of the Protection for Life Bill. He hoped that the debate on the former could be concluded in one or two sittings; that the House would then at once be able to read the latter a first time. He had hardly yet realised the nature of the opposition with which he had to deal. The Protectionists debated the second reading of the Corn Bill for a week, and only allowed it to pass the second reading in the early morning of the 28th of March. In these circumstances Graham, on Monday the 30th of March, introduced the Life Bill. But he was not even allowed to do so without a preliminary debate. Orders of the day had precedence of motions on Mondays, and Graham had therefore to propose the postponement of the orders before he could introduce his motion. Most of the evening was occupied with the preliminary discussion, and time was only left for Graham's own speech on the introduction of the bill. The Government probably hoped to continue the discussion on the Tuesday. But private members would not give way to it, and it was actually unable to secure the resumption of the discussion till the Friday. On that evening O'Connell, enfeebled by illness, delivered his last appeal for his native country to Parliament.2 It did not need his authority and example to stimulate the opposition of Irish members to a fresh Coercion Bill. The debate, protracted throughout the evening, was again adjourned till the Monday. The third night failed to bring the discussion to a conclusion; private members again refused to give way on the Tuesday, and the Government was compelled to allow the House to adjourn for the Easter recess without obtaining the first reading of the bill. Parliament When Parliament reassembled after Easter, the same tactics were pursued. Lord G. Bentinck's great object after Easter. before Easter had been "to delay the progress of the Government measures;" after Easter "he devoted all his 1 Hansard, vol. lxxxiv. pp 1045, 1283. 2 "A feeble old man muttering before a table." Life of Lord G. Bentinck, p. 159. The speech is in Hansard, vol. lxxxv. p. 493. energies to the maintenance of the deadlock."1 Never before had the parliamentary programme so facilitated obstruction. The House was divided into four parties. Some 120 members still yielded an unflinching support to the minister. Some 120 members-Radicals and Irish-were determined to resist all coercion. The 400 other members who followed Bentinck and Russell were nominally in favour of coercion. But Bentinck declared that he could only support coercion if it were given precedence over corn; while Russell hinted a reluctance to support coercion unless corn had precedence of it. Four parties, so constituted, were unlikely to make progress. The Irish talked on the Life Bill from dislike of coercion, the country gentlemen talked on the Life Bill from dislike of free trade. And the measure which the queen had recommended to Parliament in January was not actually allowed to pass its first reading till the 1st of May.3 The resources of delay were not yet exhausted. In the course of the debate on the Life Bill, Peel had avowed that his opinions on the subject of corn had undergone a change. The restrictions which he had at first believed to be impolitic he now believed to be unjust, and a sense of their injustice ✓ precluded him from any compromise. Bentinck seized on this avowal as a fresh pretext for delay. He succeeded in wasting a whole night in a discussion founded on the minister's new change of opinion. When it proved impossible to protract the talk any longer, a series of motions to report progress effected the same object; and Peel, admitting that he had no strength to go through with the contest, gave way, and the House was once more adjourned. But the end was 5th of May, the already near. On the following night, the Corn Bill went through committee. On the 8th of May it was reported; and finally, on the 15th of May, after three nights' debate, it was read a third time, and carried to the Lords. 1 Life of Lord G. Bentinck, pp. 110, 202. 2 Hansard, vol. lxxxiv. p. 1280. 4 Ibid., p. 1109. 3 Ibid., vol. lxxxv. p. 1406. 5 Ibid., vol. lxxxvi. p. 92. 6 Ibid., pp. 140, 299, 721. The third reading was carried by 327 vctes to 229. The Corn law. Tactics of delay, frequent as they are in the Commons, have never been tolerated in the Lords. Even the great landowners who composed the majority of that House would not have ventured to obstruct the progress of a measure which they, perhaps sincerely, thought ruinous to their country and themselves. The bill was read a first time without a division on Monday the 18th of May. It was read a second time on the 28th of May after three nights' debate by a sufficient majority. The Lords, indeed, so their leader had. Bill becomes the courage to tell them, had no alternative but to accept the bill. It had been recommended by the Crown, it had been passed by the Commons; if it were rejected by the Lords, the Lords would place themselves in a position in which they could not stand, because they were "entirely powerless. Without the House of Commons and the Crown the House of Lords can do nothing."3 It was the opinion of a distinguished author that the chief claim which Wellington possesses to be entitled a statesman arises from the manner in which he persuaded the Lords to accept the decisions of the Commons. If this be so, his speech on this occasion must be regarded as his chief parliamentary achievement, for the doctrine of the impotence of the Peers was never stated with greater plainness either by himself or by any other statesman. Wellington's avowal facilitated the further progress of the measure. His speech made it plain to every man of sense that the Lords, however much they might dislike the bill, could not hope to defeat it. Protectionists, indeed, still endeavoured to resist the measure, or, at any rate, to substitute a moderate fixed duty of 10s. or even 5s. for free trade.* They had the mortification to find themselves in a minority in their own stronghold. Tory peers, at last convinced of their impotence, ceased to divide, and the third reading of the great measure which established free trade in corn actually passed an unwilling House without a division.5 Corn, how 1 Hansard, vol. lxxxvi. p. 728. 2 By 211 votes to 164. Ibid., p. 1405. 4 Ibid., vol. lxxxvii. pp. 453, 544 3 Ibid., p. 1404. ever, was only one of the commodities which Peel desired to liberate from the shackles of a protective tariff. The debates on the Corn Bill were accompanied or followed by discussions on the Customs Bill, and the Protectionists again rallied to support the cause which was already lost. The old arguments were again used to support protection for hops, spirits, silk, cattle, and timber, and the battle of free trade was fought over and over again in Lords and Commons. In the discussions which thus took place, peers and country gentlemen repeated the blunders from which they seemed hopelessly incapable of extricating themselves. They had to deal with measures which reconstructed a commercial code, and they based their objections to it on their own interests. They ought to have made it their business to attack free trade in goods; they made it their especial object to denounce free trade in agricultural produce. If they had taken the former course, faction itself could have only declared them mistaken. By following the latter course a nation of workers pronounced them selfish. Men recollected the Report of the Agricultural Society bidding the poor boil, three times over, the refuse bones of the butcher's shop; they remembered the suggestion of a great Duke that a starving people should satisfy their hunger with a pinch of curry powder in a basin of hot water; they understood that millions of workers were to be condemned to dear food that a few thousand landlords might be able to extract a little more rent from the soil. "And ye call yourselves Conservatives, Aristocracies!" so a great writer had written only three years before. "Ought not honour and nobleness of mind, if they had departed from all the earth elsewhere, to find their last refuge with you? Ye unfortunate!" 1 Notwithstanding peers and country gentlemen, however, Corn Bill and Customs Bill passed the Lords on the 25th of June,2 and the protectionists had to content themselves with a barren protest against measures which they were unable to defeat. But one satisfaction was still in store for 1 Carlyle, Past and Present, p. 206. 2 Hansard, vol. lxxxvii. p. 961. them. Impotent to withstand free trade, they could at least visit their displeasure on the ministry which had ventured to propose it. The passage of the Corn and Customs Bills to the Lords left the Commons free to revive the discussion of the Life Bill. There was, indeed, some difficulty in assuming that any formidable number of members could be induced to combine against this measure. Its first reading had been supported by the Whigs and the Protectionists, and only opposed by Radicals and Irish. Was it possible to assume that the men who had said " Aye" in May were prepared to say "No" in June? Politicians, however, find little difficulty. in justifying inconsistencies which ordinary men would shrink from committing; and the leaders both of Whigs and Pro The Life Bill defeated. tectionists, in supporting the Life Bill in May, had left themselves a pretext for opposing it in June. Bentinck had declared that it would cease to be justifiable if it were not pushed forward,1 Russell had undertaken to demand amendments in it at a later stage.2 Bentinck therefore could say in June that delay had deprived the bill of its justification, and Russell could assume that it was more convenient to reject the bill than to attempt to amend it in committee. Whigs, Protectionists, and Radicals therefore agreed in combining against Peel; and, on the very night on which free trade was passed by the Lords, the minister experienced his final defeat in the Commons.3 One resource was still available. The minister might have appealed from the Parliament which had defeated him to the country which perhaps approved his policy. But Peel shrank from the course which was thus recommended to him. He felt the inconsistencies of his own position, he feared the consequences of a general election fought on the propriety of coercive measures for Ireland, and he preferred the repose of retirement to a protracted struggle with a mutinous assembly. Instead, therefore, of appealing to the Peel retires. 1 Hansard, vol. lxxxv. p. 141. 2 Ibid., p. 548. By 292 votes to 219. Ibid., vol. lxxxvii. p. 1027. 4 See Peel's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 292. |