by Edward R. Russell.
Originally published in Belgravia (John Maxwell) vol.3 #11 (Sep 1867).
THE 18th of June 1866 seemed the Waterloo-day of Parliamentary Reform. The once victorious cause had returned in good spirits from the Elba of Palmerstonian disfavour. The Reform forces were numerous, and in high condition. But in a short and sharp conflict they were decisively defeated. In the early morning of the 19th Mr. Lowe, the Wellington of the struggle, and Lord Dunkellin, its Blucher, stood, as I well remember, uproariously hurrahing upon the well-won field. If within a year of Waterloo-day 1815 the French had been masters of Europe, but without Napoleon at their head, the political events which have occurred since that memorable morning would have been historically prefigured. For it was on the 27th of last May that the final barrier against household suffrage was removed, and the electoral system of the country virtually established by Tory ministers on a basis which a year before Sir Roundell Palmer had been deemed rash and visionary for suggesting. Every reader capable of recalling past phases of public opinion—by no means so common a gift as may be supposed—must perceive, though few may be able to appreciate, the vastness of the revolution which has been thus rapidly accomplished. If there is no cause in it for alarm, it is rather a revolution in opinions and arrangements than a revolution in our political state. In that case the Lowe fever, which last year made the country delirious and left it prostrate, was a very simple malady. But its prevalence, its violence, and its obstinacy are facts far more remarkable and undoubted than the strength of those popular agitations by which some believe Reform to have been carried. That the Reform demonstrations would have become overpowering if Reform had been refused is likely enough; that they were overpowering is not true. The antiReform fever in society yielded—symptomatically at least, for in essence it lingers still—to the charms of the great medicine-man, Disraeli; and our present business is to take a retrospect of his enchantments. In reviewing the strange story I shall not affect ignorance of or indifference to what men of all parties feel to have been the real significance of the year's events, though I shall scrupulously avoid expressing my own opinions on the merits of the great question which has been so miraculously settled.
The session began amidst absolute uncertainty whether a Reform Bill would be introduced. Even the movers and seconders of the addresses in reply to the Royal Speech had the vaguest ideas of the intentions of the Government. Mr. Disraeli pledged himself to deal with the subject within a week. When he addressed himself to it, he informed the House that the design of the Government was to submit resolutions and take counsel with the House. The second Monday of the session was fixed for a statement of the resolutions which the Government proposed to introduce. The day came, and the statement was made; but the only result was to try the patience which had as yet been most studiously extended to the Government by the Opposition. Up to this point there was no sign of power, no indication of policy—nothing to lead any unbiassed observer to suppose that her Majesty's Ministers had any settled intentions, or meant to take the plough of which Mr. Disraeli soon after spoke strongly in hand. On all sides it was felt that they were not only in a difficult position, but were occupying it with an ill grace. And yet it is clear from a consideration of the dates under the light of subsequent revelations, that as early at least as this 18th February the Government must have taken a very strong resolution. On the part of the majority of the Ministers, the resolution was to introduce a bill giving household suffrage, with personal payment of rates and dual voting as checks. On the part of Mr. Disraeli and Lord Derby, everything that has happened and been said since proves the resolution then taken to have been a bold and comprehensive one not to be outbidden. Had it been suspected, the Conservative party would have drawn back almost to a man from the enterprise to which, by Mr. Disraeli's gradual concessions, they eventually stood unalterably committed. But there was nothing in Mr. Disraeli's demeanour to indicate anything but a hand-to-mouth policy. Except the audacious ingenuity with which he replied to the interrogations of inquisitive Liberals, he showed no sign of power. It is necessary to remember this clearly in order to understand the full force of the change which was soon to follow. That change was probably much assisted by a growing inclination amongst certain bolder independent members of the Tory party to encourage the leaders in a more radical measure than it had ever been supposed a Tory government could propose. This was at first a mere coincidence; but of course the conversations which were common amongst these bolder Tories within the precincts of the House were speedily reported to the leader of the House. They had their origin in a feeling he was eager to encourage—a feeling of impatience at the sorry, driven condition of the party on the great question of the day; and there can be little doubt he resorted to every means he could use without committing himself to aggravate the discontent of the hardier spirits at the timid tone to which Cabinet and party differences compelled him publicly to adhere. When, with scarcely concealed disgust, he introduced on the 25th February the Six-Pound or "Ten Minutes" Bill, it must have been a great relief to his mind to discover that the last straw, which he had borne with difficulty, had fairly broken the back of his best allies. Those best allies were the guerilla Reformers, harboured strangely enough in the smoking-room of the chief Tory club. The Carlton émeute and the Tea-room schism did not include a single parliament-man of the first importance; but in reviewing the session, it is impossible not to accord to these events a preëminent place. Contrary to all theories of parliamentary management, the notorious opinions of the majority on each side of the House have been set aside, and those of a section on each side have been embodied unanimously in the great act of the year. Both of these sections had very early in their history the advantage, without which they could have done nothing, of secret assurances more or less direct that household suffrage, upon which they were intent, would gladly be carried out by Mr. Disraeli and Lord Derby if they could secure the coöperation of the House. How these assurances were conveyed to the Tea-room Liberals, who did not enjoy a corporate existence till later, was sufficiently indicated in the discussion which took place immediately before the Easter recess on the memorandum drawn up by Mr. Dillwyn after an important interview with Colonel Taylor. In spite of protestations that Colonel Taylor had not committed the two heads of the Government to anything, the conviction that they would hesitate at nothing so spread below the gangway, that Mr. Bernal Osborne exclaimed one day, in a paroxysm of partisanship, "All the ground hereabouts is mined." How the Carlton malcontents—the little set identified with the extremely unimportant name of Mr. Banks Stanhope—learnt that their treason was not distasteful to the generals at St. James's-square and Grosvenor-gate is hardly so well known.
The real leader of these mutineers, or rather pioneers, was probably not Mr. Banks Stanhope, but a member for one of the largest boroughs. Very early in these discussions he had privately declared himself for household suffrage, tempered only by the requirement that the rates should be paid or the vote forfeited. He had learnt by inquiries in his own borough that large numbers of ten-pound householders were never on the register because they failed to meet this rate-paying requirement. He had summoned the rate-collectors of that borough together, and ascertained from them that in their opinion a lowering of the suffrage even to the extent of a household franchise would not introduce many discreditable persons, if a year's residence and the payment of rates were made indispensable preliminaries to coming on the register. He argued from this that household suffrage, which was sure to be popular, would as surely be safe. He found in conversation that several members or the House had arrived, and others were arriving, at his conclusions, which had long been anticipated by Mr. Henley, and therefore already possessed a certain Conservative sanctity, extravagant as the issue to which they tended then seemed. As the feeling grew and consolidated, it was thought steps should be taken to make it known. The announcement of the Ten Minutes Bill afforded the needed opportunity. It was a grievous disappointment. Mr. Lowe said a few days afterwards, and it is now known to be true, that the country had been within a few hours of household suffrage. As members of the Carlton, the little band of household-suffrage Tories had had inklings of this programme; and the veriest Radicals were not more disgusted than they when, in a spiritless speech, delivered in evident dejection, Mr. Disraeli announced as the ultimatum of the Government a 6l. rating franchise in boroughs, and a 20l. rating franchise in counties. The member of whom I have spoken immediately called upon Mr. Disraeli, and fully laid before him the views which he and others entertained. The leader listened to his jibbing follower with marked reserve,—met all his points with commonplace arguments, such as an Adderley or Mowbray might more fitly have used,—diplomatically avoided anything like an expression of his own preferences. He advocated the Six-Pound Bill as he had introduced it, with a loyalty that moulted no feather, though its plumage drooped dejectedly, and the note of the argument was jarring and faint. The interview was a long one. It seemed likely to end unfruitfully. At last, after some two hours of conference, the informal envoy once more reiterated the convictions he had come to urge. Then it was that, as if provoked out of his reticence, but probably fulfilling an intention he had conceived very early in the conversation, Mr. Disraeli said to this pertinacious emissary: "I will not conceal from you that Lord Derby and myself are of your opinion." That was enough. In a few hours more than a score of trusty Conservatives had put their names in the Carlton smoking-room to a significant memorial to the Ministers. If Lord Derby wanted household rating suffrage, what excuse could there possibly be for further hesitation? The paper was handed in. Other representations were made to the Cabinet, and, under a very general pressure, they took a strong resolution. They retreated to the position which they had been truly reported to occupy before the Ten Minutes Bill was introduced. They "reverted to their original policy." But not without loss. Before the week had elapsed, Lord Cranborne, General Peel, and the Earl of Carnarvon had severed themselves from Lord Derby's fortunes.
It was amidst vague rumours of disorganisation and apprehensions lest the whole Ministry might soon follow the three seceders that the two Houses met on Monday the 4th of March. Lord Cranborne took the seat he has ever since occupied at the corner of the front bench below the gangway on the ministerial side. He seemed to enjoy a sort of physical delight in his new liberty as he lounged there with his characteristic head thrown back and his gleaming teeth visible every few moments as Lord Robert Montague, soon to be won from his side by an offer of place, whispered in his ear the tittle-tattle of the crisis. General Peel, looking less bluff and more harassed than usual, puzzled the House by keeping seat on the ministerial bench, and it was out of the uncertainty of his position that the first discussion relative to the situation arose. But with strange reserve everything was withheld that night from the eager Commons, while everything was revealed to the apathetic Lords. The Premier concealed nothing. Men held up their hands as he narrated the strange, because unvarnished, story of the Cabinet differences: how the three seceders had struck a week ago; how, in deference to them, the Six-Pounds Bill had suddenly been resolved upon; how that bill had proved unsatisfactory to everybody; how the majority had determined to recur to the bill from which the minority had flinched; how in consequence the minority had resigned. Lord Carnarvon rose from the ministerial bench to give his version of the same story. He showed none of that bitterness which was afterwards generated in his amiable composition either by the example of his friends or by the prosperous progress of the Bill. The substance of his explanation was that his colleagues wanted household suffrage in all boroughs, while he would have restricted it to those above a certain population. Then Lord Granville bantered, Lord Grey prosed, and Lord Derby twitted Lord Granville for having exaggerated the time—"to him perhaps it had seemed long"—during which the Cabinet had been undecided about Reform. Later in the evening Mr. Osborne and Mr. Roebuck in the other House loudly resented the comparative communicativeness of the Government to the Peers; but already the Disraeli spell was beginning to work, and the Commons were too patient to perceive how much they had been affronted.
Next night Mr. Disraeli repaired the slight by a full explanation. General Peel and Lord Cranborne each spoke, and each received the hearty sympathy due to men who had descended from no ordinary height of ministerial prosperity at the bidding of conscience and principle. What is most remarkable in reviewing their speeches is the utter disregard they evinced for the checks and securities which were soon to be, from the Liberal point of view, the great obstacles to the adoption of the Derby-Disraeli scheme. Those checks and securities had indeed a singular history. Scorned by the faithful few on the Conservative benches as shams and impostures, they were branded by the official Liberals as substantial deductions from the enfranchisement of the bill. Nevertheless the Liberals most resolutely bent upon household suffrage showed little vehemence in opposing them. Least of all concerned for their fate in the ultimate event seemed the Government, which during the hottest weeks of the session strove to satisfy Conservatives that they would check democracy, and Liberals that they would have no sensible effect. The most important of them, that relating to personal ratepaying, was never condemned on a division. It had the advantage of Adullamite favour, of the contempt of Lord Cranborne's friends, of the politic tolerance of the Tea-room Liberals, of the strenuous advocacy of all ministerial partisans, and of most maladroit soft-hitting at the crisis of its fate from Mr. Gladstone's lieutenant, Mr. Childers. And yet it suddenly died and made no sign. The explanation is that it was utterly bad and silly, and that Mr. Disraeli never thought it otherwise.
But on the memorable 4th of March, of which I have just been speaking, the compound householder had not appeared in the discussion. Mr. Gladstone restricted his animadversions to minutia, and Mr. Lowe treated household suffrage as a "fatal and ominous" fait accompli. It was Lord Stanley, of all men, who endeavoured to restore timid legislators to equanimity. If anyone supposed, he said, that the Government were about to propose a measure more extreme than the opposite party would have agreed to, he was greatly mistaken. This cool and positive statement is now one of the chief wonders of this most wondrous session. When it was delivered Lord Kimberley, one of the most regular auditors of the Commons' debates, was sitting in the Ambassadors' Gallery, and he tossed his William Pitt nose high in air with unconcealed contempt. But there is no mystery in Lord Stanley's declaration if we apply to it the master-key of the session. Lord Stanley was justified in deeming the personal payment of rates a substantial check upon the democratic action of the Bill by the opposition it subsequently received from the Liberals; and though he pledged the Government not to introduce, he did not declare they would decline, ultra-democratic proposals. Mr. Disraeli's one resolution not to be out-bidden explains everything. It even renders intelligible the final surrender of personal rating to an opposition that probably might have been disintegrated and foiled. The real heads of the Government were as determined to leave no excuse for a Whig Reform Bill in a future year, as they were to give the House of Commons no opportunity of taking Reform out of their hands before the session had expired.
One of the signs of the times during the next anxious fortnight was that a report flew abroad, and was thought worthy of contradiction, that Mr. Disraeli had sought the advice of Mr. Bright. Strange to say, the denial, though it sufficed to suppress the rumour in its first form, did not affect the belief which was obtained for a revised version of the anecdote. According to that account, Mr. Disraeli sent a message to Mr. Bright by his, at that time, devoted satellite, Mr. Ralph Earle, requesting to speak with him. They had an interview in one of the corridors of the House—so ran the story—and Mr. Brand passing by just as it began, Mr. Disraeli exclaimed: "Ah, Brand will go and say we're making a coalition!" But he plunged into the subject of Reform, by saying he supposed the Government might count upon Mr. Bright's strenuous opposition to whatever Bill they might bring in. This supposition Mr. Bright, of course, repudiated, expressing his readiness to take what was fair from either side of the House. Then Mr. Disraeli was encouraged to burst into protestations that he had never opposed popular enfranchisement. "You will search my speeches in vain for such a passage," said he; and proceeded to impress upon Mr. Bright, as a thing most especially to be remembered, that he "had never praised Lowe." Mr. Bright is said to have been rather puzzled by these franknesses, and to have concluded that something large was about to be proposed. But even he did not, could not suppose, even after the resignation of the three Ministers, that he was within three months of the fruition of his hopes.
Lord Russell appears to have guessed what it would come to, for before the introduction of the Bill, which was fixed for the 18th March, he made a heavy speech in the House of Lords deprecating the swamping of other classes of voters by the importation of working men. To this Lord Derby replied most cavalierly, and a few days later he published to the world, through a meeting at Downing-street, the provisions of the Bill which on the following Monday his principal colleague introduced. The anticipation of Mr. Disraeli's statement was complained of as an affront to the House; but the effect of it was to render the comments of the leader of the Opposition on the night of the introduction of the Bill unusually mature and interesting. Mr. Gladstone evidently did not believe the House was ready for household suffrage. He did not scruple, therefore, to hint his own indisposition to go so far, though he carefully guarded himself from any profession of alarm. His manner was buoyant, authoritative, exacting, almost peremptory. Had the Government intended to stand or fall by the Bill, the speech would have been either the precursor of its defeat, or a historic monument of its imperfections. But the points of Mr. Gladstone's criticism were necessarily too minute to awaken enthusiasm, and the debate was a dull and brief one. Sir William Heathcote sounded the first note of independent Tory opposition in his most solid, gentlemanly, Oxford-mixture style. Mr. Lowe satirised the Bill generally, and dual voting in particular. Mr. Henley characteristically stood up for personal ratepaying, not merely as a political test, but as a social and moral obligation. Sir George Bowyer and Mr. Roebuck openly fell from Mr. Gladstone. Even Mr. Osborne was for giving the Government fair play. But Mr. Beresford Hope whimsically, and Lord Cranborne sadly, proclaimed the downfall of the Constitution. As for Mr. Disraeli, he was not yet ready to give the House more than a glimpse of his hand. His speech was spirited enough, but not thorough or plain-sailing. He resented the attacks on his party honour in theatrical tones, accompanied by most exuberant gesticulation. He made much of the inconsistency between those who condemned his conduct from Mr. Bright's point of view, and those who opposed his policy from Mr. Lowe's. But he was still hampered by the necessity of making that which he cared for least appear the most cherished portion of his plan. Not till another week had passed was he to get his feet fairly in the stirrups. The second reading of the Bill was the turning-point of the session. Everything had gone well for the Government since the three Ministers had seceded. Under inauspicious advice, asserted to be that of Lord Halifax, Mr. Gladstone had hinted a wish to select a 5l. line as the basis of opposition. Indeed, judging by all past experience, such a proposal was at once liberal and safe. But the time for medium proposals had passed when once household suffrage, however checked, had been responsibly proposed. The consequence, therefore, of the ‘5l. line" proposal was that the household-suffrage Liberals became as restive as the Adullamites. Opposition to the second reading was impossible. One may well conceive how a leader capable of privately creating enthusiasm amongst his followers would use these circumstances to stifle the hostile and to intoxicate the hesitant in his ranks. But it was in public that Mr. Disraeli's great coup was to be made. Looking back over this session of marvels, I can recal nothing so surprising as the hilarious earnestness, the contagious élan of his speech in concluding the debate on the second reading. He had listened unmoved to Mr. Gladstone's brilliant, scathing, and exhaustive criticisms; he had heard without wincing Mr. Hardy's bouncing protests against household suffrage; he had borne unwaveringly the peckings of one conscientious bore after another; he had focussed with his eye-glass—as he always does once every new member—the like, yet unlike, heir of the translated Russell, who that night made his début. At last, when the House, under the potent influence of a set speech from Mr. Bright, was exceedingly full, Mr. Disraeli sprang to his feet. His large tumbler and his little red despatch-box were both at hand. His mind was evidently possessed, but not oppressed—rather stimulated and brightened—by the resolve to secure in that one speech the carrying of a Reform Bill under the conduct of the Government. And he effected his purpose. There was hardly a sentiment in the speech which a statesman of Mr. Gladstone's elevated ambition would have cared to utter. To a man of Mr. Mill's calibre nearly everything in it must have been provocative of a noble compassion, unless indignation now and then mastered the more generous feeling. But, to use an expression very general that night, "it did the trick." Say rather it did a whole bagful of tricks. Its exuberance caught the House. Its bold caricature of Mr. Gladstone's cloud-compelling manner placed an obstacle such as ridicule can rarely raise in the path of the official opposition. The whole House seemed tickled too much ever seriously to fall out with Mr. Disraeli on this subject again. The Liberals below the gangway were charmed with the easy lavish vagueness, which they rightly interpreted as readiness to concede anything and everything that the Tory rank and file could be got to part with; and the latter would have parted with almost anything at that moment in honour of a leader who had given them so sweet an hour of triumph. It was the speech of the session, though hardly ten lines of it will be remembered; and men who have heard Mr. Disraeli throughout his career agree that never did he show such mastery over his audience, such boundless histrionic resource. From that moment the course of the Bill was clear, though the trying fights of the session were still to come.
On the 8th of April the Bill was to go into the Committee, and by an arrangement made at a Liberal "caucus" Mr. Coleridge was to move an instruction, which was to enable the House in committee to alter the law of rating, and to establish instead of the principle of the Bill what Mr. Henley called a hard-and-fast line. But when the Commons met that night all was confusion. Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Gladstone were being called out of the House with Sir George Grey. Mr. Locke, the burly member for Southwark, openly communicated with Mr. Disraeli. The hum which prevailed as the peers flocked into their seats and the members of the House settled into their places was not that of expectancy but that of curiosity. In a few minutes all was known. A meeting of household-suffrage Liberals had taken place in the Tea-room. The Whig phalanx was broken. If the Government would consent to the first part of the instruction—that empowering the Committee to deal with rating—the second (that proposing the hard-and-fast line) would not be pressed. In five minutes the great struggle had been avoided. The one subject of the night most ungenerously treated on all hands was Mr. Gladstone's failure. There can be no doubt that with the devotion of the Tearoom men to household suffrage was mingled a rather ignoble feeling that sufficient deference had not been paid to them in the recent party arrangements. Members of the new Cave went about loudly protesting that their leader was inaccessible; that of all the Radicals only Mr. Mill and Mr. Bright were consulted; that Russell's bee about swamping the middle classes had got into Gladstone's bonnet; that when they (the Cave men) hinted that they would like to take any bill that established the principle of household suffrage they were snubbed; that Mr. Milner Gibson busied himself in drawing amendments to catch the Cranbornites, and showed for some of the Radicals at Brooks's (for there are Radicals even there) and to others at the Reform a sublime contempt; that even Mr. Brand did not hesitate to boast that he could do without the household-suffrage men, and beat the Government with the aid of the Hope-Cranborne-Hubbard section opposite. Much of this was improbable, some of it no doubt untrue; but it is not always great influences that work great results, and it was these little mice of Liberal discontent that released the Tory lion from the net of difficulties in which he had been enmeshed. His genial summer-dove roar on the second reading had made them his friends, and now they nibbled helpfully at his toils. Before the House separated for Easter Mr. Disraeli had carried his personal-rating principle, which he was soon afterwards virtually to surrender by a majority of twenty-one; and so strong was his position even before the division, that he offered to Mr. Gladstone what was only prevented from being a personal affront by a studied selection of expressions which added bitterness to the slur for which it secured impunity.
Mr. Gladstone was placed at this moment in a position of excessive difficulty, but he is incapable of dudgeon when duty is before him. He did not renounce, as he at. first threatened, the endeavour to free the Bill from its restrictive inequalities. It would interest few readers to dwell on the minute details of the struggle, which ended in Mr. Disraeli yielding up to destruction, with an absurd affectation that to do so had throughout been the burning desire of the Government, the practice of compounding for rates, in order to admit to the franchise under the Bill those whose landlords now collect their rates with their rent. Having reached this pass, and having, with that childish love of overdoing his triumph which so peculiarly characterises him, declared that he had only been prevented from attaining it sooner by the objections of the Whigs, Mr. Disraeli had virtually accomplished a political feat more nearly approaching a miracle than any achievement of the last five-and-thirty years. The Bill left the Commons amidst the wailings of Mr. Lowe, Mr. Hope, and Lord Cranborne, to be received in the upper House with carpings from Earl Russell, and sepulchral prophecies of evil from the Earl of Shaftesbury. But it passed without difficulty, though not without alteration. These lines are necessarily written at a date when the final enactment of the Reform Bill can only be anticipated, but the most favourable anticipations will probably have been realised before my sketch of this wonderful session meets the public eye.
It is too early as yet, and these pages are hardly suited for any estimate of the results of the measure. I have been content to indicate the process by which it has been passed into law.
I do not, in concluding, conceal my own feeling that never was so great a result accomplished by means morally so small. The jealousies amongst Liberals, some of which (as Lord Elcho's and Lord Grosvenor's) have led to an unprecedented abnegation of principle, and others (as those of the Tea-room men) to a degree of faithfulness to extreme views usually deemed rash and unwise in members of a great party, have codperated with the ambition of the Conservatives never before so anxious to retain office and obtain a majority. Both advantages have been used with infinite adroitness and patience, and not a little dissimulative diplomacy by the daring Tory leader. That is the story of the Sessio Mirabilis of 1867. Those who think that strong principle and moral stability have been dethroned, may be encouraged to hope better things by observing that, though by a way they knew not, the most consistent and uncompromising Reformers have reached the climax of their desires. Those who think the constitution has been ruined and England transformed, may be consoled with the reflection that the public memory is short, and that if they will but throw themselves into the stream, nobody will care to remind them hereafter how furiously they strove to dam it.