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tocracy, 'with all their castles, manors, rights of warren and rights of chase, and their broad acres reckoned at fifty years' purchase,' when compared with the vast possessions of the middle-classes; his assertion of their lordships' inferiority to the industrious men of England-not indeed in grace of manners or refined elegance of taste, but in sober, practical wisdom-were applauded to the echo, and helped to confirm and extend the delusion which prevailed as to the democratic tendencies of Lord Brougham's mind. His greatly-praised speech upon the second reading of the bill strikes us, on perusing it now, as scarcely worthy of the speaker or of the occasion. It is far inferior to the addresses of Francis Jeffrey and Sir James Mackintosh on the same subject, both of which, because they were superior to the sparkling mediocrity best adapted to a miscellaneous audience, fell dead and cold upon the House. There was also in Lord Brougham's address a manifest indication of a wish for compromise, cleverly veiled as it may be, which would have greatly lowered his lordship in the estimation of the more eager reformers had it not been lost sight of in the glitter of the more showy passages, of the peroration especially, with its illustration, always effective, hackneyed as it is, of the fabled Sibyl's diminishing books and increasing price. The opening of the speech offers a striking specimen of the exaggeration which at times so greatly marred the beauty and effect of his lordship's oratory :-' If I, now standing with your lordships on the brink of the most momentous decision that ever human assembly came to at any period of the world, and seeking to arrest you while it is yet time, in that position, could by any divination of the future have foreseen in my earliest years that I should have to appear here and to act as your adviser on a question of such awful importance, not only to yourselves but to your remotest posterity, I should have devoted every day and every hour of that life to preparing myself for the task which I now almost sink under.' It is quite certain that if he had so devoted every day and hour of his life, he would never have delivered that or any other speech from the woolsack. The first general election under the new law gave the Grey ministry an overwhelming majority. As the returns came in, the new danger, the great peril in this country of a too great success, broke for a moment upon Lord Brougham's mind, and he exclaimed, 'We shall be too strong!' Prophetic words, as the sequel abundantly proved. The ministry had encountered a fierce, able, almost desperate opposition, and the deadlier the struggle the more powerful did they emerge from it. They were now to grapple with a more insidious and fatal enemy-almost absolute political power; and they fell in public opinion almost as rapidly as they had risen. The first act of the reformed parliament was to repeal the habeas-corpus act in Ireland, to substitute courts-martial for jury-trial, and to prohibit popular meetings in that country. However much Mr O'Connell's turbulence might appear to justify measures of repression, the passing of such an act at the dictation of a ministry could not but destroy the prestige of the new House-not perhaps in the opinion of those who opposed the Reform measure, but certainly in that of the men who had so fiercely struggled to obtain it. Lord Brougham, as if desirous of attracting towards himself more than his due share of popular odium, ran riot in his advocacy of this penal enactment, and exulted with rampant delight over the expedients devised for

putting down 'agitation' -language which from his lips sounded very strangely. To crown all, Sir Andrew Agnew's preposterous bill for insuring the bitter' observance of the Sabbath, although subsequently defeated, was read a second time by the decision of a majority of the new House. The disappointment was general, intense-unreasonably so, as subsequent experience has proved. Sir Robert Peel read the new signs of the times with keen sagacity. The enthusiasm for the Whig ministry having utterly vanished, the next dissolution, whenever it should come, must tell a tale, and the far-sighted baronet immediately began to organise 'liberal conservatism.' The maintenance of the corn-laws in their integrity' was made a cabinet question; and coldness and disgust rapidly overgrew the once ardent and hopeful minds of the great movement party. Still it cannot be denied that great and wise measures were subsequently brought forward and passed by the Grey cabinet. For proof of this, we need only mention the Slave-Emancipation Act-the throwing open of the China trade the modification, in a liberal sense, of the East India Company's charter-the chancellor's bankruptcy reforms-and the promise, at all events, of a popular reconstruction of municipal corporations. They failed, however, to win back the confidence of the people. The early retirement of Lord Durham from the cabinet also told gravely upon the public mind: it was believed, and there is now no doubt correctly believed, that to him the comparatively wide sweep of the Reform Billespecially the total disfranchisement of the close boroughs-was mainly attributable. Lord Brougham was not for going so far. At a meeting of liberal members held in 1830, on the day after the resignation of the Wellington-Peel cabinet, at Lord Althorp's chambers, he said he should propose to cut off one member from every close borough, and to absolutely disfranchise some, but he greatly questioned the expediency of wholly abolishing this class of seats.' In the session of 1834 the squabbles, accusations, criminations, explanations of the ministry relative to the renewal of the court-martial clauses of the Irish Coercion Bill, still further damaged the cabinet in public estimation. Lord Grey ultimately withdrew from office, and after much caballing and negotiation, Lord Melbourne's 'lath-and-plaster' cabinet, as the Times' called it, was duly installed. The virulence which a portion of the Conservative press had never ceased to manifest against Lord Brougham burst forth at this time with tenfold bitterness. Amongst other agreeable imputations, he was accused over and over again, and in almost direct terms, of habitual addiction to drinka charge covertly repeated in the House of Lords by the Duke of Buckingham, who remarked that the noble and learned lord would no doubt carouse 'pottle deep' over the success of the intrigues which had removed Earl Grey from office. The Lord Chancellor retorted angrily upon his Grace for assailing him with such 'alehouse slang;' and the dispute was apparently growing serious, when it was suggested, in behalf of the duke, that the words 'pottle deep' were Shakspeare's, and consequently legitimate-orthodox; with which Shakspearian explanation the Chancellor professed himself satisfied, and in his turn said that 'alehouse slang' was merely a parliamentary periphrasis, conveying no meaning of a personally offensive or uncivil nature. The accusation so perseveringly urged against Lord Brougham was a false and scandalous one. Intemperance

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of speech he might be fairly enough charged with, but intemperance in drink was an utterly baseless and audacious falsehood. But worse, infinitely worse than the renewed rancour of the Conservative press and peers, was the tone assumed by the liberal papers, which either joined in the cry against the Chancellor, or coldly and feebly defended him. His foibles, once so carefully ignored or concealed, were openly and industriously paraded before the public eye, of course not without much exaggerative colouring. The following hit from an old friend, the Times,' seems a cruel and ungenerous one. It was called forth by an article in the 'Caledonian Mercury,' which denounced the arrogance of the leading journal, and accused it of aiming at the direction of the royal counsels. This article a correspondent of the Times' imputed to Lord Brougham. The Times' thus replied: 'If we have sought to direct the royal counsels in the formation of a cabinet, we have not played contemptible and mountebank tricks to persuade people that we did direct those counsels, and that we were actually (when we were not) authorised to share with Lord Melbourne in the trust of submitting a cabinet to his majesty. We did not pretend to be honoured with the king's commands, nor with the royal confidence, while we knew the king would sooner behold a mad dog enter his council-chamber than see us approach within five miles of Windsor. We never gave out to servants and hangers-on that we were going to Windsor when we ordered a postchaise to take us no further than Putney Bridge.' All these imputations were untrue, and the fact is certain that Lord Brougham did receive the king's commands. Other graceful amenities, such as calling the Chancellor'the cracked and crazy weathercock of the House of Lords,' were showered upon him by the same journal with liberal profusion. But this bitter and undisguised hostility was not shewn till after Lord Brougham's speech upon the New Poor-Law had delivered him into his enemies' hands. In order that the reader may fully appreciate the indiscretion committed by the noble and learned lord, it will be necessary to run over a few of the circumstances connected with the introduction and enactment of that much-controverted measure.

In 1832 a Commission of Inquiry into the causes of the growth of pauperism in England was appointed by the Grey government. The commissioners' report determined the ministry to bring in a bill to provide, by a central board, possessed of ample powers, for the better, more economical, more salutary administration of relief to the poor and destitute than could be hoped for from the discordant action of thousands of independent local boards, all more or less liable to be acted upon by disturbing causes, which could have no influence over a central imperial authority. This bill, although a very stringent one in many of its provisions, maintained and embodied the principle of the old law-namely, that every necessitous person has an absolute claim or right to relief. It passed during Lord Melbourne's administration, safely and without encountering any very formidable opposition, through the House of Commons, under the judicious and temperate management of Lord Althorp, although the rumbling of the Times''thunder,' and other indications of the tendency of popular opinion, emphatically demonstrated that great circumspection and prudence were required in order to weaken or allay the growing apprehension already entertained by many thousands of persons, who

suspected the new bill was a device conceived by the owners of fixed property to destroy not only the abuses, but the very existence of a law which made the relief of destitution a legal obligation as well as a moral duty. Under these circumstances the Chancellor moved the second reading, in a speech which, spite of the innumerable interpretations, explanations, and excuses afterwards offered in its defence, not only gave the finishing blow to his own popularity, but excited a storm of reprobation throughout the country, due not to the measure itself, but to the introductory speech with which the opponents of the bill took care effectually, and for a time inextricably, to confound it. The new law, as we have before observed, embodied, like the old one, the principle that every necessitous person in England has a right to relief, while Lord Brougham's exceedingly clever speech was mainly directed to prove 'that the right to a share in a fixed fund is the grand mischief of the poorlaws, with the seeds of which they were originally pregnant.' As if this were not enough aliment to feed the rising clamour out of doors, his lordship launched into a laudation of the Rev. Mr Malthus and his doctrines, and with only one well-defined exception, denounced the institution of hospitals for the shelter and relief of the sick and feeble. 'The safest, and perhaps the only perfect charity,' said the Lord Chancellor, ‘is a hospital for accidents or violent diseases, because no man is secure against such calamities. Next to this, perhaps a dispensary is the safest; but this is doubtful, because a dispensary is liable to abuse, and because, strictly speaking, sickness is a thing which a prudent man should look forward to and provide against as part of the ills of life. . ... But when I come to hospitals for old men—and old age is before all men, and every man is every day nearer to that goal-all prudent men of independent spirit will in the vigour of their days lay by sufficient to maintain them when age shall have ended their labour. Hospitals, therefore, for the support of old men and women may, strictly speaking, be regarded as injurious in their effect upon the community.' Language like this from the lips of a fortunate lawyer in the actual enjoyment of £14,000 a year, with a secured pension of £5000 on retirement from office, seemed to the embittered spirits out of doors very like triumphant mockery of care and toil-worn men, although of course not so meant by the unaccommodating orator. The plain-speaking he indulged in with respect to the 'widewasting ruin' produced by the old poor-law-foreshadowing the swallowing up of their lordships' rentals unless some sharp remedy were speedily applied-may be judged of from the following sentences: 'I will not say that many farms have been actually abandoned: I will not say that many parishes have been wholly given up to waste for want of occupants (I know that there are instances of farms here and there, and of a parish-I think in the county of Bucks—which have been reduced to this state); but I will not say that as yet the system has so worked as to lay waste any considerable portion of territory.' All this was founded in truth, and the details of the facts alluded to were fully given by Mr George Nicholls, afterwards one of the Poor-Law Commissioners; but it was answered that no considerable portion of the territory of England could as yet have been thrown out of cultivation, since it was well known that year after year 'enclosure bills' for the reclamation and culture of poor lands had been

more and more numerous. One statement he made relative to the worldfamous Deal boatmen called forth a very angry and indignant remonstrance. Their hardihood and daring had, he declared, vanished under the operation of the poor-law, for being able to procure twelve shillings a week from the parish, they refused to put to sea except in fine calm weather. This declamation was not indiscreet because the facts were untrue, but because they were offensive, and wholly unnecessary to induce the Peers to pass the bill. We need not say, however, that many wise, and good, and great men rank to this day on the side of Lord Brougham in the vexed question of the poor-law.

Of course the outcry against what the Times' called the shocking intimation given in one part of the Chancellor's speech against relieving even the aged, the helpless, and the sick,' became furious and unappeasable; and calmly-judging men saw that the fall of the cabinet was at no distant date inevitable. One word as to the excess of population and anti-poorlaw theories propounded by the Rev. Mr Malthus, and eulogised by Lord Brougham. Without wishing to question the humanity of the reverend gentleman, or disputing the soundness of his views under certain circumstances not certainly the circumstances of Great Britain, with her magnificent colonies calling with the myriad voices of their glorious but solitary rivers, their giant woods and fertile, far-stretching plains, upon the English, and Scotch, and Irishman, to come forth and cultivate the fair earth which the Creator has given them-we may be permitted to doubt the possibility of successfully applying his principles in such a state of society as we see in England. We do not misrepresent the views of Mr Malthus when we say they point to a day as early as may be consistent with prudence and self-safety, when the state shall inexorably refuse to relieve destitution, however incurred or however lamentable. This may, for aught we care to know, be true humanity, far-seeing wisdom, but it certainly could not be carried out in England. A few deaths from the refusal of food and shelter-and such results must under the most favourable circumstances be expected as long as improvidence, disease, misfortune, are incidental to humanity-would raise a hurricane of popular indignation, in which not only the obnoxious law, but the most valued institutions of the country-property itself perhaps not excepted-would be swept away amidst the tumult and uproar of a strongly-feeling, and, upon this matter, excitable and passionate people. The new poor-law proposition became law. It has since been purged of its more repulsive provisions, softened into a charitable but still firm and enlightened code, and is, we believe, in the main both considerate and corrective in its general operation.

Another and a very painful incident which occurred about this time added greatly to the disfavour into which the Melbourne cabinet and its chancellor had fallen. Mr Justice Williams, a newly-created Whig judge, sentenced six Dorchester labourers to be transported for seven years under colour of an obsolete statute against taking illegal oaths, originally enacted to repress mutiny in the navy, but in reality for being members of an agricultural trades-union. This cruel, impolitic, unjust sentence Lord Brougham defended in his place in parliament as wise, legal, and even merciful. He spoke to the winds, and a subsequent ministry were compelled to rescind the sentence.

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