The Protectionists were unable to make any impression upon the house or the country favourable to a reversal of free trade, or the removal from the landed gentry of the taxes which they professed bore most heavily upon them.
In connection with the protectionist agitation, the navigation laws, and their repeal, held an angry prominence. The shipowners agitated the peculiar burdens on shipping almost as loudly as the landlords complained of the peculiar burdens on land. The cause of the shipowners was espoused by the landlords, and among them the Earl of Derby was the most prominent. The act of 1849, for the removal of maritime restrictions, was discussed in both houses, and the shipowners and landed interests demanded that the legislature should retrace its steps on that subject. The house, however, maintained the policy of 1849.
GENERAL PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY OF 1851.
In the foregoing notices of proceedings in parliament, reference was made to them in connection with the great subjects which agitated the country at large. Those notices necessarily abridge the relation of this section of the chapter.
Although the session was not fruitful in legislation, a considerable range of important subjects was embraced by the discussions which took place. The ministry was desirous to improve the laws, and carry some useful measures. Private members in vain sought opportunity to direct the attention of parliament to practical and useful legislation: the great agitations of the day, and mere party disputes, consumed the time of the house. The Protectionists caught at so many opportunities for prolonged debates, for the purposes of gaining some pecuniary advantage, and of worrying the ministry, that the public business was greatly impeded. The Peelites, especially in the commons, were hostile to the ecclesiastical titles bill. That small section of the house which prided itself in following the policy of Sir Robert Peel in everything, belonged, in almost every individual case, to the Puseyite party in the established church, and viewed with apparently bitter animosity the attempt of Lord John Russell to curb the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy. Mr. Gladstone and Sir James Graham, always hostile to the religious liberties of Protestant dissenters, led the opposition to the government measure. It was obvious enough that the house and the country were resolved upon the passing of the bill, but the Peelite and Puseyite orators resisted it at every stage, with a zeal and activity which surpassed that of the Roman Catholic members. In vain the government pressed upon the house the urgency of the public business, and the number of the measures which ought to occupy attention: Puseyites and Protectionists maintained debates on every possible occasion, rendering legislative measures on a great variety of subjects impracticable.
The ministerial crisis has been already referred to, and its termination, by the announcement (on the 3rd of March) that the government had resumed office.
The defeat of the government on the motion of Mr. Locke King, for leave to bring in a bill to assimilate the elective franchise in boroughs and counties upon a tenpound value occupation has incidentally been noticed in connection with the ministerial crisis. Mr. Locke King brought in his bill, and moved the second reading on the 2nd of April. The debate which ensued was remarkable from the circumstance that Lord John Eussell pledged himself to bring in, at the beginning of the next session, a bill to extend the franchise. This pledge, up to the close of the session of 1859, more than eight years, has never been redeemed. The excuse urged has been always the same—the pressure of public business—an excuse, the sincerity of which cannot be accepted by the most credulous friends of his lordship’s party. Mr. Disraeli declared that he desired to see the “great settlement of 1831” improved, in the sense of confirming “the proper territorial influence and power,” which he assured the house was essential to the liberties of the English nation. Mr. Disraeli desired an improvement of the Reform Bill which would consolidate the power of a class: Lord John promised a reform which would increase the power of the people. Persuaded by his lordship’s specious promises, those of Mr. Fox Maule, and other members of the government, the Liberals supported the government, and Mr. Locke King’s bill was lost by a vast majority. The speech of Mr. Bright much conduced to this result, as he showed that the ten-pound occupants, in counties, would be under the control of the landed interest, which Mr. Bright denounced as opposed to the material interests and civil and religious liberties of the people.
Mr. Henry Berkeley endeavoured to secure another measure of reform—the conducting of elections by vote by ballot. The government resisted this, and Lord John Eussell, with a tone of ridicule and acrimony, offered the motion an ostentatious opposition. The government was beaten by a majority of eighty-seven to fifty. The bill was read a first time, but Mr. Berkeley did not proceed with it, the same pretence set up by the government on Locke King’s motion soothing the reformers.
Mr. Cobden signalized himself by proposing a resolution pledging the house to arbitration in case of national differences. Mr. Cobden’s motion was in itself impracticable, his statistics partial, and his tone personal and unjust to the statesman by whom our foreign relations had been conducted. Lord Palmerston replied in one of the most happy speeches he ever delivered, vindicating himself from the implications made by Mr. Cobden. Mr. Roebuck supported Mr. Cobden, whom, and whose party, he has so often opposed since, when their peculiar opinions were advocated in a similar manner. The motion was withdrawn, in consequence of the conviction of all parties being strongly expressed that the course proposed by Mr. Cobden was utterly impossible.