Lord Russell in his speech at Blairgowrie, in the recess of 1863, had told Reformers that they should “rest and be thankful.” In 1864, however, they not only refused to follow the advice, but were rewarded for their enterprise by taking captive no less prominent a personage than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There had been the usual debate on the ballot, in which the old arguments for and against it were set forth in the old way. Mr. Locke King had revived his scheme for extending the £20 franchise to counties. But both projects had been rejected, and everybody felt that the cause of reform was once more shelved, till suddenly the whole question was quickened into life by Mr. Gladstone’s unexpected declaration of policy. Mr. Baines, one of the members for Leeds, had brought in a Bill substituting a £6 for a £10 rental in boroughs, and it was met by Mr. Cave moving the previous question, on the ground that the working classes did not need or want any better representation of their interests than they enjoyed already. Mr. Gladstone, however, to the consternation of the Whigs and Tories, intervened in the debate, and declared that he thought there ought to be “a sensible and considerable addition” to the infinitesimal portion of the working classes then in possession of the franchise. This he defined to be such as would have been made by the Government proposal of 1860. The Whigs grew pale with fear when they heard him, amidst Radical cheers, declare “that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the constitution.” The upper stratum of the working class which was deprived of votes was not inferior to the lower stratum of the middle class, which had votes—indeed, the one section of society was as worthy as the other. As Mr. Forster observed, this speech from the leading member of the Government in the House—Lord Palmerston was absent on the occasion—rendered it impossible for the Ministry to set aside the question of Reform much longer. All men saw that Parties would soon have to join issue and decide whether the country was to be governed by a Tory Ministry on Tory principles, or by a Liberal Ministry acting on Conservative ideas and in secret league with the Conservative Leaders. Mr. Baines’s Bill was got rid of by carrying the “previous question”—but from that day it was settled that the reversion of the leadership of the Liberal Party in the Commons must fall to Mr. Gladstone.
The Session would have been dull and leaden save for a debate with which the Peers diverted the town in the dog days. On the 15th of July Lord Houghton, in the House of Lords, protested against Convocation issuing a synodical condemnation of a now forgotten book entitled “Essays and Reviews,” in which seven clever clergymen discoursed with mild and timorous heterodoxy on seven burning theological questions. Current views were challenged in the light of modern German research and criticism, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had acquitted two of the authors who had been prosecuted for heresy.[217] Convocation, however, issued a synodical condemnation of the book which created a considerable sensation at the time, as it was the first occasion during a century and a half on which the Church of England asserted her claim to pronounce authoritatively in controversies of faith. Lord Houghton challenged the legality of the condemnation, and pressed the Government to take action in the matter. Lord Chancellor Westbury disposed of the subject in a provokingly contemptuous statement. There
OLIVER KING’S CHANTRY, ST. GEORGE’S CHAPEL, WINDSOR.
were, he said, three modes of dealing with Convocation. The first was to take no notice of its proceedings when they were harmless; the second was, when it was likely to do mischief, to prorogue it and put an end to its power; the third was to bring its members to the bar of justice. To pass such a judgment as had been pronounced on “Essays and Reviews,” Lord Westbury held was technically a usurpation of the prerogative of the Crown as the head of the Anglican Church. Hence members of Convocation had rendered themselves liable to the penalties of præmunire, and to appear as penitents in sackcloth and ashes. Something like £40,000 in fines, he declared, might be exacted from them, but still the Government in the circumstances meant to take no action. Solvuntur risu tabulæ. Westbury’s mincing sneering tones would have sufficed to stir the old Adam in militant ecclesiastics, but it happened that in describing a synodical judgment he directed a personal attack with biting wit and bad taste against the Bishop of Oxford. Such a sentence could not conveniently be dealt with, said Westbury, because “it was a set of what he might call well-lubricated words, but it was a sentence so oily, so absurd, and so saponaceous[218] that no one could grasp it, but, like an eel, it slipped through the fingers. It must mean something or nothing, and he was glad to be able to tell his noble friend (Lord Houghton) that it had literally no signification whatever.” Wilberforce
MR. LOWE (AFTERWARDS LORD SHERBROOKE).
lifted the gage of battle with the spirit of a trained gladiator of debate, and he certainly had not the worst of the duel. “If,” said he, “a man has no respect for himself, he ought at all events to respect the tribunal before which he speaks, and when the highest representative of the law of England in your Lordships’ Court, upon a matter involving the liberties of the subject and the religion of the Realm, and all those high truths concerning which this discussion is, can think it fitting to descend to a ribaldry in which he knows that he can safely indulge, because those to whom he addresses it will have too much respect for their character to answer it in like sort, I say that this House has ground to complain of having its high character unnecessarily injured in the sight of the people of this land by one occupying so high a position within it.”[219] The edifying spectacle of a Bishop and the Keeper of the Queen’s Conscience waking the funereal echoes of the House of Lords with acrimonious personalities naturally enlivened the London season of 1864. Quite a year elapsed before the Bishop of Oxford and Lord Westbury resumed anything approaching friendly relations.