Lord John Russell Part 4

Pet.i.tions in favour of Reform from all parts of the kingdom poured into both Houses. The excitement in the country rose steadily week by week, mingled with expressions of satisfaction that the Bill was to be committed to the charge of such able hands. In Parliament speculations were rife as to the scope of the measure, whilst rumours of dissension in the Cabinet flew around the clubs. Even as late as the middle of February, the Duke of Wellington went about predicting that the Reform question could not be carried, and that the Grey Administration could not stand. Ministers contrived to keep their secret uncommonly well, and when at length the eventful day, March 1, arrived, the House of Commons was packed by a crowd such as had scarcely been seen there in its history. Troops of eager politicians came up from the country and waited at all the inlets of the House, whilst the leading supporters of the Whigs in London society gathered at dinner-parties, and anxiously awaited intelligence from Westminster.

Lord John's speech began at six o'clock, and lasted for two hours and a quarter. Beginning in a low voice, he proceeded gradually to unfold his measure, greeted in turns by cheers of approval and shouts of derision.

Greville says it was ludicrous to see the faces of the members for those places doomed to disfranchis.e.m.e.nt, as they were severally announced.

Wetherell, a typical Tory of the no-surrender school, began to take notes as the plan was unfolded, but after various contortions and grimaces he threw down his paper, with a look of mingled despair, ridicule, and horror. Lord Durham, seated under the gallery, doubted the reality of the scene pa.s.sing before his eyes. 'They are mad, they are mad!' was one of the running comments to Lord John's statement. The Opposition, on the whole, seemed inclined to laugh out of court such extravagant proposals, but Peel, on the contrary, looked both grave and angry, for he saw further than most, and knew very well that boldness was the best chance. 'Burdett and I walked home together,' states Hobhouse, 'and agreed that there was very little chance of the measure being carried. We thought our friends in Westminster would oppose the ten-pound franchise.'

'I rise, sir,' Lord John commenced, 'with feelings of the deepest anxiety to bring forward a question which, unparalleled as it is in importance, is as unparalleled in points of difficulty. Nor is my anxiety, in approaching this question, lessened by reflecting that on former occasions I have brought this subject before the consideration of the House. For if, on other occasions, I have invited the attention of the House of Commons to this most important subject, it has been upon my own responsibility--unaided by anyone--and involving no one in the consequences of defeat.... But the measure which I have now to bring forward, is a measure, not of mine but of the Government.... It is, therefore, with the greatest anxiety that I venture to explain their intentions to this House on a subject, the interest of which is shown by the crowded audience who have a.s.sembled here, but still more by the deep interest which is felt by millions out of this House, who look with anxiety, with hope, and with expectation, to the result of this day's debate.'

[Sidenote: OLD SARUM VERSUS MANCHESTER]

In the course of his argument, setting forth the need of Reform, he alluded to the feelings of a foreigner, having heard of British wealth, civilisation, and renown, coming to England to examine our inst.i.tutions.

'Would not such a foreigner be much astonished if he were taken to a green mound, and informed that it sent two members to the British Parliament; if he were shown a stone wall, and told that it also sent two members to the British Parliament; or, if he walked into a park, without the vestige of a dwelling, and was told that it, too, sent two members to the British Parliament? But if he were surprised at this, how much more would he be astonished if he were carried into the North of England, where he would see large flouris.h.i.+ng towns, full of trade, activity, and intelligence, vast magazines of wealth and manufactures, and were told that these places sent no representatives to Parliament.

But his wonder would not end here; he would be astonished if he were carried to such a place as Liverpool, and were there told that he might see a specimen of a popular election, what would be the result? He would see bribery employed in the most unblus.h.i.+ng manner, he would see every voter receiving a number of guineas in a box as the price of his corruption; and after such a spectacle would he not be indeed surprised that representatives so chosen could possibly perform the functions of legislators, or enjoy respect in any degree?' In speaking of the reasons for giving representatives to Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and other large towns, Lord John argued: 'Because Old Sarum sent members to Parliament in the reign of Edward III., when it had a population to be benefited by it, the Government on the same principle deprived that forsaken place of the franchise in order to bestow the privilege where the population was now found.'

Lord John explained that by the provisions of the bill sixty boroughs with less than 2,000 inhabitants were to lose the franchise; forty-seven boroughs, returning ninety-four members, were to lose one member each.

Of the seats thus placed at the disposal of the Government eight were to be given to London, thirty-four to large towns, fifty-five to English counties, five to Scotland, three to Ireland, and one to Wales. The franchise was to be extended to inhabitants of houses rated at ten pounds a year, and to leaseholders and copyholders of counties. It was reckoned that about half a million persons would be enfranchised by the bill; but the number of members in the House would be reduced by sixty-two. Lord John laid significant stress on the fact that they had come to the deliberate opinion that 'no half-measures would be sufficient, that no trifling, no paltry reform could give stability to the Crown, strength to the Parliament, or satisfaction to the country.'

Long afterwards Lord John Russell declared that the measure when thus first placed before the House of Commons awoke feelings of astonishment mingled with joy or with consternation according to the temper of the hearers. 'Some, perhaps many, thought that the measure was a prelude to civil war, which, in point of fact, it averted. But incredulity was the prevailing feeling, both among the moderate Whigs and the great ma.s.s of the Tories. The Radicals alone were delighted and triumphant. Joseph Hume, whom I met in the streets a day or two afterwards, a.s.sured me of his hearty support of the Government.' There were many Radicals, however, who thought that the measure scarcely went far enough, and one of them happily summed up the situation by saying that, although the Reform Bill did not give the people all they wanted, it broke up the old system and took the weapons from the hands of the enemies of progress.

[Sidenote: CAPITULATION OR BOMBARDMENT]

Night after night the debate proceeded, and it became plain that the Tories had been completely taken by surprise. Meanwhile outside the House of Commons the people followed the debate with feverish interest.

'Nothing talked of, thought of, dreamt of but Reform,' wrote Greville.

'Every creature one meets asks, "What is said now? How will it go? What is the last news? What do you think?" And so it is from morning till night, in the streets, in the clubs, and in private houses.' After a week of controversy, leave was given to bring in the bill. On March 21, Lord John moved the second reading, but was met by an amendment, that the Reform Bill be read a second time that day six months. The House divided at three o'clock on the morning of the 23rd, and the second reading was carried by a majority of one--333-332--in the fullest House on record. 'It is better to capitulate than to be taken by storm,' was the comment of one of the cynics of the hour. Illuminations took place all over the country. The people were good-humoured but determined, and the Opposition began to recover from its fright and to declare that the Government could not proceed with the measure and were certain to resign. Peel's action--and sometimes his lack of it--was severely criticised by many of his own followers, and not a few of the Tories, unable to forgive the surrender to the claims of the Catholics, met the new crisis in the time-honoured spirit of Gallio. They seemed to have thought not only that the country was fast going to the dogs, but that under all the circ.u.mstances, it did not much matter.

Parliament met after the usual Easter recess, and on April 18 General Gascoigne moved as an instruction to the committee that the number of members of Parliament ought not to be diminished, and after a debate which lasted till four o'clock in the morning the resolution was carried in a House of 490 members by a majority of eight. The Government thus suddenly placed in a minority saw their opportunity and took it. Lord Grey and his colleagues had begun to realise that it was impossible for them to carry the Reform Bill in the existing House of Commons without modifications which would have robbed the boon of half its worth. The Tories had made a blunder in tactics over Gascoigne's motion, and their opponents took occasion by the forelock, with the result that, after an extraordinary scene in the Lords, Parliament was suddenly dissolved by the King in person. Brougham had given the people their cry, and 'the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill,' was the popular watchword during the tumult of the General Election. On the dissolution of Parliament the Lord Mayor sanctioned the illumination of London, and an angry mob, forgetful of the soldier in the statesman, broke the windows of Apsley House.

[Sidenote: THE FLOWING TIDE]

Speaking at a political meeting two days after the dissolution, Lord John Russell said that the electors in the approaching struggle were called on not merely to select the best men to defend their rights and interests, but also to give a plain answer to the question, put to the const.i.tuencies by the King in dissolving Parliament, Do you approve, aye or no, of the principle of Reform in the representation? Right through the length and breadth of the kingdom his words were caught up, and from hundreds of platforms came the question, 'Reform: Aye or No?' and the response in favour of the measure was emphatic and overwhelming. The country was split into the opposing camps of the Reformers and anti-Reformers, and every other question was thrust aside in the struggle. The political unions proved themselves to be a power in the land, and the operatives and artisans of the great manufacturing centres, though still excluded from citizens.h.i.+p, left no stone unturned to ensure the popular triumph. Lord John was pressed to stand both for Lancas.h.i.+re and Devons.h.i.+re; he chose the latter county, with which he was closely a.s.sociated by family traditions as well as by personal friends.h.i.+ps, and was triumphantly returned, with Lord Ebrington as colleague. Even in the agricultural districts the ascendency of the old landed families was powerless to arrest the movement, and as the results of the elections became known it was seen that Lord Sefton had caught the situation in his dry remark: 'The county members are tumbling about like ninepins.' Parliament a.s.sembled in June, and it became plain at a glance that democratic ideas were working like leaven upon public opinion in England. In spite of rotten boroughs, close corporations, the opposition of the majority of the territorial aristocracy, and the panic of thousands of timid people, who imagined that the British Const.i.tution was imperilled, the Reformers came back in strength, and at least a hundred who had fought the Bill in the late Parliament were shut out from a renewal of the struggle, whilst out of eighty-two county members that were returned, only six were hostile to Reform.

On June 24, Lord John Russell, now raised to Cabinet rank, introduced the Second Reform Bill, which was substantially the same as the first, and the measure was carried rapidly through its preliminary stage, and on July 8 it pa.s.sed the second reading by a majority of 136. The Government, however, in Committee was met night after night by an irritating cross-fire of criticism; repeated motions for adjournment were made; there was a systematic division of labour in the task of obstruction. In order to promote delay, the leaders of the Opposition stood up again and again and repeated the same statements and arguments, and often in almost the same words. 'If Mr. Speaker,' wrote Jekyll, 'outlives the Reform debate, he may defy _la grippe_ and the cholera. I can recommend no books, for the booksellers declare n.o.body reads or buys in the present fever. The newspapers are furious, the Sunday papers are talking treason by wholesale.... Peel does all he can to make his friends behave like gentlemen. But the nightly vulgarities of the House of Commons furnish new reasons for Reform, and not a ray of talent glimmers among them all. Double-distilled stupidity!'[6] In the midst of it all Russell fell ill, worn out with fatigue and excitement, and as the summer slipped past the people became alarmed and indignant at the dead-lock, and in various parts of the kingdom the att.i.tude of the ma.s.ses grew not merely restless but menacing. At length the tactics of the Opposition were exhausted, and it was possible to report progress.

'On September 7,' is Lord John's statement, 'the debate was closed, and after much labour, and considerable sacrifice of health, I was able on that night to propose, amid much cheering, that the bill should be reported to the House.' The third reading was carried on September 19 by a majority of fifty-five. Three days later, at five in the morning on September 22, the question was at length put, and in a House of five hundred and eighty-one members the majority for Ministers was one hundred and nine.

[Sidenote: LORD GREY ARISES TO THE OCCASION]

The bill was promptly sent up to the Peers, and Lord Grey proposed the second reading on October 3 in a speech of sustained eloquence. Lord Grey spoke as if he felt the occasion to be the most critical event in a political career which had extended to nearly half a century. He struck at once the right key-note, the gravity of the situation, the magnitude of the issues involved, the welfare of the nation. He made a modest but dignified allusion to his own life-long a.s.sociation with the question.

'In 1786 I voted for Reform. I supported Mr. Pitt in his motion for shortening the duration of Parliaments. I gave my best a.s.sistance to the measure of Reform introduced by Mr. Flood before the French Revolution.[7] On one or two occasions I originated motions on the subject.' Then he turned abruptly from his own personal a.s.sociation with the subject to what he finely termed the 'mighty interests of the State,' and the course which Ministers felt they must take if they were to meet the demands of justice, and not to imperil the safety of the nation. He laid stress on the general discontent which prevailed, on the political agitation of the last twelve months, on the distress that reigned in the manufacturing districts, on the influence of the numerous political a.s.sociations which had grown powerful because of that distress, on the suffering of the agricultural population, on the 'nightly alarms, burnings, and popular disturbances,' as well as on the 'general feeling of doubt and apprehension observable in every countenance.' He endeavoured to show that the measure was not revolutionary in spirit or subversive of the British Const.i.tution, as many people proclaimed.

Lord Grey contended that there was nothing in the measure that was not founded on the principles of English government, nothing that was not perfectly consistent with the ancient practices of the Const.i.tution, and nothing that might not be adopted with absolute safety to the rights and privileges of all orders of the State. He made a scathing allusion to the 'gross and scandalous corruption practised without disguise' at elections, and he declared that the sale of seats in the House of Commons was a matter of equal notoriety with the return of nominees of n.o.ble and wealthy persons to that House. He laid stress on the fact that a few individuals under the existing system were able to turn into a means of personal profit privileges which had been conferred in past centuries for the benefit of the nation. 'It is with these views that the Government has considered that the boroughs which are called nomination boroughs ought to be abolished. In looking at these boroughs, we found that some of them were incapable of correction, for it is impossible to extend their const.i.tuency. Some of them consisted only of the sites of ancient boroughs, which, however, might perhaps in former times have been very fit places to return members to Parliament; in others, the const.i.tuency was insignificantly small, and from their local situation incapable of receiving any increase; so that, upon the whole, this gangrene of our representative system bade defiance to all remedies but that of excision.'

After several nights' debate, in which Brougham, according to Lord John, delivered one of the greatest speeches ever heard in the House of Lords, the bill was at length rejected, after an all-night sitting, at twenty minutes past six o'clock on Sat.u.r.day morning, October 8, by a majority of forty-one (199 to 158), in which majority were twenty-one bishops.

Had these prelates voted the other way, the bill would have pa.s.sed the second reading. As the carriages of the n.o.bility rattled through the streets at daybreak, artisans and labourers trudging to their work learnt with indignation that the demands of the people had been treated with characteristic contempt by the Peers.

[Sidenote: THE NATION GROWS INDIGNANT]

The next few days were full of wild excitement. The people were exasperated, and their att.i.tude grew suddenly menacing. Even those who had hitherto remained calm and almost apathetic grew indignant. Wild threats prevailed, and it seemed as if there might be at any moment a general outbreak of violence. Even as it was, riots of the most disquieting kind took place at Bristol, Derby, and other places.

Nottingham Castle was burnt down by an infuriated mob; newspapers appeared in mourning; the bells of some of the churches rang m.u.f.fled peals; the Marquis of Londonderry and other Peers who had made themselves peculiarly obnoxious were a.s.saulted in the streets; and the Bishops could not stir abroad without being followed by the jeers and execrations of the mult.i.tude. Quiet middle-cla.s.s people talked of refusing to pay the taxes, and showed unmistakably that they had caught the revolutionary spirit of the hour. Birmingham, which was the head-quarters of the Political Union, held a vast open-air meeting, at which one hundred and fifty thousand people were present, and resolutions were pa.s.sed, beseeching the King to create as many new Peers as might be necessary to ensure the triumph of Reform. Lord Althorp and Lord John Russell were publicly thanked at this gathering for their action, and the reply of the latter is historic: 'Our prospects are obscured for a moment, but, I trust, only for a moment; it is impossible that the whisper of a faction should prevail against the voice of a nation.'

Meanwhile Lord Ebrington, Lord John's colleague in the representation of Devons.h.i.+re, came to the rescue of the Government with a vote of confidence, which was carried by a sweeping majority. Two days later, on Wednesday, October 12, many of the shops of the metropolis were closed in token of political mourning, and on that day sixty thousand men marched in procession to St. James's Palace, bearing a pet.i.tion to the King in favour of the retention of the Grey Administration. Hume presented it, and when he returned to the waiting crowd in the Park, he was able to tell them that their prayer would not pa.s.s unheeded. No wonder that Croker wrote shortly afterwards: 'The four M's--the Monarch, the Ministry, the Members, and the Mult.i.tude--all against us. The King stands on his Government, the Government on the House of Commons, the House of Commons on the people. How can we attack a line thus linked and supported?' Indignation meetings were held in all parts of the country, and at one of them, held at Taunton, Sydney Smith delivered the famous speech in which he compared the attempt of the House of Lords to restrain the rising tide of Democracy to the frantic but futile battle which Dame Partington waged with her mop, during a storm at Sidmouth, when the Atlantic invaded her threshold. 'The Atlantic was roused. Mrs.

Partington's spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. Gentlemen, be at your ease, be quiet and steady; you will beat--Mrs. Partington.' The newspapers carried the witty allusion everywhere. It tickled the public fancy, and did much to relax the bitter mood of the nation, and vapouring heroics were forgotten in laughter, and indignation gave way to amused contempt.

Parliament, which had been prorogued towards the end of October, rea.s.sembled in the first week of December, and on the 12th of that month Lord John once more introduced--for the third time in twelve months--the Reform Bill. A few alterations had been made in its text, the outcome chiefly of the facts which the new census had brought to light. In order to meet certain anomalies in the original scheme, Ministers, with the help of Thomas Drummond, who shortly afterwards honourably distinguished himself in Irish affairs, drew up two lists of boroughs, one for total disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt and the other for semi-disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt; and the principle on which fifty-six towns were included in the first list, and thirty in the second, was determined by the number of houses in each borough and the value of the a.s.sessed taxes. Six days later the second reading was pa.s.sed, after three nights' discussion, by a majority of 324 to 162. The House rose immediately for the Christmas recess, and on January 20 the bill reached the committee stage, and there it remained till March 14. The third reading took place on March 23, and the bill was pa.s.sed by a majority of 116. Althorp, as the leader of the Commons, and Russell, as the Minister in charge of the measure, carried the Reform Bill promptly to the House of Lords, and made formal request for the 'concurrence of their lords.h.i.+ps to the same.' Other men had laboured to bring about this result; but the nation felt that, but for the pluck and persistency of Russell, and the judgment and tact of Althorp, failure would have attended their efforts.

[Sidenote: LORD ALTHORP'S TACT]

It is difficult now to understand the secret of the influence which Althorp wielded in the Grey Administration, but it was great enough to lead the Premier to ask him to accept a peerage, in order--in the crisis which was now at hand--to bring the Lords to their senses. Althorp was in no sense of the word a great statesman; in fact, his career was the triumph of character rather than capacity. All through the struggle, when controversy grew furious and pa.s.sion rose high, Althorp kept a cool head, and his adroitness in conciliatory speech was remarkable. He was a moderate man, who never failed to do justice to his opponent's case, and his influence was not merely in the Commons; it made itself felt to good purpose in the Court, as well as in the country. He was a man of chivalrous instincts and unchallenged probity. It was one of his political opponents, Sir Henry Hardinge, who exclaimed, 'Althorp carried the bill. His fine temper did it!'

Lord John Russell, like his colleagues, was fully alive to the gravity of the crisis. He made no secret of his conviction that, if another deadlock arose, the consequence would be bloodshed, and the outbreak of a conflict in which the British Const.i.tution would probably perish.

Twelve months before, the cry in the country had been, 'What will the Lords do?' but now an altogether different question was on men's lips, 'What must be done with the Lords?' Government knew that the real struggle over the bill would be in Committee, and therefore they refused to be unduly elated when the second reading was carried on April 14 with a majority of nine, in spite of the Duke of Wellington's bl.u.s.tering heroics. Three weeks later, Lord Lyndhurst carried, by a majority of thirty-five, a motion for the mutilation of the bill, in spite of Lord Grey's a.s.surance that it dealt a fatal blow at the measure. The Premier immediately moved the adjournment of the debate, and the situation grew suddenly dramatic. The Cabinet had made its last concession; Ministers determined, in Lord Durham's words, that a 'sufficient creation of Peers was absolutely necessary' if their resignation was not to take immediate effect, and they laid their views before the King. William IV., like his predecessor, lived in a narrow world; he was surrounded by gossips who played upon his fears of revolution, and took care to appeal to his prejudices. His zeal for Reform had already cooled, and Queen Adelaide was hostile to Lord Grey's measure.

When, therefore, Lord Grey and Lord Brougham went down to Windsor to urge the creation of new Peers, they met with a chilling reception. The King refused his sanction, and the Ministry had no other alternative than to resign. William IV. took counsel with Lord Lyndhurst, and summoned the Duke of Wellington. Meanwhile the House of Commons at the instance of Lord Ebrington, again pa.s.sed a vote of confidence in the Grey Administration, and adopted an address to His Majesty, begging him to call to his councils such persons only as 'will carry into effect unimpaired in all its essential provisions that bill for reforming the representation of the people which has recently pa.s.sed the House of Commons.' Wellington tried to form a Ministry in order to carry out some emasculated scheme of Reform, but Peel was inexorable, and refused to have part or lot in the project.

[Sidenote: THE FIERCE CRY OF THE STREETS]

Meanwhile the cry rang through the country, 'The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill!' William IV. was hissed as he pa.s.sed through the streets, and the walls blazed with insulting lampoons and caricatures. Signboards which displayed the King's portrait were framed with c.r.a.pe, and Queen Adelaide's likeness was disfigured with lampblack.

Rumours of projected riots filled the town, and whispers of a plot for seizing the wives and children of the aristocracy led the authorities to order the swords of the Scots Greys to be rough-sharpened. At the last moment, when the att.i.tude of the country was menacing, the King yielded, on May 17, and sent for Lord Grey. 'Only think,' wrote Joseph Parkes on May 18, 'that at three yesterday all was gloomy foreboding in the Cabinet, and at twenty-five minutes before five last night Lord Althorp did not know the King's answer till Lord Grey returned at half-past five--"All right." Thus on the decision of one man rests the fate of nations.'[8]

Instead of creating new Peers, the King addressed a letter to members of the House of Lords who were hostile to the bill, urging them to withdraw their opposition. A hint from Windsor went further with the aristocracy in those days than any number of appeals, reasonable or just, from the country. About a hundred of the Peers, in angry sullen mood, shook off the dust of Westminster, and, in Lord John's words, 'skulked in clubs and country houses.' Sindbad, to borrow Albany Fonblanque's vigorous simile, was getting rid of the old man of the sea, not permanently, alas! but at least for the occasion. During the progress of these negotiations, the nation, now confident of victory, stood not merely at attention but on the alert. 'I say,' exclaimed Attwood at Birmingham--and the phrase expressed the situation--'the people of England stand at this moment like greyhounds on the slip!' Triumph was only a matter of time. 'Pray beg of Lord Grey to keep well,' wrote Sydney Smith to the Countess; 'I have no doubt of a favourable issue. I see an open sea beyond the icebergs.' At length the open sea was reached, and on June 7 the Reform Bill received the Royal a.s.sent and became the law of the land, and with it the era of government by public opinion began. The mode by which the country at last obtained this great measure of redress did not commend itself to Lord John's judgment. He did not disguise his opinion that the creation of many new Peers favourable to Reform would have been a more dignified proceeding than the request from Windsor to n.o.ble lords to dissemble and cloak their disappointment. 'Whether twelve or one hundred be the number requisite to enable the Peers to give their votes in conformity with public opinion,' were his words, 'it seems to me that the House of Lords, sympathising with the people at large, and acting in concurrence with the enlightened state of the prevailing wish, represents far better the dignity of the House, and its share in legislation, than a majority got together by the long supremacy of one party in the State, eager to show its ill-will by rejecting bills of small importance, but afraid to appear, and skulking in clubs and country houses, in face of a measure which has attracted the ardent sympathy of public opinion.'

[Sidenote: BOWING BEFORE THE STORM]

'G.o.d may and, I hope, will forgive you for this bill,' was Lord Sidmouth's plaintive lament to Earl Grey, 'but I do not think I ever can!' There lives no record of reply. The last protest of the Duke of Wellington, delivered just before the measure became law, was characteristic in many respects, and not least in its blunt honesty.

'Reform, my lords, has triumphed, the barriers of the Const.i.tution are broken down, the waters of destruction have burst the gates of the temple, and the tempest begins to howl. Who can say where its course should stop? who can stay its speed? For my own part, I earnestly hope that my predictions may not be fulfilled, and that my country may not be ruined by the measure which the n.o.ble earl and his colleagues have sanctioned.' Lord John Russell, on the contrary, held then the view which he afterwards expressed: 'It is the right of a people to represent its grievances: it is the business of a statesman to devise remedies.'

In the first quarter of the present century the people made their grievances known. Lord Grey and his Cabinet in 1831-2 devised remedies, and, in Lord John's memorable phrase, 'popular enthusiasm rose in its strength and converted them into law.'

The Reform Bill, as Walter Bagehot has shown, did nothing to remove the worst evils from which the nation suffered, for the simple reason that those evils were not political but economical. But if it left unchallenged the reign of protection and much else in the way of palpable and glaring injustice, it ushered in a new temper in regard to public questions. It recognised the new conditions of English society, and gave the mercantile and manufacturing cla.s.ses, with their wealth, intelligence, and energy, not only the consciousness of power, but the sense of responsibility.

[Sidenote: A GENEROUS TRIBUTE]

The political struggle under Pitt had been between the aristocracy and the monarchy, but that under Grey was between the aristocracy and the middle cla.s.ses, for the claims of the democracy in the broad sense of the word lay outside the scope of the measure. In spite of its halting confidence in the people, men felt that former things of harsh oppression had pa.s.sed away, and that the Reform Bill rendered their return impossible. It was at best only a half measure, but it broke the old exclusive traditions and diminished to a remarkable degree the power of the landed interest in Parliament. It has been said that it was the business of Lord John Russell at that crisis to save England from copying the example of the French Revolution, and there can be no doubt whatever that the measure was a safety-valve at a moment when political excitement a.s.sumed a menacing form. The public rejoicings were inspired as much by hope as by gladness. A new era had dawned, the will of the nation had prevailed, the spirit of progress was abroad, and the mult.i.tudes knew that other reforms less showy perhaps but not less substantial, were at hand. 'Look at England before the Reform Bill, and look at it now,' wrote Mr. Froude in 1874. 'Its population almost doubled; its commerce quadrupled; every individual in the kingdom lifted to a high level of comfort and intelligence--the speed quickening every year; the advance so enormous, the increase so splendid, that language turns to rhetoric in describing it.' When due allowance is made for the rhetoric of such a description--for alas! the 'high level of comfort'

for every individual in the kingdom is still unattained--the substantial truth of such a statement cannot be gainsaid. When the battle was fought, Lord John was generous enough to say that the success of the Reform Bill in the House of Commons was due mainly to the confidence felt in the integrity and sound judgment of Lord Althorp. At the same time he never concealed his conviction that it was the mult.i.tude outside who made the measure resistless.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] _Correspondence of Mr. Joseph Jekyll_, 1818-1838. Edited, with a brief Memoir, by the Hon. Algernon Bourke. Pp. 272-273.

[7] Flood's Reform proposals were made in 1790. His idea was to augment the House of Commons by one hundred members, to be elected by the resident householders of every county.

[8] _Life of George Grote_, by Mrs. Grote, p. 80.

CHAPTER V

THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA

1833-1838