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chise in the new borough should be fixed at 107. instead of 57. and he successfully resisted two amendments, for merging the representation in the adjacent hundreds, and for conferring it on the freeholders of Yorkshire. But he was not equally successful in resisting a proposal of Mr. Stuart Wortley to limit the franchise to 20/. householders, and he abandoned the further conduct of the Bill. Though, however, he thought it right thus to mark his disapprobation of the amendment, he did not withhold his support from the measure of which Mr. Stuart Wortley himself took charge. He both spoke and voted in favour of the third reading; and, when the Bill was altered by the Lords, and the franchise which was taken from Grampound was transferred by them from the burgesses of Leeds to the freeholders of Yorkshire, he again raised his voice in favour of concession.

The question was, whether or not the Bill, as amended, was so ill-adapted to its object that it would be well to reject it. The object was first to reform the borough of Grampound, and then to transfer the right of returning two representatives to another place. . . . The Commons had proposed to give the franchise to the borough of Leeds; the Lords decided that it should be transferred to the large county of York. Now, though he wished that Leeds should return two members to Parliament, he was still of opinion that more members ought to be given to the county of York. He was therefore contented that the Bill as amended should pass; but in a future session he proposed to call attention to the claims of large towns to send members to this House.

The opposition of the Lords was thus impelling Lord John to a fresh step, and the refusal of the Upper House of Parliament to enfranchise the householders of Leeds was directing his attention to the claims of other large towns.

Lord John, indeed, had already moved in this direction. Early in 1821 Mr. Lambton, who was afterwards better known as Lord Durham, had brought forward a proposal for triennial Parliaments, for the extension of the suffrage to all holders of property, and for the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs. The debate had been brought to an abrupt conclusion on the second evening, when Mr. Lambton was himself absent from the House, and only 100 members were present; and on

May 9, 1821, while the Grampound Disfranchisement Bill was before the Lords, Lord John had followed up Mr. Lambton's motion by proposing four resolutions :-(1) Affirming the gross bribery and corruption which were prevalent in many boroughs; (2) Declaring the expediency of strengthening the connection between the people and Parliament by giving direct representation to wealthy and populous places; and appointing a select committee to consider (3) How such places could be given representation without an inconvenient addition to the House of Commons; and (4) How charges of bribery might in future be best investigated with a view to the disfranchisement of the guilty boroughs.

Undoubtedly the most important circumstance in connection with these resolutions was the division upon them-Lord John was only defeated by 155 votes to 124. Such a division naturally encouraged him to persevere. On April 25, 1822, he again brought forward the whole subject. Advancing far beyond any proposal which he had hitherto made, he asked that 100 new members should be added to the House-60 for counties and 40 for the great towns and commercial interests of the country. In order that the size of the House might not be inconveniently increased, he proposed that the hundred smallest boroughs should be deprived of one member each.1

In the division on this remarkable motion, the Reformers succeeded in securing 164 votes-40 more than had supported Lord John in the previous year. But the majority rose from 155 votes to 269, and their strength in the division was

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This speech raised Lord John's reputation. His old friend Lady Spencer

wrote to him :

'How are you, my dear Lord John? I dared not yesterday intrude on your repose; but to-day I can no longer resist my anxious inquiries. To tell you my warm and cordial delight at your well-deserved and complete success is quite out of the question, for I cannot express it. To hear from every mouth, as I do, that, however highly your talents and powers were thought of before, they are now estimated by universal concurrence as they have always been rated by us who have had the happiness of intimate intercourse with you, is a pleasure too bright to describe. But I do enjoy it from my inmost heart. Tell me you are well, and I shall have nothing to wish for about you.-Ever affectionately yours, 'LAVINIA SPENCER.

'April 27: Spencer House.'

only one advantage which the Tories derived from the debate. For the brunt of the battle on their side fell on Mr. Canning; and the speech which the great orator delivered was one of his most successful efforts. In the course of it he referred, in a passage which has been often quoted, to Lord John himself:

That the noble lord will carry his motion this evening I have no fear; but, with the talents which he has shown himself to possess, and with (I sincerely hope) a long and brilliant career of Parliamentary distinction before him, he will, no doubt, renew his efforts hereafter. Although I presume not to expect that he will give any weight to observations or warnings of mine, yet on this, probably the last, opportunity which I shall have of raising my voice on the question of Parliamentary Reform, while I conjure the House to pause before it consents to adopt the proposition of the noble lord, I cannot help conjuring the noble lord himself to pause before he again presses it upon the country. If, however, he shall persevere, and if his perseverance shall be successful, and if the results of their success shall be such as I cannot help apprehending, his be the triumph to have precipitated those results, be mine the consolation that, to the utmost and to the latest of my power, I have opposed them.

The anticipations of this famous paragraph were not fulfilled. Mr. Canning did not go to India; the premature death of Lord Castlereagh, in the following August, opened to him other opportunities. He became Foreign Secretary and leader of the House of Commons. As such he had occasions, which he had not anticipated, of resisting Parliamentary Reform. But his admirers derive little consolation from his conduct. To Lord John belongs the credit of having precipitated Reform. Mr. Canning, by resisting it, very nearly precipitated a revolution.

Yet, for the time, the prospects of the Reformers were not favourable. The reconstruction of the Tory Government,

' Lord J. Russell, writing to Mr. Moore in January 1822, said: 'Canning is,

I suppose, to bury himself in India, He is a fool for his pains; but it is a fine

moral on the value of character in this country.' Lord John was at that time writing the Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe, in which the passage occurs: 'It is the character of party, especially in England, to ask for the assistance of a man of talent, but to follow the guidance of a man of character.' He probably took the idea from Voltaire. He applied the phrase to Sir R. Walpole and Mr. Bolingbroke; but he probably knew that one of his friends applied it to Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning.

after Lord Castlereagh's death, was in itself an obstacle to organic Reform. Both Mr. Canning and Mr. Peel, the only really important members of the Administration, were opposed to it. The Reformers had already found that they were in a minority in the House of Commons. The country, regaining its former prosperity, lapsed into something like apathy. The Whig leaders declined to make Reform a party question; and Mr. Tierney went so far as to declare his conviction that it never could be made a party question. Twice again, indeed, during the Parliament of 1820, Lord John re-stated his old arguments and reintroduced the old subject. But the House listened with indifference or even lassitude to the short debates which took place on these motions. In 1823 Lord John was defeated by 280 votes to 169, in 1826 by 247 votes to 123; and, discouraged by these defeats, he did not again bring forward any broad proposal until he was able to rise with the authority of a Minister and to demand consideration for a larger measure than any he had hitherto contemplated.

If Lord John temporarily abstained from proposing any large measure of organic Reform, he addressed himself in earnest to another kindred subject. In 1826 the Parliament, elected at the commencement of the new reign, had already entered on the last year of its authorised existence. A general election was therefore imminent, and Lord John, following up the steps which he had already taken in the case of Grampound, introduced a Bill to secure the discovery and suppression of bribery. The Bill was read a first and second time without a division: but finally abandoned by its author in consequence of the threatened opposition of the Ministry. But Lord John did not stop with that discomfiture. In the last week of the session he brought forward a series of resolutions affirming the policy which he wished to declare by his Bill. The House was equally divided on the first resolution; and the Speaker, considering it 'declaratory of what are the powers and what is the duty of the House,' gave his vote with the ayes.

In the week which followed this division, the Parliament of 1820 was dissolved; and Lord John naturally appealed to his old constituents in Huntingdonshire. But he did so

without any great confidence in his chance of victory. In Parliament, indeed, he was already regarded as one of the foremost members of the Whig party; but, in rural England, country gentlemen and country clergymen persisted, to borrow Mr. Lowell's illustration, in spelling Evolution with a capital 'R,' and looked with disfavour on Reformers. After a visit which he paid to his constituents in April 1826, Lord John wrote to Mr. Moore

My triumph in Hunts, I fear, is more cry than wool. But I own it is a great pleasure to have the people with me. I wish you would come to the election. The women are so eager on our side, it is quite a pleasure to see them.

The women and the people were equally without votes; Lord Mandeville, the eldest son of the Duke of Manchester, came forward in conjunction with Mr. Fellowes in opposition to Lord John, who had the mortification of encountering defeat and finding himself out of Parliament.1

His first thought on his defeat was of the measure for the prevention of bribery, on which he had lately won so great a triumph. Disabled from forwarding it himself, he decided on entrusting it to a friend who had already fought side by side with him in the ranks; and who, a few years later, was to claim his service as his leader. The letter in which he thus committed the Bill to Lord Althorp's charge was subsequently published as a pamphlet, and the Times' gave it a wider circulation by republishing it in its columns. His father wrote to him—

I knew nothing of your letter to Althorp till it actually came from the press, and I received a copy of it from Ridgway. I did not even know that you meant to publish such a thing. It is admirable; every sentence and every line to the purpose. Short, but perfectly clear and intelligible, and what every reformer must approve.

It is impossible in this memoir to imitate the example of the Times' and to reproduce the whole pamphlet. But a short extract from it will explain its tendency and the policy which Lord John had initiated.

The final numbers were: Lord Mandeville, 963; Mr. Fellowes, 911; Lord J. Russell, 858.

VOL. I.

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