Chapter XVII, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 9 page 5

Mr. Gladstone, in a short, clear speech, defended the basis adopted by the Government, and once more patiently explained what was meant by the terms " rateable value " and " gross estimated rental," an explanation of which many members of the House stood greatly in need. A smart passage of arms followed between the Solicitor-General and Mr. Disraeli; and finally, upon a division, the amendment was negatived by a narrow majority of seven votes. Lord Dunkellin's motion, to the same effect with respect to the borough franchise, met with very different success. Its mover supported the principle of rating rather than rental, because he believed it, he said, to be the more convenient, inexpensive, and constitutional method of giving the franchise of the two. Whatever were the inequalities of rating, the inequalities of rental, he contended, were greater still. Mr. Gladstone again rose in answer, this time to give so determined a statement of the course the Government intended to pursue, that it was at once felt that the crisis of the whole matter had at last been reached. Piercing through all arguments as to details, he went to the heart of his opponent's case, and showed that what Lord Dunkellin wanted was not merely " rateable value," as against rental, but that the motion was avowedly meant to restrict the suffrage, and as such, in the end, to defeat the bill. " But," said Mr. Gladstone, " from the moderate amount of enfranchisement proposed in the bill, we are not, under any circumstances or conditions, prepared to recede. By it we intend to stand." Lord Dunkellin's motion, he continued, if carried, would strike off 60,000 voters from the 200,000 which it was proposed by the bill to enfranchise. Another motion on the order book, by the member for Wenlock, would take away another 40,000, " so that a deduction of one half from the total enfranchisement in boroughs seems to be the aim of the more moderate among our opponents." The proper basis of political franchise, he maintained, " is not the net value of any property to the landlord (its rateable value), but the capacity of the occupier to pay," or, in other words, the rent he was able to give for his house. No doubt there were inequalities in the "gross estimated rental " column of the rate-book; but in contradiction of Lord Dunkellin, he declared the inequalities in the rateable value column to be infinitely greater, and such as would, were the amendment allowed to stand, prove an insuperable obstacle in the way of the working of the bill. For these and other reasons, the Government were determined to stand or fall by the clause as it originally stood; and Mr. Gladstone sat down, having made it fully apparent that the coming division, should it prove hostile, would be taken by the Ministry as decisive of their resignation.

A warm and exciting debate followed. Mr. Bright strongly supported Government, urging that if the amendment were carried, the great aim and object of the bill would be defeated, and the legitimate hopes of the working classes once more disappointed. "Every interest in the country," said the member for Birmingham, " would be the safer and happier for the introduction of 200,000 more of the working classes to the electoral franchise. If the amendment were carried, and the Government overthrown, the question would not be disposed of; it would rise up again, and break up every Government till it was settled; and he put it to the Opposition whether it would not be wiser to accept this moderate measure frankly, and show once more that confidence in the people which had always been repaid by increased loyalty and obedience to the law." Other speakers followed, but all the world knew there was not much to be said now on either side. Finally, Mr. Gladstone clinched his first speech by the brief repetition of the Government's determination not to accept the amendment, and to regard the carrying of it as incompatible with the further progress of the bill. It was a quarter-past one o'clock when the crowded House divided, and amid a scene of great excitement, the following numbers were announced: For the amendment, 315; against it, 304. Majority against Government, 11. Long and loud was the cheering of the Opposition. Mr. Disraeli had won his battle, and the immediate political future, at least, was in the hands of the Conservatives.

On the day following this important division, it was generally known that the Russell Ministry was at an end; in fact, in the evening Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone formally announced to the two Houses that the Ministry had sent in their resignations to the Queen, and motions of adjournment to the following Monday, the 25th, were put, and agreed to. It was on Tuesday, the 26th, however, that Mr. Gladstone made his promised statement in the House of Commons. The House was crowded in every part, and when the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose, he was greeted with a burst of tumultuous cheering. " Sir," he said, " the suspense, which the House yesterday so kindly consented to prolong, is at an end, and Her Majesty has been pleased to accept the resignation of their offices, which was last week tendered by the Government. The House is aware that Her Majesty thought fit in her wisdom to postpone the acceptance of that tender when it was first made. It appeared to Her Majesty that, upon the first aspect of the vote which led to the tender of our resignation, it might, perhaps, be considered as a matter of mere machinery and detail, susceptible of adjustment, rather than as one which tended to break up the framework of the bill; and Her Majesty also felt, and I think the House and the country, without distinction of party, will agree in that sentiment, that, in the present state of affairs on the continent of Europe, there is necessarily a disadvantage in a change of Government. Without the slightest approach to any invidious preference or distinction, it may truly be said that at such a moment it is not easy for any incoming Administration to step at once into the exact conditions of relations with Governments and ministers abroad which was enjoyed by their predecessors; and that difficulty, whatever may be its amount, is in itself a public disadvantage." Upon these grounds, then, the Queen had been for some little time unwilling to accept their resignation, until a long conference with Lord Russell had convinced her that the step was inevitable, and the resignations were accepted.

Mr. Gladstone went on to give a general review of the action of the Government. " After the division," he said, " which took place on the 18th inst., and during the interval which has since occurred, the alternative which the Government had to consider was, whether it was their duty at once to resign their offices, or whether, on the other hand, they ought to accept the vote which had been arrived at on the motion of my noble friend (Lord Dunkellin), and to endeavour, if they could, to adapt that vote and the operation of it to the framework of their measure and the attainment of its essential object.... Now, sir, when we came to examine the effect of the motion, and to consider whether it was possible for us to adopt it, we were struck with these difficulties. In the first place, the inequality of its operations in the different boroughs; in the second place, the inequalities of its operation in the same borough; and in the third place, the almost insurmountable difficulty of choosing any formal figure of enfranchisement, relative to rating, which would express faithfully and exactly, and without material deviation on the one side or the other, the scale of enfranchisement which we had contemplated and submitted to the House, and to which we thought ourselves bound by consideration for the public interest to adhere." Mr. Gladstone proceeded to enlarge upon these three points, and to declare that the Government had felt the practical difficulties in the way of accepting Lord Dunkellin's motion to be so great, that they saw no other course open to them but that of unqualified resistance to it, on the ground that it broke up the essential framework of the measure by which they had deliberately pledged themselves to stand or fall.

Having thus sketched the conduct of the Government, Mr. Gladstone gave " a plain, unvarnished tale " of that of the Opposition, which, as it sums up the history of the Reform Bill of 1866, maybe quoted here. " We found ourselves met with these proceedings on the bill: - On the 27th of April my noble friend, Earl Grosvenor, made a motion as an amendment on the second reading, the effect of which would have been to compel us to produce the Seats Bill before the House had given any opinion whatever on the Franchise Bill. That motion was rejected, in a House unprecedentedly large, by a majority of five, the numbers being 318 as against 323. The next step was that, on the 2nd of May, the honourable baronet, the member for Northamptonshire (Sir Rainald Knightley), made a motion to instruct the committee to include in the bill clauses for the repression of bribery and corruption. One difficulty already was, that we had an overweighted measure, and that it was almost impossible to find time to consider it. We remonstrated; but the House thought fit to overrule the view of the Government, and by a majority of ten the honourable baronet carried his motion. I do not say now whether he was right or wrong. I speak only of the amount of obstacles which we found besetting us on our road to the end which we had in view. On the 4th of June, another motion was made by the member for Wells (Captain Hayter), which certainly ended without a division, but which was debated for three nights, and which evidently must have had, and was intended to have, the effect of putting aside the consideration of the bill for this year. On the 7th of June, Lord Stanley moved to postpone the enfranchising clauses to the clauses relating to the redistribution of seats. That motion was made without any public notice whatever. But it was within the knowledge of the Government at a subsequent period, that, through channels which I am not able to point out, information had been conveyed, that either that motion or some such motion would be 'made on that day and on that hour; such information, however, being conveyed exclusively to certain gentlemen on this side of the House whose votes appeared likely to be favourable to the motion. Notwithstanding that information, the motion was negatived by 287 against 260. We were then met by the motion of the right honourable the member for Cambridge University (Mr. Walpole), who proposed to raise the county franchise to £20, and thereby to maim, in our view - at all events greatly to alter - one of the fundamental clauses in the bill. That motion was rejected by a very small majority of only fourteen; and then came in another form a motion which was admitted to have for one of its objects the raising of the county franchise - I mean the motion of the member for Northamptonshire (Mr. Ward Hunt). That motion was rejected only by a majority of seven. Then came the motion of my noble friend the member for Galway, raising the very same point for the boroughs which had been. rejected by only seven for the counties, and applying that principle to the boroughs which had been refused for the counties, although it was within the knowledge of us all that whatever difficulty was connected with rateable value would be greater in the boroughs than in the counties. That motion was carried by a majority of eleven; and it was upon a deliberate review of this series of facts, from the recital of which I have endeavoured to exclude every qualifying epithet - it was on a deliberate review of this series of facts, combining that review of previous divisions I and debates, with what I have already stated as to the nature of the motion itself, that we arrived at the conclusion, that effectual progress with the bill was, under existing circumstances, impossible."