To turn to home affairs, Mr. Locke King honourably distinguished himself by his persevering efforts to extend the franchise in counties; but he was more successful in his endeavours to remove a great blot from the system of parliamentary representation by abolishing the property qualification of members. This was always regarded as a highly conservative feature of the Constitution; and at the time the Reform Bill was passed it would perhaps have been impossible to carry its abolition. It had, however, so notoriously become a sham, and involved so much that was discreditable, false, and immoral in the efforts to evade the law, that although the Conservatives were now in power, the Bill of Mr. Locke King encountered no serious opposition in either House. A member for a county was obliged to swear that he had a clear estate in perpetuity worth £500, or for a borough £300 a year. But it was well known that the oath was not true, but merely conventional, and that the qualification was often created by fictitious conveyances, which if obtained for any other purpose would have been regarded as positively fraudulent. Adventurers and men of straw entered the House without any difficulty when returned by English and Irish constituencies; while in Scotland, where there was no property qualification, men of standing and worth were almost invariably selected as representatives. Besides, the existing system was rendered still more obnoxious by the fact that the sons of peers were exempt from the operation of the law, and could enter the House of Commons without any property qualification. The law, therefore, was universally understood to be an unreality, a sham, and a snare; while, as Lord Fortescue remarked in the Upper House, it limited the freedom of choice among the electors, and was an infringement of the rights of the people. Earl Grey, indeed, considered the measure to be only one of a series put forward by a party that desired to effect a total change in the representative system—a change that would bring it closer to a democracy, which they hoped to effect by degrees and in detail. But the Earl of Derby met this objection fully: it did not follow that because the House of Commons passed this measure, it would also pass those which Earl Grey deprecated—the £10 franchise in counties, for example. He did not believe the abolition of the qualification would make any substantial difference in the condition of the representation. The Bill passed without much further opposition.
LORD CANNING. (After the Portrait by George Richmond, R. A.)
The success of the measure encouraged an attempt to abolish the privilege of freedom from arrest for debt; but it was defended on the ground that it protected the independence of members, and was shared in by barristers attending the courts or on circuit, justices of the peace at sessions, suitors and witnesses, the Queen's servants, and foreign ambassadors with their servants; and on the ground that the Bill drew a distinction between peers and members of the House of Commons. It was read a second time by a considerable majority on the 30th of June, but it was allowed to drop.
STREET IN PESHAWUR.
One of the most singular anomalies connected with the relations of political parties in England occurred in the Session of 1859. The defects of the Reform Act had occupied the attention of politicians from time to time, and fruitless attempts had been made by Lord John Russell and others to remedy those defects and supplement the great measure of 1832. Mr. Bright agitated the subject in the North with his usual eloquence and power of argument, and not without considerable effect on the public mind in the manufacturing districts; but the nation at large could not be induced to take much interest in the subject. No urgent need was generally felt for a reform in the representation, the prevalent conviction being that the House of Commons as it stood was quite competent to perform all its duties as a representative body; but if any attempt were made to give fuller effect in the Commons to the will of the people, nothing could be more unlikely than that it should be made by a Conservative Government, supported by men who had strenuously resisted Reform at a time when it was imperatively demanded by the nation. Yet, in the Royal Speech at the opening of the Session, the Queen was made to say—"Your attention will be called to the state of the laws which regulate the representation of the people in Parliament, and I cannot doubt but that you will give to this great subject a degree of calm and impartial consideration proportioned to the magnitude of the interests involved in the result of your deliberations."
In pursuance of this announcement, Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the Commons, introduced a Reform Bill, on the 28th of February, in a crowded House, full of interest and curiosity to learn what might be the nature of a measure of the kind proceeding from a Conservative Cabinet. The right honourable gentleman spoke in a manner worthy of an occasion so remarkable and a position so equivocal. The question as he viewed it was more important than one of peace or war. It was beset with difficulties, but they were mitigated by the absence of passion and the advantage of experience. There was a general wish to settle the question, and the Government offered a solution not based upon any mean concession or temporary compromise, but consistent with the spirit and principles of the Constitution. Since the great measure of 1832 the progress of the nation had been extremely rapid, there being no instance in history of such an increase of population and accumulation of capital as had taken place within that period. Hence Parliamentary Reform had become successively a public question, a Parliamentary question, and a Ministerial question. Lord John Russell in 1852, and Lord Aberdeen in 1854, counselled her Majesty to announce from the throne a measure of Parliamentary Reform, nor was the House reluctant to deal with the question. What, in these circumstances, was Lord Derby's duty? It might have been practicable by evasion to stave off the difficulty; but was it to be left in abeyance as a means for reorganising an Opposition, as a desperate resource of faction? Lord Derby's Cabinet were unanimous in thinking that the question should be dealt with in a sincere and earnest spirit, nor was there anything in the antecedents or position of the Premier—whom Lord Grey had summoned to his Cabinet in 1832—to preclude him from dealing with it, or to justify the taunts that were so freely used against the Ministry for undertaking the task. Mr. Disraeli argued against the principle of basing representation upon population. If the House of Commons were re-constructed according to that principle, it would find itself in the ignominious position from which it had been emancipated more than two centuries ago. His plan would combine population with property, adding the new principle of representing property in the funds; a new kind of franchise, founded upon personal property; and another founded upon education. He would give a vote, therefore, to persons having property to the amount of £10 a year in the funds, Bank Stock, and East India Stock; to persons having £60 in a savings bank; to pensioners in the naval, military, and civil services receiving £20 a year. He would also give a vote to lodgers, or persons occupying a portion of a house, whose aggregate rent was £20 a year. He would give the franchise to graduates of the universities, clergymen of all denominations, members of the legal profession, of the medical body, and to a certain class of schoolmasters. He proposed an identity of suffrage between counties and boroughs, in order to bring about general content and sympathy between the different portions of the constituency. Thus a £10 franchise would be given to counties, which would add 200,000 to the county constituency. Commissioners were to be appointed to adjust the borough boundaries to the altered circumstances of the country, so as to embrace the population that had sprung up. Discarding the principle of population, and accepting as a truth that the function of the House was to represent, not the voice of a numerical majority, or the predominant influence of property, but the various interests of the country, the Government proposed to add four members to the West Riding of Yorkshire, two to South Lancashire, and two to Middlesex; and also to give members to Hartlepool, Birkenhead, West Bromwich, Wednesbury, Burnley, Staleybridge, Croydon, and Gravesend, for which purpose one member was to be taken from each of a number of small places then represented by two.
Strong objections were made to this measure by members representing various classes of reformers. Mr. Baxter complained that it excluded Scotland, and moved as an amendment that "it is expedient to consider the laws relating to the representation of the people in England, Scotland, and Ireland, not separately, but in one measure." Mr. Fox said that the Bill did nothing for the working classes. Lord John Russell condemned the clause which would take away from freeholders in towns the right of voting in counties. Mr Roebuck denounced it as a measure of disfranchisement, leading to a worse state, and not giving one iota of power to the working classes. Mr. Bright also strongly censured the measure for excluding the working classes from power. The new franchises were absurd, and seemed intended merely to make it appear that something was given. He thought that a Government representing a party that had always opposed the extension of political power to the people ought not to have undertaken to settle this question. It would have been better if it had adopted a measure of its opponents, than to introduce a Bill that must create anger and disgust throughout the country—a Bill that would disturb everything and settle nothing.
But one of the greatest blows to the measure was the secession of Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley, two of the ablest members of the Cabinet. On the the evening after the introduction of the Bill, the former rose and read a letter to the Premier, stating the grounds of his resignation. He said that he found it utterly impossible to sanction or countenance the policy which the Government had determined to adopt on the important subject of Parliamentary Reform. He regarded the reduction of the county occupation franchise to a level with that which existed in boroughs as utterly contrary to every principle that the Conservatives, as a party, had always maintained—as a complete destruction of the main distinction that had hitherto been recognised and wisely established between the borough and the county constituencies. It was to his mind a most dangerous innovation, giving to temporary and fluctuating occupations a preponderating influence over property and intelligence; while it would throw large masses into the constituencies who were almost exempt from direct taxation, and therefore interested in forcing their representatives to fix that taxation permanently on others. Mr. Henley, stating that he had taken as his guide the principles laid down by Lord Derby in 1854, said it was his opinion that identity of suffrage, which was the principle of the Government Bill, would be fatal to the Constitution of the country. If they took a paintbrush to draw a line across the country, and said that all the people upon one side were to have the franchise, and all the people upon the other were not to have it, as sure as the sun was in heaven they would find the people upon the outside of the line, some day or other, making a very ugly rush to break over it, and when they did break over it, it would not be easy to maintain the Constitution.