lord John was generous enough to say that the success of the Reform Bill in the House of Commons was due mainly to the confidence felt in the integrity and sound judgment of Lord Althorp. At the same time he never concealed his conviction that it was the mult.i.tude outside who made the measure resistless.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] _Correspondence of Mr. Joseph Jekyll_, 1818-1838. Edited, with a brief Memoir, by the Hon. Algernon Bourke. Pp. 272-273.
[7] Flood's Reform proposals were made in 1790. His idea was to augment the House of Commons by one hundred members, to be elected by the resident householders of every county.
[8] _Life of George Grote_, by Mrs. Grote, p. 80.
CHAPTER V
THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA
1833-1838
<script>