XXIII. 1832. CHAP. be decidedly and greatly increased by either or both of these changes. Experience has proved in America, that neither universal suffrage nor the ballot either prevent bribery, when it is for the interest of the candidate to give it, or conceal votes. It may lower the sum required to sway the electors, but that is all. Bribery will not be lessened because £5000 is divided among 10,000 electors instead of 1000; it will only be spread over a wider surface, and extend farther its demoralising influence. The transference of seats in the legislature to a more needy class will still less obviate the evil; it will only induce the giving of bribes to those who have recourse to it, in order to open the career of fortune or avert impending insolvency. Even if the constituencies were made so large that no fortune could corrupt them, the evil would not be removed, it would only assume another and a still more dangerous form. The worst and most dangerous species of bribery is that which is practised by holding out prospects of legislative injustice and spoliation; and the nation will have little cause to congratulate itself if it escapes slipping sovereigns into electors' pockets, but induces the putting the sponge to the national debt into their hands, and untaxed spirits into their mouths. 156. of the Libe These were the great errors committed by both parties Great fault in the course of this great debate. The faults were the rals in the greater on the part of the Conservatives at its commenceReform Bill ment, of the Liberals at its close. This was the natural was carried. result of the alternate possession of power by those two way the great parties; each used it while they had it, not for the general interests of the empire, but for the maintenance debtor consulted the wishes of his creditor, the client would have blushed to oppose the views of his patron, the general was followed by his veterans, and the aspect of a grave magistrate was a living lesson to the multitude. A new method of secret ballot abolished the influence of fear and shame, of honour and interest, and the abuse of freedom accelerated the progress of anarchy and despotism. The Romans had aspired to be equal-they were levelled by the equality of servitude, and the dictates of Augustus were patiently ratified by the formal consent of the tribes or centuries."-GIBBON, Decline and Fall, chap. xliv. XXIII. 1832. or acquisition of government to themselves. But there CHAP. is one step on the part of the Liberals, of a different character, and to which, now that strife is over, and all thoughts of a return to the old system are out of the question, it is the duty of the historian to give the most unqualified condemnation: this is, the way in which the Reform Bill was carried. The excitement of the people by the Liberal leaders, during the continuance of the contest, was so violent and incessant that at last they became altogether unmanageable, and they were driven by their own followers to coerce the Crown, and threaten to violate the constitution, as the only means of avoiding civil war and revolution. The English revolution was effected by means as violent, though happily bloodless, as the French; the threat of marching sixty peers into the House of Lords, to overthrow that assembly, was a measure, in substance, if not in form, as violent as the marching sixty grenadiers, on the 18th Brumaire, into the Legislative Assembly by Napoleon. 157. coercing It is remarkable that on the only occasions in English history when such an extreme measure was thought of, it Danger of was to overthrow the greatest benefactors of their country the House -once in the reign of Queen Anne, when twelve peers of Peers. were created to destroy the Duke of Marlborough; and once in that of William IV., when sixty were threatened, to subvert the Duke of Wellington. Such precedents, if again followed by either party, will speedily destroy the British constitution, and not leave a vestige of real freedom in the land. Let them for ever, and by all parties, be considered as beacons to be avoided, not precedents to be followed. It is with pain that the Author feels himself compelled to pronounce this severe condemnation of a party at that time containing so many able and estimable men, and which, in the commencement of the strife, was clearly in the right. But the cause of truth is paramount to every other consideration. It will appear in the sequel whether the Whig party gained any VOL. IV. 2 D XXIII. 1832. CHAP. lasting advantage, even to themselves, from this violent stretch; and it will be the more pleasing duty of the historian to award a corresponding meed of praise to their leaders, for the wisdom and moderation with which they exercised the power when they had once acquired it. 158. the Duke of Welling to the majo Peers to For a similar reason, the highest praise must be beWisdom of stowed on the Duke of Wellington for the advice he gave the majority of the Peers, when a creation could not otherton's advice wise be averted, to withdraw, and allow the bill to pass. rity in the The Liberal historians, with praiseworthy candour, admit withdraw. that, if he did wrong in his declaration against reform, he atoned for that error by the advice he gave the Peers at the close of the contest.* Great as must, by all candid men of either party, be admitted to be the evil of forcing an independent branch of the legislature, and compelling, by the threat of an unconstitutional measure, an organic change in the constitution, it is not so great as fixing a majority in the hereditary branch of the legislature by a great creation of peers, and thus rendering one House, by an act done in a moment of excitement, and in the heat of contest, permanently at variance with what may come to be the prevailing opinion of the other branch of the legislature and of the country. The lesser evil was wisely accepted, to avoid the greater. If the precedent is once established of overcoming a hostile majority in the House of Peers by a great creation, it may and probably would come to be repeated, as it has been in France, on every entire change of administration, until all respect for, or consistency in, the hereditary branch of the legislature is lost, and it becomes alternately a titled crowd of court favourites, or an obsequious mob of popular flatterers. In a word, the fault of the Tories in this great debate, and it was no light one, was, that they used the political power which had grown up in their hands, as a property, "If the Duke committed a blunder on the 4th November, when he declared against all reform, he nobly redeemed his error on the 17th May, by yielding to the popular demand."-ROEBUCK, vol. ii. p. 336, note. XXIII. 1832. 159. the faults on not a trust, and resisted to the last those changes in the CHAP. representation of the Commons which time had rendered necessary, and which were essential either to insure beneficial legislation, or to diffuse contentment and satisfaction Summary of among the people. The fault of the Liberals, which was both sides. still greater, consisted in this, that when they got the power, they introduced a reform in Parliament based on erroneous principles, which destroyed one system of class legislation only to introduce another still more at variance with the interests of the majority; and, having brought it forward, forced it through by violent excitement of the people, and unconstitutional coercion of the Sovereign. The Tories, in the last extremity, in a great measure expiated their fault by the praiseworthy self-sacrifice which they made at the call of patriotic duty. The Whigs, in the moment of triumph, in some degree redeemed theirs, by the moderation with which they used the unlimited powers acquired by victory. 160. ing classes were still the majority in number and value. If the buying and selling class had constituted in Great Britain, as they did in Athens, Holland, or Venice, the The producmajority in number or importance of the entire empire, no one could have blamed the Liberals for framing a constitution which gave them the command of the country; for it is the fundamental principle of all popular governments that the majority in number and value must rule the minority. But what rendered the new constitution peculiarly unsuited to the British empire, and aggravated the fault of the Whigs in forcing it through, was, that the class in whom it vested supreme power was very far indeed from being a majority either in number or wealth of the whole inhabitants, and owed its ascendancy entirely to the command it had accidentally got of the boroughs. Out of the 27,000,000 who now inhabit the British Islands, 18,000,000 are directly or indirectly dependent on land for their support, and only 9,000,000 on all the branches of commerce and manufactures put together. Of the income-tax, £2,700,000 is paid by the land, and XXIII. 1832. CHAP. not £1,700,000 by trades and professions. Two-thirds of the inhabitants are dependent on the producing interests; two-thirds of the direct revenue is paid by them; but nevertheless they are deprived of all real influence in the legislature; and the minority, intrenched in the boroughs, have been enabled to carry through a series of measures destructive of their best interests. If the colonies, wholly unrepresented by the Reform Bill, are considered as distant provinces of the empire, this disproportion will appear still greater; and less than a half in number, and a third in wealth, actuated by an adverse interest, have got the command of both. 161. Bill has ed Govern its basis. It must be considered as a decided set-off to these The Reform manifold evils that the Reform Bill has obviously and strengthen greatly strengthened Government as a government, irrement by spective of the divisions of party. So nearly balanced, enlarging indeed, are the two parties into which the country is divided, that great weakness of administration in the House of Commons has in general been the characteristic of the times since it became law; but this is quite a different thing from any weakness of the Government itself. It has afforded rather a proof of the truth of De Tocqueville's observation, that the danger of democracy is not its weakness, but its tremendous strength. The frequent conspiracies which took place between 1815 and 1830, and which had for their object to overturn the Government by violence, have been almost unknown since the Reform Bill passed. Even the terrible storm of 1848 failed to shake the steady fabric of the British monarchy. Queen Victoria put down the efforts of factions in 1848 without firing a shot, when all the Continental monarchies were falling around her. No man can affirm with confidence that this auspicious result would have taken place had the old government of the nomination boroughs been still in force. It is one thing to weaken the rule of two or three hundred holders of seats in the House of Commons; it is another, and a very dif |