ONE:Meanwhile Lord Ashley, a staunch upholder of the Corn Laws, in a letter to his constituents of Dorsetshire declared his opinion "that the destiny of the Corn Laws was fixed," and that it would be wise to consider "how best to break the force of an inevitable blow." Mr. Bickham and Captain Estcott, also strong defenders of the landlords' monopoly, published their conviction that the Corn Laws were no longer tenable; and on the 22nd of November Lord John Russell, who was at Edinburgh, addressed a letter to the electors of the City of London, which was duly circulated throughout the kingdom, and which contained the following remarkable passages:Yet the whole demand for sailors was carried, and the demand of inquiry as absolutely rejected. Parliament went on and voted three million two hundred and five thousand five hundred and five pounds for the expenses of the navy; four thousand pounds for Greenwich Hospital; five hundred thousand pounds for the discharge of the debts of the navy. For the army, including some new contracts with the German princes for men to serve in America, three million pounds. What was still more disgraceful was that, amid all these charges on the public purse, the king came again with a fresh demand for six hundred thousand pounds for debts on the Civil List. It was pretended that extraordinary calls had been made on the royal purse by the suffering Royalists in America; but it was notorious that the Royal household continued in the same condition of reckless waste and extravagance as it was when the former half million was voted for the same purpose. Yet the Commons granted this sum; and, by way of preventing the king from falling into fresh difficulties, added one hundred thousand pounds a year to the Civil List. The matter, however, did not pass without a plain reminder to his Majesty. The rough-spoken Sir Fletcher Norton, the Speaker of the Commons, when presenting this Bill for the increase of the Civil List to the king, said:"Sir,In a time of public distress, full of difficulty and danger, under burdens almost too heavy to be borne, your faithful Commons postponed all other business, and granted your Majesty not only a large present supply, but a very great additional revenuegreat beyond examplegreat beyond your Majesty's highest wants!" Having passed these votes, Parliament was prorogued on the 13th of December till the 21st of the following January.
TWO:Lord Advocate Jeffrey, who had introduced the Scottish Reform Bill as early as the 19th of January, moved the second reading on the 21st of May. He had, in the previous Session, proceeded on the principle that the old system was to be regarded as utterly incurable, and not to be patched or mended, but abandoned and destroyed. They could not decimate its abuses, or cut off its vicious excesses; its essence was abuse, and there was nothing that was not vicious about it. He gloried in the avowal that no shred, or jot, or tittle of the old abomination should remain. Indeed, it is a matter of astonishment that the Scottish people could have so long borne a state of things so humiliating to a nation which originally formed a kingdom by itself, which still retained its own laws, religion, interests, feelings, and language; which was full of generally diffused wealth; in which education had for ages been extended throughout the very lowest ranks; and whose people were peaceable, steady, and provident, possessing all the qualities requisite for a safe exercise of the franchise. The Scots had literally no share whatever in the representation of the Imperial Parliament. The qualification for a voter in Parliament was at least thirty or forty times higher than in any other part of the empire, and above a hundred times beyond the general qualification in England. Consequently a vote became a dear article in the Scottish market. Some persons bought votes as a good investment. The average price was about 500, but it frequently rose to double that sum. Shortly before the passing of the Reform Bill six Scottish votes were exposed for sale in one day, and brought 6,000. The electors were, therefore, cut off from the rest of the public, and set aside to exercise a high and invidious privilege, which they regarded not as a trust for the people, but as a privilege to[354] be prized for its pecuniary value or for its influence in procuring Government situations.
ONE:Thus the Cabinet was evidently fast breaking up, when Mr. Littleton introduced his Tithe Bill. Its object was much the same as Mr. Stanley's Act of 1832 for the Compulsory Commutation of Tithe. This last Act had been a failure, and Mr. Littleton was compelled to ask Parliament to grant the sum of 1,000,000 to pay the arrears. He hoped to remedy its defects by reducing the number of people who were liable to tithe, and then, after the 1st of November, to commute the tithe into a land tax, payable to the State, to reduce its amount by one-fifth, and to allow any person having a substantial interest in the estate to redeem the residue of it, after five years had expired, on easy terms. After a number of stormy debates the progress of the measure seemed assured, when Lord John Russell went out of his way to express his views in favour of the appropriation of the surplus revenues of the Irish Church to secular purposes. Stanley wrote to Graham the laconic note, "Johnny has upset the coach." Indeed, the declaration was the more indiscreet because the Cabinet was hopelessly divided on the point.
TWO:Undaunted by this display of prelatical bigotry, Lord Stanhope immediately gave notice of a Bill to prevent a tyrannical exercise of severity towards Quakers, whose principles did not permit them to pay tithes, church-rates, or Easter offerings; this he did on the 3rd of July of the same year. By the 7 and 8 William III. two justices of peace could order a distress on a Quaker for tithes under the value of ten pounds; and by 1 George I. this power was extended to the non-payment of Easter and other dues; but his Lordship showed that of late the clergy had preferred to resort to an Act of Henry VIII., a time when Quakers did not exist, which empowered the clergy, by warrant from two justices of peace, to seize the persons of the defaulters and throw them into prison, where, unless they paid the uttermost farthing, they might remain for life. Thus the clergy of the eighteenth century in England were not satisfied with the humane enactments of William III. or George I., by which they could easily and fully obtain their demands, but they thirsted for a little vengeance, a little of the old enjoyment of imprisoning and tormenting their neighbours, and therefore went back to the days of the brutal Henry VIII. for the means. They had, two months before, thrown a Quaker of Worcester into gaol for the non-payment of dues, so called, amounting to five shillings, and there was every prospect that he might lie there for life. At Coventry six Quakers had lately been prosecuted by the clergyman for Easter offerings of the amount of fourpence each; and this sum of two shillings amongst them had, in the ecclesiastical court, been swelled to three hundred pounds. For this three hundred pounds they were cast into prison, and might have lain there for life, but being highly respected by their townsmen, these had subscribed the money and let them out. But this, his Lordship observed, would prove a ruinous kindness to the Quakers, for it would whet the avarice of the clergy and proctors to such a degree that the people of that persuasion would everywhere be hunted down without mercy for small sums, which might be recovered at once by the simple process of distraint. He declared that he would have all clerical demands satisfied to the utmost, but not by such means, worthy only of the dark ages; and he therefore, in this Bill, proposed the repeal of the obnoxious Act of 27 Henry VIII. But the glutting of their vengeance was too precious to the clergy of this period, and the Bill was rejected without a division.
ONE:This was wormwood to the Government; and Wilkes did not leave them many days in quiet. He had declared that, on returning to England, he would surrender himself under his outlawry on the first day of the next term. Accordingly, on the 20th of April, he presented himself to the Court of King's Bench, attended by his counsel, Mr. Glynn, and avowed himself ready to surrender to the laws. Lord Mansfield declared that he was not there by any legal process, and that the court could not take notice of him; but in a few days he was taken on another writ, and on the 8th of June he was again brought before Lord Mansfield, who declared the outlawry void through a flaw in the indictment; but the original verdict against him was confirmed, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for twenty-two calender months, and two fines of five hundred pounds eachone for the North Briton, and the other for the "Essay on Woman."
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