182 MR. MACAULAY AND THE VOTE OF CONFIDENCE.

'party,' it was not in 1831 the proper word wherewith to name the connection of families which had, till the year before, controlled the public offices and the chief professions. So cold a blast could but make the Tory Barons wrap themselves more tightly in their mantles. This jewel of speech was presented in a complimentary manner to the chairman of a political union; and soon afterwards a proclamation was issued to tell political unions that they were illegal in the opinion of the King's Ministers, who in issuing this proclamation complied with the real wish of the King.1

The Cabinet, unchanged in composition, and conducting international transactions loftily, accepted as a matter of course the renewed vows of its supporters in the Lower House, who mustered three hundred and twenty-nine on October 10, to declare that the opinion of the country had been unequivocally pronounced in favour of the Bill. The excellent teacher of politics, Mr. Macaulay, took occasion in speaking on this 'vote of confidence' to state most impressively a view of the unreformed system of Government which it is well to bring to remembrance; for, since it no longer holds good as a description of modern Britain, it marks the eventual result of the change which the speaker furthered. He pointed out that, as things then stood, there was a great anomaly in the relation between the people and the Government . . . that

1 The King was moved to express this wish by the Duke of Wellington. If the Duke gave the advice to the King without first imparting it to the First Minister, he stretched a point.

THE POWER OF JURIES.

183

the people had not sufficient power in making the laws, but quite sufficient power to impede the execution of the laws when made. He illustrated this by reference to the Sidmouth Act of 1819 against libels, which was obtained with ease from a subservient Parliament, but was not set in motion in 1820 against the libellers of George IV. because the Crown officers knew they had to deal with a refractory people. He foretold that the Reform Bill would establish harmony between the people and the Legislature, giving a fair share in the making of laws to those without whose co-operation laws were mere waste paper. Juries, in fact, had long been able and willing to nullify recent statutes which were express and solemn commands of the sovereign aristocracy.1

Trial by jury was to the bold democrat what sanctuary had formerly been to homicides. In the weeks which followed the triumph of the Tory peers, many Reformers used language for which they might have been indicted on a charge of sedition, or on a charge of conspiracy to break the peace. Justices of the peace, and grand juries at assizes, might have been induced to further, so far as it lay in their power, such prosecutions; but petty juries would have acquitted, against evidence, any Reformers charged with conspiring to stop the payment of taxes.

1 This contumacy is quite different from the sceptical indolence which turns many well-intended statutes into mere records of good projects. In the reformed system of government, every statute that modifies the law of libel and similar branches of the law is obeyed by all the courts, and enters into the accepted destiny of all British subjects, even when new rules for the promotion of longevity, and the like, are neglected. In the Liverpool days the juries were apt to set at nought both evidence and judicial direction if they thought the law too severe.

184

RIOTS AT NOTTINGHAM.

XXXIV.

MR. ROEBUCK, who sat in many reformed Parliaments with authority, said in old age that he was lawyer enough to know that in the Reform Bill times he had done things for which he might have been hanged. In point of fact the gentlemen who went to public meetings were sometimes in danger of violence if they disagreed with the crowd, but they were also in danger of being confounded with the malefactors who lusted for disorder and plunder. There was of course boundary line between the admirers of Hampden, who defied the tax-gatherer, and the admirers of Thistlewood, who longed for a chance of breaking into a Tory's cellar; nor is there any proof that any politician overstepped the line. But there were at least two English towns, Nottingham and Bristol, in which political antipathy engendered riots which ended in felonies.

At Nottingham a mob, formed without design on the announcement of the Bill's failure, burnt a house belonging to, though not occupied by, a Duke who was known to entertain a strong sense of his lordly rights. For this outrage no one was arrested; hence it is inferred that the rioters were protected by an overwhelming flood of popular excitement.1 The Duke was by the law entitled to compensation at the

1 Three culprits were hanged for burning a silk mill near Nottingham about the same time as the Duke's house was burnt. They seem to have reckoned, by mistake, on the sympathy of the factory people.

cost of all the inhabitants of the Hundred; and, if the orderly householders connived at arson, it was clearly expedient that they should be rateably charged with the reparation of the injury.1

But that State is imperfectly constituted which, at a time of foreseen excitement, has no machinery for promptly avenging the public wrong done by incendiary rioters; and it is historically certain that the high statesmen, who had held unbroken sway for nearly fifty years, had not completed the organization required for suppressing the explosions of malice which headstrong gentlemen were apt to provoke.

In the riots of Nottingham and of some other towns the rabble broke out too suddenly for magistrates to guard against. At Bristol there was time to take precautions against disorder. It was not till October 29—that is, three weeks after the rejection of the Bill, a week after the prorogation—that Bristol became the field of combat between the defenders of order and the lovers of anarchy and of strong liquors. The Bristol follies and crimes lasted about fifty hours. Bristol was within a day's coaching, or posting, of London. It was in possession of its felons and drunkards so long that the Home Office must have been rousing itself to send thither a detachment of its own little standing army, the metropolitan police, when the news came that the flames were quenched.

The Home Office had entrusted the city to troops

1 A Hundred is a subdivision of a county; except as regards the law of compensation for mischief done by rioters, it is almost an obsolete institution; few know to what Hundred their parish belongs.

186

THE RECORDER OF BRISTOL.

belonging to two regiments of horse, which were left to the discretion of a gentleman who had resided there about eight years, under the title of inspecting field officer.' He was called a colonel, but he had not command of any regiment; he was in his fiftieth year, and he had never paid for any step in his promotion.

A modern soldier would hardly care to take charge of a great town with only two or three squadrons of cavalry, with no cannon, no infantry, no engineers. If obliged to do so, he would ascertain precisely the numbers and the positions of the military pensioners resident in the town, of the paid constables, of the volunteer special constables, of the armed officers employed against smugglers, and of the volunteer yeomanry. He would take care never to be out of communication with a civil magistrate; for without his leave he would not be free to employ soldiers to strike any blows except when the soldiers were mobbed and endangered.

The inspecting field officer' was not conscious of being in charge of Bristol; because, in theory, the mayor was in charge. Now, the mayor was at first eclipsed by a greater magistrate, the recorder, that is, the barrister, or queen's counsel, who came to act as judge at sessions for 'gaol delivery.' The recorder of Bristol was so considerable a lawyer that he ranked almost with the twelve judges; at least he seemed to the tradesmen of the corporation an august representative of the Crown. The office was held by a violent party politician, Sir Charles Wetherell ; he was notorious as the most vituperative and nearly