Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4

RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT. (NOVEMBER 2, 1852) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON THE 2D OF NOVEMBER, 1852

At the General Election of 1852 the votes for the City of Edinburgh stood thus:

Mr Macaulay ...............1872

Mr Cowan ..................1754

The Lord Provost ..........1559

Mr Bruce ..................1066

Mr Campbell ............... 686

On the second of November the Electors assembled in the Music Hall to meet the representative whom they had, without any solicitation on his part, placed at the head of the poll. On this occasion the following Speech was delivered.

Gentlemen,—I thank you from my heart for this kind reception. In truth, it has almost overcome me. Your good opinion and your good will were always very valuable to me, far more valuable than any vulgar object of ambition, far more valuable than any office, however lucrative or dignified. In truth, no office, however lucrative or dignified, would have tempted me to do what I have done at your summons, to leave again the happiest and most tranquil of all retreats for the bustle of political life. But the honour which you have conferred upon me, an honour of which the greatest men might well be proud, an honour which it is in the power only of a free people to bestow, has laid on me such an obligation that I should have thought it ingratitude, I should have thought it pusillanimity, not to make at least an effort to serve you.

And here, Gentlemen, we meet again in kindness after a long separation. It is more than five years since I last stood in this very place; a large part of human life. There are few of us on whom those five years have not set their mark, few circles from which those five years have not taken away what can never be replaced. Even in this multitude of friendly faces I look in vain for some which would on this day have been lighted up with joy and kindness. I miss one venerable man, who, before I was born, in evil times, in times of oppression and of corruption, had adhered, with almost solitary fidelity, to the cause of freedom, and whom I knew in advanced age, but still in the full vigour of mind and body, enjoying the respect and gratitude of his fellow citizens. I should, indeed, be most ungrateful if I could, on this day, forget Sir James Craig, his public spirit, his judicious counsel, his fatherly kindness to myself. And Jeffrey—with what an effusion of generous affection he would on this day, have welcomed me back to Edinburgh! He too is gone; but the remembrance of him is one of the many ties which bind me to the city once dear to his heart, and still inseparably associated with his fame.

But, Gentlemen, it is not only here that, on entering again, at your call, a path of life which I believed that I had quitted forever, I shall be painfully reminded of the changes which the last five years have produced. In Parliament I shall look in vain for virtues which I loved, and for abilities which I admired. Often in debate, and never more than when we discuss those questions of colonial policy which are every day acquiring a new interest, I shall remember with regret how much eloquence and wit, how much acuteness and knowledge, how many engaging qualities, how many fair hopes, are buried in the grave of poor Charles Buller. There were other men, men with whom I had no political connection and little personal connection, men to whom I was, during a great part of my public life, honestly opposed, but of whom I cannot now think without grieving that their wisdom, their experience, and the weight of their great names can never more, in the hour of need, bring help to the nation or to the throne. Such were those two eminent men whom I left at the height, one of civil, the other of military fame; one the oracle of the House of Commons, the other the oracle of the House of Lords. There were parts of their long public life which they would themselves, I am persuaded, on a calm retrospect, have allowed to be justly censurable. But it is impossible to deny that each in his own department saved the State; that one brought to a triumphant close the most formidable conflict in which this country was ever engaged with a foreign enemy; and that the other, at an immense sacrifice of personal feeling and personal ambition, freed us from an odious monopoly, which could not have existed many years longer without producing fearful intestine discords. I regret them both: but I peculiarly regret him who is associated in my mind with the place to which you have sent me. I shall hardly know the House of Commons without Sir Robert Peel. On the first evening on which I took my seat in that House, more than two and twenty years ago, he held the highest position among the Ministers of the Crown who sate there. During all the subsequent years of my parliamentary service I scarcely remember one important discussion in which he did not bear a part with conspicuous ability. His figure is now before me: all the tones of his voice are in my ears; and the pain with which I think that I shall never hear them again would be embittered by the recollection of some sharp encounters which took place between us, were it not that at last there was an entire and cordial reconciliation, and that, only a very few days before his death, I had the pleasure of receiving from him marks of kindness and esteem of which I shall always cherish the recollection.

But, Gentlemen, it is not only by those changes which the natural law of mortality produces, it is not only by the successive disappearances of eminent men that the face of the world has been changed during the five years which have elapsed since we met here last. Never since the origin of our race have there been five years more fertile of great events, five years which have left behind them a more awful lesson. We have lived many lives in that time. The revolutions of ages have been compressed into a few months. France, Germany, Hungary, Italy,—what a history has theirs been! When we met here last, there was in all of those countries an outward show of tranquillity; and there were few, even of the wisest among us, who imagined what wild passions, what wild theories, were fermenting under that peaceful exterior. An obstinate resistance to a reasonable reform, a resistance prolonged but for one day beyond the time, gave the signal for the explosion; and in an instant, from the borders of Russia to the Atlantic Ocean, everything was confusion and terror. The streets of the greatest capitals of Europe were piled up with barricades, and were streaming with civil blood. The house of Orleans fled from France: the Pope fled from Rome: the Emperor of Austria was not safe at Vienna. There were popular institutions in Florence; popular institutions at Naples. One democratic convention sat at Berlin; another democratic convention at Frankfort. You remember, I am sure, but too well, how some of the wisest and most honest friends of liberty, though inclined to look with great indulgence on the excesses inseparable from revolutions, began first to doubt and then to despair of the prospects of mankind. You remember how all sorts of animosity, national, religious, and social, broke forth together. You remember how with the hatred of discontented subjects to their governments was mingled the hatred of race to race and of class to class. For myself, I stood aghast; and though naturally of a sanguine disposition, I did for one moment doubt whether the progress of society was not about to be arrested, nay, to be suddenly and violently turned back; whether we were not doomed to pass in one generation from the civilisation of the nineteenth century to the barbarism of the fifth. I remembered that Adam Smith and Gibbon had told us that the dark ages were gone, never more to return, that modern Europe was in no danger of the fate which had befallen the Roman empire. That flood, they said, would no more return to cover the earth: and they seemed to reason justly: for they compared the immense strength of the enlightened part of the world with the weakness of the part which remained savage; and they asked whence were to come the Huns and the Vandals, who should again destroy civilisation? It had not occurred to them that civilisation itself might engender the barbarians who should destroy it. It had not occurred to them that in the very heart of great capitals, in the neighbourhood of splendid palaces, and churches, and theatres, and libraries, and museums, vice and ignorance might produce a race of Huns fiercer than those who marched under Attila, and of Vandals more bent on destruction than those who followed Genseric. Such was the danger. It passed by. Civilisation was saved, but at what a price! The tide of popular feeling turned and ebbed almost as fast as it had risen. Imprudent and obstinate opposition to reasonable demands had brought on anarchy; and as soon as men had a near view of anarchy they fled in terror to crouch at the feet of despotism. To the dominion of mobs armed with pikes succeeded the sterner and more lasting dominion of disciplined armies. The Papacy rose from its debasement; rose more intolerant and insolent than before; intolerant and insolent as in the days of Hildebrand; intolerant and insolent to a degree which dismayed and disappointed those who had fondly cherished the hope that the spirit which had animated the Crusaders and the Inquisitors had been mitigated by the lapse of years and by the progress of knowledge. Through all that vast region, where little more than four years ago we looked in vain for any stable authority, we now look in vain for any trace of constitutional freedom. And we, Gentlemen, in the meantime, have been exempt from both those calamities which have wrought ruin all around us. The madness of 1848 did not subvert the British throne. The reaction which followed has not destroyed British liberty.

And why is this? Why has our country, with all the ten plagues raging around her, been a land of Goshen? Everywhere else was the thunder and the fire running along the ground,—a very grievous storm,—a storm such as there was none like it since man was on the earth; yet everything tranquil here; and then again thick night, darkness that might be felt; and yet light in all our dwellings. We owe this singular happiness, under the blessing of God, to a wise and noble constitution, the work of many generations of great men. Let us profit by experience; and let us be thankful that we profit by the experience of others, and not by our own. Let us prize our constitution: let us purify it: let us amend it; but let us not destroy it. Let us shun extremes, not only because each extreme is in itself a positive evil, but also because each extreme necessarily engenders its opposite. If we love civil and religious freedom, let us in the day of danger uphold law and order. If we are zealous for law and order, let us prize, as the best safeguard of law and order, civil and religious freedom.

Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are free with servitude all around us, why our Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended, why our press is still subject to no censor, why we still have the liberty of association, why our representative institutions still abide in all their strength, I answer, It is because in the year of revolutions we stood firmly by our Government in its peril; and, if I am asked why we stood by our Government in its peril, when men all around us were engaged in pulling Governments down, I answer, It was because we knew that though our Government was not a perfect Government, it was a good Government, that its faults admitted of peaceable and legal remedies, that it had never inflexibly opposed just demands, that we had obtained concessions of inestimable value, not by beating the drum, not by ringing the tocsin, not by tearing up the pavement, not by running to the gunsmiths' shops to search for arms, but by the mere force of reason and public opinion. And, Gentlemen, preeminent among those pacific victories of reason and public opinion, the recollection of which chiefly, I believe, carried us safely through the year of revolutions and through the year of counter-revolutions, I would place two great reforms, inseparably associated, one with the memory of an illustrious man, who is now beyond the reach of envy, the other with the name of another illustrious man, who is still, and, I hope, long will be, a living mark for distinction. I speak of the great commercial reform of 1846, the work of Sir Robert Peel, and of the great parliamentary reform of 1832, the work of many eminent statesmen, among whom none was more conspicuous than Lord John Russell. I particularly call your attention to those two great reforms, because it will, in my opinion, be the especial duty of that House of Commons in which, by your distinguished favour, I have a seat, to defend the commercial reform of Sir Robert Peel, and to perfect and extend the parliamentary reform of Lord John Russell.

With respect to the commercial reform, though I say it will be a sacred duty to defend it, I do not apprehend that we shall find the task very difficult. Indeed, I doubt whether we have any reason to apprehend a direct attack upon the system now established. From the expressions used during the last session, and during the late elections, by the Ministers and their adherents, I should, I confess, find it utterly impossible to draw any inference whatever. They have contradicted each other; and they have contradicted themselves. Nothing would be easier than to select from their speeches passages which would prove them to be Freetraders, and passages which would prove them to be protectionists. But, in truth, the only inference which can properly be drawn from a speech of one of these gentlemen in favour of Free Trade is, that, when he spoke, he was standing for a town; and the only inference which can be drawn from the speech of another in favour of Protection is, that, when he spoke, he was standing for a county. I quitted London in the heat of the elections. I left behind me a Tory candidate for Westminster and a Tory candidate for Middlesex, loudly proclaiming themselves Derbyites and Freetraders. All along my journey through Berkshire and Wiltshire I heard nothing but the cry of Derby and Protection; but when I got to Bristol, the cry was Derby and Free Trade again. On one side of the Wash, Lord Stanley, the Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, a young nobleman of great promise, a young nobleman who appears to me to inherit a large portion of his father's ability and energy, held language which was universally understood to indicate that the Government had altogether abandoned all thought of Protection. Lord Stanley was addressing the inhabitants of a town. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Wash, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was haranguing the farmers of Lincolnshire; and, when somebody took it upon him to ask, "What will you do, Mr Christopher, if Lord Derby abandons Protection?" the Chancellor of the Duchy refused to answer a question so monstrous, so insulting to Lord Derby. "I will stand by Lord Derby," he said, "because I know that Lord Derby will stand by Protection." Well, these opposite declarations of two eminent persons, both likely to know the mind of Lord Derby on the subject, go forth, and are taken up by less distinguished adherents of the party. The Tory candidate for Leicestershire says, "I put faith in Mr Christopher: while you see Mr Christopher in the Government, you may be assured that agriculture will be protected." But, in East Surrey, which is really a suburb of London, I find the Tory candidate saying, "Never mind Mr Christopher. I trust to Lord Stanley. What should Mr Christopher know on the subject? He is not in the Cabinet: he can tell you nothing about it." Nay, these tactics were carried so far that Tories who had formerly been for Free Trade, turned Protectionists if they stood for counties; and Tories, who had always been furious Protectionists, declared for Free Trade, without scruple or shame, if they stood for large towns. Take for example Lord Maidstone. He was once one of the most vehement Protectionists in England, and put forth a small volume, which, as I am an elector of Westminster, and as he was a candidate for Westminster, I thought it my duty to buy, in order to understand his opinions. It is entitled Free Trade Hexameters. Of the poetical merits of Lord Maidstone's hexameters I shall not presume to give an opinion. You may all form an opinion for yourselves by ordering copies. They may easily be procured: for I was assured, when I bought mine in Bond Street, that the supply on hand was still considerable. But of the political merits of Lord Maidstone's hexameters I can speak with confidence; and it is impossible to conceive a fiercer attack, according to the measure of the power of the assailant, than that which his lordship made on Sir Robert Peel's policy. On the other hand, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who is now Solicitor General, and who was Solicitor General under Sir Robert Peel, voted steadily with Sir Robert Peel, doubtless from a regard to the public interest, which would have suffered greatly by the retirement of so able a lawyer from the service of the Crown. Sir Fitzroy did not think it necessary to lay down his office even when Sir Robert Peel brought in the bill which established a free trade in corn. But unfortunately, Lord Maidstone becomes a candidate for the City of Westminster, and Sir Fitzroy Kelly stands for an agricultural county. Instantly, therefore, Lord Maidstone forgets his verses, and Sir Fitzroy Kelly forgets his votes. Lord Maidstone declares himself a convert to the opinions of Sir Robert Peel; and Sir Robert Peel's own Solicitor General lifts up his head intrepidly, and makes a speech, apparently composed out of Lord Maidstone's hexameters.

It is therefore, Gentlemen, utterly impossible for me to pretend to infer, from the language held by the members of the Government, and their adherents, what course they will take on the subject of Protection. Nevertheless, I confidently say that the system established by Sir Robert Peel is perfectly safe. The law which repealed the Corn Laws stands now on a much firmer foundation than when it was first passed. We are stronger than ever in reason; and we are stronger than ever in numbers. We are stronger than ever in reason, because what was only prophecy is now history. No person can now question the salutary effect which the repeal of the Corn Laws has had on our trade and industry. We are stronger than ever in numbers. You, I am sure, recollect the time when a formidable opposition to the repeal of the Corn Laws was made by a class which was most deeply interested in that repeal; I mean the labouring classes. You recollect that, in many large towns, ten years ago, the friends of Free Trade could not venture to call meetings for the purpose of petitioning against the Corn Laws, for fear of being interrupted by a crowd of working people, who had been taught by a certain class of demagogues to say that the question was one in which working people had no interest, that it was purely a capitalist's question, that, if the poor man got a large loaf instead of a small one, he would get from the capitalist only a sixpence instead of a shilling. I never had the slightest faith in those doctrines. Experience even then seemed to me completely to confute them. I compared place with place; and I found that, though bread was dearer in England than in Ohio, wages were higher in Ohio than in England. I compared time with time; and I saw that those times when bread was cheapest in England, within my own memory, were also the times in which the condition of the labouring classes was the happiest. But now the experiment has been tried in a manner which admits of no dispute. I should be glad to know, if there were now an attempt made to impose a tax on corn, what demagogue would be able to bring a crowd of working men to hold up their hands in favour of such a tax. Thus strong, Gentlemen, in reason, and thus strong in numbers, we need, I believe, apprehend no direct attack on the principles of Free Trade. It will, however, be one of the first duties of your representatives to be vigilant that no indirect attack shall be made on these principles; and to take care that in our financial arrangements no undue favour shall be shown to any class.

With regard to the other question which I have mentioned, the question of Parliamentary Reform, I think that the time is at hand when that question will require the gravest consideration, when it will be necessary to reconsider the Reform Act of 1832, and to amend it temperately and cautiously, but in a large and liberal spirit. I confess that, in my opinion, this revision cannot be made with advantage, except by the Ministers of the Crown. I greatly doubt whether it will be found possible to carry through any plan of improvement if we have not the Government heartily with us; and I must say that from the present Administration I can, as to that matter, expect nothing good. What precisely I am to expect from them I do not know, whether the most obstinate opposition to every change, or the most insanely violent change. If I look to their conduct, I find the gravest reasons for apprehending that they may at one time resist the most just demands, and at another time, from the merest caprice, propose the wildest innovations. And I will tell you why I entertain this opinion. I am sorry that, in doing so, I must mention the name of a gentleman for whom, personally, I have the highest respect; I mean Mr Walpole, the Secretary of State for the Home Department. My own acquaintance with him is slight; but I know him well by character; and I believe him to be an honourable, an excellent, an able man. No man is more esteemed in private life: but of his public conduct I must claim the right to speak with freedom; and I do so with the less scruple because he has himself set me an example of that freedom, and because I am really now standing on the defensive. Mr Walpole lately made a speech to the electors of Midhurst; and in that speech he spoke personally of Lord John Russell as one honourable man should speak of another, and as, I am sure, I wish always to speak of Mr Walpole. But in Lord John's public conduct Mr Walpole found many faults. Chief among those faults was this, that his lordship had re-opened the question of reform. Mr Walpole declared himself to be opposed on principle to organic change. He justly said that if, unfortunately, organic change should be necessary, whatever was done ought to be done with much deliberation and with caution almost timorous; and he charged Lord John with having neglected these plain rules of prudence. I was perfectly thunderstruck when I read the speech: for I could not but recollect that the most violent and democratic change that ever was proposed within the memory of the oldest man had been proposed but a few weeks before by this same Mr Walpole, as the organ of the present Government. Do you remember the history of the Militia Bill? In general, when a great change in our institutions is to be proposed from the Treasury Bench, the Minister announces his intention some weeks before. There is a great attendance: there is the most painful anxiety to know what he is going to recommend. I well remember,—for I was present,—with what breathless suspense six hundred persons waited, on the first of March, 1831, to hear Lord John Russell explain the principles of his Reform Bill. But what was his Reform Bill to the Reform Bill of the Derby Administration? At the end of a night, in the coolest way possible, without the smallest notice, Mr Walpole proposed to add to the tail of the Militia Bill a clause to the effect, that every man who had served in the militia for two years should have a vote for the county. What is the number of those voters who were to be entitled to vote in this way for counties? The militia of England is to consist of eighty thousand men; and the term of service is to be five years. In ten years the number will be one hundred and sixty thousand; in twenty years, three hundred and twenty thousand; and in twenty-five years, four hundred thousand. Some of these new electors will, of course, die off in twenty-five years, though the lives are picked lives, remarkably good lives. What the mortality is likely to be I do not accurately know; but any actuary will easily calculate it for you. I should say, in round numbers, that you will have, when the system has been in operation for a generation, an addition of about three hundred thousand to the county constituent bodies; that is to say, six thousand voters on the average will be added to every county in England and Wales. That is surely an immense addition. And what is the qualification? Why, the first qualification is youth. These electors are not to be above a certain age; but the nearer you can get them to eighteen the better. The second qualification is poverty. The elector is to be a person to whom a shilling a-day is an object. The third qualification is ignorance; for I venture to say that, if you take the trouble to observe the appearance of those young fellows who follow the recruiting sergeant in the streets, you will at once say that, among our labouring classes, they are not the most educated, they are not the most intelligent. That they are brave, stout lads, I fully believe. Lord Hardinge tells me that he never saw a finer set of young men; and I have not the slightest doubt that, if necessary, after a few weeks' training, they will be found standing up for our firesides against the best disciplined soldiers that the Continent can produce. But these are not the qualifications which fit men to choose legislators. A young man who goes from the ploughtail into the army is generally rather thoughtless and disposed to idleness. Oh! but there is another qualification which I had forgotten: the voter must be five feet two. There is a qualification for you! Only think of measuring a man for the franchise! And this is the work of a Conservative Government, this plan which would swamp all the counties in England with electors who possess the Derby-Walpole qualifications; that is to say, youth, poverty, ignorance, a roving disposition, and five feet two. Why, what right have people who have proposed such a change as this to talk about—I do not say Lord John Russell's imprudence—but the imprudence of Ernest Jones or of any other Chartist? The Chartists, to do them justice, would give the franchise to wealth as well as to poverty, to knowledge as well as to ignorance, to mature age as well as to youth. But to make a qualification compounded of disqualifications is a feat of which the whole glory belongs to our Conservative rulers. This astounding proposition was made, I believe, in a very thin House: but the next day the House was full enough, everybody having come down to know what was going to happen. One asked, why not this? and another, why not that? Are all the regular troops to have the franchise? all the policemen? all the sailors? for, if you give the franchise to ploughboys of twenty-one, what class of honest Englishmen and Scotchmen can you with decency exclude? But up gets the Home Secretary, and informs the House that the plan had not been sufficiently considered, that some of his colleagues were not satisfied, and that he would not press his proposition. Now, if it had happened to me to propose such a reform at one sitting of the House, and at the next sitting to withdraw it, because it had not been well considered, I do think that, to the end of my life, I never should have talked about the exceeding imprudence of reopening the question of reform; I should never have ventured to read any other man a lecture about the caution with which all plans of organic change ought to be framed. I repeat that, if I am to judge from the language of the present Ministers, taken in connection with this solitary instance of their legislative skill in the way of reform, I am utterly at a loss what to expect. On the whole, what I do expect is that they will offer a pertinacious, vehement, provoking opposition to safe and reasonable change, and that then, in some moment of fear or caprice, they will bring in, and fling on the table, in a fit of desperation or levity, some plan which will loosen the very foundations of society.