Chapter VII.: Character and Composition of the First Reform Parliament.

The House of Commons, backed by the people, is the medium through which we look forward for the ultimate attainment of good government; but whether its composition is such—so independent of aristocratic influence and prejudice—as to be prepared to adopt the remedial suggestions of the last chapter, is a point we are unable to determine. We do not yet despair of the reformed representation. Although the ballot, triennial parliaments, and alterations in the elective suffrage are points which ought not to be delayed, practical ameliorations claim the first consideration. Both the people and their representatives have still much to learn. That there is a large body of independent men in the House we infer from two facts; first, that in spite of the contrary disposition of government, a majority of the members were determined to support Mr. Ward’s motion (May 27th) for the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical property; and secondly, they were determined to throw out the more objectionable clauses of the Irish Coercion Bill: in the one we had evidence of a sound and firm judgment in regard to a great economical question; in the other of a constitutional jealousy, which would not, without imperative necessity, submit to abridge the civil liberties of the people. That they were not disposed to support other popular measures may be ascribed to an impression that they were premature, or were unseasonably introduced, or had a tendency to embarrass—perhaps to cause a change of ministers!

The last is a consideration, we confess, that always puzzled us amazingly; it does, indeed, appear an astounding fact that a majority of the honourable members should have laboured under the strange delusion that no ‘great men’ could be found capable of governing this vast empire save Thomas Spring Rice and my lords Lansdowne, Auckland, and Melbourne. The thought never seems to have occurred that great occasions always produce their great men to direct them. So far from sharing in this infatuation, our opinion is that if the whole of the late cabinet,—or, indeed, the three estates of the realm, as Guy Fawkes intended,—had disappeared in the recent combustion of the parliamentary walls, the entire community would have gone on much in the same way as if no such catastrophe had happened. We are quite sure the ‘Collective Wisdom’ (we cannot forget old names) will look back to this part of their conduct with the same ludicrous feelings that they look back to the phantasmagoria of the nightmare, occasioned by swallowing too much of Bellamy’s old port and rump-steaks.

A second hallucination under which the Reformed Parliament laboured, and which gave a wrong direction to their legislation, was mistaken notions of the importance of the agricultural interest. Hence their negative vote on the corn-laws and their dealings with fiscal burdens. In our chapter on the ‘Plough and the Loom’ we have tried to place this question in its true light. The middle classes, as well as their representatives, share in the misapprehension of the national importance of rural industry, and it is a fact which may partly account for the proceedings of the House of Commons in this respect, that nothing like an energetic and consentaneous expression of public opinion on the injustice and impolicy of the bread-tax could be elicited.

There is another subject on which we think the people are quite as much at fault as their representatives,—namely, the projected dealings with church property. The idea of giving upwards of one-third part of the tithes to the landlords instead of applying as much of the redundant revenues of the clergy to some purpose of public utility, surpasses our comprehension. Yet this intended spoliation, of what we consider the national resources, did not call forth any loud expression of disapprobation. The truth is, the people did not generally comprehend it; many of them, we verily believe, conceived it to be a generous act of the landlords to undertake to pay, in lieu of their tenants, three-fifths of the tithes on consideration that the remaining two-fifths should be abated; not reflecting or not knowing that the whole tithe is a rent-charge on the land belonging to the public, and which the public has as much right to exact to the full amount from the owners of the soil as a mortgagee has to exact the amount of his mortgage.

Much of the other business which has been before parliament has been of the same character as the commutation of tithes. Referring to property rather than personal rights, it has not excited a high degree of popular interest. If a pension is lavished on the cast-off mistress of a minister, attention is excited to the profligacy of the transaction from the Land’s End to John-o’-Groat’s; but legal reform, the slave-question, and the renewal of the charters of the Bank and East India Company have been more interesting to lawyers and political economists than the mass of the people. Hence the House of Commons has been left, as we may say, to itself, and its members have been influenced neither by the watchfulness nor excitement of their constituents.

Another circumstance tended to give flatness and inefficiency to the proceedings of the Reform Parliament. There is nothing like a regular opposition in the House of Commons. The Tories never reckon to exert themselves unless they are amply paid for it, and having no expectation of the recent turn-up in their favour, they were mostly content during the late sessions lo look on and laugh while the Whigs tried to wriggle out of the difficulties created by their long course of misgovernment. Exclusive of Tories there is a somewhat numerous corps of Radicals—one hundred and twenty at the least—a number far exceeding that of the old opposition, which under Charles James Fox struggled against the war faction, and the profligate administrations of Liverpool and Castlereagh. With discipline and the support of the towns the Radicals in the house might make the English aristocracy quail for their corn-laws, church abuses, and hereditary privileges, but they are a body without a soul; having no leader in whose superior character and ability they can acquiesce, they are a disorganized mass, many of whom had no higher object of ambition than the dinners of lord Althorp!

While we are on the popular party, we might as well drop an observation on the conduct of some of its chief members. Mr. Hume appears to have been amalgamated, in part at least, with the late ministers, and his economical vocation became so diminutive, that at the end of the session he had only to complain of the wastefulness of using gilt instead of plain edged paper. The conduct of the member for Middlesex on agricultural questions has puzzled us exceedingly. His motion for a fixed duty on corn at the high rate fixed by him was more favourable to the landlords than the existing graduated scale. If such were the intention of the honourable member, we cannot reconcile it with our notion of a popular representative, and that it was so may be inferred from Mr. Hume’s subsequent vote in favour of the marquis of Chandos’s motion, that ‘agriculture be specially considered in any reduction of taxation.’ Mr. Buckingham too, (proh pudor!)—the representative of the operatives and tradespeople of Sheffield—voted (disinterestedly we suspect) with the ‘lords of the soil’!

Knowing Mr. Hume’s sentiments on the slave question, we were not surprised to find him among the foremost supporters of the Poor Law bill—a measure which certainly required the stomach of a Scotchman to swallow whole and undivided. It may be inferred from this that he is a disciple of that school which has long been labouring to substitute a heartless selfishness for the more generous impulses of our nature. We have before adverted to the tendency of this mis-named philosophy, and which in substance amounts to this:—that the miseries of life result from the absence of individual prudence, and that this prudence will be best taught by abandoning the destitute to the consequences of their vices or misfortunes; thereby extinguishing all the charities which hitherto it has been the business of science and religion to inculcate, and bringing society into that primæval state in which the predominant rule is—Take care of yourself without regard to any body else! A man who thinks that social existence can be bettered by the dissemination of such a doctrine must have a very peculiar organization himself, and have had a very limited and peculiar observance of human nature.

Mr. O’Connell is usually enrolled in the popular file, but with little pretension to popular principles. His idea of church reform is limited to the transfer of tithe to the landlords; he is opposed to poor laws and to popular education, which last he identifies with the spread of deism; thus covertly insinuating that Christianity is incompatible with the diffusion of general intelligence. His quarrel with government is a personal quarrel merely; it is a dispute about the disposal of the ‘loaves and fishes,’ not about popular rights and benefits. Ireland is the patrimony of O’Connell and his heirs, and the away of the ‘Saxon’ is in the way of his ambition.

Two truths are satisfactorily illustrated in the career of this redoubtable agitator,—first the power of a clever man to mislead a community; secondly, the deplorable ignorance of the Irish, who can be duped by so palpable an adventurer, who fights not for them but himself only.

It is one of the imputed weaknesses of the late administration that it sought to open a negotiation with O’Connell; or, as we understood it, to buy him over. But how was this possible? Like the Times newspaper, O’Connell may boast of being placed by circumstances in such a position that he is above the price of any ministry. What pension or place could they give him which would be an equivalent for the ‘rint’ and professional gains? There is only one—the kingly office—and that is not yet vacant.

The position of sir Francis Burdett in the reform calendar cannot be overlooked. For some reason—we know no good one—the Baronet has fallen to leeward. This may be the mere caprice of popular favour, which posterity will correct. We shall, however, stick to first impressions; we shall not transfer our allegiance from those who cherished reform in its weakness and nonage to those who have only adopted it in its triumph and maturity. It is often painful to observe how the ‘honours are divided.’ The Whigs claim all the laud of reform, but what did they do for the cause during the thirty years’ public life of sir Francis Burdett save treat its advocates with sneers, revilings, and contumelious silence? Not many years since there appeared in the organ of the party, the Edinburgh Review, an article recommending to the people to withdraw from the pursuit of parliamentary reform as a primary object, and concentrate attention on retrenchment in the public expenditure. Even so late as 1830 (Nov. 2d) earl Grey declared in the House of Lords that he was ‘unprepared with any plan of reform,’ and perhaps would have long continued unprepared had he not had at his elbow lord Durham, lord John Russell, and one or two more who loved the cause more with the heartiness of a first love than the ex-Premier.

We have no taste for minute retrospections into public conduct, for we have an aversion to try men either by words or deeds, having their own by-gone circumstances to justify them. We will never deny—it cannot be denied—that the Whigs at length, as soon perhaps as they had the power—gave the people a measure of reform ample beyond their expectation. For this they owe them forgiveness and perhaps gratitude. But if it comes to the apportionment of individual merit, we say that of living men—we pass over the early martyrs, Wyvil, Sharpe, Jebb, Wakefield, Cartwright, and Walter Fawkes—we repeat, of living men there is none to whom the cause is so much indebted as to sir Francis Burdett, and next to him a few honest and indefatigable men of Westminster. Among the upper ranks sir Francis long fought the good fight single-handed, and for the achievement of what he conceived the birthright of Englishmen he sacrificed that which is most painful to bear—the friendship and association of his equals. For a long time the Baronet was sent to Coventry by Whigs and Tories, and when he walked into the House of Commons not a member would speak to him. He had committed high treason against the usurping few by identifying himself with the rights and interests of the oppressed many:—

The present inertia of sir Francis may be easily explained. His task is done. He never sought more than the constitutional immunities of his countrymen. Fiscal, commercial, and economical questions, which now form the chief topics of parliamentary discussion are not in his department; but if he takes no further share in public affairs, he has well earned a life interest in the representation of Westminster and the gratitude of his country after.

It is not our purpose to go through the entire roll of ‘good men and true’ in the House of Commons. They are a formidable body, and will, no doubt, be ultimately omnipotent there, but they cannot accomplish national objects unless they have the zealous support of the people. If we look to the composition of the lower house, we shall find that what may be termed aristocratic interests have still a numerical preponderance. On the first meeting of the reformed parliament, the sons and heirs presumptive of peers returned amounted to seventy-three; of other relatives of peers there were seventy-eight, making one hundred and fifty-one members united by consanguineous ties with the House of Lords. Besides the direct influence of the aristocracy, there is the influence of the crown. From the returns of 1833, (Parl. Pap. No. 671,) it appears there are sixty members holding offices and receiving emoluments from civil appointments, pensions, and sinecures to the amount of £86,291 (exclusive of eighty-three members holding naval and military commissions.) There are four members holding offices at the pleasure of public officers, the emoluments of which are £7,500; ten members holding offices or pensions for life under the crown, £1,311; four members hold offices under the chief justice or other public officers, of which the emoluments are £9,233; four members with pensions, or sinecures, or offices executed by deputy, the annual emoluments of which are £5,764. One member (the speaker!) has the reversion of an office after one or more lives, the annual value of which is £4,000. Sixty-four members hold commissions in the army, and nineteen in the navy. In the militia and yeomanry there are forty-five members who receive pay and emolument when their corps are on service. Seventy-five members have church patronage.

It is worthy to be remarked that in the house there are only forty-nine merchants, manufacturers, and traders, while there are seventy-one lawyers. The Whig administration was the harvest of gentlemen of the long robe, and this was the spring of a good deal of the scribbling and talking support it received. Of four hundred and twenty-four new offices created by the late ministers, one hundred and five were given to barristers. When one million had been voted by parliament to assist the Irish clergy, no fewer than seventy-two barristers, at five guineas per diem, aided by seventy clerks, were immediately put into active service to distribute the loan. The lavishness of this creation was the more palpable, as only sixty persons had been appointed to distribute the twenty millions among the slave-holders in the West-India colonies. But patronage at home is more valuable than patronage abroad, and the advantages derived from confining it to legalists are obvious enough. Lawyers usually move in the better circles; they are educated men—have the power of explaining and diffusing their opinions—and they are accustomed to advocate causes of all descriptions. Set them to make a report on any public subject—give them, for example, a brief to fill up against the Poor and the Poor-Laws, and they will do it to their employer’s satisfaction: it is their vocation faithfully to serve those by whom they are paid, or hope to be paid, and little of conscientious responsibility to truth or justice is felt in the execution of the appointed task.

But the elective bodies of the kingdom must see what injury they are doing the public cause by returning so many hungry Swiss to parliament. Lawyers are eaten up by mutual rivalry and ambition; it is a profession into which no one enters without views of aggrandizement; if by any contrivance or clap-traps the representative function be obtained, it is mostly used only as a stepping-stone to wider practice at the bar or to government employment. As legislators they seek only to serve themselves, not their constituents, and their course is rarely marked by patriotic independence. If their connexions lie among the opposition, it is mere factious hostility to government; if among ministers, it is either silent acquiescence or clamorous advocacy of all their measures, according to the bribes of office received or expected. But the mischief they openly do by impeding or misdirecting public affairs is only a part of the evil. It is among the vulgar errors of common life to consider barristers more competent and better informed than other men; in grammar and elocution, and in Coke and Littleton no doubt they are, but not in the mass of questions which ought to occupy parliamentary attention,—connected with trade, manufactures, commerce, currency, and the condition of the several classes of the population. Yet owing to this false estimate of legislative fitness, they are at all times looked up to as guides and finger-posts; by their speeches in the house, and their promptings and whisperings out of it, on the back benches, and in the lobby, smoking-room and supper-rooms, members of plain minds and honest purposes are overlaid and misled by them.

It is to this preponderance of legal influence we ascribe much that has been wrong or inefficient in the proceedings of the Reformed Parliament. But this is another evil in addition to those already suggested, which may be traced to the conduct of the people themselves. Why have the manufacturing towns and some of the more populous boroughs returned lawyers to parliament? What have they got by it? Have they got vigilant attention to the conduct of ministers, or zealous watchfulness over their local interests or the more general interests of the community? To these inquiries we fear the answer, in most cases, must be a very simple figure of arithmetic. Some of the popular law representatives have not even vouchsafed a speech in return for the favour of their constituents; others have deserted their trust for valuable appointments in the colonies; others are fructifying at home on commissionerships or Treasury practice; others again have been reposing on the file of king’s counsel, waiting in silence a joyful resurrection as solicitor or attorney general, master of the rolls, vice-chancellor, or judge of the superior courts: but few or none have laboriously served the people.

But the error of misplaced confidence may be corrected. As a general election seems inevitable, if the projected formation of a Tory ministry is persisted in, the electors will soon have an opportunity of getting rid of faithless and negligent servants, and of not again accepting their services unless it be under such guarantees of devotion to the public, and not their own gains, as even lawyers cannot evade.