History of the Anti-Corn Law League/Chapter15
CHAPTER XV.
CHANGE OF MINISTRY.
Having briefly sketched the proceedings of the League after the announcement of the fixed duty scheme proposed by the whig ministers, we now revert to their position in Parliament. Their defeat on the sugar duties had made it obvious that they must either resign, or appeal to the constituencies; and much discussion arose as to which course they would pursue. Their strong inclination to hold office, doubtless because they had a strong conviction that the government of the country would be better in their hands than in the hands of the tories, made men believe that they would not hastily relinquish their opportunities to effect public good. On the other hand it was much doubted whether they would gain anything by a general election, for their announced approach to a freetrade policy had roused all the energy of that class which, according to Lord John Russell's own declaration, ought to be predominant in Parliament while that proposed approximation fell too far short of the free-trade requirement to gain friends amongst those who agitated for the total and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws. From this dilemma they were delivered by Sir Robert Peel, whose political sagacity taught him to strike, before, in their progress towards liberal commercial policy, they acquired new and zealous supporters.
On Thursday, May 27th, Sir Robert moved: "That her Majesty's ministers do not sufficiently possess the confidence of the House of Commons to enable them to carry through the house measures which they deem of essential importance to the public welfare; and that their continuance in office under such circumstances is at variance with the spirit of the constitution." The animated debate was adjourned until next day, and then until Wednesday, and then until Thursday. On Friday (June 4th) the house divided, when the numbers were:—For the motion, 312; against it, 311, Majority, ONE. This was a small majority to drive the whigs from office, but it was sufficient, viewed in connection with former defeats, to convince them that they could do nothing if they remained; and on the following Monday, Lord J. Russell, on rising to declare what were the intentions of ministers, said it was apparent from the division that the business of the country could neither be carried on by the then government nor by the right honourable baronet. The only course, therefore, was to appeal to the country, and with a view of so doing, it was his intention to demand only such votes of the civil contingencies as were indispensable for the public service, until the meeting of the new Parliament. In reply to a question from Sir Robert Peel, his lordship added that no time should be lost in calling the new Parliament, and it was not the intention of himself or his colleagues to bring forward the question of the Corn Laws during that session. My comment at the time, on this position of affairs, was:The votes of the English counties and universities were:—
| For the monopolies of corn and sugar | 117 |
| For ministers | 38 |
| Majority for the monopolies | 79 |
On Tuesday, June 22nd, her Majesty prorogued the Parliament in person. The brief speech contained the following paragraph:—" The paramount importance of the trade and industry of the country, and my anxiety that the exigencies of the public services should be provided for in the manner least burdensome to the community, have induced me to resort to the means which the constitution has entrusted to me, of ascertaining the sense of my people upon matters which so deeply concern their welfare." On the following day a royal proclamation declared the house dissolved.
The borough elections came first. The balance of representation in the Lancashire and Cheshire boroughs remained the same as in the previous Parliament, the gain to the progressives being one in Stockport, one in Bolton, and one in Preston and the gain to the obstructives being two in Wigan, and one in Blackburn. The boroughs in Yorkshire did much worse, the tones having gained in seven instances and lost only in one. Hull and Liverpool had "freemen" nursed in all the corruption of the old system; Knaresborough, returning as many members as as Manchester, had a handful of voters easily corruptible; and Wigan had been rotten when a close borough, and the old leaven had leavened a great part of the new mass. Boroughs too small, boroughs cursed with "freemen," boroughs needing the protection of the ballot—these were the causes of defeat in those three counties, which ought to have given a preponderance of free-trade votes, equivalent to the loss which was anticipated in the agricultural district.
There were some elections which could not fail to afford high gratification to every true friend of his country, as giving proof that the good seed would, in due time, produce good fruit. Thus, at Walsall, where some doubt was entertained of returning an anti-corn-law candidate—where it was feared that neglected registration and the length of the Gladstone purse would, for one Parliament, give the representation to that family, Mr. Scott, a member of the League, was triumphantly returned. The abundant instruction which had been diffused amongst the electors during the canvass of Mr. J. B. Smith, had not been forgotten, and the spirit which had been engendered there by Mr. Cobden's addresses had not subsided. Mr. Scott, without treating a single voter, without expending a single farthing beyond the legal expenses, and with no other services from the League than the services of Mr. Joseph Hickin, its secretary, a native of Walsall, routed his antagonist under circumstances that promised to drive him from that borough for ever. Thus, at Bolton, John Bowring was returned, to give effect in Parliament to the political and commercial principles of Jeremy Bentham. As an honourable ambassador to other nations he could have effected treaties that would have elevated this country to a high state of prosperity, but he had every where been met by the objections that England, by her exclusive commercial system, had set the example of prohibition, and that no bargain which he could effect, for a mutually beneficial change, would receive the sanction of a legislature in which he had not a seat, and in which there was but a very small band of men in favour of thoroughly free trade. And thus, at Stockport, Richard Cobden was returned, an especially gratifying event to me who had earnestly striven to have him selected as a candidate for Manchester. On his election I wrote: "Need we say that the result is matter for national exultation? Far greater than a local triumph—far greater than the gain of a single man—far greater than even the gain of a ministerial majority would have been, his return must be regarded. Cobden is the acknowledged leader of that great and energetic movement which has driven ministers to the recognition of free-trade principles, and which is now agitating the three kingdoms with a degree of excitation unparalleled. He goes to the House of Commons to give additional life and vigour to the movement there—to assert boldly the principle of total repeal amidst timid compromisers—to supply with practical information those who are right in theory—to keep up to the mark those who, without being very hearty in the cause, have used the cry of free-trade to secure their seats—to bring to the question of questions his ample knowledge of all the bearings of commerce, at home and abroad,—and to demolish with ready argument and pungent sarcasm the cunning sophistications by which monopoly is defended. Great honour to Stockport for the impulse it has given to the right cause."
Why was he not member for Manchester? It was a blunder that he was not—a blunder, although no evil consequences resulted from it—perhaps some good, for an able representative was secured, who had honourably thrown up the representation of Ipswich because he no longer represented the conservative opinions which he had held when elected for that place, and who, subsequently, stood side by side with Cobden, in the house and out of the house, during the five years there were yet to elapse before the prospective repeal of the Corn Law was obtained. Some good, perhaps, came of the blunder, for the probability is that had Cobden represented Manchester he never would have been the representative of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Manchester, however, had the credit, such as it was, of inviting him, but in his reply to the invitation he had said that he would not consider himself as owing any allegiance to whig ministers, who, at that time, seemed likely enough to be driven from office. This reply was too hastily interpreted into a refusal to become a candidate. The truth is that the free traders did not then know their full strength in the borough, and they too readily yielded to the wish of many influential persons that a member should be chosen who, while he was a thorough opponent of monopoly, would not be indifferent to the retention of the whigs in office, and to the usurpation of place and power by another administration, believed to be adverse to every political and commercial reform. The disagreement amongst the liberals on this point caused no diminution in the zeal with which the operations of the League were carried on. Its members were all united for one grand purpose; and, during the whole of the long struggle, there never was any difference of opinion on other points permitted to weaken the efficiency of their agitation.
In Manchester, Mr. Thomas Milner Gibson was candidate for the seat which had been resigned by Mr. R. H. Greg, and he and Mr. Mark Philips were opposed by Sir George Murray and Mr. Entwistle, tories and protectionists. The contest was a very energetic one on both sides, but it was a fair one; for in so large a constituency bribery was hopeless. At the close of the poll the numbers were:
Philips, 3,695; Gibson, 3,575; Murray, 3,115; and Entwisle, 2,692.
The county elections decided the fate of ministers. Lord Howick lost his seat for Northumberland, and Lord Morpeth and Lord Milton theirs for the West Riding of Yorkshire; and when the new house was analysed it was seen that, although there was a whig majority of nine in Scotland, and nineteen in Ireland, there was a conservative majority of 104 in England and Wales, leaving ministers in a minority of 76. The inquiry now became, not what they would do, but what the tories, who were sure to succeed them in office, would do—what Sir Robert Peel, who would succeed Lord John Russell, would do. The question, it seems, was often put to himself. At a Tamworth dinner he said: "I am constantly asked what it is I mean to propose, supposing I am called to the administration of affairs. I will answer the question when I am placed in that position. My advice for the present is, dismiss those who are at present in office. They have not the confidence—they had not the confidence of Parliament—they have not the confidence of the people. Change your physician; the patient has not confidence in him. They found her in health and they left her in sickness; and then they say to me what do you prescribe? But I will wait till I am regularly called in." The first great object then was to get rid of the old practitioner. It was thought that the new physician would be required by his own party to declare what his practice would be before they promised their support. The out-voted ministers assumed the air of men who held principles which, sooner or later, would prevail. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, at a dinner given to him at Winchester, said of the union of monopolists: "He felt no despondency; they might destroy a government, but they could not destroy truth and reason. They would triumph they were now silently winning their way, and whoever—he said it with perfect confidence—whoever were placed at the helm of government, he felt perfectly satisfied that, before many years were over, they would reform their Corn Laws and revise their commercial system. Whether those who proposed such measures were those who now turned out the government because they proposed them, or whether it should be those ministers who now risked power and place in proposing them, was to him a matter of complete indifference, and he believed that was the case with his colleagues. They were attached to the principles and the measures they had proposed, and they would give their earnest support to those measures from whatever quarter they might come." It was amusing enough this tone of martyrdom to principles, which most men believed to have been assumed to make a good election "cry;" but it was obvious enough that the whig ministers were preparing themselves for a bolder course when "out" than they followed when "in." When they were entrenched within the walls of office they only thought of acting on the defensive and preserving their position. It was now to be seen whether they would make common cause with the people; but it was remarked that, even in their straits, they talked of a reform or a revision but never of a repeal of the Corn Laws. It had taken three years' agitation of the question to bring them to an eight shillings' duty. A further and a more energetic agitation for five years more, and five years more of intense suffering on the part of the people, were required to bring them to the recognition of thoroughly free-trade principles.
The League had not been disheartened by the defeat of the whig ministers, for they had rather stood in its way than helped it; and their tardy conversion had been only half-way to its principles. The union of every class of monopolists in support of the one great monopoly was only an to incentive renewed and additional activity. It had added Mr. J. S. Buckingham to the list of its lecturers, and it had in view a still further extension of its operations.In my paper of the 14th August I wrote:—
"Parliament meets at Westminster on Thursday. The conference of ministers of the gospel upon the Corn Laws meets at Manchester on Tuesday. There will be about the same number of persons in the latter named assemblage as there are members of the House of Commons. The majority of the one owe their seats to intimidation, and to bribery, and corruption, in all the most painful forms. The united body of the other consists of pastors freely elected by their several congregations, enjoying their love and confidence, and deputed specially to represent their people on this important occasion, and to raise their voices against a law passed and sustained in contempt of every precept of religion and morality.
"Parliament meets in total ignorance of the course which will be dictated to it by the leaders of that majority which has been obtained through the venality, the stupidity, or the indifference, of the handful of voters whom it is the fashion of finality scribes to designate the people. It meets to wait the prescription of the state physician, Sir Robert Peel. It meets without any certainty that the Sangrados, Stanley, Graham, Inglis, and others of their depletion school, will be content to prescribe anything short of copious bleedings and hot-water drenchings. It meets without knowing whether the graduated dose or the fixed number of vegetable pills will be most acceptable to patients beginning to be impatient, and with Peel advising one course and the Times another.
"The conference takes place, not to discover the cause of national distress, but how, most effectually, to destroy a law, which its members are already aware occasions more wide and more intense misery than all the other bad laws in the statute book put together. It meets not to debate whether a silk gown shall be worn in the pulpit, or to institute an inquisitorial investigation as to the authorship of some wishy-washy sketch book, but to declare that the landlord-law is contrary to the law of God; to add to the information the members already possess of its mischievous workings; to accumulate evidence of the distress it occasions; and unitedly to resolve on the course which they shall individually follow when they return to their respective constituents. It will indeed be, as The Anti-Bread-Tax Circular justly observes, 'a meeting which, viewed in relation to its object and the character of its members, has had no parallel in importance since the time of those great ecclesiastical councils which met to determine the faith of the early Christian world. In suspending, for a season, all arguments to the secular interests of our readers, we feel that we are only paying a proper homage to the tribunal before which our cause is about to be arraigned—a tribunal which will judge the bread tax according to the revealed law of God, from which there can be no appeal in a Christian country.' "The first meeting at which Christian ministers appeared in any number was on the occasion of a tea party, given to Mr. George Thompson, in the Manchester Corn Exchange. In June, the committee of the British India Society passed the following resolution:—
"The committee of the British India Society agrees that Mr. Thompson shall render his services gratuitously to the council of the National Anti-Corn-Law League during the present struggle for the abolition of the Corn Laws ; Mr. Thompson, at the same time, retaining his connection with the British India Society. The committee further pledges itself to aid, to the extent of its ability, the Anti-Corn-Law League in its efforts to promote the establishment, and secure the recognition of the principles of free trade, and to this end the committee tenders the services, as a writer in the cause, of William Adams, Esq., their secretary, and editor of The British India Advocate."
The council of the League gladly accepted this generous offer. Mr. Thompson had, from the commencement of the agitation, taken a warm interest in its advancement, and at Manchester, Edinburgh, and other places, had voluntarily given it his efficient aid.
At a meeting of the council of the League the following resolution was passed unanimously:—"That the council of the National Anti-Corn Law League recognises the legitimacy and importance of the objects sought by the British India Society, as stated in the address adopted as its constitution; that the council regards these objects as kindred to its own, and as inseparably connected with the establishment of free trade, and the protection of the best interests of the British Empire; and the council pledges itself, as far as it is competent, to co-operate with the British India Society upon the settlement of the question of the Corn Laws, now pending, for the attainment of its great object—justice to India."
It was at the same time resolved to give a tea party to Mr. Thompson, to invite the presence of a number of his old and distinguished friends in the anti-slavery contest, and to request the benevolent and universally respected Isaac Crewdson to take the chair. A committee of 44 ladies was appointed to make the preparations and to preside at the tea tables, amongst whom were, Lady Potter, Mrs. Brotherton, Mrs. Cobden, Mrs. Kershaw, Mrs. John Brooks, Mrs. D. Ainsworth, Mrs. Rawson, Mrs. Elkanah Armitage, Mrs. Burd, Mrs. G. Wilson, Mrs. Prentice, and others, all taking a deep interest in the question in which their husbands were so earnestly engaged. The meeting took place on the 25th of June. The Corn Exchange was elegantly fitted up for the occasion, and the party consisted of nearly 800 ladies and gentlemen. The chairman congratulated the meeting on obtaining the services of Mr. Thompson, and then introduced that gentleman, who was received with great applause, and spoke with his usual eloquence and power. At the close of his speech, he said " I congratulate you that you have as president on this occasion, a man so justly beloved as my honoured friend who sits before you, and also on the unprecedented number of the ministers of religion who are here with us. Are they with us in the full import of the word? Not merely with their bodies but their souls, their sympathies and their best efforts? Then they would not have been so with us, I am certain, without first considering deeply, conscientiously, and prayerfully the merits of this great question. Their presence assures us that this cause has aspects under which many have not yet viewed it. Their presence assures us that our cause has claims which may not be despised; that there are obligations resting on us which will urge us on in the work upon which we have entered; not upon the narrow grounds of political expediency, or temporary necessity, but upon the high and impregnable foundations of immutable truth and justice." The subsequent speakers were the Rev. William Shuttleworth, Dr. Bowring, Rev. W. Gadsby, Mr. Joseph Thompson, Mr. Moffat (the missionary to South Africa), Rev. R. Fletcher, Mr. Brotherton, Mr. Mark Philips, Rev. James Griffin Mr. T. M. Gibson, Rev. J. Gwyther, Mr. C. Townley, Rev. J. W. Massie, Mr. L. Heyworth, and Mr. John Brooks.
Closely following the meeting was the issue of a circular, signed by Mr. George Thompson, addressed to ministers of religion in Manchester, requesting them to meet and confer upon the Christian means of obtaining a settlement of the Corn-Law question without injustice or civil convulsion. Twenty-eight ministers attended, and passed a resolution that it was desirable that a conference of ministers of religion, from all parts of the United Kingdom, should be held at Manchester, in the week between the 15th and 22nd of August, and a committee was appointed to issue the invitations and make the necessary arrangements. During these preparations, the Wesleyan Methodist Conference was assembled in Manchester, and an earnest invitation, signed by the Revs. Wm. Mc.Kerrow, James Wm. Massie, and Richard Fletcher, was sent to the president and ministers of that numerous body. Although five hundred copies were addressed to ministers attending the Conference, an answer from only one of them was received! It was not to be supposed that only one man of that number cared about the daily supply of daily bread. It was known that there were many who, in addition to their prayers that there might be abundance in the land and no complainings in the street, were willing to give their aid in promoting cheapness and plenty; but there was a powerful influence amongst the leaders of the Conference, which in former days had been exerted to resist the demand for Parliamentary Reform, and was now exerted to put down the demand for cheap bread. Hence the extraordinary fact, that, of the five hundred congregated, only one was found with courage enough to give in his adhesion to the cause of free trade in corn. The Wesleyan Methodists were looking to clergy reserves in Canada, and to government aid to their schools; and there were men uncharitable enough to say that many of the "influential of their number were looking for some provision similar to the Regium Donum bestowed upon the Presbyterians in Ireland. By what newspaper writers would call "a curious coincidence," the invitation to the Manchester meeting had been replied to by only one of the ministers of the Church of England the—Rev. Thomas Spencer and—but two of the ministers of the Church of Scotland. In addition to the objections sometimes made to the state payment of churches, may be named the mode of payment which, being regulated by the price of corn, gives to incumbents in those two establishments a direct interest in sustaining high prices. I leave my readers to judge how far that interest influenced their opinion upon the Corn Laws.