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ing state of that part of the Legislature. What interest is there not fully represented? In what assembly on earth are the same talents and learning to be found? Where is the pulse of the public mind to be so surely felt and ascertained? Here we find men ever watchful to proclaim error and enforce truth, to vindicate the cause of the oppressed, to urge inquiry, to bring delinquency to exposure and guilt to punishment, to denounce ministerial tyranny, and to assert the rights of the people. Administration acts, like the man of Momus, as it were, with a window in its breast. Add to this the agency of the press, which disseminates over the island and over Europe, the doctrines that are maintained, the measures that are discussed, and the nature of the policy that is followed; which, in short, gives tenfold energy to public opinion, and renders all public men cautious, circumspect, and, to a certain degree, virtuous. We therefore agree with Mr Canning, that the system, as it is constituted at present, "works well," and that it would be little short of madness, in order to get rid of partial defects, to fly to greater unexplored evils.

At the same time, we have to state that several instances of notorious bribery and corruption in the election of members of Parliament were this session brought under the cognisance of the House of Commons. These were Grampound, Barnstaple, and Penryn; and in all the three the corruption was proved by the fullest and most conclusive evidence. The consequence was, that Parliament ordered prosecutions against the individuals implicated; and the facts charged being proved, conviction followed. The trial of Sir Manasseh M. Lopez will be found in the Appendix. That of Mr Swann for bribery at

Penryn we have not given, because it appeared to possess litte independent interest. With regard to Grampound, Lord John Russell announced his intention to propose next session a measure of modified reform, by disfranchising burghs convicted of gross and notorious corruption, and transferring the elective franchise, of which they should thus be deprived, to large towns, as Manchester or Leeds, which formerly sent no member to Parliament, or to extensive counties inadequately represented. An account of this motion, and its result, will be found in our next chapter.

On the 1st of July, Sir Francis Burdett brought forward a motion on the subject of Parliamentary Reform, the object of which was to pledge the House of Commons, early in the ensuing session, to take into consideration the state of the representation. This motion he introduced in a long speech, in which he assailed the present system as substantially rotten at the core, and consequently wholly inadequate to the exercise of the functions for which it was originally intended. The motion naturally led to a long debate, and the reiteration of those common places, with which the public are already so familiar; but it is remarkable that none of the bright luminaries on either side of the House thought proper to mingle in the discussion, or to dart a single coruscation of new light on the tame and vapid declamation with which the proposition of the honourable Baronet was supported. On a division, the motion was lost by a majority of 153 to 58.

On the 13th of July, this busy Session of Parliament, in which, to use the words of the Speaker of the House of Commons, "the subjects that had occupied its attention had been more numerous, more various,

and more important, than are usually submitted to the consideration of Parliament in one session," was closed by the following speech, delivered from the throne by the Prince Regent, and Parliament prorogued till the 24th day of August next:

"My Lords and Gentlemen, "It is with great regret that I am again obliged to announce to you the continuance of his Majesty's lamented indisposition.

"I cannot close this session of Parliament without expressing the satisfaction that I have derived from the zeal and assiduity with which you have applied yourselves to the several important objects which have come under your consideration.

"Your patient and laborious investigation of the state of the circulation and currency of the kingdom demands my warmest acknowledgments; and I entertain a confident expectation, that the measures adopted, as the result of this inquiry, will be productive of the most beneficial consequences.

"Gentlemen of the House of Com

mons,

"I thank you for the supplies which you have granted for the service of the present year.

"I sincerely regret, that the necessity should have existed of making any addition to the burdens of the people; but I anticipate the most important permanent advantages from the effort which you have thus made for meeting at once all the financial difficulties of the country; and I de

rive much satisfaction from the belief, that the means which you have devised for this purpose are calculated to press as lightly on all classes of the community as could be expected when so great an effort was to be made.

"My Lords and Gentlemen,

"I continue to receive from foreign powers the strongest assurances of their friendly disposition towards this country.

"I have observed, with great concern, the attempts which have recently been made, in some of the manufacturing districts, to take advantage of circumstances of local distress, to excite a spirit of disaffection to the institutions and government of the country. No object can be nearer my heart than to promote the welfare and prosperity of all classes of his Majesty's subjects; but this cannot be effected without the maintenance of public order and tranquillity.

"You may rely, therefore, upon my firm determination to employ for this purpose the powers intrusted to me by law; and I have no doubt that, on your return to your several counties, you will use your utmost endeavours, in co-operation with the magistracy, to defeat the machinations of those whose projects, if successful, could only aggravate the evils which it is professed to remedy; and who, under the pretence of reform, have really no other object but the subversion of our happy constitution."

CHAPTER VIII.

RE-ASSEMBLING OF PARLIAMENT AND STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

Apparent causes of the disturbances in the manufacturing districts.-Re-assembling of Parliament in November.-Regent's Speech.-Debates on the Address. Report on the Address.-Measures proposed by Ministers for regulating public Meetings, preventing secret military training, searching for arms, and restraining the licentiousness of the press.-Bill for preventing seditious meetings.-Motions in both Houses of Parliament for the appointment of Committees to inquire into the State of the Country.-Mr Bennet's motion for a Committee to inquire into the present state of the manufacturing districts.-Bill for preventing training passed into a law. - Mr Hobhouse sent to Newgate for a libel on the House of Commons.-Lord John Russell's resolutions on the subject of Parliamentary Reform.-Sir W. De Crespigny's motion for a Select Committee to inquire into the practicability of Mr Owen's plan for relieving the distresses of the lower classes.-Bill introduced for the disfranchisement of Grampound.-The arms' seizure bill, the misdemeanour traverse bill, the seditious meetings' bill, the newspaper stamp-duty bill, and the seditious publications' bill, passed.-Adjournment of Parliament.

HOOKER commences his admirable work on Ecclesiastical Polity with this observation; "He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers." This remark, at once eloquent and just, indicates a deep insight into the principles of human nature. In all communities, however well governed, and however equal and impartial the protection and security afforded by the laws, we may nevertheless detect the elements of discontent, which, unless duly and energetically repressed, will in time break through the restraints of civil order, and produce confusion and anarchy. But there are times when this dangerous spirit, as it may be more effectually roused, ought to be more carefully and vigorously watched; times when general distress not only gives fresh activity

to the principle of insubordination, but naturally prompts the immediate sufferers to catch at every hope, however delusive, at every reed, however frail, that promises present relief and safety. It is on such occasions as this that the demagogue comes into play. While people are enjoying plenty, they are naturally easy, good-natured, and indifferent; as they feel no wants, they dream of no abuses; the system of Government is allowed to pursue its course undis. turbed; and no man labouring with his hands for his daily bread suspects that he is competent to point out and expose errors, to reform abuses, and, in short, to mend the State. But the period of reduced wages and consequent privation arrives, and the same man becomes at once sensitive and credulous; he feels strongly the contrast of his present wants with his former abundance or luxuries; and he

naturally believes every lying spirit who furnishes him with something to curse as the cause of his calamity, and with a nostrum or specific to hold forth as a sovereign remedy for all ills. Hence, we have seen Parliamentary Reform gravely proposed as a remedy for the evils flowing from a bad harvest or low prices, and the abolition of sinecures recommended as an infallible expedient for opening the foreign market to British manufactured produce.

In no country upon earth does this proneness to crimination, and this aptitude of delusion exist to such an extent as in our own: and it is perhaps one of the unavoidable consequences of that freedom which we enjoy, and which gives to every man a stake in the Government, and a deep and paramount interest in the measures pursued by the governors. But there can be no doubt that it also opens a large field for the speculations and activity of designing men, who, insignificant and contemptible by themselves, become truly dangerous and formidable when they have gained a vicious ascendancy over multitudes, and can lead thousands of their fellowsubjects to embrace the most absurd and preposterous doctrines, and, occasionally, to commit the most illegal and dangerous acts of aggression against the laws and constitution of the kingdom. Then, accordingly, it is, that the Government ought to interfere; then it is that measures both penal and precautionary must be adopted, to repress the mischief that has been already done, and to rescue the people from the destructive arts and machinations of those who have made them only an instrument for the accomplishment of their own base and profligate ends. In a Government constituted like ours, we are well aware, that the arm of power can never be so extended with

out exciting much jealousy, and calling forth the keenest animadversion; we are aware that suspicion will always attach to every act which has for its object to restrain public opinion, however misdirected, and however pernicious and we are also aware, that this salutary vigilance is one of the elements that go to the composition and preservation of the just equipoise of the constitution. But we are equally satisfied that, in such circumstances, Government has no alternative, but to proceed in a steady and energetic course; and that pusillanimous submission to popular delusion, wrought up to frenzy, would be the worst sort of treason which governors could commit against the best and vital interests of the community at large.

The year 1819 is, in many respects, one of the most remarkable in our recent history. At its commencement, the country enjoyed comparative general tranquillity; the evils inseparable from the sudden cessation of a long war, which had occasioned the expenditure of hundreds of millions, and consequently given a vast and unexampled stimulus both to industry and the principle of population, had, in some measure, subsided; symptoms of the revival and renovation of our commerce had begun to manifest themselves; our agriculturists had borne the pressure of low prices and high rents with that resignation and patience which hope inspires; and among the lower classes, whose sufferings had been more immediate and personal, there appeared but few indications of that turbulent and seditious spirit which afterwards burst forth with such almost unprecedented fury. Public meetings and inflammatory speeches, when these produce no actual results beyond the expenditure of some foul breath, we make no great account

of; considering them as, in some sort, the safety-valves of the State, by which that highly expansive vapour is disengaged and set free, which, if compressed, might displode and produce wide-spread ruin and destruction. But as the sum mer advanced, things began to put on a very different aspect. It then appeared, that the reform meetings, which were multiplying in all direc tions, were only so many parts of a system regularly and artfully organized to overturn the Government; that incredible pains had been taken, not merely to poison the minds of the people by seditious and blasphemous publications, but to teach them the dangerous secret of their own strength, and to inculcate the necessity of combined efforts no less than sameness of creed and concert of purpose; that drillings to the use of arms had prevailed to an alarming extent in many of the most populous districts; and, in short, that the whole of the manufacturing population had been silently and unobservedly undergoing a process of tuition, for the purpose of enacting in England the bloody drama of the Revolution of France. Emissaries issued forth from London, that great focus of turbulence and sedition in all periods of the monarchy. Blasphemy, the usual concomitant of treason, was disseminated in penny publications: And, when the artful contrivers of disturbance and commotion imagined that their tools and instruments were prepared for their purpose, or nearly so, the decisive experiment was attempted of assembling the people in great masses, and in the regular and imposing attitude of military array, with revolutionary ensigns, and all the paraphernalia of sedition, that, feeling their own strength, they might enforce their demands by menace and intimidation. Such an experiment we consider the

VOL. XII. PART I.

meeting at Manchester on the 16th of August; a meeting, the illegality of which has been very generally admitted by men of all parties, whatever have been their sentiments as to the method taken to disperse it. For who can doubt, if a hundred thousand men, in military array, marshalled under subordinate leaders, at the beck of an arch-demagogue, with banners inscribed with "Equal Representation or Death," can march to a meeting under the flimsy pretence of merely petitioning, that there is at once an end to the constitution, and that such an imperium in imperio must either destroy or be destroyed? The purpose was avowedly hostile, the pretence a deception, the grand object intimidation. If petitioning Parliament for a redress of grievances had been the real, instead of the ostensible end, it is clear that the constitution had provided a method by which it could have been attained without at once violating the fundamental principles of that to which they looked for relief, endangering the public peace of a large and populous district, and perhaps letting loose all the horrors and calamities of a civil war. such a meeting as that of the 16th of August were to take place in Ireland, who could doubt for a moment, that unless instantly dispersed by military force, treason would stalk abroad in the confidence inspired by impunity, and rebellion be the consequence? But, at the time in question, the manufacturing districts of England, and particularly the country in and about Manchester, were in a state nearly, if not altogether, as disturbed and disloyal as Ireland in the worst times; and hence, the exigency of the moment called for energy, not merely to anticipate the evil, but to overawe the disaffected. We are perfectly well aware how this will be, and has been met, by the

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