A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

[Sidenote: 1831—The principles of the Reform Bill]

Some of the vacant seats were, however, to be assigned to the cities and towns which were then actually unrepresented in the House of Commons. Seven of these towns were to have two representatives each, and twenty smaller but still goodly towns were to have one representative each. Even at this day it may still come as a matter of surprise to some readers to learn that the seven towns which in 1831 were wholly unrepresented, and to which the Bill proposed to give two members each, were Manchester, which was to include Salford; Birmingham, Leeds, Greenwich, Wolverhampton, Sheffield, and Sunderland. The Government proposed to give eight additional members to the metropolis itself—that is to say, two members each to the Tower Hamlets, Holborn, Finsbury, and Lambeth. The three Ridings of Yorkshire were to have two members each, and twenty-six counties already represented, and in each of which there were more than 150,000 inhabitants, were each to have two additional members. It is not necessary to go more fully into the details of the scheme which Lord John Russell expounded elaborately to the House of Commons.

In Ireland and in Scotland there were some slight differences as to the scale of the qualification from those that were proposed for England; but in the three countries the principle was the same, and the right to vote was associated with a certain occupation of land or payment of household rating, and new constituencies were created where towns, unrepresented before, had grown up into recognized importance. By the changes that the Bill proposed to make no less than half a million of new voters were to be created throughout Great Britain and Ireland. For the purpose of diminishing the enormous expense of elections it was proposed that the poll should be taken at the same time in separate districts, so that no voter should have to travel more than fifteen miles in order to record his vote, and {143} that the time over which an election contest could be spread should be greatly reduced, and reduced in proportion to the size of the constituency. It is as well to say at once that that part of the Reform Bill which aimed at the due reduction of election expenses to their legitimate and necessary proportions proved an utter failure. No reduction in the amount of what may be called working expenses could have diminished, to any satisfactory degree, the evil from which the country was suffering at that time, and from which it continued to suffer for more than another generation. Bribery and corruption were the evils which had to be dealt with, and the Reform Bill of 1831 left these evils as it had found them. The Bill, however, did, in its other provisions, do much to establish a genuine principle of Parliamentary representation.

To begin with, it proclaimed the principle of representation as the legal basis of the whole Parliamentary system. It abolished the nomination of members, whether by individual persons or by corporations. It laid down as law that representation must bear some proportion to the numbers represented. It made actual, or at least occasional, residence a qualification for a voter. These were the main principles of the measure. The attention of readers will presently be drawn to the manner in which the Bill failed to answer some of the demands made upon the Government by the spreading intelligence of the country, and left these demands to be more adequately answered by the statesmen of a later generation. Enough to say that with all its defects the Bill, as Lord John Russell explained it, was, for its time, a bold and broad measure of reform, and that it laid down the lines along which, as far as human foresight can discern, the movement of progress in England's political history will make its way.

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CHAPTER LXXII.

THE GREAT DEBATE.

[Sidenote: 1831—Sir Robert Inglis and Reform]

The debate which followed Lord John Russell's motion for leave to bring in the Bill contained, as well might be expected, some very remarkable speeches. Three of these deserve the special attention of the student of history. The first illustrated the views of the extreme Tory of that day, and is indeed a political curiosity which ought never to be consigned to utter oblivion. This speech was made by Sir Robert Harry Inglis, who represented the University of Oxford. Sir Robert Inglis was a living embodiment of the spirit of old-world Toryism as it had come down to his day, Toryism which had in it little or nothing of the picturesque, half poetic sentiment belonging to the earlier wearers of the rebel rose, the flower symbolic of the Stuart dynasty. Sir Robert Inglis was a man of education, of intelligence, and of high principle. His sincerity was unquestioned, and his opinion would probably be well worth having on any question which was not concerned with the antagonism between Whig and Tory. Sir Robert argued boldly in his speech that the principle of representation had never been recognized by the Constitution as the Parliamentary system of England. He insisted that the sovereign had a perfect right to choose any representative he pleased from any constituency which it suited him to create. The King could delegate to any nobleman or gentleman his right of nominating a representative. Sir Robert scouted the idea that a large, prosperous, and populous town had any better claim to be represented in the House of Commons than the smallest village in the country. It was all a matter for the sovereign, and if the sovereign thought fit he had as good a right to invite any one he {145} pleased to represent an unpeopled plain as to represent Manchester, Leeds, or Sheffield. He denounced Russell's proposal to disfranchise the small nomination boroughs, and he used an argument which was employed in the same debate and by much wiser men than he in defence of the pocket boroughs and the whole system of nomination. Some of the most brilliant, gifted members of the House of Commons, he contended, had been sent into that House by the patrons and owners of such boroughs, and otherwise never could have got into Parliament at all, for they could not have borne the enormous expense of a county contest.

We have heard that argument over and over again in days much more recent. It would, of course, have been hard to dispose of it completely if it could be shown that there was no possible way by which the expenses of elections could be reduced to a reasonable amount; if it could be shown that there was any human system so bad as to have no compensating advantages whatever; and finally if it could be shown that with the spread of education and the growth of popular intelligence a man of great and commanding ability without money would not have a much better chance of election at the hands of a large constituency than by the mere favor of some discerning patron. Sir Robert Inglis also used an argument which is even still not unfamiliar in political debate, whether inside or outside Parliament. He contended not merely that the English population had no real grievances to complain of, but that none among the English population would have fancied that they were suffering from grievances if it had not been for the evil advice and turbulent agitation of mob orators. To these wicked persons, the mob orators, Sir Robert ascribed all the disturbances which were setting the country in commotion. If only these mob orators could be kept from spouting everything would go well and no subject of the sovereign would ever get it into his head that he was suffering from the slightest grievance.