XXXVI. 1835. remedied many indefensible abuses which had crept in, in CHAP. the course of ages, under the old close system. The old freemen were by no means a creditable class of voters, and being the lowest class of the community, they were most accessible to open corruption; but still it would have been a dangerous precedent to have disfranchised the whole for the faults of some; for as no class is immaculate, there is no saying how far this precedent might have been carried. But the great principle of the bill, that of declaring the councils eligible by the whole ratepayers as well as the freemen, remained unchanged, and, for good or for evil, worked out its appropriate results. What those fruits are have been now ascertained by Experience, and were even at the time anticipated by Reason, however little its still small voice had a chance of being heard amidst the din of the first great constitutional struggle which had arisen since the passing of the Reform Bill. 17. defect. The great fault of the Municipal Reform Bill was not what it destroyed, but what it created; yet so strangely Its great ignorant were the Conservative leaders of the real tendency of the changes introduced in this respect, that the subject was scarcely mooted, and never dwelt upon in either House of Parliament. The old corporations had very generally abused their trusts, and introduced for their own benefit many corruptions, and therefore it was quite right to dispossess them of their management; and Lord John Russell said with truth, that the only way to introduce a better system of administration was to let in a fair proportion of the "property, intelligence, and population of the borough." This being the principle on which the bill professed to be based, how was it carried out? Why, by admitting the whole rate-payers, in one undistinguished mass, to choose the councillors in whom the entire government of the borough was vested. Of these ratepayers, at least three-fourths of course occupied houses rated at or below £10; that being, at the very least, the XXXVI. 1835. CHAP. proportion of the working to all other classes of society. This, then, was the class in whom the Municipal Reform Bill placed the entire government of boroughs and corporations in England and Wales-in a huge mass of persons inhabiting houses rented at from £5 to £10 a-year. It was a mockery to speak of property or intelligence being represented, when they were outvoted four to one by publicans and workmen. It is the more extraordinary that Government should have committed the enormous mistake of establishing the constituency on this basis, that they were so much alive to the abuses of the franchise by the freemen, that they themselves had proposed to disfranchise them all both of municipal and political rights. But their idea seems to have been, "seeing that a portion of the lowest class of freemen have introduced abuses, and proved unworthy of trust, therefore we will succeed in remedying them, and establishing a pure administration, by giving the same class the entire control of the corporations." The common argument that the multitude will govern well because it is for their interest to be well governed, is utterly fallacious. That holds good only so long as they are the governed; when they become the governors, the desire is overcome by a much stronger one, viz., to benefit themselves by governing others ill. 18. ple on the subject. The only way in which it is possible to introduce good govTrue princi- ernment on the representative principle, either as regards municipalities or nations, is to have the representation based, not on numbers, but on classes. This may be effected either by arranging the whole citizens in classes, according to the amount which they annually contribute in the shape of taxes or personal service to the State, or in guilds or corporations; according to their different trades or avocations; and having the ruling body chosen, not by a simple majority of numbers told by head of the whole, but by the different classes or trades thus separately arranged. The working classes should by no means be excluded, but XXXVI. 1835. they should not be allowed to form the majority, and CHAP. consequently rule the whole. The first principle was adopted in ancient Rome, where the citizens were arranged in thirty centuries, according to their contributions to the public service, and the government officers were chosen by the votes, not of the citizens, but the centuries: the last is the principle on which the representative system, both in parliaments and municipalities, has been generally established in modern Europe. Wherever the representative system has acted well and lasted long, it has been rested on one or other basis; the long duration and immense prosperity induced by the old English constitution, was owing to the same system having, amidst many imperfections, by indirect means, and through the intervention of the close boroughs, been practically put in operation in these islands. Based on this principle of the representation of classes, the system affords the best security for good government which the wit of man has ever yet devised, because it brings the great interests of society to bear directly on the administration of affairs, and affords a constant check upon their mismanagement. Based on the opposite principle of the representation of mere numbers, it becomes the greatest curse which can afflict society, and must speedily work out its own destruction; because it subjects the community to the irresponsible government of the most numerous, but at the same time the most dangerous, most uninformed, and most corruptible portion of its members.* *This is exactly Mr Burke's view of the question. "There is," says he, no argument for supposing the multitude, told by head, to be the people. Such a multitude can have no sort of title to alter the seat of power in society, in which it ever ought to be the obedient, and not the ruling power. What power may belong to the whole mass, in which mass the natural aristocracy, or what by convention is appointed to represent and strengthen it, acts in its proper place, with its proper weight, and without being subjected to violence, is a deeper question. To enable men to act with the weight and character of a people, and to answer the ends for which they are incorporated into that capacity, we must suppose them to be in that state of habitual social discipline, in which the wiser, the more expert, and the more opulent, conduct, and, by conducting, enlighten and protect the weaker, the less knowing, and the less provided with the goods of fortune. When the multitude are not under this discipline, VOL. VI. M CHAP. 19. bill for Church reform. June 26. While these important discussions were going on reXXXVI. garding municipal reform, Government introduced a bill 1835. for the regulation of the Irish Church, embodying, of Ministerial course, the appropriation principle, which had been recognised by the house on the late memorable debate, and occasioned the fall of the late Administration. It consisted of two parts,-one for the collection and reduction. of tithes, and the other for the creation of a surplus, and its appropriation to the moral and religious instruction of the whole community, without any distinction of religious creed. The bill passed a second reading without a division, Sir R. Peel reserving to himself to move an instruction to the committee regarding the appropriation clause. This he accordingly did, by moving in committee that the bill should be divided into two parts—one containing the remedial, the other the appropriation clause. This was objected to by Ministers, on the ground that it was only a device to enable the House of Lords to pass the one bill and throw out the other, which it certainly was. On a division, Ministers had a majority of 37— the numbers being 319 to 282. This majority, like all those at this period, was secured entirely through the Irish and Scotch members; of the English members, a majority of 8 were in favour of the motion, but no less than 63 Irish were against, and only 34 for it. This division was decisive of the fate of the bill in the Lower House; and to render it more palatable to the Upper, Ministers proposed an annual grant of £50,000 a-year from the Consolidated Fund, to form the basis of a fund, to which the church property appropriated to educational purposes was to be added. This step, however, failed in disarming the opposition of the Conservative peers, who, consider they can scarce be said to be in civil society. Give once a certain constitution, which produces a variety of conditions and circumstances in a State, and there is in natural reason a principle which, for their own benefit, postpones not the interest, but the judgment of those who are numero priores to those who are virtute et honore majores.”—“ Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs;" Works, vi. 216, 228, XXXVI. 1835. ing this question as involving an important public prin- CHAP. ciple, threw out the appropriation clause by a majority of 97-the numbers being 138 to 41. This defeat so disconcerted Ministers that they abandoned the bill in the Lower House, and it was accordingly dropped for the present. At the same time, a bill was hastily brought in and passed, authorising Government to suspend proceedings against the clergy for recovery of the £1,000,000 which had been advanced to them during the worst periods of the combination against tithes; a humane and praiseworthy step, for if recovery of the sum had been attempted, as it must have been, under the acts authoris- 934; Ann. ing the advance, the Irish clergy would have been involved 297, 315. in total ruin.1 * While measures of party politics were thus fiercely debated, and attended by those narrow divisions in the House of Commons, those which, without benefiting either Sir R. Peel, in the course of the debate on this question, gave the following account of the real clear revenues of the Irish Church, which had been so often represented as the richest in the world, and enjoying an income of £3,000,000: Parl. Deb. 840, 1146, xxix. 790 and xxx. Reg. 1835, £507,367 76,700 £584,067 Average income of incumbents of benefices, . The Report of the Commissioners of Public Instruction in the same year enumerated the inhabitants according to their creeds thus : 2505 1121 860 1385 £188 Established Church, Presbyterians, Other Dissenters, Total Protestants, . Roman Catholics, -Ann. Reg., 1835, pp. 290, 296. 853,064 642,356 21,808 1,517,228 6,427,712 |