MEETING OF PARLIAMENT—RE-ELECTION OF MR. MANNERS SUTTON AS SPEAKER.
A.D. 1833
The first reformed parliament was opened by commission on the 29th of January. The first business of the commons was to elect a speaker. Mr. Manners Sutton had not been advanced to the peerage, although such a mark of honour is usually bestowed on those who have filled the chair for so long a period, and with such distinguished applause. At the general election he had been returned one of the members for the university of Cambridge; and ministers having obtained his consent to put him in nomination, resolved to support his re-election as chairman. This intention was not concealed; and on the meeting of parliament Mr. Hume moved that Mr. Littleton, one of the members for Staffordshire, should take the chair. The Radicals, of whom Mr. Hume was one of the leaders, took this step on the score of Mr. Manners Sutton’s politics, considering it a matter of the greatest importance that the speaker should concur generally in the political sentiments entertained by a majority of members. Mr. Hume’s motion was seconded by Mr. O’Connell, who denounced the intention of government as “another instance of the paltry truckling of the present administration.” On the other side, Lord Morpeth moved, and Sir Francis Burdett seconded the motion, that Mr. Manners Sutton should take the chair. In doing so, they insisted on the admitted fact of his superior qualification, as well as the candid and impartial conduct which he had observed during the late political struggles. Mr. Littleton himself requested Mr. Hume to withdraw his motion; but that gentleman declined to do so. Seeing the house universally in the favour of Mr. Manners Sutton, the Radicals now chiefly confined themselves to the question of the pension. The attorney and solicitor-general argued that there was no feasible ground for these objections, and asserted that he would have no claim to his retiring annuity. By act of parliament, any speaker was entitled to his salary till a successor was elected, and Mr. Manners Sutton, being thus entitled to his salary, he could have no claim for a pension. On a division, Mr. Manners Sutton was re-elected by a majority of two hundred and forty-one against thirty-one.
OPENING OF THE REFORMED PARLIAMENT BY THE KING IN PERSON.
The first session of the new parliament was opened by the king in person, on the 5th of February. His speech on this occasion took a comprehensive view of our foreign and domestic relations, in which the affairs of Holland, the approaching termination of the charters of the Bank and the East India Company, the temporalities of the church, and the state of Ireland, were prominently introduced.
In the house of lords the address was voted almost unanimously, a slight discussion only being elicited by the sentiments of Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of Wellington, against the foreign policy of government, and especially that regarding Portugal and Holland. Such harmony, however, did not exist in the commons. A part of the speech which pointed at the adoption of extraordinary measures to suppress insubordination, excited violent indignation among a large portion of the Irish members. Mr. O’Connell denounced the address as “bloody, brutal, and unconstitutional.” He concluded by moving an amendment, that the house do now resolve itself into a committee of the whole house to consider of the address to his majesty. Mr. Stanley replied in a speech of caustic severity, which the agitators of Ireland have never forgotten or forgiven. He argued that coercion was necessary; that crime could not be put down in Ireland but by the strong arm of the law. Colonel Davis considered Mr. Stanley’s speech as an insult to Ireland, and as proving that he was totally unfit for office. He was opposed to the repeal of the union; but unless justice were dealt out to Ireland by measures of relief being proposed, he would vote against the coercive policy contemplated by government. Mr. Roebuck expressed himself to the same effect: he would not join with ministers in doing what must produce a civil war in Ireland: if they did not take care, they would find the people rise up in such terrible array that they would not know where to turn. Lord Althorp declared that it was the intention of ministers to remove every grievance they possibly could; but, he asked, was it not a grievance that, in Ireland, life and property were not secure—that murder, burglary, and arson should exist in every part of that country? If it was their duty to remove grievances, ought they not to remove this grievance also? The debate was continued by adjournment on the three following days; the general strain of the arguments adduced coinciding with those expressed on the first day of the debate. The opposition to the address was chiefly conducted by Irish members, although they received likewise the support of Messrs. Hume, Cobbett, Bulwer, Tennyson, and Clay. Mr. Bulwer told ministers that the independent representatives of the people in that house, three hundred in number, were allied to no old party, and attached to no superstitious observance of Whig names; and that these members could not, night after night, hear grievances stated by the Irish members, which, received no other answers except demands for soldiery, without dropping off in serious defection from the ministerial majority. Mr. Tennyson said, that he had no doubt of the good intention of ministers; but he could not approve of their conduct in pressing the house to adopt the address. At the same time he could not support the amendment of Mr. O’Connell, and he therefore proposed another to this effect:—“That the house should declare its readiness to sanction such measures for restoring social order in Ireland, as might appear, on mature deliberation and inquiry, necessary, and to entrust his majesty’s official servants with additional power for that purpose, and to employ its best energies to the putting an end to the disturbances which affect that country; that, while the house would give a willing ear and earnest attention to the complaints and petitions of the Irish people, with the view to promoting an efficient remedy, it was prepared to resist by every means in its power all lawless attempts to effect a repeal of the legislative union between the two countries.” Mr. Macaulay taunted Mr. O’Connell with not having ventured to bring the question of repeal before the house. He asked, what was meant by the watch-word of repeal of the union between Great Britain and Ireland. If those who used it meant a complete separation, or a species of Hibernian republic, their conduct was both comprehensible and consistent; but if, as they asserted, they only meant two separate independent legislatures, under the same monarch, the motion was inconsistent with the first principles of the science of government. After having shown this inconsistency by a chain of conclusive reasoning, he said, that he admitted Ireland had grievances to remove; but, he asked, was he in the meantime to see the law outraged and despised by a misguided multitude? Talk of the distribution of church property in a country where no property was respected! and be told that to enforce the laws against the robber, the murderer, and the incendiary, was to drive an injured people into civil war! Did those who talked thus wildly recollect that sixty murders, or attempts at murder, and six hundred burglaries, or attempts at burglary, were committed in one county alone, in the space of a few weeks? This was worse than civil war. He would rather live in the midst of many civil wars he had read of, than in some parts of Ireland. Civil war had commenced, and if not checked, it would end in the ruin of the empire. Mr. Shiel, in reference to repeal, entrenched himself behind quotations from speeches delivered by Lord Grey at the time of the union, in which he predicted that it would only lead to distress, suspicion, and resentment, and that the people of Ireland would seek an opportunity of recovering rights which they would believe to have been wrested from them by force. The interest of the debate ended with Mr. Shiel’s speech, although addresses were subsequently made by Mr. Grant, Mr. Hume, and Sir Robert Peel. On a division, Mr. O’Connell’s amendment was lost by a majority of four hundred and twenty-eight against forty; and Mr. Tennyson’s, by three hundred and ninety-three against sixty. On the bringing up of the report, Mr. Cobbett moved that the whole of the address should be rejected, and that another which he had concocted should be adopted. This crude amendment was negatived by an overwhelming majority: only twenty-three in a full house voted for it.
CASE OF MR. PEASE.
During the general election, the southern division of the county of Durham had returned Mr. Pease, a gentleman who belonged to the Society of Friends. On the 9th of February, when he appeared to be sworn in, as a Friend he refused to take an oath, but offered to give his solemn affirmation. He was desired by the speaker to withdraw, as no affirmation could be made without the sanction of the house. A committee was appointed, on the motion of Lord Althorp, to report what precedents were to be found on the journals, and what was the state of the law in regard to Friends being allowed to substitute affirmation for oath. The report of this committee was taken into consideration on the 14th, and its chairman, Mr. Wynn, moved that Mr. Pease was, on making his solemn affirmation, entitled to take his seat, without taking those oaths which were demanded from the other members of the house. Mr. Wynn stated, at great length, the reasons which induced him to make this motion, and the solicitor-general agreed in his views. It was quite clear, the latter said, that at the time of passing the 7th and 8th William III., Friends could not sit in parliament, having been excluded, along with all other dissenters, by the 30th Charles II.; but under the act of William they would have been admissible, if its provisions, as they ought to have been, had been construed liberally. At all events, the act of George II. removed every doubt: it was evident that the legislature, in passing that act, intended to put Friends on the same footing in England with all other dissenters, except Catholics; such being the case, the act ought to be construed in accordance with the intention of the legislature in passing it. The motion to allow Mr. Pease to make his solemn affirmation in place of the usual oath was agreed to unanimously.