Chapter XXVIII: THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued) (1)

Parliamentary Reform--Mr. Disraeli's Resolutions--Their Text--Mr.
Lowe's Sarcasms--The "Ten Minutes" Bill--Sir John Pakington's
Revelations--Lord John Manners' Letter--Ministerial Resignations--A
New Bill promised--Meeting at Downing Street--Mr. Disraeli's
Statement--The Compound Householder--The Fancy Franchises--Mr.
Gladstone's Exposure--Mr. Lowe and Lord Cranborne--The Spirit of
Concession--Mr. Gladstone on the Second Reading--Mr. Gathorne
Hardy's Speech--Mr. Bright and Mr. Disraeli--The Dual Vote
abandoned--Mr. Coleridge's Instruction--The Tea-Room Cabal--Mr.
Gladstone's Amendment--His other Amendments withdrawn--Continued
Debates and Divisions--Mr. Hodgkinson's Amendment--Mr. Disraeli's
_coup de théâtre_--Mr. Lowe's Philippic--The County Franchise--The
Redistribution Bill--Objections to It--The Boundaries--Lord
Cranborne and Mr. Lowe--Mr Disraeli's Audacity--The Bill in the
Lords--Four Amendments--Lord Cairns's Minorities Amendment--The
Bill becomes Law--The "Leap in the Dark"--_Punch_ on the
Situation--The Scottish Reform Bill--Prolongation of the Habeas
Corpus Suspension Act--Irish Debates--Oaths and Offices Bill--Mr.
Bruce's Education Bill--The "Gang System"--Meetings in Hyde
Park--Mr. Walpole's Proclamation and Resignation--Attempted
Attack on Chester Castle--Collapse of the Enterprise--Attack on
the Police Van at Manchester--Trial of the "Martyrs"--Explosion
at Clerkenwell Prison--Trades Union Outrages at Sheffield--The
Crimes of Broadhead--Tailors and Picketing--The Buckinghamshire
Labourers--Distressing Accidents--Royal Visitors--Foreign
Affairs--The French Evacuation of Mexico--The Luxemburg
Question--The London Conference--Neutralisation of the Duchy--The
Austrian Compromise--Creation of the Dual Monarchy--The Autumn
Session--The Abyssinian Expedition--A Mislaid Letter.

On the 11th of February, 1867, in pursuance of the pledges given by the new Ministry in their various speeches before the beginning of the Session, the House of Commons was once more invited to consider the question of Reform, under the guidance, however, of Mr. Disraeli, instead of Mr. Gladstone. The Conservative party naturally felt somewhat strange to the work; they had turned out the Liberal Government upon various pleas, all of which they were to abandon, more or less completely, before the close of the Session of 1867; they had no such traditional or inherited policy to guide them in framing a popular Reform Bill as the Liberals had; and they had a dread of the Opposition, which, considering their own conduct towards the defeated Reform Bill of the preceding year, was, perhaps, not unreasonable. Still the fact that the whole question had been already fully canvassed and discussed--that the House had become familiarised with the details as well as the general principles of Reform, and that its members had, one and all with more or less sincerity, it is true, pledged themselves to Reform in some shape or other--was in their favour. When the _pros_ and _cons_ of the situation are considered, the course adopted by Mr. Disraeli, in introducing the subject, seems, at first sight, both natural and ingenious. "We desire no longer," said the Conservatives, "to risk the settlement of the whole question upon a question of detail; the House is pledged to Reform; let us then, instead of dictating to it a definite policy, instead of bringing in a Bill of our own immediately, endeavour to ascertain the general sense of the House upon disputed points before framing it, that we may not frame it in the dark, and meet the common fate of those Ministries that have hitherto dealt with the subject." This was the meaning of Mr. Disraeli's famous Resolutions, which he explained to the House in his opening speech. In this speech, throughout ingeniously indefinite, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer provided such men as Mr. Lowe, possessing a keen sense of humour, with ample food for ridicule. After the resolutions had been sufficiently debated, Government promised to bring forward a Bill embodying the general opinion of the House, so far as the discussions on the resolutions should have enabled them to ascertain it. Mr. Gladstone, in answer to Mr. Disraeli, reproached Government with wishing to shift the whole responsibility in the matter from their own shoulders to those of the House. The principle of Ministerial responsibility was one sanctioned by long usage, and was not to be lightly abandoned. With regard to the resolutions themselves, though at first sight he disliked the plan, he was willing to give them a fair trial, provided they were not mere vague preliminary declarations which it would be of no practical advantage to discuss. The resolutions appeared in the papers next day, and produced general disappointment. It was felt that Government, in spite of all their protestations, were really "angling for a policy," and that they were treating neither the House nor the nation straightforwardly. The resolutions were as follows:--

1. "That the number of electors for counties and boroughs in England and Wales ought to be increased.

2. "That such increase may best be effected by both reducing the value of the qualifying tenement in counties and boroughs, and by adding other franchises not dependent on such value.

3. "That while it is desirable that a more direct representation should be given to the labouring class, it is contrary to the Constitution of this realm to give to any one class or interest a predominating power over the rest of the community.

4. "That the occupation franchise in counties and boroughs shall be based upon the principle of rating.

[It will be remembered that it was upon this very question of rating, as against rental, that the Russell Ministry had been thrown out of office in the preceding year. After Lord Dunkellin's amendment, the Conservatives were bound to make the principle of rating a part of any scheme brought forward by them. How much they were obliged to modify it before the end of the matter, and how amply justified Mr. Gladstone's arguments against it were proved to be, will be seen hereafter.]

5. "That the principle of plurality of votes, if adopted by Parliament, would facilitate the settlement of the borough franchise on an extensive basis.

6. "That it is expedient to revise the existing distribution of seats.

7. "That in such revision it is not expedient that any borough now represented in Parliament should be wholly disfranchised.

8. "That in revising the existing distribution of seats, this House will acknowledge, as its main consideration, the expediency of supplying representation to places not at present represented, which may be considered entitled to that privilege.

9. "That it is expedient that provision should be made for the better prevention of bribery and corruption at elections.

10. "That it is expedient that the system of registration of voters in counties should be assimilated as far as possible to that which prevails in boroughs.

11. "That it shall be open to every Parliamentary elector, if he thinks fit, to record his vote by means of a polling paper, duly signed and authenticated.

12. "That provision be made for diminishing the distance which voters have to travel for the purpose of recording their votes, so that no expenditure for such purpose shall hereafter be legal.

13. "That a humble Address be presented to her Majesty, praying her Majesty to issue a Royal Commission to form and submit to the consideration of Parliament a scheme for new and enlarged boundaries of the existing Parliamentary boroughs where the population extends beyond the limits now assigned to such boroughs; and to fix, subject to the decision of Parliament, the boundaries of such other boroughs as Parliament may deem fit to be represented in this House."

The House and the country were naturally dissatisfied with such vague statements as these, and between the 11th and the 25th of February, when Mr. Disraeli promised something more definite, many attempts were made to induce Government to declare themselves more plainly. "The Resolutions of the Government," said Mr. Lowe later, borrowing a happy illustration from the "Vicar of Wakefield," "have no more to do with the plan of the Government than Squire Thornhill's three famous postulates had to do with the argument he had with Moses Primrose, when, in order to controvert the right of the clergy to tithes, he laid down the principles--that a whole is greater than its part; that whatever is, is; and that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles." However, Mr. Disraeli kept his secret, in spite of attacks from Mr. Ayrton and arguments from Mr. Gladstone, till the night of the 25th, when he rose to explain the resolutions and to suggest certain constructions of them on the part of Government; a very different thing, it will be understood, from bringing in a Bill by which the framers of it are bound in the main to stand or fall. In the first place, then, Government proposed to create four new franchises--an educational franchise, to include persons who had taken a university degree, ministers of religion, and others; a savings bank franchise; a franchise dependent upon the possession of £50 in the public funds; and a fourth dependent upon the payment of £1 yearly in direct taxation. By these means the Government calculated that about 82,000 persons would be enfranchised. In boroughs the occupier's qualification was to be reduced to £6 rateable value, and in counties to £20 rateable value--reductions which it was supposed would admit about 220,000 new voters. With regard to the redistribution of seats, four boroughs, convicted of extensive corruption, and returning seven members between them, were to be wholly disfranchised; and in addition to these seven members, Mr. Disraeli appealed "to the patriotism of the smaller boroughs" to provide him with twenty-three more, by means of partial disfranchisement. The thirty seats thus obtained were to be divided as follows:--Fifteen new seats were to be given to counties, fourteen to boroughs (an additional member being given to the Tower Hamlets), and one member to the London University. The points of likeness and unlikeness between this scheme and that of the Liberals in 1866 will be easily perceived by any one who takes the trouble to examine the two plans.

This meagre and unsatisfactory measure, however, was short-lived; and the secret history of it, as it was afterwards told by various members of the Government, affords an amusing insight into the mysteries of Cabinet Councils. The fact was that before the beginning of the Session, and during the time that the thirteen resolutions were lying on the table of the House, two Reform schemes were under the consideration of Government, "one of which," said Lord Derby, "was more extensive than the other." When it was seen that the House would have nothing to say to the resolutions, and that a Bill must be brought in without delay, it became necessary to choose between these two schemes. At a Cabinet meeting on Saturday, February 23rd, the more extensive one, based upon household suffrage, guarded by various precautions, was, as it was supposed, unanimously adopted, and Mr. Disraeli was commissioned to explain it to the House of Commons on the following Monday, the 25th. The rest of the story may be told in Sir John Pakington's words. "You all know," he said, addressing his constituents at Droitwich, "that, on the 23rd of February, a Cabinet Council decided on the Reform Bill which was to be proposed to Parliament. On Monday, the 25th, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Lord Derby was to address the whole Conservative party in Downing Street. At half-past four in the afternoon of that day--I mention the hour because it is important--the Chancellor of the Exchequer was to explain the Reform Bill in the House of Commons. When the Cabinet Council rose on the previous Saturday, it was my belief that we were a unanimous Cabinet on the Reform Bill then determined upon. [Lord Derby, however, afterwards stated that General Peel, one of the three seceding Ministers, had some time before the Cabinet of the 23rd expressed his strong objections to the Reform Bill then adopted, but had consented to waive his objections for the sake of the unity of the Ministry.] As soon as the Council concluded, Lord Derby went to Windsor to communicate with her Majesty on the Reform Bill, and I heard no more of the subject till the Monday morning. On the Monday, between eleven and twelve o'clock, I received an urgent summons to attend Lord Derby's house at half-past twelve o'clock on important business. At that hour I reached Lord Derby's house, but found there only three or four members of the Cabinet. No such summons had been anticipated, and consequently some of the Ministers were at their private houses, some at their offices, and it was nearly half-past one before the members of the Cabinet could be brought together. As each dropped in, the question was put, 'What is the matter? Why are we convened?' and as they successively came in, they were informed that Lord Cranborne, Lord Carnarvon, and General Peel had seceded, objecting to the details of the Bill which we thought they had adopted on the Saturday. Imagine the difficulty and embarrassment in which the Ministry found themselves placed. It was then past two o'clock. Lord Derby was to address the Conservative party at half-past two; at half-past four Mr. Disraeli was to unfold the Reform scheme [adopted on the previous Saturday] before the House of Commons. Literally, we had not half an hour--we had not more than ten minutes--to make up our minds as to what course the Ministry were to adopt. The public knows the rest. We determined to propose, not the Bill agreed to on the Saturday, but an alternative measure, which we had contemplated in the event of our large and liberal scheme being rejected by the House of Commons. Whether, if the Ministry had had an hour for consideration, we should have taken that course was, perhaps, a question. But we had not that hour, and were driven to decide upon a line of definite action within the limits of little more than ten minutes."

In Lord Malmesbury's "Recollections" is to be found a letter from Lord John Manners, which corroborates this ingenuous confession. "I am truly sorry," he wrote on February 26th, "to hear of the cause of your absence from our distracted councils, and hope that you will soon be able to bring a better account of Lady Malmesbury. I really hardly know where we are, but yesterday we were suddenly brought together to hear that Cranborne and Carnarvon withdrew unless we gave up household suffrage and duality, upon which announcement Peel said that, although he had given up his opposition when he stood alone, now he must be added to the remonstrant Ministers. Stanley then proposed that to keep us together the £6 and £20 rating should be adopted, which, after much discussion, was agreed to. We have decided to abandon the Resolutions altogether, and to issue the Boundary Commission ourselves. We are in a very broken and disorganised condition."

It was soon felt, however, by the Ministry that this condition of things was unsound, and could not last. The measure explained on the 25th satisfied neither Conservatives nor Liberals. A large meeting of Liberals held at Mr. Gladstone's house decisively condemned it; while from their own friends and supporters Government received strong and numerous protests against it. What was to be done? Lord Derby once more called his Government together, and they agreed to retrace their steps, even at the cost of the three objecting Ministers. Upon the 4th of March Lord Derby, in the House of Lords, and Mr. Disraeli, in the Commons, announced the resignation of Lord Cranborne, Lord Carnarvon, and General Peel (who were replaced by the Dukes of Richmond and Marlborough and Mr. Corry), the withdrawal of the measure proposed on the 25th, and the adoption by Government of a far more liberal policy than that represented. Both in the House and in the country there were naturally some rather free criticisms passed upon a Government who, three weeks before the announcement of a Reform Bill brought forward by them, had not come to an agreement upon its most essential provisions, and upon a sudden emergency, and to keep their members together, adopted and introduced a makeshift measure, which their own sense of expediency, no less than public opinion, afterwards obliged them to withdraw. In these marchings and counter-marchings of Government much valuable time had been thrown away. "No less than six weeks of the Session," said Lord Grey, "have been wasted before any step whatever has been taken." The Conservative leaders, however, vehemently protested that it was no fault of theirs; and now that the confession had been made, and the three refractory colleagues got rid of, affairs did at length assume a businesslike aspect. "It is our business now," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "to bring forward, as soon as we possibly can, the measure of Parliamentary Reform which, after such difficulties and such sacrifices, it will be my duty to introduce to the House. Sir, the House need not fear that there will be any evasion, any equivocation, any vacillation, or any hesitation in that measure."

In the interval between these Ministerial explanations and the production of the real Reform Bill in Parliament meetings of their supporters were held by the lenders of both parties. At a meeting held in Downing Street on the 15th of March, Lord Derby explained to 195 members of the Conservative party the distinctive features of the proposed Bill. Startling as the contemplated changes in the franchise must have seemed to every Conservative present, only one dissenting voice was heard--that of Sir William Heathcote, who declared, in strong terms, that he wholly disapproved of the measure, and that he believed, if carried out, it would destroy the influence of rank, property, and education throughout the country by the mere force of numbers. The scheme, of which only a few fragments were as yet generally known, was given to the public on the 18th of March, when Mr. Disraeli described it at much length in the House. And although the measure at first proposed was so largely altered in its passage through Parliament that by the time it had become part of the law of England its original projectors must have had some difficulty in recognising it as theirs, it is worth while to take careful note of its various provisions as they were originally drawn up, that the action of the two great parties engaged throughout the subsequent struggle may be the more plainly understood.

(_From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry, Baker Street, W._)]

The first quarter of Mr. Disraeli's speech was taken up by a review of the past history of the question--an old and well-known story, somewhat impatiently listened to by the House. He picked the various Reform schemes of his predecessors to pieces, and finally declared that the principle at the bottom of them all--the principle of value, regulated whether by rental or rating--had been proved by long experience to be untenable and unpractical, and Government were now about to abandon it altogether. Nor was Mr. Disraeli slow to disclose his secret. The very next paragraph of his speech announced that, in the opinion of Government, any attempt to unite the principle of value with the principle of rating, any such solution as a £6 or £5 rating franchise, would be wholly unsatisfactory. In the boroughs of England and Wales, Mr. Disraeli went on to say, there were 1,367,000 male householders, of whom 644,000 were qualified to vote, leaving 723,000 unqualified. Now, if we examined these 723,000, we should find that 237,000 of them were rated to the poor and paid their rates. So that if the law were changed in such a manner as to make the borough franchise dependent upon the payment of rates only, unrestricted by any standard of value, these 237,000 would be at once qualified to vote, making, with the 644,000 already qualified, 881,000 persons in the English and Welsh boroughs in possession of the franchise. There would still remain 486,000, belonging mostly to the irregular and debatable class of compound householders--householders paying their rates, not personally, but through their landlords. Now, since Government thought that the franchise ought to be based upon a personal payment of rates, it became a great question as to what was to be done with these 486,000 compound householders. "Ought the compound householders to have a vote?" As a compound householder Government thought he ought not to have a vote. But he was not to be left altogether in the cold. Ample opportunities were to be afforded him for raising himself out of the anomalous position to which the Small Tenements Acts had consigned him. Let him only enter his name upon the rate-book, and claim to pay his rates personally; and having fulfilled the constitutional condition required, he would at once succeed to the constitutional privilege connected with it. It had been said that the working classes did not care enough about the suffrage to take so much trouble to obtain it. "That, however," said Mr. Disraeli, oracularly, "is not the opinion of her Majesty's Government." Thus 723,000 additional persons might, if they wished, obtain the franchise under the new Bill. To these were to be added all those who paid 20s. a year in direct taxes, whether compound householders or not; while, to prevent the working classes from swamping the constituencies and nullifying the influence of the middle and upper classes, Government brought forward the curious expedient of dual voting. "Every person," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer," who pays £1 direct taxation, and who enjoys the franchise which depends upon the payment of direct taxation, if he is also a householder and pays his rates, may exercise his suffrage in respect of both qualifications."

The dual vote, however, provoked such hot opposition that, as will shortly be seen, Government eventually withdrew it. The direct taxes qualification, Mr. Disraeli calculated, would add more than 200,000 to the constituency; and the three other "fancy franchises," as they were called--the education franchise, the funded property franchise, and the savings bank franchise--another 105,000. In all, Government held out the splendid promise of an addition of more than 1,000,000 voters to the borough constituency. In counties the franchise would be lowered to £15 rateable value--a reduction which would enfranchise about 171,000 additional voters; while the four lateral franchises mentioned above would bring the number of new county voters up to about 330,000. With regard to the redistribution of seats, Government had substantially the same proposals to make as those originally described to the House on the 25th of February. Mr. Disraeli, however, vigorously defended them from the charge of inadequacy which had been brought against them in the interval. Neither Government nor the country, he said, was prepared to go through the agitating labour of constructing a new electoral map of England; and this being the case, all that would be done would be to seize opportunities as they arose of remedying grievances and removing inequalities by some such moderate means as those proposed in the Bill.

Alas! for Mr. Disraeli's figures when they came to be handled by Mr. Gladstone. Instead of 237,000, it was stoutly maintained by Mr. Gladstone that scarcely 144,000 would be admitted to the franchise by extending it to all who personally paid their rates. And as to the facilities to be offered in such tempting profusion to the compound householder for obtaining a vote, they amounted to this--that he was to have the privilege of paying over again that which he had already paid. It was difficult to believe that he would ever avail himself of this privilege to any great extent. Practically, the Bill did nothing for the compound householder; so that, while it would introduce household suffrage--nay, universal suffrage--into villages and country towns where there was no system of compounding for rates, in large towns, like Leeds, with a population of a quarter of a million, where the majority of the inhabitants were compound householders, its effect would be little or nothing. In fact, the results of the Bill, had it been passed as it was originally drawn up, would have been almost grotesque. In Hull, for instance, where the Small Tenements Act was almost universally enforced, the number of personally rated occupiers under the £10 rental who would have been enfranchised by the Bill would have been 64 out of a population of 104,873; while in the small borough of Thirsk, where the system of compounding for rates was not in use, 684 would have obtained the franchise as personal ratepayers. In Brighton, where compound householders abounded, the Bill would have enfranchised 14 out of every 10,000 occupiers under the £10 line; while in York it would have enfranchised 100 out of every 1,000. The enfranchising effect of the Bill would have been between "six and seven times as great in the boroughs not under Rating Acts as in the others." It is more than probable that in framing their measure Government foresaw none of these anomalies, and that they were revealed to them and impressed upon them in the course of debate. There was, in fact, no adequate knowledge among them of the working of those complicated details of rating machinery upon which they made the whole effect of their Bill ultimately depend. With regard to the secondary franchises--the direct taxes franchise, the education franchise, etc.,--Mr. Gladstone contended that the figures quoted by Mr. Disraeli were wholly erroneous and visionary, and that the new voters it was supposed they would admit were no more substantial than Falstaff's men in buckram. For himself, he had no belief in the principle of rating as a bulwark of the Constitution; and to base the possession of the franchise upon the personal payment of rates, he thought fundamentally wrong. To the proposition of dual voting as a safeguard of household suffrage, he declared himself inflexibly opposed. It could only serve as a gigantic instrument of fraud, and was nothing less than a proclamation of a war of classes. And where was the lodger franchise, so highly praised by the Conservatives in 1859, which all the world had expected to find in the Bill? If that were added, and the so-called safeguards of dual voting and personal payment of rates done away with, the Liberal party would accept the Bill as a whole.

A short debate followed, in which Mr. Lowe reappeared, to do battle as warmly against the Reform Bill of the Conservatives as he had formerly waged it against that of the Liberals. Mr. Lowe had been duped, but he was not yet prepared to confess it. Later, when concession after concession had been made by Government, and a far more Radical measure than any Liberal Ministry had ever dreamt of was on the point of becoming law, Mr. Lowe did indeed make ample and public confession of his mistake, and loud and bitter were the expressions of his wrath and mortification. But at this stage of the matter the "Cave" had still some confidence in Conservative principles and time-honoured Conservative traditions, and refused to believe that the party they had helped to put into power would ever betray them so completely as was afterwards actually the case. They disliked the Bill and said so; but for some little time they trusted to the genuine Conservative influence still existing behind the Ministerial benches for its modification. Lord Cranborne, a seceder from the Tories, as Mr. Lowe had been from the Liberals, made a short but energetic attack upon the Bill on this occasion. "If the Conservative party accept the Bill," he said, "they will be committing political suicide: household suffrage, pure and simple, will be the result of it, for no one can put any faith in the proposed safeguards; and, after their conduct last year, it is not the Conservatives who should pass a measure of household suffrage."

During the interval between the introduction of the Bill and the motion for the second reading, an important meeting of the Liberal party was held at Mr. Gladstone's house on March 21st, to consider whether opposition should be offered to the second reading. Mr. Gladstone said, "Since the printing of the Government Bill, having applied myself day and night to the study of it, I have not the smallest doubt in my own mind that the wiser course of the two would be to oppose the Bill on the second reading." He thought, however, "that the general disposition of the meeting would not bear him out in that course;" and to maintain the unity of the party, he was willing to sacrifice his own personal opinion. "If Ministers were content to abandon the dual voting, and to equalise the privileges and facilities of the enfranchised in all cases, however the qualification arose, then the measure might be made acceptable. If they would not concede these points, then he thought that the Liberals should not permit the measure to go into committee." It was already evident that both sides had made up their minds to pass some kind of Reform Bill during the Session, and that both were prepared to make concessions rather than offer to the country once more the pitiable spectacle of a great measure of necessary Reform overthrown by party spirit and party warfare. Still the Liberals were determined to wrest certain points from Government; and in his speech on the second reading (March 25th) Mr. Gladstone thus summed up the defects in the Bill, which must, he said, be amended before the Liberals could give in their adhesion to it:--

1. Omission of a lodger franchise. 2. Omission of provisions against traffic in votes of householders of the lowest class, by corrupt payment of their rates. 3. Disqualifications of compound householders under the existing law. 4. Additional disqualifications of compound householders under the proposed law. 5. The franchise founded on direct taxation. 6. The dual vote. 7. The inadequate distribution of seats. 8. The inadequate reduction of the franchise in counties. 9. Voting papers. 10. Collateral or special franchises. Every one of these ten points, except the second, was finally settled more or less in accordance with the demands of the Liberals,--an instructive comment on the experiment of "government by minorities," which Mr. Disraeli was making with such great success.

In contradistinction to Lord Cranborne, Mr. Gladstone maintained that while the Bill seemed on the face of it to be a measure of household suffrage, it was in reality nothing of the kind; every concession in it was balanced by a corresponding restriction, and what it gave with one hand it took away with the other. For the dual vote he had nothing but hard words: "At the head of the list stand those favoured children of fortune--those select human beings made of finer clay than the rest of their fellow-subjects--who are to be endowed with dual votes. Upon that dual vote I shall not trouble the House, for I think that my doing so would be a waste of time." And, indeed, the general opinion of the House had already pronounced so decidedly against it, that no purpose would have been served by discussing it at length. Mr. Gladstone went on to declaim afresh against the fine which the Bill would inflict upon the compound householder before he could obtain his vote. Then followed an elaborate and masterly examination of the probable results of the Bill if passed in its original form. Making use of some important statistics, the return of which had been lately moved for by Mr. Ward Hunt, he attacked the Bill as one that would "flood some towns with thousands of voters, and only add a few in other towns." After reading a long series of these damaging statistics, Mr. Gladstone might well ask, "Is it possible that any one on the Treasury benches can get up in his place, and recommend those clauses respecting the compound householder with all their anomalies?" Men, however, were not lacking to defend them, and to defend them with ability and vigour. Mr. Gathorne Hardy, then Commissioner of the Poor Laws, after a graceful tribute to the power of Mr. Gladstone's speech, made out, perhaps, the best case for the Ministerial measure that had yet been attempted. He denied that the Bill was a Household Suffrage Bill; the proper name for it was a Rating Franchise Bill; and so far from excluding anybody, as Mr. Gladstone had tried to prove, it opened the franchise to every one who chose to claim it. And as to the "fine" which it was said would be imposed upon the compound householder by the Bill, he could recover whatever rates he paid from the landlord--a statement in support of which Mr. Hardy quoted an Act of Queen Victoria, allowing "any occupier paying any rate or rates in respect of any tenement where the owner is rated to the same, to deduct from his rent or recover from his landlord the amount so paid." The Act, however, did not really bear out Mr. Hardy's argument, since it only enabled the tenant to recover the reduced rate, while the Bill obliged him to pay the full rate before obtaining his vote. The personal payment, of rates, and the two years' residence clauses, were, he admitted, meant as safeguards and limitations; but he believed them to be just and reasonable, and such as would be approved by the country.

The debate was vigorously kept up--the Ministry being only represented by Mr. Gathorne Hardy and Mr. Disraeli, and supporters and opponents of the Bill being found promiscuously on both sides of the House. In truth, people had not yet got over their surprise, and neither Liberals nor Conservatives quite knew what to think of a measure so Liberal at heart, though cased with Conservative safeguards, brought in by a Conservative Government. It was only towards the end of the debate, when Mr. Bright spoke, and Mr. Disraeli made answer on the whole case, that the country began clearly to see which way things were going. Mr. Bright was in a happy vein; he mixed in an effective way solid criticism on the details of the Bill with sarcastic descriptions of its framers, and earnest denunciation of what he called the "deception and disappointment" of which it bore the marks. He regarded the Bill as really equivalent to a measure for £8 suffrage, and therefore less thorough than the Bill of the previous year. It was too much inclined to a "set off"--the enfranchising of higher class voters to counteract the lower, which, of course, would not be the removal of the real grievance that the workmen felt. Then, after protesting that he would be the first person in the House to support a "fair and honest measure" of Reform, Mr. Bright went on: "I will be no party to any Bill which would cheat the great body of my countrymen of the possession of that power in the House on which they have set their hearts; and which, as I believe, by the Constitution of this country, they may most justly claim."

When Mr. Disraeli rose to end the debate, the House clearly saw that, though he was supporting his Bill most strenuously, he was really speaking in the spirit of his own resolutions. Those, it will be remembered, had been brought forward early in the Session with the avowed purpose of "feeling" or "taking the sense of" the House. Mr. Disraeli made no secret then of his readiness to do as he was bid by the majority; and now, though he pretended to make a secret of it, the same readiness was to be detected in his speech. There was a vast amount of epigram directed at Mr. Gladstone; but Mr. Disraeli, in taking up the amendments indicated by him, confessed that "if satisfactory arguments were brought forward in committee," no doubt the House would adopt them; and the House might adopt them, he implied, without endangering the Government Bill. To the lodger franchise--of which Mr. Disraeli claimed himself to be the father--he was not personally opposed; it might be left to the committee. The compound householder amendment--why was it that Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone, in schemes of their own, had wished to keep up the distinction between classes of ratepayers, and now wished to abolish those distinctions? Yet that amendment might be referred to the committee. In the same way with the amendment about voting papers, about the qualification of residence, about the county franchise, about redistribution of seats. On one and all of these points Mr. Disraeli's watchword was "elasticity." The Bill's chief merit was that it was elastic, whereas Mr. Gladstone's £5 rating Bill would have been rigid and hard. This Bill, he said, was so drawn as to secure the "fitness and variety" that were to become security against democracy. Then Mr. Disraeli ended, saying that it was the one wish of Government to co-operate with the House in settling this question once for all. Till the settlement was arrived at they would not desert their posts. Any concessions, he implied, any withdrawal of obnoxious clauses, or substitution of amending clauses, would be consented to. Government, the House, the country, only asked for one thing--settlement. The Bill must be passed at any cost; no personal feeling should make Government either withdraw it or resign until it had been passed. "Pass the Bill," he concluded, "and then change the Ministry if you please." A speech of which this was the tone very naturally disarmed the Opposition. The only danger was lest the Conservative rank and file, irritated by their leader's tone of concession, should mutiny. There was no mutiny, however, though there was some murmuring, and the Bill was read a second time on the 26th of March, without a division.

The committee was fixed for the 8th of April. On the 1st Mr. Disraeli made the first of his promised concessions; he announced that Government were prepared to withdraw the clause relating to the dual vote. That removed one of the bugbears of the Liberal party, and left them to direct their interest to the interminable and vexatious question of the compound householder. The enormous number of small occupiers who compounded for their rates--amounting, it was confidently said, to two-thirds of the occupiers under £10--showed the importance of the question. The compound householder rose first into prominence at a large meeting of Liberal members held at Mr. Gladstone's house on the 5th of April. There it was agreed that the point in the Government Bill that lay most open to attacks from the Liberals, now that the dual vote had been withdrawn, was this point of the personal payment of rates. Without amendment on this head the Government Bill was illusory; it gave with one hand what it took away with the other. Mr. Gladstone recurred to what he had himself said earlier in the Session--that there should properly be a "hard and fast line," below which occupiers should neither pay rates nor exercise the suffrage. This was, in fact, a proposal for a £5 rating franchise; for the abolition of all distinctions between persons who paid their rates directly and those who paid them through their landlord; and for the relief of all those who occupied tenements at less than £5 rateable value from the liability to be rated at all. With a view to carrying his amendment, he proposed that Mr. John Duke Coleridge, member for Exeter, should move an instruction to that effect.

At the meeting where this line of action was planned there was some criticism, but little open dissent from the course. During the three days that were to elapse before the proposal of Mr. Coleridge's amendment, however, an ominous change took place in the position of affairs. Mr. Disraeli had promised he would not resign, and that he would not withdraw the Bill; but he had not promised that he would not dissolve Parliament, supposing the conduct of the Opposition were to drive him that way. Now, the threat of a dissolution is always terrible to many members. Hence, when the word "dissolution" began to be whispered, the Opposition began to disunite. A meeting of dissatisfied members took place in the tea-room of the House of Commons, transformed for the moment into a new cave of Adullam; and a cabal was formed for breaking up the plans of the Liberals in reference to Mr. Coleridge's instruction. Forty-eight members of the Liberal party agreed to vote against the amendment, and a deputation waited upon Mr. Gladstone to inform him of their decision. In the face of such a defection it was, of course, impossible to proceed. Mr. Coleridge practically withdrew his instruction, reserving his right to proceed on the subject of it in committee; Mr. Gladstone began to feel that, as concerned really Liberal amendments, his hands were not so free as he hoped; and Government faced the committee with new strength and satisfaction.

Mr. Gladstone, however, was not satisfied with the result of the tea-room cabal; for much of the discontent that had promoted it had been directed at the "hard and fast line" of the £5 rating franchise. It was resolved, therefore, to divide upon a different amendment--one which should relieve the compound householder from the disabling clauses of the Bill, but which should still keep to the original basis of household rating suffrage. Mr. Gladstone's amendment inserted in the restrictive clause the words "whether he in person, or his landlord, be rated to the relief of the poor;" and the arguments which, with his usual force, he urged upon the House in its support were, first, that the houses below £10 rental that compounded for their rates were two-thirds of the whole number of such houses, and that therefore a Bill that excluded compounding householders from the franchise was an illusion; and secondly, that the case standing so, the "settlement" for which Government were clamouring would not be attained unless the Bill were amended. The debate on Mr. Gladstone's amendment occupied two nights, and was chiefly valuable as showing the extraordinary difference of opinion that prevailed among the supporters of the Bill, and the equally different points of view from which members were found to oppose it. When the division came, however, Government triumphed. The numbers were found to be--For the amendment, 289; against, 310--majority for Government, 21. This was an important majority, and, as the division lists showed, it implied far more unanimity among the Conservatives (in spite of the defection of Sir W. Heathcote and Lord Cranborne) than among the Liberals. Twenty-five of the old "Adullamite" party voted with Mr. Disraeli--a fact sufficiently indicating the opinion which was held as to the tendency of the amendment. The Adullamites voted for the original Bill because they wanted the compound householder--the dangerous being who occupied a house below £10 annual rent--to be kept without his vote.

The immediate effect of this division was to draw from Mr. Gladstone an important statement of policy. He wrote a letter to Mr. R. W. Crawford, member for the City of London, to say that he felt it useless to proceed personally with the other amendments standing in his name. He was compelled to own that the Liberals who thought together on the question of Reform were not a majority, but a minority, "and they have not the power they were supposed to possess of limiting or directing the action of the Administration, or of shaping the provisions of the Reform Bill. Still," Mr. Gladstone went on, "having regard to the support which my proposal with respect to personal rating received from so large a number of Liberal members, I am not less willing than heretofore to remain at the service of the party to which they belong; and when any suitable occasion shall arise, if it shall be their wish, I shall be prepared again to attempt concerted action upon this or any other subject for the public good.... I shall not proceed with the amendments now on the paper in my name, nor give notice of other amendments such as I had contemplated; but I shall gladly accompany others in voting against any attempt, from whatever quarter, to limit still further the scanty modicum of enfranchisement proposed by the Government, or in improving, when it may be practicable, the provisions of the Bill." This letter showed that Mr. Gladstone was disheartened, but his discouragement only increased the zeal of the reforming party throughout the kingdom. The House broke up for the Easter holidays immediately after the vote; and during the recess meetings were held in every important town in England and Scotland, to express confidence in Mr. Gladstone and to encourage him and his followers in their attempts to liberalise the Bill. The number, enthusiasm, and unanimity of these meetings had, in all probability, much to do with Mr. Disraeli's later concessions.

When the House met again, the first important act of the committee was to accept Mr. Ayrton's amendment, substituting one year for two years as the period of residence necessary for borough voters. There seems to have been a general idea in the House that to require two years' residence in a borough before a man could be entitled to vote in an election of members of Parliament was vexatious; and in spite of the strenuous efforts of Government, Mr. Ayrton's amendment was carried by the large majority of 81. A majority as large as this is never, however, so much to be dreaded by a Government as one a fourth of its size. Accordingly Mr. Disraeli stated on the next day that he and his colleagues "deferred to the opinion of the House." Then came Mr. Hibbert's notice to amend the Bill, by allowing all compound householders who chose to pay personally to pay reduced rates--a proposal that became celebrated, from the conduct of the Government "whip" with regard to it. It came out in the course of the debate--Mr. Bernal Osborne revealed it--that the whip, Colonel Taylor, had undertaken, "as a gentleman and a man of honour, to press upon the Cabinet the desirability of adopting Mr. Hibbert's amendment;" and also that Colonel Taylor had stated to Mr. Dillwyn, a Liberal member, that "he believed Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli to be personally in favour of accepting it." That is to say, just before a division, the Government whip entered into negotiations with some of the enemy's forces, and endeavoured to win them over to his side by a statement--afterwards disavowed on authority--of the opinions of his chief. The episode afforded an interesting comment upon the manœuvres of party government.

The debate on Mr. Hibbert's motion turned on the question--Whether, supposing a compound householder wanted a vote (which, according to the Bill, would require him to pay his rates personally), he should be compelled to pay as much as other non-compounding householders, or whether the same amount should be accepted from him personally as had been accepted previously from his landlord on his account? Mr. Disraeli aimed not only at making him pay the full rate, but even at repealing a section of Sir William Clay's Act (14 and 15 Vict., c. 14) which had defined certain electoral rights of householders above £10. That Act had allowed non-rated occupiers--compounders above £10--to claim to be rated, in order to be put upon the register of voters, and had declared them liable only for the reduced or commuted rate. Under that Act, according to Mr. Bright, electoral rights were guaranteed to not less than 94,000 persons; and Mr. Disraeli's proposal, to say nothing of its immediate effect in excluding new voters, simply amounted to a proposal either to disfranchise these 94,000 altogether, or to make them pay higher rates than they had previously paid. We can understand the spirit in which Mr. Bright spoke of this as an "audacious proposal." Still, audacious or not, the proposal of Government for the time succeeded. The division was taken on the question, whether the borough voter should be rated as an "ordinary occupier," always and without exception, and Government had a very great majority with them, affirming that he should. The numbers were--Ayes, 322; Noes, 256--majority for Government, 66.

Eight days afterwards they had changed their minds. Another amendment was proposed in the meantime, and Mr. Gathorne Hardy, in the debate that followed, gave an artless explanation of what Government intended by their emphatic cry of "personal payment." He said--"The Government insisted upon the personal payment of rates. But the Bill had not the phrase, 'personal payment of rates.' That was a description rather of the Government's intention. The Bill required that a man should be responsible for his rates. It was necessary, in order to come within the provisions of the Bill, that a man should have his name upon the rate-book, and be personally responsible." But Mr. Hardy forgot, in stating this as the essential principle of the Bill, that he was only stating what was already law. He forgot that the Small Tenements Act provided that rates assessed upon the landlord are recoverable, not only by distraint upon the landlord's goods, but by distraint upon the occupier's, "in the same way as if the rates were assessed on such occupier." That is to say, the occupier was, and always had been, responsible for his rates. The compound householder was as much responsible as the non-compounding householder. Mr. Disraeli's Bill, if this was its foundation, was founded upon an illusion. This fact seems to have suddenly dawned upon the minds of the House of Commons between the 13th and the 17th of May. On the latter day, Mr. Hodgkinson, member for Newark, moved the insertion of the following words, which Mr. Disraeli afterwards calmly called, "not an amendment, but a proviso,"--"Provided always that, except as hereinafter provided, no person other than the occupier shall, after the passing of this Act, be rated to parochial rates in respect of premises occupied by him within the limits of a parliamentary borough, all Acts to the contrary notwithstanding."

This was to cut the Gordian knot at a stroke, by abolishing the compound householder altogether. Mr. Hodgkinson brought forward his amendment, the effect of which would be to make all occupiers of tenements personal ratepayers, and therefore, according to the Bill, voters. In other words, household suffrage pure and simple was offered to the acceptance of the House. Mr. Gladstone saw the importance of the moment; he saw that the question lay between "an extension of the franchise, limited, unequal, equivocal, and dangerous," accompanied with certain social and economical advantages, and "an extension of the franchise which was liberal, which was perfectly equal," without those social and economical advantages. As the leader of the Liberal party, he chose the "lesser evil," he preferred the liberal extension, and he was willing to sacrifice the convenience of compounding. That was only to be expected from the Liberal leader; but what was the amazement of the House when Mr. Disraeli, by a sudden _coup de théâtre_, rose to accept Mr. Hodgkinson's amendment likewise! Nay, he rose not only to accept the amendment, but to greet it with strong welcome and approval. It is true that, on the 9th of May, eight days before, Mr. Disraeli had declared that the advice of those who wished to supersede or repeal the Rating Acts was "rash counsel." It is true that, on the 13th, only four days before, Mr. Disraeli had branded with two names, which immediately became famous--"obsolete incendiaries," and "spouters of stale sedition"--a deputation of 360 gentlemen, headed by seventeen members of Parliament, which had waited on Mr. Gladstone, with a view to remove the disqualification laid by the Bill on the lower class of ratepayers. It is true that, on the morning of the 17th, the Government "whip" had sent a circular to the Conservatives, asking their attendance at the House, plainly with the intention of opposing Mr. Hodgkinson's amendment. These facts, however, were nothing to Mr. Disraeli. He was bent on a _coup_, and he made it. The Bill was entirely transformed in a single evening; and Government, through their Chancellor of the Exchequer, vowed that they had all along been meaning to produce the transformation scene themselves. To show the importance of the change, it is enough to say that the total number of new voters which the original Bill would have made was 118,400, and that the number of new voters added by the Bill, plus Mr. Hodgkinson's amendment, was 427,000. Nothing more is needed to show that the compound householder was a person of importance, and that it was only natural that his destiny should be a matter of interest to both sides of the House.