In
DISRAELI
ON
WHIGS AND WHIGGISM
J
WHIGS AND WHIGGISM
POLITICAL WRITINGS
BY BENJAMIN DISRAELI
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY
WILLIAM HUTCHEON
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
SIR ADAM FERGUSON : But, Sir, in the British Constitution it
is surely of importance to keep up a spirit in the people, so as to
preserve a balance against the Crown.
DR. JOHNSON : Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig.
BOSWELL : Life of Johnson.
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1914
PREFATORY NOTE
THE suggestion for the preparation of a volume of by-
products of Disraeli's pen came from Mr. John Murray;
for the selection and treatment I alone am responsible.
I have to acknowledge Mr. Murray's helpful counsel and
encouragement, and I have also to express my thanks to
Mr. Goningsby Disraeli for advice willingly rendered; to
the proprietors of the Morning Post for special facilities
for the identification of Disraeli's contributions to that
journal; to Mr. T. E. Kebbel; to Sir James Murray; to
Messrs. Maggs Brothers for permission to reproduce the
Disraeli letters in facsimile from the originals in their
possession; and to Mr. B. L. O'Malley for his criticisms
and suggestions. Lastly, I cannot but make grateful
acknowledgment of my wife's co-operation, which has
made the work a pleasure.
It should be noted that the frontispiece, from a dry-
point by my friend, Mr. James McBey, does not profess
to be an actual portrait. It is rather an endeavour to
realise the Young Disraeli from the published descrip-
tions of the period, with the well-known portrait by
A. E. Ghalon, K.A., in the possession of Mr. Coningsby
Disraeli, as a basis.
W. H.
CONTENTS
[Those of Disraeli's political writings which are now reprinted for the first
time are indicated by an asterisk ; that portion which has been previously
republished in book form, but which is not now readily accessible, is
indicated by a dagger.]
FAOB
INTRODUCTION - 1
WHAT is HE ? (1833)f - - 16
THE CRISIS EXAMINED (1834)* - 23
PEERS AND PEOPLE (1835)* - - 42
VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION (1835)f - 111
THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE (1836)f - - - 233
Dedication to Sir Robert Peel - 234
1. To Viscount Melbourne - 238
2. To Sir John Campbell - 242
3. To Mr. Thomas Attwood, M.P. - - 247
4 To Lord Brougham - - 252
5. To Sir Robert Peel - - 256
6. To the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Spring
Rice) - 261
7. To Lord John Russell - 266
8. To the People - 272
9. To Lord Stanley - 277
10. To Lord William Bentinck - - 282
11. To Viscount Palmerston - - 289
12. To Sir John Hobhouse - 294
13. To Lord Glenelg - - 297
14. To the Right Hon. Edward Ellice - - 301
15. To Viscount Melbourne - - 305
16. To the House of Lords 308
17. To the House of Lords - 313
18. To the Lord Chancellor (Lord Cottenham) - 317
19. To Viscount Melbourne .... 322
viii CONTENTS
PAGE
THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM (1836)f - - 327
OPEN LETTERS (1837-1841)* • - - - 367
To Lord Normanby, by Kunnymede (1837) - - 368
To Lord Melbourne, by Kunnymede (1837) - - 361
To Lord John Russell, by Laelius (1839) - 366
To the Queen, by Lselius (1839) - • 368
To Lord Melbourne, by Lselius (1839) - ' - 372
To the Duke of Wellington, by Attious (1841) - ' - 378
DISRAELI OR MAGINN ! (1835-1837)* - - - 386
POLITICAL SATIRES IN VERSE, BY SKELTON, JUNIOR (1837)* 400
OLD ENGLAND, BY CCETTR-DE-LION (1838)* ... 408
A LATER DISRAELIAN CHAPTER (1853)* - - 431
Coalition (1853) - - - - r- 431
To the Whigs, by Manilius (1853) ' ' -L ' - * ^ 436
INDEX - - - - - - :Jr 471
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
DISRAELI THE YOUNGER • • frontispiece
From a dry point by JAMES McBEY
LORD LYNDHURST ..... facing 396
From the drawing by MACLISE in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, South Kensington
FACSIMILE LETTERS:
Morning Post Articles - - - * -41
"The Vindication" - - * - 112
"Atticus" Letter - - - - - 377
DISRAELI ON WHIGS AND
WHIGGISM
INTRODUCTION
THE contents of this volume call for no elaborate intro-
duction. Some of them are familiar to close students of
the life and works of Disraeli, and by reputation to a
wider circle. The rest are here republished for the first
time. The early life of Disraeli is a mine in which many
men have quarried. Every known biographical vein has
been exhausted, and the output has been turned over,
sifted, and analysed by hundreds of hands. The book-
shelves of the British Museum indeed bear notable
evidence of the monumental industry of Disraeli's anno-
tators, both at home and abroad. But it fell to the lot
of the late Mr. Monypenny, through the private papers
placed at his disposal, to indicate the existence of unsus-
pected seams in which new material might be found.
These have now been systematically explored, and that
portion which has been considered of permanent value
has been brought to the surface, and is here made avail-
able to the public. Disraeli contributed freely to the
Press in the thirties, at a time when he was struggling to
obtain a foothold in politics. Those contributions varied
in quality and interest. Not all were worthy of being
rescued from the dusty files in which they were embedded.
The others, however, will probably be welcomed by those
— and the number is steadily growing — who follow with
interest the various phases of the career of that marvel-
1
2 INTRODUCTION
lously diversified personality. It has been thought well
to go outside the period so far covered by the authorita-
tive " Life " now in process of publication, and to open
for a moment the pages of a later chapter, when, after a
lapse of over ten years, Disraeli renewed his connection
with journalism. That chapter has yet to be written
from inside knowledge, and very absorbing it should prove.
For present purposes, however, two extracts only are
given from his anonymous contributions to his own
periodical, The Press, which was founded in 1853. To
facilitate comparison and research, and to complete
the record of Disraeli's political writings of the period,
there are included the " Vindication," the Bunny mede
Letters, and other known works. Readers will thus be
enabled to trace for themselves at first-hand, in a setting
deliberately kept free from party bias, the gradual evolu-
tion of a career that in its opening stages offered so many
enigmas to the historian, and has been so diversely inter-
preted.
The period of Disraeli's greatest journalistic activity
was that between the passing of the Reform Act in 1832
and the breaking of the Whig power in 1841. It marked
a stage of much importance in the political development
of the young statesman. Through all those writings the
insistent note is that of fierce and uncompromising hos-
tility to Whigs and Whiggism, and to Lord Melbourne as
their official exponent. It makes itself heard in the first
sentence of "What is He ?" (1833)— a tiny and much
canvassed pamphlet which, though written in advocacy
of the formation of a national party, is quoted by his
critics and enemies as showing that he was at the time
at heart a Radical. It becomes more pronounced in
"The Crisis Examined" (1834), the manifesto which
marked his definite alliance with the Conservative party.
The note becomes vehement in his articles in the Morning
Post in the summer of 1835, and still more vehement in
the Letters of Runnymede and other subsequent con-
tributions to the columns of the .Times. In |the more
LOED LYNDEUKST'S INFLUENCE 3
matured letters "To the Whigs " in The Press of 1863,
there is a searching and acute analysis of the causes of
their decay as a political factor. Whatever taunts may
be levelled at Disraeli's inconsistency, he was at least
unchanging in his whole - hearted hatred of Whig
rule.
During the earlier of those busy years the dominant
influence was that of Lord Lyndhurst. In " Vivian
Grey " (1826) Disraeli foreshadowed the future with
prophetic accuracy. "At this moment," exclaims the
hero, "how many a powerful noble wants only wit to
be a Minister ; and what wants Vivian Grey to attain the
same end ? That noble's influence. When two persons
can so materially assist each other, why are they not
brought together ? Shall I, because my birth baulks my
fancy, shall I pass my life a moping misanthrope in an
old chateau ?" Assuredly there was little of the " moping
misanthrope " about Disraeli. Into the years between
1831, when he returned from a prolonged tour in the
East, and 1837, when he entered Parliament as Member
for Maidstone, he crowded much varied life. He had the
qualities necessary to ensure success in politics — youth,
an acute intellect, a mind broadened by travel and read-
ing, a brilliant pen, and, like Vivian Grey, he " could
perform right skilfully upon the most splendid of musical
instruments, the human voice." He had a genius for
political missionary work, and an extraordinary acquaint-
ance with men and things. He combined with these
advantages a force and dash that were ruthless where a
political end was to be gained. A man of such varied
parts, endowed by Nature with a striking personality
accentuated by an extreme coxcombry of dress, was
bound to be buzzed about in society, and his growing
fame in politics was aided by his growing fame in litera-
ture.
The meeting with his patron in July, 1834, was marked
by instant and mutual confidence. Lyndhurst had am-
bitions, and needed Disraeli's pen ; Disraeli had ambitions,
4 INTRODUCTION
and needed Lyndhurst's influence. Probably one of the
first results of the alliance was the publication a few
months later of " The Crisis Examined." Politics at the
moment were full of interest. Disraeli was entering on
his third unsuccessful contest for High Wy combe; his
future rival, Gladstone, was already Member for Newark.
Indeed, on the very day (December 16) that Disraeli,
addressing the Wycombe electors, was taking his fateful
political plunge, there was in the post the letter from Peel,
the Tory Prime Minister, that led to Gladstone's first
brief tenure of office. For the Government in which Mel-
bourne had succeeded Grey as Prime Minister had been
summarily dismissed by the King in November. There
had been numerous changes in its personnel, and the
King had become disgusted. As Disraeli put it in his
familiar simile, the six horses on which Ducrow had under-
taken to ride round the arena had been replaced by
donkeys. But the Peel Ministry, in which Lyndhurst
took the Great Seal, lived but a few months, and with
the defeat of Disraeli for Wycombe, the return of Mel-
bourne for the second time as the Minister " not of the
King's choice, but of the King's necessity," and the rele-
gation of Lyndhurst once more to Opposition, crumbled
glorious dreams.
II
Lyndhurst was what in latter-day politics would be
termed a " Diehard," and in Disraeli he saw the eager
dare-devilry of a master-controversialist. The oppor-
tunity for united action was not long delayed. During
Lyndhurst's brief Chancellorship he gave a dinner-party
which is historic as being that at which Gladstone and
Disraeli, the great protagonists of the Victorian era,
first met round the same table. To this dinner may,
perhaps, be traced the series of articles which Disraeli
contributed to the Morning Post in the summer of the
same year (1835). Another of the guests was Winthrop
Mackworth Praed, at the moment terminating his asso-
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE "MORNING POST" 5
elation with the Morning Post as a contributor of graceful
prose and verse in order to take a place in Peel's Ministry ;
and so, when opposition to the Municipal Corporations
Bill was being organised by the " Diehards," what more
natural than that, through Lyndhurst's influence, Dis-
raeli should be the chosen writer, and that, through
Praed's influence, the Morning Post should be the chosen
journal, to voice the views of the leaders of the cam-
paign ?
The origin of the articles may be stated in a few sen-
tences. Melbourne, on his return to office, had set him-
self the task of reforming the Municipal Corporations of
the country. The Commission which had been appointed
in 1833 to inquire into municipal abuses had issued its
report, and on June 5, 1835, Lord John Russell, as leader
of the House of Commons, introduced the Municipal Cor-
porations Bill. It was read a second time on June 15,
was in Committee for about a month, and was sent to
the House of Lords, without material change, on July 21.
Here there was mustered a strong majority opposed to
reform. Lyndhurst took the direction of affairs in his
own hands, and under his masterful leadership the Tory
peers decided to fight the Bill inch by inch. They intro-
duced and carried amendments which had been rejected
in the Commons, and there was soon much talk of the
inevitability of a " collision " between the Peers and the
People. For a time the position was threatening, but
the progress of the Bill was delayed for only a few weeks.
The House of Commons refused to accept the more drastic
alterations, Peel discountenanced Lyndhurst's extreme
methods, Wellington advised compromise, and in the end
the House of Lords, while holding its own on some points,
gave way on others, and the " crisis " passed.
Disraeli's authorship of the Morning Post articles was
revealed by the following entry in his diary for September,
1835:
" Wrote the « M.P/ during the English Municipal Bill
for L three leading articles a day for nearly a month/'
6 INTRODUCTION
These articles, and many further contributions to the
Times in subsequent years, were written for political and
not pecuniary reward. Disraeli was never a "hired
scribbler of the Press "; he has himself recorded that his
sole object in writing for the newspapers at the time was
to connect himself with a man who had already been a
Minister, and who was destined to take a conspicuous
part in public affairs, and to establish a claim upon him
which might some day be useful. His connection with
the Post was kept a profound secret. Even to his sister
Sarah, throughout her life the repository of his secrets,
he wrote mysteriously on August 20 about a great un-
known whose exploits in the Post formed almost the sole
staple of conversation. " All attempts at discovering the
writer," he added, " have been baffled, and the mystery
adds to the keen interest which the articles excite."
The contributions of that week contained really little
that was distinctive or that would merit reproduction;
but in the following week, when the Bill reached Com-
mittee in the Lords, and Lord Lyndhurst was overwhelm-
ing it with drastic amendments, there was ferment every-
where. Disraeli, who pooh-poohed the outcry as manu-
factured clamour, was in his element. From August 22
onward there appeared a series of articles the brilliance,
pungency, and vigour of which may well have set political
London talking. The invective was unsparing, rough,
and occasionally even coarse, but the literary power was
marked. That able journalist, the late W. T. Arnold,
used to trace a relation between the pace at which a thing
was read and that at which it was written, and one of
the means by which he thought a sympathetic relation
between reader and writer might be attained was an
extreme rapidity in writing; that those who run might
read, it was best to write running.1 No better illustra-
tion of Arnold's theory could be found. Disraeli's articles
1 "Studies of Roman Imperialism," by W. T. Arnold, with
memoir of the author, by Mrs. Humphry Ward and C. E. Mon-
tague.
INVECTIVE 7
for the Post were written running. They have no flavour
of the study and the reference book ; some of them have,
indeed, the ring of the platform. Swift, unhesitating,
mocking, his written word was as typical as his speech;
he talked, it was said, like a racehorse approaching the
winning-post, every muscle in action. He loved the
rapier, but he did not disdain to use the bludgeon.
At the present day few such articles could be published
without spelling financial ruin to a paper. Each day's
" airy flank of the thong " would invariably produce its
concomitant flow of writs. Barnes of the Times com-
mented on Disraeli's surprising disdain for the law of
libel. Nowadays the Press is much restricted by the
libel law ; even a casual slip of the pen may cost thousands
of pounds. But most journalists would prefer the restric-
tions and reticence of to-day to the licence of yesterday.
Throughout the House of Lords crisis of 1910-11 the
relations between Sovereign and Minister were delicately
handled by almost every writer in the Press, not through
fear of libel law or Court displeasure, but because of the
prevalence of a healthier tone and of a stronger sense of
responsibility. It was not so in Disraeli's day. It was,
of course, matter of current gossip that Melbourne and
his colleagues were no favourites of the King. " I would
rather see the Devil than any one of them in my House,"
was His Majesty's bitter observation. Disraeli made
frequent and daring use of the estrangement between
King and Premier. Time and again he returned to the
attack on Melbourne, and the assault was carried through
with a vigour of invective to which the present generation
is, fortunately, unaccustomed.
Personalities apart, however, there is much in these
articles that is worthy of preservation. It was here that
Disraeli first put forward the Constitutional theories that
were afterwards more fully developed and identified with
his name. It is sufficient testimony to their quality that,
written for the day and fragmentary as they were bound
to be, they yet have in them, three-quarters of a century
8 INTRODUCTION
later, so very much that will secure the approval of the
Conservative politician of the twentieth century.
With the passing of the Corporations Bill, Disraeli's
active association with the Post ceased, although he
remained for many years in friendly communication with
it. He entered upon that association to " establish a
claim " upon Lord Lyndhurst, and he succeeded. The
Bill passed on September 7; on September 10 he wrote
to his mother a joyful letter respecting the promise of a
seat in Parliament. To his sister, recording an invita-
tion to dine with Lord Lyndhurst and meet certain im-
portant political personages, he wrote: " I do not know
what you think of the Morning Post, but Fitzgerald says
they drank my health in a bumper at Sir H. Hardinge's
on Saturday, and said ' He is the man.' >J1
in
In December, 1835, Disraeli published as a political
tract his well-known " Vindication of the English Con-
stitution." It took the form of a letter to Lord Lynd-
hurst, and is an elaborate and learned disquisition on
constitutional history. The case for the Peers in their
recurrent collisions with the People is set out with a
fulness and subtlety that drew encomiums from Sir
Robert Peel. At this time of day there is no need to do
more than refer to its publication, which, according to
Mr. Monypenny, gave Disraeli what his fugitive efforts
could never have given him — a recognised position as a
political writer and thinker. A keen judge of his own
work, Disraeli liked it better than anything he had
written.2
The publication of the " Vindication " gave rise to a
bitter attack on Disraeli in the Globe. Disraeli's reply
appeared in the Times, and the controversy was carried
on with great freedom of language on both sides. It would
1 See facsimile letter, p. 41.
2 See facsimile letter, p. 112.
ASSOCIATION WITH THE "TIMES" 9
serve no good purpose to republish this correspondence;
its ashes have been raked over often enough. What is
of interest is that from now Disraeli went over bag and
baggage to the Times. Here again Lyndhurst was
doubtless the moving influence, and there can be little
question that Barnes, the editor, had noted the effect of
Disraeli's anonymous work on the reputation of the rival
paper, and was willing to encourage as Edward Sterling's
colleague and co-swashbuckler so able a controversialist.
The full extent of Disraeli's work for the Times will
probably never be known. Only a very few of the
contributions have been acknowledged, but buried in the
files of that journal for the next few years are leading
articles which proclaim themselves to one familiar with
his style as unquestionably his.
Of his now acknowledged contributions to the Times
the most important were his famous Letters of Runny -
mede, nineteen in number. Throughout his life Disraeli
did not publicly accept their authorship, but it was never
seriously in doubt. They were republished anonymously
in July, 1836, incorporated with them being a tract
entitled "The Spirit of Whiggism." The letters rank
in the public estimation second only to the Letters of
Junius ; yet they are little read, and, so far as we know,
they have only once been republished. We are able to
reprint in this volume two further letters by " Runny-
mede," which were published in the Times of the follow-
ing year, and have not since seen the light. They are in
the same vein as their forerunners. Melbourne, as always,
comes under the lash. " It has sometimes been my
humble but salutary office," writes " Runnymede," " to
attend your triumph and remind you in a whisper that
you are mortal. Amid the blaze of glory that at present
surrounds you, it may be advisable for me to resume this
wholesome function, lest in the intoxication of success
your Lordship may for a moment forget that, although
still a Minister, you are yet only a man."
It seems difficult now to understand why the common
2
30 INTRODUCTION
origin of the Morning Post articles, "The Vindica-
tion," and " Runnymede," should not at the time have
been definitely established, and why it should have been
left to the twentieth century to discover what ought to
have been palpable to the nineteenth. The parallelism
in argument was convincing. In the Post he began to
lay down his theory of the constitutional position; and
as Disraeli the younger and as " Runnymede " within
the space of a few short months he re-expounded his
views. And later, in a speech in the House of Commons
on household suffrage (March 21, 1839), he propounded
the same arguments in similar language. Disraeli was
indeed a confirmed self -plagiarist. One instance may be
quoted; readers will discover many others for themselves.
In "The Crisis Examined" (1834), Disraeli the younger
writes of Lord John Eussell as one
" who, on the same principle that bad wine produces good
vinegar, has somehow turned from a tenth-rate author
into a first-rate politician."
In the Morning Post of September 4, 1835, we find
another reference to Lord John as one who
" has written a book upon the English Constitution, and
who, on the same principle that bad wine makes very
good vinegar, has somehow or other been metamorphosed
from a tenth-rate author into a first-class statesman."
We turn to the Times of January, 1836 (Runnymede
Letters), to find that
" the seals of the principal office of the State are en-
trusted to an individual who, on the principle that good
vinegar is the corruption of bad wine, has been meta-
morphosed from an incapable author into an eminent
politician."
It is this characteristic of Disraeli's that emboldens me
to put forward the view, in a subsequent section, that he
was the author of at least three of the biographical
sketches in Fraser (subsequently reprinted in the " Maclise
OPEN LETTERS 11
Portrait Gallery ") which up to the present have been
attributed to Dr. Maginn.
On December 13, 1836, Disraeli began in the Times a
series of political allegories entitled " A New Voyage of
Sindbad the Sailor, recently discovered." This was,
perhaps, the least happy of his journalistic efforts; it
was laboured and obscure, and its publication dragged
over a considerable period. Between the publication of
the eleventh and twelfth chapters nearly a month elapsed,
and, though the series was evidently unfinished, Barnes
appeared to have had enough, and it ended there. More
happy was the touch in the " Old England " series of
papers (January, 1838), written in unfamiliar vein, and
in parts in obvious imitation of Carlyle. It was a vigor-
ous attempt by the new Member for Maidstone to wake
up John Bull to a sense that a real " Crisis " in the
Queen's Government had at last been reached. The
articles ran through ten issues of the Times, and there
is contemporary evidence that they were not without
effect on the public mind.
So far as is known, that was Disraeli's last contribu-
tion of any length to the Times. In the previous year
he had tried his hand at satirical verse, of which several
samples, now reprinted for the first time, appeared in the
month of March ; but here again Barnes was not sympa-
thetic. Disraeli wrote four open letters — one to Lord
John Russell, one to the Queen, one to Melbourne, and
the last (in 1841) to the Duke of Wellington — each with a
distinct point of interest. In the following year Barnes
died, and was succeeded by Delane. The Melbourne
Ministry came to an end, and was followed by Sir Rober t
Peel's administration, in which, again outdistanced by
Gladstone, Disraeli to his "intolerable humiliation " found
no place.
" I am not going to trouble you," he wrote to Peel,
" with claims similar to those with which you must be
wearied. I will not say that I have fought since 1834
four contests for your party, that I have expended great
12 INTRODUCTION
sums, have exerted my intelligence to the utmost for the
propagation of your policy, and have that position in life
which can command a costly seat. But there is one
peculiarity on which I cannot be silent. I have had to
struggle against a storm of political hate and malice which
few men ever experienced, from the moment when, at the
instigation of a member of your Cabinet, I enrolled myself
under your banner, and I have only been sustained under
those trials by the conviction that the day would come
when the foremost man of this country would publicly
testify that he had some respect for my ability and
character."
Peel's reply, however, was cold and formal. With the
Times under new control, the Whigs out, and a Tory
Ministry, from which he had been excluded, in power,
Disraeli's incentive to journalistic effort had gone.
IV
It is a long jump from 1841 to 1853, when Disraeli's
active association with journalism was renewed. In
those twelve years much had happened. In literature,
as in politics, he had amply fulfilled his earlier promise.
The dramatic breach between Peel and Disraeli in 1846
was followed by the overthrow, and finally by the death,
in 1850, of the Tory leader. Disraeli's political star rose
as Peel's fell. He succeeded to the leadership of the
party in the House of Commons, became Chancellor of
the Exchequer in Lord Derby's Ministry for a few brief
months in 1852, and then was sent back once more to
Opposition. To strengthen his hands in fighting the
Coalition Government under Lord Aberdeen, Disraeli
founded The Press, a political weekly. During its early
years it was ably conducted, and several of its con-
tributors afterwards attained celebrity in literature.
After the accession of the Conservatives to office in
March, 1858, the paper changed hands, and it died in
1862. The full extent of Disraeli's connection with The
DISKAELI'S PEKIODICAL 13
Press will doubtless be revealed by Mr. Buckle, when the
Beaconsfield papers for the period have been thoroughly
examined. For much of the information that follows the
writer is indebted to the kindness of Mr. T. E. Kebbel,
whose active connection with the paper began in 1855.
Mr. Kebbel is now a veteran of over fourscore years. Most
of the staff and contributors at the time were his seniors,
and he alone survives . We have his authority for stating
that the leading article on " Coalition " in the first number
of The Press was by Disraeli, but Mr. Walter Sichel is the
only writer who has positively identified as Disraeli's the
masterly series of letters "To the Whigs," which ran
through the early numbers — an identification confirmed
by the internal evidence. Samuel Lucas, the versatile
journalist and critic, was the first editor. He resigned
the position in 1855, though he continued to write for
the paper afterwards. He was succeeded in 1855 by Mr.
David T. Coulton, who conducted the paper till his death,
two years later, and who always wrote the first leader.
Coulton used to go to the House of Commons on Friday
nights, and return to the office later laden with notes
taken down from Disraeli's dictation which he had to
reduce into leading article form; and very cleverly, says
Mr. Kebbel, he used to do it. Among the earlier con-
tributors were Lord Stanley (afterwards fifteenth Earl of
Derby) ; Shirley Brooks (the novelist and dramatist,
better remembered as editor of Punch) ; and George Sydney
Smythe (afterwards Lord Strangford). Then there were
Madden, who, like Brooks and Lucas, came from the
Morning Chronicle, and John Holt Hutton, editor of the
Economist, who was responsible for the financial articles.
Subsequent contributors were John Robert Seeley, author
of " Ecce Homo," and subsequently Professor of Modern
History at Cambridge ; F. W. Haydon (son and biographer
of Benjamin Robert Haydon, the painter), who was sub-
editor till 1858, when Disraeli made him an Inspector of
Factories. A still later editor was Patterson, under whom
Mortimer Collins, novelist and poet, and Edward Pember,
14 INTRODUCTION
the distinguished Parliamentary counsel, were contribu-
tors. Mr. Kebbel, during his seven years' connection with
the staff, contributed leaders and reviews, and helped to
" make up " the paper on Friday nights. Mr. T. H.
Sweet Escott, in his " Masters of Journalism," says the
management of The Press was vested in a committee,
whose meetings Disraeli regularly attended; and he
records impressively an occasion when the article of the
week was considered inadequate, and was replaced in
an hour by another of Disraeli's composition. Having
regard to the known rapidity of his pen and the extent
of his journalistic experience, there was nothing in that
feat to cause surprise.
A word or two in conclusion on Disraeli's choice of
pseudonyms, which was influenced by his classical read-
ing. Apart from " Runnymede," a happy inspiration
suggested by his immersion at the period in the history
of the Constitution, there are five which make their
appearance in this volume — c ' Manilius , " " Laelius , ' '
"Atticus," "Cceur de Lion," and " Skelton Junior."
Of the choice of " Manilius " he writes : " The name I
have assumed is so far appropriate that it is obscure to
those who may yet well remember the more prominent
disputants in the grand arena of old Roman politics; it
is a name incidentally cited by Cicero as that of one,
amongst others, who had studied the customs of his
country, and might therefore be competent to suggest
an occasional counsel to his fellow-citizens." " Lselius "
was regarded by Cicero as a second Socrates, and figures
in " De Amicitia," " De Senectute," and " De Republica."
" Atticus " — a nom de guerre also used by Sir Philip
Francis, in whose footsteps as a writer for the Press Dis-
raeli clearly followed — was the name given to Titus Pom-
ponius, Cicero's second self, and editor of his letters.
" Skelton Junior " had a nodding acquaintance with
Cicero, for, curiously enough, it is said that the first work
of John Skelton the poet (1460-1529), was a translation
of Cicero's letters, of which no copy is extant. He was
A FOLLOWER OF SKELTON 15
the inventor of Skeltonian metre. Here there may be
mentioned an added " Curiosity of Literature." The
only other John Skelton who left behind him a notable
record was Sir John (1831-1897), an author who was
appointed by Disraeli to an official position in Scotland
in 1868, the choice, it is said, having been due to
Disraeli's admiration of his literary style. In the follow-
ing year he published a sympathetic sketch entitled
"Benjamin Disraeli: The Past and the Future." It
would be interesting to learn whether " Skelton Junior's "
interest in Sir John was first aroused by his recollection
of his own earlier usurpation of the name.
W. H.
August 30th, 1913.
16 WHAT IS HE t [1833
WHAT IS HE ?
BY THE AUTHOR OF "VIVIAN GREY"
" I hear that is again in the field ; I hardly know whether
we ought to wish him success. ' WHAT is HE ?' " — Extract from
.« Letter of an Eminent Personage.
[" WHAT is HE ?" was published in 1833. Disraeli, who
in 1832 had made two unsuccessful efforts to enter the
House of Commons for High Wycombe, opened his can-
didature for Marylebone in the following year, but a
vacancy did not arise. He seized the opportunity, how-
ever, to set forth his political views, then in process of
evolution, in a little pamphlet which purported to be a
reply to a question in a letter by Lord Grey. In all
probability the quotation was merely a literary device
to attract attention. The views propounded gave rise
to the impression, never since wholly effaced, that Dis-
raeli was then a Radical. His consistency must not be
too rigidly insisted upon, but at the time he was really
unlabelled. " Toryism," he had written of an earlier
candidature, " is worn out, and I cannot condescend to
be a Whig." Hence his appeal for the formation of a
National party. Even when Chancellor of the Exchequer
in 1852, he returned to the idea of a Eadical-Tory coali-
tion ; witness his midnight interview with Mr. Bright on
December 14, and his suggestion of a future Cabinet with
Cobden and Bright as his co-members.]
I
THE Tories have announced that they could not carry on
the Government of this country with the present State
machinery; every day the nation is more sensible that
1833] ARISTOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 17
the Whigs cannot. A third party has arisen who propose
certain additions and alterations in this State machinery,
by the aid of which, they believe, the Government of the
country might be conducted.
II
The first object of a statesman is a strong Government,
without which there can be no security. Of all countries
in the world England most requires one, since the pros-
perity of no society so much depends upon public con-
fidence as that of the British nation.
Our Government, before the recent change,1 was based
upon an aristocratic principle, and as the principle was
decided, the practice was vigorous. By the recent change
we have deserted the old principle of Government without
adopting a new one. As the Government has no im-
pelling principle, the Government cannot of course act.
Hence a session of Parliament, from which so much was
expected by the thoughtless, spent only in barren discus-
sion, in the proposition of abortive measures, or the hasty
adoption of temporary and provisional enactments.
Ill
It is evident that public confidence must decrease in
exact proportion to the increasing weakness of a Govern-
ment. Unless means therefore be discovered by which
the Government in this country can be rendered strong,
by which it may be enabled to act, a public convulsion
must soon occur. At present Property is only threat-
ened ; in a few months it will be a question as to the pres-
ervation of Order; another year, and we must struggle
for Civilisation.
IV
By what means, then, are we to obtain a strong Govern-
ment ? We must discover some principle on which it
can be founded. We must either revert to the aristocratic
principle, or we must advance to the democratic.
1 The Reform Act of 1832.
18 WHAT IS HE ! [1833
The Tories announce by their leaders that to govern
the country with the present State machinery is im-
possible. Unless, therefore, they believe that it is pos-
sible to restore the old principle of Government, or unless
they have embraced a martyrdom of political insignifi-
cance, they must advance to the new. Do they believe
that they can restore the old principle ? Not merely
to expedite the argument, I will believe that they do
not.
I, for one, believe it utterly impossible to revert to the
aristocratic principle, for reasons which I shall adduce in
a subsequent section. Believing so, however, and being
convinced that, unless the Government of the country be
founded upon some decided principle, the country must
fall, I feel it absolutely necessary to advance to the new
or the democratic principle.
VI
In the House of Commons, as at present constituted,
neither of the principles predominates. Essentially the
aristocratic is much the strongest, but as the aristocratic
party is divided into two rival sections, which can seldom
coalesce, the democratic contrives nearly to balance the
antagonist principle. Superficial observers cannot under-
stand how a measure which is so essentially aristocratic
as the Reform Act has produced such threatening conse-
quences to the aristocratic principle of government. They
say, and they say truly, the Reform Act was a law, not
to destroy close government, but to destroy Toryism.
The Boroughs of the Tories were invariably sacrificed,
and those of the Whigs, in many instances, essentially
preserved. Everywhere the power of Whig nomination
was favoured. " We have only changed masters," con-
tinue these observers. " We are governed by an aristo-
cratic party, and that party how strong ! Mark their
vast majorities ! Observe the numerous scions of noble
1833] MENACING THE PEEKS 19
houses lounging behind the Treasury Bench. Talk of
Revolution indeed — there never was such an aristocratic
House of Commons as the present !" Doubtless it was
impressed with these ideas that the Whigs were induced
to introduce their famous Reform Bill. But if they have
not already discovered, it is time that they should dis-
cover, a great truth — THE ARISTOCRATIC PRINCIPLE HAS
BEEN DESTROYED IN THIS COUNTRY, NOT BY THE REFORM
ACT, BUT BY THE] MEANS BY WHICH THE REFORM ACT
WAS PASSED.
VII
The Whigs, who, with a Sovereign and a House of
Commons alike pledged to their purpose, were neverthe-
less so incapable that they could not contrive to carry a
substantive measure of Reform through the unpledged,
yet weakest, Estate of the Realm, excited a deadly struggle
between the House of Lords and the Political Unions.
The House of Lords was vanquished, and the moment
that they passed the Reform Act that assembly was as
completely abrogated and extinguished as if its Members
had torn off their robes and coronets, and flung them
into the river, and, stalking in silence to their palaces,
had never returned to that Chamber, which every Peer
must now enter with a blush or with a pang.
The moment the Lords passed the Reform Bill, from
menace1 instead of conviction, the aristocratic principle
of government in this country, in my opinion, expired
for ever. From that moment it became the duty of
every person of property, talents, and education, uncon-
nected with the unhappy party at present in power, to
use his utmost exertions to advance the democratic prin-
ciple in order that the country should not fall into that
situation in which, if I mistake not, it will speedily find
itself— absolutely without any Government whatever. A
Tory and a Radical, I understand ; a Whig — a democratic
aristocrat, I cannot comprehend. If the Tories indeed
despair of restoring the aristocratic principle, and are
1 The threat to create new Peers.
20 WHAT IS HE? [1833
sincere in their avowal that the State cannot be governed
with the present machinery, it is their duty to coalesce
with the Radicals, and permit both political nicknames
to merge in the common, the intelligible, and the dignified
title of a National Party. He is a mean-spirited wretch
who is restrained from doing his duty by the fear of being
held up as insincere and inconsistent by those who are
incapable of forming an opinion on public affairs ; and who,
were it not for the individual " inconsistency " which
they brand, would often become the victims of their own
incapacity and ignorance. A great mind that thinks and
feels is never inconsistent, and never insincere. He who
will not profess opinions without first examining them is
ever considered insincere by the mass who adopt doc-
trines without thought, and retain them with the ob-
stinacy which ignorance can alone inspire. He who will
not act without a reason will always be considered incon-
sistent by the irrational. The insincere and the incon-
sistent are the stupid and the vile. Insincerity is the vice
of a fool, and inconsistency the blunder of a knave.
VIII
It is possible that the Tories may imagine that there
are two modes by which the aristocratic principle may be
restored — firstly, by Force; secondly, by a coalition
between the two aristocratic parties.
Firstly, by Force. It seems to me impossible for a
military leader to practise upon the passions of an insular
people, to whom he can promise no conquests. If it be
urged that a military despotism has already been erected
in this country, I remind the respondent of the different
state of society in England at present to what it was in
the time of Cromwell. It appears to me that the manu-
facturing districts alone, which, in a moment, would
supply masses of population and abundance of arms,
are a sufficient security against the imposition of a
military despotism.
Secondly, by a coalition between the aristocratic parties.
1833] DEMOCEATIC METHODS 21
Such a combination might, unquestionably, retard the
advance of the democratic principle, and raise, as it were,
for an instant, a ghost of the departed aristocratic. But
its ultimate tendency would only be to place the House
of Commons again at variance with the people, and again
to develop the triumphant organisation of popular self-
government. But a coalition between the aristocratic
parties would be attended with so many difficulties that
it is almost impossible to conceive its formation.
IX
Believing, then, that it is utterly impossible to restore
the aristocratic principle, and believing that unless some
principle of action be infused into the Government a con-
vulsion must ensue, what are the easiest and most obvious
methods by which the democratic party may be made
predominant ? It would appear that the easiest and the
most obvious methods are the instant repeal of the Sep-
tennial Act and the institution of Election by Ballot,
and the immediate dissolution of Parliament.1 There is
reason to believe that the consequence of this policy
would be the election of a House of Commons a great
majority of which would be influenced by the same
wishes, and, consequently, the machine of the State
would be able to proceed. I shall not here enter into the
discussion of the nature of the measures which are likely
to be adopted by a Parliament so constituted. This is
not a party Pamphlet, and appeals to the passions of no
order of the State: I record here my solemn conviction,
and the result of my own unprejudiced meditation. The
sole object of these pages is to show that we are in a
situation in which it is necessary either to recede or to
advance ; that it is not probable that the present state of
affairs can subsist six months; and that it becomes all
men who are sincere well-wishers to their country, and
1 On October 1, 1832, in his second Wycombe election address,
he announced that he was prepared to support the ballot, and
was desirous of returning to triennial Parliaments.
22 WHAT IS HE ! [1833
who are really independent — that is to say, who are not
pledged to the unhappy party in power — to combine
together for the institution of a strong Government.
In conclusion, I must observe that there is yet a reason
which induces me to believe that the restoration of the
aristocratic principle in the Government of this country
is utterly impracticable. Without being a system-monger,
I cannot but perceive, in studying the history of the past,
that Europe for the last three centuries has been more or
less in a state of transition from Feudal to Federal prin-
ciples of government. If these contending principles of
government have not originated all the struggles that
have occurred, they have, at least, in the progress of
those struggles, in some degree blended with them. The
revolt of the Netherlands against Spain impelled, if it did
not produce, the Revolution in England under Charles
the First. The revolt of the Anglo-American Colonies
against Great Britain impelled, if it did not produce, the
revolution in France under Louis the Sixteenth. It is
unnecessary to touch upon later events. It is wise to be
sanguine in public as well as in private life; yet the
sagacious Statesman must view the present portents with
anxiety, if not with terror. It would sometimes appear
that the loss of our great Colonial Empire must be the
necessary consequence of our prolonged domestic dissen-
sions. Hope, however, lingers to the last. In the sedate
but vigorous character of the British nation we may
place great confidence. Let us not forget also an influ-
ence too much underrated in this age of bustling medi-
ocrity— the influence of individual character. Great
spirits may yet arise to guide the groaning helm through
the world of troubled waters — spirits whose proud destiny
it may still be at the same time to maintain the glory of
the Empire, and to secure the happiness of the People.1
1 " Who will be the proud spirit »" asked his father, Isaac
D' Israeli. c
1834] THE CRISIS EXAMINED 23
THE CRISIS EXAMINED
BY DISRAELI THE YOUNGER
["THE CRISIS EXAMINED " (1834) marks the beginning
of Disraeli's definite alliance with the Tory party. It was
published with the following advertisement :
" The following pages form a genuine report of an
address to the Electors of High Wycombe, delivered in
their Town Hall, Dec. 16th. As its subject is one of
general importance, and as it was then considered that
a question of great public interest was placed in a proper
position and a just fight, it has been published."
Melbourne's Ministry had been dismissed by the King,
Peel had taken office, and a General Election was in
prospect. In November, Disraeli was inviting Lord Dur-
ham's influence in his projected candidature as a Eadical
for Aylesbury; in the following month his patron, Lord
Lyndhurst, was striving to secure his selection as Conserva-
tive candidate for Lynn — a "mighty impartial person-
age," was Greville's comment. In the end it was Wycombe
again, on the basis once more of a Eadical-Tory alliance.
A few weeks later Disraeli was nominated for the Carlton
Club, and finally assumed the Tory label. The pamphlet,
which has never beenrepublished, contains many passages
of permanent interest.]
GENTLEMEN, — A considerable period has elapsed since
I last had the honour of addressing you within these walls ;
and in that interval great revolutions have occurred —
revolutions of government and revolutions of opinion ;
24 THE CRISIS EXAMINED [1834
I can, however, assure you that I remain unchanged. I
appear before you this day influenced by the same senti-
ments that I have ever professed, and actuated by the
same principles I have ever advocated. There are some
among my supporters who have deprecated this meeting ;
who have believed that I stood in so favourable a position
as regarded the final result of this contest that to move
might perhaps endanger it; who, observing that I was
supported by individuals of different opinions and hitherto
of different parties, were fearful that, in hazarding ex-
planation, I might hazard discomfiture. But, Gentlemen,
unless I enter Parliament with a clear explanation of my
views, there is little chance of my acting with profit to
you or with credit to myself. I cannot condescend to
obtain even that distinguished honour by Jesuitical in-
trigue or casuistical cajolery ; I cannot condescend, at the
same time, to be supported by the Tories because they
deem me a Tory, and by the Liberals because they hold
me a Liberal; I cannot stoop to deception, or submit to
delusion.
It is the fashion to style the present moment an extra-
ordinary Crisis. I will not quarrel with the phrase. The
times are, indeed, remarkable : we have a new Administra-
tion just formed; a new Parliament immediately threat-
ened. It is therefore incumbent on the constituent body
throughout the Empire to prepare, and to resolve upon
the course expedient to pursue. Hoping, even believing,
that I shall be your representative,1 I will venture to
offer to your consideration the course of policy which,
under existing circumstances, I think it the duty of an
Administration to pursue. And, in the first place, I think
that Administration should be based upon a determina-
tion to reduce the burthens, to redress the grievances, and
to maintain the rights of the people. I will not, however,
and certainly I do not wish them to shield themselves
under a declaration so vague. Let us, therefore, be
1 His third contest at Wycombe ended in defeat. The figures
(January 7, 1835) were — Smith, 289; Grey, 147; Disraeli, 128.
1834] ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM 25
definite. I think the necessary measures may be classed
under four heads : Financial Relief, Ecclesiastical Reform,
Sectarian Reform, and Corporate Reform. I will con-
sider the Irish Question as collateral to the general one
of Ecclesiastical Reform.
As to Financial Relief, I am of opinion that the agri-
cultural interest at the present moment is more entitled
than any other class to whatever boon the Minister may
spare. All who hear me know, and most who hear me
feel, that that interest is fearfully depressed. We may
hope, therefore, that the Exchequer may grant them at
least the partial relief of the malt tax, although I recom-
mend them to petition for the whole.1 I would not at
the same time make a request and intimate a compromise.
As for any further relief that may be conceded us, I am
always an advocate, in spite of political economists, for
the abolition of direct taxes. I hope, therefore, the
window tax will soon disappear; it is a tax the most
onerous and the most unjust.2 Further relief we cannot
certainly now anticipate.
I approach now the solemn subject of Ecclesiastical
Reform. . Church Reform, Gentlemen, is the popular cry
of the country: and when I recall the desperate profes-
sions that have been made, and the abortive measures
that have been prepared upon this subject, I confess I
recoil from a cant phrase which only reminds me of the
intrigues of ignorant faction, or the wily projects of the
protectors of vested interests . I hope the time approaches
when we may hear less of Church reform, and more of
Church improvement. I deem it absolutely necessary
that pluralities should be abolished,3 and that the great
and consequent evil of non-residence should be terminated
for ever. It is, perhaps, unnecessary for me to observe
that I cannot conceive that this all-important object can
be obtained without increasing the value of the lesser
1 This was dealt with in Disraeli's first Budget.
2 Repealed in July, 1851.
3 Legislation dealing with this subject was passed in 1838.
3
26 THE CRISIS EXAMINED [1834
livings, and the incomes in general of the inferior clergy.
Ecclesiastical Eeform naturally and necessarily draws
our attention to Ireland, a name fatal to so many Govern-
ments.
I deem it absolutely necessary, even for the existence
of the Protestant Establishment itself, that the question
of the Irish Church should be forthwith grappled with;
that it should be the object of a measure in its nature as
final, in its operation as conclusive, as human wit can
devise. It is now impossible to avoid and too late to
postpone it; it must be met immediately — the question
is how it may be met efficiently. Twelve months, there-
fore, must not pass over without the very name of tithes
in that country being abolished for ever; nor do I deem
it less urgent that the Protestant Establishment in that
country should be at once proportioned to the population
which it serves. But, Gentlemen, I for one will never
consent that the surplus revenues of that branch of our
Establishment shall ever be appropriated to any other
object save the interests of the Church of England,
because experience has taught me that an establishment
is never despoiled except to benefit an aristocracy. It is
the interest of the people to support the Church, for the
Church is their patrimony, their only hereditary property ;
it is their portal to power, their avenue to learning, to
distinction, and to honour. I see no reason why the
surplus revenues of the Church of England in Ireland
should not be placed in trust of the Prelates of that land,
and of lay trustees, for the purpose of advancing the
propagation of the Protestant faith in Ireland by all
salutary and sacred means. We may fail, Gentlemen, in
this great end, but failure under such circumstances is
preferable in my mind to seeing this property, hallowed
by its original consecration to the purposes of religion, of
learning, and of charity, in the ruthless and rapacious
grasp of some bold absentee Baron. I know the love
that great Lords, and especially Whig Lords, have for
abbey lands and great tithes, but I remember Woburn,
1834] IKELAND 27
and I profit by the reminiscence. As I am upon the
subject of Ireland, I will at once declare that I see no
chance of tranquillity and welfare for that impoverished
and long-distracted land until the Irish people enjoy the
right to which the people of all countries are entitled —
namely, to be maintained by the soil that they cultivate
by their labour. I cannot find terms to express my sense
of the injustice and the impolicy, the folly and the wicked-
ness, of any longer denying to Ireland the consolation
and the blessing of a well-regulated system of poor-laws.
But not, Gentlemen, that system which has recently made
all England thrill with feelings of horror and indignation
as they wept over the simple, though harrowing, tale of
the sufferings of our unhappy neighbours at Bledlow.
Under the head of Sectarian Reform I approach the
delicate subject of the claims of the Dissenters. In my
opinion these are claims which must not be eluded by
any Government that wishes to stand. I would grant
every claim of this great body that the spirit of the most
comprehensive toleration required, consistent with the
established constitution of the country. Therefore I
think that the Registration and the Marriage claims should
be conceded. As for the question of the Church rate,
it is impossible that we can endure that every time one
is levied a town should present the scene of a contested
election. The rights of the Establishment must be re-
spected, but for the sake of the Establishment itself that
flagrant scandal must be removed. These are conces-
sions which, I think, are due to a numerous and powerful
portion of our fellow-subjects; due, I repeat, to their
numbers, their intelligence, and their property, and con-
sistent, in my opinion, with the maintenance of an Estab-
lished Church — a blessing with which I am not prepared
to part, and which I am resolved to uphold, because I
consider it a guarantee of civilisation and a barrier against
bigotry.
I now arrive at the fourth head under which I classed
the measures, in my opinion, necessary to be adopted by
28 THE CKISIS EXAMINED [1834
the Government, Corporate Reform — a subject, I believe,
very interesting to those I am now addressing.1 I am of
opinion that a municipality should be formed upon the
model of that mixed constitution which experience has
proved to be at the same time so efficient and so bene-
ficial. I am desirous that the burgesses should be elected
by the general body of inhabitants of a town, subject, of
course, to certain limitations and restrictions; that the
Aldermen should be elected by the burgesses, and serve
the office of Mayor in rotation; for I never will consent
that the Mayors and returning officers of boroughs shall
be appointed by the Crown. This is part and parcel of
the Whig system of centralisation, fatal to rural pros-
perity and provincial independence — one of those Gallic
imitations of which they are so fond, but which, I hope,
the sense and spirit and love of freedom of Englishmen
will always resist. Paris decides upon the fate of France,
but I hope we may continue to receive our morning
papers by the Oxford coach without acknowledging a
ukase in every leading article and recognising a revolu-
tion in every riot.
Gentlemen, I need not, I am sure, remind you that
peace and economy are two things without which no
Government could now exist four-and-twenty hours.
The question for you to decide this day is whether, if a
Government be prepared to adopt and carry measures
similar to those I have detailed, and are determined to
support, with their utmost energy and resolution, every-
thing which may tend to the improvement and ameliora-
tion of the society of this realm — whether, under these
circumstances, your representative in Parliament is to
support such a Government ?
I am glad to hear that cheer. You are not ignorant
that a contrary axiom is now laboriously propagated.
I am for measures, Gentlemen, and not men, and for
this simple reason, that for four years we have had men
and not measures, and I am wearied of them. But we
1 In 1835 Disraeli strongly opposed in the Morning Post the
Municipal Corporations Bill.
1834] MEASURES NOT MEN 29
are told we ought not to accept any measures, however
desirable, from the hands of those who opposed the
Reform Bill. This is a proposition which it becomes us
to examine with an unimpassioned spirit and a severe
scrutiny, for it is a very important one. The country is
now divided into two parties, headed by different sec-
tions of the aristocracy : those who introduced, and those
who opposed, the Reform Bill. Admit the proposition
of men and not measures, and the party that introduced
that Bill are our masters for life. Are you prepared for
this ? Is your confidence in the Whigs so implicit, so
illimitable, that you will agree to the perpetual banish-
ment of their political rivals from power ? Are you
prepared to leave the Whigs without opposition, without
emulation, without check ? I think it very dangerous;
I think it very unconstitutional.
But let us examine this famous proposition a little
more severely. All of you have heard of the Duke of
Wellington's declaration against reform. God knows it
is very famous.1 One would almost fancy that the
people of England had listened to a declaration against
reform from a Prime Minister for the first time in their
lives. And yet but a few years before, a very few brief
years, and they had listened to another declaration
against reform not less decided, not less vehement, not
less vindictive — ay ! and uttered, too, in the House of
Commons, and not in the House of Lords — uttered, too,
by a Prime Minister the head of a Government of which
all the individuals composing the recent Cabinet were
either members or supporters. I allude to the declara-
tion of Mr. Canning — a declaration that compromised
Lord Lansdowne and Lord Melbourne, and, indeed, every
member of their party, who are now so loud in their
1 " I am not only not prepared to bring in any measure of the
description alluded to by the noble lord " (Lord Grey), " but I
will at once declare that, as far as I am concerned, as long as I
hold any station in the Government of the country, I shall always
feel it my duty to resist such measures when proposed by others." —
The Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords, November 2, 1830.
30 THE CRISIS EXAMINED [1834
anathemas against* apostacy, and their personal horror
of renegadoes. One solitary Whig alone stood aloof from
Mr. Canning, and that was Lord Grey. Will the late
Cabinet screen themselves under the shadow of his
mantle ? Lord Grey did not leave it behind ; he did not
leave them with his blessing, or the odour of his sanctity.
Gentlemen, what strange changes have we not lived to
witness ! You all remember when my gallant opponent,
for whom I entertain sincere respect, first appeared among
us ? You remember it was the most sudden thing in the
world ? We did not know where he came from; we
thought he had dropped from the skies. You remember
that Mr. Ellice, the Right Hon. Mr. Ellice,1 called upon
us to elect the Colonel,2 although a stranger, out of
" gratitude " to Lord Grey. Gratitude to Lord Grey !
I suppose, when he makes his appearance among us again,
we shall be summoned to elect him out of " ingratitude "
to Lord Grey, for that seems more the fashion now.
Yes, Gentlemen ! Lord Grey refusing the Privy Seal,
and Lord Brougham soliciting the Chief Barony, are two
epigrammatic episodes in the history of reform that can
never be forgotten.
But, Gentlemen, fancy Mr. Spring Rice cheering Mr.
Canning in his anti-reform tirade, and Mr. Ellice, the
Right Hon. Mr. Ellice, who was so good as to send us
down a member, crying " hear, hear," and Sir John Hob-
house,3 who, from his conservatory of consistency, throws
stones at the Duke of Wellington — Sir John Hobhouse,
the supporter of Mr. Canning, who sailed into public life
on the popular wings of Annual Parliaments and Uni-
versal Suffrage, and i fterwards
" Got pelted for his pains."
1 Edward Ellice, Member for Coventry, and brother-in-law of
Earl Grey.
2 Colonel (afterwards General) Grey, son of the Prime Minister,
better known subsequently as private secretary to Queen Vic-
toria. "That most true-hearted man" (Mr. Gladstone in a letter
to General Ponsonby, March 5, 1894).
8 Afterwards Lord Broughton.
1834] WHIG RENEGADOES 31
Oh ! rare Sir John Hobhouse ! Are we to be told that
men like these, who backed and supported Mr. Canning
under such circumstances, because they afterwards intro-
duced and supported the Reform Bill, possess an exclusive
right of calling every man an apostate who sees, in the
altered condition of affairs, a ground for applying to a
totally different set of circumstances a class of measures
essentially new ? What an exquisite pretence to con-
sistency there is in saying, " So pure is the love we bear
it, that we will sacrifice for its sake every chance of
freedom — that we will endure the worst tyranny, rather
than accept the greatest blessings that Reform may
shower down upon us from the hands of renegadoes ?"
When the Whigs came forward with their Reform Bill,
did the country twit them with their inconsistencies,
gross as they might be ? Did anyone, adopting the prin-
ciples now so much in vogue among their party, dub
them renegadoes ? Did anyone chalk " apostate " on the
back of Lord Palmerston, or outrage the nerves of those
delicate tergiversators, the Messrs. Grant,1 by squibbing
them in the streets for their change of opinion ? On the
contrary, a remarkable abstinence from such crimination
prevailed, as, I think, Gentlemen, it prevails at this
present moment. The people were content to accept the
Reform Bill as a great remedial measure which they had
often demanded, and which had been always denied, and
they did not choose to scan too severely the previous
conduct of those who conceded it to them. They did
not go about saying, WTe must have reform, but we will
not have it from Lord Palmerston, because he is the child
of corruption, born of Downing Street, and engendered
in the Treasury, a second-rate official for twenty years
under a succession of Tory Governments, but a Secretary
of State under the Whigs. Not they, indeed ! The
people returned Lord Palmerston in triumph for Hamp-
shire, and pennies were subscribed to present him with
1 Charles (afterwards Lord Glenelg), and Robert (afterwards
Sir Robert), appointed Governor of Bombay in 1834.
32 THE CKISIS EXAMINED [1834
testimonials of popular applause. The people then took
reform as some other people take stolen goods, " and no
questions asked." The Cabinet of Lord Grey was not
ungenerously twitted with the abandonment of principles
which the country had given up, and to which no man
could adhere who entertained the slightest hope of ren-
dering himself an effective public servant.
The truth is, Gentlemen, a statesman is the creature of
his age, the child of circumstance, the creation of his
times. A statesman is essentially a practical character ;
and when he is called upon to take office, he is not to
inquire what his opinions might or might not have been
upon this or that subject — he is only to ascertain the
needful and the beneficial, and the most feasible manner
in which affairs are to be carried on. The fact is, the
conduct and opinions of public men at different periods
of their career must not be too curiously contrasted in a
free and aspiring country. The people have their pas-
sions, and it is even the duty of public men occasionally
to adopt sentiments with which they do not sympathise,
because the people must have leaders. Then the opinions
and the prejudices of the Crown must necessarily influ-
ence a rising statesman. I say nothing of the weight
which great establishments and corporations, and the
necessity of their support and patronage, must also pos-
sess with an ambitious politician. All this, however,
produces ultimate benefit; all these influences tend to
form that eminently practical character for which our
countrymen are celebrated. I laugh, therefore, at the
objections against a man that at a former period of his
career he advocated a policy different to his present one :
all I seek to ascertain is whether his present policy be
just, necessary, expedient; whether, at the present
moment, he is prepared to serve the country according
to its present necessities ? Besides, Gentlemen, remember
our Reform Bill — remember that Ministers now have but
a Ministerial duty to perform. The representatives of the
people have now, we hope, a due share of power in their
1834] CONCEKNING CONSISTENCY 33
hands : they should be able to compel any Administration
to observe the strict line of its duty, and doubtless would
make it clearly understand that the tenure of office must
depend upon an accommodation of its measures to the
existing wants of the community. No, Gentlemen, these
are not times when men look complacently on the Phari-
saical Whig reproaching the Tory for a publican and
sinner.1
But, Gentlemen, upon the authority of the Whigs them-
selves, I am justified in believing that nothing can be more
noble, at the same time more wise and more magnanimous,
than a bold adaptation of policy to the demands of public
opinion. What is the change now anticipated compared
with that prodigious alteration which led to the Reform
Bill itself, and for acquiescing in which Sir Robert Peel
was so loudly and vehemently applauded by the Whigs
themselves, they being then out of office — I mean the
carrying of Catholic Emancipation ? Even Dr. Lushing-
ton himself was among the loudest and most extravagant
eulogists of the Right Honourable Baronet for proposing
this measure, and professed himself unable to find lan-
guage to do justice to the superlative greatness of mind
which led Sir Robert Peel to become the proposer of that
momentous change, which throughout his life he had
always ardently opposed.
So much for the factious cry of apostacy. Let us now
endeavour to ascertain what the Whigs did, when in
power, to entitle them to the extraordinary confidence
to which they lay claim. They opened business with
three favourite articles: Peace, Reform, and Retrench-
ment. I say at once their Peace consisted of blockades,
their Reform of the creation of commissionerships, and
their Retrenchment of the cutting down of clerks. But
they say they have taken off taxes. Could they avoid
doing so ? No Minister could go on a session without
taking off taxes long before the Reform Bill. Have they
1 A much-quoted passage on Consistency.
34 THE CEISIS EXAMINED [1834
exceeded the other party in their ratio of progressive
relief ? I say, no ! I was sure you would respond. The
Whigs plunged you into a revolution. For what ? To
take the duty off stone bottles ? Or, if we are indeed to
" wake a louder and a loftier strain," is your consolation
for four years of misery to be found in the Irish Coercion
Bill, or the English Poor Law Bill, their increase of the
army, or their defence of the Pension List ? I will grant
that they have undertaken some great questions ; but
have they disposed of any ? A practical statesman
would have settled them in a session ; but, for the Whigs,
their philosophy ends in a report, and their patriotism in
a job.
Such are the claims to public confidence which may be
put forth on behalf of the Whigs ; but if, instead of being
so miserably slender, they were indeed substantial and
important, I would say that no claims can entitle them
to become the masters for life of the British people ; and,
for my own part, I have no doubt, and I have ever
thought, that they intended to become our masters for
life; and decidedly they would have gained their object
had they succeeded in swamping the House of Peers as
well as packing the House of Commons. One of the most
distinguished writers of the day, and a member of the
extreme Liberal party in the House of Commons, has
recorded, in a work which many of you have read, his
regret that he ever was a supporter of the Whigs in their
threatened attempt to overpower the House of Lords,
and his self -congratulation that the attempt failed. Had
it, however, succeeded, Gentlemen, it well fits us to con-
sider what would have then become of the liberties of
England. I do assure you that, in drawing your atten-
tion to this important topic, I am not influenced by any
party, any electioneering views. The remarks which I
shall venture to make upon it have pressed upon my
mind in the calmness and solitude of study. I will allow
for the freedom of the Press ; I will allow for the spirit of
the age; I will allow for the march of intellect; but I
1834] LESSONS FEOM HISTOEY 35
cannot force from my mind the conviction that a House
of Commons, concentrating in itself the whole power of
the State, might — I should rather say, would — notwith-
standing the great antagonist forces to which I have
alluded, establish in this country a despotism of the most
formidable and dangerous character. Gentlemen, I re-
peat, I cannot resist the conviction, because I cannot
shut my eyes to the historical truth. Let us look to the
reign of Charles the First — a period as eventful, ay !
infinitely more so, than any that has since occurred in
this country. Believe me, Gentlemen, we err when we
take it for granted that this present age in England is
peculiarly distinguished from preceding ones by the
general diffusion of public knowledge and public spirit.
Two great revolutions immediately preceded the events
of the reign to which I have alluded, revolutions produc-
tive of as much excitement and as much effect on the
public mind of Europe as the great French Revolution,
the Protestant Reformation, and the establishment of a
Republic in the Netherlands. There was about this time,
too, doubtless in some degree impelled by these great and
strange events, a springtide in the intellect of England.
What marvellous men then met in the walls of Parlia-
ment. The indefatigable Pym, the inscrutable Hampden,
the passionate Eliot, the austere genius of Strafford !
Worthy companions of these were St. John, Hollis, Vane;
nor should we forget a Digby and a Capel, the chivalric
Falkland, and the sagacious Clarendon. Why, Gentle-
men, these were names that imparted to the deliberations
of your Parliament an intellectual lustre not surpassed,
perhaps not equalled, even in the brightest days of Pitt,
and Fox, and Burke, and Sheridan. There was the same
feeling abroad in favour of freedom, and the same en-
thusiasm for the rights of the subject. There was also,
although it is not generally supposed, the same omnipo-
tent influence operating in favour of this cause, which we
now hug ourselves in believing to be an invincible bulwark
of our liberties. Yes, Gentlemen, I am induced to believe
36 THE CRISIS EXAMINED [1834
that the English Press exercised at that moment a power
not inferior to the authority it wields at the present day.
Every street had its journal, every alley its ballad; and
besides these great methods of communication, public
Opinion, that vaunted public Opinion which we would
fain believe to be the offspring of the present hour, ap-
pealed to the people in favour of the people by an oracle
that for political purposes is now happily silent : I mean
the pulpit.
Yet, Gentlemen, notwithstanding all these checks, and
all these guarantees — checks and guarantees for your
rights and liberties, I maintain, as powerful as any that
exist at the present day — what was the result ? Your
House of Commons, in which you are now called upon to
place implicit confidence, your boasted House of Com-
mons which I for one will no more trust than any other
human institution — your omnipotent House of Commons,
after having pulled down the throne and decapitated the
monarch, after having expelled the Bishops from the
House of Peers, and then abrogated the peerage, set you
at defiance — they concentrated in themselves all the
powers of the State, and then voted their sittings per-
petual— they began by quarrelling with the King about
one hundred thousand pounds, and ended, in the short
space of five years, in imposing upon the people burdens
to the amount of forty millions sterling; confiscated the
estates of a large portion of their fellow-subjects, divided
themselves into separate committees, and monopolised in
their own persons all the functions of the State, and,
finally, on one morning, divided among themselves three
hundred thousand pounds of the public money. Did I
say fi,nally? Can we forget that this same House of
Commons, when their rapacity had dried up all other
sources of spoliation, invented the tax, most odious to
Englishmen, the Excise, and which they laid, too, not
merely upon the luxuries, but the very necessaries of
existence ?
Looking then, Gentlemen, at such consequences of an
1834] THE EEFOKM MINISTRY 37
implicit confidence in the House of Commons, I confess
myself reluctant to quit the vantage ground on which
the constitution of the country is now felicitously placed.
Looking at such consequences, I think we may feel that
we have some interest in maintaining the prerogative of
the Crown and the privileges of the Peers. I, for one,
shall ever view with a jealous eye the proceedings of any
House of Commons, however freely chosen. Nor have
I marked in the conduct of the reformed House of Com-
mons anything, I confess, to lull me into over-confidence
or security. I think I perceive even thus early in their
career some symptoms of jobbing which would not have
disgraced the Long Parliament itself ; and some instances
of servility which perhaps we must go to the reign of
Charles the Second to rival.
So much for the Reformed Parliament, Gentlemen ; and
now for the Reform Ministry !
One would think from the cry that is now raised by the
partisans of these persons that they were a band of
patriots, who had never been animated by any other
sentiment than the welfare of their country, and had
never, by any chance, quarrelled among themselves. The
Reform Ministry ! Where is it ? Let us calmly trace the
history of this " united Cabinet."
Very soon after its formation, Lord Durham withdrew
from the royal councils — the only man, it would appear,
of any decision of character among its members. Still
it was a most " united " Cabinet. Lord Durham only
withdrew on account of his ill-health. The friends of
this nobleman represent him as now ready to seize the
helm of the State; a few months back, it would appear,
his frame was too feeble to bear even the weight of the
Privy Seal. Lord Durham retired on account of ill-
health; he generously conceded this plea in charity to
the colleagues he despised. Lord Durham quitted the
"united Cabinet," and very shortly afterwards its two
most able members in the House of Commons, and two
of their most influential colleagues in the House of Lords,
38 THE CRISIS EXAMINED [1834
suddenly secede.1 What a rent ! But then it was about
a trifle. In all other respects the Cabinet was most
" united." Five leading members of the Reform Ministry
have departed ; yet the venerable reputation of Lord Grey,
and the fair name of Lord Althorp, still keep them to-
gether, and still command the respect, if not the confi-
dence, of the nation. But marvel of marvels ! Lord
Grey and Lord Althorp both retire in a morning, and in
— disgust ! Lord Grey is suddenly discovered to be
behind his time, and his secession is even intimated to be
a subject of national congratulation — Lord Althorp joins
the crew again, and the Cabinet is again " united" De-
lightful union ! Then commenced a series of scenes
unparalleled in the history of the Administrations of any
country — scenes which would have disgraced individuals
in private life, and violated the decorum of domestic
order. The Lord Chancellor2 dangling about the Great
Seal in postchaises, spouting in pot-houses, and vowing
that he would write to the Sovereign by the post; while
Cabinet Ministers exchanged menacing looks at public
dinners, and querulously contradicted each other before
the eyes of an admiring nation. Good God, Gentlemen !
could this go on ? Why, even Mr. Ellice— the Eight Hon.
Mr. Ellice — who was so good as to send us down a Member
of Parliament, he could no longer submit to nestle in this
falling House, and he, too, quitted the "united " Cabinet,
because he had — what, for a ducat ? — a sore throat !
Why, they ridicule themselves ! And yet the tale is
not all told. There is really too much humour in the
entertainment. They make us laugh too much— the fun
is overdone. It is like going to those minor theatres
where we see Listen3 in four successive farces. Lord
Melbourne, whose claim to being Prime Minister of
England, according to the Whigs, is that he is " a gentle-
man," Lord Melbourne flies to the King, and informs him
1 Mr. Stanley, Colonial Secretary, and Sir James Graham, First
Lord of the Admiralty, resigned in 1834 on the Irish Church
question and were followed by Lord Eipon, Privy Seal, and the
Duke of Richmond, Postmaster- General.
2 Lord Brougham. a John Liston, the comedian.
1834] THE KING AND LORD MELBOUENE 39
that a plan of " Church Eeform " has been proposed in
the " united " Cabinet, and that Lord Lansdowne and
Mr. Spring Rice, the only remaining Ministers in the
slightest degree entitled, I will not say to the confidence,
but the consideration of the country, have in consequence
menaced him with their resignations.
I doubt not, Gentlemen, that this plan of " Church
Reform " was only some violent measure to revive the
agitation of the country, and resuscitate the popularity
of the Whigs, a measure which they never meant, and
never desired, to pass. Perhaps, feeling that it was all
over with them, it was a wretched ruse, apparently to go
out upon a popular measure. However, Lord Melbourne,
with as serious a face as he could command, informed
His Majesty that the remains of the " united " Cabinet,
Sir John Hobhouse and Lord John Russell, were still as
"united " as ever, and he ended by proposing that the
House of Commons should be led by his Lordship, who,
on the same principle that bad wine produces good
vinegar, has somehow turned from a tenth-rate author
into a first-rate politician.1 And then Lord Melbourne
says that the King turned them out. Turned them out.
Gentlemen; why, His Majesty laughed them out ! The
truth is that this famous Reform Ministry, this great
" united " Cabinet, had degenerated into a grotesque and
Hudibrastic faction, the very lees of Ministerial existence,
the offal of official life. They were a ragged regiment
compared with which Falstaffs crew was a band of
regulars. The King would not march through Coventry
with them — that was flat. The Reform Ministry indeed !
why, scarcely an original member of that celebrated
Cabinet remained. You remember, Gentlemen, the story
of Sir John Cutler's silk hose.2 These famous stockings
remind me of this famous Ministry ; for, really, between
Hobhouse darns and Ellice botching, I hardly can decide
1 See Introduction, p. 10.
2 The London miser merchant, of whom Arbuthnot recorded that
he had a pair of black worsted stockings which his maid darned
so often with silk that they became at last a pair of silk stockings.
40 THE CRISIS EXAMINED [1834
whether the hose -are silk or worsted. The Reform
Ministry. I dare say, now, some of you have heard of
Mr. Ducrow, that celebrated gentleman who rides upon
six horses. What a prodigious achievement ! It seems
impossible, but you have confidence in Ducrow ! You
fly to witness it ; unfortunately, one of the horses is ill, and
a donkey is substituted in its place. But Ducrow is still
admirable; there he is, bounding along in a spangled
jacket and cork slippers ! The whole town is mad to
see Ducrow riding at the same time on six horses; but
now two more of the steeds are seized with the staggers,
and, lo ! three jackasses in their stead ! Still Ducrow
persists, and still announces to the public that he will
ride round his circus every night on his six steeds. At
last all the horses are knocked up, and now there are
half a dozen donkeys. What a change ! Behold the
hero in the amphitheatre, the spangled jacket thrown
on one side, the cork slippers on the other ! Puffing,
panting, and perspiring, he pokes one sullen brute, thwacks
another, cuffs a third, and curses a fourth, while one brays
to the audience, and another rolls in the sawdust. Behold
the late Prime Minister and the Reform Ministry ! The
spirited and snow-white steeds have gradually changed
into an equal number of sullen and obstinate donkeys.
While Mr. Merryman, who, like the Lord Chancellor,
was once the very life of the ring, now lies his despairing
length in the middle of the stage, with his jokes exhausted
and his bottle empty !
Enough, Gentlemen, of the Reform Ministry and the
Reformed Parliament. Let us hope that the time has
arrived when we may be favoured with a National
Administration and a Patriotic House of Commons. Let
us hope that by their salutary influence the peace of
Europe and the honour of England may be alike main-
tained; the great interests of the country fostered and
protected; and those considerable changes firmly, but
cautiously, prosecuted in our social system, which the spirit
of the age demands and the necessities of the times require.
41
42 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
PEERS AND PEOPLE
[!N the vigorous leading articles contributed to the
Morning Post in August and September, 1835, and now
republished under the title " PEERS AND PEOPLE," Disraeli
strongly supported the action of the House of Lords in
amending the Municipal Corporations Bill. They were
written at the request of Lord Lyndhurst, the prime
mover in the agitation against the Bill, and their author-
ship remained a secret until revealed seventy-five years
later by an entry in Disraeli's diary. They mark the
beginning of his connection with the Press as a political
writer ; but Disraeli, though he claimed to be a journalist,
constantly gibed against the "hired scribbler," and took
pains to point out that he never received payment — his
price was power — for his anonymous contributions to
political journalism. Only a selection has been given;
the earlier articles, written before the contending parties
had got to grips, were irregular in appearance, and lacked
the fire and continuity of the later contributions. In this
series Disraeli first outlines his views on Constitutional
questions, subsequently to be developed more fully in
"The Vindication," the " Runnymede Letters," the
" Spirit of Whiggism," and his public speeches.]
CHAPTEE I
Lord Melbourne — His political profligacy — Indolence and ineffi-
ciency— O'Connell's Prime Minister, not the King's — The
Lords and the " People " — The coming " collision " — Prin-
ciples of the Corporation Bills — Lord Lyndhurst' s qualifica-
tion— The Commissioners.
Saturday, August 22.
THE miserable Lord Melbourne, for shame and misery are
stamped upon his suffering countenance, rose on Thursday
night in the House of Lords to propose the second reading
of the Irish Church Spoliation Bill.
1835] LORD MELBOURNE 43
The annals of political profligacy do not contain an
instance of more barefaced apostasy than is exhibited by
the career of this unhappy leader of the Whigs.
Always a notorious place-hunter, Mr. William Lamb
veered for a long time between the two aristocratic
parties into which the State was then divided, and for a
considerable period enjoyed the enviable reputation of
being considered a man ready to sell himself under the
somewhat disagreeable circumstances of not being able
to command a market. At length, by dexterously
coming forward when Lord Castlereagh was rather
pushed, and defending the Manchester Magistrates, and
making a somewhat ingenious and very uncompromising
speech against Parliamentary Reform, the trading
trimmer succeeded in becoming a recognised Tory.
Lord Castlereagh despised him, Mr. Canning distrusted
him, and Lord Grey did both. And now this most indo-
lent and inefficient of official men — this Lord Melbourne —
Manchester-massacre Melbourne — is the revolutionary
Prime Minister of England, by the grace, or disgrace, of
Daniel O'Connell, with whom Lord Melbourne, in his
coteries, affects to have no connection. If he be not
Mr. O'Connell's Prime Minister, his lordship is not the
King's, our Gracious Sovereign's, whom Lord Melbourne's
paid servants and instructed toad-eaters load with every
species of seditious abuse in the solitary organ of the
Government. There never yet was a public man so
completely ignorant of public business as this egregious
nobleman.
He has read the Edinburgh Review and Horace.
This is the extent of his studies. His mind is impregnated
with a sort of bastard French philosophy, filtered through
the pages of blue and yellow, and relieved with an occa-
sional gay or poignant reminiscence of an ode, or epistle,
of the Roman epicurean. It is observable in all debates
how studiously Lord Melbourne avoids details, and the
moment he is pressed with an awkward argument, or an
inconvenient fact, how speedily he takes refuge in some
44 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
vague generalities about the spirit of the age, the progress
of philosophy, and the rights of the people. Except
Palmers ton, he is the veriest and most thorough political
hack going; but his career until the Eeform Bill was so
obscure that the mass of the public are quite ignorant of
his proverbial jobbing and his pitiful tergiversation.
Yesterday his Lordship dined with his Royal Master.
Rare occurrence ! Some whisper 'tis the first time during
his notable Premiership; there is no doubt 'tis for the
last.
*****
The baffled and craven Whigs, trembling at what is about
to happen, talk daily of " the Lords opposing themselves
to the wishes of THE PEOPLE." We wish we could induce
these gentry to define what they mean by this favourite
phrase of theirs — THE PEOPLE.
The King of England is the avowed leader of the
Conservative party — according to the Whigs, who raise
seditious cries in consequence. We have upon our side
also the Peers of England; we have upon our side the
Gentlemen of England; we have upon our side the
yeomanry of England; we have upon our side their
armed and gallant brethren ; we have upon our side the
universal peasantry of England; we have upon our side
the army and navy, the Church, the learned professions
to a man, the Universities, the Judges, the Magistrates,
the merchants, the corporate bodies of all descriptions,
and a large party in every town, agricultural, commercial,
even manufacturing. What constitutes a people if these
do not afford the elements of a great and glorious nation ?
Why — to say nothing of rank, of property, honour, in-
telligence, experience — in numbers, in sheer and very
numbers we beat these brawling braggarts.
Yet the Whig-Radicals talk not only of the indignation
and resolution, but even of the meetings of THE PEOPLE
in their favour.
Where do they meet ? " Yesterday Birmingham met
— to-day Westminster." To tell the truth, when Lord
1835] "THE PEOPLE" 45
Ellenborough proposed, and passed, his clause for en-
trusting the division of the boroughs into wards to the
Gentlemen of England, and Pis-aller Parkes1 lost his
job, we were quite prepared for a Birmingham meeting,
and meet it certainly did. A precious meeting of THE
PEOPLE ! The rump of the Political Union, the debris of
that " aristocracy of blackguards " listening to the brain-
less brayings of that melancholy ass Attwood2 over
Cossacks and currency. But, for Westminster ! Why,
we live in Westminster ; we ourselves are part and parcel
of the people of Westminster. And who doth the gentle
public suppose was the great lion at the Westminster
meeting of THE PEOPLE ? Why, one Juggins, who
described himself as a member of " the Annoyance Jury."
Shade of Dogberry ! Spirit of Verges ! Ye are at length
outdone. What are ye to Master Juggins of the Annoy-
ance Jury ? Oh, William Shakspeare ! and, oh, Walter
Scott ! the most ideal creations of your choice humour
must yield to this grotesque existence. And Juggins is
a leader of THE PEOPLE ! And Juggins wishes to know
what is the use of the Lords ?
If this be " THE PEOPLE " with whom the threatened
collision is to take place, we think the fray may fairly be
left to the new police — and with whom else it is to take
place ? What do the Whig-Radicals mean by this word
" collision " ? Do they mean civil war ? If so, we
deprecate, but we are prepared for it. Fancy John
Russell in a civil war ! Our English Don Carlos3 would
scarcely gain as many laurels as his namesake in Navarre.
Fancy Spring Rice4 waving a shillelagh, or Palmerston6
tilting with a lady's fan. Civil war, indeed ! Why, when
the last civil war took place it commenced by Hampden's
1 Joseph Parkes, secretary and solicitor to the Corporations
Commission.
2 Thomas Attwood, Member for Birmingham, and father of
the Political Unions; Cobbett's " King Tom."
3 Lord John Russell wrote " Don Carlos," a tragedy, 1822.
4 Chancellor of the Exchequer.
6 Foreign Secretary.
46 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
green horsemen riding up from Buckinghamshire, and
alone overawing the King and Court. Let William the
Fourth now raise his standard in that very county, ay,
the birthplace of Hampden, and the whole male popula-
tion to a man would rally round the Throne. The counties
within a day's journey of London would furnish His
Majesty within a week with fifty thousand Cavalry, a great
portion of them already armed and trained, and led by
skilful and experienced Officers.
But the Whigs and the Whig-Radicals do not mean
a civil war by their word collision. Oh no, they mean a
row, a riot, a short revolution, a Metropolitan bang-up,
paving stones, White Conduit House,1 broken windows,
a fire or two, Cheapside and Regent Street plundered,
and the prisons thrown open. This is what the Bang's
Ministers want. They want three days, three glorious
days, three glorious and beautiful days, as their prescient
flashman Macaulay styled the bloody riot that was the
fitting precursor of the iron despotism of Louis Philippe.
The Whig Ministers want a revolutionary riot to consoli-
date their power — the power which they have now failed
in establishing, although they carried the Reform Act,
and attempted the Corporation Bill.
But it won't do. We tell these Gallomaniac apes of
everything that is detestable in the French character
that these things will ever be " managed better in France
than in England." Let the " collision " be tried, and as
soon as they please. They shall have row enough !
*****
We hope, and we believe, that the Lords will not bate
a jot of their amendments of the Whig Corporations Bill.
Never were amendments in a projected law more just,
1 A famous Islington tea-house in bygone days. A mass
meeting of working men was summoned by manifesto to assemble
there on November 7, 1831, to ratify a new Bill of Eights. Mel-
bourne declared that the meeting would certainly be seditious,
and perhaps treasonable in law, and it was abandoned. Shortly
afterwards a royal proclamation was issued declaring organised
political associations, assuming powers independent of the civil
magistrate, to be " unconstitutional and illegal.'"
1835] LORD LYNDHURST'S "QUALIFICATION" 47
more salutary, and more statesmanlike. The majority
of them are merely, to use the coal-heaving jargon of the
Radical Press, a carrying out of the principles of the Bill.
By fully developing the principles of the Bill, the
Conservatives have simultaneously eradicated the party
virus of the measure. Thus it is in the clauses in which
they have baffled the conspiracy to plunder the freemen
of England, and to deprive them of the political rights
so recently and so solemnly guaranteed to them by the
Whigs themselves in their famous final measure; thus it
is in the Conservative qualification clause, in which the
Opposition have applied to the town council the test
which the Government itself have applied to the electors
of that town council. Nothing is more ludicrous than
the howlings of the beggarly Radicals at this most dis-
creet regulation.
Property not a qualification, forsooth ! What other
general qualification is there ? That some wealthy
blockheads may be elected on the town council is possible,
but rich blockheads are at any rate more trustworthy
than poor ones — ay, more trustworthy than insolent
knaves.
The solitary organ of the unhappy Government, in the
last gasp of its frantic insolence, inquires whether the
qualification of the Noble Mover of the Amendment for
a seat in the Upper House is property ? Why, if his
Lordship were as rich as the Duke of Bedford himself —
if he had been the fortunate descendant of some favoured
minion of an unprincipled tyrant, and the possessor of
the plunder of the Church — they know that property
would not be Lord Lyndhurst's qualification for his seat.
His genius, his learning, his public services, form his
qualification. These placed him in the House of Peers.
But if his Lordship were not as independent in his fortune
as two-thirds of the present Cabinet — which we rejoice
he is — are men of Lord Lyndhurst's calibre of such
common occurrence that we are to legislate upon the
obvious exception to a plain rule ?
48 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
How rare such a character must ever be in public life
is proved by the simple circumstance that the rapacious
Whigs themselves, eager as they ever are to gorge their
creatures with the public money, have not yet been able
to find a single individual in their whole faction competent
to discharge the onerous duties and to clutch the rich
remuneration of the office of Lord Chancellor.
Then for the clause which divides the towns into wards.
Here again the Conservatives have only adopted and
developed the principle of the Whig Measure; but then
they have entrusted its execution to the Gentlemen of
England, and not to notorious and convicted jobbers.
Ay, there's the rub !
It is true that the Peers, in a wise sympathy with
ancient associations and time-honoured forms, existing
authority and vested rights, have retained the titles and
offices, the powers and privileges, of Aldermen. To be
sure. Are the institutions of Alfred to be kicked into a
ditch for the sake of Pis-oiler Parkes and roaring Rushton
and the sober Drinkwater, and the immaculate Cockburn,
and that provincial oracle, the thrice-unheard-of Wilkin-
son, and Dwarris — our friend " Horrors-and-Hell "
Dwarris ? x By-the-by, we owe an apology to this gentle-
man. We understand his dramatic effusion was never
performed at Sadler's Wells : it was refused.2 Fortunatus
Dwarris (Phoebus, what a name !)3 lithographs his letters :
as long as he does not print his tragedies we care not
what he does.
To-day it is proposed that Aldermen should be abro-
1 Edward Rushton (nicknamed " Roaring " Rushton by Cob-
bett), John Elliott Drinkwater, Alexander James Edmund Cock-
burn (afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England), G. H. Wilkin-
son, and Fortunatus William Lilley Dwarris (afterwards Sir
F. W. L. Dwarris), members of the Corporations Commission.
Joseph Parkes, in addition to being Secretary of the Commission,
was the chief Parliamentary agent of the Whig party.
" We advise him to revise his tragedy of ' Horrors and Hell/
and get it again performed at Sadler's Wells." — Disraeli in
Morning Post, August 21.
3 " 0 Amos Cottle ! Phoebus, what a name !" (Byron, " English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers ").
1835] WHIG TENDENCIES 49
gated — to-morrow the constable and the tithing-man will
be attacked. The militia is already doomed. The
Whigs have previously carved up the old English Counties,
and now they are going to Radicalise the old English
towns. It is their evident determination to assimilate
the institutions of this country to those of France — free
and favoured France. Instead of the county and the
borough we shall soon have the arrondissement and the
commune. The prefet and the gendarmerie follow, of
course. Alas, Old England !
CHAPTER II
The friends of the " People " — Popish rebels — Mr. Hume and his
allies — Their illiteracy — A comparison — O'Connell — Patriots
and conspirators.
Monday, August 24.
WHILE the Peers of England have been making a trium-
phant stand for the rights and liberties of their country-
men, a knot of individuals, by courtesy styled the House
of Commons, have been as actively engaged in wagering
a furious war against all those constitutional securities
which hitherto, as freeborn men, we have been taught to
value.
Some sixty or seventy persons, by courtesy styled the
House of Commons, all of the same hue and kidney,
liberals, friends of THE PEOPLE, unchecked by the
presence of any Members of the Opposition, and utterly
disregarding the faint remonstrances of the unhappy
members of the Government who are at their mercy, and
whom they can place in a minority at a moment's notice,
have during the last week revived general warrants,
issued lettres de cachet, inferentially recommended the
rack, declared that their pleasure is above the law, and
consistently in the same breath that they denounce what
they term the irresponsible power of the Peers have
declared their own power despotic.
50 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
And of whom is. this knot of tyrants formed ? First
and foremost, of course, of the Popish rebels. The other
moiety is led by Mr. Hnme and his Utilitarian or rather
Brutilitarian allies. They altogether form a company
utterly contemptible in point of number, intelligence,
and influence in the country. Besides the Popish rebels,
we repeat, there is Hume, and Warburton, of course;
one Tooke, a Socinian attorney; a brother quill-driver,
Mr. Wilks, the godly father of the Moorfields Tabernacle ;
Roebuck, the Bath delegate, whose bray was once mistaken
for a roar, but who of late has shed his lion's skin, and
most elaborately "written himself down an ass"; a
pedantic schoolboy, by name Buller; that melancholy
young man, who must for a few weeks longer misrepresent
West Somerset, young Mr. Tynte, whom, to distinguish
from his Parliamentary father, we must in future recognise
as Tyntoretto. Ranting Attwood must not be forgotten,
worthy of some theatre " over the water." Wason,
Whalley, and Wakley complete the crew.1 Hudibrastic
triad ! Why, if they could only induce Mr. Abercromby
to resign the chair, and contrive to smuggle Juggins into
his seat, we should have a Praise God Barebones Parlia-
ment again and the Rump to the very life.
The vast majority of these men, who are thus disposing
of the lives and fortunes of their fellow-countrymen, are
illiterate persons. Hume, for instance, can neither speak
nor write English; his caligraphy reminds one of a
chandler's shop, and his letters resemble a butterman's
bill. Warburton is, if possible, more ignorant even
than Hume, but more discreet and consequently less
loquacious. Both these men have some property, a rare
occurrence in the party; and all the petty plunderers,
would-be Commissioners, and other small toad-eaters, for
1 A group of Liberal Members of Parliament: Joseph Hume
(Middlesex), Henry Warburton (Bridport), William Tooke (Truro),
John Wilks (Boston), J. A. Koebuck (Bath), Charles Buller
(Liskeard), C. J. K. Tynte (West Somerset), Thomas Attwood
[Birmingham), Kigby Wason (Ipswich), Sir Samuel Whalley
(Marylebone), and Thomas Wakley (Finsbury), founder of the
Lcmcet.
1835] LEADEKS OF "THE PEOPLE" 51
the sake of a positive dinner and a possible job, laud
them with great praise. But the ignorance of Warburton
rather staggers even these parasites. As a sort of ex-
tenuating compensation for the Cimmerian gloom of his
unlettered mind, they assure us he is a man of science,1 a
great chemist. A fine qualification this for the part he
is playing ! We believe he has an air-pump in his house.
Wakley is of a lighter order of mind than the preceding
worthies. There is a vulgar vivacity about him which is
not unamusing. He would make an admirable cad2 or a
first-rate conductor of an omnibus.
Wakley is a great leader of THE PEOPLE, and almost
as inquisitive an inquirer as to the use of the Lords as
Juggins himself. No one, indeed, denounces the Peers
with greater fervour; his anathema of the Duke of New-
castle set all Finsbury in a roar of indignation. It is
very evident what Mr. Wakley's definition of THE PEOPLE
means. It means those electors of Finsbury who hon-
oured him with their suffrage. Now, with due deference
to the Editor of the Lancet, we are disposed to believe
that the Duke of Newcastle is as much one of THE PEOPLE
as the Honourable Member for Finsbury himself. Some
heretics may be disposed to hold that His Grace is even a
more valuable and a more estimable member of that great
society.
Comparisons are so proverbially odious, and often so
very inconvenient, that we are not inclined to push this
parallel between His Grace and Mr. Wakley any further —
the more so, as we might find some difficulty in ascertain-
ing the points they hold in common. They both certainly
have shared one common misfortune — they have both had
their houses burnt down.3
1 At Cambridge, according to Grote, Warburton obtained dis-
tinction as " a scholar and man of science."
2 Penny Magazine, March 31, 1837 : "He who hangs behind
— who opens the door and receives the money — is conductor, or,
in the vulgar tongue, cad."
3 Wakley's house was burned to the ground on August 20, 1820,
by Thistlewood's gang; Nottingham Castle was burned 'down on
October 10, 1831, during the Keform Riots.
52 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1335
And these are our patriots. Different men, certainly, to
those who headed the Movement of the Seventeenth
Century. For Hampden we have Hume, and War burton
for Pym. Sir Samuel Whalley for Sir John Eliot, and,
instead of Sir Edward Coke, Sir Monsey Eolfe ! l
O'Connell, indeed, might find a more fitting representa-
tive in that age. He is doubtless prepared most efficiently
to perform the part of Sir Phelim O'Neale,2 his rival in
savage treachery, but scarcely in savage courage !
And these, we repeat, are our patriots. Why, com-
pared with the heroes of our earlier movement, they are
as the tallow candles of the Marylebone Vestry in relation
to the glorious firmament. These are not the men to
upset an ancient realm, whatever may be their will.
Such awful exploits require spirits of a different order.
Such sublime conspirators are found among men who,
with all their errors and all their fond ambition, are of a
heroic mould of mind, great scholars, learned in human
nature and human history, of a commanding eloquence,
of a marvellous subtilty, and an undaunted courage.
But if these men were by some ludicrous destiny to
succeed, what then ? If they were less ignorant, they
would know that all they are attempting has been already
achieved. We have " relieved " the Bishops from their
legislative functions, we have voted the " inutility " of
the House of Lords, we have rooted up the Throne, and
what was the result ? The leaders of the present move-
ment may be too ignorant to know; but the people of
England, the real people of England, have not forgotten.
1 Mr. R. Monsey Rolfe was appointed Solicitor-General in
April, 1835, and was knighted. Afterwards, as Lord Cranworth,
lie became Lord Chancellor.
2 Sir Phelim O'Neill (or O'Neale), an Irish rebel, was executed
on March 10, 1653.
1835] STOPPING SUPPLIES 53
CHAPTEE III
The " Rump " and the Supplies — A " Praise God Barebones "
crew — Single Chamber government — And Cromwell — Airy
flanks of the Disraelian thong — Small deer and their masters
— The Globe and Scipio Africanus.
Tuesday, August 25.
So the Rump will stop the Supplies,1 will they ? Ay,
and embezzle them too if they can. Pretty pickings —
the revenues of England — for the shirtless Tail and the
starving Brutilitarians.
We do not know whether the people of England will in
consequence be tempted to do what the Right Hon. Sir
John Cam Hobhouse, one of His Majesty's Ministers, once
recommended them to do, namely, " throw the House
of Commons into the Thames." 2 But we should not be
surprised.
What ! are not general warrants and lettres de cachet,
and the recommendation of the rack, and the setting up
of their pleasure above the law, and the declaration
that their power is irresponsible — are not these enough ;
but, forsooth, our dividends are also to be unpaid, our
judges and public officers, our sailors and soldiers, to be
starved ? The conduct of the Ministers on this occasion
is the most pitiful on record.
" Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,"
stood the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while Lord John
Russell menaced the Peers, and was the next morning
obliged to eat his words and recant his threat. His
threat ! In fact, the Ministers are well aware that the
collision is a failure, and ranting Attwood was obliged
to acknowledge in the House on Saturday that even the
1 A threat by Mr. Spring Rice, defended by Lord John Russell.
2 Hobhouse, in his Radical days, was committed to Newgate by
the House of Commons for breach of privilege. In an anonymous
pamphlet (1819) he had asked : " What prevents the people
from walking to the House, and pulling out the members by the
ears, locking up their doors, and flinging the key into the Thames?"
64 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
Birmingham Union could not be revived. According to
his statement, Attwood had recommended that the Union
should not be revived, and Lord John Russell praised
Attwood for his wisdom and moderation. Can anything
be more supremely farcical ?
The long and the short of the affair is this, that the
present leaders of " The People " have just begun their
collision, or civil war, the wrong way. They have reversed
the order of revolution — they have begun with the Rump
— they have commenced by the ridiculous, and want to
get on to the sublime.
If these fellows were not so absurd, we would gravely
argue the desirableness of this country being governed
by the House of Commons alone; but it is profaning
history to appeal to it in order to illustrate the sayings
and doings of such a Praise God Barebones crew. Yet
we may as well remember how the House of Commons
conducted itself when it monopolised for a season the
whole power of the State. In the course of five years
that House of Commons levied taxes to the amount of
forty millions, a sum at that period unprecedented, and
nevertheless they were loaded with debts and encum-
brances which the writers of to-day declare to be
" prodigious." Moreover, one agreeable morning (how
Wakley's mouth will water !), the House of Commons
openly took the sum of £300,000 and divided it among
themselves. Then their Committees, to whom the
management of the different branches of revenue was
entrusted, never brought in their accounts, and had
unlimited power of secreting whatever funds they pleased
from the public treasure. These branches were needlessly
multiplied, in order to render the revenue more intricate,
to share the advantages among greater numbers, and to
conceal the frauds of which they were universally sus-
pected. But this is nothing. The House of Commons
sequestered nearly one half, not only of the lands, rents,
and revenues of the Kingdom, but nearly one half of the
goods and chattels of all Englishmen. Finally, when all
1835] AIRY FLANKS OF THE THONG 55
other sources of plunder were exhausted, these leaders of
"The People," the House of Commons, invented the
Excise, the most odious of taxes, and extended it even to
provisions and the common necessaries of life. All who
appealed against these fiscal or other arrangements of the
House of Commons were sequestered, fined, imprisoned,
and corporally punished, without law or remedy. Who
can wonder that the English nation submitted without
a murmur to Cromwell ?
What ! There is yelping and whining in the kennel,
is there, eh ? And miserable moans from our slight
lashing. These are the bold spirits who menace our
gracious Sovereign and insult his Royal consort — these
are the men who want to know what is the use of the
Lords, who sneer at the Church, and brand the Corpora-
tions— these are the men who call each morning for a
" collision."
Mark how pale they grow in an instant, how they
tremble when they are told the bitter truth by concealing
which they can alone live. They announce an Honourable
Gentleman as the writer of this journal, and grossly insult
him, and complain in the same breath of our personalities.
Personalities, indeed ! Why, if we wished to be per-
sonal, do they flatter themselves we don't know them ?
Do they fancy they are " unseen " ? If a single airy
flank of our thong has created such a pother, what will
it be if it please our humour to lay it on in good earnest ?
Lord have mercy upon them !
Personal, indeed ! If we had wished to be personal —
if we chose now to follow their example of this morning
and arraign the confederate scribblers by name — do they
flatter themselves it is not in our power ? Do they hug
themselves in the fond belief that we could not summon
before us the old hack who is their nominal chief ; and the
bankrupt attorney who has turned agitator by trade;
and the editor of a more reputable journal who fights in
a visor to conceal his blushes at the ragged ranks in which
56 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
he is enlisted ; and the pursers1 and steamboat stewards,
grotesquely metamorphosed in this age of marvels into
private secretaries and confidential agents of Peers and
Ministers; and the " rich banker " of whom they boast,
and whose opulence is probably as actual as that of
Laffitte and Ternaux,2 once equally appealed to for proof
of the possible combination of liberalism and property
before the three glorious days revealed the bankrupt
bank of one, and exposed the mortgaged manufactory
of the other.
We wish not to combat with these small deer; our
business is with their masters. But there are many arrows
in our quiver, and, if they seek a fray, we are ready, to
use their jargon, for the " collision."
So they complain of personality — and on the same
morning publish a lying biography of one of the most
illustrious men in England,3 full of base sneers at his
family, and blackguard stories of his early fortunes, and
lying reports of his table conversations, styled by these
eavesdroppers his "opinions."
Personality, indeed ! Why this very Journal, this
Morning Chronicle, some little time back sullied even its
columns with foul and cowardly insinuations against a
virtuous and accomplished lady who had never stepped
for a moment out of the decorous privacy of her life.
And the craven and malignant sneer is actually repeated
this morning. Is this the spirit in which war is to be
carried on ? Well — let it be so. And let their arch-
apostate leader, who for a few more hours may be Prime
Minister of England, look to his character and conduct.
Are they so pure and immaculate ?
*****
The Globe of last night " meant to have taken some
notice of the peculiar virulence of the Morning Post of
1 Mr. Tom Young (" Ubiquity " Young), Melbourne's private
secretary, was originally a purser in the navy.
2 Jacques Laffitte, the French financier and politician
(1767-1844), and Baron Ternaux, French manufacturer and repre-
sentative (1763-1833). 3 Lord Lyndhurst.
1835] A " GLOBE CRITIC " 57
Saturday and yesterday, but," adds our considerate con-
temporary, " we don't see why we should." It is a
doubtful matter, then. The silly Globe, trying to be
supercilious, can be only simpering. 'Tis most amusing;
writing a long belaboured article, intended to be an attack
upon us, and then suddenly losing courage at the striking
point . Why, the writer in the Globe knoweth full well that
he had been concocting an attack upon the Morning Post
the whole day, yet after all this preliminary bluster he
suddenly loses heart — he tucks up his sleeves and even
squares his elbows, but then his stomach fails him, and
he determines to keep the King's peace. The writer in
the Globe must be more courageous; this is not the way
great men get out of scrapes. He should take a lesson
from Scipio Africanus.
CHAPTER IV
Protestants and Papists — House of Commons not representative
of the People— The "constituency" —A tryannical and
vexatious oligarchy.
Wednesday, August 26.
THE division in the House of Lords on Monday night
realised our proudest anticipations ! We said that on
that night the Protestant Peers of England were about
to struggle with Papacy; and their Lordships were con-
scious of the awful character of the contest. They may
rest assured that the eyes of all Europe were upon them.
The speech of the Lord Bishop of London in particular
was worthy of his high theme, worthy of the august
assembly to which it was addressed, worthy of the
reverend and lettered bench of which he is one of the
most pious and distinguished ornaments. It was earnest,
it was eloquent, it was argumentative and convincing in
the highest degree. In fact, it exhausted the subject,
and the thrilling peroration not only struck to the hearts,
and was echoed by the voices, of all present, but we feel
5
58 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
confident has stirred the spirit, and been responded to by
the sympathy of every Protestant in the United Kingdom.
Nothing can exceed the factious conduct of the Premier,
if Premier he still be, on this great question. Two
Measures which had no necessary connection with each
other, but which are avowedly incorporated with each
other for party purposes of a discreditable character, are
submitted to the consideration of the House of Commons.
By a very small majority, confessedly on all hands ob-
tained by the mere suffrages of the Popish members, the
Siamese Act passes the Lower House, and is sent to the
Peers. The Peers, to prove the sincerity of their wishes
to advance all measures for the benefit of the State, and
of Ireland especially, allow the Bill to be read a second
time, pass unanimously in Committee every clause
which relates to the relief of the practical evils com-
plained of, and strike out the clauses referring only to
an abstract principle of the assertion of which nearly half
the House of Commons had previously disapproved.
The Prime Minister hereupon turns round, and coolly
declares that he will not take upon himself the responsi-
bility of carrying on the measure any further. Could any-
thing be more barefaced, more unjust, more wicked ?
Insolent, audacious man ! Or, rather, should we pity
him ? The loud clamour of his braggadocio failed of its
purpose. In the midst of it we still heard the clank of
his fetter. The Slave of O'Connell ! Those who remem-
ber Lord Melbourne in his calmer and happier hours must
indeed be thunderstruck.
Now mark — mark the dilemma of this unhappy Minis-
ter. The Catholic Peers of England, inspired by the
remembrance of their heroic ancestors, decline voting on
this occasion in deference to their oath. What a brand for
O'Connell. Now the Bill has past the Commons only by
the votes of perjured Papists. So Lord Melbourne
announces that his consideration for these false slaves
outweighs his respect for the Peers of England ! We
leave him in this melancholy position.
1835] THE CONSTITUENCY 50
If at this moment Lord Melbourne be Prime Minister
of England, or is not on the eve of resigning the trust
which he has abused, then he has virtually announced that
the Government of this country is in future to be carried
on by the House of Commons alone. We yield our
adhesion, of course, to the new order without a murmur,
knowing full well that if this be the case the career of
independent journalists is over, and that the year will not
elapse without some severe ukase being promulgated which
will efficiently prevent any criticism of the Press upon the
conduct and " pleasure " of our new lords and masters.
Yet, while there is time, even if it be the last exercise of
our right, and the last fruitless fulfilment of our duty, in
the discharge of the noble function of upholding truth and
diffusing knowledge, we will attempt to assist our country-
men in clearly understanding what this hitherto third
estate of the realm styled the House of Commons really
is; and what has formerly been the Government of this
country when carried on by the House of Commons alone.
The House of Commons affects to be the representative
of The People. 'Tis no such thing. It never was, it
never will, it never can be. It is the representative of a
section, and a limited and varying section of the people,
called THE CONSTITUENCY — a body certainly more
numerous, but as conventional, as privileged, and as
irresponsible as the House of Lords itself. The vast
majority of the people is unrepresented, and must ever
be unrepresented. No Government of any form or frame
can last without the existence of some irresponsible power
in its structure, and if the House of Lords were rendered
elective to-morrow, what is to check, what is to guard the
people of England against the irresponsibility of the
constituency and the Representatives of that constituency
styled the House of Commons ?
The constituency of to-day is different, very different,
from the constituency of five years back, and five years
hence it may be found to vary still more widely from its
present character. Only a few days since the King's
60 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
Minister proposed a measure to Parliament which would
at one blow have cut off and disfranchised eighty thousand
members of the constituency. Had the proposition been
successful, would these men, therefore, have ceased to be
of the people ? The freemen of England, that is, a por-
tion of the constituency of England, whose rights were
menaced by a more powerful portion of the same body,
acting through their Representatives, fled to the Peers of
England for succour ; and the Peers saved them ; and
herein was seen, and in this just and courageous conduct
might have been detected, the strong claim which those
" pillars of the State '51 have upon the trust and affection
of the nation; herein might have been discovered the
reason why, when the constituency of England in the
seventeenth century had succeeded in abolishing the
Upper House of Parliament, and in establishing a tyranny
of the constituency over the people, why the same people,
harassed and plundered, rose at length against this
despotic and cruel constituency, called back their ban-
ished Sovereign and natural leader, and re-established the
abolished House of Peers, in whom they recognised
their legal and Constitutional champions against the
inroads and assaults of a favoured and privileged section
of their number, namely, that portion of them who are
entrusted with the right of electing Representatives in the
House of Commons, and thus have a Chamber set apart for
the advocacy of their rights and interests, and are
established into a third estate of the realm — an institu-
tion, we repeat, as purely conventional as the institution
of the limited Monarchy and the hereditary Peerage.
Now, the constituency of England, as distinguished from
the people of England, are, as appears by the divisions in
their peculiar Chamber, equally divided in opinion. It is
probable that the majority of the constituency are indeed
Conservative, for the Conservative Representatives of
the constituency have in general been elected by large
1 Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI., I., i. 74 ; see also The Contention, I.,
i. 75, " Braue Peeres of England, pillers of the State."
1835] A MAEYLEBONE MEETING 61
majorities, and the Destructive Representatives of the
constituency by very small ones; but this matters little.
We have to-day pointed out, for the consideration of our
countrymen, an important distinction, over which they
will do well to ponder — that there is a vast difference
between the people of England and its constituency ; that
this same constituency is a purely conventional body;
that the House of Commons is their peculiar Chamber,
and not the Chamber of the people in general; that if
the House of Commons alone rules the nation, the nation
will not be ruled by itself or its representatives, but by
the representatives of a limited section of itself; and
that the natural consequences of this arrangement will
be, as it has been before — and which we shall take an early
opportunity of demonstrating — that the favoured minority
who will thus obtain the whole power of the State will
establish a tyrannical and vexatious oligarchy, and soon
obtain also the whole property of the State.
*****
" Marylebone has met." According to the solitary
organ of the Government, there were between three and
four thousand persons present. Why, before the fatal
competition of the Fantoccini Punch could have assem-
bled half the number.
It was a very characteristic meeting of " The People."
But the muse of the immortal Samuel Butler could alone
do justice to it. We should like to draw up a catalogue
of the orators, like Homer's Ships; Potter, and Kensitt,
and Savage,1 and Sappy. Why was not Juggins present ?
Why will that illustrious member of the Annoyance Jury,
that rival of Dogberry and Verges, devote himself to
Westminster ? Oh, rare Juggins ! Savage, however,
1 " Mr. (John) Savage, the Radical, very pertinently observed
that he knew the faces of the greater number present, and was
in the habit of meeting them. When it is considered that Savage
addresses a Radical meeting at his public-house in Circus Street
every Sunday evening . . . the public voice in Marylebone on this
occasion will be justly considered in its proper light." — Morning
Post report, August 25, 1835.
62 PEEES AND PEOPLE [1835
nearly made up for him, and was as ferocious as his name.
" Down with the Lords and their foul influence !" This
was the Savage cry, and received, of course, with " tre-
mendous cheering . ' ' Another orator declared all the Peers
were "bastards," a compliment, we suppose, to Lord
Melbourne. The chivalric Whalley was very elaborate
on the Qualification Clause, and indignantly asked assem-
bled Marylebone " what property was." Sir Hudibras
paused for a reply, and it was not wonderful that no one
present could furnish him with a definition. Mr. Henry
Bulwer1 closed the proceedings. "Alas, poor Yorick !"
'Tis lamentable to see one who is at least a Gentleman
and a man of letters in such a predicament. 'Tis paying
dear for a return even if the expenses of the Parliamentary
elected were so slight as they boast. Mr. Henry Bulwer
declared that the Morning Post had announced that the
Royal Standard was about to be raised, and that fifty
thousand cavalry would march to London. Lord bless
his little soul, we said no such thing. We said that, as
far as we could form an opinion, the " collision " might
be left to the police. Mr. Henry Bulwer tries to be very
violent, while he laughs in his sleeve. He must be coarse,
or, he may take our word for it, at the next election he
will stand no chance against Juggins.
CHAPTER V
The Constitutional position elaborated — Hereditary election —
Government by the Commons — Whigs and the spirit of the
age — Don Carlos and the Premier — The distracted Cabinet —
A new Commission.
Thursday, August 27.
WE repeat that the House of Commons is not the repre-
sentative of THE PEOPLE any more than is the House of
Lords. The House of Commons is the representative of
the Commons. The Commons of England (and the Com-
1 H. Lytton Bulwer (afterwards Lord Dalling) then colleague
of Sir S. Whalley in the representation of Marylebone.
1835] PRIVILEGED ORDERS 63
mons in the original, genuine, and legal signification of
the term is a title confined to those, and those only, who
have a right to sit, or to vote for representatives, in that
estate of the Realm) — the Commons of England, like the
Peers of England, formed and still form a favoured section
or order of the people enjoying for the advantage of the
nation in general certain powers and privileges of a very
eminent and exalted character.
The number of the Commons, like the number of the
Peers, is purely conventional. The King can increase
the number of the Peers, and the King and the Peers
and the representatives of the Commons can by conven-
tion increase the numbers of the Commons. During the
last half-century the number of the Peers has been greatly
increased; yet the Commons, although far outnumbering
the Peers, still bear a very small relative proportion to
the number of the people. Nevertheless the Commons
are so numerous and so scattered that it is not possible
for them to assemble together for the purpose of legisla-
tion; therefore they meet in the persons of their repre-
sentatives. There is no other apparent reason why the
Commons should not in their own persons exercise legis-
lative power. Before the Reform Act they might have
met in Spa Fields, and now they might meet on
Salisbury Plain. It would be possible for all the Commons
of England to encamp within five miles of Stonehenge.
So much for these two sections or bodies of the people,
the Peers and the Commons, alike privileged orders
and alike exercising irresponsible power. And the only
material difference between them is that the qualification
of one is purely hereditary, while in addition to the here-
ditary qualification which is enjoyed by that portion of
the Commons who are landowners they have also the
advantage of a qualification by tenure.
If the Peers, therefore, in voting for laws, exercise a
power for which they are not responsible, so also do the
Commons in voting for lawmakers ; and if it be a blot in
our Constitution that the Peers should be invested with
64 PEEKS AND PEOPLE [1835
the function of hereditary legislation, so it must be an
equal blur that the Commons should be invested with the
function of hereditary election. Thus much in answer
to the ignorant fools and superficial knaves who pretend
to write nowadays on political subjects, and criticise,
forsooth, our ancient Constitution, of the principles of
which, as of everything else, they are absolutely and
profoundly ignorant.
The Constitution of England consists of King, Lords,
and Commons, not King, Lords, and People, and the
member of the House of Commons who talks of " the
People's House " is either a gross blockhead or an insolent
usurper.
Now, will the people of England be governed by the
Commons alone ? That is the question which we shall
soon be called upon to decide. Will the people of England
permit the whole power of the State to be monopolised
by one favoured class ? For our part, we will not trust
the Commons of England with despotic power one jot
more than the Peers of England or the Monarch of
England. The Monarch of England has at times exercised
despotic power, and we found it hard enough. The Peers
of England have never exercised despotic power, and we
hope never will. But the Commons of England have
exercised despotic power before this, and compared with
their infamous tyranny the recollection of the rule of the
stoutest tyrant that ever waved in this island a solitary
sceptre is a dream of bliss. Let us not, in God's name,
try them again ; but if we are mad enough the Republic
of jobbers will not last long. Some brawny arm will soon
be extended to " take away this bauble."
* * * * *
The Whigs have given us an eminent specimen this
year of a factious Opposition. It appears they are going
to favour us now with a factious Government. Vast are
the obligations for which England is indebted to the
Whigs.
They govern in " the spirit of the age " forsooth. If
1835] CABINET DIFFERENCES 65
so, 'tis a shabby spirit, a very pitiful spirit, indeed; a
most lick-spittle, place-loving, pelf-adoring spirit.
Lord Viscount Melbourne, ever since he assumed office,
has been the Minister of the King's necessity, not of the
King's choice. Now, it appears, he is going to carry on
the Government in spite of the House of Lords. A bold
fellow this ! If we did not find him crawling in the dust
before a Popish rebel, one might suppose that he was
animated with some degree of headstrong heroism. But
the scene behind the curtain proffers such a humiliating
and instructive contrast to the swaggering sulkiness with
which the audience is greeted that the charm vanishes
in a moment.
Never was a Cabinet in such a condition: all fighting
among themselves and contradicting and reproaching
each other.
The Premier would retire, but our "Don Carlos,"1
who is for a " collision," opposes this.
Then Melbourne urges that he has to bear the brunt of
the battle, and face each night an overwhelming majority :
Carlos replies 'tis only for a short season ; and that though
he, to be sure, has the majority in the Commons on his
side, 'tis a very delicate one, and then his labour should
be taken into consideration; some seven months' hard
work and O'Connell to aid; "while you," he quaintly
observes, " after all, are only badgered for three weeks."
"But the King," replies the Premier. "May be,"
etc., says Carlos.
All this time Lansdowne looks grave, and already
meditates joining an anti-Papal Cabinet. The needy
members of the clique, of course, are in convulsions, and
the moment the division was announced Lord Auckland
flew to his wine-merchant, and bargained that, in case of
his appointment 2 being cancelled, the Burgundy was to
1 Lord John Russell.
2 To the Governor- Generalship of India, in succession to Lord
Heytesbury, who, appointed by Sir Robert Peel, never took up
the office.
66 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
be taken back, and his Lordship only to pay for the laths
and sawdust. 'Tis a right merry crew !
*****
On Tuesday night the Marquis of Lansdowne moved
the second reading of the Charities Commission Bill. On
this Lord Lyndhurst rose and very pertinently exposed
the job. Thirty Commissioners appointed to inquire —
thirty more Commissioners ! An arrangement entailing
such heavy expenses on the country could not be assented
to without evidence and inquiry .
Lord Lyndhurst opposed the Bill — his recent experi-
ence of Commissioners did not authorise him to confide
the execution of any trust to such Gentry without the
most suspicious inquiry.
Lord Lansdowne, a great patron of Commissions, for
he has many proteges, fought hard for his parasites, but
even Lord Brougham gave up the affair as a bad job,
and supported the motion of Lord Lyndhurst for throwing
out the BiU.
What a cut-up for Parkes, whose name has actually
become a proverb throughout England for a job — and all
the queer gang, roaring Rushton, and sober Drinkwater,
and the unknown Wilkinson, and Cockburn the trust-
worthy, and " Horrors - and - Hell " Dwarris ! Great
gnashing of teeth, we suspect.
CHAPTER VI
A meeting of the " People " — Defence of Lord Lyndhurst —
Mushroom Peers — The Estates of the Realm — Rivalry and
its sequel — A Popish conspiracy — Mr. Hume's threat — Les-
sons from past history — A challenge to the Courier.
Friday, August 28.
ST. GILES'S has met. It was a very great meeting of
"The People." The rapscallions amounted to some
hundreds. Juggins was not there, because Juggins is of
Westminster ; and Sappy was not there, because Sappy
1835 UPSTAET PEERS 67
is of Marylebone; and Savage was not there, because
Savage is the comrade of Sappy; and Sir Hudibras was
not there, because Sir Hudibras1 is the confederate of
Savage.
But although Savage was wanting, there was no lack
of unlettered ruffians; and although Sir Hudibras was
missed, other parochial Cleons poured forth their plebeian
ribaldry. The dogs demanded the " use of the Lords "
with a most dinning bow-wow.
The chief orator, one Dr. Epps, after abusing the
hereditary legislators, very quaintly and consistently
assured " the people " that the old Nobles were on their
side, and that they were only opposed by " Lord Lynd-
hurst and the Duke of Wellington, and the upstart Peers."
And then the brute characteristically added, " How Sir
John Copley's mother would stare if she could rise from
her grave, and find her son a Lord !"
Fortunately, there needs no such miracle for that
happy lady, " Sir John Copley's mother, to find her son
a Lord." She still lives, in the enjoyment of all her
faculties, and she has lived, not merely lived to find her
son a Lord, but twice Lord Chancellor of England. We
are very much mistaken if, before her venerable eyes be
closed, and before her pious voice shall exclaim " Now
let Thy servant depart in peace," this proud mother will
not have the unprecedented gratification of seeing her
offspring Lord Chancellor of England for the third time,
ay, for the third time keeper of that Great Seal which he
has guarded with such fidelity, and used with so much
wisdom and so much honour.
But observe the reasoning of this parish orator — and
we only notice his reasoning because it is a fair sample of
the political logic of the faction, and only re-echoed from
the silly and seditious journals which are the evangelists
of the gang — they denounce the principle of hereditary
legislation, and in the same breath anathematise what
they call upstart Peers — that is, Peers like Lord Lynd-
1 Sir Samuel Whalley.
68 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
hurst and the Duke of Wellington, whom they quote,
raised to that distinction by their public services.
Now, let us take the case of Lord Lyndhurst, the very
instance they themselves bring forward. Here is a
nobleman who has sprung from the Commons, a great
statesman, a most accomplished orator, an unrivalled
lawyer. He obtains a seat in the upper House of Parlia-
ment entirely through the influence of his talents and his
public services ; and, unfortunately, there is at present no
prospect of his honours descending to his posterity.
Why, this is the very ideal of a senator whom the
Brutilitarian sages are always bawling about, and this is
the very Peer of England whom their St. Giles's disciples
denounce as "an upstart." Lyndhurst and Wellington
upstarts ! Would there were more such mushrooms !
* * * * *
The Constitution of England is a profounder piece of
human wit than the Brutilitarian philosophers imagine
when they recommend us their new lamps with so much
pert conceit, and so much complacent ignorance. The
Constitution has endured for centuries, and under it the
country has obtained, and enjoyed, a degree of greatness
and prosperity which has seldom fallen to the lot of
empires. As long as the King and the two privileged
orders of the Kingdom — first the Peers and secondly the
Commons acting through their Eepresentatives — have
drawn together, the polity of Great Britain may be fairly
instanced as the one which has the nearest approached
the object of all great legislators, namely, the happiness
of all the people.
But when the usual and desirable harmony has not
subsisted between the King and the estates, and especially
when an unwholesome rivalry has sprung up between
the estates themselves, and, from some accession of power
or other unusual circumstance, one House of Parliament
has endeavoured to obtain supremacy over the other,
there have ever been in this land great heart-burnings,
fatal dissensions, much injury to arts and commerce,
1835] SINGLE-CHAMBER GOVERNMENT 69
infringements of our rights and liberties, a halt in the
prosperity of the realm, a defalcation of the imperial
revenue, bloodshed and rebellion, and, finally, civil war.
The great accession of strength which that privileged
order of the State called the Commons obtained by the
Whig Reform Act has filled the imaginations of certain
representatives of the Commons, and members of their
peculiar House of Parliament, with the bold but ruinous
project of destroying the authority of the Upper Chamber,
and so monopolising within themselves, or, rather, a
petty number of their members, the whole power of the
State ; whereby they propose founding, as in times past
they have established, a most grinding tyranny, neither
respecting the persons nor the properties of the people
of this realm. And in the first place these arch-con-
spirators, finding they could not obtain the co-operation
of a majority of the British members of the House of
Commons in their wicked device, entered into a most
infamous and sacrilegious conspiracy with the Popish
rebels of Ireland, by whose aid alone they have already
upset the King's Government, and by whose continued
assistance they propose abolishing the House of Lords,
and rooting up the Throne itself.
These conspirators have already afforded the people
of England a specimen of the mode in which they will
exercise arbitrary power when they have succeeded in
obtaining it, and the House of Lords no longer subsists to
keep them in check. They have already revived general
warrants and issued lettres de cachet ; they have declared
their pleasure to be above the law ; and they have
announced themselves as irresponsible for the exercise
of their power. Moreover, they have inferentially recom-
mended the revival of the rack or other similar torture.
Englishmen will remember the sufferings of their
fathers under a similar domination, and will take good
counsel in good time.
The House of Commons have before this abolished the
Lords and rooted up the Throne, under the pretence of
70 PEEES AND PEOPLE [1835
maintaining the liberties of the people. But when one
of that people, and not even a Royalist, was summoned
before that despotic House of Commons, and refused to
answer certain illegal questions, as Colonel Fair man1
did the other day, that same House of Commons, after
adjourning several times in great dilemma, finally ordered
a red-hot iron to be bored through the tongue of the
man who refused to answer their questions ; and the iron
was heated, and the tongue was bored accordingly.2
Now we understand what Mr. Hume means by " com-
pelling witnesses to answer, whether they will or no."
The Hon. Member as yet has only inferentially recom-
mended torture; he has only given it as his abstract
opinion that " witnesses whether they will or no shall
be compelled to answer the House of Commons"; but
the instance of Naylor, which we have quoted above, will
afford an instructive commentary to Mr. Hume's threat,
and teach the people of England what they have to
expect.
They have other things to expect if the past, instead
of a dream, be a lesson of practical life and profitable
experience. They have to expect that the taxation of
this country will be doubled, while its public debt will
be simultaneously augmented. They have to expect
that the Representatives of the Commons will meet one
fine morning, and vote the money of the people to the
amount of at least £300,000, or more probably to an
amount equal to that sum at this day — a good million —
openly among themselves. They have to txpect that,
in order to carry on their tyranny without the slightest
1 Colonel Fairman, Grand Secretary and Treasurer of the
Orange Lodges, refused to give up to the House a letter-book
relating to the correspondence of the Lodges.
2 The case of James Naylor, a Quaker religious enthusiast, who,
on October 24, 1656, made a triumphant entry into Bristol after
the manner of Christ's entry into Jerusalem, was arrested and
examined by a committee of the House of Commons, and was
sentenced by the House to be twice set in the pillory, to be
whipped, to be branded, and to have his tongue bored with a hot
iron. He was then to be sent to Bristol for a second scourging,
and to be imprisoned with hard labour in Bridewell.
1835] IMPENDING CALAMITIES 71
check, the majority of the House of Commons — that is
to say, the English Radicals and the Popish repealers or
rebels — will vote that the minority are disqualified from
taking any part in these proceedings ; further, the people
of England have to expect that their bodies will be tor-
tured, their properties sequestered, their persons banished,
and their lives forfeited, without the shadow of redress,
or the solace even of a murmur ; and that " trial by Jury "
will be voted, as it hath been voted, " a breach of privi-
lege."
The young, the ignorant, the headstrong, who read
this, may read and shudder. It is but a brief and very
hurried sketch of a few of the more marked and salient
features of English revolution. And are all these awful
calamities impending over this country because a weak
faction cannot maintain themselves in power without the
aid of levellers and the co-operation of rebels ?
* * * * *
The Courier last night borrowed a little of " Cambyses'
vein " recently recommended by Lord Melbourne, and
we have seen a beggar in a barn who has ranted much in
the same manner.
The Courier announces that " Ministers are firm, and
so are the Commons." Thus have we heard exclaim
two drunken dogs, as they have been reeling home at
nights. Yet the morning generally finds them in the
gutter, low and dirty enough, or at the best in the watch-
house where they are immured, or sent to the treadmill.
Follows then much twaddle about " the nation " and
" the people." Define " the nation," Mr. Courier, define
" the people," define if you can and dare.
As for coming events, far from thinking it necessary for
the King to raise his standard, or the Yeomanry to rally
round it, it is our firm and fixed opinions that "the crisis "
may be left to the constables, and " the collision " to
the police.
Whether we consider the question in reference to
property, intelligence, or numbers, we are convinced that
72 PEEKS AND PEOPLE [1835
the Conservative party has the superiority, and a vast one.
But as far as we can deduce a meaning from this ranting
rigmarole of our usually calm contemporary, there is no
nation, no people of England, at all, for he boldly announces
that " the Commons are backed by twenty-seven millions
of constituents." Good Mr. Courier, is it so ? You
indeed ride post-haste. The constituency of England
does not amount to the population of a second-rate
capital, and more than half of that constituency is Con-
servative.
"AH power," announces the Courier, "is now in the
hands of the House of Commons." The deuce it is !
Then the sooner we get it out of their hands the better.
The people of England know by experience the blessing
of the whole power of the country being in the House
of Commons. As for that old Brutilitarian charlatan
Bentham, we will prove any day the Courier likes that
" the balance " is not a nursery tale. This trash has
been too long current, but it is base for all that.
Good-day, Mr. Courier, and we hope you are more sober
than you appeared last night. We meant to have said
something to the gentle Globe, but on reflection, to use
its own dainty phrase, " we don't see why we should."
The truth is, we do see, but we have not room ; so|to-day
we will not pluck a laurel from the honoured brow (of
Scipio Africanus.
CHAPTER VII
The Devil and his bond — Honest Lord Althorp and high-minded
Lord Melbourne — More about Single Chamber rule — Hazel
rigg precedent — Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Denman — A
" violent party man."
Saturday, August 29.
THE solitary organ of the Eump raves and rants with
desperate but desponding fury. It feels, like its doomed
faction, that the Popish taint has poisoned the fame and
influence of the Whig-Radicals in this Protestant country
for ever. In its despair and bewildered cowardice it
1835] MELBOURNE AND O'CONNELL 73
abjures its friends; it utterly renounces O'Connell and
his crew; it exclaims, with frantic ejaculation, " Get thee
behind me, Satan !"
But those who have sold themselves to the Devil err
if they suppose when the dark day of reckoning arrives
they can extricate themselves from the awful " crisis,"
from the terrible " collision " which they have provoked,
by taking refuge in this pious retort. The fiend points
to his bond, and forthwith pitchforks them into Hades.
The solitary organ asks for evidence of Lord Mel-
bourne's sacrilegious and treasonable connection with
O'Connell. We need not go far to find it. Why have
Lord Melbourne and his colleagues recanted in the course
of six short months all their previous principles and
pledges on the sacred subject of the Church of England ?
To conciliate O'Connell, and, by bribing him with the
plunder of the Establishment in Ireland, compensate
themselves with the plunder of the Treasury in England.
Why, there is not a boy who runs through the street
on a sixpenny errand who cannot supply the Whigs with
an answer, quick on the tongue and engraven on the
heart of every Briton and every Protestant.
But Lord Melbourne denies the connection, and Lord
Melbourne, according to the solitary organ of the Rump,
is " a high-minded Nobleman • ' ' We believe Lord Viscount
Melbourne to be as much a " high-minded Nobleman " as
Lord Viscount Althorp1 was an "honest " one. Honest
Lord Althorp and high-minded Lord Melbourne are fit
to run together in the national chariot, and dash the
car down the revolutionary precipice with the greatest
skill imaginable, while all the time the deluded driver
flatters himself that one of his steeds is remarkably steady,
and the other marvellously well broken. " Honest "
Lord Althorp was no doubt a remarkably honest fellow,
for all his friends said so; yet his Lordship continued
sometimes to act like a marvellously indifferent knave;
and " high-minded " Lord Melbourne is no doubt a very
1 Leader of the House of Commons in iWelbourne's first Ministry,
6
74 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
noble-spirited Gentleman, for all his friends say so; yet
his Lordship, throughout the whole of his trimming and
tortuous career, has generally managed to leave the
impression behind him that he was but a pitiful jobber.
" High-minded " Lord Melbourne, indeed ! What !
William Lamb " high-minded "? William Lamb, the
pis-aller of Castlereagh, whose best speeches have been
in defiance of what the Radicals call " the Manchester
massacre " and in favour of the repeal of the Habeas
Corpus ! William Lamb, who was always brought for-
ward by the old Tories to oppose Parliamentary reform,
and who was the champion of the Indemnity Bill. The
Arch-apostate !
Never mind; he has been used by Castlereagh, abused
by Canning, drilled by Wellington ; he has intrigued with
Huskisson against Wellington; he has betrayed Lord
Grey ; and he has deserted Lord Brougham ; and now he
is at his old tricks with O'Connell, and we mistake the
Popish rebel much if he be circumvented by this old
hack — this most unprincipled of public men, even of
Whigs.
"And then, he looks so modest all the while."
*****
When people wake in the morning, and remember that
the King's Minister is pursuing a system which must
ultimately place their lives and properties at the disposal
of Wakley and Silk Buckingham,1 they wake in terror.
The same feeling pervades Society as influences a
crowded assembly when there is a sudden cry of "Fire !"
or " Take care of your pockets !" Everyone is alarmed
and on his guard.
The Whigs publicly boast now that the House of
Commons possesses the whole power of the country.
If this dreadful allegation be true, the sooner we take
measures to clip their high-flying wings the better for all
those who value liberty, property, and life, the fruits
1 James Silk Buckingham, Liberal Member for Sheffield,
founder of the Athenceum.
1835] HAZELRIGia AND LILBURNE 75
of their industry, and the enjoyment of their freedom.
Never let us forget what the rule of the House of Commons
was when they before possessed the whole power of the
country . Never let us forget that the House of Commons,
when they had got rid of the House of Lords, voted " trial
by Jury " a breach of privilege; that they doubled the
taxes of this country, and loaded it at the same time with
enormous debts; that they divided the public money
openly among themselves; bored men's tongues with
red-hot irons who refused to answer their questions ; and
sequestered the property and imprisoned the persons of
all whom they styled, or chose to consider, malignants.
If the Whig-Radicals, by the aid and co-operation of
the Popish rebels, could re-establish this old despotism
of the House of Commons to-morrow, as they are trying
to do, every Conservative would immediately be treated
as a malignant, and any Parliamentary member of the
Movement would enjoy the high privilege of seizing any
of our estates or properties to-morrow, without any chance
on our side of redress, or even a Court of Justice to which
we could appeal.
Hazelrigg, as impudent a fellow as Hume, and as great
"a Church Reformer," practically exemplified what
" Church Reform " meant by seizing hold of great portions
of the Bishops' lands, and sacking them, during one year
only, to the amount of £60,000; a good booty at all times,
and equal then to £180,000 of our present money. Em-
boldened by his impunity, and following the examples
of his colleagues, who had voted the Conservative minority
out of the House, Hazelrigg commenced seizing private
estates, and when the plea of malignancy was exhausted
he and his friends seized those of their own party.
Thus this same impudent adventurer, who was the
Hume of those days, laid violent hands on a profitable
colliery in the North to which he had taken a fancy, and
which belonged to the famous Lilburne, a stout fellow
and " a true reformer " for he stood up right manfully
against the Star Chamber in the old days of its tyranny,
76 PEEKS AND PEOPLE [1835
now so mild in comparison to the free rule of the House
of Commons. Lilburne petitioned the House. The
House appointed a Committee on the subject, who,
without even receiving the evidence proffered in favour
of this injured man and this " tried Reformer," decided
that the petitioner, in accusing any Member of the House
of Commons of forcibly dispossessing him of his estate,
was guilty of a high contempt and gioss libel, and that
Lilburne and his fellow-petitioner should consequently
pay £3,000 to the House of Commons each, and £500
each to be divided among the Members of the Committee
itself.
There, " Reformers of England," you see how your
friends will treat you. It is evident that a Wakley and
a Buckingham must have been on the Committee.
*****
The overwhelming defeat which the base Whigs ex-
perienced in the House of Lords on the Corporation job,
as flagrant a job, by-the-by, as their India Bill, and
concocted in the same party and anti-national spirit,
has enraged them beyond measure with the distinguished
leader of the Conservative party in the Upper House.
The only way in which they hoped to neutralise the
irresistible exposure they received from Lord Lyndhurst
was very Whiggish indeed; they had recourse to a lie,
and they boldly announced that his Lordship had been
originally a Radical, or, to use his milder language, " a
Whig and something more. "
Lord Lyndhurst met the insinuation with a firm, a
manly, an uncompromising, and an unequivocal denial.
Lord Melbourne and poor Lord Lansdowne, who were
the tools and champions of their proteges and parasites,
the Commissioners, ate their words, of course, and
there the matter, so far as authority was concerned,
ended; and only the confederate scribblers who concoct
that queer journal which is the solitary organ of the
Rump repeated the base and recanted imputation.
But still there were dark whispers about. It was very
1835] NERO DENMAN 77
true that Lord Melbourne had recalled his words; " he
could do no more and he could say no less "; and all that
gaberdash with which cowardly slanderers conceal their
flinching scandal and detected calumny. But when Lord
Denman came to town he would say "such things."
Lord Denman knew all about it. He was the authority
— old Nero Denman1 — Denman who called His Gracious
Majesty a slanderer — old Nero Denman was to do the
deed, and " settle " the affair for ever.
And this was uttered with an air of triumph, and a base
interchange of smiles, among the initiated, congratu-
latory of complacent and coming victory.
Dogs ! and viler far than dogs ! Denman has come to
town, and has found himself called upon, from the spirit
of party, to confirm in the most august assembly in the
world some of the factious exaggerations of his own
factious falsehoods, uttered after the miserable inspiration
of some of his own bad wine, at some of his own wretched
dinners. Denman has " settled " the question with a
vengeance. We shall hear no more of it. It is the only
case that Denman ever did satisfactorily settle.
The most that Lord Denman 's friends could ever say
for him was that, although an ass, his bray was rather
melodious ; but in his melancholy exhibition in the House
of Lords on Thursday night even his voice failed him ; even
the vox et preterea were wanting ; nihil alone remained.
He made two accusations, one of which he immediately
withdrew; the other was destroyed by Lord Lyndhurst
amid the enthusiastic cheering of the House before his
luckless antagonist could withdraw it.
First, he accused Lord Lyndhurst of owing his intro-
duction to public life to " the Liberals." Lord Lyndhurst
replied that he owed his introduction to public life to
Lord Liverpool, and previously to entering Parliament had
jnever interfered in political affairs in the slightest degree.
1 Thomas, first Lord Denman, Lord Chief Justice. His sup-
posed comparison of George the Fourth to Nero was the origin
of the nickname.
78 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
Then Lord Denman, having swallowed his previous
charge, equivocated, and declared that he meant the
professional life of the Noble Lord. Whereupon Lord
Lyndhurst rejoined that the only party business in which
he had been professionally employed was in the defence
of Watson, a defence which he had undertaken at the
request of Sir C. Wetherell, with whom he had co-
operated. Finally he called upon Lord Denman to make
a specific charge ; even to allege a single private conversa-
tion which could justify his original imputation, and
Denman was silent.
A word or two about this person. Lord Denman may
be considered a very fortunate individual, for, of humble
origin, he is now a Peer of the Realm, and fills one of the
very highest offices in the State. But Lord Denman may
also be considered a very remarkable individual, for he
has attained this great eminence confessedly by all parties
in the total absence of any qualities which could justify
his rise and his appointment.
It is a grand characteristic of my Lord Denman that
he has failed, and failed decidedly, in everything which
he has undertaken. He was called to the Bar, and was
soon acknowledged as one of the worst lawyers and one
of the clumsiest advocates that ever practised; yet he
was not altogether void of employment, because he was
a violent party man.
He was brought into Parliament, and cut so melan-
choly a figure that he himself voluntarily retired from the
theatre of his discomfiture. And why was he brought
into Parliament ? Because he was a violent party man.
He was then made Common Sergeant, and might just
as well have been made Jack Ketch ; but he was appointed
Common Sergeant because he was a violent party
man.
At length he was metamorphosed into Attorney-
General because he was a violent party man ; and he was
found so clearly incompetent that the Junior Crown
Officer was obliged to discharge his duties; but this was
1835] THE COMET AND THE CRISIS 79
winked at because Sir Thomas Denman was a violent
party man.
Now behold him for the same reason a Peer and a Chief
Justice, a nonentity in the Lords, unfortunately not quite
a nonentity on the circuit, only a blunderer ; but still his
incompetence and his mistakes are alike forgiven, because
he is a violent party man.
At last Lord Denman resolves to shiver a lance with
Lord Lyndhurst; and the Lord Chief Justice, who has
failed in every purpose, of course, as usual, fails in this,
and the Lord Chief Justice is now universally acknow-
ledged to be an ass, although he is a violent party man.1
CHAPTER VIII
The approaching " crisis " — Principle of the Bill — Whig and Tory
policy— Lord Melbourne arid the Irish Church Bill — Peers
and party menaces — " And now for Lord Melbourne "-
Impeachment — The advice of the Press — Scylla and Charyb-
dis — Sir John Campbell — Haggis and cockaleekie.
Monday, August 31.
EIGHT-AND-FORTY hours have elapsed since we last
addressed our readers, and the crisis, like the comet,2 is
supposed to be somewhat nearer, though it is not yet
visible to the naked eye.
Eight-and-forty hours have elapsed, and Lord Viscount
Melbourne is still the Prime Minister of England. He
has sneaked through one day and he has shuffled through
another, and he is to swindle through a third. By that
time the storm or the bubble will have burst, and the
crisis, with its fiery tail, will be fairly in sight.
The present position of this eminent Minister and
" high-minded " Nobleman is very peculiar. Let us dis-
passionately review it. The Ministry of which he is the
1 The article relates to a somewhat notable encounter between
Denman and Lyndhurst, in which the former was generally
acknowledged to have been worsted.
2 Halley's comet was due to appear about this time.
80 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
chief carried through the House of Commons a Bill for
the amendment of the municipal corporations of England
and Wales. Lord Melbourne introduces his Bill to the
House of Lords, and the Peers of England in the most
unqualified manner admit its principle — yes, admit its
principle — and we call upon any one of the base block-
heads who have been for the last three weeks brawling
about " the mutilation " of their measure, and insulting
the Lords with the valiant blare of their penny trumpet,
to deny this if they can.
Let these imbecile scribblers define " The PRINCIPLE "
of the Bill. We asked them the other day to define their
favourite phrase of " The PEOPLE," but not one has been
skilful enough to satisfy our request. They know very
well that an analysis of the people would demonstrate that
all the elements of a great nation are banded and mar-
shalled in the ranks of the Conservatives.
Well, we will define what THE PRINCIPLE of the Cor-
poration Amendment Bill is. The principle is that
SELF-ELECTION IN MUNICIPAL BODIES SHALL BE TERMIN-
ATED BY THE SUBSTITUTION OF A FREE ELECTION BY A
POPULAR CONSTITUENCY. There, that is THE PRINCIPLE
of the Bill about which we hear so much gaberdash from
all the brainless knaves who live by writing " on politics,"
forsooth, and asking the use of the Lords. That, we
repeat, is the principle of the Bill; the principle, the
whole principle, and nothing but the principle ; and that
principle, identically as it is carried into effect by the
clauses of the projected law, has been thoroughly, com-
pletely, unreservedly, and unequivocally admitted by the
Peers. Their Lordships have made many and most
valuable alterations in the details of this measure, but
with its principle they have never for a moment
tampered.
Now, the Whig policy is ever to smuggle in laws for the
increase and consolidation of the power of their party
under the specious guise of advancing the cause of popular
amelioration. The principle of the Corporation Bill
1835] TORYISM DEFINED 81
advances the popular cause with which the Tories sym-
pathise ; the details of the Corporation Bill only promote
and confirm Whig power, and that the Tories oppose,
because they believe that power by the Whigs will ever
be employed for anti-national purposes.
Toryism is the national spirit exhibiting itself in th\
maintenance of the national institutions, and in support
of the national character which those institutions have
formed.
If the Lords bate one jot of their amendments of the
Whig Corporation Bill, they will deserve all their worst
enemies wish them, and they will go far to realise the
ban. Let them bate one jot of those amendments, and
if they do not find a mysterious and simultaneous cloud
steal over the jewels of their coronets, then there is no
magic in the prime tokens of their order.
But will they bate a jot ? Not they. The Radicals
have most indiscreetly chosen to make this a trial of
strength between the two privileged orders of our Con-
stitution— the Peers and the Commons of England.
Whatever they might deem the result, the Peers of
England, we imagine, would be just and fear not. But in
the present instance they may be just without the shadow
of apprehension. The nation is with the Peers, not with
the Popish majority of the Commons ; the people will not
back the factious Representatives of a very limited class
in this country, and the individuals who form the Popish
and factious majority are in the main individuals of a
discreditable character.
We could dilate upon this theme, but having despatched
the Corporation Bill we must now proceed to Lord
Melbourne and the Irish Church Bill.
We cannot too clearly comprehend the nature of that
measure by which the Whigs propose to settle the long-
controverted question of the Church establishment in
Ireland. Their Bill combines two propositions which
not only have no natural connection with each other ;
but two propositions which, less than twelve months ago,
82 PEEKS AND PEOPLE [1835
the Whigs themselves, at their own instance, declared to
have no natural connection with each other.
One is of a real, the other is of an abstract, character ;
one is of the most urgent nature, the other only concerns
the possible and the future.
One is to settle the question of tithes in Ireland,
described by the Ministers themselves to be a measure
of more pressing importance and immediate interest
than any subject which ever engaged the attention of the
Legislature; the other is to decide what shall be the
object of the surplus of Church property which may
possibly accrue after the projected arrangement be
completed, and the possible existence of which surplus
is denied by many and calculated by the Whigs themselves
at a most insignificant amount.
This Bill is introduced to the consideration of the Lords
by the Minister, and the Peers, after a most able dis-
cussion, have decided exactly as the Whigs did last
year; they have decided on the adoption of the Minis-
terial plan for the settlement of the great, practical and
urgent portion of the Measure ; and with regard to a few
clauses of the Bill which relate to the abstract principle
and hypothetical arrangement, they adopt the resolution
of the Whigs themselves, entered into only a year ago,
and which nearly half of the House of Commons have
attempted to establish and guarantee during this very
session.
Such is a brief but impartial statement of the conduct
of the House of Lords on the two great Measures which
the Minister has submitted to their recent consideration.
In the first instance they admitted the principle of the
measure in the most unqualified manner, and confined
their labours entirely to the alteration of its details;
in the second instance they adopted, without opposition,
the entire Ministerial plan for the settlement of the
practical question of urgent interest, and with regard to
the abstract principle, the recognition of which could be
of no urgency whatever, since it only asserted a dogma
1835] THE USE OF THE LORDS 83
respecting a nonentity, they adopted the opinion which
had been advocated by the Government only during the
last session, and carried, through their influence, by a
great majority in the House of Commons.
Is it possible for the conduct of a legislative assembly
to have been less factious ? Is not the prima facie case
in favour of the Peers having exercised their power and
privilege with calmness and conciliatory moderation
absolutely irresistible ?
Doubtless the Peers of England who laugh to scorn the
menaces of their adversaries, and who, as long as they are
just and honest, will never be influenced in their conduct
by the fear of consequences — doubtless the Peers of
England have exercised their power and privileges in these
legislative instances as far as they deemed necessary;
but how much more vehemently in opposition to their
measures could they not have constitutionally conducted
themselves ? And how much less, in deference to the
high functions which they have to perform, and with
which they are invested, could they have well achieved ?
Why, if they had done less, we might well have asked,
" What is the use of the Lords ?" But, thank God, the
Peers of England have given a very significant reply to
that once famous query.
*****
And now for Lord Melbourne — for to his Lordship all
this time we are as surely and as scientifically approaching
as the leaguer makes his way to the citadel. How has
his Lordship conducted himself towards that august
assembly of which he appears so often of late to have
forgotten that he is a member ?
In return for having unequivocally and cheerfully
admitted the principle of his Corporation Bill, and con-
fining their labours merely to the alteration of some of its
details, Lord Melbourne salutes the Peers of England with
a menace, announces that he cannot be responsible for the
Commons listening to a Bill which, in his opinion, is
destroyed, declares that the Peers of England are suicidal
84 PEEES AND PEOPLE [1835
madmen — that they have torn up its roots by their own
authority, and more than insinuates that a revolution is
consequently inevitable.
In return for having unequivocally adopted his Lord-
ship's measure for the settlement of the tithe question in
Ireland, which he himself describes as the most urgent
and important measure ever submitted to Parliament, and
for having, with respect to the contingency of a future
surplus in correspondence with three hundred Members
of the House of Commons, adopted Lord Melbourne's
opinion of last year in preference to Lord Melbourne's
opinion of the present, the Prime Minister, forsooth, turns
round in a puerile pet, throws up the urgent and important
Bill, pouts forth another menace, and more than insinu-
ates that the Peers will occasion the total destruction of
the Church in Ireland and a dismemberment of the
Empire.
Now, my Lord Melbourne, if, as you assert, a revolu-
tion and the destruction of the Church, and the dismem-
berment of the Empire, will be the consequence of the
Commons not adopting the amendments of the Lords in
the Corporation Bill, and of your not consenting to the
separation of the practical relief and urgent settlement
from the abstract principle and the hypothetical arrange-
ment in the case of the Church in Ireland — why do you
not secure the adoption of the Corporation amendments
by the Commons; why do you not assent to the separa-
tion of the practical from the abstract question in the
case of the Irish Church, as the Lords have decided by an
immense majority, of which decision nearly half the
House of Commons have previously approved ? You
know very well that you could carry both points by an
immense majority !
Ah, my Lord Melbourne, we have you on the hip. You
dare not answer these questions. But is there any neces-
sity ? All England, all Europe, can supply us with a
solution.
If you do that which, according to your own statement,
1835] IMPEACHMENT 85
will preserve us from a revolution, will save the Church
of England in Ireland, will prevent a dismemberment of
the Empire — Hume and the English Radicals, O'Connell
and the Popish rebels, desert you, and your Ministry is
lost, though your country is saved.
There is but one way now to manage you, my Lord
Melbourne, there is but one mode to punish a Minister
who, for the sake of power and place, leagues with the
disaffected, and attempts to pass laws which will con-
fessedly occasion a revolution, the destruction of the
Church, and the dismemberment of the Empire. You
have despised the counsel of the English Commons in
favour of the desires of the Popish rebels ; you have out-
raged the Peers of England; you are, as we told you
before, the Minister not of the King's choice, but of the
King's necessity. The cup is full. The indignant and
Protestant people of England will endure your impotent
tyranny no longer; and if we have any knowledge of
human nature or human history, if we have profited by
the study of the annals, or the observation of the living
conduct of our kind, there is an event whose coming
shadow even now obscures your path, and that is your
IMPEACHMENT.
* * * * *
Confusion and irresolution reign throughout the Minis-
terial ranks. More than a week has past since the scope
and tenour of the Lords' amendments of the Corporation
Bill were known, and yet up to the present hour it
remains undecided what course the Cabinet will pursue
relative to those amendments ! It will hardly surprise
us if, up to the very moment of Lord John's rising this
afternoon, the Ministerial pack should be left in doubt as
to the cry they are to set up. A similar case, we will
venture to say, is not to be found in the British annals.
Meanwhile this "glorious uncertainty" at head-
quarters produces a most edifying contrariety of opinion
among the Treasury scribes. Nothing can be more
diverting than to see them groping in the dark — no two
86 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
agreeing as to the gourse to be pursued. Take Saturday's
columns as an example.
The Morning Chronicle is for dying in the breach. All
is " Ercles' vein." Ministers must be firm, resolute, and
the like. They must " put themselves at the head of the
people " ; there must be "no flinching, no drawing
back," etc.
The Globe snatches a momentary courage from an
article in the Times. This, it considers, shows that the
Lords are frightened at their own work, and that it will
be quite " practicable " to make them rescind all their
own amendments.
The Courier is evidently in much lower spirits. Any-
thing, everything, is to be acceded to, so that " the
principle of the Bill " be preserved. As if the principle
of the Bill, which is undeniably the termination of the
close self - elective system, and the establishment of
popular elections in its room — as if this had ever been
assailed by the Peers !
Catching at a sentence in the Times, which suggested a
slight modification of the Aldermanic terms of office, the
Courier eagerly exclaims, " There must be no Aldermen
for life." If this be but conceded by the Peers, the
Commons may admit all the other amendments !
Supposing that the question were narrowed to this
compass, we would ask the Courier whether the Commons
would do wisely to reject the amended Bill on so trifling
a point as whether Aldermen should hold their offices for
life or for seven years.
Can it be shown that the average duration of Alder-
manic existence is equal to a septennial term ?
However, to come back to the main subject, it is clear
that the Ministry are at their wits' ends. (Some may
think, perhaps, that it would not take them long to get
that length.) In sober sadness, however, their predica-
ment is assuredly anything but pleasant.
Common-sense and reason, supposing them to possess
a few grains of either, would naturally suggest that the
1835] PRESS ADVISERS 87
alterations made by the Peers in the Corporation Bill
are really amendments, and that, whatever O'Connell and
Hume might say, the correct course would be to adopt
them all. But then comes a serious question, How are
they to get on without O'Connell and Hume ? To keep
on good terms with these two respectable Gentlemen is
clearly essential to their very existence, and none know
this better than the said Gentlemen themselves. What,
then, is to be done ? Scylla is on one side, Charybdis
on the other ?
Imagine the honest course taken — 'the right of the
Lords to exercise their own judgment admitted — the
correctness of their judgment in this particular case
admitted also — and, finally, the Corporation Bill, with the
Lords' amendments finally passed. But, then, how are
the Movement party to be appeased ? By what means
can the lost affections of the Roebucks and Wakleys
be won back ? Yet if every vote is not preserved, what
chance is there of a week's continuance in office.
Well, then, suppose the Chronicle's advice be taken;
the Ministry " puts itself at the head of the people "
(of St. Giles's and Saffron Hill), and the Bill is rejected.
What then ? Is the prospect any better now ? Not a
whit. The result of the whole session will then be — •
manifestly set forth in the eyes of all the people — that
the present Cabinet cannot govern the country. The
longest session ever known will then have been passed
through without any result . Nor will there be the slightest
prospect of any more favourable state of things in the
ensuing year. The reason is obvious. The present
Ministry, by the terms of their compact with O'Connell,
are compelled to bring forward none but destructive
measures. The House of Lords, by their duty to the
country, by the first law of Nature, that of self-preserva-
tion, are equally compelled to strip these measures of
their destructive character, and to make them Conserva-
tive enactments. Thus " the Tail," with its bare
majority of thirty in the one House, will ever be weaving
88 PEEKS AND PEOPLE [1835
webs of iniquity, which the Peers, with a majority of
nearly a hundred, will as promptly sweep away.
The sooner this state of things is made apparent to the
country the better. The first dissolution of Parliament
that occurs will easily rectify this matter. But it is not
the wish of the Ministers that the case should be under-
stood. They hope to find a way between Scylla and
Charybdis. The Lords are to be got to concede half
their amendments, and then the Commons are to agree
to the other half. And the Ministry are to claim great
credit with each party in turn for having made so good
a bargain with the other .
We doubt, however, if the Conservative Peers will
submit to be played off in this fashion. We believe they
have been in earnest in what they have done, that they
have proposed no alteration in lightness or without just
grounds, and that it is their deliberate conviction that
without the amendments which they have introduced
the Bill would be an unsafe measure. We doubt, there-
fore, if they can be brought to consent to a compromise
when they have asked no more than they feel to be right,
and when they have the power to insist on all that they
ask.
The great object, in fact, of the proposed " mutual
concession " is just to relieve Ministers from their un-
happy position. But we should like to know what interest
the Conservative Peers can feel in any such object ?
*****
A Radical who fills the office of champion of the Bang's
prerogatives has a difficult part to play ; yet we can assure
Sir John Campbell, the King's Jacobin Attorney-General,
that there is yet a more difficult character for him to
support, and that is the character of a wit. Indeed, there
are few things among the petty annoyances of life more
excruciating than to witness an attempt at playfulness
by this shrewd, coarse, manoeuvring Pict.
Fancy an ourang-outang of unusual magnitude dancing
under a banana-tree, and licking its hairy chaps, and
1835] SIR JOHN CAMPBELL 89
winking with exultation its cunning eyes as it beholds
the delicious and impending fruit, and one may form a
tolerable idea of Sir John Campbell's appearance in the
House- of Commons on Friday night when he tried to be
jocular about the Imprisonment for Debt Bill,1 and was
fain to treat the Peers of England and the execution of
their solemn justice with his base and scullion raillery.
Sir John Campbell sneer at the Peers of England ! In
God's name, what next ?
That the Hudibrastic Hawes2 should sing a serious
second to the pothouse playfulness of the Attorney-
General is not wonderful, for doubtless his ignoble mind
has its genuine and congenial misgivings as to the " use "
of a nobility.
That Wakley should shake his incendiary arm in flaming
menace at the Peers of England, or 0 'Conn ell cock his
red bonnet on his brow with a ferocious grace becoming
that destructive scalp, were no mighty marvel ; but that
this baseborn Scotchman, who knows right well that if the
tide were, in his opinion, the other way, he would lick
the very dust a Lord might tread on — that this booing,
fawning, jobbing progeny of haggis and cockaleekie
should dare to sneer at the Peers of England — pah !
vulgar insolence must have run to seed to have produced
this scampish jest.
And look at the facts, too. Here is a Bill which pro-
poses at one fell swoop to change the whole law of debtor
and creditor — a law upon which the whole present system
of credit in this great commercial country has been estab-
lished and is now based. This law has engaged the atten-
tion of the Commons for two sessions ; it has been during
their present sittings for two months before the House,
and that House, feeling the importance of the complicated
question with which they were called upon to deal, have
deemed it necessary to submit it to a Committee, who
1 Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chancellors," records that
Lord Lyndhurst was "much alarmed" by this Bill; hence,
probably, Disraeli's savage attack on the Attorney- General.
a Benjamin Hawes, Member for Lambeth.
7
90 PEEKS AND PEOPLE [1835
have examined into the details and summoned witnesses
on its subject.
All this the Commons have felt it fitting to do, and at
the fag end of August they send their Bill to the Lords,
their proposition to change one of the most important
laws of our code — a proposition, too, of which the great
mass of the trading community highly disapprove ; and
because the Peers will not legislate blindfold, because
they will not pass this most important and interesting
Bill without discussing its novel principle, without
examining its elaborate and complicated details, and
without obtaining evidence on the controverted subject
which it presumes to decide, the conduct of the Peers is
called in question, their " utility " challenged because
they will not consent to be ciphers, and their wise carriage
and high authority submitted to the rascal jeering of a
clumsy ribald who ought, in consequence, to have been
expelled the high office he degrades the very next morning.
CHAPTER IX
The impeachment of Lord Melbourne — His Majesty and the
Premier — Playing at statesmen — Reign of Charlatans over.
Tuesday, September 1.
WHETHER the Lords be right or wrong, one thing is
certain, that Lord Melbourne cannot carry on the Govern-
ment of the country, and probably before this article
appears he may have retired to Brocket, where the Fauns
and wood-nymphs will receive him with a shout of
laughter, But if, as we have ever upheld, and, as far
as we can form an opinion, as the whole country has
decided, the Peers of England, in the course which they
have pursued, have only performed their duty to their
country, and demonstrated the utility of the high powers
and privileges with which they are invested, if in this
case Lord Melbourne still retains the reins of power,
which he originally obtained by a conspiracy, and which
1835] THE KING AND HIS MINISTER 91
he now holds to the manifold let and flagrant hindrance
of all good government, we repeat — we deliberately re-
peat— that the high constitutional process of an impeach-
ment of this weak and guilty man must be the ultimate
recourse of an injured and insulted nation.
Lord Melbourne complains of the coldness of His
Majesty, and Lord Melbourne's solitary organ of the
Press has squalled out most hideous and seditious cries in
consequence. That His Majesty must be disgusted with
the insolent presence of a man who, after having forced
himself into the Royal councils by one of the most odious
conspiracies upon record, is now confessedly incapable of
securing the object for which the plot was formed, and
the offensive obtrusion was perpetrated, and who, after all
his faction and effecting a quasi revolution for six months,
cannot carry on the Government, is the most natural
circumstance in the world : nor do we require the allega-
tion of the Morning Chronicle to assure us that His
Majesty is a Conservative, though, to be sure, it is the
only assertion of the Morning Chronicle that we ever
could believe.
But Lord Melbourne not only cannot carry on the
Government — he never has carried on the Government.
During the whole period of his Downing Street roost, he has
done nothing but issue Treasury warrants for his own
salary, and approve of the project of laws which he knew
never could be passed. We have heard of children playing
at soldiers. Lord Melbourne and his fellows have been
playing at statesmen, and now that the holidays are over
they must go to school again ; or, rather, they have been
executing that military exploit which consists of an active
march over ground from which the battalion never
budges an inch, and all that is accomplished, after all
their exertions, is only kicking up a dust.
The country is sick of these fellows. It positively
nauseates the whole gang of pseudo-Reformers and
political economists and inquiring Commissioners and
dissenting delegates, and all the other base and unsavoury
92 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
fungi that have been generated of late years in the hotbed
of Whig agitation.
It does not become an ancient nation to be inquiring
for ever into the origin and " utility " of every tradi-
tionary custom and immemorial institution, like one of
the vulgar parvenu societies formed ten years back, and
which in half a century will be forgotten. England can
no longer submit to be treated like Greece or Guatemala
for the sake of serving the purposes of a weak faction and
filling the maws and pouches of their rascally retainers.
A free, flourishing, and famous people, who have
acquired their liberty, enjoyed their prosperity, and gained
their glory, under institutions which have lasted for a
thousand years do not want to know the pourquoi of all
their laws and customs.
The reign of Charlatans is over, and the Minister, their
chief, if he wishes to avoid punishment, had better imme-
diately retire to his country-seat.
1835] THE PEERS' AMENDMENTS 93
CHAPTER X
The " collision " and the Comet — The " use " of the Lords—
Limits of concession— Imprisonment for debt — More Com-
missioners— Sir John Campbell's breechless ancestors — The
People's House — Popish rebels — " Thank God there is a
House of Lords !"
Wednesday, September 2.
WELL, the collision has appeared before the Comet ; and
if that fiery meteor do not portend worse consequences
to the Constitution of England than the exhibition in the
House of Commons on Monday night, there is less chance
than some imagine of our imitating the grovelling days
"When Bradshaw bullied in a broad-brim hat." 1
After all the meetings of THE PEOPLE — after all the
valiant threats and " strong " resolutions — after the
menace of vestries, and the more awful and mysterious
murmurs of the Ministers — after the demand by the
Radicals from the Government that the Supplies should
be at least placed in the power of the Commons, and the
virtual promise of the Government, in answer to thtf
Radicals, that this great precautionary step should be
taken — what has happened ?
Why, that the same Ministers and the same Radicals
have swallowed every important amendment of the Peers
without a struggle, save in one point — the continuance
of their worships the Aldermen. The political and pro-
prietary rights of the freemen of England, to destroy
which the Ministers twice appealed to the House of
Commons and succeeded in their object, by the votes
of the Irish Papists, are retained ; although Lord Mel-
bourne characterised this constitutional amendment of
the Peers as the most injurious of all their propositions,
and thought it necessary at the very tenth hour in the
House of Lords again to declare his invincible aversion
to its ratification; yet these great and noble efforts of
1 James Bramston in " A Man of Taste."
94 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
Lord Lyndhurst and his brother Peers in favour of the
rights and liberties and property of a vast portion of
their fellow-subjects are now supported and seconded in
the House of Commons even without a murmur.
Who shall hereafter ask the " use " of the Lords ?
Again the great principle of qualification so violently
repudiated by that party in the Commons who owe their
support in so great a degree to the needy and insolvent
is recognised and submitted to in the same House of
Commons without a division.
And will anyone hereafter ask the " use " of the
Lords ?
In short, there appear to us to be only three proposi-
tions of the Peers of any magnitude to which the Ministers
finally object. The first of these, which relates to the
toll-exemption of the freeman, may be easily settled by
compensation; the second, relating to the distribution
of Church patronage by the Dissenters, will probably be
managed in a way not injurious to the Church; against
the third, which regards the retention of the Aldermen
and Town Clerks for life, the Government is disposed to
make a stand, because Sir Eobert Peel, the leader of the
Conservatives of England, combining the quality of
firmness with the desire of conciliation, does not think it
necessary to contend for a life tenure of office in the
Aldermen, when the humbled Whigs and Radicals offer
to give a six years' lease.
*****
Lord Lyndhurst, in the House of Lords on Monday
night, felt it his duty to notice the impertinent observa-
tions of Sir John Campbell, the King's Attorney- General
by the grace of O'Connell, on the reception of the Im-
prisonment for Debt Bill in their Lordships' House. And
the murder was soon out, and all the lamentations of the
Learned Gentleman and his desperate ribaldry soon ex-
plained, when it turned out that this vaunted Bill, which,
by-the-by, was indecently passed in a House of Commons
consisting only of forty Members, proposes, besides other
1835] IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT 95
enormous patronage, to establish FIFTY MORE COMMIS-
SIONERS.
Why, if the Whigs go on at this rate, where, in another
year or two, will be the boasted independence of the
British Bar ? Fifty more Commissioners, and all with
heavy salaries, and fifty registrars, and fifty ushers. Why,
'tis as good as plundering a city ; and not one of Sir John's
base and breechless ancestors at a Border fray could
ever have meditated a richer spoil. There was, then, no
trifle at stake when Sir John Campbell rushed down to
the House of Commons the other night to insult the Peers
of England, to the great diversion and edification of the
assembled Brutilitarians who represent "the People"
and ask the " use " of the Lords, and to the disgust of
the Conservative members who were present. Even
Lord Brougham agreed that this Imprisonment for Debt
BiU was " too bad."
The British people will no doubt be of opinion that
their Lordships acted most discreetly in postponing the
consideration of such an important measure for another
session, although the hopes of the crew are again dashed ;
and Parkes, whose name is now a proverb for a job
throughout " the two islands " to the plundered people
of which he so characteristically appeals to abolish the
House of Lords, must rest awhile from his spoil. We
hope that Joseph by this time clearly comprehends what
" the use of the Lords "is. One of the manifold uses of
that august assembly, Joseph, is to quash jobs by whom-
soever concocted; and if your mind be not now fully
enlightened, you may seek further information from the
roaring Rushton and the sober Drinkwater and the
unheard-of Wilkinson, or Cockburn the trustworthy,
and last, but, oh ! not least, " Horror-and-Hell " Dwarris.
* * * * *
There was great bawling in the House of Commons on
Monday night about " THE PEOPLE " and " the wishes of
the people " and " the power of the people." It was a
field-day for jargon, and the nonsense that Hume, and
96 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
O'Connell, and Warburton and Whalley, and that meagre-
minded rebel Roebuck, and that last desperate effort of
masculine organisation which lays claim to the name of
man, Ewart, who looks for all the world like Ralph, Sir
Hudibras's squire — the nonsense, we repeat, that these
fellows talked has seldom been equalled, even by them-
selves .
What do they mean by their favourite phrase, THE
PEOPLE'S House ? The available constituency of England
amounts to three hundred thousand. Are these three
hundred thousand men the people of England ? No,
these three hundred thousand men are the Commons,
not the people of England; and these Commons form a
class in the State, privileged, irresponsible, and hereditary,
like the Peers. The Commons, on account of their
number, meet by their representatives, and, to say nothing
of a majority of the Commons being opposed to the
Ministerial measure, the question when placed in the
most favourable light for the Government is just simply
this: They have thirty-seven Representatives of the
Popish Commons to place in opposition to one hundred
British Peers. Now, to say nothing of wealth and stake
in the country, and the usual considerations, it will be-
come us during "the collision" exactly to understand
how these Popish Commons are affected to the Constitu-
tion under which we have flourished, and which, in spite
of Brutilitarian nonsense, we are determined to uphold.
These Popish rebels avow their desire to effect a dis-
memberment of the Empire. By the aid of the Whigs
and the Brutilitarians they have nearly uprooted the
Protestant Church in Ireland; and their prime leader,
that arch-traitor O'Connell, has seized every opportunity
to declare that it is his wish, and shall be his endeavour,
to destroy the authority and abrogate the existence of
the House of Peers.
To be sure. Why, it is only the House of Lords
that at this moment maintains the Protestant cause in
this realm. " Thank God, there is a House of Lords !"
1835] PRINCIPLE OF THE BILL 97
said Cobbett a very short time before he died, and that
grateful ejaculation should be inscribed in letters of gold
on every temple and every dwelling-house in this still
free and still Protestant country.
CHAPTEE XI
Nearing a settlement — Mutual concessions — A remedial measure
— The war upon Aldermen — Eeform not necessarily revolu-
tion— State surgery — " Proceed, Peers of England " — The
flower of the nation.
Thursday, September 3.
THERE seems but one rational and satisfactory standard
by which the estates of the realm can at this moment
guide themselves in the mutual concessions which they
are called upon to make . The House of Commons estab-
lished a principle as the basis of their Bill for the Amend-
ment of Municipal Corporations, and this principle was
the abolition of close bodies by the substitution of a
popular election.
The House of Lords admitted the principle of the Bill
sent up to them by the Commons, and in reserving to
themselves the right of altering its details established as
the principle of these alterations that they should secure
the improvement without aiming at the reconstruction
of Corporations.
Now it remains for the two Houses, in the points of
controversy at present between them, exactly and con-
sistently to guide themselves by a becoming deference
to the two principles which they have separately estab-
lished. This is the only mode by which they can escape
a factious imputation. As the Lords neither expect nor
desire that Representatives of the Commons should make
any concession which may affect the principle which
Honourable Members have established, so it is equally
just that the Representatives of the Commons should
98 PEEKS AND PEOPLE [1835
neither expect nor desire that the Peers should make
any concession which may affect the principles which
their Lordships have established.
In return for the concessions which the Representa-
tives of the Commons have made upon the political and
proprietary rights of freemen, the principle of qualifica-
tion, and other very important subjects, the Lords, we
understand, are, with a similar liberality, disposed to
concede to the House of Commons as to the mode by
which that qualification shall be ascertained, as to the
proposed arrangement respecting the ecclesiastical patron-
age of the Corporations, and the question of tolls, for
which their Lordships will be satisfied if they obtain for
the freemen a compensation .
When we remember that these further concessions are
offered by an assembly which has already cheerfully and
unreservedly acceded to the propositions of the Commons
for abolishing the system of nomination, for establishing
popular and annual elections, for placing the Corporate
funds under the supervision of the inhabitants, and for
providing for the prompt and efficient administration of
local justice, no impartial person can deny that there is
on the part of the Peers of England a fixed and friendly
determination to improve and ameliorate the institutions
of the Empire.
With regard to the questions of the justices and the
division into wards, and one or two points of minor
interest and importance, the Representatives of the
Commons, in all probability, will not insist upon their
opposition to their Lordships' amendments.
The important clauses retaining Aldermen, acknow-
ledging the authority of the present Aldermen for life,
and continuing the official existence of the present Town
Clerks, remain to be considered. Is a compliance by the
Commons with the amendments of the Lords in this
respect inconsistent with the maintenance of the principle
of the Bill ? In no degree. The most ingenious reasoner
could not for a moment support a contrary reply.
1835] THE RIGHTS OF ALDERMEN 99
These arrangements are the necessary consequence of
respecting at the same time vested interests while you
establish popular rights. The Bill is a Bill to amend,
not to reconstruct, Corporations. This is now the genuine
character and avowed title of the Bill, and this the Lords
have established as the principle on which they have
founded their amendments.
The Bill is essentially of a remedial nature. The
grievances occasioned by the existence of the old Corpora-
tions are to be remedied, but the institutions are to be
respected. No organic changes are contemplated by the
measure, which, we repeat, assumes throughout a remedial,
not a destructive or creative, character. It has been
determined that the authorities heretofore nominated by
themselves shall in future be elected by their fellow-
citizens; but the authorities are still to remain. The
Alderman in future will be elected by his townsmen ; but
there is no reason why we should part with a title which,
as Earl Fitzwilliam wisely and well observed at the
Yorkshire meeting, " sprang from the cradle of our
liberties."
But shall an Alderman who now holds his authority
under the sanctity of a Royal charter — shall he be punished
for possessing so high a title, and be turned adrift as if
he had committed a high misdemeanour instead of en-
joying a high privilege ? Why this war upon Aldermen ?
Why should not the municipal rights of Aldermen be
respected as well as the municipal rights of freemen ?
The Whigs, who proposed to confiscate the property and
privileges of the freemen, were quite consistent in pro-
posing to abolish the dignity and authority of Aldermen ;
but the House of Lords, who have secured the gratitude
of a hundred thousand of the Commons of England by
their firm and triumphant vindication of their rights,
would only be establishing an anomaly to rescue the free-
men and desert their rulers. The same undeniable prin-
ciple applies to the Town Clerks. Their municipal rights
are as sacred as those of the Aldermen and freemen . To
100 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
neglect them because they are few in number would be
an act of cowardice of which the Upper House of Parlia-
ment could never be guilty.
By establishing at once a popular constituency, and
allowing them to elect their Town Council, and when a
vacancy occurs among the other members of the municipal
bodies to supply the vacant place in the same popular
mode, the Lords and Commons have most liberally and
effectually established a system of free election and
popular control throughout the country. By respecting
the rights of the existing members of the municipal body,
the House of Lords have given another proof that reform
is not necessarily revolution, and that the observance of
the sanctity of vested rights is not incompatible with the
establishment of popular franchises.
We trust the House of Commons will follow their wise
and patriotic example ; but if, unhappily, the influence of
a fatal connection force the Ministry to refuse their co-
operation with the Peers in this great behalf, this we do
know, that no consideration in the world will induce the
Peers to depart from their resolution, which will be as
firmly acted upon as it was deliberately taken.
The events of the last few hours have not induced the
Peers to repent the firmness with which they have exer-
cised their privileges .
Where now are the incendiary menaces which were
hurled so liberally but a few days back at this august
assembly. Why are the leading agitators silent ? Are
there no more abortive meetings to be dry-nursed ? The
vestries are as mute as swine that have had their swill.
The Supplies are not stopped.
Yet the " mutilations " have been duly sent to the
House where Hume acutely reasons and Eoebuck softly
persuades ; and instead of the Lords being arrested under
the " Cutting and Maiming Act," they have suddenly and
universally been recognised as very skilful and approved
State Surgeons.
Proceed, Peers of England. Proceed in your course —
1835] UNLETTERED CONTROVERSIALISTS 101
at once wise and courageous, temperate and dignified.
Your authority rests upon the confidence and affection
of your fellow - countrymen ; its recent exercise has
doubly entitled you to their respect and support. It is
not without a struggle that this England, so free, so
famous, so abundant in all that maketh the heart glad,
shall fall before a base and dastardly faction. You are
the chief flower of the nation,
"In peace our ornament, in war our shield ;"
and if the bitter records of the past bear any wisdom, it
is not lightly, or with a careless spirit, that the people
of England will part with the salutary institution of
your high estate.
CHAPTEE XII
Reform of the House of Lords — Rebellious nonsense — Ignorance
of the Constitution — The estates of the realm — An exposed
fallacy — Concerning etiquette.
Friday, September 4.
MB. HUME and his jackal, Mr. Roebuck, and Mr. Rippon,
who represents the Commons of Gateshead, opened the
Parliamentary campaign on Wednesday night against
the House of Lords by detailing their plans and projects
for what they called " a reform " of that ancient and
august institution.
To carry on a controversy with men so deeply and
darkly unlettered is impossible. Appeals to history, of
which they are ignorant, cannot, of course, be expected
to influence them ; and as for any conclusions which are
arrived at by the higher process of abstract disquisition,
it is very plain that we might as well address the member
for Middlesex in Greek or argue with the Bath delegate
in some of the dialects of the Hurons. But the rebellious
nonsense which these men utter affords a convenient peg
whereon to hang much instruction ; and if we neither hope
nor desire to convince them, we may at least attempt to
enlighten those whom they endeavour to delude.
102 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
And, in the first- place, these men are utterly ignorant
of the very nature of the English Constitution. Yes,
these reformers are most completely in the dark as to the
very character of the institutions which they profess
their anxiety and intention to alter.
The other night Lord John Russell, who has written
a book upon the English Constitution, and who, on the
same principle that bad wine makes very good vinegar,
has somehow or other contrived to be metamorphosed
from a tenth-rate author into a first-rate statesman1 —
the other night Lord John styled the King of England
one of the estates of the realm. We should like to know
in what authority his Lordship ever found the King of
England so styled ? In Coke ? In Selden ? In Black-
stone ?
The three estates of the realm are the Lords Spiritual
and Temporal, and the Commons ; that is to say, originally
the three privileged classes or orders of the Kingdom —
the Nobles, the Church, and the Commons. And Lord
John Russell, who made this gross mistake, is a Secretary
of State, a writer upon our Constitution, and leader of
one of the Houses of Parliament.
As little as the KING is an estate of the realm is the
PEOPLE. Yet the whole basis on which Mr. Hume and
his click found their arguments and attack upon the
Upper House of Parliament is the fallacy which we have
already exposed, that the COMMONS of England are the
PEOPLE of England. The representative of the Commons
of Middlesex is not the representative of the People of
Middlesex ; he is one of the representatives of a privileged
class or order in the State. The Commons of Middlesex,
forming a very insignificant fraction of the people of Middle-
sex, are privileged, irresponsible, and hereditary electors
of legislators; and they hold and exercise their high
functions by virtue of the same Convention that the Peers
of England, who form the other privileged, irresponsible,
1 See Introduction, p. 10.
1835] "IRRESPONSIBLE" POWER 103
and hereditary order of the State, meet and vote in the
House of Lords.
Therefore the moment that the rights, powers and
privileges of the House of Lords are violated by the Repre-
sentatives of the Commons the Convention is broken, the
social compact abrogated, society itself resolved into its
original elements, and the great body of the people called
upon to create and sanction some new form of government.
Mr. Hume and his Brutilitarians oppose the Peers
because they exercise an " irresponsible " power. As
well might the Peers oppose the Commons because they
exercise an irresponsible power. Their power to elect
law-makers is just as irresponsible as the power of the
Peers to make laws.
Is irresponsible power a whit more tolerable because
it is participated in by three hundred thousand men, the
number of the English Commons who exercised their
suffrage at the last election, instead of three hundred.
On the contrary, the three hundred are known, and there-
fore much more under the influence of public opinion
than the three hundred thousand who pervade society
like a favoured sect, and in some degree, like the Jesuits,
form a secret order.
Let Mr. Hume and his school push on their principles,
and see to what results they tend. Destroy the existing
Constitution of England and establish the principle that
no class shall exercise irresponsible power, and universal
suffrage follows, of course. Whether a social system under
any circumstances could flourish on such a basis is more
than doubtful — that it could be established in this ancient
realm is morally and physically impossible. Enough for
the present of these sciolists. That they are completely
ignorant of the nature of the British Constitution in
particular and of the nature of human society in general
is quite evident. When they meet the Peers of England,
Mr. Hume and Mr. Wakley complain that they must
stand and doff their beavers while their Lordships are
seated with covered heads. Why not ? As far as the
104 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
rationale of etiquette is concerned, it is most fit that
precedence and superior honours should be enjoyed by
the Peers, in themselves a privileged order, when they
meet a deputation of Gentlemen who are only the repre-
sentatives of a privileged order.
If precedence and etiquette, and those forms and cere-
monies which the experience of our ancestors have found
convenient and decorous, are to be maintained, and we
are not all at once to sink in the degrading slough of a
base equality, we are acquainted with no form and cere-
mony more rational and fitting than the one of which
these ignorant men complain.
The order of the Peers is a higher order than that of
the Commons. Thus the Constitution has decided. As
well might the Peers complain of vailing their coronets
before their SOVEREIGN as the Commons or their repre-
sentatives of uncovering their heads before the Peers,
and with the same grace that the Eepresentatives of the
Commons maintain their right to equal ceremonies with
the Peers might any one of the people summoned to the
bar refuse to uncover, and claim a seat.
CHAPTER XIII
Pym and Hampden — A lesson from history — An illegal notice —
The law and the Constitution — The Lords Spiritual — A
democratic institution.
Saturday, September 5.
ABOUT two centuries back the " prentices of London," at
the instigation of a party in the House of Commons,
made themselves hoarse with bawling out " Down with
the Bishops and the rotten-hearted Lords !" The arts of
insurgency were full as well understood in those days as
the present ; indeed, we suspect that Pym and Hampden
were as dexterous hands at getting up a crisis or fostering
a collision as any Roundhead of the present Cabinet, or
any Rump-agitator in their train.
1835] LOED JOHN RUSSELL 105
In consequence of these riots a pretext was obtained
for sequestrating the Lords Spiritual from their seats in
Parliament; and in due course the Lords Temporal were
as successfully attacked, and the House of Peers, to quote
the identical language of the resolution, voted " useless."
In five years' time the omnipotent House of Commons,
that had carried affairs with this high ambition, was
itself sequestrated and itself declared " useless," and a
military despotism established in our country.
It appears that Mr. Cuthbert Rippon, the Representa-
tive of the Commons of Gateshead, has revived the cry
of the " prentices of London " ; and probably thinks he
is giving utterance to a very bright and original idea.
The Lords Spiritual have just as much right to question
the propriety of Gateshead sending their Representative
to the Lower House as that functionary has to question
the right of the Lords Spiritual to seat themselves in
the House of Peers. Their title, indeed, to their power
and privileges is of a far more ancient date than that of
the Commons of Gateshead ; nor do we see how, with any
respect for the old and still existing Constitution of
these realms, such notices as those of Mr. Rippon and
Mr. Hume can be publicly given and officially registered
in the House of Commons. We hesitate not to say
they are illegal, although John Russell may be of a
different opinion, and Lord John Russell, as we proved
yesterday, is especially distinguished for constitutional
lore.
Lord John Russell, who announces the King to be one
of the estates of the realm — a fact unknown to Coke, or
Selden, or Blackstone — will perhaps inform us whether
it would be Parliamentary, constitutional, or legal, to give
notice of a motion in the House of Commons to question
the hereditary succession of the Throne, or the Royal
prerogative to make peace or declare war. Lord John
Russell knows that such a motion cannot be made, that
Parliamentary usage alone would not permit it to be
entered on the journals, and that Parliamentary privilege
8
106 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
alone would prevent the mover from being sent to the
Tower.
What difference is there in attacking the powers and
privileges of what Lord John Russell calls and considers
the second estate of the realm from attacking those of
the first ? Such notices are, without doubt, illegal ; such
ir reverend mention of any part or portion, member or
branch, of the Constitution is a high misdemeanour, and
it was the duty of some Conservative member immedi-
ately to prevent the notice of those motions being recorded.
We repeat that the English Constitution is a conven-
tional arrangement, that by virtue of the compact certain
classes or orders of the people are privileged, that if the
privileges of one order are invaded by the privileges of
the other the compact is destroyed, and society is re-
solved into its original elements.
So much for the law and the Constitution. Let us now
consider the abstract expediency of Mr. Cuthbert Rippon's
modest proposition. The great cry of the levellers of
the present day is against the hereditary jurisdiction of
the House of Lords. We have at other times shown that
this privilege is not of the peculiar and exclusive character
that the superficial imagine, but that it is in harmony
with the whole system of our Constitution. Neverthe-
less, for the sake of the argument, we will for a moment
admit that the privilege is an anomaly, and that the
consequences may be that the highest powers may be
exercised by those little qualified for the office.
Well, then, here is the estate of the Lords Spiritual, the
very Peerage for life, for which the Radicals clamour —
an estate, too, of which the members must in general
necessarily be more distinguished for their talents, their
learning, and their piety, and often spring from the
humbler classes of the people.
There is not a more democratic institution in the country
than the Church, and this is the institution the Radicals
are ever menacing and decrying.
1835] PEERS' AUTHORITY ASSERTED 107
CHAPTER XIV
The Parliamentary Session — Summing up — Triumph of Constitu-
tional principles — " A rascally crew of jobbing sciolists " —
Utilitarian misrepresentations — Lord John Russell's blunder
— The Revolutionary party — Tribute to Sir Robert Peel.
Monday, September 7.
THE Parliamentary session about to terminate will be
memorable for circumstances even more important than
its unprecedented duration and the passing of the Cor-
poration Bill.
The principles of the English Constitution have not
only rallied, but triumphed.1 The independent authority
of the Upper House of Parliament, to the exercise and
influence of which we have, in so many periods of our
history, been indebted for the maintenance of our rights
and liberties, has during the present session been asserted
by its native and essential strength alone, and will, we
confidently hope, be this night again virtually and signifi-
cantly acknowledged by the further and judicious com-
pliance of the House of Commons with those salutary
amendments to which the Peers have wisely deemed it
their duty to adhere, and the propriety of which they know
to be sanctioned by the opinion of the people.
It is undeniable that in the later events there is much
to cheer the heart of every lover of his country, and every
admirer of those ancient institutions which have alike
formed and sprung from the national character ; and
which, like all institutions founded on so sound a basis,
are invested with a remarkable and a happy power of
adapting themselves to the wants and wishes of the
society which they regulate and protect v
At present the people of England have a wiser trust in
the practical wisdom of Alfred the Great than in the
verbose and windy theories of Jeremy Bentham and his
Utilitarian disciples ; and as long as this be the case we
1 See parallel passage in Dedication to the Letters of Runny-
mede.
108 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
shall adhere to our laws, our customs, and our institu-
tions. They have made this realm " the inviolate island
of the sage and free," and we should be base fools indeed
to desert our Constitution — ay, our still unrivalled Con-
stitution, for such we hold it, and to which we are indebted
for all our famous liberty, and more than Tyrian wealth,
and blaze of intellectual glory.
We are not ashamed in this cold-blooded coxcombical
nineteenth century to praise the Constitution of England ;
and if all dared speak as they deem, the good old times
would soon return, when we were grateful to Providence
for our free and famous Constitution as for the beauteous
and fertile land wherein we dwell.
But a rascally rabble of jobbing sciolists have of late
years been distilling their leprous poison into the un-
guarded ears of our generation. We love our Constitu-
tion, we honour it, we cherish it, and we understand it.
But as for the Utilitarian sophists who, for the last few
years, in public and private, in Press and market-place,
senate and saloon, have been gabbling against the in-
stitutions and sneering at the wisdom of our ancestors —
they know nothing about the Constitution, they are
absolutely in the dark respecting the very subject they
criticise ; every observation they make, when they descant
on the English Constitution, would apply as well to the
Aulic Council, the Hungarian Diet, or the Divan itself.
We have several times of late taken an opportunity in
this journal of exposing the flagrant fallacies which these
persons make when they venture on the sacred ground
they too often violate, and indulge in their Constitutional
comments and criticisms. We have already destroyed
the great " discovery " of the Utilitarians — to wit, " the
anomalous irresponsibility of the House of Lords," and
on which blunder one journal has lived for the last six
years, and dinned the noisy nonsense every week into the
ears of the lieges. It may truly be said of the Lords that
" Sunday shines no Sabbath-day on them."1
1 " Ev'n Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me " (Pope).
1835] THE UTILITARIANS 109
This mighty discovery, we repeat — this pompous
axiom, which is regularly enunciated with such practised
complacency — we have already proved to be nothing
more than a big mare's nest, the Peers of England not
being one whit more irresponsible than the Commons of
England.
The next mischievous representation that the Utili-
tarians have taken much pains to pass current is that
the House of Commons is " the People's House." But
although this statement has passed current, it is never-
theless base, for, as we have before shown, the House of
Commons is no more " the People's House " than the
House of Lords.
The third artifice of the revolutionary school is their
abuse of the word " people " altogether. We have
proved that all the elements of a great people are enlisted
in the cause of the Constitution, and in analysing the
elements of the Conservative party we have demon-
strated that, instead of a party, it is in fact a nation.
So much for the Utilitarians; they are miserable suc-
cessors to the Girondists. But the Utilitarians are deep
enough for the Whigs, when the English leader, who has
written a book on the English Constitution, describes our
Most Gracious Sovereign in the assembled House of
Commons as one of the three estates of the realm. We
venture to say that, considering the quarter from whence
it emanated, this was the greatest blunder ever made in
a legislative assembly. But it is a very instructive
blunder, people of England — and we do not speak to the
Peers and Commons merely, but to the whole people —
this, we say, is a very instructive blunder for you; for
by Lord John Russell's knowledge of your Constitution
you may judge of his ability to amend it. The man who
is even now ignorant of what the THREE estates of the
realm really are, was five years ago selected by the
Whigs to reform ONE of them. We are only surprised
that he did not fix upon His Majesty by mistake.
But to-day we are disposed to treat the Whigs with
110 PEERS AND PEOPLE [1835
lightness. Lord John Russell, it appears, has not for-
gotten that his father is Duke of Bedford.
The judicious and well-timed notices of Mr. Hume and
Mr. Rippon and Mr. Roebuck have reminded the Whigs
of what they sometimes would willingly forget.
The essential strength of the Revolutionary party in
the House of Commons is much overrated. Five-sixths
of the present members of the Lower House are personally
interested in the preservation of the House of Lords and
the maintenance of its authority. Five-sixths, and more
than five-sixths, of the people sympathise with them.
The Whigs and the House of Commons have acted
wisely; they have done well — very well indeed. They
have not suffered themselves to be misled by the rant
and riot of a party insignificant in point of number —
more insignificant in point of influence and talent.
The House of Commons will, we doubt not, accept this
evening all the important amendments of the House of
Lords save one, and one only, to the modification of which
the Lords have consented in deference, not to the Govern-
ment, but to the wisdom, experience, and moderation of
the eminent leader of the Conservatives of England, Sir
Robert Peel.
1835] LOED LYNDHURST'S SUGGESTION 111
VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH
CONSTITUTION
IN A LETTER TO A NOBLE AND LEARNED LORD
By DISRAELI THE YOUNGER
[ " THE VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION "
appeared in December, 1835. It took the form of a
" letter to a noble and learned lord." This was Lord
Lyndhurst, with whom during the year the young poli-
tician had become closely connected. The tract is de-
scribed by Mr. Monypenny as " the most important of
Disraeli's early political writings," and as giving him
" what his fugitive efforts could never have given him —
a recognised position as a political writer and thinker."
It has twice been republished, but the reprints are almost
as scarce as the original. Its reappearance will be wel-
comed by those who desire to have by them for reference
the fullest authoritative exposition of Disraeli's views on
the Constitution.]
CHAPTER I
Of Writers on the English Constitution.
YOUR Lordship has honoured me by a wish that some
observations which I have made in conversation on the
character of our Constitution might be expressed in a
more formal and more public manner. When I transmit
you this long letter I fear you may repent your friendly
suggestion ; but the sub ject has given rise to so many
reflections that I did not anticipate that what I originally
112 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
intended for a pamphlet has, I fear, expanded almost
into a volume.
The polity of England, which has established the most
flourishing society of modern ages, and regulated the
destinies of a nation which for many centuries has made
LETTER FROM DISRAELI TO HIS SISTER (DECEMBER 5, 1835)
CONCERNING THE " VINDICATION."
The letter continues : " It will be out next week, but not, I fear, in the early
part. ' '
(By permission of Messrs. Maggs Brothers, from the original in their possession.)
a progressive advance in the acquisition of freedom,
wealth, and glory, undoubtedly presents one of the most
interesting subjects of speculation in political philosophy.
Nor is it one that has been neglected; and illustrious
foreigners have emulated our native authors in their
1835] A NEW POLITICAL SECT 113
treatises of the English Constitution. Our own constitu-
tional writers may, in general, be divided into two classes :
firstly, the mere antiquaries, whose labours, however, are
inestimable ; and, secondly, that order of political writers
who have endeavoured, in an examination of what they
style the theory of the Constitution, to promulgate the
opinions and maintain the interests of the party in the
State in whose ranks they have been enrolled : the disser-
tations upon our Constitution have therefore been either
archaeological treatises or party manifestoes.
Yet for many years the general result of these writings,
whichever might be the quarter whence they emanated,
was, as far as their subject was concerned, one of un-
qualified panegyric. However the excesses of factions
might be deplored, or the misrepresentations of factious
writers exposed and stigmatised, the English Constitution
was universally recognised as an august and admirable
fabric, and counted among the choicest inventions of
public intellect on record. That a very different tone
has of late years been assumed by our public writers is a
notorious circumstance. A political sect has sprung up
avowedly adverse to the Estates of the Realm, and seek-
ing by means which, of course, it holds legal, the abroga-
tion of a majority of them. These anti-constitutional
writers, like all new votaries, are remarkable for their
zeal and activity. They omit no means of disseminating
their creed : they are very active missionaries : there is no
medium of the public press of which they do not avail
themselves : they have their newspapers, daily and weekly,
their magazines, and their reviews. The unstamped
press takes the cue from them, and the members of the
party who are in Parliament lose no opportunity of dila-
ting on the congenial theme at the public meetings of their
constituents.
114 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
CHAPTER II
Of the Utilitarian System — Its Fallacies.
THE avowed object of this new sect of statesmen is to
submit the institutions of the country to the test of
UTILITY, and to form a new Constitution on the abstract
principles of theoretic science. I think it is Voltaire who
tells us that there is nothing more common than to read
and to converse to no purpose, and that in history, in
morals, and in divinity, we should beware of EQUIVOCAL
TERMS. I do not think that politics should form an ex-
ception to this salutary rule; and, for my own part, it
appears to me that this term, UTILITY, is about as equivo-
cal as any one which, from the time of the Nominalists
and Realists to our present equally controversial and
equally indefinite days, hath been let loose to breed sects
and set men a-brawling. The fitness of a material object
for a material purpose is a test of its utility which our
senses and necessities can decide; but what other test
there is of moral and political utility than the various
and varying opinions of mankind I am at a loss to dis-
cover; and that this is utterly unsatisfactory and insuffi-
cient, all, I apprehend, must agree.
Indeed, I have hitherto searched in vain in the writings
of the Utilitarian sect for any definition of their funda-
mental phrase with which it is possible to grapple. That
they pretend to afford us a definition it would be dis-
ingenuous to conceal, and we are informed that Utility
is " the principle which produces the greatest happiness
of the greatest number." Does this advance us in com-
prehension ? Who is to decide upon the greatest happi-
ness of the greatest number ? According to Prince Met-
ternich, the government of Austria secures the greatest
happiness of the greatest number: it is highly probable
that the effect of the Austrian education and institutions
1835] THE "GREATEST HAPPINESS" PRINCIPLE 115
may occasion the majority of the Austrian population to
be of the same opinion. Yet the government of Austria
is no favourite with the anti-constitutional writers of our
own country. Gross superstition may secure the greatest
happiness of the greatest number, as it has done in Spain
and Portugal : a military empire may secure the greatest
happiness of the greatest number, as it has done in Rome
and France: a coarse and unmitigated despotism may
secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as
it does to this day in many regions of Asia and Africa.
Every government that ever existed, that has enjoyed
any quality of duration, must have been founded on this
" greatest happiness principle," for, had not the majority
thought or felt that such were its result, the government
could never have endured. There have been times, and
those too not far gone, when the greatest happiness of
Christian nations has been secured by burning men alive
for their religious faith; and unless we are prepared to
proclaim that all religious creeds which differ from our
own are in fact not credited by their pretended votaries,
we must admit that the greatest happiness of the greatest
number of mankind is even now secured by believing that
which we know to be false. If the greatest happiness of
the greatest number, therefore, be the only test of the
excellence of political institutions, that may be the plea
for institutions which, according to the Utilitarians espe-
cially, are monstrous or absurd : and if to avoid this con-
clusion we maintain that the greatest number are not
the proper judges of the greatest happiness, we are only
referred to the isolated opinions of solitary philosophers,
or at the best to the conceited conviction of some
sectarian minority. UTILITY, in short, is a mere phrase,
to which any man may ascribe any meaning that his
interests prompt or his passions dictate. With this plea,
a nation may consider it in the highest degree useful
that all the statues scattered throughout the museums of
Christendom should be collected in the same capital, and
conquer Christendom in consequence to obtain their
116 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
object ; and by virtue of the same plea, some Iconoclastic
enemy may declare war upon this nation of Dilettanti
to-morrow, and dash into fragments their cosmopolite
collection.
Viewed merely in relation to the science of government,
the effect of the test of utility, as we have considered it,
would in all probability be harmless, and its practical
tendency, if any, would rather lead to a spirit of con-
servation and optimism than to one of discontent and
change. But optimism is assuredly not the system of
the Utilitarians: far from thinking everything is for the
best, they decidedly are of opinion that everything is for
the worst. In order, therefore, that their test of utility
should lead to the political results which they desire, they
have dovetailed their peculiar system of government into
a peculiar system of morals, in connection with which we
must alone subject it to our consideration. The same
inventive sages, who have founded all political science on
UTILITY, have founded all moral science on SELF-IN-
TEREST, and have then declared that a system of govern-
ment should be deduced alone from the principles of
human nature. If mankind could agree on a definition
of Self-interest, I willingly admit that they would not be
long in deciding upon a definition of Utility. But what
do the Utilitarians mean by the term Self-interest ? I
at once agree that man acts from no other principle than
self-interest, but I include in self-interest, and I should
think every accurate reasoner must do the same, every
motive that can possibly influence man. If every motive
that can possibly influence man be included in self-
interest, then it is impossible to form a science on a
principle which includes the most contrary motives. If
the Utilitarians will not admit all the motives, but only
some of the motives, then their science of government is
not founded on human nature, but only on a part of
human nature, and must be consequently and propor-
tionately imperfect. But the Utilitarian only admits
one or two of the motives that influence man ; a desire of
1835] MORALS AND POLITICS 117
power and a desire of property ; and therefore infers that
it is the interest of man to tyrannise and to rob.
The blended Utilitarian system of morals and politics,
then, runs thus : Man is only influenced by self-interest :
it is the interest of man to be a tyrant and a robber: a
man does not change his nature because he is a king;
therefore a king is a tyrant and a robber. If it be the
interest of one man to be a tyrant and a robber, it is the
interest of fifty or five thousand to be tyrants and robbers ;
therefore we cannot trust an aristocracy more than a
monarch. But the eternal principle of human nature
must always hold good. A privileged class is always an
aristocracy, whether it consists of five thousand or fifty
thousand, a band of nobles or a favoured sect ; therefore
the power of government should be entrusted to all;
therefore the only true and useful government is a repre-
sentative polity, founded on universal suffrage. This is
the Utilitarian system of morals and government, drawn
from their " great works " by one who has no wish to
misrepresent them. Granting for a moment their pre-
mises, I do not see that their deduction, even then, is
logically correct. It is possible to conceive a state of
society where the government may be in the hands of a
favoured majority ; a community of five millions, of which
three might form a privileged class. Would not the
greatest happiness of the greatest number be secured by
such an arrangement ? and, if so secured, would or would
not the Utilitarian, according to his theory, feel justified
in disturbing it ? If he oppose such a combination, he
overthrows his theory ; if he consents to such a combina-
tion, his theory may uphold tyranny and spoliation.
But I will not press this point : it is enough for me to
show that, to render their politics practical, they are
obliged to make their metaphysics impossible. Let the
Utilitarian prove that the self-interest of man always leads
him to be a tyrant and a robber, and I will grant that
universal suffrage is a necessary and useful institution.
A nation that conquers the world acts from self-interest ;
118 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
a nation that submits to a conqueror acts from self-
interest. A spendthrift and a miser alike act from self-
interest: the same principle animated Messalina and
Lucretia, Bayard and Byng. To say that when a man
acts he acts from self-interest is only to announce that
when a man does act he acts. An important truth, a
great discovery, calling assuredly for the appearance of
prophets, or, if necessary, even ghosts. But to announce
that when a man acts he acts from self-interest, and that
the self-interest of every man prompts him to be a tyrant
and a robber, is to declare that which the experience of
all human nature contradicts; because we all daily and
hourly feel and see that there are a thousand other motives
which influence human conduct besides the idea of exer-
cising power and obtaining property ; every one of which
motives must rank under the term Self-interest, because
every man who acts under their influence must neces-
sarily believe that in so acting he acts for his happiness,
and therefore for his self-interest. Utility, Pain, Power,
Pleasure, Happiness, Self-interest, are all phrases to which
any man may annex any meaning he pleases, and from
which any acute and practised reasoner may most syllo-
gistically deduce any theory he chooses. " Such words,"
says Locke, " no more improve our understanding than
the move of a jack will fill our bellies." This waste of
ingenuity on nonsense is like the condescending union
that occasionally occurs between some high-bred steed
and some long-eared beauty of the Pampas : the base and
fantastical embrace only produces a barren and mulish
progeny.
1835J "A PKIOKI" SYSTEMS 119
CHAPTEE III
Of Abstract Principles in Politics, and the Degree of Theory that
enters into Politics.
WE have before this had an a priori system of celestial
mechanics, and its votaries most syllogistically sent Galileo
to a dungeon, after having triumphantly refuted him.
We have before this had an a priori system of metaphysics,
but where now are the golden volumes of Erigena,1 and
Occam, and Scotus, and Raymond Lully ?2 And now we
have an a priori system of politics. The schoolmen are
revived in the nineteenth century, and are going to settle
the State with their withering definitions, their fruitless
logomachies, and barren dialectics.
I should suppose that there is no one of the Utilitarian
sages who would not feel offended if I were to style him
the Angelical Doctor, like Thomas Aquinas ; and I regret,
from bitter experience, that they have not yet conde-
scended sufficiently to cultivate the art of composition
to entitle them to the style of the Perspicuous Doctor,
like Walter Burley.
These reflections naturally lead me to a consideration
of the great object of our new school of statesmen in
general, which is to form political institutions on abstract
principles of theoretic science, instead of permitting them
to spring from the course of events, and to be naturally
created by the necessities of nations. It would appear
that this scheme originated in the fallacy of supposing
that theories produce circumstances, whereas the very
converse of the proposition is correct, and circumstances
indeed produce theories. If we survey the career of an
1 Joannes Scotus Erigena, mediaeval philosopher; wrote "De
Divisione Naturae."
2 William of Occam ("Doctor Invincibilis "), John Duns
Scotus ("Doctor Subtilis"), and Kaimon Lull ("Doctor Illu-
minatus "), schoolmen of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuriest
120 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
individual, we shall on the whole observe a remarkable
consistency in his conduct ; yet it is more than possible
that this individual has never acted from that organised
philosophy which we style system. What, then, has pro-
duced this consistency ? what, then, has occasioned this
harmony of purpose ? His individual character. Nations
have characters as well as individuals, and national char-
acter is precisely the quality which the new sect of states-
men in their schemes and speculations either deny or
overlook. The ruling passion, which is the result of
organisation, regulates the career of an individual, sub-
ject to those superior accidents of fortune whose secondary
influence is scarcely inferior to the impulse of his nature.
The blended influences of nature and fortune form his
character; 'tis the same with nations. There are im-
portant events in the career of an individual which force
the man to ponder over the past, and, in these studies of
experience and struggles for self-knowledge, to ascertain
certain principles of conduct which he recognises as the
cause of past success, and anticipates as the guarantee of
future prosperity: and there are great crises in the for-
tunes of an ancient people which impel them to examine
the nature of the institutions which have gradually sprung
up among them. In this great national review, duly and
wisely separating the essential character of their history
from that which is purely adventitious, they discover
certain principles of ancestral conduct, which they acknow-
ledge as the causes that these institutions have flourished
and descended to them; and in their future career, and
all changes, reforms, and alterations, that they may deem
expedient, they resolve that these principles shall be their
guides and their instructors. By these examinations
they become more deeply intimate with their national
character; and on this increased knowledge, and on this
alone, they hold it wise to act. This, my Lord, I appre-
hend to be the greatest amount of theory that ever enters
into those political institutions, which, from their perma-
nency, are alone entitled to the consideration of a philo-
1835] THE GREAT CHARTER 121
sophical statesman ; and this moderate, prudent, sagacious,
and eminently practical application of principles to con-
duct has ever been, in the old time, the illustrious charac-
teristic of our English politicians.
CHAPTER IV
Of Magna Oharta — Petition of Right.
FROM the days of Magna Charta to those of the Declara-
tion of Bight, the same wary boldness is perceptible in
the conduct of our leaders. It is the fashion nowadays
to depreciate the value of the Great Charter — an ominous
sign of the times, in my belief. For he runs a slight
chance of being ultimately counted among the false
prophets of the realm who predicts that, when the men-
tion of that blessed deed does not command the rever-
ential gratitude of every Briton, evil fortunes are im-
pending for this society. Despots may depreciate it,
whether they assume the forms of crowned monarchs or
popular tribunes, for it stands alike in their way ; but he
who really loves freedom and his fatherland will never
forget that the signet of the tyrant sealed alike our civil
liberty and our national independence. They were great
men, my Lord, that Archbishop of Canterbury1 and that
Earl of Pembroke, who, in the darkness of feodal ages,
laid this bold and broad foundation of our national
liberties; they were great men, and they were great
statesmen. They did not act upon abstract principles,
luckily for us, principles which the next age might have
rejected, and the first schoolman, hired by the King,
might have refuted; they acted upon positive conven-
tional right. They set up no new title: they claimed
their inheritance. They established the liberties of Eng-
lishmen as a life estate which their descendants might
enjoy, but could not abuse by committing waste, or
1 Stephen Langton.
122 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
forfeit by any false, and fraudulent conveyance. They
entailed our freedom.
The Magna Charta, at which our new sect of statesmen,
the admirers of abstractions, sneer (it would be well if
they read it oftener or at all), established an equality of
civil rights to all classes of English freemen. It ter-
minated arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation.
It enacted that justice should neither be sold, nor denied,
nor delayed. It virtually established Habeas Corpus.
It eminently advanced civilisation by curtailing at the
same time the most crying grievances of the feodal tenure,
and rendering inviolate the franchises of all mural com-
munities. It checked the forest laws, established the
freedom of foreign commerce, and finally secured the
speedy execution of justice by virtually rendering the
Court of Common Pleas permanent at Westminster, and
independent of the Sovereign.
But, my Lord, these great and manifold blessings were
not wrested from the Norman oppressor by the Barons
of England under the plea of Utility, or with some windy
and senseless cry of securing the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. Stephen Langton knew the value of
words as well as any clerk in Christendom ; and he knew
also that the right that is founded on words may be sub-
verted by the same machinery ; that what is incontestable
in the twelfth century may be a subject of great discus-
sion in the thirteenth; that a first principle in one age
may become a second principle in a succeeding century,
or a twenty-second principle. Whether there were any
Utilitarians under the Plantagenets I pretend not to
decide. There is generally no lack of political sciolists,
and, for aught I know, some predecessor of Condorcet1
or Bentham may have been innocently dreaming in a
cloister; but if these abstract-principle gentlemen had
been as active in the reign of John as in that of our own
gracious Sovereign, I doubt our great Lord Primate would
1 Marie Jean Antoine Nicholas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet
(1743-1794), French philosopher.
1835] PETITION OF EIGHT 123
have placed the State in jeopardy to make it prove and
square with their cockbrained fancies . The Barons wished
that the liberties they secured for themselves should like-
wise descend to their posterity; and as therefore they
were to become a matter of inheritance, as a matter of
inheritance they claimed them. They claimed them as
an inheritance which had been too long in abeyance ; and,
not content with establishing their confirmation by Henry
Beauclerk, they traced their glorious pedigree even to the
Confessor.
I do not find, my Lord, that at a much later but as
momentous a period of our history, Selden and Sir
Edward Coke, though they lived in an age which, in the
Protestant Reformation and the Revolt of the Nether-
lands, had witnessed revolutions as awful as any of those
which we or our fathers can remember; and had, con-
sequently, the advantage of a far vaster range of political
experience than the Stephen Langtons and the great
patriots of the reign of John ; I do not find, my Lord,
that these wise, and spirited, and learned personages saw
fit to question the propriety of their great ancestors' con-
duct. On the contrary, knowing that society is neither
more nor less than a compact, and that no right can be
long relied on that cannot boast a conventional origin,
they were most jealous of our title to our liberties. They
lavished all their learning in proving its perfection and
completeness. They never condescended to argue; they
offered evidence. They were ever ready with their
abstract of title, and, with very slight alterations, the
language of the famous Petition of Right itself might be
transformed into a humble request to a Sovereign for the
restoration of some real estate — some patrimony long
withheld from a defrauded posterity. In short, all our
struggles for freedom smack of law. There is throughout
the whole current of our history a most salutary legal
flavour. And arbitrary monarchs and rebellious Parlia-
ments alike cloak their encroachments under the sacred
veil of right, alike quote precedent and cling to prescription.
124 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
CHAPTER V
Of Precedent, Prescription, and Antiquity — Of the Formation of
a Free Constitution.
THIS respect for Precedent, this clinging to Prescription,
this reverence for Antiquity, which are so often ridiculed
by conceited and superficial minds, and move the especial
contempt of the gentlemen who admire abstract principles,
appear to me to have their origin in a profound know-
ledge of human nature, and in a fine observation of public
affairs, and satisfactorily to account for the permanent
character of our liberties. Those great men, who have
periodically risen to guide the helm of our government in
times of tumultuous and stormy exigency, knew that a
State is a complicated creation of refined art, and they
handled it with all the delicacy a piece of exquisite
machinery requires. They knew that, if once they ad-
mitted the abstract rights of subjects, they must inevit-
ably advance to the abstract rights of men, and then that
the very foundations of their civil polity would sink
beneath them. They held this to be too dear a price for
the barren fruition of a first principle. They knew that
- the foundation of civil polity is Convention, and that
everything and every person that springs from that
foundation must partake of that primary character.
They held themselves bound by the contracts of their
forefathers, because they wished their posterity to observe
their own agreements. They did not comprehend how
the perpetuity of a State could be otherwise preserved.
xThey looked upon the nation as a family, and upon the
country as a landed inheritance. Generation after
generation were to succeed to it, with all its convenient
buildings, and all its choice cultivation, its parks and
gardens, as well as its fields and meads, its libraries and
its collections of art, all its wealth, but all its incum-
brances.
1835J KEVEEENCE FOR ANTIQUITY 125
Holding society to be as much an artificial creation as
the fields and cities amid which they dwelt, they were of
opinion that every subject was bound to respect the
established Constitution of his country, because, inde-
pendent of all other advantages, to that Constitution he
was indebted even for his life. Had not the State been
created the subject would not have existed. Man with'^
them, therefore, was the child of the State, and bornj
with filial duties. To disobey the State, therefore, was
a crime ; to rebel against it, treason ; to overturn it, parri-
cide. Our ancestors could not comprehend how this high
spirit of loyalty could be more efficiently fostered and
maintained than by providing that the rights, privileges,
and possessions of all should rest on no better foundation
than the State itself. They would permit no antagonist
principle in their body politic. They would not tolerate
nature struggling with art, or theory with habit. Hence
their reverence for prescription, which they placed above
law, and held superior to reason. It is to this deference
to what Lord Coke finely styles " reverend antiquity "
that I ascribe the duration of our commonwealth, and it
is this spirit which has prevented even our revolutions
from being destructive.
I do not see, my Lord, that this reverence for antiquity
has checked the progress of knowledge, or stunted the
growth of liberty, in this island. We are universally
held to be the freest people in Europe, and to have en-
joyed our degree of freedom for a longer period than any
existing State. I am not aware that any nation can
fairly assert its claims to superior learning or superior
wisdom; to a more renowned skill in arts or arms; to a
profounder scientific spirit ; to a more refined or compre-
hensive civilisation. I know that a year or two back the
newspapers that are in the interest of the new sect of
statesmen were wont to twit and taunt us with the superior
freedom of our neighbours. " The fact can no longer be
concealed," announced the prime organ of the party,
" the people of France are freer than the people of Eng-
126 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
land. The consciousness of this fact will be the last blow
to the oligarchy." Profound publicist ! The formation
of a free government on an extensive scale, while it is as-
suredly one of the most interesting problems of humanity,
is certainly the greatest achievement of human wit. Per-
haps I should rather term it a superhuman achievement ;
for it requires such refined prudence, such comprehensive
knowledge, and such perspicacious sagacity, united with
such almost illimitable powers of combination, that it is
nearly in vain to hope for qualities so rare to be congre-
gated in a solitary mind. Assuredly this summum bonum
is not to be found ensconced behind a revolutionary barri-
cade, or floating in the bloody gutters of an incendiary
metropolis. It cannot be scribbled down — this great in-
vention— in a morning on the envelope of a letter by
some charter-concocting monarch, or sketched with ludi-
crous facility in the conceited commonplace book of a
Utilitarian sage. With us it has been the growth of ages,
and brooding centuries have watched over and tended its
perilous birth and feeble infancy. The noble offspring of
liberty and law now flourishes in the full and lusty vigour
of its proud and perfect manhood. Long may it flourish !
Long be its life, venerable its age, and distant its beatified
euthanasia ! I offer this prayer for the sake of human
nature as much as for my country ; not more for Britain
than for the world of which it is the ornament and honour.
CHAPTER VI
Of the Attempts of the French to form a Free Constitution —
Reasons of their Failure — Fallacy of adopting the English
Constitution in France.
WHEN the people of France, at the latter part of the last
century, made their memorable effort for the formation
of a free government, they acted on very different prin-
ciples to those that guided Stephen Langton and Selden.
Their principles, indeed, were as abstract as any Utili-
1835] FKENCH UTILITARIANS 127
tarian could desire. They built their fabric, not merely ~J
upon the abstract rights of subjects, but the abstract j
rights of men, and at once boldly seized equality for their ^
basis. We know the result. Equality, anarchy, tyranny,
were the necessary gradations of their philosophical system
of political regeneration. Wearied with fruitless efforts,
and exhausted by long suffering, they at length took
refuge in the forced shade of exotic institutions. We
witnessed the miserable but inevitable fate of the con-
stitutional studies of the groves of Hartwell j1 a fate which
must ever attend institutions that have not been created
by the genius of a country, and with which the national
character can never sympathise.
In Prance, previous to the great revolution, there
existed all the elements of a free Constitution, although
not of the English Constitution. In its old local divisions,
indicated by nature, consecrated by custom, in its ancient
States, its Parliaments, its corporations, its various classes
of inhabitants, its landed tenure, its ecclesiastical and
chivalric orders, there might have been found all that
variety of interests whose balanced influences would have
sustained a free and durable constitution. The French!
leaders neglected these admirable materials. To secure/
equality they decided on indiscriminate destruction : they
not only destroyed law and custom, but they destroyed
their country. They destroyed Normandy, they de-
stroyed Provence, they destroyed Burgundy, they de-
stroyed Gascony; not in name alone, but in very deed
and fact. They measured their land, and divided it into
equal geometrical departments, without the slightest
regard to difference of soil or population, variety of
manners, or diversity of temperament; and in this
Laputan state that great country still remains. Why
the name of France was preserved it is difficult to com-
prehend. If for its associations, could not these Utili-
tarian legislators understand that, in destroying the asso-
1 Hartwell, a Buckinghamshire village, to which Louis the
Eighteenth retired in 1809.
128 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
ciations that clung -to the name of Brittany and Bur-
gundy, they were destroying so many wholesome elements
of vigorous and enduring government ? Their sentiment
required that they should still dwell in Paris, beautiful
and famous Paris. Were they so blind as not to see that
the outraged sympathy, which would have recoiled from
styling the capital " the city of the Seine," was equally
offended when the old dweller in Touraine found that he
was suddenly transformed into an inhabitant of the
department of the Loire ?
When Napoleon obtained supreme power France was
not a country — it was a camp — a lawless and disorderly
camp. Napoleon disciplined it. He found the land
geometrically parcelled out, and the French nation
billeted on the soil. With such elements of government,
even Napoleon could do not more; even with his un-
limited authority and indomitable will, all that he could
aspire to was to organise anarchy. The Emperor of the
French was not one of your abstract-principle gentlemen.
His was eminently a practical mind. He looked about
for the elements of government, and he could discover no
better than those which had been created by the national
character, and hallowed by the national habits. Even
his sagacious mind deferred to the experience of ages,
and even his unconquerable will declined a rivalry with
the prescriptive conviction of an ancient people. He re-
established the tribunals; he revived chivalry; he con-
jured up the vision of a nobility; he created the shadow
of a Church. He felt that his empire, like all others,
must be supported by institutions.
The rapid vicissitudes of his reign prevented these
establishments from maturing into influence and power,
and, when Louis the Eighteenth returned to the throne
of his fathers, he was called upon to establish a Constitu-
tion without being furnished with the elements to form
one. The puzzled monarch in despair, with some degree,
one would think, of that Rabelaisian humour with which
he was not altogether untinctured, presented his subjects
1835] CONSTITUTION-MAKING 129
with the Constitution of another country. Could any-
thing be conceived more supremely ludicrous ? Was it
in the power of the most ill-regulated mind to break into
folly more flagrant ? The lunatic with a crown of straw
is as much a sovereign as a country is a free country with
a paper Constitution. France, without an aristocracy of
any kind, was ornamented with an Upper Chamber ot
hereditary peers, and a Second Chamber invested with all
the powers with which, after more than five centuries of
graduated practice, we ventured to entrust our House of
Commons, was filled with some hundreds of individuals
who were less capable of governing a country than a
debating society of ingenious youth at one of our Uni-
versities. The good Louis presented his countrymen with
a free Constitution — drawn up in a morning. He did
that which the great Napoleon never ventured to do.
Louis the Eighteenth achieved that in one morning
which in less favoured England has required nearly a
thousand years for its accomplishment. This innocent
monarch seems to have supposed that the English Con-
stitution consists merely of two rooms full of gentlemen,
who discuss public questions and make laws in the
Metropolis at a stated season of the year. The King")
of France had no idea that political institutions, to be ,
effective, must be founded on the habits and opinions
of the people whom they pretend to govern; that the
members of a representative body must be composed of
a class to which the people have long looked up with
respect and confidence; and that these representatives
must carry on their affairs in a mode and spirit congenial
and homogeneous with the prescriptive practice of the
community. The King of France, good, easy man, had
forgotten — M. de Lolme1 had not taught him — that the
Parliament of England was only the last, though loftiest,
gradation in a long flight and series of ascending estab-
lishments ; that not a man was entrusted with the exer-
1 Jean Louis de Lolme (1740-1806), who wrote "The Con-
stitution of England, or an Account of the English Government."
130 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
else of a political suffrage in England who was not already
invested with the most precious office in the realm, the
duty of deciding upon the fortunes and the lives of his
fellow-citizens, and was thus long, early, and accurately
practised in the habits of judgment and examination;
that nearly every member of the Houses of Parliament
was an active magistrate of the realm, and, in taking his
legislative seat, bore his quota of local respect to the
great aggregate of national reverence; that the vast in-
stitution of the Poor Laws alone connected the thoughts
and feelings of the unrepresented peasants and populace
of England with the Parliament in which the local execu-
tors of those statutes as magistrates took their seats as
members.
Louis the Eighteenth forgot that in almost every town
in England there were corporations which were the express
image of the political Constitution of the realm, and
vestries in which the local interests were debated by a
representative body with an affectation of all the forms
and ceremonies of Westminster. Louis the Eighteenth
had no idea that his two rooms full of gentlemen, to be
obeyed, must actually or virtually, directly or indirectly,
represent every important interest in the kingdom. He
had no suspicion that it is not in the power of any legis-
lator that ever lived, or that ever will live, to frame a
political assembly a priori that shall represent all, or
even a majority of, the interests of a complicated society.
The French Chambers represented none — they were only
fitted to be the tools of a faction, and the tools of a faction
they became. The two Chambers constituted by the
Charter were nothing more than two debating societies.
I am only surprised that the ludicrous imposture lasted
so long; but we must take into consideration the ex-
haustion of France when the exotic was introduced and
planted in its soil, and the unceasing vigilance and
sleepless care with which the delicate graft was tended
by the foreign Powers, whose complaisant approval had
sanctioned its adoption.
1835] ANDALUSIA AND SICILY 131
CHAPTER VII
Of the Attempts to establish the English Constitution in the
Sicilies and the Peninsula.
IF the barren adoption of a form of government by
France, styled by courtesy the English Constitution,
must be classed among the prime follies of human con-
duct, what language are we to use when the Anglo-Gallic
scheme is gravely introduced to the consideration of the
Lazzaroni of Naples and the Hidalgos of Spain ; we seem
to have arrived at the climax of human absurdity. The
classical romance of "Rienzi " was not more ridiculous than
the first instance ; there is no adventure in " Don Quixote "
which can rival the frenzy of the second. In France,
thanks to Equality and its crabbed fruits, there were no
prejudices to shock; but when we read of the sudden
transplantation of institutions gradually established in
the course of centuries by the phlegmatic experience of a
Saxon people into the most southern soils of Europe, the
glittering and barbaric Sicilies, and a country which is
the link between Europe and Africa, and which in the
fertility of its soil, the temperature of its climate, and the
character of its inhabitants, resembles Morocco more than
England, we seem to be perusing the mad pages of a
political novel poured forth by the wild and mystic genius
of some inmate of a German University. Undine or Sin-
tram1 are more real : the pages of Hoffmann 2 less shadowy
and more probable.
I have travelled over Andalusia and Sicily — I travelled
on horseback, for there were no roads — I found a feodal
nobility and a peasantry un tinctured, even in the slightest
degree, by letters, and steeped in the grossest supersti-
tion : I found agriculture generally neglected, or unchanged
1 " Sin tram and his Companions " and " Undine," by Baron
Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouque" (1777-1843).
3 Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, 1776-1822. Of his fairy
tales, "Der Goldene Topf " was translated by Carlyle in 1827.
132 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
in its pursuit since the days of Theocritus ; a teeming soil,
no human energy; no manufactures, no police; moun-
tainous districts swarming with bandits, plains whose
vast stillness prepared me for the Syrian deserts; occa-
sionally I reposed in cities where a comparative civilisa-
tion had been obtained under the influence of a despotic
priesthood. And these are the regions to which it is
thought fit suddenly to apply the institutions which
regulate the civil life of Yorkshire and Kent ! We may
celebrate the constitutional coronation of a Bavarian in
the Acropolis, and surround his free throne with the
bayonets of his countrymen; we may hire Poles and
Irishmen as a bodyguard for the Sovereign who mimics
the venerable ceremonies of Westminster as she opens
the Parliaments of Madrid or Lisbon; but invincible
nature will reject the unnatural novelties, and history,
instead of celebrating the victory of freedom, will only
record the triumph of folly.
CHAPTER VIII
Of the Last Attempt of the French to form a Free Government
— La Fayette and Lord Somers compared.
CHARLES THE TENTH struggled with the futility of the
Charter ; he passed years in an impracticable attempt and
fruitless effort to govern thirty-two millions of people
with a silly piece of paper. With good intentions but
with no talents, surrounded by creatures destitute of
every quality of statesmen, the King at length attempted
to rid himself, and the nation, of an imposture which only
supplied a faction with a pretext. Charles failed, but
even Charles the Tenth nearly succeeded. Louis Philippe
at the head of a mob crying, " Vive la Republique !"
established a despotism. Is there no moral in this rapid
catastrophe ? Are we to be ever deaf and ever blind ?
Are we never to learn that a Constitution, a real Con-
1835] GOVERNMENT BY A PHRASE 133
stitution, is the creation of ages, not of a day, and that
when we destroy such a Constitution we in fact destroy
a nation ?
Let us bestow a little more examination upon the con-
duct of the French nation during their last Revolution,
their second great effort to establish a free government.
Let us contrast La Fayette at the head of France in 1830
with Lord Somers at the head of England in 1688. The
parallel will be instructive. When La Fayette had got
rid of Charles the Tenth, he found himself precisely in
the same situation in which that unfortunate monarch
had suffered throughout his reign; he found himself in
the precise predicament in which Louis the Eighteenth
was placed when he returned from Hartwell ; he occupied
the exact site of Napoleon when he declared himself First
Consul. He found himself at the head of a people with-
out a Constitution, and not possessing any elements to
form one. The creative genius of Napoleon instantly
devised some expedients, and until they could be called
into action he depended upon the teeming resources of
his own strong mind, and the devotion of a victorious
army. Louis the Eighteenth trusted to his allies for sub-
stantial support, and offered the written description of
the Constitution of another country as a pretext for the
loyal allegiance of his own subjects. Charles the Tenth
had neither a confiding army nor foreign allies; he had
neither the creative genius of Napoleon nor the epicurean
adroitness of Louis. La Fayette called out the National
Guard and changed the national colours for present sup-
port, and then, that his revolution might be something
better than merely a revolution of ribbons, he took refuge
again in abstract principles. Equality would not serve
the purpose again ; that blooming prostitute had shrunk
by this time into a most shrivelled and drivelling harridan.
For Equality the pupil of Washington substituted the
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE. The people shouted in its
honour, all was satisfactorily settled, and thirty-two
millions were again to be governed by a phrase.
134 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
Let me recall to your Lordship the tone and temper
with which the intelligence of these exploits was received
in our own country. I was indeed then absent; but
although the announcement of this millennium reached me
in the shadow of the Pyramids, and two years elapsed
before I returned to a country which I found so changed,
I returned in time to witness the still exulting and still
palpitating triumph of that party, who are now so anxious,
and so active in their anxiety, to abrogate the clumsy
and chance-born institutions of England, and substitute
in their place their own modish inventions, formed on the
irrefragable basis of Reason and Utility. There was no
class of persons in England with whom the junior French
Revolution1 — I mean the riot that placed the House of
Valois2 on the throne of Paris — was so popular in this
country as our own anti-constitutional writers. It was
the avowed consummation of all their theoretical wishes :
the practical adoption of the scheme in England was all
that was requisite to secure the completion of their
patriotic satisfaction. I believe there was no individual
in this country who more ardently admired the conduct
of France at that period than Mr. Bentham. I have been
assured this on good authority. Within these last twelve-
months, even, the principal daily organ of this new sect
of statesmen has more than once taunted Englishmen
with the fact that the French were now freer than they,
and has announced that the consciousness of this fact
would be " the last blow to the oligarchy." I impute no
bad motives to these writers; I condescend to none of
those " vituperative personalities " which their apostle
deprecates; I avoid the "fallacies ad odium " which their
evangelist so successfully exposes by fallacies still more
fallacious (" Book of Fallacies," pp. 127-133); I am con-
1 The Revolution of 1830.
2 Disraeli, in a letter to his sister (January 9, 1836), writes:
" Eliot . . . wants to know, by- the- by, why I called the Orleans
branch the House of Valois. I am sure I don't know. Pray find
out for me, and write your answer, if you catch one, as soon as
possible."
1835] FKOM LA FAYETTE TO SOMERS 135
tent ever to take the motives of individuals as I find
them. I give them full credit for sincerity. But judge,
oh ! judge by the result, of their capabilities for govern-
ment ; admire their political prescience, and trust, if you
will, their practical ability.
The Constitution founded on the Sovereignty of the
People has run even a shorter career than the Constitu-
tion founded on the Equality of Man: one of the most
gifted and civilised nations that ever existed is enthralled
by an iron despotism; the liberty of the press is utterly
destroyed; trial by jury virtually abrogated; arbitrary
imprisonment in daily practice ; the country covered with
Bastiles, and the Bas tiles crowded with State victims.
I turn from France in 1830 to England in 1688; from
La Fayette to Lord Somers; from the abstract-principle
politicians eulogised on all occasions by our anti-constitu-
tional writers to practical statesmen on all occasions the
object of their sneers, and whom one of their number has
recently published a quarto volume to decry. No sooner
had the nation got rid of the Popish tyrant than Lord
Somers drew up the famous Declaration of Right. Mark
that title. A Declaration of Right. This document
enumerated and claimed for Englishmen all the rights
and liberties to which they were entitled by laws which
James the Second had violated. So careful were the
leaders of 1688 of not vitiating or injuring the valued title
to our liberties that they omitted in this great remedial
statute all mention of those further guarantees of our
freedom which they had already devised, and which they
immediately afterwards proposed and passed in Parlia-
ment. First, and before they made any addition to their
inheritance, they determined to secure themselves in the
clear freehold of their rights. They were careful, while
they were meditating improvements and increase, that
they should not, from present neglect, be forced to bring
actions of ejectment hereafter for property to which they
had become entitled in the times of Charles the First or
the Plantagenets, and which in their hot zeal and hurry
136 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
they had now overlooked. The Declaration of Eight
connected the pedigree of our rights and liberties with the
Petition of Right, which again carried them upwards to
the Great Charter, in like manner dependent on the charter
of Henry Beauclerk and the laws of the Confessor.
Whether it ascended further was now a matter of interest
only to the antiquary. A pedigree of six centuries was
proud enough even for our glorious British freedom. In all
this Lord Somers exhibited the same practical wisdom as
had animated Stephen Langton and guided Selden. Lord
Somers, I doubt not, was as conversant with abstract
principles of government as any writer in the Westminster
Review ; for a quarter of a century before they had been
rife enough in England, but Lord Somers knew to what
their adoption had eventually and speedily led. He
knew that there was a stern necessity in society which
would occasionally vindicate its way above all law; his
recent experience would have taught him, if nothing else,
that occasional revolutions in States were beyond the
power of human prevention; but, like all other wise
statesmen, he would not look upon these as the course
of politics, any more than the earthquake or the hurri-
cane as the course of nature. He blotted their possi-
bility out of the statute book, however he might choose
to speculate over them in a political treatise, in Sidney,
or Harrington, or Locke. He wished to obliterate from
the mind of the nation that awful truth, that a deed may
sometimes be necessary which is not lawful. He knew
very well that, if a crisis were again to occur that should
require such a sacrifice, the native instinct of men would
prompt them to the exploit. They would read their pur-
pose in each other's eyes, and do the deed. Far from
braying out the sovereignty of the people, or any such
perilous stuff, he and his great associates exerted them-
selves to the utmost to endow King William with a legal
and hereditary title. They had consented to the neces-
sary evil of a revolution, but then they had carved the
State
1835] PRUSSIA 137
" As a dish fit for the gods,1
Not hewed it as a carcass fit for hounds."
An English revolution is at least a solemn sacrifice: a
French revolution is an indecent massacre.
Lord Somers and the English nation were rewarded
for their wisdom and their prudent carriage by securing
for this realm nearly a century and a half of the greatest
order, prosperity, and glory, that this country, or any
other country, ever enjoyed. And this leads me, my
Lord, to another great event in our history : the Reform
of the House of Commons, to which I shall presently
advert.
CHAPTER IX
Of the Constitutional Development of Prussia.
I WISH, however, previously, to call your Lordship's at-
tention to the conduct of a Sovereign who was placed in
the same situation as Louis the Eighteenth at the same
period ; but whose policy, fortunately for himself and for
his subjects, materially differed from that of the brother
of the unhappy Charles the Tenth. The Sovereign to
whom I allude is the present King of Prussia. The King
of Prussia, like the King of France, promised his subjects
a Constitution ; and we all remember for how many rabid
years this Sovereign was the object of the virulent invec-
tive of our own disaffected writers, who, by-the-by, seem
equally anxious to destroy the English Constitution in
England, and to substitute it in every other country, for
not redeeming his pledge and fulfilling his promise. No
news arrived to the geniuses of our gazettes of the hold-
ing of any Parliament at Berlin ; no advices reached them
of any Dukes of Potsdam or Posen moving constitutional
addresses in the Prussian House of Lords ; there was not
1 " Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds."
SHAKESPEARE : Julius Ccesar, II. i. 173,
10
138 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
even a rumour of any frank having yet been seen in the
handwriting of any honourable representative of Konigs-
berg or Erfurt. What royal treachery ! What base,
despotic, holy-alliance perfidy ! But nations are not to
be deceived, and outraged, and trampled on, with im-
punity. The day of retribution was at hand; sooner or
later the hour of popular vengeance would arrive, and
then the perfidious tyrant, in spite of his standing army,
would learn how utterly vain is the struggle with the
spirit of the age, and how futile the final rivalry of force
and freedom. Prussia was undoubtedly to be the first
victim.
Now this is no misrepresentation, no exaggeration even,
of the tone in which the disaffected writers of this country
indulged for a series of years against the King of Prussia.
I think it expedient to seize an occasional opportunity of
illustrating the sagacity and information which the dis-
affected writers in this country invariably bring to the
consideration of public subjects, and especially to any
speculations connected with foreign politics. Abstract
principles and a daily and dexterous practice in the art
of misrepresenting circumstances which, in the imperfect
survey of gradual occurrence, cannot always be fully com-
prehended even by the wisest heads and the calmest
minds, carry these writers through their domestic lucu-
brations with a spanking breeze and flying colours; but
when we catch them fishing in strange waters, we are
better enabled to test the value of their barren axioms,
and to gauge the depth and spirit of their acuteness and
information.
And so it happened that, when the party throughout
Europe who, to use the words of Locke, " are the popular
asserters of public liberty and the greatest engrossers of
it too, and not unfitly called its keepers — ambitious men
who pull down well-framed Constitutions, that out of the
ruins they may build themselves fortunes " — when, I say,
it happened that that restless and intriguing minority,
who ever have the greatest happiness of the greatest
1835] A STUDY OF PKUSSIAN POLICY 139
number on their lips, succeeded in 1830 in overthrowing
the Bourbon Government and embroiling Europe in that
period of general commotion, when every European State
was more or less shaken with internal convulsions, when
Belgium revolted from Holland and Poland from Russia,
when the tricolor flag was hoisted in Italy, when Spain
summoned its Cortes, and Portugal expelled its Sovereign
with foreign bayonets, when even the Swiss Confedera-
tion shook to its centre, and every minor German State,
from Baden to Brunswick, was the theatre of revolu-
tionary riots — and last of all, but, oh ! indeed not least,
when even Great Britain yielded to the tempest, and at
least a branch of that mighty oak was severed from its
vigorous though ancient trunk; Prussia, enslaved and
indignant Prussia, governed by a perfidious despot, whose
realm was surrounded and even divided in the midst of
its territory by the very States which were most inflamed,
alone sent forth neither a shout nor a murmur, and alone
remained tranquil and undisturbed. How was this ?
How did this accord with the Utilitarian system of govern-
ment ? Was Prussia content because it was tranquil ?
Was it the general conviction that the greatest happiness
of the greatest number was secured by the influence of
its polity ? But that polity was absolute. It is the
interest of every man to be a tyrant and a robber. Was,
then, the King of Prussia neither a tyrant nor a robber ?
Was he mild, merciful, just, beneficent, useful ? How
did this accord with the Utilitarian system of morals ?
It appears to me that a study of the policy of Prussia
during the last quarter of a century may tend more to a
solution of the great problem of government than any
exercise of reason with which I am acquainted. By it
we may learn how entirely the result of a principle depends
upon its method of application, and that that method of
application, to be beneficent, must be framed in very
strict, though not absolute, deference to the existing
civilisation of the country. That a reforming Minister
must, above all things, be skilful in adaptation is per-
140 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
haps but a barren phrase ; but this I will observe, that a
wise statesman will be careful that all new rights shall,
as it were, spring from out old establishments. By this
system alone can at the same time the old be purified and
the new rendered permanent.
The French Revolution was the death-blow in civilised
Europe to the long-declining feodal system. An equality
of civil rights was recognised by the King of Prussia and
his wise councillors as the basis of their new order of
society. And how did they obtain this great end ? Not
by a bombastic decree from Potsdam suddenly braying
the rights of man into the indefinite ears of the motley
subjects of the Prussian Government, and creating, prob-
ably, endless riots in consequence ; but by a series of wise
edicts which, in the course of twelve years, entirely
abolished serfage, and effected a complete but gradual
revolution in the tenure of land, so that at length the
Prussian nobility found themselves with no other privi-
lege but the prefixion of a definite article to their name.
Almost simultaneously with the abolition of serfage
among the rural population, the citizens were emanci-
pated by a great municipal charter, which introduced the
system of popular election into towns, and prepared the
inhabitants for the function of even higher duties. 1
assure you, my Lord, that the municipal constitution of
Prussia might have been referred to with profit in those
memorable debates, in which you achieved so much
general benefit and acquired so much personal honour.
I now arrive at the most important decree of the King
of Prussia, and the establishment of which I hesitate not
to class among the wisest, the most benevolent, and the
most comprehensive institutions on record, and fairly to
entitle its illustrious originator to rank among the most
eminent legislators that have flourished. Convinced that
a practical assembly of national representatives can never
be collected except in a country in which the inhabitants
have been long versed in the partial administration of
affairs, and consequently habituated to the practice of
1835] THE HEADY TUMULT OF 1830 141
public discussion, and anticipating that the hour would
arrive when such an assembly might indeed be holden at
Berlin, the King in 1815 decreed the erection of Pro-
vincial States, to whose supervision the interests of their
respective provinces were intrusted, with full power to
take into consideration all measures, whether relating to
persons, property, or taxation, and to advise with the
King thereon, by the right and process of petition. Here
the powers of these States ceased; their province was
merely consultative; they were invested with no legisla-
tive functions. In this great institution of consultative
Parliaments, the King of Prussia, by an analogous wisdom
which cannot be too much admired, has adopted as the
basis of the future Constitution of his country that
system of Eemedial, as contradistinguished from Legisla-
tive, Representation which was long the custom of Eng-
land, and to the influence of which upon the character of
the nation we mainly owe our efficient legislative repre-
sentation in the House of Commons.
There is no spectacle in the world more delightful than
that of a wisely-governed and well-ordered community,
and I could willingly dwell upon the consideration of
Prussian policy, were the fortunes of that realm the sole
subject of my remarks, instead of being the incidental
illustration of an argument. I might show how one of
the bravest, best disciplined, and most numerous, armies
in the world was a popular force ; how the boasted career
of merit of the French Empire is reduced to such prac-
tical reality in Prussia that to rise to the highest appoint-
ments in the State requires only a proportionate degree
of talent, industry, honesty, and study ; and, lastly, how
the most philosophical system of national education with
which we are acquainted is preparing the rising genera-
tion of the realm for all the duties of good citizens, loyal
subjects, and devoted patriots.
Having now, I hope, satisfactorily explained why in
the heady tumult of 1830 the subjects of Prussia were
alone loyal to their Sovereign, I will ask your Lordship
142 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
what would have been the situation of that country, then
and now, had Frederick William, at the same time as
Louis the Eighteenth, presented his subjects with the
same Constitution and a free press, and thus avoided the
diatribes of those enlightened journalists, who for so
many years described and denounced this great and good
man as a perfidious despot. We know very well what
would have happened. A nominally representative
assembly would 'have met in Berlin, consisting of in-
dividuals totally inexperienced in the habits of discussion,
the practice of legislation, and the art of government.
Invested with power which they could not exercise for
any beneficial purpose, and representing the nation in
form only, and not in spirit, they would have soon split
into factions, having no other object but their own aggran-
disement. An active click, through the agency of a
violent press, would have enlisted the physical force of
the people on their side by affecting an extraordinary zeal
for popular interests : having obtained a majority in the
Chamber by repeated elections, rendered necessary by
their factious conduct, they would have overthrown a
series of administrations by a series of factious resolu-
tions. When they had rendered the royal government
impracticable, they would have forced the King, in
defence of the nation and his crown, to some necessary
but unconstitutional decrees, and then we should have
had " three glorious and beautiful days " at Berlin.
Perhaps in such a vicinity the conspiracy would have
been crushed, but where now would have been the
prosperity and patriotism and philosophy and real
freedom of Prussia ? The bayonet would have been the
only law, and a military dungeon the only school of national
education. The King of Prussia was as careful that the
rights of his subjects should flow from the royal will, their
ancient government, as Stephen Langton, Selden, and
Lord Somers that the liberties of their countrymen
should be traced to a similar source. All were alike
practical men ; all avoided the barren assertion of abstract
1835] UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION 143
rights; and the same destiny of continued welfare in all
probability awaits Prussia that has long so blessed our
native land.
CHAPTER X
Constitution of the United States exercises the same Fatal Influ-
ence over America as that of England over Europe — Mexico,
Chili, Peru, contrasted with France, Spain, and Portugal.
IT appears to me, my Lord, that it is destined to the free
Constitution of the United States of North America to
exercise the same fatal influence over the political society
of the New World as the Constitution of England has
wielded over that of the old. The Constitution of the
United States was applied to the Government of Mexico,
Colombia, Peru, and Chili, by virtue of the same per-
emptory and abstract principles that had selected the
Constitution of England for the government of France,
Sicily, Spain, and Portugal; and the same results were
acquired. The European and the American States, that
have been the victims of this Quixotic spirit of political
Propagandism, have vied with each other in successive
revolutions, until at length disorder and even disorganisa-
tion have universally prevailed, except where anarchy
has been arrested by despotism.
Why is this ? Why has the republican Constitution
flourished in New England, and failed in New Spain ?
Why has the Congress of Washington commanded the
respect of civilised Europe, and the Congresses of Mexico,
or Lima, or Santiago, gained only its derision or disgust ?
The answer is obvious: The Constitution of the United
States had no more root in the soil of Mexico, and Peru,
and Chili, than the Constitution of England in that of
France, and Spain, and Portugal: it was not founded on
the habits or the opinions of those whom it affected ;to
guide, regulate, and control. There was no privity
between the legislative institutions and the other estab-
lishments of these countries. The electors and the
144 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
elected were both suddenly invested with offices for the
function of which they had received no previous educa-
tion and no proper training; and which they were sum-
moned to exercise without any simultaneous experience
of similar duties. Had it been the Constitution of
England, instead of that of the United States, which
they were seeking to establish, these disqualifying cir-
cumstances alone would have insured failure; but, in
addition to these disadvantages, picture to yourself the
frenzy of attempting to establish republican institutions,
invented by the Puritans and maintained by their
peculiar spirit, not only among an ignorant people edu-
cated in Papal despotism, but in revolted colonies possess-
ing a powerful Church establishment and a wealthy
aristocracy. In their haste to establish freedom, these
rudderless States have not secured independence ; their
revolutions have degenerated into riots, and, if they be
not wise, may yet turn out to be only rebellions.
He is a short-sighted politician who dates the Con-
stitution of the United States from 1780. It was estab-
lished by the Pilgrim Fathers a century and a half before,
and influenced a people practised from their cradles in
the duties of self-government. The Pilgrim Fathers
brought to their land of promise the laws of England,
and a republican religion; and, blended together, these
formed the old colonial Constitution of Anglo- America.
The transition from such a government to the polity of
Washington was certainly not greater in degree than the
difference between Great Britain of 1829 and our country
at this hour. The Anglo-Americans did not struggle for
liberty : they struggled for independence ; and the freedom
and the free institutions they had long enjoyed secured
for them the great object of their severe exertions. He
who looks upon the citizens of the United States as a
new people commits a moral, if not an historical, ana-
chronism.
Of the Reform of our House of Commons, it is in this
place only necessary to observe that the alleged increase
1835] THE EEFORM ACT 145
of democratic power was not founded on abstract rights,
but that the leaders and advocates of the Reform osten-
tatiously, although ignorantly, recommended their scheme
as a restoration of the ancient spirit and a return to the
ancient practice of the Constitution. Whether that
Reform originated in a Continental or a national impulse ;
whether it were an expedient or an imprudent measure;
whether it were framed in harmony or in hostility to
our existing institutions ; whether it really developed the
democratic elements of the country in their true and
comprehensive sense, or only increased the power and
influence of a sectarian minority; whether that great
settlement, in short, will be conducive to the ultimate
prosperity of the community, the happiness of the people,
and the honour of the Empire, are great questions from
the discussion of which I do not shrink, but they bear
no reference to the point at present under our examina-
tion, and are fully treated in a work which for a long
period has engaged my time and study.1 My object
hitherto has been to prove by reference to the experience
both of the Old and the New World, and of the several
States of which they respectively consist, that political
institutions, founded on abstract rights and principles,
are mere nullities; that the only certain and legitimate
foundation of liberty is law; that if there be no privity
between the old legal Constitution of a country and the
new legislature, the latter must fall; and that a free
government on a great scale of national representation
is the very gradual work of time, and especially of pre-
paratory institutions.
1 Possibly at this time Disraeli was engaged on " The Spirit
of Whiggism," published in the following year, which briefly
discusses the points mentioned.
146 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
CHAPTER XI
Of the " Wisdom of our Ancestors."
IT was a conviction of the soundness of these principles
that guided our forefathers in that prudent practice which
we have hitherto been in the habit of dignifying by the
venerable title of the Wisdom of our Ancestors,1 a phrase
once ever on the grateful lips of Englishmen, but now the
object of scorn and ridicule by those who fancy themselves
very profound, but who in reality are especially super-
ficial. According to the most eminent of the Utilitarian
schoolmen,2 in his " Book of Fallacies " we have all the
wisdom of our ancestors and our own into the bargain.
The great detector of the deceits of political logic has
here, according to his custom, involved himself in a
position as deceptive as any of those from which he
intended to dislodge his opponents. The fallacy of the
great Utilitarian schoolman consists in confounding
wisdom with knowledge. We may have all the know-
ledge of our ancestors, and we may have more; but it
does not follow that we have all the wisdom of our ances-
tors, and we may have less. In using the phrase " wisdom
of our ancestors," we, in fact, refer to the conduct of
those of our ancestors who were wise ; and when we have
recourse to this phrase in reference to political conduct,
we especially allude to those of our forefathers, those
rare great men, who in seasons of singular emergency,
difficulty, and peril, have maintained the State, and
framed, fostered, developed, and established, our political
institutions.
Let us take a rapid survey of our wise ancestors, in a
political sense, since the Reformation. We will com-
mence by a King, that extraordinary being, Henry the
1 First used, according to Brougham, by Sir William Grant
(1754-1832). 2 Bentham.
1835] WISE ANCESTORS 147
Eighth, for certainly he must not be omitted; Burleigh
claims a place, and Cecil, and assuredly Walsingham;
then we may count Sir Edward Coke, and Selden,
Strafford, and Pym, the Protector, Lord Clarendon, Sir
William Temple, King William, Lord Somers, the Duke
of Marlborough, the Duke of Argyll, Sir Robert Walpole,
Lord Mansfield, Lord Hardwicke, Edmund Burke. The
name of a twentieth great statesman since the Reforma-
tion previous to our own age does not easily occur to me,
although I would include Lord Bolingbroke for reasons
I may hereafter offer; and I have some doubt whether
it would be possible, even with research, to fix upon
another score. Now, it is possible that, having the
benefit of all these men's knowledge, we may actually
know more than these men; but suppose we are called
upon to act to-morrow, and act, as is very probable, very
unwisely, we may then find that we have not all these
men's wisdom.
M. Guizot, who is so learned in British history, who
writes even our annals, and edits our political memoirs,1
doubtless, during the three glorious days and the subse-
quent settlement, inwardly congratulated the French
people on being directed by a statesman who had all the
knowledge of Lord Somers, "and something more."
But where are the French people now, and what is
M. Guizot ? A striking evidence that a man may be
very knowing without being very wise. Throughout the
whole of our history we observe that the leading men
who have guided the fortunes of our Commonwealth in
times of great difficulty and danger have invariably
agreed in one line of policy — namely, to eschew abstrac-
tions. This resolution is the distinguishing feature of
English statesmanship ; it is the principal cause of the
duration of the English State; and herein eminently
consists the " wisdom of our ancestors."
1 "M6moires relatifs a la Revolution d'Angleterre " (26 vols.).
148 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
CHAPTER XII
The " House of Commons " not the " House of the People " —
The Political Institutions of England sprung from its Legal
Institutions — Nature of the Representative Principle —
Original Character of the English Parliament.
BUT, my Lord, to confess the truth, I have my suspicions
that the new school of statesmen, with all their affected
confidence in abstract principles, and all their valorous
determination to construct our coming commonwealth
on a basis of pure political science, have some misgivings
that this great result is not to be entirely obtained by the
virgin influence alone of their boasted philosophy; and
I am confirmed in this imagination by the distrustful
circumstance of their simultaneously condescending,
amid all their theory, to avail themselves, for the purpose
of advancing their object, of a great practical misrepre-
sentation of the form and spirit of our Constitution. For
it is curious to observe that, while they pretend to offer
us an unfailing test of the excellence and expediency of
all political institutions, they are at the same time in-
defatigable in promulgating the creed that the branch of
our legislature hitherto styled the House of Commons
is, in fact, the House of the People, and that the members
of that assembly are consequently and absolutely repre-
sentatives of the People. Vox POPULI vox DEI is a
favourite adage, and ever on these persons' tongues: so
that, if the House of Commons be the House of the People,
it is also the House of God ; it is omniscient and omnipo-
jfcent — a convenient creed ! There was a time when our
Kings affected to rule by Divine right. It cost our fathers
dear to root out that fatal superstition. But all their
heroic labours will prove worse than fruitless if the Divine
right of Kings is to be succeeded by the Divine right
of the House of Commons. In such a belief, I, for one,
see no security for our cherished liberties; and still less
1835] THE COMMONS OF ENGLAND 149
a guarantee for our boasted civilisation : in such a belief
it seems to me the prolific seeds are deeply sown of tyranny
and of barbarism, and if this principle is to be the founda-
tion of our future polity, it requires, in my opinion, no
great gift of inspiration to foretell that all those evils
are impending for this country which are the inevitable
consequences of its destinies being regulated by a vulgar
and ignoble oligarchy.
My Lord, I do not believe that the House of Commons
is the House of the People, or that the members of the
House of Commons are the representatives of the People.1
I do not believe that such ever were the characters, either
of the House of Commons or the members of the House
of Commons ; I am sure that such are not now the char-
acters of that assembly, or of those who constitute
it, and I ardently hope that such will never be the
characters.
The Commons of England form an Estate of the realm,
and the members of the House of Commons represent
that Estate. They represent nothing more. It is a very
important estate of the realm; it may be the most
important estate. Unquestionably it has of late years
greatly advanced in power; but at this very moment,
even with all the accession of influence conferred upon it
by the act of Reform, it has not departed from the
primary character contemplated in its original formation ;
it consists of a very limited section of our fellow-subjects;
invested, for the general advantage of the Commonwealth,
with certain high functions and noble privileges. The
House of Commons is no more the House of the People
than is the House of Lords ; and the Commons of England,
as well as the Peers of England, are neither more nor
less than a privileged class, privileged in both instances
for the common good, unequal doubtless in number, yet
both, in comparison with the whole nation, forming in
a numerical estimation only an insignificant fraction
of the mass.
1 Compare argument in Morning Post articles, 1835.
150 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
Throughout these observations, in speaking of the
English Constitution, I speak of that scheme of legislative
and executive government consisting of the King and
the two Houses of Parliament ; but this is a very partial
view of the English Constitution, and I use the term
rather in deference to established associations than from
being unconscious that the polity of our country consists
of other institutions, not less precious and important
than those of King, Lords, and Commons. Trial by Jury,
Habeas Corpus, the Court of King's Bench, the Court
of Quarter Sessions, the compulsory provision for the
poor, however tampered with, the franchises of municipal
corporations, of late so recklessly regarded by short-
sighted statesmen, are all essential portions of the English
Constitution, and have been among the principal causes
of the excellent operation and the singular durability
of our legislative and executive Government. The
.political institutions of England have sprung from its
legal institutions. They have their origin in our laws
and customs. These have been the profound and
perennial sources of their unexampled vigour and benefi-
cence ; and unless it had been fed by these clear and whole-
some fountains, our boasted Parliament, like so many of
its artificial brethren, would soon have dwindled and
dried up, and, like some vast canal filled merely with
epidemic filth, only been looked upon as the fatal folly
of a nation.
We talk much at the present day of the Representative
} principle ; yet how little is that principle understood !
'_** An assembly may be representative without being elective.
i No one can deny that the Church of England is at this
day not only virtually, but absolutely, faithfully, and
efficiently represented in the House of Lords by the
Bishops; yet these Lords of Parliament are not elected
by their clergy. Previous to the Reformation the mitred
Abbots took their seat in the Upper House. Who can
deny that these great officers were the direct representa-
tives of their powerful and wealthy institutions ? If a
1836] THE KNIGHTS 151
representative assembly be not necessarily elective, so
also it may be elective without being legislative. Repre-
sentation may be purely remedial, and such for a long
period was the character of English representation. This
remedial representation arose out of some peculiar
elements of our ancient Parliament, an assembly which,
besides being a great national council, was also a high
court of justice. Our ancient Parliaments, like those of
other feodal countries, were formed by the simultaneous
gathering of a vast number of estates, tribunals, and
public officers, from all parts of the kingdom, who met
to convey to the Sovereign information of the condition
of his realm, and to assist him in the execution of justice
between his subjects. Among those who mingled with
the prelates of the land, and the Earls and Barons of the
kingdom, were certain chosen delegates of the counties,
who were, in fact, elected by a particular order or estate
of the kingdom to act, not as their legislators, but as
their judges. These personages were prepared to afford
immediate information to the Sovereign of the state of
their districts ; and previous to their arrival at the great
council they obtained, by the inquisitions of the juries
of the hundreds, an accurate report of the condition of
the county, of the necessities of the lieges, of the " oppres-
sions " to be redressed, and of their ability to contribute
to the exigencies of the State.
CHAPTER XIII
Of the Estate of Knights — Rise of the Towns.
THESE deputies were members of a class of our popula-
tion which, from the important part it was subsequently
destined to fill in the fortunes of our country, requires
our particular attention. I allude to the estate of THE
KNIGHTS. In spite of some cloudy cavils of Madox,1
1 Thomas Madox. English antiquary and royal historiographer
(d. 1727).
152 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
our modern inquirers agree with the learned Selden, that
every immediate tenant of the Crown in England was
a Baron by virtue of his tenure, and as such entitled to
be personally summoned to the King's Great Court or
Council of Parliament, and therein to take his seat.
But in process of time these military tenants of the Crown
had, by the alienation and splitting of feofs, become in
number so considerable, and in personal influence, in
comparison with their high privilege, so moderate, that
the Crown neglected to summon them to its councils,
and, indeed, the burthen of attendance in Parliament
was so grievous to men whose limited estates required
their personal supervision that the royal neglect was
by themselves considered anything but a grievance. In
the thirteenth century these royal tenants formed the
great bulk of the freeholders of the kingdom, for I need
not remind your Lordship that it was not then uncommon
for a tenant in capite to hold even a fraction of a knight's
fee. These lower nobility, or minor Barons as they
were styled, in gradually ceasing to be insignificant
Peers, subsided, however, into a most powerful eques-
trian order, in which the lesser portion of the free-
holders, who were only mesne tenants, by degrees also
merged. And thus was established the ESTATE of THE
KNIGHTS.
The local government of the country was in the hands
of this order. In their county court, under the style and
title of " The Community or Commonalty of the County,"
a phrase which has been so much misunderstood, but
which originally implied nobility, this estate met to
elect one of their number as the governor or guardian
of the shire, their choice subject, however, to the royal
ratification. When the King hefd his great council, he
directed the Sheriff of the county to return two or more
knights to present to him the condition of their district.
These knights, being sworn, summoned before them the
jurors as witnesses of the hundreds, and, having obtained
from these inquisitions all necessary information, repaired
1835] EEMEDIAL REPRESENTATION 153
to the great council of the kingdom with their quota of
statistical intelligence. The transition from being merely
the selected councillors of their Sovereign to being the
virtual representatives of their order was natural, easy,
and rapid ; and thus this important and numerous estate
of the kingdom was in fact represented by deputation
in the great council — a representation, however, merely
remedial, and not legislative : they came to impart know-
ledge and inferentially to proffer counsel, to present to
the King the state of his realm and the " grievances " of
his subjects, and to assist the monarch in deciding suits
arising in their districts, and in ascertaining the just
apportionment of the general taxation. As from coun-
cillors and judges they became representatives, so also
in time their sanction was held necessary to the tax which
originally they had met only to estimate by their in-
formation. In time, also, their consent was equally held
necessary to the laws, which, however, they never
originated. It is, indeed, very questionable whether the
great office of legislation was then exercised even by the
more potent estates of the kingdom themselves, who
appeared personally in Parliament, the Clergy and the
Peers. In those days legislation was the province of
the clerk-like councillors of the Sovereign, and I do not
myself infer any degrading inferiority in the estate of
the knights from the circumstance of their Parliamentary
attendance assuming merely a remedial character. Thus,
gradually, a most important constituent portion of our
House of Commons developed itself, and so little has
any preconceived theory ever influenced the formation
of our political institutions, and so entirely have they
emanated from the legal economy of the land, that I have
myself little doubt that this convenient method, by which
the English knights assumed their fitting place in the
council of their Sovereign, was derived from ancient and
analogous, though occasional, customs of our country
which prevailed in England before the Conquest, and
which pervaded the Teutonic jurisprudence in every land.
11
154 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
The Court of Echevins1 alone will occur to those who
are learned in British history, and curious in constitu-
tional inquiries.
f~ Thus we find, in the thirteenth century, the King of
[England surrounded in his council by three estates of
(his realm — his Prelates, his Peers, and his Knights. We
approach now an interesting period in the history of our
political Constitution. The reign of Henry the Third is
one of the most important in our annals. The great
struggle between the Norman King and the feodal
aristocracy was at this time conducted on both sides
with unexampled energy. Undoubtedly the great body
of the nation in these struggles favoured the aristocracy.
In England, unlike the Continent, the King was powerful.
We owe our liberties to our nobility. But I am inclined
to attribute the sympathy which has ever subsisted
between the English and their aristocarcy to a more
influential cause than the mere power and consequent
tyranny of the Crown, and to this cause, which at present
flourishes, and to which may be principally ascribed the
singular prosperity of this country, I shall hereafter
advert.
Under the Norman Kings, and especially under Henry
the Second, the English towns had made rapid advances
in wealth and population. Charters of incorporation
became frequent. In the latter part of the twelfth
century it was impossible for a sagacious politician not
1 Mr. J. H. Round's discovery, " among the manuscripts of the
British Museum, of the oath of the ' Commune ' proves for the first
time that London in 1193 possessed a fully- developed ' Commune '
of the Continental pattern. From this we learn that the govern-
ment of the city was in the hands of a Mayor and twelve echevins
(skivini); both these names, being French, seem for a time
to have excluded the Saxon Aldermen. Twelve years later
(1205-06) we learn, from another document preserved in the
same volume as the oath, that alii probi homines were asso-
ciated with the Mayor and echevins to form a body of twenty-four
(that is, twelve skivini and an equal number of councillors).
Round holds that the Court of Skivini and alii probi homines . . .
was the germ of the Common Council." — Article on " London,"
" Encyclopaedia Britannica," vol. xvi. ; J. H. Round, " The Com-
mune of London and Other Studies," 1899, cited.
1835] ADVANCE OF THE TOWNS 155
to perceive that new and powerful interests were spring-
ing up in the Commonwealth, or to shut his eyes to the
political privileges which awaited the growing wealth
and increasing numbers of the citizens and burgesses of
England. But as, from the very nature and origin of
these mural communities, the Sovereign had the un-
doubted and unquestioned prerogative of imposing
tallages or taxes on cities and boroughs at pleasure, there
existed no obvious or urgent inducement to summon the
inhabitants to the great council of estates, which prin-
cipally assembled to apportion the aids to be raised on
their separate orders. Although the Earl of Leicester,1
who headed the rebellious Barons, unquestionably pos-
sessed many of the eminent qualities becoming the leader
of a great party, I am not disposed to behold any very
revolutionary tendency in his conduct when, mighty as
were the results in his memorable Parliament of 1264,
in addition to the Prelates, the Magnates, and the Knights,
he decided to issue writs of summons to " two honest,
lawful, and discreet " citizens and burgesses from every
city and burgh. I am more inclined to believe that this
great movement was rather dictated by a politic appre-
hension that, however the nation might be disposed to
view in complacent silence his assumption of many of the
prerogatives of the King, who was his prisoner, they might
perhaps have expected that an exception would be made
in favour of the royal right of arbitrary taxation. I
suspect that he was of opinion that the tallages would
be forthcoming with more readiness if the citizens were
flattered by granting those contributions as a favour
which were before exacted as a right. Certain it is that
De Montfort anticipated in some degree the necessities
of his age; for when, under the vigorous policy of the
next reign, civil peace again flourished, and the legitimate
Sovereign found it convenient to avail himself of the new
machinery which his rebellious subject had introduced,
no privilege ever conferred by a King was ever received
1 Simon de Montfort.
156 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
with more/discontent than the right of returning members
to his Parliament by his loyal towns. These honest
burghers were loth to leave their homes and business for
pursuits with which they were little acquainted, and
society for which they were unfitted. Petitions to be
exempted from the grievance of sending members to
Parliament are not uncommon in our early records ; many
burgesses when appointed declined to serve, and absented
themselves from the council; and to remedy these in-
conveniences the Sheriff was invested with a discretionary
power of omitting boroughs in his return. It would seem
that, from experience, the inhabitants of towns preferred
the arbitrary taxation of their Sovereign to the grants
of their representatives, and that these worthy traders
were generally cajoled by the great council into con-
tributions more liberal than their calmer moments in
their stores and counting-houses approved.
We must, however, guard ourselves from supposing
that these citizens and burgesses who were summoned
to Parliament were absolutely elected by the inhabitants
of the towns as their representatives. Their presence in
Parliament is another instance of representation without
election. They were often nominated by the Sheriff of
the county; and even when that great officer, from
negligence or favour, permitted the return to be made
by those more interested in the transaction, the nomina-
tion was confined to the small governing body, who
returned two of their members, in general very unwilling
missionaries, to the great council.
CHAPTER XIV
Creation of the Estate of the Commons — The House of Commons
an Equestrian Chamber — Why the Equality of Civil Rights
was established in England at so Early a Period in our History.
AT first the three Estates of the realm held themselves
aloof ; the Knights by right and custom taking their seats
among the Peers, while the citizens and burgesses re-
1835] THE DIVISION OF PARLIAMENT 157
mained in humble attendance, and, after settling the
amount of their tallages, gave themselves no further
concern with the public business, but cheerfully returned
to their homes and affairs. But the two great causes
which had simultaneously degraded the lower nobility
into mere gentry, and raised the burghers into compara-
tive importance, still operated; the increased division of
land rendered the first class less influential and more
numerous, the increase of commerce the last more power-
ful and more wealthy. The chasm between the magnates
and the lower nobility or Knights became each year wider
and more profound, the boundary that separated the
Knights from the burghers each year less marked and
definite. It is impossible to fix nicely the period when
Parliament was divided into two Houses, but I am in-
clined to place it towards the end of the reign of Edward
the First. It is easier to ascertain the principles on
which the memorable division was established. Between
the Prelates and the Magnates on the one hand, and the
Knights and Burgesses on the other, there existed this
memorable distinction. The first were in themselves
estates of the realm; the last were only representatives
of estates. To induce the Knights, however, to quit
their noble companions, of whom the law still held them
as the personal equals, and mix with the humble burghers,
required some politic dexterity. It was at length settled
that a new estate of the realm should be created, styled
the Estate of the Commons or Commonalty, a title, as
I have before observed, of great dignity, implying nobility,
and formerly confined to the landed proprietors. The
burghers were flattered by merging into the landed gentry
of the country, and thus obtaining the dignity of the
lesser nobility, and the Knights were compensated for
the sullen sacrifice on their part by giving their title to
the new estate, and impressing their peculiar character
on the new chamber in which, for a very long period of
our history, they naturally took the lead. Yet even then
some time elapsed before the Knights condescended to
158 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
renounce their old privilege of apportioning the tax of
their original order, and blending the aids of the Lower
House of Parliament.
Thus have I traced, my Lord, and I assure you not
without some difficulty, the history of the formation of
our House of Commons. And now to what did this great
revolution in the Constitution of our country amount ?
To nothing more nor less than the establishment of AN
EQUESTRIAN CHAMBER. If such were its original charac-
ter, that character has been maintained throughout the
whole of our history, and that character, as I will shortly
show, has not been affected by the recent Act of Reform.
It never was the House of the People ; it is not the House
of the People. The members of the House of Commons
never were the representatives of the people. They are
not the representatives of the people. They always were,
and they are still, the representatives of the Commons,
an estate of the realm privileged as the other estates,
not meeting personally for the sake of convenience, but
by its representatives, and constituting, even with its
late considerable accession of members, only a small
section of the nation. We have a curious instance how
accurately this distinction was observed in the time of
Henry the Fourth, and how perfect was the order of
Parliament in that reign. For when the King met his
Parliament, and, having addressed the estates of the
Lords Spiritual and Temporal, then turned to the House
of Commons, he promised that he " would do nothing
against the liberty of the estate for which they had come to
Parliament, nor against the liberties of the Lords Spiritual
and Temporal." The impudent misrepresentation of our
anti-constitutional writers originates in an ignorant mis-
conception of words. If the House had been called the
House of Knights, or rather the House of Squires, which
is the literal meaning of the word Commons, we should
have heard nothing of this dangerous nonsense by virtue
of which it is sought that the whole power of the realm
shall be concentrated in one of the estates, and that, too,
1835] AN ESTATE OF THE PEOPLE 159
one recently remodelled for factious purposes. An Estate
of the People involves a contradiction in terms, for an
estate is a popular class established into a political order.
If, therefore, the Sovereign had established the Lower
House as the estate of the people, he would have virtually
declared that the clergy and the nobles, the most in-
fluential part of the nation, were not a portion of the
people. Far from this, the cautious monarch refrained
from even establishing the citizens into a separate estate ;
instead of doing this, he flattered their vanity while he
checked their independence, and while he raised them
to the rank of Commons, he secured, to use the epithet in
its popular — not its correct — sense, an aristocratic charac-
ter for each estate of his realm. As the Upper House
consisted of two estates of the realm, the Clergy and the
Peers, so also the Lower House might equally have con-
sisted of the representatives of two estates of the realm,
the Knights and the Burgesses. But this was avoided. J
Yet suppose the Sovereign had thought fit to establish
a separate estate of the citizens, would the Lower House
any more have represented the people ? By no means.
Other classes of the people would still have remained un-
represented, and classes the most numerous — for instance,
the peasantry. Such estates were not unknown in the
Middle Ages, and even at this day an Estate of the
Peasantry meets in the Diets of Sweden and the Storthings
of Norway.
By this final constitution of the English Parliament
the seal was set to that glorious characteristic of our laws
which various causes had been for a long period silently
combining to create; to which I mainly attribute the
freedom, honour, and prosperity of our country, and our
singular preservation from that whirlwind of outraged
passion and opinion which swept over Europe during the
end of the last century, and still threatens Christendom,
with its wild and moaning wail. This glorious character-
istic of our laws is our equality of civil rights. By the
formation of the House of Commons, the great body of
160 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
the lesser nobility of England formally renounced those
rights of peerage, the practical enjoyment of which had
been long escaping them; and instead of that gallant
but adventurous swarm of personages who, under the
perplexing title of nobles, abounded in Europe before the
great French Revolution gave the last blow to the
crumbling Gothic edifice of feodal polity, men who were
distinguished from ordinary freemen by privileges in-
herent in their blood, and held their pedigrees, often
their only muniments, as valid exemptions from the toils
and cares of honest industry; men who were free from
contributing to the public burthens; who alone might
draw the sword; and whose daughters were defended by
law from profaning alliances with roturiers — arose in this
our favoured land of Albion, a class of individuals noble
without privilege, noble from the generosity of their
nature, the inspiration of their lineage, and the refine-
ment of their education; a class of individuals who,
instead of meanly submitting to fiscal immunities, sup-
port upon their broad and cultivated lands all the burthens
of the State; men who have conquered by land and sea,
who have distinguished themselves in every honourable
profession, and acquired fame in every department of
learning and in every province of science and of art ; who
support the poor instead of plundering them, and respect
the court which they do not fear ; friends alike to liberty
and order, who execute justice and maintain truth — the
gentlemen of England; a class of whom it is difficult to
decide whether their moral excellence or their political
utility be most eminent, conspicuous, and inspiring.
In due and sympathising deference to the lesser nobility,
their former equals who subsided into gentry, the mag-
nates were careful to arrogate to themselves no privileges
which were not necessary and incidental to them in their
character of an estate of the realm, and their capacity of
hereditary legislators of a free people. So that even their
blood was not ennobled, and their children ranked only as
Commons; thus distinctly announcing that their rank
1835] THE PLANTAGENETS 161
was a political institution for the public weal, and not a
privilege for their private gratification. Indeed, it would
not be too much to affirm that the law of England does
not recognise nobility. It recognises the peerage, and it
has invested that estate with august accessories; but to
state that a man's blood is ennobled is neither legal nor
correct, and the phrase, which has crept into our common
parlance, is not borrowed from the lawyers, but from the
heralds. Thus, I repeat, was consummated that glorious
characteristic of our laws, the equality of our civil rights,
and to this cause I refer the sympathy which has ever
subsisted between the great body of the English nation
and their aristocracy.
CHAPTER XV
Why Liberty flourished under the Plantagenets — Why Liberty
declined under the Tudors — Primary Effect of Protestantism
in England not Favourable to our Civil Liberties.
LIBERTY flourished under the Plantagenets — and for this
reason, that the aristocracy headed the nation, and the
House of Commons soon learnt to combine with the dis-
contented party among the Peers. The remedial char-^
acter of our representation rapidly expanded into the V
legislative, and the judge matured into a law-maker.
Seldom has the crown of this realm circled a more able
and vigorous brow than that of our third Edward: his
reign, too, was long and eminently prosperous. Yet as
early as this reign the illegality of raising money without
consent of Parliament was firmly and practically estab-
lished, as well as the necessity of the concurrence of the
two Houses in any alteration of the law. In this reign,
too, for the first time, the councillors of the Crown were
impeached by the Commons, though there is little doubt-
that the Lower House would not have ventured on so
bold an advance in authority had they not been secretly
stimulated by the Prince of Wales, and upheld by the
162 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
majority of the Peers, jealous of the intrigues of the Duke
of Lancaster against the interests of the heir-apparent.
The Parliament that had ventured to resist an Edward
dared to control a Richard. The Commons now inquired
into the public expenditure, and even regulated the
economy of the royal household. The Lancastrian Kings
owed their throne to the Parliament, and the Parliament
was mindful of the obligation. Under these three
Sovereigns the present Constitution of England was
amply, if not perfectly, developed. The right of taxa-
tion in the two Houses was never questioned; the direc-
tion of the public expenditure was claimed and practised ;
the illegality of royal ordinances declared; Ministers, too,
were impeached and punished, and finally the privileges
of Parliament for the first time established. But perhaps
the most important change in our constitutional system
was the introduction, in the reign of Henry the Sixth, of
complete statutes of the Commons, under the title of
Bills, instead of their old method of Petitions. By these
means the Sovereign was obliged to sanction or to reject
the propositions of his Parliament without qualification ;
and as it had been previously a maxim of Parliamentary
practice that all laws should originate in the form of
petitions from the Lower House, the legislative right of the
Commons was now completely and firmly established.
If liberty flourished under the Plantagenets, it faded
under the Tudors. How was this ? Compare the reigns
of the third Edward or the second Richard with those
of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, and no one can shut
his eyes to the vast progression which our country has
made in all the elements of civilisation. We were much
more populous, infinitely wealthier. We enjoyed a great
commerce, our manufactures were considerable, our
ancient military reputation maintained, our advance in
arts indisputable. Why were we less free ? Why had
that bold House of Commons, to whom the warlike and
impatient Edward had to bow before he could carry on a
struggle flattering to the fame of England, sunk into a
1835] ADVANCE IN PUBLIC LIBERTY 163
servile crew, who witnessed without a murmur the forced
loans of a Privy Seal and a benevolence ? Where were
the men who, under the wily Henry the Fourth, had
declared the royal ordinances illegal ? Humbling them-
selves before royal proclamations, crushed by the oppres-
sion of the Star Chamber, and yielding without even a
remonstrance to the enormity of the Council. Who now
dared to inquire into the public administration ? Why
were not Wolsey and Burleigh impeached as well as Lord
Latimer and Suffolk ? Who remembered the statute of
Henry the Sixth, " for the punishment of such as assault
any on their way to the Parliament," when any member
who offended the Sovereign or the Minister was, in
scornful defiance of his privilege, instantly imprisoned;
and Henry the Eighth vowed he would behead any of the
Commons who opposed his will ? We cannot account
for this extraordinary change in the character of our
House of Commons by the usual reason of a standing
army. Henry the Eighth commanded fifty beefeaters,
and Elizabeth trusted to the guardianship of the trained
bands. The truth is, the House of Commons was no
longer supported by the Peers, and the aristocracy no
longer headed the nation. The great advance in public
liberty under the Plantagenets was carried on by a Parlia-
ment in which a perfect understanding subsisted between
the two Houses. We owe that bold scheme of popular
government to which Selden and Pym in other days were
content to appeal to "the wisdom of their ancestors,"
and to the united and harmonious efforts of the three
estates of the realm.
The Wars of the Roses were mortal to the great Peers
and chivalric commons of England, and the tints of those
fatal flowers were only emblematic of the terror and the
blood that they occasioned. Unquestionably these evils
in the course of time might have been remedied, and,
doubtless, in the natural order of events a new race of
great national leaders would have arisen, who might
have restored that noble freedom and that sweet equality
164 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
which rose under the Plantagenets, struggled under the
Stuarts, and triumphed under the benignant sway of the
House of Brunswick : but when, in the reign of Henry the
Eighth, the aristocracy afforded some indications of
reviving power, a new feature appeared in European, and
especially in English, politics, which changed the whole
frame and coloured the complete aspect of our society—
RELIGIOUS DISSENSION. It was by balancing the great
parties in which this new spirit, so fertile in discord,
divided the nation, that the Tudors, and especially
Elizabeth and her statesmen, succeeded in establishing
her power, until they delivered over to her successor the
sceptre of a despot. I have myself no doubt that,
although in its nature intimately and essentially con-
nected with the cause of civil liberty, the immediate
effect of the reformation on our English polity was any-
thing but favourable to the growth of our liberties and
^the establishment of our political institutions. The civil
despotism of the King was in that age the consequence
of his religious supremacy. The creation of the High
Commission Court alone, and the sanction which the
religious passions of a large party in the nation gave to
that dark tribunal, afforded a fatal precedent for an
application of analogous discipline to civil affairs which
in practice reduced our Constitution to a polity befitting
the meridian of Madrid, or even Constantinople.
CHAPTEE XVI
Of the Constitution of the House of Commons under the Tudors,
and of the System of Borough Eepresentation.
IF we survey the constitution of the House of Commons
under the Tudors, we shall find that, although it experi-
enced several very considerable changes, they were far
from effecting any departure from the original character
of that assembly. It did not in any degree more become
1835] THE TUDORS 165
the House of the People. It still remained the representa-
tive of an estate of the realm, an estate in number, I
apprehend, not very considerable ; inferior probably to the
fleeting population of any of the large fairs then common
in the country, and at this day not superior to the popula-
tion of a second-rate capital. The House, when it was
first established, consisted of seventy -four knights, and,
for the causes I have before stated, of a very fluctuating
number of burgesses : in early times they amounted to
two hundred and sixty. The knights, in spite of their
minority, seem to have indulged in no jealousy of their
humbler brethren, but appear to have exercised in the
chamber which had derived from them its name all that
superior authority to which their noble lineage and terri-
torial possessions entitled them. It is curious that the
idea of representation, as relative to population, never
appears to have entered into the consideration of our
ancestors : York and Rutland returned the same number
of representatives. I ascribe the apparent anomaly to
the circumstance of the constituent body being generally
very limited, arid particularly so in the northern counties.
It was never intended that the population should be
represented, but a particular class of it, and, as the spirit
of the body pervaded all the county representatives, a
knight of Rutland doubtless considered himself virtually
as much the guardian of the knights of the county of
York or Lancaster as of his own shire or that of Hunting-
don. Moreover, there are reasons to believe that earlier
than is usually imagined the English knights were in the
habit of being returned for boroughs; and I apprehend
that the majority of the House of Commons in the reigns
of the Lancastrian Kings consisted of the descendants of
our former minor Barons.
On the accession of Henry the Eighth, the burgesses
were in number two hundred and twenty -four. Henry
extended county representation to Wales, Chester, and
Monmouth, and even summoned burgesses from his
Scotch town of Berwick and his French garrison of Calais.
166 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
Edward the Sixth created fourteen boroughs and revived
ten : Mary added twenty-one, and Elizabeth sixty. In
most of these instances the right of representation was
conceded to insignificant places and confined to mere
nomination. Elizabeth was the first who worked on an
extensive scale the great Parliamentary mine of Cornwall,
and liberally enfranchised fishing-towns and miserable
villages. The object of the Tudor Sovereigns in this
increase of the House of Commons was to command
majorities on the great religious questions. Arbitrary
in every other respect, they were not unwilling to share
with the compliant orthodoxy of their Parliament the
responsibility of those extraordinary statutes which form
an epoch in the philosophy of legislation.
But the Tudors, in this extensive exercise of the power
of Parliamentary appointment, introduced no heretical
elements into the constitution of our House of Commons.
As early as Edward the Second the representatives of
more than twenty boroughs had been added by the King
to the members of that assembly. I do not believe that
the representation of our boroughs was originally elective.
Far from being of opinion that the popular character of
the third estate had gradually become corrupt and dimin-
ished previous to the late Act of Reform, I believe, on the
contrary, that since the accession of the Stuarts it had
gradually become more vigorous and more comprehensive.
Our Parliament long possessed, and indeed in some degree
still retains, its original character of a royal council.
The object of our Sovereigns was to surround themselves
by the notable subjects of their realm, and they proceeded
in the shortest and simplest manner to obtain their
purpose. The elective character of the Parliamentary
knights arose from the peculiar circumstances of their
order and the ancient juridical customs of their shires.
But these circumstances bore no relation to the Parlia-
mentary burgesses, and although, honoris causa, they
were incorporated with the noble Commons of the realm,
the machinery of their selection was far less nice and com-
1835] BOROUGH REPRESENTATION 167
plicated. In general these returns were made by the
small governing body which must exist in all mural com-
munities, whether incorporated or not; probably in
corporations the Aldermen or capital burgesses served by
rotation. Sometimes, when no leading member of the
society could be induced to undergo the inconvenience
of quitting his home and neglecting his affairs, a neigh-
bouring squire was substituted : sometimes the return was
at once made by the Sheriff from his knowledge of the
leading personages of the borough ; sometimes the future
members were recommended by the Privy Council;
sometimes the same representatives at once returned to a
new Parliament, without any intervening ceremony, who
had been seated in the last. The towns in royal demesne
were probably always represented by officers of the
Crown, and, indeed, this class of individuals abounded in
the Tudor Parliaments. If this loose practice of borough
representation were occasionally in turbulent or careless
times drawn into a dangerous precedent for the return
of knights for shires without the due and legal convoca-
tion of the county court, it is certain that eventually the
more formal and comprehensive scheme of county repre-
sentation exercised a far more decided influence on that
of the boroughs. As these increased in population and
intelligence, and the privilege of being represented in the
royal council became to be more generally understood
and more finely appreciated, the system of representation
by election, always more or less maintained by the return
of the knights, afforded, as the origin of institutions
became darker, at the same time a precedent for those
inhabitants who sought a participation in the now envied
privilege, and a plan by which their wishes might be
accomplished. Thus the freeholders in boroughs by the
right of their burgage tenure,1 the freemen of the cor-
porations, and sometimes the inhabitants at large, where
burgage tenure was rare, and the towns, though flourish-
1 A tenure by which lands or tenements in cities and towns
were held of the King or other lord for a certain yearly rent
168 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
ing, had not been, incorporated, gradually established
their right to the exercise of a suffrage, and thus in the
course of time the House of Commons came to consist
of county members elected by the freeholders ; representa-
tives of cities and boroughs chosen by a popular con-
stituency where a popular constituency existed; and
representatives of the same class who retained the old
exemption from election, because, in fact, the unimportant
places for which they appeared in Parliament had never
emerged from their original insignificance, or produced a
population bold and flourishing enough to usurp the return
of their representatives from the hands of the governing
body.
This I believe to be a very just, as I am sure it is a very
impartial, view of the formation of our House of Commons ;
and if the history of our country and our Constitution
had ever been anything better than a turbulent theatre
for the gladiatorial struggle of party writers, it is one, I
believe, which long ere this would have been adopted :
for it has the merit of being not only consistent with
human nature and consonant with that profounder
knowledge of the origin of our political institutions which
is the privilege of the present day, but it reconciles all
the characteristics and all the difficulties which have
been proved and promulgated by the four great theories
of borough representation that have so long puzzled our
lawyers and perplexed our antiquaries.
Those who may imagine that I derive any satisfaction
in establishing the narrow origin of our present more
popular representation greatly mistake my feelings and
opinions. I am not one of those who believe that the
safety of the Constitution is consulted by encouraging
an exclusive principle in the formation of the constituency
of our third estate. It is not the supposed democratic
character which it has assumed under the new arrange-
ment— I wish I could call it settlement — that fills me
with any apprehensions. On the contrary, I wish it were
even more catholic, though certainly not more Papist.
1835] MEHEMET ALI 169
It is its sectarian quality in which I discover just cause of
alarm. But it has been necessary for me to show what
was the original character of our Lower House, and the
primary intention of the founders of our Constitution.
In creating a third estate of the realm, they established
an order of men, limited in number and highly privileged,
styled the Commons. Although we have increased the
number of these Commons, we have not increased their
privileges or enlarged their political capacity. They still
remain an estate of the realm, and only an estate of the
realm — in spirit as well as in law. For although their
representatives may be chosen by three hundred thousand
men instead of one hundred thousand, they are still only
the representatives of a limited and favoured class of the
kingdom. The House of Commons is not a jot more the
House of the People, unless we exclude from our definition
of the people many of the most essential and most im-
portant elements of a nation. I shall have occasion in
due season to speak further of the great reformingscheme
of 1830. Here I will only observe that, in a hasty and
factious effort to get rid of representation without elec-
tion, it will be as well if eventually we do not discover
that we have only obtained election without representa-
tion.
CHAPTER XVII
Anecdote of the Pacha of Egypt — Eepresentation without Election
illustrated.
THE current of these observations reminds me of an
anecdote which may perhaps amuse your Lordship, nor
be found altogether devoid of instruction. When I was
in Egypt the Pacha of that country, a personage, as is
well known, of rare capacity, and influenced by an almost
morbid desire of achieving in an instant the great and
gradual results of European civilisation, was extremely
desirous, among other objects of passion or of fancy, of
12
170 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
obtaining a Parliament. Emulous of the prosperity and
popular power of our Kings, his Highness was eager to
obtain the means by which, on reflection, he was con-
vinced not only that our country so eminently flourished,
but by which our Sovereign succeeded in commanding
at the same time obedience and affectie n. It so happened
that a young English gentleman, who was on his travels,1
was at this period resident in Cairo, and as he had more
than once had the good fortune in an audience of en-
gaging the attention of the Pacha by the readiness or
patience of his replies, his Highness determined to do
the young Englishman the honour of consulting him.
Our countryman received the summons, which all
instantly obey, and immediately repaired to the Divan
of the citadel. He found the Pacha surrounded by his
courtiers, his engineers, his colonels, and his eunuchs.
At length his Highness^lapped his hands, and the chamber
was cleared, with the exception of a favourite Minister
and a faithful dragoman. The surprise of our country-
man when he received the communication of the Pacha
was not inconsiderable ; but he was one of those who had
seen sufficient of the world never to be astonished, not
altogether untinctured with political knowledge, and
gifted with that philosophical exemption from prejudice
which is one of the most certain and the most valuable
results of extensive travel. Our countryman com-
municated to the Egyptian ruler with calmness and with
precision the immediate difficulties that occurred to him,
explained to the successor of the Pharaohs and the
Ptolemies that the political institutions of England had
been the gradual growth of ages, and that there is no
political function which demands a finer discipline, or a
more regulated preparation, than the exercise of popular
suffrage. The Pacha listened in silence, nodding his
head in occasional approbation : then, calling for coffee,
instead of looking at his watch like a European Sovereign,
delicately terminated the interview.
1 Disraeli himself (see "Home Letters," Cairo, May 28, 1831).
1835] SPITTING PEARLS 171
Some short time afterwards the young Englishman
repaired, as was his occasional custom, to the levee of the
Egyptian ruler. When the Pacha perceived him, he
welcomed him with a favouring smile, and beckoned to
him to advance to the contiguous divan.
"God is great !" said Mehemet Ali to the traveller;
" you are a wise man — Allah ! kerim, but you spit pearls.
Nevertheless I will have a Parliament, and I will have
as many Parliaments as the King of England himself.
See here !" So saying, his Highness produced two lists
of names, containing those of the most wealthy and in-
fluential personages of every town and district in his
dominions. " See here !" said he, " here are my Parlia-
ments; but I have made up my mind, to prevent in-
convenience, to elect them myself."
Behold, my Lord, a splendid instance of representation
without election ! In pursuance of this resolution of
Mehemet Ali, two chambers met at Cairo, called in the
jargon of the Levant the alto Parliamento, and the basso
Parliamento. The first consisted of the Pachas and chief
officers of the capital, the second really of the most re-
spectable of the provincial population. Who can doubt
that the basso Parliamento of Cairo, if the invasion of
Syria had not diverted the attention of Mehemet Ali
from domestic politics, might have proved a very faithful
and efficient national council, and afforded the governor
of the country very important information as to the
resources, necessities, and grievances of his subjects ?
Who can hesitate in believing that there was a much
greater chance of its efficiency and duration when
appointed by the Pacha himself than when elected by
his subjects in their present condition ? Who does not
recognise in such an assembly the healthy seeds of a
popular government ? I for one should have much more
confidence in the utility and duration of the Parliament
of Cairo than in that of Naples or Madrid ; especially as,
it is but candid to confess, Mehemet Ali had further
secured a practical term of political initiation for his
172 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
future legislators by two capital rules: first, that the
basso Parliamento should only petition and not debate;
and, secondly, that the alto Parliamento should only
debate and not vote !
CHAPTER XVIII
Why the Political Consequences of the Protestant Eeligion on the
Continent were Different to those in England, and why
Favourable to Civil Liberty — Protestantism creates a Republi-
can Religion — Introduction of the Phrase " The People,"
into European Politics.
THE Protestant Reformation, which, in a political point
of view, had only succeeded in dividing England into two
parties and establishing arbitrary power, had produced
far different effects on the Continent of Europe. There
it had created a Republican religion: for such was the
ecclesiastical polity of Calvin. The English Protestants,
who, flying from the Marian persecution, sought refuge
at Geneva, in the agony of their outraged loyalty re-
nounced their old allegiance, applied to civil polity the
religious discipline of their great apostle, and returned
to their native country political republicans. Kings
were the enemies of Protestantism, and Protestants
naturally became the enemies of monarchy. The Hebrew
history, which they studied as intently as the Christian
Gospels, furnished them with a precedent and a model
for a religious republic. Judges ruled in Israel before
the royal dynasties of Saul or David. The anti-monarchical
spirit of Protestant Europe was notorious and incon-
testable as early as the middle of the sixteenth century.
The regicides of Holy Writ are the heroes of the turbulent
tractates of the early missionaries of spiritual democracy :
the slayer of Sisera, or he who stabbed the fat King of
Moab in his chamber. Samuel, the prophet of the Lord,
deposed Kings : Calvin and Knox were the successors of
Samuel. The bloody massacre of Saint Bartholomew,
1835] AN INSIDIOUS PHEASE 173
occasioned by the promulgation of this dangerous political
religionism, aggravated the danger and determination of
its votaries. The press of Europe swarmed with re-
publican treatises composed by the ablest writers.
Books are great landmarks in the history of human
nature. Now was heard, for the first time, of the para-
mount authority of " THE PEOPLE." This is the era of
the introduction into European politics of that insidious
phrase, by virtue of which an active and unprincipled
minority have ever since sought to rule and hoodwink
a nation. In 1579 appeared the famous " Vindicise contra
Tyrannos " of Languet,1 and the revolt of Holland and
the League of Utrecht, which terminated in the estab-
lishment of the Dutch Republic, formed a practical com-
mentary on its virulent and fervent pages.
The Republican Religion, which revolutionised Holland,
triumphed in Scotland under Knox, and in France long
balanced the united influence of the crown and the tiara.
Even as late as 1621 the genius of Richelieu alone pre-
vented France from being formed into a Federal Republic,
and from being divided into circles .
Such was the spirit of the European movement when
the aristocracy of England, refreshed and renovated by
more than half a century of prosperity and peace, deemed
the accession of Charles the First a fitting season for a
struggle to restore the ancient liberties of the nation,
and to regain and complete the Constitution of the Plan-
tagenets. For nearly two centuries that Constitution
had been suspended, like an old suit of armour, crusted
with the blood of the civil wars, and covered with the dust
of theologic logomachies: but the great spirits of the
seventeenth century recognised the suit as of good proof,
and, though somewhat antiquated in its style and fashion,
possessing all necessary powers of protection and o ence.
The history of the age of Charles the First has been the
literary arena of the passions of all parties. The far
vaster range of political experience which, from the great
1 Hubert Languet (1518-1581).
174 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
French Revolution and its consequences, we enjoy than
our forefathers, our increased, yet not too considerable,
distance from the passionate period in question, and our
decreased dependence upon its incidents as the once
solitary precedents for all popular movements, the re-
searches of ingenious scholars, and the publication of
contemporary memoirs, have all combined to render us
more competent to decide upon the character of the most
memorable transactions of our annals.
Until the meeting of the Long Parliament, the King
appears to have had no party in the nation, and solely
to have depended upon his courtiers and his Bishops.
There was a general feeling throughout the leading classes
of the country that the time had arrived when the settle-
ment of the State on a broad basis of constitutional
liberty was indispensable. The aristocracy of England,
also, was no longer that unlettered class of mere warriors
who, however great might be their political power or
ardent their love of public liberty, were necessarily
debarred by their habits and want of education from
practising the arts of government and legislation. The
cultivated intellect of England required a theatre for its
display and exercise ; it found this in some degree in its
Parliament, but sought it more decidedly in the adminis-
tration of the Empire. The time had arrived when a
prelate could no longer conduct the affairs of the realm
from his monopoly of learning. The age of royal
favourites was about to be closed for ever. The monarch,
though apparently almost a despot, was fast approaching
the simplicity of his executive capacity : it not only might
be then obvious to the contemplative, but it was abso-
lutely determined by practical men, that the administra-
tion of the kingdom should soon be conducted by those
of the subjects who were most eminent and distinguished
in the great national council.
1835] HAMPDEN AND PYM 175
CHAPTER XIX
Attempts of the English Aristocracy to restore the Constitution
of the Plantagenets under Charles the First — Constitutional
Eeformers and Root and Branch Reformers — The Root and
Branch Reformers attack the Church and alarm the Constitu-
tional Reformers — The Root and Branch Reformers, deserted
by the Constitutional Reformers, form an Anti-national
Alliance with the Scotch Covenanters.
THE two Houses of the first Parliament summoned by
Charles contained the flower of his kingdom — men of
the highest lineage, the largest estates, the most dis-
tinguished learning, and the most illustrious accomplish-
ments. The Opposition in the House of Commons, led
by Eliot, and supported by the Peers, succeeded, as early
as the third year of Charles's reign, in obtaining the
Petition of Bight. But this concession did not satisfy
the Parliament; they wished to dislodge the favourite;
to change the Ministry as well as establish the Constitu-
tion. Charles recoiled from the novel heresy of not being
the master of his own servant, a heresy soon doomed to
become orthodox : he determined to support his friend,
and the King resolved to reign without a Parliament.
It is singular that the King could have contrived to
reign ten years without one, but the truth is the state
of the country, as is admitted and celebrated by all
foreign writers, was of a prosperity so extraordinary that
it was difficult to excite discontents among the great
body of the nation. In this dilemma, the leaders of the
Opposition among the Commons, Hampden and Pym,
but concealing their masterly machinations from the
more numerous and moderate portions of their party, in-
trigued with the Scotch, and held out to the Presbyterian
leaders of that nation the prospect of the English Opposi-
tion assisting them in their favourite project, the over-
throw of the Church of England in Scotland. The conse-
quent troubles in Scotland plunged the King in a war,
176 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
and was the occasion of the summons of the Long Parlia-
ment.
The spirit of the King when he met this famous
assembly was quite broken. He was ready to make any
concession consistent with the maintenance of a limited
monarchy. Experience had taught him that the whole
body of the aristocracy was opposed to him, and we
know that Charles was perfectly aware of the sacrifices
which would be demanded of him, and which he was
prepared to grant without resistance. The objects of
the King at this time were to obtain the establishment
of a limited monarchy by constitutional concessions, and
then to form a Parliamentary administration from the
most eminent of his previous opponents, in which conduct
alone he recognised any security for a strong govern-
ment, and the only prevention of further movement.
The Long Parliament in a few months restored the
Constitution of the Plantagenets . It secured the frequent
assemblage of Parliaments : it terminated for ever arbi-
trary taxation : it abolished the Star Chamber and the
High Commission Court. The concessions of Charles the *
First during the two sessions of this Parliament, previous ^ (
to the Civil War, were so ample that the Eevolution of ^v
1688 added no important feature to our political system.
Faithful to their purpose, the leaders of this famous
Opposition not only established our liberties, but im-
peached the Ministers, and this brought about a result
not less anxiously and eagerly sought after than the
abolition of Ship Money : a formal attempt by the King,
for which he had been long prepared, to form a Govern-
ment of the more moderate portion of the Parliamentary
party. I cannot believe that the death of the Earl of
Bedford could alone have occasioned the failure of this
intended arrangement; it is more probable that the
dissensions which soon broke out in the great body of
the Commons had already covertly appeared. The
Parliament, although both Houses and the vast majority
of the Lower had been previously opposed to the King —
1835] A CHECK TO THE COMMONS 177
for we must not forget that even Hyde and Falkland
were originally members of opposition — had now become
divided into two parties : the Constitutional Reformers,
and the Root and Branch Reformers ; Pym and Hampden
headed the latter. The Constitutional Reformers were
alarmed by the attack on the Church : the Lords threw out
the Bill which sought to deprive the Bishops of their
Parliamentary suffrage. This was the first check that
the Commons had received from the Upper House. Pym
and Hampden, deserted by the Constitutional Reformers,
had thrown themselves into the hands of the Puritans
and Root and Branch men. Instead of political unions,
they appealed to the city apprentices, and the trained
bands; mobs were hired, petitions forged, all the arts of
insurgency practised. The Peers were daunted, the
King frightened; Straff ord was executed, the Bishops
expelled the House of Lords, the House of Commons itself
rendered independent of the King and its constituents
by the act which made its dissolution consequent on its
own pleasure. At length, by the Remonstrance and the
Propositions the very abrogation of the monarchy being
attempted, the King raised his standard, and so com-
pletely had the unhappy monarch by his conduct placed
the Commons in the wrong, that the very personage who.
two years before, had absolutely no party in the nation
found himself supported by a considerable majority of
his people, and nearly the whole of the Peerage ; while the
vote which virtually occasioned the struggle, and was
the trial of strength of the two parties in the House of
Commons, was only carried by a majority of eleven. The
success of the royal arms, and the unexpected strength
of the royal party, filled the Commons with consterna-
tion. The moderate members continued to flock to the
King. Pym and Hampden, finding that they were
deserted by their aristocratic companions, and that the
Puritans and Root and Branch men were not powerful
enough to support them, made an open and absolute
alliance with the Scotch Presbyterians, with whom they
178 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
had always had a 'secret understanding, swallowed the
Covenant which they had before disfavoured, decreed the
extermination of the Church of England, beheaded Laud,
called in a Scotch army, and maintained their cause by
a connection offensive to their countrymen.
CHAPTER XX
Parallel between passing Events and the Reign of Charles the First
— Government of " the People " established in England — Its
Practical Consequences — The Nation seeks Refuge from " the
People " — Public Opinion not less Influential in the Age of
Charles the First than at the Present Day — European Move-
ment described — Of the Latter Stuarts.
AM I indeed treating of the reign of Charles the First ?
or is it some nearer epoch that I am commemorating ?
Am I writing of the affairs of the seventeenth or the
nineteenth century ? There is such a marvellous simi-
larity between the periods that, for my part, I find great
difficulty in discriminating between the two Dromios.
In both instances the Church of England is the great
victim, and at both seasons the vast majority of the
English people were warmly and tenderly attached to
their establishment . In both cases the aristocratic leaders
of the movement thought fit to secede from their own
party, while in both cases their more determined or
desperate associates compensate themselves for the
desertion by the alliance of revolutionary or anti-national
support. In one instance the Radicals, in the other the
Root and Branch men; in one instance the Dissenters,
in the other the Puritans. And in both instances, when
Radicals and Dissenters in the one case and Puritans and
Root and Branch men in the other fail in making up with
their influence for the loss of the aristocratic connections
of the leaders who had summoned them, we find the
same desperate and treasonable compact, made in one
age with the Scotch Presbyterians, and in the other
1835] EARLY UTILITARIANS 179
with the Irish Papists ; the Solemn League and Covenant
so long repudiated swallowed as the condition in the first
instance, and the Irish Church scheme, once so warmly
opposed, gulped down in the other.
The Bishops expelled from the House of Lords, the
Bang defied, then imprisoned, and then decapitated, the
House of Lords disregarded, and then formally abolished,
voted " a nuisance, and of no use " — you see, my Lord,
there were Utilitarians even in those days — behold the
great object at length consummated of concentrating
the whole power and authority of the government in one
estate of the realm. The verbal process by which the
revolution was effected was very simple and very logical
if we only grant the premises ; the schoolmen themselves
could not have reasoned with more invincible accuracy.
The House of Commons, having first declared "that the
people are the origin of all just power " — an axiom to
which any person may annex any meaning of his fancy —
next enunciated that the House of Commons, being
chosen by the people and representing them, are the
supreme authority of the nation, and that consequently
whatever is declared to be law by the House of Commons
hath the force of law without the consent of the King or
the House of Peers. First, the constituency of the House
of Commons, a small fraction of the nation, is declared
to be the People; their power then becomes invested in
their representatives; the majority of those representa-
tives, acting by their supreme authority, then expel from
their numbers the minority who oppose their projects;
and then, still acting by their supreme authority, vote the
power of the triumphant majority perpetual. This is
the simple process by which we at length obtain a tolerably
definite idea of what is meant by the phrase " the People, 'r
and the easy machinery by which a band of two or three
hundred individuals obtain and exercise despotic power
over the lives, liberties, and property of a whole nation.
We still remember in this country the tender and happy
consequences of being governed by " the People." We
180 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
have not forgotten- that " the People " established Courts
more infamous than the Star Chamber in every county
of England, with power of fining, sequestrating, im-
prisoning, and corporally punishing all who opposed or
even murmured against their decrees; that under the
plea of malignancy " the People " avenged their private
hatreds, and seized for their private gain and gratification
any estates or property to which they took a fancy ; that
" the People " consigned to Bas tiles and perpetual
imprisonment all those who refused to answer their illegal
inquiries, and bored red-hot irons through the tongues
of the contumacious; that not an appearance of law or
liberty remained in the land ; that " the People " enlarged
the laws of high-treason so that they comprehended
verbal offences and even intentions; that " the People "
practised decimation; that "the People" voted trial
by Jury a breach of Parliamentary privilege; that "the
People " deprived of authority all persons of family and
distinction who had originally adhered to their party,
because men of blood and breeding would not submit to
be their disgraceful and ignoble tools, and filled every
office under them with the scum of the nation ; that the
very individuals who had suffered and struggled under
the Star Chamber were visited by " the People " with
punishments and imprisonments infinitely more bloody
and more grievous; that "the People" sequestrated
nearly one-half of the goods and chattels of the nation,
and at least one-half of its rents and revenues; that in
seven years "the People" raised the taxation of the
country from £800,000 per annum to £7,000,000 per
annum; that "the People" invented the Excise, and
applied that odious impost even to provisions and the
common necessaries of life; that "the People " became
so barefaced in their vile extortions that one morning
they openly divided £300,000 amongst themselves, and
settled an annuity of £4 a day on each of their number ;
that " the People " committed all these enormities in
the teeth of outraged England, by the aid of an anti-
1835] EUROPEAN MOVEMENT 181
national compact with the Scottish Covenanters; and
that finally the Nation, the insulted and exhausted
Nation, sought refuge from the Government of " the
People " in the arms of a military despot.
I hear much in the present day of the march of in-
tellect, and the diffusion of knowledge, and the influence
of public opinion, and there are those who would assure
us that in these circumstances and qualities we may
safely count upon finding ample guarantees for not only
the maintenance but the increase of our liberties, and
very able securities for every species of good government.
It will be as well for us, however, to turn aside, if possible,
for a moment from the exciting tumult in which it is
the destiny of the present age to flourish, and calmly
condescend to spare a few moments of consideration to
the history of that not less agitated and consequential
age which elapsed from 1550 to the middle of the seven-
teenth century. The Protestant Reformation and its
great political consequences, especially the formation of
the Dutch Republic, had agitated men's minds in a
degree not inferior to the influence exercised over the
spirit of the eighteenth and present centuries by the
French Revolution. The nature and origin of Power
were not less severely scrutinised; the object and in-
fluence of Establishments not less sharply canvassed.
There was as much public intelligence, as much public
opinion, and as much public spirit, in Europe then as at
the present hour. The exclusive and local character of
nations was fast disappearing; patriotism was fast
merging into philanthropy ; a cosmopolite spirit pervaded
Christendom: Geneva communicated with Edinburgh or
Paris; there was a constant spiritual correspondence
between Amsterdam and La Rochelle and London. The
political movement in England originated with the aris-
tocracy; it was supported and advanced by the great
body of the nation. If the influence of the press were
less considerable than at the present day, though I much
doubt it, and the British Museum , which contains so many
182 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
thousand pamphlets of the times of Charles the First, a
fraction only of the fugitive effusions, confirms my
scepticism — Public Opinion had yet another and more
powerful organ, and was influenced by even a more
potent and passionate medium. If there were ten
thousand pamphlets, certainly there were ten thousand
pulpits.
There was as much communication in 1640 as there is
likely to be in 1840; if we had no rail-roads, we had men
who rode " post haste "; there were as many committees,
there was as complete an organisation; the arts of in-
surgency reached such a zenith of perfection that the
unlicensed imagination and unbridled devices of Jaco-
binical France only imitated and never surpassed them;
and, more important than all, the Government was much
weaker. Yet, although the flame of popular liberty was
fed by such various and vigorous fuel, and although the
ranks of the popular party were marshalled and led on
during the contest by statesmen inferior in station,
capacity, and accomplishment, to none who ever figured
in this land, the mighty impulse, like the most beautiful
river of Germany, which, after renovating a country and
commanding the admiration of a nation, never reaches
the ocean, but sinks into the swamps of Brabant — the
mighty impulse achieved only destruction, and the move-
ment ended in mud.
The reigns of the latter Stuarts are the most disgraceful
in our annals, but as much from the character of the
nation as the character of those monarchs. The public
spirit was broken and the public mind corrupted. Good
laws are of little avail without good manners, and unless
there be a wholesome state of mind in the nation to
regulate their exercise. Trial by Jury in the time of
Charles the Second was a tyranny as fearful as the Star
Chamber ; and without any formal violation of our written
Constitution, it is probable that the government of the
Tudors would have been re-established in England, had
not James the Second alarmed the Protestant spirit of
1835] REFORM BILL OF 1830 183
the country, and the aristocracy seized the opportunity
of again establishing our liberties.
The consequences of the famous revolution which raised
the Prince of Orange to the throne of these realms were
very important, but, as they did not affect the form or
elements of the House of Commons, the remarks which
it may be necessary to make upon that event will more
naturally occur to me when I come to consider the nature
of the executive branch of our Constitution, and the
character of the kingly office. The history of England
from that period until 1830 is rather political than con-
stitutional, and, although extremely interesting to a
statesman, relates to the struggles of rival parties for
power instead of the more inspiring contest between royal
prerogative and Parliamentary privilege, and that more
noble conflict for their liberties between a nation and
a Sovereign. The struggles of parties also, as connected
with Ministerial responsibility, are naturally linked with
the yet untouched topic of the Crown.
CHAPTER XXI
Blunders of the Whigs in their Reform of the House of Commons
— But the Original Character of the House of Commons still
retained — Not the House of the People— Of the Constitution
of the House of Lords.
VIEWING the Reform Bill of 1830 as the coup d'etat of
a party who, having obtained power, found themselves
opposed by all the estates of the realm, and supposing
that their only object was to establish themselves in
power by conceding a preponderating influence in the
constituency to a sectarian minority in the State favour-
able to their views and policy, the intended measure is
very intelligible; but, dismissing for the moment from
our consideration all factious imputations, it must be
admitted that this reform was conceived and prosecuted
in a profound ignorance of the nature of our Constitution,
184 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
to which we may -ascribe all the mischiefs that have
occurred and that threaten us.
That the reconstruction of the third estate of the realm
was necessary is an intelligible proposition; and, had it
been proved, all that we had to consider was the mode
by which it should be attained. But the Whigs set out
with reforming the representatives of the estate instead
of the estate itself, and the consequences of this capital
blunder pervade the whole of their arrangement. If the
proposition of the necessity had been proved, then we
had to consider the principle on which the Reform should
be conducted, as population, fiscal contribution, or
peculiar class. But by reforming the representatives
instead of the estate, no principle could be adopted, or
at least could only partially be applied. Hence the
present system is as anomalous as the late one : communi-
ties of two or three hundred electors return as many repre-
sentatives as communities of fourteen thousand; a man
who rents a £10 house in a town enjoys a suffrage, a man
who lives in a £40 house out of a town is not an elector.
It might be undeniable that, if the third estate were to
be reformed, the principle of representation without
election no longer suited the present state of society:
but why then cling to that part of the ancient scheme
which gave a preponderating influence in numbers to
the citizens and burgesses because, in fact, they were
not elected, but only nominated ? All this originated
in the fallacy of supposing that the state of our repre-
sentation in many towns was the consequence of decay,
instead of original intention. Thus whole and important
districts of the country, and considerable classes of the
community, are not represented, and the land, which
originally formed the third estate, assumes only a secondary
character in its present elements.
Nevertheless, constituted as the third estate now is,
and changed as may be its elements, has it in a political
capacity deviated from its original character ? The
Commons form still only an estate of the realm, a privi-
1835] CHARACTER OF THE UPPER HOUSE 185
leged and limited order of the nation, in numbers a frac-
tion of the mass, and their representatives can only be
invested with the qualities of their constituents. To
maintain that an estate of the realm is the People involves
a contradiction in terms, for an estate implies a class of
the People. The Commons of England are not the
People unless we declare that every person who is not
a Parliamentary constituent is without the pale of
national definition. If we agree to this, the people of
England consists of three or four hundred thousand
persons, divided into almost equal classes professing the
most contrary opinions. The absurdity of such a con-
clusion is evident. The House of Commons is not the
House of the People, and the members of the House of
Commons are not the representatives of the People.
I proceed to consider the Constitution and the character
of the Upper House of Parliament. The House of Lords
is the most eminent existing example of representation
without election. As an estate of the realm which, from
its unlimited numbers, can with convenience personally
appear and assemble, the Peers of England do not meet
at Westminster by their trustees, or deputies, or delegates.
But this House is nevertheless representative. The
House of Lords represents the Church in the Lord Bishops,
the law in the Lord Chancellor and often the Lord Chief
Justice, the counties in the Lord Lieutenants, the boroughs
in their noble Recorders. This estate, from the character
of the property of its members, is also essentially the
representative chamber of the land ; and as the hereditary
leaders of the nation, especially of the cultivators of the
land, the genuine and permanent population of England,
its peasantry.
In ruder times, when the King desired to call a great
council which should represent the interests and consult
over the welfare of his kingdom, he summoned the Barons
or chief subjects of his realm. These great councils,
which were the origin of our Parliaments, and so styled
before they assumed a legislative character, assembled
13
186 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. [1835
for the administration of justice. They formed a high
court of law whither in time repaired, as I have before
described, deputations of the provincial tribunals and
the local executors of the law. The Barons originally
held their Parliamentary privilege by tenure, but the
King soon mingled among them by his writ of summons
such individuals as he deemed fit and competent to assist
them in their great office. Such was the origin of baronies
by writ; and peerages by patent were also introduced
as early as the reign of Richard the Second. Gradually,
as the country advanced in civilisation, and the affairs
of its population became more complicated, the Sovereign
delegated portions of his judicial power to appointed
and permanent tribunals of his palace, presided over by
his selected councillors, and in time by professional
lawyers. Such was the origin of our great courts of
law — of King's Bench, of Common Pleas, and of Ex-
chequer; but the House of Lords, even when the formal
and present constitution of Parliament occurred, still
retained, independent of the legislative functions of their
estate, their original character of a high court of justice,
which has descended to their successors, who to this
day form the supreme and efficient Court of Appeal of
the kingdom. It was this character, indeed, which
rendered in old days the intermission of Parliaments so
great a grievance. By not assembling the House of
Lords, justice was delayed, and when we read in the
reigns of the Plantagenets of the murmurs of the nation
at the King not calling his Parliament, it was, in fact,
the meeting of the Peers which the nation invoked with
such loud complaints.
The House of Lords strictly consists of two estates of
the realm : the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. Originally
the Lords Spiritual exceeded the Temporal Peers in
number. In the last Parliament that was held before the
struggles between the Houses of York and Lancaster,
so fatal to our ancient Peerage, only fifty-three Temporal
Lords appeared in Parliament : the Spiritual Lords, on the
1835] THE BISHOPS 187
other hand, numbered twenty-one Bishops and thirty-six
mitred Abbots and Priors. Henry the Seventh could only
summon to his first Parliament twenty-nine Temporal
Lords, and even in the reign of Henry the Eighth the
Temporal Peers did not equal the representatives of the
Church and the great ecclesiastical corporations. The
dissolution of the monasteries, which expelled the mitred
Abbots and Priors from the Upper House, reduced the
number of the Spiritual Peers to twenty-six, five new
bishoprics having been created as a species of representa-
tive compensation to the new Church. From this period
the political influence of the Lords Spiritual in the Upper
House has never been of a preponderating character ; and
although they retained their ancient privilege as a
separate estate, and the precedence to which they were
originally entitled, they have in fact, by blending their
votes with their temporal brethren, contributed to the
formation of one estate of the realm, in which they have
long virtually, although not formally, merged.
CHAPTER XXII
Of the Spiritual Lords — The Bench of Bishops a Democratic
Institution — Of the Temporal Lords.
I THINK, my Lord, this is not an inconvenient opportunity
of considering the policy of the presence of these right
reverend personages in the Upper House of Parliament,
a policy so unpopular with the anti-constitutional party
of this country. Whenever the factious leaders of the
third estate attempt to obtain a preponderating influence
in the Constitution for the House in which they sit as
representatives of their order, and to usurp the entire
government of the country, and exercise despotic control
over the lives and liberties, the persons and properties,
of their fellow-subjects, the attack upon the independence
and influence of the House of Lords is invariably com-
188 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
menced by an assault upon the ecclesiastical elements of
its composition. Thus, in the time of Charles the First
the factious leaders of a majority of the representatives
of that limited and privileged order of the nation called
the Commons succeeded, after repeated efforts, in ex-
pelling the Bishops, or first estate, from the Upper House ;
and thus certain persons at the present day, who inherit
all the faction of Pym and Hampden, though none of
their genius, being as like to them as Butler's Hudibras
is like to Milton's Satan, have, in a manner at once in-
decent and unconstitutional, and which, if I have any
knowledge of the laws of my country, subjects them to
a praemunire, soiled the notice book of the proceedings
of the next session of the House of Commons with a vile
and vulgar menace of this exalted order.
f The great art in creating an efficient Representative
| Government is to secure its representation of those
interests of the country which are at the same time not
\only considerable, but in their nature permanent. To
bind up with our form of polity the feelings of vast and
influential classes of the nation obviously tends to the
perpetuity of the State; though the danger of making
sudden and slightly considered additions to the elements
of our political estates need not be enlarged upon, nor
the fatal blunder of mistaking an evanescent for a per-
manent interest. Independent of all those spiritual con-
siderations, which hitherto have been held as justly and
wisely influencing the elements and character of the
English Constitution; dismissing for a moment from our
thoughts that union of Church and State which hitherto
has consecrated the commonwealth of England ; granting
for an instant that that religious connection, which has so
long tempered power and so often elevated its exercise,
should indeed cease, and that the authority of the Church
of England should only be supported by the affections
and voluntary succour of its votaries ; I have yet to learn
that the presence in the House of Peers of an order of
individuals who, in the independence of their means, I
1835] A DEMOCRATIC BENCH 189
may say the vastness of their possessions, are inferior to
none, can be enumerated among the less desirable ele-
ments of a Senate. To me it seems that a Bishop of
Durham or of Winchester affords, from his position,
the probable materials of as efficient a member of the
Upper House as any Earl or Marquis who bears those
names.
But when I recall to my recollection the virulent an-
tipathy of the anti-constitutional writers of the present
day against what they style the Hereditary Peerage, and
the unqualified legislators, who, they pretend, must be
the inevitable consequences of its institution, I confess
that I am somewhat astonished that their first and fiercest
attack should be made on that portion of the House of
Lords whose office is not hereditary, who in general spring
from the humbler classes of the community, and who,
from the nature of their qualification to sit in that august
assembly, must necessarily be men distinguished for
their learning, their talents, and their virtues. Of the
many popular elements of the House of Lords, I have
always considered that the bench of Bishops was the
most democratic.
I have not concealed my conviction, for I plead only
the cause of Truth, that the Protestant Reformation in
England originally tended to the establishment of arbi-
trary power, and of that despotism of the Tudors of which
Charles the First was the victim. The Church transferred
their allegiance from the Tiara to the Crown ; the people
followed the example of their national ecclesiastics. But
these were the inevitable consequences of unparalleled
events. The Church is part of our Constitution, and its
character has changed in unison with that Constitution;
the clergy in this country, thanks to that Reformation
whose good fruits we have long enjoyed, both political
and spiritual, are national ; they are our fellow-subjects.,
and they have changed with their fellow-countrymen.
Their errors were the errors of their age and of their
nation; they were no more. The Bishops who, under
190 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
James the First, maintained the High Commission Court,
under James the Second were the first champions of our
liberties; the Establishment which, under Laud, per-
secuted to obtain Conformity, is now certainly our surest,
perhaps our only, guarantee of Toleration.
The English Constitution, while it has secured that
toleration, absolute and illimitable, has also consecrated
the State; it has proved that religious government and
religious liberty are not incompatible. It is one of the
leading principles of our polity that the religious discipline
and future welfare of our citizens are even of greater
importance than their political and present well-being.
And although the pious and private munificence of an
ancient people has, in the course of ages, relieved the
State from the fiscal burthen of a dependent Clergy,
invested that godly and learned and devoted body with
a noble and decorous inheritance, and covered our land
with schools and churches, with sublime temples, and
august and unrivalled universities ; the State has never-
theless stepped in as the trustee and guardian of the
ministers of our religion, adopted them as its children,
and established their order into an estate of the kingdom.
The Stuarts were prodigal in the creation of Temporal
Peers ; one hundred and nineteen met in the Parliament of
1 640, but in 1 661 the number had scarcely increased. The
Peers of England led the movement against the unhappy
son of James the First. A Peer was one of the five mem-
bers whom the Bang attempted to seize ; but when all those
concessions were obtained from the Sovereign, which
would have left the estates, and the nation at large, in the
possession of even greater privileges than we enjoy at
this day ; when it was discovered that the monarchy itself
was aimed at, and that Reform was fast approaching
Revolution, the great body of the Peerage, in unison with
the great body of their fellow-subjects, withdrew them-
selves from the Parliament and adhered to the King.
So that when the Upper House was formally abolished
by the vote of the House of Commons, the customary
1835] A VENETIAN DOGE 191
attendance of Lords was not more than six or eight.
Little more than a quarter of a century after the restora-
tion of the Stuarts, the nation, headed by the Peers,
expelled them, and established the security of a Protestant
throne.
CHAPTER XXIII
Of the Peerage Bill — Attempts of the Whigs to establish an
Oligarchy— Irresponsibility of the House of Lords considered
— The Lords not more Irresponsible than the Commons — The
Qualification of the Peers the same as the Commons, Heredi-
tary— Hereditary Legislators not more Absurd than Heredi-
tary Electors — The Principle of Hereditary Legislation not
constitutionally Anomalous — The Principle of Hereditary
Legislation not abstractedly Absurd.
FROM the accession of William the Third to the accession
of William the Fourth, a period of upwards of one hundred
and forty years, the House of Lords has not only exer-
cised an independent, but a considerable, and, as some
have held, a preponderating, influence in the government
of the country. The Whigs under George the First, in
pursuance of their plan of reducing the English monarch
to the character of a Venetian Doge, succeeded in carry-
ing a Bill through the Upper House to deprive the King
of his prerogative of creating further Peers, and thus to
convert the free and democratic Peerage of England into
an odious oligarchy of exclusive privilege ; but the House
of Commons, led by the Tory country gentlemen, rejected
the proposition with becoming decision. Since that time,
and especially during the active reigns of the Third and
Fourth Georges, the royal prerogative has been exercised
with a liberality which by some has been warmly, but I
think unwisely, stigmatised. The ranks of our second
estate have been periodically strengthened by an accession
of some of the best blood, the greatest wealth, and the
most distinguished talent, of the community, and its due
influence alike in the legislature and in national opinion
has thus been efficiently maintained.
192 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
The increased strength of the third estate, in conse-
quence of its recent reconstruction, having filled the
imaginations of certain factious leaders with the old and
disastrous machination of establishing the supremacy of
its representative chamber, and that result not being
possible unless the independence of the Upper House of
Parliament is first destroyed, an attack is now made
with equal violence and perseverance upon the hereditary
principle of its institution as productive of irresponsibility,
and thus affording not only a most injurious, but an
anomalous, feature in the scheme of our legislative and
executive government .
Who has not heard of the fatal and anomalous irre-
sponsibility of the House of Lords ? Of what Whig
journal does it not form the subject of the choice and
cockbrained leading article ? Is there a tavern Cleon
from whose foaming lips its anathema does not flow in
rabid sentences of seditious folly ? Is there a plebeian
oracle of a metropolitan vestry who does not warn the
Peers of England with the solemn stolidity of his Delphic
utterance ? Nay, the authorised agitator of the adminis-
tration itself is sent upon a provincial tour of treason to
open the minds of the King's lieges on this urgent point
of constitutional revelation — the vagabond and over-
rated rebel — vomiting his infamous insolence in language
mean as his own soul !
And yet this fatal and anomalous irresponsibility is
no more the characteristic of the House of Lords than of
that third estate itself, in whose supremacy the anti-
constitutional writers teach us we are alone to find a
security for good government.
f The estate of the Peers is in no greater degree irre-
( sponsible than the estate of the Commons. Both are
] alike popular classes — that is, sections of the nation,
established for the public and common good into political
borders or estates. For this reason are they privileged,
and for no other ; nor is there any privilege of importance
which the Lords enjoy which the Commons do not share ;
1835] VOTING BY PKOXY 193
though there are very many, and those, too, very im-
portant, privileges which the Commons in the course of
time have acquired, and which they have jealously
monopolised. The Commons, for their own convenience,
meet in Parliament by their representatives ; the Lords,
from their limited number, meet personally. Yet a Peer
is allowed to vote by proxy on the same principle that
the Commons are allowed to vote by their proxies or
representatives ; it ever being the wish and intention and
genius of our Constitution that the three estates shall be
as completely and constantly consulted on all subjects,
and their consent to all laws as perfectly obtained, as
human wit could devise. This is the real and original
cause of the Peers voting by proxy, an analogous privilege
with that enjoyed by the Commons ; yet in these days of
profound constitutional learning even this vote by proxy
is held " an anomaly," and no less a personage than an
exalted member of the Upper House itself, eager to obtain
a little vulgar popularity by falling in with the superficial
humours of the day, has been found anxious to deprive
his own order to an ancient, and, as I have shown, not a
peculiar, privilege.
A political estate is in its nature complete, and there-
fore, whatever may be the amount of privileges or the
degree of power with which it is invested, it is necessarily
independent. Now, all power that is independent must
be irresponsible. If the state of the Peers be independent
and irresponsible, and undoubtedly and necessarily it is
so, to whom is the estate of the Commons responsible ?
To whom is that privileged order of the kingdom, who
at the last General Election, to the amount of three
hundred thousand men, voted for the representatives of
their order in Parliament — to whom are they responsible ?
What political dependence have they upon the nation at
large ? What do they care for what the unrepresented
mass may think of their resolves and conduct ? Are
they amenable for their political behaviour to any public
tribunal ? Have they not, if they agree among them-
194 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
selves and return their representatives to that effect,
the power, as far as the assent of their estate is concerned,
the power to deprive all those who are not of their privi-
leged order of their rights and liberties ? What lawyer
can doubt such a right in the Commons, or dispute their
power, if they choose to exercise it ? Have not the
majority of their representatives, in fact, often exercised
the delegated power of their order to this effect ? Why
has the House of Commons often been unpopular with
the great body of the nation ? Because their conduct
opposed its interests or inclinations. Was the House of
Commons dependent on the nation ? No ! They were
< dependent on their order, on their privileged constituents,
who sent them to their chamber, and who, in their turn,
responsible to no class whatever. If the question of
responsibility be mooted, what satisfaction or increased
security to a nation of many millions is it that the
privileged order of Commons consists of three hundred
thousand, instead of two hundred thousand, or even one
hundred thousand persons ? Is a privileged order of
three hundred thousand individuals, represented by their
deputies, likely to be more responsible than a privileged
order of three hundred individuals appearing by them-
selves ? On the contrary, everyone sees and feels in
an instant that, as far as the nation is concerned, the
more limited order, who appear for themselves, and are
more in the eye of the world, are in fact in a moral point
of view much more responsible to the general body of the
people than the more numerous and more obscure class,
who shuffle off that moral responsibility on their repre-
sentatives .
So much for the anomalous irresponsibility of the House
of Lords. You will perceive, my Lord, that nothing but
the two capital blunders prevalent among the anti-
constitutional writers of the present day — namely, in the
first place, confounding the representatives of an estate
with that estate itself, and, secondly, supposing that their
presumed estate was in fact representative of no less a
1835] IDENTICAL QUALIFICATIONS 195
body than the nation itself, between whom and the House
of Commons there really exists no privity — I repeat,
nothing but these two capital blunders in our profound
political instructors can account for the perverse ab-
surdities of their lucubrations, or the conceited com-
placency with which they develop their ill-seasoned
theories.
If the estate of the Peers be not more irresponsible in
the exercise of the power with which it is invested than
the estate of the Commons, so also the qualification by
which the Peers exercise their power is in its nature the
same as the qualification by which the Commons exercise
their power. If the institution of hereditary legislators
be absurd, I do not see that that of hereditary electors is
less so. If it be absurd to enact that a man in the most
elevated and cultivated class of the community should be
born with a right of becoming, at a legal age, an English
legislator, so is it equally absurd to maintain that a man
in one of the humbler and less educated classes of the
community should be born with the right of becoming,
at a legal age, the nominator of a legislator. Yet the
qualification of a majority of the English Commons is
hereditary.
So you see, my Lord, it turns out, on a little dispassionate
examination, that the " anomalous " institution of the
House of Lords is not quite so irregular, so flagrantly out
of rule, so absolutely alien to the genius of our Constitu-
tion, as, were we to place credit in our profound dis-
quisitionists and reformers, we might too hastily imagine.
The Lords, it seems, in a legal point of view, are not a
jot more irresponsible than the other limited and privi-
leged and purely conventional order of the State; in a
mere moral point of view, indeed, are more amenable to
the influence of public opinion than their obscurer rivals ;
while the qualification both of the Lords and Commons
is to a great amount identical, and the Commons hold
and enjoy their privileges by the very same odious
principle which frights the orators of the Crown and
196 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
Anchor from their propriety, and stimulates the kennel
orators of Westminster and Marylebone, in the enthusiasm
of their rhetoric slang, to denounce the " absurd and
anomalous authority of the Lords"; to wit, that very
same, that odious hereditary principle, which pervades
the whole frame of our society, which has conduced more
than any other principle to the perpetuity of our State,
and which at the present day is so greatly abused and
so little understood.
But although the exposition into which I have entered
of the real principles and the genuine nature of the
English Constitution has destroyed for ever, as far as
reason can influence and truth prevail, the revolutionary
objection which it is now the fashion to urge against the
hereditary principle of the second estate of this kingdom,
I am far from wishing to avoid the abstract discussion
of the fitting elements of a senate in which our modern
anti-constitutional writers, the gentlemen who admire
abstract principles, and would build up their political
fabric on a system of pure science, so freely and fre-
quently indulge. And therefore I will at once admit
that, if I were called upon to construct a Constitution
a priori for this country, of which a senate, or superior
chamber, was to be a constituent part, I am at a loss to
conceive where I could obtain more suitable materials for
its construction than in the body of our hereditary Peerage.
So far from considering that there is anything absurd or
objectionable in the principle of political inheritance, as
a statesman who wished to study the perpetuity of his
State it is the very principle of which I should eagerly
avail myself, and to which I should cling. Assuredly I
cannot understand how an efficient senate is to be secured
by merely instituting another elective chamber, the
members of which, being the deputies of their constituents,
must either be the echo of the Lower House, or, if re-
turned by a different class, the factious delegates of an
envious and hostile section of the community. Would
the difficult}7 be removed, and the object obtained, by
1835] HEREDITARY LEGISLATORS 197
allowing the members of the senate to be chosen from
the body of the Lower House itself ? The trial of
strength then would be elevated from the choice of a
Speaker to the election of a House of Lords. This would
indeed be a struggle ! What a prize for an ambitious
Minister ! What a noble quarry for the falcon glance of
a keen Opposition ! After the division, after the high
blood excited by such an encounter, we might, I think,
retire to our homes, and return to our constituents at
once, and leave the victorious party to record their
decrees without the affectation of discussion and the
mockery of control.
What chance do these wild schemes hold out of an
effective senate ? But would you then cling to your
hereditary legislators ? Why not ? But the very idea
of an hereditary legislator is absurd ; who ever heard of an
hereditary physician, or an hereditary surgeon, or an
hereditary apothecary ? Such an idea would be absurd;
therefore the idea of an hereditary legislator is absurd.
Granted, if legislators be apothecaries. Before we can
decide whether the idea of an hereditary legislator be
absurd, we must first ascertain what is meant by the
word " legislator, " and what are the public duties of this
personage which we are about to make a matter of
inheritance to his posterity. If by the word " legislator "
we mean one of those original and organising minds who
occasionally arise to frame commonwealths, and to mould
the minds of nations, I willingly concede that it would
be very absurd to invest such a character with the neces-
sary power to fulfil his grand objects, and simultaneously
to entail the enjoyment of the same power on his pos-
terity; I freely admit that it is not very probable that
the entailed legislator, like his sire, would prove either
a Moses or a Minos, a Numa or a Solon, a Saxon Alfred
or a Russian Peter. But at the same time I am equally
of opinion that it is just as probable that the legislative
descendant of the great legislator would rival his powers,
as that a Moses or a Minos, a Numa or a Solon, a Saxon
198 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
Alfred or a Czar Peter, should be returned to Parliament
as their representative by any body of ten-pounders in
the kingdom. Such characters are so rare that we do
not count upon their force and impulse in arranging the
economy of a State. If the conduct of public affairs
depended upon the constant presence in the common-
wealth of such characters, the State would enjoy no
quality of duration. It seems, therefore, that we must
be content to require from our legislators a somewhat
more moderate portion of sagacity and science. And the
question then naturally arises, What portion ? Whether,
in fact, the qualities of a legislator in an ancient and free
and highly civilised and experienced State will not be
necessarily found among individuals of average intelli-
gence and high education ; and whether an order of men
who, from their vast possessions, have not only a great,
a palpable, and immediate interest in the welfare of a
country, but by ease, and leisure, and freedom from
anxiety, are encouraged to the humanising pursuits of
learning and the liberal love of arts ; an order of men who
are born honoured, and taught to respect themselves by
the good fame and glory of their ancestors; who from
the womb to the grave are trained to loathe and recoil
from everything that is mean and sordid, and whose
honour is a more precious possession than their parks
and palaces ; the question is, whether an order of men thus
set apart in a State, men refined, serene, and courteous,
learned, brave, travelled, charitable, and magnificent,
do not afford the choicest elements of a senate, especially
when they are distinguished from their fellow-citizens by
no civil privileges, and the supreme power in the State
has the capacity of adding to their numbers at his will
any individuals, however humble and plebeian their
origin, whose wisdom will in his opinion swell the aggre-
gate capacity of their assembly ?
1835] SURVEY OF THE PAST 199
CHAPTEE XXIV
Political Institutions must be judged by their Eesults — The
Hereditary Peerage contributes to the Stability of the State
— The House of Lords in Ability always Equal to the House
of Commons — Superior since the Reform— The Principle of
Hereditary Legislation prevalent in the House of Commons,
and sanctioned by the National Character.
POLITICAL institutions must be judged by their results.
For nearly five centuries the hereditary Peerage, as at
present constituted, has formed an active and powerful
branch of our legislature. Five centuries of progressive
welfare are good evidence of the efficient polity of the
advancing country. No statesman can doubt that the
peculiar character of the hereditary branch of our legis-
lature has mainly contributed to the stability of our
institutions, and to the order and prosperous security
which that stability has produced. Nor can we forget
that the hereditary principle has at all times secured a
senate for this country inferior in intelligence to no
political assembly on record. If we survey the illustrious
history of our Parliament since 1688, whether we con-
sider its career in reference to the patriotic energy that
has at all times distinguished its councils, its unceasing
vigilance, its indefatigable industry, its vast and various
knowledge, its courageous firmness, its comprehensive
sympathy with all classes of the community, its prescient
and imperial ambition, or the luminous and accomplished
eloquence in which its counsels and resolves have been
recommended and expressed ; assuredly the hereditary
branch of our legislature need not shrink from a com-
parison with its elective rival. I do not think, my Lord,
that anyone will be bold enough to assert — or, if bold
enough to assert, skilful enough to maintain — that the
late Reform, which was to open the doors of the House
of Commons to all the unearthed genius of the country,
has indicated as yet any tendency to render this rivalry
200 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
on the part of the teers of England a matter of greater
venture. If in old times the hereditary senate has at
least equalled in capacity the elective chamber, no im-
partial observer at the present day can for a moment
hesitate in declaring that, not only in the higher accom-
plishments of statesmen, in elevation of thought and
feeling, in learning and in eloquence, does the hereditary
assembly excel the elective, but, in truth, that for those
very qualities for the possession of which at first sight
we should be most disposed to give a House of Commons
credit, that mastery of detail and management of com-
plicated commonplaces which we style in this country
"business-like habits," the Peers of England are abso-
lutely more distinguished than the humbler representa-
tives of the third estate.
But the truth is, my Lord, that the practical good sense
of this country has long ago disposed of the question of
the principle of hereditary legislation, even if its defence
merely depended on its abstract propriety. For if we
examine the elements of the House of Commons with a
little attention, we shall soon discover that hereditary
legislators are not confined to the House of Lords, and
that the inclination of the represented to make repre-
sentation hereditary is very obvious and very natural.
The representative of a county is selected from one of
the first families in the shire, and ten years after the son
of this member, a candidate for the same honour, adduces
the very circumstances of his succession to his father as
an increased claim upon the confidence of the con-
stituency. Those who are versed in elections know that
there is no plea so common and so popular. Such
elections prove that, far from holding the principle of
hereditary legislation absurd, public opinion has decided
that the duties of an English legislator are such as, OP
an average of human capacity, may descend from sire
to son ; and that, while there is nothing to shock their
reason in the circumstance, there is much at the same
time to gratify the feelings and please the associations
1836] FRENCH CHAMBER OF PEERS 201
of an ancient people, who have made inheritance the
pervading principle of their social polity, who are proud
of their old families and fond of their old laws.
CHAPTER XXV
The Hereditary Principle must not be considered abstractedly —
The French Senate examined — Why an Hereditary Senate,
composed of the Ablest Men, may be a Political Nonentity —
Necessary Qualities of an Assembly like the English House
of Lords.
THE hereditary character of our Peerage must be con-
sidered in relation to the other qualities of that illustrious
body. No one competent to form an opinion upon public
affairs can doubt for an instant that, whether the nominal
honours of those insignificant personages, who at this
present hour meet in the senatorial chamber of the
Luxembourg, devolve upon their posterity or not, the
circumstance one way or the other can neither increase
nor diminish their public and political authority. The
Peers of France are nonentities, and nonentities they
have ever been, as insignificant before the junior French
Revolution as they are after that bloody riot. If the
hereditary principle could not render the French Peerage
more powerful, it is equally true that the intellectual
qualifications of its members, however eminent, were
equally unproductive of that result. The Chamber of
Peers in France since the Restoration has numbered
amongst its members the most illustrious warriors and
the most celebrated diplomatists of the kingdom, the
ablest writers of the day, the most distinguished scientific
men, marshals, ambassadors, editors of newspapers, wits,
travellers, authors, mathematicians, chemists: had it
been selected by a Westminster Reviewer himself, the
Senate of France could not have consisted of men more
qualified to develop and demonstrate all " the science
of legislation." Why, then, are they so insignificant ?
14
202 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
Formed of all the talent of the country, the Chamber
has no authority. What can be the cause ? The heredi-
tary principle, to be sure — the fatal, the absurd, the
anomalous hereditary principle. The hereditary principle
is destroyed ! Yes, a revolution is got up to achieve,
among other great objects, the destruction of the fatal,
absurd, and anomalous principle of hereditary legislation
in the French Charter; and the French House of Peers
in consequence becomes, if possible, more odious and
more contemptible.
It is not, then, necessarily the hereditary principle
which renders the influence of our House of Lords so
injurious to the commonweal; and it is not, then, a
collection of all the clever men of a country, under the
august title of a Senate, which necessarily must be pro-
ductive of good government. The truth is, a nation will
not allow three hundred men, however ingenious, to
make laws for them because the sovereign power of the
State chooses to appoint that such a number of its
subjects shall possess this privilege, and meet in a room
to register their decrees. The King of England may
make Peers, but he cannot make a House of Lords. The
order of men of whom such an assembly is formed is
the creation of ages. In the first place, they must really
an estate of the realm, a class of individuals who,
from their property and personal influence alone, form
van important section of the whole nation. The laws and
customs of England have compensated its Peers for the
loss of their feodal splendour. A strong current of
property and influence from the wide ocean of national
prosperity perpetually flows into our House of Lords.
They still form the most eminent class in the State;
and, instead of the position of the Peers at the present
day bearing a diminished importance, compared with
the attitude of the remaining classes of the community,
as the superficial vulgarly imagine, I shall be surprised
that, if the subject be more profoundly inquired into, if the
power and privileges with which the Constitution has
1835] NECESSAEY QUALITIES 203
invested him be duly considered, and the indirect support
which he receives from his alliances with the great
Commons and the aristocratic classes which have sprung
up around him be not omitted in the estimate, the in-
fluence of a great Peer of the present day — a Duke of
Buccleugh or a Duke of Devonshire — be ascertained to be
much inferior to that of an Earl of Pembroke in the time
of John, or an Earl of Leicester in the reign of his suc-
cessor. A House of Lords must consist of men whose ")
influence is not felt merely in their chamber of Parlia-^
ment. They must be an order of individuals whose
personal importance crosses us in all the transactions of
life, and pervades the remotest nook and corner of the
country, an importance, also, which we find to arise as
much from the hallowed associations, or even the in-
veterate prejudices of society, as from their mere public
privileges and constitutional and territorial importance.
Their names, office, and character, and the ennobling
achievements of their order, must be blended with our
history, and bound up with our hereditary sentiment.
They must be felt and recognised as the not unworthy
descendants or successors of a class that has always
taken the lead in civilisation, and formed the advanced
guard in the march of national progress. Vast property,
and the complicated duties which great possessions entail
upon their owners, the inspiring traditions of a heroic
history, the legendary respect of ages, the fair maintenance
in the order itself of that civility of manners, that love
of liberal pursuits, and that public spirit which become
the leaders of a free people, and a strong conviction in the
nation generally that, under the constitution of which
this order forms a branch, they have flourished for a
longer period, and in a greater degree, than any existing
commonwealth — such are some of the elements of which
a Senate must be formed that attempts to cope with the
House of Lords of England.
The English nation has thought that there is a greater
certainty of securing a Senate of this high character by
204 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
entailing its functions on the most important order of
its members than by trusting to the periodical selection
of any body of individuals whatsoever. It has supposed
that the chance production of its carefully cultivated
aristocracy may offer, on the whole, senatorial elements
preferable to the selected materials of popular choice.
It has desired that there should be one portion of its
legislature free from the turbulent and overwhelming
passions that occasionally assail the less guarded struc-
ture of its more popular assembly ; and to secure all these
great purposes, to contrive at the same time, in estab-
lishing this chamber, its power and its perpetuity, its
independence and its ability, it has not comprehended
how a more practical system could be adopted than to
establish the hereditary legislation of a democratic
Peerage.
CHAPTER XXVI
Causes of the Harmony between the Two Houses — The Hereditary
Principle must also be considered in Eeference to the System
of Parties in this Country — Summary — That the Principle of
Hereditary Legislation is neither constitutionally Anomalous,
nor abstractedly Absurd, nor practically Injurious, but the
Eeverse.
THIS, my Lord, is, I think, one of those cases in which
" the wisdom of our ancestors " has been conspicuous,
and the harmony which throughout our history has on
the whole so remarkably subsisted between our two
Houses of Parliament, and the effective manner in which
the machinery of our legislature has consequently
operated, prove the sound judgment of the national
mind that has required and sanctioned a Senate thus
constituted. So profound, indeed, is and ever must be
the reciprocal sympathy between the Peers and Commons
of England, that, even after the late factious reconstruc-
tion of the third estate, a majority of the representatives
of the English Commons upheld the independence of our
1835] CIVIL EQUALITY 205
august Senate. I ascribe this sympathy to a cause I
have before indicated, to the principle which is the basis
of our social fabric, our civil equality. It is this great
principle which has prevented the nobility of England
from degenerating into a favoured and odious sect; it is
this great principle which has placed the Peers at the
head of the People, which has surrounded them with a
popular aristocracy, and filled the chamber of the third
estate with representatives connected with our senators
not only by sympathy of feeling and similarity of pur-
suits, but by the most intimate relations of birth and
blood.
Again, my Lord, the question of our hereditary Peerage
must be viewed in reference to the state and system of
parties in this country. It results from the system of
parties in this country that both Houses of Parliament
are led and directed by a very few members, and those
the most eminent for talents, and character, and station,
in the respective assemblies. Thus the extreme cases,
which the anti-constitutional writers are ever urging, of
the legislative function devolving through the medium
of an hereditary institution to individuals incompetent
to discharge this high office, never in fact practically
occur. By ranging himself under one of the political
banners of the State, every legislator avails himself of the
intelligence of his leaders; to guide his judgment and
form his opinion, he has the advantage of the finest talents
in the country. Thus an individual, abstractedly very
incompetent, may become practically very useful, and
thus even a weak brain may assist in passing a wise law.
Thus we have seen, my Lord, that, viewed in reference
to the complete scheme of our legislature, the hereditary
principle of the House of Lords, far from being " anomal-
ous," is in perfect harmony with the constitution of the
other estate of the realm ; that if it were as " anomalous "
as it is regular and consistent, far from being " absurd,"
the application of the principle is extremely rational;
and that, inasmuch as it is not either constitutionally
206 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
"anomalous" or abstractedly "absurd," its practical
results have been such as might have been anticipated
from an institution suited to the genius of the country,
in harmony with all its political establishments, and
founded, not only on an intimate acquaintance with the
national character, but a profound knowledge of human
nature in general.
CHAPTER XXVII
Of the Kingly Office — Unsuccessful Attempts of the Whigs to
establish an Oligarchy under William the Third — Keign of
Anne — Its Influence on Parties — More Successful Attempts
of the Whigs to establish an Oligarchy under George the First
— They establish the Cabinet, and banish the King from his own
Council ; pass the Septennial Act, and introduce the Peerage
Bill — Oligarchical Coups d'Etat — Policy of the Whigs under
George the First compared with their Policy at the Present
Day.
IN these observations on the character and history of our
two Houses of Parliament, I have already incidentally
traced, or referred to, the character and history of the
monarchy. We have seen the Kings of England, in the
reigns of the Plantagenets, exercising a sovereign power,
limited, however, in its use by the privilege estates of
the kingdom, who, although they held the right of
legislation in its fullest extent, from the imperfect civilisa-
tion of the times assumed on the whole rather the office
of powerful councillors of the Sovereign than that of
the administrators of the kingdom. We have seen the
same King, in the reigns of the Tudors, an arbitrary
monarch. We have witnessed the same King, in the
reigns of the Stuarts, engaged in a continual struggle
with the reviving and at length preponderating power
of the long-dormant and paralysed estates. From the
accession of the Prince of Orange the character of our
history changes. The old contest between prerogative
and privilege, between the power of the Crown and the
liberty of the subject, ceases for ever, and the war of
1835] UNDER WILLIAM THE THIRD 207
parties succeeds to the struggles of Kings and Parlia-
ments.
The English Constitution under William the Third did
not secure greater power and privileges to our Parliament
than it possessed under the reign of Henry the Fourth;
but the Lords and great Commons of England had since
that time become the most civilised and highly cultured
body in Europe ; men exceeding the superior classes of all
nations in learning, eloquence, and public spirit, in
practical skill and theoretic wisdom. It is not difficult
to comprehend that such a body of men in absolute and
unquestioned possession of the legislature should no
longer be content that the executive and administrative
province of the Constitution, with all its pomp and cir-
cumstance, should be monopolised by a single individual
and his personal retainers. Here, then, commences the
age when the influence of the Court rapidly declined,
when Ministers were virtually appointed by the Parlia-
ment instead of the Sovereign, and when, by the institu-
tion of the Cabinet, the scheme and policy of the adminis-
tration devolved upon a Parliamentary committee, and
the King was, in fact, excluded from his own council.
If it be perhaps too strong an expression to say that
William the Third was called to the throne by the voice
of the whole nation, it is certain that the whole nation
ratified the abdication of James the Second. Whig and
Tory, Churchman and Dissenter, had alike required, and
alike assisted in, his expulsion. When the excitement
of this great event had a little subsided, when the rights
and liberties of the nation had been secured by its Parlia-
ment, the leaders of the Whigs, including many of the most
powerful and ancient families of the kingdom, commenced
a favourite scheme of that party, which was to reduce the
King of England to the situation of a Venetian Doge.
But William the Third, like Louis Philippe, was resolved
to be his own Minister, and it is not very easy to com-
prehend how in a perilous and revolutionary period a
Sovereign of great capacity will consent to be deprived
208 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
of the benefit of his own sagacity. The Whigs therefore
were obliged to postpone until a more favourable oppor-
tunity the series of measures by which their great result
was to be obtained; and for the present indicated their
spleen by opposing the Sovereign, to whom certainly that
party had originally attracted the attention of the
English nation. But William, whose administrative
talents were of a high order, succeeded, by his adroit
balance of parties, in keeping the Whigs in check, and
throughout his reign in maintaining his authority.
The reign of Anne, which proved that the reign of a
Stuart might at the same time be glorious, Protestant,
and prosperous, completely unsettled the public mind of
England, and made nine-tenths of the people yearn after
the lost dynasty of their native Sovereigns. The leaders
of both parties were in secret communication with St. Ger-
mains, and one circumstance alone prevented the son of
James the Second from regaining the throne of his
ancestors — his absolute incompetence. The Pretender
was an incapable bigot, totally devoid of that talent
which in some degree had always characterised his
family.
The Hanoverian accession was secured by the bold
conduct of the Dukes of Somerset and Argyle. These
great Whig Peers had the hardihood to attend a Privy
Council, without being summoned, while the Queen was
lying in a state almost of lethargy, and absolutely forced
Her Majesty to appoint the Duke of Shrewsbury Lord
Treasurer. This is one of the most dramatic scenes in
our political history: the unexpected arrival of the two
Dukes, the Queen's desperate state, Bolingbroke's baffled
hopes, the troops summoned to London, the heralds kept
in waiting with a company of guards to proclaim the new
King the moment the throne was vacant. The Elector
of Hanover ascended the throne of England by the
sufferance rather than the consent of the nation. Un-'
supported by the mass of the people, ignorant of our >
language, phlegmatic in temperament, George the First
1835] ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CABINET 209
i
entirely depended upon the Whig Peers, and the Whig
i Peers resolved to compensate themselves for the dis-
| appointment they had experienced under William the
^Third. They at once established the Cabinet on its
present basis. It is curious to trace the kingly office
from the era of the Plantagenets, when the characters of a
royal council and a legislative chamber were so blended
together in the House of Lords that the monarch always
presided over his Parliament, to the moment when the
Sovereign under the Brunswicks was virtually excluded
from his own council. Having thus by the establish-
ment of the Cabinet obtained in a great degree the execu-
tive power of the State, the Whig Peers ventured to
propose a measure, in order to consolidate and confirm
their strength, which is perhaps unequalled by any of the
machinations of a party so remarkable in all periods of
our history for the unscrupulous means with which they
satisfy their lust of power. This measure was the famous
Peerage Bill, proposed and supported in the House of
Lords by those very Dukes of Somerset and Argyle who
had forced a Queen to appoint a Prime Minister on her
death-bed. This Bill, if passed into a law, would have
deprived the King of his prerogative of making further
Peers, and would have occasioned a virtual revolution in
our government, which from that moment would have
become oligarchical. George the First assented to the
Bill, and the House of Lords passed it; but the Tory
country gentlemen in the House of Commons, aided on
this occasion by some unusual allies, succeeded in reject-
ing the measure. The Peerage Bill, my Lord, made as
much noise in its day as the Reform Bill in our own.
There was as great a " crisis," as vehement a " collision "
in 1718, as any we have lately witnessed stalking about
in their lions' skins; and the press teemed then with
more pamphlets about " the Lords " than even at this
hour, when every briefless barrister smells out that the
surest road to a commissionership or other base job is
to denounce that House of Parliament which will not
210 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
truckle to a rapacious and unprincipled faction. The
Whigs in 1718 sought to govern the country by " swamp-
ing " the House of Commons: in 1835 it is the House of
Lords that is to be "swamped." In 1718 the coup
d'etat was to prevent any further increase of the Lords ;
in 1835 the Lords are to be outnumbered. Different
tactics to obtain the same purpose; and the variance to
be accounted for by the simple circumstance that the
party which has recourse to these desperate expedients is
not a national party, influenced by any great and avowed
principles of public policy and conduct, but a small knot
of great families who have no other object but their own
aggrandisement, and who seek to gratify it by all possible
means.
CHAPTER XXVIII
George the Second unsuccessfully struggles against the Whig
Oligarchs — George the Third emancipates the Nation from
them — Of Whigs and Tories — Their Origin explained, and
their Eeal Character ascertained.
ALTHOUGH the House of Commons, supported by a
roused and indignant nation, rejected the Peerage Bill,
still the power of the Whig aristocracy, increased by the
Septennial Act, was so considerable that they monopo-
lised the administration of this realm for upwards of
half a century. George the Second, indeed, struggled
for a time against these Venetian magnificoes, but when
he found himself forced to resign his favourite Minister,
the brilliant Carteret, to the demands of the Pelhams
and their well-organised connections, the King gave up
the effort in despair. It was the clear sense and the strong
spirit of his able grandson that emancipated this country
from the government of " the great families." The King
put himself at the head of the nation; and, encouraged
by the example of a popular monarch in George the
Third, and a democratic Minister in Mr. Pitt, the nation
elevated to power the Tory or national party of England,
1835] WHIGS AND TOKIES 211
under whose comprehensive and consistent, vigorous and
strictly democratic system, this island has become the
metropolis of a mighty Empire, its Sovereign at the same
time the most powerful and its people the most free, and
second to no existing nation in arts or arms, in internal
prosperity, or exterior splendour.
There is no political subject, my Lord, on which a
greater confusion of ideas exists, and none on which it is
more desirable that we should possess very accurate con-
ceptions, than respecting the nature and character of the
two great political parties in which England, for the last
century and a half, has been divided — the WHIGS and
the TORIES. The people of England in the reign of
George the First formed a community as distinguished
for their public spirit as any people with which we are
acquainted. How happened it, then, that nine-tenths of
the nation were the avowed admirers of arbitrary power,
of the Divine right of Kings, of the doctrine of non-
resistance, and of the duties of passive obedience ? How
came it that the upholders of this servile creed, instead
of imbibing it from the Court, maintained it in defiance
of the Court ? How happened it that the supporters of
the Court themselves were the avowed admirers of the
most popular opinions, of the sovereignty of the people,
of the right and duty of resistance, of toleration, and of the
cause of civil and religious liberty ? How came it that
the upholders of these popular opinions, instead of
adopting them to flatter the bulk of the people, maintained
them in defiance of the people ? And, lastly, how came it
that, while the professors of arbitrary opinions exhibited on
every great occasion an unquestioned and undisguised love
of freedom and their rights, and expelled from the throne
the Sovereign who menaced them, the professors of popular
opinions, on the other hand, seized every opportunity of
curtailing popular power and abridging popular privileges,
introduced a Peerage Bill in the House of Lords, carried a
Septennial Act in the House of Commons, and finally
organised a system of political corruption throughout
212 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
the Parliament and the country from the taint of which,
it is not too much to assert, the national character has
never absolutely recovered ?
The consequences of the Great Rebellion, Parliamentary
tyranny, and sectarian fanaticism, had occasioned in due
season a strong reaction throughout the country in
favour of the Crown and the Church. Gradually there
developed themselves two sections of the nation respec-
tively hostile to one of these institutions — sections con-
nected together by no other similarity of feeling or
situation, yet finally co-operating for the purpose of
reciprocal assistance in a united attack upon the
Monarchy and the Establishment : these were a powerful
party of the Lords and the Non-conformists . A republican
feeling united the haughtiest of the Peers with the lowest
of the Puritans; but the republican model of the House
of Russell was Venice; of their plebeian allies, Geneva.
f The Peers, to reduce the power of the Crown, now sup-
' ported by the great majority of the nation, called in the
aid of the Puritans, and to obtain the aid of the Puritans
attacked the Church : the Puritans, to insure the destruc-
tion of the religious establishment, allied themselves with
the Peers in their assault upon the King, whose office,
apart from the ecclesiastical polity, they were inclined
\|>o respect, and even to reverence. The Puritans, headed
by the Peers, formed a small minority of the nation, but
at the same time a party formidable from their leaders
and their organisation, for the Non-conformists abounded
in the metropolis, and were chiefly resident in towns.
"Their cry was, " Civil and Religious Freedom " — that is,
\ a Doge and no Bishops : advocating the liberty of the
,subject, the Peers would have established an oligarchy;
/upholding toleration, the Puritans aimed at supremacy.
1 This is the origin of the Whig party in our country.
1835] ORIGIN OF THE TORY PARTY 213
CHAPTER XXIX
Why the Advocacy of Divine Right, Non-Resistance, and Passive
Obedience by the Tories in the Reign of George the First were
Evidences of the Democratic Character of the Party — The
Whigs an Oligarchical Faction — The Tories a National Party
— Why the Whigs are, ever have been, and ever must be,
Odious to the English Nation — Why the Whigs are Hostile to
the Establishments of the Country.
THE mass of the nation still smarting under the seques-
trations and imprisonments of Parliamentary committees,
and loathing the recollection of the fanaticism and the
hypocrisy of the Roundhead apostles of the tub, clung
to the national institutions. The clergy, jealous of the
Non- conformists, and fearful of another deprivation,
exaggerated the power and character of the Crown, in
which they recognised their only safeguard. Hence
Divine right and passive obedience resounded from our
Protestant pulpits, echoed with enthusiasm by a free
and spirited people, who acknowledged in these phrases
only a determination to maintain the mild authority of
their King and of their Church. This is the origin of the
Tory party in our country.
On the one hand civil and religious liberty; on the
other, Divine right and passive obedience; both mere
phrases, both the sheer cries of a party, both the mysti-
fying pretexts that concealed a pregnant cause. The
avowed upholders of Divine right and passive obedience,
headed by the national clergy that promulgated these
doctrines, were the first to expel the Sovereign who aimed
at their rights and liberties; the avowed advocates of
civil and religious freedom, when they finally obtained
power, hazarded a blow at the only foundation of freedom,
the equality of civil rights, " swamped " the House of
Commons by the Septennial Act, and nearly concentrated
the whole powers of the State in the House of Lords by
the Peerage Bill.
214 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
It was the intention of the Whigs to have raised the
Prince of Orange to the throne by the aid of a cabal. By
this means the Sovereign would have been in their power,
and they could have realised the object at which they
had been long aiming. The insurrection of the Tories
or the national party against James frustrated this
project : the movement became national, and the settle-
ment, instead of being factious, was patriotic. The
powerful capacity of William the Third was not content
with the limited authority destined for him : he encouraged
the Tories, he balanced parties, and he maintained his
throne with all the artifices of a practised politician.
The reign of Anne, a Stuart, yet strictly Protestant and
eminently prosperous, broke up in a great degree the
strong lines of political demarcation, and occasioned the
blending of parties. In spite of the Act of Settlement,
the whole nation was prepared for the restoration of the
ancient line; Whigs and Tories alike corresponded with
St. Germains, and served together in the same administra-
tion at home. So weak was the tie of party in this reign,
that it was not then considered a point of political honour
to resign your post on a change of administration which
substituted a Prime Minister of different opinions to
your own, and to those through whose influence you had
yourself acceded to office.
The Whigs secured the Hanoverian succession by a
coup d'etat. But when the nation had recovered from its
surprise, the rage of parties increased to a degree un-
precedented in our history, and that formal and organised
division of public men occurred which has ever since
been observed in the world of politics. The dislike of
the Tories to the new dynasty was, if possible, aggravated
by the conviction of the impolicy of recalling the old.
The truly Protestant spirit of England forbade such a
recourse. The House of Brunswick was supported by
the great Whig families, the Non-conformists, and what
was then for the first time called " the money interest,"
the fungus spawn of public loans, who began to elbow
1835] WHIGS AN ANTI-NATIONAL PARTY 215
the country gentlemen, and beat them out of the repre-
sentation of their boroughs by the long purses of a
Plutocracy. The rest of the nation — 'that is to say, nine-
tenths of the people of England — formed the Tory party,
the landed proprietors and peasantry of the kingdom,
headed by a spirited and popular Church, and looking to
the kingly power in the abstract, though not to the
reigning King, as their only protection from an impending
oligarchy. The Whig party has ever been odious to the
English people, and, in spite of all their devices and com-
binations, it may ever be observed that, in the long-run,
the English nation declares against them. Even now,
after their recent and most comprehensive coup d'etat,
they are only maintained in power by the votes of the
Irish and the Scotch members.
CHAPTER XXX
Probable Consequences of Whiggism, and Degrading Effects of
Centralisation — Democratic Character of Toryism developed
— Why Parties sometimes change their Names and Cries.
THE reason of this is that the Whigs are an anti-national
party. In order to accomplish their object of establishing
an oligarchical republic, and of concentrating the govern-
ment of the State in the hands of a few great families,
the Whigs are compelled to declare war against all those
great national institutions the power and influence of
which present obstacles to the fulfilment of their purpose.
It is these institutions which make us a nation. Without
our Crown, our Church, our Universities, our great
municipal and commercial Corporations, our Magistracy,
and its dependent scheme of provincial polity, the in-
habitants of England, instead of being a nation, would
present only a mass of individuals governed by a metro-
polis, whence an arbitrary senate would issue the stern
decrees of its harsh and heartless despotism. A class
216 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
of the subjects, indeed, might still possess the fruitless
privilege of electing its representatives in Parliament,
but without any machinery to foster public spirit and
maintain popular power, the whole land a prey to the most
degrading equality, the equality that levels, not the
equality that elevates, we should soon see these mock
representatives the mere nominees of a Praefect, and the
very first to tamper with our privileges and barter away
our freedom. In such a state of society, a state of society
which France has accomplished, and to which the Whigs
are hurrying us, no public avenues to wealth and honour
would subsist save through the Government. To that
government all the ambition and aspirations, all the
talent and the energy of the subject, would be devoted;
and from the harsh seat of the provincial governor, to
the vile office of the provincial spy, every place would be
filled by the ablest and most unprincipled of a corrupted
people.
The Tory party in this country is the national party;
it is the really democratic party of England. It supports
the institutions of the country because they have been
established for the common good, and because they secure
the equality of civil rights, without which, whatever
may be its name, no government can be free, and based
upon which principle every government, however it
may be styled, is in fact a Democracy. The Whig
leaders at the commencement of the last century,
men of consummate ability and great experience in
affairs, were not blind to the advantage which might
be obtained by enlarging on the apparent unpopular
character of Tory tenets. In the reign of George the
First, both parties in their eagerness had recourse to
their old cries, without reflecting that the circumstances
of their respective positions had considerably changed;
that the advocates of enlarged and comprehensive free-
dom were now attempting to establish an oligarchy on
the ruins of the national institutions, and that the votaries
of Divine right and passive obedience were prepared to
1835] PAKTY REORGANISATION 217
rebel against the Sovereign whose authority, by the
original Act of Settlement, they themselves had mainly
contributed to establish. However inconsistent might
be the practice and the professions of the respective
parties, it was obvious that, in the mutual misrepre-
sentations, the Whigs had the advantage. An oligarchy
sought to establish itself by the plea of public freedom;
a nation struggled to maintain its rights on the principles
of arbitrary power. This was, indeed, a false position;
yet so clear-sighted was the people of England, and so
apt to distinguish their cause from their pretext, that its
inconvenience was for a long time unfelt, and in the pre-
ceding reign the nation had sympathised with the triumph
of Sacheverell, and ridiculed the false pretensions of the
Whigs to the advocacy and trusteeship of the popular
cause.
When, however, the Tory party — that is, the English
nation — had renounced all hope or wish for the restora-
tion of their native Sovereigns ; when, in their Protestant
feeling, they had taught themselves to look upon the
establishment of the Hanoverian succession as indispen-
sable to the maintenance of their liberties, and had thus
authorised and ratified, without redress or appeal, the
very political opinions which they had hitherto opposed,
the inconvenience became more apparent. There are
periods when the titles and watchwords of political
parties become obsolete; and when, by adhering to an
ancient and accustomed cry, a party often appears to
profess opinions less popular than it really practises,
and yields a proportionate advantage to its more dexterous
competitor. In times of great political change and rapid
political transition, it will generally be observed that
political parties find it convenient to rebaptise them-
selves. Thus, in the present day, Whigs have become
Reformers, and Tories Conservatives. In the early part
of the last century, the Tory party required a similar
reorganisation to that which it has lately undergone;
and as it is in the nature of human affairs that the in-
15
218 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
dividual that is required shall not long be wanting, so,
in the season of which I am treating, arose a man re-
markable in an illustrious age, who, with the splendour
of an organising genius, settled the confused and dis-
cordant materials of English faction, and reduced them
into a clear and systematic order. This was Lord
Bolingbroke.
CHAPTER XXXI
Character of Lord Bolingbroke — His Influence on our History —
Reorganises the Tory Party — Founder of Modern Toryism —
The Whigs pursuing the Same Machinations now as under
George the First.
GIFTED with that fiery imagination, the teeming fertility
of whose inventive resources is as necessary to a great
statesman or a great general as to a great poet ; the ablest
writer and the most accomplished orator of his age, that
rare union that in a country of free Parliaments and a
free press insures to its possessor the privilege of exer-
cising a constant influence over the mind of his country,
that rare union that has rendered Burke so memorable;
blending with that intuitive knowledge of his race, which
creative minds alone enjoy, all the wisdom which can
be derived from literature, and a comprehensive ex-
perience of human affairs — no one was better qualified
to be the Minister of a free and powerful nation than
Henry St. John ; and Destiny at first appeared to combine
with Nature in the elevation of his fortunes. Opposed
to the Whigs from principle, for an oligarchy is hostile to
genius, and recoiling from the Tory tenets, which his un-
prejudiced and vigorous mind taught him at the same
time to dread and to contemn, Lord Bolingbroke, at the
outset of his career, incurred the common-place imputa-
tion of insincerity and inconsistency, because, in an age
of unsettled parties with professions contradictory of their
conduct, he maintained that vigilant and meditative
independence which is the privilege of an original and
1835] LORD BOLINGBROKE 219
determined spirit. It is probable that in the earlier
years of his career he meditated over the formation of
a new party, that dream of youthful ambition in a per-
plexed and discordant age, but destined in English
politics to be never more substantial than a vision. More
experienced in political life, he became aware that he
had only to choose between the Whigs and the Tories,
and his sagacious intellect, not satisfied with the super-
ficial character of these celebrated divisions, penetrated
their interior and essential qualities, and discovered, in
spite of all the affectation of popular sympathy on one
side, and of admiration of arbitrary power on the other,
that this choice was in fact a choice between oligarchy
and democracy. From the moment that Lord Boling-
broke, in becoming a Tory, embraced the national cause,
he devoted himself absolutely to his party : all the energies
of his Protean mind were lavished in their service; and
although the ignoble prudence of the Whig Minister
restrained him from advocating the cause of the nation
in the senate, it was his inspiring pen that made Walpole
tremble in the recesses of the Treasury, and in a series
of writings, unequalled in our literature for their spirited
patriotism, their just and profound views, and the golden
eloquence in which they are expressed, eradicated from
Toryism all those absurd and odious doctrines which
Toryism had adventitiously adopted, clearly developed
its essential and permanent character, discarded jure
divino, demolished passive obedience, threw to the winds
the doctrine of non-resistance, placed the abolition of
James and the accession of George on their right basis,
and in the complete reorganisation of the public mind
laid the foundation for the future accession of the Tory
party to power, and to that popular and triumphant
career which must ever await the policy of an administra-
tion inspired by the spirit of our free and ancient institu-
tions.
Upwards of a century has elapsed since the Whigs,
by a series of coups d'etat, attempted to transform the
220 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
English Constitution into an oligarchy. George the
Third routed the Whigs; but had their India Bill been
more fortunate than their Peerage Bill, all the energy of
that spirited Sovereign would have been fruitless. Stung
to the quick by their long and merited exclusion from
power, the Whigs are now playing the same great game
which was partially successful at the commencement of
the last century. They have again formed a close and
fopen alliance with the Dissenters, and again declared
war against the national institutions. Instead of
" swamping "the Tory House of Commons by a Septennial
Act, they have moulded it to their use and fancy by a
reconstruction which has secured a preponderating in-
fluence to their sectarian allies: instead of restricting
the royal prerogative in the creation of Peers, they have
counselled its prodigal exercise ; but before they had only
to confirm their power in the House of Lords, now they
have to create their power. They boast that they hold
the King in duresse, and probably their boast is not ill-
founded, but let us hope that our gracious Sovereign
may take warning from the first of his house that ruled
these realms, and follow the example of George the Third
rather than George the First. The House of Commons
remodelled, the House of Lords menaced, the King un-
constitutionally controlled, the Church is next attacked,
then the Corporations, and they do not conceal that the
Magistracy is to be the next victim: and the nation is
thus mangled and torn to pieces, its most sacred feelings
outraged, its most important interests destroyed, by
a miserable minority arrogating to themselves the bewilder-
ing title of " the People," and achieving all this misery and
misfortune, all this havoc and degradation, in the sacred
name of liberty, and under the impudent pretence of
advancing the great cause of popular amelioration, and
securing the common good and general happiness. My
Lord, the Whigs invoke " the People " ; let us appeal to
the nation.
Mark these friends of " the People " installed in power.
1835] POLICY OF THE WHIGS 221
What are their great measures ? The Poor Law Bill and
the projected disfranchisement of all the freemen of
England. Is this their service to the " People "? Are
these their measures of popular amelioration ? Is this
their scheme to secure the happiness and increase the
power of " the People "? Who does not in an instant^
detect that " the People " of the Whigs is that part of 1
the constituency or Commons of England who yield ^
them the advantage of their suffrages ? Now, at the last
General Election, warm as was the contest, there were not
more — I doubt whether as many — than one hundred and
fifty thousand votes polled in favour of the Whigs. And
this, too, after they had remodelled the third estate with
a mere view to the consolidation of their own interest.
So, then, " the People " of the Whigs is about one hundred
and fifty thousand persons, and of these, too, the great
majority sectarians, a class necessarily hostile to our
Constitution, and long excluded by the nation from the
exercise of political power for that very reason. It might
have been very odious, it might have been very illiberal,
it might have been very unwise, to exclude the Dissenters
from the exercise of political power ; but is it less odious,
is it more liberal, is it wiser, to carry on the government
of the State by the aid of the Dissenters alone ?
CHAPTER XXXII
Three Points to which the Tories must at the Present Moment
apply themselves — Tories vindicated from the Charge of
Corruption, Bigotry, and Hostility to Improvement — Causes
and Consequences of Political Conciliation.
IF the Whigs at this moment be pursuing the same
desperate and determined policy that they prosecuted
so vigorously a century back, it will be well for their rivals
to adopt the same cautious yet energetic system of
conduct which, developed at the same period by the
genius of a Bolingbroke, led in due season to the ad-
222 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
ministration of a Pitt*. In the conduct of the Tory party
at this moment, it appears to me that there are three
points to the furtherance of which we should principally
apply ourselves : First, that the real character and nature
of Toryism should be generally and clearly comprehended :
secondly, that Toryism should be divested of all those
qualities which are adventitious and not essential, and
which, having been produced by that course of circum-
stances which are constantly changing, become in time
obsolete, inconvenient, and by the dexterous misrepre-
sentation of our opponents even odious : thirdly, that the
efficient organisation of the party should be secured and
maintained.
The necessity of the third point has already been
anticipated by the party ; but they have blundered in the
second, and totally neglected the first.
Toryism, or the policy of the Tories, being the proposed
or practised embodification, as the case may be, of the
national will and character, it follows that Toryism must
occasionally represent and reflect the passions and preju-
dices of the nation, as well as its purer energies and its
more enlarged and philosophic views. In a perilous age
of war and revolution, throughout the most terrible
struggle of modern history, the destiny of England was
regulated by the Tories. They carried us through the
sharp and flaming ordeal to transcendent triumph and
unparalleled prosperity. A factious and anti-national
Opposition, who predicted our discomfiture in every
engagement, and exaggerated and extolled on every
occasion the power and pre-eminence of our foe, raised
a cry of corruption against the Tories during this mighty
contest because, in the creation of our colonial empire,
immense establishments were necessarily raised, the
details of which in the desperate heat of war could not
be severely scanned; raised a cry of enmity to improve-
ment against the Tories during this mighty contest,
because they opposed any examination or remodelling
of our ancient institutions and domestic polity at a time
1835] ANTI-TORY CRIES 232
when all the attention and energies of the nation and its
rulers should be devoted to their foreign enemy, the
most terrible for his power, his resources, his talents, and
his activity, which England had ever encountered ; raised
a cry of narrow-minded bigotry and hostility to civil and
religious liberty against the Tories during this mighty
contest, because at such a moment they refused to sanction
extensive alterations in the Constitution of the country,
and declined the responsibility of entrusting, at a season
ill-suited for experiments, new classes of their fellow-
subjects with the exercise of political power. Corrup-
tion, bigotry, hostility to all improvement — these were
the false cries raised by the Whigs against the national
party during the immortal struggle between Toryism and
Napoleon. Yet were the Tories advocates of corruption
when they introduced a Bill into the House of Commons
for the banishment of all placemen from that assembly,
and denounced Walpole ? Were the Tories hostile to
civil and religious liberty when they crushed the Papacy,
opposed a standing army, cherished free elections, upheld
short Parliaments ? Were the Tories inimical to national
improvement when, under Pitt, they first applied phil-
osophy to commerce, and science to finance ; when, under
their auspices, the most severe retrenchment was practised
in every department of the public expenditure; when a
Bill for the Commutation of Tithes was not only planned,
but printed; and when nothing but the violence of the
French Revolution prevented the adoption of a matured
scheme of Ecclesiastical Reform, which would not have
left our revolutionary oligarchs a single pretext to veil ^/
their present plundering purpose ? Why ! the cry of
Parliamentary Reform was first raised by a Tory Minister,
struggling against the bigoted and corrupt authority of
the Whig oligarchy ; and it was not until the united efforts
of the Sovereign, the Minister, and the nation, succeeded
in piercing the serried ranks of the anti-national faction,
that the Whigs, alarmed at the Tories beginning, by their
acquisitions, to neutralise the only ill effects of the close
224 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
borough system, borrowed the watchword of their
patriotic opponents, became friends of " the People "
and Parliamentary Reformers. Corruption, bigotry, hos-
tility to improvement, may be but other names for the
just and decent influence of a vigorous government, a
determination to uphold the religious establishment of
the country, and a resolution to oppose the crude and
indigested schemes of adventurous charlatans. However
this may be, it is sufficient for me to show that the quali-
ties popularly associated with these titles are not peculiar
to Toryism, that they form no essential portion of that
national policy, and that when from the course of cir-
cumstances they have been temporarily adopted by the
Tories in power, it has been in deference to the national
voice, of which Toryism is the echo; for we must not
forget that the war, and all its concomitant expenditure,
^vas heartily sanctioned by the English nation, and that
"^that sagacious community discountenanced with an
almost unanimous expression any experimental tampering
with our civil or religious establishments, or the general
scheme of our domestic polity, during the war of the
Revolution.
When that war terminated, the alleged advocates of
" corruption " pursued so vigorous a system of retrench-
ment that, when their rivals entered office, pledged to
such marvels of financial regeneration, they were abso-
lutely baffled to surpass their misrepresented predecessors ;
the opposers of " national improvement " reformed our
criminal code, revised our currency, remodelled our
commercial system; the enemies of civil and religious
freedom relieved the Dissenters, and emancipated the
Papists. Far from being corrupt, far from cherishing
abuses, far from withstanding improvement and uphold-
ing a system of exclusive bigotry, we know now, and we
know it too well, that Toryism had unwisely weakened
the indispensable influence of government, that it indulged
in a dangerous liberality, in a fallacious conciliation, in
fantastic empiricism and unnecessary concession.
1835] THE OLD WHIG GAME 225
But this was not the fault of the Tory leaders ; it was
the fault of the party — of Toryism — of the nation. The
triumph of the national party at the Peace of Paris over
their anti-English opponents was so complete that they
fancied, in the fulness of their pride, that all future
competition was impossible, so the Tories became merci-
ful and condescendingly lenient. Conciliation was the
national motto from the Parliament to the Vestry, and
Conciliation conducted us in due time to a Revolution.
The supineness of the nation forced the Tory leaders to
yield much of which they disapproved. At length the
reconstruction of the third estate was demanded, and of
such a change the Tory leaders would not incur the re-
sponsibility. The old Whig party took advantage of the
dissensions which it had deeply sown and sedulously
watched, and appeared again upon the public stage to
play the old game of a century back, with their mouths
full of the People, Reform, and Liberty, and their port-
folios bursting with oligarchical coups d'etat.
The English nation has now recovered its senses, and
Toryism has resumed its old healthy complexion. The
social power of a national party can never be destroyed,
but a State trick may terribly curtail its political power.
So it is with the Tories. I do not think there ever was
a period in our history when the English nation was so
intensely Tory in feeling as at the present moment; but
the Reform Act has placed the power of the country in
the hands of a small body of persons hostile to the nation,
and therefore there is no due proportion between the
social and the political power of the national party.
226 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
CHAPTER XXXIII
Vindication of the Recent Policy of Sir Robert Peel and his
Cabinet — The Political Power of the Tories distinguished
from their Social Power — The Political Power maintained at
Present by a Series of Great Democratic Measures.
IF, in confirmation of the argument which I have been
pursuing, I appeal to the measures brought forward by
Sir Robert Peel and the Cabinet, in which your Lordship
held the Great Seal of England, as evidence that the
Tories are not opposed to measures of political ameliora-
tion, I shall perhaps be met with that famous dilemma
of insincerity or apostacy which was urged during the
last General Election on the Whig hustings, with an air
of irrefutable triumph, which, had it been better grounded,
had been less amusing. I will grant that Sir Robert
Peel and his colleagues had previously resisted the
measures which they then proposed. But in the interval
the third estate of the realm had been reconstructed, and
a preponderating influence had been given to a small class
who would not support any Ministry unprepared to
carry such measures. If once the Tories admitted that
it was impossible for them to propose the adoption of
these measures they simultaneously admitted that they
could never again exercise power; they conceded to the
Whigs a monopoly of power, under the specious title of
a monopoly of Reform ; and the oligarchy against which
we had so long struggled would finally have been estab-
lished. Was this the duty of Sir Robert Peel and his
colleagues ? If they had held it to be such, the nation
would have rejected them for its leaders. The nation,
struggling with a sect, menaced by an insolent minority
of its members, recognised the absolute necessity of such
concessions on the part of its leaders as would deprive this
hostile and privileged minority of every just or plausible
ground of opposition to the national will. The deter-
mination of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues to carry
1835] TORY DEMOCRACY 227
these measures has already shaken the oligarchy to its
centre; it has forced it, only four years after having re-
constructed the third estate for its purposes, to rely upon
the treasonable support of a foreign priesthood; and it
has prepared the way for the regeneration of the national
character. This great deed therefore, instead of being
an act of insincerity or apostacy, was conceived in good
faith, and in perfect harmony with the previous policy
of the party : it was at the same time indispensable,
and urged alike by the national voice and the national
interests, and history will record it as the conduct of
patriotic wisdom.
I think, my Lord, that I have now shown how unjust
are those, and how liable to error, who form their opinion
of Toryism from those accidental qualities which are
inseparable from all political parties that have been long
in power, and have exercised that prolonged authority
under circumstances of extreme difficulty and danger.
And it is curious to observe that, so difficult is it to
destroy the original character and eradicate the first
principles of human affairs, those very members of the
Tory party who were loudest in upbraiding the Whig
Reform Act as a democratic measure were simultaneously,
and have ever since been, urging and prosecuting measures
infinitely more democratic than that cunning oligarchical
device. However irresistible may be the social power
of the Tory party, their political power, since 1831, has
only been preserved and maintained by a series of
democratic measures of the greatest importance and
most comprehensive character. No sooner was the
passing of the Whig Reform Act inevitable than the
Tories introduced a clause into it which added many
thousand members to the estate of the Commons. No
sooner was the Whig Reform Act passed, and circum-
stances had proved that, with all their machinations, the
oligarchy was not yet secure, than the Whigs, under the
pretence of reforming the corporations, attempted to
compensate themselves for the democratic increase of
223 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
the third estate, through the Chandos clause, by the
political destruction of all the freemen of England; but
the Tories again stepped in to the rescue of the nation
from the oligarchy, and now preserved the rights of
eighty thousand members of the third estate. And not
content with adding many thousands to its numbers, and
preserving eighty thousand, the Tories, ever since the
passing of the oligarchical Reform Act of the Whigs, have
organised societies throughout the country for the great
democratic purpose of increasing to the utmost possible
extent the numbers of the third estate of the realm. The
clause of Lord Chandos, your Lordship's triumphant
defence of the freemen of England, and the last Registra-
tion, are three great democratic movements, and quite in
keeping with the original and genuine character of
Toryism.
CHAPTER XXXIV
General View of the English Constitution — Shown to be a Com-
plete Democracy — English and French Equality contrasted
— Conclusion.
IF we take a superficial view of the nature of the English
Constitution, we shall perceive that the government of
the country is carried on by a King and two limited orders
of his subjects : but if we indulge in a more profound and
comprehensive survey — if we examine not only the
political Constitution, but the political condition of the
country — we shall in truth discover that the state of our
society is that of a complete democracy, headed by an
hereditary chief, the executive and legislative functions
performed by two privileged classes of the community,
but the whole body of the nation entitled, if duly qualified,
to participate in the exercise of those functions, and con-
stantly participating in them.
The basis of English society is Equality. But here let
us distinguish. There are two kinds of equality: there
1835] THE HIGHEK EQUALITY 229
is the equality that levels and destroys, and the equality
that elevates and creates. It is this last, this sublime,
this celestial equality, that animates the laws of England.
The principle of the first equality, base, terrestrial, Gallic,
and grovelling, is that no one should be privileged; the
principle of English equality is that everyone should be
privileged. Thus the meanest subject of our King is
born to great and important privileges; an Englishman,
however humble may be his birth, whether he be doomed
to the plough or destined to the loom, is born to the
noblest of all inheritances, the equality of civil rights ; he
is born to freedom, he is born to justice, and he is born
to property. There is no station to which he may not
aspire; there is no master whom he is obliged to serve;
there is no magistrate who dares imprison him against the
law; and the soil on which he labours must supply him
with an honest and decorous maintenance. These are
rights and privileges as valuable as King, Lords, and
Commons; and it is only a nation thus schooled and
cradled in the principles and practice of freedom which,
indeed, could maintain such institutions. Thus the
English in politics are as the old Hebrews in religion,
" a favoured and peculiar people." As Equality is the
basis, so Gradation is the superstructure ; and the English
nation is essentially a nation of classes, but not of castes.
Hence that admirable order, which is the characteristic
of our society; for in England every man knows or finds
his place ; the law has supplied every man with a position,
and nature has a liberal charter to amend the arrangement
of the law. Our equality is the safety-valve of tumul-
tuous spirits; our gradation the security of the humble
and the meek. The latter take refuge in their order; the
former seek relief in emancipating themselves from its
rank. English equality calls upon the subject to aspire;
French equality summons him to abase himself. In
England the subject is invited to become an object of
admiration or respect; in France he is warned lest he
become an object of envy or of ridicule. The law of
230 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
England has invested the subject with equality in order
that, if entitled to eminence, he should rise superior to
the mass. The law of France has invested the subject
with equality, on condition that he prevent the elevation
of his fellow. English equality blends every man's
ambition with the perpetuity of the State; French
equality, which has reduced the subject into a mere
individual, has degraded the State into a mere society.
English equality governs the subject by the united and
mingled influences of reason and imagination; French
equality, having rejected imagination and aspiring to
reason, has, in reality, only resolved itself into a barren
fantasy. The Constitution of England is founded not
only on a profound knowledge of human nature, but of
human nature in England ; the political scheme of France
originates not only in a profound ignorance of human
nature in general, but of French human nature in par-
ticular ; thus in England, however vast and violent may
be our revolutions, the Constitution ever becomes more
firm and vigorous, while in France a riot oversets the
government, and after half a century of political experi-
ments one of the most intellectual of human races has
succeeded in losing every attribute of a nation, and has
sought refuge from anarchy in a despotism without lustre,
which contradicts all its theories and violates all the
principles for which it has ever affected to struggle.
The English nation, to obtain the convenience of
monarchy, have established a popular throne, and, to
enjoy the security of aristocracy, have invested certain
orders of their fellow-subjects with legislative functions :
but these estates, however highly privileged, are invested
with no quality of exclusion; and the Peers and the
Commons of England are the trustees of the nation, not
its masters. The country where the legislative and even
the executive office may be constitutionally obtained by
every subject of the land is a democracy, and a democracy
of the noblest character. If neither ancient ages nor
the more recent experience of our newer time can supply
1835] THE BKITISH HEEITAGE 231
us with a parallel instance of a free government, founded
on the broadest basis of popular rights, yet combining
with democratic, liberty aristocratic security and mon-,
archical convenience ; if the refined spirit of Greece, if the
great Roman soul, if the brilliant genius of feodal Italy,
alike failed in realising this great result, let us cling with
increased devotion to the matchless creation of our
ancestors, and honour with still deeper feelings of grati-
tude and veneration the English Constitution. That
Constitution, my Lord, established civil equality in a
rude age, and anticipated by centuries, in its beneficent
practice, the sublime theories of modern philosophy:
having made us equal, it has kept us free. If it have
united equality with freedom, so also has it connected
freedom with glory. It has established an Empire which
combines the durability of Rome with the adventure of
Carthage. It has at the same time secured us the most
skilful agriculture, the most extended commerce, the
most ingenious manufactures, victorious armies, and in-
vincible fleets . Nor has the intellectual might of England,
under its fostering auspices, been less distinguished than
its imperial spirit, its manly heart, or its national energy.
The authors of England have formed the mind of Europe,
and stamped the breathing impression of their genius
on the vigorous character of a new world. Under that
Constitution the administration of justice has become so
pure that its exercise has realised the dreams of some
Utopian romance. That Constitution has struggled
successfully with the Papacy, and finally, and for the first
time, proved the compatibility of sectarian toleration
and national orthodoxy. It has made private ambition
conducive to public welfare, it has baffled the machinations
of factions and of parties, and when those more violent
convulsions have arisen, from whose periodic visitations
no human institutions can be exempt, the English Con-
stitution has survived the moral earthquake, and out-
lived the mental hurricane, and been sedulous that the
natural course of our prosperity should only be dis-
232 VINDICATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION [1835
turbed, and not destroyed. Finally, it has secured for
every man the career to which he is adapted, and the
reward to which he is entitled; it has summoned your
Lordship to preside over Courts and Parliaments, to
maintain law by learning, and to recommend wisdom by
eloquence: and it has secured to me, in common with
every subject of this realm, a right the enjoyment of
which I would not exchange even for
" The errnined stole,
The starry breast, and coroneted brow "
— the right of expressing my free thoughts to a free people.
1836] THE LETTEES OF EUNNYMEDE 233
THE LETTERS OP RUNNYMEDE
[THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE, written while Disraeli
was yet in the wilderness, appeared in the Times during
the first half of 1836, and were republished anonymously
in July, with the following lines on the title-page :
" Neither for shame nor fear this mask he wore
That like a vizor on the battle-field
But shrouds a manly and a daring brow."
Disraeli's authorship of the letters was never acknow-
ledged by him; doubtless as the years passed, and his
knowledge of the men with whom he had dealt so
unsparingly became more intimate, he regretted their
publication. They were mainly a curious compost of
abuse and panegyric — invective against political foes,
adulation of political friends. But the Letters have an
abiding reputation, and, like the Morning Post articles,
to which they have a close kinship, they could not be
omitted from a volume of his earlier political writings.
They formed an integral portion of his campaign in
behalf of Lord Lyndhurst against the Whigs.
It will be convenient, for the better understanding of
the Letters, to give here the composition of the Ministry
of the day :
Prime Minister
Lord President of the Council
Lord Privy Seal
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Home Secretary
Foreign Secretary
Colonial Secretary
First Lord of the Admiralty
Viscount Melbourne.
The Marquis of Lansdowne.
Viscount Duncannon.
Mr. T. Spring Eice (afterwards
Lord Mont eagle).
Lord John Eussell.
Viscount Palmerston.
Lord Glenelg.
Lord Auckland; Lord Minto.
President of the Board of Control Sir John Cam Hobhouse
(afterwards Lord Brough-
ton).
16
234 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
Secretary at War . . . . . . Viscount Ho wick (afterwards
Earl Grey).
Board of Trade Mr. C. Poulett Thomson (after-
wards Lord Sydenham).
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan-
caster . . . . . . . . Lord Holland.
Lord Chancellor . . . . In Commission ; afterwards
Lord Cottenham.
Irish Secretary Viscount Morpeth.
Sir John Campbell (afterwards Lord Campbell) was Attorney-
General, and the Earl of Mulgrave (afterwards Marquis of Nor-
manby) was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.]
DEDICATION :
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
SIR ROBERT PEEL, BARONET, M.P.
SIR, — I have the honour to dedicate to you a volume
illustrative of WHIGS and WHIGGISM. It has been my
object to delineate within its pages not only the present
characters and recent exploits of the most active of the
partisans, but also the essential and permanent spirit of
the party. It appeared to me that it might be advan-
tageous to connect the criticism on the character of the
hour with some researches into the factious idiosyncrasy
of centuries. Political parties are not so inconsistent as
the superficial imagine; and, in my opinion, the Whig of
a century back does not differ so materially as some would
represent from the Whig of the present day. I hope,
therefore, that this volume may conduce, not only to the
amusement, but to the instruction of my countrymen.
It is now, Sir, some six months past since I seized the
occasion of addressing you another letter, written under
very different auspices.1 The session of Parliament was
then about to commence ; it is now about to close. These
six months have not been uneventful in results. If they
have not witnessed any legislative enactment eminently
1 Letter V., January 26, 1836.
1836] RALLY OF THE CONSTITUTION 235
tending to our social welfare, they have developed much
political conduct for which our posterity may be grateful :
for this session, Sir, has at least been memorable for one
great event — an event not inferior, in my estimation, in
its beneficial influence on the fortunes of the country, to
Magna Charta itself — I mean the rally of the English
Constitution ; I might use a stronger phrase, I might say
its triumph.1
And it has triumphed because it has become under-
stood. The more its principles have been examined, the
more the intention of its various parts has been investi-
gated and its general scope comprehended, the more bene-
ficent and profound has appeared the polity of our fathers.
The public mind of late has been cleared of a vast amount
of error in constitutional learning. Scarcely a hired
writer would have the front at this day to pretend that
a difference of opinion between the two Houses of Parlia-
ment is a collision between the Peers and the People.
That phrase " the People " is a little better comprehended
now than it used to be ; it will not serve for the stalking
horse of faction as it did. We know very well that the
House of Commons is not the House of "the People ";
we know very well that " the People " is a body not in-
telligible in a political sense ; we know very well that the
Lords and the Commons are both sections of the Nation,
and both alike and equally representative of that great
community. And we know very well that if the contrary
propositions to all these were maintained, the govern-
ment of this English Empire might, at this moment, be
the pastime and plunder of some score of Irish adven-
turers.
When, Sir, you quitted Dray ton in February, the vaga-
bond delegate of a foreign priesthood2 was stirring up
rebellion against the Peers of England, with the implied,
if not the definite, sanction of His Majesty's Ministers.
Where is that hired disturber now ? Like base coin de-
1 Compare passage in final article of the Morning Post series,
p. 107. 2 O'ConneU.
236 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
tected by the very consequences of its currency, and
finally nailed against the counter it has deceived, so this
bad politician, like a bad shilling, has worn off his edge
by his very restlessness. Parliament met, and the King's
Ministers exhibited with a flourish their emblazoned cata-
logue of oligarchical coups-d'etat, by which they were to
entrench themselves in power under the plea of amelio-
rating our society. Not one of these measures has been
carried. Yet we were told that their success was certain,
and by a simple process — by the close and incontestable
union between all true reformers. The union between all
true reformers has terminated in the mutiny of Downing
Street.
I believe that I have commemorated in this volume
that celebrated harangue, which the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, at the commencement of the session, ad-
dressed at a dinner to his constituents -1 You may perhaps
remember, Sir, the glowing promises of that Eight
Honourable Gentleman : they seemed almost to announce
the advent of a political millennium. " First and fore-
most," announced the Right Honourable Chancellor,
" we shall proceed in our great work of the reform of the
Court of Equity " — the opus magnum of the gifted Cot-
tenham ! It seems the course of nature was reversed
here, and the butterfly turned into a grub. " Our earnest
attention will then be directed," quoth Mr. Bice, " to
the entire and complete relief of our Dissenting brethren
and fellow-subjects." How liberal, how condescending,
and how sincere ! The Dissenters are absolutely our
fellow-subjects. None but a Whig, a statesman almost
eructating with the plenary inspiration of the spirit of the
age, could have been capable of making so philosophical
an admission. In the meantime six months have passed,
and nothing has been done for our unhappy " fellow-
subjects," while the Dissenting organs denounce even the
projected alleviations as a miserable insult. To justice
to Ireland Mr. Bice of course was pledged, and most
1 Mr. Spring Rice's speech at Cambridge.
1836] PLACE WITHOUT POWER 237
determined to obtain it; but his Bills have been dis-
honoured nevertheless. And the settlement of the Irish
Tithe and the Reform of the Irish Corporations are about
as much advanced by this great Whig Government as the
relief of the Dissenters and the reform of the Court of
Chancery. What have they done then ? What pledge
have they redeemed ? The Ecclesiastical Courts remain
unpurged. Even the Stamp Act, through the medium
of which the Whigs, as usual, have levelled a blow at the
liberty of the press, has not passed yet, and in its present
inquisitorial form can never become a law. What then,
I repeat, have they done ? They promised indeed to
break open the prisons like Jack Cade; but as yet the
grates are barred; the pensions are still paid, and the
soldiers still flogged. Oh, ye Scribes of the Treasury
and Pharisees of Downing Street !
Supported in the House of Lords by a body inferior in
number to the Peers created by the Whigs during the
last five years, upheld in the House of Commons by a
majority of twenty-six, Lord Melbourne still clings to his
mulish and ungenerative position of place without
power; and with a degree of modest frankness and con-
stitutional propriety equally admirable pledges himself
before his country, that, as long as he is supported by a
majority of the House of Commons, he will remain
Minister.1 I apprehend the ratification of a Ministry is
as necessary by one House of Parliament as by the other ;
but I stop not to discuss this. The choice of Ministers
was once entrusted to a different authority than that of
either Lords or Commons.
But this is an old almanack ; and I leave Lord Viscount
Melbourne to shake its dust off at his next interview with
his projected Doge of Windsor.
RUNNYMEDE.
July 27, 1836.
1 "I conscientiously believe," Lord Melbourne declared, "that
the well-being of the country requires that I should hold my
present office — and hold it I will till I am constitutionally removed
from it."
238 THE LETTEES OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
LETTER I
To ViscomsTT MELBOURNE
MY LORD, — The Marquis of Halifax1 was wont to say
of his Royal Master, that, " after all, his favourite Sultana
Queen was sauntering." It is, perhaps, hopeless that
your Lordship should rouse yourself from the embraces
of that Siren Desidia to whose fatal influence you are not
less a slave than our second Charles, and that you should
cease to saunter over the destinies of a nation, and lounge
away the glory of an empire. Yet the swift shadows of
coming events are assuredly sufficiently dark and ominous
to startle from its indolence even
" The sleekest swine in Epicurus' sty." a
When I recall to my bewildered memory the perplexing
circumstance that William Lamb is Prime Minister of
England, it seems to me that I recollect with labour the
crowning incident of some grotesque dream, or that in
some pastime of the season you have drawn for the
amusement of a nation a temporary character, ludicrously
appropriate only from the total want of connection and
fitness between the festive part and the individual by
whom it is sustained. Previous to the passing of the
famous Act of 1832, for the amendment of popular repre-
sentation, your reputation, I believe, principally depended
upon your talent for prologue writing. No one was held
to introduce with more grace and spirit the performances
of an amateur society. With the exception of an annual
oration against Parliamentary reform, your career in the
House of Commons was never remarkably distinguished.
Your Cabinet, indeed, appears to have been constructed
from the materials of your old dramatic company. The
1 Sir George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695), a promi-
nent figure in the reign of Charles the Second.
2 " Me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises . . . Epi-
ouri de grege porcum " (Horace, "Epistles," Book I,, iv. 15, 16).
1836] THE CAST 239
domestic policy of the country is entrusted to the cele-
brated author of "Don Carlos"; the Fletcher of this
Beaumont, the author of the " Siege of Constantinople '?1
(an idea apparently borrowed from your Russian allies),
is the guardian of the lives and properties of the Irish
clergy, under the charitable supervision of that " first
tragedy man," the Lord of Mulgrave; Lord Glenelg ad-
mirably personifies a sleepy audience; while your Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer beats Mr. Power ;2 and your Secre-
tary for Foreign Affairs, in his mimetic sympathy with
French manners and intimate acquaintance with French
character, is scarcely inferior to the late ingenious Charles
Mathews. That general adapter from the Spanish, Lord
Holland, gives you all the advantage, in the affairs of the
Peninsula, of his early studies of Lope de Vega,3 and,
indeed, with his skilful assistance you appear, by all
accounts, to have woven a plot absurd and complicated
enough even for the grave humour of Madrid or the gay
fancy of Seville. For yourself is still reserved a monopoly
of your peculiar talent, and doubtless on February 4 you
will open your House with an introductory composition
worthy of your previous reputation.
I remember some years ago listening to one of these
elegant productions from the practised pen of the present
Prime Minister of Great Britain, if not of Ireland. I
think it was on that occasion that you enunciated to your
audience the great moral discovery that the character-
istic of the public mind of the present day was
" A taste for evil."
Our taste for evil does not seem to be on the wane, since
it has permitted this great empire to be governed by the
Whigs, and has induced even those Whigs to be governed
1 Viscount Morpeth (afterwards seventh Earl of Carlisle),
author of " The Last of the Greeks, or the Fall of Constantinople,"
1828.
2 Tyrone Power.
3 Lord Holland published in 1806 anonymously, and in 1817
over his own name, a short Life of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio ;
and in 1807 " Three Comedies from the Spanish."
240 THE LETTEKS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
by an Irish rebel. Your prologue, my Lord, was quite
prophetic.
If your Royal Master's speech at the opening of his
Parliament may share its inspirations, it will tell to the
people of England some terrible truths.
It will announce, in the first place, that the policy of
your theatrical Cabinet has at length succeeded in
dividing the people of England into two hostile camps,
in which numbers are arrayed against property, ignorance
against knowledge, and sects against institutions.
It will announce to us that your theatrical Cabinet
has also been not less fortunate in maturing the passive
resistance of the enemy in Ireland into active hostility,
and that you have obtained the civil war from which
the Duke of Wellington shrank, without acquiring the
political security which might have been its consequence.
It will announce to us that in foreign affairs you and
your company have finally succeeded in destroying all
our old alliances without substituting any new ones ; and
that, after having sacrificed every principle of British
policy to secure an intimate alliance with France, the
Cabinet of the Tuileries has even had the airy audacity
to refuse its co-operation in that very treaty in which
its promises alone involved you; and that, while the
British Minister can with extreme difficulty obtain an
audience at St. Petersburg, the Ambassador of France
passes with a polite smile of gay recognition the luckless
representative of William the Fourth, who is lounging in
an ante-chamber in the enjoyment of an indolence which
even your Lordship might envy.
It will announce to us that in our colonial empire
the most important results may speedily be anticipated
from the discreet selection of Lord Auckland1 as a suc-
cessor to our Clives and our Hastings ; that the progressive-
improvement of the French in the manufacture of beet-
root may compensate for the approaching destruction of
our West Indian plantations ; and that, although Canada
1 Succeeded Lord William Bentinck as Governor-General of India.
1836] LOED MELBOURNE'S ASSISTANTS 241
is not yet independent, the final triumph of liberal prin-
ciples, under the immediate patronage of the Government,
may eventually console us for the loss of the glory of
Chatham and the conquests of Wolfe.
At home or abroad, indeed, an agreeable prospect on
every side surrounds you. Your Lordship may exclaim
with Hannibal: "Behind us are the Alps, before us is
Eridanus !" And who are your assistants to stem the
profound and impetuous current of this awful futurity ?
At an unconstitutional expenditure of four coronets,1
which may some day figure as an article in an impeach-
ment, the Whigs have at length obtained a Lord Chan-
cellor as a lawyer not illustrious, as a statesman a non-
entity. The seals of the principal office of the State are
entrusted to an individual who, on the principle that good
vinegar is the corruption of bad wine, has been meta-
morphosed from an incapable author into an eminent
politician.2 His brother Secretaries3 remind me of two
battered female sinners; one frivolous, the other ex-
hausted; one taking refuge from conscious scorn in
rouge and the affected giggle of fluttering folly, and the
other in strong waters and devotion. Then Mr. Spring
Rice waves a switch, which he would fain persuade you
is a shillelagh; while the Rienzi of Westminster smiles
with marvelling complacency at the strange chapter of
accidents which has converted a man whose friends pelted
George Lamb with a cabbage-stalk, into a main prop of
William Lamb's Cabinet.
Some yet remain ; the acute intelligence of Lansdowne,
the polished mind of Thomson, Howick's calm maturity,4
and the youthful energy of Holland.
1 In a later letter the " expenditure " of coronets is reduced
to three. Sir Christopher Pepys, Master of the Rolls, received
the Great Seal, with the title of Earl of Cottenham; Bickersteth,
with the title of Lord Langdale, succeeded him as Master of the
Rolls; and Lady Campbell, wife of Sir John Campbell, Attorney-
General, was made a peeress in her own right.
2 Lord John Russell (see Introduction, p. 10).
3 Lord Palmerston and Lord Glenelg.
4 Mr. Poulett Thomson and Viscount Howick had just been
admitted to the Cabinet.
242 THE LETTEKS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
And this is the Cabinet that controls the destinies of
a far vaster population than owned the sway of Rome in
the palmiest hour of its imperial fame ! Scarron1 or
Butler should celebrate its political freaks, and the
shifting expedients of its ignoble statecraft. But while I
watch you in your ludicrous councils, an awful shade
rises from behind the chair of my Lord President.
Slaves ! it is your master ; it is Eblis2 with Captain Rock's3
bloody cap shadowing his atrocious countenance. In
one hand he waves a torch, and in the other clutches a
skull. He gazes on his victims with a leer of fiendish
triumph. Contemptible as you are, it is this dark con-
nection that involves your fate with even an epic dignity,
and makes the impending story of your retributive for-
tunes assume almost a Dantesque sublimity.
January 18, 1836.
LETTER II
To SIR JOHN CAMPBELL4
SIR, — I have always been of opinion — an opinion I im-
bibed early in life from great authorities — that the
Attorney and Solicitor-General were not more the guar-
dians of the honour and the interests of the Crown than
of the honour and the interests of the Bar. It appears to
me that you have failed in your duty as representative
of this once illustrious body, and therefore it is that I
address to you this letter.
Although your political opponent, I trust I am not
1 The burlesque poet, who married Mademoiselle d'Aubigne,
afterwards so well known as Madame de Maintenon.
2 The chief of the fallen angels.
3 The fictitious name of the leader of the Irish insurgents in
1822. Maclise's " Installation of Captain Rock " was exhibited
in 1834.
4 The Attorney-General, afterwards Lord Campbell. As a
solatium for being passed over in the appointments of Master of
the Rolls and Lord Chancellor, Sir John secured the elevation of
his wife to the peerage as Lady Stratheden.
1836] A WAIVED RIGHT 243
incapable of acknowledging and appreciating your abilities
and acquirements. They are sound, but they are not
splendid. You have mastered considerable legal reading,
you are gifted with no ordinary shrewdness, you have en-
joyed great practice, and you have gained great experi-
ence ; you possess undaunted perseverance and invincible
industry. But you can advance no claim to the refined
subtlety of an Eldon, and still less to the luminous pre-
cision, the quick perception, the varied knowledge, and
accomplished eloquence of a Lyndhurst. In profound
learning you cannot cope for a moment with Sir Edward
Sugden;1 as an advocate you can endure no competiton
with your eminent father-in-law,2 or with Sir William
Follett, or — for I am not writing as a partisan — with Mr.
Serjeant Wilde. As a pleader I believe you were dis-
tinguished, though there are many who, even in this
humble province, have deemed that you might yield the
palm to Mr. Baron Parke and Mr. Justice Littledale.
But, whatever be your merits or defects, you are still
the King's Attorney- General, and as the King's Attorney-
General you have a prescriptive, if not a positive, right
to claim any seat upon the judgment bench which becomes
vacant during your official tenure. This prescriptive
right has never been doubted in the profession. It has
been understood and acted upon by members of the
bar, of all parties, and at all times. In recent days,
Sir Robert Gifford,3 though a common law lawyer,
succeeded to the equity tribunal of Sir Thomas Plomer,
It is true that Sir Robert Gififord, for a very short time
previous to his accession, had practised in the Court of
Chancery, but the right of the Attorney-General to suc-
ceed, under any circumstances, was again recognised by
Lord Eldon, when Sir John Copley,4 who had never been
in an Equity Court in his life, became Master of the Rolls.
On this occasion it is well known that Leach,6 the Vice-
1 Afterwards Lord St. Leonards and Lord Chancellor.
2 Sir James Scarlett, afterwards Lord Abinger.
3 Afterwards Lord Clifford.
4 Lord Lyndhurst. 6 Sir John Leach.
244 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
Chancellor, was anxious to succeed Lord Gifford, but
his request was not for a moment listened to in preference
to the claim of the Attorney-General.
In allowing a judge, who a very short time back was
your inferior officer, to become Lord Chancellor of
England, and in permitting a barrister, who had not
even filled the office of Solicitor- General, to be elevated
over your head into the seat of the Master of the Rolls ;
either you must have esteemed yourself absolutely in-
competent to the discharge of those great offices, or you
must have been painfully conscious of your marked in-
feriority to both the individuals who were promoted in
your teeth; or last, and bitterest alternative, you must
have claimed your right and been denied its enjoyment.
In the first instance, you virtually declared that you were
equally unfit for the office you at present hold, and what
should have been your consequent conduct is obvious ;
in the second, you betrayed the interests of the bar ; and
in the third, you betrayed not only the interests of the
bar, but its honour also.
Without imputing to Sir John Campbell any mar-
vellous degree of arrogance, I cannot bring myself to
believe that he holds himself absolutely unfit for the dis-
charge of the offices in question. I will not even credit
that he has yielded to his unfeigned sense of his marked
inferiority to the supernatural wisdom and miraculous
acquirements of my Lord Cottenham, or that his down-
cast vision has been dazzled by the wide extended
celebrity that surrounds with a halo the name of Bicker-
steth ! No, Sir, we will not trench upon the manorial
right of modesty which is the monopoly of your colleague,
Sir Monsey Rolfe,1 that public man on the lucus a non
lucendo principle, that shadowy entity which all have
heard of, few seen. An individual, it would appear, of
a rare humility and admirable patience, and born, as it
were, to exemplify the beauty of resignation.
I believe, therefore, that you claimed the office — that
1 Afterwards Lord Cranworth and Lord Chancellor.
1836] AN UNKESENTED INSULT 245
you claimed your right, and that you were refused it.
That must have been a bitter moment, Sir John Campbell
— a moment which might have made you recollect, per-
haps even repeat, the Johnsonian definition of a Whig.1
You have not hitherto been held a man deficient in spirit,
or altogether uninfluenced by that nobler ambition which
spurs us on to great careers, and renders the esteem of
our fellow-countrymen not the least valuable reward of
our exertions. When therefore you were thus insulted,
why did you not resent the insult ? When your fair
ambition was thus scurvily balked, why not have gratified
it by proving to a sympathising nation that you were
at least worthy of the high post to which you aspired ?
He who aims to be the guardian of the honour of the
Crown should at least prove that he is competent
to protect his own. You ought not to have quitted
the Minister's ante - chamber the King's Attorney-
General.
Why did you, then ? Because, as you inform us, your
lady is to be ennobled. Is it the carnival, that such jests
pass current ? Is it part of the code of etiquette in this
saturnalia of Whig manners that the honour of a man is
to be vindicated by a compliment to a woman ? One
cannot refrain from admiring, too, the consistent pro-
priety of the whole arrangement. A gentleman, whom
his friends announce as a resolved republican, and to
whom, but for this slight circumstance, they assert would
have been entrusted the custody of the Great Seal, is
to be hoisted up into the House of Lords in the masquerade
of a Baron; while yourself, whose delicate and gracious
panegyric of the Peers of England is still echoing from
the Movement benches of the House of Commons to the
reeking cellars of the Cowgate, find the only consolation
for your wounded honour in your son inscribing his name
in the libro d'oro of our hereditary legislators. Why, if
Mr. O'Connell were but simultaneously called up by the
1 Johnson, in his Dictionary, denned " Whig " as " the name
of a faction."
246 THE LETTEKS OF KUNNYMEDE [1836
title of Baron RatHcormac, in honour of his victory, the
batch would be quite complete.
What compensation is it for the injured interests, and
what consolation to the outraged honour, of the bar,
that your amiable lady is to become a peeress ? On the
contrary, you have inflicted a fresh stigma on the body
of which you are the chief. You have shown to the
world that the leading advocate of the day, the King's
Attorney-General, will accept a bribe ! JTay ! start not.
For the honour of human nature, for the honour of your
high profession, of which I am the friend, I will believe
that in the moment of overwhelming mortification you
did not thus estimate that glittering solace, but such,
believe me, the English nation will ever esteem the
coronet of Strath-Eden.
Was the grisly spectre of Sir William Home1 the
blooming Eve that tempted you to pluck this fatal fruit ?
Was it the conviction that a rebellious Attorney-General
might be shelved that daunted the hereditary courage of
the Campbell ? What, could you condescend to be
treated by the Minister like a froward child — the parental
Viscount shaking in one hand a rod, and in the other
waving a toy ?
I have long been of opinion that, among other per-
fected and projected mischief, there has been on the part
of the Whigs a systematic attempt to corrupt the English
bar. I shall avail myself of another and early oppor-
tunity to discuss this important subject. At present I
will only observe that, whether they do or do not obtain
their result, your conduct has anticipated the consequence
of their machinations: the Whigs may corrupt the bar
of England, but you, Sir, have degraded it.
January 19, 1836.
1 Attorney - General in Grey's Ministry ; a " victim to the
trickery and shuffling of the Chancellor (Lord Brougham), who
wanted to get him out, and did not care how " (Greville's
"Memoirs," February 26 1834).
1836] HIGH NONSENSE AND LOW NONSENSE 247
LETTER III
To MR. THOMAS ATTWOOD, M.P.1
SIR, — You may be surprised at this letter being ad-
dressed to you; you may be more surprised when I
inform you that this address is not occasioned by any
conviction of your political importance. I deem you a
harmless, and I do not believe you to be an ill-meaning,
individual. You are a provincial banker labouring under
a financial monomania. But amid the seditious fan-
faronade which your unhappy distemper occasions you
periodically to vomit forth, there are fragments of good
old f eelings which show you are not utterly denationalised
in spite of being " the friend of all mankind," and con-
trast with the philanthropic verbiage of your revolu-
tionary rhetoric like the odds and ends of ancient art
which occasionally jut forth from the modern rubbish of
an edifice in a classic land — symptoms of better days,
and evidences of happier intellect.
The reason that I have inscribed this letter to your
consideration is that you are a fair representative of
a considerable class of your countrymen — the class who
talk political nonsense; and it is these with whom,
through your medium, I would now communicate.
I met recently with an observation which rather
amused me. It was a distinction drawn in some journal
between high nonsense and low nonsense.2 I thought
that distinction was rather happily illustrated at the
recent meeting of your Union,3 which, by-the-bye,
differs from its old state as the drivellings of idiotism from
1 Member for Birmingham ; a Reform leader, and father of the
Political Unions; the " King Tom " of Cobbett's Political Register.
2 Disraeli's own letter to the Times, December 31, 1835: " I
have often observed that there are two kinds of nonsense — high
nonsense and low nonsense."
3 Birmingham Political Union, January 18, 1836, presided over
by Mr. Muntz.
248 THE LETTEKS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
the frenzy of insanity- When your chairman, who, like
yourself, is " the friend of all mankind/' called Sir Robert
Peel " an ass," I thought that Spartan description might
fairly range under the head of low nonsense; but when
you yourself, as if in contemptuous and triumphant
rivalry with his plebeian folly, announced to us that at
the sound of your blatant voice 100,000 armed men would
instantly rise in Birmingham, it occurred to me that
Nat Lee1 himself could scarcely compete with you in
your claim to the more patrician privilege of uttering high
nonsense. If, indeed, you produce such marvels, the
name of Attwood will be handed down to posterity in
heroic emulation with that of Cadmus; he produced
armed men by a process almost as simple, but the teeth
of the Theban King must yield to the jaw of the Bir-
mingham delegate, though I doubt not the same destiny
would await both batches of warriors.
But these 100,000 armed men are only the advanced
guard, the imperial guard of Brummagem, the heralds
of a mightier host. Nay, compared with the impending
legions, can only count as pioneers, or humble sappers at
the best. Twenty millions of men are to annihilate the
Tories. By the last census, I believe the adult male
population of Great Britain was computed at less than
4,000,000. Whence the subsidiary levies are to be
obtained, we may perhaps be informed the next time
some brainless Cleon, at the pitch of his voice, bawls
forth his rampant folly at the top of New Hall
Hill.
Superficial critics have sometimes viewed, in a spirit
of narrow-minded scepticism, those traditionary accounts
of armed hosts which startle us in the credulous or the
glowing page of rude or ancient annals. But what was
the Great King on the heights of Salamis or in the straits
of Issus, what was Gengis Khan, what Tamerlane, com-
pared with Mr. Thomas Attwood of Birmingham ! The
leader of such an army may well be " the friend of all
1 Nathaniel Lee, the dramatist.
1836] THE TEN-POUNDERS 249
mankind," if only to recruit his forces from his extensive
connections.
The truth is, Xerxes and Darius, and the valiant leaders
of the Tartars and the Mongols, were ignorant of the
mystical yet expeditious means by which 20,000,000 of
men are brought into the field by a modern demagogue, to
change a constitution or to subvert an empire. When
they hoisted their standard, their chieftains rallied round
it, bringing to the array all that population of the country
who were not required to remain at home to maintain
its order or civilisation. The peasant quitted his plough
and the pastor his flock, and the artisan without employ
hurried from the pauperism of Babylon or the idleness
of Samarcand. But these great leaders, with their
diminutive forces which astounded the Lilliputian experi-
ence of our ancestors, had no conception, with their
limited imaginations, of the inexhaustible source whence
the ranks of a popular leader may be swollen ; they had
no idea of " THE PEOPLE." It is " the people " that is
to supply their great successor with his millions.
As in private life we are accustomed to associate the
circle of our acquaintance with the phrase " THE WORLD,"
so in public I have invariably observed that " THE
PEOPLE " of the politician is the circle of his interests.
The "people " of the Whigs are the ten-pounders who
vote in their favour. At present the municipal con-
stituencies are almost considered by Lords Melbourne and
John Russell as, in some instances, to have afforded
legitimate claims of being deemed part and parcel of the
nation; but I very much fear that the course of events
will degrade those bodies from any lengthened participa-
tion in this ennobling quality. It is quite clear that the
electors of Northamptonshire have forfeited all right to
be held portion of " the people," since their return of
Mr. Maunsell;1 the people of Birmingham are doubtless
those of the inhabitants who huzza the grandiloquence of
1 Mr. T. P. Maunsell, Conservative Member for North North-
amptonshire.
17
250 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
Mr. Attwood; and* the people of England, perchance,
those discerning individuals who, if he were to make a
provincial tour of oratory, might club together in the
different towns to give him a dinner. I hardly think
that, all together, these quite amount to 20,000,000.
Yourself and the school to which you belong are apt
to describe the present struggle as one between the Con-
servatives and the people — these Conservatives con-
sisting merely of 300 or 400 peers and their retainers.
You tell us in the same breath, with admirable con-
sistency, that you possess the name, but not the heart,
of the King; that the Court is secretly, and the Peerage
openly, opposed to you; the Church you announce as
even beholding you with pious terror. The Universities,
and all chartered bodies, come under your ban. The
Bar is so hostile that you have been obliged to put the
Great Seal in commission for a year,1 and have finally,
and from sheer necessity, entrusted it to the custody of
an individual whom by that very tripartite trusteeship
you had previously declared unfit for its sole guardian-
ship. The gentlemen of England are against you to a
man because of their corn monopoly ; the yeomanry from
sheer bigotry; the cultivators of the soil because they
are the slaves of the owners, and the peasantry because
they are the slaves of the cultivators. The freemen of
the towns are against you because they are corrupt; the
inhabitants of rural towns because they are compelled;
and the press is against you because it is not free. It
must be confessed that you and your party can give
excellent reasons for any chance opposition which you
may happen to experience. You are equally felicitous
in accounting for the suspicious glance which the fund-
holder shoots at you; nor can I sufficiently admire the
1 When Melbourne returned to office in April, 1835, it was
determined, after the conduct of Brougham in the previous Mel-
bourne Administration, not to have him among them again; and
to soften the blow to Brougham, the Great Seal was put in Com-
mission until the appointment of Pepys in the following year,
the Commissioners being Sir Charles Pepys (Master of the Rolls),
Vice-Chancellor Shad well, and Mr. Justice Bosanquet.
1836] ELEMENTS OF A NATION 251
admirable candour with which the prime organ of your
faction has recently confessed that every man who
possesses £500 per annum is necessarily your opponent.
After this, it is superfluous to remark that the merchants,
bankers, and ship-owners of this great commercial and
financial country are not to be found in your ranks, and
the sneers at our national glory and imperial sway which
ever play on the patriotic lips of Whigs, both high and
low, only retaliate the undisguised scorn with which their
anti-national machinations are viewed by the heroes of
Waterloo and the conquerors of Trafalgar. Deduct these
elements of a nation, deduct all this power, all this
authority, all this skill, and all this courage, all this
learning, all this wealth, and all these numbers, and all
the proud and noble and national feelings which are
their consequence, and what becomes of your "people " ?
It subsides into an empty phrase, a juggle as pernicious
and as ridiculous as your paper currency !
But if you and your friends, " the friends of all man-
kind," have, as indeed I believe you have not, the brute
force and the numerical superiority of the population of
this realm marshalled under your banners, do not delude
yourselves into believing for a moment that you are in
any degree more entitled from that circumstance to count
yourselves the leaders of the English people. A nation
is not a mere mass of bipeds with no strength but their
animal vigour, and no collective grandeur but that of their
numbers. There is required to constitute that great
creation, a people, some higher endowments and some
rarer qualities — honour, and faith, and justice ; a national
spirit fostered by national exploits; a solemn creed ex-
pounded by a pure and learned priesthood; a jurispru-
dence which is the aggregate wisdom of ages; the spirit
of chivalry, the inspiration of religion, the supremacy of
law; that free order, and that natural gradation of ranks
which are but a type and image of the economy of the
universe ; a love of home and country, fostered by tradi-
tionary manners and consecrated by customs that embalm
252 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
ancestral deeds; learned establishments, the institutions
of charity, a skill in refined and useful arts, the discipline
of fleets and armies ; and above all, a national character,
serious and yet free, a character neither selfish nor con-
ceited, but which is conscious that as it owes much to its
ancestors, so also it will not stand acquitted if it neglect
its posterity ; — these are some of the incidents and quali-
ties of a great nation like the people of England, Whether
these are to be found in " the people " who assemble at
the meetings of your union, or whether they may be more
successfully sought for among their 20,000,000 of brethren
at hand, I leave you, Sir, to decide. I shall only observe,
that if I be correct in my estimate of the constituent
elements of the English people, I am persuaded that in
spite of all the arts of plundering factions and mercenary
demagogues, they will recognise, with a grateful loyalty,
the venerable cause of their welfare in the august fabric
of their ancient constitution.
January 21, 1836.
LETTEE IV
To LORD BROUGHAM
MY LORD, — In your elaborate mimicry of Lord Bacon,
your most implacable enemies must confess that, at least
in one respect, you have rivalled your great original —
you have contrived to get disgraced. In your Treatise
on Hydrostatics you may not have completely equalled
the fine and profound researches of " the Lord Chancellor
of Nature "; your most ardent admirers may hesitate in
preferring the Penny Magazine to the " Novum Orga-
non "; even the musings of Jenkins and the meditations
of Tomkins may not be deemed to come quite as much
home " to men's business and bosoms " as the immortal
Essays ; but no one can deny, neither friend nor foe, that
you are as much shunned as their author — almost as
much despised.
1836] TWO LORD CHANCELLORS 253
Whether the fame of his philosophical discoveries and
the celebrity of his literary exploits may console the late
Lord Chancellor of William the Fourth in the solitude of
his political annihilation, as they brought balm to the
bruised spirit of the late Lord Chancellor of James the
First in the loneliness of his sublime degradation, he best
can decide who may witness the writhings of your tor-
tured memory and the restless expedients of your irritable
imagination. At present, I am informed that your
Lordship is occupied in a translation of your Treatise
of Natural Theology into German, on the Hamiltonian
system. The translation of a work on a subject of which
you know little, into a tongue of which you know nothing,
seems the climax of those fantastic freaks of ambitious
superficiality which our lively neighbours describe by a
finer term than quackery. But if the perturbed spirit
can only be prevented from preying on itself by literary
occupation, let me suggest to you, in preference, the pro-
priety of dedicating the days of your salutary retirement
to a production of more general interest, and, if properly
treated, of more general utility. A memoir of the late
years of your career might afford your fellow-countrymen
that of which at present they are much in want — -a great
moral lesson. In its instructive pages we might perhaps
learn how a great empire has nearly been sacrificed to the
aggrandisement of a rapacious faction; how, under the
specious garb of patriotism, a band of intriguing poli-
ticians, connected by no community of purpose or of
feeling but the gratification of their own base interests,
forfeited all the pledges of their previous careers, or vio-
lated all the principles of their practised systems ; how,
at length, in some degree palled with plundering the
nation, according to the usual course, they began plunder-
ing themselves ; how the weakest, and probably the least
impure, were sacrificed to those who were more bold and
bad; and, finally, how your Lordship, especially, would
have shrouded yourself in the mantle, while you kicked
away the prophet.
254 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
If your Lordship would have but the courageous can-
dour to proceed in this great production, you might,
perhaps, favour us with a graphic narrative of that
memorable interview between yourself and the present
Premier, when, with that easy elocution and unembar-
rassed manner which characterise the former favourite of
Castlereagh, the present First Lord of the Treasury,
robbing you of the fruit after you had plundered the
orchard, broke to your startled vision and incredulous
ear the unforeseen circumstance that your Lordship was
destined to be the scapegoat of Whiggism, and to be
hurried into the wilderness with all the curses of the
nation and all the sins of your companions. This ani-
mated sketch would form an admirable accompaniment
to the still richer picture when you offered your congratu-
latory condolence to Earl Grey on his long meditated
retirement from the onerous service of a country as grate-
ful as his colleagues.
Your Lordship, who is well informed of what passes in
the Cabinet, must have been scarcely less astonished than
the public at the late legal arrangements. Every post,
till of late, must have brought you from the metropolis
intelligence which must have filled you with anxiety
almost maturing into hope. But the lion was suddenly
reported to be sick, and the jackals suddenly grew
bold. The Prime Minister consulted Sir Benjamin;1 the
Serjeant-Surgeon shook his head, and they passed in
trembling precipitation the paltry Eubicon of their spite.
When we remember that one voice alone decided your
fate, and that that voice issued from the son of Lord Grey,
we seem to be recalled to the days of the Greek drama.
Your Lordship, although a universalist, I believe, has not
yet tried your hand at a tragedy ; let me recommend this
fresh illustration of the sublime destiny of the ancients.
You have deserved a better fate, but not a degrading one ;
though Achilles caused the destruction of Troy, we deplore
his ignoble end from the unequal progeny of Priam.
1 Benjamin Collins Brodie, appointed Sergeant-Surgeon to the
King in 1832, and afterwards knighted.
1836] AN UNFORGIVEN INSULT 255
And is it possible — are you indeed the man whose
scathing voice, but a small lustre gone, passed like the
lightning in that great Assembly where Canning grew
pale before your terrible denunciation, and where even
Peel still remembers your awful reply ? Is this indeed
the lord of sarcasm, the mighty master of invective ? Is
this indeed the identical man who took the offer of the
Attorney- Generalship, and held it up to the scorn of the
assembled Commons of England, and tore it, and trampled
upon it, and spat upon it in their sympathising sight, and
lived to offer the cold-blooded aristocrat, who had dared to
insult genius, the consoling compensation of the Privy Seal?1
For your Lordship has a genius ; good or bad, it marks
you out from the slaves who crouch to an O'Connell
and insult a Brougham. Napoleon marched from Elba.
You, too, may have your hundred days. What though
they think you are dying — what though your health is
quaffed in ironical bumpers in the craven secrecy of their
political orgies — what if, after all, throwing Brodie on one
side and your Teutonic studies on the other, your spectre
appear in the House of Lords on the fourth of February !
Conceive the confusion ! I can see the unaccustomed robes
tremble on the dignified form of the lordly Cottenham,
and his spick and span coronet fall from the obstetric
brow of the baronial Bickersteth,2 Lansdowne taking
refuge in philosophical silence, and Melbourne gulping
courage in the goblets of Sion !
January 23, 1836.
1 " The Chancellor and the Hollands urged Lord Grey to take
the Privy Seal. Lord Grey . . . rather smiled at the proposi-
tion, but he did not repress the pious resentment of his children.
The Grey women would murder the Chancellor if they could. It
certainly was a curious suggestion. ... It is not always easy
to discover the Chancellor's motives, but ... he perhaps took
this opportunity of revenging himself for the old offer of the
Attorney-Generalship, which he has never forgiven " (Greville's
"Memoirs," July 21, 1834).
2 Henry Bickersteth (Lord Langdale) was first educated for
the medical profession, but his health broke down through over-
study.
256 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
LETTER V
To Sra ROBERT PEEL
SIR, — Before you receive this letter you will, in all
probability, have quitted the halls and bowers of Drayton ;
those gardens and that library where you have realised
the romance of Verulam and where you enjoy " the
lettered leisure " that Temple loved. Your present pro-
gress to the metropolis may not be as picturesque as that
which you experienced twelve months back, when the
confidence of your sovereign and the hopes of your
country summoned you from the galleries of the Vatican
and the city of the Caesars.1 It may not be as picturesque,
but it is not less proud — it will be more triumphant.
You are summoned now, like the Knight of Rhodes in
Schiller's heroic ballad, as the only hope of a suffering
island. The mighty dragon is again abroad, depopulating
our fields, wasting our pleasant places, poisoning our
fountains, menacing our civilisation. To-day he gorges
on Liverpool, to-morrow he riots at Birmingham: as he
advances nearer the metropolis, terror and disgust pro-
portionately increase. Already we hear his bellow, more
awful than hyaenas; already our atmosphere is tainted
with the venomous expirations of his malignant lungs ;
yet a little while and his incendiary crest will flame on
our horizon, and we shall mark the horrors of his insatiable
jaws and the scaly volume of his atrocious tail !
In your chivalry alone is our hope. Clad in the
panoply of your splendid talents and your spotless char-
acter, we feel assured that you will subdue this unnatural
and unnational monster; and that we may yet see sedi-
tion, and treason, and rapine, rampant as they may
have of late figured, quail before your power and prowess.
1 Sir Robert Peel was in Italy when summoned by the King to
form an administration in 1834.
1836] A CONTRAST 257
You are about to renew the combat under the most
favourable auspices. When, a year ago, with that devo-
tion to your country which is your great characteristic,
scorning all those refined delights of fortune which are
your inheritance, and which no one is more capable of
appreciating, and resigning all those pure charms of social
and domestic life to which no one is naturally more at-
tached, you threw yourself in the breach of the battered
and beleaguered citadel of the constitution, you under-
took the heroic enterprise with every disadvantage. The
national party were as little prepared for the summons
of their eminent leader by their sovereign as you yourself
could have been when gazing on the frescoes of Michel-
angelo. They had little organisation, less system; their
hopes weak, their chieftains scattered; no communica-
tion, no correspondence. Yet they made a gallant rally ;
and if their numerical force in the House of Commons
were not equal, Sir, to your moral energy, the return of
Lord Melbourne, at the best, was but a Pyrrhic triumph ;
nor perhaps were your powers ever sufficiently appreciated
by your countrymen until you were defeated. Your
abandonment of office was worthy of the motives which
induced you originally to accept power. It was not
petty pique ; it was not a miserable sentiment of personal
mortification that led you to decide upon that step.
You retained your post until you found you were endan-
gering the King's prerogative, to support which you had
alone accepted His Majesty's confidence. What a con-
trast does your administration as Prime Minister afford
to that of one of your recent predecessors ! No selfish
views, no family aggrandisement, no family jobs, no
nepotism. It cannot be said that during your adminis-
tration the public service was surfeited with the incapable
offspring of the Premier ; nor, after having nearly brought
about a revolution for power which he has degraded, and
lucre which degraded him, can it be said that you slunk
into an undignified retirement with a whimpering Jere-
miad over " the pressure from without." Contrast the
258 THE LETTEES OF KUNNYMEDE [1836
serene retirement of'Drayton and the repentant solitude
of Howick; contrast the statesman, cheered after his
factious defeat by the sympathy of a nation, with the
coroneted Necker, the worn-out Machiavel, wringing his
helpless hands over his hearth in remorseful despair and
looking up with a sigh at his scowling ancestors !
But affairs are in a very different position now from
what they were in November, 1835.1 You have an addi-
tion to the scutcheon of your fame in the emblazoned
memory of your brief but masterly premiership: they
cannot taunt you now with your vague promises of
amelioration : you can appeal to the deeds of your Cabinet,
and the plans which the applause of a nation sanctioned,
and the execution of which the intrigues of a faction alone
postponed. Never, too, since the peace of Paris, has the
great national party of this realm been so united as at
the present moment. It is no exaggeration to say that
among its leaders not the slightest difference of opinion
exists upon any portion of their intended policy. Pitt
himself, in the plenitude of his power, never enjoyed more
cordial confidence than that which is now extended to you
by every alleged section of the Conservative ranks ; all
private opinions, all particular theories, have merged in
the resolute determination to maintain the English con-
stitution in spite of Irish rebels, and to support, without
cavil and criticism, its eminent champion in that great
course of conduct which you have expounded to them.
That this admirable concord, a just subject of congratu-
lation to the suffering people of this realm, has been in
some degree the result of salutary conferences and frank
explanations, I pretend not to deny; nor do I wish to
conceal a circumstance in which I rejoice, that at no
period have you displayed talents more calculated for the
successful conduct of a great party than at the present;
but, above all, this admirable concord is to be attributed
to the reason that, however individuals of the Conserva-
tive party may have occasionally differed as to the means,
1 An obvious misprint for 1834.
1836] "KEGISTEK, REGISTER, REGISTER" 259
they have at all times invariably agreed as to the end of
their system, and that end is the glory of the empire and
the prosperity of the people.
But it is not only among the leaders in the two Houses
of Parliament that this spirit of union flourishes; it
pervades the country. England has at length been com-
pletely organised; the battle which you told us must be
fought in the registry courts has been fought, and in
spite of the fanfaronade of the enemy, we know it has
been won. Every parliamentary election that has of
late occurred, in country or in town, has proved the dis-
ciplined power of the national party. It is not that they
have merely exceeded their opponents on the poll, and
often by vast majorities ; but they have hastened to that
poll with an enthusiasm which shows that they are ani-
mated with a very different spirit to that which impels
their shamefaced rivals. Contrast these important
triumphs with the guerilla warfare of the Government
party on town-clerks and aldermen, and be convinced
how important have been our efforts in the registry
courts, by their feeble yet feverish attempts at what they
style Reform Associations.
If we contrast also this faithful picture of the state and
spirit of the party of which you are the leader with the
situation of your opponents, the difference will be striking.
Between the Opposition and the Government party there
is this difference; that, however certain sections of the
Opposition may occasionally have differed as to measures,
their end has always been the same ; whereas the several
sections of the Ministerial party, while for obvious reasons
they agree as to measures, avowedly adopt them because
they tend to different ends. The oligarchical Whigs, the
English Radicals, the Irish Repealers — the patrons of rich
livings, the enemies of Church and State, hereditary
magistrates, professors of county reform — the sons of the
nobles, the enemies of the peerage — the landed proprietors,
the advocates of free corn, can only be united in a per-
verted sense. Their union then is this : to a certain point
260 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
they all wish to destroy; but the Whigs only wish to
destroy the Tories, the Radicals the constitution, and the
Repealers the empire. The seeds of constant jealousy
and inevitable separation are here then prodigally sown.
What are to be the tactics of this heterogeneous band
time will soon develop. Dark rumours are about which
intimate conduct too infamous, some would fain think,
even for the Whigs. But as for myself, history and
personal observation have long convinced me that there
is no public crime of which the Whigs are not capable,
and no public shame which for a sufficient consideration
their oligarchical nerves would not endure. But whether
they are going to betray their anti-national adherents, or
only to bribe them, do you, Sir, proceed in your great
course, free and undaunted. At the head of the most
powerful and the most united Opposition that ever
mustered on the benches opposite a trembling Minister,
conscious that by returning you to your constituents he
can only increase and consolidate your strength, what
have you to apprehend ? We look to you, therefore,
with hope and with confidence. You have a noble duty
to fulfil — let it be nobly done. You have a great task to
execute — achieve it with a great spirit. Rescue your
sovereign from an unconstitutional thraldom, rescue an
august Senate which has already fought the battle of the
people, rescue our National Church, which your opponents
hate, our venerable constitution at which they scoff ; but
above all rescue that mighty body of which all these great
classes and institutions are but some of the constituent
and essential parts — rescue The Nation.
January 26, 1836.
1836] A MAN OF BUSINESS 261
LETTER VI
To THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER
SIR, — I really think that your celebrated compatriot,
Daniel O'Rourke,1 when, soaring on the back of an eagle,
he entered into a conversation with the man in the moon,
could scarcely be more amazed than Mr. Spring Rice
must be when he finds himself, as Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, holding a conference with the First Lord of the
Treasury. Your colleagues, who, to do them justice, are
perpetually apologising for your rapid promotion, account
for your rocket-like rise by the unanswerable reason of
your being " a man of business "! I doubt not this is a
capital recommendation to those who are not men of
business; and indeed, shrewd without being sagacious,
bustling without method, loquacious without eloquence,
ever prompt though always superficial, and ever active
though always blundering, you are exactly the sort of
fussy busybody who would impose upon and render
himself indispensable to indolent and ill-informed men of
strong ambition and weak minds. Cumberland,2 who,
in spite of the courtly compliments of his polished Memoirs,
could be racy and significant enough in his conversation,
once characterised in my presence a countryman of yours
as " a talking potato." The race of talking potatoes is
not extinct.
Your recent harangue at Cambridge was quite worthy
1 Croker's "Fairy Legends," published by Mr. John Murray on
Disraeli's recommendation. After the publication of the first
volume, Croker wrote to a friend concerning his tour in the South
of Ireland " for the purpose of gleaning, in the course of six weeks,
the remainder of the fairy legends and traditions which Mr. Murray
of Albemarle Street suspected were still to be found lurking
among its glens, having satisfied himself as to the value of dealing
in the publication of such fanciful articles, and the correctness of
my friend Ben. Disraeli's estimate thereof."
2 Kichard Cumberland, author and dramatist, died in 1811,
when Disraeli was seven years old !
262 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
of your reputation, and of those to whom it was addressed.
Full of popular commonplaces and ministerial propriety,
alike the devoted delegate of " the people " and the trusty
servant of the Crown, glorying in your pledges, but re-
minding your audience that they were voluntary, chuck-
ling in your " political triumph," but impressing on your
friends that their " new power " must not be used for
party purposes, I can see you with Irish humour winking
your eye on one side of your face as you hazard a sneer
at " the Lords," and eulogising with solemn hypocrisy
with the other half of your countenance our " blessed
constitution." * How choice was the style in which you
propounded the future measures of the Cabinet ! What
heartfelt ejaculations of " Good God, sir !" mingled with
rare jargon about "hoping and trusting!" You even
ventured upon a tawdry simile, borrowed for the occasion
from Mr. Sheil,2 who, compared with his bolder and more
lawless colleague, always reminds me of the fustian lieu-
tenant, Jack Bunce, in Sir Walter's tale of the " Pirate "
contrasted with his master, the bloody buccaneer, Captain
Cleveland.
You commenced your address with a due recollection
of the advice of the great Athenian orator, for your action
was quite striking. You clasped the horny hand of the
astonished Mayor, and, full of your punch-bowl orgies,
aptly alluded to your " elevated feelings." As for the
exquisite raillery in which your graceful fancy indulged
about Tory port and Whig sherry, you might perhaps
have recollected that if " old Tory port affects to be a
new mixture, is ashamed of its colours, and calls itself
Conservative," that the Whig sherry has disappeared
altogether, and that its place has been deleteriously
supplied by Irish whisky from an illicit still, and English
blue ruin. Your profound metaphysics, however, may
amply compensate for this infelicitous flash of jocularity.
A Senator, and a Minister, and a Cabinet Minister, who
1 Compare " A Character" in Political Satires in Verse, p. 400.
2 Richard Lalor Sheil.
1836] A KATTEEFELTO CREW 263
gravely informs us that " the political history of our
times has shown us that there is something in human
motive that pervades and extends itself to human
action," must have an eye, I suspect, to the representa-
tion of the University. This is, indeed, " a learned
Theban." That human motives have some slight con-
nection with human conduct is a principle which will,
no doubt, figure as an era in metaphysical discovery.
The continental imputations of our shallowness in
psychological investigation must certainly now be re-
moved for ever. Neither Kant nor Helvetius can enter
the arena with our rare Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The fall of an apple was sufficient to reveal the secret
of celestial mechanics to the musing eye of Newton, but
Mr. Spring Bice for his more abstruse revelations requires
a revolution or a Reform Bill. It is " the political
history of our times " that has proved the connection
between motives and actions. The Chancellor of the
Exchequer must have arrived at this discovery by the
recollection of the very dignified and honourable conduct
to which the motives of power and place have recently
impelled himself and his friends. I cannot help fancying
that this display of yours at Cambridge may hereafter
be adduced as irrefutable evidence that there is at least
one portion of the Irish Protestant population which has
not received " adequate instruction."
It seems that you and your Katterfelto1 crew are
going to introduce some very wonderful measures to
the notice of the impending Parliament. And, first of
all, you are about to " remedy the still existing grievances
to which the great dissenting bodies are subject." " Good
God ! sir," as you would say, are you driven to this ?
The still existing grievances of the Dissenters ! Do you
and your beggarly Cabinet yet live upon these sores ?
1 Gustavus Katterfelto, conjurer and quack doctor.
" Katterfelto, with his hair on end
At his own wonders, wondering for his bread."
COWPER: The Task.
264 THE LETTEKS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
Dissenting grievances are like Stilton cheeses and Da-
mascus sabres, never found in the places themselves,
though there is always some bustling huckster or other
who will insure you a supply. " The still existing
grievances of the Dissenters," if they exist at all, exist
only because, after four years of incapacity, you and your
clumsy coadjutors could not contrive to remove and
remedy what Sir Robert Peel could have achieved, but
for your faction, in four days.
Then we are to proceed in " our great work of the
reform of the Courts of Equity." I "hope and trust "
not. What ! after creating the Court of Review, the
laughing-stock of the profession; after having at length
succeeded in obtaining a second-rate Lord Chancellor at
the expense of four coronets,1 whose services might have
been secured without the waste of one; after having
caused more delay, more expense, more mortification
and ruin in eight months of reform than the annals of
the Court can offer in a similar period in the worst days
of its management — still must you amend ! Spare us,
good sir; be content with your last achievements of law
reform; be content with having, by your corporation
magistrates, made for the first time in England since the
days of Charles the Second, the administration of justice
a matter of party. Will not even this satisfy the Whig
lechery for mischief ?
Then, " Ireland must be tranquillised." So I think.
Feed the poor ; hang the agitators. That will do it. But
that's not your way. It is the destruction of the English
and Protestant interest that is the Whig specific for Irish
tranquillity. And do you really flatter yourself, because
an eccentric course of circumstances has metamorphosed
an Irish adventurer into the Chancellor of the English
Exchequer, that the spirited people of this island will
allow you to proceed with impunity in your projected
machinations ? Rest assured, sir, your career draws
rapidly to a close. Providence, that for our sins and the
1 See note 1, p. 241.
1836] OUT-OF-OFFICE DIVERSIONS 265
arrogance of our flush prosperity has visited this once
great and glorious empire with five years of Whig govern-
ment, is not implacable. Our God is a God of mercy as
well as justice. We may have erred, but we have been
chastened. And Athens, when ruled by a Disdar Aga,
who was the deputy of the chief of the eunuchs at Con-
stantinople, was not so contemptible as England governed
by a Limerick lawyer — the deputy of an Irish rebel !
Prepare, then, for your speedy and merited dismissal.
It is amusing to fancy what may be the resources of your
Cabinet in their permanent retirement. The First Lord
of the Treasury, in all probability, will betake himself
to Brocket, and compose an epilogue for the drama just
closed. Your Lord Chancellor may retire to his native
village, like a returned cheese. Lord John, perhaps, will
take down his dusty lyre, and console us for having
starved Coleridge by pouring forth a monody to his
memory. As for the polished Palmerston and the pious
Grant,1 and the other trading statesmen of easy virtue —
for them it would be advisable, I think, at once to erect
a political Magdalen Hospital. Solitude and spare diet,
and some salutary treatises of the English constitution,
may, after a considerable interval, capacitate them for
re-entering public life, and even filling with an approxi-
mation to obscure respectability some of the lower offices
of the State. But, Sir, for yourself, with your " business-
like talents," which must not be hid under a bushel, it
appears to me that it would be both the wisest and the
kindest course to entrust to your charge and instruction
a class of beings who, in their accomplishments and in-
defatigableness, alike in their physical and moral qualities,
not a little resemble you — the INDUSTBIOUS FLEAS.
January 28, 1836.
1 Lord Glenelg.
18
266 THE LETTEKS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
LETTER VII
To LOED JOHN RUSSELL*
MY LORD, — Your name will descend to posterity — you
have burnt your Ephesian temple. But great deeds are
not always achieved by great men. Your character is
a curious one; events have proved that it has been im-
perfectly comprehended, even by your own party.
Long and, for a period, intimate opportunities of observ-
ing you will enable me, if I mistake not, to enter into its
just analysis.
You were born with a strong ambition and a feeble
intellect. It is an union not uncommon, and in the
majority of cases only tends to convert an aspiring youth
into a querulous and discontented manhood. But under
some circumstances — when combined, for instance, with
great station, and consequent opportunities of action —
it is an union which often leads to the development of
a peculiar talent — the talent of political mischief.
When you returned from Spain, the solitary life of
travel and the inspiration of a romantic country acting
upon your ambition had persuaded you that you were
a great poet; your intellect, in consequence, produced
the feeblest tragedy in our language. The reception of
" Don Carlos " only convinced your ambition that your
imaginative powers had been improperly directed.2
Your ambition sought from prose-fiction the fame which
had been denied to your lyre ; and your intellect in conse-
quence produced the feeblest romance in our literature.3
Not deterred by the unhappy catastrophe of the fair maid
1 In "Coningsby," Book V., Chapter IV., the estimate of Lord
John Kussell is very different indeed from that contained in this
Letter.
2 Yet "Don Carlos" ran through five editions in twelve
months.
3 " The Nun of Arrouca," which appeared in 1822, was founded
on an incident of Lord John's travels in the Peninsula.
1836] FEOM LITEEATURE TO POLITICS 267
of Arrouca, your ambitions sought consolation in the
notoriety of political literature, and your intellect in
due time produced the feeblest political essay on record.1
Your defence of close boroughs, however, made this
volume somewhat popular with the Whigs, and flushed
with the compliments of Holland House, where hitherto
you had been treated with more affection than respect,
your ambition resolved on rivalling the fame of Hume
and Gibbon. Your " Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe,"2
published with pompous parade in successive quarto
volumes, retailed in frigid sentences a feeble compilation
from the gossip of those pocket tomes of small talk
which abound in French literature. Busied with the
tattle of valets and waiting-maids, you accidentally
omitted in your " Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe " all
notice of its most vast and most rising empire. This
luckless production closed your literary career ; you flung
down your futile pen in incapable despair; and your
feeble intellect having failed in literature, your strong
ambition took refuge in politics.
You had entered the House of Commons with every
adventitious advantage — an illustrious birth, and the
support of an ancient and haughty party. I was one
of the audience who assisted at your first appearance,3
and I remember the cheering attention that was extended
to you. Cold, inanimate, with a weak voice and a
mincing manner, the failure of your intellect was com-
plete; but your ambition wrestled for a time with the
indifference of your opponents and the ill-concealed
contempt of your friends.
Having, then, failed alike in both these careers which
in this still free country are open to genius, you subsided
for some years into a state of listless moroseness which
was even pitiable. Hitherto your political opinions had
1 " An Essay on the History of the English Government and
Constitution," 1821.
2 " Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe from the Peace of
Utrecht," 1824-1829.
3 1814. Disraeli was then barely ten years old !
268 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
been mild and moderate, and, if partial, at least consti-
tutional; but, as is ever the case with persons of your
temperament, despairing of yourself, you began to despair
of your country. This was the period when among your
intimates you talked of retiring from that public life in
which you had not succeeded in making yourself public,
when you paced, like a feeble Catiline, the avenues of
Holland House; and when the most brilliant poet of the
day, flattered by your friendship, addressed you a remon-
strance in which your pique figured as patriotism and
your ambition was elevated into genius.1
Your friends — I speak of the circle in which you lived —
superficial judges of human character as well as of every-
thing else, always treated you with a species of con-
tempt, which doubtless originated in their remembrance
of your failure and their conviction of your feebleness.
Lord Grey, only five years ago, would not even con-
descend to offer you a seat in the Cabinet, and affected to
state that, in according you a respectable office, he had
been as much influenced by the state of your finances
as of your capacity. Virtual Prime Minister of England
at this moment, you have repaid Lord Grey for his
flattering estimate and his friendly services, and have
afforded him, in your present career, some curious medi-
tations for his uneasy solitude, where he wanders, like
the dethroned Caliph in the halls of Eblis, with his
quivering hand pressed upon his aching heart.
A finer observer of human nature than that forlorn
statesman might have recognised at this crisis in a noble
with an historic name and no fortune, a vast ambition
and a balked career, and soured, not to say malignant,
from disappointment, some prime materials for the leader
of a revolutionary faction. Those materials have worked
well. You have already banished your great leader ; you
1 " Thus gifted, thou never canst sleep in the shade
If the stirring of genius, the music of fame,
And the charm of thy cause, have not power to persuade
Yet think how to freedom thou'rt pledged by thy name."
MOORE'S Bemonstrance.
1836] A CABINET OF INEFFICIENTS 269
have struck down the solemn idol which you yourself
assisted in setting up for the worship of a deluded people ;
you have exiled from the Cabinet, by your dark and dis-
honourable intrigues, every man of talent who could have
held you in check; and, placing in the seat of nominal
leadership an indolent epicurean, you rule this country
by a coalition with an Irish rebel, and with a council of
colleagues in which you have united the most inefficient
members of your own party with the Palmerstons and
Grants, the Swiss statesmen, the condottieri of the political
world, the " British legion " of public life.
A miniature Mokanna,1 you are now exhaling upon the
constitution of your country which you once eulogised,
and its great fortunes of which you once were proud, all
that long - hoarded venom and all those distempered
humours that have for years accumulated in your petty
heart and tainted the current of your mortified life — •
your aim is to reduce everything to your own mean level,
to degrade everything to your malignant standard.
Partially you have succeeded. You have revenged
yourself upon the House of Lords, the only obstacle to
your degenerating schemes, by denouncing with a frigid
conceit worthy of "Don Carlos," its solemn suffrage as
" the whisper of a faction,"2 and hallooing on, in a flimsy
treble, your Scotch and Irish desperadoes to assail its
august independence. You have revenged yourself upon
the sovereign who recoiled from your touch, by kissing,
1 The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, an impostor who, being
terribly disfigured, wore a veil under pretence of shading the
dazzling light of his countenance.
" The prophet- chief,
The Great Mokanna. O'er his features hung
The Veil, the Silver Veil, which he had flung
In mercy there, to hide from mortal sight
His dazzling brow, till man could bear its light."
MOOEE.
Maclise exhibited in 1833 " Mokanna unveiling his Features to
Zelica."
2 " It is impossible that the whisper of a faction should prevail
against the voice of the nation " (Lord John Eussell's message to
the Birmingham Political Union).
270 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
in spite of his royal soul, his outraged hand. Notwith-
standing your base powers and your father's fagot
votes, the gentlemen of England inflicted upon you an
indelible brand, and expelled you from your own county ;
and you have revenged yourself upon their indignant
patriotism by depriving them of their noblest and most
useful privileges, and making, for the first time since the
reign of Charles the Second, the administration of justice
the business of faction. In all your conduct it is not
difficult to detect the workings of a mean and long-
mortified spirit suddenly invested with power — the
struggles of a strong ambition attempting, by a wanton
exercise of authority, to revenge the disgrace of a feeble
intellect.
But, my Lord, rest assured that yours is a mind which,
if it succeeded in originating, is not destined to direct, a
revolution. Whatever may be the issue of the great
struggle now carrying on in this country, whether we
may be permitted to be again great, glorious, and free,
or whether we be doomed to sink beneath the ignoble
tyranny which your machinations are preparing for us,
your part in the mighty drama must soon close. To
suppose that, with all your efforts and all your despera-
tion, to suppose that, with all the struggles of your am-
bition to supply the deficiency of your intellect, your
Lordship, in those heroic hours when empires are de-
stroyed or saved, is fated to be anything else than an
instrument, is to suppose that which contradicts all the
records of history and all our experience of human
nature.
I think it is Macrobius who tells a story of a young
Greek, who, having heard much of the wealth and wisdom
of Egypt, determined on visiting that celebrated land.
When he beheld the pyramids of Memphis and the gates
of Thebes, he exclaimed: " 0 wonderful men ! what must
be your gods !" Full of the memory of the glorious
divinities of his own poetic land, the blooming Apollo
and the bright Diana, the awful beauty of the Olympian
1836] MINISTERIAL GODS 271
Jove and the sublime grace of the blue-eyed Athena, he
entered the temples of the Pharaohs. But what was his
mingled astonishment and disgust when he found a
nation prostrate before the most contemptible and the
most odious of created beings ! The gods of Egypt are
the Ministers of England.
I can picture to myself an intelligent foreigner, attracted
by the fame of our country, and visiting it for the first
time. I can picture to myself his admiration when he
beholds our great public works; our roads, our docks,
our canals; our unrivalled manufactories, our matchless
agriculture. That admiration would not be diminished
when he learnt that we were free; when he became
acquainted with our social comfort and our still equal
laws. "0 wonderful men!" he would exclaim, "what
must be your governors !" But conceive him now,
entered into our political temple ; conceive his appalled
astonishment as he gazes on the ox-like form of the Lans-
downe Apis. On one side he beholds an altar raised to
an ape, on the other incense is burned before a cat-like
colleague. Here, placed in the shapes of Palmerston
and Grant, the worship of two sleek and long-tailed rats ;
and then learns, with amazement, that the Lord Chan-
cellor of this great land is an onion or a cheese. Towering
above all, and resting on a lurid shrine bedewed with
blood and encircled with flame, with distended jaws and
colossal tail, is the grim figure of the O'Connell crocodile.
But, my Lord, how thunderstruck must be our visitor
when he is told to recognise a Secretary of State in an in-
finitely small scarabaeus; — yes, my Lord, when he learns
that you are the leader of the English House of Commons,
our traveller may begin to comprehend how the Egyptians
worshipped — AN INSECT.
January 30, 1836.
272 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
LETTER VIII
To THE PEOPLE
This is the first direct address that has ever been made
to the real people of England. For the last few years,
a gang of scribblers, in the pay of a desperate faction,
have cloaked every incendiary appeal that they have
vomited forth to any section of your numbers, however
slight, or however opposed to the honour and happiness
of the nation, by elevating the object of their solicitude
into that imposing aggregate, the people. Thus have they
played, for their ulterior purposes, dissenting sects against
the National Church, manufacturing towns against agri-
cultural districts, the House of Commons against the
House of Lords, new burgesses against ancient freemen,
and finally, the Papists against the Protestants. With
scarcely an exception, you may invariably observe that
in advocating the cause of "the people " these writers
have ever stimulated the anti-national passioris of the
minority. But, in addressing you now, I address myself
in very truth to the English people — to all orders and
conditions of men that form that vast society, from the
merchant to the mechanic, and from the peer to the
peasant
You are still a great people. You are still in the pos-
session and enjoyment of the great results of civilisation,
in spite of those who would destroy your internal pros-
perity. Your flag still floats triumphant in every division
of the globe, in spite of the menaces of dismemberment
that threaten your empire from every quarter. Neither
domestic nor foreign agitation has yet succeeded in up-
rooting your supremacy. But how long this imperial
integrity may subsist, when it is the object of a faction
in your own land to array great classes of your population
in hostile collision, and when, from the Castle of Dublin
to the Castle of Quebec, your honour is tampered with
1836] GODS AT AUCTION 273
by the deputies of your sovereign, is a question which
well deserves your quick and earnest consideration.
In the mesh of unparalleled difficulties in which your
affairs are now entangled, who are your guides ? Are
they men in whose wisdom and experience, in whose
virtue and talents, principle and resolution, in whose
acknowledged authority and unblemished honour and
deserved celebrity, you are justified in reposing your
hopes and entrusting your confidence ? Lucian once
amused the ancients with an auction of their gods. Let
us see what Mr. George Robins1 might think of an auction
of your Ministers. The catalogue may soon be run
over.
A Prime Minister in an easy-chair, reading a French
novel. What think you of that lot ? Three Secre-
taries of State, one odious, another contemptible, the
third both. They have their price, yet I would not be
their purchaser. A new Lord Chancellor, like a new
cheese, crude and flavourless: second-rate as a lawyer,
as a statesman a nonentity, bought in by his own party
from sheer necessity. A President of the India Board,2
recovering from the silence of years imposed upon him
by Canning, by the inspiration of that eloquent man's
chair which he now fills. As we are still a naval nation,
our First Lord of the Admiralty should be worth some-
thing; but, unfortunately, nobody knows his name.3
The President of the Council4 has always indicated a
tendency to join any Government, and therefore should
be a marketable article enough. In Egypt, where their
favourite food are pumpkins that have run to seed, such
a solid and mature intelligence might be worth exporting
to the Divan. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, being
"a man of business," would doubtless fetch "a long
figure "; refer for character to the mercantile deputations
who leave the Treasury after an interview, bursting
1 G. H. Kobins (1778-1847), the great auctioneer.
2 Sir John Cam Hobhouse.
3 The Earl of Minto. 4 The Marquis of Lansdowne.
274 THE LETTEKS OF KUNNYMEDE [1836
with laughter from, sheer admiration of his knowledge
and capacity. Lord Ho wick, who is a Minister on the
same principle that the son of an old partner is retained
in the firm to keep together the connection, might com-
mand a price on this score, were it not notorious that his
parent has withdrawn with his person, his capital, and
confidence. The remainder may be thrown into one
lot, and the auction concluded with the item on the
Dutch system.
Were the destinies of a great people ever yet entrusted
to such a grotesque and Hudibrastic crew ? Why, we
want no candid confessions or triumphant revelations
from Mr. Sheil ; we want no audacious apostacy of a whole
party to teach us how such a truckling rout governs
England. They govern England as the mock dynasties
governed Europe in the time of the Eevolution, by a
process as sure and as simple, as desperate and as de-
grading— by being the delegates of an anti-national
power. And what is this power beneath whose sirocco
breath the fame of England is fast withering ? Were it
the dominion of another conqueror, another bold bastard
with his belted sword, we might gnaw the fetter which
we could not burst ; were it the genius of Napoleon with
which we were again struggling, we might trust the issue
to the god of battles with a sainted confidence in our
good cause and our national energies : but we are sinking
beneath a power before which the proudest conquerors
have grown pale, and by which the nations most devoted
to freedom have become enslaved — the power of a foreign
priesthood.
The Pope may be an old man, or an old woman, once
the case, but the Papacy is independent of the Pope.
The insignificance of the Pope is adduced by your enemies
as evidence of the insignificance of the Papacy. 'Tis
the fatal fallacy by which they mean to ride roughshod
over England. Is the Pope less regarded now than when
Bourbon sacked Rome ? Yet that exploit preceded the
massacre of St. Bartholomew and the revocation of the
1836] AN ESTIMATE OF O'CONNELL 275
Edict of Nantes. The Constable of Bourbon lived before
Sir Phelim O'Neale. The Papacy is as rampant now in
Ireland as it was in Europe in the time of Gregory; and
all its energies are directed to your humiliation.
Who is this man whose name is ever on your lips ?
Who is this O'Connell ? He is the feed advocate of the
Irish priesthood ; he is the hired instrument of the Papacy.
That is his precise position. Your enemies, that wretched
anti-national faction who wish to retain power, or creep
into place, by clinging to the skirts of this foreign rebel,
taunt those who would expose his destructive arts and
unmask the purpose of his desperate principals with the
wretched scoff that we make him of importance by our
notice. He cannot be of more importance than he is.
Demoralised in character, desperate in fortunes, infinitely
over-estimated in talents, he is the most powerful indi-
vidual in the world because he is entrusted with the dele-
gated influence of the greatest power in existence. But
because an individual exercises a great power, it does not
follow that he is a great man. O'Connell is not as yet as
great as Robespierre, although he resembles that terrific
agitator in everything except his disinterestedness.
Robespierre presided over public safety as O'Connell over
Reform. A precious foster-dam ! Would it have been
any answer to those who would have struggled against
the great insurer of public security, that his intended
victims made him of importance by their notice ? Would
it have been endured that these deprecators of resistance
should have urged, " He is not a Csesar, he is not an
Alexander, he has no amplitude of mind, he is not
a great genius; let him go on murdering, you make
him of importance by noticing his career of blood and
havoc !"
This man, O'Connell, is the hired instrument of the
Papacy ; as such, his mission is to destroy your Protestant
society, and, as such, he is a more terrible enemy to
England than Napoleon, with all his inspiration. Your
empire and your liberties are in more danger at this
276 THE LETTEKS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
moment than when the army of invasion was encamped
at Boulogne.
Now we have a precise idea of the political character of
O'Connell. And I have often marvelled when I have
listened to those who have denounced his hypocrisy or
admired his skill, when they have read of the triumphant
demagogue humbling himself in the mud before a simple
priest. There was no hypocrisy in this, no craft. The
agent recognised his principal, the slave bowed before his
lord; and when he pressed to his lips those sacred robes,
reeking with whisky and redolent of incense, I doubt not
that his soul was filled at the same time with unaffected
awe and devout gratitude .
If we have correctly fixed his political character, let
us see whether we can as accurately estimate his intellec-
tual capacity and his moral qualities. The hired writers
would persuade you that he is a great man. He has not
a single quality of a great man. In proportion as he was
so gifted, he would be less fitted for the part which he has
to perform. There is a sublime sentiment in genius, even
when uncontrolled by principle, that would make it
recoil with nausea from what this man has to undergo.
He is shrewd, vigorous, versatile; with great knowledge of
character, little of human nature ; with that reckless dex-
terity which confounds weak minds, and that superficial
readiness that masters vulgar passions; energetic from
the certainty of his own desperate means, and from the
strong stimulus of his provisional remuneration; inex-
haustible in unprincipled expedients, and audacious in
irresponsible power; a nisi prius lawyer, with the soul of
a demagogue. That is the man. He is as little a great
orator as a great man. He has not a single quality of a
great orator except a good voice. I defy his creatures to
produce a single passage from any speech he ever delivered
illumined by a single flash of genius, or tinctured with the
slightest evidence of taste, or thought, or study. Learn-
ing he has none; little reading. His style in speaking, as
in writing, is ragged, bald, halting, disjointed. He has
1836] A TINSEL RHETORICIAN 277
no wit, though he may claim his fair portion of that Mile-
sian humour which everyone inherits who bears a hod.
His pathos is the stage sentiment of a barn ; his invective
is slang. When he aspires to the higher style of rhetoric,
he is even ludicrous. He snatches up a bit of tinsel, a
tawdry riband, or an artificial flower, and mixes it with
his sinewy commonplace and his habitual soot like a
chimney-sweeper on May-day.
Of his moral character it might be enough to say that
he is a systematic liar and a beggarly cheat, a swindler
and a poltroon. But of O'Connell you can even say more.
His public and his private life are equally profligate; he
has committed every crime that does not require courage :
the man who plunders the peasant can also starve his
child. He has denounced your national character and
insulted your national honour. He has said that all your
men are cowards and all your women wantons. He has
reviled your illustrious princes — he has sneered at your
pure religion — he has assailed your National Church. He
has endeavoured to stir up rebellion against your august
Senate, and has described your House of Commons, even
when reformed, as an assembly of "six hundred scoun-
drels." Everything which is established comes under his
ban, because everything which is established is an ob-
stacle to the purpose for which he is paid — the destruction
of everything which is ENGLISH.
February 2, 1836.
LETTEE IX
To LOBD STANLEY
MY LORD, — The classical historian of our country said
of your great ancestor that " the Countess of Derby had
the glory of being the last person in the three kingdoms,
and in all their dependent dominions, who submitted to
the victorious rebels." Charlotte de la Tremoille was a
woman who might have shamed the degenerate men of
278 THE LETTEES OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
the present day ; but your Lordship may claim, with a
slight though significant alteration, the eulogium of that
illustrious princess. The rebels are again victorious, and,
to your Lordship's lasting honour, you have been the -first
to resist their treasonable authority.
Never has a statesman yet been placed in a position so
difficult and so trying as the present heir of the house of
Derby ; never has a statesman under similar circumstances
yet conducted himself with more discretion and more
courage. When the acerbities of faction have passed
away, posterity will do justice to your disinterestedness
and devotion, and the future historian of England will
record with sympathising admiration the greatness of
your sacrifice.
If the gratification of your ambition had been your only
object, your course was clear. Less than three years ago
the Whigs, and loudest among them my Lord Melbourne,
announced you as the future Prime Minister of England.
Young, of high lineage, of illustrious station, and of
immaculate character, and unquestionably their ablest
orator — among your own party you had no rival. They
looked upon you as the only man who could at the same
time maintain their power and effectually resist the
machinations of those who would equally destroy the
constitution and dismember the empire. With what
enthusiastic cheers did they not greet the winged words
with which you assailed the anti-national enemy when
you rose in the House like a young eagle, and dashed back
his treason in the baffled countenance of the priestly
delegate !
Who could believe that the same men who cheered you
in the House, and chuckled over your triumphs in their
coteries, should now be the truckling slaves of the sacer-
dotal power from whose dark influence they then shrank
with disgust and terror ? Who could believe that the
projected treason of these very men should have driven
you and your high-minded colleagues from the contagion
of their councils ? Who could believe that the famous
1836] HONOUR OE INTEREST ! 279
<c Reform Ministry," that packed a Parliament by bellow-
ing " gratitude to Lord Grey " throughout the empire,
should finally have expelled that same Lord Grey from
his seat, under circumstances of revolting insult;1 that
the very Lord Melbourne who had always indicated your-
self as Lord Grey's successor should himself have slid
into that now sullied seat, where he maintains himself
in indolent dependence by a foul alliance with the very
man whom he had previously denounced as a traitor ?
Can the records of public life, can the secret archives of
private profligacy, afford a parallel instance of conduct so
base, so completely degrading, so thoroughly demoralised?
You, my Lord, preferred your honour to your interest,
the prosperity of your native land to the gratification of
your ambition. You sacrificed without a pang the proudest
station in your country, to prove to your countrymen
that public principle was not yet a jest. You did well.
The pulse of our national character was beating low. We
required some great example to rebrace the energies of
our honour. From the moment that you denounced this
disgusting thraldom and the base expedients of your
chicaning colleagues, a better feeling pervaded England
and animated Englishmen. In this sharp exigency you
did not forget your duty to yourself as well as to your
country. Yours was no Coriolanus part; neither the
taunts of the recent supporters who had betrayed you,
nor the ready compliments of your former adversaries,
tempted you to swerve for a moment from the onward
path of a severe and peremptory principle. When Sir
Robert Peel was summoned to the helm, in the autumn
of 1834, your position was indeed most painful. Your
honour and your duty seemed at conflict. You recon-
ciled them. You supported the policy while you declined
the power.
These, my Lord, are great deeds. They will live. The
defence of Lathom2 was not more heroic. They will live
1 The Littleton intrigue with O'Connell, July, 1834.
2 By Charlotte de la Tr6moille, Countess of Derby, in 1644-45.
280 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
in the admiration and the gratitude of an ancient and
honourable nation, ever ready to sympathise with the
pure and noble, and prompt to recognise a natural leader
in blood that is mingled with all the traditionary glories
of their race.
You had now placed your character above suspicion.
The most virulent of the hired writers of the faction did
not dare to impugn the purity of your motives. You had
satisfied the most morbid claims of an honour which the
worldly only might deem too chivalrous. When, therefore,
I find you at length avowedly united with that eminent
man, on whom the hopes of his country rest with a de-
serving and discerning confidence, and who, in his parlia-
mentary talents, his proud station, and his unsullied
fame, is worthy of your alliance, I was rejoiced, but not
surprised. It is a fit season to " stand together in your
chivalry." The time is ripe for union and fair for concord.
When, some days back, in my letter to Sir Robert Peel —
a letter, let me observe in passing, written by one whose
name, in spite of the audacious licence of frantic conjec-
ture, has never yet been even intimated, can never be
discovered, and will never be revealed — I announced the
fact that the great Conservative party was at length
completely united, it was a declaration equivalent to
England being saved. The debates upon the address
have proved the accuracy of my information. The hired
writers and the place-hunting dependents of the priestly
junta triumph over the division in the Commons; they
might have read their knell in the voice of the tellers.
They assure us, with solemn or with sparkling counte-
nance, that they did not reckon upon a moiety of such a
majority. And do they indeed think that the people of
England care one jot whether there be ten or twenty
traitors more or less in the House of Commons ? It is
not a miserable majority in that assembly, either way,
that will destroy or preserve the empire. That very
debate, my Lord, over the result of which these short-
sighted desperadoes affect to triumph, sealed the doom
1836] NEED FOR UNITY 281
of the faction and announced the salvation of the country.
It will fill every loyal and discerning heart throughout
England with more than hope. Whatever the hired
writers and the expectant runners may bawl or scribble,
that division numbered the days of the present Cabinet.
And they know it. The sacerdotal delegates know full
well that the moment the Conservatives are united, the
priestly plot is baffled.
When the First Lord of the Treasury was reinstalled in
the office which he won by so patriotic a process, and
which he fills with such diligent ability, shrinking from
the contamination of O'Connell, the very mention of
whose name in his private circle makes him even now
tremble with compunctious rage, he declared that affairs
might be carried on without "the victorious rebels,"
from the mere disunion of the Conservative camp. No
one was more completely aware than his Lordship that
the moment that disunion ceased, his authority must
tremble. To perpetuate distrust, and to excite division
among the different sections of the Conservative party,
all the energies of the anti-English cabal have of late been
directed. The Municipal Bill filled them with a fluttering
hope; a severance between the Duke of Wellington and
Sir Robert Peel was announced as inevitable. To-day a
great commoner and a learned lord no longer meet; to-
morrow the appropriation clause is to be got rid of by
some new juggle, and your Lordship and your fellow-
leaders are to return to the tainted benches of the Trea-
sury. Now the conferences at Dray ton hang fire; then
midnight visits from illustrious Princes bode splits and
schisms. We have scarcely recovered from the effect of
a suspicious dinner, when our attention is promptly
directed to a mysterious call. The debates on the address
have laid for ever these restless spectres of the disordered
imagination of a daunted yet desperate faction. In a
Peel, a Stanley, a Wellington, and a Lyndhurst, the people
of England recognised their fitting leaders. Let the
priestly party oppose to these the acrid feebleness of a
19
282 THE LETTEKS OF KUNNYMEDE [1836
Russell and the puerile commonplace of a Howick, Mel-
bourne's experienced energy, and Lansdowne's lucid
perception !
February 6, 1836
LETTER X
To LOBD WILLIAM BENTDSTCK a
MY LORD, — I have just read your Lordship's Address
to the Electors of the City of Glasgow; and, when I re-
member that the author of this production has been en-
trusted for no inconsiderable period with the government
of 100,000,000 of human beings, I tremble. I say not
this with reference to the measures of which you have
there announced yourself the advocate, but to the
manner in which that announcement is expressed. It
implies, in my opinion, at the same time, a want of
honesty and a want of sense.
This Address to the Electors of the City of Glasgow is
made by an individual who has been employed for more
than a quarter of a century by his sovereign in foreign
service of the utmost importance, ascending, at last, even
to the Viceregal throne of India; he is a member of a
family of the highest rank and consideration; and some
very persevering paragraphs in the Government journals
have of late sedulously indicated him as a fit and future
member of Lord Melbourne's Cabinet. Your Lordship,
therefore, is a very considerable personage; the public
are familiar with your name, if not with your career;
they are instructed to believe you an individual of great
mark and likelihood, of great promise as well as of great
performance; as one who is not unwilling to devote to
1 Lord William Bentinck (1774-1839), second son of the third
Duke of Portland, was appointed Governor- General of Bengal in
1827, and on the passing of the East India Company's Charter
Act in 1833 became the first Governor-General of India. He
resigned in 1835, was elected Liberal Member for Glasgow in
Feburary, 1836, and retained the seat until a few days before his
death, June 17, 1839.
1836] ADDRESS TO GLASGOW ELECTORS 283
their interests at home all those talents which have been
so long exercised, and all that experience which has been
so laboriously obtained in their service in other and dis-
tant lands. 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
sings a bard of that city which your Lordship is to repre-
sent : 'tis distance which has invested your Lordship with
the haze of celebrity; but I doubt whether the shadowy
illusion will be long proof against that nearer inspection
and more familiar experience of your judgment and capa-
city which your Lordship has favoured us with in your
Address to the Electors of the City of Glasgow.1
1 The following is the address alluded to:
To the Electors of the City of Glasgow.
GENTLEMEN, — It is only in consequence of the very numerous
requisition which I have had the honour to receive that I could
have ventured to aspire to the high distinction of representing
you in Parliament. Encouraged by this invitation, I shall at
once proceed to state, frankly and explicitly, my opinion upon
the various topics and measures that are likely to be brought
before Parliament in the ensuing session, with a confident hope
that in this exposition nothing will be found at variance with
those principles which for many years of my life I have pro-
fessed and practised; and upon which alone, and to no par-
ticular competency of my own, I can found a claim to your
suffrages.
Permit me then, in the outset, to give my adherence to the
now happily established conviction among all reformers, that by
firm union, by the abandonment of all separate and minor views,
and by a steady support of Lord Melbourne's Ministry, the
present and future cause of reform can alone be supported.
With respect to expected measures, I should decidedly sup-
port the ministerial plan of Irish Church Reform, imperfect and
insufficient as I must consider that measure to be.
I, of course, am a decided friend to a complete reform of the
Irish Municipal Corporations.
I am favourable to the shortening of the duration of Parlia-
ments; but without having had occasion seriously to consider
this subject, I should prefer, as a present measure, the quin-
quennial to the triennial term.
With respect to the extension of the suffrage, into the details
of which I have never entered, I can only generally state my
firm belief that the broader the admission of all the intelligent
classes to the government of the country, the greater will be the
security of our existing institutions.
I am opposed to the vote by ballot; I consider it a complete
illusion. It will not destroy the exercise of undue influence,
284 THE LETTERS OF KUNNYMEDE [1836
There are some, indeed, who affirm — and those, too,
persons of no mean authority — that this address may
even be considered a manifesto of the least constitutional
portion of the Cabinet to whom your Lordship and my
Lord Durham are speedily to afford all the weight of your
influence and all the advantage of your wisdom. How
this may be, events will prove; the effusion is certainly
sufficiently marked by the great characteristic of the Whig-
Radical school; a reckless readiness to adopt measures of
the details and consequences of which they are obviously
and often avowedly ignorant.
The address itself consists of fourteen paragraphs. In
the first your Lordship informs us that you come forward
in consequence of " a very numerous requisition." What
"a very numerous requisition," by-the-bye, may be, I
pretend not to decipher. It may be Hindostanee; it
may be Sanscrit; it is not English. With a modesty
natural to an Oriental Viceroy, the late Master of the
Great Mogul, you then make your salaam to the electors,
but it will give rise to another influence still more pernicious —
that of money and corruption, against which there is no security
but in publicity. At the same time, as the vote by ballot affects
no existing right, I should willingly acquiesce in the general wishes
of my constituents to vote for it as an experimental and tem-
porary measure.
I am profoundly penetrated with the indispensable necessity
that the two branches of the Legislature should be brought into
harmony with each other; and I am of opinion that the result
may be advantageously accomplished through the constitutional
exercise of the prerogative of the Crown without any organic
change.
I need not promise my support to all measures regarding
freedom of trade, and economy and retrenchment in every
department of the State, consistently, of course, with efficiency
and safety.
The Corn Laws are a difficult question. I am for their
abolition. If railways, as I believe, may become necessary in
the race of competition that we have to run with other coun-
tries, the prices of subsistence must in a still greater degree con-
tribute to success. I should hope that an equitable compromise
between the agricultural and manufacturing interests might not
be found impracticable.
I shall advert, in the last place, to the application for a grant
of £10,000 towards the endowment of additional chapels and
places of worship for the Established Church of Scotland. I
1836] AFTER CALCUTTA— GLASGOW 285
assuring them that but for this very numerous requisi-
tion you " could not have ventured to aspire to the high
distinction of representing Glasgow in Parliament " — of
representing Glasgow after having ruled Calcutta !
Your Lordship then proceeds to state, " frankly and
explicitly," your political creed, " with a confident hope,"
which seems, however, but a somewhat hesitating and
trembling trust, that " nothing will be found at variance
with those principles which for many years of your life
you have professed and practised." How many years,
my Lord William ?
After eulogising " union among all Reformers," but of
course in favour of Lord Melbourne's Government, and
the abandonment of " all separate and minor views," you
immediately declare, with admirable consistency, that
the Ministerial plan of Irish Church Reform does not go
far enough, but is " imperfect and insufficient." This is
certainly a very felicitous method of maintaining union
among all Reformers. There is no doubt with what
am entirely averse to this grant. The event, of all others, that
in my humble judgment would best establish peace and good-
will and concord among all classes of men, would be a perfect
equality of civil and religious rights.
But as this cannot at present be, at least let us be careful
not to aggravate an obnoxious distinction. Let the Established
Churches retain what they possess, but let nothing more be
taken from the public funds. The same religious zeal which
exclusively maintains all the places of worship and the ministers
of Dissenters, cannot fail to supply those additional aids of which
the Established Churches of England and Scotland may stand in
need.
I will now conclude with the expression of my very deep
regret that the effects of the very long and severe illness which
drove me from India will not allow me without positive risk,
to appear at the election. But if I am so fortunate as to obtain
the honour to which I aspire, I shall take the earliest oppor-
tunity, after the session, of visiting Glasgow; and should it
then be the opinion of the majority of my constituents that the
generous confidence which they have been pleased to place in
me has been in any degree disappointed, I shall be most ready
to resign the trust confided in me.
I have the honour to be, Gentlemen,
Your most obedient servant,
W. BENTINCK.
LONDON,
February 4, 1836.
286 THE LETTEKS OF KUNNYMEDE [1836
section of that rebellious camp your Lordship will herd,
you who are, " of course, a decided friend to a complete
reform in the Irish municipal corporations."
Your Lordship, it appears, is also " favourable to the
shortening of the duration of Parliaments," although you
ingenuously allow that you " have had no occasion
seriously to consider the subject"; and that you are
partial to the " extension of the suffrage," into the details
of which, however, you candidly admit you " have never
entered " ! Admirable specimen of the cautious pro-
fundity of Whig Radicalism ! Inimitable statesman,
who, busied with concocting constitutions for Sicily, and
destroying empires in India, can naturally spare but few
hours to the consideration of the unimportant topics of
domestic policy.
Your decisive judgment, however, on the subject of the
ballot will clear your Lordship in a moment from any
silly suspicion of superficiality. This paragraph is so
rich and rare that it merits the dangerous honour of a
quotation :
" I am opposed to the vote by ballot ; I consider it a
complete illusion. It will not destroy the exercise of undue
influence, but it will give rise to another influence still more
pernicious, that of money and corruption, against which there
is no security but in publicity. At the same time, as the
vote by ballot affects no existing right, I should willingly
acquiesce in the general wishes of my constituents to vote
for it as an experimental and temporary measure."
Without stopping to admire your refined distinction
between an influence which is undue and " another in-
fluence " which is pernicious, one cannot too ardently
applaud the breathless rapidity with which your Lord-
ship hurries to assure your future constituents that you
will willingly support an illusion and a pest.
The ninth paragraph of this memorable production
informs us that your Lordship is " profoundly pene-
trated " with an idea. Pardon my scepticism, my Lord;
whatever other claims you may have to the epithet, I
doubt whether your Lordship's ideas are radical. I am
1836] A DULL QUIXOTE 287
indeed mistaken if their roots have ever " profoundly
penetrated " your cultured intellect. Was it this " pro-
found penetration " that prompted the brother of the
Duke of Portland to declare his conviction of " the
indispensable necessity of bringing the two branches of
the legislature into harmony with each other by the
constitutional exercise of the prerogative of the Crown "?
Your Lordship may settle this point with His Grace.
The tenth paragraph is only remarkable for the felicity
of its diction. The honourable member for Middlesex
has at length found in the future member for Glasgow
a rival in the elegance of his language and the precision
of his ideas.
But now for your masterpiece ! " The Corn Laws are
a difficult question; I am for their abolition." How
exquisitely does this sentence paint your weak and
puzzled mind and your base and grovelling spirit ! Con-
fessing at the same time your inability to form an opinion,
yet gulping down the measure to gain the seat. Space
alone prevents me from following the noble candidate
for Glasgow through the remainder of his address,
admirably characteristic as it is of the same mixture of
a perplexed intellect and a profligate ambition.
My Lord, I have not the honour of your acquaintance ;
I bear you no personal ill-will. I stop not here to inquire
into the proceedings of your former life — of your Sicilian
freaks or of your Spanish exploits, or of your once im-
pending catastrophe in India. I form my opinion of
your character from your last public act, and, believing
as I do, that there is a conspiracy on foot to palm you
off on the nation as a great man, in order that your less
hackneyed name may prolong the degrading rule of a
desperate faction, I was resolved to chalk your character
on your back before you entered the House where you
are doomed to be silent or absurd. There are some of
your acquaintances who would represent you as by no
means an ill-intentioned man ; they speak of you as a sort
of dull Quixote. For myself, I believe you to be without
288 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
any political principle, but that you are unprincipled
from the weakness of your head, not from the badness
of your heart. Your great connections have thrust you
into great places. You have been haunted with a restless
conviction that you ought not to be a nonentity, and,
like bustling men without talents, you have always com-
mitted great blunders. To avoid the Scylla of passive
impotence, you have sailed into the Chary bdis of active
incapacity.
But you are, or you will be, member for Glasgow.
The author of such an address meets, of course, with
"no opposition." Discriminating electors of Glasgow!
Send up your noble member to the House, where the
Government newspapers assure us he will soon be a
Minister. His difference with the present Cabinet is
trifling. He only deems the Irish Church reform " im-
perfect and insufficient." He is, "of course," for a
complete reform of the Irish corporations. He is for
short Parliaments, he is for the ballot, he is for exten-
sion of the suffrage, he is for the abolition of the Corn
Laws, the virtual annihilation of the House of Lords,
and the gradual destruction of ah1 alliance between the
Church and the State. What more can you require ?
His Sicilian constitution ?
It would, however, be disingenuous to conceal that
there is at the conclusion of your Lordship's address a
sentence which almost leads one to impute its production
to other causes than the impulse of a party or the original
weakness of your character. It appears that " a long
and severe illness drove you from India," and even now
incapacitates you from personally soliciting the suffrages
of your choice constituents. Have, then, the republican
electors of Glasgow, eager to be represented by a Lord,
selected for their champion in the Senate one of those
mere lees of debilitated humanity and exhausted nature
which the winds of India and the waves of the Atlantic
periodically waft to the hopeless breezes of their native
cliffs ? The address is ominous; and perhaps, ere the
1836] UNDER SEVEN PRIME MINISTERS 289
excitement of a session may have passed, congenial
Cheltenham will receive from now glorious Glasgow the
antiquated Governor and the drivelling Nabob !
February 11, 1836.
LETTER XI
To VISCOUNT PALMERSTON
MY LORD, — The Minister who maintains himself in
power in spite of the contempt of a whole nation must
be gifted with no ordinary capacity. Your Lordship's
talents have never had justice done to them. Permit me
to approach you in the spirit of eulogy ; if novelty have
charms, this encomium must gratify you. Our language
commands no expression of scorn which has not been
exhausted in the celebration of your character; there is
no conceivable idea of degradation which has not been,
at some period or another, associated with your career.
Yet the seven Prime Ministers,1 all of whom you have
served with equal fidelity, might suffice, one would think,
with their united certificates, to vamp up the first; and
as for your conduct, so distinguished an orator as your
Lordship has recently turned out can never want a
medium for its triumphant vindication, even if it were
denied the columns of that favoured journal where we
occasionally trace the finished flippancy of your Lordship's
airy pen.
1 Portland, Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, Grey, and
Melbourne. He also served for a few months under the Duke of
Wellington. On March 8, 1842, in the House of Commons, Dis-
raeli sharpened the point of this dart against Lord Palmerston,
who had sarcastically expressed a hope that Disraeli would
obtain promotion from Sir Robert Peel, who had neglected him
on forming his administration. Disraeli replied to the following
effect: " The noble Viscount is a consummate master of the sub-
ject, and if to assist my advancement he will only impart to me
the secret of his own unprecedented rise, and by what means he
has contrived to enjoy power under seven successive administra-
tions, I shall at least have gained a valuable result by this dis-
cussion."
290 THE LETTEKS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
The bigoted Tories, under whose auspices your Lordship
entered public life had always, if I mistake not, some
narrow-minded misgiving of your honesty as well as your
talents, and with characteristic illiberality doomed you
to official insignificance. It was generally understood
that under no circumstances was your Lordship ever
to be permitted to enter the Cabinet. Had you been an
anticipated Aislabie,1 you could not have been more
rigidly excluded from that select society; you were
rapidly advanced to a position which, though eminent,
was also impassable; and having attained this acme of
second-rate statesmanship, you remained fixed on your
pedestal for years, the Great Apollo of aspiring under-
strappers.
When the ambition of Mr. Canning deprived him of
the ablest of his colleagues, your Lordship, with that
dexterity which has never deserted you, and which seems
a happy compound of the smartness of an attorney's
clerk and the intrigue of a Greek of the Lower Empire,
wriggled yourself into the vacant Cabinet. The Minister
who was forced to solicit the co-operation of a Lansdowne
might be pardoned for accepting the proffer of a Palmer-
ston; but even in his extreme distress Mr. Canning was
careful not to promote you from your subordinate
office; nor can I conceive a countenance of more blank
dismay, if that brilliant rhetorician, while wandering in
the Elysian fields, were to learn that his favourite port-
folio was now in your Lordship's protocolic custody.
A member of Mr. Canning's Cabinet by necessity, you
became a member of the Duke of Wellington's by suffer-
ance. You were expelled from your office for playing a
third-rate part in a third-rate intrigue. Your Lordship
was piqued, and revenged yourself on your country by
becoming a Whig. I remember when, in old days, you
1 John Aislabie (1670-1742), who, for his connection with the
South Sea Bubble, was compelled to resign his position as Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, being adjudged by the House of Com-
mons guilty of " most notorious, dangerous, and infamous cor
ruption."
1836] WHIG LEADER'S CRITICISM 291
addressed the Speaker on our side of the House, your
oratorical displays were accompanied not only by the
blushes, but even the hesitation, of youth. These might
have been esteemed the not unpleasing characteristics
of an ingenuous modesty, had they not been associated
with a callous confidence of tone and an offensive flippancy
of language, which proved that they were rather the
consequence of a want of breeding than of a deficiency
of self-esteem. The leader of the Whig Opposition was
wont to say, in return perhaps for some of those pas-
quinades with which you were then in the habit of
squibbing your present friends, that your Lordship re-
minded him of a favourite footman on easy terms with
his mistress. But no sooner had you changed your
party than all Brooks 's announced you as an orator.
You made a speech about windmills and Don Quixote,
and your initiation into Liberalism was hailed complete.
Your Lordship, indeed, was quite steeped in the spirit
of the age. You were a new-born babe of that political
millennium which gave England at the same time a
Reform Bill and your Lordship for a Secretary of State.
I can fancy Mr. Charles Grant assisting at your adult
baptism, and witnessing your regeneration in pious
ecstasy.
The intellectual poverty of that ancient faction who
headed a revolution with which they did not sympathise
in order to possess themselves of a power which they
cannot wield, was never more singularly manifested than
when they delivered the seals of the most important
office in the State to a Tory underling. You owe the
Whigs great gratitude, my Lord, and therefore I think
you will betray them. Their imbecility in offering you
those seals was only equalled by your audacity in accept-
ing them. Yet that acceptance was rather impudent
than rash. You were justly conscious that the Cabinet
of which you formed so ludicrous a member was about
to serve out measures of such absorbing interest in our
domestic policy, that little time could be spared by the
292 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
nation to a criticism of your Lordship's labours. During
the agitation of Parliamentary Reform your career re-
sembled the last American war in the midst of the
revolutions of Europe : it was very disgraceful, but never
heard of. Occasionally, indeed, rumours reached the
ear of the nation of the Russians being at Constantinople,
or the French in Italy and Flanders. Sometimes we
were favoured with a report of the effective blockade of
our ancient allies, the Dutch; occasionally of the civil
wars you had successfully excited in the Peninsula,
which we once delivered from a foreign enemy. But
when life and property were both at stake, when the
Trades Unions were marching through the streets of the
metropolis in battle array, and Bristol was burning,
your countrymen might be excused for generally believing
that your Lordship's career was as insignificant as your
intellect.
But your saturnalia of undetected scrapes and un-
punished blunders is now over. The affairs of the
Continent obtrude themselves upon our consideration
like an importunate creditor who will no longer be denied.
There is no party cry at home to screen your foreign
exploits from critical attention. The author of the
New Whig Guide1 may scribble silly articles in news-
papers about justice to Ireland, but he will not succeed
in diverting public notice from the painful consequences
of his injustice in Europe. To-night, as we are informed,
some results of your Lordship's system of non-interference
in the affairs of Spain are to be brought under the con-
sideration of the House of Commons. I am not in the
confidence of the Hon. Gentleman who will introduce
that subject to the notice of the assembly of which, in
spite of the electors of Hampshire, your Lordship has
somehow or other contrived to become a member. But
I speak of circumstances with which I am well acquainted,
and for the accuracy of which I stake my credit as a
1 See Disraeli's note to his " Heroic Epistle to Lord Visct.
Mel e."
1836] THE BRITISH LEGION IN SPAIN 293
public writer, when I declare that of the 10,000 or
12,000 of your fellow-countrymen whom your crimping
Lordship inveigled into a participation in the civil wars
of Spain1 for no other purpose than to extricate yourself
from the consequences of your blundering policy, not
3,000 effective men are now in the field; such have been
the fatal results of the climate and the cat-o '-nine-tails,
of ignoble slaughter and of fruitless hardship. Your
Lordship may affect to smile, and settle your cravat as
if you were arranging your conscience; you may even
prompt the most ill-informed man in His Majesty's
dominions — I mean, of course, the First Lord of His
Majesty's Treasury — to announce in the Upper House
that the career of the British Legion has been a progress
of triumph, and that its present situation is a state of
comparative comfort; but I repeat my statement, and
I declare most solemnly, before God and my country,
that I am prepared to substantiate it. When the most
impudent and the vilest of your Lordship's supporters
next amuses the House with his clap-trap appeals to the
tears of the widow and the sighs of the orphan, your
Lordship may perhaps remember the responsibility you
have yourself incurred, and, sick as the nation may be of
this inglorious destruction, there is one silly head, I
believe, that it would grieve no one to see added to the
heap. It would atone for the havoc, it would extenuate
the slaughter, and the member for Westminster, who is
a patriot in two countries, would be hailed on his return
as the means of having rid both England and Spain of
an intolerable nuisance.
For the last five years a mysterious dimness seems to
have been stealing over the gems of our imperial diadem.
The standard of England droops fitfully upon its staff.
He must indeed be an inexperienced mariner who does
not mark the ground swell of the coming tempest. If
there be a war in Europe to-morrow, it will be a war
against English supremacy, and we have no allies.
1 General de Lacy Evans's British Legion.
294 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
None but your Lo'rdship can suppose that the Cabinet
of the Tuileries is not acting in concert with the Court
of the Kremlin. Austria, our natural friend on the Con-
tinent of Europe, shrinks from the contamination of
our political propagandism. If there be a European
war, it will be one of those contests wherein a great State
requires for its guidance all the resources of a master
mind ; it would be a crisis which would justify the presence
of a Richelieu, a Pombal, or a Pitt. 0 my country !
fortunate, thrice fortunate England ! with your destinies
at such a moment entrusted to the Lord Fanny1 of
diplomacy ! Methinks I can see your Lordship, the
Sporus of politics, cajoling France with an airy compli-
ment, and menacing Russia with a perfumed cane !
February 22, 1836.
LETTER XII
To SIB, JOHN HOBHOUSB
SIB, — Your metamorphosis into a Whig and a Cabinet
Minister has always appeared to me even less marvellous
than your transformation into a wit and a leader, after
having passed the most impetuous years of life in what
might have appeared to the inexperienced the less
ambitious capacity of a dull dependent. In literature
and in politics, until within a very short period, you have
always shone with the doubtful lustre of reflected light.
You have gained notoriety by associating yourself with
another's fame. The commentator of Byron, you natu-
rally became in due season " Sir Francis Burdett's man,"
as Mr. Canning styled you, to your confusion, in the
1 A nickname originally given by Pope to John, Lord Hervey,
author of the " Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second " ; also
called by Pope " Sporus " :
" What, that thing of silk T
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk f
Satire or sense, alas ! can Sporus feel ?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel f "
1836] DEMAGOGUE OR PLACEMAN 295
House of Commons; and to which sneer, after having
taken a week to arrange your impromptu, you replied
in an elaborate imitation of Chatham, admitted by your
friends to be the greatest failure in parliamentary
memory. At college your dignified respect for the
peerage scarcely prepared us for your subsequent sneers
at the order. Your readiness to bear the burden of the
scrapes of those you honoured by your intimacy an-
nounced the amiability of your temper. Yet, whether
you were sacrificing yourself on the altar of friendship,
or concocting notes upon the pasquinades which others
scribbled, there was always " something too ponderous
about your genius for a joke "; and when these words
fell from your lips on Friday night,1 to me they seemed to
flow with all the practised grace of a tu quoque, and to
be not so much the inspiration of the moment as the
reminiscence of some of those quips and cranks of
Mathews and Scrope Davies 2 of which you were the
constant, and often the unconscious, victim.
It may be the prejudice of party, perhaps the force
of old associations, but to me your new character seems
but thinly to veil your ancient reputation. There is a
massy poise even in your airiest flights, that reminds
one rather of the vulture than the eagle ; and your lightest
movements are pervaded with a sort of elephantine grace
which forces us to admire rather the painful tutorage of
art than nature's happier impulse. Bustling at the
University, blustering on the hustings, dangling the seals
of office — a humble friend, a demagogue, or a placeman —
your idiosyncrasy still prevails, and in your case.
" piddling Theobalds " has, at the best, but turned into
"slashing Bentley."8
Allow me to congratulate you on your plaintive con-
fession, amid the roars of the House, that " circumstances
1 In the debate on Spain.
2 Scrope Berdmore Davies, a " scholar-dandy," the friend of
Byron.
3 " From slashing Bentley down to pidling Tibalds." — Pope's
" Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot."
296 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
have brought you and your noble friend, the Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, together on the same bench."
The honour of sharing the same seat with an individual
might, in another's estimation, have sufficed, without
the additional disgrace of calling attention to the stigma.
There is something so contaminating in a connection with
that man that, when you voluntarily avowed it, we might
be excused for admiring your valour rather than your
discretion. It is, in truth, a rare conjunction; and Cir-
cumstance, " that unspiritual god," as your illustrious
companion, Lord Byron, has happily styled that com-
monplace divinity, has seldom had to answer for a more
degrading combination. You have met, indeed, like the
puritan and the prostitute on the banks of Lethe in
Garrick's farce, with an equally convenient oblivion of
the characteristic incidents of your previous careers;
you giving up your annual parliaments and universal
suffrage, he casting to the winds his close corporations
and borough nominees ; you whispering Conservatism on
the hustings, once braying with your revolutionary up-
roar, he spouting reform in the still recesses of the dust
of Downing Street ; the one reeking from a Newgate cell,
the other redolent of the boudoirs of Mayfair; yet both
of them, alike the Tory underling and the Radical dema-
gogue, closing the ludicrous contrast with one grand
diapason of harmonious inconsistency — both merging in
the Whig Minister.
That a politician may at different periods of his life, and
under very different aspects of public affairs, conscien-
tiously entertain varying opinions upon the same measure,
is a principle which no member of the present House of
Commons is entitled to question. I would not deny you,
Sir, the benefit of the charity of society ; but when every
change of opinion in a man's career is invariably attended
by a corresponding and advantageous change in his
position, his motives are not merely open to suspicion —
his conduct is liable to conviction. Yet there is one
revolution in your sentiments on which I may be per-
1836] SALUTARY CANDOUR 297
mitted particularly to congratulate you and that country
which you assist in misgoverning. Your sympathy on
Friday night with the success of the British arms came
with a consoling grace and a compensatory retribution
from the man who has recorded in a solemn quarto 1 his
bitter regret that his countrymen were victorious at
Waterloo. I always admired the Whig felicity of your
appointment as Secretary at War.
Pardon, Sir, the freedom with which I venture to
address you. My candour may at least be as salutary
as the cabbage-stalks of your late constituents.2 There
are some, indeed, who, as I am informed, have murmured
at this method of communicating to them my opinion
of their characters and careers. Yet I can conceive an
individual so circumstanced that he would scarcely be
entitled to indulge in such querulous sensitiveness. He
should be one who had himself published letters with-
out the ratification of his name, and then suppressed
them ; he should be one who had sat in trembling silence
in the House when he was dared to repeat the statement
which he had circulated by the press; he should be one
to whom it had been asserted in his teeth that he was " a
liar and a scoundrel, and only wanted courage to be an
assassin." It does not appear to me that such an indi-
vidual could complain with any justice of the frankness
of " Runny mede."
February 27, 1836.
LETTER XIII
To LORD GLENELG
MY LORD, — Let me not disturb your slumbers too
rudely: I will address you in a whisper, and on tiptoe.
At length I have succeeded in penetrating the recesses
1 " The Substance of Some Letters written by an English
Gentleman resident at Paris during the Last Reign of the Em-
peror Napoleon."
2 The electors of Westminster.
20
298 THE LETTERS OP BUNNYMEDE [1836
of your enchanted abode. The knight who roused the
Sleeping Beauty could not have witnessed stranger
marvels in his progress than he who has at last contrived
to obtain an interview with the sleeping Secretary.
The moment that I had passed the Foreign Office an
air of profound repose seemed to pervade Downing Street,
and as I approached the portal of your department, it
was with difficulty I could resist the narcotic influence
of the atmosphere. Your porter is no Argus. " His
calm, broad, thoughtless aspect breathed repose," and
when he " slow from his bench arose, and swollen with
sleep," I almost imagined that, like his celebrated pre-
decessor in the Castle of Indolence, he was about to
furnish me with a nightcap, slippers, and a robe de chambre.
I found your clerks yawning, and your under-secretaries
just waking from a dream. A dozy, drowsy, drony hum,
the faint rustling of some papers like the leaves of autumn,
and a few noiseless apparitions gliding like ghosts, just
assured me that the business of the nation was not
neglected. Every personage and every incident gradu-
ally prepared me for the quiescent presence of the master
mind, until, adroitly stepping over your private secretary,
nodding and recumbent at your threshold, I found myself
before your Lordship, the guardian of our colonial
empire, stretched on an easy couch in luxurious listless-
ness, with all the prim voluptuousness of a puritanical
Sardanapalus.
I forget who was the wild theorist who enunciated the
absurd doctrine that "ships, colonies, and commerce,"
were the surest foundation of the empire. What an in-
finitely ridiculous idea ! But the march of intellect and
the spirit of the age have cleansed our brains of this
perilous stuff. Had it not been for the invention of
ships, the great malady of sea-sickness, so distressing
to an indolent Minister, would be unknown; colonies,
like country-houses, we have long recognised to be
sources only of continual expense, and to be kept up
merely from a puerile love of show; as for commerce, it
1836] AN ARISTOCRATIC CABINET 299
is a vulgarism, and fit only for low people. What have
such dainty nobles as yourself and Lord Palmerston to
do with cottons and indigoes ? Such coarse details you
fitly leave to Mr. Poulett Thomson, whose practical
acquaintance with tallow is the only blot on the scutcheon
of your refined and aristocratic Cabinet.
Although a grateful nation has seized every oppor-
tunity of expressing their confidence in your Lordship
and your colleagues, and although myself, among more
distinguished writers, have omitted no occasion of cele-
brating your inexhaustible panegyric, it appears to me,
I confess, that scant justice has hitherto been done to
the grand system of our present administration, and
which they are putting in practice with felicitous rapidity
and their habitual success. This grand system, it would
seem, consists of a plan to govern the country without
having anything to do.
The meritorious and unceasing labours of the noble
Secretary for Foreign Affairs for the destruction of
English influence on the Continent will soon permit his
Lordship to receive his salary without any necessary
attendance at his office. Lord Morpeth1 has nearly
got rid of Ireland. The selection of your Lordship to
regulate the destinies of our colonies insures the speediest
and the most favourable results in effecting their emanci-
pation from what one of your principal supporters styles
" the unjust domination of the mother country " ; and we
are already promised a Lord Chancellor who is not to
preside over the Chancery. The recent government of
Lord William Bentinck will, I fear, rob Sir John Hob-
house of half the glory of losing India, and the municipal
corporations, if they work as well as you anticipate, may
in due season permit Lord John Russell to resume his
relinquished lyre. Freed of our colonies, Ireland, and
India, the affairs of the Continent consigned to their
own insignificance, Westminster Hall delivered over to
the cheap lawyers, and our domestic polity regulated by
1 Chief Secretary for Ireland.
300 THE LETTERS OF KUNNYMEDE [1836
vestries and town councils, there is a fair probability
that the First Lord of the Treasury, who envies you your
congenial repose, may be relieved from any very onerous
burden of public duty, and that the Treasury may estab-
lish the aptness of its title on the non lucendo character
of its once shining coffers.
Vive la bagatelle ! His Majesty's Ministers may then
hold Cabinet Councils to arrange a whitebait dinner at
Blackwall, or prick for an excursion to Richmond or
Beulah Spa. Such may be the gay consequences of a
Reform Ministry and a reformed Parliament ! No true
patriot will grudge them these slight recreations, or
hazard even a murmur at their sinecure salaries. For to
say the truth, my Lord, if you must remain in office, I
for one would willingly consent to an inactivity on your
part almost as complete as could be devised by the
united genius for sauntering of yourself and that energetic
and laborious nobleman who summoned you to a worthy
participation in his councils.
Affairs, therefore, my dear Lord Glenelg, are far from
disheartening, especially in that department under your
own circumspect supervision. What if the Mauritius be
restive — let the inhabitants cut each others' throats : that
will ultimately produce peace. What if Jamaica be in
flames — we have still East India sugar ; and by the time
we have lost that, the manufacture of beetroot will be
perfect. What if Colonel Torrens, perched on the
Pisgah height of a joint-stock company, be transporting
our fellow-countrymen to the milk and honey of Aus-
tralia, without even the preparatory ceremony of a trial
by jury — let the exiles settle this great constitutional
question with the kangaroos. What if Canada be in
rebellion — let not the menacing spectre of Papineau1 or
the suppliant shade of the liberal Gosford2 scare your
Lordship's dreams. Slumber on without a pang, most
1 The French leader of the rebellion in Canada.
2 Lord Gosford, Governor of Canada.
1836] THE MEMBER FOR COVENTRY 301
vigilant of Secretaries. I will stuff you a fresh pillow
with your unanswered letters, and insure you a certain
lullaby by reading to you one of your own despatches.
March 12, 1836.
LETTER XIV
To THE RIGHT HON. EDWABD
SIR, — In this age of faction, it is delightful to turn to
one public character whom writers of all parties must
unite in addressing in terms of unqualified panegyric.
From " a man discreditably known in the City," you have
become a statesman creditably known at Court. Such
is the triumph of perseverance in a good cause, undaunted
by calumny and undeterred by the narrow-minded
scruples of petty intellects. That influence which, in
spite of prejudice, you have gained by the uniform
straightforwardness of your conduct, you have confirmed
by that agreeable and captivating demeanour which
secures you the hearts of men as well as their confidence.
Uninfluenced by personal motives, always ready to sacri-
fice self, and recoiling from intrigue with the antipathy
native to a noble mind, you stand out in bold and
favourable relief to the leaders of that party whose
destinies, from a purely patriotic motive, you occasion-
ally condescend to regulate.
I ought, perhaps, before this to have congratulated
you on your return to that country whose interests are
never absent from your thoughts; but I was unwilling
to disturb, even with my compliments, a gentleman who,
I am aware, has been labouring of late so zealously for
the commonweal as the Right Hon. Mr. Ellice. Your
devotion in your recent volunteer visit to Constanti-
nople has not been lost on the minds of your countrymen.
1 "Bear " Ellice was a business man connected with the north-
west fur trade. Secretary for War in Lord Grey's Government,
he went out with Melbourne in 1834, and never again took office.
302 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
They readily recognise your pre-eminent fitness to
wrestle with the Russian bear; and they who have wit-
nessed in a northern forest a duel between those polished
animals, must feel convinced that you are the only
English statesman duly qualified to mingle in a combat
which is at the same time so dexterous and so desperate.
Happy England, whose fortunes are supervised by such
an unsalaried steward as the member for Coventry !
Thrice fortunate Telemachus of Lambton Castle, guided
by such a Mentor !
After the turmoil of party politics, you must have
found travel delightful ! I can fancy you gazing upon
the blue Symplegades, or roaming amid the tumuli of
Troy. The first glance at the Mge&u must have filled
you with classic rapture. Your cultured and accom-
plished mind must have reveUed in the recollections of
the heroic past. How different from the associations of
those jobbing politicians, who, when they sail upon
Salamis, are only reminded of Greek bonds, and whose
thoughts, when they mingle amid the imaginary tumult
of the Pnyx at Athens, only recur to the broils of a settling
day at the Stock Exchange of London !
In your political career you have emulated the fame,
and rivalled, if not surpassed, the exploits of the great
Earl of Warwick. He was only a King-maker, but Mr.
Ellice is a maker of Ministers. How deeply was Lord
Grey indebted to your disinterested services ! Amid the
musings of the Liternum1 of Howick, while moralising
on the gratitude of a party, how fondly must he congratu-
late himself on his fortune in such a relative. It is said
that his successor is not so prompt to indicate his sense
of your services as would be but just. But the ingrati-
tude of men, and especially of Ministers, is proverbial.
Lord Melbourne, however, may yet live to be sensible of
your amiable exercise of the prerogative of the Crown. In
the meantime the unbounded confidence of Lord Palmer-
ston in your good intentions may in some degree console
1 The town to which Scipio AMcanus retired.
1836] AN EMANCIPATED MIND 303
you for the suspicions of the Prime Minister, to say
nothing of the illimitable trust of the noble Secretary for
the Colonies, who sleeps on in unbroken security as long
as you are the guardian angel of his slumbers.
Distinguished as you are by the inflexible integrity of
your conduct, both in public and private life, by your
bland manners and your polite carriage, your total
absence of all low ambition and your contempt for all
intrigue and subterranean practices, you are, if possible,
still more eminent for your philosophical exemption from
antiquated prejudice. The people of England can never
forget that it was your emancipated mind that first
soared superior to the mischievous institution of a
National Church, and that, with the characteristic
liberality of your nature, yours was the intellect that first
devised the ingenious plan of appeasing Ireland by the
sacrifice of England. Had you been influenced in your
conduct by any factious object of establishing your
friends in the enjoyment of a power to exercise which
they had previously proved themselves incapable, it
might in some degree have deteriorated from the single-
ness of your purpose; but no one can suppose, for an
instant, that in forming a close alliance one year with a
man whom twelve months before they had denounced
as a rebel, or in decreeing the destruction of an institu-
tion which they had just recently pledged themselves to
uphold, your pupils of the present administration were
actuated by any other motives but the most just, the
most disinterested, and the most honourable.
You have recently been gratified by witnessing the
proud and predominant influence of your country in the
distant and distracted regions of the East. The compli-
ments which were lavished on yourself and your com-
panion by the Czar must have been as flattering to the
envoy as they were to the confiding sovereign with whose
dignity you were entrusted. It must be some time before
the salutes of Odessa cease ringing in your ear, and it
cannot be supposed that your excited imagination can
304 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
speedily disembarrass itself of your splendid progress in
a steamer over the triumphant waters of the Euxine.
Yet, when you have in some degree recovered from the
intoxication of success and the inebriating influence of
Royal and Imperial condescension, let us hope that you
may deign to extend your practised attention to our
domestic situation. The country is very prosperous ; the
Stock Exchange has not been so active since 1825.
They certainly have missed you a little in Spanish, but
the railways, I understand, have been looking up since
your return, especially the shares of those companies
which have no hope or intention of prosecuting their
designs. In the meantime, perhaps, for you may be
destined the glory of inducing Lord Melbourne to tolerate
the presence of Mr. O'Connell at an official banquet.
That would be an achievement worthy of your great
mind. The new Liberal Club, too, which, like Eldorado,
is to supply
" Shirts for the shirtless, suppers for the starved,"
may merit your organising patronage. For the rest, the
unbounded confidence which subsists between our gracious
Sovereign and his Ministers, the complete harmony at
length established between the two Houses of Parliament,
the perfect tranquillity of Ireland, vouched by the
de facto member for Dublin, and guaranteed by Lord
Plunket, and the agreeable circumstance that the people
of England are arrayed in two hostile and determined
parties, all combine to assure us of a long, a tranquil, and
a prosperous administration of our affairs by the last
Cabinet which was constructed under your auspices.
March 20, 1836.
1836] RECREATION FOR THE EASTER RECESS 305
LETTER XV
To VISCOUNT MELBOURNE
MY LORD, — I always experience peculiar gratification
in addressing your Lordship — your Lordship is such a
general favourite. I have read somewhere of " the best-
natured man with the worst-natured muse." I have
always deemed your Lordship the best-natured Minister
with the worst-natured party. And really, if you have
sometimes so lost your temper — if for those Epicurean
shrugs of the shoulder, and nil admirari smiles, which were
once your winning characteristics, you have occasionally
of late substituted a little of the Cambyses' vein, and
demeaned yourself as if you were practising " Pistol "
for the next private theatricals at Panshanger — very
extenuating circumstances may, I think, be found in
the heterogeneous and Hudibrastic elements of that
party which Fate, in a freak of fun, has called upon your
Lordship to regulate. What a crew ! I can compare
them to nothing but the Swalbach swine in the Brunnen
Bubbles,1 guzzling and grunting in a bed of mire, fouling
themselves, and bedaubing every luckless passenger with
their contaminating filth.
We are all now going into the country, and you and
your colleagues are about to escape for a season from
what your Lordship delicately terms the " badgering "
of Parliament. I trust you will find the relaxation reno-
vating. How you will recreate yourselves, we shall be
anxious to learn. I think the Cabinet might take to
cricket — they are a choice eleven. With their peculiarly
patriotic temperaments and highly national feelings, they
might venture, I think, to play against " all England."
Lord Palmerston and Lord Glenelg, with their talent for
1 Sir Francis Bond Head's "Bubbles from the Brunnens of
Nassau" (1834).
306 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
keeping in, would assuredly secure a good score. Lord
John, indeed, with all his flourishing, will probably end
in knocking down his own wicket; and as for Sir Cam,
the chances certainly are that he will be " caught out,"
experiencing the same fate in play as in politics. If you
could only engage Lord Durham to fling sticks at the seals
of the Foreign Office, and the agile Mr. Ellice to climb a
greasy pole for the Colonial portfolio, I think you will
have provided a very entertaining programme of Easter
sports.
My Lord, they say, you know, when things are at
the worst, they generally mend. On this principle our
affairs may really be considered highly promising. The
state of Spain demonstrates the sagacity of our Foreign
Secretary. The country is divided into two great parties ;
we have contrived to interfere without supporting either,
but have lavished our treasure and our blood in upholding
a Camarilla. This is so bad that really the happiest
results may speedily be anticipated. Canada is in a state
of rebellion, and therefore after Easter we may perhaps find
loyalty and peace predominant, especially when we recall
to our recollection the profound intellect your Lordship
has selected for the settlement of that distracted colony.
The Whigs, my Lord, seem indeed to have a happy knack
in the choice of Governors, and almost to rival in their
appointments the Duke in " Don Quixote." To them we
are indebted alike for the prescient firmness of a Gosford
and the substantial judgment of a Sligo.1 The spring-
like promise of the experienced Elphinstone will explain
the genial seed so deftly sown by the noble member for
Glasgow,2 and complete the trio. Three wise and learned
rulers ! To whomsoever of the leash my Lord Glenelg
may award the golden palm, I doubt not it will prove an
apple of sufficient discord.
" But all our praises why should Lords engross ?"
1 Formerly Governor of Jamaica.
2 Lord William Bentinck, ex-Governor-General of India.
1836] "TKANQUIL" IKELAN*D 307
particularly when the appointments of Lord Auckland
and Lord Nugent1 are duly mentioned.
" Kise, honest muse, and sing Sir Francis Head !" 2
The convenient candour of that celebrated functionary
will at least afford one solacing reminiscence for your
Easter holidays.
But what is Spanish anarchy or Canadian rebellion, the
broils of Jamaica or the impending catastrophe of Hindo-
stan, when Ireland is tranquil ? And who can doubt the
tranquillity of Ireland ? Has not your Lordship the
bond of the trustworthy Mr. O'Connell, whose private
praises you celebrate with such curious felicity, and the
choice collateral security of the veracious Lord Plunket.
With such a muniment in the strong box of your Cabinet
securities, what care you for the charges of Baron Smith
and the calendar of Tipperary ? And yet, my Lord,
though Ireland is tranquil, and though the Papists, in
their attempts on the lives of their rivals, seem of late
charitably to have substituted perjury for massacre, I
fancy I mark a cloud upon your triumphant brow at my
incidental mention of that fortunate land. Be of good
cheer, my Lord; and if you cannot be bold, at least be
reckless. In spite of the elaborate misrepresentations of
party, the state of Irish affairs is very simple. The point
lies in a nutshell, and may be expressed in a single sen-
tence. Your Lordship's accommodation bills with Mr.
O'Connell are becoming due, and unless you can contrive
to get them renewed, the chances are your Lordship's firm
will become bankrupt.
It seems, my Lord, that the hon. member for Finsbury 3
is about to move a petition to our gracious sovereign
to intercede with the King of the French in favour of the
State-victims of the three glorious days, persecuted like
other great men for anticipating their age, and attempting
to do that in 1830 the consummation of which was re-
1 High. Commissioner of the Ionian Islands.
2 Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada.
3 Mr. Thomas Slingsby Buncombe.
308 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
served for 1835. My Lord, buffoonery after a while
wearies ; put an end, I beseech you, to the farce of your
government, and, to save time, consent at once that you
and your colleagues should be substituted in their stead.
Nay, I wish not to be harsh ; my nature is not vindictive.
I would condemn you to no severer solitude than the
gardens of Hampton Court, where you might saunter
away the remaining years of your now ludicrous existence,
sipping the last novel of Paul de Kock, while lounging
over a sundial.
March 30, 1836.
LETTER XVI
To THE HOUSE OF LOEDS
MY LORDS, — If there be one legislative quality more
valuable than another, it is the power of discriminating
between the CAUSE and the PRETEXT.1 For two sessions
of Parliament an attempt has been made to force upon
your Lordships' adoption a peculiar scheme of policy
under the pretext of doing " justice to Ireland." A
majority of the members of the House of Common^ no
matter how obtained, have not felt competent, or in-
clined, to penetrate beneath the surface of this plausible
plea. They have accepted the pretext as a sound and
genuine principle of conduct, and have called for your
Lordships' co-operation in measures which you have
declined to sanction, because you believe you have dis-
tinguished the concealed from the ostensible motive of
their proposition. Your Lordships believe, that under
the pretext of doing " justice to Ireland," you are called
upon to do "injustice to England," and to assist the
cause of Irish independence and papal supremacy.
"A very good pretext may be the delusive cloak of a very
bad cause" (Disraeli in the Morning Post, August 21, 1835).
' It is an important principle in morals and in politics not to
mistake the cause for the pretext, nor the pretext for the cause,
and by this means to distinguish between the concealed and the
ostensible motive " (Isaac D'Israeli: " Curiosities of Literature ").
1836] CAUSE AND PRETEXT 309
My Lords, the English nation agrees with you. The
experience of the last few years has not been lost upon
your reflective countrymen. Under the pretext of eman-
cipating the Irish people, they have witnessed the estab-
lishment of the dominion of a foreign priesthood — -under
the pretext of Parliamentary Reform, they have wit-
nessed the delusive substitution of Whig Government —
under the pretext of Municipal Reform in England, they
have seen a sectarian oligarchy invested with a monopoly
of power, tainting the very fountains of justice, and
introducing into the privacy of domestic life all the
acerbities of public faction — and under the pretext of
" justice to Ireland," they have already beheld the de-
struction of Protestant ascendancy, and the Papacy, if
not supreme, at least rampant. The English nation are
reaping the bitter fruits of not sufficiently discriminating
between the ostensible and concealed purposes of legisla-
tion. Had they been aware some years back, as they
now keenly feel, that they were only extending power
and privileges to a priesthood when they thought they
were emancipating a people, the miserable dilemma of
modern politics would never have occurred. They would
not have witnessed the gentlemen of Ireland driven from
its parliamentary representation, and deprived of their
local influence; they would not have witnessed a fierce
and bloody war waged against the property of the Pro-
testant Church and the lives of its ministers ; they would
not have witnessed the Imperial Parliament occupied in
a solemn debate on the propriety of maintaining the
legislative union. Political revolutions are always
effected by virtue of abstract pleas. " Justice to Ire-
land " is about as definite as " the Rights of Man." If
the Irish have an equal right with ourselves to popular
corporations, have they less a right to a domestic Legis-
lature or a native Sovereign ? My Lords, are you pre-
pared to go this length ? Are you prepared to dismiss
circumstances from your consideration, and legislate
solely upon principles ? Is the British Senate an assembly
310 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
of dreaming schoolmen that they are resolved to deal
with words in preference to facts ? Is a great empire to
be dissolved by an idle logomachy ? If Dublin have an
equal right with Westminster to the presence of a Parlia-
ment, is the right of York less valid ? Be consistent, my
Lords, in the development of the new system of politics.
Repeal the Union, and revive the Heptarchy.
When the Irish papists were admitted to the Imperial
Parliament, we were told that they would consist of a
few gentlemen of ancient family and fortune. That class
is already banished from our councils. When the Protes-
tant Establishment in Ireland was reformed by the Whigs,
we were told that the Church in Ireland would then be as
safe as the Church in Yorkshire. That Establishment is
now an eleemosynary one. When the repeal of the union
was discussed in the English Parliament, we were told
that it was only supported by a feeble section. That
section now decides the fate of the British Government
and the policy of the British Empire. Because much has
been conceded, we are told that all must be given up;
because the Irish papists have shown themselves un-
worthy of a political franchise, we are told that it neces-
sarily follows that they should be entrusted with a
municipal one; because * * *
*****
*****
*****
This new system of inductive reasoning may pass
current with some bankrupt noble, panting to nestle in
the bowers of Downing Street ; this topsy-turvy logic may
flash conviction on the mind of some penniless expectant
of the broken victuals of the official banquet; but the
people of England recoil with disgust from the dangerous
balderdash, and look up to your Lordships as their heredi-
tary leaders, to stand between the ark of the constitution
and the unhallowed hands that are thrust forward to soil
1836] O'CONNELL AGAIN 311
its splendour and violate its sanctity. The people of
England are not so far divorced from their ancient valour,
that, after having withstood Napoleon and the whole
world in arms, they are to sink before a horde of their
manumitted serfs and the nisi prius demagogue whom a
foreign priesthood have hired to talk treason on their
blasphemous behalf. After having routed the lion, we
will not be preyed upon by the wolf. If we are to fall,
if this great empire, raised by the heroic energies of the
English nation — that nation of which your fathers formed
a part — is indeed to be dissolved, let us hope that the
last moments of our career may prove at least an euthan-
asia: let no pestilent blight, after our meridian glory,
sully the splendour of our setting; and whether we fall
before the foreign foe we have so often baffled, or whether,
by some mysterious combination of irresistible circum-
stances, our empire sinks, like the Queen of the Adriatic,
beneath the waves that we still rule, let not the records
of our future annalist preserve a fact which, after all our
greatness, might well break the spirit of the coming
generations of our species. Let it not be said that we
truckled to one, the unparalleled and unconstitutional
scope of whose power is only equalled by the sordid
meanness of his rapacious soul. Let it not be said that
the English constitution sank before a rebel without
dignity and a demagogue without courage. This grand
pensionary of bigotry and sedition presumes to stir up
the people of England against your high estate. Will
the Peers of England quail to this brawling mercenary —
this man who has even degraded crime, who has deprived
treason of its grandeur and sedition of its sentiment;
who is paid for his patriotism, and whose philanthropy
is hired by the job — audacious, yet a poltroon — agitating
a people, yet picking their pockets ; in mind a Catiline, in
action a Cleon ?
This disturber is in himself nothing. He has neither
learning, wit, eloquence, nor refined taste, nor elevated
feeling, nor a passionate and creative soul. What ragged
312 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
ribaldry are his public addresses, whether they emanate
from his brazen mouth or from his leaden pen ! His
pathos might shame the maudlin Romeo of a barn; his
invective is the reckless abandonment of the fish-market.
Were he a man of genius, he would be unsuited to the
career for which he is engaged ; for, after all, he is but
a slave. But it is the awful character of his master
that invests this creature with his terrible consideration.
However we may detest or despise the nisi prius lawyer
hired to insult and injure the realm of England, we know
that he is the delegate of the most ancient and powerful
priesthood in Europe. It is as the great papal nominee
that this O'Connell, with all his vileness, becomes a power
to control which requires no common interference.
My Lords, the English nation believes that that inter-
ference can be efficiently exercised by your august as-
sembly. In you are reposed their hopes; you will not
disappoint them. In a few hours, in obedience to the
mandate of the papal priesthood, that shallow voluptuary
who is still Prime Minister of England, will call upon
your Lordships with cuckoo note, to do " justice to Ire-
land." Do it. Justice to Ireland will best be secured by
doing justice to England. The people of England created
the empire. At the time when we were engaged in that
great strife which will rank in the estimation of posterity
with the Punic wars and the struggles of the Greeks
against Asia, the very men who are now menacing your
illustrious order, and stirring up war against our national
institutions, were in communication with our most in-
veterate foe, and soliciting invasion. My Lords, you will
not forget this; you will not forget to distinguish their
pretext from their cause. These men cannot be concili-
ated. They are your foes because they are the foes of
England. They hate our free and fertile isle. They hate
our order, our civilisation, our enterprising industry, our
sustained courage, our decorous liberty, our pure religion.
This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain, and superstitious
race have no sympathy with the English character. Their
1836] PAPAL INFLUENCE 313
fair ideal of human felicity is an alternation of clannish
broils and coarse idolatry. Their history describes an
unbroken circle of bigotry and blood. And now, for-
sooth, the cry is raised that they have been misgoverned !
How many who sound this party shibboleth have studied
the history of Ireland ? A savage population, under the
influence of the Papacy, has, nevertheless, been so regu-
lated, that they have contributed to the creation of a
highly-civilised and Protestant empire. Why, is not that
the paragon of political science ? Could Machiavel teach
more ? My Lords, shall the delegates of these tribes,
under the direction of the Roman priesthood, ride rough-
shod over our country — over England — haughty and still
imperial England ? Forbid it all the memory of your
ancestors ! Rest assured that if you perform your high
and august office as becomes you, rest assured that in this
agony of the Protestant cause and the British empire,
the English nation will not desert you. All parties and
all sects of Englishmen, in this fierce and yet degrading
struggle, must ultimately rally round your House. My
Lords, be bold, be resolute, be still " the pillars of the
State."
April 18, 1836.
LETTER XVII
To THE HOUSE OF LORDS
MY LORDS, — You have unfurled the national standard.
Its patriotic and hearty motto is, " Justice for England."
The English nation will support you in your high en-
deavours. Fear not that they will be backward. They
recognise your Lordships as their natural leaders who
have advanced, according to your hereditary duty, to
assist them in the extremity of their degraded fortunes.
The time is come for bold and vigorous conduct ; the time
is come to rid ourselves of that base tyranny, offensive
to the pride of every Englishman, no matter what his
religious sect or class of political opinions. The English
21
314 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
nation will not be ruled by the Irish priesthood. Five
years of Whig government have not yet so -completely
broken our once proud spirit that we can submit without
a murmur or a struggle to such a yoke. If Athens, even
in her lower fortunes, could free herself of her thirty
tyrants, let us hope that England, in spite of all the jobs
of our corrupt and corrupting Government, may yet
chase away those gentlemen who, fresh from the unction
of M'Hale and the mild injunctions of the apostolic
Kehoe,1 have undertaken to guard over the rights and
liberties, the property and the religion, of Protestant
England. We have not reformed the third estate of the
realm in order that England should be governed by the
nominees of the Papacy. There is not a man in Britain,
Tory or Radical, Episcopalian or Presbyterian, who can
stand this long ; there is not a man in Britain who at the
bottom of his heart is not proud of our empire, and who
does not despise the inferior race who dare to menace its
integrity. However faction may corrupt and machinate,
the people of England will never long submit to a Milesian
master ; and when they reflect upon their present degrada-
tion, and are conscious that they have experienced it
only to secure in power the dull and desperate remains of
a once haughty oligarchy, long baffled in their anti-
national attempts upon the free realm of England, the
nation will rise in its wrath, and execute vengeance upon
the cabal which has thus trifled with this great country's
immemorial honour.
The English nation requires justice; and it is not con-
tent to receive that justice by instalments — a process
that may suit their lately manumitted serfs, but which
will not accord with their stern and determined spirits,
habituated to the ennobling exercise and the proud enjoy-
ment of an ancient liberty. They require justice, and
they will have that justice full and free. It must be meted
1 John M'Hale (1791-1881), appointed Archbishop of Tuam
in 1834 ; and possibly John Keogh (1740-1817), the Irish Catholic
leader, to whose efforts the passing of the Relief Act of 1793 was
mainly due.
1836] JUSTICE FOE ENGLAND 315
out speedily and not scantily. They require this justice,
with the Peers of England at their head, and the result
will prove whether the Milesian peasantry, led on by the
papist priesthood, can cope with this proud and powerful
society. It is not just to England that the Sovereign
should be deprived of his undoubted prerogative; it is
not just to England that M'Hale and Kehoe should dictate
to our King the servants whom our Royal master should
employ ; it is not just to England that the King of England
should by any such an anti-national process be surrounded
by the Ministers, not of his choice, but of his necessity;
it is not just to England that a knot of papist legislators
should deal with the polity and property of our Protestant
Church; it is not just to England that no English blood
in Ireland should be secure from plunder or assassination ;
it is not just to England that a hired disturber, paid by
the Roman priesthood, should ramble over our country
to stir up rebellion against your Lordships' august estate;
that his ribald tongue should soil and outrage all that we
have been taught to love, honour, and obey — our women,
our princes, and our laws; and lastly, it is not just to
England that its constitution should be attacked, its
empire menaced, and its religion scoffed at.
My Lords, the same party that demands justice for
Ireland is not less clamorous in its requisition of justice
for Canada. Will you grant it ? Justice for Botany
Bay, too, is, I have heard, in the market, and the cry is
said to be worth some good £2,000 per annum. The
noble member for Glasgow, the vigorous writer of that
lucid address which I had the honour of transferring from
its original Sanscrit and first introducing to the notice of
the British public, has, I believe, already done justice to
India. My Lords ! when and where is this dangerous
nonsense to terminate ? How compatible is the preva-
lence of such windy words with the subsistence of an
empire ? It may be as well for your Lordships to ponder
on the consequences. The English nation formed the
empire. Ours is the imperial isle. England is the Metro-
316 THE LETTEKS OF EUNNYMEDE [1836
politan country, and .we might as well tear out the living
heart from the human form, and bid the heaving corpse
still survive, as suppose that a great empire can endure
without some concentration of power and vitality.
My Lords, the season is ripe for action. In spite of all
the machinations of the anti-English faction, never was
your great assembly more elevated in the esteem and
affection of your countrymen than at this perilous hour.
The English are a reflecting and observant people; they
ponder even amid tumult ; they can draw a shrewd moral
even from the play of their own passions ; and they cannot
but feel that — after all the revolutionary rhetoric which
has been dinned into their ears of late in panegyric of
a Reform Ministry and a Reformed Parliament, and in
simultaneous depreciation of your Lordships' power and
usefulness — not only in eloquence and knowledge, in
elevation of thought and feeling, and even in practical
conduct, your Lordships need fear no comparison with
that assembly which, from a confusion of ideas, is in
general supposed to be more popular in its elements and
character, but that on all occasions when the dignity of
the empire and the rights of the subject have been threat-
ened and assailed, the national cause has invariably found
in your Lordships' House that support and sympathy
which have been denied to it by the other Chamber.
Your Lordships, therefore, commence the conflict with
the anti-English party under great advantages. Not only
is your cause a just one, and your resolution to maintain
its justice unshakable, but there happens in your instance
that which unfortunately cannot always be depended on
in those great conjunctures which decide the fate of crowns
and nations. The sympathy of the nation is arrayed
under your banner. And inasmuch as the popularity
which you now enjoy is to be distinguished from that
volatile effusion which is the hurry-skuny offspring of
ignorance and guile, but is founded on the surer basis of
returning reason and mellowed passions and sharp experi-
ence, you may rest assured that the support of your
1836] A STKUGGLE WITH THE PAPACY 317
countrymen will not be withdrawn from you in the hour
of trial.
But, my Lords, do not undervalue the enemy which, at
the head of the English nation, you are about to combat.
If you imagine that you are going to engage only an
ignorant and savage population, led on by a loose-tongued
poltroon, you will indeed deceive yourselves, and the
truth will not be in you. My Lords, you are about to
struggle with a foe worthy even of the Peers of England,
for he is a foe that has placed his foot upon the neck of
Emperors. My Lords, you are about to struggle with the
Papacy, and in its favourite and devoted land. Whether
the conspiracy of the Irish priests be more successful than
the fleets of Spain, and more fatal to the freedom and the
faith of England, time can alone prove, and Providence
can alone decide . But let us not forget that Heaven aids
those who aid themselves, and, firm in the faith that
nerved the arms of our triumphant fathers, let us meet
without fear that dark and awful power that strikes at
once at the purity of our domestic hearths and the
splendour of our imperial sway.
April 23, 1836.
LETTER XVIII
TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR1
MY LORD, — The gay liver, who, terrified by the conse-
quences of his excesses, takes to water and a temperance
society, is in about the same condition as the Whig
Ministers in their appointment of a Lord Chancellor,
when, still smarting under the eccentric vagaries of a
Brougham, they sought refuge in the calm reaction of
your sober Lordship. This change from Master Shallow
to Master Silence was for a moment amusing; but your
Lordship has at length found the faculty of speech, and
your astonished countrymen begin to suspect that they
1 Lord Cottenham.
318 THE LETTEES OF KUNNYMEDE [1836
may not be altogether the gainers in the great transition
from Humbug to Humdrum. We have escaped from the
eagle to be preyed upon by the owl. For your Lordship is
also a Reformer, a true Reformer; you are to proceed in
the grand course of social amelioration and party jobbing,
and the only substantial difference, it seems, that a
harassed nation is to recognise, is that which consists
between the devastation of the locust and the destruction
of the slug.
Your Lordship has figured during the last week in the
double capacity of a statesman and a legislator. With
what transcendent success let the blank dismay that
stamped the countenance of the Prime Minister bear
flattering witness ; as he hung with an air of awkward
astonishment on the accents of your flowing eloquence,
and listened with breathless surprise, if not admiration,
to the development of those sage devices which, by a
curious felicity of fortune, have succeeded in arraying
agianst them the superficial prejudices of all parties.
Yet one advantage, it cannot be denied, has resulted
from your Lordship's last triumphant exhibition. The
public at length become acquainted with the object of
Lord Langdale's surprising elevation, and the agreeable
office which it appears the noble Master of the Rolls is to
fulfil in the Senate of Great Britain. We have heard
before of a Lord Chancellor's devil ; but my Lord Cotten-
ham is the first guardian of the Great Seal whom his
considerate colleagues have supplied not only with a
coronet, but a critic.
That your Lordship should be an advocate for " justice
to Ireland," might reasonably have been expected from
your eminent situation. Your party may share with you
the odium or the glory of your political projects, but the
laurels which you have recently acquired by your luminous
eloquence and your profound legal knowledge are all your
Lordship's own, and I doubt whether any of your friends
or your opponents will be aspiring enough to envy you
their rich fruition.
1836] CUSTODY OF THE GREAT SEAL 319
And here, as it is the fashion to do " justice to Whig-
gism," I cannot but pause to notice the contrast, so
flattering to the judgment and high principle of your
Lordship's party, which their legal appointments afford
when compared with those of the annihilated Tories, and
especially of the late Government. The administration of
justice is still a matter of some importance, and we
naturally shrink from the party who have entrusted its
conduct to men so notoriously incompetent as a Sugden
or a Scarlett, or placed upon the judgment seat such mere
political adventurers as an Alderson and a Park, a
Patteson and a Coleridge, a Taunton and a Tindal ! How
refreshing it is, after such a prostitution of patronage and
power, to turn to a Lord Chief Justice like a Denman,
raised to his lofty post by the sheer influence of his un-
equalled learning and his unrivalled practice, or to recog-
nise the homage which has been paid to professional
devotion in the profound person of Mr. Baron Williams !
I say nothing of your Lord Chancellors ; one you have
discarded, and the other you are about to deprive of his
functions. And, indeed, it cannot be denied, that the
appointment of your Lordship to the custody of the
Great Seal, as a preliminary step to the abolition of the
office of Lord Chancellor itself, displayed a depth of
statecraft in your party for which the nation has hitherto
given them scarcely sufficient credit. Had it been en-
trusted to a Hardwicke, an Eldon, or a Lyndhurst, to
some great functionary to whom the public had been
accustomed to look up with confidence, and the pro-
fession with respect, some murmurs might naturally have
arisen at the menaced disturbance of an ancient order
which had long contributed to that pure and learned
administration of justice which was once the boast of
Britons. But if the Whigs, as their organs daily assure
us, are indeed to be our perpetual masters, we may be
excused for viewing with indifference, if not with com-
placency, that promised arrangement by which the most
important duties of the State are no longer assigned at the
320 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
caprice of a party, which, with a singularly sound judg-
ment, has periodically selected for their performance an
Erskine, a Brougham, and finally your learned Lordship.
The still haughty Venetians sometimes console them-
selves with the belief that their State would not have
fallen if the last of their Doges had not unfortunately been
a plebeian; the Bar of England, that illustrious body
which has contributed to our fame and our felicity not
less than the most celebrated of our political institutions,
may perhaps, in a sympathetic strain of feeling, some day
be of opinion that they would not have been expelled
from their high and just position in our society if the
last of the Lord Chancellors had been worthy of being
their chief ; and posterity may perhaps class together, in the
same scale of unsuitable elevation, the ignoble Manini1
and the feeble Cottenham.
My Lord, the same spirit that would expel the heads
of our Church from the Senate, would banish the head
of our law from the King's Council. Under pretext of
reform and popular government, your party, as usual,
are assailing all the democratic elements of our con-
stitution. The slang distinction of the day between the
political and legal duties of a Lord Chancellor tends, like
all the other measures of the party which has elevated
your Lordship to the peerage, and is now about to lower
you to a clerkship, to the substitution of an oligarchical
government. We may yet live to regret that abrogated
custom which, by giving the head of the law a prece-
dence over the haughtiest peers, and securing his constant
presence in the Cabinet of the sovereign, paid a glorious
homage to the majesty of jurisprudence, announced to
the world that our political constitution was eminently
legal, guaranteed that there should be at least one indi-
vidual in the realm who was not made a Minister because
he was a noble, insured the satisfactory administration
of domestic justice, and infused into our transactions with
foreign Courts and Cabinets that high and severe spirit
1 Ludovico Manini, the last Doge of Venice.
1836] LEGAL REFORM 321
of public rectitude which obtained our own rights by
acknowledging those of others.
Will the hybrid thing which, under Lord Cottenham's
scheme of legal reform, is to be baptised in mockery a
Lord Chancellor, afford these great advantages in the
Cabinet or the Senate ? He is to be a lawyer without a
court, and a lawyer without a court will soon be a lawyer
without law. The Lord High Chancellor of England will
speedily subside into a political nonentity like the Presi-
dent of the Council; that office which is the fitting
appanage of pompous imbecility. Lord Cottenham may
be excused for believing that to make a Lord Chancellor
it is enough to plant a man upon a woolsack, and thrust
a wig upon his head and a gold-embroidered robe upon
his back; but the people of England have been accus-
tomed to recognise in a Lord Chancellor, a man who has
won his way to a great position by the exercise of great
qualities — a man of singular acuteness and profound
learning, and vast experience, and patient study, and
unwearied industry — a, man who has obtained the con-
fidence of his profession before he challenges the confi-
dence of his country, and who has secured eminence in the
House of Commons before he has aspired to superiority
in the House of Lords — a man who has expanded from
a great lawyer into a great statesman, and who brings
to the woolsack the commanding reputation which has
been gained in the long and laborious years of an admired
career.
My Lord, this is not your portrait. You are the child of
reform, the chance offspring of political agitation and
factious intrigue. The Whigs have stirred up and made
muddy even the fountain of justice; for a moment an
airy bubble, glittering in the sunshine, floated on the
excited surface ; but that brilliant bubble soon burst and
vanished, and a scum, thick and obscure, now crests the
once pure and tranquil waters .
April 30, 1836.
322 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
LETTER XIX
To VISCOUNT MELBOUBNE
MY LORD, — I had the honour of addressing you on the
eve of your last holidays; the delightful hour of relaxa-
tion again approaches : I wish you again to retire to the
bowers of Brocket with my congratulations. The cam-
paign about to close has been brief, but certainly not un-
eventful; I will not say disastrous, because I wish to
soothe, rather than irritate, your tortured feelings.
The incidents have been crowded, as in the last act of
one of those dramas to which it was formerly your ambi-
tion to supply an epilogue. Why did that ambition ever
become so unnaturally elevated ? Why was your Lord-
ship not content to remain agreeable ? Why did you
aspire to be great ? A more philosophical moderation
would have saved you much annoyance and your country
much evil; yourself some disgraceful situations, perhaps
some ludicrous ones. When I last addressed you, your
position was only mischievous; it is now ridiculous.
Your dark master, the Milesian Eblis, has at length been
vanquished by that justice for which he is so clamorous,
and which he has so long outraged. The poisoned chalice
of revolutionary venom which your creatures prepared
for our august Senate, august although you are a member
of it, has been returned to their own lips.1 The House of
Lords, decried for its ignorance and inefficiency by ad-
venturers without talents and without education, has
vindicated its claims to the respect of the country for its
ability and its knowledge. Held up to public scorn by
your hirelings as the irresponsible tyrants of the land, a
1 Cf. " The reformed House of Commons, proud of its new-
fangled existence . . . permitted a Minister of State to stigmatise
a vote of the House of Lords as * the whisper of a faction ' ; but
now the poisoned chalice is returned to their own lips" (Dis-
raeli in the House of Commons, May 27. 1841)
1836] WHIG MACHIAVELISM 323
grateful nation recognises in the Peers of England the
hereditary trustees of their rights and liberties, the
guardians of their greatness, and the eloquent and un-
daunted champions of the integrity of their empire. The
greater portion of the nation has penetrated the super-
ficial characteristics of Whig Machiavelism. Your hollow
pretences all evaporated, your disgraceful manoeuvres
all detected, your reckless expedients all exhausted, we
recognise only a desperate and long-baffled oligarchy,
ready to sacrifice, for the possession of a power to which
they are incompetent, the laws, the empire, and the
religion of England.
My Lord, it requires no prophet to announce that the
commencement of the end is at length at hand. The
reign of delusion is about to close. The man who obtains
property by false pretences is sent to Botany Bay. Is the
party that obtains power by the same means to be saved
harmless ? You have established a new colony in
Australia; it wants settlers. Let the Cabinet emigrate.
My Lord Glenelg, with all his Canadian experience, will
make an excellent colonial governor. And there your
Lordship may hide your public discomfiture and your
private mortification. And, indeed, a country where
nature regulates herself on an exactly contrary system
to the scheme she adopts in the older and more favoured
world, has some pretensions, it would seem, to the bene-
ficial presence of your faction. The land where the
rivers are salt, where the quadrupeds have fins and the
fish feet, where everything is confused, discordant, and
irregular, is indicated by Providence as the fitting scene
of Whig government.
The Whigs came into office under auspices so favour-
able, that they never could have been dislodged from
their long- coveted posts except by their own incom-
petence and dishonesty. From circumstances which it
would not be difficult to explain, they were at once sanc-
tioned by the King and supported by the people. In
the course of five years they have at once deceived the
324 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
sovereign and deluded the nation. After having recon-
tructed the third estate for their own purposes, in the
course of five years a majority of the English representa-
tives is arrayed against them; wafted into power on the
wings of the public press, dusty from the march of intel-
lect, and hoarse with clamouring about the spirit of the
age, in the course of five years they are obliged to declare
war against the journals, the faithful mirrors of the public
mind. With peace, reform, and retrenchment for their
motto, in the course of five years they have involved us in
a series of ignoble wars, deluged the country with jobs and
placemen, and have even contrived to increase the
amount of the public debt.
What rashness and what cowardice, what petty
prudence and what vast recklessness, what arrogance
and what truckling, are comprised in the brief annals of
this last assault of your faction upon the constitutional
monarchy of England ! Now hinting at organic changes,
now whimpering about the pressure from without;
dragged through the mud on the questions of military
discipline and the pension list, yet ready at the next
moment to plunder the Church or taint the very foun-
tain of justice; threatening the Peers of England on one
day, and crouching on the next before the Irish priests !
A few months back you astounded the public by an-
nouncing that you had purchased a Lord Chancellor at
the price of three coronets.1 The cost has been con-
sidered not only exorbitant, but unconstitutional: but
the nation, wearied by your vexatious delay of justice,
was content to be silent, and awaited the anticipated
presence of a Minos. You produced Cottenham. Moses
and his green spectacles was not in a more ludicrous
position than your Lordship with your precious purchase.
Yet this impotent conclusion was announced in January
as a coup d'etat, and the people of England were daily
congratulated on an arrangement now universally ac-
knowledged as the most ridiculous act even of your ad-
1 The four coronets have now decreased to three (see note, p. 241).
1836] " SWAMPING " THE PEERS 325
ministration. Moralists have contrasted the respective
careers of the knave and the fool, and have consoled
humanity by the conviction that the scoundrel in the
long-run is not more fortunate than the simpleton. I
leave this controverted question to the fabler and the
essayist ; the man of the world, however, will not be sur-
prised at the fate of a political party, the enormity of
whose career is only equalled by the feebleness of their
conduct.
My Lord, the Whigs a century back or so were at least
no fools. When the Dukes of Somerset and Argyle
attended a Privy Council without being summoned,1 and
forced a dying Queen to appoint the Duke of Shrewsbury
Prime Minister, they did not perpetrate a greater out-
rage than the Whig leader, who, by virtue of a papist
conspiracy, returned to the post from which he had
been properly expelled, and became the Minister, not of
the King's choice, but of the King's necessity. These
same Whig leaders, when thus unconstitutionally estab-
lished in power, introduced the Peerage Bill, which if
passed into a law would have deprived the sovereign
of his prerogative of creating further Peers, and they
remodelled the House of Commons by the Septennial Act.
The Whigs in 1718 sought to govern the country by
" swamping " the House of Commons; in 1836 it is the
House of Lords that is to be "swamped"! In 1718
the coup d'etat was to prevent any further increase of the
Lords ; in 1836 the Lords are to be outnumbered : different
tactics to obtain the same purpose — the establishment of
an oligarchical government by virtue of a Republican cry.
Where Argyle and Walpole failed, is it probable that
Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell will succeed ?
The Whigs, a century back, were men of great station,
great talents, great eloquence, supported by two-thirds
of the nobles of the land ; by the Dissenters, because they
attacked the Church, inasmuch as the Establishment,
like every other national institution, is an obstacle to
1 July 3, 1714.
326 THE LETTEKS OF KUNNYMEDE [1836
oligarchical power; #nd by the commercial and "monied
interest " of the country, now, like every other interest of
property, arrayed against them. And what are you ?
Is it your eloquence, your knowledge, your high descent,
and vast property, or the following of your order, that
introduce you into the King's Cabinet ? No, you are
the slave of a slave, the delegate of a deputy, the second-
hand nominee of a power the most odious and anti-
national in existence, foreign to all the principles and
alien to all the feelings of Britons. My Lord, the popular
and boisterous gale that originally drove your party into
power has long since died away, and though some occa-
sional and fitful gusts may have deceived you into be-
lieving that your sails were to be ever set and your
streamers ever flying, the more experienced navigators
have long detected the rising of the calm yet steady
breeze fatal to your course. It is a wind which may be
depended on — a great monsoon of national spirit, which
will clear the seas of those political pirates who have too
long plundered us under false colours.
And yet, my Lord, let us not part in anger. Yours is
still a gratifying, even a great position. Notwithstand-
ing all your public degradation and all your private annoy-
ances, that man is surely to be envied who has it in his
power to confer an obligation on every true-hearted
Englishman. And this your Lordship still can do; you
can yet perform an act which will command the gratitude
of every lover of his country; you can — RESIGN.
May 15, 1836.
1836] THE " VINDICATION " IN LITTLE 327
THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM
["THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM" was published as an
addendum to the book containing the Letters of Runny -
mede. It is the " Vindication " in little — a popular sum-
mary that Disraeli hoped might be easily read and easily
remembered. It is perhaps freer from extravagances of
style than any other of his writings of the period. Of its
genesis little is known. It may be that it represents the
original form of the Letter to Lord Lyndhurst, when, as
he says, he found that the subject gave rise to so many
reflections that what was originally intended for a pam-
phlet expanded almost into a volume. Published anony-
mously within a few months of the appearance of the
" Vindication " which bore his name, it could not have
failed, by similarity of views and of method of expression,
to carry conviction that the writer of " Runny mede "
was identical with Disraeli the Younger.]
CHAPTER I
HISTORICAL
ENGLAND has become great by her institutions. Her
hereditary Crown has in a great degree insured us from
the distracting evils of a contested succession ; her Peerage,
interested, from the vast property and the national
honours of its members, in the good government of the
country, has offered a compact bulwark against the
temporary violence of popular passion; her House of
Commons, representing the conflicting sentiments of an
328 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
estate of the realm not less privileged than that of the
Peers, though far more numerous, has enlisted the great
mass of the lesser proprietors of the country in favour of
a political system which offers them a constitutional
means of defence and a legitimate method of redress;
her ecclesiastical establishment, preseved by its munifi-
cent endowment from the fatal necessity of pandering
to the erratic fancies of its communicants, has maintained
the sacred cause of learning and religion, and preserved
orthodoxy while it has secured toleration ; her law of pri-
mogeniture has supplied the country with a band of
natural and independent leaders, trustees of those legal
institutions which pervade the land, and which are the
origin of our political constitution.
That great body corporate, styled a nation — a vast
assemblage of human beings knit together by laws and
arts and customs, by the necessities of the present and
the memory of the past — offers in this country, through
these its vigorous and enduring members, a more sub-
stantial and healthy framework than falls to the lot of
other nations. Our stout-built constitution throws off
with more facility and safety those crude and dangerous
humours which must at times arise in all human com-
munities. The march of revolution must here at least be
orderly. We are preserved from those reckless and
tempestuous sallies that in other countries, like a whirl-
wind, topple down in an instant an ancient crown, or
sweep away an illustrious aristocracy. This constitution,
which has secured order, has consequently promoted
civilisation ; and the almost unbroken tide of progressive
amelioration has made us the freest, the wealthiest, and
the most refined society of modern ages. Our commerce
is unrivalled, our manufacturers supply the world, our
agriculture is the most skilful in Christendom . So nation al
are our institutions, so completely have they arisen from
the temper and adapted themselves to the character of
the people, that when for a season they were apparently
annihilated, the people of England voluntarily returned
1836] THE FUKY OF FACTIONS 329
to them, and established them with renewed strength and
renovated vigour.
The constitution of England is again threatened, and
at a moment when the nation is more prosperous, more
free, and more famous than at any period of its momen-
tous and memorable career. Why is this ? What has
occasioned these distempered times, which make the loyal
tremble and the traitor smile ? Why has this dark cloud
suddenly gathered in a sky so serene and so splendid?
Is there any analogy between this age and that of the first
Charles ? Are the same causes at work, or is the apparent
similarity produced only by designing men, who make
use of the perverted past as a passport to present mis-
chief ? These are great questions which it may be
profitable to discuss and wise to study.
Rapin, a foreigner who wrote our history,1 in the course
of his frigid yet accurate pages, indulged in one philo-
sophical observation. Struck at the same time by our
greatness and by the fury of our factions, the Huguenot
exclaimed, " It appears to me that this great society can
only be dissolved by the violence of its political parties."
What are these parties ? Why are they violent ?
Why should they exist ? In resolving these questions,
we may obtain an accurate idea of our present political
position, and by pondering over the past we may make
that past not a prophecy, as the disaffected intend, but a
salutary lesson by which the loyal may profit.
The two great parties in which England has during
the last century and a half been divided originated in
the ancient struggle between the Crown and the aris-
tocracy. As long as the Crown possessed or aspired to
despotic power, the feeling of the nation supported the
aristocracy in their struggles to establish a free govern-
ment. The aristocracy of England formed the constitu-
tion of the Plantagenets ; the wars of the Roses destroyed
that aristocracy, and the despotism of the Tudors suc-
1 Paul de Kapin de Thoyras, whose " Histoire d'Angleterre,"
in eight volumes, appeared in 1724.
22
330 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
ceeded. Renovated by more than a century of peace
and the spoils of the Papacy, the aristocracy of England
attacked the first Stuarts, who succeeded to a despotism
which they did not create. When Charles the First, after
a series of great concessions which ultimately obtained
for him the support of the most illustrious of his early
opponents, raised the royal standard, the constitution of
the Plantagenets, and more than the constitution of the
Plantagenets, had been restored and secured. But a
portion of the able party which had succeeded in effecting
such a vast and beneficial revolution was not content to
part with the extraordinary powers which they had
obtained in this memorable struggle. This section of the
aristocracy were the origin of the English Whigs, though
that title was not invented until the next reign. The
primitive Whigs — " Parliament-men," as they liked to
call themselves, "Roundheads," as they were in time
dubbed — aspired to an oligarchy ; for a moment they
obtained one ; but unable to maintain themselves in power
against the returning sense and rising spirit of a generous
and indignant people, they called to their aid that
domestic revolutionary party which exists in all countries,
and an anti-national enemy in addition. These were the
English Radicals, or Root-and-Branch men, and the
Scotch Covenanters. To conciliate the first they sacri-
ficed the Crown ; .to secure the second they abolished the
Church. The constitution of England in Church and
State was destroyed, and the Whig oligarchy, in spite of
their machinations, were soon merged in the common
ruin.
The ignoble tyranny to which this great nation was
consequently subject produced that reaction which is
in the nature of human affairs. The ancient constitution
was in time restored, and the Church and the Crown
were invested with greater powers than they had enjoyed
previously to their overthrow. So hateful had been the
consequences of Whig rule that the people were inclined
rather to trust the talons of arbitrary power than to take
1836] THE VENETIAN CONSTITUTION 331
refuge under the wing of these pretended advocates of
popular rights. A worthless monarch and a corrupted
Court availed themselves of the offered opportunity ; and
when James the Second ascended the throne, the nation
was again prepared to second the aristocracy in a struggle
for their liberties. But the Whigs had profited by their
previous experiment: they resolved upon a revolution,
but they determined that that revolution should be
brought about by as slight an appeal to popular sym-
pathies as possible. They studiously confined that appeal
to the religious feelings of the nation. They hired a
foreign prince and enlisted a foreign army in their service.
They dethroned James, they established themselves in
power without the aid of the mass ; and had William the
Third been a man of ordinary capacity, the constitution
of Venice would have been established in England in
1688. William the Third told the Whigs that he would
never consent to be a Doge. Resembling Louis Philippe
in his character as well as in his position, that extra-
ordinary Prince baffled the Whigs by his skilful balance
of parties ; and had Providence accorded him an heir, it is
probable that the oligarchical faction would never have
revived in England.
The Whigs have ever been opposed to the national
institutions because they are adverse to the establish-
ment of an oligarchy. Local institutions, supported by
a landed gentry, check them ; hence their love of centrali-
sation and their hatred of unpaid magistrates. An inde-
pendent hierarchy checks them; hence their affected
advocacy of toleration and their patronage of the Dis-
senters. The power of the Crown checks them; therefore
they always labour to reduce the sovereign to a nonentity,
and by the establishment of the Cabinet they have
virtually banished the King from his own councils. But,
above all, the Parliament of England checks them, and
therefore it may be observed that the Whigs at all times
are quarrelling with some portion of those august estates.
They despair of destroying the Parliament ; by it. a«id by
332 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
it alone, can they succeed in their objects. Corruption
for one part, force for the other, then, is their motto. In
1640 they attempted to govern the country by the House
of Commons, because the aristocracy was then more
powerful in the House of Commons than in the House of
Lords, where a Peerage, exhausted by civil wars, had been
too liberally recruited from the courtiers of the Tudors
and the Stuarts. At the next revolution which the
Whigs occasioned, they attempted to govern the country
by the House of Lords, in which they were predominant ;
and, in order to guarantee their power for ever, they
introduced a Bill to deprive the King of his prerogative
of making further Peers. The revolution of 1640 led to
the abolition of the House of Lords because the Lords
opposed the oligarchy; the revolution of 1688 led to the
remodelling of the House of Commons by the Septennial
Act, because the House of Commons then were influenced
by the same feelings as the Lords during the great rebellion .
The accession of the House of Hanover revived the
hopes of the Whigs, baffled by the subtle policy of
William, and by the Tory triumphs of Anne. The new
dynasty was unpopular with the mass of the nation,
and proportionately dependent on the Whig oligarchy.
Having a majority in the House of Lords, the Whigs
introduced the Peerage Bill, by which the House of
Lords would have been rendered independent of the
sovereign ; unpopular with the country, the Whigs
attacked the influence of popular election, and the
moment that, by the aid of the most infamous cor-
ruption, they had obtained a temporary majority in the
Lower House, they passed the Septennial Act. The
Whigs of the eighteenth century " swamped " the House
of Commons; the Whigs of the nineteenth would
" swamp " the House of Lords . The Whigs of the
eighteenth century would have rendered the House of
Lords unchangeable; the Whigs of the nineteenth re-
model the House of Commons.
I conclude here the first chapter of the " Spirit of
1836] KULING FAMILIES 333
Whiggism " — a little book which I hope may be easily
read and easily remembered. The Whig party have
always adopted popular cries. In one age it is Liberty,
in another Reform; at one period they sound the tocsin
against popery, in another they ally themselves with
papists. They have many cries, and various modes of
conduct; but they have only one object — the establish-
ment of an oligarchy in this free and equal land. I do
not wish this country to be governed by a small knot of
great families, and therefore I oppose the Whigs .
CHAPTEE II
AT WAR WITH THE CONSTITUTION
WHEN the Whigs and their public organs favour us with
their mysterious hints that the constitution has provided
the sovereign with a means to re-establish at all times a
legislative sympathy between the two Houses of Parlia-
ment, it may be as well to remind them that we are not
indebted for this salutary prerogative to the forbearance
of their party. Suppose their Peerage Bill had passed
into an Act, how would they have carried the Reform
Bill of 1832 ? The Whigs may reply, that if the Peerage
Bill had become a law, the Reform Bill would never have
been introduced; and I believe them. In that case, the
British House of Lords would have been transformed
into a Venetian Senate, and the old walls of St. James's
might have witnessed scenes of as degrading mortification
as the famous ducal palace of the Adriatic.
George the Third routed the Whigs, consolidated by half
a century of power ; but an ordinary monarch would have
sunk beneath the Coalition and the India Bill. This
scheme was the last desperate effort of the oligarchical
party previous to 1830. Not that they were inactive
during the great interval that elapsed between the advent
of Mr. Pitt and the resurrection of Lord Grey : but, ever
334 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
on the watch for a "cry to carry them into power, they
mistook the yell of Jacobinism for the chorus of an eman-
cipated people, and fancied, in order to take the throne
by storm, that nothing was wanting but to hoist the
tricolour and to cover their haughty brows with a red cap.
This fatal blunder clipped the wings of Whiggism ; nor is
it possible to conceive a party that had effected so many
revolutions and governed a great country for so long a
period, more broken, sunk, and shattered, more desolate
and disheartened, than these same Whigs at the Peace
of Paris. From that period till 1830, the tactics of the
Whigs consisted in gently and gradually extricating
themselves from their false position as the disciples of
Jacobinism, and assuming their ancient post as the
hereditary guardians of an hereditary monarchy. To
make the transition less difficult than it threatened, they
invented Liberalism, a bridge by which they were to
regain the lost mainland, and daintily recross on tiptoe
the chasm over which they had originally sprung with so
much precipitation. A dozen years of " liberal principles "
broke up the national party of England, cemented by
half a century of prosperity and glory, compared with
which all the annals of the realm are dim and lacklustre.
Yet so weak intrinsically was the oligarchical faction
that their chief, despairing to obtain a monopoly of power
for his party, elaborately announced himself as the cham-
pion of his patrician order, and attempted to coalesce
with the liberalised leader of the Tories. Had that nego-
tiation led to the result which was originally intended
by those interested, the Riots of Paris would not have
occasioned the Reform of London.
It is a great delusion to believe that revolutions are
ever effected by a nation. It is a faction, and generally
a small one, that overthrows a dynasty or remodels a
constitution. A small party, stung by a long exile from
power, and desperate of success except by desperate
means, invariably has recourse to a coup d'etat. An
oligarchical party is necessarily not numerous. Its
1836] OKIGIN OF THE KEFOKM BILL 335
members in general attempt, by noble lineage or vast
possessions, to compensate for their poverty of numbers.
The Whigs, in 1830, found themselves by accident in
place, but under very peculiar circumstances. They were
in place but not in power. In each estate of the realm a
majority was arrayed against them. An appeal to the
Commons of England, that constituency which, in its
elements, had undergone no alteration since the time of
Elizabeth, either by the influence of the legislature or the
action of time — that constituency which had elected
Pym, and Selden, and Hampden, as well as Somers,
Walpole, and Pulteney — an appeal to this constituency,
it was generally acknowledged, would be fatal to the
Whigs, and therefore they determined to reconstruct it.
This is the origin of the recent parliamentary reform : the
Whigs, in place without being in power, resolved as
usual upon a coup d'etat, and looked about for a stalking-
horse. In general the difficult task had devolved upon
them of having to accomplish their concealed purpose
while apparently achieving some public object. Thus
they had carried the Septennial Act on the plea of pre-
serving England from popery, though their real object
was to prolong the existence of the first House of Commons
in which they could command a majority.
But in the present instance they became sincerely
parliamentar}^ reformers, for by parliamentary reform
they could alone subsist; and all their art was dedicated
so to contrive, that in this reformation their own interest
should secure an irresistible predominance.
But how was an oligarchical party to predominate
in popular elections ? Here was the difficulty. The
Whigs had no resources from their own limited ranks to
feed the muster of the popular levies. They were obliged
to look about for allies wherewith to form their new
popular estate. Any estate of the Commons modelled
on any equitable principle, either of property or popu-
lation, must have been fatal to the Whigs ; they, therefore,
very dexterously adopted a small minority of the nation,
336 THE SPIRIT OF WHIQGISM [1836
consisting of the sectarians, and, inaugurating them as
the people with a vast and bewildering train of hocus-
pocus ceremonies, invested the Dissenters with political
power. By this coup d'etat they managed the House of
Commons, and having at length obtained a position, they
have from that moment laid siege to the House of Lords,
with the intention of reducing that great institution and
making it surrender at discretion. This is the exact
state of English politics during the last five years. The
Whigs have been at war with the English constitution.
First of all they captured the King ; then they vanquished
the House of Commons; now they have laid siege to the
House of Lords. But here the fallacy of their grand
scheme of political mystification begins to develop itself.
Had, indeed, their new constituency, as they have long
impudently pretended, indeed been " the people," a
struggle between such a body and the House of Lords
would have been brief but final. The absurdity of sup-
posing that a chamber of two or three hundred individuals
could set up their absolute will and pleasure against
the decrees of a legislative assembly chosen by a whole
nation, is so glaring that the Whigs and their scribes
might reasonably suspect that in making such allegations
they were assuredly proving too much. But as " the
people " of the Whigs is in fact a number of Englishmen
not exceeding in amount the population of a third-rate
city, the English nation is not of opinion that this arro-
gant and vaunting moiety of a class privileged for the
common good, swollen though it may be by some jobbing
Scots and rebel Irish, shall pass off their petty and selfish
schemes of personal aggrandisement as the will of a great
people, as mindful of its duty to its posterity as it is
grateful for the labours of its ancestors. The English
nation, therefore, rallies for rescue from the degrading
plots of a profligate oligarchy, a barbarising sectarianism,
and a boroughmongering Papacy round their hereditary
leaders — the Peers. The House of Lords, therefore, at
this moment represents everything in the realm except
1836] AN OLIGAKCHICAL EEPUBLIC 337
the Whig oligarchs, their tools — the Dissenters, and their
masters — the Irish priests. In the meantime the Whigs
bawl aloud that there is a " collision " ! It is true there
is a collision; but it is not a collision between the Lords
and the People, but between the Ministers and the Con-
stitution.
CHAPTER III
THE REPUBLIC OF THE WHIGS
IT may be as well to remind the English nation that a
revolutionary party is not necessarily a liberal one, and
that a republic is not indispensably a democracy. Such is
the disposition of property in England that, were a
republic to be established here to-morrow, it would
partake rather of the oligarchical than of the aristocratic
character. We should be surprised to find in how few
families the power of the State was concentrated. And
although the framers of the new commonwealth would be
too crafty to base it on any avowed and ostensible prin-
ciple of exclusion, but on the contrary would in all prob-
ability ostentatiously inaugurate the novel constitution
by virtue of some abstract plea about as definite and as
prodigal of practical effects as the Rights of Man or the
Sovereignty of the People ; nevertheless I should be aston-
ished were we not to find that the great mass of the
nation, as far as any share in the conduct of public affairs
was concerned, were as completely shut out from the
fruition and exercise of power as under that Venetian
polity which has ever been the secret object of Whig
envy and Whig admiration. The Church, under such
circumstances, would probably have again been plun-
dered, and therefore the discharge of ecclesiastical duties
might be spared to the nation; but the people would
assuredly be practically excluded from its services, which
would swarm with the relations and connections of the
senatorial class; for, whether this country be governed
338 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
only by the House, of Commons, or only by the House
of Lords, the elements of the single chamber will not
materially differ; and although in the event of the
triumph of the Commons, the ceremony of periodical
election may be retained (and we should not forget that
the Long Parliament soon spared us that unnecessary
form), the selected members will form a Senate as irre-
sponsible as any House of Parliament whose anomalous
constitution may now be the object of Whig sneers or
Radical anathemas.
The rights and liberties of a nation can only be pre-
served by institutions. It is not the spread of knowledge
or the march of intellect that will be found sufficient
sureties for the public welfare in the crisis of a country's
freedom. Our interest taints our intelligence, our pas-
sions paralyse our reason. Knowledge and capacity are
too often the willing tools of a powerful faction or a dex-
terous adventurer. Life is short, man is imaginative; our
means are limited, our passions high.
In seasons of great popular excitement, gold and glory
offer strong temptations to needy ability. The dema-
gogues throughout a country, the orators of town-councils
and vestries, and the lecturers of mechanics' institutes,
present, doubtless in most cases unconsciously, the ready
and fit machinery for the party or the individual that
aspires to establish a tyranny. Duly graduating in cor-
ruption, the leaders of the mob become the oppressors
of the people. Cultivation of intellect and diffusion of
knowledge may make the English nation more sensible
of the benefits of their social system, and better qualified
to discharge the duties with which their institutions
have invested them, but they will never render them
competent to preserve their liberties without the aid of
those institutions. Let us for a moment endeavour to
fancy Whiggism in a state of rampant predominance ; let
us try to contemplate England enjoying all those ad-
vantages which our present rulers have not yet granted
us, and some of which they have as yet only ventured
1836] THEEATENED CHANGES 339
to promise by innuendo. Let us suppose our ancient
monarchy abolished, our independent hierarchy reduced
to a stipendiary sect, the gentlemen of England deprived
of their magisterial functions, and metropolitan prefects
and sub-prefects established in the counties and principal
towns, commanding a vigorous and vigilant police, and
backed by an army under the immediate orders of a
single House of Parliament. Why, these are threatened
changes — ay, and not one of them that may not be
brought about to-morrow, under the plea of the " spirit
of the age " or " county reform " or " cheap govern-
ment." But where then will be the liberties of England ?
Who will dare disobey London ? the enlightened and re-
formed metropolis ! And can we think, if any bold
Squire, in whom some of the old blood might still chance
to linger, were to dare to murmur against this grinding
tyranny, or appeal to the spirit of those neighbours whose
predecessors his ancestors had protected, can we flatter
ourselves that there would not be judges in Westminster
Hall prepared and prompt to inflict on him all the pains
and penalties, the dungeon, the fine, the sequestration,
which such a troublesome Anti-Reformer would clearly
deserve ? Can we flatter ourselves that a Parliamentary
Star Chamber and a Parliamentary High Commission
Court would not be in the background to supply all the
deficiencies of the laws of England ? When these merry
times arrive — the times of extraordinary tribunals and
extraordinary taxes — and, if we proceed in our present
course, they are much nearer than we imagine — the
phrase " Anti-Reformer " will serve as well as that of
" Malignant," and be as valid a plea as the former title
for harassing and plundering all those who venture to
wince under the crowning mercies of centralisation.
Behold the Republic of the Whigs ! Behold the only
Republic that can be established in England except by
force ! And who can doubt the swift and stern termina-
tion of institutions introduced by so unnatural and
irrational a process. I would address myself to the
340 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
English Radicals. . I do not mean those fine gentlemen
or those vulgar adventurers, who, in this age of quackery,
may sail into Parliament by hoisting for the nonce the
false colours of the Movement; but I mean that honest
and considerable party, too considerable, I fear, for their
happiness and the safety of the State — who have a definite
object which they distinctly avow — I mean those thought-
ful and enthusiastic men who study their unstamped
press, and ponder over a millennium of operative amel-
ioration. Not merely that which is just, but that which
is also practicable, should be the aim of a sagacious poli-
tician. Let the Radicals well consider whether, in
attempting to achieve their avowed object, they are not,
in fact, only assisting the secret views of a party whose
scheme is infinitely more adverse to their own than the
existing system, whose genius I believe they entirely
misapprehend. The Monarchy of the Tories is more
democratic than the Republic of the Whigs. It appeals
with a keener sympathy to the passions of the millions ;
it studies their interests with a more comprehensive
solicitude. Admitting for a moment that I have mis-
taken the genius of the English constitution, what chance,
if our institutions be overthrown, is there of substituting
in their stead a more popular polity ? This hazard, both
for their own happiness and the honour of their country,
the English Radicals are bound to calculate nicely. If
they do not, they will find themselves, too late, the tools
of a selfish faction or the slaves of a stern usurper.
CHAPTER IV
THE ESTATES OF THE BEALM
A CHAPTER on the English constitution is a natural
episode in the spirit of Whiggism. There is this connec-
tion between the subjects — that the spirit of Whiggism is
hostile to the English constitution. No political institu-
1836] LOKD JOHN RUSSELL'S ERROR 341
tions ever yet flourished which have been more the topic
of discussion among writers of all countries and all parties
than our famous establishment of " King, Lords, and
Commons"; and no institutions ever yet flourished, of
which the character has been more misrepresented and
more misconceived. One fact alone will illustrate the
profound ignorance and the perplexed ideas subsisting on
this point. The present Whig leader of the House of
Commons, a member of a family who pique themselves on
their constitutional reputation, an author who has even
written an elaborate treatise on our polity, in one of his
speeches, delivered only so late as the last session of Parlia-
ment, declared his desire and determination to uphold the
present settlement of the " three estates of the realm,
viz. — King, Lords, and Commons." Now, His Gracious
Majesty is no more an estate of the realm than Lord John
Russell himself. The three estates of the realm are the
estate of the Lords Spiritual, the estate of the Lords Tem-
poral, and the estate of the Commons. An estate is a popu-
lar class established into a political order. It is a section
of the nation invested for the public and common good
with certain powers and privileges. Lord John Russell
first writes upon the English constitution, and then
reforms it, and yet, even at this moment, is absolutely
ignorant of what it consists. A political estate is a com-
plete and independent body. Now, all power that is
independent is necessarily irresponsible. The sovereign
is responsible because he is not an estate ; he is responsible
through his Ministers; he is responsible to the estates
and to them alone.
When the Whigs obtained power in 1830, they found
the three estates of the realm opposed to them, and the
Government, therefore, could not proceed. They resolved,
therefore, to remodel them. They declared that the
House of Commons was the House of the people, and
that the people were not properly represented. They
consequently enlarged the estate of the Commons; they
increased the number of that privileged order who appear
342 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
by their representatives in the Lower House of Parlia-
ment. They rendered the estate of the Commons more
powerful by this proceeding, because they rendered them
more numerous; but they did not render their represen-
tatives one jot more the representatives of the people.
Throwing the Commons of Ireland out of the question,
for we cannot speculate upon a political order so unsettled
that it has been thrice remodelled during the present
century, some 300,000 individuals sent up, at the last
general election, their representatives to Westminster.
Well, are these 300,000 persons the people of England ?
Grant that they are; grant that these members are
divided into two equal portions. Well, then, the people
of England consist of 150,000 persons. I know that
there are well- disposed persons that tremble at this
reasoning, because, although they admit its justice, they
allege it leads to universal suffrage. We must not show,
they assert, that the House of the people is not elected
by the people. I admit it; we must not show that the
House of the people is not elected by the people, but we
must show that the House of Commons is not the House
of the people, that it never was intended to be the House
of the people, and that, if it be admitted to be so by
courtesy, or become so in fact, it is all over with the
English constitution.
It is quite impossible that a whole people can be a
branch of a legislature. If a whole people have the power
of making laws, it is folly to suppose that they will allow
an assembly of 300 or 400 individuals, or a solitary being
on a throne, to thwart their sovereign will and pleasure.
But I deny that a people can govern itself. Self-govern-
ment is a contradiction in terms. Whatever form a
government may assume, power must be exercised by a
minority of numbers. I shall, perhaps, be reminded of
the ancient republics. I answer, that the ancient re-
publics were as aristocratic communities as any that
flourished in the Middle Ages. The Demos of Athens
was an oligarchy living upon slaves. There is a great
1836] FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION 343
slave population even in the United States, if a society
of yesterday is to illustrate an argument on our ancient
civilisation.
But it is useless to argue the question abstractedly.
The phrase " the people " is sheer nonsense. It is not
a political term. It is a phrase of natural history. A
people is a species; a civilised community is a nation.
Now, a nation is a work of art and a work of time. A
nation is gradually created by a variety of influences —
the influence of original organisation, of climate, soil,
religion, laws, customs, manners, extraordinary accidents
and incidents in their history, and the individual character
of their illustrious citizens. These influences create the
nation — these form the national mind, and produce in
the course of centuries a high degree of civilisation. If
you destroy the political institutions which these in-
fluences have called into force, and which are the machin-
ery by which they constantly act, you destroy the nation.
The nation, in a state of anarchy and dissolution, then
becomes a people; and after experiencing all the conse-
quent misery, like a company of bees spoiled of their
queen and rifled of their hive, they set to again and
establish themselves into a society.
Although all society is artificial, the most artificial
society in the world is unquestionably the English nation.
Our insular situation and our foreign empire, our immense
accumulated wealth and our industrious character, our
peculiar religious state, which secures alike orthodoxy
and toleration, our church and our sects, our agriculture
and our manufactures, our military services, our statute
law and supplementary equity, our adventurous com-
merce, landed tenure, and unprecedented system of credit,
form, among many others, such a variety of interests,
and apparently so conflicting, that I do not think even the
Abbe Sieves himself could devise a scheme by which this
nation could be absolutely and definitely represented.
The framers of the English constitution were fortu-
nately not of the school of Abbe Sieyes. Their first object
344 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
was to make us free; their next to keep us so. While,
therefore, they selected equality as the basis of their
social order, they took care to blend every man's ambition
with the perpetuity of the State. Unlike the levelling and
destructive equality of modern days, the ancient equality of
England elevates and creates. Learned in human nature,
the English constitution holds out privilege to every
subject as the inducement to do his duty. As it has secured
freedom, justice, and even property to the humblest of
the commonwealth, so, pursuing the same system of
privileges, it has confided the legislature of the realm to
two orders of the subjects — orders, however, in which
every English citizen may be constitutionally enrolled —
the Lords and the Commons. The two estates of the
Peers are personally summoned to meet in their chamber :
the more extensive and single estate of the Commons
meets by its representatives. Both are political orders,
complete in their character, independent in their authority,
legally irresponsible for the exercise of their power. But
they are the trustees of the nation, not its masters; and
there is a High Court of Chancery in the public opinion
of the nation at large, which exercises a vigilant control
over these privileged classes of the community, and to
which they are equitably and morally amenable. Esti-
mating, therefore, the moral responsibility of our political
estates, it may f airly be maintained that, instead of being
irresponsible, the responsiblity of the Lords exceeds that
of the Commons. The House of Commons itself not
being an estate of the realm, but only the representatives
of an estate, owes to the nation a responsibility neither
legal nor moral. The House of Commons is responsible
only to that privileged order who are its constituents.
Between the Lords and the Commons themselves there is
this prime difference — that the Lords are known, and seen,
and marked; the Commons are unknown, invisible, and
unobserved. The Lords meet in a particular spot; the
Commons are scattered over the kingdom. The eye of
the nation rests upon the Lords, few in number, and
1836] TWO PROPOSITIONS 345
notable in position; the eye of the nation wanders in vain
for the Commons, far more numerous, but far less remark-
able. As a substitute the nation appeals to the House
of Commons, but sometimes appeals in vain; for if the
majority of the Commons choose to support their repre-
sentatives in a course of conduct adverse to the opinion
of the nation, the House of Commons will set the nation
at defiance. They have done so once; may they never
repeat that destructive career ! Such are our two Houses
of Parliament — the most illustrious assemblies since the
Roman Senate and Grecian Areopagus ; neither of them is
the " House of the People," but both alike represent the
"Nation."1
CHAPTER V
A DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION
THERE are two propositions, which, however at the first
glance they may appear to contradict the popular opinions
of the day, are nevertheless, as I believe, just and true.
And they are these : —
First. That there is no probability of ever establishing
a more democratic form of government than the present
English constitution.
Second. That the recent political changes of the
Whigs are, in fact, a departure from the democratic spirit
of that constitution.
Whatever form a government may assume, its spirit
must be determined by the laws which regulate the
property of the country. You may have a Senate and
Consuls, you may have no hereditary titles, and you may
dub each householder or inhabitant a citizen; but if the
spirit of your laws preserves masses of property in a
particular class, the government of the country will
1 The argument of this chapter, and indeed the language, may
be found in the Morning Post articles (Chapters V., VI., XII.),
and in the " Vindication " (Chapter XXIII.).
23
346 THE SPIKIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
follow the disposition of the property. So also you may
have an apparent despotism without any formal popular
control, and with no aristocracy, either natural or arti-
ficial, and the spirit of the government may nevertheless
be republican. Thus the ancient polity of Rome, in its
best days, was an aristocracy, and the government of
Constantinople is the nearest approach to a democracy
on a great scale, and maintained during a great period,
that history offers. The constitution of France during
the last half century has been fast approaching that of
the Turks. The barbarous Jacobins blended modern
equality with the refined civilisation of ancient France;
the barbarous Ottomans blended their equality with the
refined civilisation of ancient Rome. Paris secured to
the Jacobins those luxuries that their system never could
have produced : Byzantium served the same purpose .to
the Turks. Both the French and their turbaned proto-
types commenced their system with popular enthusiasm,
and terminated it with general subjection. Napoleon and
Louis Philippe are playing the same part as the Soleimans
and the Mahmouds. The Chambers are but a second-
rate Divan; the Prefects but inferior Pachas: a solitary
being rules alike in the Seraglio and the Tuileries, and the
whole nation bows to his despotism on condition that they
have no other master save himself.
The disposition of property hi England throws the
government of the country into the hands of its natural
aristocracy. I do not believe that any scheme of the
suffrage, or any method of election, could divert that
power into other quarters. It is the necessary conse-
quence of our present social state. I believe, the wider
the popular suffrage, the more powerful would be the
natural aristocracy. This seems to me an inevitable
consequence; but I admit this proposition on the clear
understanding that such an extension should be estab-
lished on a fair, and not a factious, basis. Here then,
arises the question of the ballot, into the merits of which
I shall take another opportunity of entering, recording
1836] INDUSTRY, LIBERTY AND ORDER 347
only now my opinion that, in the present arrangement
of the constituencies, even the ballot would favour the
power of the natural aristocracy, and that, if the ballot
were simultaneously introduced with a fair and not a
factious extension of the suffrage, it would produce no
difference whatever in the ultimate result.
Quitting, then, these considerations, let us arrive at
the important point. Is there any probability of a
different disposition of property in England — a disposition
of property which, by producing a very general similarity
of condition, would throw the government of the country
into the hands of any individuals whom the popular
esteem or fancy might select ?
It appears to me that this question can only be decided
by ascertaining the genius of the English nation. What
is the prime characteristic of the English mind ? I appre-
hend I may safely decide upon its being industry. Taking
a general but not a superficial survey of the English
character since the Reformation, a thousand circum-
stances convince me that the salient point in our national
psychology is the passion for accumulating wealth,
of which industry is the instrument. We value our
freedom principally because it leaves us unrestricted in
our pursuits; and that reverence for law and all that is
established, which also eminently distinguishes the English
nation, is occasioned by the conviction that, next to liberty,
order is the most efficacious assistant of industry.
And thus we see that those great revolutions which
must occur in the history of all nations, when they happen
here produce no permanent effects upon our social state.
Our revolutions are brought about by the passions of
creative minds taking advantage, for their own aggrandise-
ment, of peculiar circumstances in our national progress.
They are never called for by the great body of the nation.
Churches are plundered, long rebellions maintained,
dynasties changed, parliaments abolished; but when the
storm is passed, the features of the social landscape remain
unimpaired ; there are no traces of the hurricane, the
348 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
earthquake, or the volcano; it has been but a tumult of
the atmosphere, that has neither toppled down our old
spires and palaces nor swallowed up our cities and seats
of learning, nor blasted our ancient woods, nor swept
away our ports and harbours. The English nation ever
recurs to its ancient institutions — the institutions that
have alike secured freedom and order; and after all their
ebullitions, we find them, when the sky is clear, again at
work, and toiling on at their eternal task of accumulation.
There is this difference between the revolutions of Eng-
land and the revolutions of the Continent — the European
revolution is a struggle against privilege; an English
revolution is a struggle for it. If a new class rises in the
State, it becomes uneasy to take its place in the natural
aristocracy of the land: a desperate faction or a wily
leader takes advantage of this desire, and a revolution is
the consequence. Thus the Whigs in the present day
have risen to power on the shoulders of the manufacturing
interest. To secure themselves in their posts, the Whigs
have given the new interest an undue preponderance;
but the new interest, having obtained its object, is content.
The manufacturer, like every other Englishman, is as
aristocratic as the landlord. The manufacturer begins to
lack in movement. Under W^alpole the Whigs played
the same game with the commercial interest; a century
has passed, and the commercial interest are all as devoted
to the constitution as the manufacturers soon will be.
Having no genuine party, the Whigs seek for succour
from the Irish papists; Lord John Russell, however, is
only imitating Pym under the same circumstances. In
1640, when the English movement was satisfied, and the
constitutional party, headed by such men as Falkland
and Hyde, were about to attain power, Pym and his
friends, in despair at their declining influence and the
close divisions in their once unanimous Parliament, fled
to the Scotch Covenanters, and entered into " a close
compact " for the destruction of the Church of England
as the price of their assistance. So events repeat them-
1836] PROPERTY AND WEALTH 349
selves ; but if the study of history is really to profit us, the
nation at the present day will take care that the same
results do not always occur from the same events.
When passions have a little subsided, the industrious
ten-pounder, who has struggled into the privileged order
of the Commons, proud of having obtained the first step
of aristocracy, will be the last man to assist in destroying
the other gradations of the scale which he or his posterity
may yet ascend; the new member of a manufacturing
district has his eye already upon a neighbouring park,
avails himself of his political position to become a county
magistrate, meditates upon a baronetcy, and dreams of a
coroneted descendant.
The nation that esteems wealth as the great object of
existence will submit to no laws that do not secure the
enjoyment of wealth. Now, we deprive wealth of its
greatest source of enjoyment, as well as of its best security,
if we deprive it of power. The English nation, therefore,
insists that property shall be the qualification for power,
and the whole scope of its laws and customs is to promote
and favour the accumulation of wealth and the perpetua-
tion of property. We cannot alter, therefore, the dis-
position of property in this country without we change
the national character. Far from the present age being
hostile to the supremacy of property, there has been no
period of our history where property has been more
esteemed, because there has been no period when the
nation has been so industrious.
Believing, therefore, that no change will occur in the
disposition of property in this country, I cannot com-
prehend how our government can become more demo-
cratic. The consequence of our wealth is an aristocratic
constitution ; the consequence of our love of liberty is an
aristocratic constitution founded on an equality of civil
rights. And who can deny that an aristocratic constitu-
tion resting on such a basis, where the legislative, and
even the executive office may be obtained by every
subject of the realm, is, in fact, a noble democracy ? The
350 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
English constitution, faithfully representing the national
character, secures to all the enjoyment of property and the
delights of freedom. Its honours are a perpetual reward of
industry; every Englishman is toiling to obtain them;
and this is the constitution to which every Englishman
will always be devoted, except he is a Whig.
In the next chapter I shall discuss the second proposi-
tion.
CHAPTER VI
RECENT POLITICAL CHANGES
THE Tories assert that the whole property of the country
is on their side; and the Whigs, wringing their hands
over lost elections and bellowing about "intimidation,"
seem to confess the soft impeachment. Their prime
organ also assures us that every man with £500 per
annum is opposed to them. Yet the Whig-Radical
writers have recently published, by way of consolation
to their penniless proselytes, a list of some twenty Dukes
and Marquises, who, they assure us, are devoted to
" Liberal " principles, and whose revenues, in a paroxysm
of economical rhodomontade, they assert, could buy up
the whole income of the rest of the hereditary Peerage.
The Whig-Radical writers seem puzzled to reconcile this
anomalous circumstance with the indisputably forlorn
finances of their faction in general. Now, this little
tract on the " Spirit of Whiggism " may perhaps throw
some light upon this perplexing state of affairs. For
myself, I see in it only a fresh illustration of the principles
which I have demonstrated, from the whole current of
our history, to form the basis of Whig policy. This union
of oligarchical wealth and mob poverty is the very essence
of the " Spirit of Whiggism."
The English constitution, which, from the tithing-man
to the Peer of Parliament, has thrown the whole govern-
ment of the country into the hands of those who are
1836] ASPIRING OLIGARCHS 351
qualified by property to perform the duties of their
respective offices, has secured that diffused and general
freedom, without which the national industry would
neither have its fair play nor its just reward, by a variety
of institutions, which, while they prevent those who have
no property from invading the social commonwealth, in
whose classes every industrious citizen has a right to
register himself, offer also an equally powerful check to
the ambitious fancies of those great families, over whose
liberal principles and huge incomes the Whig-Radical
writers gloat with the self-complacency of lackeys at the
equipages and establishments of their masters. There is
ever an union in a perverted sense between those who are
beneath power and those who wish to be above it; and
oligarchies and despotisms are usually established by the
agency of a deluded multitude. The Crown, with its con-
stitutional influence over the military services ; a Parlia-
ment of two houses, watching each other's proceedings
with constitutional jealousy; an independent hierarchy,
and, not least, an independent magistracy, are serious
obstacles in the progressive establishment of that scheme
of government which a small knot of great families, these
Dukes and Marquises, whose revenues, according to the
Government organ, could buy up the income of the whole
peerage, naturally wish to introduce. We find, therefore,
throughout the whole period of our more modern history, a
powerful section of the great nobles ever at war with the
national institutions; checking the Crown; attacking the
independence of that House of Parliament in which they
happen to be in a minority, no matter which ; patronising
sects to reduce the influence of the Church ; and playing
town against country to overcome the authority of the
gentry.
It is evident that these aspiring oligarchs, as a party,
can have little essential strength; they can count upon
nothing but their mere retainers . To secure the triumph of
their cause, therefore, they are forced to manoeuvre with
a pretext, and while they aim at oligarchical rule, they
352 THE SPIKIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
apparently advocate popular rights. They hold out,
consequently, an inducement to all the uneasy portion
of the nation to enlist under their standard; they play
their discontented minority against the prosperous
majority, and, dubbing their partisans "the people,"
they flatter themselves that their projects are irresistible.
The attack is unexpected, brisk, and dashing, well
matured, dexterously mystified. Before the nation is
roused to its danger, the oligarchical object is often
obtained; and then the oligarchy, entrenched in power,
count upon the nation to defend them from their original
and revolutionary allies. If they succeed, a dynasty is
changed, or a Parliament reformed, and the movement
is stopped; if the Tories or the Conservatives cannot
arrest the fatal career which the Whigs have originally
impelled, then away go the national institutions; the
crown falls from the King's brow; the crosier is snapped
in twain; one House of Parliament is sure to disappear,
and the gentlemen of England, dexterously dubbed
Malignants, or Anti-Reformers, or any other phrase in
fashion, the dregs of the nation, sequester their estates
and install themselves in their halls; and "liberal prin-
ciples " having thus gloriously triumphed, after a due
course of plunder, bloodshed, imprisonment, and ignoble
tryanny, the people of England, sighing once more to be
the English nation, secure order by submitting to a despot,
and in time, when they have got rid of their despot, com-
bine their ancient freedom with their newly-regained
security by re-establishing the English constitution.
The Whigs of the present day have made their assault
upon the nation with their usual spirit. They have
already succeeded in controlling the sovereign and in
remodelling the House of Commons. They have menaced
the House of Lords, violently assailed the Church, and
reconstructed the Corporations. I shall take the two
most comprehensive measures which they have suc-
ceeded in carrying, and which at the time certainly
were popular, and apparently of a very democratic
1836] EFFECT OF WHIG REFORMS 353
character — their reform of the House of Commons, and
their reconstruction of the municipal corporations. Let us
see whether these great measures have, in fact, increased
the democratic character of our constitution or not —
whether they veil an oligarchical project, or are, in fact,
popular concessions inevitably offered by the Whigs in
their oligarchical career.
The result of the Whig remodelling of the order of the
Commons has been this — that it has placed the nomina-
tion of the Government in the hands of the popish priest-
hood. Is that a great advance of public intelligence and
popular liberty ? Are the parliamentary nominees of
M'Hale and Keogh more germane to the feelings of the
English nation, more adapted to represent their interests,
than the parliamentary nominees of a Howard or a
Percy ? This papist majority, again, is the superstruc-
ture of a basis formed by some Scotch Presbyterians and
some English Dissenters, in general returned by the small
constituencies of small towns — classes whose number and
influence, intelligence and wealth, have been grossly
exaggerated for factious purposes, but classes avowedly
opposed to the maintenance of the English constitution.
I do not see that the cause of popular power has much
risen, even with the addition of this leaven. If the
suffrages of the Commons of England were polled together,
the hustings-books of the last general election will prove
that a very considerable majority of their numbers is
opposed to the present Government, and that therefore,
under this new democratic scheme, this great body of
the nation are, by some hocus-pocus tactics or other,
obliged to submit to the minority. The truth is, that the
new constituency has been so arranged that an unnatural
preponderance has been given to a small class, and one
hostile to the interests of the great body. Is this more
democratic ? The apparent majority in the House of
Commons is produced by a minority of the Commons
themselves ; so that a small and favoured class command
a majority in the House of Commons, and the sway of
354 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
the administration, as far as that House is concerned, is
regulated by a smaller number of individuals than those
who governed it previous to its reform.
But this is not the whole evil : this new class, with its
unnatural preponderance, is a class hostile to the institu-
tions of the country, hostile to the union of Church and
State, hostile to the House of Lords, to the constitutional
power of the Crown, to the existing system of provincial
judicature. It is, therefore, a class fit and willing to
support the Whigs in their favourite scheme of centralisa-
tion, without which the Whigs can never long maintain
themselves in power. Now, centralisation is the death-
blow of public freedom; it is the citadel of the oligarchs
from which, if once erected, it will be impossible to dislodge
them.
But can that party be aiming at centralised govern-
ment which has reformed the municipal corporations ?
We will see. The reform of the municipal corporations
of England is a covert attack on the authority of the
English gentry — that great body which perhaps forms the
most substantial existing obstacle to the perpetuation of
Whiggism in power. By this apparently democratic Act
the county magistrate is driven from the towns where he
before exercised a just influence, while an elective magis-
trate from the towns jostles him on the bench at quarter
sessions, and presents in his peculiar position an anomaly
in the constitution of the bench, flattering to the passions,
however fatal to the interests, of the giddy million. Here
is a lever to raise the question of county reform when-
ever an obstinate shire may venture to elect a representa-
tive in Parliament hostile to the liberal oligarchs. Let
us admit, for the moment, that the Whigs ultimately
succeed in subverting the ancient and hereditary power
of the English gentry. Will the municipal corporations
substitute themselves as an equivalent check on a cen-
tralising Government ? Whence springs their influence ?
Prom property ? Not half a dozen have estates. Their
influence springs from the factitious power with which the
1836] CONCLUSIONS 355
reforming Government has invested them, and of which
the same Government will deprive them in a session,
the moment they cease to be corresponding committees
of the reforming majority in the House of Commons.
They will either be swept away altogether, or their func-
tions will be limited to raising the local taxes which will
discharge their expenses of the detachment of the metro-
politan police, or the local judge or governor, whom
Downing Street may send down to preside over their
constituents. With one or two exceptions, the English
corporations do not possess more substantial and durable
elements of power than the municipalities of France.
What check are they on Paris ? These corporations have
neither prescription in their favour, nor property. Their
influence is maintained neither by tradition nor sub-
stance. They have no indirect authority over the minds
of their townsmen; they have only their modish charters
to appeal to, and the newly engrossed letter of the law.
They have no great endowments of whose public benefits
they are the official distributors; they do not stand on
the vantage-ground on which we recognise the trustees
of the public interests; they neither administer to the
soul nor the body ; they neither feed the poor nor educate
the young ; they have no hold on the national mind ; they
have not sprung from the national character; they were
born by faction, and they will live by faction. Such
bodies must speedily become corrupt ; they will ultimately
be found dangerous instruments in the hands of a faction.
The members of the country corporations will play the
game of a London party, to secure their factitious local
importance and obtain the consequent results of their
opportune services.
I think I have now established the two propositions
with which I commenced my last chapter : and I will
close this concluding one of the " Spirit of Whiggism "
withjj|their recapitulation, and the inferences which I
draw from them. If there be slight probability of ever
establishing in this country a more democratic govern-
356 THE SPIEIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
ment than the English constitution, it will be as well,
I conceive, for those who love their rights to main-
tain that constitution; and if the recent measures of
the Whigs, however plausible their first aspect, have, in
fact, been a departure from the democratic character
of that constitution, it will be as well for the English
nation to oppose, with all their heart, and all then- soul,
and all their strength, the machinations of the Whigs
and the " Spirit of Whiggism."
1837-41] OPEN LETTEKS 357
OPEN LETTERS
[THE OPEN LETTERS represent a selection from Disraeli's
fugitive contributions to the Times. Among them are
two Runnymede Letters, written after the publication
of the others in book form, and never since reprinted.
The Letters signed "Lselius " are in similar vein. Probably
most interest attaches to that " To the Queen," written
at Lord Lyndhurst's request, in support of Sir Robert
Peel in his contention with Queen Victoria over the Ladies
of the Bedchamber. It is a curious fact that sixty years
later the Queen said, " I was very young then, and perhaps
I should act differently if it was all to be done again ;"
while Disraeli, on the other hand, veered round to the
view that Sir Robert had made an error in his treatment
of the young Sovereign. The " Letter to the Queen "
caused a stir at the time, and was in some quarters
attributed to Brougham. Thus Disraeli, writing to his
sister : 1
" B. denies the letter to the Queen. Croker, ostensibly
writing to him on some literary point, but really to ex-
tract some opinion from him on the subject of the letter,
put in a postscript :
' ' Have you seen the Letter to the Queen ? They give it to you.
" Brougham answered, in a postscript also:
" / have seen the Letter to the Queen. It was lent to me."
The Atticus Letter to the Duke of Wellington has also
a value of its own. In 1852 it fell to Disraeli, in his first
period of office, to deliver as a funeral oration in the
House of Commons a fuller estimate of the Great Duke.
The manuscript from which the oration was delivered
was handed to the Press, and is now to be seen in the
Manuscript Room of the British Museum.]
1 Additional Manuscripts, British Museum.
358 OPEN LETTERS [1837
To His EXCELLENCY THE LORD LIEUTENANT OF
IRELAND l
MY LORD, — Allow me to congratulate your Excellency,
to use the revolutionary jargon of the day, " on carrying
out " by so unforeseen a method the great measure of
Roman Catholic Emancipation. It was a bright idea,
that of emptying the gaols of the Barataria2 over whose
destinies your Excellency so shrewdly presides; and it
is interesting to witness the philosophical civilisation of
the nineteenth century, in triumphant defiance of ancient
prejudice, communicating with so much effect the rude
yet prophetic conceptions of a Jack Cade. Fortunate
island, that an O'Connell supplies with justice, and a
Mulgrave with mercy; the severer quality typified by a
murdered Protestant, the gentler attribute only by the
release of a Papist convict.
Your Excellency has by this time doubtless digested
the Parliamentary bulletin of the grand encounter of last
week. The annals of political warfare do not record an
instance of a more arrogant attack, or of a defeat more
disastrous.
The recent debates are valuable for weightier reasons
than the illustrations they richly afford of your Lordship's
character, in itself, however, no uninteresting topic when
its spirit may affect the destinies of an empire. Vain,
volatile, and flimsy, headstrong without being courageous,
imperious rather than dignified, and restless rather than
energetic, but always theatrical, with a morbid love of
mob popularity and a maudlin flux of claptrap sensibility,
his anger a stage scowl, his courtesy a simper; every
glance directed to the lamps, every movement arranged
into an attitude ; now frowning on an Orange functionary,
1 Constantino Henry Phipps, Earl of Mulgrave, and afterwards
Marquis of Normanby, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ire-
land in 1835, and held the position until 1839. His administra-
tion was much criticised on account of his leniency to political
prisoners. 2 gancho Panza's island city.
1837] FATAL FOLLY 359
now releasing a criminal with a sympathetic sigh : behold
the fluttering and tinsel thing of shreds and patches,
the tawdry-property man, whom the discrimination of the
Whigs has selected at this crisis to wrestle with the
genius of the Papacy in its favourite stronghold.
It is not, however, because the recent debates have
furnished me with the traits with which I sketched your
Excellency's portrait, and the English nation with ex-
perience to appreciate its resemblance, that they are
principally valuable; these debates, my Lord, have
demonstrated to the satisfaction of every clear-headed
Briton the identity of the Irish Government and the
" National Association." In that case the Irish Govern-
ment cannot be in worse hands, nor Ireland under a sway
at the same time more disastrous and more dishonest;
and I much mistake the character of the English nation
if they will for a moment submit with humiliating patience
to a system which enables an impudent assembly of self-
delegated adventurers, pledged to the eradication of
every English institution and every English feeling, to
meet under the shadow of the Viceregal castle, and,
arrogating to themselves a title so comprehensive and
corporate, launch their destructive decrees with the
avowed or implied ratification of the King's repre-
sentative.
Well said the eloquent and patriotic Member for
Cumberland,1 on passing in review the terrible array of
your fatal folly, that the question of this mischievous
identity might be decided by a single instance — the
appointment of Mr. Pigot ! 2 It is in the bosom of the
rebel Association that the loyal Lord Lieutenant seeks
his confidential adviser. I also would observe that your
connection with a single individual is conclusive as to
this disgraceful union of the power of the Crown and
the plots of those who are conspiring against its dignity —
1 Sir James Graham.
2 David Richard Pigot, law adviser to the Lord Lieutenant
and subsequently Chief Baron of Exchequer in Ireland.
360 OPEN LETTERS [1837
this monstrous partnership of authority and insurrection.
I take the case of a man who is the avowed and acknow-
ledged founder of the " National Association." I listen
to him in that assembly venting the most revolutionary
doctrines and seditious menaces; I trace him afterwards
on a provincial tour of treason, fresh from these halls of
initiative outrage, stirring up the multitude even to mas-
sacre in language unparalleled for its spirit of profligate
persecution. I hear of this man, at a blasphemous ban-
quet of his followers still calling for blood, announced
by a Bishop of his Church with sacerdotal unction as the
messenger of the Divinity; I am informed that the gentry
of the county where he made these terrific appeals assem-
bled together to invoke your protection, as the King's
representative, against the consequence of his sanguinary
machinations. And what do you do ? By what means
does your Excellency testify your disapprobation of his
career of infamous tumult ? By an invitation to dinner.
Notwithstanding all that had occurred, and the strongly
expressed disapprobation of your Sovereign of this man
ever appearing at your table, he is nevertheless your
cherished guest.1 Why, courtesy to this man is no
longer a question of party politics; it is a question of
civilisation. After such conduct on your part, who can
doubt your sanction of the system he had been pursuing ?
I, for one, cannot hesitate as to the perfect identity of your
government and the will of this man, even if I had not
witnessed him the other night in the House of Commons,
at the conclusion of your delegated defiance, grasp the
trembling palm of your noble champion with that subtle
and savage paw that can alike rifle the pocket of a
Raphael 2 or hurl a dead dog into the grave of a Kavanagh.
Observe the gradations of official sympathy with Irish
treason. The Association, repudiated by Lord Melbourne,
1 The King, in a letter to Lord Melbourne, had protested
against O'Connell being received at the table of the Lord Lieu-
tenant.
2 A charge of misappropriation made against O'Connell by
Mr. Raphael, M.P. for CarJow, and disproved.
1837] KUNNYMEDE AND LOED MELBOURNE 361
is apologised for by Lord John Russell and justified by
Lord Morpeth. What, then, remains ? The Viceregal
panegyric. Lord Grey retired from the helm because he
detected that some of his colleagues had secretly carried
on a disgraceful intrigue with your Excellency's guest.
How will Lord Melbourne act now that he discovers that
the very association he denounced is, in fact, the govern-
ment of Ireland ? His Lordship is at least a man of
spirit. There is nothing base in his composition, though
much that is reckless. He might be induced to become
a desperate leader, but he will never submit to being made
the cat's-paw of his own followers. I believe that Lord
Melbourne will follow the example of Lord Grey; the lion
stalked oft' with majestic grandeur; the wolf may yet
effect his retreat with sullen dignity. The rapacious
band of modern Whigs must seek for a new leader in a
more ignoble beast of prey. But they need not despair,
my Lord. The Government need not break up. It has
at least my ardent aspirations for its continuance. After
all its transmutations, I wish it to assume its last phasis
of contempt. Your Excellency is now skilled in govern-
ment. Come, then, my Lord, and rule us ! Come and
insult our gentry and open our prisons ! Be the last
leader of the Reformed Parliament and the Reform
Ministry. Come, my Lord, and make revolution at length
ridiculous.
RUNNYMEDE.
February 11, 1837.
To LORD VISCOUNT MELBOURNE
MY LORD, — It has sometimes been my humble but
salutary office to attend your triumph, and remind you
in a whisper that you are mortal. Amid the blaze of
glory that at present surrounds you, it may be advisable
for me to resume this wholesome function, lest in the
intoxication of success your Lordship may for a moment
24
362 OPEN LETTERS [1837
forget that, although still a Minister, you are yet only a
man.1 I willingly admit, however, that the qualities
both of your Lordship and your colleagues are far from
being identical with those of ordinary mortals. If I
cannot venture to acknowledge them as supernatural, I
make your Lordship a present of a new word, the intro-
duction of which into our language the fact of your
admonition will amply authorise with our future lexi-
cographers. No one can deny that the abilities of your-
self and of your colleagues are subterhuman.
You and your partners appear to me at present to be
very much in the situation of a firm of speculative
country bankers who have been generously stimulating
the prosperity of their neighbourhood by a frank issue
of their peculiar currency. Whether Ireland required
justice, or Spain only freedom — whether the sectarists
were anxious to subvert the Establishment, or the
Papists merely to plunder it — they were sure of being
accommodated at your counter. But your notes are
now returned, and it seems you lack bullion; and ere
long it may be expected that you will figure in the
Gazette, resigning your seals and your salaries, as a bank-
rupt delivers up to his creditors his watch and his
purse.
When the Right Hon. Baronet the Member for Tarn-
worth,2 who in all probability will be the official assignee of
your abortive projects and your disastrous schemes,
recently seized the happy opportunity of criticising your
balance-sheet, it appears that his comments called a smile
to the serene visage of the noble Secretary for Foreign
Affairs. Our intimate relations with France, the triumph
of our countrymen in the Peninsula, and the profound
consideration which Russia seizes every occasion of
testifying for our flag, might justify the complacent
ebullition of this fortunate functionary. But why
4 "A Minister, but still a Man" (Pope's "Epistle to James
Craggs, Esq., Secretary of State ").
2 Sir Robert Peel.
1837] NATIONAL INTERESTS DISORDERED 363
should smiles be confined to my Lord Palmerston ?
Why should
" Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks, and wreathed smiles,"1
deck merely that debonair countenance ? Could not the
successful consciousness of his hereditary hostility to a
Church summon one simper to the pensive cheek of Lord
John ? Could not Mr. Rice screw his features into
hilarity ? He might have remembered the deputation
from Liverpool. Was the state of Manchester forgotten
by Mr. Thomson that he was so grave ? Or was the
reminiscence of his Indian majority by Sir John Hob-
house " too ponderous for a joke "? I think, my Lord,
if this scene had been performed in the Upper House,
your Colonial Secretary, the sleeping partner, by-the-by,
of your confederacy, might have laughed outright at
some Canadian vision. And you, my Lord, you were
wont once to be a hearty and jocose man enough: I
really think the merriment of Lord Melbourne at this
moment might rank with the fiddling of Nero.
The state of the realm is indeed unparalleled. Each
division of the national interests is in like disorder.
Commerce, manufactures, public credit, our colonial and
Continental relations — the same confusion pervades every
section of our policy. There is not a department that is
not in a condition of feeble tumult. You cannot rally,
you have nothing to fall back upon. Like your famous
General, you have no reserve. You are all in a state of
distraction, and all running away at the same time. We
have before this had unpopular, and feeble, and mis-
chievous Cabinets. One Minister has been accused of
sacrificing our foreign influence to our domestic repose,
another of preferring distant fame to internal prosperity.
One has been said to mismanage the colonies, another
suspected of unconstitutional designs upon India. A
successful expedition has been counterbalanced by an
improvident loan, or social order has been maintained
i "L* Allegro."
364 OPEN LETTERS [1837
at the cost of despotic enactments. Some department,
perhaps, of every Ministry has supplied the people with
a safety-valve of grumbling ; but your administration,
my Lord, is the first that has failed in every department of
the State, and covered every member of the Cabinet
with equal odium. It has failed in everything, both at
home and abroad. Beneath its malevolent genius our
glory has been sullied and our purses thinned ; our colonies
have rebelled, and our allies have deserted us; our
soldiers are runagates, and our merchants bankrupts.
Those who know you cannot easily be persuaded that
you have a serious design on the existence of the empire,
and some may even question whether you have a serious
design of any kind. You began in a careless vein, and you
will terminate in a tragical one. The country was
swinging itself very prosperously in its easy-chair, when,
half in mirth and half in mischief, you kicked over the
unconscious victim, and now, frightened out of your
wits, in a paroxysm of nervous desperation you are going
to hack and hew in detail, and add mutilation to murder.
But never mind, my Lord; Bobadil, though beaten,
was still a captain, and Lord Melbourne, in spite of all his
blunders, is still a Reformer. What though Russia cap-
tures our ships, and Englishmen are saved from Spanish
bayonets only by their heels, no one can deny that the
seals of the Foreign Office are entrusted to a sincere
Reformer. What though Ireland be ruled by the Romish
priesthood, is not our Home Secretary as ardent a
Reformer as M'Hale and Cantwell ? Let Canada boast
her Papineau, we have as tried a Reformer in our Glenelg.
And though we may be on the verge of national bank-
ruptcy, 'tis some consolation that a most trustworthy
Reformer presides over our Exchequer. For six years
the talismanic cry of reform has reconciled the English
nation to every vicissitude that can annoy or mortify
the fortunes and spirit of a people. Soothed by its lullaby,
we have endured domestic convulsion and foreign disgrace.
Your Lordship therefore is safe; for who for a moment
1839] LOKD J. EUSSELL AND REFORM 365
can suppose that the nation will so stultify itself as to
suspect, at the tenth hour, that there may be an indis-
soluble connection between Reform and ruin ?
RUNNYMEDE.
April 15, 1837.
To LORD JOHN RUSSELL
MY LORD, — -I have read your letter to your constitu-
ents.1 I like it. It lacks, perhaps, something of the
racy and epigrammatic vigour which characterised the
memorable epistle in defence of the corn laws. It is
somewhat too prodigal, perhaps, of images which are not
very novel and which are occasionally rather confused;
but it is thoughtful and determined, and worthy of one
who, from his lineage, ambition, and career, will occupy no
mean space in the future history of our country.
Your Lordship in this document, which will not easily
be forgotten, figures in a new, a strange, and an impor-
tant character. You appear as the great Conservative
Precursor, heralding the advent of a Tory Administra-
tion, and expounding the rationale of reaction.
Little more than eight years have elapsed since the
project of the Reform Act, but they are eight years replete
with events. Wise men compute time, not by the
almanacks, but their impressions ;2 and with reference to
political instruction the experience of eight such years is
worth the results of half a century of undisturbed
prescription.
It is only by this mode of estimating the progress of
time that I can philosophically account for the changes
in your Lordship's opinions, and for the revolution of your
political temper. The former champion of representa-
tion instead of nomination in the House of Commons has
1 "Letter to the electors of Stroud on the Principles of the
Reform Act." The letter ran through seven editions.
2 "Count them by sensation, and not by calendars/' wrote
Disraeli in " Sybil " of the race for the Derby in 1837, " and each
moment is a day, and the race a life."
366 OPEN LETTEES [1839
at length discovered, that we may have election without
representation; and the denouncer of the constitutional
decision of the House of Lords as "the whisper of a
faction " now delicately intimates to his astonished
followers that " the moral influence " of that assembly is
alike indisputable and irresistible, and that its members
are in general superior to the Reformed House in every
statesmanlike quality.
The necessity which compels the father of the Reform
Act to enter, only six years after its passing, into a defence
of that measure, leads me to reflect upon the nature of
parties under the new Parliamentary scheme, which is
threatened never to become old.
It is, perhaps, a fanciful theory of the physicians who
hold that man is born with the seeds of the disease which
terminates his life. Undoubtedly, however, these are the
exact circumstances which must inevitably attend the
birth of every " Movement " Administration. The causes
of their dissolution accompany their nativity. They have
attained power by agitation. Their success is at the same
time a precedent and an encouragement for continued
disturbance. The original innovators, having no inclina-
tion for further progress, take refuge in " finality."
Three parties then appear in the State — their original
opponents, who are conservative of institutions; them-
selves, who are administrative of institutions ; and their
new adversaries, who are aggressive against institutions.
The first party may count the nation in their ranks ; the
last may appeal successfully to the mob; but for the
middle party only remain the population of the offices —
those who enjoy and those who expect.
The result, as far as the Government is concerned, can-
not be doubtful. After having protracted the catastrophe
by every expedient consistent with their determination not
to make any substantial concession, they take refuge in
those conservative opinions of which your Lordship has
just developed the philosophy; and, retiring from public
life with the consolation they have enjoyed their fair share
1839] VIOLENT ALTEEATIVES 367
of official power, or, to use language sentimental, that
" they have had their dream," they gratify their spleen as
well as exemplify their patriotism by crushing the nascent
efforts of the party that has outbid them in popular
overtures, and surpassed them in popular favour.
The fate of the Whig party has indeed been hurried.
Truly the elements of the famous Reform Ministry seem
never to have been settled. After two years of initiatory
tumult, your first session of affairs was distinguished by
the sullen, yet significant, retirement of Lord Durham.
Twelve months more, and a Secretary of State, a First
Lord of the Admiralty, and two of their colleagues
abruptly quit your councils ; and before the public mind
has recovered from the uneasiness which such events
naturally occasion, a conspiracy explodes, and we are
startled by the overthrow of Lord Grey and the resigna-
tion of Lord Althorp. In a few months the vamped-up
Cabinet quits and returns to power. You throw over your
Lord Chancellor — you affect to justify the catastrophe.
But was Lord Glenelg an intriguer and traitor ? The
Whigs are said to be bitter opponents; for my part, I
should shrink from their friendship.
Eight members of the Reform Ministry betrayed by
their own party in eight years ! — on an average a victim for
every session. Yet, with all these violent alteratives, the
original disease has worked its irresistible course, and
after having immolated your Constitutional colleagues,
the picture is completed by your Lordship publishing, on
the same day, a loyal proclamation against the Chartists,1
and a Conservative manifesto against the Radicals. The
history of reform should be written in epigrams.
The march of events has indeed been rapid. It is only
five years ago since the staple subject of Whig journalism
was a jest against reaction. In another year the jest
became a controversy ; and now, only six years after the
passing of the Reform Act, the wealth and the irresistible
1 A proclamation in the London Gazette forbidding unlawful
assemblies for the purpose of drilling persons to the use of arms.
368 OPEN LETTERS [1839
power, the numbers and the high character, of the Tory
party are sketched by an individual no less celebrated and
no less free from any imputation of partiality than the
nobleman who commenced his literary career by defend-
ing close boroughs, and his political one by destroying
them.
Your Lordship will retire from public life with dignity,
for you have prepared the way for your great rival. He
has deserved this service, for he has been a generous
antagonist ; and if you adorn your solitude by writing the
memoirs of your administration — a task which you would
perform admirably — I have such confidence in that
nobility of sentiment which is inseparable from genius
that I do not doubt you will do justice to his consummate
abilities.
Far, however, is it from my desire that you should
relinquish the power which you are prepared to exercise
so much to the satisfaction of every lover of our institu-
tions. You really seem to me to be the fair ideal of a
Conservative statesman. They tell me that you are in
somewhat of a scrape at present about Jamaica. Trust
to your natural allies, the Tories, to extricate you from it.
Although not your friend, I am so much your admirer
that I will present you with a specific for this colonial
embroilment. 'Tis simple — take it. Let Lord Normanby
return to the first scene of his administrative talents.
With his peculiar practice of policy I should hardly think
there would be the present want of accommodation in the
Jamaica prisons.
LJELIUS.
May 4, 1839.
To THE QUEEN x
MADAM, — That freedom happily secured to us by the
settlement of your Eoyal race on the throne of this island
permits me to address your Majesty on an occasion inter-
1 This letter was written by Disraeli at Lord Lyndhurst's
request (see "Life of Disraeli," by W. F. Monypenny, vol. ii.,
p. 58). In "Sybil" (1845) Disraeli gave his more matured
1839] THE BEDCHAMBER INCIDENT 369
esting to your personal happiness, important to the for-
tunes of your realm.
The week that is now closing embraces the most critical
events in the life of the Queen of England. At its com-
mencement, your Majesty's Minister publicly and formally
announced that he no longer possessed the confidence of
your Parliament, and that he was unable to carry measures
which he believed to be indispensable to the service of the
State. Your Majesty accepted his tendered resignation,
and entrusted to the leader of the party opposed to him
the formation of another Ministry. It was well known
that your Majesty honoured your retiring Minister as
much by your personal regard as by your political con-
fidence; but your Majesty, with a dignified intelligence
worthy of your station, encouraged your new adviser by
a gracious and voluntary expression of the unlimited
confidence and the unrestricted authority which you ex-
tended to him.
Thus auspiciously Sir Robert Peel proceeded to form a
Government, and in twenty-four hours after receiving
your Majesty's commands to that effect he waited on
your Majesty with the announcement that he had achieved
your object. Then it was learned for the first time that
your Majesty would permit no change in the female offices
of the Royal Household, and, though your Majesty's late
Ministers had quitted your service, and were in all
probability about to oppose the policy of your new
councillors, that it was indispensable that their wives,
sisters, or daughters, should still be the constant com-
panions of the Sovereign. Under these circumstances
Sir Robert Peel felt himself bound to resign the task
opinion as follows: " One may be permitted to think that, under
all the circumstances, he" (Sir Robert Peel) "should have taken
office in 1839. His withdrawal seems to have been a mistake. . . .
It was unfortunate that one who, if any, should have occupied
the proud and national position of the leader of the Tory party,
the chief of the people and the champion of the Throne, should
have commenced his career as Minister under Victoria by an
unseemly contrariety to the personal wishes of the Queen."
370 OPEN LETTERS [1839
which he had been invited to accomplish; and your
kingdom is, consequently, still governed by a Ministry
which its leader in the House of Lords describes as not
possessing the confidence of the country — a confidence
which its leader in the House of Commons has just written
a pamphlet to prove it never can obtain.
Unquestionably, Madam, the most painful office of a
British Minister is the necessity imposed on him of par-
tially controlling the society of his Sovereign. But there
are certain combinations of courtly intimacy which, it is
obvious, cannot be tolerated without great public incon-
venience and embarrassment. The nation may be in
error, but it will with difficulty be convinced that a
Minister possesses the confidence of his Sovereign if the
family of his predecessor be retained in the Royal House-
hold, and are seen and heard of as the constant com-
panions of the Royal person. The public, unaware that
a Royal mind is schooled from infancy in habits of severe
self-control, will not be apt to comprehend how the secret
of the Cabinet can be constantly concealed from the com-
panion of the closet; and will be indignant, rather than
astonished, if occasionally the tactics of Opposition be
felicitously adapted to the concealed weaknesses of the
Government. Under such circumstances, the Minister,
if popular, is looked upon, not as the Minister of the
Crown, but as the Minister of the Parliament; and the
throne that had been hitherto esteemed as a high political
institution assumes the unfortunate aspect of a mere
courtly pageant.
I can easily conceive how a young and ingenuous
mind, full of innocence, and giving others credit for the
same singleness of purpose as animates herself, can,
without difficulty, reconcile the fulfilment of the duties
of even a royal station with the indulgence of the affec-
tions of the heart. Your Majesty looks upon the female
relatives of your Ministers as the mere companions of the
pleasures of your life, and doubtless these ladies compli-
ment your Majesty upon your just and discriminating
1839] THE ANXIETIES OF A SOVEKEIGN 371
appreciation of their pursuits and motives. I will even
myself at present give them credit for sincerity, and,
while their husbands and their fathers are sitting at your
council table, they perhaps are not aspiring enough to
conceive that they are formed for severer duties than to
glitter at the banquet and glide in the saloon.
But even Mistresses of the Robes and Ladies of the
Bedchamber, though angelic, are human. Let their
relatives quit office and be nightly arrayed in attempts to
destroy your Majesty's Government; let success to some
of these relatives in their party conflicts be a matter of
imperious necessity. Is the courtly child to repudiate
the faction of her father ? Is the wife in waiting expected
to feel no sympathy with the Parliamentary assault that
may bear its plunder to the exhausted coffers of a desperate
husband ?
But your Majesty has confidence in the strength of your
own character. You are convinced that the line of
demarcation between public duty and private affection
is broad and deep . On all that concerns the State, you are
assured that your lips and your heart will be for ever
closed to the circle in which you pass your life. Be it so.
I humbly presume to give your Majesty credit for all the
exalted virtues which become a throne. But where,
then, are the joys of companionship ? The Royal brow
is clouded, but the Royal lip must never explain its care.
The Queen is anxious, but the Lady in Waiting must not
share her restlessness or soothe her disquietude.
Madam, it cannot be. You are a Queen ; but you are a
human being and a woman. The irrepressible sigh will
burst forth some day, and you will meet a glance more
interesting because there is a captivating struggle to
suppress its sympathy. Wearied with public cares,
crossed, as necessarily you must sometimes be, the
peevish exclamation will have its way, and you yourself
will be startled at its ready echo. The line once passed,
progress is quick ; fascinating sympathy, long suppressed
indignation, promised succour; the tear, the tattle, the
372 OPEN LETTERS [1839
innuendo, the direct falsehood; in a moment they will
convince you you are a victim, and that they have heroes
in wait to rescue their Sovereign. Then come the Palace
conspiracy and the backstairs intrigue. You will find
yourself with the rapidity of enchantment the centre and
the puppet of a Camarilla, and Victoria, in the eyes of
that Europe which once bowed to her, and in the hearts
of those Englishmen who once yielded to her their devo-
tion, will be reduced to the level of Madrid and Lisbon.
And shall this be the destiny of that "fair virgin throned
in the west," who was to have been our second Elizabeth ?
— the mistress of an Empire more vast than that mighty
monarchy that attempted to crush Elizabeth with its
baffled Armadas ? Ah ! Madam, pause. Let not this
crisis of your reign be recorded by the historian with a
tear or a blush. The system which you are advised to
establish is one degrading to the Minister, one which must
be painful to the Monarch, one which may prove fatal to
the monarchy.1
L^LIUS.
May 11, 1839.
To LOUD MELBOURNE
MY LORD, — The world is perplexed about your pur-
poses; perhaps you share their embarrassment and anxiety.
For my own part, I cannot forget that in politics, as well as
in everything else, "no-meaning puzzles more than wit,"
and while some are giving you credit for an impending
Machiavelian stroke of state, I should not be surprised if,
after all, you have only turned a fresh page in the chapter
of accidents.
Yet are there rumours of great changes . Your followers
bruit about a "programme of liberal measures." Your
temporary secession from power, they insinuate, produced
the most salutary effects upon your intellect and your
temper. A momentary relief from the toils of State per-
1 Lord Morley records that Mr. Gladstone also composed on
the same subject a letter which has not been published.
1839] A PENNY AND A SHILLING 373
mitted profound reflection on the spirit of the age. You
returned to Downing Street as Napoleon from Elba, ready
to concede a Constitution adapted to the necessities of
the times. The rapacious appetite of the Republican
for innovation is to be satiated by paying only a penny
for his letters; the more moderate Radical professors
satisfied by not paying a shilling for the registration of
their votes. A penny and a shilling ! Whig ways and
means to prevent revolutions and arrest the fall of
monarchies ! But even this is not all. The Reform Act
is still to be final, but it is not to be conclusive. Nice
distinction ! There are to be considerable alterations,
but then they are to be made in its spirit. More of the
precious metal, indeed, is not to be introduced into circu-
lation, but, then, the currency is to be considerably in-
creased by its debasement. Add to this the strong yet
not astounding conviction of your colleagues of the neces-
sity of education, and the " programme " is complete.
Imaginary resources of beggared gamesters !
It will not do, my Lord. These scrapings and cheese-
parings of your famished larder will never serve a banquet.
The primary and restless cause of all the embarrassment
of your party, past and present, can never be removed
or eradicated. I have traced its fatal birth, its inde-
fatigable activity, and its inevitable consequences, in the
letter which I addressed to the most distinguished of your
colleagues.1 A " progressive " party is a party that must
dash over the precipice.
But your Lordship is again in power. Your bank-
ruptcy is superseded, though your credit is not restored.
I admired the characteristic naivete, from one whom his
experience should have made so close and callous, not
without charm, with which you assured the House of
Lords that had your Lordship been in the situation of
Sir Robert Peel, when recently summoned by his Sover-
eign, you would have acted very differently. I believe
you. Enjoying such an opportunity, the leader of a party
1 The letter to Lord John Kussell, p. 365.
374 OPEN LETTERS [1839
such as your Lordship heads would have seen only within
his grasp power to which neither the essential strength of
that party nor his own reputation legitimately entitled
him. The temptation would have been too strong for
nerves less flexible than those of the former Irish Secre-
tary of the Duke of Wellington ; and however brief the
lease of office, however degrading the terms by which it
was secured, sinister the means by which it was main-
tained, and mischievous the results which it entailed on
the Crown and the country, it could bear no damage to a
party in whose expiring condition even defeat might
figure as an achievement, as proving their vitality. In
the most ignominious discomfiture they must reap some
profit — as bands of fugitive marauders can still sack
villages and plunder peasants.
But, my Lord, there may be statesmen and parties
differently circumstanced. Let me consider the character
and position of a political leader whom, to use only the
admissions of his adversaries, I may describe as a man
unrivalled for Parliamentary talents, of unimpeached
integrity, of unsullied personal conduct, of considerable
knowledge, both scholastic and civil, and of an estate
ample and unencumbered — one of long official practice,
of greater political experience; of that happy age when
the vigour of manhood is not impaired, and when men
have attained as much experience as, without over-refining
action, is compatible with practical wisdom; when an
elevated and thoughtful ambition is not eager, yet
prepared, for power, free from both the restlessness of
youth and the discontent of declining age — epochs that
alike deem life too short for delay. Add to this a tem-
perament essentially national, and a habit of life pleasing
to the manners and prejudices of his countrymen, with
many of the virtues of the English character, and some of
its peculiarities; confident rather than sanguine; guided
by principles, yet not despising expedients; fearful to
commit himself, y«t never shrinking from responsibility ;
proud, yet free from vanity, and reserved rather from
1839] ESTIMATE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 375
disposition than from an ungenerous prudence; most
courageous when in peril; most cautious in prosperity.
It is difficult to estimate the characters of our con-
temporaries, but this I believe, though a slight, to be not
an incorrect sketch of that of Sir Robert Peel — a states-
man who is at the head of the most powerful party that
ever flourished in this country — that in opposition com-
mands a large majority in one House of Parliament,
equals the united factions in the other, and, by general
consent, needs only a recurrence to the sense of the nation
to overwhelm them. But, moreover, and above all, a
statesman who has watched and witnessed this mighty
party congregate and expand under his advice and guid-
ance, in an ill-favoured season of trial, turbulence, and
trouble, with small beginnings, forlorn hopes, extreme
difficulties, struggling at the same time against popular
prejudice and courtly alienation.
My Lord, such a man, and the leader of such men,
must never obtain an entrance to the councils of his
Sovereign — I will not say by artifice or intrigue, but in any
other style or spirit than become an elevated character
and a commanding position. His administration must
never be one existing on sufferance by any branch of the
Legislature. He forfeits too great a station to accept
power grudged and hampered by any estate of the realm.
The essential strength of his party, the permanent char-
acter of the constitutional principles and material interests
that bind them together, his own vigorous time of life,
authorise on his part patience and justify delay. He of
all men must never deign to be a seeker. Time is one of
his partisans. For two years Lord Melbourne submitted
to be the Minister of his late Sovereign's necessity, not of
his choice. Sir Robert Peel never will. There is the
difference between you.
A quarrel about a Lady of the Bedchamber ! Pah !
Your Lordship remembers the contemptuous exclamation
of Mr. Burke when, at the commencement of the great
revolutionary struggle, the war was described by some
376 OPEN LETTERS [1839
superficial rhetorician as a war about the opening of the
Scheldt. The scornful image which in that instance
flashed from his indignant and irritated imagination
would not be altogether out of keeping with that scene
and sanctuary into which you have at length pursued the
jaded destinies of your country. But I will not profane
the mysteries of the Bona Dea.
It is not want of ability, or lack of knowledge, or even
deficiency of patriotism, that disqualifies a Lord Melbourne
or a Lord John Russell from being Ministers of their
country. Their difficulties, and they are insuperable, are
inherent in the Whig party. It is a party that now is only
a name. It has no principle of action, no essential quality
of cohesion, no bond of union except traditionary exploits
and hereditary connections, both fast fleeting and fading
away before the course of time and the stern and urgent
pressure of reality. It was once a great and high-spirited
aristocratic confederacy ; it has its place, and will keep it,
in our history, for its annals are illustrious, but the chapter
of its fate is about to close; and with your Lordship and
your colleague it rests whether its end shall be a revolu-
tionary catastrophe or a patriotic euthanasia.
L^LIUS.
May 25, 1839.
THE STATE OF THE CASE
["ATTICUS is an immense hit," wrote Disraeli in the
postscript of a letter to his sister, of which two pages
are reproduced on p. 377, by permission of Messrs.
Maggs Brothers, from the original in their possession.
The text of the letter is as follows :
CABXTON CLUB,
March 16 [1841].
MY DEAREST SA,
A most agreeable party at Bulwer's— Morpeth, Hanley
of the Treasury, Mr. Charrington, an Irish ruffian, D'Orsay,
Col. Maberly, Quin. Much Attic badinage and serious
1841]
"ATTICUS AN IMMENSE HIT"
377
appreciation; at last Morpeth recited a whole passage of
Runnymede. Yesterday I dined at the Carlton with Lynd-
hurst, walking up together past the House. He was most
amiable and delightful. Rd. Plantagenet, de Lisle, and
Canterbury came and dined at the next table, and there was
a feast of reason and a flow of grumbling (on the part of P.
and C.) — very amusing. Esterhazy has sent me an invitation
for his assembly to-morrow, but he doesn't know that I am
25
378 OPEN LETTERS [1841
married, or that my wife has the honour of his acquaintance,
and therefore there is no ticket for Mary Anne, but I hope
we shall arrange it in the course of the day. On Sunday we
past the day at Boyle Farm, and very agreeably. 1000 loves.
D.
The "Atticus " reference, of course, was to Disraeli's letter
to the Duke of Wellington on "The State of the Case."]
To THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
Your Grace has performed a greater number of great
exploits than any living man; but you never achieved a
deed more remarkable or more difficult than keeping the
Whigs in office.
Various reasons are circulated for the permission which
you accord them to serve their Sovereign and to receive
their salaries. Some would insinuate that, satisfied — not
to say satiated — by the celebrity of an unrivalled career,
your Grace is indisposed to re-enter the arena of political
responsibility, content with the possession of passive but
unquestioned power. But these are speculators who, in
my opinion, are not very apt in their discrimination of
your Grace's character, and take but a superficial view
of the bent and temper of minds of your stamp and order.
This idea of retiring on a certain quantity of fame, as
some men retire on a certain quantity of money, has the
twang of mediocrity. It is generally the refuge of those
whose distinction has been more owing to chance than
their own conceptions. They are perplexed, almost
alarmed, by the results of their good fortune, and in
retiring from enterprise they think they realise success.
But original and creative spirits are true to the law of
their organisation. An octogenarian Doge of Venice
scaled the walls of Constantinople ; Marius had completed
his seventieth year when he defeated the elder Pompey
and quelled the most powerful of aristocracies; white
hairs shaded the bold brain of Julius the Second when he
planned the expulsion of the barbarians from Italy; and
1841] ESTIMATE OF THE DUKE 379
the great King of Prussia had approached his grand
climacteric when he partitioned Poland.1 In surveying
your Grace's career of half a century, I cannot perceive
any very obtrusive indications of moderation in your
purposes, though abundant evidence of forbearance in
your conduct. Celebrated for caution, I should rather
select as your characteristic a happy audacity. No one
has performed bolder deeds in a more scrupulous manner ;
and plans which, in their initial notion, have assumed
even the features of rashness have always succeeded from
the wariness of your details. I speak chiefly of your
civil life; but I am inclined to believe that your more
illustrious, though not perhaps your more eminent, ser-
vices will not contradict this inference. Your physical
aspect is in complete harmony with your spiritual con-
stitution. In the classic contour of your countenance
at the first glance, we recognise only deep thoughtful-
ness and serene repose ; but the moment it lights up into
active expression, command breathes in every feature;
each glance, each tone, indicates the intuitive mind im-
pervious to argument, and we trace without difficulty the
aquiline supremacy of the Csesars.2
1 Contrast the famous passage in " Coningsby " in which Disraeli
extols the power of young men: " The history of heroes is the
history of youth."
2 The following lines written by Disraeli are quoted from the
Morning Post by Sir Herbert Maxwell in his " Life of the Duke of
Wellington ":
To THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
Not only that thy puissant arm could bind
The tyrant of a world, and, conquering fate,
Enfranchise Europe, do I deem thee great;
But that in all thy actions do I find
Exact propriety; no gusts of mind
Fitful and wild, but that continuous state
Of ordered impulse mariners await
In some benignant and enriching wind,
The breath ordained by Nature. Thy calm mien
Kecalls old Rome, as much as thy high deed;
Duty thine only idol, and serene
When all are troubled; in the utmost need
Prescient; thy country's servant ever seen,
Yet sovereign of thyself whate'er may speed.
B. DISRAELI.
380 OPEN LETTERS [1841
I dismiss, then, at once the idea that your Grace shrinks
from action. The sublime vanity of a mind like yours
will not suffer that any great transactions shall be con-
ducted in your lifetime without your special interference.
Is it then, as others suggest, from a subtle regard for the
ultimate interest of your party that you have more than
once thrown your aegis over the trembling Treasury
Bench ? Is it, in short, your Grace's opinion that the
hour has not yet arrived ? That the triumph of old
English principles will be not only insured, but confirmed,
by the prolonged feebleness of that administration, which
is still representative of the new doctrines, however mean
and spiritless ? If you looked only to the personal inter-
ests of your political friends, such consideration might be
influential, for the duration of the Government that some
deem impending might probably bear some relation to the
incapacity of its predecessor. But I know well that your
mind soars far above such limited calculations, and I
believe that you are only reconciled to the continuance
in office of the present administration from an opinion
that, checked by your power, they can do no harm,
and in the enjoyment of place they will not care to
project it.
Before we can form a correct judgment on this head,
it is necessary that we should possess a precise idea
of the present situation of the Government in the
House of Commons. It is not only curious, it is un-
precedented.
Her Majesty's Ministers carry on the government of
the country by two methods : first, practically, by a Con-
servative majority, and secondly, theoretically, by a
revolutionary majority. As long as public credit is to be
maintained or the national honour vindicated, a tax to
be raised or an armament equipped — in a word, as long
as anything is to be done, a successful appeal is made to the
loyal support of the Conservative party ; but the moment
that party evinces any ambition to possess itself of the
forms as well as the spirit of power, and because it fills
1841] RECONNOITRING THE POSITION 381
the Treasury would sit upon the Treasury Bench, and
because it mans the fleet would counsel at the Admiralty
Board — then the theoretical method is forthwith recurred
to by the alarmed administration. Some abstract declara-
tion as to the nature of ecclesiastical property, or the
exercise of the political franchise, is pompously announced;
the capacity of an administrative body is made to depend
upon the Parliamentary assertion of some unfeasible
principle; and by the assistance of the revolutionary
majority it is demonstrated that the Conservative party
are disqualified for the conduct of public business, because
at the beginning of a session they vainly declare the im-
practicability of a measure the impossibility of which is
not acknowledged by the Government until the close of
that session. These ingenious manoauvres are described
in Ministerial rhetoric as the assertion of a great
principle.
This, then, is the Parliamentary position which great-
authorities are not anxious to disturb — as one, if not
productive of benefit, at least inefficient for injury;
and, on the whole, a political arrangement adapted
to a country fast rallying from a recent revolutionary
convulsion.
Let us reconnoitre the position a little more closely.
There may be some, perhaps, who may find no mean
constitutional objections to the government of a country
being habitually carried on by an Opposition, even if that
Opposition be headed by such men as the Duke of Welling-
ton and Sir Robert Peel. These objections may claim
our future consideration. Here only we may observe
that it is difficult to foresee how the consequence of such a
conjecture can ultimately be other than a struggle for
supremacy between the Crown and the Parliament. For
the nation it matters little in what form the inevitable
despotism may develop itself — in that of a Select Com-
mittee or in that of a Privy Council; in the decision
of a Parliamentary vote or the decree of a Royal
proclamation.
382 OPEN LETTERS [1841
There may be others who may view with apprehension
a state of affairs which accustoms the great body of the
people to associate the idea of regular government with
that of revolutionary doctrines. Your Grace and your
party have for years inculcated on this nation that the
doctrines of the persons in power menaced the institutions
of the country and the existence of the empire. They have
not changed those doctrines, and their indispensable sup-
porters, the theoretical majority, have aggravated them.
Yet the public observe that the affairs of State are con-
ducted with sobriety and order; they have not time for
refined speculation on the condition of parties; they
cannot comprehend that the order and sobriety are in
contradiction to the doctrines of the Ministry, and in
spite of the support of their adherents; and thus they
may cease to connect the idea of revolutionary govern-
ment with that of revolutionary principles. Hitherto
they have rallied round you with eager sympathy, and
readily responded to your call for constitutional succour.
It may be necessary to appeal to them again. Circum-
stances may change. The present administration, for
instance, may cross the floor of the House. What if
they then consistently spout the sedition which in office
they have never recanted ? What if they are prepared to
re-enter office to practise as well as to preach it ? And
in all probability they would not be able to re-enter office
on any other terms. Will your cry of the Constitution in
danger avail you again ? May not the people of England
fairly rejoin, The cry of the Constitution in danger means
only the return of the Whigs to power; and why should
they not return to that power which, when they possessed
it before, they exercised exactly as yourselves ? Thus,
Sir, you perceive that refined political tactics may mystify
the practical simplicity of the popular mind. A nation
perplexed, like a puzzled man, will act weakly, ineffi-
ciently, erroneously — in a word, blunder. But the
blunder of a people may prove the catastrophe of an
empire.
1841] INDEPENDENT OF PAELIAMENT 383
I present you, Sir, yet with another great public con-
sideration which results from your Parliamentary policy.
It is exactly ten years since the author of the " Essay
on the English Constitution '51 introduced into the House
of Commons his measure for the reconstruction of the
third estate of the realm commonly called the Parlia-
mentary Reform Bill. That violent proposition was
temperately rejected by the House of Commons ; and the
House of Commons was instantly dissolved — in the then
state of affairs, I might say destroyed. The reintroduced
proposition was opposed by the Lords Spiritual, another
Parliamentary estate of the realm, and the Bishops were
burnt in effigy, their persons assailed, and their palaces
plundered. It was opposed by the Lords Temporal, and
the present Minister of England denounced the constitu-
tional expression of their judgment " as the whisper of a
faction." For four years the Whigs hallooed on the
popular blood against your Grace and your peers; and
your House tottered. At length, baffled by the returning
sense of the country, the arrogant hostility that would
have destroyed the House of Lords was succeeded by the
sullen vengeance that would rule the country in defiance
of it. The character and office of the House of Commons
were systematically exaggerated and misrepresented.
But by degrees even this reorganised and all-sufficient
House of Commons began to slip their moorings from the
Whig sandbank. The Ministers even formally acknow-
ledged and announced that they had forfeited its confi
dence. But they are still Ministers. These constitu-
tional denouncers of " the whisper of a faction " now
chuckle in their orgies over the consolatory conviction
that " one is enough," but after the Supplies it seems
that even a minority of ten will do no harm. And thus
the great Reform struggle, that has now lasted as long as
the siege of Troy, terminates by the Reform Ministry
governing the country independent of the Reformed
Parliament.
1 Lord John Kussell.
384 OPEN LETTERS [1841
To me there is nothing in this conduct of the Whigs at
all inconsistent with their whole management since their
accession to power. To me our domestic history for the
last ten years is a visible and violent attempt by an
oligarchy to govern this country in spite of its Parliament.
The policy of the Whigs has been a continued assault
upon some portion or other of our Parliamentary institu-
tions. They destroyed the old House of Commons
because it was intractable; they menaced the House of
Lords because it was unmanageable; and, for the new
House of Commons, they will bully it as long as it is sub-
missive, and attempt to reconstruct it the moment it is
mutinous.
But is it the Duke of Wellington — is it that statesman,
so impressed with the importance of popular responsi-
bility that he declared that after the Reform Act no
Prime Minister ought to sit in the Upper House — is it you,
Sir, who will countenance an administration of whom it
may be said that they are dependent upon everything
and everybody except Parliament ?
With the means at the command of the Ministry, it is
possible that the present state of affairs may be continued
for three more sessions. But at the inevitable close of
the existing Parliament are we certain of redress ? What
if this be the last House of Commons that is elected by
the present constituency ? What if a Royal proclamation
issues a Commission to inquire into the best means of
obtaining a full and fair representation of the people, and
in the meantime provides that no portion of them shall
be represented to the detriment of the others by not
summoning a Parliament on the old scheme ? With a
skilful adaptation of means, and a dexterous agitation of
the popular spirit, the Supplies, under such circumstances,
might perhaps be obtained by an Order in Council. At
least we have the satisfaction of feeling that in all prob-
ability our Sovereign would not be destitute, and that a
Parliament holden in Dublin in 1844, full of " affectionate
loyalty," could scarcely refuse a civil list.
1841] THE STATE OF THE CASE 385
We start at such portents. They are grave pr6b-
abilities. The Whigs for two centuries have been great
dealers in coups d'etat. They are the natural conse-
quences of the Parliamentary policy that permits the
Whigs simultaneously to carry on the Government by a
Conservative majority, and to carry on the Revolution by
a Radical one.
And this, my Lord Duke, is the state of the case.
March 10, 1841. ATTICUS.
DISRAELI OR MAGINN 1 [1835-37
DISRAELI OR MAGINN ?
[!N the Introduction it is suggested that three of
the biographical sketches which appeared in Fraser's
Magazine in 1835-36, and which have hitherto been
attributed to Maginn, were in fact by Disraeli. The
grounds for this belief are to be found in the articles
themselves; so far as is known there is nothing in Dis-
raeli's private papers either to confirm or to disprove the
assumption. In the first eight years of Fraser's existence
there appeared the famous Gallery of Illustrious Literary
Characters. The drawings, some eighty in number, were
by Maclise, and the accompanying biographical sketches,
concise and witty, were by Maginn. There were some
known exceptions ; five of the articles have been traced to
the pens of Carlyle, Lockhart, and Father Prout (the Rev.
Francis Mahony). All were republished in 1873 by Pro-
fessor Bates as the " Maclise Portrait Gallery," and dedi-
cated to Disraeli, whose familiar portrait by Maclise forms
No. 36 of the Gallery. The original drawing, with many
others of the series, was purchased by Forster at the
Maclise sale, and is now in the Forster collection at South
Kensington.
When the stock of Illustrious Literary Characters
showed signs of exhaustion, the net was spread a little
wider, and a few persons who were of political rather than
literary repute were admitted to the company of the elect.
Among them were the Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards
Marquis of Normanby (No. 64), November, 1835; Sir John
Cam Hobhouse (No. 72), May, 1836; and Lord Lyndhurst
(No. 77), October, 1836. These three politicians figure
frequently in Disraeli's writings, and his mental attitude
towards them is known. The view of the writer of the
1835-37] SELF PLAGIAKISM 387
sketches in Fraser is precisely that of Disraeli in his pub-
lished writings of the period. Not only so, but character-
istic phrases which occur in articles now republished for
the first time as his reappear in the Fraser contributions,
and are allotted impartially to one or other of the charac-
acters. Now Disraeli, as has been pointed out, was a
confirmed self-plagiarist. The main evidence is therefore
contained in the parallel passages; add to them the fact
that Disraeli was in friendly relations with the Fraserians,
and especially with Maclise and Count D'Orsay; note the
casual allusions to visits paid to Athens and Florence, both
of which cities had been included in his recent itinerary;
contrast the Disraelian acerbity of treatment of Cam Hob-
house and Mulgrave with the humorous badinage meted
out to other illustrious characters in the Gallery ; compare
the panegyric of Lord Lyndhurst, his patron, with the
sentiments in the Times article by Disraeli — one of " four
bolts of veritable Olympian thunder," concerning which
he wrote to his sister on August 20, 1 836 ; and there will be
found, surely, an accumulation of evidence sufficient to
justify the inclusion in this volume of the three sketches
as Disraeli's.
Below are set out in adjoining columns the more striking
parallel passages :
It was a bright idea, that of Perhaps His Excellency may
emptying the gaols of the Bara- have stumbled on the second
taria over whose destinies your part of " Henry the Sixth," in
Excellency so shrewdly pre- which Jack Cade made his ap-
sides, and it is interesting to pearance . . . but do we compare
witness the philosophical civil- the undaunted " Mortimer, Lord
isation of the nineteenth cen- of the City," to O'ConnelH —
tury, in triumphant defiance of Mulgrave : Frazer's Magazine,
ancient prejudice, communicat- November, 1835.
ing with so much effect the rude The time has come when, in the
yet prophetic conceptions of a queer revolution of things which
Jack Cade. Fortunate island we are doomed to witness, our
that an O'Connell supplies with Sancho has got the government
justice, and a Mulgrave with of an island, and rules India
mercy ! — Open Letters : Runny- with a degree of wisdom which
mede to Mulgrave, February 11, would excite envy in the Cab-
1837. inet of Barataria. — Hobhouse :
Fraser's Magazine, May, 1836,
388
DISKAELI OR MAGINN
[1835-37
My candour may? at least, be
as salutary as the cabbage-
stalks of your late constituents.
There are some indeed who, as
I am informed, have murmured
at this method of communicat-
ing to them my opinion of their
characters and careers. Yet I
can conceive an individual so
circumstanced that he would
scarcely be entitled to indulge
in such querulous sensitiveness.
He should be one . . . to whom
it had been asserted in his teeth
that he was a liar and a scoun-
drel, and only wanted courage
to be an assassin. — Eunnymede
Letter to Hobhouse, February 27,
1836.
The Rienzi of Westminster
smiles with marvellous com-
placency at the strange chapter
of accidents which has con-
verted a man whose friends
pelted George Lamb with a
cabbage-stalk into a main prop
of William Lamb's Cabinet. —
Eunnymede Letter to Melbourne,
January 18, 1836.
The Commentator of Byron,
you naturally became in due
season " Sir Francis Burdett's
man," as Mr. Canning styled
you, to your confusion, in the
House of Commons. — Eunny-
mede Letter to Hobhouse, Feb-
ruary 27, 1836.
A demagogue or a placeman.
— Idem.
That "first tragedy man,"
the Lord of Mulgrave. — Eunny-
mede Letter to Melbourne, Janu-
ary 18, 1836.
Vain, volatile, and flimsy,
headstrong without being cour-
ageous . . . always theatrical,
with a morbid love of popu-
larity and a maudlin flux of
claptrap sensibility, his anger a
stage scowl, his courtesy a
simper; every glance directed to
This Right Hon. Baronet is
now a member of the Cabinet
presided over, at least nomin-
ally, by the brother of the
gentleman whom he so un-
mercifully exposed in Covent
Garden to the cabbages and
turnip-tops of its Liberal elec-
tors. . . . When he makes a
gathering of the writings attri-
buted to him, we trust that he
. . . may append to it, as a
fitting note, Canning's compli-
mentary billet that the author
of a certain pamphlet was a
liar and a scoundrel, who only
wanted courage to be an assas-
sin.— Hobhouse : Fraser's Mag-
azine, May, 1836.
He began life as a butt of
Lord Byron's. Cobbett styled
him Sancho, from his obsequi-
ous servility to Sir Francis
Burdett, to whom he bore the
same relation as the greasy
clown did to his mistaken but
chivalrous master. — Hobhouse :
Fraser's Magazine, May, 1836.
The brawling patriot has been
transformed into the lickspittle
placeman. — Idem.
Among fashionable people he
is distinguished as an amateur
actor, who is equally meritori-
ous in his performance of
" Hamlet " and the " Cock." . . .
When duly curled, oiled, painted,
and lighted up, he does look
passably well, and might be
trusted in a third-rate walking
gentleman cast. — Mulgrave :
Fraser's Magazine. November,
1835.
1835-37]
LORD MULGRAVE
389
the lamps, every movement
arranged into an attitude. —
Open Letters : Eunnymede to
Mulgrave, February 11, 1837.
Lord Lyndhurst terminated
last night his splendid career
for this session by an oration
which ought to be printed at
every press and posted under
every roof in old England. . . .
For luminous arrangement and
Eerspicuous statement, com-
ined with the most polished
sarcasm and irresistible irony,
we know no effusion of the
noble lord, distinguished as
they ever are by these striking
qualities of accomplished elo-
quence, superior to this well-
timed and well-executed ad-
dress. Its effect upon the
House is only the herald of its
effect upon the country. . . .
No words can describe the
outrageous irritability of Lord
Melbourne or the blank rage of
Lord Holland. One found
words in his wrath, and the
other lost them in his per-
plexity.— In the ''Times,"
August 18, 1836.
His profound legal know-
ledge, his calm yet courageous
bearing, his statesmanlike com-
prehension of a subject, and
his humorous eloquence, have
fairly won him the post of
leader of the Conservative party
in the House of Lords. — In the
" Morning Post," August 21,
1835.
The celebrated speech which
closed the last session . . . demol-
ished the reputation of the un-
fortunate Government, or rather
shadow of a Government, strid-
den over by O'Connell. All
parties agree that it had the
most withering effect. The
Whigs were silent, in breath-
less rage or fear; the Tories en-
tranced in admiration and mute
wonder, as the eloquent periods
flowed from the lips of the
stately speaker. — Lyndhurst :
Fraser's Magazine, October, 1836.
He is the recognised leader of
the most honourable party in
what, considered on public
grounds as a whole, and with-
out reference to the factious
fraction which he opposes, is
the noblest body in the world,
and he owes this lofty station
to his own overwhelming
talents. — Lyndhurst : Fraser's
Magazine, October, 1836.]
THE EARL OF MULGRAVE
(Fraser's Magazine, November, 1835.)
WE present to our readers the ex-Governor-General of
Jamaica, the President of the Garrick, and the Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland. Among literary men he is known
390 DISRAELI OR MAGINN ! [1835
or heard of as the author of several novels which have
not materially contributed to swell his repute; among
fashionable people he is distinguished as an amateur
actor, who is equally meritorious in the performance of
" Hamlet " and the " Cock." We recollect him when he
used to perform in Florence all manners of characters to all
manners of audiences ; and we never failed to appreciate
the discriminating civility with which, after having
crowded his rooms with a miscellaneous collection of all
the English who could be found tolerant enough to listen
to him, he used to go through the weary mob, inviting a
select few, in the hearing of the whole company, to re-
main to supper (a little supper he used to call it, and in
that particular he amply kept his word), to the exclusion
of the indignant multitude, who thought that, in common
justice, they should have had something to wash down
his Lordship's dose of histrionism.
Our artist is rather too favourable to Mulgrave.
Thanks to Delcroix, or some other artist of that pro-
fession, the locks look exuberant still ; but woe worth the
day ! crow's-feet tell about the temples, and deep wrinkles
beseam the well-rouged face. But still, when duly
curled, oiled, painted, and lighted up, he does look pass-
ably well, and might be trusted in a third-rate walking
gentleman ci'st. He is at present showing off in a part
for which he is just as much fitted as he is for enacting
" Romeo," but one in which he can do more mischief than
could attend the most vigorously hissed performance
that ever disgraced a theatre.
Perhaps His Excellency may have stumbled on the
Second Part of "Henry the Sixth," in which Jack Cade
makes his appearance. This great reformer declared that
the laws of England should come out of his mouth (which
even his own partisans allowed to be foetid and disgust-
ing) ; that that mouth should be the Parliament of England ;
that he would leave no lord or gentleman in the land;
that a universal destruction should take place, so that all
men should be arrayed in one livery, and worship him
1835] CADE AND O'CONNELL 391
their lord. In these particulars we have now a revived
Jack Cade; but do we compare the undaunted " Mortimer,
Lord of the City," to O'Connell ? They both may be
designated beggars ; but the beggary of Cade was
valiant. He had no vow in heaven to protect him
from the consequence of his outrages; nor, on the other
hand, could he, after he had doomed " the nobility
to go in leathern aprons," have found a representa-
tive of the King to allow him to play the part of
" protector over him." That was reserved for our own
times.
Mulgrave is poor, and is glad to escape from the elee-
mosynary hospitality of the Duke of Devonshire on any
terms. He is vain, and the title of Viceroy must tickle
his fancy. We are told that he is annoyed at the marked
absence of the Irish gentry from his parties or levees ; but
the shouting in the upper gallery compensates in his ear
for the hissing of the boxes ; and we recommend him to
exhibit at Donnybrook grinning through a horse-collar,
which would at once show his features in their most
appropriate expression, and afford the most congenial
gratification to the friends on whom he relies. In the
short list of his ancestors, we find that one invented a
diving-bell — typical of sinking and mud-seeking propen-
sities; that another was that Lord Chancellor of Ireland
who was made the victim of Curran's bitterness more than
a half-century after his death, and about another half-
century before his descendant grovelled at the hoofs of
those who adhere to all the sedition, without a tithe of
the talent, of Curran; that another (Commodore Phipps)
was, like his nephew, sent upon an experimental voyage,
in which he had no great success; and that formerly
His Excellency's father enjoyed, for good reason (vide
Cobbett), the title of Lord Lonsdale's boots. The
noble son plays the part of boots to a very different
person.
To conclude. Mulgrave is about forty years old,
desperately hard up, a most industrious scribbler, a
392 DISRAELI OE MAGINN ! [1836
capital led-captain, a passable buffoon; but when we see
him sent to govern Ireland just now, we are irresistibly
reminded of one of his own novels, and must say :
" By Yes and No, but it is very strange." 1
SIR JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE
(Fraser's Magazine, May, 1836.)
THIS right honourable Baronet is now a member of the
Cabinet presided over, at least nominally, by the brother
of the gentleman whom he once so unmercifully exposed
in Covent Garden to the cabbages and turnip-tops of its
Liberal electors, and the unsparing raillery of Mr. Canning,
poured in with so much effect upon the " mud-bespattered
Whigs taking refuge from the oppression of their popu-
larity under the bayonets of the Horse Guards." Times
are changed since. Hobhouse no longer writes letters to
Lord Erskine or Lord Erskine's friends, sneering at green
ribands, and laughing at the pretensions to political
purity in the holders of place and pension. We are no
longer told to " Ask him, gentlemen," when any of the
Whigocracy forgets to advocate in power those doctrines
which he had maintained to be indispensable to the very
existence of the country while out of office. No ! the
usual change has taken place: the brawling patriot has
been transformed into the lickspittle placeman.
He began life as a butt of Lord Byron's, who made
many most unsavoury rhymes on his name. In fact, we
do not remember any person of note among us who has
had the fortune of being saluted with titles less redolent
of grace than Cam Hobhouse. Hook, by an error of
the press, saluted him with an appellation which, it must
be admitted, his personal appearance perpetually tends
to suggest. Gait, in his notice of the Pot and Kettle
controversy, bestowed upon him the title of the former
1 Mulgrave was the author of a book entitled " Yes and No."
1836] COMPLIMENTS TO HOBHOUSE 393
utensil. Lord Palmerston (we believe) eulogised him in
an ode in the John Bull, the first distich of which was :
" I care not a — — (very familiar beast)
For John Cam Hobhouse."
Cobbett styled him Sancho, from his obsequious servility
to Sir Francis Burdett, to whom he bore the same re-
lation as the greasy clown did to his mistaken but chival-
rous master. The time has come when, in the queer
revolution of things which we are doomed to witness, our
Sancho has got the government of an island, and rules
India with a degree of wisdom which would excite envy
in the Cabinet of Barataria.
We remember him — we regret to say, a good many years
ago — in Athens, where he distinguished himself by wear-
ing a pair of green baize breeches, which produced an
epigram hardly fit to be repeated to ears polite; but
which, nevertheless, has appeared in print. The collec-
tion of such compliments paid to Hobhouse would be
large. It is a pleasant reflection for any man that he
should have been so particularly distinguished by his
contemporaries. When he makes a gathering of works
attributed to him, we trust that he will not forget the
famous letter in which he boasted that three hundred
Muciuses had sworn to murder Canning. He may append
to it, as a fitting note, Canning's complimentary billet —
that the author of a certain pamphlet was a liar and a
scoundrel, who only wanted courage to be an assassin.
It would also be an agreeable literary curiosity if he
were to publish at the same time Lord Byron's confi-
dential note, in which his Lordship recommended certain
folks not to trouble themselves by making vain efforts to
appear in the alien character of men of honour.
He is, perhaps, the best exemplification of Lord Mans-
field's saying, that popularity is gained without a merit,
and lost without a fault. He had no claim whatever,
except impudence and servility, on Westminster, when
be was elected; and these qualities he possessed when he
was turned out . One of the main pretences for his ejection
26
394 DISRAELI OR MAGINN f [1836
was his devotion, to the cat-o'-nine-tails. His successor
has made that much- abused instrument the principal
engine of discipline in his well- whipped and ill-fed army.
Of Hobhouse's political career the records are short. The
man has done nothing, because nothing is in him. Ex
nihilo nil fit — there is no getting blood from a turnip ; and
it is one of our misfortunes that we should be compelled
to write about such people at all. But the amber of
office embalms them for their day. Shrined for a while in
that, we are doomed to observe the forms of creeping
things, our wonder at which — a small one under existing
circumstances — secures the tribute of a page even to " my
boy, Hobbio." We have added to his name the title of
his first performance — the Miscellany ; or, as his friend
Lord Byron (Murray's edition, vol. i., p. 185) too truly
called it, the Miss-sell-any. The names of his other
literary performances we have forgotten.
LORD LYNDHURST
(Fmser's Magazine, October, 1836.)
IT is hardly possible to conceive a prouder situation than
that which is now occupied by Lord Lyndhurst. He is
the recognised leader of the most honourable party in
what, considered on public grounds as a whole, and with-
out reference to the factious fraction which he opposes,
is the noblest body in the world; and he owes this lofty
station to his own overwhelming talents. In an assembly
which comprises men who have filled the greatest offices,
governed vast provinces, led victorious armies, conducted
important missions, presided over courts of justice, repre-
sented large constituencies — who have, in short, fulfilled
with distinction the highest functions of public life in
every department — in an assembly where we find princes
and marshals, viceroys and ambassadors, chancellors
and judges, orators and statesmen, knights and nobles,
the presence of any one of whom, with a few disgraceful
LORD LYNDHURST.
From a drawing by Daniel Maclise, K.A,
1836] LYNDHURST AND O'CONNELL 395
exceptions, would be considered to be an ornament in
any company in the world ; in this assembly, illustrious as
it is by high birth, ancient descent, polished breeding, and
not more so than by great talent, knowledge, and elo-
quence, its most illustrious portion has, without a dis-
senting voice, chosen Lord Lyndhurst as its organ and
its chief. It is a distinction of which any man might
justly be proud ; and that just pride must be enhanced by
the consciousness that he executes the duty entrusted to
him so as to excite the admiration of his noble allies, and,
what is a tribute no less decisive, the bitter fury of his
ignoble antagonists.
It is quite unnecessary that we should attempt the
slightest sketch of the life of a man so long before the
public. The bawling demagogue of the day has threat-
ened to espose his private history, and he may indulge
his slandetfous propensities with impunity, for all people
duly appreciate the reason which dictates the lies he may
publish in some obscure journals. They feel that in his
sinking estate — for sinking he is, in spite of his swagger
and bluster — he attributes his fall to the eloquence of
that eminent orator whom we have enrolled in our
Gallery. The celebrated speech which closed the last
session,1 and which gives us the title to place his portrait
on the opposite page, demolished the reputation of the
unfortunate Government, or rather shadow of a Govern-
ment, stridden over by O'Connell. All parties agree that
it had the most withering effect. The Whigs were silent,
in breathless rage or fear ; the Tories, entranced in admira-
tion and mute wonder, as the eloquent periods flowed from
the lips of the stately speaker. It is generally reported
that O'Connell was present under the gallery while Lord
Lyndhurst addressed to him, in one of his speeches, the
passage directed by Cicero against Catiline, and that the
triple-bronzed beggar-man shrank away in abashment.
Yet that passage pleased us not. It was not fair to Cati-
line to compare him, who, as Sallust tells, was " ndbili loco
1 Republished as the "Summary of the Session."
396 DISRAELI OR MAGINN ? [1836
natus" who never shrank from danger of any kind in the
midst of the stirring period of human history, whose hands
are free from the stain of money, and who died gallantly
fighting, at last, amid his brave companions —
" Each stepping where his comrade stood
The instant that he fell "
—with one whose name is unconnected with any honour-
able action, whose whole life has been one scene of skulking
from dangers into which he had drawn others, and who is
occupied from one end of the year to the other in devising
plans of drawing enormous fortunes from squalid beggary.1
What Lord Lyndhurst is as a politician and lawyer is
known to all. In both characters he is pre-eminent.
We shall invade his private lif e no further than to say that
the orator of the Senate is the wit of the dinner-table — the
profound lawyer of the Bench or Woolsack, the gayest of
the gay hi drawing-room and boudoir. Our artist has
been happy in catching his likeness at a moment when,
the robes of office or nobility being thrown aside, he aims
at no other character than one in which he is so well quali-
fied to shine — a gentleman. A pleasanter fellow does
not exist; and in his case, at least, the fair author was
mistaken when she said that " the judge and the peer is
a world-weary man."
It is rarely that a man of genius leaves behind him a son
also a man of genius. It has been so, however, in the pre-
sent case. But little could Copley have contemplated,
when he was painting his celebrated picture of the death
of Chatham, that his own son was destined to equal the
fame of Chatham in such an assembly as that on which
he was employing his pencil.
1 " I am not one of those public beggars that we see swarming
with their obtrusive boxes in the chapels of your creed, nor am
I in possession of a princely revenue arising from a starving race
of fanatical slaves" (Disraeli's Letter to O'Connell, May 5, 1835).
1836] LORD LYNDHURST 397
THE SUMMARY OF THE SESSION1
LORD LYNDHTJRST terminated last night his splendid
career for this session of Parliament by an oration which
ought to be printed at every press and posted under every
roof in old England. It was a summary of the session — of
this session, so memorable in the annals of our country, and
in which his Lordship has acquired laurels that even his
most ardent admirers had not anticipated. For lumin-
ous arrangement and perspicuous statement, combined
with the most polished sarcasm and irresistible irony, we
know no effusion of the noble Lord, distinguished as they
ever are by these striking qualities of accomplished elo-
quence, superior to this well-timed and well-executed
address. Its effect upon the House is only the herald of
its effect upon the country. It fell upon the ranks of the
Government like a Congreve rocket. Two Cabinet
Minsters, one the Prime Minister, rose to answer it. They
spoke one immediately after the other, as if they felt
conscious that two of their number at least were wanting
to combat such an antagonist. No words can describe
the outrageous irritability of Lord Melbourne or the blank
rage of Lord Holland. One found words in his wrath,
and the other lost them in his perplexity. Yet the First
Lord of the Treasury, though he raged, and the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, though he whimpered, must yield in
the effect that they produced to the solemn testiness of the
Lord Chancellor. Lord Melbourne writhed like a scotched
snake, Lord Holland gambolled like an excited elephant,
but the present keeper of the Great Seal, the successor of
Lord Lyndhurst, was the crowning glory of this grand
scene of Ministerial propriety and administrative justifi-
cation, and to the satisfaction of all present assuredly
" wrote himself down " a most grave and reverend,
though not most potent Signior.
Will these men go on ? We hope so. Lord Viscount
1 Leading article by Disraeli in the Times of August 19, 1836.
398 DISRAELI OR MAGINN t [1836
Melbourne assured us last night that he was Minister,
and Minister he would remain, come what might.1 His
Lordship condescended to say nothing in favour of the
Crown, not even of the confidence of the nation. We are
wearied of experiments and restless change. What this
country requires is a firm and vigorous and able adminis-
tration, supported by the property and intelligence of
the country, not by a pennyless and ignorant faction.
The Duke of Wellington last night well described the
character of the British Empire, its vast and various
interests, its diversified population, and its complicated
wealth. Can a Ministry, tied to the hackney-chariot
wheels of a contemptible crew of political adventurers,
the spawn of a malignant class of our society, generated
in an ill-seasoned and distempered time, rise to the height
of this elevated office ? Say what the jobbing levellers
like, England must still be governed by men whose
wealth creates a natural anxiety for the stability of all
property, and whose education and intelligence enable
them to appreciate, and induce them to cling to, those
institutions which form the strength and essence of con-
stitutional freedom.
The able and seasonable speech of Lord Lyndhurst
may be considered as the manifesto of the Conservative
party. Will its delivery assist the Government in their
machinations as to the King's Speech ? What have they
heard from Windsor to-day ? Will the paragraph be
admitted ? 2 What says the worthy Chancellor of the
Exchequer ? Lord Lansdowne was dumb last night.
This motion of the great Conservative leader, this powerful
vindication of the legislative career of the House of Lords
by its ablest member, chimes in opportunely with the well-
1 "I conscientiously believe," said Lord Melbourne in the
debate, "that the well-being of the country requires that I
should hold my present office — and hold it I will till I am
constitutionally removed from it."
2 The Tories had spread a report that the Ministers wanted to
thrust into the Speech some allusions to the conduct of the House
of Lords, but no such thing was ever contemplated (Greville's
"Memoirs").
1836] A CONSEEVATIVE MANIFESTO 399
digested scheme of the baffled Whigs to cast contumely
upon the Upper House of Parliament for their constitu-
tional opposition to an incapable and unprincipled
Ministry. This Ministry, vanquished, as Lord Lynd-
hurst well observes, in one House by an irresistible
majority, and maintained in the other by abandoning
their prime measures at the sudden dictation of "a
mutinous and sullen section " — such a Ministry are exactly
the men to hold the Government in duresse and outrage
the Constitution ! We tell them once for all, the people
of England scorns them; we know our countrymen. It
is our pride to advocate on all occasions their interests,
maintain their rights, and consult their feelings. It is not
Lord Viscount Melbourne, with all his loose-tongued and
ill-conditioned ribaldry, that will persuade us he knows
more than ourselves of the heart and soul of the English
nation. We tell him the core of his political body is
rotten, its foundation sand, and its days mmbered.
400 POLITICAL SATIKES IN VERSE [1837
POLITICAL SATIRES IN VERSE
A CHARACTER
WITH smile complacent, and with candid air,
Each gesture frank, and every sentence fair ;
Skilful alike each party to appease,
And ready from each side each hint to seize ;
Fixed to defend the Crown, uphold the Church,
And meaning but to leave them in the lurch ;
Firm in his faith, and in his tenets strong,
Yet open to conviction if he's wrong ;
Ready to die, and yet prepared to live,
Eager to grasp, yet half resolved to give;
Convinced no government is like a King,
Yet deems republics still may be the thing;
Abhorring spoliation, hinting plunder,
And joining Church and State quite well asunder;
See Blarney'1 rise; the House attentive listens,
And quite persuaded all is gold that glistens ;
Beneath his fostering care exchequers thrive,
Bright sage, who proves that two and two make five !
SKELTON, JOT.
March 7, 1837.
1 Mr. T. Spring Bice, afterwards Lord Monteagle, an Irish-
man, whose Bill for the abolition of Church rates had been intro-
duced in Parliament. The Times declared of the Chancellor's
measure that " a more despicable compound of tricky assump-
tion, political trimming, party inconsistency, false reasoning,
perverted quotation, unconstitutional principle, and odious pre-
tence, consummated by a proposal equally insulting to Dissenters
and treacherous to the Church, has never yet been produced within
the walls of a deliberative assembly."
1837-] CHAKLES BULLER 401
OPEN QUESTIONS : A POLITICAL ECLOGUE
" Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin." 1
FOR charming place the patriot B — 1 — r2 sighed,
And through the Mall with mournful footsteps hied,
To where its classic front the Treasury rears,
The solemn temple of his hopes and fears;
Or down that street now traced his anxious way,
Sacred to statesmen and to quarter-day :
There to the sullen windows plaintive sings,
And with his cries the official welkin rings :
" Oh, cruel Johnny, are my votes then nought ? (a)
And must I ever then remain unbought ?
Will pity never touch that haughty breast,
Nor nightly labours lead to daily rest ?
Are all my efforts, then, to save the nation
To end in nothing but in sharp starvation ?
Better with Peel on adverse bench to sit,
And share at least the triumph of his wit : (b)
Doomed still to see each Lordling seize the prize
By me secured with unproductive ' ayes.'
" Was it for this I voted black was white, (c)
And proved in patriot strains that wrong was right ?
Ah ! haughty youth, we yet may break the spell,
Trust not thy vast majorities too well;
To-morrow's night may prove that white is black,
To-morrow's night may send thee baffled back
To those lorn benches where thy youth was spent
In barren opposition's discontent,
Mourning in vain thy ineffectual lot,
A would-be Catiline without a plot.
1 Virgil's Second Eclogue.
2 Charles Buller, the clever young Member for Liskeard, whom
Carlyle described as " the genialest Radical I have ever met."
402 POLITICAL SATIEES IN VERSE [1837
" You slight me, Johnny ! think, I have some claim — (d)
M.P. for Lis d ; not unknown to fame ;
Nor am I such a fool as some men say, (e)
As lately proved on that memorial day,
When our good E — 1 — e1 Tories caught at fault,
And true Reform seemed nearly at a halt,
While in his private pouch the public money,
Perversely found, made prospects somewhat funny;
I bore the brunt, and, mingling in the fray,
I proved the second Scipio pure as day ! (/)
" Nor pass unnoticed that accomplished pen
To columns known, if not to gods and men ;
That can with equal ease, and like applause,
Remodel Senates, or reform our laws,
A code contribute, or a Peer disrobe,
And sway the fortunes of the mighty (g) Globe !
" Come, haughty youth, (Ji) I yet will gain thy heart;
List to the tale my trembling lips impart ;
Two Rads I lately found in wicked play,
Young, mischievous, malignant, wild, and gay,
And ready quite to vote the other way ; (?)
'Tis I will gain these Rads to thee once more,
And clip the wings with which they sought to soar ;
Yes, lead our M th2 once more to his traces,
And tempt e'en Ro ks with a choice of places.
" Fool that I am ! He scorns my tempting bribe, (k)
And turns a deaf ear to our restless tribe;
What various tastes divide his fickle crew ! (I)
L 4 likes a trull, and H d6 loves a shrew.
1 Edward Ellice, Member for Coventry, was charged with,
having used public funds for election purposes in 1832, but the
charge was refuted.
2 Sir William Molesworth, Liberal Member for East Cornwall.
3 J. A. Roebuck, Liberal Member for Sheffield.
* William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne.
6 Lord Holland.
1837] LORD MELBOURNE 403
In easy-chairs their limbs the G — ts1 intrench.
While Palmy loves a protocol in French.
H e2 they say, before a speech a brimmer,
And Blarney's3 ever partial to a trimmer.
Repentant Rads methought might Johnny please,
And place a Whigling once more at his ease."
He ceased, then to the House dejected hies,
And yields a sullen vote to Whig Supplies.
March 9, 1837. SKELTON, JTO.
ORIGINAL FOOTNOTES.
(a) " 0 crudelis Alexi ! nihil mea carmina curas;
Nil nostri miserere; mori me denique coges T'
(6) " Nonne fuit melius tristes Amaryllidis iras "
(c) " . nonne Menalcan,
Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses,
0 ! formose puer, nimium ne crede colori !
Alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur."
(d) " Sum tibi despectus; nee qui sim quseris, Alexi."
(e) " Nee sum adeo informis; nuper," etc.
(/) The hon. member's parallel between the Right Hon. Mr.
Ell — e and Scipio Africanus will never be forgotten, and is not
surpassed by anything in Plutarch.
(g) Q. Mity.
(h) " Hue ades, 0 formose puer."
(j) ' — duo nee tuta mihi valle reperti
Capreoli," etc.
(fc) " Rusticus es, Corydon; nee munera curat Alexis."
(I) " — trahit sua quemque voluptas."
AN HEROIC EPISTLE TO LORD VISCOUNT MEL—
0 THOU, who, lolling in an easy-chair,
Rulest a realm, with far-niente air ;
Viewing alike with philosophic pride
An empire threatened, or a law defied ;
Statesman supreme, who by a secret paction
Insults a nation, just to gain a faction;
Scholar refined, whose taste sublime, or bland,
Now soars to Hooker, and now sinks to Sand; (a)
1 Lord Glenelg and his brother.
2 Sir J. Cam Hobhouse. 3 T. Spring Rice,
404 POLITICAL SATIRES IN VERSE [1837
Chivalric knight, whose all-considerate love
The records of thy Master's Bench may prove ;
To laud thy triple fame this verse shall flow,
Deep Sage, great Minister, successful Beau !
For all thy praises why should Whigs supply ?
Rise, Tory Muse, and wave thy wings, and try !
Still must I hear, shall Globes and Couriers pour
Their pensioned paragraphs from door to door ? l
Or some dark Papist, in a patriot guise,
By Chronny's aid, throw dust in English eyes ?
Shall to thy fame all strain their loudest pitch,
From flippant F — nb — que2 down to priggish R ; 3> 4
And I my modest muse with trembling hide,
Nor write like Pal n a " New Whig Guide." (6)
Yet dread not, Sir, this friendly pen shall trace
Aught that may bring the blushes to your face.
Unnoticed let me pass, oh ! graceless truth !
Your boyish promise and your loyal youth;
When, foremost struggling in a hallowed cause,
Your voice upheld a country's outraged laws ;
Or, mid the tumult of sedition's storm,
With zeal denounced the juggle of Reform.
Not mine the pen the struggle to relate
Of your ambition and your better fate,
Your half-resolves of good, and desperate deeds of hate,
Reckless and yet remorseful, rash yet wise,
The conscious tool of traitors you despise ;
True to the Crown your faction would alloy ;
Sighing to save the country you destroy !
1 Cf. " Still must I hear ? Shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall f '
BYRON : English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
• Albany Fonblanque, the brilliant journalist.
3 Probably Henry Rich, Liberal Member for Knaresborough,
and afterwards for Richmond; Lord of the Treasury, 1846 ; author
of several political pamphlets; created a Baronet, 1863.
* Of. " From Soaring Southey down to Grovelling Stott."
BYRON: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
1837] LOED MELBOUENE 405
Survey the Imperial realm and haughty State,
To thee entrusted by some freak of fate !
Once in each land that meets the solar beam
The standard of St. George might wave supreme,
And greet on every shore beneath the sky
A faithful subject or a fond ally.
Now panting couriers to thy trembling gate
But bear the tokens of our falling fate,
And with a gloomy whisper, quaking, tell,
How this rejects us, and how these rebel:
The mournful records of thy rule, comprised
Of treaties broken and of sway despised.
Ts't not enough from Lisbon to the Hague
Thy word is shunn'd, as shuns a Turk the plague :
That in those lands which Wellesley fought to save,
Where every victim found a hero's grave,
By Whiggish skill our British host appears
To Europe's scorn a band of bucaniers ;
While the proud flag, that o'er a hundred seas
Has dared alike the battle and the breeze,1
Skulks like a smuggler with a muffled oar,
Or steals a pirate by Trafalgar's shore ?
Is't not enough, on Europe's scoffing stage,
The wars of luckless Pantaloon to wage,
The jeer of feigning friend and open foe,
And bustling ever but to gain a blow :
A smile from Talleyrand, an Austrian leer,
A scowl from Berlin, from the Russ a sneer ?
Is't not enough, that H e2 to break their vow
May counsel colonies with brazen brow ;
Or from his penny trump a E — b — k3 blow
The dread defiance of his Papineau ?
1 Of. "Whose flag has braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze."
CAMPBELL : Ye Mariners of England.
2 Hume. 3 Eoebuck.
406 POLITICAL SATIEES IN VEESE [1837
The proverb says, two differ of a trade,
Yet these are patriots both, and both are paid.
Is't not enough that e'en Calypso's rock
Swells with its tiny cry sedition's stock; (c)
That, not content with foreign broils and fears,
You e'en must set the country at its ears,
Domestic trouble blend with distant shame,
And blast at once our comfort and our fame ?
Well for the man who now may hold the helm,
And guide the groaning fortunes of the realm,
If faithful messmates and a skilful crew
Rise to his signal vigilant and true.
Pipe all your hands, and let old England learn
Who trims her ballast, and who guides her stern ;
While swift before the wind the vessel flies
To meet the gathering menace of the skies !
With brooding bosom and with sullen mien,
Pacing the dangerous deck Lord John is seen —
Your first lieutenant ; yet, if truth appear,
Trusted perforce, and half a mutineer.
Beside him lounging, voluble and pert,
And greatly glorying in a gay check shirt,
Behold the "New Whig Guide !" Prophetic name !
The youthful volume suits his present shame,
For a most novel Whig, him all decide,
And everyone must own he needs a guide.
Meanwhile, with jabber brisk, and bustling air,
Blarney, the purser, mounts the gangway stair,
Deals out his junk as if a feast he spread,
And shares his mouldy biscuit like fresh bread.
Past midshipmen a type in P — tty1 find,
That solemn emblem of a seedy mind;
While on the maintop Gr— nt2 discreetly snores,
And keeps a sure look-out for hostile shores.
1 Henry Petty, third Marquis of Lansdowne.
2 Lord Glenelg.
1837] LOED MELBOURNE 407
His quadrant then Dun — n — n1 quick prepares, (d)
And beckons H — b — e,2 who the duty shares ;
H — b — e, though Indian realms his sway confess,
A man of science once, and F.R.S.
While H — w — k,3 young Ascanius of the Whigs,
Sneers at strange shrouds, and lauds his father's rigs,
And whispers Th — m — n,4 much renowned for figs.
Speed on, bold mariners ! with careless brow,
Place at your helm, and pension at your prow ;5
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,
Pursue your triumph and partake the gale ?
Prompt in bright verse to celebrate your force,
And keep the log-book of your blundering course !
SKELTON, JTJN.
March 20, 1837.
ORIGINAL FOOTNOTES.
(a) The favourite reading of his Lordship consists of old divinity
and new French novels. From the first he acquires his profound
knowledge of all details of the Church question, and from the last
the conviction of the total inutility of ecclesiastical establishment
at all.
(b) " The New Whig Guide," a collection of Tory lampoons
ridiculing the principal leaders and members of the Eef orm party,
and chiefly written by the present noble and consistent Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs.
(c) Under the Whigs even Malta has rebelled, but the rebellion
is to be quelled in the true Whig style — by a Commission.
(d) His Lordship, it is said, is in the habit of taking an observa-
tion weekly, and with a very old-fashioned and rusty instrument.
1 Lord Duncannon. 2 Hobhouse.
3 Viscount Howick. 4 Poulett Thomson
6 " Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm."
GRAY : The Bard.
408 OLD ENGLAND [1838
OLD ENGLAND
BY CCEUR-DE-LION
[THE OLD ENGLAND series of articles appeared in the
Times of January, 1838, just before the opening of the new
session of the Parliament in which Disraeli had taken his
seat for the first time as the Member for Maidstone. It is
cast in quite a different mould from his other writings; but
the phraseology of Carlyle does not altogether obscure the
sentiments of Disraeli. Home, foreign, and colonial
affairs were troublesome; his party were in Opposition;
full of enthusiasm and excitement, it was his cue for the
moment to represent that a Crisis — not the sham " Crisis "
of 1834 and 1835, or the daily " Crisis " from Ireland, but
a real Crisis due to a prolonged deadlock in the workings
of government — had been reached. The nation was de-
manding to know how the Queen's Empire was to be
maintained. The key to the deadlock was duty; whoever
could find that key, and could reinvest the Government
with the moral power of which it had been stripped by
the Whigs, was fit to be the Prime Minister of England.]
CHAPTEE I
ASLEEP
ARE you asleep, John Bull ? Could I but hear you snore
I should not care. They might catch you napping, as
they have done before this; but what then ? A vigorous
shake of your drowsy shoulders, and who so alive as you ?
More lively from a sweet, wholesome slumber, more
vigorous.
1838] A QUESTIONING NATION 409
But now it seems you have fallen into a trance, you do
not even nod. There is no health in this repose. What
if you have thrown yourself on your couch only to forget
sorrows, woes with which you cannot struggle, fate in-
evitable— as an insolvent of vast credit, who knows to-
morrow must see his name in the Gazette? That would
be a vile, cowardly rest, if rest such a feeble, nerveless
swoon deserves to be counted. Have you no dreams ?
Come, come, John, you must wake. There are many
messengers waiting in your hall ; many letters to answer ;
much business to transact ; and, lo ! a new year to transact
it in.
Remember what the great Prussian said, old iron-
hearted Frederick, when affairs were very desperate,
though his salvation was nearer at hand than he deemed
it : After seven years of struggle, all parties began to
know their own position." You, too, have had your
seven years' war, John. Let us see whether all parties in
your case do not begin to know their position also. And,
for the first, what may be yours ? 'Tis seven years and
more since old William the Fourth, who also had a lion
heart in his way, did not dine in the city;1 and the great
question has not yet been answered, " How is the King's
Government to be carried on ?" Great question of a
great man !2 True hero-question, prescient, far-seeing,
not easily answered by common men.
And now other questions arise, not less great, not more
easily responded to, and not asked by heroes, but by
common people. When a nation asks questions, it will
be replied to. And, first, how is the empire to be main-
tained ? There is a question. The seven years' war of
agitation has brought us to that. In 1831 question how
King's Government is to be carried on: in 1838 question
how Queen's Empire is to be maintained. Here is phi-
losophy; the nation has become Socratic; one question
answered by another question. Will the same solution
serve for both ? Here be Christmas riddles and new year
1 November, 1830. 2 The Duke of Wellington.
27
410 OLD ENGLAND [1838
charades, and if we cannot untwist them we must pay
forfeit. Reformed' Parliament has not answered them ;
Reform Ministry has not answered them; town councils
have not answered them ; New Poor Law has not answered
them ; justice to Ireland has not answered them ; colonial
conciliation has not answered them; new allies and old
allies have not answered them ; St. Stephen's is dumb, and
Downing Street is dumb ; and Castle of Dublin and Castle
of Quebec, both are dumb; and new Mayors are dumb,
though their brains be no longer off uscated by Aldermen ;
and board of guardians are dumb, notwithstanding their
well-regulated dietaries : no answer from the Euxine ; no
answer from the Caspian; no answer from Barbary, or
Spain, or Portugal, or Constantinople. Strange to say,
no answer from St. Cloud or the Tuileries.
Yet answers must be found to both — to hero question
and national question.
You see, John, you must really wake.
Jcmuary 3, 1838.
CHAPTER II
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN OLD ENGLAND AND YOUNG
FRANCE
Questions : How King's Government to be carried on t How
Queen's Empire to be maintained ? — John Bull has received no
answers; but here is a sharp note of a conversation between
two eminent personages,which came to hand in a manner wonderful
but nameless, but is nevertheless as authentic as many State
papers.
YOUNG FRANCE. How do you do, old foe ?
OLD ENGLAND. The compliments of the Season to you,
new ally.
YOUNG FRANCE. Your Reform Bill, does it please you
as much as ever ?
OLD ENGLAND. As much as the three glorious days
do you.
1838] AN ANGLO-FRENCH CONVERSATION 411
YOUNG FRANCE. We have a new dynasty, that is
something.
OLD ENGLAND. If we have not yet come to that, our
Prime Minister, after seven years of reflection, has just
given in his adhesion to our old monarchy. That is some-
thing.
YOUNG FRANCE. Extraordinary reaction !
OLD ENGLAND. Undoubtedly, a very great demon-
stration.
YOUNG FRANCE. We have at least conquered Barbary.
OLD ENGLAND. And we have not yet lost Canada.
YOUNG FRANCE. How is your old favourite, Lord Grey?
OLD ENGLAND. He is quite as well as Mr. Laffitte.1
YOUNG FRANCE. And my Lord Russell ?
OLD ENGLAND. Is as tall as M. Thiers.2
YOUNG FRANCE. We live in droll times. That affair
of the Vixen ? 3
OLD ENGLAND. Was purely commercial; at least, they
tell us so.
YOUNG FRANCE. And the Prussian league ?
OLD ENGLAND. Not in the least political; we are well
assured.
YOUNG FRANCE. And the Russian tariff ?
OLD ENGLAND. Entirely an affair of finance, accord
ing to our Ministers, who ought to know, for they arr
paid for it.
YOUNG FRANCE. And Mr. Van Buren,4 is he quite well:
OLD ENGLAND. What is Mr. Van Buren to me ?
YOUNG FRANCE. Some half -century back the same as
M. Papineau.5 Do not lose your temper.
1 The French financier and politician.
2 Premier and Foreign Minister of France, afterwards President
of the Kepublic.
3 In February, 1837, trouble arose with Russia over the capture
of the Vixen, a British vessel owned by Mr. George Bell, the
Russian admiral giving as his reason for the act that the Vixen
was attempting to break a blockade, and that the Circassians
were at war with Russia.
4 President of*the United States.
5 Leader of the Canadian revolt
412 OLD ENGLAND [1838
OLD ENGLAND. I assure you I am quite calm.
YOUNG FRANCE. "I see it. Did you give up your
sovereignty of the seas with your rotten boroughs ?
OLD ENGLAND. That is a question with which at least
you have nothing to do.
YOUNG FRANCE. Nous verrons. At Paris it is asked,
Is the sovereignty of the seas in schedule A or schedule B?
OLD ENGLAND. I have heard it is your habit there to
ask idle questions.
YOUNG FRANCE. My Lord Palmerston, it is a great
man ?
OLD ENGLAND. He has at least preserved peace.
YOUNG FRANCE. By the aid of Marshal Evans.1
OLD ENGLAND. That was a private business.
YOUNG FRANCE. Precisely; a speculation, purely com-
mercial, like Mr. Bell to the Circassians.
OLD ENGLAND. You seem very lively; you forget our
intimate alliance.
YOUNG FRANCE. Not at all; it allows me to take the
liberty of a close friendship, and to ask you a question.
OLD ENGLAND. Well, what is it ?
YOUNG FRANCE. In case of a war with Mr. Van Buren,
do you count upon Russia ?
OLD ENGLAND. Perhaps not.
YOUNG FRANCE. Austria will of course be neutral ?
OLD ENGLAND. It may be so.
YOUNG FRANCE. And attend to the carrying trade of
the Levant. Very wise !
OLD ENGLAND. If it were not for these troubles in the
Atlantic, we should soon settle that question.
YOUNG FRANCE. Ay, ay, my dear hereditary foe and
new ally, we shall take care that you have not in future to
deal with one question at a time.
OLD ENGLAND. How, this language from you ! Have
you forgotten our intimate alliance ?
YOUNG FRANCE. Not on New Year's Day. 'Tis the
season of mirth. But tell me, how did you get Canada ?
1 De Lacy Evans, commander of the British Legion in Spain.
1838] THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON 413
OLD ENGLAND. You should know.
YOUNG FRANCE. From old France, I think ?
OLD ENGLAND. Well ?
YOUNG FRANCE. And we have gone through two rev-
olutions to erase the memory of the betises of old France.
OLD ENGLAND. That is your affair.
YOUNG FRANCE. Not so quick. Do you believe that
young France will assist you in maintaining an empire
wrested by you from old France ? That would be to
make both our revolutions ridiculous.
OLD ENGLAND. For my part, I begin to think all
revolutions are so.
YOUNG FRANCE. Ha ! ha ! That is very well for you,
who ever had everything your own way. The use of revo-
lutions is to destroy monopolies, ancient comrade.
OLD ENGLAND. Monopolies ?
YOUNG FRANCE. Verily. You begin to suspect, like
the Emperor Joseph, that revolution is not your metier.
There is nothing like experience. Adieu ! We part the
most intimate friends in the world, but as for our alliance,
this is the 1st of January; this day three months I will
send you un poisson d'Avril.
January 4, 1838.
CHAPTER III
THE DUKE'S QUESTION
I THINK one eye is open, John. Nay, it is even said one
foot is in the stocking. Come, the other ! What, shaJl
life consist of putting on one's stockings and pulling them
off again ? Even that better than nothing. Oh ! Arthur
Wellesley, great man, great have been thy deeds. Rightly
art thou a Duke, a true Dux, a leader. Great was thine
Indian career, greater thine European. Great was
Assaye, Talavera, Torres Vedras, Salamanca, Vittoria,
above all Waterloo ! Very great thine entrance into
414 OLD ENGLAND [1838
Madrid, into Paris; very great when thou didst hold
Cabinet Councils without colleagues, and the seals of
three secretaries dangled at thy side, to say naught of the
keys of the Exchequer. But greater than all thine ex-
ploits, is this thy " Question." Truly a Sphinx question
which has perplexed a nation for seven years, and which
they seem to be further off from answering than ever.
Yet answered it must be. The query puzzling, yet the
response inevitable — or ruin. Is not that great ? To
puzzle a whole nation for seven years. To puzzle all
Britain, and nineteenth century, and march of intellect,
and spread of knowledge. Rightly art thou Chancellor
of Universities. What is Duns Scotus to thee, or Aquinas,
or Erigena? Doctors seraphic, irrefragable, in vincible ?
Have not thy fellow-men essayed to answer ? Verily to
their utmost, to their wit's end. Great question that has
caused four dissolutions of Parliament, yet, lo ! no reply.
The chattering of multitudinous hustings, infinite gabble
of brawling debates, yet all dark — dark now as ever —
darker. Great question — that has written more pam-
phlets, set up more newspapers, established more reviews,
quarterly, monthly, bimensal, than all the causes and
parties and " great interests " since Fourth Estate was
recognised. Let my Lord Vaux, with his wrigglings and
windings and infinite eel-motions, educate us as he will in
true reverence and adoration of Broughamocracy ; thou
alone hast set us athinking — and with nine words. Spar-
tan ! Lycurgus-Leonidas !
And now the nation, worthily imitating thee, whom it
cannot answer, has asked its question also — " How is the
Queen's Empire to be maintained ?" What if this
question be only thine own in another guise ? But nation
will be answered; nation is omnipotent; will be omnis-
cient; will go to everyone; will clutch them in the street,
in House of Lords, House of Commons, quarter-sessions,
town-councils, mechanics' institutes, will come, among
others, to thee, and wait for response beneath the far-
spreading branches, old oak of the forest ! Nation will
1838] THE TRUE AND THE SHAM 415
go to Brocket, to Woburn, to Dray ton, to Knowsley, ay !
even to Lambeth and Finsbury, but answer it will have.
If not from palace, from cellar ; if not from common man,
from man inspired, from prophet; if no prophet, will
make one, will believe in one.
This is Tekel Upharsin work ; gold chains and fine linen,
and robes of purple, honour for whomsoever will expound,
but answer there must be. Notable the difference be-
tween moral and material questions : King's Government,
a spiritual essence; Queen's Empire, form substantial;
one asked by a far-seeing statesman, no reply ; the other
asked by a whole nation, by all, even by the mob, and
must be answered.
January 5, 1838.
CHAPTER IV
NATION-CRIES
NOTE ever, John, the difference between a true nation-cry
and a sham nation-cry. Reform House of Commons,
wise or unwise, true nation-cry ; Reform House of Lords,
sham nation-cry. Respecting the voice of the nation
there can be no mistake; it sounds everywhere, in town
and in country, streets and fields, lordly mansion, ten-
pound tenement, unglazed hovel. Great chorus wherein
all join, prince and peasant, farmer and factor, literate and
illiterate, merchant and artisan, mariner and landlubber.
The same thought stamped on the brain of everyone,
from him who wears a coronet to him who drives a coster-
monger's cart ; same thought on the brain, same word on
the tongue.
But a sham cry, however loud, no one knows whence it
comes. Truly, we are told it is heard everywhere, except
in the circle wherein we live. Very sham, ultimately
discovered to be but the roaring of " the public," " the
people," and the like. Many names has the impostor,
416 OLD ENGLAND [1838
numerous as the firms of Coster and Co., or the Sieur
Minter Hart, but all worth nothing, living on the rascality
of mutual reference and the scoundrelism of mutual ac-
commodation. By-and-by the swindlers are found out,
and fail to gull even the silliest. Then come a new cry
and a new name like a new quack medicine. Dr. Eady
is worn out, then try Dr. Morison. " Public Opinion " is
discovered to be a hoax, then try " The People." If
" People," with all their irresistible powers, turn out,
after all, to be but a very drastic dose1 of gamboge, then
heigh ! for animal magnetism and " The Masses."
Public opinion, discovered to be party opinion, is laid
on the shelf; the people detected to be a little coterie
dressed up for the occasion, very generally avoided as
suspicious, with a cry of " Swell mob," and " Take care
of your pockets." Being analysed, and found consisting
of a disreputable minority, heard of no more, and the
Masses introduced; name portentous ! Now, forsooth,
the Masses are to have it, and all their own way ; for who
can resist the Masses ? Mighty Masses, mighty mysteri-
ous ! Papineau orators in the House of Commons quote
Masses, condescend to represent no other, laugh at all
constituencies, because they are known, palpable, in-
scribed on the registry, mere flesh and blood, go for
nothing; Papineau writers out of Parliament concoct
articles in reviews, specially in Sunday journals, about
the Masses ; would have no tax on pen, ink, or paper, or
be supplied by the Government gratis, that Masses may
read and believe their lucubrations, which all others do
most heartily resist. Glory to the Masses ; choice, gener-
ous phrase ! By no means inert or cloddish ; specially
complimentary. What if said Papineau orators and
writers, by some mischance of a lapsus linguce, or damn-
able error of the press, do but omit the initial letter of
that name, wherewith they have defined, and in a manner
baptised, their countrymen ? And may not the next
stage come even to this ? —
1838] TOMKINS AND JENKINS 417
First . . . . . . . . Public.
Second. . . . . . . . People.
Third . . . . . . . . Masses.
Fourth . . . . . . . . Asses.
" 0 Richard ! 0 mon Roi /" O England ! 0 my
country ! Shall I live even to see this ? Shall I live to
see thee even governed by the Asses ? Arise Aristoph-
anes, rise from thine Attic sepulchre, here is theme fit
only for thee ! Our long-eared Government, braying in
all quarters, filling Downing Street with their melodious
song; not condescending, indeed, to stretch out their
resounding necks in House of Lords or at Quarter
Sessions, cashiered institutions, not fit indeed for donkeys ;
but in House of Commons triumphant, as indeed there
they have had some practice, in town-councils very much,
and in mechanic lectureshops potent. And by St.
George, I believe, it will even end in this, unless the old
Duke's question be not speedily answered.
January 6, 1838.
CHAPTER V
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MR. TOMKINS, M.P., AND
MR. JENKINS
TOMKINS. Jenkins ! or my eyes deceive me.
JENKINS. The same; you are surprised to find me again
so unexpectedly in England. I have arrived within these
ten days from New York.
TOMKINS. A bearer of good news from Canada, I hope ?
JENKINS. Quite the contrary; the truth is, our Papi-
neau is too perfect an imitation of O'Connell.
TOMKINS. I would he were a bolder copy.
JENKINS. Liberalism has gained no laurels there; it
does not shine apparently as much in practice as in theory.
And, to speak my mind, our affairs do not appear to
flourish here much more vigorously. I can scarcely be-
418 OLD ENGLAND [1838
lieve this is the country I left four years ago so ripe. You
have had a succession of frosts, I think.
TOMKINS. Things have certainly changed somewhat;
we must consider 'tis a bigoted land, encumbered with
the prejudices of centuries ; nevertheless, our progress has
not been entirely arrested.
JENKINS. No; I have heard of your promotion, and
beg to congratulate you upon it; an unquestioned M.P.,
I believe ?
TOMKINS. Not even petitioned against. Can I do any-
thing for you in the franking way ?
JENKINS. I may avail myself of your kindness. But
tell me, my dear Tomkins, how can you explain this
vexatious Conservative rally ?
TOMKINS. The causes are numerous ; in the first place,
want of education.
JENKINS. Indeed ! Why, when I was here last our
success seemed mainly to depend upon the all-acknow-
ledged diffusion of intelligence and knowledge.
TOMKINS. We were too sanguine; the enlightened
classes who possess power wish to make a monoply of
their intelligence, and therefore are against us.
JENKINS. The enlightened classes against us !
TOMKINS. It is useless to conceal the difficulties of our
position, though, of course, as I took occasion to mention
last night in the House, our ultimate triumph is certain.
But we must remember that public opinion is a great force
to struggle against.
JENKINS. Public opinion ! What, is that against us,
too ?
TOMKINS. The public opinion of this country is founded
on wrong principles, and therefore opposed to us; but,
still, it is public opinion all the same.
JENKINS. How are we to change it ?
TOMKINS. We must change its elements.
JENKINS. Ah ! our old friend " the People." I see it,
we must call them in; that will do the business. I will
answer for the people ; the people has not changed.
1838] "THE PEOPLE" AT A DISCOUNT 419
TOMKINS. My dear Jenkins, it is unnecessary for you
to remind me you have been absent for several years.
" The People " is a phrase we now never use — a body of
whom we never speak.
JENKINS. What, our old friend, the People ! Has the
people turned against us too ?
TOMKINS. It is not a philosophical term; it served its
purpose for the time, but it led at length to awkward
Conservative analyses of the constituent elements of a
nation, and it began to be turned against us. We never
mention it now.
JENKINS. I am afraid affairs are very flat indeed.
TOMKINS. Oh no ! As I said in the House yesterday,
" Hon. gentlemen opposite may cheer, and the noble Lord,
the Secretary for the Home Department, may feel proud
of his new allies, but the eternal principles of democracy,
JENKINS. Miss the metaphor ; I see we are at a discount.
I confess I thought the People was an inexhaustible fund.
TOMKINS. We overdrew it. We attacked and abused
so many elections of the population, that at last our adver-
saries began to count up and to prove that even the
majority was against us — an infamous Tory fallacy, of
course, but still it began to tell. So it was thought
prudent to drop the subject.
JENKINS. Have we come to prudence ?
TOMKINS. You are impatient. Even the triumph of
democracy requires time. Is it nothing that even in the
House of Commons, as at present constituted, with all
the unphilosophical antagonism of bigotry and property,
we still have the good fortune of counting a few who are
not the mere nominees of the aristocracy ?
JENKINS. A very few indeed ! Why, where is our
Radical party ? I was glad, however, to see your name
in the minority on Wakley's motion.
TOMKINS. Ah ! my dear Jenkins, you know not what
temptations assail a Radical M.P. The moment he is
returned to Parliament there comes a most corrupt and
420 OLD ENGLAND [1838
insidious invitation to dine with a Minister. A Govern-
ment should not be permitted to entertain a most
profligate and unconstitutional method of spending the
public money. The aristocratic attrition of these official
banquets is fatal to all the racy roughness of Radicalism.
Few have sufficient strength of mind to vote against a
Minister with whom they are in the habit of taking wine.
Then, sir, it leads to a very disgusting refinement in dress.
You would be surprised at the number of fine waistcoats
that gradually steal, as the session advances, among men
pledged on the hustings against the aristocratic corrup-
tion of which these fine waistcoats are the symbol. 'Tis
a trying life. You will find many of your old acquaint-
ances, friends of the people five years ago, and all that,
very much altered.
JENKINS. My eyes begin to open.
TOMKINS. They will stare soon.
JENKINS. Our cause seems hopeless.
TOMKINS. By no means.
JENKINS. We have no party.
TOMKINS. Oh yes !
JENKINS. Why, Crown, Lords, and Commons, were
always against us; Church, of course; all learned profes-
sions and unlearned too; every landholder in the king-
dom ; every man who has £500 per annum, as we ourselves
long ago confessed ; the whole agricultural population are
slaves ; all the small towns rotten boroughs, and half the
great ones to be purchased by the highest bidder; land-
holder, fundholder, merchant, manufacturer, every solvent
tradesman, all are aristocrats. I hear even of Operative
Conservative Associations; and as for sympathy with
revolted colonies, 'tis out of the question. The fact is,
this country is devoted to capital, and every capitalist is
our enemy. We succeed ! Why, even the Whigs can
only retain power through the Irish, the Irish whom we
thought our tools, and whose instruments we have become!
TOMKINS. A little too fast, friend Jenkins. You forget
we have on our side the Masses.
1838] THE MASSES 421
JENKINS. The Masses ! Who are they ?
TOMKINS. A body so numerous that it is really im-
possible to tell you who they may be. But the Masses,
my dear fellow, will carry us through yet. Never mind
who they are or where they may be. It is a party ; it is
our party. The Whigs may intrigue, the Irish may
blarney, the Tories may egg on Lord John and laugh at
our minorities, but after all the English Radical leaders
are backed by the Masses. As long as we have a party,
never mind. Revolutions are never effected by large
parties ; ever by small ones. We have an excellent small
party with an excellent large name. The Masses for
ever ! They brought me into Parliament, and they shall
bring you. Come into the Reform Club, and I will give
you your frank.
January 8, 1838.
CHAPTER VI
CRICIS AT LAST
JOHN BULL is now fairly awake. He will bestir himself.
He will know what has been going on in his household.
There have been strangers and unauthorised visitors ; he
has heard of them. Who is this Masses who has been
caught more than once sneaking down the area ? A
scurvy knave who, it is rumoured, has been round the
neighbourhood to John's tradesmen, and obtained goods
under false pretences. John rings the bell for his break-
fast; substantial meal — the roast beef of old England;
nor shall it be cooked a la Papineau. It shall be still
dressed in the old way, shall appear still as stately sirloin ;
nor will John's keen appetite be satisfied even by a slice
from the rump, Whig fashion.
And now he must learn the news. While napping, it
would seem, colonies have revolted, but they tell him are
now appeased. Be it so; but why revolt ? This must
be explained.
422 OLD ENGLAND [1838
Will explanation come on the 18th of this month at
Westminster ?
What if Canada even be quiet, the rationale of revolt
must now be dissected. Is cause of revolt peculiar to
Canada ? May not some cause occasion revolt in other
places ? This must be seen to. Is reason of revolt
reason why Queen's Empire cannot be maintained ? Is
it reason why King's Government cannot be carried on ?
All the same reason ? Here is business. For the great
Duke's great question mixes with all other questions, and
lies at the bottom of every well where truth must be
inquired after.
So, then, it would seem, if the reason of Canadian revolt
be discovered, peradventure at length may be discovered
answer to the Duke's question. Yet it has taken seven
years to arrive at this. In seven years the difficulties in
carrying on King's Government, foreseen by a sage, have
become embodied in a shape palpable and intelligible to
all. This, then, is a Crisis.
A Crisis ? What is this same Crisis ? Often have we
heard of him these last seven years. Now, indeed, it
would appear he has really come. Who is he ? Who is
Crisis ? Is he any relation to Masses ? Do we know as little
about him ? We must have his paternity, his pedigree.
Advance heralds !
We live in an age of change. True ; but what have been
all ages but ages of change ? But of rapid change. Ay,
there it is ! Why rapid ?
The progress of society is gradual, not to say slow.
When it makes these sudden starts, forward or sideways,
as it may be, ending ever in as sudden stops and stand-
stills, has the progress been gradual ? Has not party
intrigue, for special purpose, mixed itself up with national
progress, accelerated the movement by temporary stimu-
lants, say burning draughts, instead of good wholesome
nutriment, and so national movement, pushed on before
its time, finds no post-horses ready, and so a dead stop, a
standstill, a Crisis !
1838] CKISIS 423
In 1830, remodelling of third estate, commonly called
Reform of Parliament, was required. National progress
required it, had long summoned it. Remodelling was
advancing but slowly, gradually, yet its shadow was
already recognised. A party, shut out from power, by
an accident possess themselves of power. How to retain
it ? There is the difficulty All estates of the realm
arrayed against them; majority against them in House
of Lords; majority against them in House of Commons.
The natural changes of national progress will not avail
them, are too slow for them; change, therefore, must
become more rapid.
Whereupon the cork is drawn, and the nation drinks
the burning draught of agitation. All now is progress;
the nation is galloping. But at the end of the stage, no
relays, no horses ready, nothing prepared. Is it a Crisis ?
No ; for they will post on another stage with the same
horses. Nevertheless, not quite at the same pace.
Is there reaction, then ?
So some say. Those who approve of slower travelling
are better pleased, while the others curse the drivers, who
have disappointed them, and who, they say, are to their
fancy no better than slugs.
But lo ! another stage; again no post-horses, and the
old ones, jaded to death, fairly jib and move no more. A
dead stop, a Crisis at last !
Jcmuary 9, 1838.
CHAPTER VII
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN JOHN BULL AND CRISIS
JOHN BULL. So you have come at last ?
CRISIS. I have indeed that honour.
JOHN BULL. Honour be hanged; I have heard a great
deal of you, and nothing to your credit. They tell me
you have been long expected here.
CRISIS. I am much flattered.
424 OLD ENGLAND [1838
JOHN BULL. Fiddle-faddle ! And where do you come
from last ?
CRISIS. Straight from Canada.
JOHN BULL. And you have been very active there,
they say.
CRISIS. I seldom interfere without producing a re-
sult.
JOHN BULL. Well, take care of what you are about in
England. I give you fair notice; I will have no revolu-
tions here.
CRISIS. You mistake me; I am connected with no
party ; I am perfectly independent.
JOHN BULL. Why, I took you for a regular Jacobin !
CRISIS. Quite an error; I never interfere until affairs
are at a standstill, and then I invariably side with the
strongest party.
JOHN BULL. Hem ! Well, I think there is no doubt
which is the strongest party here.
CRISIS. We shall see ; the strength of a party does not
depend upon its numbers, or its property but upon the
tactics of its leaders.
JOHN BULL. That sounds very Jesuitical. I am afraid
you are a Papist.
CRISIS. My religious opinions are like my political —
they depend upon the circumstances of the moment.
JOHN BULL. A very dangerous character, I fear.
CRISIS. On the contrary, a most useful one. I never
interfere until my interference is a matter of necessity.
JOHN BULL. Is this your first visit to England ?
CRISIS. By no means ; I was here in 1640, and again in
1688. Had I not been very much engaged at Paris, I
should have paid you a visit in 1830; but some of my
retinue were here.
JOHN BULL. I have heard of them, and for the last
seven years I have almost daily expected yourself.
CRISIS. In all my visits to this country, I have invari-
ably found the strong and successful party a very small
one. It was the same in Paris in 1830. Everybody was
1838] INVITATIONS IGNORED 426
surprised at the triumph of Louis Philippe, except myself.
He owes his crown entirely to my management.
JOHN BULL. Well, I hope the present instance will
form an exception to your usual experience, for I think
the strongest party here is both the most numerous and
the most wealthy.
CRISIS. It may be so ; it will soon be decided.
JOHN BULL. Egad, I shall not be sorry if it be, for, to
speak the truth, I am heartily wearied of the present
unfruitful state of affairs.
CRISIS. Ay ! ay ! There is no doubt I am wanted.
However, here I am. They have sent for me continually
of late years ; but I know my time better than those who
apply to me. They wanted me to come over with Sir
Eobert Peel in 1834, but I knew better; they urged me
very much in 1835 to meet Lord Lyndhurst, but they
were quite mistaken ; there was not the least necessity.
As for my invitations to Ireland, I have received one
almost daily for the last twenty years. Whigs, Tories,
Radicals, Papists, Protestants, Reformers, Orangemen.
Conservatives, Repealers, have all in turn sent for me,
but I have no intention of going.
JOHN BULL. Well, I am glad of that.
CRISIS. I am generally found where least expected. I
have been busy at Canada for the last five years, and
even gave the Whigs warning of it, but nobody attended
to me.
JOHN BULL. And, pray, why are you here now ?
CRISIS. You are frank in your questions. In reply, let
me ask you one. How does your Government work ?
JOHN BULL. Work ! Why, not at all ! There has
been a dead-lock for the last three years.
CRISIS. And suppose the dead-lock remains, what then ?
JOHN BULL. What then ! Why, then everything will
fall into confusion, which indeed it is fast doing. What
an odd question !
CRISIS. And why do you not remedy this inconveni-
ence ? For is not a Government that cannot govern the
28
426 OLD ENGLAND [1838
greatest practical grievance that a nation can labour
under ?
JOHN BULL. It is very fine talking, but how am I to do
it ? I have tried everything and everybody. No party
can carry on affairs. I have tried Lord Grey and the
Whigs, and did all for him I possibly could ; he promised
everything, but he broke down. Then I tried Peel, much
against his will: he made a gallant effort, but he broke
down. Then I tried a Whig-Radical Cabinet, and they
will not even break down; they stand stockstill. I
would try the Radicals if they could do anything, but
they honestly confess the affair is totally beyond their
capacity.
CRISIS. You have answered your own question. When
all parties are confessedly inoperative, I make it a rule
invariably to appear.
January 10, 1838.
CHAPTER VIII
DEADLOCK
CRISIS has spoken out; his conversation with John Bull
yesterday was frank. This visitor, whom all talk of,
many fear, has told John Bull the truth. He has at
length come to our shores. He had given us seven years
to answer the Duke's great question — " How is the King's
Government to be carried on ?" We have not answered
it, and now Crisis has arrived. Was it not time ?
Colonies revolting without practical grievances and with-
out power or capability of independence; plainly be-
cause they were not governed; colonies revolting, not
because they were misgoverned or could govern them-
selves, but because they were not governed at all. It is
time for Crisis to appear.
Is Canada the only portion of the realm that is not
governed ? — that rebels, in short, because it is not con-
1838] CAUSES EXAMINED 427
trolled ? Are there any others ? Why has the power
of government of the British Empire in so many quarters
degenerated into mere administration ? As a nation, are
we less brave, less rich, less powerful, than heretofore ?
We have fleets and armies ; we have a great revenue.
Why, in the words of the great Duke — why, then, cannot
the government be carried on, when all the visible means
of government are at hand ? It must be answered; it
cannot longer be delayed. The whole nation cries out:
" Question, question."
January 11, 1838.
CHAPTER IX
FORMAL POWER AND MORAL POWER
IN every part of the kingdom and the empire, authority
has dwindled into a mere affair of administration. Gov-
ernment has lost its moral power ; it has degenerated into
a mere formula, obeyed in Britain from habit and the love
of order peculiar to the nation, the necessary quality of a
people devoted to industry; obeyed in all other places
according to circumstances, and of these the principal
is, whether there be a sufficient physical force to uphold
it. As long as there be a sufficient force, agitation only;
if not a sufficient force, then revolt.
Let us endeavour to ascertain the cause of this un-
precedented and perilous state of affairs.
And first we must distinguish between the formal and
the moral power of the Government.
The formal power of Government is its authority by
law, and the modes by which the law has directed such
authority to be exercised.
The moral power of Government is the known and
universally recognised support which it receives from the
powerful institutions and classes of the State.
But when a Government accepts formal power on the
428 OLD ENGLAND [1838
condition that it sjiall attack the sources of its moral
power, the necessary consequence must be that its
authority will rest mainly, not to say merely, on its
official position, and the physical force with which that
position invests it.
A powerful peerage, a powerful Church, a powerful
gentry, a powerful colonial system, involving the interests
of the merchant, the manufacturer, and the ship-owner,
a powerful military system, a learned bar, a literary
press — these were formerly some of the great interests
on whose support the moral power of a British Govern-
ment was founded. During the last seven years we have
seen every one of these great interests in turn attacked.
And by whom ? By the Ministers of the Crown.
They have denounced the peerage ; they have attempted
to degrade the Church ; they have held up the gentlemen
of England to public reprobation as bigoted oppressors;
they have maintained themselves in power by means of
a party who have declared the dominion of the metrop-
olis over her colonies to be baneful ; they have disbanded
the militia ; they have menaced the bar ; and they have
vainly attempted to annihilate the intelligence of the
press. They have themselves set an example to the mob
to attack everything that is established.
Can they be surprised that they themselves are at last
attacked ? Under the term " agitation " they have en-
couraged the questioning of all authority except their
own. Is it wonderful that their own, ever the weakest,
should be at length assailed ? Threatened themselves,
they exercise their formal power, and it fails, and must
fail. What resource remains ? None for the Whigs.
They cannot call for the support of those institutions and
classes whom they have taught the mob to hate and
despise — the institutions and classes that formed the
empire, and by whom alone the empire can be main-
tained. The Whigs have destroyed the moral influence
of Government.
January 13, 1838:
1838] THE ABSENCE OF DUTY 429
CHAPTER X
THE KEY
IT may perhaps be deemed that we yesterday advanced
a step in the solution of the great Duke's great question.
When His Grace asked, " How the King's Government
was to be carried on ?" he felt that that Government had
been rudely and suddenly stripped of its sources of moral
power.
Invest the Royal Government once more with that
moral influence, and we shall be able to put an end to
what may be truly termed our present immoral state;
for such is the epithet applicable to a condition of public
society of which the principal characteristic is a total
absence of duty.
Here, then, is a key to open the dead-lock — could we
but find it. Here is a word to put the whole machine
in motion — did we but know how to pronounce it. A
magical word ! But whisper it in the ear of Crisis, and
he would vanish in an instant.
Whoever can find this key is fit to be Prime Minister of
England; and without it, the wisdom of assuming power
by any existing party in the State would be questionable.
Where is the key ?
We know where it is not. It is not at present in Down-
ing Street. Is it at Lamb ton Castle ? It can scarcely
be at Petersham. Is it at Strathfieldsaye ? Is it at
Drayton Manor ?
Oh ! look sharp, look sharp, noble seigneurs, right hon-
ourable gentlemen; there are but a few days more, and
you will all meet at Westminster. Proud will be his
position who enters either House of Parliament with
the key to the dead-lock.
Is not Parliament stuffed full of questions ? Why is
this great question always forgotten ? All the rest mere
430 OLD ENGLAND [1838
mockery ! Yet there are leading questions and second-
rate questions, and interesting questions and uninteresting
questions, and important questions and unimportant
questions, and questions which call hon. members up
to town and questions which invariably send hon.
gentlemen out of town. What are Irish questions — forms
of Protean blarney; what military flogging, public walks,
and Mr. Spottiswoode1; what even Corn Law question, or
even Poor Law question, compared with this all-absorbing
query, which, if it be not answered, all questions will alike
become dumb ?
Gentle Mr. Stanley, active Mr. Holmes, is it not worth
a whip ?
January 15, 1838.
1 Mr. Spottiswoode, the Queen's Printer, had set on foot a
subscription list to provide Protestant candidates for Irish
constituencies and to finance petitions against Eoman Catholic
members. Disraeli dealt with the matter in his maiden speech
on December 7, 1837.
1853] DISEAELI IN THE FIFTIES 431
A LATER DLSRAELIAN CHAPTER
[The LETTERS TO THE WHIGS were written in 1853.
Disraeli was by that time a statesman of assured position ;
he had succeeded to the leadership of the Tory party in
the House of Commons on the overthrow of Peel, and he
had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Derby's
Ministry in the previous year. When, the Budget having
been defeated, the Coalition Government under Lord
Aberdeen took office, with Gladstone as Chancellor,
Disraeli founded the Press, a clever weekly political
organ, to further his views. He probably inspired more
than he wrote ; and until the private papers of the period
have been examined, it would be unsafe positively to
identify as his the brilliant political essays which marked
the earlier years of that periodical's existence. But that
his influence and inspiration were over all there can be
no doubt. " Coalition " was the first leading article
published in the organ, and the first issue also contained
the opening chapter of the caustic Letters to the Whigs
by Manilius, which are now reprinted here for the first
time.]
COALITION
THE state of political parties in England at the present
moment is very peculiar, and, with a prosperous and
tranquil surface, not without considerable danger. The
administration of our affairs is carried on by a Coalition
of individuals, who have avowedly no opinions in common,
except upon a subject which is no longer a matter of
public controversy, the principles of our commercial
system. There are members of the Ministry who are in
432 A LATER DISRAELIAN CHAPTER [1853
favour of vote by ballot ; there are members of the Ministry
who, having been in favour of vote by ballot, have for-
mally renounced that conviction within the last two
years; there are members of the Ministry who are, and
have been, always decidedly hostile to vote by ballot.
If we take any of the other great constitutional questions,
either in Church or State, we shall find among Her
Majesty's principal advisers equal discrepancies of opinion
and sentiment. The Coalition is carried on not even by
a compromise, but by a mere suspension of principle.
There is no similar instance on record. The Administra-
tion, therefore, is not morally, but literally, a Government
without principles. They administer affairs, but they
represent no opinion.
The excellence of representative government, however,
is that it should represent opinion. It is this quality
which compensates for its inevitable and innate de-
ficiencies. As a mere instrument of legislation nothing
can be more clumsy or cumbrous than a process which
requires the sanction and receives the suggestions of
between five and six hundred individuals. It is as a
means which allows the predominant opinion of a com-
munity to stimulate or control that a representative
government becomes powerful and beneficial. But the
representative form is not merely a clumsy machine; it
has a tendency to be a corrupt one. Five or six hundred
individuals invested with legislative functions, and sub
ject to the influences of a powerful executive, are capable
of any misconduct. Their very numbers divide the
responsibility, and their assumed popular origin diverts
and dissipates the odium.
Our ancestors discovered in party, or political con-
nection, a remedy for these injurious consequences, and a
means of combining efficient and comparatively pure
government with popular authority and control. Bodies
of men acting in concert, advocating particular tenets,
and recognising particular leaders, were animated by the
principle of honour as well as by a sense of duty. The
1853] SUSPENDED OPINIONS 433
reputation of the party kept up the high tone of the
individual who was a member of it, and, deferring to the
superior judgment of the most eminent of the association,
union of opinion and of action were found compatible
with a multitude of counsellors and agents. Notwith-
standing some passages in the course of two centuries
touched by the infirmity of human passion, the annals of
English party form one of the noblest chapters in the
history of man.
It is not in a moment that you can dissolve the ancient
political connections of this Parliamentary country, but
the first dilapidation of the structure of our free govern-
ment has taken place when our affairs are administered
by a Cabinet of suspended opinions. Tradition, the sense
of honour, the social influences which still prevail among
the representatives of the landed constituencies, may for
awhile avert or mitigate the consequences of this state
of affairs; but these consequences are sure, and will be
ultimately found in a multitude without cohesion, without
consistency or even decorum of conduct, in individual
scandals, in aggregate humiliation, in a general loss of
weight, authority, and character, which will lower the
once proud, aristocratic, free Parliament of England to
the level of those Continental assemblies whose brief and
tumultuous careers have been alike the terror and the
ridicule of the world.
The most singular characteristic of this strange con-
jecture is the apologetical reason that is given for its
occurrence. It is conveniently maintained that, in con-
sequence of the abrogation of the protective principle in
commerce, the distinctive characters of the two great
parties in the country no longer exist. The persons who
circulate this tenet are the very individuals who depre-
cated the uncompromising opposition of Lord George
Bentinck, on the ground that the question which then
divided the Conservative party was only one of tariffs, and
that the great principles of the Conservative connection
were in nowise in controversy.
434 A LATER DISRAELIAN CHAPTER [1853
It would not, at the first glance, appear that the repeal
of the Corn Laws or the reduction of the sugar duties
had solved the momentous problem what classes should
be the principal depositary of power in this country.
The nature of the franchise, and its extent, which depends
on a right appreciation of its nature; whether the royal
supremacy in matters ecclesiastical should be maintained ;
whether our Upper House should be a territorial or an
elective senate; whether, as an element of strength and
duration, a preponderance should be given in our polity
to the landed franchise, or whether, on the contrary, the
municipal ingredient should predominate; the rights of
inheritance and the laws of tenure — these are the vast
questions of permanent interest which will occupy at
intervals the mind of the nation, and on which they will
receive no solution or guidance from a Cabinet consisting
of members who are diametrically at variance on all these
important heads.
It will not do to gloss over then1 inconsistent and in-
coherent position by announcing themselves the disciples
of progress. We want to know of what progress they are
the votaries. Is it English progress ? Or is it French,
or American, or German progress ? A centralised adminis-
tration, a tyrant majority, or a Pantheistic religion ?
There is no progress for a country except in the spirit of
its national character, or which runs counter to the
principle of its institutions. If the national character be
exhausted, the nation is worn out, notwithstanding the
price of Consols may be at par. If the principle of its
institutions no longer animates and inspires, a new race,
like the Goths in Italy, may establish new institutions;
but an old race will find that what it deems progress is
only change, and that change is only the epilepsy of decay
For our part we have confidence in the enduring char-
acter of this country, and believe that there is yet an
inspiring force in the principle of its free aristocracy
which may secure the continuance of our power and the
improvement of our society. These ends, however, can
1853] PANDERING TO AN OLIGARCH 435
be most surely obtained by the Parliamentary govern-
ment of this country being carried on by two parties with
distinctive principles, eliciting in their discussions the
conclusions of political truth, and giving, by their argu-
ments and appeals, a tone to the public mind. And what
prevents all this ? Why has the constitutional habit of
the realm been disturbed and discontinued ? Why is
the country governed neither by the Liberal nor by the
Conservative party ? From personal and petty causes
only. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, professing high
Conservative opinions, will not, from a personal feeling,
combine with the leader of the Conservative party in the
House of Commons. The morbid vanity of Woburn
Abbey must be represented without an interval in the
royal councils. The Whigs may perish, but the Duke of
Bedford must be satisfied. To accomplish these noble
ends, to gratify a prejudice, and to pander to an oligarch,
an austere intriguer, without any following in the country
and without any lustre of career, is installed in the high
place. Around him are clustered a motley crew of
statesmen, who, magnanimously forgetting careers of
recrimination, and veiling their mutual aversion with
sinister frankness and affected cordiality, devote their
heterogeneous energies to the service of a perplexed
Sovereign and an amazed country.
May 1, 1853.
436 TO THE WHIGS [1853
TO THE WHIGS
CHAPTER I
GENTLEMEN, — Whatever praise or whatever censure
attach to the name it was once your boast to assume, the
name itself is so identified with the History of England
that we have a right to ask why it has disappeared from
our records. Hitherto you have been an essential
element in that collision of opinion from which flash all
the political truths that enlighten statesmen and save
nations. Even at the period in which your numbers were
reduced to the lowest — exiled from the Court and alien-
ated from the People — the genius of your leaders sus-
tained the enthusiasm of Party. It is enthusiasm alone
that gives flesh and blood to the skeletons of abstract
opinion, and the devotion of the genial patricians who
gloried to call themselves the friends of Fox carried on
that hereditary affection of clanship which bound you
together, and which ultimately enabled you, in the enact-
ment of the Reform Bill, to obtain the renown and reap
the rewards which belong to the successful arbiters
between rival classes and conflicting passions. It was this
close and firm connection, however justly it exposed you
to the charge of exclusiveness, that atoned in discipline
and compactness for your want of numercial force.
The enthusiasm is vanished — the connection is broken
— the discipline is gone. What and where are the Whigs
now ? Your history itself seems to cease ; you are merged
into a section of your former opponents ; you are subordi-
nates in a Cabinet from which the name of Whig is ex-
cluded ; your ancient badge is exchanged for a shred from
the mantle of the dead chief who in life most derided your
1853] CASHIEEED MINISTERS 437
pretensions, most damaged your reputation, and who,
even when accepting your opinions, shrunk pointedly
from all thought of your alliance. Twice did Sir Robert
Peel pass into your camp a deserter from his own forces,
but in neither case an associate with yours. He did but
seize upon your weapons to pile them up as trophies for
himself. And perhaps all his hostilities never so injured
the Whigs as when he appropriated, to enlarge, the
measures he had before resisted, and showed the practical
people of England that he alone could perform what you,
the Whigs, had in vain attempted to do. Nay, even
when on the abolition of the Corn Laws he assigned to each
associate in his victory the due proportion of merit, so
eager was his desire to disparage your earnestness, and
cast a slur on your own claims to popular gratitude, that,
with all his habitual abhorrence to extra-forensic agita-
tion, he gave the lion's share of conceded praise to the
Orator of the League.
And yet it is to the special followers of your most
illustrious enemy that you now postpone all your claims
of two centuries, not participating on equal terms in the
spolia opima,1 and consenting to erase the very name
of Whig from the cornerstone of the Government, to
cement the foundation of which you fritter your own
masonry into splints and rubble. And what do you gain
by an alliance in which you figure, not as confederate
potentates, but as dependent auxiliaries ? It is in vain
to boast of the sacrifices of patriotism — of the necessities
of carrying on the Queen's Government — Government in
which your two most distinguished leaders actually hold
no official appointment ! From the list which includes
each scattered subaltern of Peel are cashiered the men
who had formed the first ranks of your phalanx. The
thoughtful mind of Lord Grey ; the ready vigour and force
of his cousin, Sir George;2 the financial reputation of
1 The Cabinet was composed of six Peelites, six Whigs, and a
Radical.
2 Sir George drey, Home Secretary for nearly twenty years.
He joined the Coalition Ministry later.
438 TO THE WHIGS [1853
Baring;1 the earnest intelligence of Labouchere;2 the
liberal accomplishments and exquisite temper of Car-
lisle;3 the wit and the courage of Clanricarde ;4 the busi-
ness-like abilities of Seymour ;5 the scholarship and moder-
ation of Vernon Smith;6 the immense erudition and
dazzling eloquence of Macaulay,7 are severed from the
sides of those who serve as subordinates to Gladstone.
True, Macaulay's abnegation is voluntary. Can you say
the same of the rest ? Why these exclusions of your own
natural officers, except that they have been too much
identified with the memory of your past battles ; and in
the eyes of your new associates their scars are not the
tokens of honour, but the excuse for dismissal from
service ? But the Queen's Government must be carried
on. True; but how and by whom ?
The nation is divided between two great parties — that
of the Movement commonly called the Radical, and that
composed of the supporters of the policy which charac-
terised the short Government of Lord Derby. Between
these two great divisions of the electoral body there are
noble intermediators, I grant — men whose sublime duty
it may be to grasp with firm hand the balance of opposing
parties. But it is clear that no mere junction of petty
sections can obtain what is the first requisite of a Govern-
ment — a strength of numbers sufficient to carry its
measures. But neither of these parties do you gain;
neither of them do you conciliate in your fusion with
politicians equally dissevered from both. You win the
Conservative Gladstone, but not the Conservatives ; you
win the Radical Molesworth, but not the Radicals. You
1 Sir Francis Thornhill Baring (Lord Northbrook), Chancellor
of the Exchequer, 1839-1841.
2 Henry Labouchere (Lord Taunton).
8 George W. F. Howard, seventh Earl of Carlisle, who as Lord
Morpeth took a leading part in the politics of the Reform period.
4 Postmaster -General in Lord John Russell's administration.
5 Edward Adolphus (Lord Seymour), Member for Totnes, and
afterwards twelfth Duke of Somerset.
6 Robert Vernon Smith, afterwards Lord Lyveden.
7 T. B. Macaulay.
1853] THE PEELITES 439
rally round you no popular sympathies when you invest
all your political capital in the precarious speculation of
a Peelite Cabinet. Look to the last General Election.
What men less popular then than the Peelites, despite
their unquestionable talents ? Peel himself was a name
that carried with it the affection and trust of an immense
proportion of the electoral class. I grant this most fully;
but to his individual memory alone the popular attach-
ment confines itself. How many men in the House of
Commons can be called Peelites ? Are there forty ? So,
then, is this fragment from the main Conservative body — •
without popular prestige, without electoral influence,
without definite policy — you, the Whigs, to whom Lord
Grey bequeathed the Government of England, while not
one opposing litigant had resources sufficient to contest
your title — -you, the Whigs, at last sink your identity and
vanish out of sight ! So thus do the organs of the Govern-
ment which your leaders help to compose emphatically
style it the Conservative — so thus the very title of Whig
is ignored as a thing past and obsolete. And the highest
compliment the Premier can pay to your veteran chief is
to assure the startled public that My Lord John Russell
is — Conservative !
Is this a position that can flatter the just pride of party?
And is this the Be All and End All of the descendants of
Somers and Walpole ? Is the position — if you grant it
undignified — wholly the fault of the accomplished and
practised chief to whom the conduct of your party was
consigned in the Commons when Lord Althorp was lost
amongst the Peers ? If his be the fault, it arises from no
defect in the inherent qualities which command admira-
tion and justify power. To a name to which history has
given a blazon beyond all the or and azur of heralds, Lord
John Russell united an intellect refined by letters and
invigorated by practical life. Consummate in the usual
tactics of party — courteous to opponents, if somewhat
indifferent to friends — rising on legitimate occasions to
an eloquence ennobled by generous sentiments and en-
440 TO THE WHIGS [1853
riched by a various knowledge, Lord John's just preten-
sions to be the leader of gentlemen and the exponent of
party opinion were never denied, save by the mutinous
followers who sat at his rear, only with more effect to
assail him from behind.
Where, then, was his fault, when we ask, " What has
become of the mighty party that passed to his guidance?"
It seems to me simply this, that he never comprehended
the true ground he should occupy, nor the directions in
which he should advance. For the last twenty years one
choice has lain before the judgment of statesmen, viz.,
the maintenance of those institutions — nay, of those
habits of thought which preserve monarchy, or that
gradual change into absolute democracy to which Tocque-
ville somewhat rashly considered all the tendencies of our
age impel the destinies of Europe.
It was this choice that Lord John could never prevail
on himself to make with unequivocal and systematic
decision ; it is by seeking to evade or to toy with it, and by
attempting to dignify vacillation into political prudence,
that, under the leadership of Lord John, you have year
after year thinned your ranks and damaged your influence.
And now the sole principle upon which you can defend
your coalition is based upon precisely the same error —
that of playing Conservatives against Eadicals, and ob-
taining majorities that have no faith in your policy and
no heart in your cause.
Yet your true position was so directly in sympathy
with the views and wishes of the great middle class — of
which as Whigs you aspire to be the fittest representa-
tives— that you had but to understand and maintain it
in order to render yourselves indispensable to the neces-
sities of the State.
Let us pause and examine. The Parliamentary Reform
Bill was the great work of the Whigs. From that epoch
dates the influence they gained with Lord Grey, to lose at
last under Lord Aberdeen. You had thus created a new
constitution, amidst the loud hurrahs of the people.
1853] UNDOING THE EEFOEM BILL 441
What was your obvious and easy task ? Was it not to
identify yourselves inseparably with your own work, and
to be strictly the conservatives of the liberal constitution
you had formed ? But you imperfectly understood that
task when, through the mouth of Lord John, you declared
yourselves for finality. A problem like the Reform Bill
entails the task of solving its corollaries. To conserve
this new constitution, you had first, it is true, to maintain
its roots, but secondly to establish the value of its
products ; in other words, your task, as the authors of a
fresh charter between the throne and the people, was to
maintain the charter intact from democratic invasion,
and to disarm democracy itself by proving that it sufficed
for all those ends of practical government, the failure of
which alone excuses his own creed to the democrat.
Firmness to defend the reformed constitution, unrelaxing
energy to work out its legitimate results — this should
have been your twofold aim : this was Lord Grey's.
And had you proved yourselves equal to that position
you would have carried off from Conservatives on one
side, and Radicals on the other, a majority all your own.
For you would have become the representatives of the
real sense of the public, and rapidly have formed the
Third Party amongst the electoral constituencies which
withered away under your hesitating discouragements.
For why did the Government of Lord John gradually die
of exhaustion ? Because it unsettled much as to the
new constitution, and settled nothing that was expected
to be the result of it. And just towards the close, at the
moment most inopportune, when insurgent populations
and tottering thrones throughout the Continent, when
quick successions of excess and despotic reaction rendered
it most unwise to tamper with settled institutions at
home, and disposed the public least to demand a change,
my Lord John comes down to the House of Commons
with his notable proposition — to undo the Reform Bill !
Six years of languid legislation, six years' subsistence on
the legacy of Free Trade, six years and nothing done that
29
442 TO THE WHIGS [1853
could show the innate vigour of the existent constitution
to remove all grievances and advance all progress, con-
trasted by a spasmodic violence against the Reform Bill
itself, and a classical dissertation by the very Premier who
had been most in collision with the democrats during all
his tenure of office — on the advantageous construction of
the word " democracy " ! All this explains why the Whigs
had fallen at the commencement of the present Parlia-
ment into so great disrepute. They had not only thrown
away their right position; they had perversely taken up
the wrong one. They had done nothing to prove that
Reform works well ; and their only pretence to what the
jargon of the day calls " Liberal opinion " was in the
abortive attempt to create agitation against the very
title-deeds of the possessions they had obtained from the
State. Could it be supposed, then, when thus thrown
out of power — meeting the present Parliament with
reduced numbers, internal divisions, popular discredit —
they would obstinately insist again on precisely the same
error ? And yet is not that error the very basis of their
present coalition, or rather submersion ? They form a
Government on the principle of a further Reform Bill
whenever Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Moles worth1
can concur in amalgamating the opinions of the Reform
Club with those of the Carlton. Every attempt to vindi-
cate the constitution is put off for some indefinite plot on
the constitution itself, on which, if it be possible to form
a rational conjecture, not two of the conspirators can
possibly agree together. It is true, meanwhile, that you
have assisted to swell the reputation which you, above
all men, are forbidden to share — the reputation that
Mr. Gladstone has procured from a Budget of which the
chief popular merit is in its signal contrast to all your
own financial principles, and its covert blow to the policy
by which you have hitherto supported Aristocracy as an
element necessary alike to the safety of freedom and the
1 The representative of the Kadicals in the Cabinet.
1853] LORD DERBY'S GOVERNMENT 443
duration of monarchy. What in this be your gain shall
be considered later.
Here I pause for the present. In my next letter I shall
endeavour to show that the Government of Lord Derby
assumed precisely that position which you, the Whigs,
had thrown away; and I shall take leave to inquire if you
then took the best means to reunite your forces, regain
your ascendancy, and identify your natural leaders with
the cause they profess to cherish.
May 7, 1853.
CHAPTER II
GENTLEMEN, — The case at issue in the last General
Election had not been confined to the question whether
the Act that repealed the Corn Laws should or not be
modified. Even in the counties the general cry of the
farmers was, not that Free Trade should be abandoned,
but that Free Trade should be impartially carried out.
The paramount question everywhere was " Ay " or " No "
to a fair trial of Lord Derby's Government. The question
was answered by the return of about three hundred
members more or less pledged to grant to the new Ad-
ministration a support, whether provisional or permanent,
cordial or qualified. What were the other parties which
assembled in November last on the floor of the House of
Commons ? First in point of numbers were the Radicals
— -viz., those who favoured a bold increase of the Demo-
cratic element in the constitution. Nor was the body
undistinguished by leaders remarkable for influence and
energy without the doors of Parliament, and for ability
and eloquence within its walls. It is impossible to affect
contempt for a party, whatever its defects, which com-
prises the ready intellect of Mr. Cobden, the inflexible
purpose of Mr. Bright, and the perseverance and acumen
of Mr. Villiers, sharpened into passion by his avowed
hostility to the aristocracy, to which by birth he belonged .
444 TO THE WHIGS [1853
Sir William Molesworth lent his austere philosophy, and
Mr. Bernal Osborne contributed his caustic wit to the
intellectual resources of a host thus formidable to any
Government from its numbers, and still more formidable
to our mixed constitution from the principles which
sought to remove the aristocratic medium placed by
Time between those two contending powers that never
yet in the history of the world have been long left nakedly
confronting each other — viz., Monarchy and Popular
Suffrage.
That all this party, whatever its subdivisions or its
jealousies, would be actuated and combined for the time
in one sentiment of hostility to Lord Derby's Govern-
ment was clear. Free Trade was safe, but so was the
Constitution; and the common object of this party was
not only to preserve the one, but to change the other.
Below the gangway, in the ranks of this motley Oppo-
sition, assembled the special followers of the late Sir
Robert Peel, determined not only to protect his policy,
but to avenge his fall. These gentlemen could not but
regard in Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli the most illustrious
victims they could dedicate to the Manes of their hero.
With them, therefore, as with the Radicals, it was not
enough that Free Trade should be recognised as the future
principle of our financial system; it was not the future
that engaged their fears; they had to efface a debt of
resentment in the past.
Next came the Irish party, popularly termed the
Brigade. Free Trade was no more to them than Hecuba
to Hamlet. Whatever the financial measures of Lord
Derby, to Lord Derby's Government they had pledged
their opposition, on the simple ground that they had
deemed it a duty incumbent on their patriotism and their
conscience to oppose every conceivable Government
whatsoever.
Now I turn to you, the Whigs, and I ask what could be
your sympathy with any one of these three divisions,
bent on the overthrow of that Government which had
1853] A NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITY 445
succeeded to power on the inevitable expiration of your
own ? Could you sympathise with the ulterior objects
of the Radicals ? Was the " democracy " of Lord John
identical with the democracy — we will not say of Mr.
Bright, but of a single honest leader of the Movement ?
Could you sympathise with the followers of Sir Robert
Peel ? What to you was their desire of retribution
against those who had assailed his conversion on the
question of the Corn Laws ? You sympathise with their
resentment ! You were the last men to do so ; for none
were so bitter in all societies against the skilful adversary
who had contrived to repique you by a bold discard of the
suit you had counted on his retaining. Free Trade was
one thing ; that you were bound to defend : the supposed
wrong to a foe who, by destroying his own party, had
outwitted yours, was another thing; and that wrong,
real or imaginary, you were not bound to avenge. Not
a sarcasm of Mr. Disraeli's in the most heated period of
old debate but what some of you had cheered in the
House of Commons, and nearly all of you cited in clubs
and drawing-rooms, with the acrimonious pleasure of
furtive enemies, when others say what themselves think,
but do not think it wise to be the first to utter.
Lastly, what had you in common with the Brigade ?
the author of the Durham letter1 in common with Mr.
Duffy ?2
Thus, really remote from the three sections antagon-
istic to Lord Derby's Government, and unable to form
of yourselves an Administration, what was that position
which became you best ? Surely you had but to evince
neutrality in order to obtain the office of arbitrators.
Free Trade was secure. The first act of Lord Derby's
Government, on the assembling of the new Parliament,
1 Lord John Russell's letter to the Bishop of Durham (Novem-
ber 4, 1850) on Roman Catholic pretensions. Disraeli had taken
a prominent part in the discussion on the letter.
2 Mr. Gavan Duffy was prominent at the time on account of
a charge made by him (May 5, 1853) of Ministerial corruption of
Irish members.
446 TO THE WHIGS [1853
was precisely that anticipated by every man of ordinary
sense. It was the recognition of that principle which
divides the rulers of a despotism from the Ministers of a
constitutional monarchy — viz., the submission of men,
made responsible to the Sovereign for the security of the
realm, to the power of public opinion when unequivo-
cally expressed by a legitimate appeal to its verdict.
Here all taunts as to the inconsistency of politicians who,
in opposition, had opposed a law which in office they
ratified, were absurd on the lips of those who had studied
our history and comprehended our constitution. To
oppose a law, to represent the hardships it may inflict,
to argue on the consequences it may entail, to advise,
when it be passed, either congenial modifications or
supplementary amendments — all this belongs to the just
province of debate. But that law, confirmed in all its
integrity by fresh proofs of popular assent, and the
modifications or amendments advised rendered as im-
practicable as the repeal — nothing remains for those who
have passed from the freedom of opposition to the grave
responsibilities of office but to accept the law, and seek, by
means analogous to its spirit, remedies for whatever par-
tial grievance it may inflict.
But if certain high and stubborn spirits, who, in the
severity peculiar to those Censors who cannot aspire to
be Consuls, refused to acknowledge that there could be
any virtue in necessity — if the Brights and the Bernal
Osbornes could not enlarge their comprehension of the
requisites of statesmen beyond quotations from Hansard,
there were surely some juster thinkers in the House of
Commons who must have trembled at the doctrine that
men in office are rigidly to carry out the opinions they
professed in opposition. Stand forth, my friends the
Whigs ! Those juster thinkers must be you ! Who in
opposition had been the most renowned supporter of
Roman Catholic emancipation ? Was it not the very
archetype of Whiggery, Charles Fox ? Charles Fox came
into office. What did he do ? Honestly confess that, if
1853] AN UNCOMPLETED SACRIFICE 447
it be the noble duty of a member in opposition to advo-
cate his own opinions, it is a stern necessity of a Minister
of the Crown to defer to the opinions of the public and the
Sovereign. Therefore Charles Fox requested the friends
of Roman Catholic emancipation not to embarrass the
Government ; with too lively a remembrance of his former
services to their cause, the ducal head of the house of
Russell was commissioned by Mr. Fox to meet the more
eminent stragglers for political franchise of their religious
faith, and advise them not even to present their petition
that session ! The petition was accordingly suspended,
and the fears of the Ministers relieved.
Who does not remember that, on the principle embodied
in the Irish Appropriation Clause, Lord John Russell ex-
pelled the Government of Sir Robert Peel ? And so
keen in opposition was my Lord John's sense of the
immediate and vital adoption of that principle, that he
declared in Parliament that " he would rather have
severed his political connection from those with whom he
had so long allied, than continue any longer a system
founded on bigotry and oppression !" Abjure his very
party for a principle ! Noble sacrifice ! — not to be com-
pleted ! Heaven had compassion on the Whigs : the party
was not abjured, the principle was.
Lord John had only come into office, and bigotry and
oppression obtained an instant reprieve. Lord Derby
fought for his principle as long as there was a chance of
a majority for its adoption. Lord John, having obtained
a majority that brought himself into office, immolated
the principle so intolerable in opposition to the austerer
deities whom office intrudes into the creeds of men.
Themis is the goddess of Opposition; Nemesis sits in
Downing Street. Was it possible, then, that you, the
Whigs, could have any just quarrel with Lord Derby's
Government when it adopted your own peculiar policy
of Free Trade in conformity with your own illustrious
examples of political expediency ? Or was it for you to
insult the conscience of honourable men by coupling their
448 TO THE WHIGS [1853
public measures with a bill of indictment on their private
opinions ?
I grant that if, when Lord Derby's Government at once
accepted Free Trade as the principle henceforth incor-
porated in our commercial policy, and to be recognised in
our financial system, that Government had nevertheless
evinced, on all general measures, the tendencies to
arbitrary rule, and resistance to the great law of pro-
gressive improvement, you, as Whigs, would have been
justified in combining with all other sections for its down-
fall. But the whole spirit of Lord Derby's Government
was to vindicate and to vivify your own Reform Bill — to
preserve the constitution the Reform had created, but to
put into action all its long-neglected machinery for the
redress of grievances or the correction of abuse. This, in
my next letter, I will endeavour to prove. Meanwhile I
have thus far cleared the ground before us. First, the
question between Free Trade and Protection no longer
existed as an insuperable barrier between yourselves and
any party with which, upon their general conduct upon
State affairs, your hereditary sentiments might be more
congenial than with other divisions of political opinion.
Second, in reviewing those divisions we find banded against
Lord Derby's Government, no matter what its merely
commercial policy might be, the party of the Movement,
regarding it as a barrier to those ulterior objects which
you, as Whigs, had ever professed to oppose; the section
of the Peelites, with whose desire for retribution it would
be hypocrisy indeed, could you affect, to sympathise;
the Irish Brigade — men, no doubt, very ardent in their
patriotism and very zealous for their faith, but it is only
to say that you were Protestants and Englishmen to
prove that with those gentlemen you could have nothing
in common, unless you could be prepared to destroy any
Government whatsoever to which Protestants would trust
their religion and Englishmen their rights. By the help
of all these divisions you might destroy Lord Derby's
Administration : by remaining aloof from them you might
1853] AN ARK GOVERNMENT 449
save it. You chose the former alternative. No Deluge
has yet occurred, but it seems that you have foreseen its
coming ; for the Government you have helped to construct
very much resembles the Ark, in which creatures of the
most opposite species went in two by two.
May 14, 1853.
CHAPTER III
GENTLEMEN, — I have said that Lord Derby's Govern-
ment took precisely that ground which the Whigs should
have appropriated. Brief -lived as that Government was,
never since the time of Lord Grey's Administration has
any Cabinet evinced equal energy in the redress of popular
grievances.
What was the loudest complaint throughout the
kingdom ? The abuses of the Court of Chancery. And
here the reform that had been put out to nurse, swathed
and coddled by a Commission until it seemed to have
lost all power of movement, at once assumed vitality and
vigour; all that the Whigs, throughout six long years,
had been proposing to do, was done by a Government
that scarcely lasted six months; the spirit of Bentham
united itself with the learning of Lord St. Leonards,1 and
became practical. What complaint, now so smothered
(and why it is smothered we shall see later when examining
Mr. Gladstone's Budget), was then loudest amongst all
subdivisions of labour and skill ? The unequal assess-
ment of the income tax. All Governments before had
refused to deal with the injustice. A Whig Chancellor of
the Exchequer had proposed to double it. The Govern-
ment of Lord Derby founded its financial scheme on the
remedy of this popular grievance. What had been for
the last four years the urgent demand of the mercantile
world ? The extension of our trade with China by the
1 Lord Chancellor in the Derby Administration.
450 TO THE WHIGS [1853
diminution of the tea duties. The demand was conceded.
In a like spirit the complaints of the shipping interest,
long neglected, were promptly heard. There remained
the grievances urged by the colonial interest, and still
more loudly by the agricultural. Here, Free Trade once
established as a fixed principle, it was only in the power
of the Government to give such redress as that principle
permitted. It is true that the Government could not
here restore immediate prosperity to diminished capital.
But it could at least achieve one object of immense
national importance — it could conciliate discontented
classes.
To judge of the Budget produced by Mr. Disraeli in the
dry spirit of a financier is to do signal injustice to the
grand political principle that presided over the whole
scheme, and should have won favour to a hundred petty
errors in detail. That principle was the conciliation to
an inevitable commercial policy of all whom the effects of
the policy had, for the time, most alienated from the
Legislature and the Constitution. That principle went
farther still : it went to the foundation of our repre-
sentative system; it animated the ancient liberty that
exists in the Right of Petition ; it connected the supply of
subsidies with the redress of grievances.
Its merit here was precisely that which the Whig had
ever affected to identify with the wisdom of Liberal legis-
lation— the merit of recovering to the State the alienated
affections of some large division of the people. Thus,
the Derby Government having conceded Reform to all
who appeal to law on behalf of property : having met the
complaint which, day by day, the trading public and the
press had united to utter against the iniquity of taxing
precarious income at the same rate as that derived from
realised capital ; having taken into consideration the just
assertion contained in the Report of the Committee on
the Income Tax, that the whole of the burden was at
present borne by about 350,000 persons, and that under
such an assessment one person contributed not only his
1853] A FAKTHING OK A PENNY f 451
own share to the expenditure, but the share justly charge-
able on three other capable persons ; having given to the
merchant the boon he most demanded ; having earned the
grateful acknowledgment of the representatives of the
shipping interest — it turned to the class most suffering
from the effects of Free Trade. It could not repeal Free
Trade for the sake of that class : was it, therefore, to
exclude that class from the benefits it was conferring on
those whom free trade had most enriched ? What was
its language to the agriculturists ? " We accept your
own cry at the hustings ; we will seek to carry out Free
Trade fairly. You assert that the excise duty on malt
cripples your industry in the direction of your capital:
that assertion no political economist can deny. The
relief, in such reduction as we can effect, may be small;
but in dealing with the malt tax, and taking off one
moiety, we will at least try to do you this justice — we
will prosecute Free Trade for the enlargement of your own
energies, the freedom of your own capital." And some-
thing far more important than the reduction of a malt
tax is the conviction of English fair-play in the mind of
men in whose loyalty England recognises the best defence
for her domestic institutions, and the firmest guarantee
for that safety from a foreign foe for which, at this
moment, you are levying your militia and manning your
naval armaments. And yet, all that you, the Whig
gentlemen who aspire " to make democracy Conservative,"
could see in a measure framed with this obvious end was
the miserable question — whether the gain upon a pot of
beer would be a farthing or a penny !
Well, but the late Chancellor of the Exchequer pro-
posed to bring the ten-pound householders within the
pale of taxation. Audacious man ! Regarded solely as
a question of political prudence, I grant candidly that
very reasonable doubts may be entertained whether the
same Budget should have contained an extension of the
tax on income, and an extension of the tax on houses.
But with respect to the last, the precise verge of exemption,
452 TO THE WHIGS [1853
and the precise amount of the tax imposed, Mr. Disraeli
wisely and pointedly left as a detail. The principle that
was asserted, you, the Whigs, were especially bound to
defend : you had created the class of the ten-pound house-
holders ; you had made those voters potent agents in the
decision of all fiscal burdens. And was it for you to say
that the constituencies you had called into being were to
stand wholly exempt from the taxation their representa-
tives were admitted to levy upon all householders save
themselves ? Was that a doctrine agreeable to the theory
of representation ? Was that your notion of a " Con-
servative Democracy "? You inveigh against the bribery
practised in a borough election. Small indeed is such
septennial corruption to that which you would perpetuate
in the doctrine that men who hold a suffrage in right of a
property qualification should keep sacred from fiscal
burdens the very property which qualifies them to tax
their neighbours ! And the danger becomes immeasurably
heightened when the only excuse you can make for their
exemption is that it might curtail their franchise (in other
words, diminish their political power) if you did not
annex to their right of thrusting their hands into the
pockets of others — the privilege of buttoning up their
own.
No, I repeat it, and I challenge you to disprove the
assertion, there was not a single principle in the Budget
on which Lord Derby's Government staked its existence
which you, the Whigs, were called upon to oppose — not
a principle which had not been recognised by all the
economical authorities you have received as guides — not
a principle which did not tend to consummate that policy
of which you were the legal inheritors, and to restore to
it the value it had lost by your neglect. Had you, then,
refused to join all attempts to overthrow Lord Derby's
Government upon the introduction of its Budget, you
would have maintained the position you resigned to Mr.
Gladstone and his coterie ; you would have been the party
to form a Cabinet whenever the fitting moment to regain
1853] THE DESPOTISM OF TO-MORROW 453
your ascendancy had arrived. I reinforce the proposition
previously stated — present neutrality would have secured
to you the power of future arbitration. And what then
would have been your relative gain ? Clearly this: the
Liberal tendencies of the late Government would have
compelled you gradually to amalgamate with its chiefs.
A Government reconstructed from Lord Derby's would
have united all those who, instead of undoing your
Reform Bill, would make the Reform Bill do its work.
The old quarrels between Whigs and Tories would have
passed away in the midst of the new combinations which,
as Whigs, sooner or later you must resist, or they will
sweep you wholly from the scene. Tories had already
recognised the necessity of employing all the popular
elements of the Constitution in support of its monarchical
foundations; and you as Whigs would have recognised
no less the necessity of preserving all that constitutes the
life of monarchy from insidious attempts to remove from
due influence in legislation that order of gentlemen which
has hitherto given dignity to freedom, and maintained a
constitutional throne apart from the dangerous hostility
or the still more dangerous adulation of fickle numbers.
Remove that order, and the republic of to-day is the
despotism of to-morrow. Nor is there a country in the
world in which the reaction from democracy to despotism
would be so sudden and so complete as in England,
because in no other country is there the same timidity of
Capital ; and just in proportion as democratic progress,
by levelling the influences of birth, elevates the influences
of money, does it create a power that would at any time
annihilate liberty — if liberty were brought into opposition
with the Three per Cents.
But this post of neutrality you renounced. You pre-
ferred to become the tools of the section most embittered
against Lord Derby's Government because most identified
with the memory of your own inflexible opponent. Mr.
Hayter1 has conversations (unauthorised, of course — all
1 Afterwards Sir W. G. Hayter, Liberal Whip.
454 TO THE WHIGS [1853
such conversations, are) with the chiefs of the Brigade.
No income tax extends to Ireland, if Sir Charles Wood1 be
a consistent man and the member of a new Cabinet. You
unite with the Radicals, who overthrew you before —
whom, unless you also become Radicals, you can never
conciliate. You unite with the Peelites, whose organs in
the press had been, up to the last, treating your principles
and your party with contumelious disdain. And you
throw out the Government of which the Premier had been
the most eloquent defender of your Reform Bill — of which
the leader in the House of Commons had been accused of
too warm a desire to reanimate that Toryism of Queen
Anne's day which sought to identify itself with popular
reforms — in order to make a Premier of my Lord Aber-
deen, and a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. Glad-
stone ! A Premier of the man who had treated your
Lord John as a religious incendiary, and your Lord
Palmerston as a meddling revolutionist ! A Chancellor
of the Exchequer of the man who, in the very speech that
preceded his elevation, styled himself "a Conservative,"
pathetically expressing his regret for the rupture of ancient
ties and his hope of some future reunion. Amiable
regret ! honourable hope ! reminding us of those inhabi-
tants of the South Sea Islands who never devour their
enemies — that would be paying them too great a compli-
ment: they eat up only their own friends and relations,
with an appetite proportioned to the love that they bear
to them. And then they hasten to deck themselves in
the feathers and trappings of those thus tenderly de-
voured, in memorial of their " regret at the rupture of
ancient ties," and their "hope of some future reunion " !
Do you feel quite safe with your new ally ? Do you not
dread that the same affectionate tooth will some day be
fastened upon your own shoulders ?
May 21, 1853.
1 Afterwards Viscount Halifax. " Sir Charles Wood in Cabinet
(April 11, 1853) strongly disapproved of the extension of income
tax to Ireland " (Morley's "Life of Gladstone").
1853] WHY THE GOVERNMENT FELL 455
CHAPTER IV
GENTLEMEN, — Lord Derby's Government fell, not on a
question of Free Trade, not on any principle opposed to
Liberal opinion or to national progress. It fell because
the Whigs resolved to abet the revenge of the Peelites
and subserve the ambition of Mr. Gladstone; it fell
because the party of the Movement desired at all hazards
to destroy an Administration proving, by the spirit of its
policy, that our mixed constitution suffices for the
practical purposes of popular government. Not that
Lord Derby's Government ever pronounced itself hostile
to the principle of widening the existent franchise, or of
securing the franchise we possess from whatever liabilities
to corruption it is in the power of the law to control or
counteract. Judging from the general tenor of its meas-
ures, such defects and anomalies in our representative
system as are not inherent in all representative systems
whatsoever would have received due care and correction.
This only was the position Lord Derby's Government
assumed : it refused to make its existence dependent upon
a vague pledge to the Democratic party that it would
introduce such reforms as the Democratic party might
support. In a word, it was the guardian of those institu-
tions which are essential to a tempered monarchy, and
would therefore have been opposed to the innovations
that insidiously prepare the way to the republic and the
dictatorship. The true statesman regards individual
measures less according to their merits, taken per se, than
to their consequences as affecting the framework of the
political system to which they are applied. States derive
their vitality from elements too familiar to be discernible,
as the air, the least visible of fluids, is yet the most neces-
sary to existence. Aristocracy with us has no marked
limit; the eye cannot track it to its vanishing point; it
exists in every circle ; you address a mob by the appella-
456 TO THE WHIGS [1853
tion of " gentlemen " — a noble phrase, denoting a senti-
ment that elevates the whole tone of our national spirit.
But it is on this sentiment that the Democratic party
wage their way ; Mr. Cobden defends the French for their
indifference to freedom on account of their love of equality.
Well, then, might the Democrats seek to destroy a
Government round which the bulk of the gentry had
rallied. But why the Whigs ? Are the Whigs not
aristocrats ?
And now, gentlemen, you have made your choice.
Half a dozen of you have got place; and the rest of you
are — where ? and what ? " Taciturna noctis signa !"
Contemplate the position to which you have reduced
yourselves after twenty years of political supremacy.
You have no leader in the Lords ; you have scarcely a
voice of your own in that august assembly; and Lord
John only holds place in the Cabinet as your representa-
tive upon that single question on which he has hitherto
most notably failed, and on which all such perilous success
as belongs to a compact with democracy must destroy
irremediably whatever is substantial in Whig power —
remove from between the extremes of party the inter-
mediate class of statesmen who, representing none of the
more vehement passions that sway the crowds below the
hustings, rely for their return to Parliament upon the
authority which birth, property, and education obtain
among the smaller or more rural constituencies brought
under the local influences of personal respect and hered-
itary affection.
Lord John holds a seat in the Cabinet solely as the
trustee for a new Reform Bill. But those who have con-
signed to him the trust imperatively demand the dis-
franchisement of small constituencies, and the introduc-
tion of fresh urban voters into the registration for coun-
ties. The disfranchisement of small constituencies is the
disfranchisement of the Whigs; and, if the territorial
interest is to be converted into a new supplement to the
electoral influence of urban householders, it is true that
1853] THE EACE BEFOEE THE FLOOD 457
you may weaken Conservatism, but you weaken yet more
every principle which can distinguish the Whig from the
Democrat. For, after all your endeavours to destroy
Conservatism, still the eternal and immutable tendencies
to conserve and to resist must remain. Even in the
largest mercantile or manufacturing towns there is
always at least a powerful and united minority in oppo-
sition to democratic opinion. In counties, swamp them
as you will with town voters, that opposition will be still
so vigorous, so sustained, that in the ordinary course of
events, when undisturbed by great popular excitement,
Conservatives will secure a large proportion of their
present strength. But you, who can neither accord with
the passions of the populace, nor win the favour of yeoman
and farmer through sympathy with their class and their
calling, will find that, just in proportion as you destroy
all the local influences which conciliate differences in
political opinion, you will vanish more and more from
the contests of public life. Here and there, as in the case
of Lord John, rare circumstances of name and past popular
service may sustain some individual in Parliament, and
secure to him the suffrages of voters proud of his repute,
though chafed against the moderation of his sentiments.
But, as a political party, the Whigs, both in name and in
thing, will be but as the fossils which speak of the race
before the flood. And observe, too, that, under the
peculiar circumstances of the position Lord John has
assumed, all the ordinary difficulties that attend the
recasting of the constitution, the remodelling of the
franchise, are gratuitously increased. For, by the dec-
larations, hints, and vague promises Lord John has made,
not only to his allies amongst the Movement, but to that
more moderate, though not more thoughtful, portion of
the public which imagines that for every ill legislation
can find a remedy, this bold statesman has committed
himself to a task much more difficult than that of com-
manding the Channel fleet — the task of bringing the law
written upon parchment to bear against the laws im-
30
458 TO THE WHIGS [1853
pressed upon human nature. He undertakes to find,
against the bribes which the rich candidate offers to the
poor elector, remedies more effectual than those com-
prised in the rigorous severity with which Committees of
the House now unseat every member to whom the practice
of bribery is brought home — remedies that shall meet all
of which the advocates for secret suffrage complain, yet
dispense with secret suffrage itself. My Lord John, you
are pledged to an impossibility ! Not that we need sub-
scribe to the cynic code of Mr. Drummond, confound all
men in one principle of corruption, and see no distinction
between the sale of a vote for five pounds and the generous
ambition that makes the soldier desire the token of honour,
or the patriot labour for the power to accomplish noble
schemes for his country. Narrow the view to the evil
immediately before us — viz., the bribery or intimidation
of voters; acknowledge the state and conditions of our
civilisation, with all its disparities of wealth, all the pas-
sions of ambition and of greed that it engenders. See
all those disparities brought to bear, all those passions
let loose, at a contested election, and ask yourself if it be
possible by any law to prevent wealth from the exercise
of its power, or place avarice out of the reach of tempta-
tion ? Yes, there is one law, and but one — the law that
would erase the theory of popular representation from
our system ; the law that would suspend the franchise or
restrict it to an oligarchy ; the law that would take wealth
and poverty from juxtaposition; the law that would
annihilate constitutional liberty in England, with all its
virtues and with all its concomitant excesses. There is
no other law, fill your statute book as you may. And the
worst of it is that, when men enter into a war with human
nature, they go on adding threat upon threat, penalty
upon penalty, till the disproportion between the offence
and the punishment makes justice itself disappear before
the common-sense of the tribunal to which the verdict is
referred. The advocates for the ballot have this at least
in their favour — all your remedies will fail one after the
1853] MINISTERS AND CORRUPTION 459
other, and leave but the ballot-box alone untried. Man-
lier and wiser would have been the frank avowal: We
must take civilisation and liberty as they exist, lamenting
the temptations they offer, the excesses to which they are
incident, seeing that the more civilisation and liberty are
brought to bear upon the ferment of masses closely pressed
together in towns, the more your evidence shows that the
corruption of individuals is in ratio with the active prin-
ciple that gives life to the State ; and that thus the sparser
population of agricultural districts is comparatively free
from the vices which rage in the towns, whose electoral
influence you desire us to increase. Nor is the large
city more pure than the small borough. We can dis-
franchise St. Albans to please you. Would you have us
disfranchise for the same offence Liverpool and London ?
Or, if we are to adjust constituencies according to the
evidences of bribery before our committees, would you
have us accept those evidences, and say : Agricultural
constituencies are so rarely condemned in comparison to
urban that the facts call upon us to give to the rural
population the very influence of which you would deprive
them. No ! we cannot separate civilisation from all its
consequences — the same causes that produce the vice
call forth the virtue ; you show us only the temptation to
which men have yielded — show us also the magnanimity
with which all threats have been defied and all bribes
have been disdained. An election is but an epitome of
human life. And it is to the glory of our commonwealth
that, upon the whole, honesty is so prevalent; and that
there never yet existed in the world a popular assembly
in which the corruption of the representatives themselves
was so rare as in the British House of Commons. Honour
to us that, amidst all our hot feuds of faction, amidst all
the changes of opinion and of party which our statesmen
undergo, it never yet was suspected that one man to
whose voice the English Parliament would listen for a
second had accepted a pecuniary consideration for the
change of an opinion and the record of a vote. Can you
460 TO THE WHIGS [1853
say this even of the first statesmen of France, of America,
of the chiefs of the old republics ? Individuals may be
corrupted in our boroughs — the National Assembly is
incorrupt.
Nor is this rash undertaking to accept civilisation, yet
reject its conditions, the only difficulty Lord John has
created for himself in becoming sponsor for a new Par-
liamentary Eeform Bill. He has undertaken what would
obviously require the most cordial unanimity as to the
ulterior objects which such reform, be it large or small,
should effect — in connection with men of opinions the
most opposite, and with whom the peculiarities of his own
mind can have the least of that sympathy which he might
have found amongst the Whigs cashiered from the Cabinet.
And thus, on the one hand a Gladstone, on the other a
Molesworth, he is to conciliate the University of Oxford
with the reforms that will satisfy the electors of Southwark !
This is his position, on this ground alone he holds
office, and to this, after scattering, subdividing, the party
that he led, does he commit all the chance of their
reunion !
But, Whigs and gentlemen, I have heard some of you
take this comfort to yourselves : " Rely on it," you say —
" rely on it that, with such colleagues as Lansdowne and
Aberdeen, Gladstone and Sidney Herbert, Lord John's
new Reform Bill will be so nominal that even Conserva-
tives may support it." Well, if that be so, why were
democrats enticed to destroy a Conservative Govern-
ment ? Have so many votes been purchased by a bill
at a year's date, which will then be dishonoured ! Pos-
sibly it may prove to be the fact. It is easy for one party
to outbid another for popularity, when there is no inten-
tion to disburse the difference between the offers . ' ' What
salary do you give to your secretaries ?" asked a French
Prince of another grand seigneur. " A hundred crowns,"
was the answer. " A hundred crowns only ! How low !
What a trifle ! I give two hundred to mine — but, to be
sure, I never pay them /"
1853] ME. GLADSTONE'S BUDGET 461
But in this case the secretaries will be Cobden and
Bright, and I have a strong suspicion that they intend to
be paid. Look to it.
May 28, 1853.
CHAPTER V
GENTLEMEN, — You have rallied round Mr. Gladstone's
Budget as round a banner. The Budget is popular, I
grant it. But why ? Because of the political principle
that lies concealed amongst its financial details. It is
popular because it natters all those whose passions are
yet warmed by the remembrance of the long disputes on
the Corn Laws. It revives the ignes suppositos by the
cineri doloso.1 It renews the triumph over the landed
interest by a fresh attack upon the land. I have said in
a former letter that we would consider why the complaint
against the assessment of the income tax, once so loud,
was now so silenced. I invite you to that consideration.
You cannot deny that at the commencement of the
present Parliament it was generally computed that not
one hundred and fifty members could be found who would
vote for the reassessment of the income tax, according to
the principle upon which it has been imposed and con-
tinued. Now, Mr. Gladstone has obtained a willing
majority not only to the renewal but to the extension of
the tax, unmitigated in its stern principle — &nd how ?
By annexing to it the new duty on successions. Take
from the Budget this tax, and where would be Mr. Glad-
stone's popularity — where the acquiescence in the renewal
of the income tax, which, like that grim impartial visitor
described by the poet,
pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Kegumque turres '"? 2
1 " Periculosse plenum opus alese
Tractas; et incedis per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso."
Horace, " Odes," II., i. 6.
Horace, " Odes," L, iv. 13.
462 TO THE WHIGS [1853
It may or may not he true that the new tax on succes-
sions is but a claptrap for popularity, that it will little
injure the land, that only £400,000 will be raised from that
description of property. Not so, at least, was the propo-
sition regarded by the Movement who cheered the assault
on aristocracy, and the shopkeeper who silenced as a
Eadical the complaints he had uttered as a tradesman.
It became popular solely on the ground that it inflicted
on the principle of hereditary aristocracy a something that
had heretofore been resisted as detrimental to its exist-
ence. The popularity was increased because the attack
was unaccompanied by one conciliatory measure towards
the class it assailed — not even an attempt to mitigate the
expenses of the sale or the mortgage which the tax might
not unfrequently compel. Do the democrats pause to
to think whether the gain from land will be less than half a
million ? No ! To use the language of their own press,
" They have inserted another wedge into the tree."
I say nothing on the general question as to whether
real property should or should not be exposed to the
legacy duty ; or whether it be a sound principle in political
economy to relieve our own incomes by deductions from
the capital of posterity. All that I say is that the time
and the mode in which the duty is now imposed convert
a question otherwise financial into a measure especially
political.
The income tax was mainly defended, as an instrument
for the abolition of protective duties. And now the sole
prospect of our release from that burden is made to rest
upon the profits of a new tax on the very class which the
abolition of those duties had most galled arid most injured.
You thus ultimately pay for Free Trade out of the pockets
of those whom Free Trade had impoverished. You con-
clude your war, not by grace to the enemy who has retired
from the field, but by an act that is meant to charge him
with its expenses. You have cheered on your followers
by the shout of " Vse victis !" and in the spirit of Eastern
despots have made the proof of your victory consist in
1853] FELICITOUS IMITATION 463
the fine you have levied on the vanquished. Thus it is
that Mr. Gladstone purchased the popular consent to the
inequalities of his income tax. And Lord John sate
beside Mr. Gladstone, and Lord John subscribed to the
impost, because it was a symbol of political insult — having
during his whole career as a Whig opposed the impost as a
measure of finance ! And do you think that this fresh
triumph to the Peelites is no fresh damage to the Whigs !
Mr. Gladstone's Budget itself, regarded purely as a
financial measure, has some great merits; and amongst
them that which is only second to originality — viz.,
felicitous imitation. Mr. Brodie's pamphlet supplies the
conception of the new succession tax; to Mr. Disraeli's
Budget we owe the mitigation of the tea duties, the relief
of the shipping interest. There is one authority, indeed,
to which Mr. Gladstone never turned his classical taste,
whether for paraphrase or translation — viz., the Budgets
of the Whigs.
But that which predistinguishes the scheme of Mr.
Gladstone from the propositions of Mr. Disraeli is notable
and significant. It is the utter absence of every desire
to remove the irritation and to gain the affections of the
vast class employed in the production of wealth, through
its earliest and deepest source — the cultivation of the soil.
When our Hannibal of the Exchequer has gained the
summit of his Alps, and looks down on his Italy of Relief,
a divine compassion seizes him for the sufferings of all —
except the class which alone has suffered. He thinks the
case of the posthorse-masters "very hard," he reserves
a corner of his heart for the wrongs of attorneys, ponies
and dogs come under benignant consideration; but the
husbandman whose earnings had been seized to defray
the cost of ascending the Alps is excluded from all the
benefits showered down on the rest of Italy! The land is
ignored for relief — it is only remembered for taxation.
And therefore the old grudge still remains, and the golden
opportunity of effecting conciliation between town and
country upon easy terms is irrevocably cast away. Mean-
464 TO THE WHIGS [1853
while the Parliament stands pledged for six years to the
continuance of the income tax, with all the grievances
which will again find voice when the hurrahs that cheered
the new tax upon bloated landlords have passed away —
remaining in full force, and extending to a wider range all
the feelings that weaken respect for property, and all the
temptations which can demoralise the honest. In the
speech by which Mr. Disraeli introduced his Budget he
contemplated the future extinction of the income tax,
while redressing for the present its inequalities. But
on what did he rely for aid to the resources obtained from
the termination of the Long and other Annuities ? Upon
the diminution of expenditure in the Public Works. The
two millions which Mr. Gladstone is in six years to obtain
from a tax that it now seems is to disappoint popular
expectation, and fall rather upon humble house-owners
than opulent landholders, Mr. Disraeli would have raised,
perhaps, in three years, by drawing only on that Magnum
Vectigal Parsimonia1 which has no place in the calculation
of Mr. Gladstone. " Retrenchment " was one of the
three conditions of Lord Grey when he entered into office ;
Lord Derby's Government took up the long-dormant
principle upon which the Whigs had based their preten-
sions to power; and the Whigs turned aside, to cry out,
with Mr. Goulburn, " Dangerous and abominable prin-
ciple ! to count on retrenchment for the future repeal of
a tax."
And now, gentlemen, I close my appeal to you. You
have united yourselves with men opposed to all your past
policy, for the purpose of suspending your present exist-
ence as a party, and for the preparation of a measure
which must either complete your unpopularity by its
failure, or destroy all the elements of your future power
by its success. Meanwhile you have the fullest oppor-
tunities to cultivate the virtue of patience under affront.
My Lord John has had the presumption to speak for him-
*" Magnum vectigal est parsimonia" (Cicero, "Paradoxa
Stoicorum," vi, 3, 49).
1853] A FINAL APPEAL 465
self on a question he might well be supposed to under-
stand ; my Lord Aberdeen disavows, on the part of him-
self "and many of his colleagues," the sentiments ex-
pressed by the nominal Leader of the Commons. Periods
polished with literary care, and delivered with the frigid
solemnity of elaborate preparation, are excused as ex-
pressions liable to be " misunderstood," indiscreet ebulli-
tions from the "heat of debate"! The apology that
would damage the raw tyro in politics is applied to the
colleague grey with the experience and conflicts of forty
years; and the services of Mr. Keogh1 are repurchased by
the marked humiliation of the ci-devant First Minister of
the Crown. Your India Bill, purely Whig, is already
exposed to contempt by the defenders of that part of the
Cabinet which is purely Peelite; and the grave troubles in
the East introduce into your councils every ancient sub-
ject of discord that can distinguish a Palmerston from
an Aberdeen. But such differences of policy are in-
significant compared to that which Lord John himself
holds in reserve. Let the seeds of disunion lie interred
through the present session — the crop will be richer for
the repose of the fallow. Another year, and the old
position of the Whigs will be gone for ever. You must
then do as others have done before you — make your bold
choice between abjuring your creed of moderation, and
passing as Radicals to the expectant camp of Mr. Cobden,
or carrying that creed into the forces that gather round the
standard of Lord Derby. The brief Government which
you overthrew lasted long enough to suffice for proof
that a Ministry which never pledged itself to finality can
comprehend the necessities of progress; that to redress
grievances, conciliate classes, retrench expenditure, reform
the laws, take into council Public Opinion, are not only
within the power, but become the essential duty, of those
who call themselves Conservatives — simply because they
would preserve to their children the constitution once
reverenced by the Whigs.
1 Irish Solicitor- General.
466 TO THE WHIGS [1853
I do not doubt the choice to which intelligence and
patriotism will compel some amongst you, and those not
the least eminent nor the least Liberal. And looking to
your uneasy and undignified post in the present Adminis-
tration, certain that all the motives which guide human
conduct forbid you long to retain it — conscious that you
cannot for years to come form an Administration solely
from your own ranks — I foresee that fusion between the
more thoughtful of the chiefs and supporters of the present
Government and the leaders of the present Opposition
which will terminate in the creation of such a Government
as will bring all the forces of the constitution to bear upon
the cure of its own diseases. With States, as with men,
all that physicians can do is to assist Nature. To every
political constitution is its own nature, its own idiosyn-
crasies. You cannot amend the abuses that have crept
into an ancient monarchy by the remedies you would
apply to the system of a young republic. Attempt it, and
you do not cure the disease : you destroy the patient.
For myself, I stand somewhat distinct from the ordinary
relations of party, and altogether remote from the interests
of official ambition. The name I have assumed is so far
appropriate that it is obscure to those who may yet well
remember the more prominent disputants in the grand
arena of old Roman politics; it is a name incidentally
cited by Cicero as that of one among others who had
studied the customs of his country, and might therefore
be competent to suggest an occasional counsel to his
fellow-citizens. I see before me a numerous and powerful
party, animated by chiefs whose opinions in favour of all
that can advance the cause of pure Democracy have been
openly proclaimed. Amongst that party, no doubt
there are some more moderate than others, some who
march blindfold towards the goal which those of bolder
vision see clear through the mists of faction. But all
unite in the march of the caravan towards the heart of
the desert ; and if there be those who then discover that
the fountain which allures them on is but the mirage, it
1853] CONSOLIDATING THE EMPIEE 467
will be too late to return, and it will be but destruction to
pause. To that party the real sense of the country is
nevertheless healthfully opposed. But what avails the
sense of the country, when it is subdivided into sections
who dispute on the straws which the wind will soon whirl
away from their sight ? If England is to retain that
empire which she owes to no natural resources, but to the
various influences of a most complicated and artificial,
but a most admirable and effective, social system, she
must gather into one united phalanx all who hold the
doctrine that England, to be safe, must be great — to con-
tinue free she must rest upon the intermediate institutions
which fence round monarchy as the symbol of executive
force from that suffrage of unalloyed democracy which
represents the invading agencies of legislative change.
Our system of policy must be opposed to all those who,
by rules of arithmetic, would reduce the empire in which
the sun never sets, to the isle of the Anglo-Saxon, and leave
our shores without defence against a yet craftier Norman.
Our measures of reform must be so framed as to gain all
the purposes of good government, yet to admit under the
name of reform no agency that tends by its own inevitable
laws to the explosion of the machinery whose operations
you pretend it will economise and quicken. By what
plausible arguments were the dwellers in the Pirseus
admitted to vote in the Athenian Assembly ! They had
fought at Salamis. What so just as that they should
possess the franchise of the State they had assisted to
save ? Regarded in itself, that extension of suffrage
was reasonable enough; but as applied to the system of
the Athenian commonwealth, all sound historians concui
that it became the necessary destruction of Athens. A
power was brought to play against the tendencies that pre-
served the good that was acquired from the greed of the
fatal something that is yet to be obtained. In a word,
those who had no stake in the soil swamped the votes of
those who were its natural defenders . Hence, from that
moment, arise the dictator and the demagogue — Pericles
468 TO THE WHIGS [1853
and Cleon — the flatterer and the tyrant of mobs; hence
the rapid fluctuations, the greedy enterprises, the dominion
of the Have-nots, the ruin of the fleet, the loss of the
colonies, the Thirty Tyrants, the vain restoration of a
hollow freedom, the conquest of the Macedonian, the
adulation offered to Demetrius as to a god — licence —
corruption — servitude — dissolution .
Give the popular assembly of Great Britain up to the
controlling influence of the lowest voters in large towns,
and you have brought again a Piraeus to destroy your
Athens.
But I see the sole hope for England in the union of those
men who will defend England as she is. History has
buried in the past all of the old feuds between Tories and
Whigs save that mere emulation for power which hunts
out pretexts for unsubstantial differences. Both have
now to protect from a common fate the constitution which
has been corrected and ennobled by their ancient collisions
of opinion. A manly alliance upon the broad understand-
ing that reforms are to cement the foundation of mon-
archy, and not attempt the anomalous paradox of uniting
democratic institutions to a defenceless throne, would at
once give to the Whigs all that they require for the re-
sumption of their historical influence — electoral numbers
— and strengthen the liberal disposition of Lord Derby's
partisans by the accession of all that they need to make
the public fully comprehend their views — viz., colleagues
experienced in office and eloquent in debate. The
Whigs may lose that occasion ; the stubborn prejudices
attached to obsolete feuds — not strong enough to resist
subordination to Aberdeen and Gladstone — may yet
induce them to reject association with men whom at
heart they more cordially approve. If so, the loss is to
themselves — their extinction will be doomed. It is the
Gladstones and the Aberdeens who will then ultimately
obtain all the ground that they forfeit. Meanwhile let
not the true Conservatives despond — let them be patient
till the storm which their opponents themselves have
1853] HOUR-GLASS AND SCYTHE 469
invoked scatter the fleet which carries mutiny on board.
All wrecks come to the shore — the shore does not go to the
wrecks .
Not that I would have you suppose that Fortune is a
goddess that favours the inert. They who think that it
is sufficient to wait for the ripening season never reap the
harvest. Sow first, and then wait. " Time," said Lord
Plunket, in one of his great orations, " is represented with
the hour-glass as well as with the scythe." By the one
he mows down — by the other he reconstructs.
MANILIUS.
June 11, 1853.
INDEX
ABERCROMBY, MR. SPEAKER, 50
Aberdeen, Lord, 12, 431, 435, 440,
454, 460
Aislabie, John, 290 (note)
Althorp, Lord (third Earl Spencer),
38, 73, 367, 439
Aquinas, Thomas, 119, 414
Aristocratic Principle of Govern-
ment, 17 et seq., 349
Arnold, W. T., 6
Athenaeum, the, 74
" Atticus " pseudonym, 14; Letter to
the Duke of Wellington, 376-385
Attwood, Thomas: Runnymede Letter
to, 247-252; otherwise mentioned,
45 (note), 50, 53, 54
Auckland, Lord, 65, 240, 307
Bacon, 252, 253
Barataria, 358, 387, 393
Baring, Sir F. T. (Lord North-
brook), 438
Barnes, Thomas (of the Times), 1,
9, 11
Bedchamber, Ladies of the, 357,
368 et seq., 375
Bedford, Duke of, 26, 47, 110, 435
Bentham, Jeremy, 107, 122, 134,
146, 449
Bentinck, Lord William, Runny-
mede Letter to, 282-289; otherwise
mentioned, 299, 306, 315
Bickersteth, Henry (Lord Langdale),
241, 255, 318
Bolingbroke, Lord, 147, 208, 221;
estimate of, 218 et seq.
Bright, John, 16, 443, 445, 446
Brodie, Sir Benjamin, 254
Brooks, Shirley, 13
Brougham, Lord : Runnymede Letter
to, 252-255; otherwise mentioned,
30, 38, 40, 66, 74, 95, 317, 357,
367, 414
Buckingham, James Silk, 74 (note),
76
Buckle, G. E., 13
Budget, Mr. Disraeli's, 450 et seq.
Buller, Charles, 50 (note), 401
Bulwer, Sir Henry Lytton (Lord
Balling), 62, 376
Burdett, Sir Francis, 294, 388, 393
Buren, Van, 411
Burke, Edmund, 35, 147, 375
Burley, Walter, 119
Butler, Samuel, 61
Byron, Lord, 294, 296, 388, 393
Campbell, Sir John (Lord Camp-
bell) : Runnymede Letter to, 242-
246 ; otherwise mentioned, 88, 94
Canning, George, 29, 43, 74, 255,
273, 290, 294, 388, 392
Cantwell, 364
Capel, Lord, 35
Carlyle, Thomas, 11, 386, 408
Castlereagh, Lord, 43, 74, 254
Chalice, the poisoned, 322
Character, A. (Mr. Spring Rice), 400
Charities Commission Bill, 66
Chartists, 367
Church Reform, 25 et seq.
Clanricarde, Lord, 438
Clarendon, Lord, 35, 147
Coalition Government (1852), 12;
article on Coalition, 431 et seq.
Cobbett, William, 97, 388, 393
Cobden, Richard, 16, 443, 456, 465
Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice, 48
(note), 66, 95
" Cceur de Lion " pseudonym, 14.
See Old England
Coke, Sir Edward, 52, 105, 123, 125,
147
Collins, Mortimer, 13
Commons, oppression by the, 36,
54, 70, 75, 180
Condorcet, Marquis de, 122
Consistency in Politics, 3, 20, 24, 32
Constitution, Disraeli's theory of
the, 7, 59, 62, 68, 96, 102, 105, 107,
471
472
INDEX
148, 158, 169, 185, 192 et seq., 228
et seq., 340 et seq.
Constitution of France, 126 et seq.,
132 et seq.
Constitution of Prussia, 137 et seq.
Constitution of the United States,
143 et seq.
Constitution, Vindication of the
English, 111-232; otherwise men-
tioned, 2, 8, 10, 327
Cottenham, Lord : Runnymede Letter
to, 317-321; otherwise mentioned,
236, 241, 244, 264, 271, 324, 397
Coulton, David T., 13
Courier, the, 71, 86, 404
Crisis Examined, The, 23-40; other-
wise mentioned, 2, 4, 10
Cromwell, Oliver, 20, 55, 147
Cutler, Sir John, 39 (note)
Davies, Scrope, 295
Debt, imprisonment for, 89, 94
Delane, J. T., 11
Democratic Principle of Govern-
ment, 17 et seq.
Denman, Lord, 77 (note), 319
Derby, Lord, Ministry of, 12, 431,
443 et seq.
Diary, Disraeli's, 5, 42
Digby, Lord, 35
Disraeli, Benjamin:
Writes Vivian Grey, 3
Tour in the East, 3, 134, 170
Enters political life, 3
Candidatures for High Wycombe,
4, 16, 23, 24
Candidature for Marylebone, 16
Member for Maidstone, 3, 11, 408
What is He? 16-22 ; otherwise men-
tioned, 2
Influence of Lord Lyndhurst, 3,
23, 42, 111, 233
First meeting with Gladstone, 4
The Crisis Examined, 23-40;
otherwise mentioned, 2, 4, 10
Contributions to the Morning
Post (Peers and People}, 41-110;
otherwise mentioned, 2, 4, 10
Globe controversy, 8
Vindication of the English Con-
stitution, 111-232; otherwise
mentioned, 2, 8, 10, 327
Runnymede Letters, 233-326;
otherwise mentioned, 2, 6, 9
On Lord Lyndhurst's " Summary
of the Session," 397-399
The Spirit of Whiggism, 327-356;
otherwise mentioned, 9, 145
Further Letters of Runnymede
(1837), 357-365; otherwise men-
tioned, 9
Contributor to Fraser's Magazine,
386-399; otherwise mentioned,
10
Political Satires in Verse, 400-407;
otherwise mentioned, 11
Old England, 408-430; otherwise
mentioned, 11
Lcelius Letters : to Lord John
Russell, 365-368; to the Queen,
368-372; to Lord Melbourne,
372-376; otherwise mentioned,
11, 14
Atticus Letter to the Duke of
Wellington, 376-385; otherwise
mentioned, 11, 14
Letter to Sir Robert Peel, 11
Sir Robert Peel's reply, 12
Leads Tory party in the Com-
mons, 12, 431
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 12,
16, 431
Founds The Press, 2, 3, 12, 431
Contributes article on Coalition,
431-435; otherwise mentioned
13, 431
To the Whigs, 436-469; otherwise
mentioned, 3, 13, 431
Self-plagiarism, 10
D 'Israeli, Isaac, 22
Disraeli, Mrs. (Lady Beaconsfield),
378
D 'Israeli, Sarah, 6, 41, 112, 134
Disraeli or Maginn ? 10, 386-399
D'Orsay, Count, 376, 387
Drinkwater, John Elliott, 48 (note),
66,95
Ducrow simile, 4, 40
Duffy, Gavan, 445 (note)
Duncannon, Lord, 407
Duncombe, Thomas Slingsby, 307
Durham, Lord, 23, 37, 285, 306, 367
Dwarris, SirF. W. L., 48 (note), 66, 95
Echevins, Court of, 154
Edinburgh Review, 43
Eldon, Lord, 243, 319
Eliot, Sir John, 35, 52, 175
Ellenborough, Lord, 45
Ellice, Edward, Runnymede Letter io,
301-304; otherwise mentioned, 30,
38, 39, 306, 402
Erigena, 119, 414
Escott, T. H. Sweet-, 14
Esterhazy, Prince, 377
Evans, General de Lacy, 293, 412
INDEX
473
Facsimile Letters, 41, 112, 377
Fairman, Colonel, 70 (note)
Falkland, Lord, 35, 348
Federal Principle of Government, 22
Feudal Principle of Government, 22
Fitzwilliam, Earl, 99
Follett, Sir William, 243
Fonblanque, Albany, 404
Fox, Charles James, 35, 436, 44G
Francis, Sir Philip, 14
Fraser's Magazine, 10. See also
Disraeli or Maginn ?
Free Trade, 444 et seq., 462
Gait, John, 392
Gifford, Sir Robert (Lord Gifford),
243
Gladstone, W. E., 4, 11, 372, 431,
435, 438, 442, 452, 454, 455, 460,
461, 462, 463, 464
Glenelg, Lord : Runnymede Letter to,
297-301 ; otherwise mentioned, 31,
239, 265, 271, 273, 291, 303, 305,
306, 323, 363, 364, 367, 403, 406
Globe, the, 8, 56, 72, 402, 404
Gosford, Lord, 300, 306
Graham, Sir James, 359
Grant, Sir Charles. See Glenelg
Grant, Sir Robert, 31, 403
Great Seal in Commission, 48, 250
Greville's "Memoirs," 23, 246, 255,
398
Grey, Earl, 4, 16, 29, 30, 32, 38,
43, 74, 254, 255 (note), 268, 279,
333, 361, 367, 411, 426, 437, 440,
449
Grey, General, 30 (note)
Grey, Sir George, 437, 464
Guizot, M., 147
Halifax, Lord. See Sir Charles
Wood
Halifax, Savile, Marquis of, 238
Halley's Comet, 79, 93
Hampden, John, 35, 45, 52, 104,
175, 177, 188, 335
Hardinge, Sir Henry, 8, 41
Hawes, Benjamin, 89
Haydon, Benjamin, 13
Haydon, F. W., 13
Hayter, Sir W. G., 453
Hazelrigg, 75
Head, Sir Francis, 305, 307
Herbert, Sidney, 460
Heroic Epistle to Viscount Melbourne,
403
High Nonsense and Low Nonsense,
247 (note)
High Wycombe, candidatures for,
4, 16, 23, 24
Hobhouse, Sir John Cam (Lord
Broughton) : Runnymede Letter to,
294-297; otherwise mentioned, 30,
31, 39, 53 (note), 273, 299, 363,
386, 392 et seq., 403, 407
Holland, Lord, 239, 241, 389, 397,
402
Hollis, 35
Hook, Theodore, 392
Home, Sir William, 246
House of Commons not representa-
tive of the people, 59, 62, 102, 109,
148 et seq., 158, 185, 235, 345
House of Lords: irresponsibility of,
96, 103, 108, 192, 204 et seq.;
character and constitution of,
185 et seq., 199 et seq.; Runnymede
Letters to, 308-317
Howick, Lord, 241, 274, 282, 407
Hume, Joseph, 50 (note), 52, 70, 75,
85, 87, 95, 100, 101, 103, 105, 110.
405
Huskisson, W., 74
Hutton, John Holt, 13
Impeachment of Lord Melbourne,
85,90
Irish Church Bill, 57, 65, 73, 81, 84,
96, 237, 285
Jenkins and Tomkins, 252, 417
Johnson, Dr., 245
Junius, Letters of, 9
Katterfelto, Gustavus, 263
Kebbel. T. E., 13, 14
Keogh (or Kehoe), John, 314, 353
Keogh, Judge, 465
Labouchere, Henry (Lord Taunton),
438
Lcelius Letters. See Disraeli
" Lselius," pseudonym, 14, 357
La Fayette, 132 et seq.
Laffitte, Jacques, 56 (note), 411
Lancet, the, 51
Langton, Stephen (Archbishop of
Canterbury), 121, 126, 136
Languet, Hubert, 173
Lansdowne, Lord, 29, 39, 65, 66, 76,
241, 255, 271, 273, 398, 406, 460
Leach, Sir John, 243
Liberty under the Plantagenets, 161
Liberty under the Tudors, 162
Lilburne, John, 75
Liston, John, 38
31
474
INDEX
Littledale, Mr. Justice, 243 .
Liverpool, Lord, 77
Lockhart, J. G., 386
Lolme, Jean Louis de, 129
Lucas, Samuel, 13
Lully, Raymond, 119
Lushington, Dr., 33
Lyndhurst, Lord: influence of, 3 et
seq., 23, 42, 111, 233; estimates
of, 47, 67, 394 et seq,, 397 et seq. ;
encounter with Lord Denman, 76
et seq. ; otherwise mentioned, 56,
66, 94, 243, 281, 319, 357, 386,
389, 425
Macaulay, Lord, 438
Maclise, Daniel, 11, 386
M'Hale, John, Archbishop of Tuam,
314, 353, 364
Madox, Thomas, 151
Maginn, Dr., 386-399; otherwise
mentioned, 11
Magna Charta, 121 et seq., 235
Maidstone, Member for, 3, 11, 408
Malt Tax, 25, 451
' Manilius " pseudonym, 14, 431.
See also Whigs, To the
Mansfield, Lord, 147, 393
Marylebone, candidature for, 16
"Masses," the, 416, 420
Mathews, Charles, 239, 295
Maunsell, T. P., 249
Mehemet Ali, 169
Melbourne, Lord : RunnymeddLetters
to, 238-242, 305-308, 322-326;
further letter to, 361-365; Heroic
Epistle to, 403; Minister not of
the King's choice, 4, 65, 85, 325,
375; second Ministry of, 233;
otherwise mentioned, 2, 5, 7, 9,
11, 23, 29, 38, 39, 42, 43, 58, 59,
62, 71, 73, 76, 79, 83, 90, 93, 237,
254, 257, ?65, 273, 278, 281, 300,
302, 304, 360, 370, 376, 389, 397,
402
Minto, Lord, 273
Molesworth, Sir William, 402, 438,
442, 444, 460
Montfort, Simon de (Earl of
Leicester), 155
Monypenny, W. F., " Life of Dis-
raeli " by, 1,2,8, 111
Morley, Lord, 372
Morning Chronicle, the, 13, 56, 86,
87, 91, 404
Morning Post, the, 2, 4 et seq.,
233. See also Peers and People,
42-110
Morpeth, Lord (seventh Earl of
Carlisle), 239, 299, 361, 376, 438
"Movement," the, 245, 366, 438,
445, 448, 455, 462
Mulgrave, Lord (Marquis of Nor-
manby), 239; Runnymede Letter
to, 358-361; otherwise mentioned,
368, 386, 389 et seq.
Municipal Corporations Bill crisis,
5, 8, 28, 281, 354, 425. See also
Peers and People, 42-110
Municipal Corporations Reform
Commission, members of, 5
National Association, 359
National party, advocacy of, 2, 16,
20
Naylor, James, 70 (note)
Newcastle, Duke of, 51
Normanby, Marquis of. See Mul-
grave
Nottingham Castle, burning of, 51
Nugent, Lord, 307
Occam, William of, 119
O'Connell, Daniel: estimates of, 275-
277, 359-360; otherwise men-
tioned, 43, 52, 58, 65, 73, 85, 87,
89, 96, 235, 240, 242, 245, 256,
265, 269, 271, 279, 281, 304, 307,
311, 315, 322, 358, 387, 389, 395,
417
Old England, 11, 408-430
O'Neale, Sir Phelim, 52 (note), 275
Open Letters, 9, 357-385
Open Questions : a Political Eclogue,
401
Osborne, Bernal, 444, 446
Palmerston, Lord, Runnymede Letter
to, 289-294; the " Lord Fanny "
and " Sporus " of Politics, 294;
office under seven Prime Ministers,
289; otherwise mentioned, 31, 44,
45, 239, 265, 271, 273, 299, 302,
305, 306, 362, 393, 403, 404, 412,
454, 465
Papineau, 300, 364, 406, 411, 417
Parke, Baron, 243, 319
Parkes, Joseph, 45 (note), 48, 66, 95
Peel, Sir Robert: Runnymede Letters
to, 234-237, 256-260; estimate of,
374; breach between Disraeli and,
12; death of, 12; otherwise men-
tioned, 4, 5, 11, 23, 33, 94, 110,
226, 248, 255, 279, 280, 281, 356,
362, 369, 373, 381, 425, 426, 431,
437, 444, 447
INDEX
475
Peelites, the, 439, 454, 455
Peers, threatened creation of, 19, 34,
209, 325, 332
Peers and People, 41-110
Pember, Edward, 13
People, Runnymede Letter to the,
272-277
" People," the, 44, 49, 54, 59, 61, 62,
66, 71, 80, 93, 95, 102, 109, 148,
173, 179, 220, 235, 249, 336, 343,
352, 416, 418
Pigot, Chief Baron, 359
Pitt, 35, 222, 258, 333
Plomer, Sir Thomas, 243
Plunket, Lord, 304, 307, 469
Political Satires in Verse, 11, 400-
407
Political Unions, 19
Poor Law, 27, 34
Power, Tyrone, 239
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 4, 5
Press, The. See Disraeli
Prout, Father, 386
Pseudonyms, 14
Pym, John, 35, 52, 104, 147, 163,
175, 177, 188, 335, 348
Rapin, 329
Reform Act, 2, 17 et seq., 29, 31, 33,
46, 69, 169, 183, 227, 238, 333,
367, 373, 383, 384, 436, 441, 448,
456
Reform, Duke of Wellington and,
29 (note)
Reform Ministry, dissensions in, 37,
65, 254
Rippon, Cuthbert, 101, 105, 110
Robins, George, 273
Roebuck, J. A., 50 (note), 87, 96,
100, 101, 110, 402, 405
Rolfe, Sir Monsey (Lord Cranworth),
52 (note), 244
Runnymede Letters, 233-326; Further
Letters of, 357-365; otherwise
mentioned, 2, 9, 10, 14, 327, 377
Rushton, Edward, 48 (note), 66, 95
Russell, Lord John: Runnymede
Letter to, 266-271; Lwlius Letter
to, 365-368; on the constitution,
10, 102, 105, 109, 267, 341, 383;
otherwise mentioned, 5, 10, 11,
39, 45, 53, 85, 110, 265, 273, 282,
299, 306, 325, 348, 361, 363, 370,
373, 376, 402, 406, 411, 421, 439,
445, 447, 454, 456
Scarlett, Sir James (Lord Abinger),
243, 319
Scipio Africanus, 57, 72, 403
Scotus, Duns, 119, 414
Seeley, J. R., 13
Selden, 105, 123, 126, 136, 147, 152,
163, 335
Septennial Act, 21, 211, 213, 332,
335
Seymour, Lord, 438
Sheil, Richard Lalor, 262, 274
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 35
Sichel, Walter, 13
Sieyes, Abbe, 343
Sindbad the Sailor, A New Voyage
of, 11
" Skelton, Junior " pseudonym,
14. See also Political Satires in
Verse
Skelton, Sir John, 15
Sligo, Lord, 306
Smith, Robert Vernon (Lord Lyve-
den), 438
Smythe, George Sydney (Lord
Strangford), 13
Somers, Lord, 132 et seq., 147, 335,
439
Spirit of Whiggism. See Whiggism
Spottiswoode subscription, 430
Spring Rice, T. (Lord Mounteagle) :
Runnymede Letter to, 261-265; A
Character, 400; otherwise men-
tioned, 30, 39, 45, 53, 236, 239,
241, 273, 363, 403
Stanley, Lord (fourteenth Earl of
Derby), Runnymede Letter to,
277-282
Stanley, Lord (fifteenth Earl of
Derby), 13
Star Chamber, 75, 163, 176, 180,
182, 339
State of the Case, The. See Welling-
ton, Duke of (AUicns Let'e?)
St. John, Henry. See Bolingbroke
Sterling, Edward, 9
Strafford, Lord, 35, 147
Sugden, Sir Edward (Lord St.
Leonards), 243, 319, 449
Ten-pound householder, the, 184,
249, 349, 451
Ternaux, Baron, 56 (note)
Thiers, M., 411
Thomson, C. Poulett (Lord Syden-
ham), 241, 299, 363, 407
Three Per Cents., 453
Times, the, 2, 6, 8 et seq., 86, 233,
357
Tooke, William, 50 (note)
Tynte, C. J. K., 50 (note)
476
INDEX
Utilitarians, the, 50, 53, 68, 95, 103,
107, lUetseq., 122, 134, 139, 146,
179
Vane, Sir Harry, 35
Venetian Constitution, 191, 207, 210,
212, 320, 331, 333
Victoria, Queen : Lcelius Letter to,
368-372; otherwise mentioned, 11,
373
Villiers, Charles, 443
Vindication, The. See Constitution
Vivian Grey, 3
Wakley, Thomas, 50 (note), 54, 74,
76, 87, 89, 103
Walpole, Sir R., 147, 223, 335, 348,
439
Warburton, Henry, 50 (note), 96
Wason, Rigby, 50 (note)
Wellington, Duke of: Atticus Letter
to, 376-385; Disraeli's lines to,
379; the Duke's question, 409,
413 et seq., 426, 429; on reform,
29 (note); otherwise mentioned, 5,
11, 30, 67, 74, 240, 281, 290, 374,
398, 405
Wetherell, Sir C., 78
Whalley, Sir Samuel, 50 (note), 52,
62, 67, 96
W hat is He ? 16-22; otherwise men-
tioned, 2
Whiggism, Spirit of, 327-356; other
wise mentioned, 9, 145
Whigs, origin of, 330
Whigs, To the, 436-469; otherwise
mentioned, 3, 13, 431
"Whisper of a Faction," the, 269,
366, 383
White Conduit House, 46 (note)
Wilde, Serjeant, 243
Wilkes, John, 50 (note)
Wilkinson, G. H., 48 (note), 66, 95
William the Third, 136, 191
William the Fourth, 4, 7, 39, 44, 46,
91, 191, 409
Window Tax, 25
Wise ancestors, 146
Wood, Sir Charles (Viscount Hali-
fax), 454
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