XXXVI. 1836. CHAP. elections will engender strife, and increase the already heated state of party feelings in Ireland, as you value the integrity and security of this great empire, not to lend your sanction to the establishment in Ireland of normal schools, in which the science of agitation is to be taught; 1 Parl. Deb. and, above all, not to make the graduates in those schools, 1076; Ann. and the professors of that science, the chosen instruments for leading the civil force, and for dispensing public justice." 1 xxxi. 1050, Reg. 1835, 26-31. 38. The bill is carried in the ComMarch 28. mons. 1 In accordance with these views, Sir R. Peel did not divide the House upon the second reading of the bill, thereby admitting the principle that the old corporations should be abolished; but in committee Lord Francis Egerton moved, with his concurrence, that "the committee should be empowered to make provision for the abolition of corporations in Ireland, and for such arrangements as should be necessary for their abolition, and for securing the efficient and impartial administration of justice, and the peace and good government of cities and towns in Ireland." The object of this was to vest the government of boroughs, so far as the administration of justice and direction of the police force was concerned, in the Lord-lieutenant, or those acting under him, not the persons elected by the constituencies. Government resisted this, on the ground that it tended to do away with the principle of popular appointment and control, which was the leading principle of the bill, and establish an invidious distinction in this respect between Great Britain and Ireland. Lord F. Egerton's motion was lost by a majority of 307 to 64-a larger majority than Lord Mel2 Parl. Deb, bourne's Ministry had yet got in the Commons; and the xxxi. 1318; bill finally passed by a majority of 61—viz. 260 to 199— 747; Ann. with the alteration only that the sheriffs in the larger boroughs were to be nominated by the Lord-lieutenant, not the town-councils.2 1386, xxxii. Reg. 1836, 33, 43. The success of the bill was now secured so far as the Commons were concerned; but all parties were aware XXXVI. 1836. 39. altered in and finally the Com May 9. that it was in the House of Lords that the real trial of CHAP. strength on it would take place. It was read a second time in the Upper House without opposition; but in going into committee Lord Fitzgerald moved, as had been The bill is done in the Commons, for an instruction to the committee essentially similar to Lord F. Egerton's, which had been thrown out the Lords. in the Lower House. This motion was carried against rejected in Ministers by a majority of 84, the numbers being 203 mons. to 119. Several other amendments, bringing the bill into the shape for which Sir R. Peel had contended in the House of Commons, were carried by majorities nearly as large; and the bill, as thus amended, was sent down to the Commons for their consideration. Lord John Russell, after observing that the bill, as now altered, contained little or nothing of what had been sent up from the Commons, seeing that out of 140 clauses 106 had been omitted or altered, and 18 new ones introduced, moved that the amendments of the Lords should be rejected, and the bill sent back to the Upper House. June 9. This was carried by a majority of 86, the numbers being 324 to 238. Upon the bill, however, backed by this large majority, coming back to the Lords, the motion of Lord Melbourne, that the amendments of the Commons June 27. should be taken into consideration, was lost by a majority of 99, the numbers being 220 to 121; and upon the bill returning, as amended by the Lords, to the Commons, Lord John Russell moved, and carried, that it should be Ann. Reg. taken into consideration that day three months-the usual 64; Parl mode of abandoning questions which were then set at rest 218, 963. for the present in both houses of Parliament.1 1 1835, 53, Deb. xxxiv. Church Bill in the Commons, and The other great party-question of the year produced 40. a similar collision, threatening the most serious conse- Irish quences between the two houses. The Irish Church Bill again passed was introduced on 25th April by Lord Morpeth, being the same in substance with that which had been thrown thrown out out, by a majority of 97, in the Upper House; and on Lords. this occasion he promised a surplus of £100,000 a-year, in the April 29, СНАР. XXXVI. 1836. as likely to be ultimately available to the purposes of education. Lord Stanley and Sir R. Peel renewed their objections to those clauses in the bill which went to appropriate any part of the church property to temporal or general purposes. The bill on this occasion passed the Commons by a majority of only 26, the numbers being 290 to 264, the minority containing a majority of English members. Upon going to the Upper House, however, the appropriation clauses were rejected by a majority of 91, the numbers being 138 to 47, and the bill, as thus amended, was read a third time and passed. Upon the bill returning to the Commons, Lord John Russell started a question of privilege, on the ground of the Lords havand xxxiii, ing incompetently interfered in the first instance with Ann. Reg. a money bill; and on this technical ground the bill, as amended, was thrown out by a majority of 29, or 260 to 231.1 July 25. 1 Parl. Deb. xxxv. 241, 279, 515, 1392, 1393; 1835, 66 110. 41. Perils of Thus were the two houses brought into direct and fearful collision on the two vital questions of Corporate Reform collision and the Church Establishment in Ireland, the natural two Houses, and oft-predicted result of a majority of the Lower House this state of between the being based on the boroughs and the representation of numbers, of the Upper on landed estates and the representation of property. It was obvious to all the world that this state of matters was in the highest degree perilous, and could not continue without putting the constitution, as established by the Reform Bill, in serious jeopardy. It went far to neutralise the whole advantage of the representative system, as any question taken up by the opposite sides as a party one, was sure to be carried in the one house and thrown out in the other; and this state of antagonism was not only confirming both in their conceived opinions, but rendering the division between them, from the keenness of party conflict, every day more decided and irreparable. In the violent shock of the opposite parties which divided the empire, of which Ireland had become the battle-field, the real wants and pre XXXVI. 1836. interests of its unhappy inhabitants were well-nigh for- CHAP. gotten; and the fatal illusion became daily more common, that its real evils were political, not social, and were to be removed by a change of ministry or political power, not by an alteration of material circumstances. Meanwhile the open antagonism of the two houses contributed greatly to strengthen the hands of the Radicals, who desired the abolition or entire change of the Upper, and furnished a plausible ground to O'Connell and the revolutionists for representing the House of Peers as the inveterate enemy of all reform, and its establishment on an entirely different footing as an indispensable preliminary to any real social improvement. 42. agitation Lords. The event soon showed that the Radicals would not be slow in taking advantage of the door thus opened to Increased them for renewing and inflaming the agitation against against the the House of Lords. "Justice to Ireland," said O'Con- House of nell," is our cry. England has reformed corporations; Scotland has them: Ireland applied for them; the House of Commons granted them; the House of Lords refused them. It was said, that as soon as the House of Commons was reformed, it would seek a quarrel with the House of Lords; that prophecy has been completely falsified. It is not the Commons who seek a quarrel with the Lords, but the Lords with the Commons. The House of Commons have been forbearing in the highest degree, in order to avoid a collision with the Lords; and the only consequence has been, that they have been defied and insulted. This is not to be endured. We have submitted for centuries to your oppression, but we will not submit to be insulted. We will do nothing violent or illegal; we will keep ourselves within the limits of the constitution, but we will agitate, agitate, agitate, until Ireland is organised, peaceably and legally, as it was before, and the result will be the same. I trust the people of England will respond to the cry, Justice to Ireland.' I defy the House of Lords to keep from Ire XXXVI. 1836. CHAP. land municipal institutions. They may delay-withhold them they never will. I thank them for choosing this as the ground of collision between the two houses; I thank them for branding the people of Ireland as aliens ; I thank them for thus barbing with insult their dart of death. The people of England must now join with the majority of the Lords in proclaiming the people of Ireland unfit for municipal institutions, or they must join with the majority of the Commons in forcing them from that obstinate body. Day after day the necessity of another organic reform is becoming more evident. The House of Commons has taken its part, the House of Lords has 1 Ann. Reg. done the same; the collision has come; the people of England will determine between them, and may God defend the right."1 1836, 62, 63. 43. this agita land. Upon the English people these violent declamations Effects of produced at this time very little impression; for the tion in Ire- urban population, in whom such sentiments had formerly found a responsive voice, were so prosperous, from the low price of provisions and flourishing state of commerce, that they were entirely occupied with projects of gain; and the rural, who were suffering from those low prices, were so inherently loyal and peaceable that they could not be brought, from any external pressure, to join their voices to those of the decided enemies of the constitution. But the case was very different in Ireland. There the low price of agricultural produce, which had fallen rapidly from the influence of three fine harvests, acted with unmitigated force on a population wholly agricultural, and 2 Tooke on possessing no means of either living or paying their rents but by the disposal of the crops of the year.2 Mr O'Connell took advantage of the universal distress produced by this circumstance to rouse and inflame the tithe agitation; and he founded on the Whig proposalto deduct 30 per cent froin it in a tithe commutation, not as a reason for remaining quiet, but as an addi Prices, iv. 412. |