Chapter XVII, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 9 page 2

The night following the introduction of the bill was marked by the second of Mr. Lowe's famous Reform speeches, and the first of those fierce attacks upon the Russell Ministry which more than anything else contributed to bring in the Conservatives in the following year. Mr. Lowe was then member for Calne. He had held office under Lord Palmerston as Vice-President of the Council from 1859 to 1864, and had long been known in the House as an accomplished man and ready debater; but probably few, in 18Ç6, had any idea of the real greatness of his oratorical gift, and of the splendid displays he was to make of it before the close of the session. In his address to his constituents, in June, 1865, Mr. Lowe had given sufficient warning of the course he meant to take with regard to Reform. So long as tranquillity and content existed unbroken in England, he said, "I see no reason for great organic changes in institutions which, though partaking largely of. the imperfection incident to all things human, and susceptible, doubtless, of great improvements as our experience widens and ripens, have combined order and liberty, stability and progress, in a greater degree than the institutions of any other nation." And throughout the Reform debates Mr. Lowe amply redeemed the pledge of action thus given. At the very outset of his speech on March 13, he denied the necessity of Reform altogether. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had, he said, given a clear and elaborate account of the various provisions of the proposed bill; but " although he ably entered into these matters, and with a detail which reminds me more of a speech on the Budget than on Reform, he did not find - he was so pinched for time - a moment to say why the Constitution under which we have lived so long might not be left to us a little longer." Mr. Gladstone had taken up the position that Reform was inevitable, and had long been proved inevitable; he had declined to go into the merits of the question, upon the ground of "accumulated authority" on the side of Reform; granted the necessity of Reform, he had such and such propositions to make. Mr. Lowe, on the other hand, argued the question of Reform in the abstract; was it necessary? were the existing institutions of the country really in need of such violent remedies? If it was pleaded that Reform was needed for the working classes, the best of whom, it had been said by Lord Russell in the preceding year, were excluded from the franchise, Mr. Lowe contended that Mr. Lambert's statistics proved the working man was already adequately represented. And even if they were not, there was a natural progress going on among the lower orders, which provided far safer means of enfranchisement than any legislative tinkering. Were not wages rising, and was not wealth spreading farther every year? Every day labour was becoming more and more in demand, and the proportion of men earning high wages was every day becoming greater. The vast extension of trade and commerce, emigration, the discovery of gold in California and Australia, all were so many levers, which would in time lift the working man to the place in the constituency properly belonging to him. The process was a natural one, and would not bear being interfered with. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had not been able to make up his mind to the £6 franchise because it would give the working classes a majority in the constituencies. But that majority would soon be theirs, whether Mr. Gladstone granted it now or not. " Is it not certain that causes are at work which will have a tendency to multiply the franchise - that the £6 houses will become the £7 ones, and the £9 houses will expand to £10?... Sooner or later we shall see the working classes in a majority in the constituencies." And then came the famous passage which has made Mr. Lowe the bugbear of the working classes ever since, but which he has always strenuously, and sometimes angrily, defended. " Look at what such a majority implies. I shall speak very frankly on this subject, for - having lost my character by saying that the working man could get the franchise for himself, which has been proved to be true, and for saying which, he and his friends will not hate me one bit the less - I shall say exactly what I think. Let any consider - I have had such unhappy experiences, and many of us have - let any gentleman consider the constituencies lie has had the honour to be concerned with. If you want venality, if you want ignorance, if you want drunkenness and facility for being intimidated; or if, on the other hand, you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where do you look for them in the constituencies? Do you go to the top or to the bottom?"

It has been said, he went on, that the sins of the constituencies are to be laid at the door of the small shopkeepers and beer-house keepers. They, it is granted, " are an indifferent class of people; but get to the artisans, and there you will see the difference." Mr. Lowe had nothing but ridicule for this view of things. It was, he said, like the ancients' idea of getting to the back of the north wind. If, they argued, it was so cold in front of the north wind, how warm it would be if you could get to the back of it! Then, descending to questions of practical detail, Mr. Lowe went on to oppose the bill, because it would increase the expenses of candidates, " for," he said, " experience shows that corruption varies inversely as the franchise;" and, with still greater energy, because it would invest the working men not only with power, but with a sense of power. "They will say, " We can do better for ourselves. Don't let us any longer be cajoled at elections. Let us set up shop for ourselves. We have our objects to serve as well as our neighbours, and let us unite to carry out those objects. We have machinery; we have our trades unions; we have our leaders all ready.' " This, in fact, was the main ground of Mr. Lowe's opposition, as it was the main ground of the opposition which the Conservatives brought to bear, and which in the end, as we shall show, unseated the Government. It was the aristocratic, or at least the anti-democratic argument, that Reform would lessen the power of the few in proportion as it emancipated the many. The argument, however, was applied in many forms by Mr. Lowe: he urged that the course on which the Government was entering would make the constituencies in the end so large and so expensive that none but millionaires or demagogues would find a seat, and that the Executive Government would be lowered even below the pitch of "painful weakness " at which, according to Mr. Lowe, it had already arrived. Lastly, Who asked for the bill? Not the people, not the House of Commons, but the Radical leaders, as a salve for a theoretical and not a practical grievance! " All I can say," concluded Mr. Lowe, " is, that if my right honourable friend does succeed in carrying this measure through Parliament, when the passions and interests of the day are gone by, I do not envy him his retrospect. I covet not a single leaf of the laurels that may encircle his brow. I do not envy him his triumph. His be the glory of carrying it; mine of having, to the utmost of my poor ability, resisted it."

The cheers that greeted this speech - and not only the Opposition, but for a moment the Ministerialists, were carried away by its eloquence and wit - were a kind of omen of the difficulties that the Government were to meet with during the progress of the measure. But they were not to fall yet - not till a whole session had been spent in desperate fighting, and till a score of new reputations had been made, and old ones more than maintained in the incessant debates. In this debate on the first reading, Mr. Horsman, the Liberal member for Stroud, took up the same position of hostility to the measure as Mr. Lowe; and it was in answer to him that Mr. Bright threw out his famous nickname for the new party. " He 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 name of Adullamites was ever afterwards given to the group of seceding Liberals, and their position was called the Cave.

The bill was brought in, and read a first time, and the House adjourned for the Easter Holidays to think over the situation. It was evident that a storm was coming, and questions perhaps graver than that of the fate of a Cabinet or of a measure were dependent on the issue. A great meeting was held at Liverpool, at which Mr. Gladstone made a speech in defence of the bill. Mr. Lowe's Liberal constituents at Calne wrote him a strong protest against his conduct, and clearly indicated that he must not ask for a continuance of their confidence. His answer to them was, in fact, an answer to a perfect chorus of invective with which he was greeted by every Liberal newspaper, and in every meeting of Liberals throughout the country. He maintained that he had but fulfilled the announcement which he had made to them at the time of his election in 1865, when the words of his address had been, " I attach too much importance to the blessings we already enjoy, to risk them in pursuit of ideal perfection, or even of theoretical improvement." And, while with perfect frankness he affirmed his belief that " ignorant, drunken, venal, violent " people were to be found at the bottom of the constituencies, he denied that he had meant the words to apply to a whole class of his countrymen. But this disclaimer availed little; the words had been spoken, and they stuck. The popular excitement which they caused, and which continued after the failure of the bill, and through the winter of 1866, to "be directed mainly against the "renegade Liberals" and their leaders, shows that nothing is so effective in firing a train of explosive feeling as an epithet. Mr. Gladstone's Liverpool speech was of the most uncompromising kind. "We do not desire," he said, " we should be the first to resist, sudden and violent sweeping changes; but the progressive enlargement of the popular franchise - with due regard to the state and circumstances of the country - we do not consider liable to the application of any of these epithets. Having produced this measure, framed in a spirit of moderation, we hope to support it with decision.-... We stake ourselves, we stake our existence as a Government, and we also stake our political character, on the adoption of the bill in its main provisions. You have a right to expect from us that we should tell you what we mean, and that the trumpet which it is our business to blow shall give forth no uncertain sound. Its sound has not been, and I trust will not be, uncertain. We have passed the Rubicon, we have broken the bridge and burned the boats behind us.... The defeat of the bill, what would it procure? an interval, but not an interval of repose - an interval of fever, an interval of expectation, an interval for the working of those influences which might extend even to the formidable dimensions of political danger."

The great debate on the second reading began on the 12th of April; and never within living memory had a greater display of eloquence, argument, and energy been witnessed within-the walls of the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone had seen enough of the spirit of opposition that had been awakened to make it necessary for him to make an elaborate speech on moving the second reading, directed mainly against the amendment of which notice had been given by Lord Grosvenor, the eldest son of the Marquis of Westminster. This amendment, which was to be seconded by Lord Stanley, was to the effect "that it was inexpedient to consider this bill until the House had before it the whole scheme of representation.; " that is to say, that it was inexpedient to break up the Reform legislation into two parts, to separate the question of the franchise from the question of redistribution. It is not necessary to go through the points that Mr. Gladstone raised; for to do so would be to anticipate the course of the debate, so exhaustive and voluminous was his eloquence. The former part of the speech was of a more general kind than that which had introduced the bill originally; it was a sort of answer to Mr. Lowe and to those who had denied the necessity and the demand for Reform, and it dwelt with immense force upon the pledges given in past years by Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Horsman, and others, now strenuous opposers of Reform in any shape. Mr. Disraeli, in 1859, had pronounced that he and his colleagues in Lord Derby's Cabinet" were perfectly prepared to deal with the question of the borough franchise and of the introduction of the working classes by lowering the franchise in boroughs, and by acting in that direction with sincerity." Mr. Horsman. in 1851, had been one of the very persons who had pressed on the Government a measure of "piecemeal Reform" - ho who was now among the "implacable objectors " to it. Then, after treating the history of the question in this spirit, and showing that the idea of a downward extension of the franchise was no novelty, Mr. Gladstone went on to show why, from the altered circumstances of the time, from the improved character and condition of the working class since 1832, Reform was not only justifiable but necessary. The time had positively come, he said. Such an amendment as the present one, whose only result could be the defeat of the bill, was mere trifling. " It is not enough to say," he concluded, " as we shall soon, it appears from a notice given, be asked to say, by way of answer to an expecting country, ' We are ready to entertain the question of Reform with a view to its settlement.' Enough, and more than enough, there have been already of barren, idle, mocking words. Deeds are what are wanted. I beseech you to be wise, and to be wise in time."

Mr. Gladstone had previously denounced as a "deplorable arrangement," "a gross blunder springing from that kind of cleverness which so often outwits itself," the design of the opponents of the bill to place themselves under the guidance of " the representatives of two of our noblest and most ancient houses." Indeed, it looked very much like a combination of aristocracy against democracy, when from the Liberal side of the House rose Lord Grosvenor to move an amendment, and from the Conservative side rose Lord Stanley to second it. Lord Grosvenor's speech was not specially effective, except from the family weight of the speaker. It mainly turned upon the affront put upon the Whig families by the Government, in not having sufficiently taken them into their counsels. Lord Stanley was more telling. Alluding to the coming general election, he protested against the chance of allowing the extension of the suffrage to be dealt with by one Parliament, and the redistribution of seats by another. The Franchise Bill, if carried, would confer a great increase of power upon the Radical element in the constituencies - an increase of power which would lead to the return of a much more Radical Parliament than the present, pledged by the very circumstances of its existence to extreme measures. Was it safe to leave to its tender mercies a question involving so many complicated interests as that of the re-distribution of seats? Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the able speech which followed Lord Stanley's, had no difficulty in showing this to be the real grievance and bugbear of the great families who have still so much influence over English politics, though Lord Stanley had hardly ventured to put it into such a definite form; but were there any real grounds for this fear of the working classes? - for it was at bottom nothing else. The blue book of Mr. Lambert, said Mr. Mill, after an eloquent vindication of the rights of the workmen as a class, had revealed the fact that twenty-six per cent, of the electors were of the working classes, "to the astonishment of everybody." "They kept the secret so well - it required so much research to detect their presence on the register - their votes were so devoid of traceable consequences - they had all the power of shaking our institutions, and so obstinately persisted in not doing it - these honourable gentlemen are quite alarmed, and recoil in terror from the abyss into which they have not fallen.... A class may have a great many votes in every constituency of the kingdom and not obtain a single representative in the House. Their right of voting may be only the right of being everywhere outvoted.... Twenty-six per cent, concentrated would be a very considerable representation, but twenty-six diffused may be almost the same as none at all."