From my youth up, Bulwer was my beau ideal; he is now my realization of perfidy and tergiversation, and before such an elaborate sham, even the star of Disraeli must pale.
Like your confrère novelist, Disraeli, you have turned your back upon yourself, and brought a slur on the literary calling. You, who began your political career by associating your name with the freedom of the newspaper from all fiscal restrictions, end it by doing what you can to hamper and enchain it. On the night of the third reading of the Paper Duty Repeal Bill, May 8, you absent yourself from the Division, when EVERY VOTE was of the utmost importance to the Finance Minister, though I am bound to add you were not alone in turning your back upon yourself, and your speeches about giving the people education and intelligence. Lord Stanley, with an inconsistency equally glaring, votes for £300,000 for the Promotion of Education, and then evades the Repeal Bill Division by flight! I prefer Disraeli’s, and Adderley’s, and Pakington’s adverse vote to such mean, pusillanimous Absentees, and Patrons of Educational Institutes, as Lord Stanley, the Member for King’s Lynn, Sir Robert Peel, the Member for Geneva, and the immaculate John Arthur Roebuck, [17] the stern guardian of Political Purity. Stroud will rid itself of Horsman, and the Metropolitan constituencies of Finsbury, St. Marylebone, Southwark, and Westminster, will have something not very complimentary to whisper to Mr. Duncombe, Mr. James, and Sir De Lacy Evans, who absented themselves from the Division, and to Sir Charles Napier, who voted with the Noes. If Liskeard favours the absence of Mr. Osborne from a Reform Bill, compared with which a £6 franchise is as nothing in the scale of moral value, it is time this Cornish borough was disfranchised. The honourable member for Oldham, I regret to notice, has a legitimate excuse for his absence, but what can be said of his colleague, the son of Cobbett, voting against Free Trade in Intelligence and Ingenuity, voting for imposing an oppressive and restrictive tax of upwards of a million, on an article which is just as essential to the circulation of knowledge, as iron rails are to the progress of a locomotive.
In glancing over the Division list, Ayes, 219, Noes, 210, I was glad to notice Birmingham’s indefatigable and respected Representative, William Scholefield, Esq., among the Ayes; but where was the staid and “eminent” member, John Bright, on this particular night? What! The Tribune of the People to slope away on a field night like this! Not even to pair! Why ASSUME there would be no fight on the third reading? Had the vote been as decisive as on the second reading, Lord Derby, with all his ill-concealed jealousy of the rising influence of Mr. Gladstone, and his antipathy to a cheap Press, would not have ventured on so desperate a game as the backer of the Limerick game cock. The Rupert of Debate was far too wily a tactician to overlook this narrow Party victory, this dwindling of the Ayes from 53 (245 against 192) to 9, this narrow squeak, this, in effect, desertion to the enemy. There is not the shadow of a doubt the wretched NINE encouraged the wily strategist in his dangerous game of USURPING the privileges of the Commons, and reviving the ominous cry of 1832, “What use is the House of Lords?”
Observe, far be it from me to comment with severity on the sayings and doings of the brilliant Quaker. Far be it from me to notice affronts which I set down to exuberance of arrogance, often seen in men who have raised themselves from an obscure position to a front rank. I would much rather dwell on Mr. Bright’s eminent services in the People’s cause. Who was the chief Orator at the great League Meetings, 1843–45? Who so captivated by his earnest style? Fifteen years have elapsed, and again I have listened to Mr. Bright’s persuasive words. His speech at St. Martin’s Hall, May 15th, 1860, was a master-piece, and, despite a cold, a most animated, yet almost solemn appeal. I will quote a sentence, which, who that loves his country will gainsay?
“You boast of your love of freedom, your newspapers fill columns every day with the details of what men are doing in other parts of the world—some in overthrowing, some in building up noble fabrics of human liberty. Let me beseech you that, whilst you are observing what is being done ABROAD with an intense and increasing interest, never for a single moment forget what is being done, and what it is your duty to do, AT HOME.”
Mr. Bright’s reception by the great meeting of some three thousand persons was indeed an ovation, not “a roomfull of London mob,” (as the Times insolently says), but of an indignant people. As in the days of Kean, “the pit rose at him,” at the close of an inciting yet moderate speech, of one hour’s duration.
“I exhort the people of England—you who are here present to-night—all who shall read my words to-morrow, I exhort them to make this a great question. Your fathers would have made it a great question: they would have maintained, and did maintain their rights; and you are recreant and unworthy children of theirs if you surrender them in your generation.”
What cares Earl Derby, with his fifty proxies, whether he throws the country into inextricable confusion? [19] What cares a haughty aristocrat for Mr. Gladstone? His great superiority of intellect—his undaunted courage—his noble conscientiousness, are so many thorns in his side, and it is clear that certain members of both Houses, and envious EX-Chancellors, (as Disraeli, or that renegade sinecurist, Spring Rice, Lord Monteagle—a servant of the Crown, yet working against the Crown—with an office of £2,000 as Comptroller of the Exchequer, money wrung from a heavily taxed Public) dislike our honest Finance Minister. Need I remind you the genius Mr. Gladstone has displayed as a Financier is a crime in their eyes. To drive the State Coach at all hazards, what cares Lord Derby if the wheels of his chariot knock down the great Commoner? What does such a titled usurper care for offering gross insults to the Chancellor of the Exchequer? To OBSTRUCT, to offer every impediment to the spread of knowledge by means of the Penny Newspaper—that great political Intelligence—is the delight of this chieftain and his retainers. You then turn round and most insolently taunt the Poor with their want of knowledge and improvidence, with their hazy and uncertain political ideas. You tempt the poor man with bribes, and complain of his dependence in his exercise of the Franchise, and contemptuously enquire “what will he do with it?”
I know of no dishonour, no meanness to be compared with this. You are astute enough in diverting attention from the Reform Bill by unfriendly criticisms on Napoleon, and by the distraction of Foreign Affairs.
You are not Members for Nice or Savoy. To annoy our ALLY and impede his policy, the rights and liberties of ENGLISHMEN are to be shelved. Why this excessive anxiety about our Foreign neighbours to the neglect of HOME? I can only glance at the curious tone of this cynical speech. No doubt the delivery of this harangue was striking enough, but a roar is certainly not a melodious sound. The effect of the oration though clothed in glittering phraseology was entirely lost by the jerking mode of its delivery. Such a dogmatical outcry I never heard. It resembled the noise of some furious mastiff, and no wonder the loud barking drove despairing Members into the lobby. And this wretched declamation Lord B. Manners calls a brilliant and magnificent oration. There was a time when Mr. Bulwer could see no evil in a large increase of the constituency, nor any danger in the ignorance, credulity, and excitableness of the working classes. There was a time when he wished to conciliate the “English” with fulsome adulation in order to elevate himself, now he labours to damage and damnify; and who are his associates in adopting the not very elegant or polite terms of “scum,” “boor.” &c. A Mr. Adam Black, M.P. for Edinburgh, the son of a journeyman mason, Sidney Smith, a briefless Edinburgh barrister, Robert Longfield, an Irish barrister, a Q.C. and Member for Mallow, and next a brace of Lords, Robert Cecil, and Robert Montagu. In coarse and vulgar slanders of the Poor who is such an adept as the man who is a traitor to his order—the man who has himself worked for his bread? None are so bitter and malignant as those who have risen from the ranks. Let me tell this scion of the House of Rutland that the presence of Lords in the House of Commons is not desirable, and that the days of a rapacious OLIGARCHY as the real ruling Power in England are numbered. Why add Insult to Injury? It is a defence full of peril, to say in effect that your order requires the people to be deprived of their just Rights.