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

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

Lord Grey was a noble illustration of what may be described as the stately order of Parliamentary eloquence. He had not the fire and the passion of Fox; he had not the thrilling genius of Pitt; and, of course, his style of speech had none of the passionate and sometimes the extravagant declamation of which Brougham was a leading master. He had a dignified presence, a calm, clear, and penetrating voice, a style that was always exquisitely finished and nobly adapted to its purpose. It would not be too much to say for Earl Grey that he might have been the ideal orator for an ideal House of Lords, if we assume the ideal House of Lords to be an assembly in which appeal {169} was always made to high principle, to reason, and to justice, not to passion, to prejudice, or to party. Lord Grey, so far as we can judge from contemporary accounts, never spoke better than in the debate on the second reading of the Reform Bill, and it was evident that he spoke with all the sincere emotion of one whose mind and heart alike were filled with the cause for which he pleaded. But the House of Lords just then was not in a mood to be swayed greatly by argument or by eloquence. Lord Wharncliffe moved an amendment to the effect that the Bill be read a second time this day six months. This, at least, was the shape that the motion took after some discussion, because Lord Wharncliffe, in the first instance, had concluded his speech against the second reading by the blunt motion that the Bill be rejected; and it was only when it had been pressed upon his attention that such a method of disposing of the measure would be a downright insult to the Commons that he consented to modify his proposal into the formal and familiar amendment that the Bill be read a second time this day six months. The effect would be just the same in either case, for no Ministry would think of retaining office if the discussion of its most important measure were postponed in the House of Lords for a period of six months. During the debate which followed, the Duke of Wellington spoke strongly against the Bill. On the morning of October 8 the division was taken. There were 199 votes for the amendment and 158 against it, or, in other words, for the second reading of the Bill. The second reading was therefore rejected by a majority of 41. The whole work of legislation during all the previous part of the year had thus been reduced to nothing, and the House of Lords had shown what it would do with the Bill by contemptuously rejecting it, and thus bidding defiance to the demand unquestionably made by the vast majority of the people of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Parliament was at once prorogued, and the members who were in favor of reform hurried off to address great meetings of their constituents, and to denounce the action of the House of Lords. Popular enthusiasm was aroused {170} more than ever in favor of the Reform Bill, and popular passion was stirred in many places to positive fury against the principal opponents of the Bill. In London several public men who were conspicuous for their opposition to the Bill were surrounded in their carriages as they drove through the streets by suddenly collected crowds, who hooted and hissed them, and would have gone much further than hooting and hissing in their way of expressing condemnation but for the energetic intervention of the newly created police force. In some of the provincial towns, and here and there throughout the country, the most serious riots broke out. In Derby there were disturbances which lasted for several days, and consisted of attacks on unpopular persons and of fierce fights with the police. Nottingham was the centre of rioting even more serious. Nottingham Castle, the seat of the Duke of Newcastle, was attacked by a furious mob and actually burned to the ground. In the immediate neighborhood was the estate of Mr. Musters, which was invaded by an excited mob. The dwelling-house was set on fire, and, although the conflagration was not allowed to spread far, yet it ended in a tragedy which must always have a peculiar interest for the lovers of poetry and romance. The wife of Mr. Musters was the Mary Chaworth made famous by Lord Byron in his poem of the "Dream," and other poems as well—the Mary Chaworth who was his first love, and whom, at one time, he believed destined to be his last love also. Mary Chaworth does not seem to have taken the poet's adoration very seriously—at all events, she married Mr. Musters, a country gentleman of good position. Mrs. Musters was in her house on the night when it was attacked by the mob, and when the fire broke out she fled into the open park and sought shelter there among the trees. The mob was dispersed and Mrs. Musters, after a while, was able to return to her home; but she was in somewhat delicate health, the exposure to the cold night air of winter proved too much for her, and she became one of the most innocent victims to the popular passion aroused by the opposition to the Reform Bill.

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[Sidenote: 1831—The Reform riots]

Bristol was the scene of the most formidable riots during all that period of disturbance. Sir Charles Wetherell, who had made himself conspicuous as an opponent of reform, was the Recorder as well as the representative of Bristol, and his return to the city after the Lords had thrown out the Bill became the signal for an outbreak of popular fury. Houses were wrecked in various parts of the city; street fights took place between the mob and the military, day after day; the Mansion House, where Sir Charles Wetherell was supposed to have taken refuge, was besieged, attacked, and almost demolished, and Sir Charles Wetherell himself was rescued, more than once, with the utmost difficulty from hostile crowds who seemed thirsting for his blood. All these riots were atoned for dearly soon after by some who had taken part in them. The stroke of the law was heavy and sharp in those days, and many of the rioters in Derby, Nottingham, and Bristol, and other places expiated on the scaffold their offences against peace and order. Some of the cathedral cities became scenes of especial disturbance because of the part so many of the prelates who were members of the House of Lords had taken against the Reform Bill. The direct appeal which Earl Grey had made to the archbishops and bishops in the House of Lords to think long and well before opposing the Reform Bill was delivered with the highest and sincerest motive, with the desire that the Church should keep itself in harmony with the people; but the mere fact that the appeal was made, and made in vain, seems to have aroused in many parts of the country, and especially in the cathedral cities, a stronger conviction than ever that the prelates were, for the most part, the enemies of popular rights. Then, again, there was a more or less general impression that the King himself, in his heart, was not in favor of reform and would be glad to get rid of it if he could. Daniel O'Connell, addressing a great popular meeting at Charing Cross in London, pointed with his outstretched right arm towards Whitehall, and awakened a tremendous outburst of applause from the vast crowd by telling them that it was there Charles I. had lost his head {172} because he had submitted to the dictation of his foreign wife. There was a popular belief at the time that Queen Adelaide, the wife of King William, cherished a strong hatred against reform such as Lord Grey and his colleagues were pressing on, and that she was secretly influencing the mind of her husband her own way, and so it was that O'Connell's allusion got home to the feelings and the passions of the multitude who listened to his words. Never, in the nineteenth century, had England gone through such a period of internal storm. All over the Continent observers were beginning to ask themselves whether the monarchy in England was not on the verge of such a crisis as had just overtaken the monarchy in France.

[Sidenote: 1832—The third Reform Bill]

Lord Grey and his ministers still, however, held firmly to their purpose, and the King, much as he may have disliked the whole reform business, and gladly as he would have got rid of it, if it were to be got rid of by any possible means, had still wit enough to see that if he were to give his support to the House of Lords something even more than the House of Lords might be in danger. Parliament was therefore called together again in December, and the Royal Speech from the Throne commended to both Houses the urgent necessity of passing into law as quickly as possible the ministerial measure of reform. Lord John Russell brought in his third Reform Bill for England and Wales, a Bill that was, in purpose and in substance, much the same as the two measures that had preceded it, and this third Reform Bill passed by slow degrees through its several stages in the House of Commons. Then again came up the portentous question, "What will the Lords do with it?" There could not be the least doubt in the mind of anybody as to what the majority of the House of Lords would be glad to do with the Bill if they only felt sure that they could work their will upon it without danger to their own order. There, however, the serious difficulty arose. The more reasonable among the peers did not attempt to disguise from themselves that another rejection of the Bill might lead to the most serious disturbances, and even possibly to civil war, and they were not {173} prepared to indulge their hostility to reform at so reckless an expense. The greater number of the Tory peers, however, acted on the assumption, familiar at all times among certain parties of politicians, that the more loudly people demanded a reform the more resolutely the reform ought to be withheld from them, and that, if the people attempted to rise up, the only proper policy was to put the people down by force. The opinions and sentiments of the less headlong among the Conservative peers had led to the formation of a party, more or less loosely put together, who were called at that time the "Waverers," just as a political combination of an earlier day obtained the title of the "Trimmers." The Waverers were made up of the men who held that their best and most patriotic policy was to regard each portion of the Bill brought before them on its own merits, and not to resist out of hand any proposition which seemed harmless in itself simply because it formed part of the whole odious policy of reform. King William is believed, at one time, to have set hopes on the efforts of the Waverers, and to have cherished a gladsome belief that they might get him out of his difficulties about the Reform Bill; as indeed it will be seen they did in the end, though not quite in the way which he would have desired.

Lord Grey introduced the third Reform Bill on March 27, 1832. The first reading passed, as a matter of course, but when the division on the motion for the second reading came on on April 14, there was only a majority of 9 votes for the Bill: 184 peers voted for it and 175 against it. Of course Lord Grey and his colleagues saw, at once, that unless the conditions were to be completely altered there would be no chance whatever in the House of Lords for a measure of reform which had passed its second reading by a majority of only 9. The moment the Bill got into committee there would be endless opportunities afforded for its mutilation, and if it were to get through the House at all, it would be only in such a form as to render it wholly useless for the objects which its promoters desired it to accomplish. This dismal conviction was very speedily {174} verified. When the Bill got into committee, Lord Lyndhurst moved an amendment to the effect that the question of enfranchisement should precede that of disfranchisement. Now this proposal was not in itself one necessarily hostile to the principle of the Bill. It is quite easy to understand that a sincere friend to reform might have, under certain conditions, adopted the views that Lord Lyndhurst professed to advocate. But the Ministry knew very well that the adoption of such a proposal would mean simply that the whole conduct of the measure was to be taken out of their hands and put into unfriendly hands—in other words, that it would be utterly futile to go any further with the measure if the hostile majority were thus allowed to deal with it according to their own designs and their own class interest.

[Sidenote: 1832—The Peers and the third Reform Bill]

Lord Lyndhurst was a man of great ability, eloquence, and astuteness. He was one of the comparatively few men in our modern history who have made a mark in the Law Courts and in Parliament. As a Parliamentary orator he was the rival of Brougham, and the rivalry was all the more exciting to the observers because it was a rivalry of styles as well as of capacities. Lyndhurst was always polished, smooth, refined, endowed with a gift of argumentative eloquence, which appealed to the intellect rather than to the feelings, was seldom impassioned, and even when impassioned kept his passion well within conventional bounds. Brougham was thrilling, impetuous, overwhelming, often extravagant, scorning conventionality of phrase or manner, revelling in his own exuberant strength and plunging at opponents as a bull might do in a Spanish arena. Lyndhurst's amendment was one especially suited to bring to his side the majority of the Waverers. It was plausible enough in itself, and gave to many a Waverer, who must have had in his mind a very clear perception of its real object, some excuse for persuading himself that, in voting for it, he was not voting against the principle of reform. When the division came to be taken on May 7, 151 peers voted for the amendment and 116 against it, thus showing a majority of 35 against {175} the Government, by whom of course the amendment had been unreservedly opposed.