No. XII, Retrospective Glance at Past Houses of Commons.

In all sixty-nine boroughs, which sent members to parliament in different reigns, and which are now deprived of that right. Besides these, Mr. Oldfield has given a list of ninety-seven other boroughs which have charters, and most probably sent members at some former period since the reign of Edward I. but which are now disfranchised. From the reign of Edward I. to that of Charles II. boroughs have been created and annihilated, at the caprice of each successive monarch. The following will show at one view, the gradual alterations in the representation of the people.

In the puerile debates on the East Retford bill, sir R. Peel took up a sophism dropped by the late Mr. Canning; namely, that however just and expedient a reform in the representation might be, still he should oppose it, since it would compromise the safety of the monarchy. What an argument to address to the United Kingdom! Is the safety of the Crown and the Aristocracy to be put in competition with the wishes and welfare of twenty-four millions of people; or, if we include the population of the colonies and dependencies of the empire, with one hundred and fifty millions? The kingly office is only a trust for the public benefit, and the Peerage is instituted for a similar purpose: and shall the prerogatives of these be made a pretext for withholding justice and happiness from such an assemblage of human beings? But we deny either the Crown or Peerage would be compromised by parliamentary reform, between which and a government of three orders we cannot discern an inherent incompatibility. Every community must have a head: we prefer a king to any other designation, and between the monarch and the commons an intermediate body may be interposed, without deranging the harmony of the system or erecting a barrier to popular rights. This intermediate body is the Peerage, or Aristocracy, and ought to be a real aristocracy, consisting of the élite of society, not deriving their functions from the accident of birth, but chosen, like the judges, for life. Such an innovation as this might compromise the corruptions of monarchy and aristocracy, they might involve a reduction in the civil list, and in the pensions and unearned salaries of the nobility; and it may be these Sir Robert contemplated; but the loss of them would not be greatly deplored by the people of England, so long as the substance of the regal office and the legitimate functions of an upper chamber were preserved inviolate. It would relieve them at least of the pain of beholding the descendants of statesmen, heroes, and lawyers, dependent on sources of income which true nobility ought to spurn. They inherit name, and fame, and rank, but no bread. A poor lord is a poor thing, and the natural prey of a corrupt or ambitious Minister. What will not a pauper peer, dependent on a paltry sinecure or pension, with a fashionable wife and a crowd of infant nobility about her—very hungry, and what is worse, very capricious and luxurious—do for quarter day?

It may be truly said England has yet to establish a constitution. France and America are the only countries which can answer the challenge—If you have a constitution produce it? An Englishman, if asked, where is the constitution of which you boast? must answer, it exists by a sort of inference from what a half hundred hirelings have written, and in which they all contradict each other, and are the whole of them contradicted by daily practice in every transaction of state. In every part the renovated French constitution, under king Philip, is an improvement on the principles of the English government. We shall select a few points of comparison.

The French charter is announced as the right of the people, not the grant of the Crown. It abolishes the censorship of the press. The dramatic censorship exists in England in great rigour, and the powers of the attorney-general are an indirect censorship—a suspended despotism—which, aided by the stamp-duties, and the law of securities, fetter the freedom of discussion. The sittings of the two chambers are declared public: the debates of our parliament are by law declared secret, and are published only by connivance at the illegality. The French deputies are elected only for five years, ours for seven. A confiscation of goods is abolished;—in England, children may be attainted in blood for the delinquencies of their parents, and punished by confiscation of their father’s property. Peers in France cannot vote till they are twenty-five years of age: in England they vote at twenty-one, and by proxy, without hearing the discussion. Half the members must be resident: in England, one-half the members have no knowledge of the boroughs they represent. The French government, without professing to be of any religion, grants not only equal toleration, but equal provision for the maintenance of every Christian sect: the English government adopts one creed, and subjects to neglect every other. In short, the French constitution is, in all respects, what the English pretends to be, except in the impossible theory of three equal and co-existing branches of the legislature. In France, the commons are triumphant, the peers subordinate, and the king only the premier, or first public minister: in England, a surreptitious branch of the constitution has been predominant—the boroughmongers.

To all complaints against our defective representation, Mr. Canning had but one reply—It works well. Any government is better than no government; and, consequently, they must all work well. It was time, however, for that great Pacific Ocean, the English public, to look about them, and see whether other governments did not work better. While John Bull has been dozing under the political drug, it works well, his more vigilant neighbours in France have laughed him to scorn, and bravely achieved a government that works better. Having compared the principles of the two governments, let us next compare, not theories, charters, and paper-constitutions, but simply the working well; acknowledging, however, imprimis, that in working a people, no government ever worked half so well as that of England.

Who does not remember the incessant goadings in the house of commons to acknowledge the free republics of South America, and the sophistry, concealments, and shuffling to put off the recognition? The French government, before it was a month old, declared its recognition.

We have been chuckling and rejoicing over Mr. Fox’s libel bill for the last forty years. The French have at once determined that all offences of the press shall be subject to the adjudication of a jury.

What nauseating debates have occurred session after session, to induce the government to rescue the black population of our Colonies from a brutal tyranny. The French have already given all the rights and privileges of citizenship to their negroes, and are adopting measures for the effective protection of the African race.

What eloquent and endless declamation there has been on the increasing influence of the Crown, from the increased expenditure, and the augmentation of the Peerage. Within a few days of its first sitting, the French Chamber struck off the roll ninety-three peers of the creation of Charles X. and last year made a bolder step by the abolition of the hereditary right of legislation.

Every session has produced its exposure of jobs, which generate like the polypus, and are quite as indestructible. The Dundas and Bathurst and the South-American missions were the jobs of the Tories, and the Plunket doings those of the Whigs. The French are subjecting their pension-list, their dead weight, and the ecclesiastical and civil salaries to rigid investigation and close curtailment.

Every session produced its scores of motions for economy, finance committees, judicial inquiries, and what not. They all ended in nothing but bills of charges for commissioners, secretaries, office-keepers, and so forth. The most ridiculous, and almost the last farce of the Tories, was the mock trial of the East Retford electors, and the passing laws to indemnify witnesses for their evidence in proof of corruption!

Lastly, observe what the French have done in regard to capital punishments. We have been nibbling for half a century at our savage treason laws: in the session of 1830 an abortive attempt was made to abolish capital punishment for forgery; the French have voted for the abolition of the punishment of death for all political offences.

Instead of a working government, the Borough System has been the laziest institution in the world for any purpose save evil doing—a mere congerie of formalities, parade, and ostentation. The Parliament, for a century, has been little better than a common debating club, where a mob of gentlemen met, during the winter season, to spend their evenings in cracking jokes and spouting nonsense. It has been mere play at shuttlecock between the rival disputants, who, in alternately changing from one side of the house to the other, have amused themselves in reciprocally throwing back their opponents’ arguments, phrases, and opinions: all the time the nation has been looking on the logomachy quite seriously, as if it were real business, instead of a sham fight—harmless pastime for those who had no better employment: but the game is up!