RATHER THAN A MONARCHY. 195 Prince Albert to the premier, Lord Aberdeen, during the Crimean War, urging vigorous measures and deprecating the moderation of his language in the House of Lords, may be cited in proof of this remark.1 So also the sovereign may, when occasion requires, counsel moderation or the suppression of an indiscreet passage in a despatch. But for the sage intervention of the Queen, Lord John Russell's demand for the surrender of Mason and Slidell would have been couched in language that might, in the then temper of the American people, have provoked a refusal, and led to a contest in which England would have joined hands with the Southern States, with results that would have been calamitous to the cause of civilization throughout the world. The Crown is not a mere formal appendage to the machine of State, or one of those organs which sometimes in the political, as in the natural, body outlast the need that called them into being, and can neither be retained with advantage nor exscinded without risk, but is an integral part of the Constitution, which could not be laid aside without endangering the harmonious working of the entire system. Not only does the loyalty, which, as we learned during the late civil war, is a phase of patriotism, gather round the Throne and form a useful counterpoise to the unthinking hero-worship which is prone to deify the demagogue or the successful general, but there is less to be apprehended from the vulgar ambition which aims at the show as well as the reality of power, when the first place is held by an hereditary tenure, and the task of government relegated to subordinates who may be removed at pleasure.2 It is because the cabinet is the result of a process of evolution on which the Queen sets the seal, by summoning the leader of the House of Commons to Windsor, that ministers come and go with less disturbance of social and business life than would presumably ensue if the choice of a chief magistrate were submitted formally to Parliament or determined by a popular vote. 1 Sheldon Amos, Fifty Years of the English Constitution, 218. LECTURE XII. The English Constitution (continued). - Parliamentary Representation.- -- -- - Pitt. HAD the House of Commons continued to be what it was during the greater part of the eighteenth century, it might not have become the mainspring of the government, and certainly would have been unequal to such a function. Though nominally a representative assembly, it was really chosen by a comparatively small number of persons who belonged to the privileged or wealthy classes, and did not represent the national will. The counties and some of the larger towns. might still speak with a popular voice, although even they were largely influenced by family and fortune; but it has been authentically stated that at the close of the last and during the earlier years of this century 487 members, constituting a majority of the Commons, were chosen by some five or six thousand voters, distributed among boroughs which, in the significant language of the times, were "rotten," and voted as their patrons dictated, or close corporations where admission to the suffrage depended on the will of the exist ing corporators or freemen, who distributed the right among their families and adherents, and took care that the voters should not be too numerous to enable each one to make a profitable bargain. Agreeably to Oldfield's Representative History,1 177 members were returned at the bidding of 123 commoners, and 304 nominated and virtually elected by 144 peers; so that while the Lower House was, on a superficial view, PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION. 197 the dominant assembly it was in reality largely influenced, if not controlled, by the Upper. This was one of the points made by the opponents of reform, who insisted that the existing method rendered both branches harmonious, and lessened the risk of a collision.1 The abuse was not entirely barren of good results. The much-needed reform in the criminal law was due to the exertions of Sir Samuel Romilly, who sat for a purchased borough; and not a few of the "borough-mongers," as they were opprobriously termed, used their power wisely to bring able and upright men into Parliament, who might otherwise have been left out of public life.2 The elder and younger Pitt, Burke and Fox, in the last century, and Canning and Horner in this, owed their early rise to such means; but there were others who bargained shamelessly with successive ministries for title, place, or opportuni 1 "Dr. Oldfield's Representative History furnishes still more elaborate statistics of parliamentary patronage. According to his detailed statements, no less than 218 members were returned for counties and boroughs in England and Wales by the nomination or influence of 87 peers; 137 were returned by 90 commoners, and 16 by the government; making a total number of 371 nominee members. Of the 45 members for Scotland, 31 were returned by 21 peers, and the remainder by 14 commoners. the 100 members for Ireland, 51 were returned by 36 peers, and 20 by 19 commoners. The general result of these surprising statements is, that of the 658 members of the House of Commons, 487 were returned by nomination, and 171 only were representatives of independent constituencies." 1 May's Constitutional History of England, 300. Of Writing in 1821, Sydney Smith says: "This county belongs to the Duke of Rutland, Lord Lonsdale, the Duke of Newcastle, and about twenty other holders of boroughs. They are our masters.' 2During the debates on the Reform Bill, Sir Robert Peel produced a list of twenty-two individuals, including almost every illustrious name which during the last fifty years had adorned the national councils; and of these twenty-two persons it appeared that sixteen were, on their first entrance into public life, returned for boroughs which it was proposed by the bill before Parliament to disfranchise, while of the remaining six, who had owed their return in the first instance to a more popular constituency, five had at a subsequent period of their public career found it convenient to quit that constituency and betake themselves also to a close borough." Quarterly Review for 1831, p. 259. ties to grow rich at the public expense. Patronage was as flagrantly abused by Walpole, Newcastle, and Bute as it can be by an American President or Senate. The ministry unscrupulously dismissed every public servant who ventured to oppose their measures or cast an independent vote; and the public conscience was so undeveloped in this regard that as good and wise a man as Dr. Johnson could declare: "The government has the distribution of offices in order that it may maintain its authority. Were I in power, I would turn out every man who opposed me."1 Not a few of the peerages which were profusely created under George III. originated in sources like those stigmatized by Pope: "Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows, In each how guilt and greatness equal ran, man." In fine, demoralization reached the point at which men cease to believe in the possibility of virtue, and patriotism came to be regarded as a mask worn by adventurers who sought for office under the pretence of love of country.2 12 Fitzgerald's Boswell, 17. a venerable 2"Gentlemen have talked a great deal of patriotism, word when duly practised; but I am sorry to say that of late it has been so much hackneyed about that it is in danger of falling into disgrace: the very idea of true patriotism is lost, and the term has been prostituted to the very worst of purposes. A patriot, sir! why patriots spring up like mushrooms! I could raise fifty of them within four and twenty hours; I have raised many of them in one night. It is but refusing to gratify an unreasonable or an insolent demand, and up starts a patriot. I have never been afraid of making patriots, but I disdain and despise all their efforts." Walpole's speech in the House of Commons, Feb. 13, 1741; 3 Mahon's History of England, 73, 74. See also Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George II., vol. i. ch. xii. pp. 376, 377. So Johnson defined patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel;" and when Boswell, pressed" to name a single exception, mentioned an eminent person whom we all greatly admired," Johnson's reply was, "I do not say he is not honest, but we have no reason to conclude from his political career that he is honest." 2 Fitzgerald's Boswell, 11. The curious in such matters may read in the Quarterly Review for January, 1878, p. 189, some account of the disreputable methods by which AT THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 199 The result was an assembly as diverse as the soil from which it sprang, where men of lofty tone and brilliant genius sat on the same benches with place-hunters, political adventurers, and "fools of quality" with scarce wit enough to be rogues,— where, in short, heterogeneous elements were commingled, and "all the gravel mixed with golden ore." But the splendor of individual talent did not redeem the House as a whole from the taint of its baser particles, or render it a fit instrument of government, save in the hands of some minister wise as Walpole or magnanimous like the elder Pitt. Some conception of what public life and morals then were in England may be gathered from Horace Walpole's account of the Duke of Newcastle, and Bubb Dodington's unblushing narrative of his shameless bargain for place, in which he was as shamelessly outwitted by the Duke.1 Newcastle and Dodington were below the standard even of their day; but this remark does not apply to a contemporary statesman, who was exceptional only as regards ability. The elder Fox was remarkable among the brilliant debaters of his time for close and cogent reasoning, clothed in forcible and expressive language, and could, as we learn from Horace Walpole, beat all the lawyers in the House at their own weapons. Had these powers been joined to a love of country and the just pride which will not stoop for power, he might have claimed a first place, or been a worthy coadjutor of Pitt. Unhappily, his main object was to accumulate wealth and leave it with a peerage to his children. No means seemed to him degrading that tended to these ends, and he consented to take office, with the leadership of the House of Commons, as the "man" of the Duke of Newcastle, "who was to remain in full power, with the whole confidence and secret of the king." The negotiation was broken off because the Duke insisted on keep the attorney Lamb founded the family which was ennobled in the second generation, and in the third gave a prime minister to England in the person of Lord Melbourne. So Bubb Dodington became Lord Melcombe, through the ability to return four members to Parliament, and his readiness to sell their votes to the highest bidder. 1 Dodington's Diary, 257, 308. |