[Footnote 264: In the course of the session, in order to tranquillize the public mind on the subject, secret committees were appointed by both Houses of Parliament to investigate the subject, from whose inquiries it appeared that, since the days when the government was endangered by the plots of the Jacobites, the power had been very sparingly used. The most conspicuous instance of its employment had been in the case of Bishop Atterbury, several of whose letters had been opened, and were produced in Parliament to justify the bill of "pains and penalties" which was passed against him. The power had been confined to Great Britain till the latter part of the last century, when it was judged desirable to extend it also to the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. But, since the Peace of Amiens, the number of letters opened in a year had not, on an average, exceeded eight; nor was there the least ground for suspecting that a single one had been opened except on such information as fully warranted suspicion.
The practice, however, was not confined to our own government. In the second volume of the "Life of Bishop Wilberforce" a page is given of his diary, dated July 18, 1854, which records a conversation in which the Duke of Newcastle and Lord John Russell took part, and in which it is mentioned that the French government, under the administration of M. Guizot, opened letters, and that the practice was not confined to monarchical or absolute governments, for "the American government opens most freely all letters." And, with reference to this particular case, the Duke of Newcastle said that "Sir James Graham really opened Mazzini's letters on information which led to a belief that a great act of violence and bloodshed might be prevented by it."—Life of Bishop Wilberforce, ii., 247.]
[Footnote 265: A subsequent act, passed since the date at which the present history closes, has repealed even this exception. By the 33d Victoria, c. 14 ("Law Reports," p. 169), it is enacted that "an alien, to whom a certificate of naturalization is granted, shall in the United Kingdom be entitled to all political and other rights, powers, and privileges, and be subject to all obligations to which a natural born British subject is entitled as subject in the United Kingdom," etc.; and at the general election of 1880 the Baron de Ferrieres, a Belgian nobleman, who had been naturalized in 1867, was elected M.P. for Cheltenham.]
[Footnote 266: In one instance—on the question whether twelve should be the number of hours, as proposed by the Government—the majority against that number was 186 to 183. But immediately afterward a majority of 188 to 184 decided against Lord Ashley's alternative proposal of ten hours.]
[Footnote 267: As President of the Board of Trade. He afterward was raised to the Peerage as Lord Taunton.]
[Footnote 268: The second reading was carried in the House of Lords by 49 to 37.]
[Footnote 269: See "Peel's Memoirs," ii., 173.]
[Footnote 270: It has been observed that till the Corn-laws were repealed there had been no instance whatever of any person who had been engaged in trade becoming a cabinet minister. Since that time there have been several, some of whom only relinquished their share in houses of business on receiving their appointments, and some who are generally understood to have continued to participate in the profits of trade while members of an administration.]
[Footnote 271: Alison, quoting the General Report of the Census Commissioners, estimates the deaths caused by famine and the diseases engendered by it at the appalling number of 590,000, and states the sums advanced under different acts of Parliament to meet the emergency at £7,132,268.—History of Europe, vii., 274, 276, 2d series.]
[Footnote 272: The same statesman who has previously been mentioned as Lord Stanley, and whom the death of his father had recently raised to the House of Peers.]
[Footnote 273: In 1853 he said to Lord Clarendon, speaking of a new bill which he was pressing on Lord Aberdeen, then Prime-minister, "I am for making it as Conservative as possible, and that by a large extension of the suffrage. The Radicals are the ten-pound holders. The five-pound holders will be Conservative, as they are more easily acted upon."—Life of the Prince Consort, ii., 503. It was the same idea that inspired some of the details of the Reform Bill subsequently passed by Lord Derby's third ministry.]
[Footnote 274: "Life of the Prince Consort," iv., 395.]
[Footnote 275: "Life of the Prince Consort," v., 56.]
Dismissal of Lord Palmerston.—Theory of the Relation between the Sovereign and the Cabinet.—Correspondence of the Sovereign with French Princes.—Russian War.—Abolition of the Tax on Newspapers.—Life Peerages.—Resignation of two Bishops.—Indian Mutiny.—Abolition of the Sovereign Power of the Company.—Visit of the Prince of Wales to India.—Conspiracy Bill.—Rise of the Volunteers.—National Fortifications.—The Lords Reject the Measure for the Repeal of the Paper-duties.—Lord Palmerston's Resolutions.—Character of the Changes during the last Century.
The frequency of ministerial changes at this time has already been mentioned, and the first of them took place at the beginning of 1852, under circumstances which throw some light on a question which has never been exactly defined—the duty of the different members of a cabinet to one another, to the Prime-minister, and to the sovereign.
Queen Victoria had a high idea of her duties and responsibilities. From any legal responsibility she was aware that she was exempt; but she did not the less consider that a moral responsibility rested on her not to be content to give her royal sanction as a mere matter of form to every scheme or measure which might be submitted to her, but to examine every case for herself, to form her own opinion, and, if it differed from that of her ministers, to lay her objections and views fairly before them, though prepared, as the constitution required, to act on their decision rather than on her own, if, in spite of her arguments, they adhered to their judgment. And in carrying out this notion of her duty she was singularly aided by the Prince, her husband, a man of perfectly upright character, of great general ability, and who, from the first moment of his married life, regulated his views of every question, domestic and foreign, by its bearing on English interests and English feelings, to which he early acclimatized himself with a remarkable readiness of appreciation.
In the administration of Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary, and during its latter years foreign affairs occupied more of the attention of the country than matters of domestic policy.
The revolution of 1848, which overthrew the Orleans dynasty, had produced in France a state of affairs but little removed from anarchy, which was scarcely mitigated by the election of Prince Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of the new republic for four years, so constant was the opposition which the Republican party in the Assembly offered to every part of his policy. They even carried their opposition so far as to form a deliberate plan for the impeachment of his minister and himself, and for his arrest and imprisonment at Vincennes. But he was well-informed of all these dangers, and on the morning of the 2d of December, 1851 (the day, as was commonly believed, having been selected by him as being the anniversary of his uncle's great victory of Austerlitz), he anticipated them by the arrest of all the leading malcontents in their beds; which he followed up by an appeal to the people to adopt a new constitution which he set before them, the chief article of which was the appointment of a President for ten years.
No one could avoid seeing that what was aimed at was the re-establishment of the Empire in his own person. And so arbitrary a deed, as was inevitable, produced great excitement in England and anxious deliberations in the cabinet. Their decision, in strict uniformity with the principle that rules our conduct toward foreign nations, was to instruct our ambassador in Paris, Lord Normanby, to avoid any act or word which could wear the appearance of an act of interference of any kind in the internal affairs of France. But, on Lord Normanby reporting these instructions to the French Foreign Secretary, M. Guizot, he learned, to his surprise and perplexity, that Lord Palmerston had interfered already by expressing to the French ambassador in London, M. de Walewski, his warm approval of the President's conduct;[276] and Lord Normanby, greatly annoyed at being directed to hold one language in Paris, while the head of his department was taking a widely different tone in Downing Street—a complication which inevitably "subjected him to misrepresentation and suspicion"—naturally complained to the Prime-minister of being placed in so embarrassing a situation.
Both the Queen and the Prime-minister had for some time been discontented at the independent manner in which Lord Palmerston apparently considered himself entitled to transact the business of his department, carrying it so far as even to claim a right to send out despatches without giving them any intimation of either their contents or their objects. And the Queen, in consequence, above a year before,[277] had drawn up a memorandum, in which she expressed with great distinctness her desire to have every step which the Foreign Secretary might recommend to be taken laid clearly before her, with sufficient time for consideration, "that she might know distinctly to what she had given her royal sanction;" and "to be kept informed of what passed between him and the Foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken," etc., etc. And, after such an intimation of her wish, she not unnaturally felt great annoyance at learning that in a transaction so important as this coup d'etat (to give it the name by which from the first it was described in every country) Lord Palmerston had taken upon himself to hold language to the French Ambassador "in complete contradiction to the line of strict neutrality and passiveness which she had expressed her desire to see followed with regard to the late convulsions at Paris, and which was approved by the cabinet."[278] The Prime-minister seems to have taken the same view of the act, and remonstrated with Lord Palmerston, who treated the matter very lightly, and justified his right to hold such a conversation, which he characterized as "unofficial," in such a tone and on such grounds that Lord John considered he left him no alternative "but to advise the Queen to place the Foreign Office in other hands."
A careful and generally impartial political critic has recently expressed an opinion "that Lord Palmerston made good his case;"[279] but his argument on the transaction seems to overlook the most material point in it. Lord Palmerston's own defence of his conduct was, that "his conversation with Walewski was of an unofficial description; that he had said nothing to him which would in any degree or way fetter the action of the government; and that, if it was to be held that a Secretary of State could never express any opinion to a foreign minister on passing events except as the organ of a previously consulted cabinet, there would be an end of that easy and familiar intercourse which tends essentially to promote good understanding between ministers and government;" and he even added, as a personal justification of himself as against the Prime-minister, that three days afterward Lord John Russell himself, Lord Lansdowne (the President of the Council), and Sir Charles Wood (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had all discussed the transaction with M. de Walewski at a dinner-party, "and their opinions were, if anything, rather more strongly favorable than his had been."
This personal aspect of the case it is impossible to discuss, since there are no means of knowing whether the ministers mentioned would have admitted the correctness of this report of their language. If it were confessed to be accurate, it would only show them to have been guilty of equal impropriety, and to a great extent justify him as against the Prime-minister, whose condemnation of his language, if he were conscious that he had held the same himself, would be inexplicable. But it certainly does not justify him in respect of her Majesty or the cabinet collectively, since the Queen's complaint was, not that he held unofficial conversations as a private individual, and not as "the organ of a previously consulted cabinet," but that the tenor of the conversation which he had held was in direct contradiction to the tone which the cabinet had decided should be taken on the subject; that his language was calculated to draw the government into a course of action which it had been deliberately resolved to avoid. And, in spite of the deference due to Lord Palmerston's great experience, it is hard to see how a conversation between our Foreign Secretary and the French Ambassador on an action, the result of which is as yet undecided, can be wholly unofficial, in the sense of having no influence on the conduct of affairs, or, as he expressed it, "in no degree or way fettering the action of the government."
The result was, as has been mentioned before, that the Prime-minister recommended the removal of Lord Palmerston from his office, and that he was removed accordingly. And this conclusion of the case seems to show that the statement of the position of the Prime-minister in the cabinet is rather understated by Mr. Gladstone in one of his essays,[280] where he says: "The head of the British government is not a Grand Vizier. He has no powers, properly so called, over his colleagues; on the rare occasions when a cabinet determines its course by the votes of its members, his vote only counts as one of theirs." He admits at the same time that "they are appointed and dismissed by the sovereign on his advice." And surely to have the right of giving this advice is to have the greatest possible power over his colleagues; not power, perhaps, to change their opinions (though it possibly at times has had power to prevent the expression of them), but power to compass their immediate removal from the administration, as was exercised in this instance, and as had been exercised by Pitt with regard to Lord Thurlow. That a difference of opinion, even on an important subject, is not always regarded as a sufficient cause for such a dismissal; that a Prime-minister, especially if conscious of his strength, occasionally consents to retain colleagues who differ from him on some one subject, the same work to which we are partly indebted for our knowledge of the details of this affair—the "Life of the Prince Consort"—furnishes two remarkable instances in which the Prime-minister, then Lord Palmerston himself, submitted to be overruled. We read there that on one occasion, when "Count Persigny sought the active intervention of England by the way of 'moral support' to a demand" which France proposed to address to Austria, "Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell (then Foreign Secretary) were disposed to accede; but a different view was taken both by her Majesty and by the cabinet, and Count Persigny's request was accordingly declined."[281] On this occasion, it is true, he was yielding to an overwhelming majority of his colleagues (her Majesty's approval must, of course, have been expressed subsequently to their decision). But in another instance we find the same Prime-minister consenting to the introduction of a bill by one of his colleagues, Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, of which he disapproved so highly that, after it had been passed by a very slender majority of the House of Commons,[282] he expressed to the Queen a hope that the closeness of the division "might encourage the House of Lords to throw out the bill when it should come to their House, and that he was bound in duty to say that, if they should do so, they would perform a good public service;" and after they had rejected it by a majority of eighty-nine, he pronounced that "they had done a right and useful thing," reporting to her Majesty, as a corroboration of this opinion, and as a proof that it was largely shared by the public out-of-doors, that "the people in the gallery of the House of Lords are said to have joined in the cheers which broke out when the numbers of the division were announced."[283] And on a third occasion also he bore with the same colleague's opposition to a measure which he and all the rest of the cabinet justly thought of vital importance to the best interests of the country, the fortification of our great seaports, allowing him to object for a time in private, and even to threaten public opposition to it the next year, since he felt assured that his opposition, if carried out, which he doubted, would be wholly ineffectual.[284]
The personal interest in politics which this laudable habit of judging of everything for herself naturally engendered in the Queen's mind led, however, to the adoption by her Majesty, in more than one instance, of a course at variance not only with all historical precedent, but, with deference be it said, with constitutional principle, sanctioned though it was by more than one ministry. When the First Napoleon, after his elevation to the head of the French government as First Consul, proposed, by an autograph letter to George III., to treat with that sovereign for the conclusion of peace between the two nations, Pitt, to whom his Majesty communicated the letter, had no difficulty in deciding that it would be unseasonable for the King "to depart from the forms long established in Europe for transacting business with foreign states,"[285] and, under his guidance, the cabinet instructed Lord Grenville, as Foreign Secretary, to address the reply to the First Consul's letter to the French Foreign Secretary, M. de Talleyrand.
But this reign has witnessed several departures from the old and convenient rule. Its violation was not begun by her Majesty, but by the Emperor Nicholas of Russia in the year preceding the Crimean war. He wrote to the Queen herself to discuss some of the points in dispute, and she answered his letter with her own hand.[286] The outbreak of war which soon ensued prevented any continuation of that correspondence; but the close alliance which that war for a time produced between England and France, strengthened as it was by an interchange of visits between the royal and imperial families, which led to the establishment of a strong mutual friendliness and regard, led also to an occasional interchange of letters on some of the gravest questions affecting the policy of the two nations. The correspondence was sanctioned by successive English cabinets, every letter which the Queen either received from, or sent to, any foreign prince on political affairs being invariably communicated by her either to the Prime-minister or to the Foreign Secretary; and they, in one instance, even suggesting to her Majesty to write to Louis Napoleon[287] with an object so delicate as that of influencing the language with which he was about to open his Chambers.
But we must think the line recommended by Pitt to George III. both more constitutional and more safe. A letter from one sovereign to another on political subjects cannot be divested of the character of a state-paper, and for every state-paper some one must be responsible. The sovereign cannot be, but for every one of his actions the ministers are. And it follows, therefore, that they are thus made responsible for documents of which they have not been the original authors; of which, were it not for the courtesy of the sovereign, they might by possibility be wholly ignorant; and with parts of which, even with the knowledge which that courtesy has afforded them, they may not fully coincide, since they could hardly venture to subject a composition of their royal mistress to a vigorous criticism. Such a correspondence, therefore, places them so far in a false position, and it runs the risk of placing the sovereign himself in one equally false and unpleasant, since, if the opinions expressed or the advice given fail of their effect, the adviser is so far lowered in the eyes of his correspondent and of the world.
As has been incidentally mentioned, in the spring of 1854 war broke out with Russia, nominally on account of the Sultan's refusal to concede some of the Czar's demands concerning the condition of the Greek Church in Palestine, but more really because, believing the Turkish empire to be in the last stage of decay, he hoped by hastening its destruction to obtain the lion's share of its spoils. And for the first time for two centuries an English and French army stood together in a field of battle as allies. In the field our armies were invariably victorious, inflicting severe defeats on the enemy at Alma and Inkerman, and wresting from them the mighty fortress of Sebastopol, in the Crimea, which hitherto they had believed to be absolutely impregnable. Our fleet was, if possible, still more triumphant, destroying Bomarsund and Sweaborg, in the Baltic, without the Russian ships daring to fire a single gun in their defence, while their Black Sea fleet was even sunk by its own admiral, as the only expedient to save it from capture. And in the spring of 1856 the war was terminated by a treaty of peace, in which, for the first time since the days of Peter the Great, Russia was compelled to submit to a cession of territory. But (it may almost be said) to the credit of the nation these successes, glorious and substantial as they were, made at the time scarcely so great an impression on the people as the hardships which, in the first winter of the war, our troops suffered from the defective organization of our commissariat. Want of shelter and want of food proved more destructive than the Russian cannon; presently our gallant soldiers were reported to be perishing by hundreds for lack of common necessaries; and the news awakened so clamorous a discontent throughout the whole of the United Kingdom as led to another change of ministry, and Lord Aberdeen was succeeded by Lord Palmerston. While a war on so large a scale was being waged there was but little time to spare for the work of the legislator, though it is not foreign to our subject to relate that in 1855 the last of those taxes which the political economists denounced as taxes on knowledge, the tax on newspapers, was abolished. Originally it had been fourpence; in 1836 Mr. Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Melbourne's ministry, had reduced it to a penny; and now, with a very general acquiescence, it was abolished altogether.
The entire abolition of a tax is not properly to be called a financial measure, that epithet belonging rather to those which aim at an augmentation of revenue by an increase in the number of contributors to a tax, while lessening the amount paid by each. But the abandonment of the tax in question should rather be regarded as a sacrifice of revenue for the instruction of the people in political knowledge; a price paid to enable and induce the poorer classes to take a well-instructed interest in the affairs of the state and the general condition of the country. And, viewed in this light, the abolition of this tax must be allowed to have been a political measure of great importance, and to have contributed greatly to the end which was aimed at. Till 1836 a daily paper, costing sevenpence, was the luxury of the few; and the sale even of those which had the largest circulation was necessarily limited. But the removal of the tax at once gave birth to a host of penny newspapers, conducted for the most part with great ability, and soon attaining a circulation which reached down to all but the very poorest class; so that the working-man has now an opportunity of seeing the most important questions of the day discussed from every point of view, and of thus acquiring information and forming a judgment on them which the subsequent extension of the franchise makes it more than ever desirable that he should be able to form for himself. Every movement in that direction renders it the more necessary to raise the intelligence of the great mass of the people to a level which may enable them to make a safe and salutary use of the power placed in their hands. And no mode of implanting a wholesome political feeling in the masses can equal candid political discussion: discussion one ruling principle of which shall be to teach that the greatest differences of opinion may be honestly entertained; that, with scarcely an exception, the leading men of each party, those who have any title to the name of statesman, are animated with an honest, patriotic desire to promote the best interests of the nation; and that the elucidation of truth is not aided by unreasoning invective and the undeserved imputation of base motives.
One of the last topics discussed by Mr. Hallam was the introduction of a bill to limit for the future the prerogative of the crown in a field in which its exercise had previously been unrestrained, the creation of peers;[288] and among the last which we shall have to examine was one of an exactly opposite character, though relating to the same subject, the creation of a life peerage. In the winter of 1855 Sir James Parke, one of the Barons of the Exchequer, was created Lord Wenslydale, by letters-patent which conferred the title limiting it also to the new peer's own life. The professed object of the measure was to strengthen the judicial power of the House of Lords. But it was not denied that the limitation of the peerage conferred on him for his own life (a limitation which made no practical difference to Sir James himself, since he had no children) was intended to raise the question whether the crown could or could not create a life peerage with a seat in the House of Lords. A creation so limited was so novel, or at all events so long disused a proceeding, that it inevitably provoked examination and discussion. And, as it was found that the lawyers in general regarded it as indefensible, at the beginning of the session of 1856 Lord Lyndhurst brought the matter before the House of Lords by a motion for the appointment of a committee of privileges to investigate and report upon it. There were two aspects of the case which naturally came to be considered in the debates on it which ensued: the advantages or disadvantages, in other words, the political expediency, of such a form of letters-patent, and their legal or constitutional propriety. It was, of course, with the latter alone that the committee of privileges had to deal. And this part of the question was examined with great legal and antiquarian learning, though, as was almost inevitable, it was argued as a party question, except, indeed, by the lawyers. They, with the exception of the Chancellor, Lord Cranworth, who had advised the measure, were unanimous in their condemnation of it; the Whig peers, Lord Brougham and Lord Campbell, then Chief-justice, being as positive in their denial of the right so to exercise the prerogative as those on the Opposition side of the House, Lord Lyndhurst or Lord St. Leonards.[289]
The arguments against the measure were chiefly these: The objectors drew a distinction between what was legal according to the strict letter of the law, and what was constitutional; contending that there might be exercises of the prerogative which could not be affirmed to be illegal, but which no one would deny to be altogether inconsistent with the principles and practice of the constitution, since a great part of the constitution rested on unwritten law, on long-continued usage, Lex et consuetudo Parliamenti. And they affirmed that this measure was so opposed to that usage, that "no instance had occurred within a period of four hundred years in which a commoner had been raised to a seat in the House of Lords by a patent of peerage containing only an estate for life;"[290] one most essential, if not the most essential character of the peerage being that it was an hereditary dignity, and one which combined with its rank an hereditary seat in the House of Lords. That one or two instances of life peerages were to be found in the annals of the Plantagenet kings was not denied, though none exactly similar in character.[291] But Lord Lyndhurst argued that precedents which had occurred "at a time when the constitution of the country was neither understood nor fully formed" were entitled to but little respect; and Lord Derby, limiting the age of valid precedents a little more strictly, "said frankly that he had no respect for any precedent affecting the prerogatives of the crown that dated farther back than the year 1688." And since that time, or indeed since the time of Henry VIII., it was certain that no life peerage had ever been granted, except by Charles II., James II., and George I. and II., to some of their mistresses, instances wholly beside the present case, since, of course, none of those ladies could claim seats in the House of Lords. Indeed, it was believed that both Mr. Pitt, at the time of the Union, and Lord Grey, in 1832, had considered the question, and had both decided against the propriety of advising a creation of life peerages.
In defence of the measure Lord Granville refused to admit the distinction between what was legal and what was constitutional; if a measure were both legal, that is, warranted by the letter of the law, and also expedient, these two concurrent qualities, he contended, made it constitutional. He denied, also, that any legal prerogatives of the crown could be held to have lapsed through disuse; nullum tempus occurrit Regi; and he challenged any peer to assert that the sovereign had lost the right of refusing his royal assent to a measure passed by the two Houses, merely because no sovereign since William III. had so exercised his royal prerogative. And against the authority of Mr. Pitt and Lord Grey he quoted that of Lord John Russell, who, in 1851, had offered a life peerage to an eminent judge, who, though he had declined the offer, had been influenced in his refusal by no doubt of the right of the crown to make it.
On the expediency of the measure its opponents had urged that it would effect a remodelling of the House of Peers, a total change of its constitution, by the introduction of a second and distinct class of peerages; and Lord Campbell, with a not unbecoming jealousy for what he regarded as the interests of his brother lawyers, argued that it would "henceforth prevent any lawyer, however eminent he might have been as an advocate, whatever services he might have rendered to the state in the House of Commons, whatever fame or fortune he might have acquired, from aspiring to an hereditary peerage, or to becoming the founder of a family, since, to make a distinction between the Chancellor and the Chief-justice, between one Chancellor or Chief-justice and another, when coming into the Upper House, as to the tenure of their honors, would be intolerable; all must be under the same rule, 'no son of theirs succeeding.'" And Lord Lyndhurst closed his argument by drawing a comparison between the House of Lords and the French Senate: "It was but a few weeks since he had read an official comment in the Moniteur, coming from the highest source, on the inefficiency, the want of patriotism, energy, and the backwardness to fulfil the high destinies to which they were called, that characterized that illustrious body, the Senate of France. He had no disposition to cut down our tribunal to that life interest on which the Senate of France is based, as he believed the hereditary character of the House of Lords to be one from which great and important advantages are derived.... The hereditary principle," he added, "is intwined in every part of our constitution; we in this House enjoy our hereditary rights in common with the crown; we mutually support and assist each other, and we form a barrier and defence to protect both those branches of the constitution against any by whom they may be assailed."
As Lord Granville had made the expediency of any measure the quality which, combined with legality, was sufficient to establish its constitutional character, he naturally labored this point with especial diligence. He dwelt upon the great importance of strengthening the judicial element in the House, since it was the great ultimate court of appeal. He produced a letter of the great Chancellor, Lord Eldon, which quoted instances in which various administrations had found difficulties in the way of introducing eminent lawyers into the House, because their want of adequate fortune to support the rank had disinclined them to encumber their descendants with an hereditary peerage. He showed also that that difficulty had made so great an impression on their own Chairman of Committees, Lord Redesdale, that on one occasion he had intimated a feeling in favor of allowing "the Law, in the same way as the Church, to be, to a certain extent, represented in the House by the holders of certain offices, who should be admitted to that House as Peers of Parliament during the continuance of holding such office" (to which argument Earl Grey added another, that the instance of bishops, who were but life peers, proved that the holders of life peerages were not considered inferior to hereditary peers).
He dwelt, too, on the evil consequence of the Lords "placing themselves before the country as seeking to limit the prerogative of the crown, when that prerogative was exercised with a view to remedy something that was weak, and to remove a certain imminent danger." What the danger was he certainly did not explain. But Lord Grey, in supporting him, took wider ground, and, applying the argument derived from Lord Eldon's letter to other professions, extolled the idea of instituting life peerages as one whose effect would be "more easily to open the doors of the House to men whom it was desirable should be admitted—to distinguished officers; to eminent writers; to members of the House of Commons, who in their different lines might have rendered good service to the state, but who, though possessing means amply sufficient to support their rank during their own life, yet, from having only a life income, or a numerous family to be provided for, might be unable to accept an hereditary peerage without injury to their family. In such instances," he contended, "it would be most desirable to grant peerages for life only. Such a proceeding would, he was convinced, by no means disincline others in different circumstances to accept hereditary titles, nor indispose the ministry to confer them. Nor did he see any reason for fearing that the practice of creating life peerages would be more likely to be abused for the purpose of increasing the power of the minister than the creation of hereditary peerages."
The committee of privileges was appointed, and reported it as the opinion of the members that "neither the letters-patent by themselves, or with, the addition of the usual writ of summons, could entitle the grantee to sit and vote in Parliament." And the House, by a majority of ninety-two to fifty-seven, adopted their report. The ministers yielded to its judgment, and ennobled Lord Wenslydale by a new patent in the usual form, as Lord Derby had suggested. But Lord Derby desired to show that his objection had been founded on principle only; and, as he was willing to admit that, apart from the principle involved, "some advantages in certain cases, and under certain modifications, might arise from peerages for life," he proposed the appointment of a select committee "to consider the expediency of making provision for the more efficient discharge of the duties of the House as a court of appeal." The committee was appointed, and, after careful consideration, recommended the creation of two new offices, to be held by two law lords, as "Deputy Speakers of the House of Lords," who should be judges of at least five years' standing, and should be enabled "by authority of Parliament to sit and vote in the House, and enjoy all the rights and privileges of a peer of Parliament under a patent conferring a peerage for life only, if the crown may have granted or shall grant the same to such persons in preference to an hereditary peerage, provided always that not more than four persons shall have seats in the House at one time as peers for life." Such an arrangement would have introduced a new practice, but not a new principle, since the annexation of a seat in the House of Lords to certain offices had existed from time immemorial in the case of the bishops. And the bill was carried in the House of Lords, but defeated in the Commons by a motion to refer it to a committee, which was adopted by a small majority, in a not very full House,[292] toward the end of the session.
Those who look at the question apart from all preference of one minister or one party to another will, probably, be of opinion that the decision of the committee, that a life peerage thus created by the crown could not confer a seat in Parliament, was conformable to the most legitimate view of the constitution. It was, indeed, matter of history that in the Middle Ages the crown had exercised its prerogative in many ways which it had since abandoned. Boroughs had been enfranchised, and again disfranchised, apparently from no motive but pure caprice; writs of summons had been withheld from peers.[293] But no one would have justified the repetition of such acts now. And common-sense, as well as recognized usage, favored the doctrine that long disuse was a sufficient and lawful barrier against their revival. That the power of conferring life peerages with a seat in Parliament—of which, perhaps, the only undeniable instances were the cases of the brothers of Henry V., whose royal blood would in those days, probably, have been held to warrant an exception in their favor—had not been exercised for full four hundred years, was admitted; and the assumption that so long a disuse of a power was tantamount to a tacit renunciation of it, is quite compatible with a loyal and due zeal for the maintenance of other parts of the prerogative which have suffered no such abatement.
If, however, we consider the expediency of the measure, or, in other words, the possible advantage that might ensue from the existence of a power to create life peerages with a seat in Parliament, opinions will probably be more divided. We have seen that Lord Derby allowed that there might be advantages in such an exercise of power under certain limitations; and the existing system does, undoubtedly, appear open to improvement in certain cases. At present the only mode of rewarding naval or military commanders who have performed brilliant and useful service, or a Speaker of the House of Commons, whose public career, though less showy and glorious, may at times have been scarcely less valuable, and has certainly been by far more irksome, is the grant of a peerage with a pension for lives. Without the peerage they cannot have the pension.[294] And, consequently, many most distinguished officers, whose conspicuous merits well deserved conspicuous honors, have gone unrewarded except by some promotion of knighthood, which carries with it no substantial benefit; while the descendants of some of those who have been ennobled have openly lamented that the only mode which could be found of honoring their fathers proves a punishment to their heirs, by encumbering them with an empty title, which they are unable adequately to support, and practically closing against them avenues to possible wealth and distinction which custom pronounces derogatory to their rank. So, not to mention the names of living worthies, no reward could be found for Sir W. Parker, that brave and skilful seaman who conducted a British fleet two hundred miles up a Chinese river, and crowned his exploits by the capture of a mighty city, which had never before beheld a European flag; nor for Inglis, who, when the safety of our Indian Empire hung upon his gallantry, successfully sustained a siege whose hardships and dangers are surpassed by none in ancient or modern history. Many will, probably, be of opinion that it is not for the honor of England that such services should want due recognition; and that for men like those life peerages with liberal pensions would be an appropriate recompense. It would, of course, be impossible to limit the number of them beforehand, but it would also be needless, since the nature of the services by which alone they could be deserved would act of itself as a sufficient limitation.
One of the expedients which had been mentioned in this discussion had been the annexation of peerages to certain offices, to which it had been regarded as an unanswerable objection that this would be the creation of an absolutely unheard-of tenure, the peer thus created being able at pleasure to lay down his peerage, or even, it might be, being removable. But before the end of the session an emergency arose which induced Parliament to sanction the principle, novel though it was, that an official peerage, if a bishopric may be so called, might be laid down with the sanction of Parliament when the holder was no longer able to discharge its duties. Two of the most eminent members of the Episcopal bench, Dr. Blomfield, Bishop of London, and Dr. Maltby, Bishop of Durham, had become wholly incapable of discharging their duties, the one having been struck down by paralysis, and the other being almost blind. And they now proposed to the Prime-minister that he should make some arrangement by which they might be allowed to relinquish their offices, retaining a certain portion of the income of their sees as a retiring pension. There was no precedent for such an arrangement, but the necessity of the two cases was so manifest, the injury which the Church must suffer if the superintendence of two such important dioceses were to be neglected, was so palpable, and the conditions of the retiring pensions asked were so moderate and equitable, that Lord Palmerston had no hesitation in sanctioning the introduction of a bill to give effect to the arrangement proposed.
It did not pass without vigorous resistance from more than one quarter. The Bishop of Exeter complained of it as incompatible with the great Church principle, that a bishop could only resign his office to the archbishop of his province; others opposed it as a violation of the common law, which forbids any bargain being made for the resignation of an office; while some, referring to the prohibition of simony (a word, perhaps, as much misunderstood and as often misapplied as any in the language), denounced the arrangement that the retiring prelates were to have pensions as simoniacal.[295] The most reasonable objection made to the proceeding was, that such exceptional legislation to meet an isolated case tended to establish a dangerous precedent, and that, as there were other men of great age on the bench, it would be better to effect the end now aimed at by a large general measure providing means for the retirement of all clergymen, those of inferior rank as well as bishops, whom age or infirmity might incapacitate. But the general feeling was against delay. The bill passed, and served in some degree as a model for that general measure which was soon afterward introduced, and which, as was suggested on this occasion, provided for an arrangement similar in principle being carried out whenever a priest holding any kind of ecclesiastical preferment should become disabled for the performance of its duties.
There can be no doubt that such legislation was absolutely necessary in the interests of the Church, taking that expression to include, not the clergy alone, but the whole congregation of Churchmen. But it introduced a remarkable change into the system of ecclesiastical peerages, and, so far, into the constitution of the House of Lords. What was resigned by the two prelates was not the peerage (they had still the right to be styled "my lord"), but the seat in the House of Lords, which was a part, and which had hitherto been regarded as an inseparable part of it, or, at least (as it should, perhaps, rather be said, since the recent regulation that the junior bishop should not have a seat was a clear violation of that principle), which hitherto no one had been able to dissociate from the peerage after it had been once enjoyed.
The treaties which terminated the war with Russia were not concluded till the spring of 1856; and it was well, indeed, that the country had no longer a foreign war on her hands, for a twelvemonth had scarcely elapsed when the very continuation of her existence as a great Eastern power was suddenly imperilled by what, regarded in one aspect, was a mutiny of her troops on a most extensive scale; in another, a civil war, waged by a combination of native princes, Hindoo as well as Mohammedan,[296] for the total extinction of our power, and the expulsion of the British race from Bengal. As early as the first week of February several commanders of regiments and other authorities received warnings of the organization of a wide conspiracy against our power; and in the second week of May the troops at Meerut broke into open mutiny, set fire to the public buildings, murdered their officers, and even their wives and children, and then marched off to Delhi, where the garrison was prepared to receive them with open arms, and to imitate their atrocities. The contagion spread, and in a few weeks nearly all Bengal was in arms. In one or two instances the native chiefs stood by us, but the greater number joined the insurgents, some from the desire to throw off our yoke, but others, probably, from constraint and through fear. Whatever were their motives, before the end of June nearly all the principal cities and fortresses of Bengal, up to the very gates of Calcutta, were in the hands of the insurgents, the chief exception being at the great city of Lucknow, where, though the mutineers got possession of the city, a British garrison held the Residency, in the centre; and, maintaining themselves with heroic fortitude, unsurpassed in all the history of war, for nearly nine months, contributed more than any other body of men to the final suppression of the revolt. It would be beside our purpose here to dwell upon the great deeds by which in that terrible year our army, in all its branches, maintained its old renown; upon the recapture of Delhi; the deliverance of the incomparable defenders and preservers of Lucknow; the exploits of Lawrence, and Inglis, and Havelock, and Outram, and Peel, and Campbell; and, if we are forced to deny ourselves the proud gratification of dwelling on their combined heroism and wisdom, we may for the same reason be spared the pain of recounting the horrid cruelties wreaked in too many instances not only on the officers who fell into the rebels' hands, and on the civil magistrates, but on the helpless women and children. In the first excitement of fear and horror those cruelties were, no doubt, greatly exaggerated, but still enough remains proved to stamp the insurrection as one branding with the foulest disgrace the race which perpetrated and exulted in them.
It was not till the last week of 1858 that the last sparks of rebellion were finally extinguished by the defeat in Oude of the last body of rebels who remained in arms, and the flight of the remnant of their force across the frontier of Nepaul; but, even before that day came, the ministry at home had been led to see the necessity of putting the government of the country for the future on a different footing. It could hardly be doubted that the prompt suppression of a revolt of so unprecedented a magnitude, and the proof given in the course of our operations that the British soldier still maintained the same superiority over the native trooper as in the days of Clive, had heightened our reputation and the belief of our power among the native tribes. But, speedily and decisively crushed though it had been, the revolt had given too terrible a proof of the inconstancy and treachery of the native tribes not to act as a warning to our statesmen; and the reflection that was thus forced upon them showed that a company of merchants, however distinguished by general courage and sagacity they had shown themselves, was no longer qualified to exercise imperial dominion over a territory which now extended over more than a million of square miles, and more than a hundred and fifty millions of native subjects.