MOTION FOR A COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE HOUSE ON THE STATE OF THE NATION.
In the debate on the address Lord Stanhope gave notice that he should on an early day bring the state of the country under their lordships’ notice, by a special motion. He did so on the 25th of February, by moving that their lordships should resolve themselves into a committee of the whole house on the state of the nation. The proposition on which his lordship founded his motion was, that all the great productive interests of the country were suffering under the pressure of a distress the tendency of which was to go on increasing. Complaints and applications for relief by the agriculturists, he said, had come up from every county, and they had been disregarded, probably because they were couched in respectful language. He said this, because recent experience had shown that if they had formed illegal associations, collected funds, and spoken to government in the language of intimidation, they would have received attention. Of the reasonableness of their complaints no man could doubt who knew their situation. Rents were paid from the capital of the farmer; and numbers of tenants had already been driven from their farms in bankruptcy and beggary. The capital of others, also, was daily extorted from them to meet their current expenses; and when that capital was exhausted they, too, must go forth ruined men. It had been said, “Reduce your rents, and you will remove the mischief,” But this expedient had been tried, and had failed: rents had been reduced fifty per cent.; but there were cases in which no rent could be paid. He knew of one parish, for instance, in Sussex, where all the proceeds of the land were not sufficient to maintain the poor; and neighbouring parishes had been applied to to give them relief. If the existing state of things was not speedily remedied, they must end in ruin and anarchy. Nor, he continued, was the state of the manufacturing population better than that of the agriculturists. Artisans were at work for threepence or fourpence per day; and of those who received employment, a great proportion worked for wages which, when compared with the value of the article on which they were employed, were altogether deceptive. Then, he asked, what was the state of the shipping interest? To realize profit was out of the question; and many of the ship-owners had preferred parting with their ships at a certain loss of forty per cent., to continuing to hold them at the risk of a loss still greater. All these interests were, therefore, at present in a state of apparently hopless distress. As for the symptoms to which ministers pointed as those of returning health, they were utterly fallacious. It had been said that the traffic on railways and canals had been increased; the same effect would be produced if the goods had been transported on speculation, and hawked about from one part of the country to another for sale, either in vain or at ruinous prices. With an increasing population consumption must increase to some extent, because the addition to the population would not absolutely famish; but the evil was, that it was consumption which still furnished to those employed in creating the articles consumed the means, not of living with any reasonable comfort, but of mere squalid starvation. Ministers had told them, likewise, to look at the number of new houses which were springing up, and had asked if this was an indication of distress. No one had ever said that every man in the country was distressed. Who had ever said, for instance, that the fund-holders and annuitants felt the general pressure? They might continue to flourish like rank and noxious weeds among surrounding ruins; they still drew their fixed incomes, but their security was diminishing; for that security depended on the productiveness of the revenue; and the revenue, as the natural result of the misery of all the productive classes of society, was fall ing off. Lord Goderich, in reply, said that he had expected the motion would have been supported by something better than the two undeniable propositions that there was great distress in the country, and that it was the duty of ministers to relieve it to the utmost of their power. He should have thought that the noble mover would have stated the causes which had produced the distress of the country, and have given some notion of the remedies which he deemed applicable to the disease. In regard to the one and the other, the house had been left in the dark. While, however, he resisted a mode of inquiry which promised nothing, he did not say that it was impossible for parliament to do anything. In relation to the currency and the state of our taxation, parliament might afford material relief to the country. He thought parliament might also do something by a reduction of taxation; for during the two years that he himself had been chancellor of the exchequer, nine millions of taxes had been removed, and yet that amount had not been eventually lost to the revenue: in some heads of receipt there had been a diminution, but in others there had been an increase. The Earl of Roseberry, also, spoke against the motion: he could not support it, because he thought that in its present form it was neither practicable nor expedient. The motion was supported by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Eldon. The former insisted principally on various facts proving the extent and pressure of the prevalent distress; and maintained that in common sense the causes of the misfortune should be investigated, before means for removing them were tendered. Lord Eldon, in supporting the motion, accused his ancient colleagues of coming down to parliament with a declaration that there were “other causes” for the distress of the country, which they did not deem it expedient to specify, and which they left to each one’s sagacity to guess at as he might. He contended that the smallest consideration of the causes and remedies of the present all-pervading distress would have been received by the country with gratitude. He was the more confident of this, he said, when he bore in mind the pacific and loyal demeanour of the numerous thousands who were suffering under the most pinching distress, and who, he hoped, would be prevented from being drawn away from the line of good conduct by the expressed determination of parliament to inquire into the causes of their sufferings, with a view to remedy them so far as circumstances might permit. The Duke of Wellington still denied that the existence of distress was so extensive as had been represented, and supported his opinion by the augmented consumption of various articles, by the increase of buildings, by the state of the savings’ banks, and by the advanced traffic on railways and canals. He still maintained, also, that the power of redress was beyond the reach of parliament; and he defied noble lords opposite to do anything on the subject which should be at once politic and satisfactory; expedient and efficacious. Was it right, he asked, for parliament to interfere where it was utterly impossible to do good? The noble mover might recommend a committee; but to what end could they follow his counsel if he could lead them no further? And not one step further had he gone. The Marquis of Lansdowne said that he had no hesitation in stating what he conceived to be the causes of the distress. Much of it, he thought, had been produced by a transition from a state of war to peace. He could not help recollecting, however, that a great part of the difficulties, out of which we had now to extricate ourselves, was to be ascribed to that fatal perseverance, with which we had persisted for many years, in contracting permanent money engagements in a depreciated currency. That was the root of the evil; but in saying so, he did not forget, that, unfortunate as these engagements were, they nevertheless were engagements which the honour of parliament was bound to respect, and which we must find means to discharge. It was one thing, however, to see the cause, and another to point out the remedy: for the present he confessed that he saw but one means of uniting all opinions on the subject, and that was retrenchment, retrenchment qualified by diminution of taxation. The Marquis of Salisbury expressed an opinion that a general inquiry would do more harm than good: he would prefer a select committee, and if that should fail in coming at the cause of the distress, then would be the time for an inquiry of the whole house. Lord King, in conclusion, moved as an amendment, “that a select committee should be appointed to inquire into the depressed state of the agricultural and manufacturing interests of the kingdom for the purpose of ascertaining whether any, and what relief could be afforded.” This amendment, however, was received with as little favour as the original motion, which was lost on a division by one hundred and eighteen against twenty-five.
A similar motion was made, at a more advanced period of the session in the house of commons by Mr. Davenport. The discussion in that house lasted four nights, and in the course of it, the leading members of all parties delivered their opinions, which were in many respects contradictory on the extent as well as on the causes of the evil. The arguments and the views of the speakers, however, were generally the same that had been used in the house of lords, though being used by a greater number of persons, they were presented under a greater number of modifications. The motion was supported by the admitted fact of the prevailing distress; the duty of the house to give relief, if possible; and the necessity for that purpose of ascertaining the causes of the evil. On the other hand it was denied that the distress was general, and that if it was, it would be useless to enter into an inquiry without some specific remedy being pointed out, which had not yet been done. Great objections were also taken to the form of the proposed inquiry. There was no subject of any difficulty with which parliament had ever had to deal, but would necessarily come before this committee, and how could the whole house deal with such an investigation. Sir C. Burrell moved as an amendment that the petitions should be referred to a select committee, but this was still more vehemently resisted: Mr. Peel declaring that a committee of the whole house was the better of the two. Lord Althorp, with the leading members of the Whig party generally, as well as Mr. Huskisson and his followers, took part with the ministry; and the motion was eventually lost by a majority of two hundred and fifty-five against eighty-seven.