The concession made by Mr. Disraeli was not accepted without a protest on the part of some of his own followers, and a still louder protest on the part of the consistent anti-reformers, Lord Cranborne and Mr. Lowe. Lord Cranborne insisted upon at least an adjournment, that the House might not vote blindfold; and Mr. Lowe spent the three days' recess in preparing a new philippic. Both sides of the House came in for their share of reproof from this impartial censor; both alike, he said, were weary of the subject of Reform, and willing to adopt any solution of the question; both were afraid of a dissolution; both alike were miserably anxious not to give offence to the classes about to be enfranchised. He declared that no great number of members really and honestly either desired or approved the change about to be made. Which party in the House, save and except a few of the extreme Liberals below the gangway, really wanted household suffrage and the enfranchisement of the new voters? The question had changed since last year. "The question now is not—what is the opinion of the élite of the working classes? but—what is the opinion of the unskilled labour class? For instance, in the borough which I represent you will, I rather think, give us some Wiltshire labourers with 8s. a week wages. Will any gentleman favour me with a précis of the politics of these men?" It was like 1866 over again; but Mr. Lowe was powerless to change the intentions of the House. The amendment was adopted without a division on May 20th, though Mr. Disraeli attempted, a short time afterwards, to tone it down and practically to replace what it had abolished, by making it optional to continue the compounding system. The attempt, doubtless suggested to him by some timid follower, was unsuccessful; and the law came to be that "no owner of a dwelling in a parish, either wholly or partially within a borough, is to be henceforth rated to the poor rate instead of the occupier." In this way the vexed question of "personal rating" was solved, and household suffrage in its simple form was established in the boroughs.
With regard to the county franchise, the history of the Bill was not so full of incident. The original proposal of Government had been to give the franchise to "rated occupiers of premises of any tenure within the county of the rateable value of fifteen pounds and upwards;" the words "any tenure" referring to the various modes—freehold, copyhold, leasehold, annual tenancy, etc.—on which premises may be held. There were also various "fancy franchises" proposed in the counties as in the boroughs, but these were very soon withdrawn. The substantial proposal of Government was modified in various ways. On Mr. Colvile's motion, the franchise was extended to copyhold tenants of premises of the value of £5 per annum—that is, to such persons as, without being freeholders, were practically the owners of their dwellings; and very soon afterwards Government acceded to the proposal of Mr. Hussey Vivian to extend the franchise to "leaseholders under sixty years' leases of lands worth £5 a year." Finally Mr. Locke King proposed to substitute £10 for £15 as the figure down to which county occupiers were to have a vote; and though he did not press his motion, he obtained from Government the concession of reducing the figure from £15 to £12.
The part of the Bill that related to the redistribution of seats was very roughly handled during the early stages of the Bill, and the treatment it received in committee was equally severe. But when all was done, there still remained much that failed to satisfy the reforming party in the country. Government proposed to deal with thirty new seats—namely, with the seven provided for them by the total disfranchisement of Lancaster, Reigate, Great Yarmouth, and Totnes, and the twenty-three from the same number of small boroughs which were to lose one of their two members. This number was soon enlarged. On May 31st Mr. Laing, member for the Wick Boroughs, moved that "no borough which had a smaller population than 10,000 at the census of 1861 shall return more than one member to Parliament." This motion, which gave thirty-eight seats to the House in place of twenty-three, was carried by a great majority (306 to 179), though the Chancellor of the Exchequer opposed it. There, however, the House paused in the process of disfranchisement. Mr. Serjeant Gaselee's motion to extend the principle of Mr. Laing's amendment, by wholly depriving towns of less than 5,000 inhabitants of their member, was not carried.
Mr. Disraeli's treatment of the delicate task of redistribution was this. He proposed to give twenty-five seats to the counties, two new members being given to each of the following: Cheshire, Derbyshire, Devonshire, Essex, West Kent, North Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Somersetshire, Staffordshire, East Surrey, and the West Riding of Yorkshire, and one new seat being given to South Lancashire. A member apiece was to be given to thirteen large manufacturing or commercial towns, till now unrepresented: Barnsley, Burnley, Dewsbury, Darlington, Gravesend, Hartlepool, Keighley, Luton, Middlesborough, St. Helens, Stalybridge, Stockton, and Wednesbury. Chelsea and Hackney were to be constituted boroughs, each with two members. Salford and Merthyr Tydvil were each to return two instead of one. The Universities of London and Durham were to combine to return one member.
This scheme enfranchised a certain number of new towns, and its county redistribution in some cases gave a more direct voice to the industrial population; but it left the great manufacturing towns of Birmingham, Manchester, and the rest exactly where they were, and it retained what was thought to be too much power in the hands of the small boroughs. Mr. Disraeli, however, declined the proposal of Mr. Laing to give a third member to the six great manufacturing and commercial towns—Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Bristol; and again he opposed Mr. Hadfield's and Mr. Berkeley's proposals in favour of Sheffield and Bristol. And when he assented to Mr. Horsfall's motion to give a third member to Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, it was only on condition that the members given to them should be taken away from some of the other towns which Government admitted to have claims for increased representation.
The remaining time during which the Bill was in committee was occupied with a discussion of the complicated question of boundaries. It was necessary, in order to give completeness to the Bill, to examine the boundaries of existing boroughs and counties, as well as to determine those of the new boroughs created by the Bill. For this purpose, after much debating on minute points connected with the rights conferred by different kinds of ownership in boroughs and counties, a Parliamentary Commission was appointed "to inquire into the boundaries of all the boroughs of England and Wales, with a view to ascertain whether the boundaries were to be enlarged;" to investigate also the local conditions of the new boroughs, and to ascertain what alterations should be made in the divisions of counties. The report of the Boundary Commissioners was to be laid before Parliament, and, till its adoption, provisional regulations were made on the points in question. At last, at the end of a long and weary Session, the moment arrived—the "supreme and solemn moment," as Mr. Beresford Hope described it—when the Reform Bill was to be read a third time. It was the evening of the 15th of July. Mr. Disraeli's success was at hand. But, first of all, although no more divisions were to be faced, and although the passing of the Bill was certain, Government knew they were not to escape a whipping from exasperated enemies and candid friends. In the presence of a crowded House Lord Cranborne rose to deliver his soul. From the day when he had resigned office, and refused to work with Mr. Disraeli, the rooted antipathy between the late Secretary for India and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been growing in strength. In incisive language, and with the slow measured action to which his tall figure so readily lent itself, he deliberately charged the Tory leaders with a betrayal of their trust. He ridiculed the idea of the Bill being called "a Conservative triumph." "The real parent of the Bill, as we are about to pass it," he said, "is not the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Mr. Disraeli], but the member for South Lancashire [Mr. Gladstone]." The Bill that had been offered to the House in March was wholly unlike the Bill that was now waiting its final approval. The "checks and counterpoises," of which Mr. Disraeli had spoken so confidently, were gone. Mr. Gladstone had demanded ten alterations in the Bill, and had carried nine of them—the lodger franchise, the abolition of the compound householder, the provision against traffic in votes, the abolition of the "taxing franchise," the omission of the dual vote, enlarged redistribution of seats, reduced county franchise, the omission of voting papers, of the educational and of the savings bank franchises. "If the omission of these clauses, and the adoption of the principles of Mr. Bright, be a triumph, then the Conservative party has never in the whole course of its history won a triumph so signal as this." Then, in words of profound seriousness, he went on: "I desire to protest, in the most earnest language which I am capable of using, against the political morality on which the manœuvres of this year have been based. If you borrow your political ethics from the ethics of the political adventurer, you may depend upon it the whole of your representative institutions will crumble beneath your feet.... Even if I deemed this measure to be most advantageous, I still should deeply regret that the position of the Executive should have been so degraded as it has been in the present Session. I should deeply regret to find that the House of Commons has applauded a policy of legerdemain; and I should, above all things, regret that this great gift to the people—if gift you think it—should have been purchased at the cost of a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals."
This, from a seceding Conservative, from one who, even in opposition, retained the confidence of the Conservative back benches, was severe; and no less severe was the language of Mr. Lowe, who spoke immediately after. If Lord Cranborne was bitter because he, and genuine Conservatives with him, had been sacrificed to keep, as he said, "political adventurers" in office, Mr. Lowe was furious because he had succeeded in turning out the Liberal Government in 1866 only to make way for a more revolutionary Tory Government in 1867. "Was it to be conceived," he said, "that right honourable gentlemen, who had given no indications of the extreme facility of changing their opinions and lending themselves to the art of treachery, would, for the sake of keeping a few of them in office for a short time and giving some small patronage to half a dozen lawyers, have been prepared to sacrifice all the principles, all the convictions, all the traditions of their lives; while others were prepared to turn round upon their order and the institutions of their country, merely for the purpose of sitting behind these right honourable gentlemen, and hearing, with the knowledge that it is all true, language such as that the noble lord [Cranborne] has used to-night?" However, Mr. Lowe had, in the midst of his wrath, what may be called "lucid intervals" of foresight and practical reflection upon the consequences of the Bill. Every one admitted that it was to pass; every one admitted that its effect would be striking and immediate. What, then, ought to be the attitude of Parliament and public opinion? Clearly, to soften "the blow which had been levelled at our ancient institutions" as much as possible. "We must," said Mr. Lowe, in an afterwards famous epigram—"we must persuade our masters to learn their letters."
Several other speeches followed, none of them very complimentary to Government, and Mr. Disraeli was not happy in his attempt to answer them. He had to perform the impossible task of showing that the Conservative party had in this measure acted in a purely Conservative spirit, and in a manner consistent with previous professions. Instead of taking up the tenable ground that the Conservative party had seen good cause, on an examination of figures and facts, to change their old opinions, he boldly asserted that the old opinions remained unchanged and were embodied in this Bill. With a noble audacity he declared that even in 1859—the year when Lord Derby's first Reform Bill was projected—"the Cabinet was unanimous ... that if we attempted to reduce the borough qualification which then existed, we must have recourse to household suffrage;" an assertion which it is sufficient to say was flatly contradicted soon afterwards by Lord Carnarvon in the House of Lords. But neither questionable paradoxes on Mr. Disraeli's part, nor fierce invective on Mr. Lowe's, had any influence on the success of the Bill. When the Speaker put the momentous words from the chair, "That this Bill do now pass," only one obstinate voice cried "No;" and a shout of "Aye," audible far beyond the limits of the House, gave Mr. Disraeli the happy assurance that his Bill had passed the Commons.
The Bill had passed the Commons, but it was not yet law. Indeed, when Lord Derby rose to move the second reading of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords on July 22nd—exactly a week after it had left the Commons—he found his own party by no means so manageable as Mr. Disraeli had found them in the Lower House. The debate was long and the speeches were able, and though in the end the second reading passed without a division, yet the speeches were very nearly unanimous in disapproving of the measure. Lord Cairns, indeed, approved the Bill warmly, and made no secret of his hopes from "the residuum." "We know that on most subjects there is a considerable difference of opinion between what are called the higher artisan class and those below them," said he; that is, we know that there is a gulf fixed between the bricklayer and the bricklayer's labourer. Lord Cairns appealed, in the name of the Conservatives, from the bricklayer to the bricklayer's labourer. This, he said, was the distinction between the Bill of 1866 and the present Bill: the line of £7 rental would let in the "higher artisan class" only—a class presumed to be hostile to Conservatism; and household rating suffrage would let in the "class below them"—a class easily manageable at election times. This dangerous argument was, however, not generally supported in the House. Lord Shaftesbury said: "To proceed as is done by this Bill, to lift by the sudden jerk of an Act of Parliament the whole residuum of society up to the level of the honest, thrifty working-man, is, I believe, distasteful to the working-men themselves. I am sure it dishonours the suffrage." This was in the debate raised by Lord Grey's amendment, which was to the effect that "the Representation of the People Bill does not appear to the House to be calculated, in its present shape, to effect a permanent settlement of this important question, or to promote the future good government of the country." Lord Grey, however, did not mean to oppose the second reading, but only to show to the Commons what the Lords considered to be weak points in their Bill, and in the end, finding that the common opinion of the House accepted the Bill as inevitable, he withdrew his amendment—not, however, before Lord Carnarvon, one of the seceding Ministers, had spoken in words that almost echoed the furious charges of Lord Cranborne and Mr. Lowe in the other House. Speaking of Mr. Disraeli's assertion, to which we have already referred, that household suffrage had been the secret doctrine of the Conservatives ever since 1859, he gave it the most emphatic contradiction.
