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

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

The very motion—in ordinary times a purely formal motion—which had to be passed in order that the House might get into committee, gave to the opponents of reform their first opportunity of obstruction. The motion was that the Speaker do now leave the chair, and the moment that motion was put it was immediately met by an amendment. A Tory member raised the question that there was a mistake in one of the returns of population in the constituency which he represented, and he proposed that his constituent should be allowed to show cause in person or by counsel at the bar of the House for a rectification of the error. Lord John Russell admitted that there appeared to have been some mistake in the return, but he contended that the motion to enable the House to go into committee was not the proper time at which such a question could be raised. Every one in the House knew perfectly well the motive for raising the question just then, and after some time had been wasted in absolutely unnecessary discussion the obstructive amendment was defeated by a majority of 97. That, however, did not help matters very much, for the House had still to divide upon the question that the Speaker do now leave the chair. This was met by repeated motions for adjournment, and on every one of these motions a long discussion was kept up by some leading members of the Opposition and by their faithful followers. The reader will remember that until the motion had been carried for the Speaker to leave the chair it was still the House, and not the committee, that was sitting, and therefore no member could speak more than once on the same subject. But then this fact did not secure even that particular stage of the debate against obstruction, for there were several different forms in which the motion for adjournment might be made, and on each of these several proposals a member was entitled to speak even although he had already spoken on each motion previously proposed {162} to the same practical effect. Perhaps it may be as well to bring the condition of things more clearly and more practically within the understanding of the general reader, seeing that the Parliamentary obstruction which may be said to have begun with the Reform Bill became afterwards so important an instrument for good or for evil in our legislative system. The motion then is made that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair. Thereupon Mr. Brown, Tory member, moves as an amendment that the House do now adjourn, and Mr. Brown sets forth in a lengthened speech his reasons for thinking that the House ought not to sit any longer that night. Some member of the Ministry rises and gives his reason for urging that the Speaker should be allowed to leave the chair at once, and that the House go into committee in order to consider the details of the measure. Thereupon several of Mr. Brown's friends arise, and one after another expound, at great length, their reason for supporting Mr. Brown. The ministers, by this time, have made up their minds that the best course they can follow is to let Mr. Brown's friends have all the talk to themselves, but some independent members on the side of the Government are sure to be provoked into making speeches denouncing the obstructives and thereby only helping to obstruct. At length, when all Mr. Brown's friends have had their say—and Mr. Brown, it will be remembered, cannot speak again on this particular question—a division is taken on his amendment, and the amendment is lost. Then the question is put once more for the Speaker to leave the chair, and instantly Mr. Jones, another Tory member, springs to his feet and moves as an amendment, not that the House do now adjourn, but that this debate be now adjourned, which, as every one must see, is quite a different proposition. On this new amendment Mr. Brown is quite entitled to speak, and he does speak accordingly, and so do all his friends, and at last a division is taken and the amendment of Mr. Jones has the same fate as the amendment of Mr. Brown, and is defeated by a large majority. Up comes the question once more about the Speaker leaving the chair, and up gets Mr. Robinson, {163} another Tory member, and moves that the House do now adjourn, which motion is strictly in order, for it is quite clear that the House might with perfect consistency refuse to adjourn at midnight and yet might be quite willing to adjourn at four o'clock in the morning. On the amendment of Mr. Robinson his friends Brown and Jones are of course entitled to speak, and so are all their colleagues in the previous discussions, and when this amendment too is defeated, then Mr. Smith, yet another Tory member, rises in his place, as the familiar Parliamentary phrase goes, and moves that this debate be now adjourned. This is really a fair summary of the events which took place in the House of Commons on this first grand opportunity of obstruction, the motion to enable the House to get into committee on the details of the Reform Bill.

[Sidenote: 1831—The Reform Bill in committee]

It was half-past seven in the morning when the out-wearied House consented to adjourn, and the story was told, at the time, that when Sir Charles Wetherell was leaving Westminster Hall with some of his Tory colleagues he observed that a heavy rain was pouring down, and he declared with a vigorous oath that if he had known of that in time he would have treated the Government to a few more divisions before giving them a chance of getting to their homes. The Bill, however, did get into committee at last, and then the work of obstruction began again and was carried on after the most systematic fashion. In committee the opportunities were ample, for the case of each constituency which it was proposed to disfranchise, or each constituency the number of whose members it was proposed to lessen, had to be discussed separately, and, of course, gave rise to an unlimited number of speeches. A committee was actually formed to prepare, organize, and apply the methods of obstruction, and of this committee no less a person than Sir Robert Peel, then one of England's most rising statesmen, afterwards to be one of her greatest statesmen, was the president. Sir Robert Peel was himself one of the most frequent speakers in the obstructive debates, and among his rivals were Sir Charles Wetherell and Mr. John Wilson Croker, a man who has {164} been consigned to a sort of immortality by a famous essay of Macaulay's and by Disraeli's satirical picture of him as Mr. Rigby in "Coningsby." The committee of Tory members which has been already mentioned arranged carefully, in advance, the obstruction that was to be carried on in the case of each particular constituency, and planned out in advance how each discussion was to be conducted and who were to take the leading parts in it.

[Sidenote: 1831—Determination to pass the Bill]

Meanwhile popular feeling was rising more and more strongly as each day of debate dragged on. Some of the largest constituencies were most active and energetic in their appeals to the Government to hold out to the very last and not yield an inch to the obstructionists. A fear began to spread abroad that Lord Grey and his colleagues might endeavor to save some of the main provisions of their Bill by surrendering other parts of it to the Opposition. This alarm found expression in the cry which soon began to be heard all over the country, and became in fact the battle-cry of Reformers everywhere—the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill. Great public meetings were held in all parts for the purpose of urging the Government to make no concessions to the political enemy. During the summer a meeting of the most influential supporters of the Government was held in the Foreign Office, and at that meeting Lord Althorp, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced that Lord Grey and his colleagues were perfectly determined not to give way, and he declared that the Government were resolved to keep the House of Commons sitting until December, or, if necessary, until the following December, in order to pass the Bill before the rising of the House for its recess. Naturally this firm declaration had some effect on the obstructionists, especially on the rank and file of the obstructionists. Nothing discourages and disheartens obstruction so much, in the House of Commons, as a resolute announcement on the part of the Ministry that the House is to be kept together until the measure under debate, whatever it may be, is disposed of. It is a hard task, at any time, to keep the House of Commons together after the regular season for its {165} holiday has come on; and if the rank and file of Opposition can once be brought to believe that a certain measure is to be passed no matter what number of weeks or months it may occupy, the rank and file is very apt to make up its mind that there is no use in throwing good months after bad, and that it might be as well to get the thing done, since it has to be done, without unlimited sacrifice of personal comfort. Still, the leaders of the Tory Opposition were not deterred by Lord Althorp's proclamation from maintaining their work of obstruction for some time yet. The impatience and anger of the country rose higher and higher. A reforming member of the House was in an unlucky plight indeed if he happened to be caught by one of the amendments proposed from the benches of Opposition and, believing that it had something reasonable in it, allowed his too sensitive conscience to persuade him into supporting it by his vote. Into such a plight fell a worthy alderman of the City of London—who had been sent into the House of Commons as a Radical reformer. This well-meaning person had permitted himself to become satisfied that there was something to be said for one of the Opposition amendments, and in a moment of rash ingenuousness he voted for it. He was immediately afterwards formally censured by his constituents and by the body to which he officially belonged. He was informed by solemn resolutions that he had been sent into the House of Commons to help the Government in passing the Reform Bill, and it was more or less plainly intimated to him that he had no more right to the exercise of his independent opinion on any of the details of the measure than a private soldier on a battle-field would have to exercise his individual judgment as to the propriety of obeying or disobeying the order of his commanding officer. The poor man had to make the most fervid assurances that he had meant no harm in voting for the Opposition amendment, that he was thoroughly devoted to the cause of reform, and to the particular measure then before the House of Commons, and that never again was he to be induced by any arguments to give a vote against the Government on any {166} section or sentence or line of Lord John Russell's Bill. Then, and not until then, he was taken back into favor.

[Sidenote: 1831—The Reform Bill passes the Commons]

The Bill, however, did get through committee at last. The Government contrived by determined resistance and untiring patience to get their scheme of reform out of committee in substantially the condition they wished it to have. Then came the third reading. It was confidently assumed on both sides of the House that there would be a long debate on the motion that the Bill be now read a third time. In the House of Commons, however, it often happens that the assumption of a forthcoming debate as a certainty is itself the one cause which prevents the debates from being long. So it happened on this important occasion. Every Tory took it for granted that his brother Tories would keep the debate going for an indefinite time, and in this fond faith a good many Tories felt themselves in no hurry to get to the House, and were willing to leave the first hour or two at the disposal of their colleagues. When the sitting began, and, indeed, when the motion for the third reading came on, there were comparatively few Tories in the House, and the great leaders of Opposition were not present. There was confusion in the ranks of the Tories, and the crowded benches of the Reformers thundered with clamorous shouts of "Divide! Divide!" Now, it takes a very heroic orator indeed to continue declaiming for a long time when a great majority of the members present are bellowing at him and are drowning, by their united voices, the sounds of the words which he is trying to articulate. The members of Opposition in the House found this fact brought home to them, and, being further bewildered by the fortuitous absence of their leaders, soon gave up the struggle, and the debate collapsed, and the third reading was carried by a large majority before Sir Robert Peel, Sir Charles Wetherell, and others came in leisurely fashion into the House, filled with the assumption that there would be ample opportunity for them to carry on the debate. Even yet, however, all was not over. According to the procedure of the House, it was not enough that the motion for the third reading of the {167} Bill should be carried. It was still necessary to propose the motion that the Bill do now pass. The moment this motion was proposed the torrent of opposition, frozen up for a too-short interval, began to flow again in full volume. The nature of the formal motion gave opportunity for renewed attacks on the whole purpose of the Bill, and all the old, familiar, outworn arguments were repeated by orator after orator from the Tory benches. But this, too, had to come to an end. The House was no longer in committee, and each member could only speak once on this final motion. Of course, there could be motions for adjournment, and on each such motion, put as an amendment, there would be opportunity for a fresh debate; but the leaders of the Opposition were beginning to see that there was nothing of much account to be done any longer in the House of Commons, and that their hopes of resisting the progress of reform must turn to the House of Lords. So the Reform Bill passed at last through the House of Commons, and then all over the country was raised the cry, "What will the Lords do with it?"

Soon the temper of the more advanced Reformers throughout the country began to change its tone, and the question eagerly put was not so often what will the Lords do with the Bill? but what shall we do with the House of Lords? At every great popular meeting held throughout the constituencies an outcry was raised against the House of Lords as a part of the constitutional system, and no speaker was more welcome on a public platform than the orator who called for the abolition of the hereditary principle in the formation of legislators. One might have thought that the agitation which broke out all over the country, and the manner in which almost all Reformers seemed to have taken it for granted that the hereditary Chamber must be the enemy of all reform, might have put the peers on their guard and taught them the unwisdom of accepting the imputation against them, and thus proving that they had no sympathy with the cause of the people. But the great majority of the Tory peers of that day had not yet risen to the idea that there could be any {168} wisdom in any demand made by men who had no university education, who had not what was then described as a stake in the country. The voice of the people was simply regarded as the voice of the rabble, and the Tory peers had no notion of allowing themselves to be guided by any appeal coming from such a quarter.

[Sidenote: 1831—The Reform Bill in the Lords]

The agitation of which we are speaking had been going on during the long reign of obstruction in the Commons, and there was no time lost by the Government between the passing of the Bill in the representative Chamber and its introduction in the House of Lords. On the evening of the day when the Bill was passed by the Commons, September 23, 1831, it was formally brought into the House of Lords and read a first time. It has already been explained that, according to Parliamentary usage, the first reading of any Bill is taken in the House of Lords as a matter of right and without a division. The second reading of the Bill was taken on October 3. Lord Grey, who had charge of the measure in that House, delivered one of the most impressive and commanding speeches which had ever come from his eloquent lips, not merely in recommendation of the measure itself, but in solemn warning to the peers in general, and to the bishops and archbishops in particular, to pause and consider carefully all the possible consequences before committing themselves to the rejection of a demand which was made by the vast majority of the English people.