“These are the reasons why, in my opinion, after abolishing 141 seats by the Reform Act, it is not expedient that the smaller boroughs be extinguished by any further large process of enfranchisement. The last Reform Bill of Lord Palmerston’s Government went quite far enough in this direction.”
Now, sir, what did the last Reform Bill of Lord Palmerston do? It took away the second member from twenty-five boroughs, and that was the whole of it. It did not break up a single electoral district. The present bill takes away forty-nine members from these places, and therefore, according to the words of the Prime Minister written six months ago, it exactly doubles what the Ministry ought to do in the matter. After that I think the House will agree with me that it would not become the member for Calne to add anything in defence of his borough; for what could he say that the Prime Minister had not said a hundred times better and with all the authority and weight of such a statesman, writing deliberately in his study no less than thirty-three years after the passing of the Reform Act? Well, I shall say no more of that, but for some reason for which we have yet to hear I will assume that the small boroughs are to be disfranchised. The next question that we have to consider is what is to be done with the seats to be acquired by that disfranchisement. It does seem to me quite absurd to halt between two opinions in this way. I must assume that there is some good and cogent reason for disfranchising the small boroughs, or else I suppose they would let us alone. But if there be a good and cogent reason for disfranchising them, what possible reason can there be for re-enfranchising them immediately afterwards? What reason can there be for giving them back as a fraction that which you have taken away as an integer? The first process condemns the second. It may be right and wise—I do not in my conscience think it is—to disfranchise these boroughs; but if you do take that course your business surely should be to do the best you can for the interests of the country at large with the seats you thus obtain. If you are to be influenced by respect for traditions, and by veneration for antiquity, perhaps Calne should have some claim, because it was there that the memorable encounter is said to have taken place between St. Dunstan and his enemies, which terminated in the combatants all tumbling through the floor, with the exception of the Saint himself. And I may remind you that in our own times Calne was represented by Dunning, by Lord Henry Petty, by Mr. Abercromby, for some time Speaker of this House, and by Lord Macaulay. That might avail something; but if it is all to go for nothing, I ask on what principle, having first broken up the electoral system of these boroughs and taken away their franchise, you begin to reconstruct them in groups? If you are actuated by a veneration for antiquity, or by an indisposition to destroy a state of things which is, if not carried too far, in no slight degree advantageous, and eases very much the working of the government of the country, besides introducing into this House a class of persons some of whom you would do very badly without—if that be so, leave these boroughs alone. If it be not, deal with the question in a bold and manly spirit; but do not take a thing away from them because you say it is wrong they should have it, and then give it them back again in part because you say it is right they should have it. That involves a contradiction. Look at what you are doing. You take away the franchise from these places and then you limit yourself by giving it to boroughs which have previously possessed it. You unite together boroughs that have been in the habit of engrossing for themselves all the care and attention of a single member, who is obliged to pay great regard to their wishes, to look after their little wants, to pet them and coddle them and make much of them. That which he has been used to do for one of these boroughs he will still be expected to do, and must do, after they are grouped; and what he does and pays for one of the group he will have to do and pay for all the rest. Not one of the three or four will bate one jot or tittle of its claim upon the member, or candidate, but everything will be multiplied by so many times as there are separate places in the group. You must have as many agents in each of them, you must give as many subscriptions to their charities, their schools, and their volunteers. Everything of that kind, in fact, will be multiplied by this system three or four fold. Now these boroughs at present give you a great advantage. All must admit that there is an advantage, if it is not bought too dear, in having means by which persons who are not of large fortune can obtain seats in this House. But by this Bill you take away that one clear advantage of these boroughs, the one thing for which, I think, they very worthily exist—you make them very expensive constituencies; and you then retain them out of veneration for antiquity and from a traditionary feeling, when you have stripped them of the very merit which recommends them to the friends of the Constitution! Well, sir, it is polygamy for a man to marry three or four wives; but that comparison does not do justice to this particular case, because you enforce an aggravated form of political polygamy by asking a man to marry three or four widows. The House need not be afraid of my pursuing that branch of the subject. The best that can be said for the Ministerial Bill—at least what has been said for it—is that it is intended to remove anomalies. I really know of no other defence that is offered for it than that. Well, sir, mankind will tolerate many anomalies if they are old, and if as they have grown up they have got used to them. They will also tolerate anomalies if they have been necessarily occasioned by the desire to work out improvements. But when people set about correcting anomalies, and so do their work as to leave behind them and to create even worse anomalies than any they found existing, neither gods nor men can stand it. Is not that the case here? I would briefly call attention to two or three of the proposed groups. In Cornwall you have Bodmin, Liskeard, and Launceston, with 18,000 inhabitants between them, thrown into a group; but the towns of Redruth, Penzance, and others, making up altogether 23,000, in the same county, are left without the means of representation. Then, in the county of Devon, you are to have Totnes joined with Dartmouth and Ashburton, and by putting the three places together you only get 11,500 people; but there is Torquay, with 16,000, that you leave entirely unrepresented. I should not object to that, because if a thing works well you do not do wrong in leaving it alone; but if you do begin to meddle with it, it is monstrous to turn everything upside down, and then introduce a thousand times greater anomalies than those you have removed. People will bear with anomalies that are old, historical, and familiar, and that, after all, answer some useful end; but they revolt at them when you show them how flagrant an injustice and inequality the House of Commons or the Government will perpetrate in the name of equality and justice. Then there is the group of Maldon and Harwich, thirty miles apart. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was much shocked at our objecting to these boroughs being joined in this extraordinary way; but, sir, were we not told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that these things were done upon geographical considerations? The geographical considerations referred to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer appear to me to mean, as interpreted by his Bill, that the members for the towns to be grouped should learn as much geography as possible by having as large distances as possible to travel over. Then we have in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, Cirencester, Tewkesbury, and Evesham, with 16,000 inhabitants; but in Worcestershire alone you have Oldbury and Stourbridge, with a population of 23,000, which remain utterly unrepresented. Again, there is the case of Wells and Westbury, which scrape together 11,000 inhabitants, while between the two we find Yeovil with 8000, and for which nothing is done. In Wiltshire, Chippenham, Malmesbury, and Calne have 19,000 inhabitants, but a very few miles from Calne is Trowbridge, with 9626 inhabitants, the second town in the county, which you leave unrepresented. In Yorkshire, Richmond and Northallerton scrape together 9000 inhabitants, while for Barnsley, with 17,000, Doncaster, 16,000, and Keighley, 15,000, you do nothing at all. Such things may be tolerable when they have grown up with you, but they are utterly intolerable when a Government interferes, and introduces a measure which overlooks such cases while professing to take numbers as its guide. The Government has repudiated geographical considerations, but it is more absurd if taken numerically. Here is, however, something worse than an anomaly. It is a gross injustice. The House is aware—with the two exceptions of Bewdley and Droitwich, which are probably to be accounted for by haste and carelessness, the matter being a small one—that all the boroughs having a less population than 8000 inhabitants are dealt with in some way or other. There are two ways of treating these boroughs. There is a gentler and a severer form. There are eight boroughs which are picked out for what I call the question ordinary—that is, losing one member; and the remainder, a very large number, are picked out and formed into sixteen groups, this being the extraordinary or exquisite torture of being pounded to pieces, brayed in a mortar, and then renovated. In judging of the treatment which these boroughs receive, I think some principle ought to be observed. The geographical principle has been ostentatiously set aside, and look at what has happened to the numerical principle. There is Newport, in the Isle of Wight, with 8000 inhabitants, which loses only one of its members, and is not grouped; while Bridport, with 7819 inhabitants, loses both its members and is grouped. There are seven boroughs having smaller populations than Bridport from which only one member is taken, and they are not grouped; while Bridport, with a large population, has both its members taken and is grouped. Is it on account of geographical considerations that it is coupled with Honiton, nineteen miles off? [An honorable member: Twenty-one!] That is not anomaly. It is simply a gross injustice. There is Chippenham, with 7075 inhabitants. Chippenham, as every one knows, is a rising railway town. Yet it is grouped; while there are five boroughs which contain fewer inhabitants than Chippenham which will each continue to return one member. Going a little further, we find Dorchester, with 6779 inhabitants, and three boroughs smaller than itself. Dorchester loses both members, while the three boroughs smaller than Dorchester retain one member. They are Hertford, Great Marlow, and Huntingdon. I can simply attribute the cause of this to the great haste, carelessness, and inadvertency which have characterized this measure. I am far from attributing it to any improper motives. I have not the slightest notion of anything of the kind. It arises, I believe, from the mere wantonness or carelessness of the Government hurrying forward a Bill which they did not intend to bring in, and which they were at last compelled to bring in, contrary to all their declarations. Between Huntingdon, the smallest borough that loses one member, and Newport, the largest, there are seventeen boroughs, nine of them returning one member each and eight returning two, all of which have larger population than Huntingdon, which is allowed to retain one member while they are grouped. The reason I cannot tell, but there stands the anomaly. This grouping of boroughs cannot therefore, I say, be satisfactory to any class of gentlemen. Of course, it is not satisfactory to the small boroughs. They are material out of which other people are to be compensated, and of course no one likes to be included in such a process. But I cannot imagine that it can be satisfactory to gentlemen who call for those measures with a view to remove anomalies and promote equality, and make the Parliament a more accurate representative of the population of the country. It seems to me that everybody must be dissatisfied with such a proceeding as this. The House need not take all these groups as they stand, because any one of them might be remedied in Committee, but the whole principle of the thing is so bad that it is absolutely impossible to deal with it in Committee at all. I have been assuming hitherto that we have good grounds for getting these forty-nine members that are wanted, but that depends entirely upon the use the Government make of them when they have them. What do they do with them? They propose to give out of these forty-nine twenty-five as third members to counties, and four as third members to large towns, and seven to Scotland. I deny that a case is made out in favor of this arrangement. The honorable gentlemen opposite with whom I sympathize so much on this question may not perhaps agree with me on this point. I maintain that it is a mere illusion, as things now stand and looking at these two measures as a whole, to talk of county representation; you must look at the two things together, franchise and redistribution, and you must remember that the counties you give these members to are to become really groups of towns. Every one knows very well where the houses between £14 and £50 are to be found. They are to be found, not in the rural districts, but in the towns. What you are preparing to do for the counties’ members is to make a total change in the nature of their constituency. But under the system proposed the county members would no longer represent a constituency which from its present and peculiar character can easily be worked as a whole. When you lower the franchise as proposed you have taken the power out of the rural districts and given it to small towns, with probably an attorney in each. When you speak of giving a third member to counties you must remember that you are talking of counties not as they are now, but as you propose to make them. It is an illusion, therefore, to say that a great deal is done for the rural districts in thus adding members to the counties, and this will be the more easily understood if you have not forgotten the opinion of Lord Russell, who says how materially the small boroughs assist the counties in maintaining the balance of power. I altogether decline to be caught by that bait. But, putting that aside, on what principle are we to give three members to counties? It has been the practice to give two members to counties from time immemorial, with a slight exception at the time of the Reform, which is by no means generally approved. I am willing to accept the fact without stopping to inquire too curiously whether this number was fixed upon because they slept in the same bed or rode on the same horse on their journeys to London. But, if you come to make it a general practice to give three members to counties, I think we are entitled to ask upon what principle this is to be done. For my own part, I can suggest no other principle than the mere worship of numbers. It is quite a new principle that numbers should not only be represented in this House because they are important, but that that importance should entitle them to more votes. The House will recollect that every member has two separate and distinct duties to perform. He is the representative of the borough which sends him to Parliament, and he has to look after its local interests to the best of his power. That is a small and, in the mild and just times in which we live, generally a comparatively easy duty, but his greater and more pre-eminent duty is to look after the affairs of the Empire. The real use, therefore, of an electoral district, be it small or large, is one more important than the adequate representation of the numbers of any particular place, so long as they are represented. It is that it should send to Parliament the persons best calculated to make laws, and perform the other functions demanded of the members of the House. This seems to me to go directly against the principle that these great communities are not only entitled to send competent gentlemen to represent their affairs, but to send as many members as will correspond with their weight in the country. If once you grant this principle you are advancing far on the road to electoral districts and numerical equality. I say this is the mere principle of numbers. If the principle be once established, it is very easy to give it extension. Scarcely a meeting is assembled on this subject without some man getting up and complaining that the member for a small borough, myself, for instance, should have a vote which will counterbalance the vote of a representative of a borough containing 200,000 or 300,000. If it was a fight for the good things of this world between Caine and Birmingham, I could understand how such a principle might be adopted; but when it is a question of making the laws and influencing the destinies of this country, the question is not which is the larger body, but which best discharges its duty in sending members to Parliament. I cannot find a trace of that principle in the whole of this Bill, for it is clear that there is no such idea in giving these three members to counties. They are mere concessions to the importance of the constituencies to which they are given, while the small boroughs are grouped in a manner likely to promote mediocrity, because gentlemen of shining qualities and useful attainments will scarcely be able to contest them, unless possessed of great wealth. I cannot bring my mind to the idea of giving three members to those large constituencies. We should, on the whole, be far better without those twenty-nine members. We had better use for them. Now, I have gone through the details of this Bill; and perhaps the House will allow me to sum up what I think of the whole effect of the Ministerial measure. You say how frightful the expenses of elections are, and declare that they are a canker-worm in the very heart of the Constitution. Yet what is the effect of this Bill with regard to the legitimate expenses of elections? The Government are proposing to increase the size of the constituency of every borough in the kingdom. Will they decrease expense? They propose to disfranchise small boroughs; and instead of subdividing districts with a view to make more manageable constituencies, except in the case of the Tower Hamlets and South Lancashire, a senseless homage is paid to mere numbers, adding to that which is already too much. Then there is another thing. It is the duty of every man who calls himself a statesman to study the signs of the times, and make himself master, as far as he can, of the tendencies of society. What are those signs and tendencies? I suppose we shall none of us doubt that they are tending more or less in the direction, as I said before, of uniformity and democracy. What, then, is the duty of a wise statesman under such circumstances? Is it to stimulate the tendencies which are already in full force and activity, or is it not rather, if he cannot leave matters alone, to see if he cannot find some palliative? If he cannot prevent the change which stronger powers are working, should he not make that change as smooth as possible, and not by any means accelerate it? But the whole of this Bill is not in the way of moderating, but stimulating existing tendencies. It is not always wise, and the observation is as old as Aristotle, to make a law too accurately in correspondence with the times or the genius of the Government under which you live. The best law that could be made for the United States would not be one peculiarly democratic. The best law for the French Government to enact is not one of an ultra-monarchical character. There is sound wisdom in this, and it should be kept well in mind; but it seems to have been by no means considered by the framers of the crude measure before us.
“But our new Jehu spurs the hot-mouthed horse,
Instructs him well to know his native force,
To take the bit between his teeth and fly,
To the next headlong steep of anarchy.”[27]
Passing to another point, I have to remind you that the Chancellor of the Exchequer frightened us the other day by giving us a prose version of Byron’s poem on “Darkness,” when we were told that our coal was all going to be consumed, and that we were to die like the last man and woman of our mutual hideousness. Upon that the Right Honorable Gentleman founded a proposition; and never was so practical a proposition worked out upon so speculative a basis. “You will have no coal in one hundred years,” he says, “and, therefore, pay your debts”; and, addressing the honorable gentlemen opposite, he says, “Commerce may die, navigation may die, and manufactures may die,—and die they will,—but land will remain, and you will be saddled with the debt.” That was the language of the Right Honorable Gentleman. Now, if we are to pay terminable annuities on the strength of the loss of our coal, do not you think we may apply the same dogma to this proposed reform of our Constitution? What is the Right Honorable Gentleman seeking to do by this Bill? He is seeking to take away power of control from the land—from that which is to remain when all those fine things I have mentioned have passed away in the future—from that which will be eventually saddled with the whole burden of the debt, and to place it in these fugitive and transitory elements which, according to the account he gave us, a breath has made and a breath can unmake. I ask, is that, upon the Right Honorable Gentleman’s own showing, sound prospective wisdom? I do not deal myself with such remote contingencies; I offer this simply as an argumentum ad hominem. I should like to hear the answer. I have a word to say with regard to the franchise. We have had a little light let in upon this subject. We are offered, as you all know, a £7 franchise. It is defended by the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon two grounds—flesh and blood, and fathers of families. The £7 franchise is defended by the honorable Member for Birmingham upon another ground; he takes his stand on the ancient lines of the British Constitution. I will suggest to him one line of the British Constitution, and I should like to know whether he means to stand by it. In his campaign of 1858, in which he had taken some liberties with the Crown and spoke with some disrespect of the Temporal Peers, he came to the Spiritual Peers, and this was the language he employed. He said, “That creature of monstrous—nay, of adulterous birth.” I suppose there is no part of the British Constitution much more ancient than the Spiritual Peers. Is that one of the lines the honorable gentleman takes his stand upon? Again, the Attorney-General, having recovered from the blow the grouping of Richmond must have been to him, has become a convert, and like most converts he is an enthusiast. He tells us that he is for the £7 franchise because he is in favor, like the honorable Member for Birmingham, of household suffrage.[28] These are the reasons which are given in order to induce us to adopt the £7 franchise. I ask the House, is there any encouragement in any of these arguments to adopt it? The Chancellor of the Exchequer says it is flesh and blood; it is a very small instalment of flesh and blood, and none can doubt that any one asking for it upon that ground only asks for it as a means to get more flesh and blood. The honorable Member for Birmingham stands upon the Constitution, and he puts me in mind of the American squib which says:
“Here we stand on the Constitution, by thunder,
It’s a fact of which there are bushels of proofs,
For how could we trample upon it, I wonder,
If it wasn’t continually under our hoofs.”
Well, the honorable gentleman asks the £7 upon the ground that it is constitutional—that is, upon the ground of household suffrage. He wants it with a view of letting us down gently to household suffrage. The Attorney-General, of course, means the same. In fact, he said we ought to do it at once. But see what a condemnation the Attorney-General passes upon the Government of which he forms a part. He says: “You have taken your stand upon the £7 franchise. The ground you take is so slippery and unsafe, so utterly untenable, that I would rather go down to the household suffrage at once—to the veriest cabin with a door and a chimney to it that can be called a house. There I may perhaps touch ground.” What encouragement do these gentlemen give us to take the £7 franchise? Yet the honorable Member for Westminster says that £7 is no great extension, and out of all comparison with universal suffrage; so he excuses himself for having thrown overboard all the safeguards which he has recommended should be girt round universal suffrage. I do not object to his throwing them overboard. Checks and safeguards, in my opinion, generally require other safeguards to take care of them. The first use universal suffrage would make of its universality would be to throw the safeguards over altogether. He says the £7 franchise has nothing to do with safeguards. The Chancellor of the Exchequer goes to universal suffrage, and the other two to whom I have referred profess they go to household suffrage. Do you think you could stop there? You talk of touching ground—would it be solid ground or quicksand? You think that when you have got down to that you can create a sort of household aristocracy. The thing is ridiculous. The working-classes protest even now against what they call a brick-and-mortar suffrage. They say, “A man ’s a man for a’ that.” The Bill appears to me to be the work of men who
“At once all law, all settlement control,
And mend the parts by ruin of the whole.
The tampering world is subject to this curse,
To physic their disease into a worse.”[29]
What shall we gain by it? I have not, I think, quibbled with the question. I have striven to do what the Government have evaded doing—to extract great principles out of this medley, for medley it is, composed partly out of veneration for numbers and partly out of a sort of traditional veneration for old boroughs, which are to be preserved after what is beneficial in them has been taken from them. Then we have to consider the proposed county franchise, founded, as it has been said, upon utter ignorance. It is quite evident that this Bill has been framed without information, because the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as is well known, has told us that the only copy he had—I may be right; at any rate I cannot be wrong until I have stated it somehow—the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us that the only copy he had of those statistics was the one which he was obliged to lay on the table of the House. If I am wrong, let the Right Honorable Gentleman contradict me.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer: I spoke of the last absolutely finished copy. The substance of those statistics, as far as regarded the general bases of the measure, had been in our hands for weeks before that time, but was not in a state to be placed on the table of the House until all the columns had been filled in.
Mr. Lowe: Well, sir, that finished document is what I call a copy. It may be that the Bill was originally drawn for £6 and £12, and that at the last moment £7 and £14 were substituted, and that it was regarded as a matter of little consequence what the exact figures were. As to the element of time, I suppose, however, I must not say anything, or the Right Honorable Gentleman will be angry with me. The twelve nights that he gave us for the Franchise Bill are pretty well gone, and we have now got what he never contemplated we should have, a Redistribution Bill as well. I suppose I had better say nothing about the support the Government will have, or I had better veil it in a dead language and say, Idem trecenti Juravimus.[30] I would ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how he can expect to get the Bill through the Committee under those circumstances, bearing in mind that most of the newspapers that lay claim to intelligence and write for educated persons, having begun with rather vague notions of liberality, have written themselves fairly out of them, and that educated opinion is generally adverse to this measure. These, sir, are the prospects we have before us. We have a measure of the most ill-considered and inadequate nature, which cannot be taken as it is, and which, as I understand it, is based on principles so absolutely subversive and destructive—the grouping, for instance—that if we were ever so anxious to aid the Government we could not accept it. Well then, sir, what objection can there be to the advice given to the Government by my honorable friend, the Member for Dumfries,—no hostile adviser,—to put off the question for another year, and give the educated opinion of the country time to decide on this matter? What are the objections to such a course? There are only two that I know of. One is, that the honorable gentlemen are anxious for a settlement. But are there materials for a settlement in the Bill before us? How, for instance, can you settle the grouping? If you retain the principle on which the Government act, that of grouping those boroughs that have already members, you may do a little better than they have done, because they seem to have gone gratuitously wrong; but you cannot make an effective measure of it, and one that would stand. I am convinced that it would generate far more inequality than it seeks to remove. Then, the giving the constituencies three members is a principle of the greatest gravity and weight, not only for its actual results, but because it really concedes the principle of electoral districts. That, surely, is a matter not to be lightly disposed of; nor do I see how it can be compromised, because if the Government gives it up, it must select some other apportionment, which can only be done by creating other electoral districts. Then, as regards the franchise: no doubt that we could get through, because it would only be dealing with a figure, and I dare say there are many honorable gentlemen whose opinions are entitled to great weight who would like a compromise on the franchise. But then you have to consider this, that a compromise on the franchise is a capitulation. Take what I said of the opinions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the honorable Member for Birmingham, and the Attorney-General, and it is just as true of £8 as of £7, and of £9 as of £8. If you once give up the notion of standing on the existing settlement, so far as the mere money qualification for the franchise is concerned, whatever other qualifications you may add to it, you give up the whole principle. As the Attorney-General himself sees, you must go down to household suffrage at last—whether any farther is a matter on which men may differ, though, for my part, I think you would have to go farther. I must say, therefore, that I can see no materials for a compromise in the borough franchise part of this Bill, and I come therefore to the conclusion that, desirable as it would be, weary as we all are of the subject, and anxious as we all are to get rid of it, there is no place for a compromise. The divergence is too wide; the principles are too weighty; the time is too short; the information is too defective; the subject is too ill-considered. Well, then the other objection to a postponement is that, as my Right Honorable friend, the Secretary for the Colonies, told us, the honor of the Government would not permit them to take that course. Now, I think we have heard too much about the honor of the Government. The honor of the Government obliged them to bring in a Reform Bill in 1860.[31] It was withdrawn under circumstances which I need not allude to, and as soon as it was withdrawn the honor of the Government went to sleep. It slept for five years. Session after session it never so much as winked. As long as Lord Palmerston lived honor slept soundly; but when Lord Palmerston died, and Lord Russell succeeded by seniority to his place, the “Sleeping Beauty” woke up. As long as the Government was kept together by having no Reform Bill, honor did not ask for a Reform Bill; but when, owing to the peculiar predilections of Lord Russell, the Government was best kept together by having a Reform Bill, honor became querulous and anxious for a Reform Bill. But that, Sir, is a very peculiar kind of honor. It puts me in mind of Hotspur’s description: