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FARMERS AND TOWNSMEN AS VOTERS. 167

The sum of fifty pounds seems high in relation to the ten pounds of the borough voter. But a tenant farmer paying fifty pounds rent was generally as embarrassed and needy as a retailer paying ten pounds; more so than an artizan with the same rent. He was, however, far less likely to take a bribe; for he came near, in social station, to the small freeholder. The class of tenant farmers was increasing, because, as education spread, men discovered that, if they had any capital, they could make more of it by trading, or by lending to traders, or by tilling hired fields with the use of hired buildings, than by shutting it up in the ownership of land. Small freeholds were beginning to merge in big estates, which were divided amongst rent-paying farmers. But, though the class of tenant farmers increased, farms were thrown together; and the peasants whose rents were as low as fifty pounds began in most counties to disappear, either by emigration beyond sea, or by going into towns, just at the time when the Chandos franchise came into play. Still it was amusing to see these

When he gets it he has the so-called monopoly transferred to him. If, for instance, he grows broccoli at Penzance, liquorice at Pontefract, or three crops of potatoes a year in Jersey, he enjoys advantages over other growers of vegetables, and he pays for them, just as a shopkeeper pays for the use of a house in a much frequented street, or the South Sea speculator paid for the use of the hunchback on whom he wrote his application for scrip.

It is not easy to imagine what monopoly the owner of the soil was getting from legislation when Mr. Roebuck published this heretical passage, which spoils his prophecy about tenants. The only monopoly' which legislation in England could take from landowners was that which, if taken, must have been given to others that which nature has created by limiting space. No man, no class, has been allowed by English legislation to engross soil.

168 TORY INCONSISTENCY ABOUT SUFFRAGE.

politicians, who shuddered at the grant of power to discontented and shabby townsmen, themselves offering the franchise to tillers of the soil who had to work in the fields and could not sign their names.

The Tories weakened themselves in public opinion by an inconsistency much more glaring than their variations about the extension of the suffrage. They blew hot and cold in speaking of the people's behaviour. When the people exulted, they said that violence was let loose to swamp judgment. When the people ceased to exult, they said there was a 'reaction.'

It was a foolish custom of the day to express political feeling by lighting up windows. In the war time gentlemen of prudent habits, dwelling in towns, used to buy, as part of their necessary furniture, a stock of small coloured glass lamps; and their bedrooms smelt of oil whenever a victory was announced. In the Reform times every division in the House of Commons was treated by frivolous people as an occasion for triumphing over the borough-mongers1 with a feast of lamps and dips, by mischievous people as an occasion for breaking the windows of any brave man who gloried in preferring the losing cause and had no outside shutters.2 The enforcing of illumi

This word had soon passed into common parlance. A coachman, laying his whip across a stumbling horse, was heard to say, 'Get up, you borough-mongering rascal!'

2 Among the brave men then in London may be reckoned General Alava, the Spaniard; he was with his friend, the Duke of Wellington, inside a carriage when people in the street howled at the Duke. He put his head out of the carriage window and exclaimed, 'I also am a Tory and an Anti-Reformer, and I glorify myself in it.' The Duke is said to have spent 150l. on putting up iron shutters, after his windows were broken.

LAMPS AND WINDOWS.

169

nation in London was justly called mob tyranny. In country towns the lads who ran down a street with a blazing tar barrel lifted above their heads were looked at by shrinking ladies as revolutionists. All this folly was left, on constitutional principles, to be dealt with by the mayors; and if a mayor was known to be weak, as he was apt to be before corporations were reformed, still it was against British principles to admonish him. Yet the Whig Ministers were twitted with allowing these disorders. Lamps and windows were under discussion in the House of Lords when the French troops were invading Belgium. It looks as if some Tories honestly believed that the people who broke unillumined windows were all of them ten-pound householders, and that their freaks were suggested by Lord Brougham, if not by Lord Lansdowne. On the other hand, it seemed to be expected of all Reformers that they must prove their zeal from March to Michaelmas by a sustained petition, or else it was 'a hollow cry.'

XXXIII.

THE harvest was ending when the Bill was getting out of Mr. Croker's reach, and the producers of wealth began again all over the country to give a weekly if not a daily thought to the Constitution, when the London politicians were asking each other what the Lords would do. Mr. Macaulay, the best interpreter of the Whig policy, asked this question privately of

170

DIVERGENCE OF LIBERAL PATHWAYS.

his patron, Lord Lansdowne: 'What will the Ministers do if the Lords reject the Bill?' Lord Lansdowne answered that they would give up their places. Mr. Macaulay held that no other Ministers would have authority with the nation.

At this point it is convenient to show how the pathways of English Liberals diverge. Of the men who desire political justice some are, and others are not, guided by political affection. An absolute Reformer might say, might even think, that he did not care whether the Lords did or did not throw out the Bill; whether Lord Grey did, or did not, go out of the Treasury. He would not care, because he would be sure that the good cause must prevail. Resistance would cause delay, and probably conflict; so much the more decisive would be the victory of the people. If Lord Grey resigned, Sir Robert Peel, or some one else, would try, like the Stuarts, to bridle the nation, and would fall heavily. If the House of Lords fell, it would rid the nation of anomalies; a better Senate would be formed.

This lofty and hard indifference to persons is

observed in absolute thinkers. There were such thinkers in Britain, perhaps in Parliament, perhaps even in the House of Lords. But this way of thinking is less British than Roman, less Roman than French. It is a way of thinking favourable to temporary anarchy and temporary coercion. But it can be indulged with some safety in a country in which family influence and tradition are very strong. In Britain it has been indulged without even doing mis

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chief, because Britain has been possessed, not only by a network of durable families, but by rich families which have been superior to the people generally in courage. But in the years of Reform there was also a great body of able men impelled for the time by a political desire which gave them a temper not wholly unlike the temper of the Roman reformers who assailed and shook the Senate, or of the Frenchmen who have more than once seized power after the overthrow of parliamentary government. And there were also Reformers who were coldly disdainful in their habit of thinking about forms of government, who would, out of sheer intellectual pride, look on with indifference, and see the rival sets of noblemen pushing each other out of office.

The true Whig, even if born and bred in a household that has no connection with the aristocracy and no recollection of ancestors that have served the State, is moved in politics by affection, and cannot bear to see the line of Liberal gentlemen broken.1 He had rather have an imperfect law framed by a council whose primary business is to govern, than a perfect law framed by sages, or saints, or tribunes, who have obtained a brief ascendency over the people,

It is frequently said that to be a Whig one must be born a Whig. This is mere impertinence. In 1831 Sir James Graham, Lord Brougham, Lord Palmerston, were Whigs by conviction, adherence, and sympathy. It is interesting to know what their earlier opinions were, and if in after years they cease to be Whigs, it is interesting to observe that they are reverting to habits of thought formed in early life under family pressure, but in their best years they were as good Whigs as if they had been Russells or Cavendishes. There have been scores of pure Whigs who came into the party, no one knows from what origin; it has been so for two hundred years.

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