ANECDOTAL HISTORY THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT. ANECDOTAL HISTORY OP FROM THE 0!&s to NOTICES OF EMINENT PARLIAMENTARY MEN, AM) EXAMPLES OF THEIR ORATORY. COMPILED FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES BY GEOKGE HENKY JENNINGS. YOKE: D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 1, 8, AND 5 BOND 8TEEET. 1881. PREFACE. THE scantiness of available information on the subject of the British Parliament, its history and its leading men, is a sur- prising fact, in days when historical writing may be said to superabound. Much information was to be found, no doubt, in bulky volumes, or scattered through the material of exten- sive libraries, but there was nothing for the general reader at once comprehensive and readily accessible. An attempt was made some years back, by two fellow-workers who had experienced the want, to supply it, by bringing together, in anecdotal form, " some of the more striking facts in the history of our Parliaments, and the public lives of dis- tinguished statesmen.-"* Their work met with a favourable reception, and a cordial appreciation of its purport, not only in this country but abroad. One correspondent a member of the legal profession in Italy expressed himself warmly in praise of the book, which he was desirous of translating into his own tongue, as showing compendiously the history of constitutional liberty in the nation which has striven most * "A Book of Parliamentary Anecdote," by G. H. Jennings and W. S. Johnstone, 1872. The writer takes this opportunity of expressing his satisfaction that in his earlier labours he was aided by the co-operation of his valued friend Mr. "William Steven Johnstoce. That gentleman, although prevented by arduous engagements from continuing the work, lias kindly placed at the disposal of Ids colleague his own gatherings towards the former book. vi ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. successfully for its promotion, and being therefore well adapted as a text-book for the political education of his country- men.* The encouragement given to the previous tentative work has led the present writer to follow it up by the expansion and rearrangement of its materials; influenced, as regards the latter point (in the "Personal" section of the volume), in some measure by the suggestion of a competent and courteous critic in the Quarterly Review, who has since given his remarks upon the book a more enduring circulation.f As regards expansion, the former work included but a small portion of the material contained in the present ; for the vein was found to be more rich as it was further explored. To deal with it in a manner likely to secure a satisfactory result has required the leisure of many years, the difficulty at length having been to confine the gathered material within moderate limits, while not omitting (it is believed) any important or characteristic fact in either the historical or the biographical branch of the subject. It is hoped that the work, in its present form, may be of practical value in more than one direction. As Mr. Lowe once pointed out, in a celebrated phrase, J the power of this country is now, more distinctly than at any former time, vested in the electoral body. Every individual citizen exercises a proportion of that power ; and, that he may use it wisely, an acquaintance with the history and the working of our Parlia- mentary institutions is an essential condition. All have not the opportunity of reference to the works requisite for the information; but all may consult such a digest as will be * Ho writes : " Vous avez raconte, dans ses traits plus remarquables, 1'histoire d'Angleterre, qui, ancienne ou moderne, est toujours actuelle pour iious, parcequ'elle est toujours la memo chose, fatale et grande, Vhistoire de la liberte. L'ltalie, si grande dans son histoire ancienne et moyenne, si nouvelle dans 1'histoire moderne, trouverait bien dans votre livre un recueil precious d'exemples et de pratique liberale, qui 1'aideraient immensement dans son education civile et politique." Letter from Sig. Roger Calabrye, avocat a Naples. f " Selected Essays by A. Hayward, Q.C." London : 1878. J See p. 346. PREFACE. vii found here, and the book may therefore claim to possess its educational uses at home. To maintain the standard reached by constant patriotic effort in past times, and so to uphold the dignity and efficacy of the Nation in Council, is a most impor- tant object, which it seems as necessary to keep in view at the present day as at any former period. Moreover, to this country the founders of Parliamentary institutions in other lands have been, and are, eagerly looking. Besides nations speaking other tongues, our -numerous colonies have their growing Parliaments, all taking the cue from our own, and tracing in its history the foundations of a government at once popular, and regulated by law and order, while Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent. To any of these colonial Assemblies might probably be applied a remark recently made respecting one of them : " It is almost as jealous of any departure from English Parliamentary pre- cedent as could well be the House of Commons itself."* As to the general subjects of Parliamentary rule and prece- dent, formally considered, it is scarcely needful to say that no attempt is here made to compete with the claims of such elaborate and exhaustive works as those of Sir T. Erskine May and his predecessors, Elsynge, Hatsell, and the rest. In the following "anecdotal" pages, these matters are necessarily kept less in view than the broad lines of historical fact, personal trait, and oratorical effort or allusion ; and in dealing with these, one especial design has been to make the work useful to persons engaged in political and literary pursuits. The occasion of a particular incident, or the use of a certain * Letter from special correspondent of the Times at Melbourne, March 31, 1880. Since these lines were written, the subject has been enforced in the House of Commons. Mr. Speaker Brand, on his re-election to the chair in 1880, said, "The power and consequent responsibility of this House are constantly increasing. It is looked up to, not only by our colonial fellow-subjects as the parent of their popular Assemblies, but every nation in the world now treading in the path of Parliamentary Government watches our proceedings with the greatest attention and interest. It is, then, the more incumbent on us to set an example of freedom and order in debate, which constitute the life-blood of Parlia- mentary Government." viii ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. phrase, is often matter of dispute and requires verification, both in Parliament and out of it. A circumstance which occurred in the session of 1876 will show that the want of a ready means of authenticating such facts and phrases is felt, at times, by persons even of great eminence in active political life. Mr. Gladstone, speaking in the House of Commons of an expression used by a former colleague (the Earl of Clarendon) in an important crisis, said he had been at some pains to find out in " Hansard '* what were the actual meaning and connec- tion of that expression (" drifting into war "), and he gave the correct version. If, however, the right honourable gentle- man had had before him the small work of which this is a development, it would have saved him the labour, for the expression would there have been found, among many others of like interest, with the context as given in " Hansard's " pages. The process of " mythical accretion " to which Mr. Glad- stone referred on that occasion is constantly going on with regard to the celebrated dicta of our public men, and this makes it the more desirable to trace, as has here been done, the original occasion and precise sense of such expressions. Another instance in point will be found on page 334. Mr. Cobden is frequently credited with the saying that we could " crumple up Eussia like a sheet of paper." What he really did say, and the "accretion" which followed, will there be found recorded ; and many similar instances appear in other places. One of the express objects of this book is to prevent, on many occasions in future, the need of such laborious research as that instanced by Mr. Gladstone ; and the number of political proverbs and sayings which will be found included here, with an account of the circumstances under which they arose, is very considerable. For many of these, recourse has necessarily been had, not only to the voluminous pages of " Hansard," and the similar records, such as they are, of former days, but to the, deeper depth of ancient newspaper files, where alone some of the celebrated sayings of distin- guished statesmen could be found, often uttered on " extra- parliamentary " and slight occasions, but destined, by some PREFACE. i x happy conjuncture of thought and phrase, to live as long in memory, or longer, than anything that fell from them in elaborate orations. To these, as well as some other portions of the book, gathered from voluminous histories and lengthy biographies, the words of the elder Disraeli, when speaking of some of his own labours, may not inappropriately be applied : " There are articles in the present work, occupying but a few pages, which could never have been produced had not more time been allotted to the researches they contain than some would allow to a small volume." It may be thought that anecdotes of a humorous nature occur in the book to an extent not to have been anticipated. They have, however, arisen from the nature of the subject. Humour has always played an important part in the pro- ceedings of the British Parliament, whether it be the greater Parliament of the platform and the polling-booth, or the select body which assembles at St. Stephen's. As a worthy member of the House of Commons once remarked, it " loves good sense and joking."* This book, therefore, could not faithfully mirror Parliamentary life, as it attempts to do, unless both qualities were fairly represented. Reference to authorities is given throughout the work, wherever it seemed likely to be useful to the reader, or of any importance for verification. It is scarcely necessary to add that in many cases the authorities cited indicate only the sources from which the principal facts or reports are derived ; such additions and explanations as may have been requisite to complete the information having, of course, been sup- plied from other sources. Of one thing the reader may be assured, that the work before him has been prepared without undue leaning or partiality in favour of any of the great parties in the State, whether in past or present time. The historical student frequently cares little for the differences of passing politics, seeing rather, in the calmness of private study, that the adver- saries and opponents of a particular time have been, in the main, men working with different views towards common * P. 490. x ANECDOTAL EI8TORT OF PARLIAMENT. objects, and that there has been much on both sides worthy of admiration and respect. The familiar illustration of the knights and the shield is as applicable in political as in any other affairs, and it has required many chivalrous men of opposing views to build worthily upon the foundations of the British Parliament. It is believed that all sides alike are here fairly represented ; for the historical spirit, as distin- guished from that of party, in the main pervades the principal sources of information referred to, and in the collection of material from these quarters there has been no such endeavour as that of Dr. Johnson,* to " take care that the Whig dogs did not get the best of it." * P. 424. CONTENTS. PART I. PAGE EISE AND PEOGEESS OF PAELIAMENTAEY INSTI- TUTIONS I PAET II. PEESONAL ANECDOTES: SIB THOMAS MORE 63 LOED BACON ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 64 SIB EDWABD COKE 65 SIB JOHN ELIOT ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 67 JOHN PTM 69 JOHN HAMPDEN 73 EARL OF STBAFFOBD 74 LOBD FALKLAND 76 HABBT MABTEN ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 78 OLIVES CBOMWELL 80 SIB HENBT VANE 83 ANDBEW MABVELL 85 ALGEBNON SIDNEY 86 THE FIBST EABL OP SHAFTESBUBT 87 LOBD HALIFAX... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 90 LOBD SOMEBS 90 EOBEBT HABLET, EABL OF OXFOED 92 LOBD BOLINQBBOKE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 93 JOSEPH ADDISON ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 94 SIB EICHABD STEELE 94 EABL OF CHESTEBFIELD 96 SIB EOBEBT WALPOLE 98 WILLIAM PULTENEY 107 HENBY PELHAM ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 109 THE FIBST DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 110 EABL OF HABDWICKE Ill EABL OF BUTE... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 112 WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM 113 EABL OF MANSFIELD ... ... 123 Xii ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. PERSONAL ANECDOTES (continued) PAOE LORD NOETH ... ... ... ... 124 JOHN WILKES ... ... ... ... 128 CHARLES TOWNSHEND 130 LORD LOUGHBOROUGH 132 EARL CAMDEN 133 LORD THURLOW 133 EARL OF SHELBURNE 137 WILLIAM PITT 138 CHARLES JAMES Fox ... ... ... ... ... 143 EDMUND BURKE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 150 EICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 160 EDWARD GIBBON ... ... ... ... ... 165 WILLIAM WINDHAM 166 SIR PHILIP FRANCIS 167 GEORGE TIERNEY ... , ... ... 168 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE ... ... ... ... 169 SIR SAMUEL EOMILLY 171 SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH 172 FRANCIS HORNER 174 HENRY ADDINGTON, LORD SIDMOUTH 175 LORD CASTLEREAGH 176 HENRY GRATTAN 181 HENRY FLOOD 184 JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 185 LORD PLUNKET 186 LORD ERSKINE 189 SIR WILLIAM GRANT 190 LORD ELDON 191 SPENCER PERCEVAL 193 EGBERT JENKINSON, EARL OF LIVERPOOL 194 JOHN HORNE TOOKB 195 LORD BYRON 196 LORD BROUGHTON 198 SIR FRANCIS BURDETT ... ... ... ... ... ... 199 WILLIAM COBBETT 201 JOSEPH HUME 203 THOMAS S. BUNCOMBE 206 GEORGE CANNING 207 WILLIAM HUSKISSON 213 EARL GREY 214 LORD ALTHORP ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 216 LORD MELBOURNE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 218 LORD BROUGHAM ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 222 LORD LYNDHURST .. ... ... ... ... ... ... 231 DUKE OF WELLINGTON 234 SIR EGBERT PEEL 241 SIR JAMES GRAHAM 251 DANIEL O'CONNELL 255 EICHARD LALOR SHEIL 260 CONTENTS. Xiii PERSONAL ANECDOTES (continued) PAOE * LOKD JOHN (EARL) EUSSELL 262 LORD PALMERSTON ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 268 EARL OF CLARENDON 279 LORD MACAULAT 280 EDWARD BULWER, LORD LTTTON 285 EDWARD GEOFFREY, EARL OF DERBY 286 BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD ... ... ... 291 LORD GEORGE BENTINCK 312 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE ... 315 BlCHAKD COBDEN 332 JOHN BRIGHT 338 EGBERT LOWE, LORD SHERBROOKE 345 JOHN ARTHUR EOEBUCK ... ... ... ... ... ... 350 EALFH BERNAL OSBORNB 352 EARL GRANVILLE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 353 MARQUIS OF SALISBURY ... ... ... ... ... ... 355 EARL CAIRNS 357 LORD SELBORNE 360 SIR STAFFORD NOBTHCOTE 361 MARQUIS OF HARTINGTON 363 MINOR CELEBRITIES AND ODD CHARACTERS 365 "THE EOLLIAD" 369 PAET III. MISCELLANEOUS ANECDOTES : 1. ELECTIONS 373 2. PEIVILEGE 403 EXCLUSION OF STRANGERS 413 PUBLICATION OF DEBATES 421 3. PAELIAMENTAEY USAGES, ETC 429 4. VAEIETIES 459 APPENDIX. A. LISTS OP THE PABLIAMENTS or ENGLAND AND or THE UNITED KINGDOM 493 B. SPEAKERS OP THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 496 C. PRIME MINISTERS, LORD CHANCELLORS, AND SECRE- > TARIES OP STATE, PROM 1715 TO" 1880 500 INDEX 507 3T7 The following, among other works, are quoted in this book, and many more have been consulted in its preparation : Addresses from the Court of Common Council to the King, &c. (1760-1778). Alison's (Sir A.) Life of Castlereagh. Ashley's (Hon. E.) Life of Palmerston. Bacon's (Nathaniel) Historical Dis- course on the Government of Eng- land. Barrington's (Sir Jonah) Historic Memoirs of Ireland. Bell's Life of Canning. Blacks! one's Commentaries. BoswelTs Life of Johnson. Bonrke's Parliamentary Precedents. Bright's Speeches, edited by Professor Rogers. Brougham's (Lord) Autobiography, Historical Sketches of Statesmen, &c. Broughton's (Lord) Recollections. Buckingham's (Duke of) Memoirs of the Court and Regency of George IV. Bulwer's Works (Sir E.) See Lytton. Butler's (Charles) Reminiscences. Burke's Speeches and Miscellaneous Works. Burke's (P.) Life of Burke. Bnrnet's History of his Own Time. Bnxton'a (SirT. P.) Memoirs. Byron's Letters, &c. Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors and the Chief Justices. Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Cromwell. Castlereagh, Memoirs and Corre- spondence of Viscount, edited by his Brother. Charlemont's (Lord) Correspondence. Christie's (W. D.) Memoirs, &c., of Shaftesbury. Clarendon's Life, History of the Re- bellion, &c. Cobbett's Parliamentary History. Annual and Weekly Regis- ters. Cobden's Speeches, edited by Bright and Rogers. Cockburn's (Lord) Life of Jeffrey. Colchester, Diary of Lord (Mr. Speaker Abbot). Cooke's History of Party. Cornwallis, Correspondence of Charles, 1st Marquis. Coxe's (Archdeacon) Life of Walpole. Croly's Life of George IV., &c. Curran's Sketches of the Irish Bar. Dalling's (Lord) Historical Characters, and Life of Palmerston. Daunt's Life of Daniel O'Connell. D'Ewes (Sir Simonds) Journal, &c. D'Israeli's (B.) Life of Bentinck. D'Israeli's (I.) Curiosities of Litera- ture, Memorials of Charles I., &c. Doran's Walpole's Journals, &c. Duncombe's Life of T. S. Dnncombe. Dundonald's (Earl of) Autobiography. Eldon's Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon. Elections, Determinations of the House of Commons concerning (1753). Elsynge's Ancient Method and Manner of Holding Parliaments, &o. Evelyn's Diary. Ewald's Biography of Walpole. Fenn's (Sir J.) Paston Letters. Forster's Statesmen of the Common- wealth, Grand Remonstrance, &c. Francis's Orators of the Age, &c. Francis's (Lady) Reminiscences. Gibbon's Autobiography. Gleig's Life of Wellington. Grafton's Abridgment of the Chronicles of England. Grant's Random Recollections of the Lords and Commons. Grattan's Life and Times. Grenville Papers, the. Greville Memoirs, the. Grey, Life and Opinions of Lord. Guizot's Memoirs of Peel, Embassy to the Court of St. James's, &c. Gordon's History of Parliament. Hakewel's " Modus Tenendi Parlia- mentum." Hallam'a Constitutional History. Hansard's Debates, passim. Harf ord' s Recollections of Wilberf orce. Hardy's Memoirs of Lord Charle- mont. Harleian MSS. Harris's Life of Hardwicke. Hatsell's Precedents, &c. Horner's Memoirs and Correspondence. Holcroft's (Thomas) Memoirs. Huish's Memoir of O'Connell. Hume's History of England. Irving' s Annals of Our Time. Journals of Parliament, Votes, Pro- ceedings, &o. LIST OF WORKS QUOTED. King's (Dr.) Anecdotes of His Own Time. Knight and Macfarlane's History of England. Le Marchant'a (Six D.) Memoir of Viscount Althorp. Lingard's History of England. Long Parliament. Speeches of this Great and Happy Parliament (1641). The Dinrnall Occurrences of ditto. Lowe's Speeches on Befonn. Lytton's (Lord) St. Stephen's and New Timon ; Speeches, Ac. Macaulay's History, Essays, &c. Mackintosh's (Sir J.) Journals, tnaaaaug amfcm mad luaming to their princ^ploa. 1 Sheridan turned round, "Sir, it k easy for my Lord O, or Earl G.. or Marquk B., or Lord BL, with thousands upon thousands a-year, some of it either presently derived or inherited in sinecure or acquisitions from the public money, to boast of their jiiliialimm and keep aloof from but they do aot know fiom wbat temptatioa those have kept EDWARD GIBBON. 165 aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, and not unequal passions, and nevertheless knew not in the course of their lives what it was to have a shilling of their own." And in saying this he wept. An Ambiguous Compliment. "Before my departure from England," says Gibbon in his " Autobiography," " I was present at the august spectacle of Mr. Hastings' trial, in Westminster Hall. It is not my province to absolve or condemn the Governor of India, but Mr. Sheridan's eloquence demanded my applause ; nor could I hear without emotion the personal compliment which he paid me in the presence of the British nation." The passage in the speech of the orator that afforded so much gratification to the historian is thus reported in the Morning Chronicle, June 14th, 1788 : " He said that the facts that made up the volume of narrative were unparalleled in atrociousness, and that nothing equal in criminality was to be traced either in ancient or modern history, in the correct periods of Tacitus, or the luminous page of Gibbon." On being asked by some one, at the conclusion of the speech, how he came to compliment Gibbon with the epithet " luminous," Sheridan answered, in a half -whisper, "I said 'voluminous.'" Byron, in his "Monody on the Death of Sheridan," thus alludes to the appreciation in which a meed of praise from Sheridan was held : " In whose acclaim the loftiest voices vied, The praised the proud who made his praise their pride." EDWAED GIBBON. (17371794.) A Mute Member. The historian of the Roman Empire was re- turned for Liskeard in 1774, and sat in Parliament for eight sessions. Prudence, he says in his " Autobiography," condemned him to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute. " Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice." In a letter to a friend he writes, " I am still a mute : it is more tremendous than I imagined ; the great speakers fill me with despair, the bad ones with terror." Gibbon supported Lord North's administration by his vote, and was appointed one of the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations. He was employed by the Government, at the outbreak of hostilities with France in 1778, to draw up the official manifesto on that occasion. A Contrast. In a letter to a friend in 1783, describing his life at Lausanne, the ex-M.P. says : " Acknowledge that such a life is more con- ducive to happiness than five nights in the week passed in the House of Commons, or five mornings spent at the Custom House." But in his " Autobiography " he remarks, " I never found my mind more vigorous, nor my composition more happy, than in the winter hurry of society and Parliament." His Application for Diplomatic Employment. The follow- ing letter is given in Gibbon's "Autobiography and Correspondence." The communication is without date, nor does the name of the nobleman 166 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. to whom it was addressed appear : " My Lord, I am ignorant (as I ought to be) of the present state of our negotiations for peace; I am likewise ignorant how far I may appear qualified to co-operate in this important and salutary work. If, from any advantages of language or local connections, your lordship should think my services might be use- fully employed, particularly in any future intercourse with the Court of France, permit me to say that my love of ease and literary leisure shall never stand in competition with the obligations of duty and gratitude which I owe to his Majesty's Government." Gibbon also applied to Lord Thurlow, soliciting an appointment as Secretary to the Embassy to Paris, in 1783. Of the result he writes : " The scheme is completely vanished, and I support the disappointment with heroic patience." "WILLIAM WINDHAM. (17501810.) Political Training. In 1783, Mr. Wiudham was appointed principal secretary to Lord Northington, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Before leaving England he called upon his friend Dr. Johnson, to whom he expressed, says Bos well, some modest and virtuous doubts whether he could bring himself to practise those arts which it is supposed a person in that situation has occasion to employ. " Don't be afraid, sir," said Johnson, with a pleasant smile ; " you will soon make a very pretty rascal." A Very Palpable Hit. Sometimes he would convulse the House by a happy, startling, and most unexpected allusion; as when on the Walcheren question, speaking of a coup-de-main on Antwerp, which had been its professed object, he suddenly said, " A coup-de-main in the Scheldt ! You might as well talk of a coup-de-main in the Court of Chancery." Sir William Grant (Master of the Rolls) having just entered and taken his seat, probably suggested this excellent jest; and assuredly no man enjoyed it more. His habitual gravity was over- powered in an instant, and he was seen absolutely to roll about on the bench which he had just occupied. Brougham's " Statesmen." Homely Saxon. " When some phrase of his," says Lord Brougham, " long after it was first used, seemed to invite attack, and a great cheer followed, as if he had unwittingly fallen into the scrape, he stopped and added, ' Why, I said it on purpose ! ' or, as he pronounced it, ' a purpose ; ' for no man more delighted in the old pronunciation, as well as the pure Saxon idiom of our language, which yet he could enrich and dignify with the importations of classical phraseology." Instability. Mr. Windham (says Earl Russell) was unstable and irresolute. He said one day to Lord Henry Petty, who was sitting beside him, towards the end of his speech, " Which way did I say I would vote ?" Convenient Illustration. Windham's happiness in illustration was thus alluded to by Lord John Russell, in speaking on Parliamentary Reform in 1854 : " I know to those who do not like the measure a fit SIR PHILIP FRANCIS. 167 time is always wanting. Mr. Windham, who was a great master of illustration and allusion, when a measure of reform was introduced in a time of public quiet and peace, said, 'You are like the man in the Spectator, who had every symptom of the gout except the pain ; you are going to deal with a disease that causes you no inconvenience.' Times changed, and there was a vast deal of commotion, and agitation, and excitement, and still Mr. Windham opposed reform, saying, ' Surely you will not repair your house in a hurricane ! ' On both occasions he was ready with an illustration, and so it is with many of those who now say that this is not the time to introduce a measure of Parliamentary reform." SIR PHILIP FEANCIS. (17401818.) An Unready Speaker. Sir Philip Francis, the reputed author of the " Junius " letters, was unsuccessful as a speaker. His own theory on the subject is given by Lady Francis in her " Reminiscences :" " Here I may account for his not being a ready speaker in Parliament, except when roused by indignation or feeling, when he electrified the House. He accounted for it from Lord Bacon's well-known axiom, ' Reading makes a full man, writing an exact man, speaking a ready man.' ' I had enough and too much of the former, and none of the latter, in my youth. A vessel may be too full to part easily with its contents, and few orators are very exact men ; besides, I had too much sensibility, and felt the House was against me. The House was Pitt's, and Pitt could not despise me, but he tried to make it believe he did.'" Lady Francis adds another reason for his hesitation in speaking namely, extreme anxiety to weigh every word lest it should convict him of being " Junius." An Appeal from Son to Father. Sir Nathaniel "Wraxall writes as follows of Francis : " However inferior he was to Burke in all the flowers of diction, more than once he electrified the House by passages of a pathos which arrested every hearer. A beautiful specimen of his ability in this point occurred during the debates on Pitt's India Bill. One of the regulations abolished the trial by jury for delinquents returning from India, and instituted a new tribunal for inquiring into their misdemeanors. Against such an inroad on the British constitution Francis entered his protest in terms of equal elegance and force. ' 1 am not,' said he, ' an old man, yet I remember the time when such an attempt would have roused the whole country into a flame. Had the experiment been made when the illustrious statesman, the late Earl of Chatham, enjoyed a seat in this assembly, he would have sprung from the bed of sickness, he would have solicited some friendly hand to lay him on the floor, and thence, with a monarch's voice, he would have called the whole kingdom to arms to oppose it. But he is dead, and has left nothing in the world that resembles him. He is dead ! and the sense, the honour, the character, and the understanding of the nation are dead with him.' . . The repetition of the words, ' He is dead,' was attended with the finest effect ; and the reflections produced by it involuntarily attracted every eye 168 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. towards the Treasury bench, where sat his son. I have rarely witnessed a moment when the passions were tonched in a more masterly manner within the walls of the House. The impression made by it on Pitt is said to have been of the deepest kind." GEOEGE TTEENEY. (17611830.) The Pox and the Goose. Mr. Tierney was one of those Whigs who, partly through hostility to Mr. Pitt, and partly from a sincere gratitude for the peace abroad, and the mild and constitutional govern- ment at home, obtained for the country by Mr. Addington, first supported and afterwards formally joined that minister, upon his rupture with his patron and predecessor. When alluding to the difficulties the Foxites and Pittites had of passing over to join each other in attacking the Addington ministry, Mr. Tierney (forgetting for the moment how easily he had himself overcome a like difficulty in joining that ministry) alluded to the puzzle of " the Fox and the Goose," and did not clearly expound his idea. Whereupon Mr. Dudley North said, " It is himself he means who left the Fox to go over to the Goose, and put the bag of oats in bis pocket." Brougham's " Sketches." A Saying about Office. Earl Russell remarks that Mr. Tierney used to say, as the fruit of his experience, that it was very difficult for a member of the House of Commons to attain high office, but that it was still more difficult to leave high office with credit on sufficient grounds. His lordship endorsed this by adding, " The latter is, in fact, the more difficult operation of the two." The Duel between Pitt and Tierney. Pitt brought in a bill for the more effectual manning of the navy, on the 25th of May, 1798, and urged that it pass through all its stages in one day. Tierney opposed this " precipitous course." In reply Pitt asked how the honourable gentleman's opposition to the measure was to be accounted for, but from a desire to obstruct the defence of the country. Refusing to retract or explain, Pitt received a challenge the next day from Tierney. Lord Sidmouth gives the following account of the preliminaries : " I was dining with Lord Grosvenor when a note was brought me from Mr. Pitt stating that he had received a hostile message from Mr. Tierney, and wished me to go to him, which I did as soon as the party at Lord Grosvenor's broke up. Mr. Pitt had just made his will when I arrived. He had sent, in the first instance, to Mr. Steele to be his second ; but, finding he was absent, ho sent next to Mr. Ryder. On the following day I went with Pitt and Ryder down the Birdcage Walk, up the steps into Queen Street, where their chaise waited to take them to Wimbledon Common." On Sunday, the 27th, at three o'clock in the afternoon (says Earl Stanhope), the two parties met on Putney Heath. Mr. Pitt was attended by Mr. Dudley Ryder, afterwards Lord Harrowby, and Mr. Tierney by Mr. George Walpole. The seconds had some conversation, and endeavoured to prevent further proceedings, but they did not prevail. The principals WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 169 took their ground at the distance of twelve paces, and fired at the same moment, each without effect. A second case of pistols was produced, and fired in the same manner, Mr. Pitt on this last occasion firing his pistol in the air. The seconds interfered, and thus ended the affair. His Style in Debate. Lord Lytton, in " St. Stephen's," gives the following graphic sketch of Tierney's manner : " There is an eloquence which aims at talk A muse, though winged, that prefers to walk ; Its easy graces so content the eye, You'd fear to lose it if it sought to fly ; Light and yet vigorous, fearless yet well bred. As once it moved in Tierney's airy tread. Carelessly, as a wit about the town Chats at your table some huge proser down, He lounged into debate, just tonch'd a foe, ' Laughter and cheers' A touch, sir ? what a blow 1 Declaiming never, with a placid smile He bids you wonder why you are so vile ; One hand politely pointing out your crime, The other in hia pocket all the time." WILLIAM WLLBEEFOKCE. (17591833.) Slave Trade Motions. " In 1787," said Wilberforoe, " I was staying with Pitt at Holwood one has often a local recollection of par- ticular incidents and I distinctly remember the very knoll upon which I was sitting, near Pitt and Grenville, when the former said to me, ' "Wilberforce, why don't you give notice of a motion on the subject of the slave trade ? You have already taken great pains to collect evidence, and are therefore fully entitled to the credit which doing so will insure you. Do not lose time, or the ground may be occupied by another.' I did so, and upon that occasion Pox said he had himself seriously entertained the idea of bringing the subject before Parliament ; but he was pleased to add that, it having got into so much better hands, he should not interfere. In 1789 I opened the question to the House. Burke, I remember, complimented me on my speech, and thanked me for the information he had received from it." As an instance of the ridiculous stories told in consequence to the speaker's disadvantage, Clarkson was travelling in a stage-coach, when, the conver- sation turning on the abolition question, one of the passengers gravely said, " Mr. Wilberforce is doubtless a great philanthropist in public, but I happen to know a little of his private history, and can assure you that he is a cruel husband, and even beats his wife." At this time Mr. Wilber- force was a bachelor. Harford's " Recollections." His Parliamentary Dinners. Mr. Wilberforce (says Harford) resided in Palace Yard for some time with his friend, Mr. Henry Thorn- ton, as bachelors, where they kept an almost open house for members of Parliament. About three o'clock daily their friends began to drop in on their way to the House, and partook of a light dinner, the number of them 170 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. amounting to seventeen or twenty. Lord Eldon was not unfrequently one of the party. " It delighted us," said Mr. Wilberforce, " to see our friends in this way, especially as it gave us the opportunity of talking upon any important points of public business, without any great sacrifice of time. Those who came in late put up with a mutton chop or beefsteak. The Duke of Montrose called in one day as we were thus employed, but declined taking anything. Seeing, however, so many around him busy with the knifo and fork, he said, ' I cannot resist any longer,' and dowu he sat to a mutton chop. ' Ah ! duke,' said I, ' if your French cook could see you now, he would be quite affronted.' " Power and Forbearance. The singular kindness, the extreme gentleness of his disposition, wholly free from gall, from vanity, or other selfish feeling, kept him from indulging in any of the vituperative branches of rhetoric ; but a memorable instance showed that it was any- thing rather than the want of power which held him off from the use of the weapons so often iu almost all other men's hands. When a well-known and popular member thought fit to designate him repeatedly, and very irregularly, as the " honourable and religious gentleman," not because he was ashamed of the Cross he gloried in, but because he felt indignant at any one in the British Senate deeming piety a matter of imputation, he poured out a strain of sarcasm which none who heard it can ever forget. A common friend of the parties having remarked to Sir Samuel Romilly, beside whom he sat, that this greatly outmatched Pitt himself, the master of sarcasm, the reply of that great man and just observer was worthy to be remarked : " Yes," said he, " it is the most striking thing I almost ever heard ; but I look upon it as a more singular proof of Wilberforce's virtue than of his genius, for who but he ever was possessed of such a formidable weapon, and never used it?" Brougham's " Statesmen." A Simile. " Few passages can be cited," says Brougham, " in the oratory of modern times of a more electrical effect than Wilberforce's singularly felicitous and striking allusion to Mr. Pitt's resisting the torrent of Jacobin principles : ' He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed.' " Repenting of his Vote. Lord Sidmouth told us that one morning at a Cabinet meeting, after an important debate in the House of Commons (the subject of which he had forgotten), some one said, " I wonder how Wilberforce voted last night." On which Lord Liverpool observed, " I do not know how he voted ; but this I am pretty sure of, that in whatever way he voted, he repents of his vote this morning." Lord Sidmouth added, " It was odd enough that I had no sooner returned to my office than Wilberforce was announced, who said, ' Lord Sidmouth, you will be sur- prised at the vote I gave last night, and, indeed, I am not myself altogether satisfied with it ! ' To which I replied, ' My dear Wilberforce, I shall never be surprised at any vote you may give.' Pursuing the con- versation, I soon convinced him that ho had really voted wrong, when lie Baid, ' Dear me, I wish I had seen you last night before the debate.' " Life of Lord Sidmouth. SIR SAMUEL ROMILLT. 171 SIE SAMUEL EOMILLT. (17571818.) An Advanced Liberal. Romilly, who was identified with all the liberal measures, and the political activity in a liberal direction, of the early part of the nineteenth century, entered Parliament in 1806, when close upon fifty years of age ; and he was appointed Solicitor-General in the administration of which Fox was a leading member. Having sat for one pocket borough after another, in 1818 he was elected for "West- minster ; but the death of his wife in the same year had such an effect upon his mind that he destroyed himself. He was to the last one of the foremost spirits of the philanthropical party. Barbarians. Earl Russell writes, in his " Recollections :" Sir Samuel Romilly tried to amend our criminal law; Lord Castlereagh successfully obstructed his progress. The same great and liberal man proposed to make freehold property subject to the payment of simple contract debts; the law officers of the Crown would not hear of so dangerous an innovation. One of the Crown lawyers said that it was a mistake to say the law dated from the reign of Henry YIII. ; that its origin was as far back as the time of Edward I. " What care I," retorted Romilly, " whether this law was made by one set of barbarians or another ?'' The Reform of the Criminal Code. The name of reform in the criminal law had not been heard in the House of Commons for fifty- eight years, when, in 1808, Romilly carried his bill for the abolition of the punishment of death for privately stealing from the person to the value of five shillings ; in other words, for picking pockets. Romilly approached the subject of this reform with a caution which now looks almost like weakness. His object was originally to raise the value according to which a theft was rendered capital. In January, 1808, he gave up the intention of bringing forward even this limited measure he was sure the judges would not approve of it. To another distinguished lawyer belongs the credit of having urged Romilly to a bolder policy. His friend Scarlett, he says, " had advised me not to content myself with merely raising the amount of the value of property, the stealing of which is to subject the offender to capital punishment, but to attempt at once to repeal all the statutes which punish with death mere thefts unaccompanied by any act of violence, or other circumstance of aggravation. This sugges- tion was very agreeable to me. But, as it appeared to me that I had no chance of being able to carry through the House a bill which 'was to expunge at once all these laws from the statute-book, I determined to attempt the repeal of them one by one, and to begin with the most odious of them, the Act of Queen Elizabeth which makes it a capital offence to steal privately from the person of another." Upon this prudential principle Romilly earned his first reform in 1808. Martineau's History of the Peace. Modern Philosophy v. " Experience." The constant argument employed against the alterations proposed by Romilly in the criminal 172 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. laws -was this that of late years the offences which they undertook to repress were greatly increased. Justly did Romilly say, " A better reason than this for altering the law could hardly be given." On the 24th of May, 1811, when three of Romilly's bills were rejected in the House of Lords, Lord Ellenborough declared, " They went to alter those laws which a century had proved to be necessary, and which were now to be overturned by speculation and modern philosophy." Lord Chancellor Eldon, on the same occasion, stated that he had himself early in life felt a disposition to examine the principles on which our criminal code was framed, "before observation and experience had matured his judg- ment. Since, however, he had learned to listen to these great teachers in this important science, his ideas had greatly changed, and he saw the wisdom of the principles and practice by which our criminal code was regulated." Although Eldon frequently gave effectual opposition to Romilly's measures, the old Lord Chancellor, we are told, was unusually affected by his death. As he took his seat in court the following morning, "he was struck by the sight of the vacant place which Romilly was accustomed to occupy, and his eyes filled with tears. ' I cannot stay here,' he exclaimed, and, rising in great agitation, broke up his court." SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. (17651832.) A Philosopher's Peculiarities. Unparliamentary Style. Mackintosh entered the House of Commons in 1813 with a high reputation from his forensic oratory, but he failed to sustain it in Parlia- ment. A contemporary in Colbum's New Monthly for 1832 (edited by Bulwer Lytton) gives a picture of the philosophic orator, then j ust deceased : " We ourselves heard Sir James Mackintosh's great, almost wonderful, speech upon Reform. We shall never forget the extensive range of ideas, the energetic grasp of thought, the sublime and soaring strain of legislative philosophy with which he charmed and transported us ; but it was not so with the House in general. His Scotch accent, his unceasing and laboured vehemence of voice and gesture ; the refined and speculative elevation of his views, and the vast heaps of hoarded knowledge he some- what prolixly produced, displeased the taste and wearied the attention of men who were far more anxious to be amused and excited than instructed or convinced. We see him now, his bald and singularly formed head working to and fro, as if to collect and then shake out his ideas ; his arm violently vibrating, and his body thrown forward by sudden quirks and starts, which, ungraceful as they were, seemed rather premeditated than inspired." Mackintosh's eloquence, remarks the same writer, like that of Burke and Brougham, appeared " addressed to another audience than that to which it was actually delivered. Intended for the House of Commons only, the style would have been absurdly faulty ; intended for the public, it was august and correct." Macaulay thus alludes to Mackin- tosh's deficiency in Parliament : " His talents were not those which enable a speaker to produce with rapidity a series of striking but transi- SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 173 tory impressions to excite the minds of five hundred gentlemen at mid- night, without saying anything that any one of them will be able to re- member in the morning." An Attack on Prejudice. The following characteristic passage is from a celebrated speech by Sir James Mackintosh on the reform of the old Criminal Laws : " If a foreigner were to form his estimate of the people of England from a consideration of their penal code, he would un- doubtedly conclude that they were a nation of barbarians. This expres- sion, though strong, would be unquestionably true; for what other opinion could a humane foreigner form of us when he found that in our criminal law there were two hundred criminal offences against which the punish- ment of death was denounced, upon twenty of which only that punish- ment was ever inflicted that we were savage in our threats, and yet were feeble in our execution of punishments that we cherished a system which in theory was odious, but which was impotent in practice from its very severity that in cases of high treason we involved innocent children in all the consequences of their father's guilt that in cases of corruption of blood we were even still more cruel, punishing the offspring when we could not reach the parent and that on some occasions we even proceeded to wreak vengeance upon the bodies of the inanimate dead ? If the same person were told that we were the same nation which had been the first to give full publicity to every part of our judicial system that we were the same nation which had established the trial by jury, which, blamable as it might be in theory, was so invaluable in practice that we were the same nation which had found out the greatest security which had ever been devised for individual liberty, the writ of habeas corpus, as settled by the Act of Charles II. that we were the same nation which had dis- covered the full blessings of a representative government, and which had endeavoured to diffuse them throughout every part of our free empire, he would wonder at the strange anomalies of human nature which could unite things that were in themselves so totally incompatible. If the same foreigner were, in addition to this, told that the abuses which struck so forcibly on his attention were the abuses of the olden time, which were rather overlooked than tolerated, he might perhaps relent in his judgment, and confer upon us a milder denomination than that of barbarians ; but if, on the contrary, he were told that influence and authority, learning and ingenuity, had combined to resist all reformation of these abuses as dangerous innovations if he were informed that individuals who, from their rank and talents, enjoyed not an artificial but a real superiority, rose to vindicate the worst of these abuses, even the outrages on the dead, and to contend for them as bulwarks of the constitution and land- marks of legislation, he would revert to his first sentiments regarding us, though he might perhaps condemn the barbarism of the present instead of the barbarism of the past generation." Things taken for Granted. " How is it," Mackintosh was once asked, " I never hear a word about the blessings of liberty, and the glory of the British Constitution, in your debates?" "Because we take all that for granted," was his reply. 174 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. A Precaution. I remember (writes Earl Russell) that in 1819, after the Manchester meeting known by the name of Peterloo, I was staying in the house of Sir James Mackintosh, in the country. We read every day in the newspapers accounts of meetings; it was generally stated that the meeting at Manchester, although legal, had been attacked and dispersed by military force. Sir James said to me, " It will be worth while to look at my law-books, and see whether this assumption that the meeting at Manchester was legal is founded in law." "We soon found reason to conclude that the Manchester meeting was an illegal meeting. Sir James Mackintosh and I agreed that in the approaching session of Parliament we would not affirm the legality of the Manchester meeting. FEANCIS HOENER. (17781817.) His First Canvass. On the 19th of October, 1806, Francis Horner received an offer of a seat in Parliament from Lord Kinnaird, which he accepted, untrammelled by any conditions. St. Ives was the borough destined for him, and in a letter to his mother from that place he gives some account of the election proceedings. " I am glad enough," he says, " none of you were here to quiz me as I went through my duty ; entering every cellar in the place, and behaving as sweet as possible to every man, woman, and child. I did sometimes feel ashamed of myself, I own, and there were some hovels that went against my stomach, if it had not been for the number of pretty women, three or four of them quite beautiful, whom I found in these hovels." Treaties of Peace. Mr. Horner took part in the debate which arose on the treaties of peace entered into consequent on the downfall of Napoleon. A speech delivered by him in the House of Commons, February 20th, 1816, attracted much attention at the time. Referring to the guarantees to be exacted from France, he said : " The real security which was required from France, after the destruction of that military monarchy which oppressed the greatest part of the continent of Europe, combined the integrity of that kingdom with the establishment of a government agreeably to the wishes and deserving of the confidence of the people. The question of territorial cession had been discussed at great length, and he would merely state that, in his opinion, any attempt to dismember Franco, instead of being likely to afford any security for the continuance of peace, would be the certain source of inquietude and danger. . . There was no chance of the stability of peace if guarantees wore sought for in measures that must be galling and irritating to the French people ; there was no chance of continued tranquillity but in conciliatory arrangements ; there was no chance of reconciling them to Europe but by allowing them to establish the government they liked. Wo could never rationally entertain confidence in the pacific dispositions of people upon whom wo forced a government of conquest, which we main- tained by arms." HENRY ADDINQTON, LORD SIDMOUTH. 175 An Element of Stability. Referring to the motion in the House of Commons for a new writ for St. Mawes in the room of Francis Homer, March 6th, 1817, and to the encomiums on the character of the deceased member embodied in the motion, Sir James Mackintosh, writing in his Journal, says : "A Howard introduced, and an English House of Commons adopted, the proposition of thus honouring the memory of a man of thirty-eight, the son of a shopkeeper, who never filled an office, or had the power of obliging a living creature, and whose grand title to this distinction was the belief of his virtue. How honourable to the age and to the House ! A country where such sentiments prevail is not ripe for destruction." HENRY ADDINGTON, LOED SIDMOUTH. (17551844.) Respectable Mediocrity. Henry Addington (Viscount Sidmouth) was nicknamed "the Doctor," his father having been physician to the elder Pitt. Earl Russell says of him, "He was a man of average understanding, equal to the requirements of quiet times, of respectable prejudices, and undoubted courage ; but as minister for a great emergency he excited only ridicule and contempt. Little could he withstand the daily epigrams of Canning, and the scarcely more endurable compassion of Sheridan : ' As London is to Paddington, So is Pitt to Addington.' 1 When his speeches lag most vilely, Cheer him, cheer him, Brother Hiley ; When his speeches vilely lag, Cheer him, cheer him, Brother Bragge.' 1 The Pells* for his son, the pills for himself.' These and a thousand other arrows which wit squandered upon Addington utterly ruined him in public opinion." Spoiling Nature. On the 8th of June, 1789, Addington, who had just completed his thirty-second year, was elevated to the dignity of Speaker of the House of Commons. Mr. Gilpin, in a congratulatory note, writes on that occasion : " I was in some little pain at first how you could restrain the natural modesty of your disposition on so sudden an elevation to one of the most awful posts I know; but Sir John Dayley and other gentlemen gave such an account of your setting out, that all apprehensions for you are now over; and I have only to regret, as a picturesque man, that such an enlightened countenance as God Almighty has given you should be shrouded in a bush of horsehair." A Cabinet of Mediocrities. The following story was told by John Hookham Frere : "I remember old Lord W , the father of the present lord, a fine specimen of a thorough-going old country Tory, coming to call on my father to tell him that Pitt was out of office, * The sinecure of Clerk of the Pells. 176 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. and that Addington had formed a ministry. He went through all the members of the new Cabinet, and, rubbing his hands at the end, with an evident sense of relief, said, ' Well, thank God, we have at last got a ministry without one of those confounded men of genius in it !' " A Necessary Evil. Lord Balling remarks in his "Life of Palmerston" that the necessity of pleasing George III. introduced Addington into so many administrations, as to justify Mr. Canning's criticism that he was like the small-pox, that everyone was obliged to have once in their lives. A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing. A few days before the declaration of war with France, in 1803, a warlike message from the Crown was sent to Parliament. Addington, then being minister, appeared in the full dress of the Windsor uniform, and strutted up the house in the midst of a burst of laughter, just as the Speaker was reading a medicine bill. " It must have been on this occasion," says Earl Russell, "that Sheridan redoubled the laughter of the House by saying, 'The right hon. gentleman, who has appeared this evening in the character of a sheep in wolf's clothing,' &c. In fact, nothing could be more tragical than the occasion, nothing more comical than the chief actor in the tragedy." A Royal Appeal. Mr. Addington used to tell his friends that at the interview with which he was honoured on the 10th of May, 1804, the King again pressed upon him the acceptance of the peerage and pension, in terms which it must have been very difficult for so devoted a subject to resist : " You are a proud man, Mr. Addington, but I am a proud man too ; and why should I sleep uneasy on my pillow because you will not comply with my request P Why should I feel the consciousness that I have suffered you to ruin your family, and that through your attachment to me ? " Taking Things Coolly. At the time of the trial of Queen Caroline (1820) the general transports raised the popular exasperation against Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth, the supposed authors of the proceedings, to the highest point ; they never appeared in the streets without being hooted and reviled by the mob, and both daily received anonymous letters threatening them with instant death if the bill against her Majesty were not abandoned. These intrepid men, however, disre- garded those threats, and walked about the streets as usual, without any attendants; and the people, admiring this spirit, abstained from actual violence. One day at this time they were walking together in Parliament- street, when, being recognised, a large mob got up round them, and they were violently hooted. " Here we go," said Lord Sidmouth, " the two most popular men in England." " Yes," replied Lord Castlereagh, " through a grateful and admiring multitude." Alison's " Life of Castle- reagh." LORD CASTLEEEAGH. (17691822.) Common-place Oratory. No man (remarks Lord Brougham) ever attained the station of a regular debater in our Parliament with such an LORD CASTLEREAGH. 177 entire want of all classical accomplishment, and indeed of all literary pro- vision whatsoever. While he never showed the least symptom of any infor- mation extending beyond the more recent volumes of the " Parliamentary Debates," or possibly the files of the newspapers only, his diction set all imitation, perhaps all description, at defiance. It was with some an amusement to beguile the tedious hours of their unavoidable attendance upon the poor, tawdry, ravelled thread of his sorry discourse, to collect a kind of ana from the fragments of mixed, incongruous, and disjointed images that frequently appeared in it. "The features of the clause;" "the ignorant impatience of the relaxation of taxation;" "sets of cir- cumstances coming up and circumstances going down;" " men turning their backs upon themselves ; " " the honourable and learned gentleman's wedge getting into the loyal feelings of the manufacturing classes ; " " the constitutional principle wound up in the bowels of the monarchical principle ; " " the Herculean labour of the honourable and learned member, who will find himself quite disappointed when he has at last brought forth his Hercules " (by a slight confounding of his mother's labour, " which produced that hero, with his own exploits which gained him immortality) these are but a few, and not the richest samples, by any means, of a rhetoric which often baffled alike the gravity of the Treasury bench and the art of the reporter, and left the wondering audience at a loss to con- jecture how anyone could ever exist, endowed with humbler pretensions to the name of orator. Historical Sketches of Statesmen. Courageous Leadership. When the Tory party, "having a devil," preferred Lord Castlereagh to Mr. Canning for their leader, all men naturally expected that he would entirely fail to command even the attendance of the House while he addressed it, and that the benches, empty during his time, would only be replenished when his highly-gifted competitor rose. They were greatly deceived ; they under-rated the effect of place and power ; they forgot that the representative of a Government speaks " as one having authority, and not as the scribes ; " but they also forgot that Lord Castlereagh had some qualities well fitted to conciliate favour, and even to provoke admiration, in the absence of everything like eloquence, and without ever having written a line in the Anti-Jacobin. He was a bold and fearless man : the very courage with which he exposed himself unabashed to the most critical audience in the world, while incap- able of uttering two sentences of anything but the meanest matter, in the most wretched language ; the gallantry with which he faced the greatest difficulties of a question ; the unflinching perseverance with which he went through a whole subject, leaving untouched not one of its points, whether he could grapple with it or no, and not one of the adverse argu- ments, however forcibly and felicitously they had been urged neither daunted by recollecting the impression just made by his antagonist's dis- play, nor damped by consciousness of the very rags in which he now presented himself all this made him, upon the whole, rather a favourite with the audience whose patience he was taxing mercilessly, and whose gravity he ever and anon put to a very severe trial. ISTor can anyone have forgotten the kind of pride that mantled on the fronts of the Tory 13 178 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. phalanx, when, after being overwhelmed with the powerful fire of the Whig Opposition, or galled by the fierce denunciations of the " Mountain," or harassed by the brilliant though often tinsel displays of Mr. Canning, their chosen leader stood forth, and, presenting the graces of his eminently patrician figure, flung open his coat, displayed an azure ribbon traversing a snow-white chest, and declared " his high satisfaction that he could now meet the charges against him face to face, and repel with indignation all that his adversaries were bold and rash enough to advance." Ibid. Light out of Darkness. On one occasion (relates Earl Russell) Castlereagh had gone on for an hour speaking upon what subject no man could guess, when he exclaimed of a sudden, " So much, Mr. Speaker, for the law of nations." At another time, when he had spoken for an hour tediously and confusedly, he declared, " I have now proved that the Tower of London is a common law principle." " Before he spoke," said Lord Granville, " he would collect what he could on the subject, but never spoke above the level of a newspaper. Had three things in his favour : tact, good humour, and courage." Thomas Moore's answer to the question, " Why is a pump like Viscount Castlereagh ? " will be remembered " Because it is a slender thing of wood, That up and down its awkward arm doth Bway, And coolly spoilt and spout and spout away, In one weak, washy, everlasting flood." But some could see much more in Castlereagh than his opponents would allow. Thus Lytton, in " St. Stephen's " " They much, in truth, misjudge him who explain His graceless language by a witless brain. So firm his purpose, so resolved his will, It almost seem'd a craft to speak so ill As if, like Cromwell, flashing towards his end, Through cloudy verbiage none could comprehend." Ignorant Impatience of Taxation. Lord Castlereagh (says Alison) was at times eminently imprudent in expression, especially in those curt and pithy sayings which are easily recollected, and strike between wind and water the prevailing prejudices of the day. His sayings on these occasions were generally perfectly true, but that only rendered them more provoking, and induced the greater hostility against him. Never was a truer expression than "the ignorant impatience of taxation," of which he complained when the income-tax was thrown out in 1816. Life of Castlereagh. Mr. Gladstone quoted this phrase when he introduced his " Commercial Treaty " budget in 1860. He said, " It was Lord Londonderry* who complained of the people of England as exhibiting an ' ignorant impatience of taxation ; ' but I think, were he to rise from the dead and again take his place in this House, he would be very much more likely to complain of an ignorant patience of taxation." Castleroagh's later title. LORD CASTLEREAGH. 179 The Currycomb of the House. The following entry appears in the Journal of Sir James Mackintosh : " March 22nd, 1817. F said it was delightful to see how completely the currycomb of the House of Commons had taken off all the gilding and lackering that Castlereagh had brought from the Congress." Insulting Language in Parliament. Nothing could be more just than the rebuke which, as connected with the question of personal courage, we may recollect his administering to a great man who had passed the limits of Parliamentary courtesy. "Every one must be sensible," he said, " that if any personal quarrel were desired, any insult- ing language used publicly where it could not be met as it deserved, was the way to prevent and not to produce such a rencounter." Brougham's " Statesmen." It was Grattan who had attacked Castlereagh in the Irish Parliament, charging him with puerility, arrogance, and presumption. Lord Cornwallis thus wrote on the matter : " Lord Castlereagh rose with great coolness in reply. He said that he never should enter into personal altercation in that house ; that he despised that parade of parliamentary spirit which led to nothing, and which denied in offensive terms what had been never uttered; that if any personal incivility were used to him, it was not in Parliament he should answer it, and that he should carefully avoid making himself an object for the interference of the House." The reply raised him much in the estimation of the House. Castlereagh, however, afterwards felt inclined to send Grattan a message, but was dissuaded by his friends, who represented to him that by doing so he would be quitting the high ground on which he stood. His Duel with Canning. Unknown (says Alison) to Lord Castle- reagh, and without giving him the slightest reason to suspect its exist- ence, a party had been formed in the Cabinet inimical to him, and the object of which was to get him removed from his position as Minister at War, and Lord Wellesley substituted in his room. This was arranged by the whole Cabinet, with the exception of his lordship, as early as the 4th of April, 1809. It was not till Lord Castlereagh was shown the corre- spondence of Mr. Canning by Mr. Perceval that he showed any resent- ment or unpleasant feeling on the subject. It was from that he learned how early his removal had been consented to by his Majesty and his colleagues, and it was in that he met with passages which induced him to challenge Mr. Canning. . . Lord Castlereagh, conceiving that the whole was an intrigue of Mr. Canning's to get him removed from office in order to facilitate his own advancement, and that he himself had been ill- used by being allowed so long, and at so critical a juncture, to retain the responsibility of office, when his removal had not been only resolved on by the Cabinet, but submitted to his Majesty and approved by him, sent Mr. Canning a challenge. The parties met on Putney Heath, September 21st, and exchanged shots. Mr. Canning's fire did not take effect ; but that of Lord Castlereagh inflicted a severe flesh wound on the thigh of his adversary. Castlereagh in the Cabinet. The letters given in the "Memoirs and Correspondence " of Castlereagh, edited by his brother, show the high 180 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. estimation in which his personal qualities were held by his colleagues. Lord Ripou relates an anecdote of his firmness. Castlereagh was at the council when the question was raised respecting the reinforcement of Blucher's section of the Allied Army with two corps of Bernadotte's, without previous communication with the latter. " The moment he understood that, militarily speaking, the proposed plan was indispensable to success, he took his line. He stated that, in that case, the plan must be adopted, and the necessary orders immediately given ; that England had a right to expect that her allies would not be deterred from a decisive course by any such difficulties as had been urged; and he boldly took upon himself the responsibility of any consequences as regarded the Crown Prince of Sweden. His advice prevailed ; Blucher's army was reinforced in time ; the battle of Laon was fought successfully, and no further efforts of Buonaparte could oppose the march of the Allies on Paris, and their triumphant occupation of that city." Sir Robert Peel said, "I doubt whether any public man (with the exception of the Duke of "Wellington), within the hist half century, possessed the combination of qualities, intel- lectual and moral, which would have enabled him to effect, under the same circumstances, what Lord Londonderry did effect in regard to the union with Ireland, and to the great political transactions of 1813, 1814, and 1815. To do these things required a rare union of high and generous feelings, courteous and prepossessing manners, a warm heart and a cool head, great temper, great industry, great fortitude, great courage moral and personal, that command and influence which make other men willing instruments, and all these qualities combined with disdain for low objects of ambition, and with spotless integrity." A Lover of Ireland. " It is said," remarks Earl Russell, " that when Grattan's friends were assembled round his bed, the dying patriot said to them, ' Don't be hard upon Castlereagh he loves our country.' It is added that when Lord Castlereagh heard of these words of his great opponent, he burst into tears. I cannot vouch for the truth of this anec- dote, but I think it probably authentic." Death of Castlereagh. The following are the particulars given by Sir A. Alison: On the 9th of August, 1822, the Duke of Wel- lington was so much struck with the manner of Lord Castlereagh that, after walking with him to the Foreign Office, he went to his medical attendant, Dr. Bankhead, and not finding him at home, wrote a letter expressing his apprehensions, and not obscurely hinting at mental delusions. Dr. Bankhead no sooner received this alarming intelligence than he went out to Cray Farm, Lord Castlereagh's seat in Kent, and seeing the Duke of Wellington's fears too well founded, he slept in the house the next two nights, and gave orders to his valet to remove the razors from his lordship's dressing-case, and take other precautions against self-destruction. He did so without being observed ; but, unfor- tunately, not recollecting that there was a penknife belonging to the case in one of the drawers of the washing-stand, he neglected to secure it. The consequences were fatal. During the 10th and llth of August Castlereagh remained in bed, wandering, but expressing no alarming HENRY 6RATTAN. 181 intentions. On the morning of the 12th of August, Lady Londonderry, who was with him, reported that he had passed a restless night, and that he wished to see Dr. Bankhead, who was in an adjoining apartment. When Dr. Bankhead went into his dressing-room, he found him standing opposite the window, looking out, with his hands above his head, his throat cut and bleeding profusely. Consciousness, as is often the case, returned with the flow of blood. He threw his arms round the doctor's neck, and saying, in a feeble voice, " Bankhead, let me fall on your arm ; I have opened niy neck ; it is all over ! " sank on the ground arid expired. HEKRT GKATTAN. (17501820.) Preparation for Parliamentary Life. Grattan had taken a residence near Windsor Forest, where he was preparing sedulously for his future destination by addressing imaginary audiences. His landlady took such manifestations much to heart. "What a sad thing it was," she would say, " to see the poor young gentleman all day talking to somebody he calls Mr. Speaker, when there's no speaker in the house except himself." Grattan's Manner in Speaking. The chief difficulty (says Phillips) in this great speaker's way was the first five minutes. During his exordium laughter was imminent. He bent his body almost to the ground ; swung his arms over his head, up and down and around him ; and added to the grotesqueness of his manner a hesitating tone and drawling emphasis. Truly, indeed, might it be said of him as he said of Chatham, " he was very great, and very odd." For a time the eye dis- sented from the verdict of the mind ; but at last his genius carried all before it, and, as in the oracles of old, the contortions vanished as the inspirations became manifest. His Grant of 50,000. In April, 1782, Grattan moved a resolu- tion in the Irish Parliament, the main purport of which was the repeal of the statute of George I. by which England ckimed a right to legislate for Ireland. He was at the time (says the Annual Register) in a most feeble state of health, his frame seemed bent down by debility, and every- one supposed he must have sunk under the exertion. But as he proceeded he warmed with the subject, appeared to shake off not merely illness, but mortality, and, amid the tumultuous enthusiasm of the House, he carried his resolution, " That no power on earth could make laws to bind Ireland except her own King, Lords, and Commons." The motion was after- wards proposed and carried in the English Parliament. The delight and gratitude of the people were unbounded ; addresses poured in on him from every village in Ireland, and statues were voted to his memory. The Parliament also voted him a grant of 50,000?., as some testimony of the estimation in which he was held. The grant of public money subsequently gave rise to a bitter dispute between Grattan and Flood in the house, which is commemorated in the following epigrammatic dialogue : 182 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. " QUESTION. Say, what has given to Flood a mortal wound P ANSWER. Grattan's obtaining fifty thousand pound. QUESTION. Can Flood forgive an injury so sore ? ANSWER. Yes, if they give him fifty thousand more." His Oratory leading to the Expulsion of the Students. The students of Trinity College, Dublin, were allowed free access to the Irish House of Commons to hear the debates, and, in 1792, better accom- modation was provided for them than for the public who obtained admis- sion by members' orders. " This proud distinction the gownsmen, how- ever, soon forfeited. Lord Fitzwilliam had been sent over as a popular viceroy, and, on his sudden recall, a strong feeling of disappointed pre- vailed. On a night when the subject was brought before the House, our gallery was full, and I remember well the irrepressible excitement that seemed to actuate us all. At length it broke out. Grattan rose to depre- cate the measure, as one calculated to cause the greatest disturbance in Ireland, by what was considered the perfidy of the Government, first exciting the high hopes of the people by promised measures of liberal policy, and then dashing them, by the sudden removal of the man who had been sent over expressly to accomplish them. At the conclusion of Grattan's inflammatory speech, the enthusiasm in the gallery was no longer capable of restraint. "We rose as one man, shouting and cheering with the boisterous tumult of a popular meeting. When this subsided, Foster's (the Speaker's) peculiar voice was heard through his nose, ordering the students' gallery to be cleared, and a sergeant-at-arms, with a posse of messengers, entered among us. We were pushed out in a heap without the slightest ceremony, and were never again suffered to enter as privileged persons." Ireland Sixty Years Ago (1847). Party and Place. Attacking the administration on one occasion in the Irish House of Commons, Grattan made the following remarks : " Sir, I will tell gentlemen what description of party is beneficial : party united on public principle, by the bond of certain specific public measures, which measures cannot be carried by individuals, and can only succeed by party. . . I have submitted a description of a party which I conceive to be a public benefit ; I will state to you a description of a party which I conceive to be a public curse : if party it can be called which is worse than a faction, and nothing more than an impudent phalanx of political mercenaries, coming from their little respective offices to vote for their bribe and vapour for their character ; who have neither the principles of patriotism nor ambition, nor party nor honour ; who are governed not by deliberation but discipline, and lick the hands that feed and worship the patron who bribes them. Degraded men, disgraceful tribe ! When they vote for measures, they are venal ; when such men talk against party, they are impudent." Infirmity Overcome. On the 15th of January, 1800, the parlia- mentary session was opened in Ireland with a speech from the throne. Sir Laurence Parsons moved an amendment to the effect that it was their interest and their duty to maintain the local Parliament. A long debate ensued, which was carried far into the morning, when a scene occurred HENRY ORATTAN. 183 that seemed the climax of this exciting contest. " Just when Mr. Egan had risen to speak, the doors of the House of Commons were thrown open, and Henry Grattan, who had been returned for Wicklow the night before, entered the house. His form was emaciated by sickness, and his face was worn with anxiety ; his limbs tottered ; he was obliged to lean upon his friends Arthur Moore and George Ponsonby ; he advanced slowly to the table. Acting on the impulse of his really noble nature, Castlereagh rose at the head of the Treasury bench, and remained standing and uncovered while the patriot took the oaths. Grattan then moved slowly to his seat, selecting a place beside Mr. Plunket, and having obtained per- mission to speak sitting, he addressed the House for nearly two hours in a speech of great power." Life of Lord Plunket. An Unready Writer. Grattan was utterly incapable (said Curran) of writing the simplest thing with rapidity. Upon one occasion he lost an important motion in the Irish House of Commons by his defect in this respect. The House being with him, the Speaker asked him to commit his motion to writing. Four lines would have embraced it, but Grattan wrote and tore, and wrote and tore, till, the House losing its patience, a ministerial member proposed that instead of a formal resolution of the House, the minister should give a verbal pledge, to which Grattan assented, and thus the motion was lost. " Dragons' Teeth." On the 24th of November, 1779, Mr. Grattan proposed the following short and decisive resolution in the Irish Parlia- ment : " That at this time it would be inexpedient to grant new taxes." This was carried against the Government by a majority of 123. On the ensuing day it was moved that the appropriated duties should be granted for six months only. This also was carried against the Government by a majority of 38. It was in this debate that Mr. Burgh, then Prime Serjeant, made a brilliant speech, which produced electric effects in the house and galleries, but which in a letter from the Viceroy was termed "great violence." They rose in a mass and cheered him re- peatedly as he concluded " Talk not to me of peace ; Ireland is not in a state of peace ; it is smothered war. England has sown her laws like dragons' teeth, and they have sprung up in armed men." Graltan's Life and Times. Negative Defence. On one occasion, in the Irish Parliament, Mr. Fitzgibbon had attacked Mr. Grattan, who was not at that time present. Mr. Yelverton defended his absent friend, saying, " The learned gentleman has stated what Mr. Grattan is ; I will state what he is not. He is not styed in his prejudices ; he does not trample on the resusci- tation of his country, or live like a caterpillar on the decline of her pro- sperity; he does not stickle for the letter of the constitution with the affectation of a prude, and abandon its principles with the effrontery of a prostitute." A Pitiful Failure. When Dr. Lucas, a very unpopular man, ventured on a speech in the Irish Parliament, and failed altogether, Henry Grattan said, " He rose without a friend, and sat down without an enemy." 184 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. Waiting for the Signal. " I have heard," says Lord Byron, "that when Grattan made his first speech in the English Commons, it was for some minutes doubtful whether to laugh at or cheer him. The debut of his predecessor, Flood, had been a complete failure, under nearly similar circumstances ; but when the ministerial part of our senators had watched Pitt (their thermometer) for the cue, and saw him nod repeatedly his stately nod of approbation, they took the hint from their huntsman, and broke out into the most rapturous cheers. Grattan's speech, indeed, deserved them ; it was a chef-d'wuvre" When he rose (says Phillips) every voice in that crowded house was hushed the great rivals, Pitt and Fox, riveted their eyes on him. He strode forth and gesticulated the hush became ominous not a cheer was heard men looked in one another's faces and then at the phenomenon before them, as if doubting his identity ; at last, and on a sudden, the indication of the master spirit came. Pitt was the first generously to recognise it ; he smote his thigh hastily with his hand it was an impulse when he was pleased his followers saw it and knew it, and with a universal burst they hailed the advent and the triumph of the stranger. HENEY FLOOD. (17321791.) A Wooden Oracle. One of Flood's methods of " disquieting " a minister (remarks Phillips) was the plying him with inconvenient questions. On one of these occasions, in the Irish Parliament, the Secretary referred him to some subaltern who was absent. " Well, well," said he, " I must be content to wait. Formerly the oak of Dodona uttered its own oracles ; but the wooden oracle of our Treasury is compelled to give his responses by deputy." Whipping the "Whip." Flood once affrighted the "whipper-in " of the Irish House, as he crossed him during his speech, presumedly to pursue his usual negotiations among the members. " What," he cried, " is that I see ? Shall the Temple of Freedom be still haunted by the foul fiend of bribery and corruption? I see personified before me an incar- nation of that evil principle which lives by the destruction of public virtue." Retaliation. Lord Byron relates that Courtenay silenced Flood in the English House by a crushing reply to a hasty debut of the rival of Grattan in Ireland. " I asked Courtenay (for I like to trace motives) if he had not some personal provocation ; for the acrimony of his answer seemed to me, as I read it, to involve it. Courteuay said he had ; that, when in Ireland (being an Irishman), at the bar of the Irish House of Commons, Flood had made a personal and unfair attack upon himself, who, not being a member of that House, could not defend himself; and that some years afterwards the opportunity of retort offering in the English Parliament, he could not resist it. Ho certainly repaid Flood with interest, for Flood never made any figure, and only made a speech or two afterwards, in the English House of Commons. I must except, however, his speech on JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 185 refonn, in 1790, which Fox called the best speech he ever heard upon that subject." Transplanted Too Late. Grattan, in a review of some of his Irish contemporaries, thus wrote of Flood, after the death of the latter : " Mr. Flood, my rival, as he has been called and I should be unworthy the character of his rival if in his grave I did not do him justice he had faults, but he had great powers, great public effect. He persuaded the old, he inspired the young ; the castle vanished before him. On a small subject he was miserable ; put into his hand a distaff, and, like Hercules, he made sad work of it ; but give him the thunderbolt, and he had the arm of a Jupiter. He misjudged when he transferred himself to the English Parliament ; he forgot that he was a tree of the forest, too old and too great to be transplanted at fifty ; and his seat in the British Parliament is a caution to the friends of union to stay at home, and make the country of their birth the seat of their action." JOHN PHILPOT CTJKKAN. (17501817.) Independence. Lord Longueville returned Curran to the Irish Parliament in 1783 for a pocket borough, under an idea of his own (says Phillips) that a barrister with a growing family, and totally dependent on his profession for subsistence, would scarcely suffer his principles to interfere with his interests. On the very first occasion, however, he not only voted against his patron, but, by at least an energetic speech, proved the total fallacy of all his anticipations. Lord Longueville of course warmly remonstrated ; but what was his astonishment to find Curran not only persevering in his independent opinions, but even appropriating the only five hundred pounds he had in the world to the purchase of a seat, which he insisted on transferring as an equivalent for that given to him by Lord Longueville. A Parenthetical Speech. Curran was once asked how a member of Parliament had spoken. The answer was, " His speech was a long parenthesis." He was asked to explain. "Why," said he, "don't you know that a parenthesis is a paragraph which may be omitted from beginning to end, without any loss of meaning ? " The Extinguisher. Of a certain Serjeant Hewitt Curran once remarked, " His speech put me exactly in mind of a familiar utensil called an extinguisher : it began at a point, and on it went widening and widening, until at last it fairly put out the subject altogether." Airing a Vocabulary. An able speaker, but addicted to lofty language, had made a speech in the House of Peers, at which Curran was present. He was asked what he thought of the debate. " I had," said he, " only the advantage of hearing Lord airing his vocabulary." The Ghost of a House. On the union of the Legislatures, the Irish Parliament House was turned into a bank, and various changes took place in the structure ; among the rest, the interior was gutted, and the handsome dome taken down. Hearing of Castlereagh's remark that the 186 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. house looked " like a traitor that had undergone the sentence of the law," Curran, in allusion to that noble lord's activity in carrying the Union, said, "Ay, no man is likelier to make that remark a murderer is always afraid of ghosts." Deliberate Aim. During a debate in the Irish Parliament in 1789, Curran replied, with severe sarcasm, to a speech of Attorney- G-eneral Fitzgibbon, in which he had received a rather gross personal attack. The result of this reply was a hostile message from Fitzgibbon. Mr. Ogle was second to the Attorney-General. The parties were to fire by signal ; Fitzgibbon did not do so, but, reserving his fire, took deliberate aim at Curran ; and, having missed him, walked off the ground. Curran exclaimed to him, " It was not your fault, Mr. Attorney, if you missed me, for you certainly were deliberate enough." LOED PLUNKET. (17641854.) Effective Speaking, and its Method. It was said of Flunket by Sir Robert Peel, " He was, in my opinion, the most powerful and able advocate the Catholics ever had. I will say that he, more than any other man, contributed to the success of the Roman Catholic question." Plunket came (writes Mr. Hoey) in the interval of two great parliamentary eras while the contemporaries of Pitt and Fox were gradually retreating from public life, and before Peel, Canning, or Brougham had yet risen to the full perfection of their powers. He spoke in a new and unexpected strain. It was more like the language of some great noble of the robe, speaking with the sense that the estates of the realm really hung upon his words, than the common partisan declamation of the House of Commons, which has no horizon but the opposite benches and the reporters' gallery. The greatest authorities in and out of the House declared that he reached the very highest style of parliamentary oratory. " I wish you had heard him," wrote Lord Dudley of his Peterloo speech in answer to Mackenzie (November, 1819). " He assailed the fabric of his adversary, not by an irregular damaging fire that left parts of it standing, but by a complete rapid process of demolition that did not let one stone continue standing upon another." That single speech admittedly saved the Cabinet. Most marvellous tribute of all, hardly credible of the House of Commons he is said, on several of the Catholic Claims debates, to have converted various votes to his side (so many as six, it is alleged, on one occasion) by very dint of conscientious conviction. Of the method of his public speaking he told Sheil that he always carefully prepared to the very syllable the best passages, and the best only, of his great speeches, and used these as a kind of rhetorical stepping-stones, trusting to his native fluency and force for sustaining the style. Sheil said, what all who ever heard and all who read Plunket will confirm, that so consummate was the art with which this was done, one could never discern where the prepared was welded into the extemporaneous. LORD PLVNKET. 187 Lord Lytton's portrait gallery affords us this picture of Plunket : " Mark where he sits, his calm brow downward bent, Listening, revolving, passive, yet intent. Revile his cause, his lips vouchsafe no sneer ; Defend it, still from him there comes no cheer No sign without of what he feels or thinks ; Within, slow fires are hardening iron links. Now one glance round, now upward turns the brow ; Hush'd every breath ; he rises mark him now I No grace in feature, no command in height, Yet his whole presence fills and awes the sight. Wherefore ? yon ask . I can but guide your guess Man has no majesty like earnestness. . . Tones slow, not loud, but deep-drawn from the breast, Action unstudied, and at times supprest ; But, as he near'd some reasoning's massive close, Strain'd o'er his bending head his strong arms rose, And sudden fell, as if from falsehood torn Some grey old keystone, and hurl'd down with scorn." Attraction and Repulsion. Speaking in the Irish House of Commons against the Union, Plunket used the following illustration to refute an argument of his opponents : " The two Parliaments may clash ! So in Great Britain may King and Parliament ; but we see they never do so injuriously. There are principles of repulsion yes; but there are principles of attraction, and from these the enlightened statesman extracts the principle by which the countries are to be harmoniously governed. As soon would I listen to the shallow observer of nature who should say there is a centrifugal force impressed on our globe, and therefore, lest we should be hurried into the void of space, we ought to rush into the centre to be consumed there. No ; I say to this rash arraigner of the dispensa- tions of the Almighty, there are impulses from whose wholesome opposi- tion eternal wisdom has declared the law by which we revolve in our proper sphere, and at our proper distance. So I say to the political visionary, from the opposite forces which you object to, I see the whole- some law of imperial connection derived ; I see the two countries preserv- ing their due distance from each other, generating and imparting heat, and light, and life, and health, and vigour ; and I will abide by the wisdom and experience of the ages which are passed, in preference to the speculations of any modern philosopher." Something to take Down. A remarkable effect (relates Lord Brougham) is said to have been produced by Plunket in the Irish House of Commons, upon some one calling out to take down his words. " Stop," said this consummate orator, " and you shall have something more to take down ; " and then followed in a torrent the most vehement and indignant description of the wrongs which his country had sustained, and had still to endure. The Departed Great. Mr. Plunket made perhaps his most brilliant speech on the motion for a committee on the Roman Catholic 188 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. claims, introduced February 28th, 1821. In adducing names of authority in support of his arguments, he said : " Backed by the memories of the great lights and ornaments of the lato reign of Dunning, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, and Windham backed, I say, by the name of every man who possessed buoyancy enough to float down the stream of time I feel that I have made out, I had almost said that I had established, the position that I sought, triumphantly. But when I look around me, and reflect on those whom I miss, and who were present when I last had the honour of addressing the House on this question, I am checked. When I reflect that since that period we have lost Whitbread, the incorruptible sentinel of the constitution that we have lost the aid of the more than dawning virtues of Horner that we had then Romilly, whose mature excellencies shed a steady light on his profession, on his country, and his nature that Elliott, the pure model of aristocracy that the illustrious Ponsonby, the constitutional leader of the ranks of Opposition in this house, revering alike the privileges of the Crown and the rights of the subject are no more ; but, above all, when I dwell on that last over- whelming loss, the loss of that great man (Henry Grattan) in whose place I this night unworthily stand, and with the description of whose exalted merits I would not trust myself God knows, I cannot feel any- thing like triumph. Walking before the sacred images of these illus- trious dead, as in a public and solemn procession, shall we not dismiss all party feeling, all angry passions, and unworthy prejudices ? " The Felon Transformed. Lord Plunket thus explained why he had become a Reformer, although he had before opposed the agitation : "Circumstances," said he, "are wholly changed ; formerly Reform came to our door like a felon a robber to be resisted. He now approaches like a creditor; you admit the justice of his demand, and only dispute the time and instalments by which he shall be paid." Professional Acumen. Lord Brougham records the following circumstance in the preface which he wrote for the " Life of Lord Plunket " : " There was on one occasion a very remarkable instance of his readiness at taking up a subject under extraordinary difficulties, and of this my personal recollection is very distinct, for I had in the debate experience of his power. On the case of Windham Quin, brought before the House of Commons by the friends of Chief Baron O'Grady, we examined witnesses for above a week, and Sir Robert Peel sat by us supporting his friend Quin, heard all the evidence, and, indeed, took a part in the examination of the witnesses. The evidence was, of course, printed, and Plunket's only knowledge of our proceedings was from reading it on his journey to London. Peel made an elaborate and able defence of his friend, and Plunket took the same side ; but there was this remarkable difference between the two speeches : Peel, familiar with the case in all its particulars, spoke in mitigation of censure, admitting the charge to have been proved. He had gone over the ground without perceiving that there was enough to support a plea of not guilty. Plunket at once took that course ; he had found the materials for it in the printed evidence, though absent during the whole proceedings; and, having had LORD ERSKINE. 189 to answer his wonderful speech, I can truly say that no one could have supposed he had not been present. This incident was often referred to as showing the difference between an ordinary person, however able, but unprofessional, and one with the experience and habits of an advocate. The admirable defence by Plunket was justly ascribed to his professional skill, and no one questioned the ability of Peel or his heartiness in sup- porting his friend." LOKD EESKINE. (17501823.) His Maiden Speech and Parliamentary Failure. Erskine was returned to Parliament for Portsmouth, November 20th, 1783, and delivered his maiden speech on Fox's India Bill. Pitt sat, evidently intending to reply, with pen and paper in his hand, prepared to catch the arguments of this formidable adversary. He wrote a word or two. Erskine proceeded; but with every additional sentence Pitt's attention to the paper relaxed, his look became more careless, and he obviously began to think the orator less and less worthy of his attention. At length, when every eye in the house was fixed upon him, with a contemptuous smile he dashed the pen through the paper, and flung them on the floor. Erskine never recovered from this expression of disdain. His voice faltered, he struggled through the remainder of his speech, and sank into his seat dispirited, and shorn of his fame. Croly's " Life of George IV." Sir N. Wraxall says of this speech : " Erskine's enemies pronounced the performance tame, and destitute of the animation which so powerfully characterised his speeches in Westminster Hall. They maintained that, however resplendent he appeared as an advocate while addressing a jury, he fell to the level of an ordinary man, if not below it, when seated on the ministerial bench, where another species of oratory was demanded to impress conviction or to extort admiration. To me, who, having never witnessed his jurisprudential talents, could not make any such comparison, he appeared to exhibit shining powers of declamation." Lord Byron said of Erskine's parliamentary oratory : " I don't know what Erskine may have been at the bar, but in the House I wish him at the bar once more." Butler, in his " Reminiscences," relates that, Fox having made an able speech, Mr. Erskine followed him with one of the very same import. Pitt rose to answer them. He announced his intention to reply to both. " But," said he, " I shall make no mention of what was said by the honourable gentleman who spoke last; he did no more than regularly repeat what was said by the member who preceded him, and regularly weaken all he repeated." Defence of Liberty. During the session of 1795-96 Mr. Erskine (says B/oscoe) distinguished himself in Parliament by his strenuous oppo- sition to two measures, which were, as he conceived, directed against the liberty of the subject. Upon the first of these (the Seditious Meetings Bill) he spoke with an energy and boldness not often exhibited within the walls of Parliament. " ' If the King's ministers,' " said he, adopting the words of Lord Chatham, " ' will not admit a constitutional question to be 190 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. decided on according to the forms and on the principles of the constitu- tion, it must then be decided in some other manner ; and rather than that it should be given up rather than the nation should surrender their birthright to a despotic minister I hope, my lords, old as I am, I shall see the question brought to issue, and fairly tried between the people and the Government.' With the sanction of the sentiments of the venerable and illustrious Earl of Chatham, I -will maintain that the people of England should defend their rights, if necessary, by the last extremity to which free men can resort. For my own part, I shall never cease to struggle in support of liberty. In no situation will I desert the cause. I was born a free man, and, by God, I will never die a slave ! " Whitebait and Seal. Lord Campbell relates that when Erskine was Chancellor, being asked by the Secretary to the Treasury whether he would attend the ministerial fish dinner to be given at Greenwich at the end of the session, he answered, " To be sure I will ; what would your fish dinner be without the Great Seal ? " SIR WILLIAM GKANT. (17541832.) Hard to Answer. Lord Brougham classes Sir William Grant with speakers of the first order, and says his style was peculiar ; it was that of the closest and severest reasoning ever heard in any popular assembly. The language was choice, perfectly clear, abundantly correct, quite concise, admirably suited to the matter which the words clothed and conveyed. In so far it was felicitous, no farther; nor did it ever leave behind it any impression of the diction, but only of the things said ; the words were forgotten, for they had never drawn off the attention for a moment from the things ; those things were alone remembered. No speaker was more easily listened to ; none so difficult to answer. Once Mr. Fox, when he was hearing him with a view to making that attempt, was irritated in a way very unwonted to his sweet temper by the conversation of some near him, even to the show of some crossness, and (after an exclamation) sharply said, " Do you think it so very pleasant a thing to have to answer a speech like THAT ? " " The Wisdom of onr Ancestors." The signal blunder (remarks Brougham) which Bacon long ago exposed, of confounding the youth with the age of the species, was never committed by anyone more glaringly than by this great reasoner. He it was who first employed the well- known phrase of " the wisdom of our ancestors ; " and the menaced innova- tion, to stop which he applied it, was the proposal of Sir Samuel Bomilly to take the step of reform, almost imperceptibly small, of subjecting men's real property to the payment of all their debts. A Syllogistic Speech. Francis Horner writes (1803) : "I contrived to get the second day of the debate on the Spanish papers. Fox was very slovenly, desultory, and incomplete. Pitt's reply was very angry and loud, and full of palpable misrepresentations. . . There was one extra- LORD ELDON. 191 ordinary oration that night Sir William Grant's quite a masterpiece of his peculiar and miraculons manner. Conceive an hour and a half of syllogisms strung together in the closest tissue, so artfully clear, that you think every successive inference unavoidable ; so rapid, that you have no leisure to reflect where you have been brought from or to see where you are to be carried ; and so dry of ornament or illustration or refreshment, that the attention is stretched stretched racked. All this is done without a single note. And yet, while I acknowledge the great vigour of understanding displayed in such performances, I have a heresy of my own about Grant's speaking : it does not appear to me of a parliamentary cast, nor suited to the discussions of a political assembly. The effect he produces is amazement at his power, not the impression of his subject ; now this is a mortal symptom. Besides this, he gives me a suspicion of sophistry, which haunts me through his whole deduction. Though I have nothing immediately to produce, I feel dissatisfied, as if there were some- thing that might be said. And after all, there are no trains of syllogism nor processes of intricate distinctions in subjects that are properly political. The wisdom, as well as the common feelings that belong to euch subjects, lie upon the surface in a few plain and broad lines. There is a want of genius in being very ingenious about them." LOED ELDON. (17511838.) His First Election Speech. Mr. Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon) put up for Weobly in June, 1783, and being returned, took his seat for the first time as representative of that borough. He says he delivered his speech to the crowd from the top of a heap of stones. " My audience liked the speech, and I ended, as I had. begun, by kissing the prettiest girl in the place very pleasant, indeed." Lengthy Tenure of Office. Scott was appointed Solicitor- General in 1788, and Attorney-General five years later. He was made Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and raised to the peerage as Lord Eldon, in 1799. He received the great seals for the first time in 1801. " I do not know," he said, " what made George III. so fond of me, but he was fond of me. When I went to him for the seals, ho had his coat buttoned at the lower part, and putting his right hand within, he drew them out from the left side, saying, ' I give them to you from my heart.' " On the death of Pitt in 1806, Eldon resigned the Chancellor- ship, but was reinstated in 1807, on the dismissal of the Grenville ministry, and continued in the office until the breaking up of the Liverpool administration in 1826, having held it for nearly twenty-five years, and for the longest period during which it had been held by any individual since the Norman Conquest. Conquering the Gout. Writing to a female friend (Mrs. Forster) Lord Eldon said : " I will tell you what once happened to me. I was ill with the gout ; it was in my feet, so I was carried into my carriage, and from it I was carried into my court. There I remained all the day, and 192 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. delivered an arduous judgment. In the evening I was carried straight from my court to the House of Lords ; there I sat until two o'clock in the morning, when some of the lords came and whispered to me that I was expected to speak. I told them I really could not, I was ill, and I could not stand; but they still urged, and at last I hobbled, in some way or other, with their assistance, to the place from which I usually addressed the House. It was an important question, the peace of Amiens I forgot my gout, and spoke for two hours. "Well, the House broke up, I was carried home, and at six in the morning I prepared to go to bed. My poor left leg had just got in, when I recollected I had important papers to look over, and that I had not had time to examine them ; so I pulled my poor left leg out of bed, put on my clothes, and went to my study. I did examine the papers ; they related to the Recorder's report, which had to be heard that day ; I was again carried into court, where I had to deliver another arduous judgment, again went to the House of Lords, and it was not till the middle of the second night that I got into bed." Tailors and Turncoats. While (says Campbell) the Catholic Relief Bill was making progress in the House of Commons, there were, from the commencement of the session, nightly skirmishes in the House of Lords on the presentation of petitions for and against the measure. The Chancellor (Lyndhurst, who had changed sides on the question) sometimes mixed in these, and received painful scratches. Lord Eldon presenting an Anti-Catholic petition from the Company of Tailors at Glasgow, the Chancellor, still sitting on the woolsack, said in a stage whisper, loud enough to be heard in the galleries, " What ! do tailors trouble themselves with such measures ?" Lord Eldon : " My noble and learned friend might have been aware that tailors cannot like turncoats." (A loud laugh.) Offered the Reins of Government. March 3, 1829 (writes Mr. Greville), " the Catholic question was in great jeopardy. The Chancellor (Lyndhurst), the Duke, and Peel went to tell the King that unless he would give them his real, efficient support, and not throw his indirect influence into the opposite scale, they would resign. He refused to give them that support ; they placed their resignations in his hands and came away. The King then sent to Eldon, and asked him if he would under- take to form a Government. He deliberated, but eventually said he could not undertake it. On his refusal the King yielded, and the bill went on ; but if Eldon had accepted, the Duke and his colleagues would have been out, and God knows what would have happened." Consistency. When Lord Encombe, Lord Eldon's grandson, re- ceived his doctor's degree at the hands of the Duke of Wellington then Chancellor of the University of Oxford Lord Eldon was present as High Steward, and was treated with great respect and attention. He himself related the following anecdote : " What charmed me very much when I left the theatre, and was trying to get to my carriage, was : one man in the crowd shouted out, ' Here's old Eldon ! Cheer him, for he never ratted ! ' I was very much delighted, for I never did rat. I will SPENCER PERCEVAL. 193 not say I have been right through life ; I may have been wrong ; but I will say that I have been consistent." SPENCER PEECEVAL. (17621812.) His Parliamentary Career. Mr. Spencer Perceval, who was second son of the Earl of Egmont, was returned to Parliament for North- ampton in 1796, being at the time leader of the Oxford Circuit. He supported Pitt warmly, and the minister, on the occasion of his duel with Tierney, named Perceval as competent to succeed him in the government, should he fall. He took office as Attorney- General under Addington, and in the Duke of Portland's ministry was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. He became Premier on the death of the duke in 1807. A Chancellor's Difficulty. The illness of George III. in 1811, which incapacitated him for affixing his sign-manual to bills, gave rise to a singular discussion in the House of Commons. The matter is thus referred to in the Malmesbury Correspondence: "Mr. Boss to the Earl of Malmesbury. Spring Gardens, January 4th, 1811. The business that is to come on in the House of Commons to-night offers none of the least curious circumstances of the present eventful times. That two deputy clerks, whose salaries are not more than 1501. per annum each, should have had the power of stopping the issue of 1,500,OOOZ. of the public money, seems extraordinary, but so it is. Mr. Perceval (Chancellor of the Exchequer) used every means to persuade them to put the privy seal to the warrant, and amongst other reasons endeavoured to prove to them that, as the King only signed but did not write the bill (for so I under- stand it is called), they might venture to do it without the sign-manual. Their oath is not to put the privy seal to any bill which has not the sign- manual." The sum in question was required for the service of the army and navy, and to meet the emergency the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved a resolution which was agreed to by the House, commanding the auditor and officers of the Exchequer to pay such sums as the exigency required, upon the warrants of any three or more of the Lords Com- missioners of the Treasury. This resolution of the Commons was also agreed to by the House of Lords. His Assassination. On the llth of May, 1812, Mr. Perceval was to give evidence before a committee of the whole house as to the effect produced on the trade of the country by the Orders in Council, and, there being much excitement at the time, the lobby was full of members and visitors. As he entered it with his friend Mr. Stephen, a pistol shot was heard, and the Premier, staggering forward toward the door of the house, fell upon his face. The ball had struck him near the heart, and in a few minutes he was dead. The man who fired the pistol was seized by two members standing by General Gascoyne and Mr. Joseph Hume and the former recognised him as John Bellingham, who had been a merchant in Liverpool, and who had been vainly seeking redress for an unjust imprisonment which he had suffered in St. Petersburg. He coin- 14 194 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. plained that his suit had been neglected by Lord Granville, the English ambassador there, and said he intended to shoot his lordship had not Mr. Perceval fallen in the way; but he had no grievance against the Minister personally. He was tried, condemned, and executed within a week after firing the shot. An annuity of 2000Z. was voted to Mrs. Perceval, and a sum of 50,OOOZ. to be vested in trustees for the benefit of her children. It was remembered as a remarkable circumstance that Mr. Perceval had Baid in the House, in 1802, with reference to the trial of the Frenchman . Peltier for a libel against Napoleon, " There is something so base and disgraceful there is something so contrary to everything that belongs to the character of an Englishman there is something so immoral in the idea of assassination, that the exhortation to assassinate this or any other chief magistrate would be a crime against the honourable feelings of the English law." EGBERT JENKINSON, EARL OF LIVERPOOL. (17701828.) Superlative Praise. In the course of the year 1790, the authority of Sir James Lowther over the borough of Appleby the same which had the honour of giving Pitt the first opportunity of displaying his pre- cocious genius to the Parliament of his country was exerted to procure the election of Mr. Jenkinson (afterwards the second Lord Liverpool). He did not rise in the house till he had been for above a year a member of it ; though it is no slight proof how great was the expectation which was already formed of him that, on the occasion of Mr. Whitbread moving a censure on the Government on the question known as the Russian Armament, Pitt selected him to open the debate on his side. Our parliamentary annals have recorded no maiden speech which made 80 great an impression. Pitt himself began his own harangue by pro- nouncing it " not only a more able first speech than had ever been heard from a young member, but one so full of philosophy and science, strong and perspicuous language, and sound and convincing arguments, that it would have done credit to the most practised debater and most expe- rienced statesman that ever existed." Yonge's " Life of Liverpool." Respectable Mediocrity. Lord Liverpool held office as Prime Minister for the fifteen years from 1812 to 1827 a term exceeded only by Sir Robert Walpole and the younger Pitt. Lord Brougham says of him, " No minister nay, few men in any subordinate public station ever passed his time with so little ill-will directed towards himself, had so much forbearance shown him upon all occasions, nay, few engaged uniformly so large a share of personal esteem. To what did he owe the rare felicity of his lot ? This question may, perhaps, be answered by observing that the abilities of Lord Liverpool were far more solid than shining, and that men are apt to bo jealous, perhaps envious, certainly distrustful, of great and brilliant genius in statesmen. Respectable mediocrity offends nobody. . . No popular outcry ever assailed Lord Liverpool. While others were the objects of alternate execration and acorn, ho was generally respected. The fate that befel him was that which JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 195 might have mortified others, but well suited his tastes to be little thought of, less talked about; or if, in debate, any measure was to be exposed, any member to be attacked, means were ever found, nay, pains were taken, to "assure the House that nothing was meant against the respected nobleman at the head of his Majesty's Government, for whom we all entertain feelings of et cetera, and of et cetera, and of et cetera." His Character as a Debater. He was never known (writes Brougham) to utter a word at which any one could take exception. He was, besides, the most fair and candid of all debaters. No advantage to be derived from a misrepresentation, or even an omission, ever tempted him to forego the honest and the manly satisfaction of stating the fact as it was, treating his adversary as he deserved, and at least reciting fairly what had been urged against him, if he could not successfully answer it. JOHN HORNE TOOKE. (17361812.) His Return for Old Sarnm. Professor Pryme relates that Lord Carnelf ord once took a freak to cross in a boat from Dover to Calais, while we were at war with France. The police, hearing of his design, apprehended him. Mr. Pitt, who was his kinsman, instituted an inquiry, and in a few days ordered his release. Lord Camelford was so angry at his not giving, on hearing who it was that had been arrested, an instant order for his discharge, that he said to Home Tooke, with whom he was well acquainted, " How can I avenge myself ? " He answered that he could do it very well by putting his black servant, Mungo, into his borough of Old Sarum. Lord Camelford agreed, but the next day thought better of it, and told Home Tooke so. " Well," said he, " then the next best thing you can do is to put me in." This was done, and Home Tooke, who had in early life taken holy orders, sat till the end of that Parliament. Addington, then Prime Minister, timidly dreadinghis eloquent attacks, to get rid of him had a bill brought in to prevent clergymen being returned as representatives. Exclusion of Clergymen. Homo Tooke entered the House on the 16th of February, 1801. He was introduced by Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Wilson. This being done, Earl Temple rose and said, " he had observed a gentleman who had just retired from the table after having taken the oaths, whom he conceived incapable of a seat in that House, in consequence of his having taken priest's orders and been inducted into a living. He should wait the allotted time of fourteen days, to see whether there was any petition presented against this return. If not, he should then move that the return for Old Sarum be taken into consideration." Three days after, the clerical member addressed the House on Mr. Sturt's motion respecting the failure of the expedition to Ferrol. In supporting the motion he said : " If the House refuse to go into a committee of inquiry, with what propriety can they enter into the merits of the borough of Old Sarnm and its member ? How can they plunge themselves into inquiries and discussions about what is or is not a priest, and whether a 196 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. thirty years' quarantine is not sufficient to guard against the infection of his original character ? Yet, in recommending this line of conduct to the House, I sacrifice my interest to my duty, as well as I sacrifice my wishes to truth, in defending the right honourable Secretary of State a service which he never has done, and I daresay never will do, for me." On the 10th of March, at the instance of Earl Temple, a committee was appointed to inquire into the eligibility of persons in holy orders to sit in the House. The result was the passing of a bill (May 19th) to prevent it, and in con- sequence Home Tooke was unable to offer himself for re-election, after the dissolution in the following year.* Before the bill passed, however, Tooke proposed an amendment, which was negatived. In support of his amendment he entertained the House with an illustrative anecdote. " He had heard of casuists splitting hairs, but this was the first instance he ever heard of a casuist splitting sacraments; and he was sure the learned gentleman (Sir W. Scott) must have borrowed the idea from a learned casuist in divinity, of whose intense research and perspicacity he would relate an anecdote. The divine alluded to wished to investigate the mystery related in the Scripture, of the legion of devils entering into a herd of swine ; and, in order first to ascertain the number of devils com- posing a legion, he applied to his glossary, and found that a legion in the Roman army meant a certain number of men, more or less in different reigns ; but he took as his medium the number as it stood in the reign of Tiberius. He next set about inquiring into the number that composed a herd of swine, and for this purpose he directed his investigations into Syria and other countries ; and having taken the swineries of Mesopo- tamia as the most probable standard, he divided the number of a herd there by the number ho had before ascertained of a legion, and the quotient proved to him that each hog was possessed of exactly a devil and a half, or somewhat less than a devil and three-quarters. The name of the divine was Dr. Smallwell, or Smallbridge, or Smallbrock ; but ever after the learned casuist was called Dr. Splitdevil." Good Authority. " So I understand, Mr. Tooke, you have all the blackguards in London with you," said O'Brien to him on the hustings at "Westminster. " I am happy to have it, sir, on such good authority." 8. Rogers' " Recollections." LOED BTEON. (17881824.) Byron's First Speech. He made his first speech in the House of Lords in February, 1812, on the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill. He was then twenty-four years of age. In a letter addressed to a friend soon afterwards he writes : " Lords Holland and Grenville, particularly the latter, paid me some high compliments in the course of their speeches, as * In 1873, the Hon. H. Villiers Stuart, who had been in holy orders but had divested himself of them under the provisions of a recent Act, was returned to Parliament for the county of Waterford, and was the first ex-clergyman after Home Tooke to enter the House of Commons. LORD BYRON. 197 you may have seen in the papers, and Lords Eldon and Harrowby answered me. I have had many marvellous eulogies repeated to me since, in person and by proxy, from divers persons ministerial yea, ministerial ! as well as oppositionists ; of them I shall only mention Sir F. Bnrdett. He says it is the best speech by a lord since the 'Lord knows when,' probably from a fellow-feeling in the sentiments. Lord H. tells me I shall beat them all if I persevere ; and Lord G. remarked that the construction of some of my periods are very like Burke's ! ! And so much for vanity. I spoke very violent sentences with a sort of modest impudence, abused everything and everybody, and put the Lord Chancellor (Eldon) very much out of humour; and, if I may believe what I hear, have not lost any character by the experiment. As to my delivery, loud and fluent enough, perhaps a little theatrical. I could not recognise myself or any one else in the newspapers." A Forgotten Grievance. Byron's second display, says Moore, was less promising than his first. " His delivery was thought mouthing and theatrical, being infected, I take for granted (having never heard him speak in Parliament), with the same chanting tone that disfigured his recitation of poetry." In the following year he made his third and last appearance as an orator in the Lords. " In his way home,'' writes Moore again, " he called at my lodgings. He was, I recollect, in a state of most humorous exaltation after his display, and spouted forth, in a sort of mock heroic voice, detached sentences of the speech he had just been delivering. ' I told them,' he said, ' that it was a most flagrant violation of the constitution that, if such things were permitted, there was an end of English freedom.' ' But what was this dreadful grievance ? ' I asked, interrupting him in his eloquence. ' The grievance ? ' he repeated, pausing, as if to consider. ' Oh, that I forget.' " Frose versus Poetry. Reviewing his own parliamentary ap- pearances, Byron thus wrote : " Sheridan told me he was sure I should make an orator, if I would but take to speaking, and grow a Parliament man. He never ceased harping upon this to me to the last; and I remember my old tutor, Dr. Drury, had the same notion when I was a boy; but it never was my turn of inclination to try. I spoke once or twice, as all young peers do, as a kind of introduction into public life ; but dissipation, shyness, haughty and reserved opinions, together with the short time I lived in England after my majority (only about five years in all), prevented me from resuming the experiment. As far as it went, it was not discouraging, particularly my first speech (I spoke three or four times in all) ; but just after it my poem of 'Childe Harold ' was published, and nobody ever thought about my prose afterwards, nor indeed did I ; it became to me a secondary and neglected object, though I sometimes wonder to myself if I should have succeeded." Parliamentary Impressions. "I never," said Byron, "heard the speech that was not too long for the auditors, and not very in- telligible, except here and there. The whole thing is a grand deception, and as tedious and tiresome as may be, to those who must be often present. . . The impression of Parliament upon me was thai the 198 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. members are not formidable as speakers, but very much so as an audience ; because in so numerous a body there may be little eloquence (after all, there were but two thorough orators in all antiquity, and, I suspect, still fewer in modern times), but there must be a leaven of thought and good sense sufficient to make them Ttnow what is right, though they can't express it nobly. Home Tooke and Roscoe both are said to have declared that they left Parliament with a higher opinion of its aggregate integrity and abilities than that with which they entered it. The general amount of both in most Parliaments is probably about the same, as also the number of speakers and their talent. I except orators, of course, because they are things of ages, and not of septennial or triennial reunions. Neither House ever struck me with more awe or respect than the same number of Turks in a divan, or of Methodists in a barn, would have done." LORD BEOTTGHTOK (17861869.) Sent to Newgate. Mr. John Cam Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton), the friend and fellow-traveller of Byron, incurred, in 1819, the high displeasure of the House of Commons under the following circumstances : On December the 10th, Mr. Courtenay rose to complain of a pamphlet which had been published, entitled " A Trifling Mistake in Thomas Lord Erskine's recent Preface shortly noticed, and respectfully corrected, in a Letter to his Lordship, by the author of ' The Defence of the People.' " The following extract, amongst others, was read from the pamphlet : " What prevents the people from walking down to the House and pulling out the members by the ears, locking up their doors, and flinging the key into the Thames ? " On a subsequent day, the publisher of the brochure having been summoned to the bar, and the name of the writer divulged, it was moved and carried " That John Cam Hobhouse, Esq., be, for his said offence, committed to his Majesty's gaol of Newgate." The offender remained in confinement till the death of George III., in the following January, occasioned a dissolution of Parliament. Shortly after this, Mr. Hobhouse took his seat as one of the members for Westminster, in the assembly he had denounced in such strong langnage, and delivered his maiden speech May 9, 1820. The occasion was on Mr. Alderman Wood's motion respecting the criminal conduct and proceedings of George Edwards, said to have been connected with the Cato Street Conspiracy. In the course of his address ho referred to his own case in these terms : " Now let me recall to the honourable member for Corfe Castle the dreadful alarms, the prompt proceedings adopted against the author of a pamphlet in which it seemed possible that some recom- mendations to a dispersion of this House might be found. Here was no plot, no grenades, no mischief either done or meditated ; but though this Edwards is to walk at large, the author of a single passage of disputable meaning is to be sent to prison without trial and without citation." His Majesty's Opposition. It was Mr. Hobhouse who first spoke of " His Majesty's Opposition." Canning accepted the appellation as SIR FRANCIS BURDETT. 199 appropriate. A distinguished member of the Opposition gave it the stamp of his approval, while adding a pithy exposition of its meaning. Tierney said, " No better phrase could be adopted ; for we are certainly a branch of his Majesty's Government. Although the gentlemen opposite are in office, we are in power. The measures are ours, but all the emolu- ments are theirs." SIE FKANCIS BUKDETT. (17701844.) A Favourite. "Burdett," said Byron, "is sweet and silvery as Belial himself, and, I think, the greatest favourite in Pandemonium ; at least, I always heard the country gentlemen and the ministerial devilry praise his speeches ttpstairs, and run down from Bellamy's when he was upon his legs." Lord Lytton also must be quoted as to Burdett and his powers : " Too rich to bribe, and much too proud for power, And as to fear a fico for the Tower ! In youth more popular than Fox ; in age, When Burdett spoke, few actors more the rage. None gifted more to please the eye and ear, The form so comely and the voice so clear. Pitt's surly squires resign'd their port, and ran To hear the dangerous but large-acred man. . . His speech ran over each J3olian chord, So vaguely pleasing that it never bored. Nor was it rude ; whatever fear it woke In breasts patrician, a patrician spoke ; And if no letter'd stores it could display, Still over letters it would pause and play, Surprise an elegance, conceive a trope, And pose logicians with a line from Pope." Enrclett's Committal to the Tower. J. Gale Jones, the president of a debating club, published some resolutions of his society on a debate which arose in 1810 relative to the expedition to the Scheldt. For this he was summoned to the bar of the House, and committed to Newgate. Sir Francis Burdett took up his cause, and denied the power of the Commons to commit to prison any but their own members, and repeated his argu- ments in a letter published in Cobbett's Weekly Register. This being brought before the House, he was committed to the Tower. Cooke, in his "History of Party," thus describes the circumstances attending the execution of the order : " Crowds surrounded the house of Sir Francis, who affected to resist the warrant by force, and barricaded his doors. Twenty police officers, assisted by detachments of cavalry and infantry, were necessary to execute the warrant. Burdett still resisted ; and, lest the theatrical display should be incomplete, the constables, when they broke into the house, found him teaching his infant son to read and translate Magna Charta. As he was borne along to the Tower, the crowds assembled attacked the soldiery ; pistol-shots were fired on each side, and 200 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. the troops did not return from their ungrateful duty without a sanguinary conflict, in which several people were slain. A more useless or unnecessary provocation of a scene of carnage does not occur in our history. Sir Francis brought an action against the Speaker, and, being defeated, thus had the merit of formally establishing the important principle of the Constitution which he had attacked." Hoisting Canning with his own Petard. In one of the debates of the pre-Reform period, Canning, in the course of an elaborate defence of the borough system, urged that it formed an essential element of the British Constitution, since it had " Grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength." Sir Francis Bnrdett took up the quotation in reply, and said, " The right honourable gentleman doubtless remembers the first line of the distich he has cited, and that it is ' The young disease, which mnst subdue at length,- Grows with our growth, and strengthens with our strength.' " Canning acknowledged that the retort was a happy and a just one. An Extraordinary Debate. Sir T. F. Buxton, writing to his brother-in-law, Mr. Gurney, in November, 1819, thus refers to a debate on the Manchester Riots, and Burdett's speech in it : " We have had a wonderful debate ; really it has raised my idea of the capacity and ingenuity of the human mind. All the leaders spoke, and almost all outdid themselves. But Burdett stands first ; his speech was absolutely the finest, and the clearest and the fairest display of masterly under- standing, that ever I heard ; and, with shame I ought to confess it, he did not utter a sentence to which I could not agree. Canning was second ; if there be any difference between eloquence and sense, this was the difference between him and Burdett. He was exquisitely elegant, and kept the tide of reason and argument, irony, joke, invective, and declamation, flowing for nearly three hours. Plunket was third ; he took hold of poor Mackin- tosh's argument, and griped it to death ; ingenious, subtle, yet clear and bold, and putting with the most logical distinctness to the House the errors of his antagonist. Next came Brougham and what do you think of a debate in which the fourth man could keep alive the attention of the House from three to five in the morning, after a twelve hours' debate ? " Bnrdett a High Tory. Sir Francis Burdett, reverting to the notion that the prerogative of the Crown in choosing its servants ought to be unfettered and uncontrolled, said, in bringing forward a motion for reform of Parliament, " If a country gentleman were to offer to a servant out of place to make him his butler, and the man were to answer, ' I will not be your butler unless you will take Harry for your coachman, and Thomas for your groom, and Dick for your footman,' the gentleman would be greatly astonished." This remark (says Earl Russell) proves that Sir Francis Burdett was, as ho sometimes avowed himself to be, a high pre- rogative Tory of the days of Queen Anne. His Dnel with Mr. Faull. The following particulars of the duel which took pkce between Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Paull are takoii WILLIAM COBBETT. 201 from tie Annual Register, " Mr. Paull, -who was a candidate for the representation of Westminster in 1807, had advertised a meeting of his friends to dine at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, the chair to be occupied by Sir Francis Burdett. A correspondence ensued upon this announcement, opening with a communication from Sir Francis, in which he disavowed any knowledge of the proposed gathering, and asserted that he had not sanctioned the use of his name in connection with it. The dispute between the two gentlemen, increasing in acrimony, finally culmi- nated in a challenge being forwarded by Mr. Paull to Sir Francis Burdett. The parties met, attended by their seconds, at Combe Wood, near Wimbledon Common, on the 5th of May. They discharged two pistols each; the second shot fired by Mr. Paull wounded Sir Francis in the thigh ; the second pistol fired by Sir Francis wounded Mr. Paull in the leg. This terminating the business, they both returned from Wimbledon in Mr. PaulTs carriage." WILLIAM COBBETT. (17621835.) His First Appearance. At the first general election after the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, Cobbett was returned for Oldham, and delivered his maiden speech January 29th, 1833, on the choice of a Speaker. The opening sentence with which he addressed the House was not of a very complimentary character : "It appears to me that since I have been sitting here, I have heard a great deal of vain and unprofitable conversation." On the llth of February he rose to move an amendment to the report of the Address in answer to the King's speech. " Other honourable members," he said, " may intercept the reading of the report where they please, and move that such or such parts be omitted; for my own part, I object to every tittle of the report after the words ' Most Gracious Majesty.' " Meeting with several interruptions by calls of " Question " and " Order," he said, " I have a very sacred duty to perform, and if the House be determined not to hear me to-night, I will certainly bring it forward to-morrow, and if the House will not hear me to-morrow, I will then bring it forward the day after. The statement I have to make I am determined to make, and that without any considerable interruption." His Demeanour in the House. I know no other instance (writes Lord Dalling) of a man entering the House of Commons at Cobbett's age (between sixty and seventy) and becoming at once an effective debater in it. Looking carelessly round the assembly so new to him, with his usual self-confidence ho spoke on the first occasion that presented itself, pro- posing an amendment to the Address; but this was not his happiest effort, and consequently created disappointment. Ho soon, however, obliterated the failure, and became rather a favourite with an audience which is only unforgiving when bored. It was still seen, moreover, that nothing daunted him ; the murmurs, the " Oh ! " or more serious repre- hension and censure, found him shaking his head with his hands in his pockets, as cool and defiant as when he first stuck up the picture of King 202 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. George in his shop window at Philadelphia. He exhibited in Parliament, too, the same want of tact, prudence, and truth ; the same egotism, the same combativeness, and the same reckless desire to struggle with received opinions, that had marked him previously through life, and shattered his career into glittering fragments, from which the world could never collect the imago nor the practical utility of a whole. The Black Hole of St. Stephen's. Complaining of the deficient accommodation for members in the House, Cobbett thus gave utterance to his discontent in the columns of the Weekly Register : " Why are we squeezed into so small a space that it is absolutely impossible that there should be calm and regular discussion, even from that circumstance alone P Why do we live in this hubbub ? Why are we exposed to all these incon- veniences ? Why are 658 of us crammed into a space that allows to each of us no more than a foot and a half square, while, at the same time, each of the servants of the King, whom we pay, has a palace to live in, and more unoccupied space in that palace than the little hole into which we are all crammed to make the laws by which this great kingdom is governed." The fire of 1834, however, burned down the " little hole " so contemptuously spoken of by the member for Oldham, and thus made way for a more commodious although still inadequate structure. His Influence. People (said Hazlitt) have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as they have of Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he himself is as impenetrable. One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist ; his style stuns his readers, and he " fillips the ear of the public with a three-man-beetle." He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist ; " lays waste " a City orator or member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the Government itself. He is a kind of. fourth estate in the politics of the country. Taking out the Sting. Cobbett looked (remarks Professor Pryine) like a better sort of farmer. He was a very able man, but his career in the House was a complete failure. Though bold in public assemblies, he was timid and overawed in Parliament, and was never able to say more than a few sentences. . . Cobbett was said to have "a good face for a grievance." I remember one trait which shows it. He moved to bring in a bill to modify the Stamp Act, more especially that part of it which obliged every one to give a twopenny stamp on payment of any sum between 21. and 51. Lord Althorp said that it would require great time for modification, and that it should be taken into consideration, but that meantime the member for Oldham might, if ho liked, have that par- ticular grievance of the twopenny stamp redressed at once. We all who were opposite to him were amused to observe that Cobbett looked quite disappointed, as if feeling that the sting was taken out of his complaints. Political Nicknames. Cobbett's talent (says Lord Balling) for fastening his claws into anything or anyone by a word or an expression, and holding them down for scorn or up to horror, was unrivalled. " Prosperity Robinson," "^olus Canning," the "bloody Times," the "pink-nosed Liverpool," the " unbaptised, buttonless blackguards " (in which way he JOSEPH HUME. 203 designated the disciples of Penn), were expressions with which he attached ridicule where he could not fix reproach ; and it is said that nothing was more teasing to Lord Erskine than being constantly ad- dressed by his second title of Baron Clackmannan. JOSEPH HUME. (17771855.) Small Economies. Hume had been a surgeon in India, and had made a fortune. He had an office and kept a clerk at his own cost, in order to examine the estimates and accounts of public moneys, and to pre- pare his statements and facts ; and by his attention to economy effected a considerable reduction in the national expenditure. He had his faults (writes Professor Pryrne), which produced political errors, for he looked rather to what in his mind was desirable than to what was practicable. That kind of feeling predominated throughout. He suggested even the smallest economies. Gilt-edged paper was, I take it, given up in conse- quence of his observation on the extravagance of using it for parliamentary notices. Parker, secretary to the Treasury, brought up some reports. Hume remarked, " I think that splendid gilt paper is unnecessary." Parker, nettled at this, replied, " Perhaps the honourable member may think the margins are too wide ; " but it had its effect, and in a short time the paper in the library and writing-rooms, as well as all the future reports, had no gilt edges. Soon after it went out of fashion altogether. The Duties of an Archdeacon. Lord Althorp, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, having to propose to the House of Commons a vote of 400Z. a year for the salary of the Archdeacon of Bengal, was puzzled by a question from Mr. Hume, " What are the duties of an archdeacon ? " So he sent one of the subordinate occupants of the Treasury bench to the other House to obtain an answer to the question from one of the bishops. The messenger first met with Archbishop Vernon Harcourt, who described an archdeacon as " aide-de-camp to the bishop ; " and then with Bishop Copleston, of Llandaff, who said, " The archdeacon is oculus episcopi." Lord Althorp, however, declared that neither of these explanations would satisfy the House. " Go," said he, " and ask the Bishop of London (Blomfield) ; he is a straightforward man, and will give you a plain answer." To the Bishop of London accordingly the messenger went, and repeated the question, " What is an archdeacon ? " " An archdeacon P " replied the bishop in his quick way " an archdeacon is an ecclesiastical officer who performs archidiaconal functions ; " and with this reply (says the bishop's biographer) Lord Althorp and the House were perfectly satisfied. A Free Translation. In the discussions on the Orange system in 1835-36, Mr. Joseph Hume took (says Mr. John O'Connell) an active and, as usually happened with him, a manly and an honest part. Here, however, his excitement betrayed his tongue. Mr. Sheil, alluding to the disclaimer of a certain personage of very high rank, that he had been aware of the fact of his name being at the foot of warrants for the creation of Orange 204 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. lodges, which had been distributed in some of the regiments of the line, had said, " When I am called upon to give credit to this disclaimer, I take refuge in one of the dicta of my creed, and I say, Credo quia impossibile!" To this Mr. Hume appended the following free translation : " Like the honourable member who has preceded me I say, in reference to the denial, Credo quia impossibile Let who will believe it, I will not ! " " Humbug." Mr. J. Grant, in his " Random Recollections," de- scribes a scene which took place in the House of Commons in 1836. The House was in committee of supply, and Mr. Joseph Hume (then member for Middlesex) was, as usual on such occasions, making a field day of it. He opposed almost every grant of money that was proposed for the public service, and while he was objecting to one vote, a Mr. Kearsley-thus addressed the chairman of committees : " Mr. Bernal, it has often been said in this house and elsewhere that the honourable member for Middlesex has been very useful to the country, by checking the extravagant expendi- ture of Ministers. But after what I have just seen with my own eyes I put down his conduct as perfect humbug. (Interruptions.) Yes, and I pronounce the honourable member himself to be a complete humbug. (Order, order !) I do not mean any personal unkindness to the honourable member, but I must say that when a vote was put to the House for granting some secret service money 30,OOOZ. odd, I believe I saw an honourable gentleman, connected with the noble lord (John Russell) opposite, go up to him and give him a check for coming forward. (Loud laughter.) Tes, sir, with my own eyes I saw it. It's a complete humbug and nothing else." Mr. Hume replied to this attack, from one who was usually considered a good-natured man, " I am afraid that the honourable member's optics are not in the best possible state to-night. I think the honourable member sees double. I certainly did protest against voting 30,OOOZ. secret service money ; but I am glad we have reduced the grant so low, for we formerly voted 60.000Z. and upwards for the same purpose. As to the honourable gentleman's charge against me, I tell him that no person whatever spoke to me on the subject. No man has ever attempted to control or check me in my public conduct. I will be controlled by no man and least of all shall the honourable member control me." Mr. Kearsley jumped up with the rejoinder, " I tell the honourable gentleman that if my sight is not so good as it ought to be, neither is his head so good as it ought to be. I tell him that I can see to count up the ' tottel of the whole ' [a common expression with Hume] as well as he can." (Loud laughter.) Mr. Hume, whom it was impossible to put out of temper, replied, " I beg the honourable member not to mistake me. I did not say anything about the infirmity of his eyes ; I did not accuse him of not seeing ; I only accused him of seeing too much." The matter then dropped, after having caused much amusement to both sides of the House. Support of the Speaker's Warrant. In 18-15 a discussion occurred in the House of Commons on a question of privilege. The Sorjeant-at-Arms, Sir William Grossett, had executed a Speaker's warrant against one Thomas Howard, but an action was brought in the Queen's JOSEPH HVME. 205 Bench by the latter against the Serjeant for excess of authority in staying an unreasonable time in his house, and 200 damages were awarded to him. Execution was to be levied in a day or two, when Mr. Hume remarked : " I hope the House will order any attempt that may be made to seize upon the property of the Serjeant to be most severely punished forthwith. If any one will draw up a resolution to that effect, I will move it, and, if necessary, I will assist in executing your warrant. It will not be the first time, sir, that I have personally assisted in promoting the ends of justice. I was the first to seize upon the person who committed an act of murder within the precincts of this place I allude to the person who shot the late Mr. Perceval and I kept him fast until a magistrate was found to whose custody he was delivered. I conceive, sir, that every member of this House is bound to act in the same manner ; and, as yon are authorised to call upon all magistrates and persons in authority to assist in carrying your warrant into effect, so I think you have a prior claim upon the assistance of the members of this House in enforcing and upholding your authority." The House adjourned the debate, and suffered the execution to be levied. Fighting against Majorities. In a speech at Birmingham in 1849, Mr. Cobden thus alluded to Hume's parliamentary career : " I wish our friend Mr. Hume was here to-night. You do well to receive his name with those plaudits. A more indefatigable, a more devoted, a more dis- interested patriot never lived in this or in any other country. He has for nearly forty years fought against majorities in the House of Commons. But it is given to few men to possess his physical strength, his massive endurance, his powerful energies, his impassive temperament. But few men have the power to do that which he has accomplished. I confess that I have not physically the power of going through one -half of his work." Tracking the Minister. In a discussion in the House of Com- mons on the public expenditure, in February, 1873, Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, referred as follows to the services Mr. Hume had rendered the country : " I believe that Mr. Hume has earned for himself an honourable and a prominent place in the history of this country, not by endeavouring to pledge Parliament to abstract resolutions or general declarations on the subject of economy, but by an indefatigable and unwearied devotion, by the labour of a life, to obtain a complete mastery of all the details of public expenditure, and by tracking, and I would almost say hunting, the Minister in every department through all these details with a knowledge equal or superior to his own. In this manner I do not scruple to say Mr. Hume did more, not merely to reduce the public expenditure as a matter of figures, but to introduce principles of economy into the management of the administration of public money, than all the men who have lived in our time put together. This is the kind of labour which we want above all things." A Sine qua Won. I recollect (says Lord Broughton) a saying of Sir Robert Peel, that he could not conceive a House of Commons without a Joseph Hume. 206 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. A Warlike Errand. Hume's surgical knowledge was once called into requisition under very remarkable circumstances. Mr. Greville writes respecting the duel between the Duke of Wellington and Lord Winchilsea : " Hume was there, without knowing on whose behalf till he got to the ground. Hardinge (Sir Henry Hardinge, the duke's second) asked him to attend, and told him where he would find a chaise, into which he got. He found there pistols, which told him the errand he was on, but he had still no notion the Duke was concerned ; when he saw him he was ready to drop. Hume gave the two lords a lecture on the ground after the duel, and said he did not think there was a man in England would have lifted his hand against the duke. Very uncalled for," continues Greville, " as Lord Win- chilsea did not fire." " Radical." This phrase, as designating a member of the Radical Reform section of politicians, was " first used by myself," says Hume, writing to Sir Joshua Walmsley. Macaulay compares to the Radicals of recent times the " Root-and-Branch " men of two centuries previously. Unrequited Service. Hume's sturdy character, and his work for the nation, aroused Lord Lytton's enthusiasm : " To me there's something bordering on the great In him who labours not for self. The State, In its caprice, may give him no reward ; Perhaps he bores, and is not born a lord. The House may cough his voice no coughs can drown 5 Eeports cut short no Press can cut him down. Still he toils on for what ? To be of use, To prune a tax, or weed up an abuse. Each hour for rest, for home, for health to grudge, Unpaid a servant, and unthank'd a drudge ; And, his work done, sink famelesa in the tomb : Such men have worth nine such might make a Hume." THOMAS SLINGSBY BUNCOMBE. (17971861.) Persevering Bribery. Mr. Duncombe a man of fashion as well as a leading Radical first stood a contest for Pontefract in 1821 ; he took an enormous deal of trouble in canvassing, and spent much money in bribery, but was unsuccessful. In 1823 he was again in the field, and ventured to contest a family borough (Hertford) with its proprietor. He again failed, after spending much money. In the general election of 1826, Hertford was again canvassed by him in opposition to Mr. Henry Bulwer (afterwards Lord Dalling), who was then commencing his political career. There were three claimants for the suffrages of the electors ; the borough returned two, and the fight was for the second place. Mr. Duncombe having bribed handsomely (writes his son) secured a majority. After the passing of the Reform Bill Mr. Duncombe was elected for Finsbury, and for many years represented that borough. Borrowed Plumes. Mr. Greville writes, Feb. 25, 1828: "The great event of the night was Duncombe's speech, which was delivered GEORGE CANNING. 207 with perfect self-possession and composure, but in so ridiculous a manner that everybody laughed at him, although they were amused with his im- pudence and at the style and objects of his attack. However, the next day it was discovered that he had performed a great exploit ; he was loudly applauded and congratulated on all sides, and made into the hero of the day. . . The history of Tom Duncombe and his speech is instructive as well as amusing. Tommy came to Henry de Bos and told him that his constituents at Hertford were very anxious he should make a speech, but that he did not know what to say, and begged Henry to supply him with the necessary materials. He advised him to strike out something new, and having received his assurance that he should be able to recollect anything that he learned by heart, and that he was not afraid of his courage failing, Henry composed for him the speech which Dun- combe delivered." Maintaining his Point. In August, 1831, Mr. Goulburn brought an accusation against Lord Durham for interfering in an election. Mr. Duncombe pronounced it " a base and wicked calumny." There was a tremendous call of " Chair ! " and the chairman administered a mild re- monstrance, saying that in Mr. Duncombe's calmer and more sober moments he would not use such terms. The latter answered, un- dauntedly, " I am quite calm, and sober enough, and mean what I say." Down upon him came Sir Robert Peel, Sir Henry Hardinge, Sir Henry Inglis ; down upon him came the parliamentary magnates from both sides of the House, threatening, advising, and insisting on an explanation ; but the bold reformer heeded not the menaces, cared not for the advice, and openly declared that he had spoken the truth, and meant to maintain it. His firmness conquered his opponents, and Mr. Goulburn pocketed the affront. " Life." by his Son. GEOKGE CANNING. (17701827.) His Introduction into Parliament. Canning's entry into public life is thus mentioned by himself in a letter written in 1793 to his friend Henry John Bichman, which was first printed by Charles Knight in 1868, among other interesting " Unpublished Letters of George Canning " : " You will probably have seen by the newspapers that I have come into Parliament. . . You may, in common with very many persons, have conceived that my acquaintance with some of the prin- cipal characters of Opposition was something more than a mere personal familiarity, and amounted in fact to political attachment and obligation. In answer to this supposition, if you should have entertained it, I have only to say, upon the word of an honest man, the fact is otherwise. With different individuals, indeed, of Opposition I have been much in habits of intimacy with Mr. Sheridan, particularly, my friendship is from my childhood, and as with a family friend and that friendship will, I trust, be uninterrupted by politics. I am sure it shall not be my fault if it be otherwise. But neither to him nor to any person else have I ever con- 208 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. sidered myself, nor have they considered me, as tied and bound by the smallest obligation, personal or political, that should govern my public sentiments, or fetter my free choice of my party. . . All that I wish to show to you is that my conduct has been strictly honourable, and in that I trust I shall have succeeded. The place for which I am returned is Newtown in the Isle of Wight. The seat comes to me, as I said before, from Mr. Pitt ; and, as Lbelieve I did not before add, from him solely, and immediately to me, without the influence, or interference, of any other man or set of men whatever. And, which is no immaterial consideration to a person so far from being rich as myself, it comes without a farthing of expense." His Maiden Speech. It was on the 31st of January, 1794, in his second session, that he made his first speech, in favour of a subsidy pro- posed to be granted to the King of Sardinia. In a letter dated March 20th, 1794, addressed to Lord Boringdon, he thus expresses himself respecting the event : "I intended to have told you, at full length, what were my feelings at getting up and being pointed at by the Speaker, and hearing my name called from all sides of the house ; how I trembled lest I should hesitate, or misplace a word in the first two or three sentences ; while all was dead silence around me, and my own voice sounded to my ears quite like some other gentleman's; how, in about ten minutes or less, I got warmed in collision with Fox's arguments, and did not oven care twopence for anybody or anything ; how I was roused, in about half an hour, from this pleasing state of self-sufficiency by accidentally casting my eyes towards the Opposition bench, for the purpose of paying compli- ments to Fox, and assuring him of my respect and admiration, and there seeing certain members of Opposition laughing (as I thought) and quizzing me ; how the accident abashed me, and, together with my being out of breath, rendered me incapable of uttering ; how those who sat below me on the Treasury bench, seeing what it was that distressed me, cheered loudly, and the House joined them ; and how, in less than a minute, straining every nerve in my body, and plucking up every bit of resolution in my heart, I went on more boldly than ever, and getting into a part of my subject that I liked, and having the House with me, got happily and triumphantly to the end." " This first speech," says Lord Dalling, " like many other first speeches of men who have become eminent orators, was more or less a failure. The subject was a subsidy to Sardinia, and the new member began with a scoff at the idea of looking with a mere mercantile eye at the goodness or badness of the bargain we were making. Such a scoff, uttered in an assembly which is the especial guardian of the public purse, was injudicious ; but the whole speech was bad. It possessed in an eminent degree all the ordinary faults of the declama- tion of clever young men. Its arguments were much too refined; its arrangement much too systematic ; cold, tedious, and unparliamentary, it would have been twice as good if it had attempted half as much ; for the great art in speaking, as in writing, consists in knowing what should not bo said or written." "Aix Adventurer." On presenting himself to the electors of GEORGE CANNING. 209 Liverpool in 1816, after his appointment as President of the Board of Control, Canning's return was contested; and, amongst other charges brought against him by his opponents, he was reproached with being an adventurer. He replied thus : " To this charge, as I understand it, I am willing to plead guilty. A representative of the people, I am one of the people ; and I present myself to those who choose me only with the claims of character (be they what they may), unaccredited by patrician patronage or party recommendation. Nor is it in this free country, where, in any walk of life, the road of honourable success is open to every individual I am sure it is not in this- place that I shall be expected to apologise for so presenting myself to your choice. I know there is a political creed which assigns to a certain combination of great families a right to dictate to the sovereign and to influence the people ; and that this doctrine of hereditary aptitude for administration is, singularly enough, most prevalent among those who find nothing more laughable than the principle of legitimacy in the Crown. To this theory I have never subscribed. If to depend directly upon the people, as their representative in Parliament ; if , as a servant of the Crown, to lean on no other support than that of public confidence if that be to be an adventurer, I plead guilty to the charge, and I would not exchange that situation, to whatever taunts it may expose me, for all the advantages which might be derived from an ancestry of a hundred generations." Men, not Measures! In a speech in 1801, in opposition to the Addington Ministry, Mr. Canning said : " Away with the cant of ' Measures, not men ! ' the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, sir ; if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures are comparatively nothing. I speak of times of difficulty and danger, when systems are shaken, when precedents and general rules of conduct fail ; then it is that not to that or to this measure however prudently devised, however blameless in execution but to the energy and character of individuals, a State must be indebted for its salvation." Subsidence of the Deluge. In supporting the vote of thanks in the House of Commons, July 17th, 1813, to the Marquis of Wellington for the victory gained at the battle of Vittoria, Mr. Canning said: " How was their prospect changed ! In those countries where, at most, a short struggle had been terminated by a result disastrous to their wishes, if not altogether closing in despair, they had now to contemplate a very different aspect of affairs. Germany crouched no longer trembling at the feet of the tyrant, but maintained a balanced contest. The mighty deluge by which the Continent had been overwhelmed began to subside. The limits of nations were again visible, and the spires and turrets of ancient esta- blishments began to reappear. It was this victory which had defined these objects, so lately involved in overwhelming confusion." Canning on Reform. Sir Robert Peel, in reply to a repeal speech by O'Conuell in 1834, ridiculed the proposal by the exclamation, " Repeal the Union ! As well restore the Heptarchy ! " Canning, however, had used it some years before, in a speech against parliamentary reform, 15 210 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. which he treated as preposterous, saying, " Reform the Parliament ! Repeal the Union ! Restore the Heptarchy ! " Taking Observations. " Sir Robert Peel, his distinguished rival, told me one day," says Lord Dalling, " in speaking of Mr. Canning, that ho would often, before rising in his place, make a sort of lounging tour of the House, listening to the tone of the observations which the previous debate had excited, so that at last, when he himself spoke, he seemed to a large part of his audience to be merely giving a striking form to their own thoughts." Tickling the Victims. Thomas Moore, in his "Dream of a Turtle," thus hits off some of the characteristics of Canning : " And on that turtle I saw a rider, A goodly man, with an eye so merry, I knew 'twas our Foreign Secretary, Who there at his ease did sit and smile Like Waterton on his crocodile ; Cracking such jokes at every motion As made the turtle squeak with glee, And own that they gave him a lively notion Of what his own forced-meat balls would be." Peace and War. One of the most finished and effective of Canning's oratorical displays was a speech delivered at Plymouth in 1823, in which the following celebrated passage occurred : " While we control even our feelings by our duty, let it not be said that we cultivate peace either because we fear or because we are unprepared for war ; on the contrary, if eight months ago the Government did not hesitate to proclaim that the country was prepared for war, if war should be unfortunately necessary, every month of peace that has since passed has but made us so much the more capable of exertion. The resources created by peace are means of war. In cherishing those resources, we but accumulate those means. Our present repose is no more a proof of inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity in which I have seen those mighty masses that float in the waters above your town, is a proof that they are devoid of strength and incapable of being fitted out for action. You well know, gentlemen, how soon one of those stupendous masses now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness how soon, upon any call of patriotism or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage how quickly would it put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder. Such as is one of these magnificent machines when springing from inaction into a display of its might such is England herself, while apparently passive and motionless she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion. But God forbid that that occasion should arise. After a war sustained for nearly a quarter of a century sometimes single-handed, and with all Europe arrayed at times against her or at her side England needs a period of tranquillity, and may enjoy it without fear of misconstruction." GEORGE CANNING. 211 Ministerial Promptitude. A Magniloquent Boast. On the 12th of December, 1826, Canning, then Foreign Minister, made a masterly speech on the relations between Great Britain and Portugal. Mr. Brougham, who rose afterwards, said the Secretary's eloquence had been inspired " with a degree of fervour, energy, and effect extraordinary and unprecedented in this House." In the course of his speech, Mr. Canning gave an instance of ministerial promptitude which has sometimes been cited in reproof of more dilatory Cabinets. He said : " The precise information on which we could act only arrived on Friday last; on Saturday the decision of the Government was taken; on Sunday we obtained the sanction of his Majesty ; on Monday we came down to Parliament; and at this very hour, while I have now the honour of addressing the House, British troops are on their march for Portugal." In his reply at the close of the debate, Mr. Canning again displayed great eloquence ; and on this occasion he used a famous but somewhat bombastic expression. " If France," said he, " occupied Spain, was it necessary, in order to avoid the consequences of that occupation, that we should blockade Cadiz ? No. I looked another way ; I sought materials of compensation in another hemisphere. Contemplating Spain, such as our ancestors had known her, I resolved that if France had Spain, it should not be Spain ' with the Indies.' I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." Mr. Greville writes respecting these last words, " Canning gave offence to his colleagues by the concluding sentence of his reply. The I was not relished." Canning in the Cabinet. The Duke of Wellington (says Mr. Greville) talked of Canning the other day a great deal. He said, though he prided himself extremely upon his compositions, he would patiently endure any criticisms upon such papers as he submitted for the considera- tion of the Cabinet, and would allow them to be altered in any way that was suggested; he (the Duke) particularly had often "cut and hacked" his papers, and Canning never made the least objection, but was always ready to adopt the suggestions of his colleagues. It was not so, however, in conversation and discussion. Any difference of opinion or dissent from his views threw him into ungovernable rage, and on such occasions he flew out with a violence which, the Duke said, had often compelled him to be silent that he might not be involved in bitter personal altercation. He said that Canning was usually very silent in the Cabinet, seldom spoke at all, but when he did he maintained his opinions with extraordi- nary tenacity. A Despatch, in Cypher. Mr. Bell relates that Sir Charles Bagot, our ambassador at the Hague, was one day attending at court, when a despatch in cypher was hastily put into his hand. It was very short, and evidently very urgent ; but, unfortunately, Sir Charles, not expecting such a communication, had not the key of the cypher with him. Au interval of intense anxiety followed, until he obtained the key ; when, to his infinite astonishment, he deciphered the following despatch from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs : 212 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. " In matters of commerce, the fault of the Dutch la giving too little and asking too much ; With equal advantage the French are content, So we'll clap on Dutch bottoms a twenty per cent. Twenty per cent., Twenty per cent., Nous frapperons Falck with twenty per cent. "GEORGE CANNING." Impromptu on Whitbread. The articles of impeachment against Lord Melville were -moved by Mr. Whitbread. His speech (says Mr. Bell) was clear and able ; but some passages struck Mr. Canning's acute sense of the ridiculous so forcibly, that he scribbled a parody on them, while Mr. Whitbread was yet speaking. The following is the im- promptu : " FRAGMENT OF AN OKATION. " I'm like Archimedes for science and skill ; I'm like a young prince going straight up a hill j I'm like (with respect to the fair be it said) I'm like a young lady just bringing to bed. If you ask why the llth of June I remember Much better than April, or May, or November, On that day, my lords, with truth I assure ye, My sainted progenitor set up his brewery ; On that day, in the morn, he began brewing beer ; On that day, too, commenced his connubial career j On that day he received and he issued his bills ; On that day he cleared out all the cash from his tills ; On that day he died, having finished his summing, And the angels all cried, ' Here's old Whitbread a-coming !' So that day still I hail with a smile and a sigh, For his beer with an E, and his bier with an I ; And still on that day, in the hottest of weather, The whole Whitbread family dine altogether. So long as the beams of this house shall support The roof which o'ershades this respectable court, Where Hastings was tried for oppressing the Hindoos ; So long as that sun shall shine in at those windows, My name shall shine bright as my ancestor's shines, Mine recorded in journals, Tits blazoned on signs !" An TJndebatable Subject. The following letter is given in Stapleton's " Canning and his Times : " " Foreign Office, January 27th, 1826. My dear Granville, It occurs to me, since the sealing of my letter enclosing the Speech, that M. Villele may possibly inquire why we have not mentioned the death of the Emperor of Russia. 1. It is not usual to mention the death of foreign sovereigns in the King's Speech. 2. We did not mention that of Louis XVIII. 3. The reason of this habitual silence is a sound one. The King mentions nothing that Parlia- ment is not expected to echo. Parliament echoes nothing without discussion. To bring a deceased foreign sovereign before Parliament for WILLIAM HUSKISSON. 213 discussion would be to treat him as the ancient Egyptians did their own kings judge him immediately after his death : a liberty unwarrantable with the sovereigns of other nations. Ever affectionately yours, GEOKGE CANNING." His Death, at Cliiswick. Lady Holland told me (writes Guizot) that in 1827 Mr. Canning, then ill, mentioned to her that he was going for change and repose to Chiswick, a country seat of the Duke of Devon- shire. She said to him, " Do not go there ; if I were your wife I would not allow you to do so." " Why not ? " asked Mr. Canning. " Mr. Fox died there." Mr. Canning smiled ; and an hour after, on leaving Holland House, he returned to Lady Holland, and said to her, in a low tone, " Do not speak of this to any one ; it might disturb them." " And he died at Chiswick," concluded Lady Holland, with emotion. WILLIAM HUSKISSON. (17701830.) Legal Phraseology in the House of Commons. Mr. Huskis- son will be remembered as one of the earliest advocates, among our statesmen, of the principles of Free Trade. His eloquence was often forcible, and his style at times very argumentative, while he knew how to make an effective reply. In February, 1826, Mr. Ellice, member for Coventry, had moved for a select committee on the silk trade, and he was seconded by Mr. Williams, a lawyer, member for Lincoln. To some severe remarks by the latter gentleman Mr. Huskisson thus replied : " In the course of his speech the honourable and learned gentleman repeatedly told us that he was not at liberty to admit this, and to admit that. This, I presume, is a mode of expression in which gentlemen of the legal profession are wont to indulge, to mark that they keep within the strict limits of their briefs, and that the doctrines which they advocate are those prescribed to them by their instructions. However customary and proper such language may be in the courts of law, it certainly sounds new and striking in the mouth of a member of this House." He went on to say, " To whom did the honourable and learned gentleman mean to apply the description of an ' insensible and hard-hearted metaphysician, exceeding the devil in point of malignity ? ' I appeal to the judgment of the House whether the language made use of by the honourable and learned gentle- man, with reference to me, was not such as to point to the inference that I am that metaphysician. . . It is for the honourable and learned gentleman to reconcile such language with the general tenor of his sentiments on other occasions to explain, as he best may, to those around him whether they are included in that insinuation ; and it is for me to meet that insinuation (as far as it was levelled at me) with those feelings of utter scorn with which I now repel it." The Duke of Wellington and Huskisson. In 1828, when the Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister. " the question of Parliamentary Reform was brought under discussion upon a motion to disfranchise the two boroughs of Penrhyn and East Retford, and invest Manchester and 214 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. Birmingham with the electoral privileges thus vacated. In the course of the contest a division was taken on the particular substitution of Birming- ham for East Retford. Government said ' No ' to the proposal, but Mr. Huskisson, though still Colonial Secretary, had managed to commit him- self to an affirmative vote. Confused at his position, he sent the duke what was either a resignation or an offer of resignation, and what the duke chose to think was the former. There was, in plain truth, but little cordiality between them. Unpleasant jars had occurred already. Mr. Enskisson had publicly assured his Liverpool constituents that he had not entered the new administration without a ' guarantee ' for the general adjustment of its policy by that of Mr. Canning. This sounded as if a ' pledge ' had been exacted and given an idea which the dxike indig- nantly repudiated, and parliamentary explanations had to be offered before the matter could be set at rest. So this time the difference was made final. In vain did the common friends and colleagues of the two states- men endeavour to ' explain ' the unlucky communication. The duke, in terms which passed into proverbial use, replied that there ' was no mistake, could be no mistake, and should be no mistake.' He was not sorry, in fact, that so convenient an opportunity had been created to his hand. Mr. Huskisson therefore retired." Times' Memoir of Wellington. His Death. The Annual Register gave an account of the fatal accident to Mr. Huskisson at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, on the 15th of September, 1830, from which the following par- ticulars are taken : The procession, drawn by eight locomotive engines, left Liverpool at twenty minutes before eleven o'clock. The engine Northumbrian took the south line of railway, carrying amongst other passengers the Duke of Wellington. The other seven engines pro- ceeded along the north line. On the stoppage of the Northumbrian at Parkside, Mr. Huskisson and several others got out; and Mr. Holmes, for the purpose of bringing Mr. Huskisson and the duke together, and of producing a renewed good feeling between them, led Mr. Huskisson round to that part of the car where the duke was stationed. The duke, perceiving the advance of the right honourable gentleman, immediately held out to him his hand, which was shaken in a very cordial manner. Almost at this moment the Rocket was seen to be advancing, and Mr. Huskisson, in attempting to enter the ducal car, fell upon the rails and had his right leg crushed by the wheel of the engine. The unfortunate gentleman lingered in great agony till the evening, when he expired. In the interval he showed a natural solicitude respecting his character as a statesman. " The country," said he, " has had the best of me. I trust that it will do justice to my public character." Qn the 24th of September his remains were interred in presence of upwards of 15,000 spectators. EAEL GREY. (17641845.) His First Appearance in the House. Charles, second Earl Grey, was returned in July, 1786, at the age of twenty-two, for his native EARL ORET. 215 county (Northumberland). His maiden speech in the House was delivered in opposition to the address moved by Mr. Blackburne to thank his Majesty for the Commercial Treaty with France, negotiated by Mr. Pitt. Mr. Addington, afterwards Speaker, in a letter to his father thus describes the youthful orator : " We had a glorious debate last night upon the motion for an address of thanks to the King for having negotiated the Commercial Treaty, &c. . . A new speaker presented himself to the House, and went through his first performance with an eclat which has not been equalled within my recollection. His name is Grey. I do not go too far in declaring that in the advantages of figure, voice, elocution, and manner, he is not surpassed by any member of the House, and I grieve to say that he is in the ranks of Opposition, from which there is no chance of his being detached." His own Estimate of his Debating Talent. Writing to Lady Grey in 1804, after a discussion in the Commons on the King's illness, he remarked, " You will see that I only said a few words, and those few were as bad as anything that could have come from the Doctor (Mr. Adding- ton's usual sobriquet) himself. I feel very much the want of habit and experience in debate, which is absolutely necessary to give that readiness without which nothing can be done, and which I unfortunately do not naturally possess. I feel more and more convinced of my unfitness for a pursuit which I detest, which interferes with all my private comfort, and which I only sigh for an opportunity of abandoning decidedly and for ever. Do not think this is the language of momentary low spirits ; it really is the settled conviction of my mind." A Clear Head. Stanley (writes Mr. Greville) gives the following instance of Lord Grey's readiness and clear-headed accuracy. In one of the debates on the West India question in 1833, he went to Stanley, who was standing under the gallery, and asked him on what calculation he had allotted the sum of twenty millions (for emancipation of the slaves). Stanley explained to him a complicated series of figures, of terms of years, interest, compound interest, value of labour, &c., after which Lord Grey went back to his place, rose, and went through the whole with as much clearness and precision as if all these details had been all along familiar to his mind. A Soft Answer. The other night (says Greville) Lord Grey had called Lord Falmouth to order, and after the debate Faimouth came up to him with a menacing air, and said, " My Lord Grey, I wish to inform you that if upon any future occasion you transgress in the slightest degree the orders of the House, I shall most certainly call you to order." Lord Grey, who expected from his air something more hostile, merely said, "My lord, your lordship will do perfectly right, and whenever I am out of order I hope you will." " N"o, No," in the Lords. In a discussion on the Church Tem- poralities (Ireland) Bill, in the House of Lords in July, 1833, the Duke of Cumberland interrupted Earl Grey with a cry of "No, no ;" whereupon the noble earl " trusted that the illustrious duke would have the decency not to interrupt him. The noble duke had a right to maintain his opinion: 216 AXECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. he might, if he pleased, rise and defend it ; but, because he had an opinion, he was not justified in interrupting those who differed from him." Lord Kenyon appealed to their lordships whether the dissent expressed by using the word " No " deserved the character of indecency the noble earl had ascribed to it. Earl Grey certainly did conceive that the sort of interrup- tion he had received was indecent. The Duke of Cumberland believed that there was no man in that House would more unwillingly commit an act of indecency than himself ; but if a noble lord were not to be allowed to call " No, no," when he felt inclined to dissent from a proposition, there would (ho said) bo an end of all liberty of speech. Regrets. In 1793 Grey brought forward his motion for referring to a committee the petition of the " Friends of the People," praying for parliamentary reform. Respecting his connection with this society, General Grey says : " During his last illness, when no longer able to walk, he used to be wheeled about the house in a chair, and on one occasion, when stopping, as he often did, before Mr. Fox's bust, and speaking of the influence he had held over him, he added, ' Yet he did not always use it as he might have done ; one word from him would have kept me out of all that mess of the " Friends of the People," but he never spoke it.' When I remarked that, considering he only advocated as one of the society the principles to which he had given effect as minister, this was hardly to be regretted, he replied, ' That might be time, but there were men joined with them in that society whose views, though he did not know it at the time, were widely different from his own, and with whom it was not safe to have any communication.' On mentioning this conver- sation to the late Lord Dacre, he told me he remembered Mr. Fox used always to say he did not like to discourage the young ones." LOKD ALTHOKP. (17821845.) The Rival of Palmerston. Sir Denis Le Marchant, in his "Memoir of Viscount Althorp," says that when Earl Grey was called upon to form a ministry in succession to the Duke of Wellington, he said he should much prefer Lord Althorp being at the head of affairs, but the latter replied that on no consideration would he ever accept the place of Prime Minister, for which he felt his utter incapacity. It was with the greatest reluctance that he would entertain the idea of office at all ; but when Lord Grey positively assured him that unless he became Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons it would be useless to attempt a Whig Government, and the negotiation must be at once abandoned, he could not resist such an appeal, coming as it did from this noble old man, whom he had so long known and admired. He yielded, however, only with the distinct understanding that, in the event of Lord Grey's retirement, he should not be asked to succeed him. Lord Palmer- ston the same afternoon actually proposed himself to Lord Grey for the leadership ; but, on the mere intimation that the post was reserved for Lord Althorp, ho expressed himself perfectly satisfied. In the exhausted state LORD ALTHORP. 217 of the party, no other Whig could be named for whom Lord Palmerston could have been expected to -waive his pretensions. Hatred of Office. Lord Brougham wrote in his Autobiography : " Nobody ever hated office as Althorp did. Others I have known hate it occasionally, but he detested it at all times. He often said, when he got up in the morning, he wished he might be dead before night ; but he always went through his duty manfully. . . His powers were great. His ability was never so remarkably shown as in the Reform Bill, both in 1831 and 1832. He had a knowledge of all its details, and of all the numberless matters connected with it, that was almost supernatural. The others knew it so ill, and got into such scrapes when opposed to formid- able adversaries, such as Croker, who had attained something of Althorp's mastery of the subject, that it became necessary to prevent them from speaking, or, as it was then called, ' to put on the muzzle,' and Althorp really did the whole. His temper was admirable, and invariably equal. Sugden said he had learnt a lesson from it, or at least that it was his own fault if he had not which was not ill said." His Influence with the House. The following instance of the influence which Lord Althorp exercised in the House of Commons is given by Sir D. Le Marchant : " Once, in answer to a most able and argumen- tative speech of Croker, he arose and merely observed ' that he had made some calculations which he considered as entirely conclusive in refutation of the right honourable gentleman's arguments, but unfortunately he had mislaid them, so that he could only say that if the House would be guided by his advice they would reject the amendment ' which they did accor- dingly. There was no standing against such influence as this." His Arrest by the Serjeant-at-Arms. The following account of this incident is from a note to the Greville Memoirs (1834) : Mr. Hill, a member of Parliament, had stated in a speech that some of the Irish members who most vehemently opposed the Coercion Bill in the House of Commons had nevertheless privately stated to members of the Govern- ment that they were glad the Act should be renewed. This charge was denied with great heat by the Irish members in the House when Parlia- ment met. But upon Mr. Shell's calling upon Lord Althorp to state whether he was one of the members alluded to, Lord Althorp replied that the honourable gentleman was one of them. Sheil immediately denied it in the most solemn and emphatic terms ; and, as it was feared that a hostile meeting might ensue between him and Lord Althorp, they were both taken into custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms. Further explanations ensued, and Lord Althorp subsequently withdrew the charge, stating that he believed Mr. Shell's asseveration, and that he must himself have been misinformed. Vulgar Language in High Places. I was sitting by Lord Althorp (writes Earl Russell) when he announced, in his own homely way, his resolution to resign. " The pig's killed," he said. A porcine illustration was not new in our history. When Henry VIII. was con- sidering of the best means of procuring his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he gave his decision in favour of Cranmer's opinion by saying, 218 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. " Cranmer has got the right sow by the ear." When Sir Robert Walpole was asked how he had overcome Sir Spencer Compton, to whom the King was partial, he replied, " He got the wrong sow by the ear, and I the right." So vulgar and idiomatic are the phrases of English monarchs and ministers. LOED MELBOURNE. (17791848.) His Manner in Debate. Haydon, the painter, who was present in the House of Lords to hear a debate on the bill for the reduction of the Irish Church Establishment, in 1833, thus recorded his impressions of Melbourne's delivery : " In the Irish Church debate the Duke (of Welling- ton) spoke well, without hesitation, enforcing what he said with a bend of his head, striking his hand forcibly, and as if convinced, on the papers. He finished, and, to my utter astonishment, up starts Melbourne like an artillery rocket. He began in a fury. His language flowed out like fire ; he made such palpable hits that he floored the duke as if he had shot him. But the moment the stimulus was over, his habitual apathy got a head ; he stammered, hummed, and hawed. It was the most pictorial exhibition of the night. He waved his white hand with the natural grace of Talma, expanded his broad chest, looked right at his adversary like a handsome lion, and grappled him with the grace of Paris." His Best Speech.. At the close of the session of 1836, Lord Lynd- hurst made a review of its proceedings, and an attack on the Melbourne ministry, which elicited in reply what Melbourne's biographer (Mr. Torrens) terms the happiest and ablest speech of his life. He commenced by saying, " I readily admit the great power and eloquence of the noble and learned lord. His clearness in argument and dexterity in sarcasm no one can deny ; and if he will be satisfied with a compliment confined strictly to ability, I am ready to render him that homage. But, my lords, ability is not everything. Propriety of conduct the verecundia should be combined with the ingenium, to make a great man and a statesman. It is not enough to be durcefrontis, perditce audacice. The noble and learned lord has referred to several historical characters, to whom he has been pleased to say that I bear some resemblance. I beg in return to remind him of what was once said by Lord Bristol* of a great statesman of former times (the Earl of Strafford), to whom, I think, the noble and learned lord might not inapplicably be compared : ' The malignity of his practices was hugely aggravated by his vast talents, whereof God hath given the use, but the devil the application.' " And the speaker concluded : " The noble and learned lord kindly advises me to resign, notwithstanding his own great horror of taking office after his ambition is already so fully satisfied. But I will tell the noble and learned lord that I will not bo accessory to the sacrifice of himself, which he would be ready to make if the burthen of the great seal were again forced upon him. I conscientiously believe * Lord Digby in the House of Commons, the Earl of Bristol in the Lords. See page 29. LORD MELBOURNE. 219 that the well-being of the country requires in the judgment of the people that I should hold my present office and hold it I will, until I am removed." It is recorded that the combatants on this occasion, like experienced men of the world, kept their temper, and good-humouredly owned the skill of each other's fence. Lyndhurst crossed the house when it was over, and chatted laughingly with his former colleague, as often was his way. Dismissal of the Melbourne Ministry. Many accounts of this occurrence were current at the time and afterwards, but the following particulars (gathered from Torrens' "Life of Melbourne") represent what appears to be the most correct version of the facts. The death of Earl Spencer in November, 1834, called to the Upper House his son, Lord Althorp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Lord Melbourne wrote to the King requesting an audience to submit for the royal consideration the views entertained by ministers of the general position of the Government in consequence, and their advice with regard to the future. William IV. received him without any seem- ing diminution of kindliness or confidence. The conversation lasted for an hour and a half, and to the unsuspicious Minister it appeared the wish of the King to disembarrass the discussion of all reserve. In answer to the inquiry who was to be charged with the conduct of public business in the Lower House, he submitted the name of Lord John Russell as best qualified by experience, talent, and position ; but he suggested in the alter- native the names of Spring Rice and Abercromby. Various difficulties and objections were discussed, but, without giving the Minister any reason to suspect what was contemplated, his Majesty said he would take time to think over the matter, and ended the consultation by saying, " Now let us go to dinner." Nothing more occurred during the evening ; but next morning the King handed Melbourne a letter, evidently prepared with no little care, in which he stated that he was informed that Althorp's removal would speedily leave the Government in a minority in the Lower House ; and, as they were already in that condition in the Upper, it had become necessary to place the conduct of affairs in other hands. No alternative proposal was suggested, or qualification offered of the peremp- tory nature of the dismissal. Melbourne did not affect to conceal his surprise and concern, but, too proud to parley for the retention of office after confidence in his judgment had been so unceremoniously withdrawn, he rejected, in the briefest terms which deference would allow, the offer of an earldom and the Garter. He desired, to know when and to whom he should resign his trust. The King replied that he had made up his mind to send at once for the Duke of Wellington. As Melbourne passed through the adjoining room, he could not refrain from saying to Sir Herbert Taylor, by whose aid he knew that the written form of his dismissal had been prepared, "Your old master would not have done this." The private secretary was embarrassed what to reply, and in his confusion said he had just concluded a letter to Sir Henry Wheatley which his master thought it of the utmost importance to have delivered that night. Would his lordship object to allowing his servant, on reach- 220 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. ing tovra, to leave it at St. James's Palace P It was impossible not to divine that the missive which the perplexed amanuensis had just sealed contained a summons to the duke. The ludicrous aspect of the affair was irresistible ; and Melbourne with a grim smile undertook to play the part of first mute at his own funeral. The King Threatening Impeachment. When Lord Melbourne was reinstated in the Premiership in 1835, after the defeat of Peel, the King could but ill conceal the dislike he felt for the Minister whom ho had previously summarily dismissed from power ; and occasionally it would break forth vehemently. Lord Gosford had been named Governor of Canada, and no objection had been raised to his appointment. At a meeting of the Cabinet on the llth of July, Melbourne said to his colleagues, " Gentlemen, you may as well know how you stand," and then proceeded to read a memorandum of a conversation between Lord Gosford and the King after a review the day before. His Majesty said, " Mind what you are about in Canada. By I Will never consent to alienate the Crown lands, nor to make the Council elective. Mind me, my lord, the Cabinet is not my Cabinet ; they had better take care, or by I will have them impeached. You are a gentleman, I believe ; I have no fear of you ; but take care what you do." The ministers present stared at one another, but agreed that it was better to take no notice of what had occurred, and see if the King's excitement would pass away. "The Opposition" an Irregular Epithet. On the first day of the session of 1842, after Melbourne's retirement from office and the election of a new Parliament, Brougham took his seat on the front bench next to him, just as he had done (writes Torrens) seven years before, chatting with his former friends all round, whether they would or not. From that position he addressed the House on the notorious bribery of the last general election, apportioning the blame without fear, favour, or affec- tion to the supporters of the party now in power, " over and against whom he had the honour to stand, and the party in Opposition, in the front rank of which he had the honour to take his place." (Hear, hear, and a laugh from Lord Melbourne.) " He was at a loss to know what was meant by the interruption. Was his noble friend lately at the head of the Govern- ment annoyed at the term Opposition ? " Melbourne retorted by remind- ing his implacable friend that so transcendent and impartial an arbiter of all legisktive measures ought not to declare himself beforehand a leader of Opposition. In the good old times men were not ranged in accordance with plighted vows of party. Ho could recollect, when he was a member of the other House, a gentleman being called to order for designating some one as a member of the Opposition, and the Speaker ruling that the epithet was irregular. A Brief Reply. The most crushing reply (says the Quarterly Review) that any assailant ever received was on an occasion when Lord Brougham closed one of his most brilliant displays with a diatribe against the Melbourne Government. Lord Melbourne's reply was comprised in a single sentence : " My Lords, you have heard the eloquent speech of tho noble and learned lord one of the most eloquent he ever delivered in this LORD MELBOURNE. 221 house and I leave your lordships to consider what must be the nature and strength of the objections which prevent any Government from availing themselves of the services of such a man." Not so Bad as he Seemed. The discussions in the House on Church matters in 1837 gave rise to the following observations on the policy and opinions of Lord Melbourne by Sydney Smith (Letter to Archdeacon Singleton) : " Yiscount Melbourne declared himself quite satisfied with the Church as it is; but if the public had any desire to alter it, they might do as they pleased. He might have said the same thing of the Monarchy, or of. any other of our institutions ; and there is in the declaration a permissiveness and good humour which, in public men, has seldom been exceeded. But, if the truth must be told, our viscount is somewhat of an impostor. Everything about him seems to betoken careless desolation ; any one would suppose from his manner that he was playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness; that he was always on the heel of pastime; that he would giggle away the Great Charter, and decide by the method of teetotum whether my lords the Bishops should or should not retain their seats in the House of Lords. All this is the mere vanity of surprising and making us believe that he can play with kingdoms as other men can with ninepins. Instead of this lofty nebulo, this miracle of moral and intellectual felicities, he is nothing more than a sensible honest man, who means to do his duty to the sovereign and to the country. Instead of being the ignorant man he pretends to be, before he meets the deputation of Tallow-chandlers in the morning he sits up half the night talking with Thomas Young about melting and skimming, and then, though he has acquired knowledge enough to work off a whole vat of prime Leicester tallow, he pretends next morning not to know the difference between a dip and a mould. I believe him to be conscientiously alive to the good or evil that he is doing, and that this caution has more than once arrested the gigantic projects of of the Lycurgus* of the Lower House." Dispensation of Patronage. Throughout a long official career (remarks Torrens), in which Lord Melbourne had enjoyed for the most part the especial confidence of the Crown, he neither sought nor would accept any personal favour or distinction. He was on one occasion pressed by the Sovereign to accept the blue riband, but declined. " A Garter," said he, " may attach to us somebody of consequence whom nothing else can reach ; but what would be the use of my taking it ? I cannot bribe myself." . . As a rule, he generally would have dissuaded anyone he really liked from seeking a step in the peerage. He loved to tell the story of a certain earl whom Lord Coruwallis laughed at for wishing a marquisate : " I have no son and he has several, but if I had, I should remember that after such a promotion John and Tom could no longer afford to go to town on the top of the coach." Previous to the Queen's Coronation, when many were asking favours, an old friend wrote to say that he would call on him to explain what he desired to * Lord John Russell. 222 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. have as a recognition of long fidelity. He happened to be the fourth who had coine on similar business the same morning, and, the Minister's patience being rather exhausted, he said quickly, " Well, what can I do for you ? " Fearing to let the opportunity slip, the anxious visitor muttered, " I don't very much care about it myself, but my lady wishes that I should be a marquis." Melbourne, who knew that he was not rich, opened his eyes, and said, " Why, you are not such a fool as that, are you?" On another occasion, an unfortunate member of the party, whom he had once described as a fellow who was asking for everything and fit for nothing, intimated that he had a new request to make, for reasons he wanted an interview to explain. The weary dispenser of patronage showed his note to Anson, saying, " What the devil would he have now ! Does he want a Garter for the other leg P " Political Tutor to Queen Victoria. Lord Melbourne's greatest service to his country was perhaps the painstaking care which he had the opportunity of showing, in the initiation of a new sovereign, both youthful and feminine, into the duty and the routine of the exalted functions she was called upon to exercise. The easy and amiable manners of the man made this task much less irksome to both than it might otherwise have been, and the manner in which it was discharged has been grate- ' fully acknowledged by the Queen on more than one occasion. But the testimony of the greatest of Melbourne's political opponents may be quoted. The Duke of Wellington, in a speech in the House of Lords in 1841, said : " I am willing to admit that the noble viscount has rendered the greatest possible service to her Majesty. I happen to know that it is her Majesty's opinion that the noble viscount has rendered her Majesty the greatest possible service, making her acquainted with the mode and policy of the government of this country, initiating her into the laws and spirit of the Constitution, independently of the performance of his duty as ttye servant of her Majesty's crown; teaching her, in short, to preside over the destinies of this great country." LOED BROUGHAM. (17781868.) Irrepressible Speech.. Henry Brougham received from the Duke of Bedford the offer of a seat for his borough of Camelford, and was returned in 1810. He spoke for the first time on the 5th of March in that year, in support of a motion by Mr. Whitbrcad for a vote of censure on the Government of the day, and on Lord Chatham, as commander-in-chief of the expedition to the Scheldt. He was expected to fire off an oration the very night he took his seat, but ho had made a vow not to speak for a month, and he kept it. " It was remarked " (writes Campbell) " that for the future he never was in his place a whole evening, in either House of Parliament, without, regularly or irre- gularly, more than once taking part in the discussions." This (says the Quarterly Review) is a little overstated; but his oratory was irre- pressible, and he would have suffered from suppressed speech as another LOED BROUGHAM. 223 man might suffer from suppressed gout. Although his first attempt was a failure, he soon fought his way to the front, and by the end of his first session was competing for the leadership of the Opposition, then held by the Right Hon. George Ponsonby, ex-Chancellor of Ireland. Careless whether his claim to the leadership was formally recognised or not, he took the lead on so many important questions that the general public could not well help regarding him as leader, and the recalcitrant Whigs gradually succumbed to him. "Broffam" versus "Broom." Brougham did not get into regular practice at the bar till he had acquired celebrity in the House of Commons. He got a few Scotch appeals, and these brought him into early conflict with Lord Eldon, who persisted in calling him Mr. Broffam, till a formal remonstrance arrived through the assistant-clerk ; whereupon the Chancellor gave in, and complimented the offended counsel at the conclusion of the argument, saying, " Every authority upon the question has been brought before us : new Brooms sweep clean." His Attack upon Canning. Brougham took part in the debate on the Roman Catholic claims, April 17, 1823, and in the course of his speech said, referring to Canning, he " had exhibited a specimen, the most incredible specimen, of monstrous truckling, for the purpose of obtaining office, that the whole history of political tergiversation could furnish." " Hansard " thus records what followed : " Mr. Secretary Canning: 'I rise to say that that is false.' The Speaker (after a per- fect silence in the house during some seconds) said, in a low tone, h hoped the right honourable Secretary would retract the expression he had used. An individual of his high rank and station could not fail to be aware that such an expression was a complete violation of the customs and of the orders of the House. He deeply regretted that, even in haste, it should have been used. Mr. Canning said he was sorry to have used any word which was a violation of the decorum of the House ; but nothing no consideration on earth should induce him to retract the sentiment. After an appeal to the House on the part of the Speaker, Mr. Canning expressed his regret, so far as the orders of the House were concerned, at having attracted their displeasure, but said he could not in conscience recall his declaration. Some further discussion ensued, when Mr. Bankes moved ' that the Right Honourable George Canning and Henry Brougham, Esq., be committed to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms attending this House.' Mr. Brougham opposed the motion, pointing out that with the unanimous assent of the House it had been declared by the highest authority that Mr. Canning had committed a breach of their rules ; and it was proposed by the motion to take himself also into custody, who had committed no offence whatever against the orders of the House. He admitted their power to take such a step if they chose, but declared if they did so it would be in flagrant violation of the principles of justice. He begged the House to understand he opposed the first part of the motion no less than the last. He would be the last man to hold up his hand for passing a censure upon the right honourable gentleman, or for committing him to custody for the expression which he had used on 224 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. hearing one half of the sentence which was about to be delivered. Ulti- mately Mr. Canning Mr. Bankes having withdrawn his motion said he should think no more of the matter; and Mr. Brougham similarly expressing himself, the affair terminated." Brougham's explanation, at the end of this scene, that he had used the offensive words " only in a parliamentary sense," is pointed out by Lord Campbell as having given Dickens the suggestion of the "Pickwickian sense," in his most celebrated work. But Dickens, as a reporter, although too young to have been present at this particular scene, must have been familiar with other occasions on which similar incidents had occurred, and the " parliamentary sense " had been accepted as conveying " no offence i' the world." All the Difference. Canning, when Premier, is said to have offered the post of Chief Baron of the Exchequer to Brougham, who refused it on the ground that it would prevent his sitting in Parliament. " True," was the reply, " but you will then be only one stage from the woolsack." " Yes," returned Brougham, " but the horses will be off." " The Schoolmaster Abroad." The debate on the Address which took place in the House of Commons on the 29th of January, 1828, was one of an unusually animated character, in consequence of the Duke of Wellington having resigned his office of Commander-in-Chief and formed a new administration. Brougham confessed that he felt a very great degree of objection to the arrangement. There was in it, he said, no security or compensation to the house or to the country for this union of power. He had no fear, however, of slavery being introduced into this country by the power of the sword. It would take a stronger, it would demand a more powerful man even than the Duke of Wellington to effect such an object. These were not the times for such an attempt. There had been periods when the country heard with dismay that " the soldier was abroad." Now there was another person abroad a less important person ; in the eyes of some, an insignificant person ; whose labours had tended to produce this state of things. The schoolmaster was abroad ! And he trusted more to the schoolmaster armed with his primer, than ho did to the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country. A Noble Boast. Brougham's speech in the House of Commons on Law Reform, in February, 1828, was one of the most effective he ever delivered. The Quarterly Review says of it that, " directly or indirectly, it has probably led to a greater number of important and beneficial results than any other speech, ancient or modern." He spoke on this occasion for six hours, and concluded thus : " It was the boast of Augustus it formed part of the glare in which the perfidies of his earlier years were lost that he found Borne of brick and left it of marble ; a praise not unworthy a great prince, and to which the present reign also has its claims. But how much nobler will bo the sovereign's boast when he shall have it to say that he found law dear and left it cheap ; found it a sealed book, left it a living letter ; found it the patrimony of tho rich, left it the inheritance of the poor ; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppres- sion, left it tho staff of honesty and tho shield of innocence." LORD BROUGHAM. 225 "Measures, not Men." Addressing tLo House of Commons in November, 1830, Mr. Brougham said : " I beg here to state that, as a general principle, my intention is to support measures which meet with my approbation, and to oppose those of contrary tendency, let the one or the other come from whom they may. It is necessary, however, that I should qualify the doctrine of its being not men, but measures,* that I am deter- mined to support. In a monarchy it is the duty of Parliament to look at the men as well as the measures ; because a set of men might make a treaty which would render war inevitable at some distant day, unless the honour and safety of the country were sacrificed. I say, therefore, as long as a set of men can act secretly, that we are imperatively called upon to look at them and their character, as well as at the measures they propound." "Fawning Parasites." In the House of Commons in 1830, Brougham launched out against the Wellington Ministry " in a strain of bitter invective, of sarcasm vehement even to fierceness." Mr. Roebuck (" Whig Ministry of 1830 ") gives the following passage from his speech, which called forth an indignant protest from Sir Robert Peel : " You will see in this, as in that country (France), that the day of force is now over, and that he who would rule his country by an appeal to royal favour or military power may be overwhelmed, may be hurled down by it, if he should enter- tain such an idea and I in no wise accuse him of such an attempt ; him I accuse not ; I " and here the excited orator stretched out his long bony arm, and pointed with a lean and almost skeleton finger at the Treasury bench, " I accuse you, I accuse his flatterers those mean, fawning parasites " Sir Robert rose at once, and, in grave indignant terms, called the speaker to order. " I ask the honourable and learned gentleman, as I am one of those sitting on this side of the house, whether he means to accuse me of being a fawning parasite ? " Checked thus suddenly in mid-career, Mr. Brougham seemed at once to perceive that the phrase he had used and the charge he had brought were not to be justified, and instantly, therefore, disclaimed any intention of applying the words to Sir Robert Peel himself, who truly observed, on this retrac- tation, that it was hardly sufficient, and declared that he would therefore, on behalf of Mr. Brougham, make the apology and retractation which ought to have been made by the learned gentleman. This he did, and Mr. Brougham with great good sense and good feeling adopted it. His Election for Yorkshire. Lord Campbell thus speaks of Brougham's contest for the representation of the county of York, in 1830 : " No man ever went through such fatigue of body and mind as he did for the three following weeks. The assizes at York were about to begin, and he chanced to have a good many retainers. Instead of giving these up, he appeared in court and exerted himself as an advocate with more than wonted spirit. Having finished an address to the jury, he would throw off iis wig and gown, and make a speech to the electors in the * Loflij. "Measures, not men, have always been my mark ; and I vow/' Ac. Goldsmith's " Good-Natored Man." 16 226 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Castle yard on ' the three glorious days of Paris,' and the way in which tho people of England might peaceably obtain still greater advantages. He would then return to court and reply in a cause respecting right of common of turbary, having, in the twinkling of an eye, picked up from his junior a notion of all that had passed in his absence. But, what is much more extraordinary, before the nomination day arrived, he had held public meetings and delivered stirring speeches in every town and large village within tho county ; still day by day addressing juries, and winning or losing verdicts. County elections at that time, lasting fifteen days, excited prodigious interest. All England looked with eagerness on this contest, and, when Brougham's return was actually proclaimed, the triumph was said to form a grand epoch in the history of parliamentary representation." His Stride to the Chancellorship. In his own account of his " Life and Times," Lord Brougham thus wrote : "My return for the great county of York was my greatest victory, my most unsullied success. I may say, without hyperbole, that when, as knight of the shire, I was girt with the sword, it was the proudest moment of my life." The Government of Earl Grey, wishing to secure Brougham's co-operation, offered him the Attorney-Generalship, but this he refused. He said he would take the Mastership of the Rolls, which could be held conjointly with a seat in the House of Commons ; but to this both the Ministers and the King objected. The King, however, asked if the great seal had been offered to Brougham, and on Lord Grey's replying it had not, because he anticipated an objection from his Majesty, " Oh no," said the King, " there is no one I would rather have for my Chancellor." He afterwards (writes Brougham) "once or twice alluded to this when in particularly good humour, and called me his Chancellor, as named by himself and not by my colleagues. In fact, I more than suspect that the Tories, on going out, warned him not to leave me in the Commons, member for Yorkshire, chief of the popular party, and irremovable Master of tho Rolls. In fact, I know that Huskisson told a friend of mine that he did not see how any Government could go on were I without office, and only member for Yorkshire ; but that if I had the Rolls too, I was absolute for life." A Maternal Preference. Brougham, after his elevation to the woolsack, like a pious son " as he ever showed himself," says Lord Campbell, took a journey to Brougham Hall to visit his venerable mother, and, kneeling before her, to ask her blessing on a Lord Chancellor. The good old lady still preserved her fine faculties quite entire ; but while she reciprocated her boy's affection for her, and was proud of his abilities and the distinction he had acquired, she said, with excellent good sense and feeling, " My dear Harry, I would rather have embraced the member for Yorkshire ; but God Almighty bless you ! " Treasonable Proceedings. The Dissolution of 1831.* At a Cabinet Council which was hold April 22nd, 1831, immediately after the defeat of the Government in the Commons on the reform question, * See also page 54. LORD BROUGHAM. 227 it was resolved to advise the King to prorogue Parliament with a view to an early dissolution. Earl Grey and Lord Brougham were deputed to wait on his Majesty and communicate to him the advice of the Cabinet. The interview which these ministers had with King William, in discharge of their mission, is thus described by Mr. Moles- worth, following Mr. Roebuck's account, which it was presumed Lord Brougham had authorised ; and the particulars in the main are corroborated by his lordship's Autobiography : The Chancellor approached the subject very carefully, prefacing the disagreeable message with which he was charged by a compliment on the King's desire to promote the welfare of his people. He then proceeded to communicate the advice of the Cabinet, adding that they were unanimous in offering it. " What ! " exclaimed the King, " would you have me dismiss in this summary manner a Parliament that has granted me so splendid a civil list, and given my Queen so liberal an annuity in case she survives me ?" " No doubt, sire," Lord Brougham replied, "in these respects they have acted wisely and honourably; but your Majesty's advisers are all of opinion that, in the present state of affairs, every hour that this Parlia- ment continues to sit is pregnant with danger to the peace and security of your kingdom, and they humbly beseech your Majesty to go down this very day and prorogue it ; if you do not, they cannot be answerable for the consequences. The King was greatly embarrassed; he evidently entertained the strongest objection to the proposed measure, but he also felt the danger which would result from the resignation of his ministers at the present crisis. He therefore shifted his ground, and asked, " Who is to carry the sword of state and the cap of maintenance ? " " Sire, knowing the urgency of the crisis and the imminent peril in which the country at this moment stands, we have ventured to tell those whose duty it is to perform these and other similar offices, to hold themselves in readiness." " But the troops the Life Guards ; I have given no orders to have them called out, and now it is too late." This was, indeed, a serious objection ; for to call out the Guards was the special prerogative of the monarch himself, and no minister had any right to order their attendance without his express command. " Sire," replied the Chancellor, with some hesitation, " we must throw ourselves on your indulgence. Deeply feeling the gravity of the crisis, and knowing your love for your people, we have taken a liberty which nothing but the most imperious necessity could warrant ; we have ordered out the troops, and we humbly throw ourselves on your Majesty's indulgence." The King's eye flashed, and his cheek became crimson ; he was evidently on the point of dismiss- ing the ministry in an explosion of anger. " Why, my lords," he exclaimed, " this is treason ! high treason ! and you, my Lord Chancellor, ought to know that it is." " Yes, sire, I do know it ; and nothing but the strongest conviction that your Majesty's crovrn and the interests of the nation are at stake could have induced us to take such a step, or to tender the advice we are now giving." This submissive reply had the desired effect : the King cooled ; his prudence and better genius prevailed ; and, having once made up his mind to yield, he yielded with a good grace. 228 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. He accepted, without any objection, the speech which had been prepared for him, and which the two ministers had brought with them ; he gave orders respecting the details of the approaching ceremonial, and, having completely recovered his habitual serenity and good humour, he dismissed the two lords with a jocose threat of impeachment. Brougham's Reform Speech in the Lords. On the second reading of the Reform Bill in October, 1831, Brougham delivered his great speech in defence of it, which (says Campbell) " by many was considered his chef-d'oeuvre. It certainly was a wonderful performance to witness. He showed a most stupendous memory, and extraordinary dexterity in handling the weapons both of ridicule and of reason. Without a note to refer to, he went through all the speeches of his opponents delivered during the five nights' debate, analysing them successively, and, with a little aid from perversion, giving them all a seemingly triumphant answer. The peroration was partly inspired by draughts of mulled port, imbibed by him very copiously towards the conclusion of the four hours during which he was on his legs or on his knees. . . ' I pray and I exhort you not to reject this measure. By all you hold most dear ; by all the ties that bind every one of us to our common order and our common country, I solemnly adjure you I warn you I implore you yea, on my bended knees [he kneels] I supplicate you reject not this bill!' He continued for some time as if in prayer ; but his friends, alarmed for him lest he should be suffering from the effects of the mulled port, picked him up and placed him safely on the woolsack. Like Burke's famous dagger scene in the House of Commons, this prostration was a failure ; so unsuited was it to the spectators and to the actor that it produced a sensation of ridicule, and considerably impaired the effect of a speech displaying wonderful powers of memory and of intellect." Lord Campbell's account of this scene must be taken with some allowance. He was quite capable of occasional exaggeration ; and it will be remembered that when Brougham heard the biographer of " The Chancellors " had prepared for that work supplementary lives of himself and Lord Lyndhurst, he observed that Campbell had " added a new terror to death." A Reform Cry. Earl Russell, in his " Recollections," says that the cry of " The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill," owed its origin to Lord Brougham, and was intended to meet the disposition exist- ing in the House of Commons to introduce destructive amendments. It " gave the Government a very powerful lever in raising the country to the height of their lofty proposals, while it did not prevent them from modi- fying some clauses which were ill-considered or unpopular." The Threatened Creation of Peers. Respecting the threatened creation of peers to secure the passage of the Reform Bill (see page 55, ante), Lord Brougham thus wrote in his later years : " Since 1832, I have often asked myself the question whether, if no secession had taken place, and the Peers had persisted in opposing the bill, wo should have had recourse to the perilous creation r Above thirty years have rolled over my head since the crisis of 1832. I speak as calmly on this as I now do upon any political matter whatsoever, and J cannot answer LORD BROUGHAM. 229 the question in the affirmative.* The list I had prepared of eighty new creations, when I went with Lord Grey to Windsor in May, 1832, was framed upon the principle of making the least possible permanent addi- tion to the House. When 1 supported Grey in pressing the measure upon the King, I felt strongly the necessity of the case, circumstanced as wo then were ; but so greatly did I fear the dreadful consequences of the act, that I am persuaded I should, when it came to the point, have pre- ferred running the risk of the confusion which would have attended the loss of the bill. I know that Grey would have more than met me half way in resolving to face that or any risk, rather than expose the Constitu- tion to the imminent hazard of subversion. . . He distinctly told me that I had very much understated his repugnance ; and that when the time came he never would have consented to take the step. When the Duke of Wellington read my statementf to the above effect, two or three years before his death at Walmer, where I always passed a day or two before going to Cannes, he said : ' Oh ! then you confess yon were playing a game of brag with me. Indeed, I always was certain it was a threat, and that you never would have created peers.' To this all I could say was, that we were thoroughly convinced at the time of the necessity." Asserting a " Bight." The House of Lords went into committee on the Abolition of Slavery Bill, Aug. 14th, 1833, when Lord Chan- cellor Brougham, opposing an amendment of the Duke of Wellington, said that a slave who had been freed " would have as good a right to sit in the other House of Parliament as the noble duke opposite (the Duke of Wellington), who was illustrious by his actions, and the illustrious duke near him (the Duke of Cumberland), who was illustrious by the courtesy of that House." The Duke of Cumberland rose to order ; he had not said one word to call for such an attack. The Lord Chancellor said, the illus- trious duke was most disorderly in calling him to order on the score of having addressed the illustrious duke. He had a right to address any one of their lordships. He had exercised the right of addressing the members of the other House for twenty years, and, please God, he would continue to exercise that right as regarded their lorships. Hansard. Vituperation. Lord Brougham was no more backward in exercising his vituperative powers, when occupying the dignified position of Lord Chancellor, than he had been in other stages of his career. A gross instance occurred in July, 1832, in his comparison of Sir Edward Sugden (afterwards Lord St. Leonard's) to a bug. Sir Edward had moved in the House of Commons for an inquiry into certain matters in which the Lord Chancellor was concerned, and the latter thus referred in the other House to the subject and the mover : " My lords, we have all read that it is this heaven-born thirst for information, and its invariable concomitants a self -disregarding and candid mind that most distinguishes men from the lower animals ; from the crawling reptile, from the wasp that stings, and from the wasp that fain would but cannot sting : distinguishes us, my * The italics are Lord Brougham's. f In Brougham's " Political Philosophy," Part III. 230 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. lords, not only from the insect that crawls and stings, but from that more powerful because more offensive creature, the bug, which, powerful and offensive as it is, after all is but vermin. Yes, I say, it is this laudable pro- pensity upon which humanity justly prides itself, which, I have no doubt, solely influenced the learned gentleman to whom I allude to seek for information which it would be cruel to stingily gratify." On another occasion, the Marquis of Londonderry having accused the Chancellor of resorting to vituperation, was met with the reply : " The noble lord says that I am particularly fond of vituperation. I am not prone to a vitu- perative style of argument. The noble lord is a person of that sort that if you were to bray him in a mortar you could not bray the prejudices out of him." Seal Fishing. Brougham had been very sanguine in his opposition to the bill for repealing the Navigation Laws, in 1849, and was deeply mortified when it passed both Houses. " While the bill was depending," says Lord Campbell, " I happened to call upon him one morning, In Grafton Street, to talk to him about a Scotch appeal, and was shown into his library. He soon rushed in very eagerly, but suddenly stopped short, exclaiming ' Lord bless me ! is it you ? They told me it was Stanley.' And notwithstanding his accustomed frank and courteous manner, I had some difficulty in fixing his attention. In the evening I stepped across the House to the Opposition bench, where Brougham and Stanley were sitting next each other, and, addressing the latter in the hearing of the former, I said, ' Has our noble and learned friend told you the disappoint- ment he suffered this morning ? He thought he had a visit from the leader of the Protectionists to offer him the great seal, and it turned out to be only Campbell come to bore him about a point of Scotch law.' Brougham : ' Don't mind what Jack Campbell says ; he has a prescriptive privilege to tell lies of all Chancellors dead and living.' Many jokes were circulated against Brougham on this occasion. A few days after his great speech, I myself heard Lyndhurst say to him, 'Brougham, here is a riddle for you. Why does Lord Brougham know so much about the Navigation Laws ? Answer : Because he has been so long engaged in the Seal fishery.' " Volatility. At a Mansion House dinner in 1850 to promote the contemplated Great Exhibition of the following year, Lord Stanley made an allusion to Lord Brougham (who was absent) as " his noble and learned but somewhat volatile friend." For this Lord Brougham took him to task on the following evening in the House of Lords, saying, among other things, "Volatile means flighty; but I, to answer a speech made in my presence in the House of Lords, have never flown to the House of Mayors." Lord Stanley, in reply, expressed his regret that he had occasioned dis- quietude to " his noble and learned and very grave and discreet friend," but justified the expression he had used on the previous evening. " In point," said he, " of acutencss, activity, rapidity, and pungency, sal- volatile is nothing when compared with my noble and learned friend. You may put a stopper of glass or leather on that ethereal essence, but I defy any human power, even that of my noble and learned friend LORD LYNDHURST. 231 himself, to put any stopper, either of glass, or leather, or any other material, over the activity, ingenuity, and pungency of his mind." After some further bantering remarks, Lord Stanley expressed a hope that the long friendship between himself and Brougham would not be disturbed by the phrase he had used ; and the latter replied in a similar strain. The interlude provoked much laughter. Smelling Bottle for a Parliamentary Antagonist. Charles Williams Wynn, for many years the " father " of the House of Commons, who from his youth upwards had been the great oracle of parliamentary law, delivered an opinion in the House on a question of privilege, contrary to Brougham's, fortifying his position with many precedents and references to the Journals. Lord Campbell relates the incident, and the compliment Brougham paid to the learned member, winding up with the statement that " In short, he is a man whose devotion in this respect can only be equalled by that of a learned ancestor of his (Speaker Williams, temp. Car. II.), who having fainted from excessive toil and fatigue, a smelling-bottle was called for, when one, who knew much better the remedy adapted to the case, exclaimed, Tor God's sake bring him an old black-letter Act of Parliament, and let him smell that ! ' I cannot help thinking that, in like manner, if my right honourable and learned friend should ever be attacked in a similar way, the mere smelling of a volume of the Journals could not fail instantly to revive him." LOED LYKDHUKST. (17721863.) His First Appearance in the Commons. In 1817 Mr. Copley (afterwards Lord Lyndhurst) was returned to serve in Parliament for Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight. He first broke silence in the House by a few observations in support of the practice, now abandoned and uni- versally condemned, of giving rewards to witnesses upon the conviction of offenders. " He entered his protest against the broad assertion hazarded by an honourable member, that the system of granting rewards had been productive of great confusion throughout the country. He himself," he said, " had been engaged for fourteen years on the Midland Circuit, and had never known a single instance to justify such a statement." Views and Prospects. Copley, when Solicitor- General, replying to a taunt of the Marquis of Tavistock during a debate on the Blasphemous Libel Bill in 1819, said, " I would ask the noble lord on what grounds he brings charges against me for my former conduct ? Why am I taunted with inconsistency ? I never, before my entrance into this House, belonged to any political society, or was in any way connected with politics ; and even if I had intended to connect myself with any party, I confess that during my short parliamentary experience I have seen nothing in the views of the gentlemen opposite to induce me to join them." " This harangue," says Earl Russell (preface to " Life of Moore ") " was delivered from the Treasury bench, and was received with derision by 232 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. the Whig leaders, to whom it was addressed. At the conclusion, Mackintosh whispered to Lord John Russell, who sat next to him, ' The last sentence, with the change of one word for a synonym, would have been perfectly true. Instead of quarrelling with our views, ho should have said that he did not like our prospect s.' " A Plagiarism. Campbell, in his life of Lyndhurst, referring to the celebrated speech against Catholic emancipation delivered in March, 1827, by tho subject of his biography who was at that time Master of the Rolls states that, at the close of his harangue, he sat down amidst some cheers and a great deal of tittering. The latter arose from the circum- stance that all the historical facts and arguments which Copley had used were to be found, nearly in the same order, in a very able pamphlet recently published by Dr. Philpotts, then Prebendary of Durham. Before Copley concluded, the plagiarism was detected by several members, and a stanza from a well-known song was whispered through the House : " Dear Tom, this brown jug which now foams with mild ale, Out of which I now drink to sweet Nan of the Valo, Was once Toby Philpotts'." A Comparison and a Contrast. Lord Lyndhurst, having before strongly opposed Catholic emancipation, supported from the woolsack the measure to effect it, when it was brought forward by his colleagues in 1829. Contrasting his speech in that year with one made in 1828, Lord Winchilsea said he knew of no parallel to the delivery of two such speeches by the same man within a year, except the delivery of a woman in a parish workhouse in Kent, who was brought to bed of a white baby and a black one at a birth. Not Too Old to Learn. While advocating a change of policy regarding the Catholics, Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst urged, in reply to objections advanced, that members of that body had sat in Parliament after the Reformation, without danger to reformed principles. Lord Eldon interposed with the question, "Did the noble and learned lord know that last year ? " The Chancellor replied, " I confess that I did not ; but, my lords, I have since been prosecuting my studies. I have advanced in , knowledge ; and, in my humble opinion, even the noble and learned lord might improve himself in the same way." This sally, says Campbell, set the House in a roar, and procured a favourable hearing for the Chancellor during the rest of his speech. The Judgment of Solomon. Lord Lyndhurst was Chancellor on the accession of William IV., when (says Campbell), by an order in council, a new great seal was ordered to be prepared by his Majesty's chief en- graver, but when it was finished and an order was made for using it, Lord Brougham was Chancellor. Lord Lyndhurst claimed the old great seal on the ground that the transaction must be referred back to tho date of tho first order, and that the fruit must therefore be considered as having fallen in his time ; while Lord Brougham insisted that the point of time to be regarded was the moment when tho old great seal ceased to be the " clavis regni," and that there was no exception to the general rule. The LORD LYNDHURST. 233 matter being submitted to the King, as supreme judge in such cases, his Majesty equitably adjudged that the old great seal should be divided between the two noble and learned litigants, and, as it consisted of two parts for making an impression on both sides of the wax appended to letters patent one representing the Sovereign on the throne and the other on horseback the destiny of the two parts respectively should be deter- mined by lot. His Majesty's judgment was much applauded, and he graciously ordered each part to be set in a splendid silver, salver, with appropriate devices and ornaments, which he presented to the late and present keepers of his conscience as a mark of his personal respect for them. The ceremony of breaking or " damasking " the old great seal consists in the Sovereign giving it a gentle blow with a hammer, after which it is supposed to be broken, and has lost all its virtue. An Octogenarian's Speech. Lord Campbell, who was by no means prejudiced in favour of Lyndhurst, writes in his life of him : " By one motion which he made, wholly unconnected with party, he acquired immense eclat. This was for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the claims of Baron de Bode. He was now turned of 80 ; he was obliged to support himself on a walking-stick while he spoke, and he was nearly blind. But his voice was strong, articulate, and musical, his arguments lucid, his reasoning ingenious and plausible, and he displayed a power of memory which at any age would have appeared almost miracu- lous. . . This was the most wonderful effort of a public speaker I ever witnessed in my time. He had a very bad case, yet he not only riveted the attention of all who heard him, but enlisted their sympathies on his side." Rejection of Money Bills by the Lords. On the 21st of May, 1860, the Nestor of the House of Lords, as he was styled, then in his 88th year, delivered a long and able speech against the second reading of the Bill for the Repeal of the Paper Duty. He thus maintained the right of the Lords to reject a money bill : " I do not dispute nor can it be for a moment disputed that we have no right whatsoever to amend what is called a money bill. We have, moreover, no right whatsoever to originate a bill of that nature. But that principle does not apply to the rejection of money bills. I take leave to say that there is not an instance to be found in which the House of Commons has controverted our right to reject money bills. . . My lords, as I said I would confine myself to this question of privilege, I will only further observe that the illusions perhaps I may say the delusions created by the introduction of the Budget seem to have passed away, and we have learned that, although brilliant eloquence has charms, yet, like other seductions, it is not without its dangers. The same schemes may bear the impress of geuius, of impru- dence, of rashness. Satis eloquent ice, sapientice parum, is not an irre- concilable combination." * National Safety and its Cost. In July, 1859, when the public mind was agitated by the French war in Italy, and the announcement of * See 3Ir. Gladstone's " Gigantic Innovation." 234 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. the projected annexation of Savoy to France, Lord Lyndhurst addressed the House of Lords on our continental relations, and said : " Self-reliance is the best road to distinction in private life. It is equally essential to the character and grandeur of a nation. It will be necessary for our defence that we should have a military force sufficient to cope with any Power or combination of Powers that may be brought against us. The question of the money expense sinks into insignificance. It is the price we must pay for our insurance, and it is but a moderate price for so important an insurance. I know that there are persons who will say, ' Let us run the risk.' Be it so. But, my lords, if the calamity should come, if the conflagration should take place, what words can describe the extent of the calamity, or what imagination can paint the overwhelming ruin that would fall upon us ? I shall be told, perhaps, that these are the timid counsels of old age. My lords, for myself, I should run no risk. Per- sonally, I have nothing to fear. But to point out possible peril, and how to guard effectively against it, that is- surely to be considered, not as timidity, but as the dictates of wisdom and prudence. I have confined myself to facts that cannot be disputed. I think I have confined myself also to inferences which no man can successfully contravene. I hope what I have said has been in accordance with your feelings and opinions. I shall terminate what I have to say in two emphatic words, Fee victis / words of solemn and most significant import." THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. (17691852.) First Appearances of Wellington and Castlereagh. Sir Jonah Barriugton, in his " Historic Memoirs of Ireland," wrote : " My personal acquaintance with the Duke of Wellington originated acci- dentally, soon after I commenced public life. In 1793, when I was in high repute, most prosperous at the bar, I occasionally gave large dinners. At one of those parties, Sir John Parnell brought with him, and intro- duced to me, Captain Wellesley and Mr. Stewart, two young members (of the Irish Parliament). Captain Arthur Wellesley had, in 1790, been returned to Parliament for Trim, county Meath, a borough under the patronage of his brother, the Earl of Mornington. He was then ruddy- faced, and juvenile in appearance, and rather popular among the young men of his age and station. He occasionally spoke in Parliament, but evinced no promise of that unparalleled celebrity and splendour which he has since reached. Mr. Stewart (afterwards Lord Castlereagh) was the son of a country gentleman, generally accounted a very clever man, in the north of Ireland. He began his career in the House by a motion for a committee to inquire into the representation of the people, with the ulterior object of a reform in Parliament. He made a good speech, and had a majority. At the period to which I allude, I feel confident that nobody could have predicted that one of those young gentlemen would become the most cele- brated general of his era, and the other the Minister of England. How- ever, it is observable that to the personal intimacy of those two individuals THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 235 they owed their elevation. Sir Arthur "Wellesley never would have had the chief command in Spain, but for the ministerial aid of Lord Castle- reagh ; and Lord Castlereagh could never have stood his ground as a Minister but for Lord Wellington's successes." Early Frivolity. An Unfulfilled Prediction. " I remember," said Lord Plunket, " being on a committee with him. The duke (then Captain Wellesley or Wesley) was, I recollect, playing with one of those toys called quizzes, the whole time of the sitting of the committee." This trait of the duke (remarks Lord J. Russell in his " Memoirs of Moore ") coincides perfectly with all that I have ever heard about this great man's apparent frivolity at that period of his life. Luttrell, indeed, who is about two years older than the duke, and who lived on terms of intimacy with all the Castle men of those days, has the courage to own, in the face of all the duke's present glory, that often, in speculating on the future fortunes of the young men with whom he lived, he has said to himself, in looking at Wellesley's vacant face, " Well, let who will get on in this world, you certainly will not ! " Traffic in Irish Boroughs. In the " Civil Correspondence and Memoranda of the Duke of Wellington " during the time when he was Sir Arthur Wellesley and Chief Secretary for Ireland (1807 to 1809), the following passages, among others of similar nature, show the way in which Parliamentary boroughs were at that time dealt with as political counters. Sir Arthur writes to the Right Hon. Charles Long : " Pennefather has promised us the refusal of Cashell, but he has not stated his terms. We shall have Athlone, I believe, but I have not. yet seen Justice Day. Wynne has arranged for Sligo with Canning ; I don't know whether it is the Secretary of State or not. Lord Portarlington is in England, and the agent who settled for that borough upon the last general election was Mr. Parnell. We have no chance with him, and it would be best to arrange the matter with Lord Portarlington. I heard here that he had sold the return for six years at the last election, and if that should be true, of course we shall not get it now. I have written to Roden, and have desired Henry to settle with Enniskillen. The former is in Scotland, the latter in London. I have desired Lord H. to send to Lord Charleville about Carlow. Tell Henry to make me acquainted with the price of the day." And again : " I have written to Henry (Wellesley) about a seat for myself ; of course I should not wish to pay much money for one. A man has offered me a seat for Wallingford; let me know who shall be returned for it. Names for the following boroughs : Cashell, Tralee, Enniskillen ; Athlone, possibly. Tell Lord Palmerston to give me his interest for Sligo, and desire his agent, Henry Stewart, to do as I order him." "I have thought it advisable to encourage Mr. Croker to persevere at Downpatrick. He has promised allegiance, and all that he required was a sum of 2000Z. to carry on the contest, and I have, by the duke's advice, promised to supply it." First Appearance in the House of Lords. The Duke of Wellington took his seat in the House of Lords for the first time on the 28th of June, 1814. " Hansard " records that a considerable concourse 236 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. of persons had assembled below the bar to witness his grace's introduc- tion, an unusual number of peers were present, and " below the throne sat the Duchess of Wellington, and the Countess of Mornington, the venerable mother of the noble duke. His patents of creation as baron, earl, marquis, and duke, were severally read, and occupied a considerable time." The Lord Chancellor (Eldon) addressed him, to convey the thanks of the House for the services he had rendered to his sovereign and his country, and remarked, " In the execution of that duty he could not refrain from calling his attention, and that of the noble lords present, to a circumstance singular in the history of that House, that upon his introduction he had gone through every dignity of the peerage in this country which it was in the power of the Crown to bestow." The King not a Gentleman. When Lord Liverpool was forming his administration in 1822, he insisted on the necessity of offering the Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs to Mr. Canning, and impressed his opinions on this subject so strongly upon the Duke of Wellington, that his grace, though he had some prejudices of his own to conquer, undertook to vanquish those of his Majesty against Mr. Canning's appointment. A lady who was an intimate friend of George IY., and at that moment of the duke also, and who was then staying at Brighton, told me (writes Lord Dalling) that the duke went down to Brighton and held an interview with the King, and she related to me parts of a conversation which, according to her, took place on this occasion. " Good God, Arthur, you don't mean to propose to me that fellow as Secretary for Foreign Affairs ; it is impossible ! I said, on my honour as a gentleman, he should never be one of my ministers again. You hear, Arthur ; on my honour as a gentleman ! I am sure you will agree with me that I can't do what I said on my honour as a gentleman I would not do." " Pardon me, sire ; I don't agree with you at all. Tour Majesty is not a gentleman." The King started. " Tour Majesty, I say," continued the imperturbable soldier, " is not a gentleman, but the Sovereign of England, with duties to your people far above any to yourself ; and these duties render it imperative that you should at this time employ the abilities of Mr. Canning." " Well ! " drawing a long breath, " if I must, I must," was finally the King's reply. (Lord Dalling added, in a note, that the accuracy of the story having been disputed, he had it in some measure confirmed by Lady Palmerston ; but he thought that, like most tales of a similar nature, it probably had some foundation, although not precisely correct either in details or date.) A Sovereign Mimicking his Ministers. Mr. Raikcs had the following from the Duke of Wellington : " When George IV. sent for me to form a new administration in 1828, he was then seriously ill, though he would never allow it. I found him in bod, dressed in a dirty silk jacket and a turban nightcap, one as greasy as the other ; for, notwithstanding his coquetry about dress in public, ho was extremely dirty and slovenly in private. The first words he said to me were, 'Arthur, the Cabinet is defunct,' and then he began to describe the manner in which the late Ministers had taken leave of him, on giving in their resignations. This THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 237 was accompanied by the most ludicrous mimicry of the voice and manner of each individual, so strikingly like, that it was quite impossible to refrain from fits of laughter." The Premier also Commander-in-Chief. It is a remarkable circumstance that the Duke's acceptance of the Premiership did not strike him at first as incompatible with his retention of the office of Commander-in-Chief. He thus alludes to the matter in a " memorandum on Military Patronage," dated March 13, 1839 : " In the winter of 1827-8, Lord Goderich having reported to George IV. that the Govern- ment was defunct, I being at that time Commander-in-Chief of the army, the King sent for me ; and, I conclude for my sins, I was told I was to form a Government for his Majesty. I acceded, and very shortly after the Government was formed, it was intimated to me by my colleagues that I ought to resign iny office as Commander-in-Chief of the army. I resigned accordingly, and Lord Hill was recommended to the King to be my successor. I, at the same time, declared my determination never to interfere from that time in any military affair or arrangement, and par- ticularly not in one of a personal nature, unless I should be called upon for my advice or assistance by the general commanding the army in chief, by the sovereign, or his ministers." The Duel between the Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Winchilsea. The Duke incurred great odium by the measure for Catholic Emancipation, which he had formerly opposed. The duel which arose out of it is thus referred to in the " Memoir " of the duke, published in the Times : " One episode of the history is too remarkable to be omitted. The duke had been chosen patron of the new collegiate insti- tution in the Strand, which, under the name of King's College, was destined to combat the rival seminary in Gower Street. On the dis- closure of the ministerial policy, Lord Winchilsea, writing to a gentleman connected with the new establishment, spoke of the duke and his patron- ship in these terms : ' Late political events have convinced me that the whole transaction was intended as a blind to the Protestant and High Church party, that the noble duke, who had for some time previous to that period determined upon breaking in upon the constitution of 1688, might the more effectually, under the cloak of some outward show of zeal for the Protestant religion, carry on his insidious designs for the infringement of our liberties and the introduction of Popery into every department of the State.' These expressions, coming from such a quarter, appeared to the duke to call for personal notice, and, after a vain essay of explanations, the Prime Minister of England, attended by Sir Henry Hardinge, and the Earl of Winchilsea, attended by Lord Falmouth, met in Battersea Fields on the 21st of March (1829), in full session, to discharge loaded pistols at each other on a question concerning the Protestant religion. The life of the great captain, however, was not exposed to danger. Lord Winchilsea, after receiving the duke's shot, fired in the air, and then tendered the apology in default of which the encounter had occurred." Mr. Gleig mentions that " when the moment for action arrived, it was found that the duke did not possess a case of 238 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. duelling pistols." With reference to this affair, the Duke of "Wellington wrote as follows to the Duke of Buckingham (April 21, 1829) : " The truth is that the duel with Lord Winchilsea was as much part of the Roman Catholic question, and it was as necessary to undertake it and carry it out to the extremity to which I did carry it, as it was to do everything else which I did do to attain the object which I had in view. I was living here for some time in an atmosphere of calumny. If I said a word, whether in Parliament or elsewhere, it was misrepresented for the purpose of fixing upon me some gross delusion or falsehood. Even my conversations with the King were repeated, misrepresented, and commented upon; and all for the purpose of shaking the credit which the Parliament were inclined to give to what I said. I am afraid that the event itself shocked many good men; but I am certain that the public interests at the moment required that I should do what I did." What was thought of the matter at the time is shown in the " Greville Memoirs." " At twelve o'clock the duke went to Windsor to tell the King what had happened. The King, it seems, was highly pleased with the affair, and he said, ' I did not see the letter ; if I had, I certainly should have thought it my duty to call your attention to it.' . ..-. J think (continues Greville) the duke ought not to have challenged Win- chilsea. It was beneath his dignity; it lowered him, and was more or less ridiculous. Lord Jersey met him coming from Windsor, and spoke to him. He said, ' I could not do otherwise, could IP" An Undesigned Effect. When (relates Earl Russell) at the meeting of Parliament, Nov. 3rd, 1830, the Duke of Wellington declared that the constitution of the House of Commons was perfect, and that the wit of man could not a priori have devised anything so good, the general feeling was one of dismay. The House of Lords, usually so calm, showed signs of amazement and perturbation. The duke whispered to one of his colleagues, " What can I have said which seems to make so great a dis- turbance ? " " You have announced the fall of your Government, that is all," replied his more clear-sighted colleague. The Government in One Man's Hand. When the Melbourne Ministry was dismissed by the King in 1834, and the Duke of Wellington was sent for to form a Cabinet, Sir Robert Peel, on whom he chiefly relied for assistance, was absent in Italy. The arrangements consequently made are thus commented upon by Mr. Spencer Walpole, in his " His- tory of England from 1815 " : " The King made Wellington First Lord of the Treasury ; he entrusted him with the seals of the Home Office, and gave him the seals of the two other Secretaries of State. These arrange- ments virtually placed the patronage and the power of the State in the hands of one man. They were severely reprobated at the time in the Whig press, and afterwards in Parliament, as ' an unconstitutional concentration of responsibility and power.' The politicians who used this language had, however, hardly thought out its meaning. There was nothing unconstitu- tional in Wellington assuming four of the highest offices of State at the instance of his king. Three of those offices had, in fact, been evolved out of one within his own lifetime ; and one Secretary of State was and THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 239 is technically competent to transact the business of all the others. The one thing which was unconstitutional in 1834, or which, in more correct language, was opposed to the practice of the Constitution, was the dis- missal of the Whig Ministry. All that followed was only a corollary to that proceeding, and Whig statesmen would have done well to have con- fined their censure to the act, and to have abstained from criticising the arrangements which wore consequent upon it. The general public, judging the matter more accurately, were merely amused at the spectacle which the duke afforded them. They saw the man who had been the hero of their boyhood, who had again become the hero of their declining years, driving from office to office, signing letters, dictating minutes, and dis- charging without assistance the work which it had previously taken four busy ministers to perform. Instead of blaming Wellington for straining the Constitution, most people praised him for his industry, and com- mended the singleness of character which raised all his actions above suspicion. Wellington had again become the hero of the nation ; and the nation was gratified at the new proof which its hero was giving of his amazing capacity for work." The Premier and the Commons. Guizot relates in his " Memoirs of Peel " that on the occasion just mentioned, when the Duke of Wellington was summoned to William IV. at Brighton, the old leader of the Tories gave a great example at once of modesty and power. " It is not to me," he told the King, " but to Sir Robert Peel that your Majesty must apply to form a Cabinet ; and to him it belongs to direct it. The difficulty and the predominance are in the House of Commons ; the leader of that House must be at the head of the Government. I will serve under him in any post which your Majesty may please to entrust to me." A Great Country cannot have a Little War. It was in a speech in Parliament in January, 1833, that the Duke of Wellington made this celebrated remark. He said : " My lords, I entreat you, and I entreat the Government, not to forget that a great country like this can have no such thing as a little war. They must understand that if they enter on these operations they must do it on such a scale, and in such a manner, and with such determination as to the final object, as to make it quite certain that those operations will succeed, and that at the very earliest possible period." The Queen's Government must be Supported. When the Corn Laws Abolition Act came to the House of Lords, I said to Lynd- hnrst (writes Campbell) that he was bound to defend it. " No," answered he, " this is unnecessary, for the Duke of Wellington has secured a majority in its favour, although he thinks as badly of it as I should have done seven years ago. Thus he addressed a Protectionist peer, who came to lament to him that he must on this occasion vote against the Govern- ment, having such a bad opinion of the bill ' Bad opinion of the bill, my lord ! Tou can't have a worse opinion of it than I have ; but it was recommended from the throne, it has passed the Commons by a largo majority, and we must all vote for it. The Queen's Government must be supported!' " 240 ANECDOTAL HISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. Wellington and Falmerston. In a debate on the conduct of the war in the Crimea, in May, 1855, Lord Ellenborough related the follow- ing anecdote to the House of Lords, in depreciation of Lord Palrnerston, who was then at the head of affairs : "I recollect sitting by the side of the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords, during the unfortunate difficulty between him and Mr. Huskisson, which led to the resignation of a portion of the gentlemen forming the Government. The Duke of Wellington was suddenly called out of the house, and when he returned he said to me, ' That was Palmerston who wanted to see me, to tell me if Huskisson went he must go too.' The duke continued, ' I said nothing ; it was not for me to fire great guns at small birds.' " Characteristics of His Speeches. In the House of Lords (wrote the Times') " the duke was a regular attendant, and not unfrequently a speaker, but the journals of that august body supply few testimonies of our hero's excellence. His opinions and votes, excepting when his natural con- servatism had not yet been sufficiently influenced by pressure from without, were rarely otherwise than souudly given, but his motives were often imperfectly expressed. It has been said that a collection of Crom- well's speeches would make the most nonsensical book in the world, and though such a remark is certainly not warranted by the orations of Wellington, yet on this point a certain resemblance is discoverable between the two great soldiers. The duke allowed himself in addressing the House to be carried away, not perhaps by his feelings, but by the impetus of a delivery which, without being either fluent or rapid, was singularly emphatic and vehement. He magnified his own opinions in order to impress them upon his hearers. If he recommended, as he did with great alacrity, a vote of thanks to an Indian general, the campaign was always ' the most brilliant he had ever known ; ' if he wished to stigmatise a disturbance of the peace, it was something transcending ' anything ho had ever seen in all his experience,' though such a quality could hardly be predicated of any disorders under the sun. The duke could appreciate events with unfailing nicety, but he failed in the capacity to describe them, and of late years his speeches, where they were not tautology, were often contradictious. Nor could the failing be trace- able to ago alone, for it was observed, though in a less degree, during the earlier stages of his career, and is the more remarkable from the contrast presented by his despatches." A Military Style. Macaulay (says Trevelyan) was fond of repeating an answer made to him by Lord Clarendon in the year 1829. The young men were talking over the situation, and Macaulay expressed curiosity as to the terms in which the Duke of Wellington would recom- mend the Catholic Belief Bill to the Peers. " Oh," said the other, " it will bo easy enough. He'll say, ' My lords ! Attention ! Right about face ! March ! ' " This military stylo of the duke was burlesqued, in very similar words, some years later in the " Bon Gaultier Ballads." A Blunt Denial. In 1842 a petition from the farmers of Essex was presented to the House of Lords by Lord Western, who eaid the agricultural body had been deceived by Sir Robert Peel. This statement THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 241 was at once denied by the Duke of Wellington, who said, in his charac- teristic manner, " The noble lord should have waited for the opportunity of stating the when, and the where, and the how, and in what words my right honourable friend has deceived the public. But, my lords, I deny the fact ; and, as formally and emphatically as the noble lord has stated it, I say it is not true ; and that's the end of it." " Down to the House " in his Last Days. The lobby of the House of Lords was sometimes, in the Duke's last years, the resort of persons who had travelled far to catch a sight of him. His well-known habit, even in the feebleness of eighty years, was to be driven daily from Apsley House in a cabriolet, and, after remaining in the Lords' chamber a short time, he would return as he came. One day, during the International Exhibition of 1851, a party of American gentlemen had gathered round the lobby, in eager expectation of the reappearance of the duke, who, they were informed, was within the house. Not many minutes had passed when he was seen advancing down the narrow passage to the outer porch. He tottered as he walked, almost swaying from side to side ; and as he reached the porch the Americans, some half dozen in number, took off their hats and pressed forward to within two or three yards. The duke's coming and going were not usually noticed by anyone with formality, nor did he, as a rule, seem to remark things near him, his eye apparently being intent on something far away reminding an observer .of how it might have looked, for instance, when detecting the weak point in Marmont's evolutions at Salamanca. But that distant sight, nevertheless, took in everything passing around, and on this occasion the duke paused for a moment, apparently interested by the unusual although silent demonstration before him, and he slowly raised a forefinger to his forehead in answering salute. In a few seconds he had entered his cab unassisted, and was driven away. The party present seemed to think a cheer might be an impertinence ; but immediately the duke had gone, the feeling of the spectators broke forth. " There," said one of the Americans to an English gentleman who had been chatting with them, and informing them as to the men and things around, " there we have seen the Exhibition, but we wanted still more to see the Duke. It was worth coming all the way." The duke's systematic visits to the House of Lords terminated only by his death, in the following year. SIR EOBEET PEEL. (17881850.) Patience Wanted. Peel's first appearances in the House of Commons were not very promising. They were thus alluded to at the time by the writer of a satire entitled " The Last Will and Testament of a Patriot : " " I give and bequeath my patience to Mr. Robert Pool ; he will want it all before he becomes Prime Minister of England ; but in tho event of such a contingency, my patience is to revert to the people of England, who will stand sadly in want of it." A Paternal Caution. An anecdote which 1 have from good 17 242 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. authority (wrote M. Guizot) would give reason for believing that Sir Robert Peel had been long and naturally inclined to the tendency to which he yielded when, after having been a stubborn Conservative, he became an ardent reformer. It is said that in 1809, when he entered the House of Commons, his father, old Sir Robert Peel, went to Lord Liver- pool and said to him, " My son, you may be sure, is a young man of rare talent, and will one day play an important part ; but I know him well ; at bottom his tendencies are Whig. If we do not immediately enlist him in our ranks, he will escape from us ; give him something to do, he will serve you well, but you must make sure of him without delay." Father and Son. On the appointment of a committee to inquire into the state of the Bank of England and the resumption of cash pay- ments, in 1819, Peel was chosen chairman, and in that capacity he brought up the report, and proposed the resolutions it embodied. " His speech," writes Francis in his " Critical Biography of Peel," " was heralded by one of those dramatic incidents which are so rare in our public proceed- ings ; rare, perhaps, because they really exercise so slight an influence on the conduct of our public men. His father, Sir Robert Peel, in presenting a petition from merchants of the City of London against the proposed change in the currency laws, alluded to the relative positions of himself and his son with respect to the question. Speaking with much emotion, but with the unpretending frankness which marked his parliamentary conduct, he said : ' To-night I shall have to oppose a very near and dear relative. But while it is my own sentiment that I have a duty to perform, I respect those who do theirs, and who consider that duty to be paramount to all other considerations. I have mentioned the name of Mr. Pitt. My own impression is certainly a strong one in favour of that great man. All of us have some bias, and I always thought him the first man in the country. I well remember, when the near and dear relative I have alluded to was a child, I observed to some friends that the man who discharged his duty to his country in the manner Mr. Pitt had done, was the man of all the world to be admired, and the most to be imitated ; and I thought at that moment that if my life, and that of my dear relative, should be spared, I would one day present him to his country to follow in the same path. It is very natural that such should be my wish, and I will only say further of him, that, though he is deviating from the proper path in this instance, his head and heart are in the right place, and I think they will soon recall him to the right way.' The son did not pass unnoticed this allusion of his father. At the close of an able and powerful speech, in which he explained his own reasons for a change of opinion, and the general views of the committee, he said : ' Many other difficulties pre- sented themselves to me in discussing this question : among them is one which it pains me to observe I mean the necessity I am under of opposing myself to an authority to which I have always bowed from my youth up, and to which I hope I shall always continue to bow with deference. My excuse is now, that I have a great public duty imposed upon me, and that, whatever may be my private feelings, from that duty I must not shrink.' " SIR ROBERT PEEL. 243 Peel's Challenge to O'Connell. In Angust, 1815, in conse- quence of some expressions used by the great agitator at a public meeting, a hostile correspondence took place between Peel (then Irish Secretary) and O'Connell, which, however, ended without a hostile meeting. O'Connell was arrested, and bound to keep the peace within the kingdom ; they then agreed to go to the Continent, but O'Connell was again placed under arrest on reaching London. MacGhee says much controversy occurred relative to this affair, and he conjectures that some friendly Argus kept the police on the qui vive, to prevent the shedding of valuable blood ; but the fact is that no secret was made in the Irish newspapers of O'ConnelTs movements and intentions, and the notice of the authorities was neces- sarily drawn to the matter. It was with reference to this affair that Lord Norbury indulged in a jest at O'Connell's expense a short time after- wards. O'Connell was addressing his lordship, who seemed to pay but indifferent attention to what he was saying. " I am afraid, my lord," said O'Connell, pausing in his argument, "that your lordship does not apprehend me." " I beg your pardon," replied the facetious judge, " I do perfectly; and, indeed, no one is more easily apprehended than Mr. O'Connell, when he wishes to be." " What is a Found ? " In supporting his resolutions on the cur- rency in 1819, Peel said : " The main question is this, Can we go on safely without a standard of value ? All the witnesses examined by the committee agreed that we could not, except one, a Mr. Smith ; who, on being asked if there should be no standard, said he would retain the ' pound.' Upon being further asked, What is a pound p he said it was difficult to explain, but that there was no gentleman in England who did not know what a pound was. He added that a pound was a standard which had existed in tliis country eight hundred years three hundred years before the introduction of gold coin ! I confess " (continued Mr. Peel) " that I can form no idea of a pound or a shilling, as detached from a definite quantity of the precious metals. I have the same difficulties to encounter as had Martinus Scriblerus in following the metaphysical specu- lations of his tutor, the philosophic Crambe. Being asked if he could form an idea of a universal man, he replied that he conceived him to be a knight of the shire, or the burgess of a corporation, who represented a great number of individuals, but that he could form no other idea of a universal man. Further to puzzle him, he was asked if he could not form the universal idea of a lord mayor. To which he replied, that never having seen but one lord mayor, the idea of that lord mayor always returned to his mind, and that he had therefore great difficulty to abstract a lord mayor from his gold chain and furred gown ; and that, moreover, unfortunately the only time he ever saw a lord mayor he was on horseback, and that the horse on which he rode, consequently, not a little disturbed his imagina- tion. Upon this, says the history, Crambe, like the gentleman who can form an abstract idea of a pound, swore that he could frame a conception of a lord mayor, not only without his horse, gown, and gold chain, but even without stature, feature, colour, hands, feet, or any body whatever ; * and this, he contended, was the true universal idea of a lord mayor." 244 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Catholic Emancipation. On the 5th of March, 1829, Peel pro- posed, in the House of Commons, the abolition of the political and civil disabilities which weighed upon the Catholics. Two cruel charges (relates Guizot) were brought against him tergiversation and fear. He repelled them with candid and high-minded good sense. " I cannot," he said, " purchase the support of my honourable friends by promising to adhere at all times and at all hazards, as minister of the Crown, to arguments and opinions which I may have heretofore propounded in this House. I reserve to myself, distinctly and unequivocally, the right of adapting my conduct to the exigencies of the moment and to the wants of the country. This has been the conduct of all former statesmen, at all times and in all coun- tries." And, with regard to the charge of yielding to intimidation : " In my opinion," he said, " no motive can be more justly branded as igno- minious than that which is usually termed cowardice. But there is a .temper of mind much more dangerous than this, though it may not be so base ; I mean the fear of being thought to be afraid. Base as a coward is, the man who abandons himself to the fear of being thought a coward dis- plays little more fortitude." And when the debate drew near to its close, with his heart torn by the recollections of Canning, which had been so often invoked against him, he said, " The credit belongs to others, and not to me. It belongs to Mr. Fox, to Mr. Grattan, to Mr. Plunket, to the gentlemen opposite, and to an illustrious friend of mine, who is now no more. . . I was on terms of the most friendly intimacy with my honourable friend down even to the day of his death ; and I say, with as much sincerity of heart as man can speak, that I wish he were now alive to reap the harvest which he sowed, and to enjoy the triumph which his exertions gained. I would say of him as he said of the late Mr. Perceval: ' Would he were here to enjoy the fruit of his victory ! ' ' Tuque tuis armis, noa te poteremnr, Achille.' " Finality in Reform. Sir Robert Peel, addressing the electors of Tamworth in 1834, stated that he " considered the Reform Bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question a settlement which no friend to the peace and welfare of this country would attempt to disturb, either by direct or by insidious means." " Register, Register, Register! " Addressing the electors at a Tamworth election dinner in August, 1837, Sir Robert Peel said : " It may be disagreeable, and, indeed, inconvenient to attend to the registration of yoters which annually takes place throughout the country. All this may be revolting ; but you may depend upon it that it is better you should take that trouble than that you should allow the constitution to become the victim of false friends, or that you should be trampled under the hoof of a ruthless democracy. The advice which has been given by some persons was, ' Agitato, agitate, agitate ! ' The advice which I give you is this Register, register, register ! " An Honourable Distinction. In a speech at Merchant Taylors' Hall in May, 1835, Sir Robert Peel said : " Gentlemen, will you allow me to recall to your recollection what was the grand charge against myself SIR ROBERT PEEL. 245 that the King had sent for the son of a cotton-spinner to Rome, in order to make him Prime Minister of England. Did I feel that by any means a reflection on me ? Did that make me at all discontented with the state of the laws and institutions of the country ? No ; but does it not make me, and ought it not to make you, gentlemen, do all you can to reserve to other sons of other cotton-spinners the same opportunities, by the same system of laws under which this country has so long flourished, of arriving by the same honourable means at the like distinction ? " Peel's Denunciation of Cobbett. In 1833, Cobbett moved a resolution, the effect of which was to pray the King to dismiss Sir Robert Peel from his Privy Council, as the author of the Bill of 1819, which had been the cause of the distress of the country. A long, and, though occasionally violent, a feeble speech from Cobbett ushered in the motion, which was seconded by Mr. John Feilden. Sir Robert answered him (says Francis) in a magnificent speech, of which the most remarkable passage, though it has often been quoted, will bear repetition. After an elaborate refutation of all Cobbett's arguments, and a scornful repudiation of the implied accusation that he had himself gained by the change of currency, Sir Robert burst forth in these words : " It is on public grounds that the honourable member assails me. The honourable member has not the same motives for attacking me which he has had for attacking others. I have never lent the honourable member my confidence ; from me the honourable member has never received any obligation. His object in assailing me is, doubtless, to strike terror by the threat of his denunciations to discourage opposition, from the fear of being signalised as a victim. But I tell the gentlemen of England that their best security is in boldly facing and defying such insidious efforts. God forbid that the honourable member's speculations on the prospect of public confusion should be realised. I labour under no anxiety that they will. I feel confident that whatever may be the political differences that divide public men, all who are interested in the upholding of law and property will unite in their defence to put down such attempts. Not only would it be the bitterest calamity, but a calamity embittered by the greatest disgrace, to live under such an ignoble tyranny as he would impose. ' Come the eleventh plague rather than this should be ; Come sink us rather in the sea ; Come, rather, pestilence, and reap us down ; Come God's sword, rather than our own. Let rather Roman come again, Or Saxon, Norman, or the Dane. In all the bonds we ever bore, We grieved, we sighed, we wept ; we never blushed before.' Blush, indeed, we shall, if we submit to this base and vulgar domination, and I for one believing as I do that I have been selected as an object of attack, for the purpose of discouraging resistance to the insidious efforts which the honourable gentleman is daily making to weaken the f onuda* tions of property and the authority of the law I will, at least, preserve 246 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. myself from the reproach of having furthered the objects he has in view by any symptom of intimidation or submission." The passage from old Abraham Cowley, delivered with the fine sonorous voice and lofty inamiei into which Sir Robert Peel fell in moments of real excitement, produced an electrical effect. Well (continues Francis) we remember the scene. Cobbett, his grey hairs pleading for his sincerity, had been heard as a duty, but with regret. His antagonist had borne himself along on the rising sympathy of the House. Rarely, indeed, does the British senate even seem to do injustice ; but now, the disgust of the listeners, and their excitement under Sir Robert's stirring address, overpowered all forms. Cobbett rose, was met with a shout almost of execration, retired to his seat, rose again, again was met with an indignant repulse, once more and yet once more essayed to speak against the storm of passion, till at last he staggered to his place beside his seconder, for the first time, perhaps, in his life utterly quelled by his fellow-men. The accused statesman, gathering himself up with dignity, declared he would not vote on a question so personal to himself, and left the house majestically, amidst a hurricane of cheers. Four members only John O'Connell, Thomas Attwood, James Roe, and Patrick Leader were found supporting Cobbett and Feilden, while the voters for Peel numbered 298. Then came an incident scarcely less dramatic. Lord Althorp, the Whig chief of the House, moved that the resolution should be expunged from the Journals. On a division there were still only four against the motion, Feargus O'Connor supplying the place of John O'Connell; and, the votes on the other side amounting to 295, the resolution of Lord Althorp was carried out. The " Shock of Collision " between the Houses. In a speech at Merchant Taylors' Hall in 1838, Sir Robert Peel said, " My object for some years past has been to lay the foundations of a great party, which, existing in the House of Commons, and deriving its strength from the popular will, should diminish the risk and deaden the shock of collisions between the two deliberative branches of the Legislature." The Bedchamber Question. On being invited to form a Ministry on the resignation of Lord Melbourne in 1839, Peel requested that the principal offices in the Royal household, and among them those of the Queen's ladies of the bedchamber, might be placed at his disposal. It was not (says M. Guizot) with Sir Robert Peel, but with the Duke of Wellington, that the idea of making this request would appear to have originated. The young Queeu was shocked at it ; it was, the Whigs told her, an exorbitant pretension, utterly unauthorised by precedent. It was added that the great ladies of the Conservative party had spoken of it as of a triumph over the Queen, and had said that when they composed her Court they would be better able to restrain her within constitutional limits than the Whigs had been. On the day after Sir Robert Peel had made his demand, he received from the Queen the following note: "The Queen, having considered the proposal made to her yesterday by Sir Robert Peel, to remove the ladies of her bedchamber, cannot consent to adopt a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage, and which is repugnant to her feelings." Sir Robert replied in a long and respectful SIR ROBERT PEEL. 247 letter, sensible and constitutionally true, but rather heavy, and as devoid of elegance as of complaisance. He was evidently better suited to a Par- liament than to a Court. The negotiation was broken off, and furnished a subject for debate in both Houses. The Conservatives, Wellington and Peel, maintained their ground ; the Whigs vindicated the Queen's refusal, and declared themselves ready to accept the responsibility of it. They at once returned to office, and Sir Robert Peel on his side resumed, for two years more, his position as the ruling spirit of the Opposition. An Uiiconciliatory Manner. Sir Robert Peel's manner was frequently unfortunate. " When I first went into Parliament," said one of Peel's most successful and eloquent political followers to Mr. Maddyn, 4 1 was not personally acquainted with Sir Robert Peel. I greatly admired his talents, and I approved of his principles, and many of his connexion were anxious to see me in the House. I publicly avowed myself at the hustings as one of his supporters, and I sacrificed money, time, and trouble to gain a seat for his cause. After being about a fortnight in the House, it was proposed to me by that I should be personally intro- duced to Sir Robert, and it was arranged to wait for a leisure moment to do so. It was while we were sitting in the temporary edifice, just before going into Sir Charles Barry's new house. We were both in the lobby, and Sir Robert walked slowly across, and went into the long passage that used to lead into the House of Lords. Nobody was with him. ' Now is the time,' said Lord , and he ran after Sir Robert Peel, calling him by name. I followed at a short distance, and heard my name mentioned. I advanced to meet him, and raised my hat. A freezing bow was all that I received not a smile, not a single word of encouragement, not the slightest civility." Another illustration of the unfortunate effect of Peel's manner will bo found in a speech delivered by Mr. Cobden at a public meeting, Dec. 17, 1845. He said : " I have no reason, and I think you will all admit it, to feel any very great respect for Sir Robert Peel. He is the only man in the House of Commons that I can never speak a word to in private without forfeiting my own respect, and the respect of all those men who sit around me." And yet the Minister was then on the eve of adopting Mr. Cobden's policy, and paying a handsome tribute to his eloquence and his exertions. (See, under Cobden, "Unadorned Eloquence.") Peel as a Humourist. Peel shone (writes Mr. Hayward) where such a man would be least expected to shine, in humour. He also excelled in quiet sarcasm. In the debate on commercial distress (Dec. 3, 1847), Alderman Reynolds, one of the members for Dublin, had asked, " Did not everybody know that the profit and advantage of banking consisted very much in trading on your credit in contradistinction to your capital ? " In the course of the masterly reply with which Peel closed the debate he said : " I have the greatest respect for bankers in general, and Irish bankers in particular, and among Irish bankers I well know the position enjoyed by the honourable gentleman. Now, with all the respect to which he is entitled, and with all suavity and courtesy, I will tell him that, in his banking capacity, I would rather have his capital than his credit." In 248 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. 1848 Feargus O'Connor was charged in the House with being a Republican. He denied it, and said he did not care whether the Queen or the Devil was on the throne. Peel replied : " When the honourable gentleman sees the sovereign of his choice on the throne of these realms, I hope he '11 enjoy, and I 'm sure he '11 deserve, the confidence of the Crown." Shell had learnt and forgotten the exordium of a speech which began with the word " necessity." This word he had repeated three times, when Sir R. Peel broke in " is not always the mother of invention." Effect of Mr. Disraeli's Attacks. "It has always (says Mr. Hayward) seemed unaccountable to us that Peel, who had joined battle without losing heart or ground with such antagonists as Brougham, Canning, Stanley, and Lord Russell, should have quailed before Mr. Disraeli ; or, if quailed be too strong a term, should have allowed himself to be so ruffled and annoyed : Contempsi Catilince gladios : non perti- mescam tuos. He was so irritated on the night of the third reading of the Corn Law Bill that he came after the debate to Lord Lincoln (the late Duke of Newcastle) at Whitehall Place, and insisted on his carrying a hostile message to Mr. Disraeli. On Lord Lincoln's positive refusal, Sir Robert was going off in search of another second, and was with difficulty driven from his purpose by the threat of an application to a magistrate. The most plausible explanation is that he was maddened by the clamorous cheers of his quondam friends and followers : * Non me tna f ervida torrent Dicta, ferox ; Dii me terrent ' the Dii being understood in the theatrical sense the gods that thunder their applause or censure from the gallery. It must be remembered also that there was twice over some foundation for the charge so pointedly levelled at him, of having acted like the Turkish admiral who steered the fleet under his command straight into the harbour of the enemy ; and that Mr. Disraeli was in his happiest vein. This was the night (May 15, 1846) when he declared Peel's life to be ' one great appropriation clause ; ' termed the Treasury bench ' political pedlars that bought their party in the cheapest market and sold us in the dearest ; ' and compared the conversion of the Peelites to that of the Saxons by Charlemagne, ' who, according to the chronicle, were converted in battalions and baptised in platoons.'" In the House, Sir Robert gave the following reply to Mr. Disraeli's attack : " I feel that I should be offering an insult to the House I should bo offering an insult to the country if I were to condescend to bandy personalities upon such an occasion. Sir, I foresaw that the course which I have taken from a sense of public duty would expose me to serious sacrifices. I foresaw, as its inevitable result, that I must forfeit friendships which I most highly valued, that I must interrupt political relations in which I felt sincere pride; but the smallest of all the penalties which I anticipated were the continued venomous attacks of the member for Shrewsbury. Sir, I will only say of the honourable gentleman that if he, after reviewing the whole of my public life a life extending over thirty years previously to my accession to office in 1841 if he then enter- SIR ROBERT PEEL. 249 tained the opinion of me which he now professes ; if he thought I was guilty of those petty larcenies from Mr. Homer and others, it is a little surprising that in the spring of 1841, after his long experience of my public career, he should have been prepared to give me his confidence. It is still more surprising that he should have been ready, as I think he was, to unite his fortunes with mine in office, thus implying the strongest proof which any public man can give of confidence in the honour and integrity of a Minister of the Crown." The Pall of Sir Robert Feel. On the evening of the 25th of June, 1846, the announcement was made to the House of Commons that the Lords had agreed to Sir Robert Peel's Corn and Customs Bills (effecting the Repeal of the Corn Laws) without amendment. This was the signal for the closing of a lengthened debate on the Irish Coercion Bill, then before the House. The circumstances attending the division which hurled Sir Robert Peel from power are thus described by Mr. Disraeli, in his " Life of Lord George Bentinck " : " At length, about half -past one o'clock, the galleries were cleared, the division called, and the question put. In almost all previous divisions where the fate of a Government had been depending, the vote of every member, with scarcely an exception, had been anticipated ; that was not the case in the present instance, and the direction which members took as they left their seats was anxiously watched. More than one hundred Protectionist members followed the Minister ; more than eighty avoided the division, a few of these, however, had paired ; nearly the same number followed Lord George Bentinck. But it was not merely their numbers that attracted the anxious observation of the Treasury bench, as the Pro- tectionists passed in defile before the Minister to the hostile lobby. It was impossible that he could have marked them without emotion ; the flower of that great party which had been so proud to follow one who had been so proud to lead them. They were men to gain whose hearts and the hearts of their fathers had been the aim and exultation of his life. They had extended to him an unlimited confidence and an admiration without stint. They had stood by him in the darkest hour, and had borne him from the depths of political despair to the proudest of living positions. Right or wrong, they were men of honour, breeding, and refinement, high and generous character, great weight and station in the country, which they had ever placed at his disposal. They had been not only his followers but his friends; had joined in the same pastimes, drank from the same cup, and in the pleasantness of private life had often forgotten together the cares and strife of politics. " He must have felt something of this, while the Manners, the Somer- sets, the Bentincks, the Lowthers, and the Lennoxes passed before him. And those country gentlemen, ' those gentlemen of England,' of whom, but five years ago, the very same building was ringing with his pride of being their leader if his heart were hardened to Sir Charles Burrell, Sir William Jolliffe, Sir Charles Knightly, Sir John Trollope, Sir Edward Kerrison, Sir John Tyrrell, he surely must have had a pang when his eye rested on Sir John Yarde Buller, his choice and pattern country gentle- 250 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. man, whom he had himself selected and invited, but six years back, to move a vote of want of confidence in the Whig Government, in order, against the feeling of the Court, to install Sir Robert Peel in their stead. They trooped on : all the men of mettle and large -acred squires, whose spirit he had so often quickened, and whose counsel he had so often solicited in his fine Conservative speeches in Whitehall Gardens. . . " When Prince Metternich was informed, at Dresden, with great osten- tation, that the Emperor had arrived ' Yes ; but without his army,' was the reply. Sir Robert Peel was still First Minister of England, as Napoleon remained Emperor for a while after Moscow. Each, perhaps, for a moment had indulged in hope, it is so difficult for those who are on the pinnacle of life to realise disaster. They sometimes contemplate it in their deep and far-seeing calculations, but it is only to imagine a contin- gency which their resources must surely baffle ; they sometimes talk of it to their friends, and oftener of it to their enemies, but it is only as an insurance of their prosperity and as an offering to propitiate their Nemesis. They never believe in it. " The news that the Government were not only beaten, but by a majority so large as 73, began to circulate. An incredulous murmur passed it along the Treasury bench. ' They say we are beaten by 73 ! ' whispered the most important member of the Cabinet, in a tone of surprise, to Sir Robert Peel. Sir Robert did not reply, or even turn his head. He looked very grave, and extended his chin, as was his habit when he was annoyed and care'd not to speak. He began to comprehend his position, and that the Emperor was without his army." The Minister's Valediction. The speech in which Sir Robert announced the resignation of his Ministry, June 29, 1846, was concluded by the following passage : " Within a few hours, probably, that power which I have held for the period of five years will be surrendered into the hands of another without repining, without complaint on my part with a more lively recollection of the support and confidence I have received during several years, than of the opposition which during a recent period I have encountered. In relinquishing power, I shall leave a name, severely censured I fear by many who, on public grounds, deeply regret the severance of party ties deeply regret that severance, not from interested or personal motives, but from the firm conviction that fidelity to party engagements the existence and maintenance of a great party consti- tutes a powerful instrument of government. I shall surrender power severely censured also by others who, from no interested motive, adhere to the principle of protection, considering the maintenance of it to be essential to the welfare and interests of the country. I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, from less honourable motives, clamours for protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit. But it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice." SIR EGBERT PEEL. 251 A Political Moral. Mr. Cobden, in his pamphlet "The Three Panics," published in 1862, narrated the following : " On the evening of the 24th of February, 1848, whilst the House of Commons was in session, a murmur of conversation suddenly arose at the door and spread through- out the house, when was witnessed what never occurred before or since, in the writer's experience a suspension for a few minutes of all attention to the business of the House, whilst every member was engaged in close and earnest conversation with his neighbour. The intelligence had arrived of the abdication and flight of Louis Philippe, and of the pro- clamation of the Republic. . . The writer of these pages was sitting by the side of the late Mr. Hume when the tidings reached their bench. Sir Robert Peel was on the opposite front seat, alone, his powerful party having been broken and scattered by his great measure of Corn Law Repeal. ' I'll go and tell Sir Robert the news,' exclaimed Mr. Hume, and stepping across the floor, he seated himself by his side and communi- cated the startling intelligence. On returning to his place, he repeated, in the following words, the commentary of the ex-minister : ' This comes of trying to carry on a government by means of a mere majority of a chamber, without regard to the opinion out of doors. It is what these people (pointing with his thumb over his shoulder to the Protectionists behind him) wished me to do, but I refused.' " His Character by Gnizot. " Sir Robert Peel is the most eminent statesman who has sprung from the ranks of democracy the most honest as well as the most able, the most congenial and faithful to democracy, at the same time as the most free from its evil tendencies. Although adopted by the aristocracy from his very entrance into public life, and although he served in their ranks, he never gave himself over to them ; and far from pretending, as it is said, to the honour of belonging to their body, he was proud of his plebeian origin, and did not seek to conceal it either by his manners or by his maxims. He was dignified without elegance, and with, perhaps, more susceptibility than was consistent with his superiority, which he ought to have enjoyed with greater confidence and ease. On seeing him at court, in the drawing-rooms of Windsor, I was struck by a little constraint and stiffness in his attitude ; he was evidently the most important and the most respected man there, and yet he did not look as if he were at home ; his sway did not appear to be exempt from embarrass- ment ; he governed without reigning. No one felt or expressed a deeper and more affectionate respect for the ancient institutions, the ancient manners, the whole old social order of his country ; he revered and loved the past though he was not of it and that is a certain mark of great judgment as well as of virtue; but, at the same time, he regarded aristocratic distinctions and honours with something more than indifference it was his fixed resolve to reject them." SIB JAMES GEAHAM. (17921861.) The Child Father of the Man. As a boy (says Professor Pryme) Graham exhibited the future bent of his life. When other boys 252 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. were choosing what they would be, he would say, " I will be a statesman." A stone is still shown in his native village on which the youthful politician, stood and harangued his playmates. A Contemptuous House. Mr. Graham was first returned for Hull in 1818, at the age of twenty-six. His election cost his family 6000Z. His first appearances in the House were failures. Among his early displays was a speech with regard to a bill which had been intro- duced to prevent any person not an inhabitant or freeman of a town from taking part in its political meetings. Mr. Torrens says : " Mr. Graham wished to know if a member who sat for a borough of which he was neither an inhabitant nor freeman would come within the mischief of the Act ? He paused to listen for the report of his shot ; but few were attending, and nobody cried ' Hear.' He looked to see if it had hit, but the under-secretaries were talking to one another on the Treasury bench, and Lord Castlereagh was occupied in smelling the hot-house flower in his button-hole. Mr. Graham repeated his question in other words, but with no better effect. He felt half vexed with himself at having got up, but he was up, and must go on ; so he thought he would argue the point. The case was not an imaginary one, he said, for it was his own, as he happened to sit for a borough of which he was neither a freeman nor an inhabitant, and of which he was not likely to become either, having no connection with the place. At this unlucky proffer of irrelevant informa- tion he heard, or thought he heard, something like a suppressed laugh. He felt himself getting confused, a little at first, and then very much so. For a few minutes he rambled on through commonplace and reiteration, but no timely cheer came to his rescue, and he sat down without any distinct recollection of what he had said or what he had intended to say. Mr. Henry Lascelles, who sat opposite, whispered to a mutual friend, 'Well, there is an end of Graham; we shall hear no more of him.'" His later Appearances. Very tall in person (says Mr. Maddyn), " with a handsome and intellectual countenance, Sir James Graham possessed great advantages for addressing an aristocratic assembly. His mauncr, at first, was apparently so mild that in commencing one of his elaborate attacks, the hearer could scarcely conceive how much hoarded ammunition was about to be exploded, with the certainty of doing dreadful damage to his adversaries. When just about to make a spring upon his political foe, there was an air of drawing-room lassitude about the wily descendant of the Graemes that reminded one of his ancestors; sudden in attack, and about as merciless as sudden. Standing at the table in the calm attitude of a Mayfair fine gentleman, who could have expected so much fierceness of nature to dwell within that breast P " " Hats Off !" On the 20th of June, 1837, the King died at Windsor; and on the same day both Houses met for the purpose of taking the oath of allegiance to her Majesty Queen Victoria. On the following day Lord John Russell appeared at the bar of the Commons, charged with a message from the Queen. A cry instantly arose (says Torrens) of " Hats off ! " and the Speaker, forgetful for the moment of the precise usage SIR JAMES GRAHAM. 253 on such, occasions, announced from the chair that "members must be uncovered." Everyone present forthwith complied, with the exception of Sir James Graham, who excited some observation by continuing to wear his hat until the first words of the message were pronounced. As nothing at the time escaped the vigilance of party criticism, a paragraph appeared the same evening in the True Sun, reflecting on the supposed indecorum. At the meeting of the House next day the right honourable baronet called attention to the fact, for the purpose of explaining that he had only complied with the older, and, as he thought, better custom, of waiting until the initiatory word " E/egina," or " Bex," was uttered before uncovering ; a mode of testifying respect for the Crown which was more emphatic, and which had, he thought, a better effect. The Speaker said that the honourable member for East Cumberland was correct in his observance of the practice of the House ; and he accounted for his own apparent deviation therefrom by his desire to preserve order and to save time. Opening of Letters by the Home Office. In June, 1844, Mr. T. S. Buncombe presented petitions to the House of Commons from, several gentlemen, one of whom was M. Mazzini, complaining that their letters had been delayed and opened by the Post Office authorities, and praying for a committee of inquiry on the subject. Sir James Graham, who was then Home Secretary, said that power was given to the Secretary of State by statute to open letters passing through the Post Office, and he had given his warrant in the case of one of the petitioners accordingly. Sir Robert Peel defended the action of his colleague, by saying that Fox and Grenville had exercised the same power. There was a strong feeling in the House, however, against it, and a motion which virtually amounted to want of confidence in the Ministry was defeated only by 206 against 162. Eventually the Government agreed to the appointment of secret committees of both Houses to inquire into and report upon the subject. It appeared from the reports presented that the power in question was exercised under the statute 9th Anne, cap. 10, which directs that no letters sent by post should be opened or delayed without an express warrant under the hand of one of the principal Secretaries of State ; and 1st Victoria, cap. 36, which contains a similar direction. The Lords' committee reported that 182 warrants had been issued since 1822, and added that " the issue of six or seven warrants annually upon a circulation of 220 millions of letters cannot be regarded as materially interfering with the sanctity of private correspondence." The Commons' committee found that " the last two warrants rested on grounds connected with the personal safety of a foreign sovereign (the Emperor of Russia) intrusted to the protection of England," and added, " It appears to your committee that under circumstances so peculiar, even a slight suspicion of danger would justify a minister in taking extraordinary measures of precaution." Infor- mation obtained from some of the opened letters, respecting an intended insurrection in Italy, was found by both committees to have been commu- nicated to a foreign power, but "it was not (added the Commons) of a nature to compromise the safety of any individual within reach of that 254 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. power, nor was it made known to that power by what means that informa- tion had been obtained." The matter excited great commotion in the country, and for some time afterwards envelopes and seals, with such mottoes as " Not for Sir James Graham," were commonly exhibited for sale. Disposing of " Hansard." In 1846 Sir James Graham had made up his mind to defend a Corn Law no more. Sentence after sentence and phrase upon phrase, which had fallen from him in the heat of rhetorical indiscretion in the days when he sat on the left of the Speaker's chair, were now dug up out of " Hansard," and flung at him by exasperated Protectionists, amid the angry cheers of those around him, and the loud laughter of those opposite. But he had anticipated this, and had made up his mind how to deal with it. When challenged by Mr. Stafford to say whether or not he had changed his opinion, he replied, " I freely admit that past declarations of opinions made by members of the House who have subsequently arrived at power, or who aspire to power, much more the declarations made by the First Minister of the Crown, if at all at variance with the course which he has subsequently pursued, are subjects worthy of reference, and which call for explanation. The honourable member for Northamptonshire made a direct appeal to the Government, and challenged us, if we had changed our opinions, manfully to own it. I answer that challenge. I do frankly avow my change of opinion, and by that avowal I dispose of whole volumes of 'Hansard/ and of all the charges which have been made on the ground of inconsistency." Torrens. Altered Circumstances. When addressing the House one even- ing on the oft-debated subject of the connection between the r'ate of wages and the price of food, Sir James reiterated his declaration that experience had convinced him that the former had a constant tendency to rise as the latter fell. Lord George Bentinck, who was sitting on the front Opposi- tion bench below him, threw back his head, and looking round at him exclaimed, " Ah ! yes ; but you know you said the other thing before." A shout of laughter, in which Sir James joined, was followed by cheers and counter-cheers, and curiosity was on tip-toe for the retort. From his perch, as he used to call it, the ex-minister looked down at his noble antagonist, and said, in a tone of ineffable humour, " The noble lord's taunts fall harmless upon me ; I am not in office now." Ibid. Curliness and Sarcasm. On the vote of want of confidence which defeated Lord Derby's Ministry in 1859, Mr. Disraeli referred to a speech Sir James Graham had made at Carlisle during the recent general election, while introducing a young relative as a candidate for that borough. He affected to understand Sir James's remarks, when he read them, as coming from this young candidate, and said : " When I read that charge upon the Ministry, which, I was told, was to be the basis of a vote of want of confidence, and which was made without the slightest founda- tion, and with a bitterness which seemed to me to be perfectly gratuitous, I naturally said, ' Young men will be young men.' Youth will be, as we all know, somewhat reckless in assertion, and when we are juvenile and DANIEL O'CONNELL. 255 curly, one takes a pride in sarcasm and invective. One feels some interest in a young relative of a distinguished member of this House; and, although the statements were not very agreeable to her Majesty's Ministers, I felt that he was a chip of the old block. I felt and I hope my colleagues share in the sentiment that when that young gentleman entered this House, he might, when gazing upon the venerable form and listening to the accents of benignant wisdom that fell, and always fall, from the right honourable gentleman the member for Carlisle (laughter) he might learn how reckless assertion in time might mature into accuracy of statement and how bitterness and invective, however organic, can be controlled by the vicissitudes of a wide experience " (much laughter). Sir James replied to this a few nights afterwards : " The right honourable gentleman remarked upon the mild influences of age, presenting in his own person a contradiction to the Horatian maxim, ' Lenit albescens animos capillus,' because he was an illustra- tion of the fact that one might lose one's curls and still retain one's taste for sarcasm. . . The right honourable gentleman will pardon me if I express to him an opinion. I regard him as the Bed Indian of debate. By the use of the tomahawk he has cut his way to power, and by a recurrence to the scalping system he hopes to prevent the loss of it" (cheers and laughter). DANIEL O'CONNELL. (17751847.) Introduction of the Repeal Question. The year 1834 was rendered remarkable by the introduction of the Repeal question into the House of Commons. O'Connell told me (says Mr. Daunt) he was forced to take this step bitterly against his will. " I felt," said he, " like a man who was going to jump into a cold bath; but I was obliged to take the plunge." A Wonderful Shower of Rain. In the session of 1833 (writes his son) a speech of Mr. Daniel O'Connell's, upon an Irish question of considerable interest and importance, was not only grievously abbre- viated (by the reporter), but the sense of it entirely perverted in several passages. As I recollect, it was a speech on the then very exciting and difficult subject of the tithes of the Protestant Church in Ireland ; and Mr. O'Connell, among other things, was made to say that he would vote in a certain way on the immediate point under consideration, " although it was directly in the teeth of all his former opinions on the subject ! " On his bringing the matter before the House under the usual form of a " Breach of Privilege," and making complaint of being thus treated, the defence set up by the reporter was that, during his walk from the House to the newspaper office, the rain, which was falling heavily at the time, had most unfortunately streamed into his pocket and washed out the notes he had made of Mr. O'Connell's speech. Upon which the latter remarked that it was the most extraordinary shower of rain he had ever heard of, inasmuch as it had not only washed out the speech he did make, but had washed in another, and an entirely different one. 256 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. " Beastly Bellowings." Macaulay writes in his Journal, June 11, 1840 : " The House was engaged upon Stanley's Irish Registration Bill. The night was very stormy. I have never seen such unseemly demeanour, or heard such scurrilous language in Parliament. Lord Norreys was whist- ling, and making all sort of noises. Lord Maidstone was so ill-mannered that I hope he was drunk. At hist, after much grossly indecent conduct, a furious outbreak took place. O'Connell was so rudely interrupted that he used the expression ' beastly bellowings.' Then rose such an uproar as no O. P. mob at Covent Garden Theatre, no crowd of Chartists in front of a hustings, ever equalled. Men on both sides stood up, shook their fists, and bawled at the top of their voices. Freshfield, who was in the chair, was quite unable to keep the smallest order. O'Connell raged like a mad bull ; and our people I for one while regretting and condemning his violence, thought it was much extenuated by the provocation. . . A short and most amusing scene passed between O'Connell and Lord Maidstone, which in the tumult escaped the observation of many, but which I watched carefully. ' If,' said Lord Maidstone, ' the word beastly is retracted, I shall be satisfied. If not, I shall not be satisfied.' ' I do not care whether the noble lord be satisfied or not.' ' I wish you would give me satisfaction.' ' I advise the noble lord to carry his liquor meekly.' At last the tumult ended from absolute physical weariness. It was past one, and the steady bellowers of the Opposition had been howling from six o'clock with little interruption." His Duel with D'Esterre. O'Connell was not sufficiently guarded in his language when speaking of other men, and on one occasion some one opposite to him said, " Such language might provoke a duel." " Oh, no," remarked O'Connell, pointing to one of his hands with the other; " there's too much blood upon this hand already." I heard him say this, and the effect, as he suited the action to the word, was very great. Professor Pry me. O'Connell here referred to the incident of his duel with D'Esterre, which is thus related by Phillips : " In one of his many mob-speeches, O'Connell called the Corporation of Dublin a ' beggarly corporation.' A gentleman named D'Esterre affected to feel this as a personal affront, he being one of that very numerous body, and accordingly fastened a quarrel on the offender. It is quite true that O'Connell endeavoured to avoid the encounter. But he did not do enough. He should have summoned D'Esterre before the tribunal of the country, after failing to appease him by a repeated declaration that he meant him no personal offence, and could not, he being a total stranger to him. How- ever, on the occasion in question ho showed a total absence of what is vulgarly called fear; indeed, his fixed determination was remarkable. Let those who read the following anecdote remember that he most re- luctantly engaged in the combat ; that he was then the father of seven children; and that it was an alternative of life or death with him, D'Esterre being reputed an unerring marksman. Being one of those who accompanied O'Connell, he beckoned me aside to a distant portion of the very largo field, which had a slight covering of snow. ' Phillips,' said he to me, ' this seems not a personal, but a political affair. I am obnoxious DANIEL O'CONNELL. 257 to a party, and they adopt a false pretence to cut me off. I shall not submit to it. They have reckoned without their host, I promise you. I am one of the best shots in Ireland at a mark, having, as a public man, considered it a duty to prepare, for my own protection, against such un- provoked aggression as the present. Now remember what I say to you. I may be struck myself, and then skill is out of the question ; but if I am not, my antagonist will have cause to regret his having forced me into this conflict.' The parties were then very soon placed on the ground, at, I think, twelve paces distance ; each having a case of pistols, with directions to fire when they chose, after a given signal. D'Esterre rather agitated himself by making a short speech, disclaiming all hostility to his Roman Catholic countrymen, and took his ground, somewhat theatrically, crossing his pistols upon his bosom. They fired almost together, and instantly on the signal. D'Esterre fell, mortally wounded. There was the greatest self-possession displayed by both." Wanted, a Bellman. At the Clare election, to the horror (says Phillips) of Yesey Fitzgerald, the rival candidate and a member of the then administration, Daniel, with the aid of his priests, polled tenant against landlord. Vesey, a lord in embryo, could not stand it, and he fled. Next day was a great day for Daniel. Priest, curate, coadjutor, bishop he who, with no franchise, had voted notwithstanding ; and he who, having one, had voted very often the whole available population, .the pure children of nature as he called them, and some of them most justly, hailed their champion as he shouted from the hustings, " Boys, where's Vasy Vigarald ? Och hone, Vasy, but it's me that's dull without ye. JRlghi, mavourneen ! rigJii,* and send the bell about for him. Here's the cry for you ' Stolen or strayed, Lost or mislaid, The President of the Board of Trade.' " Scorning Advantage. During a Dublin election, where Mr. West was a candidate, O'Connell resorted to his nicknames, and " sow West " and " ugly West " were lavished liberally. " Gentlemen," said West, good humouredly, " Mr. O'Connell takes advantage of me, for he wears a wig." " I scorn all advantage," exclaimed Daniel, casting off the orna- ment, and exhibiting a scalp literally without a hair between it and heaven " I scorn all advantage ; compare us now, boys ; is sow West the beauty? " Curran and Ms Contemporaries. An Unexpected Opponent. Fagan, in his "Life and Times of O'Connell," relates an incident that occurred during the canvass of the constituency of the county of Kerry, when the " Liberator's " nephew was a candidate for the representation. Daniel spoke from the balcony of the Chamber of Commerce in Tralee one day, and opposite him were the committee rooms of the Knight of Kerry. In the midst of a very powerful speech a donkey suddenly began to bray. The effect was most ludicrous. Every man, woman, and child, tittered, while the Conserva- " Bun. darling ! run I" 18 258 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. tive gentlemen roared aloud. Placid and collected, however, O'Connell looked aronnd. A suiilo lighted up his face, and, raising his voice to its fullest pitch, he cried out, " Hear him ! hear him, boys ! 'tis the chairman of the Knight of Kerry's committee." Parodies. Some of O'Connell's parodies and poetical applications iu debate (remarks Phillips) caught the humour of the House, and were con- sidered felicitous. Amongst these was his sneer at the smallness of Lord Stanley's personal adherents after some general election : " Thus down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides The Derby dilly, carrying six insides." His celebrated parody on three members of Parliament, Colonels Sibthorp, Perceval, and Yerner, was extremely ready, and produced a roar : " Three colonels, in three distant counties born, Lincoln, Armagh, and Sligo did adorn. The first in matchless impudence surpassed, The next in bigotry in both, the last. The force of Nature could no further go To beard the third, she shaved the other two." Two of these gentlemen looked as if they never needed a razor, and the third (Sibthorp) as if he repudiated one. Jupiter Relenting. The following is related by Phillips, as illus- trative of the arbitrary disposition of the great Repealer : " On a matter of parliamentary inquiry, on which I had quite as much experience as himself, our judgments differed, and I fared accordingly. No one could ever tell, however, when the storm might arise ; but he had it ready, and often nursed it in smiles. After walking down with me to the House of Commons one evening, arm-in-arm, as friendly as possible, he vehemently assailed me on the subject alluded to. He refused to retract. No alter- native was left but to right myself, which was done in a way by no means to his satisfaction. After my excellent friend Colonel Perceval, in his place in Parliament, read my letter of reply, Daniel fell into one of his paroxysms. ' The gallant member,' said he, ' may now congratulate him- self on having severed a friendship of twenty-five years' standing.' Friendship indeed ! His translation of the idem velle et idem nolle must have been a curiosity. For six months and upwards, when we met, his look was a wild glare. At last it pleased his Jupitership to relent. Ho walked up to me one day in the Reform Club, in high good humour : ' Charles, shake hands ; I'm tired not speaking to you. I forgive you ! ' " The Mob Orator. The following allusion to O'Connell is to bo found in Lord Lytton's " St. Stephen's " : " Had that fierce railer sprung from English sires, His creed a Protestant's, his birth a squire's, No blander Pollio, whom our Bar affords, Had graced the woolsack and cajoled ' my Lords.' Pass by bis faults, his art be here allow'd Mighty as Chatham, give him but a crowd ; Hear him in senates, second-rate at best, DANIEL O'CONNELL. 259 Clear in a statement, happy in a jest ; Sought he to shine, then certain to displease ; Tawdry yet coarse-grain' d, tinsel upon frieze. His Titan strength must touch what gave it birth ; Hear him to mobs, and on his mother earth !" And the poet thus records his own observation of the power of O'Connell's voice over an immense crowd : " Methought no clarion could have sent its sound Even to the centre of the hosts around ; And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell, As from some church-tower swings the silvery bell. Aloft and clear, from airy tide to tide, It glided, easy as a bird may glide ; To the hist verge of that vast audience sent, It play'd with each wild passion as it went ; Now stirr'd the uproar, now the murmur still' d And sobs or laughter answer'd as it will'd. " Then did I know what spells of infinite choice, To rouse or lull, has the sweet human voice ; Then did I seem to seize the sudden clue To the grand troublous Life Antique to view. Tinder the rock-stand of Demosthenes, Mutable Athena heave her noisy seas." The Last Speech. On the 3rd of April, 1846 (writes Mr. Disraeli in his "Life of Bentinck") Mr. O'Connell had announced that he should state his views at length on the condition of Ireland. Accor- dingly, when the order of the day for resuming the adjourned debate (on the Irish Coercion Bill) was read, he rose at once to propose an amend- ment to the motion. He sat in an unusual place, in that generally occupied by the leader of the Opposition, and spoke from the red box, convenient to him from the number of documents to which he had to refer. His appearance was of great debility, and the tones of his voice were very still. His words, indeed, only reached those who were imme- diately around him, and the ministers sitting on the other side of the green table, and listening with that interest and respectful attention which became the occasion. It was a strange and touching spectacle to those who remembered the form of colossal energy, and the clear and thrilling tones that had once startled, disturbed, and controlled senates. Mr. O'Connell was on his legs for nearly two hours, assisted occasionally in the management of his documents by some devoted aide-de-camp. To the House generally it was a performance in dumb show, a feeble old man muttering before a table ; but respect for the great parliamentary personage kept all as orderly as if the fortunes of a party hung upon his rhetoric ; and though not an accent reached the gallery, means were taken that next morning the country should not lose the last and not the least interesting of the speeches of one who had so long occupied and agitated the mind of nations. 260 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. EIOHAED LALOB SHEIL. (17941851.) The Grave of a Government. Professor Pryine says: "Mr. Sheil was distinguished, like O'Connell, by his advocacy of a repeal of the Union, and was one of the most eloquent and impressive speakers in the Parliament (1835). On a motion respecting Ireland, during Peel's short administration, he said that the grievances of that country had been fatal to several Governments, and ' even now,' pointing with bended form to that space of the floor which lies before the Treasury bench, ' have dug the grave that is yawning before the present one.' The sensation which his action and his figure created was so intense that we were almost tempted to look if there were not a chasm in the place he pointed to. He spoke with prophetic lore." A Burst of Patriotism. One of his most remarkable and beauti- ful outbursts of nationality (writes Francis) was in 1837, in his celebrated attack on Lord Lyndhurst for his " alien " speech. Alluding to the alleged charge that the Irish were aliens in blood and religion, he delivered this magnificent burst : " Where was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, when these words were uttered? Methinks he should have started up to disclaim them. ' The battles, sieges, fortunes that he'd passed,' ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperishable from Assaye to Waterloo the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies were filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparal- leled successes have been crowned. Whose were the athletic arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war before ? What desperate valour climbed the steeps and filled the moats of Badajos ? All, all his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera, Toulouse and, last of all, the greatest. Tell me, for you were there I appeal to the gallant soldier before me (pointing to Sir Henry Hardinge), who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while death fell in showers upon them ; when the artillery of France, levelled with the precision of the most deadly science, played upon them ; when her legions, incited by the voice, inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the contest ; tell me if, for an instant (when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost), the ' aliens ' blanched ? And when, at length, the moment for the last decisive movement had arrived ; when the valour, so long wisely checked, was at last let loose ; when, with words familiar but immortal, the great captain exclaimed, ' Up, lads, and at them ! ' tell me if Catholic Ireland with less heroic valour than the natives of your own glorious isle precipitated herself upon the foe P The blood of England, RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 261 Scotland, Ireland flowed in the same stream, on the same field ; when the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together ; in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green arm of spring is now breaking on their commingled dust ; the dew falls from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not participate ? And shall we be told, as a requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our lifeblood was poured out ? " The effect produced by this passage will not be easily forgotten. The. passionate vehemence of the speaker and the mournful music of his voice were a living echo to the deep emotions with which his soul seemed charged. Shell and Feargns O'Connor. Towards the end of March, 1848 (writes Torrens), considerable apprehensions were entertained regarding the effect of certain writings and speeches addressed to the working classes then suffering severely from want of employment by Mr. Feargus O'Connor. Meeting him one day in the lobby of the House of Commons, Mr. Sheil drew him aside, and expostulated with him in a friendly but warning tone on the mischief he might heedlessly do to others as well as to himself. Remonstrance appearing to prove ineffectual, he said at length, in low but monitory accents, " Well, you will take your own course ; but remember, I tell you as a friend, the Home Office has its eye upon you, and you may regret when too late your unwillingness to take prudent advice." " Oh ! " exclaimed O'Connor, raising his voice, " this comes well from the Right Honourable Richard Lalor Sheil, whom I once heard on the hustings when he was only, like myself, a plain honourable gentle- mantell the people what their rights were, and that if after due demand they could not get them by peaceful and constitutional means, he would not be found to shrink from leading them when other efforts must be tried." " But did you never hear," said Mr. Sheil, " what the people said to me afterwards ? They told me that they knew very well that I had no more notion of taking up arms, or leading them to the field, than Feargus O'Connor." An Appeal for the Jews. In the second reading of the Bill for removing Jewish disabilities, introduced by Lord John Russell's Govern- ment in 1848, Mr. Sheil made the following appeal in its favour : " There have been repeated references in this House to the author of the ' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' but I think that a name still more illustrious might have been cited. Was not Bolingbroke, the fatally accomplished Bolingbroke, to whose genius were offered tributes amount- ing almost to idolatrous veneration was not Bolingbroke, who united to external accomplishment high intellectual endowments, and whose inter- course in private life exercised a species of fascination on all who had the misfortune to approach him was not Bolingbroke, the infidel Bolingbroke, a member of this House ? Was he stopped by the test which arrested the Jew ? Did he not, on the contrary, tread upon it, and mount to the height of power, and become a confidential adviser of the Sovereign ? Is it not preposterous that a man by whom revelation was rejected, who doubted the immortality of the soul, who doubted a future state of reward and 262 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. punishment, who doubted eternity and providence, who believed nothing, who feared nothing, who hoped for nothing, who laid no restraint upon his depravity, who had no incentive to virtue beyond such natural prompt- ings as God may have given him is it not monstrous that such a fiend should find his way into the House of Commons, and climb to the pinnacle of power, and that you should slap the door with indignation in the face of an honourable and conscientious man, who adheres to the religion in which he was born and bred of a man who believes in the facts which consti- tute the foundation of Christianity, who believes in the existence of the noble part of our being, who believes in the mercies of God and who practises humanity to man, who believes in the ten great injunctions on which all morality is based, whose ear is never deaf to the supplications of the suffering, whose hand is open as day to melting charity, and whose life perhaps presents a better exemplification of the precepts of the Gospel than any ^of those men, for the sake of whose Christian religion the dishonouring disabilities are injuriously maintained P " LORD JOHN (EAEL) KUSSELL. (17921878.) A Host in Himself. Walking, says Samuel Rogers, some years ago (about 1838 or 1839) through the Park with the Duke of Wellington, I said to him, among other things, " What an array there is in the House of Commons against Lord John Russell Peel, Stanley, Graham, &c. ! " " Lord John," replied the Duke, " is a host in himself." His Introduction of the Reform Bill. Earl Russell gave, in the introduction to his " Speeches," the following account of the effect produced in Parliament by the provisions of the first Reform Bill : " So little were the opposite party prepared for the Bill, that a few days before the 1st of March, 1831, Sir Robert Peel, in a careful speech, derided what had been done on the subjects of peace and retrenchment, and predicted that when the plan of Reform should be developed, it would occasion dis- appointment by the meagreness of its proportions and the trifling nature of the changes recommended. The effect, therefore, of the revelations of the 1st of March was astounding. . . It was no wonder that this proposition, when placed boldly and baldly before the House of Commons, created feelings of astonishment, mingled with joy or with consternation, according to the temper of the hearers. Mr. John Smith, himself a member for a nomination borough, said the proposal took away his breath. Some, perhaps many, thought that the measure was a prelude to civil war, which, in point of fact, it averted. But incredulity was the prevailing feeling, both among the moderate Whigs and the great mass of the Tories. The Radicals alone were delighted and triumphant. Mr. Joseph Hume, when I met him in the streets a day or two afterwards, assured me of his hearty support to the Government. He said on another subject, in a public speech, that he was ready to vote black white in order to carry the measure of Reform. Lord Durham, who was sitting under the gallery on the 1st of March, told me he was inclined to doubt EARL RUSSELL. 263 the reality of what was passing before his eyes. A noble lord who sat opposite to me, and who has long ago succeeded to a seat in the House of Lords, cheered me so vociferously that I was myself inclined to doubt his meaning. I found afterwards that his cheers were meant derisively, to show his thorough conviction of the absurdity and impracticability of my proposals." Lord Broughton in his " Recollections " says : " Never shall I forget the astonishment of my neighbours as Lord John Russell developed his plan. Indeed, all the House seemed perfectly astounded; and when he read the long list of the boroughs to be either wholly or partially disfranchised, there was a sort of wild ironical laughter. Lord John seemed rather to play with the fears of his audience ; and, after detailing some clauses that seemed to complete the scheme, smiled and paused, and said, ' More yet.' When Lord John sat down, we of the Mountain cheered long and loud, although there was hardly one of us that believed such a scheme could, by any possibility, become the law of the land." "Finality" in Reform. In June, 1837, Lord John Russell observed of the Reform Act, in the House of Commons, " Her Majesty's Ministers, while they consider it a final measure, do not intend that it should remain a barren Act upon the statute-book, but that it should be followed up in such a manner as would ennoble, invigorate, and enlarge the institutions of the country." The name " Finality John " was frequently applied to his lordship after this declaration ; but in 1849, in the course of a debate on certain proposals connected with the Charter, Lord John denied having ever used the word " finality " in the sense imputed to him. Upsetting the Coach. The satirist's portrait of Lord John Russell, in the following lines from Lytton's " New Tiinon," becomes far from uncomplimentary at its close : " Next cool, and all unconscious of reproach, Comes the calm ' Johnny who upset the coach.'* How form'd to lead, if not too proud to please His fame would fire you, but his manners freeze. Like or dislike, he does not care a jot ; He wants your vote, but your affection not. Yet human hearts need sun, as well as oats, So cold a climate plays the deuce with votes. And while his doctrines ripen day by day, His frost-nipp'd party pines itself away ; * A note is added here : " Lord Stanley's memorable exclamation on a certain occasion which now belongs to history ' Johnny's upset the coach.' Never was coach upset with such perfect sang-froid on the part of the driver." The "coach" in question was the Ministry of Earl Grey, in 1834. The exclamation was hastily scribbled on a piece of paper, and passed to Sir James Graham. The story went that Sir James slipped this paper into his pocket ; it was found there the same night by his valet, who carried it to the Times office, and in this way the ministerial crisis oozed out to the public. This story, how- ever, has been denied. 264 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. From the starved wretch its own loved child we steal, And ' Free Trade ' chirrups on the lap of Peel ! Bat see oar statesman when the steam is on, And languid Johnny glows to glorious John ! When Hampden's thought, by Falkland's muses dress'd, Lights the pale cheek, and swells the generous breast ; When the pent heat expands the quickening soul, And foremost in the race the wheels of genius roll !" Mind Triumphing over Matter. Here is another picture of Lord John Russell, by an acute observer (Mr. Maddyn) : " His outward form was frail and weakly ; his countenance sicklied over with the effects of ill health and solitary self -communing ; his figure shrunken below the dimensions of ordinary manhood ; his general air that of a meditative invalid. But within that feeble body was a spirit that knew not how to cower, a brave heart that could pulsate vehemently with large and heroical emotions, a soul that aspired to live nobly in a proud and right manly career. His voice was weak, his accent mincing with affectation, his elocution broken, stammering, and uncertain, save when in a few lucky moments his tongue seemed unloosed, and there came rushing from his lips a burst of epigrammatic sentences logical, eloquent, and terse, and occasionally vivified by the fire of genius. Then would his right hand convulsively be clenched, his head proudly thrown back, the outline of his face become rigid and drawn, and the small form seem to dilate, while the cheek would blanchen with moral excitement, as the ecstacy of applauding partizans made the walls of the Senate ring with echoing cheers." Occasional Sparks. The speeches of Lord John Russell, as a rule, show few spai'kles of the genius which the literary portraits just referred to, like all contemporary impressions, recognise so freely. The wit and brilliancy which Lord John Russell undoubtedly possessed appear to have been deliberately and entirely subordinated to a staid, methodical way of dealing with parliamentary business, and to a sense of ministerial respon- sibility. It was often a momentary flash which alone revealed the full light within. This latent power was shown at times in unexpected repartee ; and one of the most telling retorts ever uttered in either House of Parliament was made by Lord John when Sir Francis Burdett, after turning from Radical to Tory, thought proper to sneer at the " cant of patriotism." " I quite agree," said Lord John, " with the honourable baronet that the cant of patriotism is a bad thing. But I can tell him a worse the recant of patriotism which I will gladly go along with him in reprobating whenever he shows me an example of it." Equal Rights. In a speech in the House of Commons in May, 1830, Lord John Russell thus opposed the idea of universal suffrage : " Considering our system considering our monarchy and our House of Lords, and remembering the state of property in this country, I do -not think that the exercise of universal suffrage could end otherwise than in a collision that would produce either a Commonwealth on the one hand, or an absolute Monarchy on the other. Mr. Fox, however violent he might be in opposition to, or in pursuit of, a particular measure, yet pre- EARL RV8SELL. 265 served a high degree of moderation in the most stormy times. When Mr. Fox was speaking of the doctrines of equality, so much in fashion at the time of the French Revolution, he said, ' I too, Sir, am for equality. I think that men are entitled to equal rights, but to equal rights to unequal things.' To that observation, Sir, I adhere. I think that if universal suffrage were introduced, equal rights to unequal things could not in the long-run be maintained." " Conservatives " and " Reformers." During the election of a new Parliament which followed the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, Lord John Russell, in addressing the electors of Stroud, thus referred to the suggested abolition of the terms Whig and Tory, and the adoption by the latter party of the then new term Conservative : " If they are really and truly conservatives as regards the general institutions of the country, no name is deserving of more adherents, or would meet with more general approval ; but with them it is a mere change of name, a mere alias to persons who do not like to be known under their former designation, and who under the name of Conservatives mean to be conservative only of every abuse of everything that is rotten of everything that is corrupt. If that, then, is the name that pleases them if they say that the distinction of Whig and Tory should no longer be kept up I am ready, in opposition to their name of Conservative, to take the name of Reformer, and to stand by that opposition. And in looking back to history, taking their sense of the denomination of Conservative, I think one may be as proud of the name of Reformer as they can be of the name of Conservative. What was Luther ? Luther was a Reformer. Leo the Tenth, who opposed the Reformation, was a Conservative. What was Galileo? Galileo, who made great discoveries in science, was a Reformer. The Inquisition, who put him into prison, was Conservative. So, in the same way, with respect to every part of history, we find that in all times and in all countries there have been Reformers and Conservatives. The Christians who suffered martyrdom in Rome were Reformers. The Emperor who put these Christians to death, Nero, was a Conservative." The Ecclesiastical Titles Act. " No Popery." Earl Russell thus commented in his " Recollections " upon this Act, which was passed in 1851 : " The object of that bill was merely to assert the supremacy of the Crown. It was never intended to prosecute any Roman Catholic bishops who did not act in glaring and ostentatious defiance of the Queen's title to the Crown. Accordingly, a very clever artist represented me in a caricature as a boy who had chalked up ' No Popery ' upon a wall and then run away. This was a very fair joke. In fact, I wanted to place the assertion of the Queen's title to appoint bishops on the statute-book and there leave it. I kept in the hands of the Crown the discretion to pro- secute or not any offensive denial of the Queen's rights. My purpose was fully answered. Those who wished to give the Pope the right of appoint- ing bishops in England opposed the bill. When my object had been gained, I had no objection to the repeal of the Act." " Factions Combination." After the defeat of Lord Derby's Government in 1852, and the formation of the " Coalition Ministry " by 266 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. the Earl of Aberdeen, Lord John Russell (Secretary for Foreign Affairs) thus defended himself and his colleagues, before the electors of London, from the charge of factious combination : " If an omnibus, with some dozen passengers, were seen going down Ludgate-hill at a furious pace, and breaking into the shop windows, and injuring everybody that was going by, why, every man would concur the men that were going east- ward and the men that were going westward all would concur in stopping that omnibus, and telling the coachman to get off his box. And how much surprised would all those passengers, with the policeman at their head, be if the coachman were to say, ' Why, this is a factious combination. Tou, gentlemen, are going some of you one way and some another, and yet you have all combined to prevent me driving my omnibus into the shops.' Such, however, was the charge made against us a charge, however, which I think you will say we need not be very much concerned at." "Peace with Honour." On receiving an address at Greenock, in September, 1853, Lord John Russell spoke of the duty that devolved on this country to endeavour to secure the rights of nations by peace, if possible, and added : " But while we endeavour to maintain peace, I certainly should be the last to forget that if peace cannot be maintained with honour, it is no longer peace. It becomes then but a truce a pre- carious truce, to be denounced by others whenever they may think fit whenever they may think that an opportunity has occurred to enforce by arms their unjust demands either upon us or upon our allies. I trust that so long as I can bear any part in the public councils of this kingdom such will be my sentiments." Dangerous People. Earl Russell writes : " When we first heard of the seizure of the two Confederate commissioners on board the 'Trent' (in 1861), Lord Palmerston asked me privately what wo should do. I answered shortly, quoting what Grattan said with reference to another power, and on another occasion, ' The United States' Government are very dangerous people to run away from.' " Public Justice. In May, 1854, Mr. Disraeli made a speech in the House of Commons animadverting severely on the general management of affairs by the Aberdeen Ministry, and in the course of it taunted Lord John Russell with having joined that Ministry " without a department," and " condescending to accept subordinate office under an ancient and inveterate political opponent." Lord John, in reply, defended his present connection with the Earl of Aberdeen, and expressed his confidence in his colleagues, adding : " Should I be of opinion that the conduct of the war is not safe in the hands of the present Government that the Govern- ment is not carrying on the war with the vigour which makes war successful, and with a view to a peace which alone could be safe and honourable from that moment I should cease to be a member of it. But, Sir, considering that that is the great and pressing question of the country, no taunts of the right honourable gentleman would make me leave the Government with which I am connected a position, God knows, of more labour and anxiety than of any pleasure, profit, or omolu- EARL RUSSELL. 267 merit. I repeat that, unless I were convinced that the present Govern- ment was more likely than any government which could be formed to carry on the war successfully, and to conclude it by an honourable peace, I should cease to be one of its members ; but so long as I have that opinion, I shall trust to the House and to the country for putting a fair interpretation upon my conduct. I rely upon that justice which hardly ever fails to construe rightly the actions of public men." " The Young Man from Northampton." At the general elec- tion of 1857, a new candidate, of Northampton connections, was nominated by the Registration Association of the City of London to stand with other commercial men, to the exclusion of Lord John Russell. His lordship, in addressing the electors, made the following observations on this point : " If a gentleman were disposed to part with his butler, his coachman, or his gamekeeper or if a merchant were disposed to part with an old servant, a warehouseman, a clerk, or even a porter he would say to him, ' John (laughter), I think your faculties are somewhat decayed ; you are growing old ; you have made several mistakes ; and I think of putting a young man from Northampton in your place.' (Laughter and cheers.) I think a gentleman would behave in that way to his servant, and thereby give John an opportunity of answering that he thought his faculties were not so much decayed, and that he was able to go on at all events some five or six years longer. That opportunity was not given to me. The question was decided in my absence, without any intimation to me, and I come now to ask you and the citizens of London to reverse that decision." The electors did so, Lord John being again returned in company with his former colleagues. " Rest and be Thankful." Earl Russell was entertained to dinner at Blairgowrie on the 26th of September, 1863, when, replying to the toast " Her Majesty's Ministers," he said : " With regard to domestic policy, I think we are all pretty much agreed, because the feeling of the country, and of those who have conducted great reforms, is very much like that of the man who, having made a road in your own highlands, put a, stone on the top of the mountain with an inscription, ' Rest and be thank- ful.' That seems to be very much like our feeling ; not that there are not other roads to make and other mountains to climb. But it seems to be the feeling of the country, in which I cannot help joining, that our policy is rather to ' rest and be thankful ' than to make new roads." Talent in the Lords. " When a great question arises (says Earl Russell) which requires a display of more than ordinary knowledge of history, more accurate learning, more constitutional lore, and more practical wisdom than is to be found in the usual debates of Parliament, I know not where ' the general debate, The popular harangue, the tart reply, The logic and the wisdom and the wit,' are to be found in greater perfection than among the prelates on the episcopal bench, the peers of three centuries of nobility, and the recent occupants of the woolsack '* 268 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Precious Possessions. When the Reform Bill of the Aberdeen Ministry, of which Lord John Russell had charge in the House of Commons, was withdrawn in 1854, his lordship received one of the highest compliments ever offered by a political opponent. Mr. Disraeli said : " Although it has been my fate to be always seated opposite to the noble lord, I can say, most sincerely, that no one in this House has a more heartfelt respect for the noble lord than I have. I think his character and career are precious possessions of the House of Commons, and I am sure that the members of this House will always cherish them. Wherever the noble lord sits, I am sure he will be accompanied by the respect of every member of this House ; and I think the manner in which to-night he has made what was evidently a painful communication is in every way worthy of the noble lord's character." Earl Russell's Judgment on Himself. To speak of my own work, I can only rejoice that I have been allowed to have my share in the task accomplished in the half century which has elapsed from 1819 to 1869. My capacity, I always felt, was very inferior to that of the men who have attained in past times the foremost place in our Parliament, and in the councils of our Sovereign. I have committed many errors, some of them very gross blunders. But the generous people of England are always forbearing and forgiving to those statesmen who have the good of their country at heart. Like my betters, I have been misrepresented and slandered by those who know nothing of me ; but I have been more than compensated by the confidence and the friendship of the best men of my own political connection, and by the regard and favourable interpretation of my motives which I have heard expressed by my generous opponents, from the days of Lord Castlereagh to those of Mr. Disraeli. Introduction to " Speeches." LORD PALMEESTON. (17841865.) Entrance into Parliament. The first constituency Lord Palmer- ston aspired to represent in the House of Commons was that of the University of Cambridge, for which he was nominated in 1806, and again in 1807, but proved on both occasions unsuccessful. The earlier of these events is alluded to by Byron, in " Hours of Idleness," in the following doggerel stanza : " Then would I view each rival wight, Petty and Palmerston survey, Who canvass there, with all their might, Against the next elective day." His lordship, however, was returned for the borough of Newport (I.W.) at the general election in 1807, but his name does not occur in " Hansard " as a speaker till the following year. In his " Autobiography " ho wrote respecting his return : " I came into Parliament for Newtown in the Isle of Wight, a borough of Sir Leonard Holmes'. One condition required was that I would never, even for the election, set foot in the place. So jealous LORD PALMERSTON. 269 was the patron lest any attempt should be made to get a new interest in the borough." Early Promotion. Lord Palmerston, soon after his return to Parliament, was made a Junior Lord of the Admiralty in the Duke of Portland's Administration. He had spoken only once in the House, and was but twenty-five years of age, when Mr. Perceval offered him the Chancellorship of the Exchequer in his Government. After consultation with friends, he declined on the ground of his inexperience, and was then offered the Secretaryship at "War an office distinct from the Secre- taryship/or "War, and concerned chiefly in the accounts of the department. He accepted this with reluctance, entering in his Journal: " I have alwavs thought it unfortunate for any one, and particularly a young man, to be put above his proper level, as he only rises to fall the lower." This Secretaryship he continued to hold under various Administrations from 1809 till 1828. Attempt to Assassinate Him. The attempt to assassinate Lord Palmerston is thus related in a letter from the Rev. A. Harris to Lord Fitzharris, given in the Malmesbury Correspondence : " April 8th, 1818. I have just seen Palmerston after this horrible attempt to assassinate him. He has received a contusion upon the backbone, but not a very severe one, and there is not the least reason for alarm. His escape was a very narrow one. The assassin, whose name is Davis, and who had been an officer in Spain, met him upon the staircase at the War Office, and was quite close to him when he fired ; the ball penetrated his coat and waist- coat about the middle of his spine, and glanced off. Palmerston walked on to the room where his secretary was sitting, and told him that he had been shot at, but did not know what injury he had received. Astley Cooper, and another surgeon of the name of Lynn, came imme- diately, and found the flesh upon the backbone contused, but that the ball had not penetrated the skin. The ball was found upon the staircase. The surgeons conveyed Palmerston home. Meanwhile the assassin was seized by two messengers and put into safe custody. Palmerstou told me that he knew him to be mad, and for that reason had declined seeing him, having received two letters lately asking him to do so." Lord Palmer - ston thus jocularly referred to the occurrence in a letter to Lord Malraes- bury a few days afterwards : " After all, I am not half so sore as either Don Quixote or Sancho, upon many occasions in their adventures. . . One comfort is that I shall be recorded in illustrious company, as having had the same escape as the Duke of Wellington and the Regent ; but I have so far the advantage of the latter that my bullet has been found, though, luckily, not in me." Coming to the Front. The following occurs in the " Journal " of C. GreviUe, Clerk of the Council, under date June 11, 1829 : " The event of last week was Palmerston's speech on the Portuguese question, which was delivered at a late hour and to an empty house, but which they say was exceedingly able and eloquent. This is the second he has made this year of great merit. It was very violent against Government. He has been twenty years in office and never distinguished himself before a proof how 270 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. many incidental circumstances are requisite to bring out the talents which a man may possess. The office he held was one of dull and dry detail, and he never travelled out of it. He probably stood in awe of Canning and others, and was never in the Cabinet ; but having lately held higher situa- tions and having acquired more confidence, and the great men having been removed from the House of Commons by death or promotion, he has launched forth, and with astonishing success. Lord Granville told me he had always thought Palmerston was capable of more than he did, and had told Canning so, who did not believe it." A Three-Decker. Canning, however, when Prime Minister, is re- ported to have once spoken with regret of the loss he sustained through the silence of his Secretary at War. " What would I give " he is said to have exclaimed, when wearied with assaults from the Opposition benches " what would I give to get that three-decker, Palmerston, to bear down upon them." A Prophecy. Lord Palmerston foretold not only the free-trade policy of Sir Robert Peel, but also the period of its adoption. Speaking in September, 1841, he said : " The right honourable baronet had said that he was not prepared to declare that he would never propose a change in the Corn Laws, but he certainly should not do so unless at the head of an united Cabinet. Why, looking at the persons who form his administra- tion, he must wait something near five years before he can do it." It is a remarkable coincidence (remarks Francis) that in four years and eight months from the date of this prediction, Sir Robert Peel introduced his measure for the repeal of the Corn Laws. " Off-hand " Debating. In a speech against Sir Robert Peel's Government, in 1842, Lord Palmerston thus referred to Lord Stanley (after- wards Earl of Derby) : " The noble lord the member for North Lancashire is almost the only member of the present Government who, in the course of this session, has said much upon foreign affairs. The noble lord, on the occasion to which I allude, made a very good off-hand speech, for no man is a better off-hand debater than the noble lord. But off-hand debaters are sometimes apt to say whatever may come into their heads on the spur of the moment, without stopping to consider as they would do if they had time whether what they are going to say is strictly consistent with the facts to which it applies. I remember to have heard of a celebrated minister of a foreign country, living about the middle of the last century, who was giving instructions to one of his agents as to the language he should hold in regard to the conduct of another government. The agent, having listened to the instructions, ventured, with great humility and very submissively, to suggest that the language which he was ordered to hold was not strictly consistent with fact, and might indeed be thought to be altogether at variance with fact. What was the minister's answer? ' Never mind that ! What in the world does that signify P It is a good thing to say, and take care you say it.' That minister would, I think, have made not a bad off-hand debater in this House." A Defence of " Restless Activity." In March, 1843, Mr. Roe- buck had moved for a committee to inquire into the causes of war with LORD PALMERSTON. 271 Afghanistan, and had attacked Lord Palmerston, in his capacity as the late Foreign Secretary. His lordship thus replied : " The honourable and learned gentleman did not intend, I am sxire, to have done that which I think he has done, that is, to speak in a complimentary manner of myself as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He stated a fact, and he coupled that fact with an epithet. In doing this, he certainly did not mean to be complimentary ; but I throw the epithet aside, and look only to the statement of fact, which I consider to be complimentary to anyone in the situation which I had the honour to hold. The honourable and learned gentleman accused me of a ' mischievous and restless activity ' in the discharge of my official duties. Now, with regard to the term ' mischievous,' I must take the liberty of saying that the honourable and learned gentleman appears to me to have peculiar notions of what is and what is not mischievous ; and, therefore, he will pardon me for saying that his opinion that my official conduct was mischievous will not disturb the conviction of my mind that it was of a contrary tendency. That there was ' activity ' the honourable and learned gentleman declares ; and we have his unequivocal testimony to the fact. I thank him for that compliment. He says that my ' restless activity encircled the globe.' The sun never sets upon the interests of this country ; and the individual whose duty it is to watch over the foreign relations of this country would not be worthy of his position, if his activity was not commensurate with the extensive range of the great interests that require his attention. That was my position ; the honourable and learned gentleman admits my activity, and I thank him. . . I say, Sir, that our foreign policy was eminently successful ; that we engaged in many great and important transactions ; that those transactions were invariably brought to a conclu- sion according to the views of the British Government ; that although at many periods there was great danger of disturbance to the peace of Europe, yet we endowed, as the honourable and learned gentleman has sneeringly said, with miraculous power of running near the brink of danger, but never into it succeeded in maintaining the peace of Europe." " Old Women." Lord Aberdeen in 1849, in the course of an attack on Lord Palmerston's foreign policy, said that Lord Minto, the British ambassador at Naples, had only been received by the King for the same reason that the old woman of Syracuse acquiesced in the tyranny o Dionysius lest the devil should come next. Lord Palmerston replied to this a few evenings later : " There are men who, having passed their whole lives in adoring the Government of Austria, because they deemed it the great symbol of the opinions which they entertained, at last became fickle in their attachment, and transferred their allegiance to the Govern- ment of France, because they thought that in that Government they saw an almost equal degree of leaning to the arbitrary principle, and because they, forsooth, suspected that Government of designs hostile to the interests of freedom. We have heard of persons of that sort making use of the expression ' old women.' Public men ought not to deal in egotism, and I will not apply to them the expression that has fallen from their own 272 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. mouth. I will only say that the conduct of such men is an example of antiquated imbecility." " Civis Romanus Sum." The celebrated application of this phrase by Lord Palmerston occurred in the House of Commons on the 25th of June, 1850. The occasion was the debate on a vote of confidence in the foreign policy of Lord John Russell's Government, with especial refer- ence to the affairs of Greece. Lord Palmerston, as the minister whose acts were immediately in question, entered into an elaborate defence of his entire foreign policy, and, after speaking for five hours, closed his peroration with a passage which is thus given in " Hansard " : " I con- tend that we have not in our foreign policy done anything to forfeit the confidence of the country. We may not, perhaps, in this matter or in that, have acted precisely up to the opinions of one person or of another and hard indeed it is, as we all know by our individual and private experi- ence, to find any number of men agreeing entirely in any matter on which they may not be equally possessed of the details of the facts, and circumstances, and reasons, and conditions which led to action. But, making allowances for those differences of opinion which may fairly and honourably arise among those who concur in general views, I maintain that the principles which can be traced through all our foreign transac- tions, as the guiding rule and directing spirit of our proceedings, are such as deserve approbation. I therefore fearlessly challenge the verdict which this House, as representing a political, a commercial, a constitutional country, is to give on the question now brought before it whether the principles on which the foreign policy of her Majesty's Government has been conducted, and the sense of duty which has led us to think ourselves bound to afford protection to our fellow-subjects abroad, are proper and fitting guides for those who are charged with the government of England ; and whether, as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he could say Civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong." Sir Robert Peel, although speaking against the vote of confidence, remarked of Lord Palmerston's defence, amid the cheers of the House, " His speech made us all proud of the man who delivered it." The Minister of England. After the House of Lords, in 1850, had passed a vote of censure on the foreign policy of the Russell Adminis- tration, the Premier remarked of his Foreign Secretary, in the debate which ensued in the Commons : " So long as we continue the government of this country, I can answer for my noble friend that he will act, not as the minister of Austria, or as the minister of Russia, or of France, or of any other country, but as the minister of England." The observation was thought, by some, mere tautology ; but it was not so considered by Sir Robert Peel, who thus referred to it on a subsequent evening : " The noble lord said that his noble friend the Secretary for Foreign Affairs would not be the minister of Austria, would not be the minister of Russia, and would not be the minister of France, but would be the minister of England. What was the meaning of that declaration ? The noble lord LORD PALXERSTOir. 273 has too much prudence and discretion to point a sarcasm against three of the greatest powers of Europe ; but he could afford to be very liberal with such weapons when directed against his predecessors. My construction of that passage was, that the noble lord meant to contrast the conduct of the noble lord the member for Tiverton with the conduct of the Earl of Aberdeen." Shooting the Policeman. In the defence of his foreign policy in June, 1850, Lord Palmerston thus referred to an attack which had been made upon him by Sir James Graham with regard to the affairs of Portugal : " Portugal is now in the enjoyment of a constitution, and practically it is working as well as, under all circumstances, and consider- ing how recently it has been established, could perhaps have been expected. ' Oh, but,' said the right honourable baronet, ' you hare Costa Cabral as minister, and your object was to get rid of him.' Now, the fault I find with those who are so fond of attacking me either here or elsewhere, in this country or in others, is that they try to bring down every question to a personal bearing. If they want to oppose the policy^of England, they say, 'Let us get rid of the man who happens to be the organ of that policy.' Why, it is like shooting a policeman. As long as England is England, as long as the English people are animated by the feelings, and spirit, and opinions which they possess, you may knock down twenty foreign ministers one after another, but depend upon it no one will keep his place who does not act upon the same principles. When it falls to my "duty, in pursuance of my functions, to oppose the policy of any Govern- ment, the immediate cry is, ' Oh, it's all spite against this man or that man, Count this or Prince that, that makes yon do this!'" "Judicious Bottle-holding." On the 18th of November, 1851, Lord Palmerston, as Foreign Minister, received deputations from the borough of Finsbury and the parish of Islington, who presented addresses congratulating his lordship on the aid he had rendered the Sultan of Turkey in effecting the liberation of Kossuth. The Foreign Secretary declared himself highly gratified by- such an expression of opinion on the part of so large a number of his fellow-countrymen ; and. in alluding to the difficulties which were felt in the conduct of foreign affairs, he said (Times report), "a great deal of good generalship and judgment was required, and during the pending struggle a good deal of judicious bottle -holding was obliged to be brought into play." The phrase formed the subject of a characteristic cartoon for Punch shortly after it was uttered. His Dismissal from the Foreign Secretaryship. When Lord Palmerston was dismissed from Lord John Russell's Government, for having expressed to the French Ambassador his approval of Prince Louis Xapoleon's coup d'etat, the ministerial explanations respecting the event were anxiously awaited by the country. They were given immediately on the assembling of Parliament, February 3rd, 1852, in the debate on the address in answer to the speech from the throne. Lord John made an elaborate statement to the House, in the course of which he thus explained his reasons for the course he had felt compelled to adopt : "The Secretary 19 274 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. of State for Foreign Affairs, putting himself in the place of the Crown, neglected and passed by the Crown, in order to give his own opinion with respect to the state of affairs in France. Now, it struck me that a Secre- tary of State, constitutionally, has no such power. It appears to me that he can only act with the sanction and the authority of the Crown in matters of very great importance. In matters of small importance I am ready to admit that the Secretary of State must be allowed to take a course which to him seems best, without a continual reference to the Crown ; but in this matter, which was of the utmost importance namely, that of giving the moral influence and support of England to the act of the President of the French Republic it seems to me that it was an affair so great that the opinion, not only of the Prime Minister, but of the Cabinet, should have been taken, and that no such opinion should have been expressed without their concurrence, and without the sanction of the Crown. . . When this took place, as I conceived the authority of the Crown had been set aside, and set aside for a purpose which the Government ^could not sanction, it appeared to me that I had no other course than to inform my noble friend that, while I held office, he could no longer hold the seals of the Foreign Office." Lord Palmerston's statement in his own justification was to the effect that the communica- tion complained of had been made in a non-official conversation with the French ambassador. He held that " if the doctrine of the noble lord were established, and if the Foreign Secretary were to be precluded from expressing on passing events any opinion to a Foreign Minister, except in the capacity of an organ of a previously consulted Cabinet, there would be an end to that freedom of intercourse between Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Ministers, which tends so much to good understanding and to the facility of public business." Earl Russell in his " Recollections," published in 1875, makes the following remarks upon this episode : " Baron Stockmar, whose memoirs have been published, seems to have acquiesced in the opinion that my conduct on that occasion was dilatory and undecided. My own judgment upon it is that it was hasty and precipitate. I ought to have seen Lord Palmerstou, and I think I could, without difficulty, have induced him to make a proper submission to her Majesty's wishes, and agree to act in conformity with conditions to which he had already given his assent. I felt it to bo my duty to declare the political connection between Lord Palmerston and myself to be dis- solved. But I felt at the same time that my Government was so much weakened that it was not likely to retain power for any long time." Overthrow of the Russell Administration. Lord Palmer- stone speedily avenged himself upon the Government from which he had been dismissed. On the 20th of February only a week or two after the debate just mentioned Lord John Russell moved for leave " to bring in a Bill to amend the laws respecting the Local Militia." Lord Palmerston proposed some amendments to the motion, the chief being to omit the word " local." He made a powerful speech, one of his most telling points being as follows : " The whole of the objections of the Government to the formation of a regular militia are founded upon a radical distrust of the LORD PALMERSTON. 275 people of the United Kingdom. Sir, there is no foundation for this distrust ; there is no reason to believe that the people of England would not rally round the national standard. It will not be for the first time that the people of Scotland will have risen up in arms and have fought the enemies of the United Kingdom ; and if it be that we cannot trust the people of Ireland to be faithful and true to their Queen and country, why, Sir, let us at once send for a Russian force to defend us, or let us have an Austrian garrison in London. Let us hide our heads in shame and con- fusion ; let us confess that England is no longer England ; that her people are no longer endowed with that spirit and courage which sustained them in times gone by ; and that they will not take up arms in their own defence, in defence of their homes and their families, of their Sovereign and their country. Such seems to be the idea of the framers of this Bill." On a division as to the word " local," the Government were defeated by 136 votes against 125, and Ministers immediately resigned. A Thing in a Wrong Place. At a meeting of the Royal Agri- cultural Society in 1852, Lord Palmerston made the following remarks : " If ever there was a case in which it was true that knowledge is power, that maxim is peculiarly true in reference to the aids which chemistry affords to agriculture. Allusion has been made to the question of guano, and it has been'mentioned, what is perfectly true, that when I held an office which would have enabled me, if it had been possible, to assist the farmer with regard to guano, my endeavours proved fruitless. In fact, the Peruvians were not more disposed to let us put a price on their guano than the British farmer would be to have a price put upon his corn (laughter). But, gentlemen, I cannot but think that the progress of chemical science, and the application of that science to practical agriculture, may lead you to something which will render you less anxious and solicitous about this same guano, and that, instead of sending to the other end of the world for more manure for our fields, we shall find something nearly, if not quite, as good within a few hundred yards of our dwellings. Now, gentlemen, I have heard a definition of dirt. I have heard it said that dirt is nothing but a thing in a wrong place. Now, the dirt of our towns precisely corresponds with that definition. It ought to be upon our fields, and if there could be such a reciprocal community of interests between the country and the towns, that the country should purify the towns and the towns should fertilise the country. I am much disposed to think that the British farmer would care less than he does, though he still might care something, about Peruvian guano." National Pasts and Everyday Duties. In the autumn of 1853, Lord Palmerston, then Home Secretary, received an address from the Presbytery of Edinburgh requesting the appointment of a day of national fast, in view of the probable approach of cholera. To this his lordship replied : " It does not appear to Lord (Palmerston that a national fast would be suitable to the circumstances of the present moment. The Maker of the universe established certain laws of nature for the planet in which we live, and the weal or woe of mankind depends upon the observance or neglect of those laws. Lord Palmerston would suggest that the best 276 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. course which the people of this country can pursue, to deserve that tho further progress of the cholera should be stayed, -will be to employ the interval that will elapse between the present time and tho beginning of next spring in planning and executing measures, by which those portions of their towns and cities which are inhabited by the poorer classes, and which, from the nature of things, must most need purification and improvement, may be freed from those causes and sources of contagion which, if allowed to remain, will infallibly breed pestilence, and be fruitful in death, in spite of all tho prayers and fastings of an united but inactive nation. When man has done his utmost for his own safety, then is the time to invoke the blessing of Heaven to give effect to his exertions." The Indefatigable. Professor Pryme relates the following in illustration of Lord Palmerston's well-known capacity for mental labour : " One night, after a very late division, we were walking up Parliament- street together, when just opposite Downing-street he said to me, ' I must leave you here, for I have a dispatch to revise at the Foreign Office.' I expressed some surprise at his continuing his Labours so far into the night, and he replied that he frequently did so." Another remark by a political associate may be cited to similar effect. Lord Granville in 1880, in receiving, as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a deputation on the subject of the slave traffic in the East, said, " More than forty years ago I came to the Foreign Office as a young man, and the one thing which struck me more than anything else was the immense amount of endless labour which Lord Palmerston gave to every detail connected with the slave trade." Palmerston's Debut in the Premiership. When (says the Edinburgh Review) he found himself at the head of the Cabinet, and leader of the House, he discovered that even his long experience of that body had not rendered him familiar with many of its usages. Ho set himself to learn the routine of his new position with the same patient industry with which more than forty years before, he had mastered the details of tho War Office. Early and late was the Premier in his place ; one of the first to come, one of the last to leave. Day after day saw him there before half- past four. Night after night did the summer morning find him still at his place. His first appearance as leader of the House of Commons was not entirely successful ; but by the end of the session of 1855 ho had effectually grappled with and overcome the difficulty. He continued tho practice he thus commenced during the whole period of his Premiership. A "Fortuitous Concourse of Atoms." In announcing the disso- lution of Parliament consequent upon tho division on the question of tho Chinese War (March 5th, 1857), Lord Palmerston, referring to tho combi- nation of parties which had produced the majority adverse to his Govern- ment, said : " Combination implies a certain degree of similarity and identity of feeling. Now the right honourable gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli) in what he stated to the House spoke with a calmness, a temper, and a statesman-like view of a great occasion, which did honour to himself and to the party of which he is the leader. Tho right honourable gentleman the member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gladstone), however, was carried away by an impetuosity and irritation of mind which certainly did LORD PALMERSTON. 277 not betoken any previous concert with the right honourable gentleman tlio member for Buckinghamshire, and which will, I think, be considered by him an unfortunate omen for that co-operation which is to follow the assumed combination between them. I said nothing to-night with, regard to combination or conspiracy, or anything, I believe, which could give offence to anyone ; I did state that which is a fact. You may call it combination ; you may call it the accidental and fortuitous concourse of atoms ; you may call it the accidental meeting of different gentlemen in one lobby ; but I say that when gentlemen are in the habit of finding themselves in the same lobby, it is not unnatural to suppose that they may, under certain circumstances, be ready to unite themselves together for forming an administration, and become responsible for the opinions which they severally entertain." Good Humour. Lord Palmerston (writes Mr. Hayward) had humour of the genial give-and-take kind, which, for a party leader, is often more serviceable than wit. He was told that Mr. Osborne, a popular speaker whose dash and sparkle are relieved by good feeling and sagacity, regretted a personal conflict which he had provoked. " Tell him," said Lord Palmerston, " that I am not in the least offended, the more particularly because I think I had the best of it." Administering Reproof. He had (says Lord Balling) a good- natured, gay way of giving reproofs when he did not mean them to be severe, of which every one who had much correspondence with him will recollect some example. " Put a little more starch into your neckcloth, my dear ," he said to a favourite diplomatist who he thought did not hold up his head high enough at the court where the minister represented us. . . To one gentleman who was perpetually pressing on him some claims of his father to a peerage, which claims had been frequently put aside by him, after reminding his correspondent courteously of this fact and of the reasons for it, he writes, as if relieving himself from a disagreeable thought, " I confess I cannot see what advantage or satisfac- tion can accrue to your father from drawing from me at repeated intervals a repetition of this statement." Answering a Troublesome Elector. At the general election in 1852, Lord Palmerston's return for Tiverton was unopposed, but he had to submit to a crossfire of questions from some of the Radical electors, and especially from a persistent individual named Rowcliff, a butcher of the town. Lord Palmerston in the course of his reply said : " My good friend, Mr. Rowcliff, has reproached me for not coming often enough among you. I must say that he does not appear disposed to make my visits here particularly agreeable to me (laughter). . . Mr. Row- cliff says that I only told you of the good that Governments and Parlia- ments have done, and that I have myself done, and that I have not told you of the bad. Why, God bless me ! it was quite unnecessary for me to do that when he was here (loud laughter). If there was a bad thing to be recorded, to be invented, or to be imagined, I am quite sure Mr. Row- cliff would be the first man to tell you of it. (Laughter, which was in- creased when Mr. Rowcliff called out " Question ! ") Well, Mr. Rowcliff 278 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. is impatient under this castigation. I will hit lower or higher, just as he pleases, but he must allow me to hit somewhere. Mr. BowclifE has asked me what government I mean to join. Now, that is a question which must depend upon the future ; but I will tell him what [government I do not mean to join. I can assure you and him that I never will join a government called a Rowcliff Administration." The noble lord presently touched as follows upon another question that had been put to him : " I am for septennial Parliaments. A septennial Parliament, practically, is not a Parliament that lasts for seven years, for we all know that the average duration of the Parliament during the last thirty or forty years has not been more than three or four years. If you establish annual Parliaments you will have the country in a perpetual commotion. Tour members of Parliament will not have time to learn their duties, and your business will be ill done. In the same way, if you have triennial Parlia- ments, during the first year the members will be learning their business, in the second year they will just be beginning useful measures, and in the third year they will be thinking of the RowclifEs of their respective con- stituencies (laughter), and endeavouring to shape their course, not for the good of their country, but in order to conciliate the most noisy of their constituents."* Manner in Debate. Speaking of one of Lord Palmerston's early displays in the House of Commons, Lord Bailing remarks that, while portions of his address were delivered with great ease and facility, " in others there was that hesitation, and superabundance of gesture with the hands, which were perceptible to the last when Lord Palmerston spoke unprepared, and was seeking for words ; for, though he always used the right word, it often cost him pains to find it." Happy Quotation. Lord Palmerston was often peculiarly happy in the quotations with which he enforced an argument or illustrated a position in debate ; and these not unfrequently culled rather from the byeways than from the highways of literature. One instance may be mentioned. During a discussion on the style of architecture to be adopted for the new law courts, his lordship was maintaining the pro- priety of admitting a plentiful supply of natural light into the obscure and knotty questions of law, and of giving to the gentlemen of the long robe scope and verge enough to facilitate their movements from court to court. " We have all heard," he said, " of ' Rich windows that exclude the light, And passages that lead to nothing.' " The architectural features to which his lordship referred were characte- ristics of that ancient pile where in former times " My grave Lord Keeper led the brawls, The seal and maces danced before him," but he, for one, did not think it desirable that they should be repeated too often at the present day. * Compare under " Sir Richard Stcele," p. 95. THE EARL OF CLARENDON. 279 THE EAEL OF CLARENDON. (18001870.) Exciting Spanish Gratitude. The Earl of Clarendon, who was Foreign Minister at the outbreak of the Crimean War, succeeded to the peerage on the death of his uncle in 1839, and never sat in the House of Commons. His earlier years were devoted to diplomacy, and he had for some time filled the post of British Minister at Madrid, when he was called to the House of Lords, and resigned his ambassadorial functions. He had not been long a member of the Upper House when a debate on Spanish affairs arose, in which Lord Clarendon ably defended the policy of the Government he had represented, and spoke warmly of the pro- spects of Liberal institutions in Spain. His speech so pleased the Spaniards that it was circulated throughout the country, a gold medal was struck in his honour, and it was resolved to present the upholder of Spanish dignity with a handsome work of art. "Drifting into War." On the 14th of February, 1854, the Marquis of Clanricarde, in moving in the House of Lords for further information respecting the cessation of diplomatic relations with the Court of St. Petersburg, and the war which appeared imminent, inquired of the Government, " If we are at peace, what is the peace ? and what is the peace that is the object of the war ? " In the course of his reply the Earl of Clarendon said : " The question had been asked whether we were at peace or war, and was one very difficult to answer distinctly. "We are not at war, because war is not declared ; we are not strictly at peace with Russia. (A laugh.) My noble friend may laugh; but he must know perfectly well that I am correct in saying that we are not at war with Russia, although diplomatic relations with that country are suspended. . . Therefore, I consider that we are in the intermediate state; that our desire for peace is just as sincere as ever ; but then, I must say that our hopes of maintaining it are gradually dwindling away, and that we are drifting towards war." " Europe on a Mine." The Earl of Clarendon used this expres- sion with reference to the state of Europe before the Crimean War. In a speech on the 25th of May, 1855, he said : " We have learnt a great deal of the intentions of Russia, and the means she possessed of giving effect to those intentions. We now know what were the vast military resources of Russia, how stealthily they had been accumulated, and how readily they could be made available. We now know something of the almost incredible amount of warlike stores which had been accumulated in Sebastopol, where Russia had no commerce to protect, and we are also aware of the gigantic fortifications which were contemplated at Bomar- sund. Why, Europe was really standing upon a mine without being aware of it, while the influence of Russia was so skilfully exercised as to paralyse both Governments and people. The encroachments of Russia were unheeded, although her designs had been suspected and denounced ; but it was nobody's business to interfere effectually, and no one wished to 280 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. disturb the general peace, until the mine which had been silently and slowly prepared was exploded by the rashness of Prince Menchikoff." LOED MACAULAY. (18001859.) His Characteristics as a Speaker. By all accounts (writes Dean Miluian) Macaulay's delivery was far too rapid to be impressive ; it wanted also variety and flexibility of intonation. Even the most practised reporters panted after him in vain ; how much more the slower intellects of country gentlemen and the mass of the House ! This, however, only heightens our astonishment that speeches so full, so profoundly meditated, yet with so much freedom, with no appearance of being got by heart, with such prodigality of illustration and allusion, should be poured forth with such unhesitating flow, with such bewildering quickness of utterance. To read them with delight and profit, we read them rather slowly ; we can hardly conceive that they were spoken less deliberately. It may be ques- tioned, and has been questioned, whether Macaulay was, or could have become, a masterly debater. This accomplishment, except in rare examples, is acquired only by long use and practice. When Macaulay entered the House, the first places were filled by men of established influ- ence and much parliamentary training. Even if he had felt called upon to make himself more prominent, it may be doubted whether ho could have sufficiently curbed his impetuous energy, or checked his torrent of words. He would have found it difficult to assume the stately, prudent, reserved, compressed reply ; he might have torn his adversaries' arguments to shreds, but he would not have been content without a host of other arguments, and so would have destroyed the effect of his own confutation. Still, it is remarkable that on two occasions a speech of Macaulay's actually turned the vote of the House, and carried the question (a very rare event) in his own way the debate on the Copyright Act, and the question of judges holding seats in the House of Commons. Though he took his seat, Lord Macaulay never spoke in the House of Peers ; he went down, we believe, more than once with the intention of speaking, but some unex- pected turn in the debate deprived him of his opportunity ; his friends, who knew the feeble state of his health at that time, were almost rejoiced at their disappointment in not hearing him in that which would have been so congenial a field for his studied and matured eloquence. "Express Train" Oratory. The following graphic sketch of Macaulay's demeanour in the House and his manner in delivery is from Francis's " Orators of the Age " : " In the House of Commons, abstrac- tion is his chief characteristic. He enters the House with a certain pole- star to guide him his seat ; how he reaches it seems as if it were a process unknown to him. Seated, he folds his arms and sits in silence, seldom speaking to his colleagues, or appearing to notice what is going forward. An opening is made in the discussion, and ho rises, or rather darts up from his seat, plunging at once into the very heart of his subject, without exordium or apologetic preface. In fact, you have for a few seconds LORD MACAULAY. 281 beard a roice, pitched in alto, monotonous, and rather shrill, pouring forth words with inconceivable velocity, ere you have become aware that a new speaker, and one of no common order, has broken in upon the debate. A few seconds more, and cheers perhaps from all parts of the House rouse you from your apathy, compelling you to follow that extremely voluble, and not very enticing voice, in its rapid course through the subject on which the speaker is entering, with a resolute determination, as it seems, never to pause. You think of an express train, which does not stop even at the chief stations. On, on he speeds, in full reliance on his own momen- tum, never stopping for words, never stopping for thoughts, never halting for an instant, even to take breath his intellect gathering new vigour as he proceeds, hauling the subject after him, and all its possible attributes and illustrations, with the strength of a giant, leaving a line of light on the pathway his mind has trod, till, unexhausted and apparently inex- haustible, he brings this remarkable effort to a close by a peroration, so highly sustained in its declamatory power, so abounding in illustration, so admirably framed to crown and clench the whole oration, that surprise, if it has even begun to wear off, kindles anew, and the hearer is left utterly prostrate and powerless by the whirlwind of ideas and emotions that has swept over him." His Early Speeches. Macaulay's first speech in Parliament was made on the Jewish Disabilities, in 1830, and was moderately successful ; but in the following year his masterly speeches on the Reform Bill brought him to the front rank as an orator. Jeffrey, his colleague on the Edin- burgh, who was also in Parliament, thus wrote to Lord Cockburn respecting Macaulay's speech on the second reading of the bill : " No division last night, as I predicted, and not a very striking debate. A curious series of prepared speeches by men who do not speak regularly, and far better expressed than nine-tenths of the good speeches, but languid and ineffi- cient, from the air of preparation, and the want of nature and authority, with which they are spoken. There was but one exception, and it was a brilliant one. I mean Macaulay, who surpassed his former appearance in closeness, fire, and vigour, and very much improved the effect of it, by a more steady and graceful delivery. It was prodigiously cheered, as it deserved, and I think puts him clearly at the head of the great speakers, if not the debaters, of the House. I once meant to have said something, but I now think it impossible." A session or two later, Jeffrey again wrote : " I breakfasted to-day at Rogers's with Macaulay and Sydney Smith ! both in great force and undaunted spirit. Mac. is a marvellous person. He made the very best speech that has been made this session, on India, a few nights ago, to a House of less than fifty. The Speaker, who is a severe judge, says he rather thinks it the best speech he ever heard." An Indiscretion. In 1839, Lord Melbourne offered to Macaulay the office of Secretary at War with a seat in the Cabinet the office, however, being then one of second rank, as the chief responsibility in army affairs then lay with the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. The office was willingly accepted, particularly as it was coupled 282 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. with an honour which had been denied to men like Burke and Sheridan. The appointment of course necessitated the return of Macaulay to his constituents for re-election ; and he incurred much ridicule and censure by a want of taste and judgment especially remarkable in the case of so keen a critic in dating his address to the electors of Edinburgh from "Windsor Castle, where he was staying as the Queen's guest. Giving the House a Story. The following may be taken as an example of Macaulay's power to illustrate and enliven a subject of debate, however abstruse its nature. In February, 1845, Sir Robert Peel brought forward his New Tariff, in which were proposed discriminating duties on sugar, a prohibitory duty being imposed on foreign sugar manufactured by slave labour, while raw sugar of similar production was to be admitted freely for manufacture here. " I remember," said Mr. Macaulay, " some- thing very like the right honourable baronet's morality in a Spanish novel, which I read long ago. I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such a trifle, but the story is much to the purpose. A wan- dering lad, a sort of Gil Bias, is taken into the service of a rich old silversmith, a most pious man, who is always telling his beads, who hears mass daily, and observes the feasts and fasts of the Church with the utmost scrupulosity. The silversmith is always preaching honesty and piety. ' Never,' he constantly repeats to his young assistant, ' never touch what is not your own ; never take liberties with sacred things.' Sacrilege, as uniting theft with profaneness, is the sin of which he has the deepest horror. One day, while he is lecturing after his usual fashion, an ill- looking fellow comes into the shop with a sack under his arm. ' Will you buy these ? ' says the visitor, and produces from the sack some church plate and a rich silver crucifix. ' Buy them ! ' cries the pious man. ' No, nor touch them; not for the world. I know where you got them. Wretch that you are, have you no care for your soul P ' ' Well, then,' says the thief, ' if you will not buy them, will you melt them down for me ? ' ' Melt them down ! ' answers the silversmith, ' that is quite another matter.' He takes the chalices and the crucifix with a pair of tongs ; the silver, thus in bond, is dropped into the crucible, melted, and delivered to the thief, who lays down five pistoles, and decamps with his booty. The young servant stares at this strange scene. But the master very gravely resumes his lecture. ' My son,' he says, ' take warning by that sacri- legious knave, and take example by me. Think what a load of guilt lies on his conscience. You will see him hanged before long. But as to me, you saw that I would not touch the stolen property. I keep these tongs for such occasions ; and thus I thrive in the fear of God, and manage to turn an honest penny.' " Subscriptions to Race Meetings, &c. During Macaulay's earlier connection with Edinburgh as one of its representatives, he was applied to for a subscription to the annual race meeting of the city, the sum of fifty guineas having usually been given under such circumstances. He declined to continue the practice, and thus expressed his views to his friend Mr. Adam Black : " In the first place, I am not clear that the object is a good one. In the next place, I am clear that by giving LORD MACAULAT. 283 money for such an object, in obedience to such a summons, I should com- pletely change the whole character of my connection with Edinburgh. It has been usual enough for rich families to keep a hold on corrupt boroughs by defraying the expense of public amusements. Sometimes it is a ball ; sometimes a regatta. The Derby family used to support the Preston races. The members for Beverley, I believe, find a bull for the constituents to bait. But these were not the conditions upon which I undertook to represent Edinburgh. In return for your generous con- fidence, I offer faithful parliamentary service, and nothing else. The call that is now made is one so objectionable that I must plainly say, I would rather take the Chiltern Hundreds than comply with it. If our friends want a member who will find them in public diversions, they can be at no loss. I know twenty people who, if you elect them to Parlia- ment, will gladly treat you to a race and a race-ball once a month. But I shall not be very easily induced to believe that Edinburgh is disposed to select her representatives on such a principle." The " Bray " of Exeter Hall. This celebrated expression, which lost Macaulay his seat for Edinburgh, occurred in his speech on the second reading of the Maynooth College Bill, in April, 1845. The passage containing it is thus given in his Speeches : " What substitute does the honourable baronet (Sir Robert Peel) give his followers to console them for the loss of their favourite Registration Bill ? Even this Bill for the Endowment of Maynooth College. Was such a feat of legislation ever seen ? And can we wonder that the eager, honest, hot-headed Protes- tants, who raised you to power in the confident hope that you would curtail the privileges of the Roman Catholics, should stare and grumble when you propose to give public money to the Roman Catholics ? Can we wonder that, from one end of the country to the other, everything should be ferment and uproar ; that petitions should, night after night, whiten all our benches like a snowstorm ? Can we wonder that the people out of doors should be exasperated by seeing the very men who, when we were in office, voted against the old grant to Maynooth, now pushed and pulled into the House by your whippers-in to vote for an increased grant? The natural consequences follow. All those fierce spirits, whom you hallooed on to harass us, now turn round and begin to worry you. The Orangeman raises his war-whoop : Exeter Hall sets up its bray: Mr. Macneile shudders to see more costly cheer than ever provided for the priests of Baal at the table of the Queen ; and the Protestant Operatives of Dublin call for impeachments in exceedingly bad English. But what did you expect ? Did you think, when, to serve your turn, you called the Devil up, that it was as easy to lay him as to raise him ? " The House of Commons "The Beast." In a letter written to Mr. T. F. Ellis in 1834, when Macaulay was in India, he tells his friend : " The Rajah was by no means the greatest fool whom I found at Mysore. I alighted at a bungalow appertaining to the British Residency. There I found an Englishman who, without any preface, accosted me thus : ' Pray, Mr. Macaulay, do you not think that Buonaparte was the 284 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Beast ? ' ' No, sir, I cannot say that I do.' ' Sir, lie was the Beast. I can prove it. I have found the number 666 in his name. Why, sir, if he was not the Beast, who was ? ' This was a puzzling question, and I am not a little vain of my answer. ' Sir,' said I, ' the House of Commons is the Beast. There are 658 members of the House ; and these, with their chief officers the three clerks, the Serjeant and his deputy, the chaplain, the doorkeeper, and the librarian make 666." The Taste of the House of Commons. In February, 1831, Macaulay thus wrote to Whewell : " I am impatient for Praed's debut. The House of Commons is a place in which I would not promise success to any man. It is the most peculiar audience in the world. I should say that a man's being a good writer, a good orator at the bar, a good mob-orator, or a good orator in debating clubs, was rather a reason for expecting him to fail than for expecting him to succeed in the House of Commons. A place where Walpole succeeded and Addison failed ; where Dunclas succeeded and Burke failed; where Peel now succeeds and Mackintosh failed ; where Erskine and Scarlett were dinner-bells ; where Lawrence and Jekyll, the two wittiest men, or nearly so, of their time, were thought bores, is surely a very strange place. And yet I feel the whole character of the place growing upon me. I begin to like what others about me like, and to disapprove what they disapprove. Canning used to say that the House, as a body, had better taste than the man of best taste in it, and I am very much inclined to think that Canning was right." Parliamentary Government. Lord Macaulay's remarks on this subject, in his review of Pitt's career, are as follows : " Parliamentary government, like every other contrivance of man, has its advantages and its disadvantages. On the advantages there is no need to dilate. The history of England during the 170 years which have elapsed since the House of Commons became the most powerful body in the State, her immense and still growing prosperity, her freedom, her tranquillity, her greatness in arts, in sciences, and in arms ; her maritime ascendancy, the marvels of her public credit, her American, her African, her Australian, her Asiatic empires, sufficiently prove the excellence of her institutions. But those institutions, though excellent, are assuredly not perfect. Parlia- mentary government is government by speaking. In such a government, the power of speaking is the most highly prized of all the qualities which a politician can possess ; and that power may exist in the highest degree without judgment, without fortitude, without skill in reading the characters of men or the signs of the times, without any knowledge of the principles of legislation or of political economy, and without any skill in diplomacy or in the administration of war. Nay, it may well happen that those very intellectual qualities which give a peculiar charm to the speeches of a public man may be incompatible with the qualities which would fit him to meet a pressing emergency with promptitude and firm- ness. It was thus with Charles Townshend. It was thus with Windham. It was a privilege to listen to those accomplished and ingenious orators. But in a perilous crisis they would be found far inferior in all the qnali- LORD LYTTON. 285 ties of rulers to such a man as Oliver Cromwell, who talked nonsense, or as William the Silent, who did not talk at all." EDWAED BTTLWEE, LORD LTTTOK (18051873.) Early Appearance as a Reformer. Mr. E. Bulwer (afterwards Lord Lytton) first sat in Parliament as the representative of St. Ives, for which constituency he was returned in 1831 ; and he addressed the House on the 5th of July, on the second reading of the Reform Bill. On that occasion he thus expressed himself on behalf of a popular representation : " At a time when authority can no longer support itself by the solemn plausibilities and the ceremonial hypocrisies of old, it was well that a government should be placed upon a solid and sure foundation. In no age of the world, but least of all in the present, could any system of government long exist which was menaced both by the moral intelligence and the physical force of a country." Democracy. Speaking on the Reform Bill introduced by Lord Palmerston's Government in 1860, . Sir E. Bulwer Lytton said : " Pure democracy, in the classic sense of the word, has conferred on the civilised world too many benefits, as well as warnings, not to have its full share of enthusiastic admirers among men of cultivated minds and generous hearts. But for pure democracy you must have the elements that pre- serve its honesty and ensure its duration. Those elements are not to be found in old societies, with vast disparities of wealth, of influence, of education; they belong to the youth of nations, such as colonies; and when any gentleman cites to us the example of a colony for some demo- cratic change that he would recommend to the ancient monarchy of England, I can only say that he has not studied the horn-book of legis- lation. The acute democrats of that sublime republic by which we are all unconsciously instructed whenever we discuss the problems of govern- ment the acute democrats of Athens were well aware of the truth I endeavour, before it is yet too late, to impress upon you ; they were well aware that democracy cannot long co-exist with great inequalities of wealth and power ; they therefore began by ostracising the powerful, to end by persecuting the wealthy." Another remark on this subject by the same speaker will be remembered : " Democracy is like the grave it never gives back what it receives." A Defence of the Crimean War. In a speech in favour of the continued prosecution of war with Russia, in June, 1855, Sir E. B. Lytton said : " Let me suppose that when the future philanthropist shall ask what service on the human race did we in our generation signally confer, some one trained perhaps in the schools of Oxford or the Institute of Man- chester shall answer : ' A Power that commanded myriads as many as those that under Xerxes exhausted rivers in their march embodied all the forces of barbarism on the outskirts of civilisation. Left there to develop its own natural resources, no State molested, though all appre- hended, its growth. But, long pent by merciful Nature in its own 286 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. legitimate domains, this Power schemed for the outlet to its instinctive ambition; to that outlet it crept by dissimulating guile by successive treaties that, promising peace, graduated spoliation to the opportunities of fraud. At length, under pretexts too gross to deceive the common sense of mankind, it proposed to seize that outlet to storm the feeble gates between itself and the world beyond.' Then the historian shall say that we in our generation the united families of England and France made ourselves the vanguard of alarmed and shrinking Europe, and did not sheathe the sword until we had redeemed the pledge to humanity, made on the faith of two Christian sovereigns, and ratified at those distant graves which liberty and justice shall revere for ever." Ministerial Coalitions. In a speech on Mr. Roebuck's celebrated motion in January, 1855, for a select committee to inquire into the conduct of the Crimean War, Sir E. B. Lytton made a very effective remark on this subject. He said : " Looking through our modern history, I find that most of our powerful, even popular Administrations, have been coalitions. Both the Administrations of Mr. Pitt were coalitions j and the last was very remarkable, for he first turned out the Addington Govern- ment, and then coalesced with six of its members. Nay, he was not contented till he had netted the expelled Prime Minister himself, and made him Lord President of the Council. But then there is one indis- putable element of a coalition, and that is, that its members should coalesce. Now, sir, it is that element which seems to me wanting in the present Cabinet (Lord Aberdeen's). It has been a union of party interests, but not a coalition of party sentiment and feeling." EDWAED GEOFFEEY, EAEL OF DEEBT. (1799 1869.) His Manner. "Gladstone's manner," says Professor Pryme, "I never saw excelled except by Lord Derby's, when he was in the House of Commons. The speaking of these two was like a stream pouring forth ; or it might be described as if they were reading from a book. I have heard Pitt, Fox, and other great speakers, but never any to equal Lord Derby, when Mr. Stanley, for elegance and sweetness of expression." His First Speech. Mr. Stanley was three years in the House of Commons before he took part in its debates. His first speech was made in 1824, upon a bill for lighting Manchester with gas. Sir James Mackin- tosh, who spoke after him, very highly complimented the young member on his performance, and said, " No man could have witnessed with greater satisfaction than himself an accession to the talents of the House which was calculated to give lustre to its character and strengthen its influence ; and this was more particularly a subject of satisfaction to him when he reflected that these talents were likely to be employed in supporting prin- ciples which he conscientiously believed to be most beneficial to the country." Mr. Stanley in the earlier portion of his career was identified with the Whig party. Parliamentary Instinct. Macaulay, in his essay on Chatham, thus alludes to the readiness in debate which Mr. Stanley manifested EDWARD GEOFFREY, EARL OF DERBY. 287 from the first : " Scarcely any person has ever become a great debater without long practice and many failures. It was by slow degrees, as Burke said, that Charles Fox became the most brilliant and powerful debater that ever lived. Charles Fox himself attributed his own success to the resolution which he formed when very young, of speaking, well or ill, at least once every night. ' During five whole sessions,' ho used to say, ' I spoke every night but one, and I regret only that I did not speak on that night too.' Indeed, with the exception of Mr. Stanley, whose knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembles an instinct, it would be difficult to name any eminent debater who has not made himself a master of his art at the expense of his audience." Raising a Storm. The Coercion Bill, introduced when Mr. Stanley was Secretary for Ireland, gave occasion for one of the most effective displays of his eloquence. The incident is thus narrated by Earl Russell : " It was thought right that Lord Althorp, as the leader of the Govern- ment in the House of Commons, should bring in the bill. He did so in a manner tame and ineffective. His detail of the outrages committed in Ireland was like reading a few of the blackest pages of the ' Newgate Calendar.' The Liberal majority were disappointed, sullen, and ready to break out into mutiny against their chief. Mr. Stanley, who was sitting next to me, greatly annoyed at the aspect of the House, said to me, ' I meant not to have spoken till to-morrow night, but I find I must speak to-night.' He took Lord Althorp's box of official papers, and went upstairs to a room where he could look over them quietly. After the debate had proceeded for two or three hours longer, with no change of temper in the House, Mr. Stanley rose. He explained, with admirable clearness, the insecure and alarming state of Ireland. He then went over, case by case, the more dreadful of the outrages which had been committed. He detailed, with striking effect, the circumstances attending the murder of a clergyman and the agony of his widow, who, after seeing her husband murdered, had to bear in terror running knocks at the door, kept on all night by the miscreants who had committed the crime. The House became appalled and agitated at the dreadful picture which he placed before their eyes ; they felt for the sorrows of the innocent ; they were shocked at the dominion of assassins and robbers. When he had produced a thrilling effect by these descriptions, he turned upon O'Connell, who led the opposition to the measure, and who seemed a short time before about to achieve a triumph in favour of sedition and anarchy. He recalled to the recollection of the House of Commons that, at a recent public meeting, O'Connell had spoken of the House of Commons as 658 scoundrels. In a tempest of scorn and indignation, he excited the anger of the men thus designated against the author of the calumny. The House, which two hours before seemed about to yield to the great agitator, was now almost ready to tear him to pieces. In the midst of the storm which his eloquence had raised, Stanley sat down, having achieved one of the greatest triumphs of eloquence ever won in a popular assembly by the powers of oratory." An Effective Quotation. The powers of elocution which Mr. 288 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Stanley exercised in the Commons, before he was transplanted to tho Lords as Lord Stanley (his father's second title), are shown by an inci- dent which occurred in connection with O'Connell, a few years later than the scene just mentioned. For any speaker to give the House of Commons twenty lines of Shakespeare, not only without exciting its murmurs or contempt, but with great effect, was an achievement possible only to such a speaker as Stanley himself. The circumstances under which the inci- dent occurred are thus described by Mr. Lecky : " When Lord Melbourne came into power, O'Connell gave his Ministry the whole weight of his support. His opponents Lord Grey and Mr. Stanley were no longer in the Ministry. . . The Melbourne Ministry exhibited the rare spectacle of a government opposed by the majority of the English members in the House of Commons, and by the great majority of the House of Lords, and at the same time unpopular with the country, but kept in power by the votes of the Irish members. O'Connell supported it very loyally, and, although in his position there was perhaps no great merit in not being a place-hunter, it is worthy of notice how cheerfully he acquiesced in his exclusion from a Ministry of which he was for some time the mainstay. On questions of persons and offices the Ministers found him uniformly moderate and con- ciliatory, and in this respect his attitude formed a marked contrast to that of Lord Brougham. In 1838 he refused one of the highest legal positions in Ireland that of Chief Baron. The Repeal cry at this time was suffered to sink, and in Ireland as in England O'Connell steadily and powerfully supported the Ministry. There can, however, be no question that his support was ultimately a source of weakness. . . It would have been impossible to give O'Connell a place in it without shattering it, and there was no taunt against Ministers more applauded than their alleged subserviency to the agitator. The House of Commons seldom rang with more enthusiastic plaudits than when Mr. Stanley, in one of his attacks upon tho Government, quoted these lines from Shakespeare : ' But shall it bo that you, that set the crown Upon the head of this forgetful man, And for his sake wear the detested blot Of murderous subornation shall it be That you a world of curses undergo, Being the agents, or base second means, The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather P O, pardon me that I descend so low To show the line and the predicament Wherein you range under this subtle king. Shall it for shame be spoken in these days, Or fill up chronicles in time to come, That men of your nobility and power Did 'gage them both in an unjust behalf, As both of you God pardon it ! have done P . And shall it be, in more shame, further spoken, That you are fooled, discarded, and shook off By him for whom these shames ye underwent ?' " EDWARD GEOFFREY, EARL OF DERBY. 289 A Slip. "We remember (says the writer of a biographical notice of Lord Derby) to have heard Lord Macaulay say that no one ever attempted to catch Lord Stanley tripping, and to interrupt him in his speech, without coming by the worst in the encounter. He might well say so, for he was himself an example of the truth of his words. On one occasion, in the full rush and torrent of his eloquence, Lord Stanley used the expression " mutually suicidal." It was, perhaps, not strictly defensible, and the slip was too much for the " book in breeches," who was then sitting on the front bench in opposition, to pass over. Half rising from his seat, and removing his hat with well-affected courtesy, he repeated the words in an inquiring tone, " Mutually suicidal ? " Lord Stanley checked himself for an instant, looked his antagonist full in the face, and, without attempting to justify the expression, contemptuously replied, " The right honourable gentleman is a great verbal critic." The cheers of the House showed the retort had told. " The Rupert of Debate." This well-known epithet was applied to Lord Stanley by Lord Lytton in his poem, " The New Timon." The following is the passage in which it occurs : " The brilliant chief, irregularly great, Frank, haughty, rash the Rupert of Debate. Nor gout nor toil his freshness can destroy, And time still leaves all Eton in the boy. First in the class, and keenest in the ring, He saps like Gladstone, and he fights like Spring. Ev'n at the feast his pluck pervades the board, And dauntless game-cocks symbolise their lord. Lo where atilt at friend if barr'd from foe He scours the ground and volunteers the blow, And, tired with conquest over Dan and Snob, Plants a slight bruiser on the nose of Bob. Decorous Bob, too friendly to reprove, Suggests fresh fighting in the next remove, And prompts his chum, in hopes the vein to cool, To the prim benches of the Upper School. Yet who not listens with delighted smile To the pure Saxon of that silver style ? In the clear style a heart as clear is seen, Prompt to the rash revolting from the mean." Mr. Disraeli, however, appears to have originated the expression. The "New Timon" was first published in 1846; but in April, 1844, Mr. Disraeli thus alluded to Lord Stanley, in a discussion on some charges brought by Mr. Ferrand against Sir James Graham : " The noble lord in this case, as in so many others, first destroys his opponent, and then destroys his own position afterwards. The noble lord is the Prince Rupert of Parliamentary discussion; his charge is resistless; but when he returns from the pursuit he always finds his camp in the possession of the enemy." A New Crop of Statesmen. Shortly after the formation of his first Ministry, in 1852, Lord Derby and the rest of the members of the 20 290 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. Government were entertained by the Goldsmiths' Company. Alluding in his speech to the efforts he had made to form a Cabinet, he illustrated them by a reference to the recent gold discoveries, and said : " It was supposed that the crop of statesmen was one of very limited amount, for which, if you were disposed to search, you must dig in certain favoured localities, and confine yourself to searching for them there. I am happy to think, gentlemen, that to some extent I have been instrumental in dispelling that illusion. A fortunate adventurer, I have boldly opened a new mine, and I am happy to say that in the opinion of competent judges, so far as it has been yet worked, the ore that has been raised contains among it as large a proportion of sterling metal, with as little admixture of dross, as any that was ever drawn from the old and exclusive mines to which we were formerly confined." A Candid Confession. Writing to Lord Derby (then Prime Minister) in 1858, the Prince Consort informed him incidentally that Prince Alfred had just passed his examination as a naval cadet and received his appointment, and said: "I send you Prince Alfred's examina- tion papers, which may, perhaps, interest you. He solved the mathe- matical problems almost all without fault, and did the translations without a dictionary." In his reply, after thanking the Prince for sending him the papers, Lord Derby wrote : " As I looked over them, I could not but feel very grateful that no such examination was necessary to qualify her Majesty's Ministers for their offices, as it would very seriously increase the difficulty of framing an administration." The Democratic Tide. It was often imputed to the Earl of Derby that he had said he considered it his mission to " stem the tide of democracy." The exact phrase did not proceed from his own mouth, but was founded on a passage in a speech he delivered on the 15th of March, 1852. Replying to a question from Lord Beaumont as to the intentions of the new Government with respect to duties on corn, Earl Derby said : " We are threatened with far more serious consequences than could result from the imposition of a 4s., 5s., or la. duty on foreign corn. The question before us is, whether the Government of this country can be carried on, and as to the principles on which it is to be carried on. And when I appeal to the country it will be on these grounds : Will you, Protectionists and Free Traders, all you who desire the advan- tage of all the interests of the country, place your confidence in, and give your support to, a Government which, in the hour of peril, did not hesitate to take the post of danger when the helmsman had left the helm ? Will you support a Government which is exerting itself to protect the country against any hostile attack, to maintain the peace of the world, to maintain and uphold the Protestant institutions of the country, to give, to the utmost of its power, religious and moral education throughout the land ; and which will exert itself moreover, I don't hesitate to say, to stem with some opposition, to supply some barrier against the current of that continually increasing and encroaching democratic influence in this nation, which is bent on throwing the whole power and authority of the Govern- ment nominally into the hands of the masses, but practically and really EDWARD GEOFFREY, EARL OF DERBY. 291 into those of demagogues and republicans, who exercise an influence over those unthinking masses will you, I say, support a Government which is determined to resist that noxious and dangerous influence, and to preserve inviolate the prerogatives of the Crown, the rights of your lordships' House, and the liberties of a freely -elected and freely-represented House of Commons ? These, my lords, are the questions on which, when I go to the country, I make my appeal, on behalf of myself and of my colleagues ; and, in the words which are placed in the mouths of the meanest felons that stand in the prisoner's dock, but which are not unworthy of the mouth of the first minister of the first country in the world, I say, ' I elect that we shall be tried by God and our country.' " (Hansard's Report.) " Meddle and Muddle." Lord Derby made use of this expression in February, 1864, to characterise the policy then being pursued by Earl Russell as Foreign Minister : " The foreign policy of the noble earl (said he), as far as the principle of non-intervention is concerned, may be summed up in two truly expressive words ' meddle ' and ' muddle.' During the whole course of his diplomatic correspondence, wherever he has interfered and he has interfered everywhere he has been lecturing, scolding, blustering, and retreating." The " Leap in the Dark." On the third reading of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords, August 6th, 1867, the Earl of Derby said : " No doubt we are making a great experiment and ' taking a leap in the dark,' but I have the greatest confidence in the sound sense of my fellow- countrymen, and I entertain a strong hope that the extended franchise which we are now conferring upon them will be the means of placing the institutions of this country on a firmer basis, and that the passing of the measure will tend to increase the loyalty and contentment of a great portion of her Majesty's subjects." " Dishing the Whigs." Lord Derby's style was always dignified in debate, but in conversation with his colleagues he was often extremely colloquial and idiomatic. An example has been given in his brief remark to Sir James Graham on the downfall of the Grey Ministry, " Johnny 's upset the coach." Another famous saying must be instanced. Replying to an old associate who tiiought the Reform Bill of the Derby-Disraeli Cabinet had gone too far in a popular direction, the Earl of Derby is said to have contented himself with the remark, "We have dished the Whigs!" as a complete justification of his policy. BENJAMIN DISKAELI, EAEL OF BEACONSFIELD. (1805.) His Early Candidatures. The future leader of the Conservative party first became a candidate for Parliament under Radical auspices, presenting himself at High Wycombe in 1832, with recommendations from Hume and O'Connell, Being repeatedly unsuccessful here, in 1835 he offered himself for Tannton, and on this occasion spoke against O'Connell. The latter shortly after made a characteristic reply, in which he declared of his opponent that " he possessess just the qualities of the 292 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. impenitent thief who died upon the cross, whose name, I very believe, must have been Disraeli." Smarting under this onslaught, Mr. Disraeli challenged the son of the Irish demagogue to perform " the vicarious duty of yielding satisfaction for the insults which your father has too long lavished with impunity on his political opponents ;" for O'Connell, after his fatal combat with D'Esterre (p. 256), had vowed not to fight a duel again. Mr. Morgan O'Connell on a similar occasion had offered to meet Lord Alvanley, but he now declined; and Mr. Disraeli thereupon wrote to the father a letter in which he said, " "With regard to your taunts as to my want of success in my election contests, permit me to remind you that I had nothing to appeal to but the good sense of the people. No threaten- ing skeletons canvassed for me; " with more to the same effect, concluding with the words, " We shall meet at Philippi." A Forecast. Melbourne and Disraeli. Mr. Disraeli, before he entered Parliament, was asked by Mr. and Mrs. Norton to meet at dinner Lord Melbourne, then Home Secretary. The interview is thus related by Mr. Torrens in his " Memoirs of Melbourne : " " Young Dis- raeli was not long returned from his travels in the East, with traits of which he had interested Mrs. Norton on the occasion of their first acquaintance. He had just then been defeated in an attempt to get into Parliament for the borough of Wycombe, where he attributed his failure to the want of support by the Whigs. Mrs. Norton presented him after dinner to the Home Secretary, who had the power, she said, of retrieving the disappointment if he chose ; and whose frank and open manner led to .a long conversation, in whjch Mr. Disraeli mentioned the circumstances of his late discomfiture, dwelling on each particular with the emphasis which every young man of ambition since Parliament was invented is sure to lay upon the broken promises and scandalous behaviour of his victorious foes. The minister was attracted more and more as he listened to the uncommonplace language and spirit of the youthful poli- tician, and thought to himself he would be well worth serving. Abruptly f but with a certain tone of kindness which took away any air of assump- tion, he said, ' Well now, tell me, what do you want to be ? ' The quiet gravity of the reply fairly took him aback ' I want to be Prime Minister.' Melbourne gave a long sigh, and then said very seriously : ' No chance of that in our time. It is all arranged and settled. Nobody but Lord Grey could perhaps have carried the Reform Bill ; but he is an old man, and when he gives up, he will certainly be succeeded by one who has every requisite for the position, in the prime of life and fame, of old blood, high rank, great fortune, and greater ability. Once in power, there is nothing to prevent him holding office as long as Sir Robert Walpole. Nobody can compete with Stanley. I heard him the other night in the Commons, when the party were all divided and breaking away from their ranks, recall them by the mere force of superior will and eloquence : he rose like a young eagle above them all, and kept hovering over their heads till they were reduced to abject submission. There is nothing like him. If you are going into politics and mean to stick to it, I dare say you will do very well, for you have ability and enterprise ; and if you are careful BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EAEL OF BEACONSFIELD. 293 how yon steer, no donbt yon will get into some port at last. But yon must put all these foolish notions out of your head ; they won't do at all. Stanley will be the next Prime Minister you will see.' How both would have started had their sybil-like hostess unfolded then and there in pro- phetic dream the fate in store for each ; for the one, that before many months, and for the other after the lapse of five-and-thirty years, that he should be Prime Minister of England ! " Mr. Torrens also mentions that in later years, when Lord Melbourne listened to the telling onslaughts by his early acquaintance on Peel, he recalled his strange talk at Storey's Grate, and exclaimed, " By Jove, I believe he'll do it after all." His First Appearance in Parliament. Mr. Disraeli was first returned in 1837, as representative of Maidstone, and delivered his maiden speech on the 7th of December in that year, on Irish election petitions. He was heard with continual interruptions, but concluded with a prophecy which has become famous. The following was his peroration, as given in " Hansard " : " Nothing was so easy as to laugh. He wished before he sat down to show the House clearly their position. When they remembered that, in spite of the support of thfe hon. and learned member for Dublin (Mr. O'Counell) and his well-disciplined band of patriots, there was a little shyness exhibited by former supporters of her Majesty's Government when they recollected the ' new loves ' and the ' old loves ' in which so much of passion and recrimination was mixed up between the noble Tityrus of the Treasury bench and the learned Daphne of Liskeard (loud laughter) notwithstanding the amantium ires had resulted, as he had always expected, in the amoris integratio (renewed laughter) not- withstanding that political duel had been fought, in which more than one shot was interchanged, but in which recourse was had to the secui-e arbitrament of blank cartridges (laughter) notwithstanding emancipated Ireland and enslaved England, the noble lord might wave in one hand the keys of St. Peter, and in the other (the shouts that followed drowned the conclusion of the sentence). 'Let them see the philosophical pre- judice of man.' He would certainly gladly hear a cheer, even though it canie from the lips of a political opponent. He was not at all surprised at the reception which he had experienced. He had begun several times many'things, and he had often succeeded at last. He would sit down now, but the time would come when they would hear him." A week after, he spoke a few sentences on the Copyright Bill, and he addressed the House several times in the following session. An Early Passage with Fahnerston. Mr. Disraeli stood for Shrewsbury in 1841 as an ardent supporter of Sir Robert Peel, and on his election wrote to inform the Conservative leader that " the electors of Shrewsbury had done their duty." Shortly after, Sir Robert acceded to power, and the fact that the honourable gentleman received no appoint- ment in his Government was alluded to in the following session by Lord Palmerston. Mr. Disraeli had brought forward a motion (March 8, 1842) in favour of blending the consular with the diplomatic body, and on certain portions of his speech Lord Palmerston made the following remarks: " The honourable gentleman had indeed affirmed the general principle that 294 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. political adherents ought to be rewarded by appointments, and he regretted to observe an exception to that rule in the person of the honourable gentle- man himself. After the proof, however, of talent and ability which the honourable gentleman afforded, although perhaps not of great industry in getting up the details of his case, he trusted that before the end of the session the Government would overlook the slight want of industry for the sake of the talent, and that the House would see the maxim of the honourable member practically applied to his own case." To this Mr. Disraeli rejoined : " He must offer his acknowledgments to the noble viscount for his courteous aspirations for his political promotion. Such aspirations from such a quarter must be looked upon as suspicious. The noble viscount was a consummate master of the subject, and if the noble viscount would only impart to him the secret by which he had himself contrived to retain office during seven successive Administrations, the present debate would certainly not be without a result." The " Young England " Party. About the year 1843, this name became applied to a knot of young politicians in the House of Commons, of whom Mr. Disraeli was the most conspicuous. In his " Coningsby " the ideas of the party were supposed to be unfolded ; and another of its prominent members, Lord John Manners, published a volume of poems (" England's Trust," &c.), one couplet in which has become famous : " Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, But leave us still our old nobility !" The talented George Smythe, afterwards Lord Strangford, was also a member of this school of advanced, or, as many thought, retrograde politicians. Its members affected a spice of dandyism, of which the wearing of white waistcoats in the House was one of the peculiar signs. Mr. Henry Drummond once alluded to the group as " the members with sparkling eyes and white waistcoats." The Whigs caught Bathing. It was in a debate on the opening of letters at the Post Office, in 1845, that Mr. Disraeli used this celebrated illustration of the tactics of Sir Robert Peel. He said, " I know there are some who think that he is looking out for new allies. I never believed anything of the kind. The position of the right honourable gentleman is clear and precise. I do not believe he is looking to any coalition, although many of my constituents do. The right honourable gentleman has only exactly to remain where he is. The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal position, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments." The " Organised Hypocrisy." In a debate on " the agricultural interest," March 17, 1845, Mr. Disraeli thus closed a powerful speech : " Protection appears to be in about the same condition that Protestantism was in 1828. For my part, if we are to have free trade, I, who honour genius, prefer that such measures should be proposed by the honoiirable member for Stockport (Mr. Cobden), than by one who, through skilful parliamentary manoeuvres, has tampered with the generous confidence of a great people and of a great party. For inyeolf , I care not what may be BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EAEL OF BEACONSFIELD. 295 the result. Dissolve, if you please, the Parliament you have betrayed, and appeal to the people, who, I believe, mistrust you. For me there remains this at least the opportunity of expressing thus publicly my belief that a Conservative Government is an Organised Hypocrisy." The last two words are printed with capital letters in " Hansard's Debates," which are professedly revised by the speakers themselves. "Tea-Kettle Precedents." When Sir Robert Peel introduced the bill for the increased grant to Maynooth, he rested his arguments (says Francis) less upon any broad scheme of policy which might have compromised him directly with powerful parties, than upon the fact that the principle had been sanctioned, though obscurely, by parliamentary authority. This gave occasion to Mr. Disraeli to make a hit at the Premier, which was at once humorous and true. He said that with him great measures were always rested on small precedents ; that he always traced the steam-engine back to the tea-kettle; that, in fact, all his precedents were " tea-kettle precedents." A Parliamentary Middleman. " The Dunciad of Politics." In a debate on the Maynooth grant, Mr. Disraeli applied the first-named epithet to Sir R. Peel. He said : " Something has risen up in this country as fatal in the political world as it has been in the landed world of Ireland we have a great parliamentary middleman. It is well known what a middleman is ; he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other, till, having obtained a position to which he is not entitled, he cries out, ' Let us have no party questions, but fixity of tenure.' . . I hope I shall not be answered by ' Hansard.' I am not surprised that the right honourable gentleman should be so fond of recurring to that great authority ; he has great advantages ; he can look over a record of thirty, and more than thirty, years of an eminent career. But that is not the lot of every one ; and I may say as a general rule I am rather surprised that your experienced statesman should be so fond of recurring to that eminent publication. What, after all, do they see on looking over a quarter of a century, or more even, of their speeches in ' Hansard ? ' What dreary pages of interminable talk, what predictions falsified, what pledges broken, what calculations that have gone wrong, what budgets that have blown up ! And all this, too, not relieved by a single original thought, or a single generous impulse, or a single happy expression ! Why, ' Hansard,' instead of being the Delphi of Downing-street, is but the Dunciad of Politics." Leading up to his Point. Mr. Disraeli's art in this is illustrated in the following, from Maddyn's " Chiefs of Parties " : On one occasion, while Mr. Disraeli was playing the part of Junius on his legs, he convulsed the House of Commons while Sir Robert Peel winced under the torturing sarcasm. " Honourable gentlemen think that the conduct of the right honourable baronet is not guided by principle, and that it is extremely difficult to interpret his speeches or to understand his policy. I differ from that view. To me it seems that nothing can be more plain, or less unreserved, or more entirely straightforward than the right honourable baronet in his public course." (Looks of surprise from all sides.) " I say 296 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. that he has a perfectly frank mode of treating questions." (Increased surprise.) " I will give an infallible mode of deciphering him, when he is in his most tortuous mood of mind. If you want to know how the right honourable gentleman will ultimately act upon any distorted question in politics, all you have to do is " (a long pause, and, amid a hushed expecta- tion of the point, the accomplished political archer, with serene irony of countenance, launched his shaft) " to look to the last state of the poll." " Candid Friends." One of the sharpest of the passages between Mr. Disraeli and Sir Robert Peel was the following. Mr. Disraeli had made an attack on the Minister in the debate on opening letters in the Post Office, Feb. 20, 1845, and to this Sir Robert, on the following night, thus replied : " Notwithstanding the provocation of the honourable gentle- man, I will not deal so harshly with him as he has dealt with me. He undertakes to assure the House that my vehemence was all pretended, and warmth all simulated. I, on the contrary, will do him entire justice ; I do believe that his bitterness was not simulated, but that it was entirely sincere. . . The honourable gentleman is at perfect liberty to give a direct support to a hostile motion ; but all I ask is, that when he gives that support to the motion, let him not say that he does it in a friendly spirit. ' Give me the avowed, erect, and manly foe ; Firm I can meet, perhaps can turn the blow ; But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save me, save me, from a candid friend.' Here we meet in debate with our opponents opposite. We enter into conflict with them, mutually attacking and repelling attack adverso fronte. When engaged in that conflict, it is certainly not very convenient, though it may be unavoidable, to have a blow aimed at your right flank which you did not expect." Mr. Disraeli, a few nights afterwards, thus retorted : " If the right honourable gentleman may find it sometimes convenient to reprove a supporter on his right flank, perhaps we deserve it I, for one, am quite prepared to bow to the rod ; but really, if the right honourable gentleman, instead of having recourse to obloquy, would only stick to quotation, he may rely on it, it would be a safer weapon. It is one he always wields with the hand of a master ; and when he does appeal to any authority, in prose or verse, he is sure to be successful, partly because he seldom quotes a passage that has not previously received the meed of parliamentary approbation, and partly and principally because his quotations are so happy. The right honourable gentleman knows what the introduction of a great name does in debate how important is its effect, and occasionally how electrical. He never refers to any author who is not great, and sometimes who is not loved Canning for example. That is a name never to be mentioned, I am sure, in the House of Commons without emotion. We all admire his genius ; we all, at least most of us, deplore his untimely end ; and we all sympathise with him in his fierce struggle with supreme prejudice and sublime mediocrity with inveterate foes and with ' candid friends.' The right honourable gentleman may be sure that a quotation from such an authority will always tell. Some lines, for example, upon friendship, written by Mr. Canning, and quoted by the right honourable BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD. 297 gentleman ! The theme the poet the speaker what a felicitous com- bination ! Its effect in debate must be overwhelming ; and I am sure, were it addressed to me, all that would remain for me would be thus publicly to congratulate the right honourable gentleman, not only on his ready memory, but on his courageous conscience." The recollection of the political relations between Canning and Peel made these sarcasms at the time peculiarly telling. A Turning Point. When Sir Robert Peel indicated his adoption of free trade policy, in a debate on the address on the first night of the session of 1846, the House, although intensely interested, did not seem eager to enter then upon a discussion of the subject. " Suddenly, how- ever " (writes Mr. Justin M'Carthy), " a new and striking figure intervened in the languishing debate, and filled the House of Commons with a fresh life. There is not often to be found in our parliamentary history an example like this of a sudden turn given to a whole career by a timely speech. The member who rose to comment on the explanation of Sir Robert Peel had been for many years in the House of Commons. This was his tenth session. He had spoken often in each session. He had made many bold attempts to win a name in Parliament, and hitherto his political career had been simply a failure. From the hour when he spoke this speech, it was one long, unbroken, brilliant success. . . That moment when Disraeli rose was the very turning point of the fortunes of his party. There was genius, there was positive statesmanship in seizing so boldly and so adroitly on the moment. It would have been a great thing gained for Peel if he could have got through that first night without any alarm note of opposition from his own side. The habits of parlia- mentary discipline are very clinging. They are hard to tear away. Every impulse of association and training protests against the very effort to rend them asunder. A once powerful minister exercises a control over his long obedient followers somewhat like that of the heart of the Bruce in the fine old Scottish story. Those who once followed, will still obey the name and the symbol, even when the actual power to lead is gone for ever. If one other night's habitude had been added to the long dis- cipline that bound his party to Peel ; if they had allowed themselves to listen to that declaration of the session's first night without murmur, perhaps they might never have rebelled. Mr. Disraeli drew together into one focus all the rays of their gathering anger against Peel, and made them light into a flame. He showed the genius of the born leader by stepping forth at the critical moment and giving the word of command." What is a Statesman ? " My conception," said Mr. Disraeli at this time, " of a great statesman is of one who represents a great idea an idea which may lead him to power an idea with which he may identify himself an idea which he may develop an idea which he may and can impress on the mind and conscience of a nation." Speech on the Address, Jan. 22, 1846. A Man of the People. Mr. Roebuck, in a debate on the Corn Importation Bill in May, 1846, attacked Mr. Disraeli for changing his former political opinions, and the honourable gentleman thus replied : " It ia 298 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. easy for the honourable and learned gentleman to get up and say, alluding to the honourable member for Montrose (Mr. Hume) for whom I entertain, and I believe we all entertain, great respect that I was at one time ready to follow him. Why, suppose it were so, that would be no very serious im- putation against me, for the Prime Minister of England has recently given in his adhesion to that honourable member. But I don't wish to avail myself of any special pleading, nor even to say that, when a very young man, I entertained different opinions from those which I now entertain. I can't say that. I am not in a condition to have had hereditary opinions carved out for me, and all my opinions, therefore, have been the result of reading and of thought. I never was a follower of either of the two great aristocratic parties in this country. My sympathies and feelings have always been with the people, from whom I spring ; and when obliged, as a member of this House, to join a party, I joined that party with which I believed the people sympathise." A Gentleman of the Press. In February, 1853, Sir Charles Wood, Secretary of the Board of Control, had made some strong remarks, in a speech to his constituents at Halifax, with regard to the despotism of the French Emperor, especially in gagging the press. Mr. Disraeli a few nights afterwards, addressing the House of Commons on our relations with France, censured the language used by Sir Charles Wood, and in the course of his observations said : " There is no doubt that there is a considerable prejudice in this country against the present ruler of France, because he has terminated what we esteem parliamentary consti- tution, and has abrogated the liberty of the press. It is unnecessary for me to say that it is not probable I shall ever say or do anything which should tend to depreciate the influence or diminish the power of Parlia- ment or the press. My greatest honour is to be a member of this House, in which all my thoughts and feelings are concentrated ; and as for the press, I am myself a gentleman of the press, and have no other escutcheon." " Looming in the Future." Mr. Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, issued an address to his constituents, the electors of Buck- inghamshire, in June, 1852, in which he announced the approaching dissolution of Parliament. Referring to a revision of our taxation, he said : " The times are favourable to such an undertaking ; juster notions of taxation are more prevalent than heretofore; powerful agencies are stirring, which have introduced new phenomena into finance, and altered the complexion of the fiscal world ; and the possibility of greatly relieving the burdens of the community, both by adjustment and reduction, seems to loom in the future." Ministry upon Sufferance. In a speech against the Government of Lord Aberdeen in 1854, Mr. Disraeli charged its members, Lord John Russell especially, with having offered a factious opposition to the measures of Lord Derby, while they were now engaged in carrying them out. " Look," said he, " at the distinguished and gifted beings before me ; what have they done at all equal to the establishment of the militia on the voluntary principle, or the reform of the Court of Chancery? Then there was another enlightened and liberal proposition, which laid down BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EAEL OF PEACONSFIELD. 299 the principle since adopted by Lord John Russell in his Reform Bill, that the forfeited seats should be given to great counties, and they proposed to give them to the West Riding and to Lancashire. How was that opposed ? By the sanctimonious eloquence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gladstone), who said that a Government upon sufferance could not be permitted to bring forward a measure of Parliamentary Reform. I suppose the vision of a perfect Reform Government passed before the prescient and prophetic glance of the right honourable gentle- man. Yet what have you got in the way of parliamentary reform from the Government of All the Talents ? When we brought forward financial measures and failed, we did that which it was our part to do at least when I have the misfortune to propose measures and fail ; for I will never be a Minister upon sufferance." Obstruction and the British Constitution. In committee of supply in June, 1857, Mr. Disraeli made the following remarks, which have received illustration in more recent times : " With regard to the estimates, a very great change had taken place within the last two or three years in the form of drawing them up. . . In old days a vote was asked, say the 100,OOOZ. for palaces ; the Minister who prepared that vote was supposed to be master of the subject ; he explained it if necessary, and the House if satisfied granted that sum on his responsi- bility. . . Now the fault of the present system was that they had in one vote too many items. It was perfectly absurd to fill up the vote with details of every miserable item, as if the Minister could not, for example, be charged, without the interference of the House, with the responsibility of a water-closet. But under the present system the matter might become serious as regarded the public business. Any four men might by the forms of the House bring its business to a close. Any four men could by the forms of the House make a dissolution of Parliament absolutely necessary. And, if there was not sufficient good sense in the country to insure that these four men would never be returned again, they might destroy the British Constitution at any time." A Forecast of the Royal Titles Bill. It is shown in Sir Theodore Martin's " Life of the Prince Consort " that it was the custom for the Minister who led in the House of Commons to forward to the Queen brief abstracts or outlines of its proceedings. On the discussion, in 1858, of the bill transferring the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown, Mr. Disraeli (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) wrote to her Majesty that such satisfactory progress had been made with it in the House that it might be regarded as safe, and he added : " It is, the Chancellor of the Exchequer really thinks, a wise and well-digested measure, ripe with the experience of the last five years ; but it is only the ante-chamber of an imperial palace, and your Majesty would do well to deign to consider the steps which are now necessary to influence the opinions and affect the imaginations of the Indian populations. The name of your Majesty ought to be impressed upon their native life." This remark clearly foreshadows the measure which was introduced several years later, when the writer became Prime Minister, to enable the Queen 300 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. to assume the title of Empress of Hindostan. That Act was passed, after much opposition, in 1876; but it afterwards appeared that in 1869 the Duke of Argyll, as Minister for India in Mr. Gladstone's Government, had sent to the Ameer of Afghanistan a telegram, in which her Majesty was styled " Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India " the latter words having been added to the draft telegram by the duke himself. The matter was the subject of question in both Houses in February, 1880. The Age of Faith. A meeting of the Oxford Diocesan Society for the augmentation of small benefices gave occasion, in 1864, for one of the most celebrated of Mr. Disraeli's orations. Addressing himself to combat the assertion that the age of faith has passed, the speaker said : " "When I observe what is passing around me, what is taking place in this country, and not only in this country but on the Continent, in other countries and in other hemispheres, instead of believing that the age of faith has passed, I hold that the characteristic of the present age is a craving credulity. Why, man is a being born to believe ; and if you do not come forward, if no Church comes forward with its title-deeds of truth, sustained by the tradition of sacred ages and by the conviction of count- less generations to guide him, he will found altars and idols in his own heart and in his own imagination. But observe what must be the relations of a powerful Church, without distinctive creeds, with a being of that nature. Rest assured that the great principle of political economy will be observed. Where there is a great demand, there will be a proportionate supply; and commencing, as the new school may, by rejecting the principle of inspiration, it will end by every priest being a prophet ; and beginning as they do by repudiating the practice of miracles, before long we shall be living in a flitting scene of spiritual phantasmagoria. There are no tenets however extravagant, no practices however objectionable, which will not in time develop under such a state of affairs ; opinions the most absurd, and ceremonies the most revolting, are perhaps to be followed by the incantations of Canidia and the Corybantian howl. But consider the country in which all this may take place. Look at the Europe of the present day and the Europe of a hundred years ago. It is not the same Europe ; its very form is changed. Whole nations and great nations which then flourished are no longer found. There is not a political constitution in Europe existing at the present time which then existed. The leading community of the continent of Europe has changed all its landmarks, altered its boundaries, erased its local names ; the whole jurisprudence of Europe has been subverted ; even the tenure of land, which of all human institutions most affects the character of man, has been altered the feudal system has been abolished ; not merely laws have been changed, not merely manners have been changed, but customs have been changed. And what happened ? When the turbulence was over when the shout of triumph and the wail of agony were alike stilled when, as it were, the waters had disappeared,* the sacred heights of Sinai and Calvary were * Compare with Canning, " Subsidence of the Deluge," p. 209. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACON8FIELD. 301 again revealed, and, amid the wreck of thrones and tribunals, of extinct nations and abolished laws, mankind bowed again before the divine truths that had been by omnipotent power, in His ineffable wisdom, entrusted to the custody and the promulgation of a chosen people." " On the Side of the Angels." It was in the same address at Oxford that Mr. Disraeli made this declaration, so much commented upon at the time not always in a complimentary fashion. He said : " I hold that the highest function of science is the interpretation of nature, and the interpretation of the highest nature is the highest science. What is the highest nature ? Man is the highest nature. But I must say that when I compare the interpretations of the highest nature with the most advanced, the most fashionable and modern school of modern science when I compare that with older teachings with which we are familiar I am not prepared to say that the lecture -room is more scientific than the Church. What is the question which is now placed before society with the glib assurance which to me is most astounding ? That question is this is man an ape or an angel P I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence those new-fangled theories." Asian Mystery and Batavian Grace. During the discussions in committee on the Reform Bill in 1867, Mr. Beresford Hope, opposing it, made some remarks reflecting upon Mr. Disraeli's conduct of tho measure, and declared that he for one, whether he lost his seat or not, would vote with his whole heart and conscience "against the Asian mystery." Mr. Disraeli replied : " I can assure the honourable gentleman that I listened with great pleasure to the invectives he delivered against me. I admire his style ; it is a very great ornament to discussion, but it requires practice. I listen with the greatest satisfaction to all his exhibitions in this House (oh, oh !) and when he talks about an Asian mystery, I will tell him that there are Batavian graces in all that he says, which I notice with satisfaction, and which charm me." (Mr. Beresfor^ Hope's action while speaking gave occasion to this sarcasm.) "Educating his Party." While Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Disraeli was entertained at a banquet by the Conservatives of Edinburgh, October 29th, 1867, when he went into an elaborate review of the subject of Reform, and defended the bill which had been passed, under his management, by the Government of Lord Derby. Speaking of the interval between 1860 and the period when the Conservative measure was introduced, he said: "During that period of seven years, with the advice, I may say under the instructions of my colleagues, I expressed the prin- ciples upon which any measure of parliamentary reform ought to be established. Now, mark this, because these are things which you may not have heard in any speech which has been made in the city of Edin- burgh. I had to prepare the mind of the country, and to educate if it be not arrogant to use such a phrase to educate our party. It is a large party, and requires its attention to bo called to questions of this kind with some pressure. I had to prepare the mind of Parliament and of the country on this question of reform. This was not only with the concur- rence of Lord Derby, but of my colleagues." 302 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. A British Minister's Difficulties. In his speech at the Edin- burgh banquet, Mr. Disraeli thus depicted the cares and anxieties which attach to the position of Minister in this country : " I am the last man who would attempt to depreciate the difficulties which a British Minister has to meet, or would attempt to exaggerate the qualities which my col- leagues possess. Indeed, when I remember the interests of these British Isles, so vast, so various, and so complicated when I even recall to re- collection the differences of race, which, however blended, leave a very significant characteristic when I recollect that the great majority of the population of the United Kingdom rise every day and depend for their daily sustenance on their daily labour when I recollect the delicate nature of our credit, more wonderful in my opinion than all our accumu- lated capital when I remember that it is on the common sense, the pru- dence, and the courage of a community thus circumstanced that depends the fate of uncounted millions in ancient provinces, and that around the globe there is a circle of domestic settlements that watch us for example and inspiration when I know that not a sun arises upon a British Minister that does not bring him care, and even inexpressible anxiety an unexpected war, a disturbed and discontented colony, a pestilence, a famine, a mutiny, a declining trade, a decaying revenue, a collapse of credit, perhaps some insane and fantastic conspiracy I declare I feel very often, I wonder where there is the strength of heart to deal with such colossal circumstances. But when I withdraw from the pressure of individual interest, and take a larger and deeper view of human affairs, I recognise that in this country, whatever may have been the tumult and the turmoil of our now almost countless generations, there have been three master influences that have at all times controlled and commanded our powers and passions, and they are industry, liberty, and religion. So long as this sacred combination influences the destiny of this country, it will not die ; history will recognise its life, not record its decline and fall." His Elevation to the Premiership. On the resignation of the Earl of Derby, from failing health, in February, 1868, Mr. Disraeli, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, received a summons from the Queen to reconstruct the Cabinet. The autograph letter from Osborne thus calling him to assume the Premiership was carried by General Grey, who in 1832 had defeated Mr. Disraeli in his early candidature for a seat at High Wycombe. Heedless Rhetoric. During a debate on the Irish Church in 1868, Mr. Disraeli was often taunted with arguments he had used in a speech on the state of Ireland in 1844. He said, in one of his replies : " I have been reminded in the course of this debate of expressions which I used five-and-twenty years ago. I could remind other gentlemen of ex- pressions they used on the same subject five-and-twenty years ago ; but I do not much care for that sort of thing. With reference, however, to that passage which has been quoted from a speech made by me, I may remark that it appeared to me at the time I made it that nobody listened to it. It seemed to me that I was pouring water upon sand, but it seems now that the water came from a golden goblet. With regard to the BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD. 303 passage from that speech, there are many remarks which, if I wanted to vindicate or defend myself, I might legitimately make. . . All this I might say ; but I do not care to say it, and I do not wish to say it, because in my conscience the sentiment of that speech was right. It may have been expressed with the heedless rhetoric which I suppose is the appanage of all who sit below the gangway ; but in my historical con- science the sentiment of that speech was right." An Appeal to the Jury. In the debate on Mr. Gladstone's Irish Church resolutions, in April, 1868, Mr. Disraeli said : " The only objection which I have to the attacks of the noble lord (Cranborne, after- wards Marquis of Salisbury) is that they invariably produce an echo from the other side. When the bark is heard from this side, the right honourable member for Came (Mr. Lowe) emerges, I will not say from his cave,* but perhaps from a more cynical habitation. He joins immediately in the chorus of reciprocal malignity ' And hails with horrid melody the moon.' The right honourable gentleman was extremely exuberant in his comments upon my character and career. I will not trouble the House with a defence of that character and career. I have lived in this House more than thirty years, and can truly say that during that time comments upon my character and career have been tolerably free and plain. But the House has been the jury of my life, and it allows me now here to address it, and therefore here is not the place in which I think it necessary to vindicate myself." The Country Governed by Rhetoric. In May, 1871, a motion of Mr. Miall's, that it was expedient to apply the policy initiated by the disestablishment of the Irish Church to the other churches of the kingdom, was defeated by 374 to 89. Mr. Disraeli, in speaking against it, admitted that the principle was logical, but said, " Fortunately the country was not governed by logic. It was governed by rhetoric, and not by logic, or otherwise it would have been erased long ago from the list of leading communities. No form of religion represented more fully the national senti- ment than the Established Church. For his own part, he had always believed that, organically, the English were a religious people. We had partially educated them, and we were now going to educate them com- pletely ; and when they were educated they would not fly to the conven- ticle ; they would appreciate a learned clergy, a refined ritual, and the consolation of the beautiful offices of the Church." Views of Toryism. In June, 1872, Mr. Disraeli addressed, at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, " the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations." In the course of his speech he laid down the following principles with regard to the Tory party : " It was a great mistake that those who succeeded statesmen like Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville should have so conducted affairs that they built up their policy on the most contracted basis. The Tory party, unless it is a national party, is nothing. It is not a confederacy of nobles, it is not a demo- * The Cave of Adullam see under " Mr. Bright." 304 ANECDOTAL HISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. cratic multitude ; it is a party formed from all the numerous classes of the realm classes alike and equal before the law, but whose different conditions and different aims give vigour and variety to our national life. . . I have always been of opinion that the Tory party has three great objects. The first is to maintain the institutions of the country- not from any sentiment of political superstition, but because we believe that the principles upon which a community like England can alone safely rest the principles of liberty, of order, of law, and of religion ought not to bo intrusted to individual opinion or to the caprice and passion of multitudes, but should be embodied in a form of permanence and power. We associate with the Monarchy the ideas which it represents the majesty of law, the administration of justice, the fountain of mercy and of honour. We know that the Estates of the Realm, by the privileges they enjoy, are the best security for public liberty and good government. We believe that a national profession of faith can only be attained by maintaining an Established Church, and that no society is safe unless there is a public recognition of the Providential government of the world, and of the future responsibility of man." "Sanitas Sanitatum, omnia Sanitas." The speech in which Mr. Disraeli made this remark, in illustration of the proper domestic policy of a Government, was delivered to a meeting of Lancashire Con- servatives, in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, in April, 1872. In the course of a very effective oration, the right honourable gentleman (then leader of the Opposition) said : " In attempting to legislate upon social matters the great object is to be practical. I think public attention as regards these matters ought to be concentrated upon sanitary legislation. That is a wide subject, and, if properly treated, comprises almost every consideration which has a just claim upon legislative interference. Pure air, pure water, the inspection of unhealthy habitations, the adulteration of food, these and many kindred matters may be legitimately dealt with by the Legislature. . . Gentlemen, I cannot impress upon you too strongly my conviction of the importance of the Legislature and society uniting together in favour of these important results. A great scholar and a great wit 300 years ago said that, in his opinion, there was a great mistake in the Vulgate (which, as you all know, is the Latin translation of the Holy Scriptures), and that, instead of saying " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas the wise and witty King really said Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas. Gentlemen, it is impossible to overrate the importance of the subject. After all, the first consideration of a Minister should be the health of the people. A land may be covered with historic trophies, with museums of science and galleries of art, with universities and with libraries ; the people may be civilised and ingenious ; the country may be even famous in the annals and action of the world ; but, gentlemen, if the population every ten years decreases, and the stature of the race every ten years diminishes, the history of that country will soon be the history of the past." A few weeks afterwards, in a political banquet' at the Crystal Palace, Mr. Disraeli thus defended his remarks against some adverse criticism which BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACON8FIELD. 305 had followed : " Tlie views which I expressed in the great capital of the county of Lancaster have been held up to derision by the Liberal press. A very rising member among the new Liberal members denounced them the other day as the ' policy of sewage.' "Well, it may be the ' policy of sewage ' to a Liberal member of Parliament. But to one of the labouring multitude of England, who has found fever always to be one of the inmates of his household who has, year after year, seen stricken down the children of his loins, on whose sympathy and material support he has looked with hope and confidence, it is not a ' policy of sewage,' but a question of life and death." The " Exhausted Volcanoes." In his speech to the Lancashire Conservatives, in 1872, Mr. Disraeli also used this simile, while criticising the recent course of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry : " As time advanced it was not difficult to perceive that extravagance was being substituted for energy by the Government. The unnatural stimulus was subsiding. Their paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury bench, the Ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coast of South America. Tou behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occa- sional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea." A Blaze of Apology. In the debate on the Address on the opening of the session of 1872, Mr. Disraeli thus referred to numerous speeches which had been made by Ministers during the recess a period when the loss of the ship Megaera, the Alabama negotiations, and what was termed the " Collier scandal," had been among the prominent topics : " Although a considerable interval has elapsed since we all had the honour of seeing you (the Speaker) in your chair, yet the time appears to have passed over us so rapidly as not to have exercised that softening influence, or to have drawn that comparative oblivion over our controversies, which, in my opinion, is so highly salutary and beneficial. I attribute this in a great degree to the new system adopted by her Majesty's Ministers of vindicating their cha- racters and their policy during the recess. We really have had no time to forget anything. Her Majesty's Ministers may be said during the last six months to have lived in a blaze of apology. (Cheers and laughter.) I must protest against this new system, which does not permit us to return to our labours with renovated physical powers and energies, or with our mental qualities and faculties refreshed, as we used to do in the old days. I think that for a ministerial vindication there is no place more fit than the floor of this House ; and as for Ministerial explanations, they are of so marvellous a nature that even here they are difficult always to appre- hend, but as they were given in the recess I confess I found them incomprehensible." Defeat of the Gladstone Ministry on the Irish University Bill. On the llth of March, 1873, the second reading of the Irish University Bill of the Gladstone Government was before the House of Commons, and Mr. Disraeli made a telling speech against it. In one 21 306 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. passage he said : " If her Majesty's Government have not the confidence of the House of Commons, I want to know what they have the confi- dence of ? It is a House returned under their auspices. (" No, no.") Well, elected under the exciting eloquence of the right honourable gentleman. When I remember that campaign of rhetoric, I must say I think this House was formally as well as spiritually its creation. . . This is essentially a material age. The opinions which are now afloat, which have often been afloat before, and which have died away as I have no doubt these will die in due time, are opposed, in my opinion, to all those sound convictions which the proper study of moral and mental philo- sophy has long established. But that such a proposition should be made in the land of the university which has produced Berkeley and Hutchinson makes it still more surprising. We live in an age when young men prattle about protoplasm, and when young ladies in gilded saloons unconsciously talk atheism. And this is the moment when a Minister, called upon to fulfil one of the noblest duties which can fall upon the most ambitious statesman namely, the formation of a great university formally comes forward and proposes the omission from public study of moral and mental philosophy!" The speaker went on to say that in their recent policy the Government had mistaken the clamour of Nonconformists for the voice of the nation, and he denounced the Ministry in terms resembling those used in his celebrated " Bath letter " a few months later : " You have now," said he, " had four years of it. Tou have despoiled churches. You have threatened every corporation and endowment in the country. You have examined into everybody's affairs. You have criticised every profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and nobody knows what duties he may have to perform to-morrow. I believe that the people of this country have had enough of the policy of confiscation. From what I can see, the House of Commons elected to carry out that policy are beginning to experience some of the inconvenience of satiety, and, if I am not mistaken, they will give some intimation to the Govern- ment to-night that that is their opinion also." In the division the Ministers were beaten by 287 to 284, and consequently tendered their resignations to the Queen. " Plundering and Blundering." In October, 1873, Mr. Disraeli addressed a letter to Lord Grey de Wilton, respecting an election then pending at Bath, and in the course of it said : " For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country." It closed by saying that " the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering." The writer had used the same phrase many years before, in his political novel " Coningsby," where he introduces one of his characters thus : " Light as air, and proud as a young peacock, tripped on his toes a young Tory, who had contrived to keep his seat in a Parliament where he had done nothing, but who thought the Under Secretaryship was now secure, particularly as ho was the son of a noble lord, who had also, in a public capacity, plundered and blundered in the good old time." Mr. Gladstone appears BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD. 807 to have parodied this phrase, in a speech at Greenwich in defence of his Government in January, 1874. Among other topics alluded to, was the accusation by Mr. Disraeli that British interests had been neglected in the Straits of Malacca. Mr. Gladstone retorted that if any neglect had taken place it was under the foreign administration of Lord Derby, in Mr. Disraeli's own Cabinet; and he concluded this part of the subject by declaring, "I will leave the leader of the Opposition for the present floundering and foundering in the Straits of Malacca." Humiliations of a Weak Government. In giving the House his reasons for declining the Queen's summons to form an Administration, on the 20th of March, 1873, Mr. Disraeli made the following remarks : " I know well, and those who are around me know well, what will occur when a Ministry takes office and attempts to carry on the government with a minority during the session, with the view of ultimately appealing to the people. We should have what is called ' fair play.' That is to say, no vote of want of confidence would be proposed, and chiefly because it would be of no use. There would be no wholesale censure, but retail humiliation. A right honourable gentleman will come down here, he will arrange his thumb-screws and other instruments of torture on this table we shall never ask for a vote without a lecture, we shall never perform the most ordinary routine office of government without there being annexed to it some pedantic and ignominious condition. (" No, no," and cheers.) I wish to express nothing but what I know from painful personal experi- ence. No expression of the kind I have just encountered could divest me of the painful memory ; I wish it could. I wish it was not my duty to take this view of the case. In a certain time we should enter into the paradise of abstract resolutions. One day honourable gentlemen cannot withstand the golden opportunity of asking the House to affirm that the income tax should no longer form one of the features of our Ways and Means. Of course a proposition of that kind would be scouted by the right honourable gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) and all his colleagues ; but then they might dine out that day (laughter), and the resolution might be carried, as resolutions of that kind have been. Then another gentle- man, distinguished for his knowledge of men and things, would move that the Diplomatic Service be abolished. While honourable gentlemen opposite were laughing in their sleeves at the mover, they would vote for the motion in order to put the Government into a minority. For this reason : ' Why should men,' they would say, ' govern the country who are in a minority ? ' totally forgetting that we acceded to office in the spirit of the Constitution, quite oblivious of the fountain and origin of the position we occupied. And it would go very hard if on some sultry afternoon some member should not ' rush in where angels fear to tread,' and successfully assimilate the borough and the county franchise (loud cheers). And so things would go on until the bitter end until at last even the Appropriation Bill has passed, Parliament is dissolved, and we appeal to those millions who perhaps six months before might have looked upon us as the vindicators of intolerable grievances, but who now receive us as a defeated, discredited, and degraded Ministry, 308 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT, whose services can be neither of value to the Crown nor of credit to the nation." A Passing Allusion. Mr. Disraeli's faculty of bringing in an unexpected humorous illustration was perhaps never better displayed than in a speech to the Conservatives of Glasgow (November, 1873). In allusion to the Abyssinian war he said : " I should myself, from my own individual experience, be most careful not to follow the example which one of the most distinguished members of the present Administration pursued with respect to us when we had to enconnter the Abyssinian difficulty. When I introduced the necessity of interference in order to escape from difficulties which we had inherited and not made, Mr. Lowe rose in Parliament and violently attacked the Government of the day for the absurdity, the folly, the extreme imprudence of attempting any inter- ference in the affairs of Abyssinia. . . He described the horrors of the country and the terrors of the clime. He said there was no possibility by which any success could be obtained, and the people of England must prepare themselves for the most horrible catastrophe. He described not' only the fatal influence of the climate ; bnt I remember he described one pink fly alone which he said would eat up the whole British army. He was as vituperative of the insects of Abyssinia as if they had been British workmen." Dexterity in a Difficulty. In his speech on the second reading of the Peace Preservation (Ireland) Bill in 1875, Mr. Disraeli was for a time disconcerted by one of the Irish members interposing, in the loudest tones, ejaculations of " No " and " Hear, hear." At the outset the Prime Minister had remarked of the bill, " This is a measure of necessity, framed in a spirit of conciliation ;" a statement which was followed by a stentorian " No !" from his adversary. " If that," said Mr. Disraeli, " is to be taken as a reply, I must observe that, according to the rules of the House, the honourable gentleman is precluded from taking any further part in this debate." This rejoinder, however, excited his opponent the more, and he followed his first interruption by a series of ironical cheers, which scarcely allowed the speaker to proceed. The House seemed somewhat amused at the incident (which occurred after the dinner hour), and Mr. Disraeli for a time failed to regain its ordinary attention ; but he presently created a diversion which temporarily restored his usual command over his audience. Replying to a lengthy speech from Mr. Butt on the other side, he remarked: "The honourable gentleman has quoted a passage from a speech of mine [at the Guildhall] not made in this House, which at the time attracted some public notice. I said then, as I say now, that the working classes of England inherit popular and personal privileges which the nobility of other nations do not. That is my opinion, which I am prepared to stand by. Well, a story got out that in consequence of using those words a representation was made to her Majesty's Government, and that I made an apology to the Minister [Prince Bismarck] who believed he was alluded to. Now, I never would have gone out of my way to explain, but as the honourable gentleman the other night talked of her Majesty's Government truckling to Prince Bismarck, I think, after the quotation of BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD. 309 this passage, that the House will allow me to make one other remark. There is not the slightest truth of any kind in the statement that has been made, that any allusion or remonstrance, direct or indirect, public or private, by male or by female (laughter) was ever made to me or to any member of her Majesty's Government upon that statement. When the erroneous charge was made that I had alluded to the conduct of Prince Bismarck, of whom I thought as much at the time as I am now thinking of Rory O'More, I thought it was idle to answer the remarks in the newspapers." After this, the speaker was again interrupted as before ; but he completely recovered possession of the House by introducing an apparently trivial anecdote. " I am surprised," he said, " to find county members for Ireland rising up in their places and doubting the existence of the Ribbon conspiracy. I say, Sir, that such incredulity is simply astounding. I remember there was once a member of Parliament, one of the greatest ornaments of this House, who sat upon this bench, and who filled the office which I now so unworthily occupy. That member was Mr. Canning, and at the time, besides the discovery of a new world, dry champagne was invented. Mr. Canning, hearing everyone talk of the new wine, wished to taste it. Mr. Ellice got up a little party in order to gratify Mr. Canning's desire, and the dry champagne was introduced, and Mr. Canning, after drinking his wine and thinking for a moment, said, ' The man who says that he likes dry champagne will say anything.' I don't want to enter into any rude controversy with any of my friends who doubt -the existence of Ribbonism in Ireland, but I will say that a man who doubts the existence of Ribbonism is a man who ought to drink dry champagne." Last Appearance in the Commons. The announcement of Mr. Disraeli's elevation to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield was made on the 12th of August, 1876, and took the country by surprise. On the previous evening he had addressed the Commons for the last time, none of his hearers suspecting on the occasion that one who had taken such a conspicuous and important part in its affairs during a long period, was now about to quit that stirring arena for the more sedate and quiet scenes of the Upper House. The subject before the House of Commons on the evening was the state of affairs in the East, and among the last remarks made by the Prime Minister were the following : " What our duty is at this critical moment is to maintain the Empire of England. Nor will we ever agree to any step, though it may obtain for a moment comparative quiet and a false prosperity, that hazards the existence of that Empire." Banter. In the debate in the House of Lords on the policy of the Government respecting affairs in the East, Dec. 10, 1878, the Earl of Beaconsfield replied as follows to Lord Derby, who had resigned his position as Foreign Secretary, when the Ministry contemplated measures of which he did not approve : " The noble earl who spoke last night from the cross benches made a most ingenious speech, marked by all his characteristics. I never was more pleased. I listened for a long time to what seemed a complete vindication of the Government, and, remembering 310 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. it came from an old comrade in arms with whom I had worked for a quarter of a century with entire concert, who had left me unfortunately from circumstances over which he had no control (a laugh) I thought he was making the amende by taking an early opportunity of vindicating the policy of the Government. But before sitting down, all that romantic flutter of the heart which I had experienced entirely ceased, when I found that, notwithstanding his approbation of the Government policy, he was going to vote for the amendment. What surprised me more than any- thing was the reason he gave for it, and that was because we did not go to war with Russia. The noble lord said, 'If you acted logically and properly you ought to have gone to war with Russia, and therefore I must vote for the amendment.' " (Much laughter.) An After-Dinner Sketch of Mr. Gladstone. On the return of Lords Beaconsfield and Salisbury from Berlin in 1878, a dinner in their honour was given at Knightsbridge by members of the Conservative party, more than 500 being present. In the course of his speech on this occasion, Lord Beaconsfield thus referred to some criticisms by Mr. Gladstone : " I was astonished to learn that the Convention of Constantinople has been described as ' an insane convention.' That is a strong epithet, but I do not pretend to be as competent a judge of insanity as the right honourable gentleman who used it. I will not say to the right honourable gentleman what I had occasion to say in the House of Lords this year, Naviget Anticyram ; but I would put this issue to an intelligent English jury Which do you believe most likely to enter into an insane convention, a body of English gentlemen, honoured by the favour of their Sovereign and the confidence of their fellow subjects, managing your affairs for five years, I hope with prudence and not altogether without success, or a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination, that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself ? " "Xmperinm et Libertas." The Earl of Beaconsfield used this phrase in replying for the Ministry at the Guildhall banquet in 1879. He said: "When one of the greatest of the Romans was asked what his policy was, he replied, ' Imperium et libertas.' That is a short programme, but it would not disgrace a British ministry, and it is one on which the existing Ministry will always act." The phrase, although not found to the letter, has been traced to a passage in Cicero's fourth Philippic, as well as to one in the " Agricola " of Tacitus, and other sources. "Home Rule." In the debate on the Address in the House of Lords, at the opening of Parliament in February, 1880, Lord Beacons- field made the following declaration on this subject : " It is very easy to talk of the House of Commons and of Parliament generally being over- laden with business to a great degree with Irish business and that it would be very desirable that a great portion of Irish business should be transacted in Ireland. Well, I should like to know what this business is that is to be transacted in Ireland. It is so easy to raise this question ; but there is no business which refers to Ireland which would not equally BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD. 3H be an excuse in England. Why should not the people of York transact their business in York ? So you would go on until you had no Parliament at all. We should find the noble lord (Granville) in a short time coming to this point. Well, what is the result p The next thing is you are to have a Parliament in St. Stephen's Green. The noble earl must know very well that the party called the Home Rule party that is, the Repeal of the Union party have behind their policy an Irish Parliament. The noble lord will allow me, as he has quoted a colleague of mine, to quote a colleague of his ; one who, although he displayed great sympathy with the new school, and although he was not prepared to be a member of the Parliament in St. Stephen's Green not yet prepared still he did not care how many friends he had who sat upon those benches. I wish to say, whatever may be the result of the election, I do trust that England will understand what is the issue at the present moment on this subject. I wish the country to understand that it means nothing else but the dismemberment of the United Kingdom. I do not care where a man sits in this House, whether opposite me or on my own side : those who favour such a policy are false to their Sovereign and to their country, and will live, I feel confident, soon to regret the responsibility which by their conduct they are incurring." The " Conquered Race." In the course of a debate in 1874, on a motion in favour of Home Rule brought forward by Mr. Butt, Mr. Disraeli (then Prime Minister) made some very happy allusions to the argument sometimes advanced, that the Irish people, without Home Rule, were a conquered race. He said, " There is to me nothing more extra- ordinary than the determination of the Irish people to proclaim to the world that they are a subjugated people. I have been always surprised that a people gifted with so much genius, so much sentiment, such winning qualities, should be I am sure they will pardon my saying it ; my remark is an abstract, not a personal one should be so deficient in self-respect. I deny that the Irish people are conquered : they are proud of it I deny that they have any ground for that pride. England has been subjugated quite as much, but never boasted of it. The Normans conquered Ireland, but it was after they had conquered Engknd. Cromwell conquered Ireland, but it was after he had conquered England." These remarks were received with much applause from all sides of tho House. The speaker went on to condemn the motion, declaring, "If we sanction this policy, if we do not cleanse the parliamentary bosom of this perilous, stuff, we shall bring about the disintegration of the kingdom and the destruction of the empire." The motion was rejected by 458 to 61. A Tribute front an Opponent. In the House of Lords in February, 1877, in a discussion on the Eastern question, the Duke of Argyll one of the most uncompromising of Lord Beaconsfield's political opponents made the following complimentary remarks : " My lords, before I sit down I trust that the noble earl opposite will allow me to make a personal appeal to him. He is at the head of one of the most powerful Governments which this country has ever seen, he enjoys the confidence and affection of his party, and he has their entire and devoted 312 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. allegiance in a manner and to an extent which few ministers have ever enjoyed. My lords, at one time in the course of this year the noble earl gave public intimation otherwise I should not feel myself at liberty to notice it that it was his desire, at no distant day, to retire from the fatigues and cares of his great office. That, my lords, was an intimation which could not but arouse the sympathy and interest of all who know him. In the generous contests of our public life we have no private grudges and no personal enmities. The noble earl enjoys the affection of many around him of the young men whom he has encouraged on their entering into public life, and the old men whom he has led against all hope to victory and success. But, my lords, the noble earl will not retire, if ever he does retire, with any better wish from any man than the wish to which I now give utterance, and it is this that when he looks back to this Government, of which he is the distinguished head, he will be able to say that he has wielded the great power of England for the purpose, and with the effect, of procuring some measure of tolerable liberty for the Christian subjects of Turkey, and that in procuring that measure of tolerable liberty he has secured it on such conditions as will guarantee them for the future against the odious barbarism of the Turks, and against the crushing autocracy of the Russian Czars ; for neither do we wish to see them govern the Christian people of Turkey." LORD GEORGE BENTINCK (18021848.) His Early Devotion to the Turf. Lord George Bentinck (wrote Mr. Disraeli) had sat for eighteen years in Parliament, and before he entered it had been for three years the private secretary of Mr. Canning, who had married the sister of the Duchess of Portland. Such a post would seem a happy commencement of a public career ; but whether it were the untimely death of his distinguished relative, or a natural indis- position, Lord George though he retained the seat for King's Lynn, in which he had succeeded his uncle, the late Governor- General of India directed his energies to other than parliamentary pursuits. For some time he had followed his profession, which was that of arms, but of late years he had become absorbed in the pastime and fortunes of the turf, in which his whole being seemed engrossed, and which he pursued on a scale that perhaps has never been equalled. Accompanying Lord Stanley, he became in due time a member of the great Conservative opposition, and, as he never did anything by halves, became one of the most earnest, as he certainly was one of the most enlightened, supporters of Sir Robert Peel. His trust in that minister was indeed absolute, and he subse- quently stated in conversation that when, towards the end of the session of '45, a member of the Tory party ventured to predict and pronounce the impending defection of the Minister, there was no member of the Conservative party who more violently condemned the unfounded attack, or more readily impugned the motives of the assailant. LORD GEORGE BENTINCK. 313 A Proud Aristocracy. In his speech on the opening of Parlia- ment in 1846, Sir Robert Peel had made the remark, " It is no easy task to insure the harmonious and united action of an ancient monarchy, a proud aristocracy, and a reformed House of Commons." Lord George thus com- mented upon the Minister's observation a few weeks later, in the peroration of an elaborate harangue (full, as usual with the speaker's addresses, of statistics). Such as it is, it is the best example that can be cited of the oratorical powers of one who at the time promised to be the future leader of his party : " We have heard, in the course of these discussions, a good deal about an ancient monarchy, a reformed House of Commons, and a proud aristocracy. Sir, with regard to our ancient monarchy I have no observation to make ; but, if so humble an individual as myself might be permitted to whisper a word in the ear of that illustrious and royal personage who, as he stands nearest, so is he justly dearest to her who sits upon the throne, I would take leave to say that I cannot but think he listened to ill advice when, on the first night of this great discussion,* he allowed himself to be seduced by the First Minister of the Crown to come down tfe this House to usher in, to give eclat , and, as it were, by reflection from the Queen to give the semblance of the personal sanction of her Majesty to a measure which, be it for good or for evil, a great majority, at least of the landed aristocracy of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland, imagine fraught with deep injury, if not ruin, to them. . . I come now to the reformed House of Commons ; and, as one who was a party to that great measure, I cannot but feel a deep interest in its success, and more especially in that portion of it which extended the franchise to the largest and the most respectable body in the kingdom I mean the landed tenantry of England ; and deeply should I regret did any large proportion of those members who have been sent to Parliament to represent them in this House prove to be the men to bring lasting dishonour upon themselves, their constituencies, and this House by any act of tergiversation so gross as to be altogether unprecedented in the annals of any reformed or unre- formed House of Commons. Lastly, I come to the ' proud aristocracy.' We are a proud aristocracy, but if we are proud it is that we are proud in the chastity of our honour. If we assisted in '41 in turning the Whigs out of office because we did not consider a fixed duty of 8. a quarter on foreign corn a sufficient protection, it was with honesty of purpose and in singlemindedness we did so ; and, as we were not before the fact, we will not be accomplices after the fact, in the fraud by which the Whig Ministers were expelled from power. If we are a proud aristocracy, we are proud of our honour, inasmuch as we have never been guilty, and never can be guilty, of double dealing with the farmers of England, of swindling our opponents, deceiving our friends, and betraying our con- stituents." A Sacrifice. On the day after the Derby, 1848 (says Mr. Disraeli), the writer met Lord George Bentinck in the library of the House of Commons. Prince Albert was in the House when the Minister introduced hia Corn Law Eepeal Bill. 314 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. He was standing before the book-shelves, with a volume in his hand, and his countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolutions in favour of the colonial interest, after all his labours, had been negatived by the committee on the 22nd, and on the 24th his horse Surplice, whom he had parted with among the rest of his stud, solely that he might pursue without distraction his labours on behalf of the great interests of the country, had won that paramount and Olympian stake to gain which had been the object of his life. He had nothing to console him, and nothing to sustain him except his pride. Even that deserted him before a heart which he knew at least could yield him sympathy. He gave a sort of superb groan : " All my life I have been trying for this, and for what have I sacrificed it P" he murmured. It was in vain to offer solace. " You do not know what the Derby is," he moaned out. " Yes, I do ; it is the blue ribbon of the turf." " It is the blue ribbon of the turf," he slowly repeated to himself, and, sitting down at the table, he buried himself in a folio of statistics. Bolting from the Course. The writer of a " Memoir of the fifth Duke of Richmond" relates the following of Lord George Bentinck: When canvassing at King's Lynn in company with his colleague Lord William Lennox, at a moment when Lord George had offended some of the extreme Radical party by voting for Lord Chandos's motion during the progress of the Reform Bill, he was shown into the lion's den of a somewhat gruff elector, who had only recently enjoyed his privilege as a voter. Lord George was all politeness, and, presenting his elec- tioneering card, asked him for the honour of his support. The indepen- dent Liberal put on a smile, and, in the pleasantest manner imaginable, said, " Good morning, my lord ; has your lordship been at Newmarket lately ? " The candidate smiled. " You 're very fond of a race," continued the other. " Very," responded the scion of the House of Portland. " I wish to ask you a question, my lord a racing question." The noble turfite gave one of his most willing looks, and replied that he should be very happy to give all the information he could on the subject. " Now, my lord," proceeded the inquirer in a rather dry and solemn tone, " if a horse, however thoroughbred and good he may be in other respects, is given to swerving or bolting from the course, what should you think of him ? " " Perfectly useless not worth training." " You've said it," responded the other with a demoniac laugh. " I quite agree with your lordship. As Nathan said to David, ' Thou art the man.' How came you not to run straight on the Reform Bill ? " His Death.. Lord George Bentinck died suddenly, while walking near the family seat of his father, the Duke of Portland, at Welbeck, on the 21st of September, 1848. Although he had been less than three years before the public as a parliamentary figure, his industry and mastery of commercial detail, as shown in his speeches, had impressed the nation, and, as Mr. Disraeli mentions, on the day of his interment all the British shipping in port had their flags half-mast high. Lord Lytton, in one of his admirable sketches, depicts both Bentinck's career and the national feeling at its close : LORD OEOROE BENTINCE. 815 " The lounging member seldom in his place, And then with thoughts remote upon a race, Stung into sympathy with others, blends His life with theirs, and ease for ever ends. Each task by which industrious toil supplies What culture lacks or native bent denies, Conscience itself imposes ; in his creed, Who shuns one labour is unfit to lead. Thus, victim of his own remorseless zeal, Life, overwound, snapt sudden at the wheel, And the same grief which England gives the brave Slain at their post, did homage to his grave." WILLIAM EWAET GLADSTONE. (1809.) His First Return. Mr. Gladstone was first returned to Parliament in the Tory interest in 1832, for the borough of Newark-on-Trent, then under the influence of the Duke of Newcastle. This nobleman is cele- brated as having asked the question, in response to a remonstrance against his eviction of more than a hundred persons who had voted against his wishes, " May I not do what I like with my own ? " The duke's eldest son, Lord Lincoln (the future duke, and Minister for War and the Colonies, during the Crimean hostilities), was a schoolfellow of Mr. Gladstone's at Eton, and fellow student with him at Christ Church, Oxford ; and upon Lord Lincoln's recommendation, it is presumed, the duke made his acquaintance. Mr. Gladstone had not quite completed his twenty-third year when he stood for the borough. In answer to a question put to him on the hustings, he is reported in a newspaper of the day to have said : " I found my way to Newark because I was invited by a numerous body of men, than whom none are more respectable or intelligent. The Bed Club had written to the Duke of Newcastle to know if he could recommend any gentleman as a fit and proper person, and in consequence of that application I was invited by the Red Club. I was unknown to the Bed Club as much as though I had been a person of New Zealand or Kamschatka ; but my recommendation was such that the Bed Club determined to invite me." What followed on Mr. Gladstone's part is somewhat characteristic. An elector : " Are we to understand you, then, as the nominee of the Duke of Newcastle ? " Mr. Gladstone : " I will answer that question if you tell me what you mean by nominee." The elector : " I consider the man as the nominee of the duke when he is sent by his grace to be crammed down the throats of the electors, whether they will or not." Mr. Gladstone : " Then, according to that definition, I am not the nominee of the Duke of Newcastle." The elector : " What is your definition of a nominee ? " Mr. Gladstone : " I am not here to give the definition. I ask what you mean by the word nominee, and according to your own explanation of it I give the answer." Mr. Gladstone was returned at the head of the poll. He continued to represent Newark until 1846. 316 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. First Appearances in Parliament. The Parliament in which Mr. Gladstone first sat was the first after the passing of the Reform Act, and met in January, 1833. The young member did not address the House till the following May, when he rose to repel some accusations respecting the treatment of slaves on his father's estates in Demerara. The abolition of shivery was then under discussion in the House, and was earned during this session. Lord Althorp's bill for the reduction of the Irish Church Establishment also passed in the same year, Mr. Gladstone speaking and voting against it. Macaulay on Gladstone. Macaulay's sketch of Mr. Gladstone as a young man shows the impression the future Premier made upon some of his early contemporaries in Parliament. In his review of Mr. Gladstone's work on "The State in its Relations with the Church" (Edinburgh Review, April, 1839) the essayist wrote : " The author of this volume is a young man of unblemished character, and of distinguished parliamentary talents, the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories who follow, reluctantly and mutinously, a leader [ Sir Robert Peel] whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor. It would not be at all strange if Mr. Gladstone were one of the most unpopular men in England. But we believe that we do him no more than justice when we say that his abilities and his demeanour have obtained for him the respect and good will of all parties. . . Mr. Gladstone seems to us to be, in many respects, exceedingly well qualified for philosophical investiga- tion. His mind is of large grasp ; nor is he deficient in dialectical skill. But he does not give his intellect fair play. There is no want of light, but a great want of what Bacon would have called dry light. Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees is refracted and distorted by a false medium of passion and prejudices. His style bears a remarkable analogy to his mode of thinking, and indeed exercises great influence on his mode of thinking. His rhetoric, though often good of its kind, darkens and perplexes the logic which it should illustrate. Half his acuteness and diligence, with a barren imagination and scanty vocabulary, would have saved him from almost half his mistakes. He has one gift most dangerous to a speculator a vast command of a kind of language, grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import." Mr. Gladstone and the " Sliding Scale." Mr. Gladstone had occupied subordinate offices in the brief Administration of Sir Robert Peel in 1835, and, on the return of that statesman to power in 1841, he was made Master of the Mint as well as Yice -President of the Board of Trade. Miss Williams Wynn, writing at the time from London to Baron Varnhagen von Ense, observed, " They say Mr Gladstone has been given two offices in order, if possible, to keep him quiet, and, by giving him too much to do, to prevent him from troubling his head about the Church." In presenting himself for re-election at Newark on accepting his new offices, it is interesting to note the future promoter of the Commercial Treaty with France and similar measures declaring protectionist prin- ciples. " There are," said he, " two points on which the British farmer WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 317 may rely; the first of which is that adequate protection will be given to him ; and the second is that protection will be given to him through the means of the sliding scale " (regulating the duties on corn accord- ing to the market price per quarter). In the preparation of this " sliding scale," which was introduced in 1842, it was understood that Mr. Gladstone had rendered active assistance to the head of the Govern- inent. A Reply to Lord Palmers ton. In the adjourned debate on the foreign policy of the Government, in June, 1850, Mr. Gladstone made the following remarks in reference to Lord Palmerston's famous declaration, " Civis Bomanus sum:" " He vaunted, amid the cheers of his supporters, that under his administration an Englishman should be, throughout the world, what the citizen of Rome had been. But I ask, what then was a Roman citizen ? He was the member of a privileged caste ; he belonged to a conquering race, to a nation that held all nations bound down by the hand of Imperial power. For him there was to be an exceptional system of law ; for him principles were to be asserted, and by him rights were to be enjoyed, that were denied to the rest of the world. Is such, then, the view of the noble lord as to the relation that is to subsist between England and other countries p Does he make the claim for us that we are to bo uplifted on a platform high above the standing -ground of all other nations? It is, indeed, too clear that too much of this notion is lurking in his mind ; that he adopts, in part, that vain conception that we, forsooth, have a mission to be the censors of abuses and imperfections among the other countries of the world ; that we are to be the universal schoolmasters, and that all who hesitate to recognise our office should have the war of diplo- macy, at least, forthwith declared against them. And certainly, if the business of a Foreign Secretary is merely to carry on diplomatic war, all must admit the perfection of the noble lord in the discharge of his func- tions. But it is not the duty of a Foreign Minister to be like a knight- errant, ever pricking forth, armed at all points, to challenge all comers, and lay as many adversaries as possible sprawling, or the noble lord would be a master of his art ; but to maintain that sound code of international principles which is a monument of human wisdom, and a precious inheri- tance bequeathed by our fathers for the preservation of the future brother- hood of nations." An Impulsive Speech. In the debate on the Budget of the Derby Ministry in December, 1853, Mr. Disraeli (Chancellor of the Exchequer) closed his defence of the measure in a warm and bitter speech, in which he retorted on his antagonists the charge of incompetence which they had made against himself. Sir Charles Wood (a former Chancellor) especially was the object of his animadversion, and was told, " If ho has learned his business, he has still to learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective." Sir James Graham also, Mr. Disraeli remarked, he looked upon with regard, but not with respect; and he concluded by denouncing the coalition among his adversaries, and declaring, " England does not love coalitions." It had been understood that his speech would close the debate; but the moment he sat down, 318 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. amid much cheering and counter-cheering, Mr. Gladstone sprang to his feet. " This speech," said he, " is one which must be answered, and answered at the moment. The character of England, involved in that of her public men, the character of England is at stake. . . The right honourable gentleman must permit me to tell him that he is not entitled to charge with insolence men of as high position and of as high character in this House as himself. And I must tell him that whatever else he may have learnt, he has not learned to keep within those limits, in dis- cussion, of moderation and of forbearance that ought to restrain the conduct and language of every member of this House ; the disregard of which, while it is an offence in the meanest amongst us, is an offence of tenfold weight when committed by the leader of the House of Commons." Mr. Gladstone, who had scarcely been heard for the storm of interrup- tion raised by the opposite party, then went on to review the Budget in detail, and denounced it as unsound and delusive. In the division which followed, the Government were defeated by 305 to 286. Commissioner Extraordinary to the Ionian Islands. Mr. Gladstone lent a general support to the second administration of the Earl of Derby, in 1858. Towards the close of that year he undertook, at the request of the Prime Minister, a special mission to the Ionian Islands, then under British protectorate. He declared the object of his mission to the Senate on the 3rd of December, saying he had been sent to " examine in what way Great Britain may most honourably and amply discharge the obligations which, for purposes European and Ionian rather than British, she has contracted." The Legislative Assembly of the Islands passed, in January, 1859, a resolution declaring for union with Greece, and Mr. Gladstone whose knowledge of the Greek language was of important service in this mission induced the body to appoint a com- mittee to draw up suitable representations to the protecting Powers. The petition was not then granted, but the Islands were offered a constitution similar to that of the British colonies. After the expulsion of King Otho from the throne of Greece, and the election of Prince George of Denmark to the crown, the Ionian Islands were formally ceded to Greece by the protecting Powers. A School for Statesmen. In a speech on Lord Derby's Reform Bill in 1859, Mr. Gladstone asked : " Is it not, under Providence, to be attributed to a succession of distinguished statesmen, introduced at an early age into this House, and once made known in this House securing to themselves the general favour of their countrymen, that we enjoy our present extension of popular liberty, and, above all, the durable form which that liberty has assumed ? " Small Boroughs and Great Men. In the same debate Mr. Gladstone thus defended the existence of small boroughs : " Allow me to state the case of six men Mr. Pelham, Lord Chatham, Mr. Fox, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Canning, and Sir Robert Peel. Mr. Pelham entered this house for the borough of Seaford in 1719, at the age of twenty-two ; Lord Chatham entered it in 1735, for Old Sarum, at the age of twenty-six; Mr. Fox in 1764, for Midhurst, at the age, I think, of twenty j Mr. Pitt in 1781, for WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, 319 Appleby, at the age of twenty-one ; Mr. Canning in 1793, for Newport, at the age of twenty-two; and Sir Robert Peel in 1809, for the city of Cashel, at the age of twenty-one. Now here are six men, every one of whom was a leader in this House. I take them because the youngest is older than the youngest of those who now sit here, and because the mention of their names can give rise to no personal feeling. Here are six men whom you cannot match out of the history of the British House of Commons for the hundred years which precede our own day. Every one of them was a leader in this House ; almost everyone of them was a Prime Minister. All of them entered Parliament for one of those boroughs where influence of different kinds prevailed. Every one of them might, if he had chosen, after giving proof of his powers in this House, have sat for any of the open constituencies of the country, and many of them did so. Mr. Pelham, after sitting for Seaf ord in one Parliament, represented Sussex for all the rest of his life. Lord Chatham never, I think, represented an open constituency. Mr. Fox, after sitting for Midhurst, became the chosen for Westminster. Mr. Pitt went from Appleby at a very early age to the University of Cambridge. Mr. Canning went from Newport to Liverpool, and Sir Robert Peel from Cashel to the University of Oxford. Now, what was the case of Sir Robert Peel ? The University, on account of a conscientious difference of opinion, refused the continuance of his services. They might have been lost to the British Parliament, at that moment at all events. But in Westbury he found an immediate refuge for so it must be called ; and he continued to sit for a small borough for the remainder of his life. Mr. Canning in the same way, not losing but resigning the representation of Liverpool, found it more conducive to the public business that he should become the representative of a small borough for the rest of his days. What does this show ? It shows that small boroughs were the nursery-ground in which these men were educated men who not only were destined to lead this House, to govern the country, to be the strength of England at home and its ornament abroad, but who likewise, when once they had an opportunity of proving their powers in this House, became the chosen of large constituencies, and the favourites of the nation." A " Gigantic Innovation." In the debate that took place July 5th, 1860, on the action of the House of Lords * in rejecting the bill for the abolition of the Paper Duties which had been sent up from the Lower House, Mr. Gladstone (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) said : " It appears to me to be the determination of one moiety of this House that there shall be no debate upon the constitutional principles which are involved in this question ; and I must say that, considering that gentle- men opposite are upon this occasion the partisans of a gigantic innovation the most gigantic and the most dangerous that has been attempted in our times I may compliment them upon the prudence that they show in resolving to be its silent partisans. Now, Sir, I should like to know with what language and in what tones those gentlemen who assume the name See p. 233. 320 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. of Conservative politicians would argue in support of a great encroachment by one house of the legislature upon the other." The "Danger Signal." The following passage occurred in a speech of Mr. Gladstone's in 1864 : " We are told that the working classes do not agitate for an extension of the franchise ; but is it de- sirable that we should wait until they do agitate P In my opinion, agitation by the working classes, upon any political subject whatever, is a thing not to be waited for, not to be made a condition previous to any parliamentary movement, but, on the contrary, it is a thing to be depre- cated, and, if possible, anticipated and prevented by wise and provident measures. An agitation by the working classes is not like an agitation by the classes above them, the classes possessed of leisure. The agitation of the classes having leisure is easily conducted. It is not with them that every hour of time has a money value ; their wives and children are not depen- dent on the strictly reckoned results of those hours of labour. When a working man finds himself in such a condition that he must abandon that daily labour on which he is strictly dependent for his daily bread, when he gives up the profitable application of his time, it is then that, in railway language, the danger signal is turned on ; 'for he does it only because he feels a strong necessity for action, and a distrust of the rulers who, as he thinks, have driven him to that necessity." " Unmuzzled " by Oxford University. At the general election in July, 1865, Mr. Gladstone lost his seat for Oxford University, the numbers on the 18th, after six days' polling, standing thus : Sir W. Heathcote, 3236; Mr. Gathorne Hardy, 1904; Mr. Gladstone, 1724 minority 180. It having become evident, during the two or three days before the close of the poll, that his seat was in danger, Mr. Gladstone was nominated on the 17th for South Lancashire, and when the result at Oxford was known, he made his appearance at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester to address the electors : " At last, my friends," said he, " I have come amongst you ; and I have come, to use an expression which has become very famous, and is not likely to be forgotten I am come among you ' unmuzzled.' After an anxious struggle of eighteen years, during which the unbounded devotion and indulgence of my friends maintained me in the arduous position of representative of the University of Oxford, I have been driven from my seat. . . I have loved the University of Oxford with a deep and passionate love, and as long as I breathe that attachment will continue. If my affection is of the smallest advantage to that great, that ancient, that noble institution, that advantage, such as it is and it is most insignificant Oxford will possess as long as I live. . . . I am aware of no cause for the votes which have given a majority against me in the University of Oxford, except the fact that the strongest conviction the human mind can receive, that an overpowering sense of the public interests, that the practical teachings of experience, to which from my youth Oxford herself taught me to lay open my mind all these had shown me the folly, and, I will say, the madness of refusing to join in the generous sympathies of my countrymen, by adopting what I must call an obstructive policy." WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 321 His Connection with the Liberal Party. In the course of a debate on Parliamentary Reform in April, 1866, Mr. Gladstone was taunted by Mr. Lowe with promoting Reform measures in his later years, while he had strongly opposed the first Reform Bill, in the Oxford Union Debating Society in 1831. In his reply, addressing the members of the Liberal party, he thus alluded to the change from his earlier convictions which had brought him amongst them : " I came amongst you an outcast from those with whom I associated, driven from their ranks, I admit, by no arbitrary act, but by the slow and resistless force of conviction. I came among you, to make use of the legal phraseology, in forma pauperis. I had nothing to offer you but faithful and honourable service ; you received me as Dido received the shipwrecked JEneas : ' Excepi ejectum littore, egentem.' And I only trust you may not hereafter, at any time, have to complete the sentence in regard to me : ' Et regni, demons ! in parte locavi.' You received me with kindness, indulgence, generosity, and I may even say with some measure of your confidence. And the relation between us has assumed such a form that you can never be my debtors, but that I must be for ever in your debt." A Peroration in a Pull House. The close of the same debate was marked by ono of the most forcible passages of Mr. Gladstone's .oratory. Alluding to the division then about to be taken on the second reading of the Reform Bill of Lord Russell's Government, he said : " This Bill is in a state of crisis and of peril, and the Government along with it. We stand or fall with it, as has been declared by my noble friend Lord Russell. We stand with it now ; we may fall with it a short time hence. If we do so fall, we, or others in our places, shall rise with it hereafter. I shall not attempt to measure with precision the forces that are to be arranged against us in the coming issue. Perhaps the great division of to-night is not to be the hist, but only the first of a series of divisions. At some point of the contest you may possibly succeed. You may drive us from our seats. You may slay, you may bury the measure that we have introduced. But we will write upon its gravestone for an epitaph this line, with certain confidence in its fulfilment : " Exoriare aliqnia nostris ex ossibus nltor.' ' You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side. The great social forces which move onwards in their might and majesty, and which the tumult of these debates does not for a moment impede or disturb, those great social forces are against you ; they work with us ; they are marshalled in our support. And the banner which we now carry in the fight, though perhaps at some moment of the straggle it may droop over our sinking heads, yet will float again in the eye of heaven, and will be borne by the firm hands of the united people of the three kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain and to a not distant victory." The division which followed was in favour of the second reading by a majority of five only 318 against 313. These numbers were amongst the largest 22 322 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. ever assembled on a division, constituting almost the entire House, the remainder of the 658 seats being thus accounted for : Speaker, 1 ; tellers, 4 ; pair, 2 ; vacancies, 11 ; absent, 9 only. Irish. Church. Disestablishment. The first clear intimation of Mr. Gladstone's policy with respect to the Irish Church took Parliament and the country by surprise. It occurred in a debate on the state of Ireland, introduced by an independent member (Mr. Maguire), March 16th, 1868 ; Mr. Disraeli's Government then being in office.* After speaking at some length on the various grievances of which Ireland complained, and of the Church Establishment among them, Mr. Gladstone referred to his former speeches on the subject, and said : " I did not use one word, to my knowledge, which was contrary to the opinion I held then and hold now namely, that in order to the settlement of the question of the Irish Church, that Church, as a State Church, must cease to exist. . . Without the slightest reproach to any of those who bear office in the Irish Church, I am convinced, from a long observation, that that institution is, and by the law of its existence must be, the home and last refuge of the spirit of ascendancy ; and as that which, beyond all particular and special measures, we need, is the expulsion of the spirit of ascendancy from Ireland, I take leave to say that, in order to that expulsion, we must now proceed to deal decisively with that question of the Irish Church." He further remarked : " My opinion is that religious equality is a phrase that requires further development, and I will develop it further by saying that, in this religious equality in Ireland, I, for my part, include in its fullest extent the word a very grave word, I do not deny, and I think we cannot be too careful to estimate its gravity before we come to a final conclusion the very grave word disestablishment. If we are to do any good at all by meddling with the Church in Ireland, it must, in my judgment, be by putting an end to its existence as a State Church." With reference to the unexpected character of this announcement, Mr. Disraeli remarked, in the debate upon going into committee upon Mr. Gladstone's resolutions (April 3rd, 1868), that the right honourable gentleman had come forward " all of a sudden, like a thief in the night." Use of Quotation. Mr. Gladstone's frequent and skilful use of quotation in debate is well known ; but quotation probably never took a wider range in so brief a compass, or was more effective, than in the follow- ing passage of his speech on moving his Irish Church resolutions, March 30th, 1868: "There are many who think that to lay hands upon the National Church Establishment of a country is a profane and unhallowed act. I respect that feeling. I sympathise with it. I sympathise with it while I think it my duty to overcome and repress it. But if it be an error, it is an error entitled to respect. There is something in the idea of a National Establishment of religion, of a solemn appropriation of a part of the commonwealth, for conferring upon all who are ready to receive it * In a speech in the House of Commons in March, 1865, Mr. Gladstone (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) had so far endorsed a resolution antagonistic to the Irish Church, as to admit that the state of that Establishment was " un- satisfactory." WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 323 what we know to be an inestimable benefit ; of saving that portion of the inheritance from private selfishness, in order to extract from it, if we can, pure and unmixed advantages of the highest order for the population at large there is something in this so attractive, that it is an image that must always command the homage of the many. It is somewhat like the kingly ghost in Hamlet, of which one of the characters of Shakespeare says ' We do it wrong, being so majosticol, To offer it the show of violence ; For it is, as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.' But, Sir, this is to view a religious Establishment upon one side only, upon what I may call the ethereal side. It has likewise a side of earth ; and here I cannot do better than quote some lines written by the present Archbishop of Dublin [Dr. Trench] at a time when his genius was devoted to the Muses. He said, in speaking of mankind ' We, who did our lineage high Draw from beyond the starry sky, Are yet upon the other side To earth and to its dust allied.' And so the Church Establishment, regarded in its theory and in its aim, is beautiful and attractive. Yet what is it but an appropriation of public property, an appropriation of the fruits of labour and of skill to certain purposes? and unless those purposes be fulfilled, that appropriation cannot be justified. Therefore, Sir, I cannot but feel that we must set aside fears which thrust themselves upon the imagination, and act upon the sober dictates of our judgment. I think it has been shown that the cause for action is strong not for precipitate action, not for action beyond our powers, but for such action as the opportunities of the times and the condition of Parliament, if there be but a ready will, will amply and easily admit of. If I am asked as to my expectations of the issue of this struggle, I begin by frankly avowing that I, for one, would not have entered into it unless I believed that the final hour was about to sound : ' Venit summa dies et ineluctabile fatum.' " The Lords "in. a, Balloon." This saying was applied freely to the Upper House in 1869, in consequence of an expression made use of by Mr. Gladstone in the discussion of the Lords' amendments to the Irish Church Bill. The following is the passage : " The right honourable gen- tleman says truly that we ought to approach in a spirit of respect the amendments made by the House of Lords. As I come to discuss them I shall endeavour, and my colleagues will do the same, to conform to that rule. We can hardly expect of the House of Lords that they should appro- ciate the humble considerations which govern the special relations between each member of Parliament and the portion of the British people that he represents. From the great eminence on which they sit they can no more discuss the minute particulars of our transactions than could a man in a balloon. Had the House of Lords gone through the experience of 824 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. such an election as the last, it would be absolutely impossible for them, as honourable politicians, to have consented to the clause [in favour of " concurrent endowment "] which they have put into this bill." A Generous Compliment. Mr. Gladstone's readiness to encourage young and promising members of the House of Commons was often displayed. An instance occurred in committee on the Irish Church Bill, April 29th, 1869. Mr. Chaplin, one of the representatives of Lincoln- shire, had made an able first speech against the policy of the Government, and the Premier, rising immediately after, thus complimented him : " The honourable member who has just sat down has admonished us, and myself in particular, that the sense of justice is apt to grow dull under the influence of a long parliamentary experience. But there is one sentiment which I can assure him does not grow dull under the influence of a long parliamentary experience, and that is the sense of pleasure when I hear whether upon these benches or upon those opposite to me an able, and at the same time frank, ingenuous, and manly statement of opinion, and one of such a character as to show me that the man who makes it is a real addition to the intellectual and moral worth and strength of Parliament. Having said this, I express my thanks to the honourable member for having sharply challenged us ; it is right that we should be so challenged, and we do not shrink from it." Rashness Rebuked. Mr. Gladstone's comparison of the Irish Church to the upas tree afforded an opportunity to a youthful opponent (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) to twit him in the House of Com- mons in the following way : " No doubt, if one looked long enough at a star he might persuade himself it was a comet ; if he looked long enough at a bush, he might persuade himself it was an upas tree ; and if he ruminated on a very small grievance long enough, he might per- suade himself it was a very large one." To this the Prime Minister replied : " My noble friend the member for Calne seconded this vote of censure with a modest apology for his own youth and inexperience ; but I would say that perhaps that apology was scarcely necessary. We are aware that in other and darker ages it was the custom of the older members of the human family to censure and even to chastise the youth. We live in more enlightened times, and it may be quite proper that that custom should be now reversed; if a new experiment is to be made, I know of no one who will try it with greater satisfaction and confidence in his own mind than my noble friend." (Laughter.) Imperial Interests First. In committee on the Education Bill in 1871, the views of Mr. Gladstone's Government were opposed by a largo section of his supporters from the Nonconformist body, among them chiefly Mr. Miall. On the third reading of the measure, that gentleman, complaining of the want of consideration which he thoiight had been exhibited towards his friends, declared that " they could not stand this sort of thing much longer." Whereupon Mr. Gladstone rose and said : " I hope that my honourable friend will not continue his support of the Government one moment longer than he deems it con- sistent with his sense of duty and right. For God's sake, Sir, let him WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 325 withdraw it the moment he thinks it better for the canse he has at heart that he should do so. So long as my honourable friend thinks fit to give us his support, we will co-operate with my honourable friend for every purpose we have in common; but when we think his opinions and demands exacting, when we think he looks too much to the section of the community he adorns, and too little to the interests of the people at large, we must then recollect that we are the Government of the Queen, and that those who have assumed the high responsibility of administering the affairs of this Empire must endeavour to forget the parts in the whole, and must, in the great measures they introduce into the House, propose to themselves no meaner or narrower object than the welfare of the Empire at large." AIH Impertinent Question. Mr. Whalley, long member for Peterborough, and noted in Parliament for his opposition to the annual grant to Maynooth, addressed a letter to Mr. Gladstone in 1871, calling upon him, on behalf of the constituents of Peterborough, to answer the question whether he was a member of the Church of Rome. To this Mr. Gladstone, then staying at Balmoral, replied (quoting the terms of the question addressed to him) : " I quite agree with those of your con- stituents, on whose behalf you address me, in thinking that the question, ' Whether the Prime Minister of this country is a member of the Church of Rome,' and being such not only declines to avow it, but gives through a long life all the external signs of belonging to a different communion, is a ' question of great political importance,' and this not only ' in the present,' but in any possible ' condition of the Liberal ' or any other ' party.' For it involves the question whether he is the basest creature in the kingdom which he has a share in ruling ; and instant ejectment from his office would be the smallest of the punishments he would deserve. If I have said this much upon the present subject, it has been out of personal respect to you. For I am entirely convinced that, while the question you have put to me is in truth an insulting one, you have put it only from having failed to notice its true character ; since I have observed, during an experience of many years, that even when you undertake the most startling duties, you perform them in the gentlest and most considerate manner." The Abolition of Purchase in the Army. The Army Regu- lation Bill of Mr. Gladstone's Government, which abolished the purchase system, passed by only a narrow majority in the House of Commons on the third reading, on the 3rd of July, 1871 ; an adverse motion by Mr. Graves being defeated by 239 to 231. In the House of Lords, on the 17th of July, the second reading was refused by 155 to 130. On the 20th, Mr. Gladstone, in reply to a question by Sir George Grey, said that legally there was no purchase except under the Queen's Regulations on the subject ; and the Government had resolved to recommend the Queen to cancel the Royal warrant under which purchase was allowed. That advice had been accepted by her Majesty, a new warrant had been framed, and from the 1st of November purchase in the army would be abolished. He said the Government had no other object in view but simplicity, despatch, 326 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. and the observance of constitutional usage a statement which was met with loud cries of " Oh ! " and counter-cheers. On the 31st of July, on the second reading of the Army Compensation Bill, the following resolu- tion passed the House of Lords by 162 to 82 : " That this House, in assenting to the second reading of this bill, desires to express its opinion that the interposition of the Executive during the progress of a measure submitted to Parliament by her Majesty's Government, in order to attain, by the exercise of the prerogative, and without the aid of Parliament, the principal object included in that measure, is calculated to depreciate and neutralise the independent action of the Legislature, and is strongly to be condemned ; and this House assents to the second reading of this bill only in order to secure the officers of her Majesty's army the compensation to which they are entitled consequent on the abolition of purchase in the army." Calming the Storm. One of the most striking scenes in Mr. Glad- stone's career occurred when he met an enormous mass of his constituents and others at Blackheathin October, 1871. His Ministry at that time had been waning in popularity, and many of the constituency of Greenwich had been especially angered against him, by reductions made in the dock- yard establishments at "Woolwich and elsewhere. After a few words from one of his supporters, which were inaudible, Mr. Gladstone came forward bareheaded to address the crowd. A writer in the Daily News thus described the scene which ensued : " The first word he spoke was the signal of a fearful tempest of din. From all around the skirts of the crowd rose a something between a groan and a howl. So fierce was it that for a little space it might laugh to scorn the burst of oheering that strove to overmaster it. The battle raged between the two sounds, and looking straight upon the excited crowd stood Mr. Gladstone, calm, resolute, patient. It was fine to note the manly British impulse of fair play that gained him a hearing when the first ebullition had exhausted itself, and the revulsion that followed so quickly and spontaneously, on the realisa- tion of the suggestion that it was mean to hoot a man down without giving him a chance to speak for himself. After that Mr. Gladstone may be said to have had it all his own way. Long before ho had finished he had so enthralled his audience, that impatient disgust was expressed at the handful who still continued their abortive efforts at interruption." Mr. Gladstone concluded his speech by a passage which is among the most characteristic of his style : " Gentlemen, I shall go from this meeting, having given you the best account of my position in my feeble power, within the time and under the circumstances of the day I shall go from this meeting strengthened by the comfort of your kindness and your indulgence to resume my humble share in public labours. No motive will more operate upon me in stimulating me to the discharge of duty than the gratitude with which I look back upon the, I believe, unexampled circumstances under which you made me your representative. But I shall endeavour I shall make it my hope to show that gratitude less by words of idle compliment or hollow flattery than by a manful endeavour, according to the measure of my gifts, humble as WILLIAM EWAET GLADSTONE. 327 they may be, to render service to a Queen who lives in the hearts of the people, and to a nation, with respect to which I will say that through all posterity, whether it be praised or whether it be blamed, whether it be acquitted or whether it be condemned, it will be acquitted or condemned upon this issue, of having made a good or a bad use of the most splendid opportunities; of having turned to proper account, or failed to turn to account, the powers, the energies, the faculties which rank the people of this little island among the few great nations that haA'e stamped their name and secured their fame among the greatest nations of the world." Political Quacks. It was in his address to the Greenwich electors at Blackheath, in 1871, that Mr. Gladstone observed : " Let the Government labour to its utmost ; let the Legislature labour days and nights in your service ; but, after the very best has been attained and achieved, the question whether the English father is to be the father of a happy family and the centre of a united home is a question which must depend mainly upon himself. And those who propose to you, whoever they may be, schemes like those seven points of which I have spoken ; those who promise to the dwellers in towns that every one of them shall have a house and garden in free air, with ample space ; those who tell you that there shall be markets for selling at wholesale prices retail Quantities I won't say are impostors, because I have no doubt they are sincere ; but I will say they are quacks." A. Minister's Duty. " It is the duty of a Minister to stand like a wall of adamant between the people and the Sovereign." Speech at Garston, Nov. 14th, 1868. Tyranny of Minorities. In a debate on the second reading of the Irish Land Bill in 1870, Mr. Gladstone (then Prime Minister) dropped a remark in reference to the conduct of some of his opponents, which was destined to receive forcible illustration in the House a few years later. " The oppression of a majority," said he, " is detestable and odious. The oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious." Home Rule and Disintegration. On the occasion of Mr. Gladstone's visit to Aberdeen, during his premiership in 1871, to have the freedom of the city conferred upon him, he made some remarks on the subject of Home Rule, and said that, if it were established in Ireland, people would be equally entitled to it in Scotland. He added : " More- over, I protest on behalf of Wales, in which I have lived a good deal, and where there are 800,000 people, who to this day, such is their sentiment of nationality, speak hardly anything but their own Celtic tongue a larger number than speak the Celtic tongue, I apprehend, in Scotland, and a larger number than speak it, I apprehend, in Ireland I protest on behalf of Wales that they are entitled to Home Kulo there. Can any sensible man, can any rational man suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for 328 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. bestowing benefits through legislation on the country to which we belong?" Minority Representation. Agamemnon's Tomb. In a speech to the Nottingham Liberal Union, in September, 1877, Mr. Glad- stone said : " There has been a great deal said in late years in Parliament by gentlemen who think it is very desirable that there should be a repre- sentation of minorities, and various methods have been proposed for securing that representation ; but there is one method which appears to me by far the best, and that was the one adopted for the last election for Nottingham. You had got two places to fill, and you tried to put four men into them. I do not know if any of you will be surprised at my introducing the subject, but you will soon see the purpose of it : A friend of mine named Dr. Schliemann has been in Greece, and has dug up some extraordinary tombs, and has found skeletons and remains of human bodies in those tombs. He says the tombs are those of Agamemnon and his companions, and he found amongst others the bones of an extra- ordinarily tall man ; but how long do you think the tomb is ? five feet two. So Dr. Schliemann says it is a most extraordinary thing that, having this enormously tall man to bury, they should have put him in a tomb only five feet two inches in length. That conveys to my mind something like the proposition adopted at Nottingham. You have got five feet two inches of parliamentary space allotted to you, and you attempt to put iu that which requires ten feet space. Well, gentlemen, when you have to deal with political affairs, recollect, I beseech you, Dr. Schliemann and his tombs, and do not endeavour to put into places made for two men the bodies of four men, for if you do, you will never get them into it, and while you are debating and bothering about how to do it, somebody else will come up with two men and put them in. . . I entreat you to think of these matters, and, if I may use the expression, to throw your opinions as Liberals into one common stock. Do not let us dwell exclu- sively or over much upon a particular thing that we ourselves may deem to be the most important. Remember the wise saying of Mr. Bright. Mr. Bright has said a great many wise things, and one of them was that the policy of Liberalism, as a whole, ought to have regard, and must have regard, to the average opinion of the party. If you think that the average opinion does not go far enough, why then it is your individual duty to poke it from behind and make it go forward. But do not meantime quarrel about it, for if you do, you will repeat what I call the story of Dr. Schliemann and the tomb of Agamemnon." The House of Commons a School of Discipline. At a dinner of the Institution of Civil Engineers, in 1878, Mr. Gladstone responded to the toast of the House of Commons, and in the course of his remarks said : " I may speak of the House as a school of discipline for those who enter it. In my opinion it is a school of extraordinary power and efficacy, and I am qualified to say so from having sat there, I believe, longer, as a man actively engaged in a political career and in official life, than any one who has ever sat within those walls, with the single exception of Lord Palinerston. It is a great and noble school for the creation of all the WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 329 qualities of force, suppleness, and versatility of intellect. And it is also, permit me to say, a great moral school. It is a school of temper ; for if in Parliament any one unhappily goes astray in point of temper, rely upon it he will not be five minutes older before he has found out his mistake. (Laughter.) If any of you are so unfortunate as to know a member of the House of Commons who has taken a leading part in its business whose temper is not good, depend upon it if he had not been in the House of Commons it would have been a great deal worse. (Laughter.) It is also a school of patience. A man who is disposed to learn patience there will find plenty of opportunities when, having been smitten on one cheek, ho may turn the other cheek to the smiter if he is so disposed. It is a school of honour ; for it is a place in which many small, mean, shabby advantages may be taken from the circumstances of the moment, though, perhaps, to be afterwards regretted. And it is a school of justice ; for no one can be engaged in the constant exercise of political controversy without being exposed to the constant temptation to abate somewhat of the sanctifying integrity and homage which is due from us all to truth, and, with more or less wilfulness, more or less unconsciousness, to deviate from justice in stating his own argument and in dealing with that of his opponent. The House of Commons has stood hitherto at a very high level, and I trust the level will be maintained. I speak not now of its power, which I look upon as placed beyond all question, dispute, or doubt. Its power never can be brought, except by its own fault, into a situation of peril or un- certainty." An Agitator. On the occasion of the formation of a Liberal Palmerston Club by some of the undergraduates at Oxford, in 1878, Mr. Gladstone declared that it was then Lord Beaconsfield's will that took effect in the policy of the Government, and from time to time succeeded in bringing the country into danger. He added that, " to his own great pain, and with infinite reluctance, but under the full and strong conviction, he might say, of political old age, for the past eighteen months he might be said to have played the part of an agitator. His purpose had been to the best of his power, day and night, week by week, month by month, to counter-work what he believed to be the purposes of Lord Beaconsfield." The Responsibilities of British Rule. In his first address to the electors of Midlothian, at Edinburgh in November, 1879, Mr. Glad- stone thus spoke of the responsibilities resting upon the Government and the people of Great Britain : " This empire is an empire the daily calls of whose immense responsibilities task and overtask the energies of the ablest of her statesmen. There is not a country in the history of the world that has undertaken what we have undertaken ; and when I say what we have undertaken, I do not mean what the present Government have under- taken that I will come to by-and-by but what England in its tradi- tional established policy and position has undertaken. There is no precedent in human history for a formation like the British Government. A small island at one extremity of the globe peoples the whole earth with its colonies; but it is not satisfied with that. It goes among the ancient 830 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. races of Asia, and it subjects 240,000,000 to its rule there. Along with all this it disseminates over the world a commerce such as no imagination ever conceived in former times, and such as no poet ever painted. And all this it has to do with a strength that lies within the narrow limits of these shores ; not a strength that I disparage ; on the contrary, I wish to dissipate if I can the idle dreams of those who are always telling you that the strength of England depends sometimes they say, upon its prestige ; sometimes they say, upon its extending its empire and upon what it pos- sesses beyond these shores. Rely upon it, the strength of Great Britain and Ireland is within the United Kingdom. Whatever is to be done in defending and governing those vast colonies with their teeming millions, in protecting that unmeasured commerce, in relation to the enormous responsibilities of India whatever is to be done must be done by the force derived from you and from your children ; derived from you and your fellow-electors in the land ; from you and the citizens and people of this country. And what are they? They are some three-and-thirty millions of persons ; they are a population less than the population of France, less than the population of Austria, less than the population of Germany, less than the population of Russia. But the populations of France, Austria, Germany, and Russia find it quite hard enough to settle their own matters within their own limits. We have undertaken to settle the affairs of a fourth, or nearly a fourth, of the entire human race scattered over the world. . . Why does this not satisfy the ambition of the members of the present Government ? I affirm, strive and labour as you will I speak after the experience of a lifetime, of which a fair portion has been spent in office strive and labour as you will, in Parlia- ment and in office, human strength and human thought are not equal to the discharge of the duties appertaining to Government in this great, wonderful, and world-wide empire." " Resignation." Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian " campaign," as he himself termed it, and his subsequent recall to power as Premier in 1880, lent additional interest to the terms in which, some years before, he expressed his own inclination for retirement. In March, 1874, after the election of a new Parliament and the unexpected return of a Conservative majority, entailing the resignation of Mr. Gladstone's Government, Mr. Gladstone thus wrote to Earl Granville, who had filled the office of Foreign Secretary in his Administration : " For a variety of reasons personal to myself, I could not contemplate any unlimited extension of active political service ; and I am anxious that it should be clearly under- stood by those friends with whom I have acted in the direction of affairs, that at my age I must reserve my entire freedom to divest myself of all the responsibilities of leadership at no distant time. The need of rest will prevent me from giving more than occasional attendance in the House of Commons during the present session. I should bo desirous, shortly before the commencement of the session of 1875, to consider whether there would be advantage in my placing my services for a time at the disposal of the Liberal party, or whether I should then claim exemption from the duties I have hitherto discharged. If, however, there should be WILLIAM EWAET GLADSTONE. 331 reasonable grounds for believing that, instead of the course which I have sketched, it would be preferable, in the view of the party generally, for me to assume at once the place of an independent member, I should willingly adopt the latter alternative." Again in January, 1875, he wrote (also to Earl Granville) : " I see no public advantage in my continuing to act as the leader of the Liberal party ; and at the age of sixty-five, and after forty-two years of a laborious public life, I think myself entitled to retire on the present opportunity. This retirement is dictated to me by my personal views as to the best method of spending the closing years of my life. I need hardly say that my conduct in Parliament will continue to be governed by the principles on which I have heretofore acted, and, whatever arrangements may be made for the treatment of general business, and for the advantage or convenience of the Liberal party, they will have my cordial support." In consequence of Mr. Gladstone's wish, thus strongly expressed, the members of the Liberal party, after several conferences, determined to invite the Marquis of Hartington to assume the leadership of the Opposition in the House of Commons. "Hands Off." In April, 1880, the special correspondent of a German newspaper gave an account of an interview with Mr. Glad- stone during that gentleman's contest in Midlothian, and represented him as having made the following, among other remarks : " I detest every- thing that reminds us of interference with nationalities that have to be freed from thraldom. The liberated Slavic races should have the oppor- tunity to build up a future for themselves, and their territory must not be annexed by others. Whosoever understands the meaning of the English phrase ' Hands off ' will be able to understand my line of policy. What I stated in respect to the Eastern Question, and the policy followed by Austria [alluding to a speech strongly condemning that policy], I was in duty bound to state. I am the watchful dog that barks. A good watch- dog is bound to do his duty.* I do not permit dust to be thrown up matters may take another turn, that is possible but I repeat, I am the watchful dog that barks ! I greatly admire the patriotism of the Austrian people, and esteem the progress -loving Government of Austria ; but, I say again, hands off from other people's territory." Mr. Gladstone as a Chancellor of the Exchequer. The following was Mr. Cobden's criticism, delivered in the last speech ho made, at Kochdale in 1864 : " Mr. Gladstone is the best Chancellor of the Excheqxier England ever had and I say that, knowing that ho has had among his predecessors William Pitt. But I am going to say that Mr. Gladstone has been the most extravagant Chancellor of the Exchequer we have ever had. He has been a master in tho adjustment of the burdens of the country ; that is, he found the weight placed upon tho animal in such a way as rendered it the most difficult to carry his burden. It was tied round his knees, it was fastened to his tail, it was hung over his eyes, it blinded him, and impeded him, and lamed him at every step. Now, Mr. Gladstone took the burdens off these limbs, and ho placed them most Compare " Tear-'ein," p. 350. 332 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. ingeniously over the softest possible pad npon the animal's shoulders. But the beast is carrying the burden still, and carrying a great deal more than it did before all this beautiful process was commenced." RICHARD COBDEK (18041865.) "Unadorned Eloquence." The compliment which was paid to Mr. Cobden by Sir Robert Peel, on the passing of the bills repealing the Corn Laws, is thus recorded by " Hansard :" " The name which ought to be, and will be, associated with the success of those measures, is the name of one who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has, with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired becaiise it was unaffected and unadorned : the name which ought to be chiefly associated with the success of those measures is the name of Richard Cobden." The Minister's Responsibility. During a discussion on the Corn Laws in 1843, Mr. Cobden, after having urged that the agricultural population suffered as much from these laws as the manufacturing classes, and that the new law (maintaining but regulating the duties on corn by a " sliding scale ") was as baneful as the old one, thus directly addressed Sir Robert Peel : " What is the remedy you propose ? What are the proceedings by which you propose to give relief to the country ? Tou have acted on your own judgment, and you are responsible for the con- sequences of your act. Tou passed your law; you refused to listen to the manufacturers, and I throw upon you all the responsibility of your own measure. . . The right honourable baronet says it is his duty to judge independently, and act without reference to any pressure ; and I must tell the right honourable baronet that it is the duty of every honest and independent member to hold him individually responsible for the present position of the country. I tell him that the whole responsibility of the lamentable and dangerous state of the country rests with him." M. Guizot writes in his " Memoirs of Peel " that on hearing this charge of responsibility, and personal responsibility, so often and so vehemently repeated, Sir Robert rose with visible emotion. " The honourable gentle- man," he said, "has stated here, very emphatically, what he has more than once stated at the conferences of the Anti-Corn-Law League, that he holds me individually individually responsible for the distress and suffering of the country ; that he holds me personally responsible. But, be the consequences of these insinuations what they may, never will I be influenced by menaces, either in this House or out of this House, to adopt a course which I consider " Ho was unable to complete his sentence. Whether friends or opponents, many members asked themselves what he meant, and why he was so much affected. It was perceived that the shade of Mr. Drummond [Sir Robert's secretary, who was assassinated January 21st, 1843] haunted his mind, and that the responsibility for the public distress, charged upon him with so much vehemence, struck him as a provocation to assassination. Mr. Cobden at once explained, protesting EICHARD COBDEN. 333 earnestly against so unjust a suspicion. Sir Robert accepted his explana- tion, but coldly, and still maintained an air of reserved distrust. Abstraction. At an election meeting in London in 1843, Mr. Cobden spoke in support of the Free Trade candidate, and against his Protectionist rival, Mr. Thomas Baring. In the course of his address he remarked : " Our chairman has said that Mr. Baring admits our principles to be true in the abstract that is, that his own principles are untrue in the abstract. Did you ever hear of a father teaching his children to obey the Ten Commandments in the abstract ? Did you ever know the plea to go down at the Old Bailey, after a verdict of guilty had been returned, of ' Oh, I did steal the pocket-handkerchief but only in the abstract ? ' Is monopoly an abstraction ? If it be, I have done with Mr. Baring and this election ; but the abstraction presents itself in bodily form under the shape of certain monopolists, who diminish by one half your supply of sugar, and cut off large slices from your loaves." The "Three Ways." Mr. Cobden opened an argument on the subject of Free Trade, in June, 1845, in the following fashion : " As Sir Robert Peel would say, ' there are three ways of dealing with this question.' Firstly, you may acknowledge the justice of the principles of total repeal, and you may defer it until it suits your party, or until cir- cumstances compel you to abolish the Corn Laws totally and immediately. Secondly, yon may abolish them gradually by a vanishing duty, putting an 8s. tax, and sliding off Is. a year till it comes to nothing ; that may be done by an Act of Parliament, and would involve the principle of a total repeal. Or, thirdly, you may adopt our principle of total and immediate repeal." He then went on to discuss each of these courses seriatim. The "People who will Govern this Country." In a debate on the state of Ireland, April 24, 1846, Mr. Smith O'Brien had asked Lord George Bentinck whether his party would consent to a temporary suspension of the Corn Laws. Mr. Cobden thus commented on the question : " I beg to tell the honourable member for Limerick (Mr. O'Brien) and the noble lord the member for Lynn, and the 240 members who sit behind him, and who cheered the speech he has made to-night, that there are other parties to be consulted with regard to such a proposition that there are the people of England I don't mean the country party, but the people living in the towns, and who will govern this country. I tell him that the English people and the Scotch, and the Welsh, and I believe the Irish too, are, from what I have heard, determined not to be content with a suspension, but to have a total abolition of the Corn Laws. I think, therefore, the matter is taken out of the hands of this House altogether ; and I must say I rejoice that this question of the Corn Laws can no longer be made matter for manoeuvring and compacts within the walls of this House. It is disposed of, settled, out of doors ; and, although your artifices here may delay this measure, and cause anxiety out of doors, still they can only delay it." Sir Robert Peel was accused by Mr. Disraeli of having cheered Mr. Cobden's expression, but this Sir Robert denied, saying, " I don't recognise, on the part of the people of towns, any sort of right to dictate to the people of this country." Mr. Cobden then ex- 334 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. plained himself as follows : " The honourable member for Shrewsbury states, and the right honourable baronet repeats, that I said the inhabitants of towns would dictate to the country. Now, that was not my expression. I said that the majority of the people would always do so ; and I think I am correct in saying that the majority of the people of this country live in towns. I do not wish or desire that one section should dictate to another ; but the majority will govern in all constitutional States, and the majority now will be found in towns." " Crumbling " Russia. At a meeting in London in 1849, called to express sympathy with the people of Hungary, after the Russian inter- vention on behalf of Austria, Mr. Cobden thus spoke : " The peace party throughout the world will raise a crusade against the credit of every government that attempts to carry on an unholy war. Henceforth let no one talk of Russian resources and Russian money. . . People talk sometimes as though England and Englishmen were afraid of Russia. I wish to disabuse all minds as to my views on that subject. I do not oppose Russia's advances into Hungary in the belief that, in any possible combination of events, or any accession of territory, Russia can be in the least degree dangerous to England. Should Russia make an attack upon this country, or another great maritime power, like the United States, it would fall upon her like a thunderbolt, and crumble that empire into its own dreary fastnesses in six months, by the aid of its shipping." Speeches in 1849, revised by himself. Mr. Henry Drummond added something to the " crumbling " phrase of Mr. Cobden's, in the debate, in 1855, on the condition of the army before Sebastopol : " "Whatever the honourable member for the West Riding may say, his talk about ' crumpling up ' Russia like a sheet of paper ran through the country, and people thought that Russia was a little, foolish, second-rate power, which you had the means of crumpling up whenever you liked." Non-interference. The doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other nations was one which Mr. Cobden repeatedly urged. The fol- lowing passage from a speech at Manchester in 1849 may be taken as an example of his method of dealing with this subject : " Another position which has an important bearing on the reduction of our armaments is, we must let other people manage their own affairs. The Spaniards, who have very wise maxims, say, ' A fool knows more of what is going on in his own house than a wise man does in that of his neighbour.' Now, if we will apply that to nations, mind our own business, and give foreigners the credit of being able to manage their own concerns better than we can do for them, or they with our interference, it will save us a great deal of money, and they will have their affairs settled better and sooner than if we intermeddled with them. But what are we doing ? There cannot be a petty squabble in any country in Europe or the globe, but we must have a great fleet of line-of -battle ships sent from England to take part in it. We have just interfered between Naples and Sicily what is the conse- quence P We are detested by both parties. In all Italy it is the saine. They speak of Englishmen with contempt and execration ; not because they undervalue our qualities as men no, they pay as high a tribute to RICHARD COBDEN. 335 the qualities of Englishmen as we could desire but, as a nation, as a Government, interfering with their politics, from one end of the Peninsula to the other, the Italians cordially hate and detest us. So with regard to Spain we have spent hundreds of millions on Spain, and what is the present state of feeling there ? I travelled from one end of Spain to the other, and I never heard the name of the Duke of Wellington mentioned, although he fought their battles, as we persuade ourselves I never saw his portrait or bust through all my travels, but I saw Napoleon's and his marshals' everywhere. At this very moment, Napoleon and France are more popular in Spain than England and Englishmen. It is the same in Greece the same in Portugal. The English people are hated, because we interfere with their politics. Is not that a very undignified attitude for a great nation like this to occupy ? " Influence of the Treasury Bench. "Black and Curly." In a speech on the Russian war, in the House of Commons in 1855, Mr. Cobden replied to. some remarks made by his former associate Sir William Molesworth, then a Cabinet Minister. He said : " Never in this world was there a speech delivered by any honourable gentleman so utterly at variance with all previous declarations of opinion, as that delivered by the right honourable gentleman last night. Does the right honourable gentleman remember a jeu-d'esprit of the poet Moore, when dealing, in 1833, with the Whig occupants of those benches, shortly after they had emerged from a long penance in the dreary wilderness of Opposition, and when the Whigs showed themselves to be Tories when in office ? Does he remember the jeu-d'esprit ? why, I think he and I have laughed over it, when we have been talking over the sudden conversions of right honourable gentlemen. The poet illustrated the matter by a story of an Irishman who went over to the West Indies, and, before landing, heard some of the blacks speaking tolerably bad English, whereupon, mistaking them for his own countrymen, he exclaimed, ' What ! black and curly already ? ' Now, we have all seen metamorphoses upon those benches- how colours have changed, and features become deformed, when men came under the influence of the Treasury atmosphere ; but I must say that never, to my knowledge, have I seen a change in which there has been so deep a black and so stiff a curl." Proffered Office by Lord Falmerston. The letter in which Lord Palmerston offered Mr. Cobden a seat in the Cabinet, in 1859, was equally creditable to the writer and the recipient, and ran chiefly in the following terms : " I have been commissioned by the Queen to form an administration, and I have endeavoured so to form it that it should contain representatives of all sections of the Liberal party, convinced as I am that no Government constructed upon any other basis could have sufficient prospect of duration, or would be sufficiently satisfactory to the country. Mr, Milner Gibson has most handsomely consented to waive all former differences, and to become a member of the new Cabinet. I am most exceedingly anxious that you should consent to adopt the same line ; and I have kept open for you the office of President of the Board of Trade, which appeared to me to be the one best suited to your views, and 336 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. to the distinguished part which you have taken in public life." Mr. Cobden gave his reasons for declining the offer, in a speech at Rochdale after his return from America, in August, 1859. He said : " I will not affect any modesty in this matter : I will say that if I was fit for any office in the Cabinet, I should be fit for the office of President of the Board of Trade. I think, probably, if other circumstances had not intervened, my being in that place would have been really putting a square peg in a square hole. . . The honour I did not consider a matter of indifference ; it was probably peculiarly inviting to me, if I had been one of an ambitious character, because, taking it for all in all, it would have been the first instance of a man springing immediately from amongst you literally a man of business being offered a seat in the Cabinet at all." He then went on to say that, on being made acquainted with the offer on his landing at Liverpool, he had gone as soon as possible to Lord Palmerston, and stated his case thus : " I have been for ten or fifteen years the systematic assailant of what I believe to be your foreign policy ; . . it is quite possible that I may have been mistaken in all this ; but I put it to Lord Palmerston, and now I put it to you, whether, having regard to those opinions, it was fit and becoming in me to step from an American steamer into his Cabinet, and there and then, for the first time, after having received at his hands a post of high honour and great emolument, to discover that I had undergone a change in my opinions ; and whether I should not be open to great misconstruction by the public at large if I took such a course ; and I candidly confess that it was inconsistent with my own self-respect. . . I had no personal feeling whatever in the course I took with regard to Lord Palmerston's offer. If I had had any feeling of personal hostility, which I never had, towards him for he is of that happy nature which cannot create a personal enemy his kind and manly offer would have instantly disarmed me." Parliamentary Candidates and Election Petitions. In a speech at Rochdale in 1859, Mr. Cobden thus commented on this subject; Petitions were at the time inquired into and adjudicated upon by com- mittees of the House of Commons : " What is the meaning of an election petition ? Why, in the first place, when the petitioner has been unduly deprived of his seat by the improper and corrupt proceedings of his opponent, he has to appeal to a tribunal for justice to a tribunal which is the most inaccessible and the most costly in the civilised world. For I will venture to say that a man who presents an election petition to the House of Commons, goes before a tribunal the expense of which makes the equity which is administered at the Court of Chancery dirt cheap indeed. In fact, the principal obstacle to a petition at all is that the party paying for the redress of this grievance I mean the grievance of having been deprived of a fair chance of being elected by the free and unbought suffrages of his fellow-countrymen that the petition is so costly that no man can tell him beforehand how much it may cost. The election petition may cost a man 5001., or it may cost him 5000Z. ; and no parliamentary lawyer who had one shred of conscience would ever venture to say that he could guarantee him against the larger amount. The con- RICHARD COBDEN. 837 sequence is, that very few men have the courage to present a petition, and to undergo the risk and expense of following it out before a Committee of the House of Commons. But supposing he does so and this is my great grievance and charge against the proceedings of the House of Commons what does it end in ? He proves corrupt proceedings on the part of his opponent, he proves corruption on the part of the constituency, and the result may be that his opponent is declared unseated. But that does not give him the seat ; it merely says that there shall be another election in the same borough, that he may go again, and, if he likes, incur the same expense with the same prospect of an election petition, and that those very men who have been shown to have sold their votes before, may have the privilege of selling them again ; another election in such a case being nothing more nor less than a fresh harvest to those corrupt voters who make merchandise of their privileges as free citizens. Such being the case, what wonder is it that not one-half of those who lose their elections venture to petition for a redress of grievances ? A friend of mine lost his contest for a very large borough in one of the Eastern counties, and he told me that he had a clear case against his opponent for bribery, but he did not intend to petition, and for this reason he petitioned once before, and his expenses cost him 500Z. a day, and if he went into a Committee again, he had no guarantee that it would not cost him as much, and there- fore he abstained from prosecuting his petition at all." Voices of the Dead. On the death of Mr. Cobden, in April, 1865, Mr. Disraeli passed a high eulogium on his character as a politician, and in the course of it remarked : " There is something mournful in the history of this Parliament, when we remember how many of our most eminent and valued public men have passed from among us. I cannot refer to the history of any other Pailiarnent which will bear to posterity so fatal a record. But there is this consolation when we remember these unequalled and irreparable visitations that these great men are not altogether lost to us; that their opinions will be often quoted in this House, their authority appealed to, their judgments attested ; even their very words will form part of our discussions and debates. There are some members of Parliament who, though not present in the body, are still members of this House, independent of dissolutions, of the caprice of constituencies, even of the course of time. I think, sir, Mr. Cobden was one of these men." Power of "Cobden and Bright." Mr. Kinglake thus sums up the power exercised by these two men, whose names for a long period were invariably associated in the politics of the day : " These two orators had shown with what a strength, with what a masterly skill, with what patience, with what a high courage they could carry a scientific truth through the storms of politics. They had shown that they could arouse and govern the assenting thousands who listened to them with delight that they could bend the House of Commons that they could press their creed upon a Prime Minister*, and put upon his mind so hard a stress, that after a while he felt it to be a torture and a violence to his reason to have to make a stand against them. Kay, more. Each of these 23 338 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. * gifted men had proved that he could go bravely into the midst of angry opponents, could show them their fallacies one by one, destroy their favourite theories before their very faces, and triumphantly argue them down." JOHN BRIGHT. (1811.) The Cave of Achillam. On the meeting of Parliament in 1866, a Reform Bill was introduced by Earl Russell's Administration. Several members usually found in the ranks of the Liberal party either opposed or withheld their support from the measure. Among them Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman were most conspicuous. In a debate on the bill, on the 13th of March, the following observations by Mr. Bright excited great merri- ment, and gave the name of " Adullamites " to this section of politicians : " The right honourable gentleman below me (Mr. Horsman) said a little against the Government and a little against the bill, but had last night a field-night for an attack upon so humble an individual as I am. The right honourable gentleman is the first of the new party who has expressed his great grief, who has retired into what may be called his political cave of Adullam, and he has called about him every one that was in distress and every one that was discontented.* The right honourable gentleman has been anxious to form a party in this House. There is scarcely any one on this side of the House who is able to address the House with effect, or to take much part in our debates, whom he has not tried to bring over to his party or cabal ; and at last the right honourable gentleman has succeeded in hooking the right honourable gentleman the member for Calne (Mr. Lowe). I know there was an opinion expressed many years ago by a member of the Treasury bench and of the Cabinet, that two men would make a party. When a party is formed of two men so amiable, so discreet as the two right honourable gentlemen, we may hope to see for the first time in Parliament a party perfectly harmonious, and distinguished by mutual and unbroken trust. But there is one difficulty which it is impos- sible to remove. This party of two reminds me of the Scotch terrier, which was so covered with hair that you could not tell which was the head and which was the tail of it." An Appeal against War. Mr. Bright's speech against the con- tinuance of the Crimean war (Feb. 23, 1855) was perhaps the best example of the honourable gentleman's higher flights of oratory. It contained the following passage : " I do not suppose that your troops are to be beaten in actual conflict with the foe, or that they will be driven into the sea ; but I am certain that many homes in England in which there now exists a fond hope that the distant one may return many such homes may be rendered desolate when the next mail shall arrive. The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land ; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the firstborn were slain of old, to 1 Samuol, ixli. 1, 2. JOHN BRIQHT. 339 sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on. He takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly ; and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal. . . I would ask, I would entreat the noble lord (Palmerston) to take a course which, when he looks back upon his whole political career whatever he may therein find to be pleased with, whatever to regret cannot but be a source of gratification to him. By adopting that course he would have the satisfaction of reflecting that, having obtained the object of his laudable ambition having beccrme the foremost subject of the Crown, the director of, it may be, the destinies of his country, and the presiding genius of her councils he had achieved a still higher and nobler ambition : that he had returned the sword to its scabbard that at his words torrents of blood had ceased to flow that he had restored tranquillity to Europe, and saved this country from the indescribable calamities of war."* A Modern Siudbad. In the debate on the Queen's Message an- nouncing the declaration of war with Russia, March, 1854, Mr. Bright condemned the policy of a war on behalf of Turkey, and in the course of his remarks said, " The property-tax is the lever, or the weapon, with which the proprietors of land and houses in this kingdom will have to support the ' integrity and independence ' of the Ottoman Empire. Gentlemen, I congratulate you that every man of you has a Turk upon his shoulders." The Ass between Two Burdens. In a speech at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, in 1866, Mr. Bright used this illustration. He said : " When I look at the great middle class of this country, and see all that it has done, and see the political position in which it has been to some extent content to rest, I cannot help saying that it reminds me very much of the language which the ancient Hebrew patriarch addressed to one of his sons. He said, 'Issachar is a strong ass, couching down between two burdens.' On the one side there is the burden of seven and a half millions per annum, raised by way of tax, to keep from starvation more than 1,200,000 paupers within the United Kingdom and on the other hand, and higher up in the scale, there is mismanagement the most gross, there is extravagance the most reckless, and there is waste the most appalling and disgraceful which has ever been seen in the govern- ment of any country. And this is the grand result of a system which systematically shuts out the millions, and which cajoles the middle class by the hocus-pocus of a Parliamentary Government." The "Intense Glare at the Doors of Parliament." Mr. Bright used this expression in a speech at Birmingham in 1865. Alluding to the fear which the Tories and many of the Whigs entertained of a * The critical sense of the House of Commons is always keenly alive. This peroration was listened to in a silence which was itself impressive, and the " beating of the wings ' ' might have been audible, could it have occurred ; but a member who was present remarked, "If he had said flapping we should have laughed at once." 340 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Reform Bill, he said, " What is this apparition which alarms them ? They are afraid of the five or six millions of Englishmen, grown-up men, who are allowed to marry, to keep house, to rear children, who are expected to earn their living, who pay taxes, who must obey the law, who must be citizens in all honourable conduct they are afraid of the five or six millions who by the present system of representation are shut out, and insultingly shut out, from the commonest rights of citizenship. It may happen, as it happened thirty years ago, that the eyes of the five millions all through the United Kingdom may be fixed with an intense glare upon the doors of Parliament ; it was so in the years 1831-32. . . If the five millions should once unitedly fix their eyes with an intense look upon the doors of that House where my honourable friend and I expect so soon to enter, I would ask, Who shall say them nay ? Not the mace upon the table of the House ; not the four hundred easy gentlemen of the House of Lords, who lounge in and out of that decorated chamber ; not the dozen gentlemen who call themselves statesmen, and who meet in Downing-' street ; perhaps not even those more appalling and more menacing person- ages who have their lodgment higher up Whitehall. I say there is no power in the country, as opinion now stands, and as combination is now possible there is no power in this country that can say ' Nay ' for one single week to the five millions, if they are intent upon making their way within the doors of Parliament." Parliamentary Corruption preventing a Dissolution. In a speech at Glasgow in October, 1866, Mr. Bright said : " With regard to a general election, some of you have read, and many of you know some- thing of the cost and corruption of a general election. I will give you one instance and one proof of it. It has been my opinion all along that it was the duty of the Government of Lord Russell, after the defeat of their Reform Bill during the last session, to have dissolved the Parliament. I have no reason to disbelieve what is asserted, that Lord Russell himself was of that opinion. But a general election was a burden which the members of Parliament did not wish to bear. I was speaking to a member pf the Government on this question, about the time when the resignation of the late Government was just about to be submitted to the Queen, and I was telling him that I thought the true policy, the constitutional policy, of the Government was to dissolve the Parliament. A portion of his answer was this : A member who sits on our side of the House had spoken to him about it. He said, ' My election has already cost me 9000Z. ; ' and ho added, ' I have, besides, 3000L more to pay.' He said further, what was very reasonable, that this was a heavy burden, that it was grievous to be borne, that it put him to exceeding inconvenience, and, if the Parliament were dissolved, he could not afford to fight his county or his borough, as the case might be, but would be obliged to retire from the field, and leave the contest, if there should be a contest, to some one else. You will believe, then, that the Government were greatly pressed by this consideration ; and this consideration, added, it may be, to others, induced them to resign office rather than to dissolve Parliament. Thus you have a proof that whereas general corruption and putridity are the destruction JOHN BRIGHT. 341 of most bodies which they affect, the corruption of the present Parliament was, and is, the cause of its present existence." A Parliament from Temple Bar. In a speech at Glasgow, in 1866, Mr. Bright made this supposition : " If the Clerk of the House of Commons were placed at Temple Bar, and if he had orders to tap upon the shoulder every well-dressed and apparently cleanly-washed man who passed through that ancient bar, until he had numbered 658 ; and if the Crown summoned these 658 to be the Parliament of the United Kingdom, my honest conviction is that you would have a better Parliament than now exists. This assertion will stagger some timid and some good men ; but let me explain myself to you. It would be a Parliament every member of which would have no direct constituency, but it would be a Parliament that would act as a jury, that would take some heed of the facts and arguments laid before it. It would be free, at any rate, from the class prejudices which weigh upon the present House of Commons. It would be free from the overshadowing presence of what are called noble families. It would owe no allegiance to great landowners, and I hope it would have fewer men amongst it seeking their own gains by entering Parliament." The Derby Minstrels. Speaking on Reform at Birmingham in 1866, Mr. Bright made the following allusion : " The Government of Lord Derby in the House of Commons, sitting all in a row, reminds me very much of a number of amusing and ingenious gentlemen whom I dare say some of you have seen and listened to ; I mean the Christy Minstrels. The Christy Minstrels, if I am not misinformed, are, when they are clean washed, white men ; but they come before the audience as black as the blackest negroes, and by this transformation it is expected that their jokes and songs will be more amusing. The Derby Minstrels pretend to be Liberal and white ; but the fact is, if yon come nearer and examine them closely, yon will find them to be just as black and curly as the Tories have ever been. I do not know, and I do not pretend to say, which of them it is that plays the banjo and which the bones." Inadequate Remedies. In March, 1868, the Earl of Mayo, as Chief Secretary for Ireland in Mr. Disraeli's Administration, brought before the House of Commons the measures intended to deal with Irish questions, and among them a scheme for a new Roman Catholic University. In the course of the discussion Mr. Bright ridiculed these measures as inade- quate to the requirements of the occasion, and said : " I recollect that Addison, a good while ago, writing about the curious things that happened in his time, said there was a man in his county I do not know whether it was in Buckinghamshire or not he was not a Cabinet Minister, he was only a mountebank but this man set up a stall, and to the country people he offered to sell pills that were very good against the earthquake." (Great knghter.) A "Free Breakfast Table." In addressing the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, of which he had been made an honorary member, in 1868, Mr. Bright urged his hearers to agitate for this object. By the term he included the repeal of all remaining duties on tea, coffee, and sugar. 342 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. A Defence of the Queen. During the Reform agitation in 1866, a meeting of the London trades was held in St. James's Hall, Mr. Bright and Mr. Ayrton delivering addresses. The latter, alluding to a populai demonstration at St. James's Park on the previous day, censured the Queen for not making an appearance and recognising the people. Mr. Bright thereupon disclaimed any participation in such a feeling. " I am not," he said, " accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are possessors of crowns. But I could not sit and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and pain. I think there has been, by many persons, a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she Queen of a great realm or be she the wife of one of your labouring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you." The Shunammite Woman. On the formation of Mr. Gladstone's Government in December, 1868, Mr. Bright was offered and accepted the post of President of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the Cabinet. Addressing his constituents at Birmingham on his re-election, he said that when the Prime Minister asked him to take office, " I have reason to know that he made that proposition with the cordial and gracious acquiescence of her Majesty the Queen. . . I should have preferred much to have remained in the common rank of the simple citizenship in which heretofore I have lived. There is a charming story contained in a single verse of the Old Testament, which has often struck me as one of great beauty. Many of you will recollect that the prophet, in journeying to and fro, was very hospitably entertained by what is termed in the Bible a Shunammite woman. In return for the hospitality of his entertainment he wished to make her some amends, and he called her and asked her what there was that he should do for her. ' Shall I speak for thee to the King or to the Captain of the Host ? ' and it has always appeared to me to be a great answer that the Shunammite woman returned. She said, ' I dwell among mine own people.' When the question was put to me whether I would step into the position in which I now find myself, the ajiswer from my heart was the same I wish to dwell among mine own people. Happily, the time may have come I trust it has come when in this country an honest man may enter the service of the Crown, and at the same time not feel it in any degree necessary to dissociate himself from his own people." The " Residuum." Mr. Bright having, in 1873, been made the subject of some very free remarks by a provincial clergyman, for apply- ing the term " residuum " to the working classes, he wrote a letter warmly repudiating the construction put upon his words, and remarked : " If I had applied the word ' residuum ' to the ' working men of England ' if I had deemed or called them ' the dregs of the population ' should I have given much time and labour, and many years of my life, to procure for them the right to live by the free exchange of their industry, and the right to vote that they might share in the government of their country ? JOHN BRIGHT. 343 I do not remember the time when, or the speech in which, I used the word ' residuum,' or I would refer you to the passage. You would at once see how utterly unjust and false is the construction put upon it." The speech in which the term was employed is not to be found in the authorised editions of the honourable gentleman's speeches, but it was delivered on the 26th of March, 1867, during the debate on Lord Derby's Reform Bill. Mr. Bright, in arguing that household suffrage should have its restrictions, was then reported by the Times to have said : " At this moment, in all, or nearly all, our boroughs, as many of us know, sometimes to our sorrow, there is a small class which it would be much better for themselves if they were not enfranchised, because they have no independence whatsoever, and it would be much better for the Constitution also that they should be excluded ; and there is no class so much interested in having that small class excluded as the intelligent and honest working men. I call this class the residuum, which there is in every constituency of almost hopeless poverty and dependence." In addressing his constituency at Birmingham in 1876 Mr. Bright thus returned to the subject : " You recollect that I have been sometimes criticised for using a Latin word to describe an unpleasant fact the ' residuum.' During the 10Z. franchise there was a residuum in every borough very hard to manage. It was ignorant, un- principled, sometimes drunken, often corrupt. Now, with the wide suffrage of household, there is also a residuum, and the wider the suffrage, the wider the class to which I refer; and in the counties, if you give the franchise to the labourers, there will also be a residuum. That is a fact we cannot get rid of. Why, there is a residuum in the House of Lords. There are lords who are out of elbows, bankrupt in purse, and bankrupt in character ; but it does not follow from that that the House of Lords as a body does not consist of men of great wealth and of very high character too. And there is a residuum amongst the Church. No one would more admit than I should the high character, and the great services, and the devotion, and the disinterestedness of the great body of the clergy of the Church of England, for example ; but there are some very odd specimens amongst them. So that there would be a residuum if you extend the franchise to age population, but it will every day be growing less, we hope." Always a " Weak Brother " in the House. During the debate on the Lords' amendments to the Reform Bill in 1867, Mr. Bright spoke against the representation of minorities, and remarked : " I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Mr. Disraeli] said it was a scheme to intro- duce into the House all sorts of crotchety people. I have no objection to crotchety people. I believe there must be all sorts of people in this House. I have never been in any Parliament in which there has not been at least one member generally believed by the rest of the members to be not quite strong, and excuses were made for his eccentric conduct because he was not as responsible as others. That, probably, will always be the case in the House of Commons." Women and the Franchise. On the 26th of April, 1876, the Women's Disabilities Removal Bill, introduced by Mr. Forsyth, was 344 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. brought up for second reading, and Mr. Bright addressed the House against it. He alluded to his having, in 1867, supported a motion by Mr. Stuart Mill in favour of giving the franchise to women, and explained his reasons for now adopting a contrary course, stating that, although he had then voted with Mr. Mill, he had done so with extreme doubt, and his doubts had been confirmed by further consideration. In the course of his speech he made the following remarks : " We in this House have one peculiar knowledge, that is of the penalties which we pay for our constitu- tional freedom. There are many men in this House who cannot look back upon their electioneering experience without feelings of regret, and I am afraid there are some who must look back with feelings of humiliation. Now, I should like to ask the House whether it is desirable to introduce our mothers, and wives, and sisters, and daughters into the excitement, and the turmoil, and it may be into the very humiliation which seems in every country so far to attend a system of Parliamentary representation whether it be in the United States, where so many systems are tried, or in this country ; and in France, of which we recently had an example, we see how much there is that candidates can scarcely avoid, yet must greatly deplore; and we are asked to introduce the women of England into a system like this, from which we can hardly extract ourselves without taint of pollution, which we look back upon even with shame and disgust. . I won't say that women would be more likely to be more tainted in this manner than we are, but I believe there have" been some experiences even since the Municipal Act gave them votes. I know one place in my own neighbourhood where scenes of the most shocking character took place ; and in another borough not far from where I live, whose member or members vote for this Bill, at a recent municipal contest women were served with what certainly was not wholesome or good for them, during the morning and forenoon, until they had been polled. I know at another borough in Lancashire at the last general election there were women by hundreds, I am told, but at any rate in great numbers, drunk and disgraced under the temptations that were offered in the fierceness and unscrupu- lousness of a political contest. . . My sympathies have always been in favour of a wide suffrage. They are so at this moment, and I grieve very much that a measure should be submitted in favour of the extension of the suffrage to which I cannot give my support. But I confess I am unwilling for the sake of women themselves to introduce them into the contest of our Parliamentary system, to bring them under the necessity of canvassing themselves or being canvassed by others. I think they would lose much of that, or some of that, which is best that they now possess, and that they would gain nothing from being mingled or mixed with the contest and the polling-booth. I should vote for this measure if I were voting solely in the interests of the men. I shall vote against it, I believe with perfect honesty, believing in doing so that I am serving the interests of women themselves." Tho second reading of the bill was negatived by 239 votes against 152. ROBERT LOWE (LORD SHERBROOKE). 345 EOBEET LOWE (LORD SHEEBEOOKE). (1811.) "Tampering" with the House of Commons. Mr. Lowe attained first rank as a debater by his speeches against Reform in Parlia- ment between 1865 and 1867. The following characteristic passage occurred in a speech delivered in March, 1866 : " In the course of a long and illustrious career, this House of Commons has gathered into its hands a very large proportion of the political power of the country. It has out- lived the influence of the Crown ; it has shaken off the dictation of the aristocracy ; in finance and taxation it is supreme ; it has a very large share in legislation ; it can control and unmake, and sometimes nearly make, the executive Government. Probably, when the time shall arrive that the history of this nation shall be written as the history of that which has passed away, it may be thought that too much power and too much influ- ence were concentrated and condensed in this great assembly, and that England put too much to hazard on the personal qualifications of those who sit within these walls. But, Sir, in proportion as the powers of the House of Commons are great and paramount, so does the exploit of endeavouring to amend its constitution become one of the highest and noblest efforts of statesmanship. To tamper with it lightly, to deal with it with unskilled hands, is one of the most signal acts of presumption or folly." It was in the same speech that, alluding to the influence of the constituencies on the House, Mr. Lowe remarked, " As the polypus takes its colour from the rock to which it affixes itself, so do the members of this House take their character from the constituencies. If you lower the character of the constituencies, you lower that of the representatives, and you lower the character of this House." The "Shuttlecock" of Reform. Political Bedfellows. Mr. Lowe was at times severely facetious on the abortive attempts made by successive Governments to settle the question of Parliamentary Reform. On one occasion he remarked : " The way in which the two parties have tossed this question from one to the other, reminds me of nothing so much as a young lady and young gentleman playing at battle- dore and shuttlecock. After tossing the shuttlecock from one to the other a few times, they let it drop and begin to flirt." In a speech in May, 1866, on the Reform Bill of Earl Russell's Administration, he thus noticed the objection raised by the Government to a postponement of the measure, that their honour would not permit them to take that course : " I think we have heard too much about the honour of the Government. The honour of the Government obliged them to bring in a Reform Bill in 1860. It was withdrawn under circumstances which I need not allude to, and, as soon as it was withdrawn, the honour of the Government went to sleep. It slept for five years. Session after session it never so much as winked. So long as Lord Palmerston lived, honour slept soundly; but when Lord Palmerston died, and Lord Russell succeeded by seniority to his place, the 'sleeping beauty' woke up. . . I think there was no great accession of honour gained last 346 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Monday in the division, when the House really by their vote took the management of the committee out of the hands of the Executive. All these things do not matter much to ordinary mortals, but to people of a Castilian turn of mind they are very serious. Sir, I have come to the conclusion that there must be two kinds of honour, and the only consola- tion I can administer to the Government is in the words of Hudibras ' If he that's in the battle slain Be on the bed of honour lain, Then he that's beaten may be said To lie on honour's truckle-bed.' " To this Mr. Gladstone retorted, " All that portion of the right honourable gentleman's speech was one gross and continued error both of taste and judgment. Because, Sir, in these matters we must look, not only at the merits of the sermon, but at the individuality of the preacher; and I want to know what charge is to be made against the Government on this score, which cannot be made at the very least as easily against my right honourable friend ? In that ' truckle-bed ' there may be a bed-fellow." Household Suffrage and Education. " Our Future Masters." On the third reading of the Reform Bill in 1867, Mr. Lowe again denounced the extension that had been made in the franchise, and thus referred to Mr. Bright : " The honourable member for Birming- ham had been agitating the country for household suffrage not meaning, as we see by his conduct this session, to get household suffrage. He has got it now, and I ask, is he of opinion that it is easy to stop when you like in the path of concession ? The honourable member is something like Don Giovanni which, by the way, is Italian for John. The Don asked the Commendatore to supper because he thought he could not come ; but the Commendatore did come. He said, ' Don Giovanni, you have invited me, and I am here ! ' That is very much the position of the honourable member for Birmingham. He invited household suffrage and it has come ; you can never stop when once you set the ball rolling." Mr. Lowe went on to say : " I believe it will be absolutely necessary to compel our future masters to learn their letters. It will not bo unworthy of a Conservative Government, at any rate, to do what can be done in that direction. I was opposed to centralisation I am ready to accept centra- lisation. I was opposed to an education rate I am now ready to accept it. This question is no longer a religious question ; it is a political one. Prom the moment that you entrust the masses with power, their education becomes an absolute necessity ; and I believe that the existing system is one which is much superior to the much-vaunted continental system. But we shall have to destroy it ; it is not quality but quantity wo shall require." The Supreme Power -in the State. "Tremendous Sim- plicity." In March, 1879, a motion in favour of the extension of the principle of household suffrage to counties was made in the House of Commons, and opposed by Mr. Lowe. In the course of his remarks he said : " Most of us have been brought up in the doctrines of De Lolme and Blackstoue. We have been told that the English Constitution is one ROBERT LOWE (LORD SHERBROOKE). 347 above all that have existed, that it is nicely and carefully balanced, that it is made up of different bodies, each of which has proper functions assigned to it, to which it confines itself, and that by the proper discharge of its duty it controls and prevents excess in any of the others. "We have Blackstone's theory that the King represents power, the Lords represent wisdom, and the House of Commons represent good intentions (laughter), and that each of them discharges its functions without in the slightest degree trenching upon the functions of the other. We have indulged in these dreams long enough ; let us awake from them and see what is the reality. No doubt the time was when the King had predominant power in England ; but who can say that is the case now ? Without going into details, it is sufficient to say that the regal power is of such a nature now that it really affords no strong or sufficient check or balance at all in our Constitution. I am old enough to remember when the House of Lords measured itself with the House of Commons and challenged or overthrew its decisions. Who can say it is so now ? That check also has departed. The fact is the whole power of executive administration is vested in the Government of the day, and that depends for its existence upon the House of Commons ; and the whole power of this country all that we have read of as divided among the different estates of the realm has really now entirely centred itself in the House of Commons, and everything turns upon its will. . . Our Constitution has been reduced to a state of what I can only call tremendous simplicity. We have simply an elective Assembly, - and in that elective Assembly all the powers of the State are really gathered up, and in it they are centred. If that be so, and if that elective Assembly misconduct itself, the only remedy is to go back to the con- stituencies from which it is elected and to refer the matter to them, and from their decision there is no appeal, however momentous it may be. Having a body to which we have given the whole power over the State in this country, which really has the single supreme power, which everything bows before, we should take care that it is fit for the discharge of that duty. That is the point of view from which I would suggest that honourable gentlemen should look at this question, and they should con- sider whether, in the circumstances which must necessarily arise, if we enter upon this downward course we are invited to follow, we can answer for the safety of our institutions." "A Practical Man." In 1880 Mr. Lowe abandoned his former position with regard to the extension of the franchise, and thus gave his reasons, in a speech on his re-election for London University : " You took me as your representative at a time when you knew that I differed from the mass of the Liberal party on the subject of the franchise. That was a kindness I shall never forget. What has happened with regard to that question of the franchise ? Why, this. One half of the subject has been settled by those with whom I acted at that time, the Tories themselves. You see that Sir Stafford Northcote has been complaining of the masses of people who have sprung up everywhere, as if they were the dragon's teeth. But who sowed the dragon's teeth ? This has to be said, to the credit or discredit of the Tory Government that this greater number of 348 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. people have the franchise because the Tory Government, out-trumping the Whigs, gave it to them. Well, gentlemen, now comes the question of the county franchise. I am a practical man. You know that I fought as long as there was a possibility of success ; but I am now in this dilemma if I go on any further I must unite with the Tories, who have already deceived and betrayed me (laughter and cheers), or else I must confess myself, as I humbly do, utterly beaten in this matter. I must confess that public opinion is entirely against me, and give up all opposition whatever. Gentlemen, I prefer the latter course. (Cheers.) Politics are a practical science, and, as I have said from the first, what I desired was that the subject should be fairly brought before the country, and that we should have its decision upon the question. Well, it has been brought before the country in this election, and the decision of the Liberal party has been, so far as I know, absolutely unanimous. I, therefore, have nothing to do but to bow to that decision, and to hope that it may turn out better than I, for some time certainly, was in the habit of apprehending." "Ex Luce Xiucellum." Presenting Public Petitions. On the 24th of April, 1871, a large procession of match-makers resident in the East-end of London was dispersed by the police while on its way to Westminster Hall. The object of the assemblage was to present a petition to the House of Commons against the tax of one halfpenny upon each box of lucifer matches, proposed by Mr. Lowe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in submitting his budget for the year. Several questions were, in consequence, put to the Home Secretary (Mr. Bruce) by various members on the 28th, relative to the grounds on which the purpose of the petitioners had been interfered with and prevented by the police authorities. The Home Secretary, in reply, stated "that such a procession was contrary to law the law being that no large bodies of persons should go either to the Sovereign or to Parliament for the purpose of presenting a petition. The number permitted by law does not exceed ten persons. The Act of George III., known as the One Mile Act, applies to meetings, and provides that such meetings as that of Monday last shall not be held within one mile of Westminster." The tax referred to was to have been collected by means of a stamp affixed to each box of matches. Ex luce lucellurn" out of light a little profit " was the motto devised by Mr. Lowe for the labels connected with this new impost. The Com- mittee, however, refused its sanction to that mode of increasing the revenue. The Chancellor had imported the idea from the United States, where a similar tax produces a considerable amount annually. Introduction of the Sovereign's Name in Debate. An Apology. An important discussion arose in the House of Commons on the 2nd of May, 1876. Mr. Lowe, at a Liberal banquet at East Betford, had spoken against the Royal Titles Bill, enabling the Queen to assume the title of Empress of India, and said : " I strongly suspect that this is not now brought forward for the first time. I violate no confidence, because I have received none ; but I am under a conviction that at least two previous Ministers have entirely refused to have anything to do with such a change. More pliant persons have now been found, and I have no ROBERT LOWE (LORD SHERBROOKE). 349 doubt the thing will be done." Mr. C. E. Lewis brought the subject before the House of Commons, moving for a copy of the oath taken by Privy Councillors, and said that, if Mr. Lowe's statement were true, two Prime Ministers must have broken their oath "to keep secret the Queen's counsel." Mr. Lowe in reply denied the right of any member to call him to account for anything said at a meeting in the country, unless the privileges of the House were infringed, or a personal attack were made on an individual member. Thereupon Mr. Disraeli, as the head of the Government, said Mr. Lowe had attempted to hold up to public infamy the chief Minister by asserting that, after the Sovereign had been balked and baffled in her appeals to previous Ministers, she had found a pliant and a servile instrument who was now ready to do her will. If the state- ment as to the proposals to previous Ministers we're true, it ought not to have been made by a Privy Councillor, and one who had been a Cabinet Minister ; but was it true ? Mr. Gladstone had immediately denied it, so far as he was concerned, in a letter to the press ; and Mr. Disraeli said ho had lived on such terms of political confidence with Lord Derby, especially at the time when the Queen assumed the government of India, that ho was able to say that no such proposal had ever been made to him. As to Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston, Mr. Disraeli went on to say he was authorised by her Majesty to make a statement to the House. Some objections were urged on the Opposition side to this statement being received ; but the Speaker ruled that, as the name of the Sovereign was not . to be introduced to influence the opinion of the House, the communication Mr. Disraeli proposed to make was not out of order. The Prime Minister then said there was not the slightest foundation for Mr. Lowe's story, and that the Queen had authorised him to state that at no time had any proposal to introduce such a measure been made to any Minister. The story, therefore, was a piece of calumnious gossip of the kind which would always be circulated, but which no one would expect from the mouth of a Privy Councillor and an ex-Cabinet Minister. Mr. Lewis's motion was carried by 91 to 37, and two nights afterwards Mr. Lowe asked permission of the House to make a personal statement. He said ho had employed the interval in considering the matter, and, although he had believed the statement made at Retford to be true at the time, he must acknowledge he ought not to have made it. " It was wrong," said he, " because no one has a right to drag the name of the Sovereign, even indirectly, into our disputes in this House. (Cheers.) I sincerely regret that I did not remember the fact that in the whole of the Queen's dominions her Majesty is, by reason of her sovereign dignity, the only person upon whom is imposed the disability of not being able to say any- thing in personal defence. That alone, if there was no other reason, ought to have closed my mouth, and I hope the House will consider my acknowledgment both full and ample. (Cheers.) But, Sir, that is not all. After the communication which her Majesty has been pleased to make, I cannot doubt for a moment that I was entirely mistaken in what I asserted ; and nothing remains for me except to express my most sincere and extreme regret, as one who is wholly and heartily a dutiful and loyal 350 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. subject of her Majesty, that I have caused her Majesty to have been put to what she will have felt the disagreeable necessity of making a communication on such a subject to the House a necessity that ought never to have been imposed upon her. I retract everything that I said, and, if such a thing be proper from a subject to his Sovereign, I humbly offer my most sincere apologies to her Majesty for the error that I have committed." (Loud cheers.) The Golden Age of a Government. In the course of a speech returning thanks for his re-election by the University of London, in April, 1880, Mr. Lowe said : " What I want to point out to you is what I think it extremely important should be always remembered by Governments, I having now had the honour of serving in a good many. The first moments of a Government are golden. Napoleon said that people grow old quickly on fields of battle ; but Governments grow old more quickly still in the battle-fields of Parliament. The first year of a Government is golden, the second silvern, and it soon arrives at the iron age. Wisdom lies in seizing as far as possible upon these golden moments. Things may be done and questions may be settled between this time and next August, which if delayed it might afterwards be impossible to do or settle for ten years. There is every stimulus to activity and boldness. Now is the time when we can really strike with effect, whereas nobody can tell what to- morrow may bring forth. The very strength of a Government is sure to engender combats and weakness within, and gradually to eat into its power and essence. Therefore I hope no time will be lost in bringing forward measures of secondary importance, but that the opportunity will be used to deal with matters of the first and greatest importance, simply for the reason that these things may be done now, and that next year it may be impossible to effect them." JOHN ARTHUR ROEBTJCK. (18011879.) " Tear 'em." In a speech delivered at the Cutlers' Feast, Sheffield, September 2nd, 1858, Mr. Roebuck referred to the visit he had just paid to Cherbourg with other members of the House of Commons. After expressing, in strong language, his opinion of the character of the French ruler, he proceeded : " It may be said that those who stand in my posi- tion ought not to say anything that excites national animosity; and I respond to that sentiment. But, Sir, the farmer who goes to sleep, having placed the watch-dog ' Tear 'em ' over his rick-yard, hears that watch-dog bark. He, in the anger of a half somnolence, says, ' I wish Tear 'em would be quiet ; ' and bawls out of the window, ' Down, Tear 'em.' ' Tear 'em ' does go down ; the farmer goes to sleep, and he is awoke by the flashing in at his windows of the light of his ricks on fire. I am ' Tear 'em.' I tell you to beware. What is the meaning of Cher- bourg P It is a standing menace to England." An Unaccustomed Character. Mr. Roebuck, in one of the debates in 1855 on the condition of the Crimean army and the conduct of JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK. 351 Ministers, spoke of the Duke of Newcastle as " a scapegoat that had been sent into the wilderness with the sins of the Administration on his head." He was replied to by some of the duke's colleagues with great severity ; whereupon he said, " Sir, I take shame to myself for once in my life. I have indulged in panegyric, but, like almost all other men who attempt a character to which they are not accustomed, I have failed in representing it, and have failed also most completely in making myself understood. I did object to making the Duke of Newcastle a scapegoat. I gave that noble duke credit for industry and good intentions, and I said that he had done his duty according to his ability. Then I am turned round upon because I am said to have eulogised the noble duke." Official Restraint v. Political Morality. In a speech at Shef- field in 1868, Mr. Roebuck alluded to one he had made there during the American civil war, and to a conversation afterwards on the subject with Lord Palmerston. "The moment I got into his room he was standing writing at his desk, as he always did ho turned round and put out his hands, and said, ' Roebuck, Roebuck, what a devilish good speech you made in Sheffield!' I said, 'My lord, I am greatly obliged to you, and flattered for the kind phrase you have used about my speech ' though it was rather a hard one, you know ; ' I am very much flattered.' ' Flat- tered ? ' he said. ' Why, I am entirely of your opinion, but I dare not officially say so.' Now that struck me, according to the old woman's phrase, all of a heap, that a man in power should say to me openly and without disguise that he was entirely of my opinion, and lead the people of England directly the opposite way. That, said I, is modern political morality. I did my work with the gay and pleasant old lord, and bowed my way out of his room." Reading from a Newspaper. Mr. Roebuck was making a speech in 1855 on the resignation of Lord John Russell, after his return from the conference at Yienna on the war between Russia and the allies, when an incident occurred which is thus referred to in " Hansard : " " The honourable and learned gentleman was beginning to read a passage in Lord John Russell's speech from a newspaper, when he was interrupted by calls to ' order ; ' whereupon he tore a piece out of the newspaper and was proceeding with his quotation, when Mr. Speaker said the rules of the House did not allow the honourable and learned member to quote from a newspaper a speech which had been delivered during the session, and he did not think the honourable and learned member could cure the irregu- larity by tearing a piece out. Mr. Roebuck : ' Then I will give the effect of the noble lord's statement from my own memory; and if I am incorrect, the fault is not with me, but with the rule of the House which obliges me to rely upon that faulty instrument when I have a correct report at hand.' "* An Independent Member. Mr. Roebuck on several occasions received from his constituents at Sheffield acknowledgment of his parlia- mentary services, in the form of testimonials including purses of from one * See Miscellaneous section, " Beading from Newspapers." 852 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. to three thousand pounds. On one of these presentations he said : " I ask myself what it is that has given me the present occasion of returning you my thanks. It is not talent ; it is not name ; it is not rank ; it is not wealth. What is it, then P It is steadfastness to the path which I marked out for myself in the beginning. I am proud to say that in the year 1832 I published a programme of the opinions I then held. I had prepared myself for a public life. I had then formed my opinions ; I consigned them to paper ; I printed them ; and to them I now adhere. That which I said in 1832 I now say, and it is my thorough and steadfast adherence to the opinions which I then expressed that has won for me the approba- tion of my countrymen. Going into Parliament unknown, unsupported, only recommended by that tried friend of the people, the late Joseph Hume, I determined not to ally myself with either of the great parties which then divided the House of Commons and the kingdom. I was neither Whig nor Tory, and I went into the House of Commons deter- mined to advocate that which I believed to be for the interests of the people without regard to party considerations. To that rule I have adhered through life." EALPH BERNAL OSBOENE. (1814.) The " Stormy Petrel of Debate." The nature of Mr. Bernal Osborne's appearances in parliamentary strife caused this name to be applied to him by Dr. Giffard, long editor of the Standard newspaper. One of the most effective passages in Mr. Osborne's peculiar vein occurred in the great debate on the conduct of the Government with respect to Denmark, in July, 1864. The speaker thus alluded to Lord Palmerston and his Cabinet : " The noble lord and the gentlemen on the Treasury Bench are men of great capacity, but a little past their time, and they bungle a little ; but if they wish to put the country in a proper position with foreign powers, and restore the just influence of England, it might be easily done by their imitating that custom which is obligatory on unsuccessful officials in Japan. If, Sir, they would enact, in a modified form, that ' happy despatch ' which we have learnt from the Asiatics, I am sure this country would at once regain its proper position. . . There sits the noble lord. Sedet, ceternumque sedcbit. I was about to add, but it would not be true infelix. I wish to speak of him with every respect, because I believe that a more active or a more able man never existed in this country. (General cheers.) It is said of him that ' Panting time toils after him in vain.' He is certainly facile princeps, the liveliest, if not the youngest, on the Treasury bench. The noble lord deserves great credit for his admirable management through so long a time of the affairs of this House. He lias acted with all sorts of men, and agreed with all sorts of opinions. These are great feats, but what is his policy ? Sir, his domestic policy, not to go beyond the Hue of debate, is paternal but stationary ; his foreign policy up to this day has been pugnacious but progressive. . . I have RALPH BERNAL OSBORNE. 353 not been unfair to the noble lord ; but now let us go into hia Cabinet. His Cabinet is a museum of curiosities. There, Sir, are to be found somo birds of rare and noble plumage, both alive and stuffed. (Great laughter.) But, unfortunately,' there is a difficulty in keeping up the breed. For those Whig birds have been very barren, and they were obliged to take a cross with the famous Peelite breed. Certainly it cannot be said, either by their enemies or friends, that they have been prolific of measures since they have taken office. Even my right honourable friend (Mr. M. Gibson) who is not connected with them by family, and somehow got into the Cabinet, but, like the fly in amber, ' one wonders how the devil he got there ' has not been fertile. I must say that his honourable friends the members for Rochdale (Mr. Miall) and Birmingham (Mr. Bright) are, I think, disappointed in this ' young man from the country.' When he married into the family we expected some liberal measures, but the right honourable gentleman has become indolent, and almost quarrelsome, under the guidance of the noble lord. Well, Sir, what is to be done ? We know by the traditions of the great Whig party that they will cling to the vessel, if not like shipwrecked sailors, like those testaceous marine animals which somehow adhere to the bottom, thereby clogging the engines and impeding the progress. Sir, should a vote of this House displace that administration, what are the Liberal party to do ? Well, my advice to them is that they may feel perfectly happy as to the issue of this great duel which is being fought. They are somewhat in the situation of lago in the play, and may say like him, ' Whether Cassio kills Boderigo, or Boderigo kills Cassio, or each Villa the other/ they must gain." EAEL GKASTVILLE. (1815.) First Foreign Secretaryship. Earl Granville was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs for the first time on the death of the Earl of Clarendon in June, 1870. Entering upon his duties at the Foreign Office on the 5th of July, he was informed by the permanent Under Secretary of State (Mr. Hammond) that " in all his experience he had never known so great a lull in foreign affairs." Two days after, the Spanish Government announced its intention to propose Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern as a candidate for the crown; and in ten days, war between France and Germany had become inevitable. Family Connections. Earl Granville 's introduction to office, as a connection of the " great Whig families " which long regarded Ministerial arrangements as their peculiar right, was thus alluded to by the writer of a sparkling series of " Political Portraits," published in 1873 : " It was from the royal household that Lord Granville entered upon the career in which he has since achieved all but the highest place, with probably the succession to the highest place, in the Liberal party. For the first two years of Lord John Bussell's first Administration he held the office of Master of the Buckliounds. He had been Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs for a few mouths before the break-up of the Melbourne Govern- 24 354 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. ment, having previously served an apprenticeship to diplomacy as attache in Paris during his father's embassy there ; and had sat for ten years in the House of Commons before his succession to the peerage in 1846. But his political career really began with his transfer by Lord John Russell, in 1848, from the charge of her Majesty's Buckhonnds to the Yice- Presidency of the Board of Trade. Great was the clamour which this appointment raised below the gangway. ' Is thy servant a dog ? ' said Manchester, indignant at being handed over to the Master of the Buck- hounds. Mr. Bright, we believe, made himself the mouthpiece of its anger in the House of Commons, and spoke his mind with that frank disregard of persons which has always characterised him. The appointment was denounced as a piece of nepotism on Lord John Russell's part. Very much to his credit, Mr. Bright not long afterwards admitted that Lord Granville's conduct at the Board of Trade had justified Lord John Russell's selection, and had not justified his own assault. Lord John Russell, with pardonable perversity, was more deeply aggrieved by the retractation than by the original charge. The word nepotism, naturally odious to a Russell, rankled in his mind ; and he ridiculed the idea that family affection for a descendant of his grandmother could influence his political appointments. Lord Russell's grandmother does, indeed, carry the mind back to a period of history apparently too remote to affect Ministerial combinations. For a time, however, the unfilial allusion of her grandson, and his ostentatious indifference to her posterity outside the house of Bedford, gave the old lady an historical resurrection ; and Lord Russell's grandmother, as the Mother Eve of an entire Whig Cabinet, became a subject of genealogical interest. It was on this or on some similar occasion that Mr. Bernal Osborne accounted on physiological principles for the ricketiness of their legislative offspring, on the ground that all the members of the Govern- ment were nearly related to each other." Making a Clean Breast. Lord Granville on one occasion humorously alluded to his family connections in the House of Lords. Defending, in 1855, the constitution of Lord Palmerston's Ministry, in which he was Lord President of the Council, Lord Granville said : " My lords, I had better make a clean breast of it at once ; and I am obliged to admit that some of those who went before me had such quivers full of daughters who did not die old maids, that I have relations on this side of the house, relations upon the cross-benches, relations upon the opposite side of the house, and I actually had the unparalleled misfortune to have no fewer than three in the Protectionist Administration of my noble friend opposite" (the Earl of Derby). Declining the Premiership. On the resignation of the Earl of Derby in 1859, Earl Granville was sent for by the Queen to form a Cabinet. That this should have been the case, in the lifetime both of Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston, who had in turn occupied the principal offices of the State and held the reins of government, was the subject of much comment ; but the matter was thus explained in a " com- munication" which the Times published on the 13th of June in that year : " Her Majesty, after listening to all the objections which Lord EARL GRANVILLE. 355 Granville had to offer, commanded him to attempt to form an administration which should at once be strong in ability and parliamentary influence, and should at the same time comprehend within itself a full and fair repre- sentation of all the sections into which the Liberal party has notoriously been divided. Feeling, probably, that it might be urged as an objection to this course that Lord Granville, who has never yet held the office of Prime Minister, would thus be placed in a position paramount to that occupied by Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, each of whom had served her long and faithfully in many high offices of state, and had each filled the office of First Minister of the Crown, her Majesty was pleased to observe that she had in the first instance turned her thoughts towards Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell. Her Majesty felt, however, that to make so marked a distinction as is implied in the choice of one or other of two statesmen so full of years and honours, and possessing so just a claim on the consideration of the Queen, would be a very invidious and unwelcome task. Her Majesty also observed that Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston appeared to represent different sections of the Liberal party ; Lord Palmerston the more Conservative, and Lord John Russell the more popular section. Impressed with these difficulties, her Majesty cast her eyes on Lord Granville, the acknowledged leader of the Liberal party in the House of Lords, in whom both Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston had been in the habit of placing confidence, and who might have greater facilities for uniting the whole Liberal party under one administration than could be enjoyed by either of the sectional leaders." The publication of this statement gave rise to remark in the House of Lords, to which Earl Granville replied that he had asked and obtained from her Majesty permission to state to his political friends the result of what had occurred, but it was never intended that it should be communicated to any newspaper. At the same time, he could not see that any injury had resulted from the publication, seeing that her Majesty appeared therein, as ever, desirous of walking in the spirit of the Con- stitution. Lord Palmerston became Premier for the second time on this occasion. In 1880 Lord Granville was again invited to form a Ministry, but declined in favour of Mr. Gladstone. THE MAKQUIS OF SALISBURY. (1830.) His Ministerial Career. The Marquis of Salisbury, before his call to the House of Lords on the death of his father in 1867, was well known in the House of Commons as Lord Robert Cecil, and afterwards as Lord Cranborne. He resigned the office of Secretary for India in 1867, when the Earl of Derby's Cabinet determined on a large measure of parliamentary reform; General Peel and the Earl of Carnarvon also retiring from the Government at the same time. He returned to the Indian Secretaryship in 1874, under Mr. Disraeli's leadership, and became Foreign Secretary on the resignation of the Earl of Derby in 1878. The Marquis of Salisbury attended the conference at Constantinople in 1876 356 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. as special ambassador, and was associated with Lord Beaconsfield in the representation of England at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The Theory of Government. A " Policy of Legerdemain." Lord Cranborne, on his retirement from the Earl of Derby's Govern- ment in 1867 on account of its policy with respect to Reform, severely attacked the ministerial bill, and on its final passage made the follow- ing remarks : " I have heard it said that this bill is a Conservative triumph. If it be a Conservative triumph to have adopted the principles of your most determined adversary, the honourable member for Birming- ham [Mr. Bright] ; if it be a Conservative triumph to have introduced a bill guarded with precautions and securities, and to have abandoned every one of those precautions and securities at the bidding of your oppo- nents, then in the whole course of your annals I will venture to say the Conservative party has won no triumph so signal. After all, our theory of government is not that a certain number of statesmen should place themselves in office and do whatever the House of Commons bids them. Our theory of government is that on each side of the House there should be men supporting definite opinions, and that what they have supported in opposition they should adhere to in office, and that everyone should know, from the fact of their being in office, that those particular opinions will be supported. If you reverse that, and declare that, no matter what a man has supported in opposition, the moment he gets into office it shall be open to him to reverse and repudiate it all, you practically destroy the whole basis on which our form of government rests, and you make the House of Commons a mere scrambling-place for office. Tou practically banish all honourable men from the political arena, and you will find in the long run that the time will come when your statesmen will be nothing but political adventurers, and that professions of opinion will be looked upon only as so many political manoeuvres for the purpose of attaining office. . . I entreat honourable gentlemen opposite not to believe that my feelings on this subject are dictated simply by my hostility to this measure, though I object to it most strongly, as the House is aware. But even if I took a contrary view, if I deemed it to be most advantageous, I should still deeply regret that the position of the executive should have been so degraded as it has been in the present session. I should deeply regret to find that the House of Commons has applauded a policy of legerdemain. And I should above all things regret that this great gift to the people if gift you think it should have been purchased by a political betrayal which has no parallel in our parliamentary annals, which strikes at the root of all that mutual confidence which is the very soul of our party government, and on which only the strength and freedom of our represen- tative institutions can be sustained." Ministerial Heroism. At a Conservative banquet at Hertford in October, 1873, the Marquis of Salisbury attacked Mr. Gladstone's Ad- ministration in his most characteristic stylo, as "a Ministry of heroic measures." Ho said : " Far be it from me to accuse them of heroism. They keep their heroism to the Home Office ; they don't let it transgress the threshold of the Foreign Office. They offer to us a remarkable THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY. 357 instance of Christian meekness and humility ; but I am afraid it is that kind of Christian meekness which turns the left cheek to Russia and America, and demands the uttermost farthing of Ashantee. This, how- ever, is to be said for their heroism, that as regards these islands there is no doubt it has been heroism approaching to sternness towards every interest that happened to belong to the minority defeated at the poll." " A Great Master." The House of Commons having amended the Public Worship Regulation Bill, as passed by the House of Lords in 1874, Lord Salisbury spoke of the " bluster " of the lower Assembly, and alluded to the majority there as a " bugbear." This caused Mr. Disraeli (then Prime Minister) to make the following remarks in the House of Commons respecting the language of the Indian Secretary : " As to Lord Salisbury's language, let us not for a moment be diverted from the course which we think, as wise and grave men, we ought to follow, by any allu- sions to the spirit of any speech which may have been made in the course of the debates in the other House of Parliament. My noble friend was long a member of this House, and is well known to many of the members even of this Parliament. He is not a man who measures his phrases. He is one who is a great master of gibes and flouts and jeers ; but I don't suppose there is anyone who is prejudiced against a member of Parlia- ment on account of such qualifications. My noble friend knows the House of Commons well, and he is not perhaps superior to the considera- tion that by making a speech of that kind, and taunting respectable men 4ike ourselves as being a ' blustering majority,' he probably might stimu- late the amour propre of some individuals to take the course which he wants, and to defeat the bill. Now, I hope we shall not fall into that trap. I hope we shall show my noble friend that we remember some of his manoeuvres when he was a simple member of this House, and that we are not to be taunted into taking a very indiscreet step, a step ruinous to all our own wishes and expectations, merely to show that we resent the con- temptuous phrases of one of my colleagues." Pree Discussion. In 1868, the Marquis of Salisbury, responding to the toast of the House of Lords at a banquet given by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, taid, " Although the Upper House was not yet one of the subjects of the day, he expected it would become one, and he looked forward to that contingency without apprehension. Everybody was the better for being looked after, and he would abide by the principle that any institution which could not hold its own ground on the free and fair discussion of its merits should cease to exist." EAEL CAIENS. (1819.) An Exceptional Compliment. Hugh McCalmont Cairns was returned to the House of Commons for Belfast in 1852, and continued to represent that borough until 186. In 1858 he was appointed Solicitor- General under Lord Derby's second Administration. His eloquence was 858 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT, marked at this time, and drew from the late Lord Lytton a tribute of praise, exceptional in the case of a living orator : " Still when Cairns rises, tho' at dawn of day, The sleepers wake, and feel rejoiced to stay, As his clear reasonings in light strength arise, Like Doric shafts admitting lucent skies." Sir Hugh Cairns was made Attorney-General in 1866, when Lord Derby again formed a Government ; but shortly after, a Lord Justicesliip of Appeal becoming vacant, he was promoted to the bench, and created a peer in 1867. In February, 1868, Lord Cairns became Lord High Chan- cellor in Mr. Disraeli's first Administration, and was reseated on the woolsack when the last-named statesman returned to power, in 1874. He was raised a step in the peerage, as Earl Cairns, in 1878. The Law of Primogeniture. An example of the clear statement of a case which distinguished the speaking of Sir Hugh Cairns in the House of Commons may be taken from the debate on Mr. Locke King's proposal, in 1859, to alter the law of succession to real estate in cases of intestacy. Sir Hugh Cairns, then Solicitor-General, opposed the honour- able member's bill, and in the course of his speech observed : " Honourable members opposite said that the present law as to descent was a wretched remnant of feudal policy ; that it had its origin in feudal times, and that before the feudal times it was unknown in this country. His answer to that was, that he did not care what was its origin. . . Looking at it as a question of policy, what were the results which flowed from this law ? In the first place, it harmonised with an hereditary monarchy and an hereditary peerage. In the next place, speaking of the principle of the law, not merely as it affected the disposition of the estates of intestates, but as manifested in the habits of the country with regard to entails and settlements, it tended to maintain a class in this country distinct from the aristocracy of mere wealth and the aristocracy produced and rightly produced by successful commercial enterprise. The law and the custom together, acting one upon the other, kept a class distinct, in consequence of their connection with the land, from those other classes who were of course in themselves as important elements as the aristocracy of the country. In the next place, this law and custom were favourable to the agriculture of the country. The tendency of this country, with regard both to agriculture and manufactures, had been to undertake production on a large scale; and honourable members opposite would not disagree with the doctrine of Mill, that wherever a people had once undertaken production on a large scale in agriculture, commerce, or manufactures, they would not willingly relinquish its advantages. Again, the law was most important in a social point of view. It kept families together by preserving the headship of families. The certain effect of a division of property such as that recommended was in the second generation to dwarf a family down to the rank of petty squires, and in the next genera- tion to dwarf it into the condition of mere peasants. In the next place, while it preserved to them their social station and position, the law excited younger brothers to ambition and emulation in a manner that no other EARL CAIRNS. 359 system in any country was ever known to do before. And, lastly, the benefit of it did not flow merely to the children of a family, but it stimu- lated the parent of the family also to make provision, by frugality, economy, and industry, for his younger branches, at the same time that it gave him the certainty of the importance of the family being pre- served by the headship of his eldest son. These, then, were the con- clusions at which he had arrived." The speaker went on to support these conclusions by reference to sundry authorities. The bill was defeated, on a division, by 271 to 76. The "Tender Passion" in Reform. In March, 1859, the Government of the Earl of Derby introduced into the House of Commons a Reform Bill, the second reading of which was opposed by Lord John Russell with an amendment, avowedly intended to lead to the rejection of the measure. At the close of his speech moving this amendment the noble lord said : " I shall take this course, careless of any imputation which may be cast upon me. With regard to this great question of Reform, I may conclude by saying that I defended it when I was young, and I will not desert it now that I am old." Sir Hugh Cairns, in reply, thus alluded to the noble lord, and the temporary agreement between himself and the more extreme section of the Liberal party. " I want to know what is the extent of the agreement between the noble lord and the honourable member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright). I think, as a House of Commons, we are also entitled to ask this question What probability is there of support to the noble lord and the honourable member for Birmingham from the followers who sit around him? The noble lord may depend upon it that these questions will not be asked merely in this House, but they will also be asked in the country. The noble lord appeals as a proof of his sincerity in his amendment to his long-known and long-tried attachment to the cause of reform. We all know and admit the noble lord's attachment to this great national and political question. But we also know that there is a form of the tender passion which sometimes developes itself in jealousy of any attention to the object of its affection from any other quarter. I think the noble lord exposes himself to some misconstruction on this point. We have heard it said ' Strong were his hopes his rival to remove ; With blandishments to gain the public love ; To head the faction while their zeal was hot, And popularly prosecute the plot.' Whether this is so or not I know not, but of this I am sure, that the country will ask the country have asked already what are the real inten- tions of the noble lord, and what are the specific objects which he pro- poses to himself in meeting a bill of this kind, not openly, not broadly, but by an ambiguous and almost irregular amendment, which commits nobody and which means nothing that is precise. The people of this country have differed, and always will differ, about Reform Bills, about theories of representation, about social and domestic legislation of every kind. But there is one subject upon which the people of this country are entirely agreed. They do not like anything which bears the least appearance of 360 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. approaching to artifice, or I must use a homely phrase a dodge. They do not like it in business, they do not like it in politics ; but least of all will they admire it in a man who, at a time when the best interests of our country at home and our most peaceful hopes abroad demand all the patriotism, all the candour, and all the forbearance of a statesman, approaches the consideration of a great national question like this, not fairly to criticise, not boldly to reject, but to contrive a crafty and catching device, to confuse and, if it may be, to dislocate parties, and in that confusion and dislocation to secure his own political aggrandisement and private advantage." After a debate adjourned over several nights, the amendment was carried by 330 to 291. The Government appealed to the country ; but on the assembling of the new Parliament, an amendment to the address, declaring want of confidence in the Ministry, was moved by the Marquis of Hartington, and carried by a majority of 13 in a house of 637. LOED SELBOENE. (1812.) Lord Chancellorship Deferred. Mr. Roundell Palmer (in later years Lord Selborne) was first returned to Parliament in 1847, for Plymouth, but afterwards represented Richmond (Yorkshire). He was Solicitor- General in the Administration of Lord Palmerston in 1861, and Attorney-General in 1863. When Mr. Gladstone took office in 1868, to carry out the disestablishment of the Irish Church, it was understood that Sir Roundell Palmer would have been offered the Lord Chancellorship, but for his known disapproval of the measures of disendowment which were also contemplated. In 1872 he was chosen to lay before the inter- national tribunal at Geneva the case for Great Britain in the Alabama dispute ; and a few months later, Lord Hatherley resigning the great seal, Sir Roundell Palmer was made Lord Chancellor. He returned to the woolsack on the reconstruction of Mr. Gladstone's Government in 1880. A Mild Rebuke. On the abolition of the purchase system by Royal warrant in 1871 (see page 325); the views of Sir R. Palmer, privately expressed, were commented upon in the House of Commons, in opposition to the course taken by the Government. Sir Roundell thereupon wrote as follows to Mr. Cardwell, the Secretary for War : " I have always thought and said that the issuing of such a warrant was within the undoubted power of the Crown ; though to do so without having a sufficient assurance that Parliament would provide the necessary compensation for the officers, who would otherwise suffer by such an exercise of Royal power, would not bo just, and therefore would not be consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, which vests all such powers in the Crown, in the confidence, and for the purpose, that right, not wrong, shall be done. I should have been glad if it had been generally and clearly understood from, the beginning that, subject to the sense of Parliament being ascertained with reference to the point of compensation, the form of procedure would bo that which was eventually adopted; because it is certainly an evil that the LORD SELBORNE. 361 adoption of one constitutional mode of procedure, rather than another, should appear to arise from an adverse vote of the House of Lords." "Her Majesty's Ministers." At a Trinity House banquet in 1880, this toast was proposed by Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, and coupled, in very complimentary terms, with the name of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Selborne. Responding to this, his lordship said : " I interpret the favour with which the toast of her Majesty's Ministry has been now received, and is often received on such occasions as the present, with reference solely to the position which they fill as the servants and representatives of the power and authority of the Crown. It signifies the constant adherence, under all divergences of opinion that prevail, of the leaders of English society to the great principle of permanence in the government of the country under the authority of the Crown. Whatever differences may prevail hi the stormy atmosphere of the House of Commons or in the serener atmosphere of the House of Lords whatever varieties of opinion may exist among the leading minds of the country as to questions of policy, every Ministry, during the time while it is in oflice, has entrusted to its care the great, the constant, and the permanent interests of the nation, and all right-minded men must desire, so far as those interests are concerned, to strengthen the hands of the depositaries of so great a trust. I do not think the permanent character of those duties can be better symbolised than by the three departments of the Government which are especially represented here to-day. I speak of the law, represented by -the Chief Justice of England, and of the two great forces, military and naval, on which the peace of the country and the maintenance of the national power depends. These are permanent, immutable interests, and amidst all our differences, and notwithstanding all the occasional heat of our discussions, I hope it will be believed of us all, as I shall always be ready to believe of others with whom I do not politically agree when they are charged with the same duties, that it will be our endeavour, loyally and patriotically, so to perform them that these great interests of the commonwealth may suffer no detriment at our hands." SIR STAFFORD NOKTHCOTE. (1818.) " My Right Honourable Friend." Sir Stafford Northcote is a descendant of the Sir John Northcote whose " Note-book " respecting the Long Parliament is occasionally referred to in these pages. His first experiences of public life were gained as private secretary to Mr. Glad- stone, when that Minister was President of the Board of Trade in Sir Robert Peel's Government (1843 1845). To this early connection may be owing the terms of mutual courtesy in which Mr. Gladstone and Sir Stafford, although leading opposite parties in the House of Commons, and alternately Chancellors of the Exchequer, frequently refer to each other as "my right honourable friend." Sir Stafford entered the House as member for Dudley in 1855, but has represented North Devon since 1861. Under the Administrations of the Earl of Derby and Mr. Disraeli, he 362 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. successively held the offices of Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Presi- dent of the Board of Trade, Secretary for India, and Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1871 he was appointed by Mr. Gladstone's Government one of the special commissioners to the United States, to arrange the Alabama treaty. The Confidence of the House. The following is a picture of Sir Stafford Northcote, by the author of " Men and Manners in Parlia- ment " (1874) : " There is a wonderfully wise and statesmanlike air about Sir Stafford Northcote as he sits, spectacled and bearded, on the Treasury bench, which of itself would go a long way towards acquiring the con- fidence and the submission of the House. But the right honourable baronet is not dependent on his personal aspect alone for his claim to supremacy. He is not a good speaker, but he is a ready one, sees a long way through a question, and can, if need be, cleverly fence with it. He has a good deal of tact, is fair-minded, honourable, frank, and at very long intervals displays little flashes of humorous perception which are as precious as solitary stars twinkling in an apparently hopelessly murky sky. He is always listened to with that respect the House of Commons intuitively feels and liberally awards to any man who has succeeded in convincing it that he is an honest and clear thinker, and thus he per- sonally enjoys the confidence of both sides of the House." A corroboration of this remark occurred soon after the meeting of the new Parliament in 1880. A temporary difficulty having arisen, and the leaders of Mr. Glad- stone's new Government being absent, a member suggested the guidance of " the right honourable member for North Devon, in whom we all have confidence," and the remark was received with general cheers. Parliamentary Obstruction. In a speech at Exeter in September, 1879, Sir Stafford Northcote (then leader of the House of Commons) com- mented as follows on this subject : " I trust that Parliament, still more the country, will assist us in setting our face against any conduct calcu- lated to bring party government into disrepute, or to interfere with the proper conduct of business. But do not be led away altogether by what you hear ; do not suppose that obstruction comes from only a few Irish members ; the difficulty is far deeper than that. There are men who sit for important English constituencies who secretly, and sometimes more than secretly, favour obstruction which bears the name of certain Irish members. These things have to bo considered, because if there is that spirit in the House of Commons, if there is not a hearty desire to put down obstruction, our difficulties will bo very great indeed. Depend upon it, if the whole body of the House was determined to put down the obstruc- tion of the half-dozen or dozen members of whom you hear, they would do it in a quarter of an hour. . . Remember what are the difficulties if you were to deal with the obstruction by altering regulations and making new rules. You do one of two things which you do not wish to do ; you either give a great triumph to Irish members, and that is exactly what you do not want to do, or in some future time you deprive yourselves of that valuable protection which minorities ought to have against the encroach- ments of majorities. Do not let us, in order to got rid of a temporary SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE. 363 evil, sacrifice an important permanent interest. What we want is a resolute determination on the part of the great bulk of the House that they will stand no more obstruction. If there is that feeling absent on the part of any considerable number of the members of the House, then we want the feeling to be manifested by the constituencies of the country, by their demanding that their representative shall take a firm stand against that which may otherwise be the ruin of Parliamentary government. But I do not think there is any danger of the House of Commons or of Parliament losing its character. I myself believe that these are but temporary diffi- culties, which will pass away as other temporary difficulties have passed away." The Marquis of Hartington shortly after this complained that Sir Stafford Northcote had treated the matter as one of trivial importance. " Parliamentary obstruction," he observed, " will be dealt with and put down by a Government which presents to Parliament well-considered measures in which it takes an interest itself, and in which the country takes an interest ; and when at the same time it manifests determination to set aside any business, however important, however much desired by Parliament and by the country, for the first and paramount object of assuring its own independence and authority." THE MAEQTJIS OF HAKTINGTON. (1833.) A Leader of the Liberal Party. The Marquis of Hartington, eldest son of the Duke of Devonshire, was attached to the embassy of Earl Granville to Russia, on the coronation of the Emperor Alexander II. in 1857. He was returned to the House of Commons for North Lancashire in the same year. In March, 1863, he was made a Lord of the Admiralty, but soon removed to the Under-Secretaryship for War, and he became Secretary for War in Lord Russell's Administration of 1866. He filled the office of Postmaster- General from 1868 to 1870, and of Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1870 to 1874. "When Mr. Gladstone retired from the leadership of the Opposition in 1875, the Marquis of Hartington was selected by the Liberal party to take his place, and he was consulted by the Queen as to the formation of a Cabinet on the return of the Liberals to power in 1880. Home Rule and Imperial Rule. Mr. Butt having brought forward a motion in favour of Home Rule in June, 1874, " That this House resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider the Parliamentary relations between Great Britain and Ireland," the Mar- quis of Hartington said: "In his judgment the Government [of Mr. Disraeli] had taken a wise line, and the House would do well to support them, in preferring to meet the resolution by a direct negative, rather than by the adoption of the suggested amendment [by Mr. R. Smyth], which, though eminently satisfactory as emanating from an Irish member, did not cover the whole ground. In honour and in honesty, the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain were bound to tell the Irish people that, what- ever arguments might be used in reference to this question as it applied 364 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. to Ireland, -while giving every consideration to the just claims of Ireland, they could only look at it from an Imperial point of view ; and that they were convinced that, whatever might be the effect of the proposal upon the internal affairs of that country, they could never give their assent to the proposal of the honourable and learned member for Limerick. It might be said that this was a strong declaration, but at the same time a very safe one on his part, seeing that the party to which he belonged were at present in a hopeless minority in that House, and that they had therefore nothing either to hope or to fear from the support of the Irish members. But he could say for himself and he thought he might say the same on behalf of those who sat round him that no motive of personal ambition, no consideration of party advantage, could ever induce them to purchase the support of honourable members representing Irish constituencies by any sacrifice which, in their opinion, would endanger the union between the two countries. He knew it might be said that protestations of this kind were of little avail, and that, when the exigency of the moment de- manded it, they might be easily evaded and set aside ; and therefore it was of more importance that he should express his firm conviction, that if any honourable members sitting on that side of the House were so reck- less as to show a symptom on their part of a disposition to coquet with this question, there would instantly be such a disruption and disorgani- sation of parties, that they would find that they had lost more support from England and Scotland than they could ever hope to obtain from Ireland." The motion of Mr. Butt was rejected by 458 to 61. Unrecognised Agents of Government. The Marquis of Hart- ingtoii, in addressing the University of Edinburgh on his installation as Lord Rector in 1879, said : " Much governed as we are, centrally and locally, public administration would, in my opinion, utterly break down were it not for the unrecognised forms of government which have grown up among us, created by no legislation nor even inherited from our ancestors. In these days civilised nations are led rather than governed. They are led by their reason, by their feelings, by their passions ; but they are led by their necessities and their desires, by their fears, and by their hopes ; and the men who lead them, and thus have a share in and render possible the task of government, are the authors and journalists, the members of learned professions, the employers and organisers of labour, and their innumerable subordinates, by whom in regular gradations the armies of industry and of commerce are marshalled. These are amongst the most powerful, if not the most conspicuous, agents of government at the present time. And if the influence of these unrecognised rulers is necessary and powerful at homo for the proper working of our social arrangements, how much more necessary are they for the maintenance of that complex system, without precedent in history, which is called tho British Empire.'* MINOR CELEBRITIES AND ODD CHARACTERS. 365 MINOR CELEBRITIES AND ODD CHARACTERS. Price of a City Member. Sir John Barnard took his scat for the City of London in 1722. The writer of his memoirs remarks that to Walpole's frequent observation, " Every man has his price," it was once triumphantly objected, " What, then, is Sir John Barnard's ? " " Popu- larity," was the minister's reply. But Walpole once paid Sir J. Barnard a great compliment. Riding out on the same day in two parties, they happened to come where only a narrow close prevented their view of each other. Sir J. Barnard, talking with his company, was overheard. A gentleman of the other party said, " Whose voice is that ? " Sir Robert replied, " Do not you know ? It is one I shall never forget ; I have often felt its power." " Single-Speech Hamilton." Lord Halifax was the first Lord- Lieutenant of George III. His secretary was William Gerard Hamilton, known by the name of " Single-Speech Hamilton," having made one splendid speech, which he left unequalled ever after. His first measure was a proposal to raise six regiments of Irish Roman Catholics, amounting to three thousand men, to be officered by Catholics, and to bo taken into the pay of an ally (Portugal). He proposed this in a long and excellent speech ; but the measure met with so much opposition from the Protes- tant party that it was ultimately given up by the Government. Grattan's Life and Times. Hamilton's famous speech was delivered in 1755. " He broke out," said Walpole, " like the Irish rebellion, three-score thousand strong, when nobody was aware or in the least suspected it." Other of his speeches were printed in his posthumous work entitled " Parliamen- tary Logic." Edmund Burke obtained his initiation into public life under Hamilton, whom he accompanied to Ireland in 1761. An Irish Celebrity. Sir Boyle Roche, who was a member of the Irish Parliament in the period preceding the Union, achieved renown by the remark that he could not be, " like a bird, in two places at once." Some other sayings imputed to him are scarcely less celebrated. " I would gladly, Mr. Speaker, sacrifice not only a part of the constitution, but the whole of it, to preserve the remainder." And again, speaking of what might be expected if the leaders of the rebellion gained sway, " Our heads will be thrown upon that table to stare us in the face ! " To him also is ascribed that example of mixed metaphor, " I smell a rat, Mr. Speaker ; I see him floating in the air ; but I will yet nip him in the bud." But on one occasion Sir Boyle gained the victory over Curran in a contest in the Irish House. "Do not speak of my honour," said Curran ; " I am the guardian of my own honour." " Faith," replied Sir Boyle Roche, " I knew that at some time or other you would accept a sinecure." A Seat for Eighteenpence. John Elwes, the miser, was re- turned for Berkshire in 1774, by the interest of Lord Craven. His 366 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. paternal name was Meggot, but lie inherited a large fortune and his later name from a penurious uncle, Sir Harvey Elwes, whom he had assiduously courted. He was a great gambler in his earlier years, although miserly in trifles. He stipulated that he should be at no expense in standing for Berkshire, and is said to have obtained his seat for eighteenpence, laid out in the ordinary at Abingdon. He sat for Berkshire for about twelve years, in three successive Parliaments. TJiiwigging a Member. Elwes, writes Harford, " wore a wig ; it looked as if it might have been picked off a hedge or a scare-crow. At that time we used to wear dress swords occasionally at the House ; for instance, if going to the opera. One day, Bankes, whose carriage is stiff and lofty, had on his sword, and was seated next to Elwes, who leant his head forward just as Bankes was rising up to leave his place, when the hilt of his sword came in contact with Elwes' wig, which it whisked off and bore away. The House was instantly in a roar of laughter. I never shall forget the scene. There was old Elwes, without his wig, darting forward to reclaim it ; and Bankes marching on quite unconscious of the sword-knot which he wore, and wondering what the laugh was about." Not Heartless. Lord Brougham in one of his letters (1813) made the following reference to Mr. Ward, at that time a person of some note in the House of Commons, and afterwards Lord Dudley : " I heard a joke of Lord Byron's annoyed him t'other day, though it was a baddish sort of pun. Ward was talking of being ' rewhigged,' and Lord Byron said he fancied he wanted to be ' rewarded.' They have fired an epigram at him : ' W d has no heart, they say, but I deny it ; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.' " A Suggestive Speaker. Dr. Laurence had (says Brougham) " the very worst delivery ever witnessed a delivery calculated to alienate the mind of the hearer, to beguile him of his attention, but by stealing it away from the speaker, and almost to prevent him from comprehending what was so uncouthly spoken. It was in reference to this unvarying effect of Dr. Laurence's delivery that Mr. Fox once said, a man should attend, if possible, to a speech of his, and then speak it over again himself : it must, he conceived, succeed infallibly, for it was sure to be admirable in itself, and as certain of being new to the audience. But in this saying there was considerably more wit than truth. The doctor's speech was sure to contain materials not for one, but for half-a-dozen speeches ; and a person might with great advantage listen to it, in order to use those materials, in part, afterwards ; as indeed many did, both in Parliament and at the Bar where he practised, make an effort to attend to him, how difficult soever, in order to hear all that could be said upon eveiy part of the question." Lord Brougham adds that he had repeatedly tried at the Bar the experi- ment mentioned by Fox, to a certain extent, and with success. "Once Bit, Twice Shy." Dr. Laurence's outward aspect was unwieldy, and almost grotesque. His mouth especially excited observa- tion; and being fancied to resemble a shark's, the House of Commons MINOR CELEBRITIES AND ODD CHARACTERS. 367 jest ran that Alderman Brook "Watson, who had lost his leg by that animal's bite, avoided the side where the doctor sat or lay. Alderman Watson and his accident are thus alluded to in " The Rolliad : " " ' One moment's time might I presume to beg,' Cries modest Watson, on his wooden leg ; That leg in which such wondrous art is shown, It almost seems to serve him as his own. Oh ! had the monster who for breakfast ate That luckless limb, his nobler noddle met, The best of workmen and the best of wood Had scarce supplied him with a head BO good." A Lucid Interval. Sir Charles Wetherell made a strong speech against the Catholic Belief Bill, brought in by the Government in which he was Attorney-General, and in consequence had to resign. Mr. Greville thus writes respecting him and his speech (March, 1829): "The anti- Catholic papers and men lavish the most extravagant encomiums on Wetherell's speech, and call it ' the finest oration ever delivered in the House of Commons,' ' the best since the second Philippic.' He was drunk, they say. The Speaker said ' the only lucid interval he had was that between his waistcoat and his breeches.' When he speaks he unbuttons his braces, and in his vehement action his breeches fall down and his waistcoat runs up, so that there is a great interregnum." " Chicken Taylor." Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor, who for several years brought forward a motion in the House of Commons against Lord Eldon, was known (says Lord Campbell) by the sobriquet of " Chicken Taylor." On some points of law which arose in the House, Taylor had answered the great lawyer, Bearcroft, but not without an apology, " that he himself, who was but a young practitioner, and, as he might phrase it, a chicken in the law, should venture on a fight with the cock of West- minster Hall." He then acquired, and he never lost, the above nick-name. "Orator Hnnt." Henry Hunt was the accepted leader of the discontented in the pre-Reform era, and his orations were circukted all over the country. He was the Radical of his age. The white hat he wore was regarded as almost as significant as the republican bonnet rouge in the Reign of Terror. Life of Duncombe. Hunt having been brought before Lord Chief Justice EUenborough to receive sentence upon a con- viction for holding a seditious meeting, he began his address in mitigation of punishment by complaining of certain persons who had accused him of " stirring up the people by dangerous eloquence" Lord EUenborough (in a very mild tone) : " My impartiality as a judge calls upon me to say, sir, that in accusing you of that they do you great injustice." Campbell's Life of EUenborough. While addressing the House of Commons in support of the Reform Bill in 1831, Hunt said, "Now, when the honourable member for Calne (Mr. Macaulay) was talking so much of the rabble, he looked very hard at me (laughter). I understand that laugh. But I am only sorry that the honourable member for Calne has not remained in his place, that I might now have looked in the same way at him." On the passing of the Reform Bill, Hunt lost his seat for Preston. 368 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. An ex-Prizefighter in Parliament. John Gully, who had been s prize-fighter and " champion of England," and who afterwards took to the turf and made much money by betting and racing, was returned to the House of Commons for Pontefract on the passing of the Reform Bill, in opposition to Lord Mexborough. He was also elected to the ensuing Parliament. He eventually resigned his seat on account of ill-health, and gave his entire attention to the turf, twice winning the Derby as well as other of the most important races. On his first election an epigram of the day ran as follows : " If anyone ask why should Pontefract sully Its name by returning to Parliament Gully, The etymological cause, I suppose, is, He's broken the bridges of so many noses." "Small-Journal Wynn." Sir Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, who died in 1850, sat in the House of Commons as representative of Montgomeryshire for fifty-one years, and at his death was " father " of the House. He held office for a time under Earl Grey as Secretary for. War, but resigned on account of his disapproval of the Reform Bill. His knowledge of Parliamentary rule and precedent was highly esteemed, and obtained for him the above nickname. He has before been alluded to in connection with a saying of Brougham's (p. 231 ) ; and, in the Autobio- graphy of his lordship, Charles Wynn is also mentioned under the name of " Squeak." The reason for this appellation is thus explained : Charles Wynn was brother to Sir Watkin, and from a peculiarity in the utterance of the latter, and the shrillness of Charles's voice, they had a joint nick- name as " Bubble and Squeak." Quizzing a Bill out of the House. Sir Andrew Agnew was identified in the House of Commons with the question of Sabbath obser- vance. He brought in a measure so extreme in its nature that his friends appealed to his judgment in private against such a scheme. Professor Pryme tells us, " He said, ' I quite agree with you as to the absurdity of some of the enactments, but it is the bill of the Society for the Better Observance of the Sabbath, and I cannot help it.' It was lost, of course, because it went too far, but the discussion produced great good throughout the kingdom, in leading people of all classes to attend to the subject, and improve the observance of the Lord's Day. The last time that Sir A. Agnew brought forward his bill, Mr. Hawes, M.P. for Lambeth, and two or three other members, succeeded in, I may say, quizzing it out of the House. We were in committee of the whole House, and I was in the chair. When we came to that clause which enacted that it should be unlawful for any cab or public carriage to be let out on a Sunday, Hawes moved as an amendment, 'or for any private carriage to be used.' Before putting it to the vote, Sir A. Agnew appealed to me not to do so. I answered that, as it had been moved and seconded gravely, I had no option. The clause was carried by a majority, and no more was heard of the bill." Attack on a Royal Speech. Colonel Sibthorp, who for many years represented Lincoln, wore a very long beard, which was never dese- THE ROLLIAD." 369 crated by touch of steel. He is referred to on a previous page as one of the subjects of O'ConnelPs wit (p. 258). His speeches were usually brief but extremely forcible; and he never failed to amuse the House, undesignedly, both by his matter and his manner. The following is an example of his peculiar style. On the evening of the explana- tions which ensued in 1851 upon the dismissal of Lord Palmerston by his chief, the colonel followed Lord John Russell's grave and deliberate speech by a sudden onslaught on the effects of the Great Exhibition. " There was," he said, " but one opinion, and it was universal, as to the gross insult which had been offered to the merchants and tradesmen of this country by the wholesale introduction of foreigners and their wares which had taken place in consequence of the Exhibition ; and, for his own part, he would not for a thousand guineas enter the walls or approach within smell of the unwieldy, ill-devised, and unwholesome Castle of Glass. The speech which the ministers had put into her Majesty's lips was a mass of trickery, trash, and trumpery. It was they who were responsible for the sentiments it contained, and he sincerely hoped that the Queen would speedily escape from their fangs." "THE EOLLIAD." This celebrated collection of Parliamentary squibs, which is several times quoted in this volume, was written by some of the most eminent of the adherents of Mr. Fox, and published occasionally in the form of small pamphlets. The writers gave their witticisms the shape of criticism on an imaginary poem, the title of which indicates the coming burlesque, and their effusions appeared in 1785. A full list of the authors, with their various contributions, is given by Lord Braybrooke in the first series of Notes and Queries. Earl Russell says : " While Mr. Fox, wearied with strife, was inclined to recruit his strength in the delightful shades of St. Ann's, the followers of the mighty warrior covered his retreat with the sharp missiles of wit and fun. A cloud of arrows flying around made the supporters of the Minister (Pitt) smart with pain, at once triumphant and ridiculous. ' The Rolliad,' or ' Criticisms on the Rolliad,' as it is more properly called, is the quiver of this squadron of wits." The origin of the title is thus explained by Moore in his " Life of Sheridan :" " Mr. Rolle (M.P. for Devonshire), the hero of ' The Rolliad,' was one of those unlucky persons whose destiny it is to bo immortalised by ridicule, and to whom the world owes the same sort of gratitude for the wit of which they were the butts, as the merchants did in Sindbad's story, to those pieces of meat to which diamonds adhered. The chief offence, besides his political obnoxiousness, by which he provoked this satirical warfare (whose plan of attack was all arranged at a club held at Becket's), was the lead which he took in a sort of conspiracy, formed on the ministerial benches, to interrupt, by coughing, hawking, and other unseemly noises, the speeches of Mr. Burke. The chief writers of these lively productions 25 370 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. were Tickell, General Fitzpatrick, Lord John Townshend, Richardson, George Ellis, and Dr. Laurence." The interruptions referred to by Moore are thus alluded to : " Great Rollo'a heir, whose cough, whose laugh, whose groan, Th' Antseus Edmund has so oft o'erthrown ; Whose cry of ' Question ' silenced Charles's sense That cry, more powerful than Pitt's eloquence." Pitt and his principal supporters, with, their parliamentary charac- teristics, are portrayed in sarcastic lines. Thus " the Heaven-born Minister " " Above the rest, majestically great, Behold the infant Atlas of the State ; The matchless miracle of modern days, In whom Britannia to the world displays A sight to make surrounding nations stare : A kingdom trusted to a school-boy's care." He is thus further characterised : " Pert without fire, without experience sage ; Young, with more art than Shelbnrne glean* d from age ; Too proud from pilfer'd greatness to descend, Too humble not to call Dnndas his friend ; In solemn dignity and sullen state This new Octavius rises to debate." His eloquence, which caused it to be said that " on the tip of his nose he suspended the House of Commons," is alluded to in similar terms : Crown the froth'd porter, slay the fatted ox, And give the British meal to British Fox. But, for an Indian Minister more fit, Ten cups of purest padrae pour for Pitt, Pure as himself ; add sugar, too, and cream, Sweet as his temper, bland as flows the stream Of his smooth eloquence ; then crisply nice The muffin toast, or bread and butter slice, Thin as his arguments, that mock the mind, Gone ere yon taste no relish left behind." The Speaker of the House is feelingly commiserated : " There Cornwall sits, and oh ! unhappy fate, Must sit for ever through the long debate. Painful pre-eminence ! he hears, 'tis true, Fox, North, and Burke, but hears Sir Joseph* too." Among the small people of the Parliament, one of the best of the touches is that bestowed upon "Drake, whose cold rhetoric freezes in its course." " How happy," continue the criticisms, " is the allusion to Mr. Drake's well-known speech, which, in the metaphor of our poet, we may style a beautiful icicle of the most transparent eloquence : ' Behold, sir, another * Sir Joseph Mawbey. "THE EOLLIAD." 371 feature of the procrastinating system. Not so the Athenian patriots Sir, the Romans Sir, I have lost the clue of my argument Sir, I will sit down.' " Another honourable gentleman is made the subject of some sparkling lines, with the explanation that they refer to " an active young member, who has upon all occasions been pointedly severe upon the noble lord in the blue ribbon (North), and who is remarkable for never having de- livered his sentiments upon any subject, whether relating to the East Indies, the Reform of Parliament, or the Westminster Election, without a copious dissertation upon the principles, causes, and conduct of the American War ": " Lo ! Beaufoy rises, friend to soft repose, Whose gentle accents prompt the House to dose. His cadence just a general sleep provokes, Almost as quickly as Sir Richard's* jokes. Thy slumbers, North, he strives in vain to break ; When all are sleeping, thou wonldst scarce awake, Though from his lips severe invectives fell, Sharp as the acids he delights to sell." In allusion to the last line, the reader is informed of Mr. Beanfoy that, " although the elegance of his diction and smoothness of his manner par- take of the properties of oil, he is, in his commercial capacity, a dealer in vinegar." The patrician Pittite is equally the subject of sarcasm with the trader of the same party. The Marquis of Graham had said in debate, " If the honourable gentleman calls my honourable friend goose, I suppose he will call me gosling." The remark was received with significant cheers. The marquis shortly after was elected Chancellor of Glasgow University, and he is thus referred to : " If right the bard, whose numbers sweetly flow, That all our knowledge is ourselves to know, A sage like Graham can the world produce, Who in fnll senate called himself a goose ? Th' admiring Commons from the high-born youth With wonder heard this undisputed truth ; Exulting Glasgow claim'd him for her own, And placed the prodigy on Learning's throne." Sir Eichard Hill. PAET in. MISCELLANEOUS. ELECTIONS. Universal Suffrage. Selden says : " There was a time when all men had their voice in choosing knights (of the shire). About Henry the Sixth's time they found the inconvenience, so one Parliament made a law, that only he that had forty shillings per annum should give his voice ; they under should be excluded. They made the law who had the voice of all, as well under forty shillings as above ; and thus it continues at this day. All consent civilly to a Parliament; women are involved in the men, children in those of perfect age, those that are under forty shillings a year in those that have forty shillings a year, those of forty shillings in the knights." Early Election Disturbances. In the eighth and tenth years of the reign of Henry YI. (1430 1432), laws were enacted limiting the electors to such as were possessed of forty shillings a year in land, free from all burdens, within the county. The preamble of one statute is remarkable : " Whereas the elections of knights have of late, in many counties of England, been made by outrages and excessive numbers of people, many of them of small substance and value, yet pretending to a right equal to the best knights and esquires ; whereby manslaughters, riots, batteries, and divisions among the gentlemen and other people of the same counties shall very likely rise and be, unless due remedy be pro- vided in this behalf," &c. We may learn (says Hume) from these ex- pressions what an important matter the election of a member of Parlia- ment was now become in England. A Sheriff Assaulted for Delaying a Writ. Richard Calle writes to John Paston about 1450 : " I recommend me unto your good mastership ; like you to weet (know) that on Childermas Day there were much people at Norwich at the shire (county court), because it was noised in the shire that the under-sheriff had a writ to make a new election, wherefore the people was grieved because they had laboured so often, saying to the sheriff that he had the writ, and plainly he should not away unto the time the writ were read. The sheriff answered and said 374 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. that he had no writ, nor wist who had it ; hereupon the people peaced and stilled unto the time the shire was done, and after that done, the people called upon him, ' Kill him ! head him ! ' and so John Damme, with help of others, got him out of the shire-house, and with much labour brought him into Spurrier Row, and there the people met against him, and so they avoided him into an house, and kept fast the door unto the time the mayor was sent for, and the sheriff, to strengthen him and to convey him away, or else he had been slain. Wherefore divers of the thrifty men came to me, desiring that I should write unto your mastership to let you have understanding of the guiding of the people, for they be full sorry of this trouble ; and that it please you to send them your advice how they shall be guided and ruled, for they were purposed to have gathered an hundred or two hundred of the thriftiest men, and to have come up to the King to let the King have understanding of their mocking." Influence of Peers on Elections. The following letter, written about the middle of the 15th century, and included in the Paston series, shows the influence then exercised by peers in elections for the Lower House, and the estimation in which members of that House were at that time held : " The Duchess of Norfolk to our right trusty and well-beloved John Paston, Esq. We greet you heartily well, and forasmuch as it is thought right necessary for divers causes that my lord have at this time in the Parliament such persons as belong unto him, and be of his menial servants wherein we conceive your goodwill and diligence shall be right expedient we heartily desire and pray you that, at the contemplation of these our letters, as our special trust is in you, ye will give and apply your voice unto our right well-beloved cousin and servants, John Howard and Sir Roger Chamberlayn, to be knights of the shire ; exhorting all such others as by your wisdom shall now be behoveful, to the good exploit and con- clusion of the same. And in your faithful attendance and true devoir in this part ye shall do unto my lord and us a singular pleasure, and cause us hereafter to thank you therefore, as ye shall hold you right well content and agreed with the grace of God, who have you ever in his keeping." Court Dictation. The writs issued to summon a Parliament in 1553 were accompanied by a letter in the name of the King (Edward VI.) to each sheriff, which concluded as follows : " Our pleasure is that where our Privy Council, or any of them, shall recommend men of learning and wisdom, in such case their directions be regarded and followed, to have this assembly to be of the most chiefest men in our realm for advice and good counsel." The " Prince Elector." Evelyn writes : March 5, 1685 [a few days after the accession of James II.] A Parliament was now smn- mon'd, and greate industry us'd to obtaine elections which might promote the Court interest, most of the corporations being now by their new charters impower'd to make what returnes of members they pleased. May 22. Mr. Seymour made a bold speech against many elections, and would have had those members who (he pretended) were obnoxious to withdraw, till they had clear'd the matter of their being legally return'd ; but no one seconded him. The truth is, there were many of the new members ELECTIONS. 375 whose elections and returns were universally censur'd, many of them being persons of no condition or interest in the nation, or places for which they serv'd, especially in Devon, Cornwall, Norfolk, &c., said to have been recommended by the Court, and from the effect of the new charters changing the electors. It was reported that Lord Bath carried down with him into Cornwall no fewer than fifteen charters, so that some call'd him the Prince Elector. A Court Candidate in the Seventeenth Century. Sir John Reresby, Governor of the city of York in the reign of James II., gives in his " Memoirs " the following account of the mode in which the Court manipulated the constituencies for the purpose of securing the return of its own nominees : " I sent notice to the mayor and others of York that I intended to stand for one of their representatives at the ensuing election, and found the magistracy would be for the most part against me, though I had good encouragement from the other citizens. The truth is I was at some loss how to act in this matter ; I was not desirous to be of this Parliament, not only because I was grown infirm and unfit to attend the duty of the House, but also because I was afraid the King would expect more from me than my conscience would extend to ; for, as I was determined not to violate this on the one side, so I could hardly resolve to offend so good a master on the other. In these straits I went to the King at Windsor, and showed him the letters I had sent to York, and the answers I had received thereto ; desiring his Majesty to indulge me with replies to three queries I had to make. (1.) Whether, seeing the contest was like to be both chargeable and difficult, and the success ex- tremely doubtful, it was his pleasure I should stand ? He replied posi- tively, I should. (2.) Whether, as the opposition was very strong against me, he would impute it to my remissness if I miscarried ? He promised he would not. (3.) Whether he would assist me all he could to prevent my being baffled, and particularly by such means as I should propose to him ? His answer was, Yes ; and. he gave immediate orders to the Lords for purging of Corporations, to make whatever change I desired in the city of York, and to put in or out (which the King, it seems, had reserved to himself by the last charter) just as I pleased. Then, taking leave of the King, and presenting him with some Roman medals, which he took very kindly, he again charged me to do what I could to be chosen." The worthy knight proceeds to narrate the steps he took to carry out the King's wishes ; but in the meantime the Prince of Orange landed an event by which these and many more important schemes were rendered futile. Electioneering Strategy in 1685. The Whig candidate for Buckinghamshire, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity and by audacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always a respectable part, in the politics of several reigns. He had been one of those members of the House of Commons who had carried up the Exclusion Bill to the bar of the Lords. The Court was therefore bent on throwing him out by fair or foul means. The Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys himself came down into Buckingham- 376 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. shire, for the purpose of assisting a gentleman named Hacket, who stood on the high Tory interest. A stratagem was devised which, it was thought, could not fail of success. It was given out that the polling would take place at Ailesbury ; and Wharton, whose skill in all the arts of electioneering was unrivalled, made his arrangements on that supposi- tion. At a moment's warning the sheriff adjourned the poll to Newport Pagnell. Wharton and his friends hurried thither, and found that Hacket, who was in the secret, had already secured every inn and lodging. The Whig freeholders were compelled to tie their horses to the hedges, and to sleep under the open sky in the meadows which surround the little town. It was with the greatest difficulty that refreshments could be pro- cured at such short notice for so large a number of men and beasts, though Wharton, who was utterly regardless of money when his ambition and party spirit were roused, disbursed fifteen hundred pounds in one day- an immense outlay for those times. Injustice seems, however, to have animated the courage of the stout-hearted yeomen of Bucks, the sons of the constituents of John Hampden. Not only was Wharton at the head of the poll, but he was able to spare his second votes to a man of moderate opinions, and to throw out the Chief Justice's candidate. Macaulay'a " History." Tricked by the Sheriff. John Evelyn writes : " April 8, 1685. This day my brother of Wotton and Mr. Onslow were candidates for Surrey against Sir Adam Brown and my cousin Sir Edward Evelyn, and were circumvented in their election by a trick of the sheriff's taking advantage of my brother's party going out of the small village of Leatherhead to seek shelter and lodging, the afternoone being tempestuous proceeding to the election when they were gone, they expecting the next morning; whereas before and then they exceeded the other party by many hundreds, as I am assured. The Duke of Norfolk led Sir Edw. Evelyn's and Sir Adam Brown's party. For this Parliament, very meane and slight persons (some of them gentlemen's servants, clearkes, and persons neither of reputation nor interest) were set up, but the country would choose my brother whether he would or no, and he missed it by the trick above mentioned." An Election for Norfolk Two Hundred Years Ago. Sir Thomas Browne, the learned physician of Norwich, writing to his son Edward, then a member of the College of Physicians and residing in London, gives the following account of the election of representatives for the shire of Norfolk : " Norwich, May 7th, 1679. Our election was the last Monday. The competitors were the former elected Sir Christopher Calthorp and Sir Neuille Catelyn, and Sir John Hobart and Mr. Wind- ham. I neuer obserned so great a number of people who came to giue their voyces ; but all was ciuilly carried at the hill, and I do not heare of any rude or vnhandsome caryadge, the competitors hauing the weeke before sett downo rules and agreed upon articles for their regular and quiet proceeding. They came not down from the hill vntill eleven o'clocke at night. Sir John Hobart and Sir Neuille Catelyn caryed it, and were caryed on chayres about the market-place after eleuen o'clocko, with ELECTIONS. 377 trumpets and torches, candles being lighted at windowes, and the markett- place full of people. I could not butt obserue the great number of horses which were in the towne, and conceive there might haue been fiue or six thousand which in time of need might serue for dragoone horses ; besides a great number of coach horses, and very good sadle horses of the better sort. Wine wee had none butt sack and Rhenish, except some made prouision thereof before hand ; butt there was a strange consumption of beere and bread and cakes. Abundance of people slept in the markett- place, and laye like flockes of sheep in and about the crosse." Letting Loose the Tap. Roger North, in his "Life of Lord Keeper Guilford," relates that " Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, succeeded Sir Francis North in the burgess-ship of Lynn (1685), but not so easy and cheap ; for his managers did not keep in due bounds, but let loose the tap all over that large town, and made an account of 7000Z. or more resting due to the town, besides what had been paid for the expenses." A Call for Reform. John Evelyn thus writes, in 1696, to Lord Godolphin, First Commissioner of the Treasury : " Truly, my lord, I cannot but wonder and even stand amaz'd that Parliaments should have sate from time to time, so many hundred yeares, and value their constitu- tion to that degree as the most sovraine remedy for the redresse of publiq grievances, whilst the greatest still reruaine unreform'd and untaken away. Witnesse the conf us'd, debauch'd, and riotous manner of electing members qualified to become the representatives of a nation, with legislative power to dispose of the fate of kingdomes ; which should and would be compos'd of worthy persons, of known integritie and ability in their respective countries, and still would serve them generously, and as their ancestors have don, but are not able to fling away a son or daughter's portion to bribe the votes of a drunken multitude, more resembling a pagan bac- chanalia than an assembly of Christians and sober men met upon the most solemn occasion that can concerne a people, and stand in competition with some rich scrivener, brewer, banker, or one in some gainfull office whose face or name, perhaps, they never saw or knew before. How, my lord, must this sound abroad ! With what dishonour and shame at home ! " A Simple Ceremony. Formerly, says Waller (1673), "the neigh- bourhood desired a candidate to serve ; there was a dinner, and so an end ; but now it is a kind of an empire. Some hundred years ago, some boroughs sent not ; they could get none to serve ; but now it is in fashion, and a fine thing they are revived." A Dinner to Voters. The following appears in the Annual Register, 1761, as an exact account of the articles consumed at dinner only, by the voters of a small borough, on the day of electing their members ; independently of veal, mutton, poultry, pastry, &c., and a preparatory break- fast, which last alone cost 7501. Consumption at dinner : 980 stone of beef ; 315 dozen of wine ; 72 pipes of ale ; and 365 gallons of spirits converted into punch. The Fat and the Lean Voters. Frederick Douglas, Lady Glenbervie's son, sat in Parliament for the family borough of Banbury, and amused us one day (says Harford in his " Recollections of Wilber- 378 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. force "), by telling what had formerly occurred to some recreant electors, who had ventured, though vainly, to oppose Lord North's nomination of the mayor, shortly before the annual dinner, to which his lordship was in the habit of sending venison. The old steward, while carving it, sent plenty of fat to the obedient voters, but made the rebels feelingly sensible of his displeasure, by exclaiming, as he dispatched their respective plates, " Those who didn't vote for my lord's Mayor sha'n't have none of my lord's fat ! " Origin of Conveyance of Electors and Splitting Free- holds for Votes. In January, 1679, the Parliament, which had been in existence ever since the beginning of the year 1661, was dissolved, and writs were issued for a general election. During some weeks (writes Macaulay) " the contention over the whole country was fierce and obstinate beyond example. Unprecedented sums were expended. New tactics were employed. It was remarked by the pamphleteers of that time as something extraordinary that horses were hired at a great charge for the conveyance of electors. The practice of splitting freeholds, for the purpose of multiplying votes, dates from this memorable struggle." Wholesale Multiplication of Freeholds. Oldfield relates that a committee was appointed to try the petition of John Arbuthnot, Esq., on the 10th February, 1804, against the return of certain candidates for Weymouth. In consequence of the decision of this committee, two hundred freeholds were at once split into two thousand. Freeholders of Weymouth were to be found in London, and in almost all the towns and villages to the Land's End in Cornwall, and in the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, whence many hundreds were afterwards brought at an enormous expense to vote at every election for this borough. Some even voted for the thirteen-hundredth part of a sixpenny freehold. Fagot Votes in 1877. At Exeter Registration Court, in October, 1877, thirty-two claims were made by Conservatives in respect of rent charges on one house. The property was bought two years before from the trustees of the Earl of Devon, who sold under an order of the Court of Chancery. Mr. Henry Drew, brother of Lord Devon's steward, was the purchaser, and he admitted having bought for the express purpose of creating votes. He said he gave 1350., but had made 1600Z. of the rent charges, while he valued the residence at over 200Z. ; it was a specula- tion, and had paid him well. He was not aware that the tenant had previously offered 1600Z. for the property. The Earl of Devon knew nothing of the intention to manufacture these votes, but a good many claimants were tenants of his lordship. On behalf of the Liberals it was contended that the deed conveying the property to Mr. Drew was void. The Revising Barrister allowed Mr. Drew's claim, but intimated that he should require personal attendance of every one of the other claimants. The Fagot Vote in Midlothian. In bringing forward a motion in favour of household suffrage in counties, in 1879, Mr. Trevelyan com- mented upon the recent creation of a large number of fagot votes by members of the Conservative party hi Midlothian, in anticipation of the next contest for the representation of that county, in which Mr. Gladstone ELECTIONS. 379 had announced his intention to take part. Lord Claud Hamilton replied, defending the votes recently made, and he referred to the tactics of Mr. Cobden. Speaking in London, November 26, 1849, that gentleman said : " In that great division (the "West Biding of Yorkshire), at present containing 37,000 voters, Lord Morpeth was, as you are aware, defeated on the question of free trade, and two protectionists were returned. I went into the West Riding with this 40s. freehold plan. I stated in every borough and district that we must have 5000 qualifications made in two years. They were made. The silly people who opposed us raised the cry that the Anti-Corn Law League had bought the qualifications. Such a cry was ridiculous. We followed the same plan in South Lanca- shire, and with a similar result. Our friends walked over the course at the next election, though at the previous one we had not a chance." Fotwalloping. This qualification for the suffrage, extinct since the passing of the first Reform Bill, consisted in having " boiled a pot " in a parliamentary borough for a certain time usually six months prior to an election. It was, in fact, residential qualification expressed in a popular term, which is said to have been partly derived from the Saxon weallan, to boil. Scot and Lot. Scot or shot (says Richardson) is so much cast or thrown down as a share of the whole sum to be paid ; and lot means allot- ment or portion assigned. To pay scot and lot, therefore, was for a person to pay the ordinary tributes, and also the personal tax allotted to him. A curiously elastic provision in reference to this qualification is recorded in "Determinations of the House of Commons concerning Elections" (1753) : " llth January, 1699. Resolved, that the mayor, aldermen, and all the inhabitants within the borough of Newark -upon-Trent, who pay, or ought to pay, scot and lot within the said borough, have a right to vote at the election of members to serve in Parliament for the said borough." Household Suffrage. This principle, which excited so much con- troversy during the passage of the Reform Bill of 1867, and was eventually adopted subject to the payment of poor rate, existed in simplicity in the case of many boroughs in former times. " Potwalloping " was another name for it, but in occasional instances we find it expressly laid down. The " Determinations concerning Elections," just quoted, include, for instance, a decision of the House, Jan. 28, 1695 : " Resolved, that the right of election of burgesses to serve in Parliament for the borough of Aylisbury, in the county of Bucks, is in all the householders of the said borough, not receiving alms." The same principle governed the elections at Northampton. In most cases, however, the payment of scot and lot, without admission of default as in the Newark instance, was an essential condition. Honorary Freemen. In the East Retford case, decided in the Court of King's Bench in 1802 (reports Oldfield), " it appeared to have been the custom for two hundred and twenty years for the sheriffs and aldermen to make whom they pleased freemen, for the purpose of creating voters, till they became so confident of their possessing such a power that 380 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. they proceeded to create forty-two honorary freemen at one time. This caused an information in the nature of a quo warranto to be filed within six years, as the statute limits such information to that period after they obtain the freedom of any corporation. Upon hearing the same, the bailiffs and aldermen pleaded a custom of two hundred and twenty years. Upon which it was observed that it had been also customary to rob upon the highway for so many years, but that it was always the custom to hang the offender when he was detected. Judgment of ouster was issued against the whole forty-two honorary freemen." The "Christians" of Shoreham. In 1771, the House of Commons discussed a proposal for the disf ranchisement of New Shoreham. It had been discovered that corruption of the most flagrant character existed in the borough, chiefly under the auspices of a body called " The Christian Club," which, professedly formed for the promotion of religion and charity, exercised its functions in negotiating the sale of the seat for the borough to the highest bidder. This was done by the agency of a secret committee, which concluded a transaction with the most liberal candidate, received the money, and divided the spoil among the club generally. As the members of this committee abstained from voting themselves, on the ground of conscientious scruples, they escaped the imputation of bribery, until a disagreement with the returning officer* who was in their confidence, led him to reveal all their plans. It appeared that at this particular election there were five candidates, only two of whom came near the mark with their offers. General Smith offered 3000Z. down, and to benefit the place by building shipping. Mr. Rumbold bid 351. a vote to all the freemen, and was consequently chosen by the com- mittee. The returning officer, however, preferred the General, and the disagreement led to an open quarrel. The Opposition of the day wished to disfranchise the borough, but were outvoted, the House resolving instead that eighty-one of the freemen should forfeit the franchise for ever, and that the boundary of the borough for the future should be extended to the Rape of Bramber. Sale of Boroughs. Professor Pryme says : " I have seen an advertisement, before Grampound was disfranchised, offering a borough for sale (Westbury), as not only to be sold, but to be sold by order of the Court of Chancery. A short time before the Reform Bill, Lord Monson paid 100,0002. for Gatton, which contained about twenty-five houses, and rather more than one hundred inhabitants. Mr. Aubrey, fellow-commoner of Trinity College, and nephew of Sir J. Aubrey, told me that his uncle, whose heir he was, thought that he could not spend 1000Z. a-year more pleasantly than in buying a borough and sitting in Parliament. He sat for Aldborough, in Yorkshire, by arrangement with its proprietor, Mr. De Crespigny, and on the understanding that he was to vote as he pleased. He did not pay 1000Z. annually for the privilege, but calculated that it cost him that. 5000Z. was the sum usually paid for a seat." Proprietary Rights. Earl Russell relates in his "Recollections:" " One noble lord used to go out hunting followed by a tail of six or seven members of Parliament of his own making. Another, being asked ELECTIONS. 381 who should be returned for one of his boroughs, named a waiter at White's Club ; but as he did not know the man's Christian name, the election was declared void, and a fresh election was held, when, the name having been ascertained, the waiter was duly elected. . . A seat for the whole duration of a Parliament was sold for 5000. But as Parlia- ments were subject to sudden death, prudent men made a bargain to pay 1000 a year so long as they sate in the House of Commons. Mr. Bicardo and many others were members of the House of Commons in virtue of such payment. Sir Francis Burdett entered Parliament by purchase a seat from the trustees of the Duke of Newcastle a minor." A" " Elegant Contingency." Thomas Holcroft, the dramatist, was member of a political club called "The Society for Constitutional Information," and in 1794 was prosecuted for high treason, with other members of that body. He drew up a paper in his own defence, in which he gave the following as an instance of the corrupt state of the parliamentary representation : " The borough of Gatton, within these two years, was publicly advertised for sale by auction : not sold for a single parliament, but the fee simple of the borough, with the power of nominating the two representatives for ever. On the day of sale, the celebrated auctioneer scarcely noticed the value of the estate. The rental, the mansion, the views, the woods and waters, were unworthy regard, compared to what he called an elegant contingency. Tes, the right of nominating two members to Parliament, without the embarrassment of voters, was an elegant contingency ! ' Need I tell you, gentlemen,' said he, glancing round the room with ineffable self-satisfaction, and exulting in what he called the jewel, the unique, which was under his hammer, ' Need I tell you, gentle- men, that this elegant contingency is the only infallible source of fortune, titles, and honours in this happy country ? That it leads to the highest situations in the State ? And that, meandering through the tempting sinuosities of ambition, the purchaser will find the margin strewed with roses, and his head quickly crowned with those precious garlands that flourish in full vigour round the fountain of honour ? On this halcyon sea, if any gentleman who has made his fortune in either of the Indies chooses once more to embark, he may repose in perfect quiet. No hurri- canes to dread ; no tempestuous passions to allay ; no tormenting claims of insolent electors to evade ; no tinkers' wives to kiss ; no impossible promises to make ; none of the toilsome and not very clean paths of canvassing to drudge through ; but, his mind at fcase and his conscience clear, with this elegant contingency in his pocket, the honours of the State await his plucking, and with its emoluments his purse will overflow.' " Administrations and Rotten Boroughs. Lord Palmerston wrote as follows in his Journal, respecting the manipulation of con- stituencies by the Grenville Administration in 1806 : " The method adopted by Ministers with regard to their borough seats was very politic and ingenious. They purchased seats from their friends at a low price, making up the deficiency probably by appointments and promotions. These seats they afterwards sold out at the average market price to men who promised them support; and with the difference they carried on 382 ANECDOTAL BISTORT OF PARLIAMENT. their contested elections. The sum raised in this manner was stated, by a person who was in the secret, to be inconceivably great, and accounts for an assertion afterwards made by Lord Grenville in the Lords', that ' not one guinea of the public money had been spent in elections.' " This observation by Lord Palmerston (as his biographer, Lord Dalling, remarks) seems to imply that the spending public money for party elections would not have been deemed, on the part of any Government, an extra- ordinary occurrence. Dear Seats. Sir Samuel Romilly wrote as follows in his diary, in 1807 : " I shall procure myself a seat in the new Parliament, and Tierney, who manages this business for the friends of the late Administration, assures me he can hear of no seats to be disposed of. After a Parliament which has lived little more than four months, one would naturally suppose that those seats which are regularly sold by the proprietors of them would be very cheap; they are, in fact, sold now at a higher price than was ever given for them before. Tierney tells me that he has offered 10,OOOZ. for the two seats at "Westbury, the property of the late Lord Abingdon, and which are to be made the most of by trustees for creditors, and had met with a refusal. 6000Z. and 55001. have been given for seats with no stipulation as to time, or against the event of a speedy dissolution by the King's death, or by any change of Administration." Depreciated Value. After the dissolution of 1831, the price of rotten boroughs was greatly diminished by the anticipation of the eventual passage of a Bill sweeping them away. Mr. Torrens relates that Lord Yarborough, as guardian of the daughter of Sir L. Holmes, sold to the Government for 4:0001. the next presentation to the eight political stalls in St. Stephen's appurtenant to her property in the Isle of Wight. The eight incumbents duly prayed for sudden death, and had the rare privilege of performing the part of chief mourners at their own funerals. Borouglimongering after the Reform Bill. Mr. Greville writes, Dec. 4, 1835 : " Lord Segrave has got the Gloucestershire Lieu- tenancy, and this appointment, disgraceful in itself, exhibits all the most objectionable features of the old boroughmongering system, which was supposed to be swept away. He was in London as soon as the breath was out of the Duke of Beaufort's body, went to Melbourne, and claimed the appointment on the score of having three members, which was more than any other man in England now returned. ' My brothers,' he said, ' the electors do not know by sight ; it is my influence which returns them.' The appeal was irresistible, and ' We are three ' was as imperative with Melbourne as 'We are seven' was with the Duke of Newcastle. The scarcity of the commodity enhances its value, and now that nominations are swept away, the few who are still fortunate enough to possess some remnants are great men ; and Segrave's three brothers, thrown (as they would without scruple have been) into the opposite scale, would have nearly turned it." The First Conviction for Bribery. In the session of 1571, a fine was imposed on the borough of Westbury, for receiving a bribe of four pounds from Thomas Long, " being a very simple man and of small ELECTIONS. 383 capacity to serve in that place ; " and the mayor was ordered to repay the money. Long, however, does not seem to have been expelled. This is the earliest precedent on record for the punishment of bribery in elections. Hallam'a " Constitutional History." Magisterial Delinquents. In 1767 (writes Oldfield), Philip Ward, Esq., Mayor of Oxford, in conjunction with several other magis- trates of the city, wrote a letter to Sir Thomas Stapylton and the Hon. Robert Lee, their members, offering to elect them again at the next general election for a stated sum of money. The letter was produced in the House ; whereupon the writers were ordered to be arrested and com- mitted to Newgate. After a confinement of some time, they were dis- charged, upon petitioning the House, having first been reprimanded on their knees by the Speaker. Imprisonment for Bribery. The Annual Register for 1804 records : Alexander Davidson, Esq., the opulent banker and contractor ; John "White Parsons, and Thomas Hopping, gents., have been sentenced by the Court of King's Bench, for gross bribery and corruption at the late Ilchester election, to twelve months' confinement in the Marshalsea prison. A Heavy Punishment for Bribery. On March 18th, 1819, Sir Manasseh Lopes, Bart., was tried and convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of 10,000?., and to be imprisoned in Exeter 'Gaol for two years, for bribing several of the electors of the borough of Grampound. With -reference to this case, Lord John Russell moved in the House of Commons (July llth, 1820) that the House should address the Throne to remit part of the punishment. The motion, after some discussion, was withdrawn. A Constituency Heavily Fined. In recent times we have an instance of a somewhat heavy penalty falling upon a constituency for cor- rupt practices at an election, as the following statement from the Times of 6th March, 1871, will show : " The Bridgewater Town Council were on Friday informed that they would have to pay 3146Z. as the cost of their election commission. It was stated that the payment would necessitate a rate of 2s. 6d. in the pound." In the end it amounted to 3s. Price of Votes. Previously to the Reform Bill of 1832, pecuniary influence had operated upon the electors of many boroughs to an extent scarcely now to be imagined. At Hull and Beverley, and probably at many other places, it was customary after the election to give four guineas for a single vote, or two for a divided one. At Hedon, a small borough and sea-port on the Humber, now disfranchised, it was usual to give twenty guineas for a single vote, and ten for a divided one. Before an election there was no actual promise made, but the voter would say on being canvassed, " You will do what is usual after the election, sir, I suppose ? " and the candidate would reply in the affirmative. Many of the poor electors did not wait for an election, but borrowed of the member sums of money, for which they gave a promissory note. When an election came, ten or twenty guineas was receipted upon the note, the residue of which still gave the candidate a hold upon the elector for a future occasion. This was told to mo (says Pryme) by Mr. Chaytor, of 384 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Spennithorne, in Wensleydale, who long represented the borongh. To show the extent to which corruption prevailed, I may mention that when the Reform Bill was spoken of to some electors in Stafford, they expressed their pleasure at it, and hoped that there wonld be introduced into it some plan for the better payment of poor voters ! St. Alban's was on the Great North Road, which gave the town prosperity by its posting ; and it was said of its inhabitants, when the great inn was given up, that they re- marked, " We have nothing now left to sell but our votes." Pryme's " Recollections." Oldfield, in his " Representative History," states that the freemen of the borough of Grampound had been known to boast of receiving three hundred guineas a man for their votes at one election. Respecting the general election of 1826, the Times of June 20th of that year has the following : " During the election at Sudbury, four cabbages sold for 10, and a plate of gooseberries fetched 25 ; the sellers where these articles were so dear being voters. At Great Marlow, on the con- trary, things were cheap, and an elector during the election bought a sow and nine young pigs for a penny." A Visitor from the Moon. When the borough of Wendover was in the possession of Earl Yerney, the electors in general lived rent free on condition of giving their votes to his lordship's nominee. A remark- able circumstance happened in 1768, in connection with this mutual arrangement, which Oldfield describes. In the year named, a Mr. Atkins had undertaken, by a coup-de-main, to carry the election against his lordship's interest ; and quite unexpectedly, on the day of the election, Sir Robert Darling was proposed and returned by a considerable majority. The voters were punished for their treachery to their superior by being instantly ejected from their houses, and were obliged to take refuge in huts and tents for six months, when, upon a proper acknowledgment of their contrition, they were allowed to repossess their former dwellings. In 1784, his lordship being in straits, the voters retaliated upon him by engaging with two candidates against his lordship's interest and influence, for a sum of 6.000Z. This being settled, a gentleman was employed to go down, when he was met, according to previous appointment, by the electors at a mile from the town. The electors asked the stranger where he came from. He replied, " From the moon." They then asked, " What news from the moon p " He answered that he had brought from thence 6,OOOZ. to be distributed among them. The electors, being thus satisfied with the golden news from the moon, chose the candidates and received their reward. The " Dancing Punch." The Annual Register for 1775 says : In the course of the evidence given before the select committee appointed to try and determine the Hindon election, the following circumstances came out. On a day previous to the election, a man, disguised in a fan- tastic female habit, went about the town to canvass for two of the can- didates. This figure, which was called the Dancing Punch, called at the door of almost every elector, and gave each five or ten guineas ; and sent for such as had not been canvassed at their own houses, to an inn in the town, and there distributed its favours in the same manner. Somo others ELECTIONS. 385 in the opposite interest attended in an outer apartment of the house where their friends sat in an inner room, and there obliged the electors to sign an acknowledgment for a certain sum of money, which being done, a paper containing ten or fifteen guineas was handed out to every elector through a hole in the door. Upon that and other evidence the committee resolved, That Richard Smith and Thomas Brand Hollis, Esqs., had been returned by notorious bribery; That the House be moved for leave to bring in a bill to disfranchise the borough of Hindon, in Wilts. These resolutions were confirmed by the House on the 24th of February, when it was also decided that no writ should be issued for one month. It appears, however, from Oldfield's "Representative History," that the disfranchising bill was not passed, and a new writ was ordered to be issued on the 8th May, 1776. " Mister Most." Lord Dundonald relates in his " Autobiography," that while canvassing the electors of Honiton one of these independents said to him, " You need not ask me, my lord, who I votes for ; I always votes for Mr. Most." An Election Ruse. Lord Dundonald also tells that when he first stood for Honiton (while Lord Coc-hrane) he refused to give bribes, and the seat was secured by his opponent, who paid five pounds a head. On this, Cochrane determined that the next time there was a vacancy in the borough the seat should be his without bribery; and he sent the bellman round the town to proclaim that all persons who had voted for him might repair to his agent and receive ten guineas. At the next election no questions were asked, and he was triumphantly returned. This effected (he says in his " Autobiography "), " it was then plainly asked what ex post facto consideration was to be expected by those who had supported me in so delicate a manner. ' Not one farthing ! ' was the reply. ' But, my lord, you gave ten guineas a-head to the minority at the last election, and the majority have been calculating on something handsome on the present occasion.' ' No doubt. The former gift was for their disinterested con- duct in not taking the bribe of five pounds from the agents of my opponent. For me now to pay them would be a violation of my own previously expressed principles ! ' ' Parliamentary Agents and Bribery. On the second reading of the St. Alban's Disfranchisement Bill, in March, 1852, Mr. Jacob Bell, who had been returned for the borough, rose in its defence, and in the course of his speech thus commented on the general corruption which he maintained rendered St. Albau's no worse than other places : " There were certain expenses which were illegal, but which, nevertheless, must be paid not the purest election in the world could be conducted without them and yet, in the strict letter of the law, they endangered the seat. Consequently, it was necessary to employ various agents. The genus ' Parliamentary agent ' comprised several species. Those who performed what was called the ' awkward business ' must be cunning, ingenious, and energetic, and must have a contrivance at hand to meet every case. They must be indefatigable, fear nothing but defeat, care for nothing but victory. These agents, while performing the most slippery business 26 386 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. behind the candidate's back, must convince him when in his presence that they were the purest persons in the world, and that, if a shilling im- properly spent could save his election, they would not expend it. They perpetrated the most unblushing wrong in the most daring manner. They had many methods of accomplishing their purpose, of which an example or two might be instructive. A Parliamentary agent of this kind had a room in some part of the town called a committee -room, but which the candidate never heard of. When an elector came he was ushered into the presence of the agent, who would say, ' Well, Mr. Smith, how do you do to-day P ' at the same time holding up three fingers, to signify he was to have three sovereigns. The elector would perhaps say, if he were dissatisfied with the amount, ' I am not very well to-day.' The agent then, holding up five fingers, would say, ' I am sorry you are not well to-day, Mr. Smith.' The elector would then say, ' Oh, I am not very ill. It is all right.' He would then go and look out of the window, and while he was doing so the agent would put five sovereigns upon the table. The agent would then go and look out of the window in his turn, and the elector would walk to the table, and when the agent turned round the elector was gone, and the sovereigns had vanished. The elector did not see the agent put down the money, and the agent did not see the elector take it up. When a Parliamentary Committee was appointed, the agent swore he never gave any money, and the elector swore no one gave him any. When the five honourable gentlemen who sat upon the committee heard this, they said, ' There has been some clever management here, but there is no evidence.' . . This was only one method in which bribery was carried on. He had heard of fifteen or twenty guineas being given for a canary bird. There was another method which was much more easy to practice without risk of detection that of employing people for various purposes, and paying them. There were usually a great number of agents, spies, secretaries, and messengers, all retained for five or six weeks preparatory to an election, and paid so much a week. These were put down as legal charges, though if thoroughly sifted it would be found that almost the only service these people per- formed was at the hustings or polling-booth. . . He claimed indulgence for his borough. It was in the mud, and he was in the mud with it, but he would never shrink from performing his duty towards it." Mr. Bell's arguments were ineffectual. The bill passed, and St. Alban's no more afforded practice for parliamentary agents. A " Good and Safe Man " Wanted. At the general election in 1852, some curious circumstances occurred at Derby. A leading member of the Liberal committee, accompanied by two or three policemen, obtained access to a committee -room of the Ministerial candidate, where they found seated at the table a man named Morgan, who had a pile of money before him, and a book in which wore entered the names of several of the electors, with marks affixed. He was arrested, and on examination before a magistrate admitted that the book contained the names of persons who had received money for their votes. Upon him was found a letter running as follows : " A good and safe man, with judgment and quickness, wanted immediately ELECTIONS. 387 at Derby. I suppose that you cannot leave your own place ; if not, send some one in whom you can trust in your place. Let him go to Derby on receiving this, and find the County Tavern in the centre of the town, and send his card to Cox, Brothers, and Company, leadworks, as coming from Chester. That will be enough. W. B., Monday." This letter was addressed to Mr. Frail, of Shrewsbury, a well-known electioneering agent; and an inquiry into the Derby election being held by a select committee of the House of Commons, they reported that an organised system of bribery prevailed in the borough, and that the letter was written by the Right Hon. William Beresford, Secretary-at-War. They did not, how- ever, think there was sufficient evidence of his complicity in illegal trans- actions, but they considered the letter " exhibited a reckless indifference and regard to consequences which they cannot too highly censure." "The Man in the Moon." An election commission pursuing its inquiries into bribery at Wakefield, in 1859, came across several references to an individual called " the Man in the Moon," who appeared to have been actively concerned as an agent in electoral corruption. At length a witness said he had engaged the man in question. Mr. Serjeant Pigott : Who is he ? Witness : Well, I'd rather not disclose his name yet ; but I can produce him if necessary. The secret has been so well kept that it would be a pity to disclose it before it is necessary. Serjeant Pigott : Can you produce him to-day ? Witness : Oh yes ; he is hard by. I can bring him in at once. Serjeant Pigott : We shall be delighted to see him. Witness then left the court, and in a few minutes returned with the " Man in the Moon," who said his name was Whitehead, and he was an upholsterer at Bradford, but had been in the habit of taking part in electioneering affairs. Mr. Serjeant Pigott : I suppose you know you went by the name of " the Man in the Moon " while you were here ? Whitehead : Well, I believe that was my designation. Serjeant Pigott : And there is no doubt about your identity ? Whitehead : Oh dear no ; I'm the man, sure enough. A Refuge for the Destitute. In the debate on the second reading of the Reform Bill of Lord Derby's Government in 1859, Mr. Bright thus alluded to the small boroughs which it was proposed to retain under the bill : " Putting the case in the smallest number of words, you say that they send men into Parliament who cannot get in anywhere else. These boroughs form, in point of fact, a refuge for the politically destitute ; and all that I have heard in their favour is, that the persons who find shelter in them are what would be called 'deserving objects.' . . There was an election at Harwich the other day, and I remember a statement made at the time. It was said that Mr. Bagshaw not now a member of this House had discharged a drunken gardener. There were two free- traders who had carried out their principles further than the law sane- tioned, and were imprisoned for smuggling. A respectable parson of the parish, who had not been out of his room for two years, was brought down (by the aid of cordials, stimulants, and a sedan chair) to the poll ; and those four individuals influenced the result of the election." Samples of the Sack. Mr. Bright, in addressing a meeting at 888 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Birmingham in 1866, said : " Hare you read the report of the proceedings at the commission for Yarmouth p Did you read that a late member for that borough is said to have spent 70,0002., to maintain his seat P Did you read that one gentleman, an inferior partner in a brewery, contributed 40002. for the election of his partner, and that another gentleman, knowing nothing of that borough, went down there and supplied 60002. to fight a contest spread only over a few days ? Remember that when Yarmouth or any other borough is thus brought before the public, it is only a sample of a very considerable sack." Yarmouth was disfranchised by the Reform Act of 1867. "Legitimate" Election Expenses. Mr. Lowe, in the debate on Reform in May, 1866, said : " We had a paper laid upon our table this morning, giving an account of the expenses of elections from ' S ' down- wards. I take the first few large boroughs, and I will read the expenses. The expense of the election for Stafford is 54002. ; Stoke-upon-Trent, 62002. ; Sunderland, 50002. ; and Westminster, 12,0002. These are the aggregate expenses of all the candidates. I take them as they come, without picking and choosing. I will now call attention to two or three counties. I will take the southern division of Derbyshire. The election cost 85002., and this is the cheapest I shall read. The northern division of Durham cost 14,6202., and the southern division 11,0002. South Essex cost 10,0002. ; West Kent cost 12,0002. ; South Lancashire, 17,0002. ; South Shropshire, 12,0002.; North Staffordshire, 14,0002.; North Warwickshire, 10,0002. ; South Warwickshire, 13,0002. ; North Wiltshire, 13,0002. ; South Wiltshire, 12,0002. ; and the North Riding of Yorkshire, 27,0002. all legitimate expenses, but by no means the whole expense. Now, I ask the House how it is possible that the institutions of this country can endure, if this kind of thing is to go on and increase ? " Election Expenses in 1874. It appeared by a return made to the House of Commons in August, 1874, after the general election, that the expenses incurred by the candidates throughout the United Kingdom amounted, omitting fractions of pounds, to 1,041,4362. Of this sum the expenses of the candidates for English counties were 383,8882. ; for Welsh counties, 33,9002. ; for cities and boroughs in England and Wales, 424,2042. ; for Ireland (counties, cities, and boroughs), 80,1102. ; and for Scotland, 119,3362. Contrasts in Returning Officers' Charges. A Parliamentary return issued in 1879 showed that in the counties of England and Wales the returning officers' charges at the general election of 1874 Were highest in the county of Middlesex, being 22732. 5s. lid., and lowest in Bedford (where there was no contest), being 252. 19s. 4d. In eighteen other counties the charges exceeded 10002. The highest charge in the cities and boroughs of England and Wales was that for Lambeth, which amounted to 19802. Is. 7d., and the lowest that for Harwich, which was only 6s. 6d. In only one Scotch county were the charges more than 10002., namely, those for Perth, which amounted to 10562. 14s. Id. Glasgow headed the burghs with 24822. 14. 7cZ., Edinburgh coming next with 10212. Is. 6d. In Ireland the counties for which the charges were highest were Galway ELECTIONS. 389 1200?., and Down 1000?. ; and in the boroughs, Dublin headed the list with 13061. County Election Expenses in 1876, &c. Official returns pub- lished in April, 1876, showed that at a recent contest in North Shropshire the expenses of the successful candidate, Mr. Stanley Leighton, amounted to 11,727?., and of the defeated candidate, Mr. Mainwaring, to 10,688?. In a contest for North Norfolk in 1878, the expenses of Mr. E. Birk- beck, the successful Conservative candidate, were returned as 3496?. Of this, 945Z. was paid for agency, and 742?. for the conveyance of voters. The expenses of Sir T. F. Buxton, the unsuccessful Liberal can- didate, amounted to 3190?., of which 572?. was paid for agency, and 638?. for the conveyance of voters. Cost of Elections in 1880. The returns presented from the several counties and boroughs after the general election of 1880 showed the following among other high figures : In the county of Middlesex, the expenses on behalf of the successful candidates, Lord George Hamilton and Mr. Octavius Coope, were 11,506?. 8s. 2 Foxiana, 149 Fox and the goose, the, 168 Francis, Sir Philip, 167 an unready speaker, 167 and Burke, 156 Franchise, claim to the, by peers, 410 women and the, 343 Franking letters, the privilege of, 409 Freaks, reporting, 428 " Free breakfast table," a, 341 Free discussion, 357 Freedom, a friend of, 113 Freedom of speech in Parliament, 43 the privilege of, 406 abusing, 406 Freeholds, origin of splitting, for votes, 378 wholesale multiplication of, 378 Freemen, honorary, 379 French minister, Chatham and the, 115 Frere, a story by, 175 Fretting, 125 Friend, " my right honourable," 361 Frivolity, early, 235 Fuller, Thomas, 22, 491 Full houses, unusually, 321, 447 divisions in, 454 a. Galway, intimidation in, 399 Garrick hiding himself in the gallery, 415 Garter, the order of the, 100, 101 in the Commons, 459 " Garter for the other leg," a, 232 Geese and the oats, the, 487 Gentleman, the King not a, 236 Gentleman of the Press, a, 298 Gentlemen, "the House an assembly of," 417 " Gentle Shepherd," the, 118 -George III., the illness of, 193 and the younger Pitt, 140 and Lord Eldon, 191 Germaine, Lord G., 139 and Lord North, 126 and Temple Lnttrell, 476 Ghost of a House, the, 185 Giant, " the bones of a," 145 Gibbon, Edward, 165 the " luminous," 165 his application for diplomatic em- ployment, 165 Gibson, Mr. M., 335, 353 Gift for a king, a, 74 " Gifted beings," 298 " Gigantic innovation," a, 319 Gilt-edged paper abolished, 203 Gladstone, William Ewart, (viii.) 205, 286, 315, 426, 435, 439, 444, 450, 485 his first return, 315 first appearances in Parliament, 316 Macaulay on, 316 his style and language, 316 hia connection with the "sliding scale," 316 his " Commercial Treaty " budget, 178 Commissioner extraordinary to the Ionian Islands, 318 a reply to Lord Palmeraton, 317 an impulsive speech, 317 use of quotation, 321, 323 love for Oxford, 320 " unmuzzled " by Oxford, 320 his connection with the Liberal party, 321 at Blackheath, 326, 327 purpose to " counter work " Lord Beaconsfield, 329 sketch of, by Lord Beaconsfield, an after-dinner, 310 as a Chancellor of the Exchequer, 331 "resignation," 330 Gladstone Ministry, defeat of the, on the Irish University BUI 505 516 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. " Glare at the doors of Parliament," the intense, 339 ' Golden age" of a Government, the, 350 " Good and safe man wanted," a, 386 Good humour, 277 a pattern of, 124 in defeat, 146 " Good Judge," the, 13 Good Parliament, the, 5, 10 Good quarters, 126 Goose and gosling, 371 Government, humiliations of a weak, 307 the " golden age of a," 350 Government, the theory of, 356 unrecognised agents of, 364 Government, the, in one man's hand, 238 " Government must be supported," the, 239 Gordon, Lord George, 476 Gordon Riots, the, 52 Goulburn, Mr., 207, 450 Gout, conquering the, 191 Grace, Batavian, 301 Grafton, Thurlow's reply to the Duke of, 136 Graham, Sir James, 251 his later appearances, 252 Graham, the Marquis of, 371 Grant, Sir William, 190 Grant of 50,0001. to Grattan, 181 Granville, Earl, 276, 330, 353 his first Foreign Secretaryship, 353 Granville Ministry of 1806, the, 148 Grasshopper, the, 156 Gratitude, exciting Spanish, 279 Grattan, Henry, 181, 188, 463 his attack on Castlereagh, 179 his saying of Castlereagh, 180 his character of Fox, 149 Grave of a Government, the, 260 Great, the departed, 187 Great Charter, the, 3, 66, 86, 466 Great men and small boroughs, 318 Great occasions make great men, 22 " Great wisdom " in Parliament, 491 Grenville, George, 118, 479 Grey, Earl, 55, 214 his first appearance, 214 hU own estimate of his debating talent, 215 and Fox's bust, 216 Grey and Brougham, interview of, with William IV., 55, 227 Grievance, a forgotten, 197 Grievances, a representation of, 30 (jrissell's case, Mr., 412 Guinea, Walpole's, in the British Museum, 108 Guizot, M., quoted, 213, 251 Gully, Mr., 57, 368 Gunpowder Plot, the, 18 Guns, great, at small birds, 240 Guthrie, W., reporting debates, 424 H. Habeas Corpus Act, the, 40 Hale, Sir Matthew, quoted by Black- stone, 2 " Half the house," 152 Halifax, Lord, 90 Hampden, John, 31, 32, 73 his dexterity and influence, 73 his prophecy of Cromwell, 81 Hamilton, Lord George, 461 Hamilton, " Single-speech," 365 " Hands off," 331 " Hansard," disposing of, 254 " Happy despatch," 353 Harcourt, Sir W. V., 428 Hard to answer, 190 Hardwicke, the Earl of, 111 Harley, Mr. Speaker, 457 A Harley, Robert, Earl of Oxford, 92 Hartington, the Marquis of, 331, 363, 417 Hartley, David, 451, 485 Hastings, Burke and Warren, 155, 156 Hat, betrayed by a, 135 the " real working," 440 the mystery of the, 487 "Hats off!" 252 Hazlerig, 32 Healing Parliament, the, 7 " Hear him ! " 141 " Hemming " a member down, 17 Henry VIII.'s method with the Com- mons, 13 Heptarchy, " restore the," 209 Herbert, Mr. Auberon, 473 Hereditary representatives, 60 Heroism, ministerial, 356 High bailiff reprimanded, a, 395 High places, vulgar language in, 217 Highwaymen stealing an election re- turn, 392 Hint to statesmen, a, 96 Hissing a Minister, 479 History, Walpole's ignorance of, 101 his opinion of, 106 Hit, a very palpable, 166 " Hocus-pocus of a parliamentary government," the, 339 " Hole" of St. Stephen's, the, 202 Holland, Lady, 213 Hollis, Denzil, 32, 69 and Iroton, 467 Holt, Chief Justice, and the Speaker, 46 INDEX. 517 * Home Rule," 310 and imperial rule, 363 and disintegration, 327 Homely Saxon, 166 Home Secretaries, list of, 500 Honour where due, 153 Hope, Mr. Beresford, 301 Horatian bet, a, 107 Horner, Francis, 174 Home Tooke, John, 195 Host in himself, a, 262 Hostages, parliamentary, 8 Hours, early, in Parliament, 448 late, 448 House, making a, 446 House of Commons, changes in the composition of the, 61 a school of discipline, the, 328 " tampering" with the, 345 always a " weak brother " in the, 343 House of Commons, the dignity of the, 117 the critical sense of the, 339 the taste of the, 284 what it loves, 490 House of Commons and the City of London, the, 49, 128, 425 House of Commons denounced by a member, the, 466 House of Commons " the Beast," 283 a " beast not to be understood," 35 House of Lords, the, 357 Cromwell's, 87 House of Lords, divisions in the, 455 scenes in the, 468 a standing order of the, 472 Houses of Parliament, mutual jealousy of the, 49 House of Mayors, the, 230 Household suffrage, 346, 379 and education, 346 "Hndibras" quoted, 38, 3 1C, 489 Hughes, Mr., and O'Connell, 467 Hughes, Mr. T., 450 "Humbug," 204 Hume, Joseph, 193, 203, 251 Humiliations of a weak Government, 307 Humorous incident on a grave occa- sion, 30 Hunt, " Orator," 57, 367, 445 Huskisson, William, 213, 2-10 Hustings, the last, 391 Hypocrisy, the " organised," 294 "disorganised," 439 I. Illiterate member, an, 487 Illustration, convenient, 166 a farcical, 107 Illustration, a Scriptural, 79 Hi-worded Acts of Parliament, 464 " Immutable interests," 361 Impeachment, the King threatening, 220 mock, 91 Impeachment of Danby, debate on the, 484 of Hastings, Sheridan's speech on the, 162 of Melville, 431 of Straff ord, 27 Imperial interests first, 324 Imperial rule and Home rule, 363 " Imperium et libertas," 310 Impressions, Byron's parliamentary, 197 Impromptu, Canning's, on Whitbread, 212 Imprudence, 33 Incorruptible, the, 85 Independence, 185 Independent member, an, 351 Indefatigable, the, 276 Indians, emplovment of, by Chatham, 116 Indiscretion, an, 281 " Infamous coalition ! " 124 Infirmity overcome. 182 Influence with the House, Althorp's, 217 Inglis, Sir Eobert Harry, 490 Innovation, "a gigantic," 319 "Insane convention," an, 310 Insanum Parliamentum, 4 Insight, 79 Insignificant men, 109 Inspiration of claret, the, 484 " Inspired " speaker, an, 140 Instability, Windham's, 166 Instinct, Parliamentary, 286 Insulting language in Parliament, 179 Insulting the Commons, 18 Insulting the lion, 120 Interruption quelled, 146 Intimidation in Galway, 399 " Intimidating " visage, an, 400 Intolerance in the House of Commons, 36 Intrepidity, Pelham's, 109 Introduction of new members, 442 Intruder in the house, an, 418 Intruders in 1875, 418 Invasion, "actual," 142 Invidious, 161 Ireland, Burke on, 154 a lover of, 180 the legislative union with, 53 Irish celebrity, an, 365 Irish Church debate of 1833, 218 518 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Irish Church disestablishment, 59, 322, 360 Irish election bill, an, 401 Irish elector, swearing an, 401 Irish members, charge of corrupting, 481 Irish Parliament, last meeting of the, 53 first publication of debates in the, 424 amenities of the, 478 Irish Parliament House, the, 185 a mob in the, 479 Irish University Bill, defeat of the Gladstone Ministry on the, 305 "Isthmian games," the, 450 J. " Jackdaws after cheese," 481 James I. and the " kings," 19 and his horse, 19 opening of Parliament by, 19 the Journals of the Commons rent by, 20 Jealousy of the two Houses, mutual, 49 Jeffreys, Judge, 375 not " Parliament proof," 41 Jenkinson, Robert, 194 Jewish disabilities, removal of, 57 Jews, an appeal for the, 261 John of Gaunt and the Parliament, 5, 10 Johnson, Dr., 467, 490 and the debates, 424 and a talkative member, 485 Journals of the Commons, commence- ment of the, 14 rent by James I., 20 Judge, a distinguished, 111 petition against a, 13 Judges, trial of election petitions by the, 393 Judgment, " a blood-shotten eye of," 30 " the day of no," 159 " Judicious bottle-holding," 273 Junius, the reputed, 167 Jupiter relenting, 258 Jury, an appeal to the, 303 Justice, public, 266 K. Keeping the King waiting, 49 Kenealy, Dr., 442, 454 Kentish petition, the, 456 Keogh, Mr. Justice, and the Galway elections, 399 Key, turning the, on an opponent, 108 Keyhole tactics, 108 King erasing a declaration of privi- lege, the, 20 King, honouring the, 153 King, the, flouted by the Speaker, 49 " Kings " of the Lower House, the, 19 King's speech, strong terms respecting a, 117 "King's word," Parliament and the, 66 Kneeling at the bar, 395 Knowledge, professional, versus elo- quence, 119 L. Ladies crowding the steps of the throne, 420 Ladies' gallery in the Commons, the, 421 Ladies in the Commons, presence of, 420 Ladies on canvass, 396 Ladies' triumph over the Lords, 419 " Lambs," the Nottingham, 390 Lament, a Speaker's, 448 Language, vulgar, in high places, 217 " Lantern," ladies peeping down the,' 421 Laon, the Battle of, 181 Late arrival, fines for, 447 Laurence, Dr., 366 Law, " a chicken in the," 367 Law, a vindication of, 71 Law of primogeniture, the, 358 Law v. Privilege, 46 Lawyer left behind, the, 133 Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, 451, 453 Layard, Mr., and the ladies' gallery, 421 Leadership, courageous, 177 Leadership of the Commons, the Duke of Newcastle and the, 110 "Leap in the dark," the, 291 Lefevre, Mr. Speaker, 437, 439 Legal phraseology in the House of Commons, 213 Legerdemain, " a policy of," 356 Lenthal, Mr. Speaker, 32, 83, 451, 458 Less exceeding the greater, the, 400 Letters, the privilege of franking, 409 breaking open members' , 409 opening of, by the Home Office, 253 Libel Act, the, 133 Liberal, an advanced, 171 Liberal party, a leader of the, 363 Mr. Gladstone's connection with the, 321 Liberty, defence of, 189 Wilkes and, 129 Lie direct, the, 102 INDEX. 519 Life and death, exercise of the power of, 29 Life peerages, 58 Light out of darkness, 178 Lion discomfited, the, 157 Lion, insulting the, 120 " Lion put to flight," a, 157 Little Parliament, the, 7 Liverpool, the Earl of, 194 as a debater, 195 Lobby, alone in the, 453 Locke King, Mr., 358 Logician out of place, a, 130 London, address from the City of, to the King, on the Middlesex elec- tions, 128 Londoners, the, and Peter de la Mare, 10 and the marriage of Mary, 14 Longevity, 43 Long Parliament, the, 6 Longest Parliament, the, 7 Long retention of seats, 60 Long sitting, a, 449 Longest recorded sitting, the, 449 "Looking hard," 367 " Looming in the future," 298 Lord Advocate, seeing the, 480 Lord Chancellor, addressing the, 434 resignation of, on parliamentary censure, 58 Lord Chancellors, list of, 500 Lord Chancellorship deferred, 360 Brougham's stride to the, 226 Lord Mayor, &c., committed to the Tower, 425 Lord's Prayer, altering the, 33 Lords, House of, "No, no," in the, 215 rejection of money bills by the, 233 the Speaker of the, 431 talent in the, 267 Lords, the, and the privilege of the Commons, 12 rescinding a committal by the Com- mons, 46 Lords giving protections, the, 405 Lords " in a balloon," the, 323 Lords' protests in recent legislation, 59 Loughborough, Lord, 132 Lowe, Robert, Lord Sherbrooke, 345 Lowthers, long representation by the, 60 Loyalty, Thurlow's gush of, 134 Lucas, Dr., 183, 478 Lucid interval, a, 367 " Luminous Gibbon," the, 165 Lnttrell seated for Middlesex, 128 and Wilkes, 130 " Lycurgus of the Lower House," the. 221 Lyndhurst, Lord, 231 his first appearance in the Com* mons, 231 and Eldon, 232 Lytton, Edward Bulwer, Lord, 285 his early appearance as a Reformer, 285 Lytton's " St. Stephen's " quoted, 76, 141, 169, 178, 187, 199, 206, 258, 315, 358, 396, 417 "New Timon" quoted, 263, 289 M. Macanlay, Lord, 280 his characteristics as a speaker, 280 his early speeches, 281 Macclesfield, Lord Chancellor, cen- sured, 48 Mace of the Commons, the, 432 appearance of the, at committees, 446 Mackintosh, Sir James, 172 and Tierney elected for Knares- borongh, 397 Mad Parliament, the, 4 Magician's wand, the, 145 Magna Charta, &c., 3, 66, 86, 466 Chatham on, 122 " Magna Charta will have no Sove- reign," 65 Magnaminity, 103 Maintaining a point, 207 Majorities, fighting against, 205 Majority, a pocket, 51 Malacca, the Straits of, 307 Malediction, a posthumous, 109 " Man in the Moon," the, 387 Management, clever, 386 Manner, an imposing, 114 Mansfield, the Earl of, 123 his powers of debate, 123 Marks of a bad subject, 73 Marten, Harry, 78, 83 Martin and starling, 124 Martin of Galway, 429, 478 Martyr, a parliamentary, 67 spoiling a, 79 Marvell, Andrew, 85 "Master of jibes," a, 357 " Masters at Westminster," the, 37 Masters, " our future," 346 Maxim of the Commons, a, 24 Maynard, Mr. Serjeant, 43 Mazzini's letters opened, 253 " Measures, not men," 225 " Meddle and muddle," 291 " Meddlesome" Commons, the, 15 520 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Mediocrity, respectable, 175, 194 " Medley," a curious, 57 Melbourne, Lord, 218, 410, 468 his best speech, 218 and Brougham, 221 Melbourne Ministry, dismissal of the, 219 Melville, Lord, 379, 431, 481 Member of Parliament, a turnspit a, 153 member striking another, 467 denouncing fellow members, 408 member pilloried, a, 17, 48 Members of Parliament and political clubs, the relations of, 411 Members punished for divulging de- bates, 421 Members and the mob, 479 " Men, not measures ! " 209 Menagerie, the House of Commons com- pared to a, 473 Merciless Parliament, the, 5 " Mere novelties," 464 Metaphor, " special pleading on a," 163 Metaphysician, a " hard hearted," 213 Miall, Mr., 353, 489 and Mr. Gladstone, 324 Middleman, a parliamentary, 295 Middlesex elections, the, 117, 125, 128 " Mildest censure," the, 407 Militia Bill, Lord J. Eussell's, 274 Milton's imprisonment, Marvell and, 85 Mind triumphing over matter, 264 Mine, " Europe on a," 279 Minister, an unpopular, 112 Minister of England, the, 272 Minister, "that thing called a," 125 Minister's difficulties, a British, 302 Minister's duty, a, 327 Minister's responsibility, the, 332 Ministers, " Her Majesty's," 361 Ministers in their cups, 481 mimicked by the Sovereign, 236 "Ministry" or "Cabinet Council?" 39 Minorities, tyranny of, 327 Minority, a " glorious," 454 Minority representation, 328, 393 Minstrels, the Derby, 341 Miscellaneous anecdotes, 373 Miscount, a, 453 Mistake, " there was no," &c., 214 " Mister Most," 385 " Mr. Speaker," Grattan rehearsing to, 181 " Mitred front " of religion, the, 154 Mob, every numerous assembly a, 97 members and the, 479 a mob in the Irish House, 479 Mob orator, the, 258 Monasteries, the Commons and the suppressed, 14 Money bills, rejection of, by the Lords, 233 Monk and Marten, 79 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, and the ladies' triumph, 419 Admiral, and the Garter, 100 Montesquieu, quoted by Blackstone, 2 Montfort, Simon de, the Commons summoned by, 3 complaint of, 4 Moon, a visitor from the, 384 Moore quoted, 178, 210, 369 Moral, a political, 251 Morality, official restraint v. political, 351 More, Sir Thomas, 63 Morpeth, Lord, 487 Multitude, " a grateful and admiring," 176 Murray, Pitt and, 123 " Muscular Christianity," representa- tives of, at elections, 391 Mute member, a, 165 "Muzzle," putting on the, 217 My own, " do what I like with," 315 Mystery, Asian, 301 " Mythical accretion" in parliamentary sayings (viii.) N. Names in questions, 437 Naming a member, consequences of, 437 Nations, the law of, 178 Navigation Laws, the repeal of the, 59, 230 Negotiations, the right of inquiry into ministerial, 146 " Nepotism," 354 Newcastle, the first Duke of, 110 Pitt and, 118 Newdegate, Mr., 440, 461 Newgate, petitioners sent to, 457 New member, a, 125 New members during a term of Parlia- ment, 61 in recent Parliaments, 61 introduction of, 442 forward new members, 445 Newspaper speech, a, 129 Newspapers, reading from, 351, 436 Nicknames, political, 202 Nightcap wanted, a, 156 Nodders and noddees, 79 " No House," 445 Noisy, the small and, 159 Nomination days, the old, 391 "Nominee," what is a? 315 INDEX. 521 Non-attendance of members, 447 Non-interference, 334 " No, no," in the Lords, 215 " No Popery," 265 No Popery riots, the, 52 Norfolk, an election for, 200 years ago, 376 North, Lord, 50, 51, 120, 124, 371, 459, 476 losing his temper, 127 Fox dismissed by, 145 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 361, 412, 413, 461, 462 Norton, Sir F., 466 and the King, 49, 50 "Not heard," motion that a member be, 435 Not heartless, 366 Not so bad as he seemed, 221 Not too old to learn, 232 "Not yet prepared," 311 Note-taking, dislike of the House to, 422 " cannot be stopped," 422 "Nottingham lambs," the, 390 Novelties, mere, 464 Number and payment of members, 37 O. Oath or affirmation ? 443 Oath taken by Privy Councillors, the, 349 O'Brien, Mr Smith, 333 Observations, taking, 210 Obstruction, Parliamentary, 362, 449, 460 the "barricade " of, 461 the " sacred rite " of, 462 statistics of, 461 measures against, 461, 462 Obstruction and the British Constitu- tion, 299 O'Connell, Daniel, 255, 400, 467 and Disraeli, 291 and Professor Pryme, 42 his return for Clare, 54 his last speech, 259 O'Connell, John, motion by, to exclude strangers, 415 stories by, 401, 487 O'Connor, Feargns, 455 named in the House, 437 Octogenarian's speech, an, 233 "Odd" speaking, 181 Offensive speech forbidden, 472 " Off-hand " debating, 270 Office, a saying about, 168 a qualification for, 480 buried in, 480 lengthy tenure of, 191 Althorp's hatred cf, 217 Official restraint v. political morality, 351 " Oftener-if-need-be's," the, 154 Old Sarum, Home Tooke returned for, 195 " Old ways the safest," 25 "Old women," 271,438 Oliver, Alderman, 466 " Once a carrier," 486 " Once bit, twice shy," 366 One mind, of, 64 Onslow, Mr. Speaker, 48, 437, 438, 448 on Pulteney, 107 Onslow line, the, 152 " On the side of the angels," 301 Opening of Parliament by James I. in 1621, 19 Opening scene, the, 441 Open pollings, the last, 391 Opinions, two, 130 Opponent, an unexpected, 257 Opposite sides, taking, 433 Opposition, "his Majesty's," 198 "Opposition," the, an irregular epithet, 220 " Opposition over the water," the, 126 Oppression of majorities or minorities, 327 Optimism, 153 Oracle, a wooden, 184 Oration, an exciting, 155 " Orator Hunt," 367 Orator, the mob, 258 Oratory, common-place, 176 exemplary, 65 influential, 90 "express train," 280 finished, 142 long-winded, 485 Chatham's, 115 Grattan's, leading to expulsion of the students, 182 the King's criticism on William Pitt's, 140 " Order " in the veins, 152 Orders of the Bath and Garter, the, 100 Orders, peremptory, 1 15 " Organised hypocrisy," the, 294 Orthodoxy and heterodoxy, 466 Osborne, Ealph Bernal, 277, 352, 354, 391, 398, 488 " Our masters at Westminster," 37 Oxfordshire, an expensive election in, 389 P. Pakington, Sir J., 59 Palmer, Sir Eonndell, 360 Palmerston, Lord, 268, 336, 351, 352, 355, 432, 459, 474, 489 522 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Palmerston, Lord (continued), his entrance into Parliament, 268 his manner in debate, 278 coming to the front, 269 his dismissal from the Foreign Secre- taryship, 273 his d6but in the Premiership, 276 proffer of office to Cobden, 335 Althorp the rival of Palmerston, 216 Disraeli and Palmerston, 293 Wellington and Palmerston, 240 Paper duty, repeal of the, 233, 319 Parasites, " fawning," 225 Parenthesis, a long, 185 Parke, Sir J., made Lord Wensleydale, 58 " Parliament," the name of, 3 the writ of summons to, 4 government by, 98 the " omnipotence " of, 1 paramount dignity of, 48 the " intense glare at the doors of," 339 Parliament, a strenuous, 22 a suicidal, 11 Parliament, Byron's impressions of, 197 Parliament convening itself, 34 Parliament de la Bond, the, 5 Parliament "fooled" by Charles II., 36 Parliament from Temple Bar, a, 341 Parliament, how long will it keep "fresh?" 459 Parliament of Bats, the, 5 " Parliament proof," Judge Jeffreys not, 41 Parliaments of England and the United Kingdom, lists of the, 493 Parliaments, antiquity of, 1 the earliest recorded, 3 peculiar designations given to, 4 selection of partial, 8 " the crisis of," 23 triennial, 95 Parliaments, cats and, 459 Parliaments clashing, the, 187 Parliamentum Diabolicum, 6 Parliamentum Indoctum, 5 Parliamentary eloquence, evanescence of, in former days, 93 Parliamentary government, 284 Parliamentary instinct, 286 Parliamentary agents and bribery, 385 Parliamentary institutions, rise and progress of, 1 to 61 Parliamentary reform, Lord North and, 126 Parnell, Mr., 462 suspended, 460 Parodies, O'Connell's, 258 Partington, Mrs., 56 Parts, not wanting, 111 Party, "educating" a, 301 Party and place, 182 Party relations, 109 Paston letters quoted, 13, 373, 374 Patchwork Cabinet, a, 152 " Patience of taxation," ignorant, 178 Patience wanted, 241 Patient House, a, 464 Patriot, a repentant, 65 an undaunted, 16 spoiling a, 481 Patriotism, 104 a burst of, 260 "the cant of," 264 Wilkes's, 129 Patronage, Melbourne's dispensation of, 221 Pauper proxies, 397 Payment of members, 9, 37, 440 Peace, treaties of, 174 Peace and war, Canning on, 210 " Peace with honour," 266 Pease, Mr., returned for South Dur- ham, 57 Pedestrian, not a good, 95 Peel, Sir Eobert, 54, 55, 186, 188, 225, 241, 296, 287, 333, 459 and Canning, 244 and Feargus O'Connor, 248 and Eussell, 467 a saying of Peel's, 205 as a humourist, 247 his challenge to O'Connell, 243 compliment to Palmerston, 272 denunciation of Cobbett, 245 effect of Mr. Disraeli's attacks, 248 his New Tariff, 282 the fall of, 249 the Minister's valediction, 250 his character by Guizot, 251 Peerage " by Act of Parliament," 133 changes in the, 59 limitation of the, 99 in abeyance, 60 inalienable, 411 effect of Chatham's elevation to the, 119 Peerages, life, 58 Peers, claim to the franchise by, 410 creation of, 93, 133 ; threatened, in 1832, 55, 228 disparaging the, 108 influence of, on elections, 374 sitting in the House of Commons, 33 the Spiritual, 154 Peeresses' gallery, the, 419 Pelham, Henry, 109 INDEX. 523 Pensionary Parliament, the, 7 People, a man of the, 297 "the sovereign," 148 " People who will govern this country," the, 333 Pepys's Diary quoted, 35, &c. Perceval, Spencer, 193 his parliamentary career, 193 his assassination, 193 Peremptory, very, 112 Peremptory orders, 115 Peroration in a full House, a, 321 Personal anecdotes, 63, &c. Peterborough, the Earl of, 39, 47 "Peterloo" meeting, the, 174, 186 Petition against a judge, 13 the Chartist, of 1848, 455 the Kentish, 456 Wilkes presenting a, 130 Petition of Eight, the, 66, 67, 86 assent to the, 26 Petitions to Parliament, 455 manufacture of fictitious, 422 Petitioners, harsh treatment of, 456 women as, 489 Phillips, Sir Kobert, 23, 24 Philosopher's peculiarities, a, 172 Philosophy, modern, v. " experience," 171 Physician, a Tory, and his Whig patient, 98 Piety and ability, 466 " Pig's killed," the, 217 Pillory, members in the, 17, 48 Pious and patient, 464 Pitt, "William (the elder), 113 (see also "Chatham") and Horace Walpole (the elder), 119 Pitt, William (the younger), 138, 370, 451 as a child, 143 and Fox in childhood, 143 joining the Shelburne Administra- tion, 137 his first speech, 138 his most effective speech, 140 the King's criticism on his oratory, 140 his signal, 184 and Dundas, 481 and Melville's impeachment, 431 and Erskine, 189 prompting Wilberforce, 169 Place, a bid for, 101 Plagiarism, a, 232 Plague, attempt to communicate it to Pym, 72 Play, Parliament " as good as a," 37 Playhouse Bill, the, 96 Plays, the Act for licensing, 464 Plays and games forbidden near Par- liament, 9 Pleasantries, election, 146 Plimsoll episode, the, 475 a parallel to the Plimsoll case, 476 Plots against Walpole's life, 102 " Plundering and blundering," 306 Plunket, Lord, 186 Point, leading up to a, 295 Pokers, the use of red hot, 390 Policeman, " shooting the," 273 " Policy of legerdemain," a, 356 Political axiom, Walpole's, 106 Political morality, official restraint v., 351 Political training, 166 Poll, " look to the state of the," 296 putting an end to the, 394 Polling, hours of, 392 Polypus and the rock, the, 345 Potwalloping, 379 Pope on Walpole, 106 Popham, Speaker, 18 Popular men, 176 " Potations pottle deep," 471 Pound, what is a ? 243 Power, " the balance of," 105 a long lease of, 98 Power in the State, the supreme, 346 Power and forbearance, 170 Practice, a " reprehensible," 412 " Practical man," a, 347 Praise, superlative, 194 Praise-God Barebone, 7 Precaution, a, 174 Precedent, Parliamentary, 457 Precedents, "tea-kettle," 295 "Precious possessions," 268 Prediction, a, and a threat. 462 an unfulfilled, 235 Preference, a maternal, 226 Prejudice, an attack on, 173 Premier, the, and the Commons, 239 also Commander-in-Chief, 237 Premiership, declining the, 354 Premiers, faulty, 105 Preparation for Parliamentary life, 181 Prepared for the worst, 102 Prerogative, royal, 44 " blood full of," 113 Press, the Commons and the, in 1875, 427 " a gentleman of the," 298 an unfettered, 163 " Pretty rascal," a, 1G6 Price, Mr., and his speech, 45 Pride's Purge, 76 Prime Minister, the office of, and government by Parliament, 98 524 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Prime Minister, wanting to be, 292 Prime Ministers, list of, 500 Primogeniture, the law of, 358 Prince Alfred's examination papers, Lord Derby and, 290 Prince Consort, the, 290, 318 " Prince Elector," the, 374 Printed documents, privilege of, 410 Printers, the Commons and the City, 425 Prior and Somers, 91 Private bills, referees voting on, 441 Privilege, 403 of the Commons, the Lords and the, 12 defence of Parliamentary, 70 the King erasing a declaration of, 20 a rank abuse of, 405 reprimand for breach of, 408 of franking letters, 409 of free speech, 406 of printed documents, 410 exclusion of strangers, 413 publication of debates, 421 a City, 442 Privilege v. Law, 46 Privy Councillors, motion for copy of the oath taken by, 349 Prizefighter, a, in Parliament, 368 Prizefighters at elections, 391 Prizes in the Church, 465 Professional acumen, 188 Profligacy, ministerial, in the last cen- tury, 480 Promise fulfilled, a, 75 Promotion, early, 269 Promptitude, ministerial, 211 Property qualification, abolition of the, 486 Southey and the, 486 Prophecy, a, 81, 270 Prose versus poetry, 197 Protest, a marked, 77 Protests of the Lords, 59 Proud men, 176 " Prove it," 485 Provoking, 137 Publication of debates, 421 of evidence before committees, 428 " Pull the rogues out by the ears ! " 31 Pnlteney, William, 103, 105, 107, 480 Pump, a, like Viscount Castlereagh, 178 Purchase in the army, the abolition of, 325, 360 Purse-strings, holding the, 37 Pym, John, 27, 32, 69 and Strafford, 75 Q. Quacks, political, 327 Quaker in Parliament, the first, 57 Quantity, a false, 152 Quarrel, a, on a disputed division, 39 a royal, in the Lords, 469 with the Speaker, 438 Queen, a defence of the, 342 Question, an impertinent, 325 refusing to put the, 26 Questions, names in, 437 speeches upon, 435 Quizzing a bill out of the House, 368 Quotation, an effective, 287 happy, 278 inapt, 470 completing a, 132 retort upon a, 200 Mr. Gladstone's use of, 321, 323 E. Eace meetings, &c., subscriptions to, 282 " Eadical," a, 206 Eain, a wonderful shower of, 255 Eashness rebuked, 324 Eeading from newspapers, 351, 436 Eeading speeches in the House, 436 Eeady for anything, 130 Eebuke, a mild, 360 Eeconciliation prevented, a, 143 " Eed Indian of debate," the, 255 Eeferees voting on private bills, 441 Eefuge for the destitute, a, 387 Eeform in Parliament, the first, 34 a forecast of, 117 " finality " in, 244 a " robber " and a " creditor," 188 the " shuttlecock," of, 345 the " tender passion " in, 359 Canning on, 209 Windham on, 166 Eeform Act of 1867, the, 59 Eeform Bill of 1832, the, 59 Lord J. Eussell's introduction of the, 262 passage of the, 55 Earl Eussell's in 1866, 321, 338 Eeform cry, a, 228 Eeform in elections, a call for, 377 Eeform of the criminal code, the, 171 Eeform speech in the Lords, Broug- ham's, 228 " Eeformers " and " Conservatives," 265 Eegency question, the, 135 Eegrets, 216 " Eegister, register, register I " 244 Eelic, a family, 146 Eemedies, inadequate, 341 INDEX. 525 Remonstrance, the Great, 30, 73 " Bender nnto Caesar," &c., 14 Bepeal question, O'Connell's introduc- tion of the, 255 Reply, a brief, 220 a crushing, 136 Reporters, accommodation for, in the House of Lords, 434 power of the, 428 Reporters' gallery, origin of the, 427 accommodation in the, 427 Reporting, the father of Parliamentary, 423 in the last century, 423 freaks, 428 " Reprehensible " practice, a, 412 Representation an expensive luxury, 9 Representative, testimonials to a, 351 Representative and constituents, 151 Representatives chosen in 1070, 3 Representatives, hereditary, 60 Reprimand delivered to the Lords, a, 70 Reprimand for breach of privilege, a, 408 Reproof, administering, 277 Republican, an avowed, 78, 473 Request, a preposterous, 399 " Required " or " desired ? " 435 " Residuum," the, 342 " Resignation," Mr. Gladstone's, 330 Walpole's, 105 of Lord Chancellor on parliamentary censure, 58 Respected and feared, 83 Responsibilities of British rule, the, 329 Responsibility, the Minister's, 332 "Rest and be thankful," 267 "Restless activity," a defence of, 270 " Restored " sight, 79 Retaliation, 184 Retention of seats, long, 60 Retort, a, 88 Retractation, compelling a, 114 Returning officers' charges, contrasts in, 388 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 486 and Burke, a conversation between, 160 Rhetoric, cold, 370 "heedless," 302 the country governed by, 303 Ribbon conspiracy, the, 309 Ricardo, Mr., 381 Rice, Mr. Spring, and the reporters, 428 Rich elected Speaker, 13 Richard II. absenting himself from Par- liament, 10 Richard II. holding Parliament in hia hand, 11 the deposition of, 5 "Rickety offspring," 354 Rigby, Mr., 161, 433 " Right," asserting a, 229 Right of inquiry into ministerial nego- tions, the, 146 " Right sow by the ear,"" the, 218 " Right to be heard," the, 435 Rights, equal, 264 Riotous elections cancelled, 392 Riots, the Manchester, 200 the No Popery, 52 Rising men, 138 Rivals at peace, the, 150 Robin, inquiring after, 105 Robinson, John, 161 "Prosperity," 202 Roche, Sir Boyle, 365 Rockingham, the Marquis of, and Burke, 150, 460 Roebuck, John Arthur, 270, 297, 350 Roland for an Oliver, a, 79 Rolle, Mr., 369 "Rolliad," the, 369 quoted, 134, 367, 370, 371 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 171, 188, 190, 382 Romilly, Lord, on private bills and secret service money, 482 Roman Catholic Relief Bill, the, 54 "Root-and-branch" men, 206 Rory O'More, 309 Rothschild, Baron Lionel de, 441 returned for the City of London, 57 Royal grant stopped by the Commons, a, 45 Royal interference, disputing, 18 Royal speech, attack on a, 368 Royal Titles Bill, the, 348 a forecast of the, 299 Rudyard, Sir Benjamin, 22, 466 Rule, the responsibilities of British, 329 Rump, the, 7 Runimede, the Parliament of, 3 " Rupert of Debate," the, 289 Rupture between Burke and Fox, the, 157 Ruse, an election, 385 Rush to dinner, the, 451 Russell, Lord John (Earl), 262, 291, 359, 470, 482 quoted, 102, 106, 115, 126, 163, 231, 330, 425 hia judgment on himself, 263 Russell Administration, overthrow of the, in 1852, 274 Russell, Lord William, 86 Russia, "crumbling," 334 526 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. S. Sabbath observance, 368 Sacrifice, a, 313 Safety, national, and its cost, 233 Safety and quietude for members, 9 St. Alban's Disfranchisement Bill, the, 385 St. Stephen's, the "black hole" of, 202 Sale of boroughs, 380 proprietary rights, 380 depreciated value, 382 Salisbury, the Marquis of, 355 Salomons, Alderman, returned for Greenwich, 58 Samples of the sack, 387 " Sanctimonious eloquence," 299 " Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas," 304 'Saponaceous," 470 Scandalous scenes, 35 Scapegoat, the House of Commons making a, 11 " Scarecrow to the Houses," a, 135 Scenes in the House of Commons, 39, 472, 473 in the House of Lords, 35, 468 Schliemann, Dr., 328 " Schoolmaster abroad," the, 224 Scot and lot, 379 Scotch judges excluded from the Com- mons, 479 Scotland, the legislative union with, 46 Scott, Sir Walter, quoted, 46, 150 Scottish Parliaments, 7 Scottish patriot on the union, a, 47 "Scoundrels," the House of Commons spoken of as, 287 Scrutiny, the Westminster, 145, 146 Seal, the Great, stolen, 134 a disputed, 233 Seal fishing, 230 Seal, whitebait and, 190 Seat, vacation of a, 449 Seat for eightoenpence, a, 365 Seats, dear, 382 depreciated value in, 382 Seats in the House, securing, 440 Secession of members from the Com- mons, 14, 460 Secret, in the, 127 Secret service money to members, 482 Secretaries of State, list of, 500 Seeing too much, 204 Selborne, Lord, 360 Selden quoted, 33, 373, 405 Selwyn, mot of, 486 " Senate of Lilliput," the, 424 Septennial Bill, the, 47 Servants, protection of, 405 allowed to lapse, 406 Service of members compulsory, 447 Setting bis house in order, 40 Sewage, " a policy of," 305 Seymour, Mr. Edward, refused as Speaker, 41 Seymour, Sir Edward, 456, 472 Shabby peers, 452 Shaftesbury, the first Earl of, 87, 90 the third, 483 Shakespeare, a lengthy quotation from, 288 Sheep in wolf's clothing, a, 176 Sheil, Eichard Lalor, 186, 203, 260 and Feargus O'Connor, 261 and Althorp, 217 and Peel, 248 Shelburne, the Earl of, 137, 370 Sherbrooke, Lord, 345 Sheridan, Kichard Brinsley, 160 his first speech, 138 his speech on the impeachment of Hastings, 162 his wit and its elaboration, 164 resisting temptation, 164 and Canning, 207 Sheriff, tricked by the, 376 Sheriff assaulted for delaying a writ, a, 373 Shippen, William, and Walpole, 103 " Shock of collision " between the Houses, the, 246 " Shooting the policeman," 273 Shopkeeper, the son of a, 175 Shoreham, the " Christians " of, 380 Short Parliament, the, 6 Shortest Parliament, the, 5 Short sittings and good debates, 439 Short temper and long sword, 478 Shunammite Woman, the, 342 " Shuttlecock " of Reform, the, 345 Sibthorp, Colonel, 368 Sides, changing, 439 taking opposite, 433 Sidmonth, Lord, 175 and Wilberforce, 170 Sidney, Algernon, 82, 86 Signal, waiting for the, 184 Sign-manual wanted, the, 193 Silence, impudent, 125 successful, 94 Silent, the, and the eloquent, 95 Simile, a, 170 Simplicity, " tremendous," 346 Sindbad, a modern, 339 Sinecure, Burke seeking a, 153 Sine qua non, a, 205 " Single-speech Hamilton," 365 "Singularly correct," 453 INDEX. 527 Sitting, a long, 449 the longest recorded, 449 Sittings, prolonged, 449 Slave, " I will never die a," 190 Slave abolition, 215 Slave trade, the, 169 Pitt on the, 140 Lord Palmerston and the, 276 Sleep by Act of Parliament, 465 " Sleeping beauty," the, 345 Sleeping through the centuries, 125 " Sliding scale," the, 316 Slip, a, 289 Slitting a member's nose, 41 Slow perception, 487 Small and noisy, the, 159 " Small-Journal Wynn," 231, 368 Smelling bottle for a Parliamentary antagonist, a, 231 Smith, Sydney, speech of, at Taunton, 56 Smoking in Parliament, 451 " Smouldering emotions," 439 Snakes, parties moved like, 109 Solomon, the judgment of, 232 Somers, Lord, 47, 90 Southey vacating his seat, 486 South Sea bubble, the, 48 Sovereign, communication of Parlia- mentary proceedings to the, 426 presence of the, in the early Par- liaments, 429 at debate, 37 Sovereign mimicking his Ministers, a, 236 Sovereign people, the, 148 " Sovereign power," 66 Sovereigns, death of foreign, not mentioned in Parliament, 212 Sparks, occasional, 264 Speaker of the Commons, the, 431 of the Lords, 431 Speaker, approbation of, refused by the Sovereign, 41 a courtier censured by the, 48 a disturbance quelled by the, 472 an ex-Speaker defending himself at the bar, 457 a faithful Speaker punished, 10 a Speaker flouting the King, 49 a powerful, 107 a quarrel with the, 438 royal rewards to the, 12 seeing the, 481 a squinting, 438 a sympathetic, 432 taking part in debate, 50 Speaker an agent of corruption, the, 43 vote of censure on the, 44 Speaker and party relations, the, 432 Speaker's address on election, an early, Speaker's lament, a, 448 Speaker's lists, 439 Speaker's warrant, support of the, 204 Speakers of the House of Commons, lists of the, 496, 499 Speaker, a suggestive, 366 Speaking, effective, 186 Speaking against a member, 408 Speech to Parliament, the opening, 430 a King's, read under difficulties, 430 strong terms respecting a, 117 Speech, a borrowed, 206 burnt by order of the Commons, 23 a first and last, 483 a forcible first, 77 an impulsive, 317 irrepressible, 222 a long, cut short, 485 a minute gun, 113 a parenthetical, 185 a pithy, 69 a syllogistic, 190 Speeches from the throne, recent, 430 Speeches, limitation of, 485 long, introduced by the elder Pitt, 115 good, never without effect, 160 reading, 436 Spiritual Peers, the, 154 Splitdevil, Dr., 196 Spoiling nature, 1 75 " Spoke once," 125 Sport, " historically national," 451 Spurs, wearing of, in the House, 452 Spurring the Commons, Charles I., 24 "Squeak," 368 Stability, an element of, 175 Stamp Act, the, 121 Stanhope Ministry, the, and the limita- tion of the peerage, 99 Stanley, Lord Brougham and, 230 and O'Connell, 287 Star, the bright particular, 154 Statesman, what is a ? 297 Statesmen, a hint to, 96 a new crop of, 289 a school for, 318 " Statute books in dog's ears," 121 Stcele, Sir Eicbard, 94 Stewardship of Chiltern Hundreis, 449 refused, 450 Sting, taking out the, 202 " Stockdale v. Hansard," the case of, 410 Storm, allaying a, 73 calming the, 326 raising a, 287 " Stormy petrel of debate," the, 352 528 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Story, giving the House a, 282 Stowell, Lord, 464 Stratford, the Earl of, 28, 29, 74, 452, 484 the impeachment of, 27 his attainder, 43 his defence, 75 Stranger counted in a division, a, 418 Strangers, exclusion of, 413 Strangers' gallery, the, 418 Burke in the, 150 Garrick hiding himself in the, 415 Strategy, electioneering, in 1685, 375 Strenuous Parliament, a, 22 Strode, 32 Strong language, 130 Style, a " state-paper," 142 a military, 240 unparliamentary, 172 Subscriptions to race meetings, &c., 282 Subsidy, a pious, 12 Subterfuge, a, 42 Success in Parliament, secret of, 123 Sufferance, Ministry upon, 299 Suffrage, household, and education. 346 universal, 373 Sugar fatal to Governments, 114 " who will laugh at ?" 114 Suicidal, "mutually," 289 Suicidal Parliament, a, and a suicidal King, 11 Summons to Parliament, the writ of, 4 neglect of the King's, 8 Sunday sitting of the Houses, a, 463 Sunday Observance bills, 463 Snnderland, Lord, and Sir E. Walpole, 100 Supply, a slender, 12 Supporter, a cheap, 481 a grateful, 103 Survival, a happy, 86 Swearing an Irish elector, 401 Swearing the peace against a member 479 Swords forbidden, 452 Syllogism, a, 69 Syracuse, the old woman of, 271 T. Tact, House of Commons, 92 Tailors and turncoats, 192 " Take down his words," 187 Taking things coolly, 176 Talent in the Lords, 267 "Talents," All the, 148 Talkative member, a, 485 " Tampering ' ' with the House of Com- mons, 345 Tap, letting loose the, 377 Tapestry, Chatham and the, 116, 414 "Tatler," the, 94 Taxation, ignorant impatience of, 178 untimely relief from, 163 " Tea-kettle precedents," 295 "Tea-room Party," the, 59 "Tear 'em," 350 Tears, the House in, 25 Temper in the House of Commons, 329 even, 103 Temple Bar, a Parliament from, 341 Ten for one, counting, 40 " Ten Minutes' Bill," the, 59 " Tender passion " inEeform, the, 358 Tenterden's last speech, Lord, 56 Terrier, the Scotch, 338 Terror added to death, a, 228 Thanks of Parliament to Schomberg and Wellington, 457 to General Fairfax, 458 to Admiral Gardner, 458 Theatre, the House of Commons and the, 464 " Thief in the night," a, 322 Thompson, Col., and the exclusion of strangers, 415 Thing in a wrong place, a, 275 Things taken for granted, 173 Thorpe, case of Speaker, 12 Threat, a, 462 a terrible, 485 "Three ways," the, 333 " Three-cornered ' ' constituencies, 393 Three-decker, a, 270 Throne, taking possession of the, 420 "Thumb-screws and other instru- ments," 307 Thurlow, Lord, 133 abashed, 134 and Shelburne, 137 and Wedderburn, 132 Tibetot, Sir John, 12 Tickling the victims, 210 Tide of democracy, the, 290 Tierney, George, 168, 199, 382 Timid counsels, 21 Titles and trappings, 112 Toler and Ponsonby, 478 Top-boots, to Court in, 452 the last wearer of, in the House, 453 "Tory" and "Whig," origin of the terms, 42 Tory, Burdett a high, 200 Toryism, views of, 303 " Tottenham in his boots," 452 Tower, Walpole's committal to the, 98 Lord Mayor Crosby sent to the, 49 aldermen committed to the, 425 Townshend, Charles, 113, 130 INDEX. Townshend, Lord, and Walpole, qnar- rel between, 104 Tracking the Minister, 205 Traffic in Irish boroughs, 235 Tragedy or comedy? 137 Transitory impressions, 173 Translation, a, 142 a free, 203 Transplanted too late, 185 Treasonable proceedings, 226 Treasury bench, influence of the, 335 Treaties of peace, 174 Trevor, Sir John, 43, 44, 438 Tribute, a, from an opponent, 311 " Trickery, trash," &c., 369 Triennial Parliaments, 95, 278 " Trimmer," the, 90 Trinity College, Dublin, the students of, 182 Triumph, a "Conservative," 356 Troublesome elector, answering a, 277 " True in the abstract," 333 Turncoats, tailors and, 192 Turf, devotion to the, 312 the " blue ribbon of the," 314 " Turk upon the shoulders," a, 339 Turning point, a, 297 "Turning their backs upon them- selves," 177 Turnspit a member of Parliament, a, 153 Tutor to Queen Victoria, a political, 222 "Twice-told tale," a, 484 Two made one, 157 Two words, 485 Tyranny, a forty days', 133 Tyranny of minorities, &c., 327 U. Unaccustomed character, an, 350 " Unadorned eloquence," 332 Unconciliatory manner, an, 247 Undebatable subject, an, 213 " Undertakers," the, 6 United States, an idea from the, 348 United States' Government, the, 266 Union with Ireland, the legislative, 53 Union with Scotland, the legislative, 46 a Scottish patriot on the, 47 Unlearned Parliament the, 5 "Unmuzzled," 320 Unreported Parliament, the, 414 Unrequited service, 206 " Unwhig," 133 Un wigging a member, 366 " Upas tree," the, 324 Usages, &c., Parliamentary, 429 V. " Fee victia ! " 234 Valediction, the minister's, 250 " Villain," 471, 475,476 Vane, Sir Henry, 83 Views and prospects, 231 "Vipers," the, 27 Vituperation, 229 Vocabulary, airing a, 185 Voices of the dead, 337 Volatility, 230 Volcanoes, the "exhausted," 305 Vote, repenting of a, 170 the voice overrides the, 454 Votes, price of, 383 Votes polled, largest number of, 392 Voters caged, 397 the fat and the lean, 377 Vow, a, 56 W. Wages, payment of, to members, 37. 440 a member suing for his, 9 Waiting to conquer, 419 Walpole, Sir Robert, 95, 98, 108, 109, 451, 464 his part taken, 100 character of, 106 Pitt and, 117 Walpole, Horace, in the House of Commons, 144 and Speaker Onslow, 438 Wales, Home Rule for, 327 Waller in Parliament at seventeen, 20 War, " a great country cannot have a little," 239 " drifting " into, 279 a defence of the Crimean, 285 an appeal against, 338 War Secretaries, list of, 500 Warburton, Bishop, 466 Ward, Mr., expelled, &c., 48 Ward, Lord Dudley, 366 Ward's case, Mr. J. S?, 412 Warlike errand, a, 206 Warwick, Sir P., 31, 73 Watchman, a ministerial, 132 Waterford, an election for, 398 Watson, Alderman, 367 " W. B.," letter from, 387 " We are seven," 382 Webster, Daniel, quoted, 22 Wedderbnrn, Alexander (Lord Lough- borough), 132 Burke and, 157 Wellington, the Duke of, 54, 149, 180, 192, 211, 222, 229, 234, 335, 457 his first appearance in the House of Lords, 235 characteristics of his speeches, 240 35 530 ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. Wellington (continued), " down to the House," in his last days, 241 his duel with Winchilsea, 206 and Castlereagh, first appearances of, 234 and Huskisson, 213 Wensleydale life peerage, the, 58 Wentworth, Peter, 15, 16 Westbury, Lord Chancellor, resigna- tion of, 58 and the Bishop of Oxford, 469 Westminster elections, 394 described by a foreigner, 395 Wetherell, Sir Charles, 367 Whalley, Mr., 325 committed, 404 Wharton, Lord, 376 Wharton, the Duke of, 485 What the House of Commons loves, 490 "Whig" and "Tory," origin of the terms, 42 "Whig dogs," the, 424 "Whigs caught bathing," the, 294 Whigs, " dishing the," 291 " Whip," whipping the, 184 Whip by the Court, a, 35 Whips' circulars for attendance, 446 Whiston, William, and Steele, 95 Whitbread, Mr., 188, 212 Whitebait and seal, 190 Whitebait dinner, the Ministerial, 451 Whitelocke, Mr., 28 Wilberforce, Bishop, 470, 471 Wilberforce, William, 169, 428, 490 his parliamentary dinners, 169 Wilkes, John, 117, 128, 129, 481 as a speaker, 129 and Thurlow, 135 William III., assent to a bill refused by, 45 grant by, stopped by the Commons, 45 William IV. and Lords Grey and Brougham, 55, 227 and the dismissal of the Melbourne Ministry, 219 threatening impeachment, 220 reading his speech under difficul- ties, 430 Windham, William, 166 his saying of Pitt, 138 his speeches, 142 Windsor Castle, dating from, 282 Wisdom, " great," in Parliament, 491 reputed, 92 " Wisdom of our ancestors," the, 190 Wolsey's attempt to overawe the Commons, 63 Woman, the Shunammite, 342 Women and the franchise, 343 Women as witnesses, 488 Women in Parliament, 488 Women, old, 438 Women petitioners, 489 Wonderful Parliament, the, 5 Writ delayed by a sheriff, a, 373 Writ of summons to Parliament, the, 4 Writs, new, 450 Writer, an unready, 183 Wynn, Charles Williams, 231, 368 Y. 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