The Sun.
London, England, 1859-04-05 00:00:00

try. He went on to say Parliament would not permit
us to resign, and Parliament would not permit us to dissolve.
I should like to know where the noble viscount has found
that doctrine. It has always been held to be the constitu-
tional prerogative of the Crown, when and where it pleased,
to dissolve Parliament, and since the memorable year of
1784—which the noble viscount would have done well to
remember, for the attempt was followed by disastrous con-
sequences which recoiled upon the heads of its authors—
there has been no attempt to interfere with the prerogative
of the Crown to dissolve Parliament when and for what
reason
it thought fit. I have trespassed at great length
won your lordships, but I thought it due to myself and my
colleagues—l 'thought it due to the position which my
friends and- myself hold—l thought it due to the serious
subjects that press upon our attention—that I should not
disemise the difficulties which surround our present system
of 13arnamentary government ; that I should not disguise
the views,, hopes, and expectations upon which we brought
forward d bill for the settlement of this important question ;
and that I should not also disguise the nature of the oppo-
sition we encountered, and the character of the vote by
which the House of Commons has not condemned the bill
of the Government, but has prevented the Government
from fairly bringing it forward. (Cheers.) As I have
already stated, when the vote passed in the other house my
colleagues and myself were fully and unanimously of
opinion that there were only two alternatives which it was
possible for us to select—viz., to take upon ourselves the
responsibility of advising her Majesty to dissolve Parlia-
ment so soon as it could be done consistently with the
discharge of those duties and the performance of that
amount of business which is indispensable before a dissolu-
tion can take place, and thereby making an appeal to
tire deliberate opinion of the country ; or, in the second
Pfb.ce, to offer her Majesty our gratitude for past
favours, and with a deep sense of her Majesty's kind-
ness and confidence humbly and dutifully to tender to
her Majesty the resignation of our offices. My lords, we
carefully considered these two alternatives, and I can
assure your lordships that, if we had considered our own
ease and comfort—if we had considered anything but the
imperative calls of duty—if we had not been prepared to
sacrifice our private convenience to the public interests,
there was not one of my colleagues who would not, with me,
joyfully accept the alternative I have pointed out,—who
would not have embraced with satisfaction the opportunity
of relieving themselves from the cares, labours, and respon-
sibilities of office, and who would not have content edly
withdrawn into the retirement of private life. (Hear, hear.)
My lords, the interests at stake were too great to permit us
to consider our private feelings and personal conveniences.
There was the critical state of affairs abroad as well as at
home, and I will repeat again, I believe that the preserva-
tion of the public peace of Europe, if it is still to be main-
tained, will be seriously endangered by any change in the
present composition of her Majesty's Government. My.
lords, I speak this not boastfully as to myself and my col-
leagues, but I know that there is no country in Europe in
which the lovers of peace do not look with serious appre-;
hensions to the overthrow of the present Government and
the substitution of a Government presided over either by the
noble viscount the member for Tiverton or the noble lord
the member for the city of London. (Cheers.) My lords,
we are not insensible to the inconvenience of a dissolution
at the present moment, to the delay which it will cause in
the conduct of public business, to the various evils which
are inseparable from a dissolution of Parliament at this
season of the year; but wishing tohold the balance between
the two, and believing that it is essential that in the present
state of things the country should have an opportunity of
pronouncing an opinion, and of applying, at the earliest
possible opportunity, a remedy for the presentunsatisfactory
state of things, we thought it our duty respectfully to ten-
der our advice to her Majesty that' she would be pleased to
sanction as early a dissolution of Parliament as shall be com-
patible with the state of public business ; and, if her Majesty
should not be pleased to approve of that suggestion, we
humbly and unanimously tendered to her Majesty the resig-
nation of the offices we held. Her Majesty was graciously
pleased, without any hesitation—not being insensible to the
inconvenience of either course—but without hesitation,
her Majesty intimated her pleasure that we should continue
to hold our offices, and her Majesty sanctioned an appeal to
be made to the judgment and decision of the people. M
lords, to that appeal I look with confidence. (Hear, hear.)
But the country will greatly mistake the nature and cha-
racter of that appeal if it !apposes that the question which
is submitted to it is, whether this or that measure of reform
should be adopted, and whether this or that clause or pro-
vision should be inserted in the bill. (Hear, hear.) We
have redeemed our pledge to propose to Parliament what
we thought would have satisfied the reasonable expectation
of the House of Commons, and would have shown the con -
ciliatory spirit in which weundertook the question. But my
lords, after the 'vote of the House of Commons on this sub-
ject, we hold ourselves free from the provisions of that bill,
and free to reconsider the whole question anew without pre-
judice and with due deliberation. (Hear, hear.) The course
adopted by the other house on the motion of the noble lord
the member for the city of London will have this effect,
that no single member of that house, who may be uncon-
nected with office, will be by his vote pledged to one single
provision of that measure. (Hear.) The principles and de-
tails of any new bill will be as open to consideration and de-
liberation as they were before our measure was submitted to
Parliament. (Hear, hear.) I know some of my friends in
the House of Commons have threatened me that if I go to
the hustings upon this bill I shall be beaten, and my sup-
porters have been defied to meet a popular constituency with
this bill. I know not about the hustings, because that is
not a place where calm deliberation always prevails, but
where passion and clamour often carry the clay. But lam
satisfied that, where any constituency will, calmly and
fairly consider the merits and demerits of that measure, they
will be of opinion that the bill we offered was a large, libe-
ral, and useful measure of reform, and one which, while
largely extending the advantages of the franchise and ad-
mitting many of the lower classes, yet did not indiscrimi
nately admit such a number as to overbear all other classes,
and enable the lower classes to monopolise the representa-
tion. (Cheers.) The House of Commons, however, has
thought fit to prohibit the discussion of that measure. The
amendment of the noble lord will have the effect of post-
poning for another year the settlement of the question of
reform. (Hear, hear.) It will have the effect of creating
serious inconvenience to the public interests by the inter-
ruption of useful and necessary legislative measures, by the
check it will give to commercial speculation, by apprehen-
sions of the possible consequences of a change of Ministry,
and of danger to the peace of Europe. I know all this, and
I know, too, that the .vote which the House of Commons
has pronounced will not have the effect in the slightest
degree
,of establishing any principle of Parliamentary re-
form. My lords, we do not appeal to the country on the
subject of Parliamentary reform, still less do we appeal to
the country on the particular provisions of that bill. We
appeal to the country on a much larger and broader ques-
tion,—whether the present state of the House of Commons
—split up as it is into hundreds of petty parties, either of
which is unable to conduct the business of the country, but
which are able, by combining together, to obstruct any
Government that may be formed—shall receive the con-
tinued suppert and countenance of the people of England.
(Cheers.) We- appeal to them as men who have endea-
voured faithfully to discharge the duties of our office, who
endeavoured to deserve the confidence which the House of
Commons has withheld, and the confidence which our
Sovereign has been pleased to renew to us ; we appeal to
them to know whether they will entrust the preparation of
a measure of reform to those who would approach it in a
calm and deliberate spirit, and discuss it in a moderate and
temperate tone—or whether they would entrust the pre-
paration of such a measure to men who have embarked
upon the wild and visionary schemes of the honourable
member for Birmingham, and the hardly less dangerous
and visionary propositions of the right honourable gentle-
man the member for Carlisle, the partner of the noble lord
in concocting thia resolution. (Hear, hear.) We appeal to
them whether, as lovers. of fair dealing and plain and
straightforward conduct in public men, they will sanction
the overthrow of a Ministry who, in honourably endeavour-
ing to discharge their duty, have fallen, not in pursuance of
a difference of opinieti brought forward in fair Parliamen-
tary conflict, but who have been overthrown in consequence
of the success—the undeserved, but I will not call it the
unanticipated success—of what I must be permitted to term
an ingenious manoeuvre. (The noble earl resumed his
seat amid loud and prolonged cheers.)
Earl GRANVILLE would make a few observations upon
what had fallen from the noble earl. The noble earl had, he
understood—for he was not present when he commenced his
speech—begun by reference to the moderation of the de-
bates in the House of Commons, which, as he (Earl Gran-
ville) thqught, added greater force to their decision. But
if he concurred with the noble earl in his praises of the
moderation of tone which had characterised those debates,
he must say that there were portions of the noble earl's
speech which did not deserve the same meed of approbation.
(Hear.) The noble earl commenced by stating that there
were three courses open to him and his colleagues after the
vote of the House of Commons. The; first was to resign ;
the second to dissolve ; and the third to continue in office,
and to bring in another bill concurrent with the opinion
generally entertained by the House of Commons. The last
named course the noble earl entirely repudiated. He never-
theless thought it might have been adopted by the govern
ment without any derogation from their character, and the
more so that it was not totally inconsistent with the course
taken by the noble earl himself last year. (Cheers.) It was
thought, too, that there were some advantages in a conserve--
tive government going on with a reform bill when the wishes
of the House of Commons were once known with regard to it,
not because a conservative government would have brought
forward a measure of sham reform which a liberal govern-
ment could not do, but if they chose to bring forward a bill
that would satisfy the reasonable expectations of the people
they would, for the reasons pointed out by Mr. Walpole in
his letter to the noble lord, have a better chance of carrying
such a measure than any other Government. When, how-
ever, the noble earl declared it to be inconsistent with ghat
he felt to be due to his honour, and the honour of his col-
leagues, to follow that course, he accepted that declaration,
and he was sure that there was not one of their lordships
who would any longer wish that he had followed it. (Hear,
hear.) The second course was resignation, and to meet the
objection to his-not adopting that it appeared that' the
greater part of the noble lord's speech was directed. The
noble lord began with a review of the state of parties ; and
he (Earl Granville) agreed very much in what he said on
that subject. No doubt the condition of parties had changed
very much from. What it was in those days when Walpole
and Pitt- een.l.d command enormous majorities in parliament
to vote anything at the bidding of the Minister. He quite
concurred with the noble lord that it would be inconsistent
with a reformed House of Commons that upon every little
question upon which the Government of the day might
happen to be placed in a minority they should resign.
Nevertheless, it was important that any Government
charged with the affairs of this great country should have a
numerical support in the House of Commons, and should
likewise have a policy of their own which the country coda
understand. (Hear.) And when the noble lord dwelt on the
want of cohesion that characterised the Liberal party, he
must be permitted to say that it was in the nature of the
Liberal party to want cohesion more than the Conservative
(".oh, oh," and cheers.) It was clear that a party
which stood upon ancient usages and ancient ways was
more likely to be consistent, if .united, than those who
adopted the general principles of progress and advancement.
But when the noble lord went further, and objected to the
Liberals being divided into so many guerilla parties, he
must surely forget the run he had himself made, and 'the
attacks of those guerilla parties in former times— (hear, hear)
—especially those of that famous guerilla chief, Mr. M. Gib-
son—(cheers and a laugh)—and that when he made bis
celebrated motion against the late Government, the noble
lord found it so entirely in accordance with his own princi-
ples, that he jumped at the opPortituity at face, and &two