of these great men, and England was proving by her example that a free people could triumph over the greatest difficulties, and prosper in a state of war which apparently made all prosperity hopeless. There was indeed another side to the picture; a reverse to the medal.' Material progress was accompanied with political retrogression, and victory was purchased at a cost faintly appreciated at the time, but to be discovered on the morrow. The condition of the English people, the political disabilities which they endured, the laws, to which they were subjected, cannot be considered in this chapter. It is sufficient to have recorded here the advance which Britain had made in material prosperity. Later on it will be the duty of the historian to record the circumstances of individual Englishmen in 1816, and to describe the victories which progress gradually achieved over the selfish policy of an unreformed legislature. СНАР. I. CHAP. Effects of CHAPTER II. THERE is at the present time no town in either England or Wales which a man cannot reach in a twelve hours' travelling journey from London. He may be whirled from the on politi- metropolis to York or from York to the metropolis in England. four hours. Two hundred years ago, a gentleman would have thought himself fortunate if he had been able to reach London from Northumberland in a week. A coach in 1706 undertook with the blessing of God to convey persons from London to York in four days. The facilities which roads and railways have afforded to travellers have undoubtedly changed the face of England; they have indirectly led to an alteration in the composition of the House of Commons. Parliamentary reform might have been almost indefinitely delayed, if it had not been for Telford, Brindley, and Stephenson. In the days when travelling was difficult and dangerous, the right of representation was of little value. A journey from London to Northumberland was a more hazardous operation than a journey to New York is now; and the burgesses, who were entitled to send members to Parliament, found it difficult to obtain persons who were willing to act as their representatives. It became necessary to adopt the practice of making some allowance to the people who were thus selected; and the borough member became in consequence a paid delegate, and not an unpaid representative. In such a state of things the privilege of representation was naturally of little value. Places, which had originally enjoyed the right of returning members, ceased to exercise it. Places, in which the Crown or some wealthy person had influence, were given the right, and no one ever questioned the power of the Crown to grant it. The Tudor sovereigns created borough after borough; but the creations attracted no attention. Yet The great contest of the seventeenth century fundamentally altered the position of the House of Commons. The House of Commons had asserted its right to exercise a decisive control over the government of the country, and had established for ever its position and its influence. Almost at the same time some progress was made towards better, cheaper, and quicker travelling. Parliament complained that country gentlemen were coming to London, instead of staying at home, and that the country was being pauperised at the expense of the metropolis. They failed to observe that the causes, which were collecting all the country gentlemen into one centre, were contributing to increase the influence of the House of Commons. there can hardly be a question that this was the case. The moment that it became the fashion for a country gentleman to spend a certain period of each year in London, all the apprehensions connected with the journey disappeared. No further difficulty was experienced in obtaining a member for each borough, and a seat in Parliament became of value from the social influence and the position which it gave. In the meanwhile other parts of England shared the increasing prosperity which was visible in the metropolis. New centres of industry steadily acquired fresh importance, while the old boroughs, in which the county families had met together, either ceased to grow, or began slowly to decay. The country squire, who could spend his month or six weeks in London, was too grand a gentleman to patronise the bull-ring or the ball-room of his county town. Population was slowly gravitating to particular eentres; and the House of Commons, while the country CHAP. II. CHAP. The House of Commons. was changing, suddenly resisted further changes in its constitution. Before the seventeenth century the constitution of the House of Commons had been constantly altered. Henry VIII. created seventeen new boroughs, Edward VI. fourteen new boroughs, Mary ten new boroughs, Elizabeth twenty-four new boroughs, and James I. four new boroughs. Charles II. gave members to Durham and Newark; but, with this exception, no new borough was created, either in England or Wales, from the death of James I. to the Reform Bill of 1832. The House of Commons, after the Restoration, took the issue of writs into its own hands, and declined to recognise those which had been issued by the Crown.1 The constitution of the House of Commons was thus stereotyped, for the first time in English history, at the very time at which the population of England was being collected in fresh centres. The representation of the people was becoming more unequal, and no attempt to redress the inequalities was made. At the period at which this history opens the House of Commons consisted of 658 members: 489 of these were returned by England, 100 by Ireland, 45 by Scotland, and 24 by Wales. The representation of England was more unequal than that of either of the other divisions of the kingdom. The ten southern counties of England-Cornwall, Devonshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Berkshire, and Surrey-contained a population of about 2,900,000 souls and returned 237 members to Parliament. The thirty other counties of England contained a population of more than 8,350,000 souls, and returned 252 members to Parliament. A little more than a fourth of the population returned very nearly one half of the whole House of Commons. But this inequality was one of the least glaring defects of the representative system. Scotland 1 Hansard's Parl, Hist., vol. iv. pp. 507–512. contained a population of nearly 2,100,000 persons; Cornwall contained rather more than a quarter of a million of people. Yet all Scotland returned only forty-five members, and the county of Cornwall returned no less than forty-four. Representation then bore no proportion to population; and the population, as a matter of fact, had little or nothing to do with the representation. It was stated in 1793 that the majority of the House of Commons was elected by less than fifteen thousand electors.' Seventy members were elected by thirty-four places, in which it would be to trifle with patience to mention any number of voters whatever, the election being notoriously a mere matter of form.' Ninety other members were elected for forty-six places, in none of which were there fifty voters. Thirtyseven other members were elected for nineteen places, in none of which were there one hundred voters. Fiftytwo other members were elected by forty-six places, in none of which were there two hundred voters. Twenty other members were returned by Scotch counties, in none of which were there one hundred voters. Ten other members were returned by other Scotch counties, in none of which were there two hundred and fifty voters. Two hundred and ninety-four members,1 being a majority of the entire House of Commons in 1793, were returned by constituencies none of which had two hundred and fifty, and in the great majority of which there were not one hundred voters. There were not four thousand elec СНАР. II. borough owners. tors in all Scotland.2 The fifteen not specified in the text being returned by Scotch boroughs with less than 125 electors each. 2 Petition of 1793; Ann. Reg. (1793), 83-103; Ibid. (1821), p. 49; May's Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 295. |