THE PROPOSED REFORM BILL OF 1866. income-tax to remain at fourpence in the pound. The statement of Mr. Gladstone concluded with a careful representation that it was time to prepare for a serious reduction of the national debt, the amount and fluctuations on which he said was exercising an injurious social influence. 213 and that Mr. Gladstone, and perhaps Earl Russell also, had submitted to a compromise which went no further than a £14 franchise for the counties and a £7 franchise for the towns. The House of Commons was crowded in every part to hear the proposals of the government. There was, perhaps, as much curiosity as there had been when the Reform Bill of 1831 was brought forward by Lord John Russell; but there was far less excitement, even when it was declared that the measure would have the effect of adding 400,000 persons of all classes to the number of voters. Of these 171,000 would come under the county franchise, which would be reduced from £50 to £14, with the proviso that the occupation of property of the value of less than £50 should include a house the annual value of which was not less than £7. Copyholders and leaseholders in boroughs were to have the same privileges as freeholders. The borough fran A good plan of operating on the debt was by the conversion of perpetual into terminable annuities. There was then a sum of twentyfour millions standing on a deposit account of the trustees of savings'-banks, the whole of which the state was now bound to pay; and it was proposed to take that sum, which now cost £720,000 a year, and convert it into annuities terminating in 1885, which would raise the annual charge to one million. If this was done in 1866-67 there would be a charge something above £1,200,000. The following year there would be a further charge on this conversion of £502,000; but of this £293,000 would be relieved by the falling in of other annuities. The total additional charges, making all allow-chise was to be reduced from £10 to £7. ances, would be about £409,000 per annum. It was further proposed that so much of the dividends of the fund which it was intended to create as were found to be to spare should be reinvested; and the result would be that in 1885 the charge would be £1,440,000, while there would have been cancelled no less than fifty millions of stock; and from year to year the state would be buyers of stock. surplus dealt with in making the reductions which he had stated would be £1,064,000, leaving an unappropriated balance of £286,000. The These are the indications of the plan which Mr. Gladstone was considering, nor did it meet with serious opposition. The proposal to convert a portion of the debt into terminable annuities was embodied in a separate bill, which had passed its second reading when the government was overthrown by the rejection of its reform bill, to which we must now give a passing notice. When the proposed reform bill was brought before the House of Commons on the 13th of March (1866) it soon became evident that the restrictions to which it had been subjected by the cabinet had kept it within limits which were little likely to satisfy ardent reformers, Much attention was then and afterwards directed to "the compound householder"- -a term which was constantly heard in all discussions about reform. The compound householder was the tenant of one of a number of small houses or tenements, for the rates of which the landlord "compounded" with the parochial authorities-paying for them all in one sum. This of course came to much the same thing as the rates being paid by the tenant, since the landlord would naturally take care that his disbursements were added to the rental. Compound householders in boroughs were to have the franchise, so were lodgers paying not less than £10 a year exclusive of the value of furniture, and so were separate tenants of the same house. The compound householders, it was estimated, would add 25,000 to the number of voters. Another clause gave votes to all adult males who had deposited £50 in a savings-bank for two years, which entitled them to be registered for the place in which they resided. These were the principal points of the bill. The question of the redistribution of seats was to be dealt with in a separate bill, but Mr. Gladstone considered it to be of so much importance that he would not undertake to introduce it in the same session or even in the following one. Mr. Not only was there comparatively little in the bill to evoke an outburst of national enthusiasm, but there were special difficulties in parliament itself. It was introduced to a House of Commons which had but just been elected, and had not been elected on the ground of supporting such a measure as was proposed, or indeed any inclusive scheme of reform at all. Men like Mr. Bright and Mr. John Stuart Mill, regarding the measure as a stage of political progress, supported it, and many other "advanced" Liberals were willing to approve it on that understanding. Forster was one of the first who spoke earnestly in its favour, and among other adherents of Mr. Gladstone there was presently no lack of fervour. Yet it soon became evident that many members of the Liberal party were slipping away from their allegiance-not because the bill promised too little, but because it did not promise quite what they expected, or because, having just obtained their seats, they were not inclined to imperil them by upholding a measure the success of which they thought was doubtful. Among these so-called Liberals were unpronounced Whigs, who did not care about any plan of reform unless it should be unmistakably forced on them by pressure from without. It certainly was a mild, not to say a rather colourless measure, and though it was afterwards supported by some of the most fervid and brilliant appeals ever uttered by its chief promoters, Mr. Gladstone himself introducing it to a vast assembly in a speech which lasted for nearly three hours, and was throughout listened to with eager and admiring attention, nobody could claim for it that it gave any vast concessions to popular demands. The most remarkable point of the situation was that many of the Conservatives professed to regard the measure as dangerously democratic in its tendencies, and represented that unless it were opposed it would bring ruin upon the country. Those who were really of this opinion could have had little political foresight, and others who on principle resisted all attempts to reform the suffrage could scarcely have reflected that as some changes were inevitable it woul have been more consistent to have accepted what from their point of view might have been regarded as a comparatively harmless extension of the franchise, than to arouse the country to still further expectations. In addition to these objectors, it has been declared that there were others who honestly believed that any measure of further enfranchisement should be such as to secure a settlement of the question which would leave no probability of further agitation for several years to come. To these varied opponents of the bill Mr. Gladstone had to address himself, and he closed his great oration by appealing to those who professed to see in the proposed measure dangers which it is difficult to understand how they could have associated with it. "We cannot," he said, "consent to look upon this large addition, considerable although it may be, to the political power of the working-classes of this country, as if it were an addition fraught with mischief and with danger. We cannot look, and we hope no man will look, upon it as some Trojan horse approaching the walls of the sacred city, and filled with armed men, bent upon ruin, plunder, and conflagration. We cannot join in comparing it with that monstrum infelix-we cannot say -Scandit fatalis machina muros, Foeta armis: mediæque minans illabitur urbi." I believe that those persons whom we ask you to enfranchise ought rather to be welcomed as you would welcome recruits to your army, or children to your family. We ask you to give within what you consider to be the just limits of prudence and circumspection; but, having once determined those limits, to give with an ungrudging hand. Consider what you can safely and justly afford to do in admitting new subjects and citizens within the pale of the parliamentary constitution; and, having so considered it, do not, I beseech you, perform the act as if you were compounding with danger and misfortune. Do it as if you were conferring a boon that will be felt and reciprocated in grateful attachment. Give to these persons new interests in the constitution, new interests which, by the beneficent processes MR. LOWE RISES TO THE OCCASION. 215 of the law of nature and of Providence, shall | facts, gave value to his utterances; but his manbeget in them new attachment; for the attachment of the people to the throne, the institutions, and the laws under which they live is, after all, more than gold and silver, or more than fleets and armies, at once the strength, the glory, and the safety of the land." The first note of opposition from deserting Liberals was sounded by Mr. Horsman; but the man who came to the front in denouncing the bill was Mr. Lowe. So bitter, so wild was his language that it could scarcely be surpassed even by Lord Robert Cecil (who had succeeded to the title of Lord Cranborne) when he assailed the proposed measure, or when he afterwards let loose his invective against the leader of his own party, and warned the Tories against the treachery of Mr. Disraeli. Mr. Lowe was a power in the house; but nobody suspected that his power lay in oratory: nor did it. By a singular combination of incentives he appears at this juncture to have risen to a height of declamation, to an intensity and force of language, and to a masterly vehemence which served to carry everybody before it. One is not obliged to lay undue stress on the consideration that he had some reason to think he had been neglected and deserted by the government of which he had been a member, and was still glowing with a sense of undeserved injury. More to the purpose, perhaps, was the fact, that while his attacks upon the bill were received by the Tories with delight and acclamation; they were also applauded by those Liberals who were only too glad to find an ex-minister of the late Palmerston government violently denouncing a Liberal measure which they were not prepared to support, and thus affording them an example of that kind of independence which cheers and encourages the opposition. Before the rushing torrent of Mr. Lowe's eloquence, Mr. Disraeli himself seemed to retire to a comparatively obscure position in the debate. Everybody was astonished, and their astonishment leading to outbursts of enthusiastic applause, stimulated the orator to renewed efforts. It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Lowe was a speaker always well worth listening to. Scholarship, occasional piquancy, a certain mastery of ner was not attractive, his tall and somewhat ungainly figure, his rather clumsy gestures; his extreme short-sightedness, which forbade his referring to notes or papers except in an apparently confused and awkward manner; all were against his making a very favourable impression on his audience, to say nothing of that intractability of tongue which now became of value and importance. He had never achieved any great success as a leading speaker till this opportunity arose and bore him to heights that he had not touched before, and would never reach again. For a time he mounted on the crest of a great surging wave composed of two combining, though previously conflicting currents. It bore him to the front; but when it receded he was left in scarcely a more distinguished position than that he had occupied before, though he had achieved a greater reputation in debate. Some of the language that he used was remembered with no little anger by the speakers at subsequent meetings for the support of the popular cause: for instance, "You have had the opportunity of knowing some of the constituencies of this country, and I ask if you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness, and the means of intimidation; if you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where will you go to look for them, to the top or the bottom? It is ridiculous to blink the fact that since the reform act, great competition has prevailed among the voters of between £20 and £10 rental; the £10 lodging and beer-house keepers. . . . We know what sort of persons live in these small houses; we have all had experience of them under the name of 'freemen,' and it would be a good thing if they were disfranchised altogether." Having commented satirically on Mr. Gladstone's classical quotation he concluded by saying:-"It may be that we are destined to avoid this enormous danger with which we are confronted, and not to use the language of my right honourable friend-to compound with danger and misfortune; but it may be otherwise, and all that I can say 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." It was in reply to the pseudo-liberal Mr. Horsman, who had spoken of Mr. Gladstone's address as "another bid for power, another promise made to be broken, another political fraud and parliamentary juggle," that Mr. Bright made the famous retort, one passage of which added a lasting phrase to parliamentary language, and became historical. It was a double-edged reply, and told with equal effect against Mr. Horsman and Mr. Lowe, both of whom seemed to be influenced by a grudge against the members of the government. Mr. Horsman, he said, was the first member of the new parliament who had expressed his grief: "he retired into what may be called his political Cave of Adullam, to which he invited every one who was in distress, and every one who was discontented. He has long been anxious to found a party in this house, and there is scarcely a member at this end of the house who is able to address us with effect, or to take much part, whom he has not tried to bring over to his party and his cabal. At last he has succeeded in hooking the right honourable the member for Calne (Mr. Lowe). I know it was the opinion many years ago of a member of the cabinet, that two men could make a party; and a party formed of two men so amiable, so genial, as both of those right honourable gentlemen, we may hope to see for the first time in parliament, a party perfectly harmonious and distinguished by a mutual and unbroken trust. But there is one great difficulty in the way. It is very much like the case of the Scotch terrier that was so covered with hair that you could not tell which was the head, and which was the tail.” . . . Mr. Bright continued"Now I said at the beginning that I did not rise to defend the bill. I rose for the purpose of explaining it. It is not the bill which, if I had been consulted, I should have recommended. If I had been a minister it is not the bill which I should have consented to present to the house, I think it is not adequate to the occasion, and that its concessions are not sufficient. But I know the difficulties under which ministers labour, and I know the disinclination of parliament to do much in the direction of this question. I shall give it my support because, as far as it goes, it is a simple and honest measure, and because I believe, if it becomes law, it will give some solidity and duration to everything that is good in the constitution, and to everything that is noble in the character of the people of these realms." The Cave of Adullam was one of those happy references which always seize the attention of an assembly. From that time the party represented by Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman, and including a number of "discontented" politicians who had professed to be Liberals, was called "the Cave," and its members, “ Adullamites." Another phrase, which afterwards furnished several allusions from the opposition, occurred when Mr. Gladstone, having distinctly refused to bring forward the whole scheme for redistribution of seats, turned to Lord Robert Montague, who had spoken of Mr. Villiers as "the pretended friend" of the workingclasses, and rebuked him by saying that if the working men, whom the noble lord and others seemed to dread as an invading and destroying army instead of regarding them as their own flesh and blood, were introduced into the house they would set him an example both of courtesy and good breeding. The phrase "own flesh and blood” was not forgotten, and in a subsequent debate Sir E. Bulwer Lytton adroitly turned it to purpose in a telling speech. Referring to the modified nature of the concessions made by the bill, he expressed his amazement that the chancellor of the exchequer could descend to a species of argument so hollow in itself and so perilous in its logical deductions. "What Las the right honourable gentleman to say to the millions who will ask him one day, ‘Are we an invading army? Are we not fellowChristians? Are we not your own flesh and blood?' Does he think it will be answer enough to give that kind of moditied opinion which he put forth last night, and to say, REFORM DEMONSTRATIONS. 'Well, that is very true. For my own part, in my individual capacity I cannot see that there is any danger of admitting you; but still, you know, it is wise to proceed gradually. A £7 voter is real flesh and blood. But you are only gradual flesh and blood. Read Darwin on the origin of species, and learn that you are fellow-Christians in an imperfect state of development."" The fact that Earl Grosvenor had moved an amendment that it would be inexpedient to consider the bill for the reduction of the franchise until the house had before it the whole scheme of the government, though Mr. Gladstone had stated that he would not enter into the scheme for distribution till after the second reading of the franchise bill, showed that the Whigs were indifferent to the success of the measure. The eldest son of the Marquis of Westminster was usually regarded as a steady supporter of the government. He had now joined with others in showing that he did not regard it with confidence. The second reading was not to take place till after the Easter recess, and during the interval considerable excitement prevailed in those parts of the country where the reform party was strongest. At Liverpool there were enthusiastic demonstrations. Mr. Gladstone addressed one great meeting at which the Duke of Argyll, Mr. Goschen, and others of his colleagues were present. In response to his declaration that the government would abide by the bill which they had introduced and stand or fall with it the audience rose to their feet and greeted him with long-continued cheering. "Having," he said, "produced this measure, founded in a spirit of moderation, we hope to support it with decision. It is not in our power to secure the passing of the measure: that rests more with you, and more with those whom you represent, and of whom you are a sample, than it does with us. Still, we have a great responsibility and are conscious of it, and we do not intend to flinch from it. 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 217 from us that we should tell you what we mean, and that the trumpet which it is our business to blow should 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. We have advisedly cut off the means of retreat, and having done this we hope that, as far as time is yet permitted, we have done our duty to the crown and to the nation." The passing of the Rubicon, the breaking of the bridge and the burning of the boats, was another phrase about which much reference played in after debates; but it at least expressed the determined attitude of the government. Mr. Bright took another standpoint:- -At a reform meeting at Birmingham a letter from him was read in which he said: "Parliament is never hearty for reform, or for any good measure. It hated the Reform Bill of 1831 and 1832. It does not like the franchise bill now upon its table. It is to a large extent the offspring of landed power in the counties and of tumult and corruption in the boroughs, and it would be strange if such a parliament were in favour of freedom and of an honest representation of the people. But, notwithstanding such a parliament, this bill will pass if Birmingham and other towns do their duty." The opposition was referred to as "a dirty conspiracy." "What," he asked, "should be done, and what must be done, under these circumstances? You know what your fathers did thirty-four years ago, and you know the result. The men who, in every speech they utter, insult the working men, describing them as a multitude given up to ignorance and vice, will be the first to yield when the popular will is loudly and resolutely expressed. If Parliament Street from Charing Cross to the venerable Abbey were filled with men seeking a reform bill, as it was two years ago with men come to do honour to an illustrious Italian, these slanderers of their countrymen would learn to be civil if they did not learn to love freedom." At Manchester also Mr. Bright urged an immediate organization for meetings and petitions-"as men living ina |