MOTION ON THE STATE OF THE NATION.
WILLIAM IV. 1836—1837
At this time the state of public affairs was such as to induce Mr. Roebuck to bring the subject before parliament. On the 9th of June, when the order of the day had been moved for the second reading of the Irish tithe bill, Mr. Roebuck moved an amendment that the house should resolve itself into a committee for considering the state of the nation. He made some observations upon the extraordinary position in which the representatives of the people were placed. Two bills had been sent to the other house of parliament, but they were told that the house of lords would not take them into consideration until something had been done by that house to please them. He contended that there was no government in the country: ministers were no longer in the position in which they were at the beginning of the session. They stated then that they would place their existence as ministers on the fate of the Irish corporation bill. What had become of that bill? It was laid on the shelf till the lords knew what that house was about. The other house virtually said, “If you do not what we like, we will not pass your bill.” What good could be got from playing over the farce of discussing the Irish tithe bill? Did they not know that if it passed that house, defeat awaited it elsewhere. Ministers, in fact, were useless for good purposes; and as far as the people were concerned, they were mischievous. Mr. Roebuck’s motion was seconded by Colonel Thompson, who said that ministers had started with a large stock of popular energy in their favour; but, in their fear of the boiler bursting, they had let the fire go out. Like Spanish generals, they had always one eye in their own camp, and the other in the enemy’s; and all their efforts were paralysed by their fear of being too successful. Their situation had become desperate: if any event in the chapter of human accidents should fall out to give them a reprieve, the only consequences would be, that as they had dwindled, dwindled before, they would dwindle, dwindle again. There was no stock of good luck which such conduct would not run out. It was clear what was coming: the Tories must return to power. How long they would stay there was another question; but their return was a phasis, a phenomenon which ministers had rendered it inevitable to go through. Mr. O’Connell eschewed the doctrines of Mr. Roebuck and Colonel Thompson. It was his duty, he said, in the name of the people of Ireland, to protest against his majesty’s government being blamed for not doing more. Government had the confidence and the affections of the people; and whatever might be the opinions of others, he, for one, hoped that they would long continue to occupy their present situations. Lord John Russell, in reply, disclaimed any community of sentiment with Mr. Roebuck in the constitutional views he had broached, either in reference to church or state. He was decidedly opposed to the voluntary system, and to the abolition of the house of lords. As for the doctrine of the honourable member for Bath, that men of moderation and compromise never succeed in establishing anything good or useful, his lordship said it was, on the contrary, his decided conviction that to the moderation and mediation between violent or extreme opinions on both sides, which had been exercised by Lord Somers, and the great Whig leaders at the Revolution, the country was indebted for all her subsequent prosperity. In reference to Mr. Roebuck’s reproach against ministers for not having conciliated the dissenters and popular favour generally by adopting the voluntary principle in church matters, his lordship said that such a course would not have that effect: his own opinion was not in favour of the voluntary system, and he believed that the people of this country were, like himself, still attached to the established church. The opposition, properly so called, took no part in this discussion, and Mr. Roebuck’s motion was negatived without a division. The discussion proved one great fact, namely, that between the extremes of opposition, the Whigs might for a long period maintain their places on the treasury benches; but at the same time they could not but feel embarrassment in a position which left them dependent on their opponents, now on the Radicals and now on the Tories. Had it been possible for the two to have united on any great question, the Whig ministry would soon have been no more; but oil and water might almost as soon have commingled, as the Tories and the Radicals agree.