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the sudden concession of unlook ed-for-unhoped-for-power to the meanest of the householders of great towns? Was it the complete destruction of the whole constitutional influence of the conservative party in the Lower House? If these measures had been adopted, where should we have been now? They were adopted on the other side of the channel, and the rule of Marat and Robespierre was the consequence. It was not thus that the British aristocracy of 1793 fronted the danger. The march of intellect had not as yet taught them that peril is to be evaded by weakness, and that pusillanimity in presence of an enemy is the best way to avoid a defeat. They had not then learned that concession to an insatiable opponent is the only mode of buying him off; and that the nation which gives a gratuity to its invaders, to persuade them to retreat, is most likely to be secured from future insult. They did not adopt the pusillanimous conduct of the Roman emperors, who raised vast sums to persuade the barbarians to retreat, fondly trusting that when their backs were once turned, they would never see their faces again. They proceeded on the antiquated principle-sanctioned indeed by the Roman republic, adopted by all the greatest of mankind, the parent of the long line of British greatness, but wholly unworthy of modern illumination—that in moments of peril, the most resolute course is the most prudent; and that the danger of resistance is incomparably less than that of exciting the passions of the enemy by symptoms of intimidation. Acting on this principle, that the passion for democratic power grows with every gratification it receives, the British aristocracy resolutely faced the danger: the great bulk of the Whig nobles, acting under the direction of Mr Burke, joined the administration; the threatened disturbances came to nothing; popular ambition, like every other passion, being deprived of its only food, hope, gradually declined; and in a few years the island exhibited a more united people than it had ever done since the Norman conquest.

The Duke of Wellington on the next crisis was fully aware of the danger. That sagacious and intrepid man saw at once the perilous state

in which the Constitution was placed by the successful result of the se cond French revolution, and he took the only course, which, in such circumstances, became a wise statesman or an experienced soldier. It was not by conciliation and concession that he resisted the invasion of Portugal in 1810. The Whigs then strenuously recommended the same submission to the French which they have since made to the Radicals; but the British Hero, disregarding all their prophecies of defeat, resolutely took post at Torres Vedras, and from beneath its iron ridge beheld the tide of invasion roll back. He was prepared to have done the same when Parliament met in November last. He would have bravely headed the friends of order in resisting the assault of anarchy. He would have gloriously brought them through the struggle; but at the first appearance of danger one half of his troops deserted to the enemy! The friends of Mr Huskisson united with the Ultra-Tories in joining the ranks of innovation; domestic dissension, the fatal heart-burnings consequent on Catholic emancipation, paralyzed all the efforts of the conservative party. Mr Sadler, Sir R. Vyvyan, Sir E. Knatchbull, Mr C. Grant, Lord Palmerston, voted on the same side with Sir Francis Burdett and Mr Brougham. Had the Duke of Wellington been deserted in the same manner in presence of Napoleon, where would have been the deathless glories of the field of Waterloo? Had such a defalcation taken place from Mr Pitt in 1793, where would now have been the British constitution? Had Mr Burke and the Whigs united with Mr Fox, turned out that intrepid statesman, and conceded sovereignty to the people, what would have been the subsequent fate of England? Revolutionary anarchy, a sceptre of blood, military subjugation, and a British Napoleon.

It is painful to think how different might have been the present state and future destinies of this country, had the friends of order rallied, as in 1793, round the illustrious hero, who had the magnanimity in a moment of peril to unfurl the flag of the Constitution, and nail her colours to the mast. The British Lion would not then, as now, have quailed before the tricolor ensign; the crown of Al

fred would not have been endangered on the head of the sovereign; the glories of a thousand years would not have been sinking into a sea of blood.

There never was so mistaken an idea as that which is now frequently adopted by those who perceive the present dangers of the country, that they have arisen from the Duke of Wellington's declaration against Reform. They have all arisen from his not being supported in that declaration. Had Mr Pitt been deserted as the Duke was, the present crisis would have occurred in 1793. Had the government then been delivered over to a reforming administration,the earthquake which has now shaken the empire would have occurred thirty-eight years sooner, and half the present generation would have been buried in its ruins.

But it is useless to lament the past. We refer to it not for the purpose of exciting unavailing regret, but to demonstrate the course of the perilous progress which the nation has since made, and to warn our legislature of the only course which still promises a chance of safety.

It is to the PEERS of Britain that we, in an especial manner, now address ourselves. With them it lies to temper passing excitement by permanent wisdom; to save an infatuated nation from itself; and perform an act, for which they will obtain temporary obloquy and eternal admiration.

By rallying round the Duke of Wellington in November last, before the excitement began, the conservative party might have crushed the hydra in its cradle; and postponed for cooler times the gradual reformation of the constitution. That opportunity is past; the excitement has been created by the prodigal gift of power to the populace, and it is no longer a transient passion of the multitude, but a settled resolution of a large part of the Commons. The last election, unparalleled in the annals of England, has demonstrated from whence the future peril to the constitution is to be apprehended. By rousing the multitude with the double prospect of their own elevation and the destruction of their superiors; by exciting imaginary hopes and chimerical expectations among

that numerous and ignorant class in whom the freehold qualification is placed; by dissolving Parliament at a moment of the highest excitement, and kindling the fire of misguided loyalty in the breasts of the rural tenantry, the Ministry have succeeded in obtaining a great majority in favour of Reform in the Lower House. Some concession must be made to the declared wish of the majority in point of numbers of the nation, and some change in the constitution must be admitted by its hereditary guardians.

In making this admission, we not only do not abandon, but adhere more strenuously than ever to our declared opinion, that no Reform should have been conceded till the excitement of the last French Revolution had passed away. We shall abandon this opinion when we are shewn that Mr Fox was wrong when he declared," that all the collective wisdom of mankind could not frame a constitution; and that that of England was put together by the hand of time in a way which no future architect could hope to rival." We shall abandon it when we see new constitutions as stable, as free, and as beneficent, as those which have grown up with the wants of twenty generations; when we see the people as prosperous, the public wealth as flourishing, the national independence as secure, as under the pristine order of things; when the ancient glories of English story shall have been rivalled by the achievements of a more popular dynasty; the names of Bacon and Newton eclipsed by the discoveries of future philosophy; the strains of Milton and Shakspeare abandoned for the witchery of future rhyme; the remembrance of Cressy and Waterloo dimmed by the lustre of future triumphs; the flag of La Hogue and Trafalgar forgotten in the splendours of the British tricolor.

But the philosopher may lament the deplorable effects of popular delusion; the historian may condemn the fatal ambition of unexperienced statesmen; the legislator must deal with mankind as they are: he is exposed to the fury of popular violence,

and must stem the torrent of reckless ambition. How to do this is now the question. A general who finds

that his best position has been lost by the divisions of those intrusted with its defence, must take up the next best which can be selected. Though forced to abandon the ridge of Busaco, he may still present an impregnable front at Torres Vedras.

It is in the House of Peers that this last defensive contest must be maintained. Let not that illustrious assembly be intimidated by the assertion that they are but an insulated titled body, severed from the people by their privileges, possessing no part in their affections. They are but novices in history, who do not know that it is the Barons and landed aristocracy of England, who in every age have proved the firmest supporters of its liberties, and the strongest bulwark alike against sovereign or popular tyranny.

Who extorted from a feeble and tyrannical monarch the great charter of English liberty at Runnymede, and compelled its renewal two and thirty times on the succession of subsequent sovereigns or the repeated encroachments of the crown? Who declared at Mertown, in defiance of ecclesiastical usurpation, nolumus leges Angliæ mutare-who defeated the democratical insurrection of Watt Tyler, and saved England from the horrors of servile insurrection-who took the lead against the arbitrary usurpation of Charles I., and bravely conquered at Marston Moor-who resisted the Catholic usurpation of James II., and hurled a race of arbitrary monarchs from the throne-who protected the throne from the reckless ambition of its own Ministers, and saved the liberties of England from being sacrificed by a popular administration at the shrine of Indian ambition? The Peers of Englandthe titled and the untitled aristocracy of the realm; and it is to them that her good genius still looks to throw their shield over her future destinies.

Is it said that the times are now changed; that the whole weight of the constitution virtually resides in the Commons; that the days of aristocracy are gone by, and that the House of Peers dare not now throw out a bill supported by the Commons and the Throne? Here again

* Hume, vi. 176.

history disproves the assertion, and recent events nullify its application.

It is stated by Mr Hume* and it has been repeated by Guizot, that at the commencement of the great rebellion, the landed estates of the House of Commons were three times as large as those of the House of Peers. The Upper House consisted of 78 members, and at their deliberations seldom more than thirty or forty members assisted. The whole weight of the landed property of the kingdom was in the hands of the members of the Lower House, whose leaders, Sir Edmund Hambden, Sir Orlando Bridgman, Sir J. Hollis, Sir Henry Vane, were the destined leaders of the people, not only by their individual energy, but their vast possessions. The wars of York and Lancaster, in which eighty princes of the blood and nine-tenths of the ancient nobility of England perished, had fearfully thinned the ranks and dimmed the splendour of the Norman aristocracy; and the people, accustomed to see the great estates of the nobility forfeited repeatedly in the vicissitudes of fortune consequent on the civil wars, had lost much of their respect for their hereditary legislators. When the Long Parliament, therefore, in return for the innumerable concessions of Charles, and the tame submission of the nobles, voted the House of Peers a nuisance, and terminated their legal existence, the success of their usurpation was not a proof of the insignificance of the aristocracy in a contest with the Peers; but of the inability of a remnant of that body to maintain their ground against the great majority of the landed proprietors, almost all the commercial wealth, and all the religious frenzy of the nation.

Matters have since that time been completely changed. The policy of all the administrations who have ruled the country since the Revolution, has been to call up the most distinguished members of the Lower House, whether for talent, services, or possessions, to a place in the peerage. In consequence of the long prevalence of this system, not only the great bulk of the landed property, but the descendants of all the great

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est men in the kingdom, the most distinguished representatives of its commercial wealth, and the greatest of its living orators and statesmen, have found a place in the hereditary legislature. Not only are the peers now more than four times as numerous as they were in the great Rebellion, but their landed property is at least ten times as great, and greatly exceeds the collected wealth of the whole House of Commons. Among its ranks are to be found the descendants alike of noble virtue, and of humble ability: of the generals who have led our armies to victory, the admirals who have swept the ocean with our fleets,-the lawyers who have sustained our liberties by their exertions,-the statesmen who have maintained our property by their wisdom. The peerage is not adorned only by the blood of the Howards, the Percys, and the Scotts its weight is not increased only by the vast possessions of Devonshire, Northumberland, and Buccleuch; but it numbers among its members the immediate descendants of the greatest names of Britain, whether of patrician or plebeian origin-of Marlborough, Chatham, and Somers-of Mansfield, Hardwick, and Loughborough-of Abercromby, Howe, and Nelson. Among its present members are to be found the greatest statesmen, generals, and orators of the age-the Duke of Wellington, the Marquis of Anglesea, Lord Lansdowne, Marquis Wellesley, Lord Brougham, Lord Plunkett, Lord Eldon, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Holland, Earl Grey, and many others. Its debates are conducted in a style of dignity, moderation, and temper, which places them foremost in the rank of real statesmen; and it is a common observation, that on all the great questions that have recently occupied the attention of Parliament, Catholic Emancipation, Criminal Law, the Corn Laws, and the Currency, the speeches in the Peers have been decidedly superior in point of ability to those delivered in the Lower House. Even on the question of Reform, though only in cidentally introduced, few speeches in the Commons equalled those of the Duke of Wellington, Lord Caernarvon, Lord Wharncliffe, and Lord Mansfield.

It won't do, therefore, to direct

against a body thus constituted the common newspaper slang, of their being a house of incurables-the last refuge of imbecility-always behind the age, &c. &c. This wretched abuse may do very well with the vulgar, but with men of thought and information, who hear their names and read their speeches, it can have no weight whatever.

While the weight of the Peers has thus immensely increased, that of the House of Commons, considered as composed of men of extensive landed property, has proportionally declined. With the exception of Sir Francis Burdett, and Mr Coke of Norfolk, both of whom, in pursuance of the same system, are shortly to be called to the Upper House, there is no man of great landed property in the Lower House. The successive ennobling of the second or third generation of all the principal landed proprietors, has nearly exhausted the great estates of the kingdom. Sir Robert Peel is no exception. He might have been in the Peers long ago had he chosen to relinquish his station of leader of the conservative party in the House of Com

mons.

This gradual but unceasing change in the composition of the two Houses, must long ago have brought on a direct collision between them; in other words, between the property and the popular ambition of the kingdom, had not the indirect influence of the nobility, through the medium of the close boroughs, counteracted its tendency. This, as is universally known, restored the ascendency of property in the popular branch of the legislature, and notwithstanding the increasing property and weight of the one, and the increasing energy and ambition of a portion of the other, prevented them from coming into open collision.

Mr Fox's India Bill in 1783, first proved the superior weight which the House of Peers had acquired, in consequence of the cause now mentioned, since the Revolution of 1688. On that occasion, as is well known, the administration, strong in the coalition of Lord North and Mr Fox, and supported by a majority in the House of Commons, brought forward the celebrated Whig India Bill. This extraordinary measure, based on the principle of throwing the whole pa

that his best position has been lost by the divisions of those intrusted with its defence, must take up the next best which can be selected. Though forced to abandon the ridge of Busaco, he may still present an impregnable front at Torres Vedras.

It is in the House of Peers that this last defensive contest must be maintained. Let not that illustrious assembly be intimidated by the assertion that they are but an insulated titled body, severed from the people by their privileges, possessing no part in their affections. They are but novices in history, who do not know that it is the Barons and landed aristocracy of England, who in every age have proved the firmest supporters of its liberties, and the strongest bulwark alike against sovereign or popular tyranny.

Who extorted from a feeble and tyrannical monarch the great charter of English liberty at Runnymede, and compelled its renewal two and thirty times on the succession of subsequent sovereigns or the repeated encroachments of the crown? Who declared at Mertown, in defiance of ecclesiastical usurpation, nolumus leges Anglia mutare-who defeated the democratical insurrection of Watt Tyler, and saved England from the horrors of servile insurrection-who took the lead against the arbitrary usurpation of Charles I., and bravely conquered at Marston Moor-who resisted the Catholic usurpation of James II., and hurled a race of arbitrary monarchs from the throne-who protected the throne from the reckless ambition of its own Ministers, and saved the liberties of England from being sacrificed by a popular administration at the shrine of Indian ambition? The Peers of Englandthe titled and the untitled aristocracy of the realm; and it is to them that her good genius still looks to throw their shield over her future destinies. Is it said that the times are now changed; that the whole weight of the constitution virtually resides in the Commons; that the days of aristocracy are gone by, and that the House of Peers dare not now throw out a bill supported by the Commons and the Throne? Here again

Hume, vi. 176.

history disproves the assertion, and recent events nullify its application.

It is stated by Mr Hume* and it has been repeated by Guizot, that at the commencement of the great rebellion, the landed estates of the House of Commons were three times as large as those of the House of Peers. The Upper House consisted of 78 members, and at their deliberations seldom more than thirty or forty members assisted. The whole weight of the landed property of the kingdom was in the hands of the members of the Lower House, whose leaders, Sir Edmund Hambden, Sir Orlando Bridgman, Sir J. Hollis, Sir Henry Vane, were the destined leaders of the people, not only by their individual energy, but their vast possessions. The wars of York and Lancaster, in which eighty princes of the blood and nine-tenths of the ancient nobility of England perished, had fearfully thinned the ranks and dimmed the splendour of the Norman aristocracy; and the people, accustomed to see the great estates of the nobility forfeited repeatedly in the vicissitudes of fortune consequent on the civil wars, had lost much of their respect for their hereditary legislators. When the Long Parliament, therefore, in return for the innumerable concessions of Charles, and the tame submission of the nobles, voted the House of Peers a nuisance, and terminated their legal existence, the success of their usurpation was not a proof of the insignificance of the aristocracy in a contest with the Peers; but of the inability of a remnant of that body to maintain their ground against the great majority of the landed proprietors, almost all the commercial wealth, and all the religious frenzy of the nation.

Matters have since that time been completely changed. The policy of all the administrations who have ruled the country since the Revolution, has been to call up the most distinguished members of the Lower House, whether for talent, services, or possessions, to a place in the peerage. In consequence of the long prevalence of this system, not only the great bulk of the landed property, but the descendants of all the great

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