Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century

by James Richard Joy

The condition of the representation, the rotten boroughs, as those in decay were called, and the pocket boroughs, a name applied to those which were the property of individuals, opened the way for shameless corruption. Where the electorate was small and the secret ballot unknown bribery had free rein. Seats were openly bought and sold. As early as 1770 the elder Pitt (Lord Chatham) had placed his finger upon this ailing spot in the English body politic, and had said, "Before the end of this century, either the Parliament will reform itself from within, or be reformed with a vengeance from without." His prediction was falsified by the reactionary effect of the French Revolution, which not only made the English aristocracy cautious about readjusting political arrangements, but kept the minds and hands of Englishmen so fully occupied with foreign affairs as to divert attention from their own domestic troubles. At the close of the long struggle with Napoleon the question came rapidly to the front. Financial distress and industrial depression made the populace restless and discontented. The glowing principles which had inspired the French Revolution in its early days with its watchwords of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," gained a deep lodgment in the popular mind. The dissatisfaction vented itself in attacks upon a political system which denied the right of representation to so large a proportion of the wealth-producing population.

The government at first turned a deaf ear to these appeals, then tried to suppress the agitation which swept through the great manufacturing towns. It was one of these bungling attempts to silence free speech in Manchester on August 16, 1819, which led to the trampling and sabring of many innocent persons by cavalrymen, the "Peterloo massacre," which the populace long cherished as a bloody score against, their aristocratic oppressors. For ten years more the democratic press continued to agitate even more bitterly for reform, and a lonely "radical" member of Parliament would bring forward his motions only to have them contemptuously thrust aside. In 1830, however, a ministry came into power which allowed nothing to stand in the way until the long awaited bill had become a law. The condition which contributed to its success, the incidents of the tremendous parliamentary struggle, and the men who carried it through, are all worthy of the most careful attention of the student of human affairs.

The death of George IV. (June 26, 1830) made way for his brother, William IV., and made necessary a general parliamentary election. The summer had seen a liberal revolution in Paris. The Bourbons had been thrust out and Louis Philippe had been accepted as the citizen-king of the French, governing under a liberal constitution. This revolution, and simultaneous movements throughout western Europe, touched an answering chord in the breasts of Englishmen, and the Tories found themselves in a minority when the new Parliament assembled in November. The Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, the last man from whom the popular cause could expect to receive any concessions. At the opening of the session the premier took occasion to declare his disbelief "that the state of representation could be improved or be rendered more satisfactory to the country at large than at the present moment." "I am fully convinced," he said, "that the country possesses a legislature which answers all the good purposes of legislation, and this to a greater degree than any legislature has answered in any other country whatever." He flatly declared his determined opposition to any measure of reform. Within a fortnight his government met its Waterloo and he resigned.

Earl Gray, the Whig premier who succeeded Wellington, came into office fully resolved to pass a Reform Bill. The responsibility of drafting the measure was intrusted to a young Whig commoner, Lord John Russell, a younger son of the Duke of Bedford, and a scion of one of the great Whig houses. Lord John Russell had entered Parliament in 1813, at the age of twenty-one, for one of the family boroughs. He was now in his thirty-seventh year, and his parliamentary career, if not brilliant for oratory, had at least been marked by intelligent devotion to high ideals. In 1819, before the echoes of Peterloo had died away, he had asked Parliament to disfranchise all boroughs of proved corruption, and transfer their representation to more deserving constituencies. A little later he proved to the House the corruption existing at Gram-pound, and secured the disfranchisement of that borough and the transfer of its voting rights to the great county of York. This was but a small step, but it opened the way to tremendous changes. He was determined, he said, to strip "the dead bones of a former state of England" of their political influence and give it to the "living energy of England of the nineteenth century, with its steam engines and its factories, its cotton and woolen cloths, its cutlery and its coal mines, its wealth and its intelligence." Session after session he returned to this text only to be as often defeated by the Tories. He was more successful in 1828 when he carried the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, relics of a bygone age when it was thought necessary to the safety of the nation to exclude from military or civil office all persons who did not take the communion in accordance with the ritual of the Established Church. "Lord John," as he came to be called in the course of his half-century of parliamentary life, would have advanced from the relief of Protestant dissenters to the emancipation of the Catholics, had not the Tories, in their dread of civil war in Ireland, forestalled him, and made the measure their own (April, 1829).

The first Reform Bill, which had been drafted by Russell, and worked over by Lord Durham and other ministers, was presented to the Commons on March 1, 1831. Its provisions had been kept profoundly secret, and the house was thronged to hear them explained in the low and measured tones of Lord John Russell. The nation was as eager as the immediate auditory to know how far the government would go in granting the popular demand. Touching upon some of the existing anomalies the speaker imagined a foreigner visiting England; having been impressed with British wealth, civilization, and renown, "Would not such a foreigner," he queried, "be much astonished if he were taken to a green mound and informed that it sent two members to the British Parliament? . . . . or if he walked into a park without the vestige of a dwelling and was told that it, too, sent two members to the British Parliament? But if he was surprised at this, how much more would he be astonished if he were carried into the north of England, where he would see large, flourishing towns, full of trade, activity, and intelligence, vast magazines of wealth and manufactures, and were told that these places sent no representatives to Parliament!"

By the provisions of the bill sixty boroughs with less than two thousand members were to lose both members, and forty-seven boroughs were to be reduced to a single member. Of the seats thus vacated eight were to be given to London, thirty-four to large towns, fifty-five to English counties, five to Scotland, three to Ireland, one to Wales. The franchise was to be extended to inhabitants of houses taxed at ten pounds a year, and to leaseholders and copyholders of counties. The changes added about half a million to the number of voters in the United Kingdom.

The country followed the progress of the debate with intense interest night after night. The bill passed to its second reading by a majority of one in the fullest house on record and the country gave itself up to illuminations and other expressions of joy. But the bill got no farther. The majority was too close for the comfort of the ministers, and having been defeated on a matter of detail, they confidently appealed to the country. The King dissolved Parliament, and writs were issued for a general election. It was at this juncture, when London was illuminating to show its satisfaction over the prospect for a reform victory, that the darkened windows of the Duke of Wellington's town house were stoned by the populace. The rallying cries of the Whigs were "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill," and "Reform, Aye or No?" Popular agitation by associations, newspapers, speech-making, monster meetings, etc., reached an unprecedented height, and the force of public opinion was shown at the polls. In spite of pocket boroughs, family influence, and flagrant corruption, the reformers came back to Parliament with their majority increased to fully one hundred. Of the eighty-two members for the counties where the popular feeling had its freest expression, only six were opposed to Lord Russell's scheme of reform.

Lord Russell's second Reform Bill was introduced on June 24th. The minority, hopeless of success in a stand-up fight, resorted to the obstructive tactics now known as "filibustering." After wasting three months in tedious obstruction the Commons passed the bill by a majority of one hundred and nine, and Lord Grey laid it before the House of Lords in the most impressive speech of his career. He endeavored to persuade the aristocrats before him that only by such concessions could the Constitution of England be saved. Already there were wide-spread evidences of popular discontent in the "nightly alarms, burnings, and popular disturbances." The rotten boroughs could no longer be tolerated with safety to the state. "This gangrene upon our representative system bade defiance to all remedies but that of excision." Deaf to his arguments, and blind to everything but their own privilege and immediate interest, the peers pronounced against the bill.

The rejection of the second Reform Bill by the House of Lords brought England to the brink of revolution. As it was, the newspapers were full of signs that the patience of the nation was exhausted. Mobs and incendiary fires were reported in many districts, and the abolition of the House of Lords found strenuous advocates. It was at one of the numerous indignation meetings that Sydney Smith hit off the attempt of the Lords to stay the progress of reform by comparing it with Mrs. Partington's attempt to check the high tide at Sidmouth with a mop. "The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. Gentlemen, be at your ease; be quiet and steady; you will beat Mrs. Partington!"

As soon as the Parliament reassembled in December, Lord John Russell offered the third Reform Bill. It was identical in principle with the others, though the number of the affected boroughs had been slightly altered. It passed its successive stages by ample majorities and was in due order presented to the House of Lords. The ministers were prepared to play their last card. They found the peers determined to mutilate the proposition in disregard of the popular demand, now louder than ever, for "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill." Earl Grey and his chancellor, Lord Brougham, thereupon requested King William to overcome the opposition by sanctioning the creation of new peers sufficient to insure a majority for the act. But the King held back. The ministers offered their resignations, and the King commissioned the Iron Duke to form a government. But no Tory government could stand a day in the face of the hosts of reform in the Commons and in the nation, as Wellington had reluctantly to confess. The monarch had to yield, and so doing, helped establish the principle more firmly than ever before that the chief power in the English Constitution is lodged in the House of Commons, acting through its ministers. In this case it was Commons against King and Lords, and the Commons had their way. To save themselves from an inundation of new peerages the Lords whose hostility to the bill was irreconcilable absented themselves from Westminster when the vote was taken—"skulked in clubs and country houses" as Lord Russell sharply phrased it. The Duke of Wellington's words will show the temper with which the hide-bound Tories received the act. "Reform, my Lords, has triumphed. The barriers of the Constitution are broken down, the waters of destruction have burst the gates of the temple, and the tempest begins to howl. Who can say where its course should stop? Who can stay its speed? For my own part I sincerely hope that my predictions may not be fulfilled, and that my country may not be ruined."