Chapter XVII, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 9 page 3

Mr. Mill's speech may be said to have established his parliamentary reputation, and many of the subsequent speakers took great pains to answer his arguments. Indeed, it was necessary to do so, if the opposition to the bill was to be justified, for Mr. Mill's speech had been a vigorous attempt to show that on many important questions legislation would be wiser and better if the working classes were more represented. Education, sanitary reform, the diminution of pauperism, the diminution of crime - in a word, the social side of politics - would, he maintained, be better handled by a reformed than by an un- ref ormed Parliament; and, if so, an approach to democracy should rather be welcomed than feared. These were the points chiefly dwelt upon by the Opposition speakers - by the orthodox Conservatives like Sir Hugh Cairns, by Mr. Disraeli, by the " Cave," represented by Mr. Laing, Mr. Horsman, Lord Elcho, and notably Mr. Lowe. The member for Calne, indeed, was like a man transformed throughout this period of Reform agitation. Instead of the clever administrative reformer of the year gone by, instead of the crotchety, experimentalising Chancellor of the Exchequer of the years to follow, he stood up a wit and an orator, with an answer to every Liberal argument, with a fresh thrust for every Ministerial parry; his speeches - so perfect that Mr. Gladstone said schoolmasters would take them in after ages and set them to their pupils as models to be translated into Greek - dropped from him with all the readiness of extempore efforts; his perorations seemed inspired with the feeling that the contest was the death-struggle of England's prosperity. No one, whether or not he agrees with Mr. Lowe's conclusions, can deny him the palm of debate. Neither Mr. Gladstone's copious enthusiasm, nor Mr. Bright's straightforward, honest conviction, nor Mr. Disraeli's Delphic solemnity, could compare in effectiveness with the vigour, the brilliancy, the eloquent incredulousness of Mr. Lowe.

Mr. Disraeli's summing up of the case of the Opposition was clever, but not very telling; it was, except at the end, too vague. The end, however, gave Mr. Gladstone what he wanted. Quoting from the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and addressing himself to Mr. Gladstone's famous assertion, that the working classes were "the same flesh and blood " as the upper classes, Mr. Disraeli said: -

" Sir George Lewis would not have built up the constituent body on the rights of man He would not have entrusted the destiny of the country to the judgment of a numerical majority. He would not have counselled the Whig party to reconstruct their famous institutions on the American model, and to profit in time by the wisdom of the children of their loins. Sir, it is because I wish to avert from this country such calamities and disasters that I shall vote for the amendment of the noble lord."

When the leader of the Tory party sat down, Mr. Gladstone rose and took for his starting-point the last words of Mr. Disraeli. " At last, sir," he said, " we have obtained a clear declaration from an authoritative source; and we now know that a bill which, in a country with five millions of adult males, proposes to add to the present limited constituency 200,000 of the middle class and 200,000 of the working class is, in the judgment of the leader of the Tory party, a bill to reconstruct the Constitution on American principles." (The speech which followed was, for sheer eloquence, one of the very greatest of Mr. Gladstone's parliamentary efforts; it began at one o'clock in the morning, and, after reviewing the whole course of the debate, it ended at three. " You may drive us from our seats," he ended, " 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 aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!'

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 struggle 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 not distant victory."

It was three o'clock in the morning when Mr. Gladstone finished his speech, but the crowded and excited House showed no signs of fatigue. When the Speaker put the question, the roar of " ayes " and " noes " which answered him was heard far beyond the walls of the House by the waiting crowds outside. Amid great excitement the two camps parted into their respective lobbies, and shortly afterwards the result of the division was announced as follows: - For the second reading, 318; against it, 313. Majority for Government, 5. Both sides of the House cheered the announcement of these critical numbers - the Liberals for the fact of a majority, the Conservatives for the smallness of it. When the uproar had somewhat abated, Mr. Gladstone stated that he would declare what course the Government proposed to take on the Monday following, the 30th of April. In the few days which intervened, there were many rumours abroad as to the probable resignation of the Cabinet. However, when the House re-assembled on the 30th, Mr. Gladstone announced that the Government did not consider the division on Lord Grosvenor's motion any sufficient reason for resigning, and that they were prepared to proceed with the bill in the manner which the House seemed to prefer. They would now lose no time in producing the Redistribution Scheme as well as the Scotch and Irish bills, and they promised that the House should have ample time to consider the Redistribution Scheme, before going on with the Franchise Bill. In answer to some reproaches of inconsistency from the Opposition benches, Mr. Gladstone replied that the Government had indeed pledged themselves to stand or fall by the bill, but as yet the bill had not fallen - the alteration new effected in it was, after all, a question of arrangement only, and did not affect any vital principle of it.

On the 7th of May, the Redistribution of Seats Bill was introduced. The bill provided, first, for the redistribution of seats, properly so called; and secondly, for a! more accurate settlement of borough boundaries than had been accomplished by the Reform Bill of 1832. With regard to the first question, Mr. Gladstone announced that the Government had no intention of trying to get rid of bribery by a wholesale extinction of small boroughs.! In the first place, to get rid of bribery was not the object of the bill; and secondly, corruption, that " leprosy of English politics," was not confined to small boroughs, and no hard and fast line of electoral purity could be drawn between boroughs above or beneath the ten thousand line of population. Moreover, the question of small boroughs had since the Reform Act assumed a very different aspect. In 1832, the extreme measure of extinction - " capital punishment," as Mr. Lowe called it - had to be employed wholesale, since in many places throughout England the exercise of the franchise had become a mere " mockery of the representative system." Now, however, every member did in some way or other represent the views, as well as the interests, of a real local community; and the representation of the small boroughs was in a so much better state generally that no such summary measures as those adopted in 1832 ought now to be taken with regard to it. No borough, then, was to be absolutely extinguished, but " the fair demands of justice and growing population," in other words, the electoral deficiencies of the great manufacturing towns, were to be met by the milder expedient of arranging small boroughs in groups - a principle which had been already successfully adopted in Scotland and Wales. These groups were to be arranged according to geographical convenience; in some cases they were to consist of two boroughs, in others of three, and in one case of four. " When the population amounts to less than fifteen thousand we propose to assign one representative, and when it exceeds that number we propose to give it two."

Mr. Gladstone then proceeded to run through the names of the various groups proposed. There were eight pairs of boroughs, in seven instances the group was composed of three, and in one, as we have said, of four. That is to say, that where two or more small towns had been accustomed to return each of them a representative, they were, in future, to constitute a group returning one jointly. Devizes and Marlborough, for instance, which had hitherto possessed a member apiece, were, in future, to be content with one between them. Cirencester, Tewkesbury, and Evesham, were to elect one instead of three. Andover and Lymington were to vote together, Ludlow and Leominster, and so on. Mr. Gladstone calculated that by these arrangements forty-nine seats would be set free for redistribution, and having now sketched the disenfranchisement side of the scheme, lie proceeded to consider the still more important question of enfranchisement. The franchise was to be given for the first time to the six boroughs of Burnley, Stalybridge, Gravesend, Hartlepool, Middlesborough, and Dewsbury. The Government proposed to apportion the remaining forty-three seats as follows: - Twenty-six additional members were to be given to the English counties, a third member to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, one member to the University of London, four additional members to the metropolitan constituencies of Chelsea and the Tower Hamlets, and one to the borough of Sal- ford. The seven seats still remaining were to be handed over to Scotland. Ireland and Wales, the Government considered, were already adequately represented, and they were, therefore, left out of account in this division of the spoils of redistribution. With regard to the question of borough boundaries, a vexed and difficult one, the bill proposed little in the way of actual legislation. It provided that "wherever the municipal boundary includes any area that is not now within the parliamentary boundary, the parliamentary boundary is to be so far enlarged as to include that area." The Commissioners of Inclosures were to decide the boundaries of the newly-enfranchised towns, of the newly - separated halves of the Tower Hamlets, and, in cases of municipal extension - such as occurred when any outlying suburb of a town became large enough and united enough to claim municipal privileges - the parliamentary line was to follow whatever local line might be adopted.

In conclusion, Mr. Gladstone stated that the Government was prepared to treat the two bills - the Franchise Bill and the Redistribution Bill - exactly as the House thought best. They were willing, if the House desired it, to make one bill out of them, but under no circumstances would ministers advise a prorogation of Parliament till both questions had been disposed of. This marked concession to the demands of the Opposition only produced some captious remarks from Mr. Disraeli, to the effect that the Government did not know its own mind; and that, in leaving the choice of the mode of procedure to the House, it was abdicating its functions.

After leave was given to bring in the bill, the Scotch and Irish Reform Bills were introduced. The Scotch bill provoked some discussion, but, on the whole, the House seemed to have made up its mind to let the Franchise question comparatively alone till the Redistribution of Seats, which most members considered a far more personal and pressing question, should have been settled. In the week which intervened between the introduction and the second reading of the Redistribution Bill, two notices were put upon the order book of the House, which gave the Government ample warning of a troublesome time coming. One was Mr. Bouverie's motion to consolidate the Franchise Bill and the Redistribution Bill and make one measure of them; the other and more important one, moved by Captain Hayter, was to the effect " that in the opinion of this House the system of grouping proposed by Government is neither convenient nor equitable, nor sufficiently matured to form the basis of a satisfactory measure." Before they came on for discussion, however, the Redistribution Bill passed the second reading without formal opposition, though Mr. Disraeli took the opportunity of making a vigorous defence of small boroughs. After the Whitsuntide holidays the hottest part of the contest began. Government announced that they were prepared to fuse the two bills, and that they were willing to give every facility for discussion of Captain Hayter's amendment, but the "Cave " and the Conservatives were not to be conciliated; and Sir Rainald Knightley's motion, to add on to the twofold bill, already unwieldy in size, provisions against bribery and corruption at elections, both surprised and annoyed ministers. Mr. Gladstone opposed it warmly. As he said afterwards, "We had already an overweighted measure, and it was impossible to find time to consider it alone," without adding to it any fresh material for discussion. But the Opposition rallied round the motion, and it was carried by a majority of ten against Government. Mr. Gladstone once more gave way, and announced that if Sir Rainald Knightley could produce a matured scheme for the prevention of bribery at the proper time and place, the Government would not oppose the discussion of it. Captain Hayter's amendment against the system of grouping was brilliantly debated for five nights. Mr. Mill, Mr. Lowe, Sir Hugh Cairns, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Disraeli showed themselves at their best; and the clever skirmishing of Mr. Lowe, and the more serious but hardly more logical speeches of Mr. Disraeli, contrasted well with Mr. Mill's grave sarcasms upon the "dense solid force of sheer stupidity " in the Conservative party, and the sincere enthusiasm of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Lowe's speech upon the Redistribution Bill attacked the measure seriatim. He first accused the Government of radical inconsistency upon the subject of Small boroughs. Had not the head of the Government, Lord John Russell, only the year before, put into print a plea for the preservation of small boroughs, on the ground that they admitted a class of members to the House who would else be excluded from it - men of moderate means or lacking in strong family connections wherewith to back their candidature? And if this was still the view of the noble lord and his Government, how did they justify such an immense curtailment of the electoral privileges of small boroughs as the Redistribution Bill proposed? Was it not, indeed, very true that the small boroughs formed at present the only refuge for men with average means? One of the worst results of the system of grouping would be to still further increase the expenses of elections, which were already far too heavy. It would enlarge the electoral districts, instead of lessening them; and to lessen them was the only way of making elections really cheaper. The system of grouping, indeed, met with small mercy at Mr. Lowe.'-: hands. He contended that in the various groups proposed to the House, the Government had followed no principle, either geographical or numerical. "Is it on account of geographical considerations," he asked, "that Bridport is to be coupled with Honiton, nineteen miles off P " And as to numbers, the Government, instead of reducing anomalies, as they pleaded, were only creating greater ones. If Bodmin, Liskeard, and Launceston, for instance, mustering between them 18,000 inhabitants, were to be grouped and allowed two members, why were Redruth, Penzance, and other towns in the same county, with 23,000 inhabitants, to go unrepresented? In Yorkshire, Richmond and North Allerton scraped together 9,000 inhabitants, and were to return a member; while, in the same county, Barnsley, with 17,000, Doncaster, with 16,000, and Keighley, with 15,000, were wholly left out of consideration. Why were seventeen boroughs, all larger than Huntingdon, formed into various groups, while Huntingdon was allowed a member to itself?