A.D. 1866.] HISTORY OF THE REFORM QUESTION. followed upon their defeat. And first we may briefly recapitulate the history of the Reform question since the original Reform Bill of 1832.* That Reform Bill aimed at redressing the disorder and confusion into which, through the irregular restriction of the suffrage to certain corporate bodies, and through similar causes, the franchise had fallen. Originally, the right of electing representatives had belonged to all freemen of the town or shire; but gradually the very term "freeman" had become limited in the sense in which we still talk of "the freedom of the city;" that is, had become applicable-so far, at least, as it implied a right to the franchise-to the "freemen," or members of a close corporation. In a similar way, other limitations had crept in; so that, at the time of the Reform Bill, the "representation of the people really meant the representation of a number of "deserted villages," owned by territorial grandees, while many great and growing towns were left without a voice in Parliament. Power was wholly in the hands of what Mr. Disraeli, in 1867, called "a heartless oligarchy." To remedy this (if we may still quote Mr. Disraeli), "the Whig party seized the occasion that was before them, and threw the Government of the country into the hands of the middle class." A property qualification was introduced, and the old rights of privileged corporations were either destroyed or greatly lessened. The occupation of a house worth £10 annually became the qualification for the borough franchise. The result of this was twofold: a vast number of voters of the upper and middle classes were enfranchised; and, on the other hand, a considerable number of the working class, who, under the old system, had rights as "scot and lot voters," &e., were positively disfranchised. As time passed on, and as the working classes became at once more numerous and better educated, the imperfections of the Act which excluded them from the franchise began to be felt. Statesmen on both sides of the House came to admit that, great as had been the results of the Act of 1832, it needed amendment. Lord John Russell, with whose name that of the Act of 1832 will be always associated, brought in a bill, in 1852, to reduce the borough franchise to £5, and the county franchise to tenants of lands rated at £20 annually. Again, when that bill had been dropped, through the change of Ministry which happened in 1852, he brought in another similar one two years later, proposing to fix the standard at £6. That bill also fell through, on account of the Russian War, which came to absorb the attention of Parliament and the country. The question was not re-opened till 1859, when Mr. Disraeli introduced a bill into the House of Commons, proposing what was afterwards known as lateral," instead of "vertical" extension. That is, he gave a lodger franchise to persons who paid a high rent for their lodgings, a "savings-bank franchise" to persons who had a certain sum in deposits, and a degree franchise" to persons who had taken an University degree. But he did not by this extend the right of voting downwards. He did not 66 159 The Whig party attempt to enfranchise the artisans. saw this, and contrived to throw out his bill; and after the dissolution which followed they carried a vote of want of confidence. Lord Palmerston's Governinent, which then came into office, brought in a bill not very much unlike that of which we are about to speak: it proposed a £6 franchise in boroughs, and a £10 franchise in counties; it also contemplated a limited redistribution of seats. The bill was in the end defeated on a collateral issue, and Lord John Russell withdrew it. The cause of the defeat of the Bill of 1860 was undoubtedly the indifferent attitude of Lord Palmerston. In 1865, as has been told in a former chapter, Mr. Baines brought in a bill, which was defeated. Soon after, Lord Palmerston died, and the principal barrier to a successful bill was removed. Even before his death, in the months that were spent in canvassing for the general election, "both among Liberal and Tory candidates," said Mr. Bright, "the question of Reform was mentioned in some way or other, either in their written or spoken addresses to their constituents." But when, after the news arrived that the veteran Prime Minister had died, Lord Russell succeeded to his place, and Mr. Gladstone took the position of unfettered leader of the House of Commons, it was at once known that Reform was to be immediately approached as a Government question. The whole of the autumn and winter of 1865 was spent by the Government in collecting statistics and an enormous mass of general information, on the subject of borough and county constituencies, for future use. The machinery of the various Poor Law Unions throughout England was set in motion, and statistics poured in. The task of arranging them was given to Mr. Lambert, well known for his special knowledge of electoral questions, and to him was owing the blue-book of electoral statistics which appeared in the following year. Considerable light was thrown by it upon the question of the "com. pound householder," that unfortunate being, the product of the "6 Small Tenements Act," over whom the battle was to rage so fiercely in 1867. The "compound house. holders" are "the tenants in towns whose rates under various local and general Acts are paid, not by themselves, but by their landlords." And, as the Reform Act of 1832 had made burgess suffrage depend upon the pay. ment of rates, large numbers of such tenants, persons occupying £10 houses and otherwise qualified to vote, were excluded from the franchise at every election, on the ground of the non-payment of rates. The overseers," said Mr. Bright, in 1860, "refuse in the majority of cases to put anybody's name on the register who does not pay his own rates. They put the landlord on who pays the rates of a street, but the tenant's name is not entered. Therefore, when they come to make out the list of voters from their rate books, they find the names of the landlords, of course, but do not find the names of the tenants; and the tenants under these circumstances are left off the list, and actually disfranchised." The Parlia 66 In this we have been much helped by Mr. Homersham Cox's ment of 1860, however, refused to do anything for the valuable "History of the Reform Bills of 1836 and 1867.” compound householder," and he remained a bone of contention up to the very last stages of the Reform con- towns. Parliament opened amid general interest and excitement with regard to Reform; and in March Mr. Gladstone brought in his "Bill to extend the Right of Voting at Elections of Members of Parliament in England and Wales." This important bill, upon which was based so much of the Reform Bill of 1867, was at first sight extremely moderate. In the first place, it advanced the property qualification for the borough franchise which Lord Russell's bill had fixed at £6 to £7—a step which Mr. Gladstone explained as follows: "A £6 rental, calculated upon the most careful investigation, and after making every allowance and deduction that ought to be made, would give 242,000 new voters, whom I should take as all belonging to the working class. I should then arrive at a gross total of 428,000 persons" (that is, by adding together old and new electors), "which would, in fact, probably place the working classes in a clear majority upon the constituency. Well, that has never been the intention of any bill proposed in this House. I do not think it is a proposal that Parliament would ever adopt. . . I do not think that we are called upon by any overruling or sufficient consideration, under the circumstances, to give over the majority of the town constitu encies into the hands of the working class. We therefore propose to take the figure next above that which I have named-namely, a clear annual value of £7." Under the £7 qualification, it was calculated that 144,000 voters of the working class would be admitted to the borough franchise-enough to give the artisan class its due weight and share in elections, without swamping the other elements of the constituency. Mr. Gladstone also proposed— by means of the abolition of the ratepaying clauses of the Reform Act of 1832, by registration of compound householders, and by a lodger franchise applicable to persons occupying rooms of the annual value of £10-to further increase the number of borough voters by 60,000, giving a general increase of 204,000. To this increase must be added the proposed number of new county voters, "fourteen-pound tenants," 172,000 in number; and the depositors in savings-banks, &c., 24,000 more. In all, the number of new voters to be added by the bill was estimated at 400,000, equally divided, according to the belief of the framers of the bill, between the middle class and the artisans. Mr. Gladstone introduced his bill on March 12, 1866, in a speech worthy of the occasion, though the beginning was marked by even more than his usual humility. At the outset he read the passage in the Queen's Speech which bore upon the question:-" When that information (relative to the existing rights of voting) is complete, the attention of Parliament will be called to the result thus obtained, with a view to such improvement in the laws which regulate the rights of voting in the election of members of the House of Commons as may strengthen our free institutions and conduce to the public welfare." Words like this gave Mr. Gladstone a good starting-point. He appealed to them and to the numerous occasions on which the same recommendation had been given from the throne. "By no less than five administrations, in no less than six speeches of the Queen anterior to that of the present year," had the need of Reform been suggested to the House. Such an accumulation of authority, he went on to say, seemed to excuse him from the necessity of arguing the abstract question of the advisability of Reform. He took that for granted. Again, Mr. Lam A.D. 1866.] MR. LOWE'S SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL. bert's work had been so well and quickly done that the Government found itself ready to offer the bill at once, without waiting a year. But-here was the important point-partly with a view to break up the opposition to the Government proposals, partly to prevent the bill becoming unwieldy and its progress too slow, it was to consist really of two bills. The first, with which Mr. Gladstone proposed now to deal exclusively, was a Bill for the Extension of the Franchise; the second, to be considered after the settlement of the first, was to be concerned with that much more dangerous, much more personal matter, the Redistribution of Seats. Into Mr. Gladstone's details-as clear and as copious in this speech as they always were with him-we need not follow him, for we have already sketched the main provisions of his bill. He commended it to the House, hoping that “if, unhappily, issue was to be taken adversely upon the bill, it would be, above all, a plain and direct issue "-that is, whether or not there ought to be enfranchisement downwards. In other words, Mr. Gladstone, though he had nearly ignored the general question of the need of Parliamentary Reform, courted discussion of that general question. He brought in his bill, not like a Trojan horse (he said) "approaching the walls of the sacred city, and filled with armed men, bent upon ruin, plunder, and conflagration," but rather as bringing recruits to the Parliamentary army-children to the Parliamentary family. "Give to these persons," ran his peroration, new interests in the Constitution; new interests which, by the beneficent processes of the law of nature and Providence, shall beget in them new attachment; for the attachment of the people to the Throne, the institutions, and the laws under which they live is, after all, more than gold and silver, and more than fleets and armies; at once the strength, the glory, and the safety of the land." 66 The night following the introduction of the bill was marked by the second of Mr. Lowe's famous Reform speeches, and the first of those fierce attacks upon the Russell Ministry which more than anything else contributed to bring in the Conservatives in the following year. Mr. Lowe was then member for Calne. He had held office under Lord Palmerston as Vice-President of the Council from 1859 to 1864, and had long been known in the House as an accomplished man and ready debater; but probably few, in 1866, had any idea of the real greatness of his oratorical gift, and of the splendid displays he was to make of it before the close of the session. In his address to his constituents, in June, 1865, Mr. Lowe had given sufficient warning of the course he meant to take with regard to Reform. So long as tranquillity and content existed unbroken in England, he said, "I see no reason for great organic changes in institutions which, though partaking largely of the imperfection incident to all things human, and susceptible, doubtless, of great improvements as our experience widens and ripens, have combined order and liberty, stability and progress, in a greater degree than the institutions of any other nation." And throughout the Reform debates Mr. Lowe amply redeemed the pledge of action thus given. At the very outset of his speech on March 13, he denied the necessity 161 of Reform altogether. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had, he said, given a clear and elaborate account of the various provisions of the proposed bill; but "although he ably entered into these matters, and with a detail which reminds me more of a speech on the Budget than on Reform, he did not find-he was so pinched for timea moment to say why the Constitution under which we have lived so long might not be left to us a little longer." Mr. Gladstone had taken up the position that Reform was inevitable, and had long been proved inevitable; he had declined to go into the merits of the question, upon the ground of "accumulated authority" on the side of Reform; granted the necessity of Reform, he had such and such propositions to make. Mr. Lowe, on the other hand, argued the question of Reform in the abstract; was it necessary? were the existing institutions of the country really in need of such violent remedies? If it was pleaded that Reform was needed for the working classes, the best of whom, it had been said by Lord Russell in the preceding year, were excluded from the franchise, Mr. Lowe contended that Mr. Lambert's statistics proved the working man was already adequately represented. And even if they were not, there was a natural progress going on among the lower orders, which provided far safer means of enfranchisement than any legislative tinkering. Were not wages rising, and was not wealth spreading farther every year? Every day labour was becoming more and more in demand, and the proportion of men earning high wages was every day becoming greater. The vast extension of trade and commerce, emigration, the discovery of gold in California and Australia, all were so many levers, which would in time lift the working man to the place in the constituency properly belonging to him. The process was a natural one, and would not bear being interfered with. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had not been able to make up his mind to the £6 franchise because it would give the working classes a majority in the constituencies. But that majority would soon be theirs, whether Mr. Gladstone granted it now or not. "Is it not certain that causes are at work which will have a tendency to multiply the franchise -that the £6 houses will become the £7 ones, and the £9 houses will expand to £10 ? . . . Sooner or later we shall see the working classes in a majority in the constituencies." And then came the famous passage which has made Mr. Lowe the bugbear of the working classes ever since, but which he has always strenuously, and sometimes angrily, defended. Look at what such a majority implies. I shall speak very frankly on this subject, for-having lost my character by saying that the working man could get the franchise for himself, which has been proved to be true, and for saying which, he and his friends will not hate me one bit the less-I shall say exactly what I think. Let any consider-I have had such unhappy experiences, and many of us have-let any gentleman consider the constituencies he has had the honour to be concerned with. If you want venality, if you want ignorance, if you want drunkenness and facility for being intimidated; or if, on the other hand, you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where do you 66 look for them in the constituencies? Do you go to the only with power, but with a sense of power. "They will top or to the bottom?" say, 'We can do better for ourselves. Don't let us any longer be cajoled at elections. Let us set up shop for ourselves. We have our objects to serve as well as our neighbours, and let us unite to carry out those objects. We have machinery; we have our trades unions; we and there you will see the difference." Mr. Lowe had nothing but ridicule for this view of things. It was, he said, like the ancients' idea of getting to the back of the north wind. If, they argued, it was so cold in front of the north wind, how warm it would be if you could get to the back of it! Then, descending to questions of practical detail, Mr. Lowe went on to oppose the bill, because it would increase the expenses of candidates, "for," he said, "experience shows that corruption varies inversely as the franchise;" and, with still greater energy, because it would invest the working men not have our leaders all ready."" This, in fact, was the main ground of Mr. Lowe's opposition, as it was the main ground of the opposition which the Conservatives brought to bear, and which in the end, as we shall show, unseated the Government. It was the aristocratic, or at least the anti-democratic argument, that Reform would lessen the power of the few in proportion as it emancipated the many. The argument, however, was applied in many forms by Mr. Lowe: he urged that the course on which the Government was entering would make the constituencies in the end so large and so expensive that none but millionaires |