and Sheridan, of Wyndham and Romilly, of Mackintosh and Brougham-has become extinct in the House of Commons since 1832. Such as are still there of the former race had all found an entrance under the old system by the nomination boroughs. No man who knows anything of human affairs, indeed, will assert that a legislature, the majority of which consisted of such men, would be a good frame of government. There is probably more truth than the learned professors are willing to admit in the celebrated saying of Frederick the Great, that "if he wished utterly to ruin a province, he would put it into the hands of the philosophers;" or of Napoleon, that "if an empire were made of granite, it would soon be reduced to powder by the political economists." But admitting all this, it is equally obvious that to give the learned professions only five seats out of six hundred and fifty-eight to themselves, and send them everywhere else to be swamped by a majority of farmers, provision-dealers, or publicans, was a very great evil, which may come eventually to affect in a most serious manner the fortunes of the empire. СНАР. 1832. 152. arising stance. No body of men, and least of all the Legislature intrusted with the government of the country, can emanci- Dangers pate itself without risk from the influence of intelligence from this and genius, and surrender itself without reserve to the circumguidance of material interests. The necessary effect of such exclusion is to produce an absence of enlarged views on general welfare, and to restrict every one to the selfish dictates of interested constituents. Independence of character, intrepidity of thought, wide views for the universal good, can hardly now obtain admission into the House of Commons. Large constituencies have an instinctive dread of such characters; they are either jealous of or hate them. Ability and eloquence, indeed, they all desire; but it is ability devoted to their interests, eloquence governed by their will. Their wish is to have, not representatives, but delegates, and no man worthy of ruling an empire will become such. Hence the House of 1832. CHAP. Commons, since the passing of the Reform Bill, has been XXIII. nearly deserted, so far as new members are concerned, by men of brilliant talents; and they have sought to influence public affairs by writing in the periodical or daily press, the talent in which has as much increased since the change, as that of the new entrants into the Legislature has diminished.* 153. taken re press: its danger. But the great and growing influence of the press is itTalent has self fraught with still greater danger, for it is necessarily fuge in the one-sided. Every one reads what suits his own views, and in general little else; and thus the ability of the press tends rather to confirm preconceived opinions, and widen the breaches which divide society, than to heal divisions or produce rectitude of judgment. Of it may truly be said, what the poet has affirmed of reason,— "Nec minus falsi pravique tenax quam nuntia veri.” The nomination boroughs let in independent talent, because they were either purchased or acquired by the influence of one, always less jealous than a multitude of masters. They were felt as an evil, however, because they produced a legislature at variance, on essential points, with the wishes and interests of the great urban hives of industry. What should have been done, and was not done, was to have given as many seats as were * If the following picture of the British House of Commons, after twentyeight years' experience of the Reform Bill, by a distinguished Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer, be just, the nation has not gained in administrative ability in the popular branch of the constitution what it has lost in statesmanlike views. Mr Gladstone stated in Parliament (see Times of 18th August 1860), when speaking of British Administration: "Vacillation, uncertainty, costliness, extravagance, meanness, and all the conflicting vices that could be enumerated, are united in our present system. There is a total want of authority to direct and guide. When anything is to be done we have to go from department to department, from the Executive to the House of Com. mons, from the House of Commons to a Committee, from a Committee to a Commission, and from a Commission back to a Committee, so that years pass away. The public is disappointed, and the money of the country is wasted. I believe such are the evils of the system that nothing short of revolutionary reform will ever be sufficient to rectify it." Pretty strong language this, but not one bit too strong. XXIII. 1832. taken away, not to one class, the £10 householders, but CHAP. to various classes, which might have afforded an inlet into the Legislature at once to manufacturing and commercial wealth, colonial industry, shipping interests, and general intelligence and superior education. 154. crease of under the Perhaps the evil consequence which has been most forcibly brought before the eyes of the public by the Vast inworking of the Reform Bill, is the vast increase of cor- corruption ruption which it has induced in the borough electors. Reform This has become so obvious that it has attracted univer- Bill. sal observation; and if any proof of it were requisite, it would be found in the fact that fifty-two petitions against returns, on the ground of bribery, were presented in the Parliament elected in 1852. Nothing approaching to this was ever heard of in the worst days of the old House of Commons; and the Legislature has been actively engaged since that time in devising various remedies for so great an evil-a sure proof that none of them have had any sensible effect. It is not difficult to see that the evil is irremediable under our present institutions; for it arises from a permanent cause of irresistible force-viz., that supreme power is vested in a class accessible to bribes. As long as this continues, bribes will be expected, given, and taken. The decisive proof of this is to be found in the fact, that though petitions against borough returns have been so frequent since the Reform Bill passed, there have been none against those for counties. The reason of this is, not that the forty-shilling freeholder is inaccessible to bribes-probably he would often as willingly take them as the freeman or ten-pounder in towns-but that that class have not the majority in counties, and they are not bribed, because it is no man's interest to corrupt them. The Liberals do not attempt to deny the existence of this great and crying evil in the new borough constituencies, but they affirm that it would be removed by enlarging the constituencies so as to make bribery impossible, XXIII. 1832. 155. would not ed, by the ballot and lowering the suf frage. It CHAP. and introducing the ballot so as to render it useless. may with confidence be predicted that the evil, so far from being diminished, would, as in the Roman repubWhich evil lic,* be decidedly and greatly increased by either or both be removed, of these changes. Experience has proved in America, but increas- that neither universal suffrage nor the ballot either prevent bribery, when it is for the interest of the candidate to give it, or conceal votes. It may lower the sum required to sway the electors, but that is all. Bribery will not be lessened because £5000 is divided among 10,000 electors instead of 1000; it will only be spread over a wider surface, and extend farther its demoralising influence. The transference of seats in the Legislature to a more needy class will still less obviate the evil; it will only induce the giving of bribes to those who have recourse to it, in order to open the career of fortune or avert impending insolvency. Even if the constituencies were made so large that no fortune could corrupt them, the evil would not be removed, it would only assume another and a still more dangerous form. The worst and most dangerous species of bribery is that which is practised by holding out prospects of legislative injustice and spoliation; and the nation will have little cause to congratulate itself if it escapes slipping sovereigns into elec "The Decemvirs had been named, and their tables were approved by an assembly of the centuries, in which riches preponderated against numbers. But the tribunes soon established a more specious and popular maxim, that every citizen has an equal right to enact the laws he is bound to obey. Instead of the centuries they convened the tribes; and the Patricians, after an impotent struggle, submitted to the devices of an assembly in which they were confounded with the meanest plebeian. Yet as long as the tribes passed over narrow bridges, and gave their voices aloud, the conduct of each citizen was exposed to the eyes and the ears of his friends and countrymen. The insolvent debtor consulted the wishes of his creditor, the client would have blushed to oppose the views of his patron, the general was followed by his veterans, and the aspect of a grave magistrate was a living lesson to the mul titude. A new method of secret ballot abolished the influence of fear and shame, of honour and interest, and the abuse of freedom accelerated the progress of anarchy and despotism. The Romans had aspired to be equal-they were levelled by the equality of servitude, and the dictates of Augustus were patiently ratified by the formal consent of the tribes or centuries."—GIBBON, Decline and Fall, chap. xliv. XXIII. tors' pockets, but induces the putting the sponge to the CHAP. national debt into their hands, and untaxed spirits into their mouths. 1832. 156. Great fault of the Libe way the These were the great errors committed by both parties in the course of this all-important debate. The faults were the greater on the part of, the Conservatives at its rals in the commencement, of the Liberals at its close. This was Reform Bill the natural result of the alternate possession of power by was carried. those two great parties; each used it while they had it, not for the general interests of the empire, but for the maintenance or acquisition of government to themselves. But there is one step on the part of the Liberals, of a different character, and to which, now that the strife is over, and all thoughts of a return to the old system are out of the question, it is the duty of the historian to givė the most unqualified condemnation: this is the way in which the Reform Bill was carried. The excitement of the people by the Liberal leaders, during the continuance of the contest, was so violent and incessant that at last they became altogether unmanageable, and the leaders were driven by their own followers to coerce the Crown, and threaten to violate the constitution, as the only means of avoiding civil war and revolution. The English revolution was effected by means as violent, though happily bloodless, as the French; the threat of marching sixty peers into the House of Lords, to overthrow that assembly, was a measure, in substance, if not in form, as thoroughly an appeal to force as the marching sixty grenadiers, on the 18th Brumaire, into the Legislative Assembly by Napoleon. coercing of Peers. It is remarkable that on the only occasions in English 157. history when such an extreme measure was thought of, it Danger of was to overthrow the greatest benefactors of their country the House -once in the reign of Queen Anne, when twelve peers were created to ruin the Duke of Marlborough; and once in that of William IV., when sixty were threatened, to subvert the Duke of Wellington. Such precedents, if |