as everybody else was unable to resist the been unable temptation to active partisanship; and he was so far less qualified for the chair than formerly, even if no "great public principle" had become involved in the question of his re-appointment. Mr. Abercromby was the man on whom the wishes of the Reformers settled; but Mr. Abercromby objected to the nomination, and he resisted the honor till nearly the last hour. He yielded, however, and immediately left town; while it was universally known that on the other side even urgent personal canvassing was practised. This difference, and the inclination of many quiet or lukewarm Reformers to have a speaker of such proved qualifications as Sir C. Manners Sutton in so troubled a session as was before them, rendered it doubtful, to the last moment, which way the election would turn. There was an extremely full House on the critical 19th of February: only a few of the doubtfuls and six Tories were absent; almost all the rest of the waverers and thirtyfive Reformers voted for the Ministerial Speaker; and cromby yet Mr. Abercromby was chosen by a majority of ten.1 The Reformers from this time knew that the session was theirs, if they were active and united. Sir Charles Manners Sutton at once received the peerage which his long services truly merited, being called to the Upper House by the title of Viscount Canterbury. Mr. Aber chosen. King's speech. On the 24th, the King came down to open Parliament in person. His speech declared the rising prosperity of manufactures and commerce; but deplored the depression of agriculture, and recommended to Parliament the consideration of reducing the burdens upon land.2 Wearisome as it is to record and to read of the depression of agriculture, almost from year to year, it becomes the more necessary so to do as we approach the period when a free-trade in corn was demanded by a majority of the people. It is necessary to see, as we proceed, what the state of things was which the opponents of change would have perpetuated, what the good old times were which they were unwilling to abandon. This year, the farmers' cry came up so piteously that it was echoed in the King's speech; and it was left for the multitude below to wonder how it was that there were any farmers in England, so losing a business as farming evidently was. Another series or two of farmers had to be impoverished yet, before the withering system of protection was put an end to; but every complaint to Government, and every mention by the sovereign, of agricultural distress, now went to remind the thoughtful that there must be something radically wrong in the existing system, whatever might be the difficulty of agreeing about a better. The King also requested the attention of Parlia2 Hansard, xxvi. p. 63 1 Spectator, 1835, p. 169. ment to the tithe-questions in Ireland and England; to ecclesiastical reform in regard to discipline and the administration of justice; to the best way of relieving Dissenters from a form of the celebration of marriage to which they conscientiously objected; to the municipal-corporation question; to the operations of the ecclesiastical commission; and to the condition of the Church of Scotland. 1 Angry debate. The conflict of parties began at once, in the House of Lords, about the address. According to Lord Eldon's report, there was a serious dread, some days before, of a large majority against ministers, even in the Upper House; and the Conservatives made a solemn call upon each other to muster strongly, for the last chance of preserving their dignities and their property, lest their children, like those of the French nobility, should be doomed to become commoners. The feeble old man was himself in his place, almost for the last time. "I sat,” he says, "last night in the House of Lords till between twelve and one, till all in that House was over. I certainly would much rather have sat by my fireside, quietly, and enjoying the comforts of conversation." But he was resolved, as long as he lived, to do his part in saving the monarchy. The debate was deformed by much anger and mutual unfairness. In both Houses, the recrimination was unworthy of so great an occasion, the late Ministry unreasonably finding fault with the dissolution of Parliament, and with the Duke of Wellington's way of conducting the business of the State during the Premier's return from Rome; and the Conservatives unwisely dwelling on an anecdote of the time which has never ceased to be vividly remembered. It had actually happened, that, before the King could have sent to the Duke of Wellington, and before Lord Melbourne could have officially communicated to his colleagues the state of the King's mind, an ostentatious statement appeared in a morning paper, a statement which must have been derived from a Cabinet Minister, and which was universally attributed to Lord Brougham, that Lord Melbourne's administration was dismissed, and that "the Queen had done it all." Though the speech made no allusion to the change of Ministry, and Lord Melbourne's proposed amendment was also silent about it, the anecdotage of the crisis formed the chief part of the debates on the address in both Houses. The amendments insisted on carrying out the principles of reform in regard to the projects contemplated by the late Parliament, and lamented its unnecessary dissolution before those reforms were completed. In the Lords' House, the amendment was simply negatived. In the Commons it was carried by a majority of seven.? And here, at the outset, the 1 Life of Lord Eldon, iii., p. 243. 2 Hansard, xxvi. pp. 151, 410. Premier had to consider what was to be done.1 He took time to consider, in order, as he frankly avowed, to guard himself against any misleading from mortification, and to ascertain whether the vote conveyed the real sense of the House. When satisfied that it did so, he did not oppose the amendment of the address; and it was carried up to the King, therefore, with the unusual feature conspicuous in it of the discontent of the Commons with the late dissolution of their House. The King was sorry, of course, that the Commons did not concur with him in regard to that act, and declared that he exercised his prerogatives with the sole view of promoting the welfare of his people." The restlessness of the Opposition was increased by the two majorities they had already obtained; and, through one opening or another, inquiries were incessantly conveyed to the Minister whether he meant to resign. His answer was, that the two votes did not convey a declaration of want of confidence in the government, and he therefore thought it his duty to proceed. These inquiries naturally caused rumors out of doors; and then again, these rumors were reproduced in the House, to elicit further explanations from Ministers. On the 2d of March, Lord John Russell made a statement of two reports which were prevalent, that Parliament was again to be dissolved, on the first ministerial reverse; and that, if this should happen before the Mutiny Act could be discussed, the army was to be kept up on the responsibility of the administration without the assent of Parliament.3 That such a project should have been imputed to one political leader by another, in our day, is a remarkable indication of the disturbance of the general mind. Lord John Russell declared, that he should avoid putting the direct question whether these things were true; but that he intended to test the disposition of the Cabinet by bringing forward, at a time of which he gave notice, the appropriation-question, and that of municipal reform. The Premier's reply was clear and frank. He had never discussed or proposed anywhere a speedy dissolution of Parliament: but it was not his business to place in abeyance, by any declaration of his, the royal prerogative of dissolving Parliament; and this, as he observed, was a fuller reply than Lord Grey had given to the well-remembered question of Lord Wharncliffe on the same subject. As to the Irish-Church question, he and his colleagues were anxious that the commission should prosecute their labors, as yet only half finished; and, when they had furnished the requisite information, government and the country would see what ought to be done, the present government adhering to its principle that the property of the Church ought to 1 Hansard, xxvi. 2 Annual Register, 1835, 101. be applied only to strictly ecclesiastical purposes, but being ready to amend the distribution of that property, when the requisite evidence should be complete. There was no objection on the part of the government to any needful reform of corporation abuses; but neither they nor anybody else could declare what such reforms should be till the commissioners should have offered their report. As for the rumor about the maintenance of the army without the sanction of Parliament, he had never heard the subject mentioned till that night. The same kind of suspicious inquiry was made of Lord Aberdeen in the Upper House about the carrying out of the Emancipation Act in the West Indies, when the colonial secretary declared, that no one could be more anxious than himself— whose first vote had been against slavery that the Act should be completely carried out; and he had written to Lord Sligo to entreat him to remain in his office of Governor of Jamaica, and complete his work without any misgiving on account of the change of administration at home.1 malt-tax. On the next great subject of discussion, men of all parties united on either side. Lord Chandos proposed, to the Debate of the embarrassment of the government which he usually supported, the repeal of the malt-duty, the promise of which boon to the farmers was believed to have greatly influenced the elections. Many Whig and Radical members agreed with the Premier, that such a proposition could not be entertained before the financial condition of the country was known; that there was no reason to suppose that the surplus in the treasury could meet such a demand; that it was not the barley-growers whose distress now called for attention, as the price of barley had been rising for a considerable period; and that it was extremely doubtful whether the farmers would be peculiarly benefited by the repeal of the duty. On the division, Mr. Grote and Mr. Hume were found voting on opposite sides; and three members of the late government spoke in support of Sir Robert Peel against the motion of his own adherent: the strife of party was visible only in the sarcasms thrown out in the course of debate; and the majority against the repeal of the malt-tax was 158.2 On the next occasion of defeat, the administration had little sympathy from any quarter. They had made an indefensible appointment to an office of high importance, and they had to take the consequences; and the Premier among others, not only because his was the first responsibility in such cases, however his opinion might be overruled in private, but because he attempted a lamentable defence in Parliament of an appointment which could in no view be justified. Early in January, the following paragraph appeared in the "Times" newspaper: "We 2 Hansard, xxvi. p. 834. 1 Hansard, xxvi. p. 419. Lord London "the notice, merely to discountenance an absurd report, that Lord Londonderry has been, or is to be, named Ambassador to St. Petersburg. The rumor is a sorry joke." It was no derry's joke. If all England had been searched for a man appointment. whose politics were most like those of the Emperor of Russia, Lord Londonderry might well have been chosen ; and he was now to be sent to represent the mind of England to the Emperor of Russia, now, when the affairs of Turkey were in a state to require the most accurate representation of the opinion of Great Britain, now, when Poland was commanding the sympathies of the whole world, but when Lord Londonderry was in the habit of speaking decisively of the Poles as rebellious subjects of the Emperor of Russia ;" and when he professed himself a sympathizer with Don Carlos and Don Miguel. His lordship's notions about a fair personal interest in public service were also too well known throughout the country to dispose the people of England to place him again in their service. It could never be forgotten, that he had, a few years before, brought disgrace upon himself by declaring, in the House of Lords, that he had been calumniated and injured by the foreign office, and challenging Lord Dudley, then foreign secretary, to produce a certain correspondence which would explain the case. In the course of explanation, it appeared that Lord Londonderry had been importunate for a pension, in consideration of his diplomatic services; and that the calm and moderate Lord Liverpool had written in pencil on the back of the letter, "This is too bad."1 These things, before well known, were now repeated in Parliament; and the portrait of the rank Tory nobleman, with his rashness, his obtuseness, his narrowness, his ingenuous conclusions that the people and their purses were created for the benefit of the aristocracy, was held up before the public eye in a way infinitely damaging to the administration. Sir Robert Peel held up, on the other side, his manliness and his military qualifications, qualities which, with some other very good ones, nobody denied, but which did not constitute him a fitting representative of the mind of the British nation at the court of Russia. The appointment was not actually made out; but Sir R. Peel declared himself ready to maintain the nomination. The difficulty, however, was ended by Lord Londonderry immediately withdrawing. The debate in the Commons was published on Saturday; and on Monday, the marquis declared, with his characteristic manliness, that he saw it to be impossible that he could act with advantage at a foreign court, while disowned as a representative by any considerable portion of the political body at home; and therefore, while scorning all scoffs and impu 1 Hansard, xxvi. p. 943. |