Famous Men and Great Events of the Nineteenth Century - Charles Morris

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places. In the centres of manufacture similar signs of discontent appeared. Tumultuous meetings were held, riots broke out, bloody collisions with the troops took place. Daily and hourly the situation was growing more critical. The people were in that state of exasperation that is the preliminary stage of insurrection.

      Two things they strongly demanded, reform in Parliament and repeal of the Corn Laws. It is with these two questions, reform and repeal, that we propose to deal in this chapter.

      The Parliament of Great Britain

      The British Parliament, it is scarcely necessary to say, is composed of two bodies, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The former represents the aristocratic element of the nation;—in short, it represents simply its members, since they hold their seats as a privilege of their titles, and have only their own interests to consider, though the interests of their class go with their own. The latter are supposed to represent the people, but up to the time with which we are now concerned they had never fully done so; and they did so now less than ever, since the right to vote for them was reserved to a few thousands of the rich.

      Two Centuries of Change

      In the year 1830, indeed, the House of Commons had almost ceased to represent the people at all. Its seats were distributed in accordance with a system that had scarcely changed in the least for two hundred years. The idea of distributing the members in accordance with the population was scarcely thought of, and a state of affairs had arisen which was as absurd as it was unjust. For during these two hundred years great changes had taken place in England. What were mere villages or open plains had become flourishing commercial or manufacturing cities. Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, and other centres of industry had become seats of great and busy populations. On the other hand, flourishing towns had decayed, ancient boroughs had become practically extinct. Thus there had been great changes in the distribution of population, but the distribution of seats in Parliament remained the same.

      Disfranchised Cities and Rotten Boroughs

      As a result of this state of affairs the great industrial towns, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, and others, with their hundreds of thousands of people, did not send a single member to Parliament, while places with only a handful of voters were duly represented, and even places with no voters at all sent members to Parliament. Land-holding lords nominated and elected those, generally selecting the younger sons of noble families, and thus a large number of the “representatives of the people” really represented no one but the gentry to whom they owed their places. “Rotten” boroughs these were justly called, but they were retained by the stolid conservatism with which the genuine Briton clings to things and conditions of the past.

      RUDYARD KIPLING.

      T. HALL CAINE.

      A. CONON DOYLE.

      ROBERT LOUIS

       STEVENSON.

      GEORGE DU MAURIER.

      JAMES M. BARRIE.

      WILLIAM BLACK.

      WALTER BESANT.

      GEORGE MACDONALD.

      POPULAR WRITERS OF FICTION.

      JUSTIN McCARTHY.

      JAMES BRYCE.

      JOHN MORLEY.

      A. J. BALFOUR.

      ENGLISH STATESMEN IN LITERATURE.

      The peculiar state of affairs was picturesquely pointed out by Lord John Russell in a speech in 1831. “A stranger,” he said, “who was told that this country is unparalleled in wealth and industry, and more civilized and enlightened than any country was before it—that it is a country which prides itself upon its freedom, and which once in seven years elects representatives from its population to act as the guardians and preservers of that freedom—would be anxious and curious to see how that representation is formed, and how the people choose their representatives.

      The Case Presented by Lord John Russell

      “Such a person would be very much astonished if he were taken to a ruined mound and told that that mound sent two representatives to Parliament; if he were taken to a stone wall and told that these niches in it sent two representatives to Parliament; if he were taken to a park, where no houses were to be seen, and told that that park sent two representatives to Parliament. But he would be still more astonished if he were to see large and opulent towns, full of enterprise and industry and intelligence, containing vast magazines of every species of manufacture, and were then told that these towns sent no representatives to Parliament.

      “Such a person would be still more astonished if he were taken to Liverpool, where there is a large constituency, and told, ‘Here you will have a fine specimen of a popular election.’ He would see bribery employed to the greatest extent and in the most unblushing manner; he would see every voter receiving a number of guineas in a bag as the price of his corruption; and after such a spectacle he would be, no doubt, much astonished that a nation whose representatives are thus chosen, could perform the functions of legislation at all, or enjoy respect in any degree.”

      Dissenters and Catholics Admitted to Parliament

      Such was the state of affairs when there came to England the news of the quiet but effective French Revolution of 1830. Its effect in England was a stern demand for the reform of this mockery miscalled House of Commons, of this lie that claimed to represent the English people. We have not told the whole story of the transparent falsehood. Two years before no man could be a member of Parliament who did not belong to the Church of England. No Dissenter could hold any public office in the kingdom. The multitudes of Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and other dissenting sects were excluded from any share in the government. The same was the case with the Catholics, few in England, but forming the bulk of the population of Ireland. This evil, so far as all but the Catholics were concerned, was removed by Act of Parliament in 1828. The struggle for Catholic liberation was conducted in Ireland by Daniel O’Connell, the most eloquent and patriotic of its orators. He was sneered at by Lord Wellington, then prime minister of Great Britain. But when it was seen that all Ireland was backing her orator the Iron Duke gave way, and a Catholic Relief Bill was passed in 1829, giving Catholics the right to hold all but the highest offices of the realm. In 1830, instigated by the revolution in France, the great fight for the reform of Parliamentary representation began.

      The question was not a new one. It had been raised by Cromwell, nearly two hundred years before. It had been brought forward a number of times during the eighteenth century. It was revived in 1809 and again in 1821, but public

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