Parliament in 1848 was tolerably free from discussions on the interminable Irish question. But Mr. Smith O’Brien, the leader of the Irish Party of Action, was in earnest, and his followers were full of enthusiasm for Irish nationality. Lord Clarendon had attempted to conciliate the priesthood, but he had failed; and the Executive in Dublin sought for increased power to maintain order in Ireland. Hence a Bill aimed at seditious clubs was brought forward by the Government. It empowered the Lord-Lieutenant to arrest and detain any person whom he suspected of conspiring against the
SIR GEORGE GREY.
Queen’s Government—in other words, it was proposed to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act.111 The Bill passed rapidly through all its stages, even Radicals like Mr. Hume voting for it, reluctantly, as a hateful incident in our Irish policy. They, however, warned the Ministry that they must lose no time in bringing in remedial measures, dealing with the Franchise, the Church, the Grand Jury laws, and Municipal Institutions in Ireland. On the 26th of July the Bill was passed through the Upper House. A few days afterwards Mr. Sharman Crawford, previous to the House of Commons going into Committee of Supply, moved that the distracted condition of Ireland demanded the constant attention of Parliament, and said that if he carried his motion he would follow it up with one which Lord John Russell had moved in 1844, referring the subject of Irish grievances to a Select Committee. He complained of the delays in remedial legislation; but Lord John Russell, though conciliatory, opposed the motion on the plea that it would be better to proceed gradually with the work of reform in Ireland, than to burden the House with the impossible task Mr. Crawford would impose on it. It was in this debate that Mr. Bernal Osborne complained that Ireland was governed, like a Crown Colony, with “a mock Sovereign, a Brummagen Court, and a pinchbeck Executive,” and recommended the abolition of the Viceroyalty, the government of Ireland by a fourth Secretary of State, occasional sessions of the British Parliament in Dublin, and an annual visit of the Queen and Court to her Irish dominions. Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, also suggested that the Government would not be averse from modifying the position of the Established Church in Ireland, and there seemed to be in the minds of Ministers a disposition to seek, in a scheme of “concurrent endowment,” a solution of the Irish problem. Mr. Crawford’s motion was rejected by a vote of 100 to 24.
On the 24th of February the Lord Chancellor introduced the Irish Encumbered Estates Act. The measure provided for the swift and easy sale and transfer—voluntary or compulsory under an order of the Court of Chancery—of estates whose owners could not pay off their mortgages and had no capital to improve them. The mistake lay in selling along with the estates, which were the landlords’, the improvements which, as a rule, were made by the tenants, and which in equity, and by the custom of land tenure in Ireland, belonged to the latter. The measure was therefore pregnant with evils which had to be dealt with subsequently by the Land Acts with which Mr. Gladstone’s name will be permanently associated.
What was the effect of the Chartist rising on Parliament? It bulks but slightly in the proceedings of the Legislature. On the 10th of April Mr. Feargus O’Connor presented to the House of Commons a petition signed by 5,706,000 persons in favour of the “six points of the Charter”—namely, Vote by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, Manhood Suffrage, Equal Electoral Districts, Abolition of Property Qualification for Members of Parliament, and Payment of Members. He moved that it be read by the clerk. The first sheet was taken up and the prayer read, whereupon the messengers of the House gathered up the five great masses of parchment of which the petition consisted, and rolled it to the table. On the 13th Mr. Thornley, on behalf of the Select Committee on Petitions, reported that the Chartist petition weighed not five tons, as was alleged, but 5¾ cwts., and that it contained only 1,975,496 signatures, and not 5,706,000, as Mr. O’Connor had stated. Among these appeared the names of the Queen as “Victoria Rex,” the Duke of Wellington, K.G., Sir Robert Peel, and names that were no names, such as “No Cheese,” “Pugnose,” “Flatnose,” and the like, so that doubts as to the authenticity of the document might be fairly raised. Mr. O’Connor and Mr. Cripps exchanged pungent personalities over this discovery, and when Mr. O’Connor left the House, the Speaker, fearing a duel might be the result of the quarrel, induced Mr. Cripps to withdraw his imputations on Mr. O’Connor’s honesty. Lord John Russell then moved that Mr. O’Connor be arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms. The offender, on being brought to the bar, gave explanations which brought the scene to an end.
On the 7th of April Sir George Grey brought in the Crown Government Security Bill, which was a device of Lord Campbell’s for reducing the offences created by the Act of 1796 from treason to felony, and for extending it to Ireland, where, as the law then stood, it was impossible to punish a revolutionary movement, except by treating it as treason or misdemeanour. This gave a deathblow to the odious statutory crime termed “constructive treason,” substituting, as Lord Campbell says in his Journal, a plain, easy, popular method “by which incipient traitors may be prosecuted as felons, and transported beyond the seas.” In one of the debates on this Bill, Mr. Smith O’Brien, while professing his loyalty to the Queen, declared he was not loyal to the Government or to the Imperial Parliament, and would do what he could to overthrow the one and dissever the other. He lashed the House into fury by his references to his intrigues with the leaders of the French Revolution, and by menacing England with the hostility of the Republics of France and America. Campbell’s Bill may be described as one to degrade “the spouters of state sedition,” as Mr. Disraeli once called them, to the level of vulgar criminals in the eyes of the people. A Bill enabling the Home Secretary on his responsibility to compel the departure of aliens visiting the country not from the usual motives of business and pleasure was denounced by the Radicals, led by Sir W. Molesworth, as “analogous in principle to the famous law of Suspected Persons of the 17th of September, 1793, one of the most accursed laws of the Reign of Terror.” Lord John Russell was taunted with having opposed a similar provision which disfigured the Aliens Act in his maiden speech in 1814, and Mr. David Urquhart amused the House by quoting Leviticus xxiv. 22 and Numbers ix. 14 against the proposal. It was, however, carried in both Houses.
It was felt at this time that the House of Commons was not equal to the task of social legislation. A large Party, under the leadership of Mr. Joseph Hume, contended that the duty of Parliament to the people did not begin and end with the passing of repressive laws in a revolutionary crisis. But as the House was then constituted, they felt that little else could be expected from it, and they accordingly urged that it be made effective by being reformed. To bring the popular chamber into closer touch with the people, Mr. Hume and other Radical Reformers argued that the franchise must be extended. Hence arose his Resolution of the 20th of June, to the effect that the House of Commons did not fairly represent the people, and his proposal for (1) household franchise; (2) vote by ballot; (3) triennial Parliaments; (4) equal apportionment of Members to population. This motion marks the beginning of the great Reform movement which culminated in the Reform Bill of the Derby-Disraeli Government in 1867, and of Mr. Gladstone’s Government in 1885. Lord John Russell opposed the Resolution, though he abandoned the doctrine with which he was credited, namely, that the Bill of 1832 was final, and he admitted that it had worked badly, by enforcing too great uniformity of qualification. Mr. Disraeli opposed every one of Mr. Hume’s proposals, except that for triennial Parliaments. Mr. Sidney Herbert, on behalf of the Peelites, also opposed Mr. Hume, who was supported solely by Mr. Cobden, the Radicals, and the “Manchester School.” The Resolution was rejected by a vote of 351 to 84.
FROM AN ETCHING BY THE QUEEN.
THE SOUTH-EAST CORRIDOR, WINDSOR CASTLE.
CHAPTER XIX.