This is an argument which had just been used with regard to Catholic Emancipation; which was afterwards to {146} be used with regard to free-trade and the introduction of the ballot and household suffrage; and which will probably be used again and again so long as any sort of reform is demanded. Of course it need hardly be said that when Sir Robert Inglis referred to mob orators he used the phrase as a term of contempt applying to all speakers who advocated principles which were not the principles represented by the Tory aristocracy. A Tory landlord spouting any kind of nonsense to the most ignorant crowd would not have been, according to this definition, a mob orator; he would have been a high-bred Englishman, instructing his humbler brethren as to the way they ought to go. Sir Robert also indulged in the most gloomy prophecies about the evils which must come upon England as the direct result of the Reform Bill if that Bill were to be passed into law. The influence of rank and property would suddenly and completely cease to prevail; education would lose its power to teach and to guide; the House of Commons would no longer be the place for men of rank, culture, and statesmanship, but would be occupied only by mob orators. Art after art would go out and all would be night, if we may adopt the famous line of Pope's which Sir Robert somehow failed to introduce.
[Sidenote: 1831—Peel's speech on the Reform Bill]
The second speech in the debate to which we may refer was that of Sir Robert Peel. It was a necessity of Peel's position just then, and of the stage of political development which his mind had reached, that he should oppose the Reform Bill. But in the work of opposition he had to undertake a task far more difficult to him in the artistic sense than the task which the destinies had appointed for Sir Robert Inglis to attempt. Inglis, although a man of ability and education, as collegiate education then went, was so thorough a Tory of the old school that the most extravagant arguments he used came as naturally and clearly to his mind as if they had been dictated to him by inspiration. But a man of Peel's high order of intellect, a man who had been gifted by nature with the mind of a statesman, must sometimes have found it hard indeed to convince himself that some of the arguments he used against reform {147} were arguments which the history of the future would be likely to maintain. Peel's genius, however, was not one which readily adopted conclusions, especially when these conclusions involved a change in the seeming order of things. We have seen already that he was quite capable of taking a bold decision and accepting its responsibilities when the movement of events seemed to satisfy him that a choice one way or the other could no longer be postponed.
The whole story of his subsequent career bears evidence of the same effect. His genius guided him rightly when the fateful moment arrived at which a decision had to be made, but when left to himself his inclinations always were to let things go on in their old way. He had not yet seen any necessity for a complete system of Parliamentary reform, nor was he likely, in any case, to have approved of some of the proposals contained in the Bill brought in by Lord John Russell. The speech he delivered appears, by all the accounts which reach us, to have been a genuine piece of Parliamentary eloquence. Peel did not, as may well be imagined, commit himself to some of the extravagances which were poured forth in absolute good faith by Sir Robert Inglis. But the very nature of his task compelled him sometimes to have recourse to arguments which, although put forward with more discretion and more dexterity than Inglis had shown, seemed nevertheless to belong to the same order of political reasoning.
It is not, perhaps, surprising that Peel should have found much to say for the existence of the small nomination boroughs, seeing that the same arguments were made use of a whole generation afterwards by no less a person than Mr. Gladstone. These arguments, we need hardly say, were founded on the familiar assumption that a Burke or a Sheridan, a Canning or a Plunket, would have no chance whatever of getting into the House of Commons if some appreciative patron did not generously put a borough at his disposal. In our own days we have seen, again and again, that a man of high political character and commanding eloquence, but having no money or other such influence to back him, would have a far better chance at {148} the hands of a great popular constituency than he would be likely to have in some small borough, where local interests might easily be brought to conspire against him. But at the time when Peel was making his speech against the Reform project the patronage system still prevailed in politics, if no longer in letters, and the unendowed child of genius would have little chance indeed if he were to try to get into Parliament on his own mere merits. On the whole, it must be owned that Sir Robert Peel made as good a case against the Bill as could have been made from the Conservative point of view, and it may be added that an equally ingenious case might have been made out by a man of his capacity against any change whatever in any system.
[Sidenote: 1831—The second reading of the Reform Bill]
The third speech to which we think it necessary to refer was that delivered by the Irish orator and agitator, Daniel O'Connell. O'Connell promised the Bill all the support in his power, but he took care to explain that he supported it only because he believed it was the best Bill he could obtain from any Government at that moment. He described clearly and impressively the faults which he found with Lord John Russell's measure; and it has to be noticed that the objections which he raised were absolutely confirmed by our subsequent political history. He found fault with the Bill because it did not go nearly as far as such a measure ought to go in the direction of manhood suffrage, or, at all events, of household suffrage. He contended that no Reform Bill could really fulfil the best purposes for which it was designed without the adoption of the ballot system in the voting at popular elections. He advocated shorter Parliaments and much more comprehensive and strenuous legislation for the prevention of bribery and corruption. In short, O'Connell made a speech which might have been spoken with perfect appropriateness by an English Radical of the highest political order at any time during some succeeding generations. O'Connell's opinions seem to have been at that time, save on one political question alone—the question of Repeal of the Union—exactly in accord with those of the Radical party down to the days of Cobden and Bright.
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It may be mentioned, as a matter of some historical interest, that, vindicating the true theory of popular representation, he complained that successive English Governments had abandoned the constitutional position taken up by the glorious Revolution of 1688. Readers of the present day may be inclined to think, not without good reason for the thought, that statesmanship in the days of Lord Grey's first Reform Bill, and for many years after, might have had less trouble with Ireland if it had taken better account of the opinions and the influence of O'Connell.
The debate on the motion for leave to bring in the Bill lasted several days. In accordance, however, with the usual practice of the House of Commons, no division was taken and the Bill was read a first time. In the House of Commons it is not usual to have a long debate on the motion for leave to bring in a Bill, which amounts in substance to a motion that the Bill be read for the first time. When, however, a measure of great importance is introduced there is sometimes a lengthened and very often a discursive debate or conversation on the motion; but it is rarely so long and so earnest a discussion as that which took place when Lord John Russell brought in the Reform Bill. One result of the length of the debate which preceded the first reading was that when the motion for the second reading came on the leading members of the Opposition were found to have expressed fully their opinions already, and the discussion seemed little better than the retelling of an old story.