صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

Fox, the first Lord Holland (already a Privy Councillor) was made a member of the Cabinet in 1754, by the King, as a mark of private favour, on condition that he was not to interfere with, or derogate from, the priority of the Secretary of State in the House of Commons.'1

[ocr errors]

Although the first Pitt was the guiding spirit of the administration during one of the most glorious periods of our annals, the Duke of Newcastle was First Lord of the Treasury, with the uncontrolled distribution of the patronage. In 1765, however, Pitt, on being invited to form a Ministry, refused to undertake the duty without carte blanche, which was conceded to him in 1766; and this appears to be the first instance in which such a concession was enforced. But he proceeded to form a Government much as the Duke of Cumberland (who had just before formed the Rockingham Government) may have done. He named the constituent parts including the First Lord of the Treasury, and (having become Lord Chatham) reserved merely the Presidency of the Council for himself. Nor did he make any sustained attempt to guide the counsels of the Cabinet thus constructed, the heterogeneous composition of which has been rendered memorable by Burke.2 It is remarkable that the great commoner, in the height of his well-earned popularity, besides putting up with more than one personal slight, allowed a congenial colleague (Legge) to be ousted, and a most uncongenial one (Lord Bute)

1 The entire Correspondence is printed in 'Holland House;' by Princess Marie Lichtenstein, vol. i. pp. 47-49.

2 He made an administration so chequered and speckled: he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed: a cabinet so variously inlaid: such a piece of diversified mosaic: such a tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers: king's friends and republicans: whigs and tories: treacherous friends and open enemies : that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand upon.'-(Burke).

to be forced upon him; yet when he resigned (Oct. 1761) rather than be responsible for a policy which he was no longer allowed to guide, he is censured as guilty of an undue and extraordinary assumption of superiority.1

Till some years after the accession of George III. a member of the Government was frequently found voting against his chief. It was a surprise to Charles Fox when he was suddenly dismissed for an act of ministerial insubordination by Lord North; and Thurlow made no secret of his disappointment when he found that he, the Lord Chancellor, could not beard Pitt, the Premier, with impunity. Stick to Pitt,' was his advice to Scott (Lord Eldon). He has tripped up my and I would have tripped up his if I could. I confess I did not think the King would have parted with me so easily.' This was in 1792. Ministerial discipline has been tolerably well observed since.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

heels;

The conflicts between the two Houses, with their comparative weight and influence at different epochs, are replete with dramatic situations and details. Take, for example, the conflict in 1700, when the Commons brought in a Bill for annulling the royal grants of forfeited property, and sought to force it intact through the Lords by coupling it with a money Bill. The Lords passed amendments: the Commons rejected them: the Lords passed them a second time, and a second time received the Bill back again with a threatening intimation that it must pass. "The House

1 'He (Pitt) and Lord Temple have declared against the whole Cabinet Council. Why, that they have done so before now, and yet have acted with them again, it is very true; but a little word has reached Mr. Pitt, which never entered into his former declaration; nay, nor into Cromwell's, nor Hugh Capet's, nor Julius Cæsar's; nor any reformer's of modern or ancient times. He has happened to say he will guide. Now, though this Cabinet Council are mighty willing to be guided when they cannot help it, yet they wish to have appearances saved: they cannot be fond of being told that they are to be guided, still less that other people should be told so.'-(Horace Walpole.)

of Commons (says Macaulay) broke up with gloomy looks and in great agitation. All London looked forward to the next day with painful forebodings. The general feeling was in favour of the Bill. It was rumoured that the majority which had determined to stand by the amendments, had been swollen by several prelates, by several of the illegitimate sons of Charles II., and by several needy and greedy courtiers. The cry in all the public places of resort was that the nation would be ruined by the three B.'s-Bishops, Bastards, and Beggars.'

In every conflict of this kind the final appeal must be to the people, and the boldest champions of the peerage felt that they had no alternative but to give way. It is worthy of remark that the hero of Blenheim then acted the part so frequently acted in our time by the hero of Waterloo. The Duke of Marlborough counselled concession as the least of two evils. Better pass a bad Bill than provoke another revolution or civil war. This is substantially the same argument by which the Duke of Wellington persuaded the Lords to pass the Reform Bill, the same by which he satisfied himself that he was bound to carry Catholic Emancipation and support the Bill for the abolition of the Corn Laws. According to Lord Russell, he told a Protectionist Peer, who expressed a bad opinion of it: 'Bad opinion of the Bill, my Lord! You can't have a worse opinion of it than I have, but it was recommended from the throne; it was passed by the Commons by a large majority, and we must all vote for it. The Queen's Government must be supported.'

Has not this (the great Duke's favourite) doctrine been carried much too far? The Queen's Government -meaning government as involving law and order— must be supported; but not any particular government or ministry, nor any particular policy in which their official existence may be wrapped up. Sound, well

considered legislation is an impossibility, if all honest judgment is to be waived in deference to a so-called public opinion, which we are to take on trust, forgetting that it is we ourselves who, by falling in with it whilst we dissent from it, give it weight. Let no man, either Peer or Commoner, support or vote for what he deems a bad Bill or measure. We shall then, at all events, be able to ascertain what is the real state of public opinion : we shall then have something firm and trustworthy to proceed upon, and the Constitution will work better than if, whenever the political horizon is troubled or clouded, we are content to sacrifice our convictions to expediency.

[ocr errors]

By a strange perversity of fortune, the Duke of Wellington was the unconscious instrument of accelerating that increase of popular power which has proved so detrimental to the legitimate influence of the hereditary assembly. When at the meeting of Parliament, November 3, 1830, the Duke of Wellington declared that the constitution of the House of Commons was perfect, and that the wit of man could not à priori have devised anything so good, the general feeling was one of dismay. The House of Lords, usually so calm, showed signs of amazement and perturbation. The Duke whispered to one of his colleagues, "What can I have said which seems to make so great a disturbance? " "You have announced the fall of your Government, that is all," replied his more clear-sighted colleague.'1

The Duke had taken his line deliberately before this Parliament met, and knew very well what he was saying. Moreover, it was the discontented Tories (who agreed with him about the constitution of the House of Commons) that turned the scale. But the demand

1 Earl Russell-Introduction to Speeches.' The Duke lost a capital opportunity when he insisted on giving the forfeited franchise to East Retford. In the division on the Civil List (November, 1830), which caused his resignation, thirty Tories, headed by Mr. Bankes and Sir Charles Wetheral, voted in the majority.

for parliamentary reform, like a pent-up current, had acquired depth and volume through his dogged resistance, and the resulting measure of 1832 destroyed that balance of power between the two branches of the Legislature which so largely contributed to their harmonious action and joint efficiency. It did so by severing the strongest of the connecting links between the two Houses, and by enabling the House of Commons to speak in the name of the people, which prior to 1832 would have been an idle pretension.

A list has been given in 'Notes and Queries' of fifty members in 1869, who, so far as could be ascertained, were the direct lineal descendants of those who sat for the same places respectively in the Long Parliament. Lord Stanhope, after enumerating thirty-five instances, remarks: These hereditary seats, combining in some degree the permanence of peerage with the popularity of elections-these bulwarks against any sudden and overwhelming tide of popular delusion-appear to me to have been one of the main causes of the good working of our ancient constitution, and still more of its long duration.' He also expatiates with well-founded enthusiasm on the number of eminent statesmen who owed to the smaller boroughs, now disfranchised, either their introduction into public life or their refuge during some part of it. But the essential element of a popular assembly was proportionally diminished, and it was no Radical reformer of our day, but Mr. Pitt, speaking in 1783, who said: This House is not the representative of the people of Great Britain; it is the representative of nominal boroughs, of ruined and exterminated towns, of noble families, of wealthy individuals, of foreign potentates.'

[ocr errors]

He stated that one of these foreign potentates, the Nabob of Arcot, had eight nominees in the House. A well-known story authenticates the fact of a noble

1 History of England from the Peace of Utrecht,' &c., vol. i. chap. i.

« السابقةمتابعة »