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were now in open confederacy, with Irish Romanists for the destruction of the union between church and state. I acknowledge your right of making this inquiry; and if I do not notice in detail the various suggestions in your letter, it is from no want of courtesy, but from the necessity of not needlessly involving myself in literary controversy. You are under a misapprehension if you suppose that I intended to cast any slur on the high-church party. I have the highest respect for the high-church party. I believe there is no body of men in this country to which we have been more indebted from the days of Queen Anne to the days of Queen Victoria for the maintenance of the orthodox faith, the rights of the crown, and the liberties of the people. In saying this I have no wish to intimate that the obligations of the country to the other great party in the church are not equally significant. I have never looked upon the existence of parties in our church as a calamity. I look upon them as a necessity, and a beneficial necessity. They are the natural and inevitable conse-quences of the mild and liberal principles of our ecclesiastical polity, and of the varying and opposite elements of the human mind and character. When I spoke I referred to an extreme faction in the church of very modern date, that does not conceal its ambition to destroy the connection between church and state, and which I have reason to believe has been for some time in secret combination, and is now in open confederacy, with the Irish Romanists for the purpose. The Liberation Society, with its shallow and short-sighted fanaticism, is a mere instrument in the hands of this confederacy, and will probably be the first victim of the spiritual despotism the Liberation Society is now blindly working to establish. As I hold that the dissolution of the union between church and state will cause permanently a greater revolution in this country than foreign conquest, I shall use my utmost energies to defeat these fatal machinations. Believe me, rev. sir,

'Your faithful member and servant,
'B. DISRAELI.'

The Easter holidays had now arrived, and little work had been done in the course of the session. The late period at which it commenced, the illness of Lord Derby and his

1867.]

THE THIRD READING.

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made by the minister for extending to the counties the system of voting by papers, which had already been adopted for the universities, was also rejected.

Mr. Horsfall, one of the representatives for Liverpool, having brought forward a motion for giving a third member each to Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham, the proposal was opposed in the first instance by the government, but was at length conceded by Mr. Disraeli, who at the same time added Leeds to the list of towns to which a third member was to be given. This concession increased the hostility with which the ministry and their measure were regarded by Lord Cranbourne and those that thought with him, who now sat below the gangway, on the ministerial side of the house, and led General Peel to say, that after this concession he should conclude that there was 'nothing with less vitality than a vital point, nothing so insecure as the securities that the bill offered, and nothing so elastic as the conscience of a cabinet minister.' And well he and his friends might complain when they saw the so-called securities swept away one after another, and the bill introduced by the conservative ministry transformed with their consent into a measure which Mr. Bright himself might have introduced, and which, if it did not altogether satisfy the wishes of the members of the Reform League, certainly surpassed their expectations. The House of Commons, thoroughly weary of their work, and finding themselves now in the month of July, hurried through the later clauses of the bill, tossed overboard without consideration amendments of all kinds, loudly called for the schedules, rapidly passed them; and so at last the bill, after having been thirteen weeks in committee, came before the house for the third reading. Mr. Disraeli was then compelled to listen to taunts and sarcasms as severe as those which he had heaped on Sir Robert Peel, and complaints of betrayal from the conservative party as bitter as those he had himself uttered against the illustrious statesman who led that party when he was an obscure member of it. Lord Cranbourne said, 'I should deeply regret to find that the House of Commons has applauded a policy of legerdemain; and I should above all things regret that this great gift to the people, if gift you think it, should have been. purchased at the cost of a political betrayal which has no

VOL. III.

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tween the government and the House of Commons; and therefore, as it would be necessary that they should consider their position, he proposed that the House should adjourn to the following Monday; an arrangement adopted with Mr. Gladstone's concurrence, who, however, placed on the paper a notice pledging the House to go on with the second and third resolutions on Monday before proceeding with the committee of ways and means.

On the day named the premier announced the intentions of government to a densely-crowded and eagerly-expectant House. He stated that he had waited on the Queen, and laid before her the position of the government, of the different parties in the House and the country; and he had concluded by telling her that the advice which the ministers were prepared to offer her was, that she should dissolve parliament, and take the opinion of the country on the conduct of the government and on the question at issue. At the same time he had represented to her majesty that there were important occasions on which it was desirable that the sovereign should not be embarrassed by personal claims; and that if she was of opinion that the question at issue could be more satisfactorily settled, and the interests of the country better promoted, by the immediate retirement of the present government from office, they were prepared to quit her service. He had then tendered his resignation to her majesty, who took a day to consider what had been said to her, and then announced that it was her pleasure not to accept the resignation of her ministers, and declared her readiness to dissolve parliament as soon as the state of public business would permit. Under these cirumstances he advised her majesty that although the representatives of the existing constituencies were no doubt as morally competent to decide on the question of the disestablishment of the Irish church as the representatives of the new constituencies, still it was the opinion of ministers that every effort should be made for appealing, if possible, to the new constituencies; and he stated that if the government had the cordial coöperation of parliament, he was advised by those who were experienced in this matter that it would be possible to make arrangements by which the dissolution might take place in the coming autumn. With regard to the second and third

1868.]

MR. DISRAELI'S EXPLANATIONS.

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resolutions on the Irish church, having disapproved of the first, he of course disapproved of the second and third, which he looked upon as corollaries to the first. With a view to the despatch of business, however, he would not enter into protracted and formal discussions upon them, though he should offer them a hearty negative; but he would be happy to devote the earliest possible day at the disposal of the government for their consideration.

Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Bright, all condemned the course pursued by the government as unconstitutional, and contended that after the severe defeats they had sustained they had no right to recommend a dissolution, but ought at once to have given in their resignations.

The subject was again brought up on the following day in consequence of an apparent discrepancy between the statement made by the Duke of Richmond in the House of Lords and that made by Mr. Disraeli in the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone questioned the prime-minister with regard to it, and received from him the reply that there was not the slightest intentional difference between his original and his subsequent statement of what took place. When,' said he, 'I attended her majesty at Osborne, after acquainting her majesty with the position of the government, I at once recommended that in the present state of affairs, not only in justice to the government, but for the sake of the country and the great issue at stake, parliament should be dissolved immediately, or as soon as the state of public business permitted.'

Mr. Bright. 'Did you recommend an appeal to the present constituencies?'

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Mr. Disraeli. The honourable member has interposed with a matter that has nothing to do with the question. I recommended the dissolution absolutely and unequivocally, without reference to any particular circumstance, as soon as the state of public business should permit. I said afterwards that I had hoped that by giving up all other bills which we had introduced, and by confining our attention to supplemental reform measures, if the house acted cordially with me, a general election might take place by an appeal to the new constituencies. As I was the person who had audience of her majesty, I think my statement should be taken; but if any of my colleagues elsewhere has made a

statement which conveyed a different impression, the logical procedure would be, that that colleague should be called upon to explain the discrepancy.'

Thus Mr. Disraeli, though really in a considerable minority, had the House of Commons as much under his control as if he was the leader of a large majority; for if they did not accept the measures he placed before them, he might allege that they had compelled him to make his appeal to the existing constituencies, in which case it would be necessary to dissolve the new parliament at a very early stage of its existence, in order that the new constituencies might exercise the franchises that had been conferred on them. This was the rod which circumstances and his own dexterity had placed in the hands of the prime-minister, by whom it was sure to be employed with great effect. Several members tried to extract some pledge or explanation with regard to the power of dissolution with which the Queen had intrusted him; but all these attempts were skilfully parried and put aside. Mr. Gladstone's two remaining resolutions were subsequently put and carried, ministers declining to divide against them. Then followed a scene such as has seldom been witnessed in the House of Commons. Mr. Aytoun, a Scotch member, not satisfied with the success of Mr. Gladstone's well-considered resolutions, insisted on adding to them a rider, that the Maynooth grant and the regium donum should be discontinued. In vain did Mr. Gladstone explain that this was a matter for after-consideration, and referred to his own previous decla rations of approval of the course which this ill-timed motion indicated. Mr. Aytoun persisted, and the bone of contention he had thrown down brought out at once the differences of opinion that existed in the liberal ranks. The ministers seeing that their work was being effectually done by their opponents, walked out of the House, leaving the opposition to fight out this civil war, which they did amid bellowing, screeching, cheering, yelling, and vehement gesticulation; and their anger was raised to the highest pitch, when Mr. Disraeli, who had now returned to the House, said that his expectations had been realised, and that the gentlemen on the opposite side of the House were now quarrelling over their booty. This sarcasm introduced a new element of disorder, and the confused discussion

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