205

motion for going into committee; and several more in committee. On the 22d, after it had been read a third time, first Mr. Brougham, and then Sir S. Romilly, divided the House on clauses which they proposed to insert in the bill; nor, when both had been negatived, was even the last question of all, “That the bill do pass," suffered to be carried without another division. On this concluding trial of strength, the numbers were 94 against 29. The first discussion of the measure in the Lords took place on the motion for going into committee, which was made by Lord Sidmouth on the 1st of June. But by this time a discovery had been made. It had been found that, by the act of the Scotch parliament, passed in 1685, for establishing the Bank of Scotland, all foreigners holding shares to a certain amount in that bank became thereby naturalized subjects of Scotland, while by the Act of Union all subjects of Scotland were naturalized in England. Lord Sidmouth, therefore, announced, that he should propose the insertion of a clause to prevent the object of the bill from being defeated by parties taking advantage of that enactment. The motion for going into committee was carried by a majority of 34 to 15; and then, the clause by which it was proposed to meet the old Scotch act, having been reduced by considerable tinkering to what was considered a proper form, was carried by another of 42 to 20. It deprived all foreigners of the privilege of naturalization acquired by holding bank-shares, who had purchased their shares since the 28th of April. The parties whom it affected petitioned the next day to be heard by council against this retrospective disqualification; but that was refused, after another division; and, the standing orders having been suspended, on which question there were three more divisions, the bill, with the added clause, was the same day read a third time and passed. But when it was sent down to the Commons three days afterwards, it was met there, not only by another petition from the parties affected by the disqualifying clause, but by an objection founded upon the privileges of the House. It was observed that one right which foreigners acquired upon being naturalized was to import goods into the country at lower duties than aliens; and that, therefore, the Lords had by their amendment introduced a money-clause into the bill an interference on the part of the other House which the Commons never submitted to. On the Speaker being appealed to, he gave it as his opinion that this objection was fatal to the clause; upon which Lord Castlereagh consented at once that the clause should be negatived, and the bill passed without it. On the following day, when Lord Liverpool, on the bill being brought back to the Lords, moved that that House should not insist upon its amendment, the opposition again divided in favor

of a motion for deferring the further consideration of the matter till the next day of meeting, but were of course beaten as usual. It was now announced that a bill would be brought in to supply the place of the defeated clause; and on the 8th, leave to bring in such a bill was moved for by Lord Castlereagh in the Commons. The bill was made considerably more comprehensive than the clause had been, for it had been discovered that there were some English and Irish acts to be guarded against, as well as the Scotch one; at the same time it was divested of the retrospective effect which had been so much objected to. An unsuccessful attempt was even made by the opposition to prevent it from coming into operation till three or four days after it should have been enacted, on the ground that it would otherwise come upon the country without proper notice. Ministers, however, contended that people had had notice enough from the agitation the subject had already undergone in parliament; and so, the standing orders having been again suspended, the bill went through all its stages and was passed in the Commons on the same day on which it was brought in. On the day following it was hurried in the same manner through the Lords.

on.

This severe struggle was perhaps not altogether inspired and Dissolution; sustained by the particular measure respecting the 10th June. principle or details of which it professed to be carried The moment was one at which time gained or lost was of peculiar importance. Ministers, as we have seen, had, by an act passed in the latter part of the session, got rid of the clause in the Regency Act, which provided that the parliament should immediately reassemble in case of the death of the Queen. But it still remained the law that it should so reassemble on either the demise of the Crown, or the death of the Regent. The termination of the old King's protracted life could not now be far off, and was likely enough to happen any day. That event would revive the present parliament, even notwithstanding a dissolution, if the day appointed by the writs of summons for the assembling of a new parliament had not arrived before it took place.1 In these circumstances ministers were very impatient to bring the session to a close, and to get the new parliament called together as expeditiously as possible. The unexpected discovery of the old Scotch act, enabling the opposition to renew and continue the battle on the subject of the Alien Bill, and so to have the benefit for a little longer of whatever the chapter of accidents might turn up, occasioned the loss of about a week. At last, however, on the 10th of June, the day after the supplementary Alien Bill, as it was called, was passed, the Regent came to the

1 The old parliament would have assembled if the new one had not actually

met, but for an act of the preceding session, the 57 Geo. III. c. 157.

CHAP. XIII.] DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT.

207 House of Peers, and at once put an end to the session and dissolved the parliament. This was a very unusual, indeed in modern and constitutional times quite an unprecedented proceeding. The last instance in which the same thing had been done was when Charles II., in March, 1681, suddenly and angrily dismissed his fifth and last parliament, which he had called together at Oxford, after it had sat a week. This precedent was exactly followed in the present case; now, as then, as soon as the speech from the throne had been delivered, the Lord Chancellor, by the royal command, declared the parliament dissolved. The course thus taken excited much surprise and comment; and it also threw the Commons into considerable perplexity. When the members, after the ceremony which had made them members no longer, returned to their own House, and Mr. Manners Sutton, lately their speaker, was proceeding to read the speech at the table, as is usual after a prorogation, Mr. Tierney objected to his doing so, as implying some approbation of the mode of dissolution that had been adopted, which he regarded as an insult to parliament. To this it was rejoined by Lord Castlereagh, in a different tone, that at any rate they had better let the subject alone for the present, in case they should be charged with attempting to deliberate as a House of Commons, when they were only a meeting of private gentlemen, and might incur a præmunire. In point of fact, the speech was not read. The proclamation for calling the new parliament was issued the same afternoon; and the writs were made returnable on the 4th of August. Nothing could now bring the old parliament to life again except the death of the King or the Regent within the interval of fifty-five days.

General election.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE general election kept the country in an uproar from the middle of June till the middle of July. The interest that was excited by many of the contests was almost unprecedented; and in several instances the mob proceeded far beyond its ordinary license and violence. The contest at Westminster, in particular, drew and fixed universal attention, both by the extreme character of the outrages which took place, and by the doubt that continued to hang over the issue almost to the last. Of the two late members only Sir Francis Burdett stood again; Lord Cochrane, about to set out for South America to take the command of the naval forces of the state of Chili, declined to come forward. In these circumstances different sections of the electors looked about in different quarters. One portion of the Radicals, with an amusing ignorance of their man, applied to Mr. Wetherell (afterwards Sir Charles) to represent them; Mr. Wetherell had acquired great glory by his successful defence of Dr. Watson in the preceding year, on his trial of seven days for high treason; and these worthy Westminster electors imagined the learned gentleman to be as good a patriot as themselves. Mr. Wetherell, who had sat in the late parliament for Shaftesbury, got off on the plea of his professional engagements obliging him to give up the House of Commons; but he could not resist transfixing the deputation that waited upon him, by expressing his hope that they would find some other independent candidate, with whom they might unite their efforts to rescue the city of Westminster from the disgrace it had so long endured. The disgrace consisted simply in its having been represented by the two most thorough-going and far-going reformers in parliament. It was then determined by either the same wise men, or some other small section of Sir Francis Burdett's supporters, to put forward, in conjunction with him, his personal friend the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, like himself the advocate of universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and the ballot. At the same time the regular Whig party addressed an invitation to Sir Samuel Romilly, which he accepted. Soon after, Captain Sir Murray Maxwell addressed the electors, offering to serve

CHAP. XIV.]

ELECTION FOR WESTMINSTER.

209

them on what he described as principles of attachment to his King, and veneration for the constitution in other words, as a Tory and partisan of the existing government. Sir Murray was a very gallant and distinguished naval officer, and had lately displayed the highest professional qualities on occasion of his ship, the Alceste, being shipwrecked on one of the Loo-Choo Islands, in bringing back Lord Amherst from his embassy to China; but the thought of his standing for Westminster seems to have been suggested to his friends or to himself, principally by the consideration that a candidate from the quarter-deck might probably have a good chance in a place lately represented by Lord Cochane. As soon as he announced himself, however, the Tories rallied round him. The election commenced on the 18th of June; and Covent Garden was a scene of almost incessant confusion and riot from that morning till the evening of the 4th of July. In addition to the four candidates we have mentioned, Major Cartwright and Mr. Henry Hunt, the then friend of Cobbett, and commonly known as Orator Hunt, were proposed; the show of hands was declared to be in favor of him and Romilly; but, nevertheless, he and the Major polled very few votes: the latter, who withdrew at the third day, only 23; Hunt, who obstinately persevered thro、gh the fifteen days, only 84, of which no more than 11 were the produce of the last eight days. Nor did Mr. Kinnaird continue the struggle longer than Major Cartwright, having in the three days pulled only 65 votes. Romilly, on the other hand, took the lead from the first, and remained safe at the head of the poll. The only contest was between Burdett and Maxwell. The latter was assailed by the populace, both with execrations and missiles of a more substantial kind, from almost the first moment of his appearance on the hustings. On the first day he was struck with a stone on the right eye. For the first four days, nevertheless, he kept ahead of his antagonist: at the close of the fourth day's polling the numbers stood - for Maxwell, 1726; for Burdett, only 1263. This position of the two candidates infuriated the mob; and on the evening of the fifth day, as he was returning from the hustings, Sir Murray was so severely handled as to place his life for some time in danger. He was not able again to appear in public. Both on the fourth and fifth days, too, great exertions were made by Burdett's voting friends; by that fifth evening they had the satisfaction of seeing the gallant captain second in the race, the entire poll being announced to be for Maxwell, 2169; for Burdett, 2171; and, similar efforts being continued on the following day, this difference of two was increased to very nearly two hundred. Sir Murray never recovered his ground; and the final numbers were Romily, 5339; Burdett, 5238; Maxwell, 4808. On one of