The night following the introduction of the Bill was marked by the second of Mr. Lowe's famous Reform speeches, and the first of those fierce attacks upon the Russell Ministry which more than anything else contributed to bring in the Conservatives in the following year. Mr. Lowe was then member for Calne. He had held office under Lord Palmerston as Vice-President of the Council from 1859 to 1864, and had long been known in the House as an accomplished man and ready debater; but probably few, in 1866, had any idea of the real greatness of his oratorical gift, and of the splendid displays he was to make of it before the close of the Session. At the very outset of his speech on the 13th of March he denied the necessity of Reform altogether. And then came the famous passage that made Mr. Lowe the bugbear of the working classes. "Look at what a [working-class] majority implies. I shall speak very frankly on this subject, for—having lost my character by saying that the working man could get the franchise for himself, which has been proved to be true, and for saying which, he and his friends will not hate me one bit the less—I shall say exactly what I think. Let any consider—I have had such unhappy experiences, and many of us have—let any gentleman consider the constituencies he has had the honour to be concerned with. If you want venality, if you want ignorance, if you want drunkenness and facility for being intimidated; or if, on the other hand, you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where do you look for them in the constituencies? Do you go to the top or to the bottom?" Lastly, Who asked for the Bill? Not the people, not the House of Commons, but the Radical leaders, as a salve for a theoretical and not a practical grievance! "All I can say," concluded Mr. Lowe, "is, that if my right honourable friend does succeed in carrying this measure through Parliament, when the passions and interests of the day are gone by, I do not envy him his retrospect. I covet not a single leaf of the laurels that may encircle his brow. I do not envy him his triumph. His be the glory of carrying it; mine of having, to the utmost of my poor ability, resisted it." The cheers that greeted this speech—and not only the Opposition, but for a moment the Ministerialists, were carried away by its eloquence and wit—were a kind of omen of the difficulties that the Government were to meet with during the progress of the measure. In this debate on the first reading, Mr. Horsman, the Liberal member for Stroud, took up the same position of hostility to the measure as Mr Lowe; and it was in answer to him that Mr. Bright threw out his famous nickname for the new party. "He has retired into what may be called his political cave of Adullam, and he has called about him every one that was in distress, and every one that was discontented." The name of "Adullamites" was ever afterwards given to the group of seceding Liberals, and their position was called the "Cave."
JOHN STUART MILL. (From a Photograph, by F. Hollyer, of the Painting by G. F. Watts, R.A.)
The Bill was brought in, and read a first time, and the House adjourned for the Easter Holidays to think over the situation. It was evident that a storm was coming and questions perhaps graver than that of the fate of a Cabinet or of a measure were dependent on the issue. A great meeting was held at Liverpool, at which Mr. Gladstone made a speech in defence of the Bill. Mr. Lowe's Liberal constituents at Calne wrote him a strong protest against his conduct and clearly indicated that he must not ask for a continuance of their confidence. His answer to them was, in fact, an answer to a perfect chorus of invective with which he was greeted by every Liberal newspaper and in every meeting of Liberals throughout the country.
He maintained that he had but fulfilled the announcement which he had made to them at the time of his election in 1865, when the words of his address had been, "I attach too much importance to the blessings we already enjoy, to risk them in pursuit of ideal perfection, or even of theoretical improvement." And, while with perfect frankness he affirmed his belief that "ignorant, drunken, venal, violent" people were to be found at the bottom of the constituencies, he denied that he had meant the words to apply to a whole class of his countrymen. But this disclaimer availed little; the words had been spoken, and they stuck. The popular excitement which they caused continued after the failure of the Bill and throughout the winter of 1866, and was directed mainly against the "renegade Liberals." Mr. Gladstone's Liverpool speech was of the most uncompromising kind. "We do not desire," he said, "we should be the first to resist, sudden and violent sweeping changes; but the progressive enlargement of the popular franchise—with due regard to the state and circumstances of the country—we do not consider liable to the application of any of these epithets. Having produced this measure, framed in a spirit of moderation, we hope to support it with decision.... We stake ourselves, we stake our existence as a Government, and we also stake our political character, on the adoption of the Bill in its main provisions. You have a right to expect from us that we should tell you what we mean, and that the trumpet which it is our business to blow shall give forth no uncertain sound. Its sound has not been, and I trust will not be, uncertain. We have passed the Rubicon, we have broken the bridge and burned the boats behind us.... The defeat of the Bill, what would it procure? an interval, but not an interval of repose—an interval of fever, an interval of expectation, an interval for the working of those influences which might extend even to the formidable dimensions of political danger."
The great debate on the second reading began on the 12th of April; and never within living memory had a finer display of eloquence, argument, and energy been witnessed within the walls of the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone had seen enough of the spirit of opposition that had been awakened to render it necessary for him to make an elaborate speech on moving the second reading, directed mainly against the amendment of which notice had been given by Lord Grosvenor, the eldest son of the Marquis of Westminster. This amendment, which was to be seconded by Lord Stanley, was to the effect "that it was inexpedient to consider this Bill until the House had before it the whole scheme of representation;" that is to say, that it was inexpedient to break up the Reform legislation into two parts, to separate the question of the franchise from the question of redistribution. Mr. Kinglake, a supporter of Government, moved an amendment to the same effect, though he was ready to postpone redistribution until the second reading had been carried. This compromise was accepted by Government. It is not necessary to go through the points that Mr. Gladstone raised; for to do so would be to anticipate the course of the debate, so exhaustive and voluminous was his eloquence. The former part of the speech was of a more general kind than that which had introduced the Bill originally; it was a sort of answer to Mr. Lowe and to those who had denied the necessity and the demand for Reform, and it dwelt with immense force upon the pledges given in past years by Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Horsman, and others, now strenuous opposers of Reform in any shape. Mr. Gladstone had previously denounced as a "deplorable arrangement," "a gross blunder springing from that kind of cleverness which so often outwits itself," the design of the opponents of the Bill to place themselves under the guidance of "the representatives of two of our noblest and most ancient houses." Indeed, it looked very much like a combination of aristocracy against democracy, when from the Liberal side of the House rose Lord Grosvenor to move an amendment, and from the Conservative side rose Lord Stanley to second it. Lord Grosvenor's speech was not specially effective, except from the family weight of the speaker. It mainly turned upon the affront put upon the Whig families by Government, in not having sufficiently taken them into their counsels. Lord Stanley was more telling. Alluding to the coming general election, he protested against the chance of allowing the extension of the suffrage to be dealt with by one Parliament, and the redistribution of seats by another. The Franchise Bill, if carried, would confer a great increase of power upon the Radical element in the constituencies—an increase of power which would lead to the return of a much more Radical Parliament than the present, pledged by the very circumstances of its existence to extreme measures. Was it safe to leave to its tender mercies a question involving so many complicated interests as that of the redistribution of seats? Mr. John Stuart Mill, in an able speech, followed Lord Stanley, and had no difficulty in showing this to be the real grievance and bugbear of the great families who had still so much influence over British politics, though Lord Stanley had hardly ventured to put it into such a definite form; but were there any real grounds for this fear of the working classes? For it was at bottom that and nothing else. The blue book of Mr. Lambert, said Mr. Mill, after an eloquent vindication of the rights of the workmen as a class, had revealed the fact that but twenty-six per cent. of the electors were of the working classes.
Mr. Mill's speech may be said to have established his parliamentary reputation, and many of the subsequent speakers took great pains to answer his arguments. Indeed, it was necessary to do so, if the opposition to the Bill was to be justified, for Mr. Mill's speech had been a vigorous attempt to show that on many important questions legislation would be wiser and better if the working classes were more represented. Education, sanitary reform, the diminution of pauperism, the diminution of crime—in a word, the social side of politics—would, he maintained, be better handled by a reformed than by an unreformed Parliament; and, if so, an approach to democracy should rather be welcomed than feared. These were the points chiefly dwelt upon by the Opposition speakers—by the orthodox Conservatives like Sir Hugh Cairns, by Mr. Disraeli, by the "Cave," represented by Mr. Laing, Mr. Horsman, Lord Elcho, and notably Mr. Lowe.
Mr. Disraeli's summing up of the case of the Opposition was clever, but not very telling; it was, except at the end, too vague. The end, however, gave Mr. Gladstone what he wanted. Quoting from the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and addressing himself to Mr. Gladstone's famous assertion that the working classes were "the same flesh and blood" as the upper classes, Mr. Disraeli said:—"Sir George Lewis would not have built up the constituent body on the rights of man. He would not have entrusted the destiny of the country to the judgment of a numerical majority. He would not have counselled the Whig party to reconstruct their famous institutions on the American model, and to profit in time by the wisdom of the children of their loins. Sir, it is because I wish to avert from this country such calamities and disasters that I shall vote for the amendment of the noble lord."
When the leader of the Tory party sat down, Mr. Gladstone rose and took for his starting-point the last words of Mr. Disraeli. "At last, sir," he said, "we have obtained a clear declaration from an authoritative source; and we now know that a Bill which, in a country with five millions of adult males, proposes to add to the present limited constituency 200,000 of the middle class and 200,000 of the working class is, in the judgment of the leader of the Tory party, a Bill to reconstruct the Constitution on American principles." The speech which followed was, for sheer eloquence, one of the very greatest of Mr. Gladstone's parliamentary efforts; it began at one o'clock in the morning, and, after reviewing the whole course of the debate, it ended at three. "You may drive us from our seats," he ended, "you may slay, you may bury the measure that we have introduced. But we will write upon its gravestone for an epitaph this line, with certain confidence in its fulfilment—
'Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!'