During the interval between the 8th and the 20th it became evident that the reform movement, quickened by the action of the upper house, would rise to a dangerous height. A vote of confidence in the government, brought forward by Lord Ebrington, eldest son of Earl Fortescue, was carried by a majority of 131, and speeches were made in support of it which encouraged, in the form of prediction, every kind of popular agitation short of open violence. In the course of this debate Macaulay, the future historian of the English revolution, delivered one of those highly wrought orations which adorn the political literature of reform. The excitement in London was great, but kept for the most part within reasonable bounds, partly by the firm and sensible attitude of Melbourne as home secretary. The mob, however, vented its rage in window breaking and personal assaults on some prominent anti-reformers, one of whom, Lord Londonderry, was knocked off his horse by a volley of stones. In the provinces more serious disturbances broke out. At Derby the rioters actually stormed the city jail, releasing the prisoners, and were only repelled in their attack on the county jail by the fire of a military force. At Nottingham they wreaked their vengeance on the Duke of Newcastle by burning down Nottingham Castle, which belonged to him, and were proceeding to further outrages when they were overawed by a regiment of hussars. A great open-air meeting of the political union was held at Birmingham, while the bill was still before the house of lords, at which a refusal to pay taxes was openly recommended in the last resort, and votes of thanks were passed to Althorp and Russell. The former, in acknowledging it, wisely condemned such lawless proceedings; the latter unwisely made use of a phrase which gravely displeased the king: "It is impossible that the whisper of faction should prevail against the voice of a nation". Both were called to account in the house of commons for holding correspondence with an illegal association, but disclaimed any recognition of the Birmingham union as a body, and fully admitted the responsibility of the government for the maintenance of order.
This assurance was about to be tested by the most atrocious outbreak which disgraced the cause of reform. On Saturday, the 29th, Wetherell, as recorder of Bristol, entered the city to open the commission on the following Monday. Of all the anti-reformers, he was perhaps the most vehement and unpopular, but his visit to Bristol was in discharge of an official duty, and had been sanctioned expressly by the government. Nevertheless, the cavalcade which escorted him was assailed by a furious rabble on its way to the guildhall, and from the guildhall to the mansion house, where he was to dine. For a while, they were kept back or driven back by a large force of constables, but, on some of these being withdrawn, their ferocity increased, and threatened a general assault on the mansion house. In vain did the mayor address them and read the riot act; they overpowered the constables, and carried the mansion house by storm, the mayor and the magistrates escaping by the back premises, while the recorder prudently left the city. At last the military were called upon to act, and two troops of cavalry were ordered out. But the military as well as the civil authorities showed a strange weakness and vacillation in presence of an emergency only to be compared with the Lord George Gordon riots of a by-gone generation. After making one charge and dispersing the populace for the moment, the cavalry were sent back to their barracks, and when one troop was recalled on the following (Sunday) morning, the rioters were all but masters of the city. Many of them, having plundered the cellars of the mansion house, were infuriated by drink; they broke into the Bridewell, the new city jail, and the county jail, set free the prisoners, and fired the buildings. They next proceeded to burn down the mansion house, the bishop's palace, the custom-house, and the excise-office. The cathedral is said to have been saved by the resolute stand of a few volunteers hastily rallied by one of the officials. In the midst of all this havoc, the cavalry were almost passive, Colonel Brereton, the commanding officer, waiting for orders from the magistrates, and actually withdrawing a part of his small force when it was most needed, because it had incurred the special hatred of the criminals.
On the morning of Monday, the guardians of law and order seemed to have recovered their courage; at all events, the cavalry, no longer forbidden to charge, and headed by Major Mackworth, soon cleared the streets, fresh troops poured in, and the police made a number of arrests. The reign of anarchy was at an end, having lasted three days. When a return of casualties was made up, it showed that only twelve were known to have lost their lives, besides ninety-four disabled, most of whom were the victims of excessive drunkenness or of the flames kindled by themselves. But, though the riot was quelled, it was some proof of its deliberate promotion, and of the aims which its ringleaders had in view, that parties of them issuing out from Bristol attempted to propagate sedition in Somersetshire. A special commission sent down to Bristol condemned to death several of the worst malefactors; four were hanged and eighty-eight sentenced either to transportation or to lighter punishments; and Colonel Brereton destroyed himself rather than face the verdict of a court-martial.
On the same Monday, the 31st, Burdett took the chair at a meeting in Lincoln's Inn Fields, called for the purpose of forming a "National Political Union" in London. Soon afterwards, however, he retired from the organisation, on the nominal ground that half of the seats on its council were allotted to the working classes, but more probably because he was beginning to be alarmed by the violence of his associates. His fears were justified by a manifesto summoning a mass meeting of the working-classes to assemble at White Conduit House on November 7, for the purpose of ratifying a new and revolutionary bill of rights. This time the government was on its guard, and Melbourne plainly informed a working-class deputation that such a meeting would certainly be seditious, and perhaps treasonable, in law. The plan was therefore abandoned, and soon afterwards a royal proclamation was issued, declaring organised political associations, assuming powers independent of the civil magistrates, to be "unconstitutional and illegal". The political unions proposed to consider themselves outside the scope of the proclamation, which had little visible effect, though it was not without its value as proving that the government was a champion of order as well as of liberty.
NEGOTIATIONS WITH WAVERERS.
During the short recess of less than six weeks political discontent, constantly growing, was aggravated by industrial distress and gloomy forebodings of a mysterious pestilence, already known as cholera. A voluminous correspondence was carried on between the king and Grey on the means of silencing the political unions and smoothing the passage of a new reform bill. It was not in the king's nature to conceal his own conservative leanings, especially on the imaginary danger of increasing the metropolitan constituencies, and Grey complained more than once of these sentiments being confided, or at least becoming known, to opponents of the government. At the same time attempts were being made not only by the king himself, but also by peers of moderate views to arrange a compromise which might save the honour of the government, and yet mitigate the hostility of the tory majority in the upper house. In these negotiations behind the scenes, Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Carr, Bishop of Worcester, took part, as representing the episcopal bench, while Lords Harrowby and Wharncliffe, in temporary concert with Chandos, professed to speak for the "waverers" among peers. As little of importance resulted from their well-meant efforts, and as nearly all the supposed "waverers," including the bishops, drifted into open opposition, it is the less necessary to dwell at length on a very tedious chapter in the history of parliamentary reform. Suffice it to say that when parliament reassembled on December 6, 1831, the prospects of the forthcoming bill were no brighter than in October, except so far as the danger of rejecting it had become more apparent.
The final reform bill introduced by Lord John Russell on the 12th was identical in its principle and its essential features with the former ones. The chief alteration was the maintenance of the house of commons at its full strength of 658 members. This enabled its framers not only to reduce the number of wholly disfranchised boroughs (schedule A) from sixty to fifty-six, and that of semi-disfranchised boroughs (schedule B) from forty-six to thirty, but to assign a larger number of members to the prosperous towns enfranchised. The bill was at once read a first time and passed its second reading after two nights' debate on the 16th by a majority of 324 to 162, or exactly two to one. But, after a short adjournment for the Christmas holidays, a debate of twenty-two nights took place in committee, and the opposition made skilful use of the many vulnerable points in the new scheme. Every variation from the original bill, even by way of concession, was subjected to minute criticism, and especially the fact that the schedules were now framed, not on a scale of population only, but on a mixed basis, partly resting on population, partly on the number of inhabited houses, and partly on the local contribution to assessed taxes.
It was easy to pick such a compound scale to pieces, to uphold the claims of one venal borough against another equally venal, and even to reproach the government with inconsistency in relying on the census of 1831, instead of on that of 1821—a course which the opposition had specially urged upon them. But it was not so easy to combat the irresistible arguments in favour of the bill on its general merits, to ignore the reasonable concessions on points of detail which it embodied, or to explain away the patent fact that no measure less stringent would satisfy the people. There was therefore an air of unreality about this debate, spirited as it was, nor is it easy to understand what practical object enlightened men like Peel could have sought in prolonging it. He well knew, and admitted in private correspondence, that reform was inevitable; he must have known that a sham reform would be a stimulus to revolutionary agitation; yet he strove to mutilate the bill so that it might pass its second reading in the house of lords, and there undergo such further mutilation as would destroy its efficacy as a settlement of the question. For the present he yielded. No attempt was made to obstruct the bill on its third reading, when the division showed 355 votes to 239, and it passed the commons on March 23 without any division.
THE THIRD REFORM BILL.
Such a result would have been conclusive in any parliament during the second half of the nineteenth century. A house of commons elected by the old constituencies, and under the old franchises, had declared in favour of a well-considered reform bill. The same constituencies voting under the same franchises had returned an increased majority in support of the same, or very nearly the same measure; this measure, with slight variations, had been adopted by an immense preponderance of votes in the new house of commons: yet its fate in the house of lords was very doubtful. Ever since the autumn of 1831, the expedient of swamping the house of lords had been seriously contemplated. It was supremely distasteful to the king, and Grey himself, in common with a majority of the cabinet, was strongly averse from it. Then came the intervention of Harrowby and Wharncliffe, the failure of which strengthened the hands of the more determined reformers in the cabinet, and induced the king to give way. Having already created a few peers on the coronation, he consented to a limited addition in the last resort, but with the reservation that eldest sons of existing peers should be called up in the first instance, and upon the assurance that, reform once carried, all further encroachments of the democracy should be resisted by the government. He even authorised Grey to inform Harrowby that he had given the prime minister this power, in the hope that it would never be needed, and that at least the second reading of the bill would be carried in the house of lords without it. His objection to a permanent augmentation of the peerage remained unshaken, and Grey promised to propose no augmentation at all before the second reading.