CHAPTER III

THE TRIUMPH OF URBAN DEMOCRACY

THE Reform Bill of 1832 did little to meet the demands of the working classes for the right to vote, and more than thirty years were to elapse before their claim to the franchise was conceded by Parliament. Their violent agitations during the Chartist movement were without avail, but some years later the rivalry of the great political parties seeking popular support led to the first measure which granted political power to an appreciable portion of the propertyless classes. When Earl Russell became prime minister in 1865, the signal for a new conflict over democracy was given.

1. The Political Situation and the New Reform Bill1

That the government of Lord Russell would introduce a Reform Bill was considered on all hands as a matter of course. The only questions in dispute were when the bill would be brought in, and whether it would be a big bill or a small one. Even if Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone had not both been ardent Reformers, they could hardly dispense with the support of the Radicals, and that support, as Mr. Bright told them in a speech at Rochdale, where he lived, would depend upon their earnestness in the enfranchisement of the people. All through the north of England public feeling was vehemently excited, and numerous meetings were held with great enthusiasm. In the south, on the other hand, comparative apathy prevailed, and there were men in the Cabinet, such as Lord Clarendon and the Duke of Somerset, who liked reform as little as their departed chief. The regular Opposition represented by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, were committed to the principle

1 Paul, A History of Modern England, Vol. III, pp. 22 ff. By permission of The Macmillan Company, Publishers.

of reform, having in 1859 introduced a Reform Bill themselves. But they were, of course, entitled to treat any particular scheme upon its merits, and to accept it or reject it accordingly.

The mention of the subject in the Queen's Speech was unusual and ambiguous. . . . But ministers were better than their words, and on the 12th of March, the month of reform bills, Mr. Gladstone disclosed the scheme. It proved to be mild and moderate indeed, milder and more moderate than even the bill of 1860. The county franchise would be reduced from a rental of fifty pounds to a rental of fourteen, and the borough franchise from a rental of ten pounds to a rental of seven. Compound householders, for whom their landlords "compounded," paying their rates and charging the payment in the rent, were to be on the same footing with other householders, and there would be a lodger franchise for every man whose lodgings were worth ten pounds a year unfurnished. There would also be a right of voting conferred by the deposit of fifty pounds in a savings bank for two years, and, on the other hand, laborers in the dockyards of the government would be disfranchised. It was estimated that the number of electors added to the constituencies by the bill would be four hundred thousand. That this measure should have been, as it was, accepted with gratitude by the Radicals, is strange.

82. Opposition to Mr. Gladstone's Measure

That it should have roused vehement and bitter animosity would be still stranger, if the approval of Mr. Bright and Mr. Mill did not to some extent account for the opposition of Mr. Horsman and Mr. Lowe. That opposition was declared at once. There was no division upon the first reading of the bill. But it was debated for three nights, and on the second evening Mr. Lowe made a powerful attack upon it, which was received with enthusiastic applause by the Conservative party. Mr. Gladstone had not thought it necessary to argue in favor of reform, inasmuch as five administrations in six Queen's Speeches had pledged themselves to a reduction of the franchise. Mr. Lowe fastened upon this omission, and boldly declared that the House of Commons was as good as it could be. Not since the Duke of Wellington's celebrated protest in 1830 against touching the ideal symmetry of the British Constitution had there been heard in Parliament a more emphatic outburst of undiluted Toryism. Forgetting altogether that he had supported as a member of the government,

though not of the Cabinet, the Reform Bill of 1860, he declared that he did not envy Mr. Gladstone the glory of carrying such legislation. He coveted rather the fame of resisting it to the utmost of his power. In words of which he was not soon to hear the last, he said, "You have had the opportunity of knowing some of the constituencies of this country, and I ask, if you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness, and the means of intimidation, if you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where will you go to look for them, to the top or the bottom?" Mr. Lowe always denied that he used this language of the working classes as a whole. The context, he said, showed that he spoke of those already enfranchised. This was true, but it was a quibble. For in the first place, Mr. Lowe maintained, contrary to the evidence, that the best of the working classes were enfranchised already, and, in the second place, his illustration had no meaning unless it expressed the danger of a suffrage which admitted them in larger numbers. Mr. Lowe had not been fortunate in his experience of the populace at Kidderminster, where his life was imperilled by the violence of the mob. He now represented nominally the people of Calne, and really the Marquess of Lansdowne.

83. The Adullamites and Conservatives

Next to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the member for Calne the most prominent speaker was Mr. Bright. In his happiest vein, and with his raciest humor, he compared the party of Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman with the Scotch terrier, so covered by hair that you could not tell which was the head and which was the tail. In the same speech, his speech on the first reading, he made use of a political metaphor which has not been staled by age or withered by custom. He compared Mr. Horsman, a showy, shallow person, very prominent at the time, with the Hebrew chief who gathered round him in the cave of Adullam every one that was in distress, and every one that was discontented. The Whig malcontents were at once christened Adullamites, and a group of rebellious politicians have ever since been known as a cave.

The Conservative party had immediately to decide whether they would join forces with Mr. Lowe and the rest of the Adullamites. They were not long in making up their minds. On the 16th of March they held a meeting at Lord Salisbury's house, with Lord Derby in the chair, and determined to oppose the bill. Four days afterwards, before the House of Commons adjourned for the

Easter recess, Lord Grosvenor gave notice of an amendment to the second reading, which objected to further progress with an incomplete scheme, and, to show the unity of the opposition on both sides of the House, it was announced that the amendment would be seconded by Lord Stanley. In other words, the Conservatives and Adullamites, instead of meeting the proposals of the government with a direct negative, fixed upon the plausible point that reduction of the franchise should be accompanied by redistribution of seats. . . .

§ 4. The Debate between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe

Thus, when, on the 12th of April, the debate upon the second reading of the bill began, the omens were not favorable to the government, and Mr. Gladstone found it desirable to meet the Opposition halfway. He undertook that before going into committee the House should be made acquainted with the whole scheme of reform, including the Redistribution Bill and the bills for Scotland and Ireland. But to Lord Grosvenor's amendment, which called for this disclosure before the second reading, ministers still objected, and upon that narrow issue the trial of strength was nominally held. The real subject of discussion was, however, the bill itself, and the real speakers were two. There was nothing to prevent the opponents of the measure from continuing the debate as long as they pleased, and they were pleased to continue it for eight nights. Lord Grosvenor was merely an ornamental figurehead. His seconder, Lord Stanley, intellectually the ablest member of the Conservative party, stuck to his text, and dwelt upon the risk that accident might assign the privilege of dealing with redistribution to a new and more democratic Parliament. The eloquence of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton was always ready to flow with equal vehemence and volume on either side of reform. Sir Hugh Cairns, almost alone among his contemporaries, spoke with the same effect as a statesman and as a lawyer. Mr. Disraeli, wary and adroit, used the Adullamites without allowing them to use him, and attacked the bill while he kept his own opinions to himself.

But the waves of time have long since obliterated all traces of this verbal conflict, except the memorable duel between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe. Without Lowe the cave would have been contemptible, and the Conservatives would have allowed the second reading to pass unchallenged. He was the brains and heart of the

Opposition. Gladstone had the advantage of being able to make two speeches, whereas Lowe could make only one. But in his first speech the minister was scrupulously mild, and did not go beyond entreating the House of Commons to be "wise in time." The combination of Lowe and Disraeli was required to draw from him the most magnificent specimen of Parliamentary eloquence which the oldest member of Parliament could recollect. In Lowe's eyes the bill was the first step on the downward path to that democracy which, more than anything else, he dreaded and loathed. He held up as a warning the dangerous power of Trade Unions, and showed, in language which must have given some ground for reflection to Mill, how unsound was the democratic finance of the self-governing colonies. "Look at free trade," he cried. "If we have a precious jewel in the world, it is our freetrade policy. It has been everything to us. With what eyes do democracies look at it? ... Canada has raised her duties enormously, and justified them upon protectionist principles. The Prime Minister of New South Wales at this moment is a strong protectionist. The ministry in Victoria were free traders, but by the will of the people they have become converted, and have become protectionists." After making the singularly unfortunate prediction that responsible government in France could not coexist with universal suffrage, he concluded, amid the enthusiastic applause of the party opposite to which he sat, "Surely the heroic work of so many centuries, the matchless achievements of so many wise heads and strong hands, deserve a nobler consummation than to be sacrificed at the shrine of revolutionary passion or maudlin enthusiasm of humanity. Uncoerced by any external force, not borne down by any internal calamity, but in the full plethora of our wealth and the surfeit of our too exuberant prosperity, with our own rash and inconsiderate hands we are about to pluck down on our own heads the venerable temple of our liberty and our glory. History may tell of other acts as signally disastrous, but of none more wanton, none more disgraceful."

This powerful, if somewhat extravagant, harangue was delivered on the 26th of April. When at one o'clock in the morning of the 28th the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose to reply, a crowded House, eager for the division and not unmindful of repose, was spellbound for two hours by the magic of his words as he reviewed with consummate dexterity the whole course of the debate. Although he followed Disraeli, his real antagonist was Lowe. "At last, sir," he began, in an abrupt and vigorous exordium, "we