My honorable friend, the member for the University of Oxford [Sir Robert Inglis] tells us that if we pass this law England will soon be a republic. The reformed House of Commons will, according to him, before it has sat ten years, depose the king and expel the Lords from their House. Sir, if my honorable friend could prove this, he would have succeeded in bringing an argument for democracy infinitely stronger than any that is to be found in the works of Paine. My honorable friend’s proposition is in fact this: that our monarchical and aristocratical institutions have no hold on the public mind of England; that these institutions are regarded with aversion by a decided majority of the middle class. This, sir, I say, is plainly deducible from his proposition; for he tells us that the representatives of the middle class will inevitably abolish royalty and nobility within ten years; and there is surely no reason to think that the representatives of the middle class will be more inclined to a democratic revolution than their constituents. Now, sir, if I were convinced that the great body of the middle class in England look with aversion on monarchy and aristocracy, I should be forced, much against my will, to come to this conclusion, that monarchical and aristocratical institutions are unsuited to my country. Monarchy and aristocracy, valuable and useful as I think them, are still valuable and useful as means and not as ends. The end of government is the happiness of the people, and I do not conceive that, in a country like this, the happiness of the people can be promoted by a form of government in which the middle classes place no confidence, and which exists only because the middle classes have no organ by which to make their sentiments known. But, sir, I am fully convinced that the middle classes sincerely wish to uphold the royal prerogatives and the constitutional rights of the peers. What facts does my honorable friend produce in support of his opinion? One fact only, and that a fact which has absolutely nothing to do with the question. The effect of this reform, he tells us, would be to make the House of Commons more powerful. It was all-powerful once before, in the beginning of 1649. Then it cut off the head of the king, and abolished the House of Peers. Therefore, if it again has the supreme power, it will act in the same manner. Now, sir, it was not the House of Commons that cut off the head of Charles the First; nor was the House of Commons then all-powerful. It had been greatly reduced in numbers by successive expulsions. It was under the absolute dominion of the army. A majority of the House was willing to take the terms offered by the king. The soldiers turned out the majority; and the minority, not a sixth part of the whole House, passed those votes of which my honorable friend speaks,—votes of which the middle classes disapproved then, and of which they disapprove still.
My honorable friend, and almost all the gentlemen who have taken the same side with him in this debate, have dwelt much on the utility of close and rotten boroughs. It is by means of such boroughs, they tell us, that the ablest men have been introduced into Parliament.[5] It is true that many distinguished persons have represented places of this description. But, sir, we must judge of a form of government by its general tendency, not by happy accidents. Every form of government has its happy accidents. Despotism has its happy accidents. Yet we are not disposed to abolish all constitutional checks to place an absolute master over us, and to take our chance whether he may be a Caligula or a Marcus Aurelius. In whatever way the House of Commons may be chosen, some able men will be chosen in that way who would not be chosen in any other way. If there were a law that the hundred tallest men in England should be members of Parliament, there would probably be some able men among those who would come into the House by virtue of this law. If the hundred persons whose names stand first in the alphabetical list of the Court Guide were made members of Parliament, there would probably be able men among them. We read in ancient history that a very able king was elected by the neighing of his horse, but we shall scarcely, I think, adopt this mode of election. In one of the most celebrated republics of antiquity, Athens, senators and magistrates were chosen by lot; and sometimes the lot fell fortunately. Once, for example, Socrates was in office. A cruel and unjust proposition was made by a demagogue.[6] Socrates resisted it at the hazard of his own life. There is no event in Grecian history more interesting than that memorable resistance. Yet who would have officers appointed by lot, because the accident of the lot may have given to a great and good man a power which he would probably never have attained in any other way? We must judge, as I said, by the general tendency of a system. No person can doubt that a House of Commons, chosen freely by the middle classes, will contain many very able men. I do not say that precisely the same able men who would find their way into the present House of Commons will find their way into the reformed House; but that is not the question. No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it, that if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.
There is another objection, which, I think, was first raised by the honorable and learned member for Newport [Mr. Horace Twiss]. He tells us that the elective franchise is property; that to take it away from a man who has not been judicially convicted of malpractices is robbery; that no crime is proved against the voters in the closed boroughs; that no crime is even imputed to them in the preamble of the bill; and that therefore to disfranchise them without compensation would be an act of revolutionary tyranny. The honorable and learned gentleman has compared the conduct of the present ministers, to that of those odious tools of power who, toward the close of the reign of Charles the Second, seized the charters of the Whig corporations. Now, there was another precedent, which I wonder that he did not recollect, both because it is much more nearly in point than that to which he referred, and because my noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, had previously alluded to it. If the elective franchise is property, if to disfranchise voters without a crime proved, or a compensation given, be robbery, was there ever such an act of robbery as the disfranchising of the Irish forty-shilling freeholders?[7] Was any pecuniary compensation given to them? Is it declared in the preamble of the bill which took away their franchise, that they had been convicted of any offence? Was any judicial inquiry instituted into their conduct? Were they even accused of any crime? Or if you say it was a crime in the electors of Clare to vote for the honorable and learned gentleman who now represents the County of Waterford [Mr. O’Connell], was a Protestant freeholder in Louth to be punished for the crime of a Catholic freeholder in Clare? If the principle of the honorable and learned member for Newport be sound, the franchise of the Irish peasant was property. That franchise the ministers under whom the honorable and learned member held office did not scruple to take away. Will he accuse those ministers of robbery? If not, how can he bring such an accusation against their successors?
Every gentleman, I think, who has spoken from the other side of the House, has alluded to the opinions which some of his Majesty’s ministers formerly entertained on the subject of reform. It would be officious in me, sir, to undertake the defence of gentlemen who are so well able to defend themselves. I will only say that, in my opinion, the country will not think worse either of their capacity or of their patriotism, because they have shown that they can profit by experience, because they have learned to see the folly of delaying inevitable changes. There are others who ought to have learned the same lesson. I say, sir, that there are those who, I should have thought, must have had enough to last them all their lives of that humiliation which follows obstinate and boastful resistance to charges rendered necessary by the progress of society and by the development of the human mind. Is it possible that those persons can wish again to occupy a position which can neither be defended nor surrendered with honor? I well remember, sir, a certain evening in the month of May, 1827. I had not then the honor of a seat in this House; but I was an attentive observer of its proceedings. The right honorable baronet opposite [Sir Robert Peel], of whom personally I desire to speak with that high respect which I feel for his talents and his character, but of whose public conduct I must speak with the sincerity required by my public duty, was then, as he is now, out of office. He had just resigned the seals of the Home Department, because he conceived that the recent ministerial arrangements had been too favorable to the Catholic claims. He rose to ask whether it was the intention of the new cabinet to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, and to reform the Parliament. He bound up, I well remember, those two questions together; and he declared that, if the ministers should either attempt to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, or bring forward a measure of Parliamentary reform, he should think it his duty to oppose them to the utmost. Since that declaration was made, four years have elapsed; and what is now the state of the three questions which then chiefly agitated the minds of men? What is become of the Test and Corporation Acts? They are repealed. By whom? By the right honorable baronet. What has become of the Catholic disabilities? They are removed. By whom? By the right honorable baronet.[8] The question of parliamentary reform is still behind. But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the import, do most clearly indicate that, unless that question also be speedily settled, property, and order, and all the institutions of this great monarchy, will be exposed to fearful peril. Is it possible that gentlemen long versed in high political affairs cannot read these signs? Is it possible that they can really believe that the representative system of England, such as it now is, will last till the year 1860? If not, for what would they have us wait? Would they have us wait merely that we may show to all the world how little we have profited by our own recent experience?
Would they have us wait, that we may once again hit the exact point where we can neither refuse with authority nor concede with grace? Would they have us wait, that the numbers of the discontented party may become larger, its demands higher, its feelings more acrimonious, its organization more complete? Would they have us wait till the whole tragi-comedy of 1827 has been acted over again; till they have been brought into office by a cry of “No Reform,” to be reformers, as they were once before brought into office by a cry of “No Popery,” to be emancipators? Have they obliterated from their minds—gladly, perhaps, would some among them obliterate from their minds—the transactions of that year? And have they forgotten all the transactions of the succeeding year? Have they forgotten how the spirit of liberty in Ireland, debarred from its natural outlet, found a vent by forbidden passages? Have they forgotten how we were forced to indulge the Catholics in all the license of rebels, merely because we chose to withhold from them the liberties of subjects? Do they wait for associations more formidable than that of the Corn Exchange, for contributions larger than the Rent, for agitators more violent than those who, three years ago, divided with the king and the Parliament the sovereignty of Ireland? Do they wait for that last and most dreadful paroxysm of popular rage, for that last and most cruel test of military fidelity? Let them wait, if their past experience shall induce them to think that any high honor or any exquisite pleasure is to be obtained by a policy like this. Let them wait, if this strange and fearful infatuation be indeed upon them, that they should not see with their eyes, or hear with their ears, or understand with their heart. But let us know our interest and our duty better. Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us: Reform, that you may preserve. Now, therefore, while every thing at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age; now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the continent is still resounding in our ears; now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings; now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved; now, while the heart of England is still sound; now, while old feelings and old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away; now, in this your accepted time, now, in this your day of salvation, take counsel, not of prejudice, not of party spirit, not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency, but of history, of reason, of the ages which are past, of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the state. Save property, divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by its own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of so many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing remorse, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.
RICHARD COBDEN.
The name of Cobden will always be associated with the great changes that took place in the economic policy of England about the middle of the nineteenth century. As the result of a public agitation that was carried into every hamlet of Great Britain, and that extended over a period of seven years, the policy of Protection was practically abandoned, and the policy of Free Trade practically adopted. Of that remarkable movement Cobden was the directing and inspiring genius.
Born in 1804, Cobden’s childhood was passed in the disastrous years of the later Napoleonic wars, and the financial distresses that followed. His father’s moderate fortune was involved in the ruin that was so general. As there were eleven children in the family, and as the means rescued from the financial wreck were but slender, the educational advantages of Richard were not great. At fifteen he was obliged to leave the grammar-school in order to enter the counting-house of his uncle in London. The most that can be said of his education is that it was enough to give him an insatiable taste for knowledge, that it implanted within him so ardent a desire, that throughout life he was indefatigable in the work of self-development.
At the age of twenty he became a commercial traveller for his uncle, and, in the course of the six years that followed, acquired a very comprehensive knowledge of the industrial condition of England. When he attained eminence there were many who remembered the discussions on political economy and kindred subjects with which he had enlivened his travelling associates. At twenty-six he induced two of his acquaintances to join with him in entering upon a business of their own. They founded an industry of calico-printing, and were so successful that the firm soon had three establishments, one at Sabden, where the printing works were, and one each at London and Manchester, for the sale of their products. Cobden prints soon becoming famous for the excellence of their material and the beauty of their design; the sales were large and the income of the firm very considerable. In eight years from the establishment of the partnership, the business was so flourishing and so well organized that Cobden was able to devote his energies almost exclusively to matters of public importance.