Lord John Russell - Stuart J. Reid (recommended reading txt) 📗

Speaking at a political meeting two days after the dissolution, Lord John Russell said that the electors in the approaching struggle were called on not merely to select the best men to defend their rights and interests, but also to give a plain answer to the question, put to the constituencies by the King in dissolving Parliament, Do you approve, aye or no, of the principle of Reform in the representation? Right through the length and breadth of the kingdom his words were caught up, and from hundreds of platforms came the question, ‘Reform: Aye or No?’ and the response in favour of the measure was emphatic and overwhelming. The country was split into the opposing camps of the Reformers and anti-Reformers, and every other question was thrust aside in the struggle. The political unions proved themselves to be a power in the land, and the operatives and artisans of the great manufacturing centres, though still excluded from citizenship, left no stone unturned to ensure the popular triumph. Lord John was pressed to stand both for Lancashire and Devonshire; he chose the latter county, with which he was closely associated by family traditions as well as by personal friendships, and was triumphantly returned, with Lord Ebrington as colleague. Even in the agricultural districts the ascendency of the old landed families was powerless to arrest the movement, and as the results of the elections became known it was seen that Lord Sefton had caught the situation in his dry remark: ‘The county members are tumbling about like ninepins.’ Parliament assembled in June, and it became plain at a glance that democratic ideas were working like leaven upon public opinion in England. In spite of rotten boroughs, close corporations, the opposition of the majority of the territorial aristocracy, and the panic of thousands of timid people, who imagined that the British Constitution was imperilled, the Reformers came back in strength, and at least a hundred who had fought the Bill in the late Parliament were shut out from a renewal of the struggle, whilst out of eighty-two county members that were returned, only six were hostile to Reform.

On June 24, Lord John Russell, now raised to Cabinet rank, introduced the Second Reform Bill, which was substantially the same as the first, and the measure was carried rapidly through its preliminary stage, and on July 8 it passed the second reading by a majority of 136. The Government, however, in Committee was met night after night by an irritating cross-fire of criticism; repeated motions for adjournment were made; there was a systematic division of labour in the task of obstruction. In order to promote delay, the leaders of the Opposition stood up again and again and repeated the same statements and arguments, and often in almost the same words. ‘If Mr. Speaker,’ wrote Jekyll, ‘outlives the Reform debate, he may defy la grippe and the cholera. I can recommend no books, for the booksellers declare nobody reads or buys in the present fever. The newspapers are furious, the Sunday papers are talking treason by wholesale.... Peel does all he can to make his friends behave like gentlemen. But the nightly vulgarities of the House of Commons furnish new reasons for Reform, and not a ray of talent glimmers among them all. Double-distilled stupidity!’[6] In the midst of it all Russell fell ill, worn out with fatigue and excitement, and as the summer slipped past the people became alarmed and indignant at the dead-lock, and in various parts of the kingdom the attitude of the masses grew not merely restless but menacing. At length the tactics of the Opposition were exhausted, and it was possible to report progress. ‘On September 7,’ is Lord John’s statement, ‘the debate was closed, and after much labour, and considerable sacrifice of health, I was able on that night to propose, amid much cheering, that the bill should be reported to the House.’ The third reading was carried on September 19 by a majority of fifty-five. Three days later, at five in the morning on September 22, the question was at length put, and in a House of five hundred and eighty-one members the majority for Ministers was one hundred and nine.