DISRA1LI T H E YOUNGER,

FROM T H E PORTRAIT BY A. E. CHALON, R.A,

LORD BEACONSFIELD ON THE CONSTITUTION

"What is h e ? "
AND

'A Vindication of the English Constitution"
BY "DISRAELI THE YOUNGER,"

[THE

EARL

OF BEACONSFIELD,

K.G.]

edited with an anecdotical preface by

FRANCIS HITCHMAN
author oj " The Public Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield," &c*

LONDON
Field & Titer, Ye Leadenhalle Presse, 8.C.
Simpkin, Marshall & Co. ; Hamilton) Adams & Co.

Y E L E A D E N H A L L E , PRESSE, E . C .

( T . 3,286.)

PREFACE.
TN a brilliant " Study^ which unfortunately has been circulated only amongst a
limited number of personal friends, Captain Burton {the Explorer) insists with
characteristic e?iergy upon the essentially Hebrew character of Lord Beaconsfield.
After pointing out that, that great statesman was never in his life fairly understood
by the nation which he served so well, Captai7i Burton asserts that he in turn failed
utterly to appreciate the genius of the English people. The latter view may perhaps
be open to successful traverse, though not in this place ; but the former proposition
is absolutely indisputable. As I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere, it was not until
zyithin a dozen years of his death that the mass of the English nation began to

Vlll

PREFACE,

understand the real greatness of the man whom a wise Providence had made steward
of their affairs. After the Reform Bill of 1866 and 1867, the country began to
understand that the man who had led the Conservative party for so many years was
really something better than an "Israelite magician" and began to resent with
unfeigned indignation the cultivated Liberalism, which, studiously ignoring the real
man a?id his accomplished work, prefe?-red to represent him as being in his mature
age nothing more and nothing less than " t h e wondrous boy who wrote
' Alroy,'" to quote Maginns bit of vulgar smartness.
To critics of this kind it was nothing that a quarter of a century before Mr.
Disraeli had been calledfrom the ranks of his party to assume the office of Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and that in that capacity he had produced a Budget which the
House by a factious coalition rejected, but the main features of which ivere to be
reproduced by Mr. Gladstone, and to lay the foundations of that great financier's
reputation. Nor did they care very greatly for the dealings of the Conservative
leader with the question of Reform. Every utterance of his was ignored. From
the time of the first Reform Bill down to 186 7 he was uniformly represented as
being a foe to the enfranchisement of the working class, and as anxious only for the

PREFACE.

IX

retention of political poiver in the hands of an oligarchy. Yet everyone who cared
to recall past debates and past declarations—everyone who remembered the abortive
Reform Bill of 1859, killed as if was by a coalition of Whigs, Peelites andRadicals;
knew perfectly well that the Conservative leader s view on the question of popular
representation was that it would be difficult to make it too wide provided only due
protection were given to interests as opposed to mere numbers. In the day of his youth
he had opposed and derided the settlement of 1832, for the simple reason that it was
a measure rather of disfranchisement than of enfra?uhiseme?it, and that it replaced the
"freeman" and the " potwalloper" by the ten pound householder; in other words,
had substituted the ancient and historic franchises of England for a mechanical, hard
and fast line as meaningless as it was uninteresting. That defect he chose to remedy
by a system of ingenious checks and counterbalances, but the educated and cultivated
Liberals who take their politics from the Sunday papers, laughed the "fancyfranchises"
to scorn, and for the time preferred propositions for reform, which were principally
recommended by the fact that they were warranted to add no more than half a
million of voters to the electoral roll. The plain fact was that the country did not
understand either the man or his propositions. Nor did it fairly begin to appreciate

X

PREFACE.

either until after the Treaty of Berlin. Then and then for the first time only did the
entire nation begin to understand the greatness of the statesmanship which had steered
it through the most dangerous of seas, and had brought the ship of state into the
desired haven.
All these misunderstandings and misappreciations might have been avoided had
the country made any real effort to understand the statesman who for six of the
closing years of his life was destined to place England on the highest pinnacle
amongst the nations of the world. Instead of attempting anythi?ig of the sort,
people contented themselves with the ancient jocularities of the so-called comic papers,
and with recollections of bygone caricatures. Lord Beaconsfield wore a curl on his
forehead and a iuft to his chin—what more was necessary, to prove him as the
"Spectator" would say, a quaint idealogue, a bizarre and flashy novelist, a
great mountebank, and all the rest of the pretty things which self-sufficient
ignorance caries to call a great public man whom it obstinately refuses to take the
trouble to understand. The reason is, perhaps, not very remote. It lies, as Captain
Burton argues, in the pamphlet to which reference has already been made, in the
intense and in grained Judaism of Lord Beaconsfield's character. He was, as we

PREFACE.

XI

all know, a Christian throughout his life, and there is not the smallest reason for
supposing that he was anything but sincere in his professions.
The famous speech,
in ivhich, in 1864, he declared himself on the side of the angels, proves his
Christian character, but it should not be forgotten that it proves also his intensely
J' etuish feeling. Just as in his speech on the Pill for the Relief of Jewish Disabilities
in 1847 he supported that measure for the express reason that Christianity is the
completion of Judaism, so now, ten years later, he argued against the atheistic
materialism of the age on almost identically the same grounds. On the former
occasion, in the speech which cost him the alliance of Lord George Pentinck, he
contendedfor the admission of Jews to the privilege of Parliament on the ground of
the affinity of Christianity with Judaism.
Has not the Church of Christ, he asked with fervour, made the history of
the Jews the most celebrated history in the world ? On every sacred day
you read to the people the exploits of Jewish heroes, the proofs of Jewish
devotion, the brilliant annals of past Jewish magnificence. . . . If you
had not forgotten what you owe to this people—if you were grateful for
that literature which for thousands of years has brought so much instruction

Xll

PREFACE.

and so much consolation to the sons of men, you as Christians would be
only too ready to seize the first opportunity of meeting the claims of those
who profess this religion. . . It is entirely on religious grounds and on
religious principles that I venture to recommend the subject to your
notice. . . . Yes, it is as a Christian that I take upon me the awful
responsibility of refusing to exclude from the legislature those who
are of the religion in the bosom of which my Lord and Saviour was born.
In an almost identical fashion Lord Beaconsfield, on the second occasion to which
reference has been made above, argued out his Christianity from his Judaism. He
spoke of the Church as coming forward with its title-deeds of truth sustained by the
tradition of sacred ages, and by the conviction of countless generations. He
unhesitatingly acceptedthe principle of inspiration, and he predicted with theforesight
born of experience and of knowledge that the advancing scepticism of the age would ere
long develop itself.
There are, said he, no tenets however extravagant, no practices
however objectionable, which will not in time develop under such a state
of affairs. Opinions the most absurd, and ceremonies the most revolting,

PREFACE.

Xlll

are, perhaps, to be followed by the incantations of Canidia and the Corybantian howl.
All this was the prelude to a few brief but emphatic sentences, in which the orator
described the effects of that triumph of atheism and immorality, the French Revolution
of i j g2, andpointed out how when the altar and throne had been overthrown and the
devouringfloodsof anarchy had swept over the nation, the moment of reaction came,
when, as it were, the waters had disappeared, the sacred heights of Sinai
and of Calvary were again revealed, and amid the wreck of thrones and
tribunals, of extinct nations and abolished laws, mankind bowed again
before the Divine truths that had been by Omnipotent power, in His ineffable wisdom, entrusted to the custody and promulgation of a chosen
people.
It is always thus. Lord Beaconsfield's Christianity was indubitable, but it was
ever based upon, "and supplemental to, his Judaic racial quality. He once described a
Jew as an incomplete Christian, and the accuracy of the definition has never
been challenged, least of all by those Christians who entertain, as all thoughtful and
experienced men must do, a profound respect and admiration for the estimable qualities

xiv

PREFACE.

of the Hebrews who have settled in our midst, and who, under the gentle rule of
England, have proved of what high qualities their nation is possessed. It is,
however, the racial character by which Lord Beaconsfield was most distinguished,
and of which he was always most proud. As I have endeavoured to show elsewhere,
he belonged to the Jewish aristocracy, and had nothing save descent from the same
ancestor in common with the Jews of Germany and of Eastern Europe. He was
one of the Sephardim,
children of Israel, to quote 07ice more his own words, who had never
quitted the shores of the Midland Ocean until Torquemada had driven them
from their pleasant residences and rich estates in Aragon and Andalusia
and Portugal to seek greater blessings even than a clear atmosphere and a
glowing sun amid the marshes of Holland and the fogs of Britain.
At this point it becomes of interest to endeavour to clear away some part
of the mystery which has from the first hung about the ancestry of the great
statesman. It is well known from the statements zvhich will be found scattered
throughout his writings, as well as from the declaration in the highly interesting
preface to the collected edition of his novels, that his name—whatever it may have

PREFACE.

XV

been—was not really Disraeli. That name was adopted by his great-grandfather on leaving Spain for Venice. In Spain the family', we are told, at various
times, and in a fashion more or less obscure, was an illustrious one; but when
reduced to the necessity of following a commercial career, the distinguished name
was dropped, and the humbler yet still distinctive name of D'Israeli* adopted,
much after the fashion in which in days gone by a noble of France renounced his
rank on going into trade, and hung up his sword in the cathedral until Fortune
should shine upon him once more. It will be interesting to inquire what that name
really was, and fortunately the task is not altogether an impossible one. One of the
principal characters in u Coningsby" is, as the reader will doubtless remember,
Sidonia, the Jewish financier and good genius of the story. After the publication of
the book a number of"" Keys? professing to identify the various characters, were put
forth by certain ingenious persons who were anxious to prove their knowledge ofsociety
and its doings, They were all more or less incorrect, though some of the personages
are so distinctly marked that the likeness is indisputable, No one, for example, could
* The apostrophe was not dropped until a comparatively recent date—1854 or 1855.

XVI

PREFACE.

fail to discover the features oj the Marquis of Hertford beneath the mask of Lord
Monmouth^ or those of John Wilson Croker under that of Rigby.
About Sidonia, however, opinions were divided. Whilst one party asserted
that the author intended to offer to his readers a full-length portrait of the Baron
Alfred de Rothschild of Naples, others—amongst whom was Lord Palmerston, as
witness the letter in his " Memoirs " addressed to the Hon. William Temple—more
sagaciously opined that he intended the character for a species of idealized portraits
of himself All the descriptions of Sidonia's noble horsemanship, extraordinary
achievements, and vast power, may be considered at the reader s pleasure, either as
the mere fringe and frilling of the romance—part of the novelist's stock-in-trade, in
fact—or an indication of what the author would have liked to be. Under all the
romance there is, however, a curious substratum of truth, and some very interesting
indications of family history. Sidonia, we are told,
was descended from a very ancient and noble family of Aragon, that
in the course of ages had given to the state many distinguished citizens.
In the priesthood its members had been peculiarly eminent. Besides
several prelates, they counted among their number an Archbishop of

PREFACE.

Xvil

Toledo, and a Sidonia, in a season of great danger and difficulty, had
exercised for a series of years the paramount office of Grand Inquisitor.
Yet, strange as it may sound, the writer goes on, it is nevertheless a fact, of
which there is no lack of evidence, that this illustrious family, during all
this period, in common with two-thirds of the Aragonese nobility, secretly
adhered to the ancient faith and ceremonies of their fathers : a belief in
the unity of the God of Sinai, and the rites and observances of the law of
Moses.
Now there are a minuteness and particularity about this description which
force the reader to the conclusion that some particular family must have been hi the
authors mind when he wrote it, and the question which at once suggests itself is as
to its identity.
Fortunately that identity can be established beyond much doubt by
the help of Moreri, tuhose colossal dictionary contains full and elaborate accounts of
all the most illustrious families of Spain. Amongst them is one which answers
with singular completeness to the description given by the novelist—the great house
of Mendoza. Of members of this family Moreri prints a 7iotice, extending ovef
more than twenty folio columns, a space equivalent to about seventy pages of the
b

XVlll

PREFACE.

modern octavo. Amongst the names of the notabilities thus commemorated are those
of Fedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, who was in his time archbishop of Seville and
Toledo and a cardinal, and ofAndrade Hurtado Mendoza y Mandizabel, who held
the great office of viceroy of'Navarre', and who had two sons. The elder, Ferdinand,
became Archbishop of Toledo; the younger, Juan, was Grand Inquisitor. Particularities of this kind seem to prove beyond question that it was the family of Mendizabel y Mendoza that Lord Beaconsfield had in his mind when writing
concerning the family of Sidonia ; it remains to be seen whether there is any strong
reason for believing that he intended to paint his own portrait in this imaginary
descendant of the illustrious Spanish house. There are a good many reasonsfor believing
that that was most distinctly his inte?ition. In the first place the name assumed
by his great-grandfather on leaving Spain and settling in Venice was not Benjamin
but "Fen" D*Israeli—literally, the child of Israel. The name is sufficiently
elastic to cover any man of undisputed Hebrew descent, but it is something moi'e,
inasmuch as it is an anagram, imperfect, but sufficiently recog7iisable, of the Spanish
name, Mandizabel. The fact is perfectly well known that upon occasion Jews do
not hesitate to change their names. It is not so well known, however, that in

PREFACE.

xix

making these changes they are especially careful to retain as much of the original
name as possible, whether by retaining the consonants and dropping the vowels, or,
as in this case, by anagrammatizing the whole name.
Again the cognizance of the family of Mandizabel is a castle embattled
proper, to use the terms of English heraldry. When Lord Beaconsfield first
entered upon public life he was accustomed to seal his letters, adhesive envelopes not
having then come into use, with an antique seal bearing this device. It was not a
crest, in fact the only name for it is that of " cognizance " given above. But it had
a distinctly heraldic origin, and may possibly have entailed upon " Disraeli the
younger" some of the penalties of greatness. Be this as it may, the seal seems to have
gone out of use soon after the introduction of the penny post, and never to have been
resumed. For many years Lord Beaconsfield made no pretension to a right to arms.
Almost alone amongst- those who figure in Debretfs "House of Commons" the
entry against his na7ne is remarkable by a blank shield. Considering the extremely
dubious character of much of the heraldry whichfiguresin thai respectable compilation,
it will probably be very generally thought that he exercised a wise discretion. It is
better to appear without armorial bearings at all than to figure before the world in a

XX

PREFACE,

borrowed coat. Besides, it may readily be understood that in his earlier days he
had another motive. To have paraded as he might have done the many quartered
shield of the house of Mandizabel y Mendoza, would, without doubt, have exposed
him to some of those "flouts and gibes and jeersiy to which, notwithstanding the
stoicism of his manner, he was peculiarly sensitive throughout his life. He preferred
his plain shield, therefore, and so was able, with a clear conscience, to say as he did in
the House of Commons, in reply to one of the ineptitudes of Sir Charles Wood, that
he was a gentleman of the press, and bore no other escutcheon.*
When- the time arrived for the assumption of arms, he tvent to the HeraWs
College, and obtained a grant in the proper and legitimate way,- The first grant
was to Lady Beaconsfield, on the assumption of her title of Viscountess, in November,
1868. She had been, as will be remembered, a Miss Viney-Evans, daughter of
* If the descent of Lord Beaconsfield could be absolutely established from the house of
Mandizabel it would prove him a member of the most ancient family on earth. Amongst the
names of the Princes of Israel who sealed the covenant chronicled by Nehemiah (chap. x.
ver. 21) will be found Meshezabeel, of which Mandizabel is simply the Spanish form, and from
this Prince the family claim descent."

PREFACE.

xxiii

Captain Viney-Evans, R.N., and the Heralds gave her—Argent, a slip of vine,
fructed and leaved proper {for Viney), between two flaunches, sable, each charged
with a boar's head erased {for Evans), of the field, with supporters; Dexter, an eagle,
or; sinister, a lion, also or; each gorged with a collar, gules, and pendent therefrom an
escutcheon of the last, charged with a tower, argent.
The old cognizance of the Castle thus reappears, and when in time Lord
Beaconsfield passed to the Upper House, he applied in due course for a fresh grant
of ar?ns. The coat, as figured at an earlier page of the present volume, is—Arms :
Per saltire gules and argent, a castle triple towered in chief, of the last, two lions
rampant in fesse sable, and an eagle displayed in base or—Crest: Issuant from
a wreath of oak, a castle triple turreted all proper—Supporters:
Dexter, an
eagle, and sinister, a lion, both or, and gorged with a collar gules, pendent therefrom an escutcheon of the last charged with a tower argent—Motto: FORTI NIHIL
DIFFICILE. The cognizance is thus more emphatically marked than ever, and the
punning motto will not pass unnoticed in this connexion.
Another fact which seems to prove the indentity of Sidonia with Disraeli, is to
be found in the account of the travels of the former, and their curious likeness to those

xxiv

PREFACE.

which the latter really undertook. Of course there are great divergencies in point
of"detail\ as is invariably the case when a realpersonage figures in one of these romances
of politics. Thus, for example, Sidonia is represented as the possessor of ivealth
beyond the dreams of avarice, and also as having acquired a complete mastery over
the principal European languages. Ln neither particular does this description
correspond tvith Lord Beaconsfield, who was anything but an accomplished linguist
at any period of his life, and who notoriously died a poor man, so that his estate
requires very careful nursing to free it from its incumbrances by the time his heir
comes of age. The account of the early life and travels of Sidonia affords another
illustration of this likeness in the ??iidst of dissimilarity. Sidonia, it will be
remembered, was shut out from universities and schools, by which, of course, public
schools are intended; so was Lord Beaconsfield. Sidonia had for tutor one Rebello,
a Jew, and tuent to no school. The younger Disraeli was, as he has said of himself,
born in a library, and trained by his father, who was a man of great ability,
though not quite so much of a man of genius as Rebello, or as filial affection has
painted him in the me?noir prefixed to the " Curiosities of Literature."
Lt is
perfectly true that the future Minister was for a time at a school kept by Dr, Cogan,

PREFACE.

XXV

at Walthamstow, but his real tutor^ so far as he had one at all, was, without doubt,
his father.
This Dr. Cogan, by the way, is seldom mentioned by writers of the
Mutual Admiration school without the epithet " celebrated" beingprefixed to his name.
He can hardly be said to deserve quite so grand a title, but he was unquestionably
a very able man, a fine scholar, and the associate of men of genius and learning.
Henry Crabb Robinson habitually speaks of him with respect, and mentions in his
dia?y that he was the only dissenter whose Greek scholarship that e7ni7ient pillar of
the Church, Dr. Parr, could be persuaded to acknowledge. At his school and
conle7?iporaneously with Disraeli\ tvere two boys, who afterwards obtained a certain
a77iount of celebrity. One was the late E. J. Busk, who became a Chancery barrister
of 77iore than co?m7ion reputation, and whose chambers in New Square, Lincoln's
Inn, ivere long the resort not 7nerely of professional friends, but of 77ien of known
and proved i7itellectual ability. The other was the late Mr. Paget, a police 7nagistrate,
who displayed on the Metropolitan Bench qualities which tuould have placed M771 in
the fro7it rank of the legal profession had he adhered to his origi7ial intention of
practising at the Bar.
It 77iay be convenie7it in this place to refer to the curious myth which ~ makes

XXVI

PREFACE.

Disraeli a Winchester boy. Mr. T P. O'Connor, M.P., in the spiteful party pamphlet
which he is pleased to entitle a " Life " of Lord Beaconsfield, says that it is stated
that he was first sent to a boarding school at Winchester, not to the great school
of the town, but to one under private management. Who the authority may be
from which Mr, 0? Connor derived this tale, he does not inform his readers, nor is
it easy to imagine who it can be unless it were one of the wretched little catchpenny
biographies which came out in such numbers a few years ago.
The story has been
preserved, however, apparently as an excuse for repeating a slanderous tale, for
which L have been unable to discover a shadow of foundation, to the effect that Lord
Beaconsfield 7uas in the habit of boasting that he was a " Winchester scholar"
There is, however, a small substratum of truth in the myth. Benjamin Disraeli
never was at Winchester School in his life, but his brother Ralph was for some
little time. Whilst there it was his fortune to be fag to Robert Lowe (the present
Lord Sherbrooke).
What fagging at Winchester meant, with its traditions of
" iunding '' and miscellaneous brutality of various kinds, the tvorld learned with
considerable disgust some dozen years or so ago ; what it was when the century was
in its teens may be guessed without much difficulty.
Young Ralph Disraeli was a

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XXVll

singularly timid, gentle and inoffensive little lad, and Mr. Lowe was—well, much
the same as a boy that he has since shown himself to be as a man—and poor
Ralph!s life was a misery to him during the whole of his stay at Winchester.
Lord Beaconsfield's family affections were always exceedingly strong, and he not
unnaturally resented most warmly the treatment to which his brother had been
subjected. When in after life Mr. Lowe and he were thrown together in the warfare ofpolitics the recollection of the past unquestionably imparted a considerable
amount of asperity to their relations. The old feud was probably in Lord Beaconsfield's mind when in the course of debate he transfixed his opponent with the epithet
of u great schoolboy "—a characterization quite as stinging in its truthfulness as the
phrase " superior person " which he applied on another occasion to Mr. Horsman.
After the schooldays came unquestionably the Wanderjahre.
" Coningsby"
describes that of Sidonia as "Disraeli the younger" would undoubtedly have wished
it to be. Sidonia goes abroad in a vague though not a purposeless fashion.
He
resides for some time in Germany, then having visited Italy, he settles at
Naples, and makes his entrance into life. Between Naples and Paris he passes two
years, and distinguishes himself by his reticence.

XXV111

PREFACE.

Though affable and gracious it was impossible to penetrate him. H e
observed everything, thought over, but avoided serious discussion. If
you pressed him for an opinion, he took refuge in raillery or threw out
some grave paradox with which it was not easy to cope.
At the moment of his coming of age, Sidonia quits Europe, and remains absent
for five years.
It would appear, says the novelist, that he dwelt a considerable time
in the Mediterranean regions, penetrated Nilotic Africa to Sermaar
and Abyssinia, traversed the Asiatic continent to Tartary, whence he
had visited Hindostan and the isles of that Indian Sea which are so
little known. Afterwards he was heard of at Valparaiso, the Brazils, and
Lima. H e evidently remained some time in Mexico, which he quitted
for the United States.
Such was the u Grand Tour'' as imagined by the author of u ConingsbyT His
own was of much more contracted dimensions, yet it was sufficiently extended to
afford him not merely a knowledge of men and things but zuhat was of more importance—though in this hurrying age it seems to be disregarded—time to think.
He

T H E AUTHOR OF VIVIAN GREY, FROM T H E E T C H I N G BY DANIEL MACLISE, R.A.

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xxxi

had just published " Vivian Grey" and he was, in consequence, something of a lion
in London society. He was courted and petted by great ladies, and, as Captain
Burton bluntly puts it, he made a fool of himself. But there was plenty of real
stuff under the dandyism and foppery of the " curled darling of society" whom
Maclise sketched and Maginn satirised.
"Vivian
Grey" appeared in two
instalments, the first of which was published in 1826, and the second in 1827,
the author being at the former date just twenty-two.
The lionising period seems
to have lasted for about three years, and at the close of that period
"Disraeli
the Younger " suddenly abandoned London life and its pleasures for a prolonged
tour of the most unconventional kind possible.,. The record of his journeyings has
never been vuritten, but sufficient has been made public to prove that he spent
much of his time in and about the Mediterranean.
His first point of departure
was Constantinople, whence he journeyed into Albania, where he nearly lost his
life in one of the periodical outbreaks of that interesting people. On "the windy
plains of Troy " he first conceived the idea of his " Revolutionary Epick" the
failure of which sufficed to convince him that, like " Cousin Swift" he could
" never be a poet." Later on we hear of him in Syria} the cradle of his race, and

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PREFACE.

the effects of his journey may be traced in " Tancred " and indeed in all his
later novels. At Jerusalem, on the principle he more than once laid down, that
" adventures are to the adventurous? . he got into serious difficulties with the
Moslems who guarded the Mosque of Omar, and barely escaped with his life.
He traversed the Nile at a time when Cook's Tourists were not, and when the
dahabeyah had not been superseded by the penny steamboat.
And finally,
according to his latest biographer,
at one time we hear of him on the coast of the Adriatic; .at another as
exploring the ruins of R o m e ; at another as in Spain, acquainting himself with the ruins of the Alhambra, and with the social life of Granada
and of those other Andalusian cities whiph in late years he was proud to
remember had been the homes of the Sephardim from whom he sprang.
/ / will be seen that this was in its way as unconventional a tour as that oj
Sidonia himself, although not so extended a one.
Ftom one of the most delightful books which have appeared for many years—~
the Life of the late Lord Lytton, by his accomplished son, the present Earl—I
transcribe a peculiarly interesting letter describing this period of travel.
Lord

PREFACE.

XXXlll

Lytton mentions that the friendship between Lord Beaconsfield and his father began
with a presentation of books to the forme?*, which was characteristically returned by
a
gift °f Turkish tobacco^ after which the intercourse between the two novelists
became close and cordial^ Lord Lytton even carrying his good nature so far as to
read and advise upon the MS. of what is unquestionably the worst of Lord
Beaconsfield s novels—" The Young Duke."
The following letter gives an account
of his tour:—
BENJAMIN

DISRAELI TO EDWARD BULWER.

Constantinople, 27th December, 1830.
" M Y DEAR BULWER,—In spite of the extraordinary times and
engrossing topics on which'we have fallen, I natter myself that you will
be glad to hear of my existence, and that is in a state not quite so
forlorn as when I last had the pleasure of enjoying your society.
"Since then I have travelled through Spain, Greece, and Albania,
and am a resident in this famous city.
" I cannot easily express how much I was delighted with the first
country. I no longer wonder at the immortality of Cervantes; and I
c

xxxiv

PREFACE.
perpetually detected, in the picturesque and alfresco life of his countrymen,
the sources of his inspiration.
The Alhambra, and other Saracenic
remains, the innumerable Murillos, and, above all, their olla fiodridas,
delighted me in turn.
" I arrived at Malta time enough to name the favourite horse for the
races, ' Paul Clifford'; and I have since learnt, by a letter at this place,
that he won the plate. While at the little military hot-house, I heard
that Albania was in a flaming insurrection; and, having always had a
taste for campaigning, I hurried off with a couple of friends to offer our
services to the Grand Vizier.
" W e found the insurrection, by the time of our arrival, nearly
crushed. And so we turned our military trip into a visit of congratulation
at head quarters.
" I must reserve for our meeting any account of our visit. I certainly
passed at Yanina ten of the most extraordinary days of my life; and often
wished that you had been my companion.
" Of all the places I have yet visited, Athens most completely

PREFACE.

xxxv

realised all I could have wished. The place requires no associations to
render it one of the most delightful in the globe. I am not surprised that
the fine taste of the dwellers in this delicate land should have selected the
olive for their chosen tree, and the violet for their favourite flower.
" I confess to you that my Turkish prejudices are very much confirmed by my residence in Turkey.
The life of this people greatly
accords with my taste, which is naturally somewhat indolent and melancholy, and I do not think it would disgust you.
" To repose on voluptuous ottomans, and smoke superb pipes; daily
to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which requires half a dozen attendants
for its perfection; to court the air in a carved caique, by shores which
are a perpetual scene; and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a
Barb ; this is, I think, a far.more sensible life than all the bustle of clubs,
all the boring of drawing-rooms, and all the coarse vulgarity of our
political controversies.
" And all this, I assure you is, without any colouring or exaggeration,
the life which may be here commanded.
A life accompanied by a

XXXVI

PREFACE.
thousand sources of calm enjoyment, and a thousand modes of mellowed
pleasure, which it would weary you to relate, and which I leave to your
own lively imagination.
" I can say nothing about our meeting, but pray that it may be
sooner than I can expect. I send you a tobacco bag, that you may
sometimes remember me. If you have leisure to write me a line,
anything directed to Messrs. Hunter and Ross, Malta, will be forwarded to
whatever part of the Levant I may reside in.
" I mend slowly, but mend. The seasons have greatly favoured
me. Continual heat, and even here, where the winter is proverbially
cold, there is a summer day. Remember me most kindly to your
brother, and
" Believe me, ever, my dear Bulwer,
" Yours most faithfully,
" BENJ. DISRAELI.

"P.S.—I have just got through a pile of 'Galignanis.' What a
confusion! and what an excellent pantomime! * LORD MAYOR'S DAY,

PREFACE.
OR, HARLEQUIN BROUGHAM ! '

XXX VI1

Oh, for the days of Aristophanes, or

Foote, or even Scaremouch ! D
n the Licenser 1"
Although the re?noter ancestors of Lord Beaconsfield were distinguished, his
more immediate relations were simply middle class gentlepeople. The picture
which he has left us of his grandfather's house, in the memoir of his father, is not
attractive, neither is his account of his father's youth quite so pleasant as might be
desired. Some few details gathered from various unpublished sources, may not be
unacceptable in this place. The grandfather of the future Prime Minister, migrated
from Venice to this country in 1748 as the agent of his father, who remained in
Venice, and in conjunction with whom a business was carried on, which produced a
modest fortune in the course of time. Be?ijamin Disraeli the elder was in his
eighteenth year when he came to this country, but in spite of his youth a great
responsibility devolved upon him, to zuhich he proved himself not unequal. To quote
Lord BeaconsfieWs words :—
H e made his fortune in the midway of life, and settled near Enfield,
where he formed an Italian garden, entertained his friends, played whist
with Sir Horace Mann, who was his great acquaintance, and who had

xxxviii

PREFACE.

known his brother at Venice as a banker, eat macaroni which was dressed
by the Venetian Consul, sang canzonettes, and, notwithstanding a wife
who never pardoned him for his name, and a son who disappointed all
his plans, and who to the last hour of his life was an enigma to him,
lived till he was nearly ninety, and then died in 1817 in the full enjoyment of prolonged existence.
There is a very curious slip of the pen or failure of memory in this paragraph.
The gentleman ivho is described as the "Venetian consul" has left his memory in
Enfield, where for many years he was one of the best known residents. His name
was J^ohn Charles Lucena, and for thirty years he represented in this country not
Venice but Portugal, for which kingdom he acted as Charge d'Affaires, and Consul.
General. He died at Enfield in 1813 at the age of sixty-one. The dressing of
macaroni at his hands is probably a myth, or a story founded upon imperfect
recollection of a family tradition. Is is far 7nore likely that Disraeli himself with
his Italian training should have cooked the national dish, and more likely still that
he contented himself with requiring his cook to dress it in the Italian manner.
The house spoken of by Lord Beaconsfield was in existence up to a very recent

ffiS^XAyw*T H E HOUSE A T E N F I E L D .

PREFACE.

xli

period. It stood not " near" Enfield, but in the village, about a stone's throw from
the market place. It was remarkable not merely as having been the home of the
Disraeli family, but because it was one of the finest specimens of Jacobean domestic
architecture in England.
Mr. Edward Ford, in his privately printed and very
beautiful " History of Enfield," gives a fine engraving of this house, which he has
most kindly allowed us to reproduce; together with a minute and most interesting
account of it, from which it appears to have been built with a degree of care unusual
eve?i in the seventeenth century. The bricks of which it was constructed were of the
finest quality, and apparently were brought from a considerable distance. Each was
ground by hand to a true surface, and instead of being set in mortar after the usual
•fashion, tuas cemented with a mixture of rosin and beeswax applied hot.
A species
of terra cotta was thus formed, which lent itself readily to the decorator's art. Panels,
with garlands somewhat after the fashion of those zvith which the name of Grinling
Gibbons is associated, were carved in this material and added greatly to the richness of
the effect. Mr. Ford believes the architect of the house to have been no less a personage
than Sir Christopher Wren, and he points out a curious resemblance in idea between
it and the much abused but historic Temple Bar. After Disraeli's death it passed
into the hands of John Clarke, father of Charles Coivden Clarke, who is perhaps best

xlii

PREFACE.

known to fame as the husband of the acco77iplished lady to whom the world is indebted
for the Concordance to Shakspeare, In Mr " Recollections of Writers " Mrs. Cowden
Clarke mentions the house as being
airy, roomy, and commodious, the grounds sufficiently large to give space
for flower, fruit, and vegetable gardens, playground and paddock of two
acres affording pasturage for two cows that supplied the establishment
with abundant milk.
After sundry vicissitudes the house beca77ie the p7-operty of the Great Eastern
Railway Co77ipa7iy, and for some years served as the temiinus. A few years ago,
however, the i7ia?iagement of the line arrived at the conclusio7t that a new and larger
station was necessary, and the old house was in conseqitence pulled down and replaced
by the present hideous and com77ionplace structure.
Happily the fro7it of the house
was 7tot destroyed. Thanks to the intervention of S077ie of the i7ihabitants of Enfield
who were interested in its history, the authorities at South Kensington were induced
to purchase it. It was take7i down with extre77ie care and rebuilt with equal solicitude
i7i one of the Courts of the. Museum, where it stands, not merely interesting fro77i its
history and associations, but remarkable as being the most perfect specimen of English
seventeenth century brickwork in existence.

PREFACE.

xliii

Isaac Disraeli was born in this house, but he lived in it very little. His
home, as his illustrious son has informed us, was utterly uncongenial to him, partly
because of the goodnatured carelessness of his father, but principally on account of
his mother's hatred for Jews and Judaism, and utter contempt for her accomplished son. He was educated abroad, and spent much of his early life in
travelling. When he married, which he did in 1802, Isaac Disraeli settled in
Islington, then a very pretty rural village. The house he occupied is that now
numbered 218 in the Upper Street, and was formerly a very good specimen of the better
kind of middle class family house. It has, of course, shared the fate of all the private
houses on that side of the street, and has been converted within the last few years to
business uses. A certain Mr. Beckley occupied it for some time as a mourning
establishment, and it afterwards became what it still remains, the Islington Branch
of the National Provincial Bank.
It was in this house that Benjamin Disraeli,
aftenvards Earl of' Beaconsfield,was born on the 21st oj Dece7nber, 1804. Date
and place are perhaps not without their interest and importance, seeing even the
most intimate friends of the deceased statesman were uncertain about both, while
writers of the type of Mr. T. P. O'Connor seem to adopt any fable which offers

xliv

PREFACE.

itself without inquiry or investigation.

There is .another reason for specifying the

house in the fact that the occupant of that adjoining it labours under the delusion that
his is the house in which the future statesman first saiv the light\ on the strength of
a paragraph in the "Daily
way,—which
favour

News"—hardly

an authority on such a subject, by the

he has had reprinted on a card for distribution.

The evidence in

of No. 218 is, however, conclusive, inasmuch as that house stood alone when

it was inhabited by Isaac

Disraeli*

* Lord Beaconsfield, it may be observed here, had a curious fancy for mystifying his
friends as to the place of his birth. Immediately after his death his friend, Lord Barrington,
whose hand he held at the supreme moment, wrote to the Times (20th April, 1881) a letter, in
which he explains that the expression "born in a library," more than once applied to himself
by the late Earl, was literally true. His father was, he told Lord Barrington, in very narrow
circumstances at the time of his birth, and occupied chambers in the Adelphi. The room in
which he first saw the light was lined with books—hence the expression. On another occasion
he was dining at the house of Sir Antonio (then Mr.) Panizzi, in Bloomsbury Square, and in
the interval before dinner he drew a fellow-guest to the window, whence he pointed to the
house at the south-west corner of the square, informing his convive that he was born there—a
statement which is disproved by the circumstance that Isaac Disraeli did not enter upon the

PREFACE.

xlv

" Merry Islington," as Cowper called the village, was at the beginning of the
present century a very different place from the Islington of to-day. The
interminable streets of third and fourth rate houses, which extend from the "Angel"
to the "Archway Tavern" at Highgate, did not exist, and the ground which they
occupy was pasture and meadow land and fruit gardens. The houses which were
in most cases wholly detached, and stood in their own grounds, were the homes
of wealthy merchants and bankers, who formed a colony very similar to that of
Clapham, which Sir James Stephen has described, and Thackeray has satirized.
According to the local histories, of which there are two or three, Islington
eighty-five years ago was a very different place from the Islington of to-day.
JVhere there are now endless streets and all the signs of a dense population,
there were then merely the open fields of which we have spoken, waving with
corn or dappled with cows. " Flighfs" afterwards u Laycock's Dairy Farm" was
occupation of that house until he left the house in Lthe King's Road, Gray's Inn, where he
was living when Benjamin Disraeli was baptised at St. Andrew's, Holborn, on the 31st July,
1817.

xlvi

PREFACE.

an institution of those days, and although the site of the farm has for many years
been occupied by the London General Omnibus Company, the tradition of the
dairy still lingers in the minds of the older inhabitants. At the period of Lord
BeaconsfieWs birth the entire parish—-now one of the most populous of the London
suburbs—contained no more than 1,745 houses, with 10,212 inhabitants.
Ten
years later the population had increased to only 14,000, and the houses to 2,200.
Yet the area of the parish is no less than 3,032! acres, of which, in 1810,
2,699 acres and 37 perches were returned as meadow and pasture, while 332
acres, 2 roods, and 3 perches were occupied by houses, gardens, and wastes.
According to Nelson's " History of Islington "—a dull but apparently accurate
little book which appeared in 1811—the village of Islington comprised six hamlets
as well as the little cluster of houses which properly bore the name. Those hamlets
were Holloway, which appears to have included a few houses lying between the
" Cock " at Highbury and a point a little to the north of the junction of the Seven
Sisters Road tvith the Great North Road; Ball's Pond, an insignificant
agglomeration of cottages round the turnpike which then stood at the end of what is
now called the Essex Road, but which was then and for many years aftei wards

PREFACE.

xlvii

called the Lower Road; Battle Bridge', which the stupidity of a Vestry has
converted into Kings Cross, though it might have been thought that a victory of
Alfred over the Danes across the river Fleet was as worthy of commemoration as a
hideous leaden statue of George IV. set up by a speculative plumber; the " City
Gardens" worthy of remembrance as recalling the time when the archers of
Finsbury, who had shot their arrows at the butts in the Moor Fields without
Cripplegate, sallied forth for refreshment to " Iseldone;" Kingsland Green,
a veritable green within living memory, but now the abode of'tradesmen of the Cheap
John order; and lastly, " the greater part of Newington Green"—a spot which
retained its dignified and semi-rural character to a later date than almost any part
of the parish of Islington, and which even now, in spite of tramways and in spite
of the enclosure of the Green itself, and the destruction of the beloved " Green Lanes" of
forty years ago, still retains not a little of its ancient charm.
The house occupied by Isaac Disraeli stood in what was then and for many
years aftef wards called Trinity Row.
It was an isolated set of houses, called a
'' row " apparently for the simple reason that no two of the houses were alike either
externally or internally, and that several of them were completely detached.
The

xlviii

PREFACE.

houses were comfortable and well-built\ and even now retain a curious country-town
look. Their fronts advance to that queer causeway which raises foot-passengers out
of the level of the high road, but to make amends they are, or were, rich in garden,
orchard and paddock at the rear. Behind the gardens the fields stretched in an
unbroken series to the breezy heights of Hampstead and Highgate.
Compton
Terrace, that dreary but eminently respectable row of houses, which Thackeray ought
to have seen before he reviled Harley Street, did not exist when Lord Beaconsfield
was born. It had indeed, been begun, but little more had been done towards the
erection of the houses in 1804 than marking out the foundations.
Two years later
Union Chapel, now served by the Rev. Dr. Alton, was opened for service. It was
one of the first-fruits of the Evangelical revival, and was an attempt to unite
Church and Dissent upon a common basis. A clergyman used to preach in the
morning and a dissenting minister in the evening, while a gentleman from Lady
Huntingdon's seminary read prayers in a surplice and without a stole. Somewhere
about the time of the opening of Union Chapelfour hoiises were built on the ititended
site of Compton Terrace, and these formed the nucleus of the existing row. It was,
however, not until very many years after Isaac Disraeli had left Trinity Row that

PREFACE.

xlix

Flight's dairy farm was encroached up07i by the lairs for cattle arriving in
London by the Great North Road for sale at Smithfield. Monday, it will
be remembered, was the great market-day, and in the memory of the present
generation it was the custom to drive vast numbers of cattle on Fridays and
Saturdays {sometimes also on Sundays) down this road, and to allow them a
few hours' rest in the lairs which extended with but little interruption down one
side of what is now called the Liverpool Road.
From the front of the house in Trinity Row the view was, in 1804, a sufficiently
pleasant one. Except for the interesting, if not very beautiful, Tower of Queen
Elizabeth's hunting lodge at Canonbury, and for two or three country houses
pleasantly embowered in trees and enclosed with high walls, the pfospect was uninterrupted across the meadows to Ball's Pond and Newington and further Dalston and
Hackney. Even the Islington ponds, of which Ben Jonson wrote:—
Because I live at Hogsden shall I keep company with none but
the archers of Finsbury, or the citizens that come a-ducking to Islington
ponds ?—
were in existence long after 1804.
d

1

PREFACE.

Everything, in short, seems to have emphasised the really rural character of the
house in which Benjamin Disraeli first drew breath. It was, as I have lately been
informed^ in the dining-room of that house that he was received into the covenant of Abraham, the officiant being a Portuguese merchant of high standing,
Mr. David Abarbanel Lindo, whose family have most courteously set me right in
this matter, and inform me that the firm is still in existence, Mr. David Lindo
being represented by his grandson.
Another correspondent informs me that the
accoucheur who officiated on this occasion, was Dr. Jeaffreson, of Cross Street, the
tragic death of whose son, in the discharge of his duty at the London Fever Hospital,
will be fresh in the memory of all who revere, as good men should, the medical
profession. Dr. Jeaffreson himself can hardly be forgotten.
He was one of the
kindest and gentlest of men, and his few eccentricities served only to endear him to
the multitude of people to whom he ministered without fee or reward.
The present
writer well remembers him as a figure of his boyhood—a tall, lean, elderly man, with
a slight stoop, a wonderfully clear complexion, and a venerable white head, carrying a
cane under his arm, with a " pouncet box " in the knob, and in winter bearing
always a muff as he went his roimds, in order that his patients should not feel the

PREFACE.

li

shock of a cold hand when he visited them—a piece of consideration which, coupled
with the Doctor's well-known character, endeared him to thousands.
Benjamin Disraeli returned from his second foreign tour in the spring of 1832.
He had not, indeed, like Sidonia, exhausted all the sources of human knowledge;
he was not master' of the learning of every nation, nor of all tongues dead or
living, but he had added very largely to his stock of knowledge of men and things.
He had eve?i studied man in the wilderness, and of him with more than common
truth it might be said that the influence of creeds and laws, manners, customs,
traditions in all their diversities had been subjected to his personal scrutiny.
He had in fact been preparing for that public career to which he had always looked
forward, and which was the croivn of his ambition. But it can hardly be said that
public life in England in 1832 presented much that was particularly attractive.
The great work of Catholic emancipation had just been accomplished, and the Tory
party had not recovered from the shock. The Reform agitation which followed
demoralized the Conservative forces still further. As Lord Beaconsfield said afterwards, he found political parties in this country on his return in a state of confusion
almost without parallel.
The Reform Bill was virtually, though not formally,
passed, and the nation was

Hi

PREFACE.

in terror of a rampant democracy. I saw, he says, only an impending
oligarchy. I found the House of Commons packed, and the independence
of the House of Lords announced as terminated.
I recognized a
repetition of the same oligarchical coups diktat from which we had
escaped by a miracle little more than a century before; therefore I
determined to the utmost of my power to oppose the Whigs. Why then
it may be asked, did I not join the Tories ? Because I found the Tories
in a state of ignorant stupefaction. The Whigs had assured them that
they were annihilated, and they believed them. . . The Tories trembled at a coming anarchy; what they had to apprehend was a rigid
tyranny.
Wherefore Disraeli the younger thought out his own political programme,
and presented himself to the electors of High Wycombe as an independent candidate
on the principles which are set forth at length in the first of the two pamphlets
which are contained in the present volume.
Of course he was claimed by the Radical party, and when later on he engaged
in his memorable quarrel with O'Connell—a dispute from which the so-called

PREFACE,

iin

"Liberator" did not come out wholly unscathed—that master of vituperation
called him renegade and traitor, and accused him of every crime in the political
decalogue. Three years later 0' Connell himself was to be guilty of an act of political
treachery as base as the Kilmainham Treaty itself
After attacking the Whigs in
every conceivable way throughout the tvhole of his political life, after heaping upon
them every epithet of scorn, derision and hatred in his copious vocabulary, after
having fully earned by his treatment of them that epithet of "Yahoo " with which Lord
Beaconsfield oh one occasion saluted him, O" Connell went over to them, and in the
terms of the Lichfield House Compact bound himself to support their measures on
condition of their tolerating him. His young opponent stigmatized his conduct in
the language which it deserved, and the result has been a slander on the fair fame of
Lord Beaconsfield, which even now fi?ids casual repetition. The explanation is not
altogether difficult. Being as he was a Tory of the great historical school, he was
careful throughout his life to distinguish between principles and measures, and like
those who strive to follow in his footsteps he refused to allow the right of those who
call themselves Liberals to a monopoly of beneficial legislation. Thus from the outset
of his long career down to the period of his great administration, he was an unwearied

liv

PREFACE.

advocate of the improvement of working-class dwellings. Foolish people laughed in
derision when he announced at Manchester what they were pleased to desc?ibe as a
"policy of sewage" and summed up his creed as regarded the poorer classes in the
often quoted words—which, by the way, have never been traced to their source—
Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas. On his side his defenders could point to the
fact that for well-nigh half a century he had been the consistent supporter of the
rights and interests of the poor, and that there were few men amongst the professional
philanthropists who could say with as much truth as he that he
had always felt that the best security for civilization is the dwelling,
and that upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends
more than anything else the improvement of mankind. Such dwellings
are the real nursery, he went on to say, of all the domestic virtues, and
without a becoming home the exercise of those virtues is impossible.
Nor was Lord Beaconsfield at any time unwilling to give to the working
classes their fair share of political power.
He objected most strongly to the
Whig Reform Act of 1832, because it was a measure not of enfranchisement
but of disfranchisement. The £\o householder in the boroughs, it is true, was

PREFACE.

lv

entrusted with a vote, but the genuine representatives of the working-classes were
deprived of their ancient and historical rights. In the same way he opposed the
New Poor Law, and constituted himself an unsparing censor of that triumph of
Whig genius, urging both by his pen and in the House of Commons the rights and
claims of the poorer class to kindness and consideration. These things did not make
him a Radical any more than did his advocacy of certain legislative proposals with
which the Radical party have contrived to associate their names. With his usual readiness to accept accomplished facts he accepted the Reform Act of 1832, but in his first
electoral address he explained that he regarded it as by no means a final measure,
but simply as a means to a great end. He hoped for other reforms as the result
of it—reforms in Finance, reforms in the Church, reforms in the judicial
System.
Four months later, when addressing the same constituency, he again protested his
independence. He came forward, he said, wearing the badge of no party, and
the livery of no faction. And as an independent candidate hefelt himself at liberty
to follow the line of the Tories of the days of Queen Anne. He would revert to
Triennial Parliaments, of which, said he, the Whigs originally deprived us, and
he would, like Lord Chatham, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Canning, szipport an energetic

lvi

PREFACE.

measure of Parliamentary reform upon lines which were not exclusively calculated to
establish the Whig supremacy. And like the Tories of a century earlier he was an
opponent of Whig pensions and Whig placemen, and in view of the terrorism which
he foresaw as inevitable under the new system of things', he supported the Ballot.
These things', however, cannot be said to constitute a Radical, though, as they formed
parts of the Radical programme of the period between 1832 and 1848, they obviously
gave the candidate who incorporated them in his political C7-eed, a strong claim upon
the Radicals for support. There was therefore nothing inconsistent hi the circumstances of Mr. Disraelis first public appearance. He stood for High Wycombe
against the son of the Prime Minister, who was then engaged in the task of forcing
the Reform Bill upon an unwilling Legislature, and was proposed by a Tory, and
seconded by a Radical. The local press insisted on describing him as a Tory, and
the glamour of the Reform agitation still overshadowing the Greys and the Russells,
he was defeated in that very small constituency by a majority of about two to one.
When he again presented himself to the electorate he was still an independent
candidate, and in his address to the electors he urged them to remember their rights and
responsibilities.

PREFACE.

lvii

Englishmen, said he, behold this unparalleled empire raised by the
heroic energies of your fathers; rouse yourselves in this hour of doubt
and danger; rid yourselves of all that political jargon and factious slang
of Whig and Tory—two names with one meaning used only to delude
you—and unite in forming a great national party, which alone can save
the country from impending destruction.
These words form the keynote of that remarkable and interesting pamphlet,
" What is HeV which is here reprinted. The fate of the little work has been
somewhat curious. It never had a very large circulation, and what few copies there
are in existence are hidden away so carefully as to be utterly inaccessible to the
general reader. Up to 1878 even the British Museum library had no copy, and
from other collections it is conspicuously absent. The fact that the pamphlet was
inaccessible did not, however, suffice to prevent writers who had never seen it from
evolving an account of it from the depths of their imaginations, and from
representing its author as the most despicable of human beings. Now that
it is reproduced, there can be no excuse for the repetition of the stale slander
which represents the lost leader of the Tory party as a turncoat and an adventurer

lviii

PREFACE.

—a slander which the "Times" in a lengthy article apropos to nothing at all,
thought it becoming to reproduce at the close of last year. The writer of that delectable
production begins with the assertion that the political principles on which Lord
Beaconsfield fought his early election contests have lately been the subject of
much controversy—a statement which may be true, but which would have been
much more satisfactory had the ti?ne and place of this controversy been specified.
What follows is precisely what might have been anticipated. The files of the
" Eatanswill Gazette" are largely drawn upon, and the personalities which in 1832
passed for criticisms in the provincial press are carefully reproduced. The competence
of the critic may be estimated by the fact that he considers it desirable to reproduce
even the vulgar nicknames with which the Mr. Slurk of High Wycombe thought it
becoming to pelt a political opponent in 1832. For the rest, the argument is the usual
one—Lord Beaconsfield in his youth supported measures which were also advocated
by the Radical party; he voted against the Whigs on questions on tvhich Tories
were not unwilling to support the dominant party, and when in later years the
Whigs were filling the gaols of Engla?id with the unfortunate men who had
bettered their instructions, and tuho imagined that they could find in political

PREFACE.

lix

revolution a remedy for social evils and for social wrongs', // was Mr. Disraeli who
both in and out of the House of Com?nons championed the distressed Chartists.
Therefore it is argued he must have been a Radical, and his accession to the Tory
ranks proves only the depth of his turpitude.
To all who are disposed to accept this statement of the case the pamphlet u What
is He ? " affords a decisive answer. The " Vindication of the English Constitution,
in a Letter to a Noble and Learned Lord" which follows it, answers it in another
way. The former pamphlet appearedin 1833, the latter in 1835 ; the intervening
time having been occupied by a series of assaults upon that Whig " Reform Ministryf)
which had proved itself in two years so impotent for valuable legislation, and by the
much talked of quarrel with (JConnelL
The " noble and learned Lord" to whom
it is addressed is, of course, Lyndhurst, with whom Disraeli the younger was at
this period on terms of the greatest intimacy and even affection. A writer of the
period describes how the twain might have been seen in the small hours of the
morning, linked arm in arm and pacing up and down the colonnade of Her
Majesty's Theatre while Disraeli poured forth his views and ideas in what Mr. N.
P. Willis called a particularly successful cataract of expression,—a phrase which

Ix

PREFACE.

assuredly does honour to the fertility of its inventor's vocabulary. It is not a little
singular that within the last few months it should have been thought advisable to
vindicate the fair fame of Lyndhurst from a charge identical with that brought
against Lord Beaconsfield. The venerable ex-Chancellor—one of the finest and most
accomplished lawyers who ever adorned the Woolsack, and certainly one of the most
disinterested of politicians—was accused by Lord Campbell of having begun life as a
Radical, or rather Republican, and of having " ratted " at a convenient moment
and for interested motives. Against that charge Sir Theodore Martin has certainly
vindicated him most successfully in the minds of all impartial men, but unfortunately
not all men are impartial, and a slander which has once gained currency lives long
after its falsify has been proved. No more striking confutation of that which has
smirched the reputations of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Lyndhurst could be desired
than the " Vindication " now offered to the English reader.
For one statesman to
compose, and another to accept, the dedication of such a work, is surely the most signal
proof that can be afforded of the consistent Toryism of both. In Lord Beaconsfield's
case the vindication is even more complete by reason of the publication of that earlier
pamphlet which is included in the present volume.
FRANCIS HITCHMAN.

"WHAT

IS

HE ?"

"WHAT IS HE?"
BY

THE AUTHOR OF "VIVIAN GREY."
" I hear that * * * * * * * *
is again in the field ;] I hardly know
whether we ought to wish him success. " W H A T IS H E ??'—Extract from a
Letter of an Eminent Personage.

The new edition revised

LONDON:
JAMES RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY; AND E. LLOYD, HARLEY STREET.
MDCCCXXXIII.

"WHAT IS HE?"
I.
HE Tories have announced that they could not carry on the Government
of this country, with the present state machinery; every day the nation is
more sensible that the Whigs cannot. A third party has arisen, who propose
certain additions and alterations in this state machinery, by the aid of which,
they believe the Government of the country might be conducted.

T

II.
The first object of a Statesman is a strong Government, without which there
can be no security. Of all countries in the world, England most requires one,

6

« WHAT IS HE?"

since the prosperity of no society so much depends upon public confidence as
that of the British nation.
Our Government, before the recent change, was based upon an aristocratic
principle, and as the principle was decided, the practice was vigorous. By the
recent change we have deserted the old principle of Government without adopting
a new one. As the Government has no impelling principle, the Government
cannot of course act. Hence a session of Parliament, from which so much was
expected by the thoughtless, spent only in barren discussion, in the proposition
of abortive measures, or the hasty adoption of temporary and provisional
enactments.
III.
It is evident that public confidence must decrease in exact proportion to
the increasing weakness of a Government. Unless means therefore be discovered, by which the Government in this country can be rendered strong, by
which it may be enabled to act, a public convulsion must soon occur. At

" WHAT IS HE?"

7

present, Property is only threatened; in a few months it will be a question as to
the preservation of Order; another year, and we must struggle for Civilization.
IV.
By what means, then, are we to obtain a strong Government ? We must
discover some principle on which it can be founded. We must either revert to
the aristocratic principle, or we must advance to the democratic.
V.
The Tories announce by their leaders, that to govern the country with the
present state machinery is impossible. Unless therefore, they believe that it is
possible to restore the old principle of government, or unless they have embraced
a martyrdom of political insignificance, they must advance to the new. Do
they believe that they can restore the old principle ? Not merely to expedite
the argument, I will believe that they do not.
I, for one, believe it utterly impossible to revert to the aristocratic principle,
for reasons which I shall adduce in a subsequent section, Believing so however,

8

WHAT IS. HEV*

and being convinced that, unless the Government of the country be founded
upon some decided principle, the country must fall, I feel it absolutely necessary
to advance to the new, or the democratic principle.
VI.
In the House of Commons, as at present constituted, neither of the
principles predominates.
Essentially the aristocratic is much the strongest, but as the aristocratic
party is divided into two rival sections, which can seldom coalesce, the democratic contrives nearly to balance the antagonist principle. Superficial observers
cannot understand how a measure which is so essentially aristocratic as the
Reform Act, has produced such threatening consequences to the aristocratic
principle of Government. They say, and they say truly, the Reform Act was a
law, not to destroy close government, but to destroy Toryism. The Boroughs
of the Tories were invariably sacrificed, and those of the Whigs, in many
instances, essentially preserved. Everywhere the power of Whig nomination was
favored. " We have only changed masters," continue these observers. " We

"WHAT

IS HE?"

9

are governed by an aristocratic party, and that party how strong ! Mark their
vast majorities ! Observe the numerous scions of noble houses lounging behind
the Treasury Bench. Talk of Revolution indeed,—there never was such an
aristocratic House of Commons as the present!" Doubtless it was impressed
with these ideas that the Whigs were induced to introduce their famous Reform
Bill. But if they have not already discovered, it is time that they should discover,
a great truth—THE ARISTOCRATIC PRINCIPLE HAS BEEN DE~
STROYED IN THIS COUNTRY, NOT BY THE REFORM ACT, BUT
BY THE MEANS BY WHICH THE REFORM ACT WAS PASSED.
VII.
The Whigs, who with a Sovereign, and a House of Commons alike pledged
to their purpose, were, nevertheless, so incapable, that they could not contrive to
carry a substantive measure of Reform through the unpledged, yet weakest
Estate of the Realm, excited a deadly struggle between the House of Lords, and
the Political Unions. The House of Lords was vanquished, and the moment
that they passed the Reform Act, that assembly was as completely abrogated

IO

''WHAT

IS HE?"

and extinguished as if its Members had torn off their robes and coronets, and
flung them into the river; and, stalking in silence to their palaces, had never
returned to that chamber which every Peer must now enter with a blush or
with a pang.
The moment the Lords passed the Reform Bill, from menace instead of
conviction, the aristocratic principle of Government in this country, in my
opinion, expired for ever. From that moment, it became the duty of every
person of property, talents, and education, unconnected with the unhappy party
at present in power, to use his utmost exertions to advance the democratic
principle, in order that the country should not fall into that situation, in which,
if I mistake not, it will speedily find itself—absolutely without any Government
whatever. A Tory, and a Radical, I understand; a Whig—a democratic
aristocrat, I cannot comprehend. If the Tories indeed despair of restoring the
aristocratic principle, and are sincere in their avowal that the State cannot be
governed with the present machinery, it is their duty to coalesce with the
Radicals, and permit both political nick-names to merge in the common, the
intelligible, and the dignified title of a National Party. He is a mean-spirited

"WHAT

IS

HEi

ii

wretch, who is restrained from doing his duty, by the fear of being held up as
insincere and inconsistent by those who are incapable of forming an opinion on
public affairs; and who, were it not for the individual " inconsistency " which
they brand, would often become the victims of their own incapacity and
ignorance. A great mind, that thinks and feels, is never inconsistent, and never
insincere. He who will not profess opinions without first examining them, is
ever considered insincere by the mass who adopt doctrines without thought, and
retain them with the obstinacy which ignorance can alone inspire. He who
will not act without a reason, will always be considered inconsistent by the
irrational. The insincere and the inconsistent, are the stupid and the vile.
Insincerity is the vice of a fool, and inconsistency the blunder of a knave.
VIII.
It is possible that the Tories may imagine that there are two modes by
which the aristocratic principle may be restored; istly, by Force: 2ndly,
by a coalition between the two Aristocratic parties.
Firstly^ by Force. It seems to me impossible for a military leader to

12

" WHAT IS HE?"

practise upon the passions of an insular people, to whom he can promise no
conquests. If it be urged that a military despotism has already been erected in
this country, I remind the respondent of the different state of society in England
at present to what it was in the time of Cromwell. It appears to me that the
manufacturing districts alone, which, in a moment, would supply masses of
population and abundance of arms, are a sufficient security against the imposition
of a military despotism.
Secondly', by a coalition between the aristocratic parties. Such a combination
might, unquestionably, retard the advance of the democratic principle, and raise,
as it were, for an instant, the ghost of the departed aristocrat. But its ultimate
tendency would only be to place the House of Commons again at variance with
the people, and again to develop the triumphant organization of popular selfgovernment. But a coalition between the aristocratic parties would be attended
with so many difficulties, that it is almost impossible to conceive its formation.

"WHAT

IS HE?"

13

IX.
Believing then that it is utterly impossible to restore the aristocratic principle,
and believing that unless some principle of action be infused into the Government,
a convulsion must ensue; what are the easiest and most obvious methods
by which the democratic principle may be made predominant ? It would appear
that the easiest, and the most obvious methods are, the instant repeal of the
Septennial Act, and the institution of Election by Ballot, and the immediate
dissolution of Parliament. There is reason to believe that the consequence of
this policy would be the election of a House of Commons, the great majority of
which would be influenced by the same wishes, and consequently, the machine of
the State would be able to proceed. I shall not here enter into the discussion
of the nature of the measures which are likely to be adopted by a Parliament so
constituted. This is not a party Pamphlet, and appeals to the passions of no
order of the State : I record here my solemn conviction, and the result of my
own unprejudiced meditation. The sole object of these pages is to show, that
we are in a situation in which it is necessary either to recede, or to advance; that

14

"WHAT

IS HE?"

it is not probable that the present state of affairs can subsist six months; and
that it becomes all men who are sincere well-wishers to their country, and who
are really independent, that is to say, who are not pledged to the unhappy party
in power, to combine together for the institution of a strong Government.
X.

In conclusion, I must observe, that there is yet a reason which induces me
to believe, that the restoration of the aristocratic principle in the Government of
this country, is utterly impracticable. Without being a system-monger, I cannot
but perceive, in studying the history of the past, that Europe, for the last three
centuries, has been, more or less, in a state of transition from Feudal to Federal
principles of government. If these contending principles of government have
not originated all the struggles that have occurred, they have, at least, in the
progress of those struggles, in some degree blended with them. The revolt of
the Netherlands against Spain, impelled, if it did not produce, the Revolution in
England, under Charles the First. The revolt of the Anglo-American Colonies
against Great Britain, impelled, if it did not produce, the revolution in France under

"WHAT

IS HE?»

15

Louis XVI. It is unnecessary to touch upon later events. It is wise to be
sanguine in public as well as in private life ; yet the sagacious Statesman must
view the present portents with anxiety, if not with terror. It would sometimes
appear, that the loss of pur great Colonial Empire must be the necessary consequence of our prolonged domestic dissensions. Hope, however, lingers to the
last. In the sedate, but vigorous character of the British nation, we may place
great confidence. Let us not forget also an influence too much underrated in
this age of bustling mediocrity—the influence of individual character. Great
spirits may yet arise, to guide the groaning helm through the world of troubled
waters; spirits whose proud destiny it may still be, at the same time to maintain
the glory of the Empire, and to secure the happiness of the People !
FINIS.

VINDICATION
OF T H E

ENGLISH

CONSTITUTION,
&c.

VINDICATION
OF T H E '

ENGLISH

CONSTITUTION
IN A

LETTER
TO A

NOBLE AND LEARNED LORD.
BY

DISRAELI T H E YOUNGER.

LONDON
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
1835.

SYNOPSIS
OF THE

FOLLOWING TREATISE.
Of Writers on the English Constitution
Of the Utilitarian System; its fallacies

30

Of abstract principles in Politics, and of the degree of Theory that enters into Politics .

39

Of Magna Charta

42

Petition of Right

45

Of Precedent, Prescription, and Antiquity

46

22

SYNOPSIS

OF THE FOLLOWING

TREATISE.

Of the formation of a free Constitution

49

Of the attempts of the French to form a free Constitution : Reasons of their failure:
Fallacy of adopting the English Constitution in France
Of the attempts to establish the English Constitution in the Sicilies and the Peninsula ...

50
57

Of the last attempt of the French to form a free Government: La Fayette and Lord
Somers compared
Of the Constitutional development of Prussia

59
66

Constitution of the United States exercises the same fatal influence over America as that of
England over Europe : Mexico, Chili, Peru, contrasted with France, Spain, & Portugal

74

Of the " Wisdom of our Ancestors "

78

The " House of Commons " not the " House of the People "

81

The Political Institutions of England, sprung from its legal Institutions

84

Nature of the Representative principle

85

Original character of the English Parliament...

86

Of the Estate of the Knights

87

Rise of the Towns

91

SYNOPSIS OF THE FOLLOWING

TREATISE.

23

Creation of the Estate of the Commons

...

The House of Commons an Equestrian Chamber

...

95
96

Why the Equality of Civil Rights was established in England at so early a period of our
History

...

98

Why Liberty flourished under the Plantagenets

...

Why Liberty declined under the Tudors

...

...

...

100
...

102

...

Primary effect of Protestantism in England not favourable to our Civil Liberties

105

Of the Constitution of the House of Commons under the Tudors, and of the system of
Borough Representation

106

Anecdote of the Pacha of Egypt: Representation without Election illustrated

113

Why the Political Consequences of the Protestant Religion on the Continent were
different to those in England, and why favourable to Civil Liberty: Protestantism
creates a Republican Religion
Introduction of the phrase " T H E P E O P L E " into European Politics

...
...

117
...

...

118

Attempts of the English Aristocracy to restore the Constitution of the Plantagenets
under Charles the First

...

123

24

SYNOPSIS OF THE FOLLOWING

TREATISE.

Constitutional Reformers, and Root and Branch Reformers : the Root and Branch
Reformers attack the Church, and alarm the Constitutional Reformers

124

The Root and Branch Reformers deserted by the Constitutional Reformers form an antinational alliance with the Scotch Covenanters .

125

Parallel between passing events and the reign of Charles the First
Government of " THE PEOPLE " established in England.
T H E NATION seeks refuge from " T H E PEOPLE "

125

Its Practical consequences :
...

...

128

Public Opinion not less influential in the age of Charles the First than at the present
day: European Movement described
Of the latter Stuarts

....

...

' ...

131
132

Blunders of the Whigs in their Reform of the House of Commons: but the original
character of the House of Commons still retained : not the House of the People
Of the Constitution of the House of Lords

...

...

...

134

...

136

Of the Spiritual Lords : the Bench of Bishops a democratic Institution

...

139

Of the Temporal Lords

...

144

Of the Peerage Bill: Attempts of the Whigs to establish an Oligarchy

...

145;

SYNOPSIS

OF THE

FOLLOWING

TREATISE.

25

Irresponsibility of the House of Lords considered: the Lords not more irresponsible than
the Commons

147

The Qualification of the Peers the same as the Commons, hereditary: Hereditary
Legislators not more absurd than Hereditary Electors : the principle of Hereditary
Legislation not constitutionally anomalous

152

The principle of Hereditary Legislation not abstractedly absurd

153

Political Institutions must be judged by"their results : The Hereditary Peerage contributes
to the stability of the State: the House of Lords in ability always equal to the House
of Commons : superior since the Reform

157

The principle of Hereditary Legislation prevalent in the House of Commons, and
sanctioned by the national character

...

...

159

The Hereditary principle must not be considered abstractedly: The French Senate
examined: Why an Hereditary Senate, composed of the ablest men, may be a
political non-entity: Necessary qualities of an assembly like the English House of
Lords..
Causes of the Harmony between the two Houses

...

...

...

160
165

SYNOPSIS

26

OF THE FOLLOWING

TREATISE.

The Hereditary principle must also be considered in reference to the system of parties in
this country

...

166

Summary: that the principle of Hereditary Legislation is neither constitutionally
anomalous, nor abstractedly absurd, nor practically injurious, but the reverse

...

167

Of the Kingly Office

168

Unsuccessful attempts of the Whigs to establish an Oligarchy under William the Third

169

Reign of Anne : its influence on parties

170

...

More successful attempts of the Whigs to establish an Oligarchy under George the
First.

They establish the Cabinet and banish the King from his own Council;

pass the Septennial Act, and introduce the Peerage Bill.

Oligarchical coups

d'etat...

171

Policy of the Whigs under George the First, compared with their Policy at the present
da

y

...

173

George the Second unsuccessfully struggles against the Whig Oligarchs ...

174

George the Third emancipates the nation from them

174

...

Of Whigs and Tories : their origin explained, and their real character ascertained

...

175

SYNOPSIS

OF THE FOLLOWING

TREATISE.

27

Why the advocacy of divine right, non-resistance and passive obedience by the Tories in
the reign of George the First, were evidences of the Democratic character of the party
The Whigs an Oligarchical faction.

The Tories a national party '...

...

Why the Whigs are, ever have been, and ever must be, odious to the English nation
Why the Whigs are hostile to the establishments of the country

177
178

...

180

...

181

Probable consequences of Whiggism, and degrading effects of Centralization

181

Democratic character of Toryism developed ...

182

Why parties sometimes change their names and cries

184

Character of Lord Bolingbroke: his influence on our history: re-organises the Tory
party: founder of modern Toryism
The Whigs pursuing the same machinations now as under George the First

185
...

...

Three points to which the Tories must at the present moment apply themselves

187
190

Tories vindicated from the charges of Corruption, Bigotry, and Hostility to Improvement

191

Causes and consequences of Political Conciliation

195

Vindication of the recent policy of Sir Robert Peel and his Cabinet

196

28

SYNOPSIS OF THE FOLLOWING

TREATISE.

The political power of the Tories distinguished from their social power: the political
power maintained at present by a series of great Democratic measures

....

...

198

General view of the English Constitution : shown to be a complete Democracy

200

English and French Equality contrasted

201

Conclusion

...
•

203

L E T T E R , &c.

Y

OUR Lordship has honoured me by a wish that some observations which I
have made in conversation on the character of our constitution might be
expressed in a more formal and more public manner. When I transmit you this
long letter, I fear you may repent your friendly suggestion ; but the subject has
given rise to so many reflections, that I did not anticipate, that what I originally
intended for a pamphlet has, I fear, expanded almost into a volume.
The polity of England, which has established the most flourishing society
of modern ages, and regulated the destinies of a nation which, for many
centuries, has made a progressive advance in the acquisition of freedom, wealth,
and glory, undoubtedly presents one of the most interesting subjects of specu-

30

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH

CONSTITUTION:

lation in political philosophy. Nor is it one that has been neglected; and
illustrious foreigners have emulated our native authors in their treatises of the
English Constitution. Our own constitutional writers may, in general, be
divided into two classes : firstly, the mere antiquaries whose labours however
are inestimable; and, secondly, that order of political writers who have endeavoured, in an examination of what they style the theory of the Constitution, to
promulgate the opinions and maintain the interests of the party in the state in
whose ranks they have been enrolled: the dissertations upon our constitution
have therefore been either archaiological treatises or party manifestoes.
Yet for many years the general result of these writings, whichever might be
the quarter whence they emanated was, as far as' their subject was concerned,
one of unqualified panegyric. However the excesses of factions might be
deplored, or the misrepresentations of factious writers exposed and stigmatized,
the English constitution was universally recognised as an august and admirable
fabric, and counted among the choicest inventions of public intellect on record.
That a very different tone has of late years been assumed by our public writers
is a notorious circumstance. A political sect has sprung up avowedly adverse

VINDICATION

OF THE ENGLISH

CONSTITUTION

3*

to the Estates of the realm, and seeking by means which, of course, it holds
legal, the abrogation of a majority of them. These anti-constitutional writers,
like all new votaries, are remarkable for their zeal and activity. They omit no
means of disseminating their creed : they are very active missionaries : there
is no medium of the public press of which they do not avail themselves : they
have their newspapers, daily and weekly, their magazines, and their reviews.
The unstamped press takes the cue from them, and the members of the party
who are in Parliament lose no opportunity of dilating on the congenial theme at
the public meetings of their constituents.
The avowed object of this new sect of statesmen is to submit the institutions
of the country to the test of UTILITY, and to form a new constitution on the
abstract principles of theoretic science. I think it is Voltaire who tells us, that
there is nothing more common than to read and to converse to no purpose,
and that in history, in morals, and in divinity we should beware of EQUIVOCAL
TERMS. I do not think that politics should form an exception to this salutary
rule; and, for my own part, it appears to me that this term, UTILITY, is about
as equivocal as any one which, from the time of the Nominalists and Realists,

32

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH

CONSTITUTION.

to our present equally controversial and equally indefinite days, hath been let
loose to breed sects and set men a-brawling. The fitness of a material object
for a material purpose is a test of its utility which our senses and necessities can
decide; but what other test there is of moral and political utility than the
various and varying opinions of mankind, I am at a loss to discover; and that
this is utterly unsatisfactory and insufficient, all, I apprehend, must agree.
Indeed, I have hitherto searched in vain in the writings of the Utilitarian
sect for any definition of their fundamental phrase with which it is possible to
grapple. That they pretend to afford us a definition it would be disingenuous to
conceal, and we are informed that Utility is " the principle which produces the
greatest happiness of the greatest number," Does this advance us in comprehension ? Who is to decide upon the greatest happiness of the greatest number ?
According to Prince Metternich, the government of Austria secures the greatest
happiness of the greatest number : it is highly probable that the effect of the
Austrian education and institutions may occasion the majority of the Austrian
population to be of the same opinion. Yet the government of Austria is no
favourite with the anti-constitutional writers of our own country. Gross supersti-

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH

CONSTITUTION

33

tion may secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as it has done in
Spain and Portugal: a military empire may secure the greatest happiness
of the greatest number, as it has done in Rome and France: a coarse and unmitigated despotism may secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as
it does to this day in many regions of Asia and Africa. Every government
that ever existed, that has enjoyed any quality of duration, must have been
founded on this " greatest happiness principle," for had not the majority thought
or felt that such were its result, the government could never have endured.
There have been times, and those too not far gone, when the greatest happiness
of Christian nations has been secured by burning men alive for their religious
faith; and unless we are prepared to proclaim that all religious creeds, which
differ from our own, are in fact not credited by their pretended votaries, we must
admit that the greatest happiness of the greatest number of mankind is even now
secured, by believing that which we know to be false. If the greatest happiness
of the greatest number, therefore, be the only test of the excellence of political
institutions, that may be the plea for institutions which, according to the
Utilitarians especially, are monstrous or absurd: and if to avoid this conclusion we
D

34

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH

CONSTITUTION.

maintain that the greatest number are not the proper judges of the greatest happiness, we are only referred to the isolated opinions of solitary philosophers, or at
the best to the conceited conviction of some sectarian minority. UTILITY, in
short, is a mere phrase, to which any man may ascribe any meaning that his
interests prompt, or his passions dictate. With this plea, a nation may consider
it in the highest degree useful, that all the statues scattered throughout the
museums of Christendom should be collected in the same capital, and conquer
Christendom in consequence to obtain their object; and by virtue of the same
plea, some Iconoclastic enemy may declare war upon this nation of Dilettanti tomorrow, and dash into fragments their cosmopolite collection.
Viewed merely in relation to the science of government, the effect of the test
of utility, as we have considered it, would in all probability be harmless, and its
practical tendency, if any, would rather lead to a spirit of conservation and
optimism than to one of discontent and change. But optimism is assuredly not
the system of the Utilitarians : far from thinking every thing is for, the best, they
decidedly are of opinion that every thing is for the worst. In order, therefore,
that their test of utility should lead to the political results which they desire, they

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION

35

have dove-tailed their peculiar system of government into a peculiar system of
morals, in connexion with which we must alone subject it to our consideration.
The same inventive sages, who have founded all political science on UTILITY, have
founded all moral science on SELF INTEREST, and have then declared that a
system of government should be deduced alone from the principles of human
nature. If mankind could agree on a definition of Self-interest, I willingly admit
that they would not be long in deciding upon a definition of Utility. But what
do the Utilitarians mean by the term, Self-interest ? I at once agree that man acts
from no other principle than self-interest, but I include in self-interest, and I
should think every accurate reasoner must do the same, every motive that can
possibly influence man. If every motive, that can possibly influence man, be included in self-interest, then it is impossible to form a science on a principle, which
includes the most contrary motives. If the Utilitarians will not admit all the
motives, but only some of the motives, then their science of government is not
founded on human nature, but only on a part of human nature, and must be consequently and proportionately imperfect. But the Utilitarian only admits one or
two of the motives that influence man; a desire of power and a desire of property;

36

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH

CONSTITUTION

and therefore infers that it is the interest of man to tyrannize, and to rob. The
blended Utilitarian system of morals and politics then runs thus:•—man is only
influenced by self-interest: it is the interest of man to be a tyrant and a robber :
a man does not change his nature because he is a king; therefore a king is a
tyrant and a robber. If it be the interest of one man to be a tyrant and a robber,
it is the interest of fifty or five thousand to be tyrants and robbers; therefore we
cannot trust an aristocracy more than a monarch. But the eternal principle of
human nature must always hold good. A privileged class is always an aristocracy,
whether it consists offivethousand orfiftythousand, a band of nobles or a favoured
sect; therefore the power of government should be entrusted to all; therefore
the only true and useful government is a representative polity, founded on universal
suffrage. This is the Utilitarian system of morals and government, drawn from
their " great works," by one who has no wish to misrepresent them. Granting
for a moment their premises, I do not see that their deduction, even then, is
logically correct. It is possible to conceive a state of society where the government may be in the hands of a favoured majority ; a community of five millions,
of which three might form a privileged class. Would not the greatest happiness

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.

37

of the greatest number be secured by such an arrangement ? and, if so secured,
would, or would not the Utilitarian, according to his theory, feel justified in
disturbing it ? If he oppose such a combination, he overthrows his theory; if
he consents to such a combination, his theory may uphold tyranny and spoliation.
But I will not press this point: it is enough for me to show, that to render their
politics practical they are obliged to make their metaphysics impossible. Let
the Utilitarian prove that the self-interest of man always leads him to be a tyrant
and a robber, and I will grant that universal suffrage is a necessary and useful
institution. A nation that conquers the world, acts from self-interest; a nation
that submits to a conqueror acts from self-interest. A spendthrift and a miser
alike act from self-interest: the same principle animated Messalina and Lucretia,
Bayard and Byng. To say that when a man acts, he acts from self-interest, is
only to announce, that when a man does act, he acts. An important truth, a
great discovery, calling assuredly for the appearance of prophets, or if necessary,
even ghosts. But to announce, that when a man acts, he acts from self-interest,
and that the self-interest of every man prompts him to be a tyrant and a robber,
is to declare that which the experience of all human nature contradicts; because

38

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION
—
—
.
,,. .
.—.
. _
we all daily and hourly feel and see, that there are a thousand other motives which
influence human conduct besides the idea of exercising power, and obtaining
property; every one of which motives must rank under the term self-interest,
because every man who acts under their influence must necessarily believe that
in so acting, he acts for his happiness, and therefore for his self-interest. Utility,
Pain, Power, Pleasure, Happiness, Self-interest are all phrases to which any man
may annex any meaning he pleases, and from which any acute and practised
reasoner may most syllogistically deduce any theory he chooses. " Such words/
says Locke, " no more improve our understanding, than the move of a jack will
fill our bellies." This waste of ingenuity on nonsense is like the condescending
union that occasionally occurs between some highbred steed and some long-eared
beauty of the Pampas: the base and fantastical embrace only produces a
barren and mulish progeny.
We have before this had an a-firiori system of celestial mechanics, and its
votaries most syllogistically sent Galileo to a dungeon, after having triumphantly
refuted him. We have before this had an a-priori system of metaphysics, but
where now are the golden volumes of Erigena, and Occam, and Scotus, and

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Raymond Lully? And now we have an a-priori system of politics. The
schoolmen are revived in the nineteenth century, and are going to settle the
state with their withering definitions, their fruitless logomachies, and barren
dialectics.
I should suppose that there is no one of the Utilitarian sages who would
not feel offended if I were to style him the Angelical Doctor, like Thomas
Acquinas; and I regret, from bitter experience, that they have not yet condescended sufficiently to cultivate the art of composition to entitle them to the
style of the Perspicuous Doctor, like Walter Burley.
These reflections naturally lead me to a consideration of the great object
of our new school of statesmen in general, which is to form political institutions
on abstract principles of theoretic science, instead of permitting them to spring
from the course of events, and to be naturally created by the necessities of
nations.' It would appear that this scheme originated in the fallacy of supposing
that theories produce circumstances, whereas the very converse of the proposition
is correct, and circumstances indeed produce theories. If we survey the career
of an individual, we shall on the whole observe a remarkable consistency in his

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conduct; yet it is more than possible, that this individual has never acted from
that organized philosophy which we style system. What, then, has produced
this consistency ? what, then, has occasioned this harmony of purpose ? His
individual character. Nations have characters, as well as individuals, and
national character is precisely the quality which the new sect of statesmen, in
their schemes and speculations, either deny or overlook. The ruling passion,
which is the result of organization, regulates the career of an individual, subject
to those superior accidents of fortune, whose secondary influence is scarcely
inferior to the impulse of his nature. The blended influences of nature and
fortune form his character;—'tis the same with nations. There are important
events in the] career of an individual which force the man to ponder over
the past, and in these studies of experience and struggles for self-knowledge, to
ascertain certain principles of conduct, which he recognises as the cause of past
success, and anticipates as the guarantee of future prosperity: and there are
great crises in the fortunes of an ancient people, which impel them to examine
the nature of the institutions which have gradually sprung up among them. In this
great national review, duly and wisely separating the essential character of their

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history from that which is purely adventitious, they discover certain principles
of ancestral conduct, which they acknowledge as the causes that these institutions
have flourished and descended to them; and in their future career, and all
changes, reforms, and alterations, that they may deem expedient, they resolve
that these principles shall be their guides and their instructors. By these
examinations they become more deeply intimate with their national character ;
and on this. increased knowledge, and on this alone, they hold it wise to act.
This, my Lord, I apprehend to be the greatest amount of theory that ever enters
into those political institutions, which, from their permanency, are alone entitled
to the consideration of a philosophical statesman ; and this moderate, prudent,
sagacious, and eminently practical, application of principles to conduct has ever
been, in the old time, the illustrious" characteristic of our English politicians.
From the days of Magna Charta to those of the Declaration of Right, the same
wary boldness is perceptible in the conduct of our leaders. It is the fashion
now-a-days to depreciate the value of the great charter; an ominous sign of
the times in my belief. For he runs a slight chance of being ultimately counted
among the false prophets of the realm, who predicts, that when the mention of

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that blessed deed does not command the reverential gratitude of every Briton,
evil fortunes are impending for this society. Despots may depreciate it, whether
they assume the forms of crowned monarchs or popular tribunes, for it stands
alike in their way; but he. who really loves freedom and his fatherland, will
never forget that the signet of the tyrant, sealed alike our civil liberty and our
national independence. They were great men, my Lord, that Archbishop of
Canterbury, and that Earl of Pembroke, who, in the darkness of feodal ages, laid
this bold and broad foundation of our national liberties; they were great men,
and they were great statesmen. They did not act upon abstract principles,
luckily for us, principles which the next age might have rejected, and the first
schoolman, hired by the King, might have refuted; they acted upon positive
conventional right. They set up no new title : they claimed their inheritance.
They established the liberties of Englishmen as a life estate, which their
descendants might enjoy, but could not abuse by committing waste, or Forfeit, by
any false and fraudulent conveyance. They entailed our freedom. The Magna
Charta, at which our new sect of statesmen, the admirers of abstractions, sneer,
(it would be well if they read it oftener, or at all,) established an equality of

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civil rights to all classes of English freemen. It terminated arbitrary imprisonment, and arbitrary spoliation. It enacted that justice should neither be sold,
nor denied, nor delayed. It virtually established Habeas Corpus. It eminently
advanced civilisation by curtailing at the same time the most crying grievances
of the feodal tenure, and rendering inviolate the franchises of all mural
communities. It checked the forest laws, established the freedom of foreign
commerce, and finally secured the speedy execution of justice by virtually
rendering the Court of Common Pleas permanent at Westminster, and independent of the sovereign.
But, my Lord, these great and manifold blessings were not wrested from the
Norman oppressor by the Barons of England, under the plea of Utility, or with
some windy and senseless cry of securing the greatest happiness of the greatest
number. Stephen Langton knew the value of words as well as any clerk in
Christendom; and he knew also, that the right that is founded on words, may be
subverted by the same machinery; that what is incontestable in the twelfth
century may be a subject of great discussion in the thirteenth; that a first
principle in one age may become a second principle in a succeeding century, or

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a twenty-second principle. Whether there were any Utilitarians under the
Plantagenets, I pretend not to decide. There is generally no lack of political
sciolists, and, for aught I know, some predecessor of Condorcet or Bentham may
have been innocently dreaming in a cloister; but if these abstract-principle
gentlemen had been as active in the reign of John, as in that of our own gracious
Sovereign, I doubt our great Lord Primate would have placed the State in
jeopardy to make it prove and square with their cockbrained fancies. The
Barons wished that the liberties they secured for themselves should likewise
descend to their posterity; and as therefore they were to become a matter of
inheritance, as a matter of inheritance they claimed them. They claimed them
as an inheritance which had been too long in abeyance; and not content with
establishing their confirmation by Henry Beauclerk, they traced their glorious
pedigree even to the Confessor.
I do not find, my Lord, that at a much later, but as momentous a, period
of our history, Selden and Sir Edward Coke, though they lived in an age which,
in the Protestant Reformation and the Revolt of the Netherlands, had witnessed
revolutions as awful as any of those which we, or our fathers, can remember; and

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had, consequently, the advantage of a far vaster range of political experience than
the Stephen Langtons and the great patriots of the reign of John; I do not find,
my Lord, that these wise, and spirited, and learned personages, saw fit to question
the propriety of their great ancestors' conduct. On the contrary, knowing that
society is neither more nor less than a compact, and that no right can be long
relied on that cannot boast a conventional origin, they were most jealous of our
title to our liberties. They lavished all their learning in proving its perfection
and completeness. They never condescended to argue; they offered evidence.
They were ever ready with their abstract of title, and with very slight alterations,
the language of the famous Petition of Right itself might be transformed into a
humble request to a sovereign for the restoration of some real estate;. some
patrimony long withheld from a defrauded posterity. In short, all our struggles
for freedom smack of law. There is, throughout the whole current of our history,
a most salutary legal flavour. And arbitrary monarchs and rebellious parliaments
alike cloak their encroachments under the sacred veil of right, alike quote precedent and cling to prescription.
This respect for Precedent, this clinging to Prescription, this reverence for

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Antiquity, which are so often ridiculed by conceited and superficial minds, and
move the especial contempt of the gentlemen who admire abstract principles,
appear to me to have their origin in a profound knowledge of human nature,
and in a fine observation of public affairs, and satisfactorily to account for the
permanent character of our liberties. Those great men, who have periodically
risen to guide the helm of our government in times of tumultuous and stormy
exigency, knew that a State is a complicated creation of refined art, and they
handled it with all the delicacy a piece of exquisite machinery requires. They
knew that if once they admitted the abstract rights of subjects, they must
inevitably advance to the abstract rights of men, and then that the very
foundations of their civil polity would sink beneath them. They held this to be
too dear a price for the barren fruition of a first principle. They knew that the
foundation of civil polity is Convention, and that every thing and every person
that springs from that foundation, must partake of that primary character. They
held themselves bound by the contracts of their forefathers, because they wished
their posterity to observe their own agreements. They did not comprehend how
the perpetuity of a State could be otherwise preserved. They looked upon the

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nation as a family, and upon the country as a landed inheritance. Generation
after generation were to succeed to it, with all its convenient buildings, and all
its choice cultivation, its parks and gardens, as well as its fields and meads,
its libraries and its collections of art, all its wealth, but all its incumbrances.
Holding society to be as much an artificial creation as the fields and cities amid
which they dwelt, they were of opinion that every subject was bound to respect
the established constitution of his country, because, independent of all other
advantages, to that constitution he was indebted even for his life. Had not the
State been created, the subject would not have existed. Man with them, therefore, was the child of the State, and born with filial duties. To disobey the
State, therefore, was a crime; to rebel against it, treason; to overturn it,
parricide. Our ancestors could not comprehend how this high spirit of loyalty
could be more efficiently fostered and maintained, than by providing that the
rights, privileges and possessions, of all should rest on no better foundation than
the State itself. They would permit no antagonist principle in their body
politic. They would not tolerate nature struggling with art, or theory with
habit. Hence their reverence for prescription, which they placed above law,

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and held superior to reason. It is to this deference to what Lord Coke finely
styles, " reverend antiquity," that I ascribe the duration of our commonwealth,
and it is this spirit which has pervented even our revolutions from being
destructive.
I do not see, my Lord, that this reverence for antiquity has checked
the progress of knowledge, or stunted the growth of liberty, in this island. We
are universally held to be the freest people in Europe, and to have enjoyed our
degree of freedom for a longer period than any existing state. I am not aware
that any nation can fairly assert its claims to superior learning or superior
wisdom; to a more renowned skill in arts or arms; to a profounder scientific
spirit; to a more refined or comprehensive civilisation. I know that a year or
two back the newspapers that are in the interest of the new sect of statesmen,
were wont to twit and taunt us with the superior freedom of our neighbours.
6i
The fact can no longer be concealed," announced the prime organ of the
party, "the people of France are freer than the people of England. The
consciousness of this fact will be the last blow to the oligarchy." Profound
publicist! The formation of a free government on an extensive scale, while it is

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assuredly one of the most interesting problems of humanity, is certainly the
greatest achievement of human wit. Perhaps I should rather term it a superhuman achievement; for it requires such refined prudence, such comprehensive
knowledge, and such perspicacious sagacity, united with such almost illimitable
powers of combination, that it is nearly in vain to hope for qualities so rare to be
congregated in a solitary mind. Assuredly this summum bonum is not to be
found ensconced behind a revolutionary barricade, or floating in the bloody gutters
of an incendiary metropolis. It cannot be scribbled down—this great invention
—in a morning on the envelope of a letter by some charter-concocting monarch,
or sketched with ludicrous facility in the conceited commonplace book of an
Utilitarian sage. With us it has been the growth of ages, and brooding centuries
have watched over and tended its perilous birth and feeble infancy. The noble
offspring of liberty and law now flourishes in the full and lusty vigour of its
proud and perfect manhood. Long may it flourish ! Long be its life, venerable
its age, and distant its beatified euthanasia ! I offer this prayer for the sake of
human nature, as much as for my country; not more for Britain, than for the
world, of which it is the ornament and honour.
E

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When the people of France, at the latter part of the last century, made
their memorable effort for the formation of a free government, they acted on
very different principles to those that guided Stephen Langton and Selden.
Their principles, indeed, were as abstract as any Utilitarian could desire. They
built their fabric, not merely upon the abstract rights of subjects, but the abstract
rights of men, and at once boldly seized equality for their basis. We know the
result. Equality, anarchy, tyranny, were the necessary gradations of their
philosophical system of political regeneration. Wearied with fruitless efforts,
and exhausted by long suffering, they at length took refuge in the forced
shade of exotic institutions. We witnessed the miserable, but inevitable fate
of the constitutional studies of the groves of Hartwell; a fate which must ever
attend institutions that have not been created by the genius of a country, and
with which the national'diamcter can never sympathize* In France, previous
to the great revolution, there existed all the elements of a free constitution,
although not of the English constitution. In its old local divisions, indicated
by nature, consecrated by custom, in its ancient states, its parliaments, its
corporations, its various classes of inhabitants its landed tenure, its ecclesiastical

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and chivalric orders, there might have been found all that variety of interests,
whose balanced influences would have sustained a free and durable constitution.
The French leaders neglected these admirable materials. To secure equality,
they decided on indiscriminate destruction: they not only destroyed law and
custom, but they destroyed their country. They destroyed Normandy, they
destroyed Provence, they destroyed Burgundy, they destroyed Gascony; not
in name alone, but in very deed and fact. They measured their land, and
divided it into equal geometrical departments, without the slightest regard to
difference of soil or population, variety of manners, or diversity of temperament;
and in this Laputan state that great country still remains. Why the name of
France was preserved, it is difficult to comprehend. If, for its associations,
could not these Utilitarian legislators understand, that in destroying the associations that clung to the name of Brittany and Burgundy, they were destroying
so many wholesome elements of vigorous and enduring government? Their
sentiment required that they should still dwell in Paris, beautiful and famous
Paris. Were they so blind as not to see, that the outraged sympathy, which
would have recoiled from styling the capital " the city of the Seine," was equally

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offended when the old dweller in Touraine found that he was suddenly transformed into an inhabitant of the department of the Loire? When Napoleon
obtained supreme power, France was not a country—it was a camp—a lawless
and disorderly camp. Napoleon disciplined it. He found the land geometrically
parcelled out, and the French nation billeted on the soil. With such elements
of government, even Napoleon could do no more; even with his unlimited
authority and indomitable will, all that he could aspire to was to organize
anarchy. The Emperor of the French was not one of your abstract-principle
gentlemen. His was eminently a practical mind. He looked about for the
elements of government, and He could discover no better than those which had
been created by the national character, and hallowed by the national habits.
Even his sagacious mind deferred to the experience of ages, and even his
unconquerable will declined a rivalry with the prescriptive conviction of an
ancient people. He re-established the tribunals; he revived chivalry; he
conjured up the vision of a nobility ; he created the shadow of a church. He
felt that his empire, like all others, must be supported by institutions. The
rapid vicissitudes of his reign prevented these establishments from maturing into

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influence and power, and when Louis the Eighteenth returned to the throne of
his fathers, he was called upon to establish a constitution without being furnished
with the elements to form- one. The puzzled monarch in despair, with some
degree, one would think, of that Rabelaisian humour with which he was not
altogether untinctured, presented his subjects with the constitution of another
country. Could anything be conceived more supremely ludicrous ? Was it in
the power of the most ill-regulated mind to break into folly more flagrant?
The lunatic with a crown of straw is as much a sovereign, as a country is a
free country with a paper constitution. France, without an aristocracy of any
kind, was ornamented with an upper chamber of hereditary peers, and a second
chamber, invested with all the powers with which, after more than five centuries
of graduated practice, we ventured to entrust our House of Commons, was
filled with some hundreds of individuals, who were less capable of governing
a country than a debating society of ingenious youth at one of our universities.
The good Louis presented his countrymen with a free constitution—-drawn up in
a morning. He did that which the great Napoleon never ventured to do.
Louis the Eighteenth achieved that in one morning which in less favoured

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England has required nearly a thousand years for its accomplishment. This
innocent monarch seems to have supposed that the English constitution
consists merely of two rooms full of gentlemen, who discuss public questions,
and make laws in the metropolis at a stated season of the year. The King
of France had no idea that political institutions, to be effective, must be
founded on the habits and opinions of the people whom they pretend to
govern ; that the members of a representative body must be composed of a
class to which the people have long looked up with respect and confidence;
and that these representatives must carry on their affairs in a mode and spirit
congenial and homogeneous with the prescriptive practice of the community.
The King of France, good, easy man, had forgotten—M. De Lolme had not
taught him—that the Parliament of England was only the last, though loftiest,
gradation in a long flight and series of ascending establishments; that not a man
was entrusted with the exercise of a political suffrage in England, who was not
already invested with the most precious office in the realm, the duty of deciding
upon the fortunes and the lives of his fellow-citizens, and was thus long,
early, and accurately practised in the habits of judgment and examination; that

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nearly every member of the Houses of Parliament was an active magistrate of
the realm, and in taking his legislative seat, bore his quota of local respect to the
great aggregate of national reverence; that the vast institution of the Poor Laws
alone connected the thoughts and feelings of the unrepresented peasants and
populace of England with the Parliament in which the local executors of those
statutes as magistrates, took their seats as members. Louis the Eighteenth
forgot, that in almost every town in England there were corporations which were
the express image of the political constitution of the realm, and vestries in which
the local interests were debated by a representative body with an affectation of
all the forms and ceremonies of Westminster. Louis the Eighteenth had no idea
that his two rooms full of gentlemen to be obeyed, must actually or virtually,
directly or indirectly, represent every important interest in the kingdom. He
had no suspicion that it is not in the power of any legislator that ever lived, or
that ever will live, to frame a political assembly a priori^ that shall represent
all, or even a majority of, the interests of a complicated society. The French
Chambers represented none—they were only fitted to be the tools of a faction,
and the tools of a faction they became. The two Chambers constituted by the

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Charter were nothing more than two debating societies. I am only surprised
that the ludicrous imposture lasted so long; but we must take into consideration
the exhaustion of France when the exotic was introduced and planted in its soil,
and the unceasing vigilance and sleepless care with which the delicate graft was
tended by the foreign powers, whose complaisant approval had sanctioned its
adoption.
If the barren adoption of a form of government by France, styled by
courtesy the English constitution, must be classed among the prime follies of
human conduct, what language are we to use when the Anglo-Gallic scheme is
gravely introduced to the consideration of the Lazzaroni of Naples and the
Hidalgos of Spain; we seem to have arrived at the climax of human absurdity.
The classical romance of Rienzi was not more ridiculous than the first instance;
there is no adventure in Don Quixote which can rival the frenzy of the second.
In France, thanks to Equality and its crabbed fruits, there were no prejudices to
shock; but when we read of the sudden transplantation of institutions gradually
established in the course of centuries by the phlegmatic experience of a Saxon
people, into the most southern soils of Europe, the glittering and barbaric

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Sicilies, and a country which is the link between Europe and Africa, and which
in the fertility of its soil, the temperature of its climate, and the character of its
inhabitants, resembles Morocco more than England, we seem to be perusing the
mad pages of a political novel poured forth by the wild and 'mystic genius of
some inmate of a German university. Ondine or Sintram are more real: the
pages of Hoffman less shadowy and more probable. I have travelled over
Andalusia and Sicily—I travelled on horseback, fcr there were no roads—I
found a feodal nobility and a peasantry untinctured, even in the slightest degree,
by letters, and steeped in the grossest superstition: I found agriculture generally
neglected, or unchanged in its pursuit since the days of Theocritus; a teeming
soil, no human energy; no manufactures, no police; mountainous districts
swarming with bandits, plains whose vast stillness prepared me for the Syrian
deserts; occasionally I reposed in cities where a comparative civilisation had
been obtained under the influence of a despotic priesthood. And these are the
regions to which it is thought fit suddenly to apply the institutions which regulate
the civil life of Yorkshire and Kent! We may celebrate the constitutional
coronation of a Bavarian in the Acropolis; and surround his free throne with the

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bayonets of his countrymen; we may hire Poles and Irishmen as a body-guard
for the sovereign, who mimics the venerable ceremonies of Westminster as she
opens the parliaments of Madrid or Lisbon; but invincible nature will reject the
unnatural novelties, and history, instead of celebrating the victory of freedom,
will only record the triumph of folly.
Charles the Tenth struggled with the futility of the Charter; he passed
years in an impracticable attempt and fruitless effort to govern thirty-two millions
of people with a silly piece of paper. With good intentions but with no talents,
surrounded by creatures destitute of every quality of statesmen, the king at
length attempted to rid himself, and the nation, of an imposture which only
supplied a faction with a pretext.
Charles failed, but even Charles the
Tenth nearly succeeded. Louis Philippe at the head of a mob crying, " Vive
la Ripublique!" established a despotism. Is there no moral in this rapid
catastrophe ? Are we to be ever deaf and ever blind ? Are we never to learn
that a constitution, a real constitution, is the creation of ages, not of a day, and
that when we destroy such a constitution, we in fact destroy a nation.
Let us bestow a little more examination upon the conduct of the French

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nation during their last Revolution, their second great effort to establish a free
government. Let us contrast La Fayette at the head of France in eighteen
hundred and thirty, with Lord Somers at the head of England in sixteen
hundred and eighty-eight. The parallel will be instructive. When La Fayette
had got rid of Charles the Tenth, he found himself precisely in the same
situation in which that unfortunate monarch had suffered throughout his reign ;
he found himself in the precise predicament in which Louis the Eighteenth was
placed when he returned from Hartwell; he occupied the exact site of Napoleon
when he declared himself First Consul. H e found himself at the head of a
people without a constitution, and not possessing any elements to form one.
The creative genius of Napoleon instantly devised some expedients, and until
they could be called into action, he depended upon the teeming resources of his
own strong mind, and the devotion of a victorious army. Louis the Eighteenth
trusted to his allies for substantial support, and offered the written description of
the constitution of another country as a pretext for the loyal allegiance of his
own subjects.
Charles the Tenth had neither a confiding army nor foreign
allies; he had neither the creative genius of Napoleon, nor the epicurean

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adroitness of Louis. La Fayette called out the National Guard and changed
the national colours for present support, and then, that his revolution might be
something better than merely a revolution of ribbons, he took refuge again in
abstract principles. Equality would not serve the purpose again; that blooming
prostitute had shrunk by this time into a most shrivelled and drivelling harridan.
For Equality the pupil of Washington substituted the SOVEREIGNTY OF THE
PEOPLE. The people shouted in its honour, all was satisfactorily settled, and
thirty-two millions were again to be governed by a phrase,
Let me recall to your Lordship the tone and temper with which the
intelligence of these exploits was received in our own country. I was indeed
then absent; but although the announcement of this millennium reached me in
the shadow of the Pyramids, and two years elapsed before I returned to a
country which I found so changed, I returned in time to witness the still
exulting and still palpitating triumph of that party, who are now so anxious,
and so active in their anxiety, to abrogate the clumsy and chance-born institutions
of England, and substitute in their place their own modish inventions, formed
on the irrefragable basis of Reason and Utility.
There was no class of

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persons in England with whom the junior French Revolution—I mean the riot
that placed the house of Valois on the throne of Paris—was so popular in this
country as our own anti-constitutional writers. It was the avowed consummation of all their theoretical wishes : the practical adoption of the scheme in
England, was all that was requisite to secure the completion of their patriotic
satisfaction. I believe there was no individual in this country, who more
ardently admired the conduct of France at that period than Mr. Bentham. I
have been assured this on good authority. Within these last twelvemonths
even, the principal daily organ of this new sect of statesmen has more than
once taunted Englishmen with the fact that the French were now freer than
they, and has announced that the consciousness of this fact would be " the last
blow to the oligarchy." I impute no bad motives to these writers; I condescend
to none of those "vituperative personalities " which their apostle deprecates; I
avoid the "fallacies ad odium " which their evangelist so successfully exposes by
fallacies still more fallacious;* I am content ever to take the motives of
individuals as I find them. I give them full credit for sincerity. But judge,
* Book of Fallacies, pp. 127—133.

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oh! judge by the result, of their capabilities for government; admire their
political prescience, and trust, if you will, their practical ability.
The constitution founded on the Sovereignty of the People, has run even a
shorter career than the constitution founded on the Equality of Man : one of the
most gifted and civilised nations that ever existed, is enthralled by an iron
despotism; the liberty of the press is utterly destroyed ; trial by jury virtually
abrogated; arbitrary imprisonment in daily practice; the country covered with
Bastiles, and the Bastiles crowded with state victims.
I turn from France in 1830 to England in 1688; from La Fayette to Lord
Somers; from the abstract-principle politicians eulogised on all occasions by our
anti-constitutional writers, to practical statesmen on all occasions the object of
their sneers, and whom one of their number has recently published a quarto
volume to decry. No sooner had the nation got rid of the Popish tyrant, than
Lord Somers drew up the famous Declaration of Right. Mark that title. A
Declaration of Right. This document enumerated and claimed for Englishmen
all the rights and liberties to which they were entitled by laws which James the
Second had violated. So careful were the leaders of 1688 of not vitiating

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or injuring the valued title to our liberties, that they omitted in this great
remedial statute all mention of those further guarantees of our freedom which
they had already devised, and which they immediately afterwards proposed and
passed in Parliament. First, and before they made any addition to their
inheritance, they determined to secure themselves in the clear freehold of their
rights. They were careful, while they were meditating improvements and
increase, that they should not, from present neglect, be forced to bring actions
of ejectment hereafter for property to which they had become entitled in the
times of Charles the First or the Plantagenets, and which in their hot zeal and
hurry they had now overlooked. The Declaration of Right connected the
pedigree of our rights and liberties with the Petition of Right, which again
carried them upwards to the great Charter, in like manner dependent on the
charter of Henry Beauclerk, and the laws of the Confessor. Whether it
ascended further, was now a matter of interest only to the antiquary. A
pedigree of six centuries was proud enough even for our glorious British freedom*
In all this, Lord Somers exhibited the same practical wisdom as had animated
Stephen Langton and guided Selden. Lord Somers, I doubt not* was as

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conversant with abstract principles of government as any writer in the
" Westminster Review;" for, a quarter of a century before, they had been rife
enough in England, but Lord Somers knew to what their adoption had
eventually and speedily led. He knew that there was a stern necessity in
society which would occasionally vindicate its way above all law; his recent
experience would have taught him, if nothing else, that occasional revolutions in
states were beyond the power of human prevention; but, like all other wise
statesmen, he would not look upon these as the course of politics, any more
than the earthquake, or the hurricane, as the course of nature. He blotted
their possibility out of the statute book, however he might choose to speculate
over them in a political treatise, in Sidney, or Harrington, or Locke. He
wished to obliterate from the mind of the nation that awful truth, that a deed
may sometimes be necessary which is not lawful. He knew very well that if a
crisis were again to occur, that should require such a sacrifice, the native instinct
of men would prompt them to the exploit. They would read their purpose in
each other's eyes, and do the deed. Far from braying out the sovereignty of the
people, or any such perilous stuff, he and his great associates exerted themselves

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to the utmost to endow King William with a legal and hereditary title. They
had consented to the necessary evil of a revolution, but then they had carved
the state
" As a dish fit for the Gods,
Not hewed it as a carcase fit for hounds."

An English revolution is at least a solemn sacrifice: a French revolution is an
indecent massacre.
Lord Somers and the English nation were rewarded for their wisdom and
their prudent carriage, by securing for this realm nearly a century and a half of
the greatest order, prosperity, and glory, that this country, or any other country,
ever enjoyed. And this leads me, my Lord, to another great event in our
history : the Reform of the House of Commons, to which I shall presently advert^
I wish however, previously, to call your Lordship's attention to the conduct
of a sovereign, who was placed in the same situation as Louis the Eighteenth
at the same period; but whose policy, fortunately for himself and for his subjects,
materially differed from that of the brother of the unhappy Charles the Tenth.
The sovereign to whom I allude is the present King of Prussia. The King of
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Prussia, like the King of France, promised his subjects a Constitution ; and we
all remember for how many rabid years this sovereign was the object of the
virulent invective of our own disaffected writers, who, by- the-bye, seem equally
anxious to destroy the English constitution in England, and to substitute it in
every other country, for not redeeming his pledge and fulfilling his promise. No
news arrived to the geniuses of our gazettes .of the holding of any Parliament at
Berlin; no advices reached them of any Dukes of Potsdam or Posen moving
constitutional addresses in the Prussian House of Lords; there was not even a
rumour of any frank having yet been seen in the handwriting of any honourable
representative of Koningsberg or Erfurt.
What royal treachery! What base,
despotic, holy-alliance perfidy ! But nations are not to be deceived, and
outraged, and trampled on with impunity. The day of retribution was at hand;
sooner or later the hour of popular vengeance would arrive, and then the perfidious tyrant, in spite of his standing army, would learn how utterly vain is the
struggle with the spirit of the age, and how futile the final rivalry of force and
freedom. Prussia was undoubtedly to be the first victim. Now this is no misrepresentation, no exaggeration even of the tone in which the disaffected writers

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of this country indulged for a series of years against the King of Prussia. I
think it expedient to seize an occasional opportunity of illustrating the sagacity
and information which the disaffected writers in this country invariabiy bring to
the consideration "of public subjects, and especially to any speculations connected
with foreign politics. Abstract principles and a daily and dexterous practice in
the art of misrepresenting circumstances which, in the imperfect survey of
gradual occurrence, cannot always be fully comprehended even by the wisest
heads and the calmest minds, carry these writers through their domestic lucubrations with a spanking breeze and flying colours ; but when we catch them fishing
in strange waters, we are better enabled to test the value of their barren axioms,
and to gauge the depth and spirit of their acuteness and information. And so
it happened, that when the party throughout Europe, who, to use the words of
Locke, " are the popular asserters of public liberty and the greatest engrossers of
it too, and not unfitly called its keepers—ambitious men who pull down wellframed constitutions, that out of the ruins they may build themselves fortunes,"
—-when, I say, it happened, that that restless and intriguing minority who ever
have the greatest happiness of the greatest number on their lips, succeeded in

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1830 in overthrowing the Bourbon government and embroiling Europe, in that
period of general commotion, when every European state was more or less
shaken with internal convulsions, when Belgium revolted from Holland and
Poland from Russia, when the tricolor flag was hoisted in Italy, when Spain
summoned its Cortes, and Portugal expelled its sovereign with foreign bayonets,
when even the Swiss Confederation shook to its centre, and every minor
German state, from Baden to Brunswick, was the theatre of revolutionary riots,
—and last of all, but, oh ! indeed not least, when even Great Britain yielded to
the tempest, and, at least, a branch of that mighty oak was severed from its
vigorous though ancient trunk; Prussia, enslaved and indignant Prussia,
governed by a perfidious despot, whose realm was surrounded and even divided
in the midst of its territory by the very states which were most inflamed, alone
sent forth neither a shout nor a murmur, and alone remained tranquil and
undisturbed. How was this ? How did this accord with the Utilitarian system
of government ? Was Prussia content because it was tranquil ? Was it the
general conviction that the greatest happiness of the greatest number was
secured by the influence of its polity ? But that polity was absolute. It is the

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interest of every man to be a tyrant and a robber. Was then the King of
Prussia neither a tyrant nor a robber ? Was he mild, merciful, just, beneficent,
useful ? How did this accord with the Utilitarian system of morals ?
It appears to me, that a study of the policy of Prussia during the last quarter
of a century may tend more to a solution of the great problem of government than
any exercise of reason with which I am acquainted. By it we may learn, how
entirely the result of a principle depends upon its method of application, and that
that method of application, to be beneficent, must be framed in very strict, though
not absolute, deference to the existing civilisation of the country. That a reforming
minister must, above all things, be skilful in adaptation, is perhaps but a barren
phrase; but this I will observe, that a wise statesman will be careful that all new
rights shall, as it were, spring from out old establishments. By this system alone
can at the same time the old be purified and the new rendered permanent.
The French revolution was the death-blow in civilised Europe to the longdeclining feodal system. An equality of civil rights was recognised by the King
of Prussia and his wise councillors as the basis of their new order of society. And
how did they obtain this great end ? Not by a bombastic decree from Potsdam

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suddenly braying the rights of man into the indefinite ears of the motley subjects
of the Prussian government, and creating probably endless riots in consequence;
but by a series of wise edicts which, in the course of twelve years, entirely abolished
serfage, and effected a complete but gradual revolution in the tenure of land,
so that at length the Prussian nobility found themselves with no other privilege
but the prefixion of a definite article to their name. Almost simultaneously with
the abolition of serfage among the rural population, the citizens were emancipated
by a great municipal charter, which introduced the system of popular election
into towns, and prepared the inhabitants for the function of even Higher duties.
I assure you, my Lord, that the municipal constitution of Prussia might have been
referred to with profit in those memorable debates, in which you achieved so much
general benefit and acquired so much personal honour. I now arrive at the most
important decree of the King of Prussia, and the establishment of which I hesitate
not to class among the wisest, the most benevolent, and the most comprehensive
institutions on record, and fairly to entitle its illustrous originator to rank among
the most eminent legislators that have flourished. Convinced that a practical
assembly of national representatives can never be collected except in a country

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in which the inhabitants have been long versed in the partial administration of
affairs, and consequently habituated to the practice of public discussion, and
anticipating that the hour would arrive when such an assembly might indeed be
holden at Berlin, the king, in 1815, decreed the erection of Provincial States, to
whose supervision the interests of their respective provinces were intrusted, with
full power to take into consideration all measures, whether relating to persons,
property, or taxation, and to advise with the king thereon, by the right and process
of petition. Here the powers of these states ceased; their province was merely
consultative; they were invested with no legislative functions. In this great
institution of consultative parliaments, the King of Prussia, by an analogous
wisdom which cannot be too much admired, has adopted as the basis of the future
constitution of his country that system of Remedial, as contradistinguished f^om
Legislative Representation, which was long the custom of England, and to the
influence of which upon the character of the nation we mainly owe our efificient
legislative representation in the House of Commons.
There is no spectacle in the world more delightful than that of a wisely
governed and well ordered community, and I could willingly dwell upon the

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consideration of Prussian policy, were the fortunes of that realm the sole
subject of my remarks, instead of being the incidental illustration of an
argument. I might show how one of the bravest, best disciplined, and most
numerous, armies in the world, was a popular force; how the boasted career of
merit of the French empire is reduced to such practical reality in Prussia, that
to rise to the highest appointments in the state requires only a proportionate
degree of talent, industry, honesty, and study; and lastly, how the most
philosophical system of national education with which we are acquainted, is
preparing the rising generation of the realm for all the duties of good citizens,
loyal subjects, and devoted patriots.
Having now I hope satisfactorily explained why in the heady tumult of
1830, the subjects of Prussia were alone loyal to their sovereign, I will ask your
Lordship what would have been the situation of that country, then and now, had
Frederick William, at the same time as Louis the Eighteenth, presented his
subjects with the same constitution, and a free press, and thus avoided the diatribes of those enlightened journalists, who for so many years described and
denounced this great and good man as a perfidious despot. We know very well

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what would have happened. A nominally representative assembly would have
met in Berlin, consisting of individuals totally inexperienced in the habits of
discussion, the practice of legislation, and the art of government. Invested
with, power which they could not exercise for any beneficial purpose, and
representing the nation in form only, and not in spirit, they would have soon split
into factions, having no other object but their own aggrandisement. An active
click, through the agency of a violent press, would have enlisted the physical
force of the people on their side, by affecting an extraordinary zeal for popular
interests: having obtained a majority in the Chamber by repeated elections,
rendered necessary by their factious conduct, they would have overthrown a
series of administrations by a series of factious resolutions. When they had
rendered the royal government impracticable, they would have forced the King,
in defence of the nation and his crown, to some necessary, but unconstitutional
decrees, and then we should have had "three glorious and beautiful days," at
Berlin; Perhaps in such a vicinity the conspiracy would have been crushed,
but where now would have been the prosperity and patriotism and philosophy
and real freedom of Prussia ? The bayonet would have been the only law, and

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a military dungeon the only school of national education. The King of Prussia
was as careful that the rights of his subjects should flow from the royal will, their
ancient government, as Stephen Langton, Selden and Lord Somers, that the
liberties of their countrymen should be traced to a similar source. All were
alike practical men ; all avoided the barren assertion of abstract rights; and the
same destiny of continued welfare in all probability awaits Prussia, that has
long so blessed our native land.
It appears to me, my Lord, that it is destined to the free constitution of the
United States of North America to exercise the same fatal influence over the
political society of the New World, as the constitution of England has wielded
over that of the old. The constitution of the United States was applied to the
government of Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chili, by virtue of the same
peremptory and abstract principles, that had selected the constitution of England
for the government of France, Sicily, Spain, and Portugal; and the same results
were acquired. The European and the American States, that have been the
victims of this Quixotic spirit of political Propagandism, have vied with each
other in successive revolutions, until at length disorder, and even disorganization,

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have universally prevailed, except where anarchy has been arrested by despotism.
Why is this ? Why has the republican constitution flourished in New England,
and failed in New Spain ? Why has the congress of Washington commanded
the respect of civilised Europe, and the congresses of Mexico, or Lima, or
Santiago, gained only its derision or disgust ? The answer is obvious ; the
constitution of the United States had no more root in the soil of Mexico, and
Peru, and Chili, than the constitution of England in that of France, and Spain,
and Portugal: it was not founded on the habits or the opinions of those whom
it affected to guide, regulate, and control. There was no privity between the
legislative institutions and the other establishments of these countries. The
electors and the elected were both suddenly invested with offices, for the
function of which they had received no previous education, and no proper
training; and which they were summoned to exercise without any simultaneous
experience of similar duties. Had it been the constitution of England, instead
of that of the United States, which they were seeking to establish, these
disqualifying circumstances alone would have ensured failure; but, in addition
to these disadvantages, picture to yourself the frenzy of attempting to establish

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Republican institutions, invented by the Puritans arid maintained by their
peculiar spirit, not only among an ignorant people educated in papal despotism,
but in, revolted colonies possessing a powerful church establishment and a
wealthy aristocracy.
In their haste to establish freedom, these rudderless
states have not secured independence; their revolutions have degenerated into
riots; and if they be not wise, may yet turn out to be only rebellions.
He is a short-sighted politician who dates the constitution of the United
States from 1780. It was established by the pilgrim fathers a century and a half
before, and influenced a people, practised from their cradles in the duties of
self-government. The pilgrim fathers brought to their land of promise the laws
of England, and a republican religion; and, blended together, these formed
the old colonial constitution of Anglo-America. The transition from such a
government to the polity of Washington, was certainly not greater in degree,
than the difference between Great Britain of 1829, and our country at this hour.
The Anglo-Americans did not struggle for liberty: they struggled for independence ; and the freedom and the free institutions they had long enjoyed, secured
for them the great object of their severe exertions. He who looks upon the

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citizens of the United States as a new people, commits a moral, if not an
historical anachronism.
Of the Reform of our House of Commons, it is in this place only necessary
to observe, that the alleged increase of democratic power was not founded on
abstract rights, but that the leaders and advocates of the Reform ostentatiously,
although ignorantly, recommended their scheme as a restoration of the ancient
spirit, and a return to the ancient practice of the constitution. Whether that
Reform originated in a continental or a national impulse; whether it were an
expedient or an imprudent measure; whether it were framed in harmony, or in
hostility, to our existing institutions; whether it really developed the democratic
elements of the country in their true and comprehensive sense, or only
increased the power and influence of a sectarian minority; whether that great
settlement, in shortj will be conducive to the ultimate prosperity of the community, the happiness of the people, and the honour of the empire, are great
questions, from the discussion of which I do not shrink, but they bear no reference
to the point at present under our examination, and are fully treated in a work
which for a long period has engaged my time and study. My object hitherto

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has heen to prove by reference to the experience both of the Old and the New
World, and of the several states of which they respectively consist, that political
institutions, founded on abstract rights and principles, are mere nullities ; that
the only certain and legitimate foundation of liberty is law ; that if there be no
privity between the old legal constitution of a country and the new legislature,
the latter must fall; and that a free government on a great scale of national
representation is the very gradual work of time, and especially of preparatory
institutions.
It was a conviction of the soundness of these principles that
guided our forefathers in that prudent practice, which we have hitherto
been in the habit of dignifying by the venerable title of the Wisdom of our
Ancestors, a phrase once ever on the grateful lips of Englishmen, but now the
object of scorn and ridicule by those who fancy themselves very profound, but
who, in reality, are especially superficial. According to the most eminent of the
Utilitarian schoolmen, in his Book of Fallacies, we have all the wisdom of our
ancestors and our own into the bargain. The great detector of the deceits of
political logic, has here, according to his custom, involved himself in a position

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as deceptive as any of those from which he intended to dislodge his opponents.
The fallacy of the great Utilitarian schoolman consists in confounding wisdom
with knowledge. We may have all the knowledge of our ancestors, and we may
have more; but it does not follow that we have all the wisdom of our ancestors,
and we may have less. In using the phrase "wisdom of our ancestors," we,
in fact, refer to the conduct of those of our ancestors who were wise, and when
we have recourse to this phrase in reference to political conduct, we especially
allude to those of our forefathers, those rare great men, who in seasons of
singular emergency, difficulty, and peril, have maintained the state, and framed,
fostered, developed, and established, our political institutions. Let us take a
rapid survey of our wise ancestors in a political sense, since the Reformation.
We will commence by a king, that extraordinary being, Henry the Eighth, for
certainly he must not be omitted; Burleigh claims a place, and Cecil, and
assuredly Walsingham; then we may count Sir Edward Coke, and Selden,
Strafford, and Pym, the Protector, Lord Clarendon, Sir William Temple, King
William, Lord Somers, the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Argyll, Sir
Robert Walpole, Lord Mansfield, Lord Hardwicke, Edmund Burke. The

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name of a twentieth great statesman since the Reformation previous to our own
age, does not easily occur to me, although I would include Lord Bolingbroke
for reasons I may hereafter offer; and I have some doubt whether it would be
possible, even with research, to fix upon another score. Now, it is possible, that
having the benefit of all these men's knowledge, we may actually know more
than these men ; but suppose we are called upon to act to-morrow, and act, as
is very probable, very unwisely, we may then find that we have .not all these
men's wisdom.
M. Guizot, who is so learned in British history, who writes even our annals,
and edits our political memoirs, doubtless, during the three glorious days, and
the subsequent settlement, inwardly congratulated the French people on being
directed by a statesman, who had all the knowledge of Lord Somers," and something more." But, where are the French people now, and what is M. Guizot ? A
striking evidence that a man may be very knowing without being very wise.
Throughout the whole of our history we observe, that the leading men who have
guided the fortunes of our Commonwealth in times of great difficulty and danger,
have invariably agreed in one line of policy, namely, to eschew abstractions. This

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resolution is the distinguishing feature of English statesmanship; it is the
principal cause of the duration of the English state; and herein eminently
consists the "wisdom of our ancestors."
But, my Lord, to confess the truth, I have my suspicions, that the new
school of statesmen, with all their aifected confidence in abstract principles, and
all their valorous determination to construct our coming commonwealth on a
basis of pure political science, have some misgivings that this great result is not
to be entirely obtained by the virgin influence alone of their boasted philosophy;
and I am confirmed in this imagination by the distrustful circumstance of their
simultaneously condescending, amid all their theory, to avail themselves for the
purpose of advancing their object, of a great practical misrepresentation of the
form and spirit of our constitution. For it is curious to observe that while they
pretend to offer us an unfailing test of the excellence and expediency of all
political institutions, they are at the same time indefatigable in promulgating the
creed that the branch of our legislature, hitherto styled the House of Commons
is, in fact, the House of the People, and that the members of that assembly are
consequently and absolutely representatives of the People. Vox POPULI VOX
G

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DEI, is a favourite adage, and ever on these persons' tongues : so that if the
House of Commons be the House of the People, it is also the House of God ;
it is omniscient and omnipotent;—a convenient creed ! There was a time when
our kings affected to rule by divine right. It cost our fathers dear to root out
that fatal superstition. But all their heroic labours will prove worse than fruitless,
if the divine right of kings is to be succeeded by the divine right of the House of
Commons. In such a belief, I, for one, see no security for our cherished liberties;
and still less a guarantee for our boasted civilisation: in such a belief it seems to
me the prolific seeds are deeply sown of tyranny and of barbarism, and if this
principle is to be the foundation of our future polity, it requires, in my opinion,
no great gift of inspiration to foretell, that all those evils are impending for this
country which are the inevitable consequences of its destinies being regulated by
a vulgar and ignoble oligarchy. My Lord, I do not believe that the House of
Commons is the House of the People, or that the members of the House of
Commons are the representatives of the People. I do not believe that such
ever were the characters, either of the House of Commons or the members of the
House of Commons; I am sure that such are not now the characters of that

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assembly, or of those who constitute it, and I ardently hope that such will never
be the characters.
The Commons of England form an Estate of the realm, and the members of
the House of Commons represent that Estate. They represent nothing more.
It is a very important estate of the realm; it may be the most important estate.
Unquestionably, it has of late years greatly advanced in power; but at this very
moment, even with all the accession of influence conferred upon it by the act of
Reform, it has not departed from the primary character contemplated in its
original formation; it consists of a very limited section of our fellow-subjects,
invested, for the general advantage of the commonwealth, with certain high
functions and noble privileges. The House of Commons is no more the House
of the People than is the House of Lords; and the Commons of England, as
well as the Peers of England, are neither more nor less than a privileged class,
privileged in both instances for the common good, unequal doubtless in number,
yet both, in comparison with the whole nation, forming in a numerical estimation,
only an insignificant fraction of the mass.
Throughout these observations, in speaking of the English constitution, 1

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speak of that scheme of legislative and executive government consisting of the
King and the two Houses of Parliament; but this is a very partial view of
the English constitution, and I use the term rather in deference to established
associations, than from being unconscious that the polity of our country consists
of other institutions, not less precious and important than those of King, Lords,
and Commons. Trial by Jury, Habeas Corpus, the Court of King's Bench,
the Court of Quarter Sessions, the compulsory provision for the poor, however
tampered with, the franchises of municipal corporations, of late so recklessly
regarded by short-sighted statesmen, are all essential portions of the English
constitution, and have been among the principal causes of the excellent
operation, and the singular durability of our legislative and executive Government.
The political institutions of England have sprung from its legal institutions.
They have their origin in our laws and customs. These have been the profound
and perennial sources of their unexampled vigour and beneficence, and unless it
had been fed by these clear and wholesome fountains, our boasted Parliament,
like so many of its artificial brethren, would soon have dwindled and dried up,
and, like some vast canal, filled merely with epidemic filth, only been looked
upon as the fatal folly of a nation.

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We talk much at the present day of the Representative principle; yet how
little is that principle understood ! An assembly may be representative without
being elective. No one can deny that the Church of England is at this day, not
only virtually, but absolutely, faithfully, and efficiently represented in the House
of Lords by the Bishops, yet these Lords of Parliament are not elected by their
clergy. Previous to the Reformation, the mitred abbots took their seat in the
Upper House. Who can deny that these great officers were the direct representatives of their powerful and wealthy institutions ? If a representative assembly
-be not necessarily elective, so also it may be elective without being legislative.
Representation may be purely remedial, and such for a long period was the
character of English representation. This remedial representation arose out of
some peculiar elements of our ancient parliament, an assembly which, besides
being a great national council, was also a high court of justice. Our ancient
parliaments, like those of other feodal countries, were formed by the simultaneous
gathering of a vast number of estates, tribunals, and public officers, from all
parts of the kingdom, who met to convey to the Sovereign information of the
condition of his realm, and to assist him in the execution of justice between his

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subjects. Among those who mingled with the prelates of the land, and the
earls and barons of the kingdom, were certain chosen delegates' of the counties,
who were, in fact, elected by a particular order or estate of the kingdom, to act,
not as their legislators, but as their judges. These personages were prepared to
afford immediate information to the Sovereign of the state of their districts; and,
previous to their arrival at the great council, they obtained, by the inquisitions
of the juries of the hundreds, an accurate report of the condition of the county,
of the necessities of the lieges, of the " oppressions " to be redressed, and of
their ability to contribute to the exigencies of the state.
These deputies were members of a class of our population, which, from the
important part it was subsequently destined to fill in the fortunes of our country,
requires our particular attention. I allude to the estate of THE KNIGHTS. In
spite of some cloudy cavils of Madox, our modern inquirers agree with the
learned Selden, that every immediate tenant of the Crown in England was
a baron by virtue of his tenure, and as such entitled to be personally summoned
to the King's Great Court or Council of Parliament, and therein to take his seat.
But in process of time these military tenants of the Crown had, by the alienation

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and splitting of feofs, become in number so considerable, and in personal
influence, in comparison with their high privilege, so moderate, that the Crown
neglected to summon them to its councils, and, indeed, the burthen of
attendance in Parliament was so grievous to men, whose limited estates required
their personal supervision, that the royal neglect was by themselves considered
anything but a grievance. * In the thirteenth century, these royal tenants formed
the great bulk of the freeholders of the kingdom, for I need not remind your
Lordship that it was not then uncommon for a tenant in capite to hold even a
fraction of a knight's fee. These lower nobility, or minor barons, as they were
styled, in gradually ceasing to be insignificant Peers, subsided however into a
most powerful equestrian order, in which the lesser portion of the freeholders,
who were only mesne tenants, by degrees also merged. And thus was established
t h e ESTATE Of THE KNIGHTS.

The local government of the country was in the hands of this order. In their
county court, under the style and title of " The Community or Commonalty of the
County/' a phrase which has been so much misunderstood, but which originally
implied nobility, this estate met to elect one of their number as the governor or

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guardian of the shire, their choice subject, however, to the royal ratification.
When the King held his great council, he directed the sheriff of the county to
return two or more knights to present to him the condition of their district. These
knights, being sworn, summoned before them the jurors, as witnesses of the
hundreds ; and having obtained from these inquisitions all necessary information,
repaired to the great council of the kingdom with their quota of statistical
intelligence. The transition, from being merely the selected councillors of their
Sovereign, to being the virtual representatives of their order, was natural, easy,
and rapid; and thus this important and numerous estate of the kingdom was in
fact represented by deputation in the great council—a representation, however,
merely remedial, and not legislative: they came to impart knowledge and
inferentially to proffer council, to present to the King the state of his realm and
the "grievances" of his subjects, and to assist the monarch in deciding suits
arising in their districts, and in ascertaining the just apportionment of the general
taxation. As from councillors and judges they became representatives, so also
in time their sanction was held necessary to the tax which originally they had met
only to estimate by their information. In time also their consent was equally

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held necessary to the laws, which, however, they never originated. It is, indeed,
very questionable whether the great office of legislation was then exercised even
by the more potent estates of the kingdom themselves, who appeared personally
in Parliament, the Clergy, and the Peers. In those days legislation was the
province of the clerk-like councillors of the Sovereign, and I do not myself infer
any degrading inferiority in the estate of the knights, from the circumstance of
their parliamentary attendance assuming merely a remedial character. Thus,
gradually, a most important constituent portion of our House of Commons
developed itself, and so little has any preconceived theory ever influenced the
formation of our political institutions, and so entirely have they emanated from
the legal economy of the land, that I have my self little doubt that this convenient
method, by which the English knights assumed their fitting place in the council
of their Sovereign, was derived from ancient and analogous, though occasional,
customs of our country, which prevailed in England before the Conquest, and
which pervaded the Teutonic jurisprudence in every land. The Court of Echevins
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Thus we find, in the thirteenth century, the King of England surrounded in
his council by three estates of his realm—his Prelates, his Peers, and his Knights.
We approach now an interesting period in the history of our political constitution.
The reign of Henry the Third is one of the most important in our annals. The
great struggle between the Norman king and the feodal aristocracy was at this
time conducted on both sides with unexampled energy. Undoubtedly, the great
body of the nation in these struggles favoured the aristocracy. In England,
unlike the Continent, the King was powerful. We owe our liberties to our
nobility. But I am inclined to attribute the sympathy which has ever subsisted
between the English and their aristocracy, to a more influential cause than the
mere power and consequent tyranny of the Crown, and to this cause, which at
present flourishes, and to which may be principally ascribed the singular prosperity
of this country, I shall hereafter advert.
Under the Norman kings, and especially under Henry the Second, the
English towns had made rapid advances in wealth and population. Charters of
incorporation became frequent. In the latter part of the twelfth century, it was
impossible for a sagacious politician not to perceive, that new and powerful

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interests were springing up in the Commonwealth, or to shut his eyes to the
political privileges which awaited the growing wealth and increasing numbers of
the citizens and burgesses of England. But as from the very nature and origin
of these mural communities, the sovereign had the undoubted and unquestioned
prerogative of imposing tallages or taxes on cities and boroughs at pleasure, there
existed no obvious or urgent inducement to summon the inhabitants to the great
council of estates, which principally assembled to apportion the aids to be raised
on their separate orders. Although the Earl of Leicester, who headed the
rebellious barons, unquestionably possessed many of the eminent qualities becoming the leader of a great party, I am not disposed to behold any very revolutionary tendency in his conduct when, mighty as were the results, in his memorable
Parliament of 1264, in addition to the Prelates, the Magnates, and the Knights,
he decided to issue writs of summons to " two honest, lawful, and discreet"
citizens and burgesses from every city and burgh. I am more inclined to believe,
that this great movement was rather dictated by a politic apprehension that,
however the nation might be disposed to view in complacent silence his assumption of many of the prerogatives of the King, who was his prisoner, thev might

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perhaps have expected that an exception would be made in favour of the royal
right of arbitrary taxation. I suspect that he was of opinion, that the tallages
would be forthcoming with more readiness if the citizens were flattered by granting those contributions as a favour, which were before exacted as a right. Certain
it is, that De Montfort anticipated in some degree the necessities of his age; for
when, under the vigorous policy of the next reign, civil peace again flourished,
and the legitimate sovereign found it convenient to avail himself of the new
machinery which his rebellious subject had introduced, no privilege ever conferred
by a king was ever received with more discontent than the right of returning
members to his Parliament by his loyal towns. These honest burghers were loth
to leave their homes and business for pursuits with which they were little
acquainted, and society for which they were unfitted. Petitions to be exempted
from the grievance of sending members to Parliament are not uncommon in our
early records; many burgesses when appointed, declined to serve, and absented
themselves from the council; and to remedy these inconveniences, the sheriff
was invested with a discretionary power of omitting boroughs in his return. It
would seem that from experience, the inhabitants of towns'preferred the arbitrary

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taxation of their sovereign to the grants of their representatives, and that these
worthy traders were generally cajoled by the great council into contributions more
liberal, than their calmer moments in their stores and counting-houses approved.
We must however guard ourselves from supposing that these citizens and
burgesses, who were summoned to Parliament, were absolutely elected by the
inhabitants of the towns as their representatives. Their presence in Parliament
is another instance of representation without election.
They were often
nominated by the sheriff of the county; and even when that great officer, from
negligence or favour, permitted the return to be made by those more interested
in the transaction, the nomination was confined to the small governing body,
who returned two of their members, in general very unwilling missionaries to the
great council.
At first the three Estates of the realm held themselves aloof; the Knights
by right and custom taking their seats among the Peers, while the citizens and
burgesses remained in humble attendance, and after settling the amount of their
tallages, gave themselves no further concern with the public business, but cheerfully returned to their homes and affairs. But the two great causes which had

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simultaneously degraded the lower nobility into mere gentry, and raised the
burghers into comparative importance still operated : the increased division of
land rendered the first class less influential and more numerous; the increase of
commerce, the last more powerful and more wealthy. The chasm between
the magnates and the lower nobility or knights, became each year wider and
more profound : the boundary that separated the knights from the burghers each
year less marked and definite. It is impossible to fix nicely the period when
Parliament was divided into two houses; but I am inclined to place it towards
the end of the reign of Edward the First. It is easier to ascertain the principles
on which the memorable division was established. Between the prelates and
the magnates on the one hand, and the knights and burgesses on the other, there
existed this memorable distinction. The first were in themselves estates of the
realm; the last were only representatives of estates. To induce the knights,
however, to quit their noble companions, of whom the law still held them as
the personal equals, and mix with the humble burghers, required some politic
dexterity. It was at length settled that a new estate of the reahn should be
created, styled the Estate of the Commons or Commonalty, a title, as I have

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before observed, of great dignity, implying nobility, and formerly confined to the
landed proprietors. The burghers were flattered by merging into the landed
gentry of the country, and thus obtaining the dignity of the lesser nobility, and
the knights were compensated for the sullen sacrifice on their part, by giving
their title to the new estate, and impressing their peculiar character on the new
chamber in which, for a very long period of our history, they naturally took the
lead. Yet even then some time elapsed before the Knights condescended to
renounce their old privilege of apportioning the tax of their original order, and
blending the aids of the Lower House of Parliament.
Thus have I traced, my Lord, and I assure you not without some difficulty,
the history of the formation of our House of Commons. And now to what did
this great revolution in the constitution of our country amount ? To nothing
more nor less than the establishment of AN EQUESTRIAN CHAMBER. If such were
its original character, that character has been maintained throughout the whole
of our history, and that character, as I will shortly show, has not been affected
by the recent Act of Reform. It never was the House of the People; it is not
the House of the People. The members of the House of Commons never were

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the representatives of the people.
They are not the representatives of
the people. They always were, and they are still, the representatives
of the Commons, an estate of the realm privileged as the other estates,
not meeting personally for the sake of convenience, but by its representatives, and constituting, even with its late considerable accession of members,
only a small section of the nation. We have a curious instance how accurately
this distinction was observed in the time of Henry the Fourth ; and how perfect
was the order of Parliament in that reign. For when the King met his Parliament, and having addressed the estates of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,
then turned to the House of Commons, he promised that he " would do nothing
against the liberty of the estate for which they had come to Parliament\ nor against
the liberties of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal." The impudent misrepresentation of our anti-constitutional writers, originates in an ignorant misconception
of words. If the House had been called the House of KnightSj or rather the
House of Squires, which is the literal meaning of the word Commons, we should
have heard nothing of this dangerous nonsense, by virtue of which it is sought
that the whole power of the realm shall be concentrated in one of the estates,

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and that too, one recently remodelled for factious purposes. An Estate of the
People involves a contradiction in terms, for an estate is a popular class
established into a political order. If, therefore, the Sovereign had established
the Lower House as the estate of the people, he would have virtually declared
that the clergy and the nobles, the most influential part of the nation, were not a
portion of the people. Far from this, the cautious monarch refrained from even
establishing the citizens into a separate estate ; instead of doing this, he flattered
their vanity while he checked their independence, and while he raised them to
the rank of Commons, he secured, to use the epithet in its popular, not its correct
sense, an aristocratic character for each estate of his realm. As the Upper
House consisted of two estates of the realm, the Clergy and the Peers, so also
the Lower House might equally have consisted of the representatives of two
estates of the realm, the Knights and the Burgesses. But this was avoided. Yet
suppose the Sovereign had thought fit to establish a separate estate of the citizens,
would the lower House any more have represented the people? By no means.
Other classes of the people would still have remained unrepresented, and classes
the most numerous; for instance, the peasantry. Such estates were not
H

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unknown in the middle ages, and even at this day an Estate of the Peasantry
meets in the Diets of Sweden, and the Storthings of Norway.
By this final constitution of the English parliament, the seal was set to that
glorious characteristic of our laws, which various causes had been for a long
period silently combining to create ; to which I mainly attribute the freedom,
honour, and prosperity of our country, and our singular preservation from that
whirlwind of outraged passion and opinion, which swept over Europe during the
end of the last century, and still threatens Christendom with its wild and moaning wail. This glorious characteristic of our laws is our equality of civil rights.
By the formation of the House of Commons, the great body of the lesser nobility
of England formally renounced those rights of peerage, the practical enjoyment
of which had been long escaping them; and instead of that gallant, but
adventurous swarm of personages, who, under the perplexing title of nobles,
abounded in Europe before the great French revolution gave the last blow to the
crumbling Gothic edifice of feodal polity, men who were distinguished from
ordinary freemen by privileges inherent in their blood, and held their pedigrees,
often their only muniments, as valid exemptions from the toils and cares of

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honest industry; men who were free from contributing to the public burthens;
who alone might draw the sword; and whose daughters were defended by law
from , profaning alliances with roturiers—axosQ in this our favoured land of
Albion, a class of individuals noble without privilege, noble from the generosity
of their nature, the inspiration of their lineage, and the refinement of their
education; a class of individuals who, instead of meanly submitting to fiscal
immunities, support upon their broad and cultivated lands all the burthens of
the state; men who have conquered by land and sea, who have distinguished
themselves in every honourable profession, and acquired fame in every department of learning, and in every province of science and of art; who support the
poor instead of plundering them, and respect the court which.they do not fear;
friends alike to liberty and order, who execute justice and maintain truth—the
gentlemen of England; a class of whom it is difficult to decide, whether their
moral excellence or their political utility be most eminent, conspicuous, and
inspiring.
In due and sympathising deference to the lesser nobility, their former
equals who subsided into gentry, the magnates were careful to arrogate to them-

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selves no privileges which were not necessary and incidental to them in their
character of an estate of the realm, and their capacity of hereditary legislators of
a free people. So that even their blood was not ennobled, and their children
ranked only as Commons; thus distinctly announcing that their rank was a
political institution for the public weal, and not a privilege for their private
gratification. Indeed, it would not be too much to affirm, that the law of
England does not recognise nobility. It recognises the peerage, and it has
invested that estate with august accessories; but to state that a man's blood
is ennobled is neither legal nor correct, and the phrase, which has crept into
our common parlance, is not borrowed from the lawyers, but from the heralds.
Thus, I repeat, was consummated that glorious characteristic of our laws, the
equality of our civil rights, and to this cause I refer the sympathy which has ever
subsisted between the great body of the English nation and their aristocracy.
Liberty flourished under the Plantagenets—and for this reason, that the
aristocracy headed the nation, and the House of Commons soon learnt to combine with the discontented party among the Peers. The remedial character of
our representation rapidly expanded into the legislative; and the judge matured

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into a law-maker. Seldom has the crown of this realm circled a more able and
vigorous brow than that of our third Edward: his reign too was long and
eminently prosperous. Yet as early as this reign, the illegality of raising money
without consent of Parliament was firmly and practically established, as well as
the necessity of the concurrence of the two Houses, in any alteration of the law.
In this reign too, for the first time, the councillors of the crown were impeached
by the Commons, though there is little doubt that the lower House would not
have ventured on so bold an advance in authority, had they not been secretly
stimulated by the Prince of Wales, and upheld by the majority of the Peers,
jealous of the intrigues of the Duke of Lancaster against the interests of the
heir apparent The Parliament that had ventured to resist an Edward, dared
to control a Richard. The Commons now inquired into the public expenditure,
and even regulated the economy of the royal household. The Lancastrian
kings owed their throne to the Parliament, and the Parliament was mindful of
the obligation. Under these three sovereigns the present Constitution of
England was amply, if not perfectly, developed. The right of taxation in the
two Houses was never questioned; the direction of the public expenditure was

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claimed and practised; the illegality of royal ordinances declared; ministers too
were impeached and punished, and finally the privileges of Parliament for the
first time established. But perhaps the most important change in our constitutional system, was the introduction in the reign of Henry the Sixth, of complete
statutes of the Commons, under the title of Bills, instead of their old method
of Petitions; by these means the sovereign was obliged to sanction or to reject
the propositions of his Parliament without qualification; and as it had been
previously a maxim of parliamentary practice, that all laws should originate in
the form of petitions from the lower House, the legislative right of the Commons
was now completely and firmly established.
If liberty flourished under the Plantagenets, it faded under the Tudors*
How was this? Compare the reigns of the third Edward, or the second
Richard, with those of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, and no one can shut
his eyes to the vast progression which our country has made in all the elements
of civilisation. We were much more populous, infinitely wealthier. We enjoyed
a great commerce, our manufactures were considerable, our ancient military
reputation maintained, our advance in arts indisputable. Why were we

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less free? Why had that bold House of Commons, to whom the warlike and
impatient Edward had to bow before he could carry on a struggle flattering to
the fame of England, sunk into a servile crew, who witnessed without a murmur
the forced loans of a privy seal and a benevolence ? Where were the men who,
under the wily Henry the Fourth, had declared the royal ordinances illegal ?
Humbling themselves before royal proclamations, crushed by the oppression of
the Star Chamber, and yielding without even a remonstrance to the enormity
of the Council. Who now dared to inquire into the public administration ?
Why were not^ Wolsey and Burleigh impeached as well as Lord Latimer and
Suffolk? Who remembered the statute of Henry the Sixth, "for the punishment
of such as assault any on their way to the Parliament,'' when any member who
offended the sovereign or the minister was, in scornful defiance of his privilege,
instantly imprisoned; and Henry the Eighthvowed he would behead any of the
Commons who opposed his will? We cannot account for this extraordinary
change in the character of our House of Commons by the usual reason of a
standing army. Henry the Eighth commanded fifty beefeaters, and Elizabeth
trusted to the guardianship of the trained bands. The truth is, the House of

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Commons was no longer supported by the peers, and the aristocracy no longer
headed the nation. The great advance in public liberty under the Plantagenets,
was carried on by a Parliament in which a perfect understanding subsisted
between the two Houses. We owe that bold scheme of popular government
to which Selden and Pym in other days were content to appeal, to "the wisdom
of their ancestors,'' and to the united and harmonious efforts of the three estates
of the realm.
The wars of the Roses were mortal to the great peers and chivalric
commons of England, and the tints of those fatal flowers were only emblematic
of the terror and the blood that they occasioned. Unquestionably these evils
in the course of time might have been remedied, and, doubtless, in the natural
order of events a new race of great national leaders would have arisen, who
might have restored that noble freedom and that sweet equality which rose under
the Plantagenets, s struggled under the Stuarts, and triumphed under the
benignant sway of the House of Brunswick: but when, in the reign of Henry
the Eighth, the aristocracy afforded some indications of reviving power, a new
feature appeared in European, and especially in English politics, which changed

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the whole frame and coloured the complete aspect of our society—RELIGIOUS
DISSENSION. It was by balancing the great parties in which this new spirit, so
fertile in discord, divided the nation, that the Tudors, and especially Elizabeth
and her statesmen, succeeded in establishing her power, until they delivered
over to her successor the sceptre of a despot. I have myself no doubt that,
although in its nature intimately and essentially connected with the cause of civil
liberty, the immediate effect of the reformation on our English polity was
anything but favourable to the growth of our liberties and the establishment of
our political institutions. The civil despotism of the king was in that age the
consequence of his religious supremacy. The creation of the High Commission
Court alone, and the sanction which the religious passions of a large party in the
nation gave to that dark tribunal, afforded a fatal precedent for an application of
analogous discipline to civil affairs, which in practice reduced our constitution
to a polity befitting the meridian of Madrid, or even Constantinople.
If we survey the constitution of the House of Commons under the Tudors,
we shall find that although it experienced several very considerable changes,
they were far from effecting any departure from the original character of that

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assembly. It did not in any degree more become the House of the People.
It still remained the representative of an estate of the realm, an estate in
number, I apprehend, not very considerable; inferior probably to the fleeting
population of any of the large fairs then common in the country, and at this day
not superior to the population of a second-rate capital. The House, when it
was first established, consisted of seventy-four knights, and, for the causes I have
before stated, of a very fluctuating number of burgesses: in early times they
amounted to two hundred and sixty. The knights, in spite of their minority,
seemed to have indulged in no jealousy of their humbler brethren, but appear
to have exercised in the chamber which had derived from them its name, all that
superior authority to which their noble lineage and territorial possessions entitled
them. It is curious that the idea of representation, as relative to population,
never appears to have entered into the consideration of our ancestors : York and
Rutland returned the same number of representatives. I ascribe the apparent
anomaly to the circumstance of the constituent body being generally very
limited, and particularly so in the northern counties. It was never intended
that the population should be represented, but a particular class of it, and as the

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spirit of the body pervaded all the county representatives, a knight of Rutland
doubtless considered himself virtually as much the guardian of the knights of the
county of York or Lancaster as of his own shire or that of Huntingdon,
Moreover, there are reasons to believe that earlier than is usually imagined the
English knights were in the habit of being returned for boroughs; and, I
apprehend that the majority of the House of Commons in the reigns of
the Lancastrian kings consisted of the descendants of our former minor barons.
On the accession of Henry the Eighth, the burgesses were in number two
hundred and twenty-four. Henry extended county representation to Wales,
Chester, and Monmouth, and even summoned burgesses from his Scotch town
of Berwick, and his French garrison of Calais. Edward the Sixth created
fourteen boroughs and revived ten: Mary added twenty-one, and Elizabeth
sixty. In most of these instances the right of representation was conceded to
insignificant places and confined to mere nomination. Elizabeth was the first
who worked on an extensive scale the great parliamentary mine of Cornwall, and
liberally enfranchised fishing-towns and miserable villages. The object of the
Tudor sovereigns in this increase of the House of Commons was, to command

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majorities on the great religious questions. Arbitrary in every other respect,
they were not unwilling to share with the compliant orthodoxy of their Parliament
the responsibility of those extraordinary statutes which form an epoch in the
philosophy of legislation.
But the Tudors, in this extensive exercise of the power of parliamentary
appointment, introduced no heretical elements into the constitution of our
House of Commons. As early as Edward the Second the representatives of
more than twenty boroughs had been added by the King to the members of that
assembly. I do not believe that the representation of our boroughs was
originally elective. Far from being of opinion that the popular character of the
third estate had gradually become corrupt and diminished previous to the late
Act of Reform, I believe, on the contrary, that since the accession of the Stuarts
it had gradually become more vigorous and more comprehensive. Our Parliament
long possessed, and indeed in some degree still retains, its original character of
a royal council. The object of our Sovereigns was to surround themselves by the
notable subjects of their realm, and they proceeded in the shortest and simplest
manner to obtain their purpose. The elective character of the parliamentary

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Knights arose from the peculiar circumstances of their order and the ancient
juridical customs of their shires. But these circumstances bore no relation to
the parliamentary burgesses, and although, honoris causa, they were incorporated
with the noble Commons of the realm, the machinery of their selection was far
less nice and complicated. In general these returns were made by the small
governing body which must exist in all mural communities, whether incorporated
or not; probably in corporations the aldermen or capital burgesses served by
rotation. Sometimes, when no leading member of the society could be induced
to undergo the inconvenience of quitting his home and neglecting his affairs, a
neighbouring squire was substituted : sometimes the return was at once made by
the sheriff from his knowledge of the leading personages of the borough;
sometimes the future members were recommended by the privy council; sometimes the same representatives at once returned to a new Parliament, without
any intervening ceremony, who had been seated in the last. The towns in
royal demense were probably always represented by officers of the crown, and
indeed this class of individuals abounded in the Tudor Parliaments. If this
loose practice of borough representation were occasionally in turbulent or

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careless times drawn into a dangerous precedent for the return of Knights for
shires without the due and legal convocation of the county court, it is certain
that eventually the more formal and comprehensive scheme of county representation exercised a far more decided influence on that of the boroughs. As
these increased in population and intelligence, and the privilege of being
represented in the royal council became to be more generally understood and
more finely appreciated, the system of representation by election, always more
or less maintained by the return of the Knights, afforded, as the origin of
institutions became darker, at the same time a precedent for those inhabitants
who sought a participation in the now envied privilege, and a plan by which
their wishes might be accomplished. Thus the freeholders in boroughs by the
right of their burgage tenure, the freemen of the corporations, and sometimes
the inhabitants at large, where burgage tenure was rare, and the towns, though
flourishing, had not been incorporated, gradually established their right to the
exercise of a suffrage, and thus in the course of time, the House of Commons
came to consist of county members elected by the freeholders ; representatives
of cities and boroughs chosen by a popular constituency where a popular con-

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in

stituency existed; and representatives of the same class who retained the old
exemption from election, because, in fact, the unimportant places for'which they
appeared in Parliament had never emerged from their original insignificance, or
produced a population bold and flourishing enough to usurp the return of their
representatives from the hands of the governing body.
This I believe to be a very just, as I am sure, it is a very impartial, view of
the formation of our House of Commons; and if the history of our country and
our constitution had ever been anything better than a turbulent theatre for the
gladiatorial struggle of party writers, it is one, I believe, which long ere this
would have been adopted: for it has the merit of being not only consistent
with human nature and consonant with that profounder knowledge of the origin
of our political institutions which is the privilege of the present day, but it
reconciles all the characteristics and all the difficulties which have been proved
and promulgated by the four great theories of borough representation, that have
so long puzzled our lawyers and perplexed our antiquaries.
Those who may imagine that I derive any satisfaction in establishing the
narrow origin of our present more popular representation, greatly mistake my

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feelings and opinions. I am not one of those who believe that the safety of the
Constitution is consulted by encouraging an exclusive principle in the formation
of the constituency of our third estate. It is not the supposed democratic
character which it has assumed under the new arrangement—I wish I could call
it settlement—that fills me with any apprehensions. On the contrary, I wish it
were even more catholic, though certainly not more Papist. It is its sectarian
quality in which I discover just cause of alarm. But it has been necessary for
me to show what was the original character of our Lower House, and the primary
intention of the founders of our constitution. In creating a third estate of the
realm, they established an order of men, limited in number and highly
privileged, styled the Commons. Although we have increased the number
of these Commons, we have not increased their privileges, or enlarged their
political capacity. They still remain an estate of the realm, and only an estate
of the realm ; in spirit as well as in law. For although their representatives may
be chosen by three hundred thousand men instead of one hundred thousand,
they are still only the representatives of a limited and favoured class of the
kingdom. The House of Commons is not a jot more the House of the People,

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unless we exclude from our definition of the people many of the most essential
and most important elements of a nation. I shall have occasion, in due season,
to speak further of the great reforming scheme of 1830. Here I will only
observe, that in a hasty and factious effort to get rid of representation without
election, it will be as well if eventually we do not discover, that we have only
obtained election without representation.
The current of these observations reminds me of an anecdote which may
perhaps amuse your Lordship, nor be found altogether devoid of instruction.
When I was in Egypt, the pacha of that country, a personage, as is well known,
of rare capacity, and influenced by an almost morbid desire of achieving in an
instant the great and gradual results of European civilisation, was extremely
desirous, among other objects of passion or of fancy, of obtaining a Parliament.
Emulous of the prosperity and popular power of our Kings, his Highness was
eager to obtain the means by which, on reflection, he was convinced not only
that our country so eminently flourished, but by which our Sovereign succeeded
in commanding at the same time obedience and affection. It so happened that,
a young English gentleman, who was on his travels, was at this period resident

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in Cairo, and as he had more than once had the good fortune in an audience of
engaging the attention of the pacha by the readiness or patience of his replies,
his Highness determined to do the young Englishman the honour of consulting him.
Our countryman received the summons, which all instantly obey, and
immediately repaired to the Divan of the citadel.
H e found the pacha
surrounded by his courtiers, his engineers, his colonels, and his eunuchs. At
length his Highness clapped his hands and the chamber was cleared, with the
exception of a favourite minister and a faithful dragoman. The surprise of our
countryman, when he received the communication of the pacha, was not
inconsiderable; but he was one of those, who had seen sufficient of the world
never to be astonished, not altogether untinctured with political knowledge, and
gifted with that philosophical exemption from prejudice, which is one of the
most certain and the most valuable results of extensive travel. Our countryman
communicated to the Egyptian ruler with calmness and with precision the
immediate difficulties that occurred to him, explained to the successor of the
Pharaohs and the Ptolemies that the political institutions of England had been
the gradual growth of ages, and that there is no political function which demands

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a finer discipline, or a more regulated preparation, than the exercise of popular
suffrage. The pacha listened in silence, nodding his head in occasional approbation : then calling for coffee, instead of looking at his watch like an European
sovereign, delicately terminated the interview.
Some short time afterwards the young Englishman repaired, as was his
occasional custom, to the levee of the Egyptian ruler. When the pacha
perceived him, he welcomed him with a favouring smile, and beckoned to him
to advance to the contiguous divan.
" God is great!" said Mehemet Ali to the traveller; " you* are a wise m a n Allah ! kerim, but you spit pearls. Nevertheless I will have a parliament, and I
will have as many parliaments as the King of England himself. See here !" So
saying, his Highness produced two lists of names, containing those of the most
wealthy and influential personages of every town and district in his dominions.
" See here ! " said he, " here are my parliaments; but I have made up my mind,
to prevent inconvenience, to elect them myself. "
Behold, my Lord, a splendid instance of representation without election!
In pursuance of this resolution of Mehemet Ali, two chambers met at Cairo:

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called in the jargon of the Levant, the alto Parliamento, and the basso Parliamento, The first consisted of the pachas and chief officers of the capital: the
second really of the most respectable of the provincial population. Who can
doubt that the basso Parliamento of Cairo, if the invasion of Syria had not
diverted the attention of Mehemet Ali from domestic politics, might have proved
a very faithful and efficient national council, and afforded the governor of the
country very important information as to the resources, necessities, and grievances
of his subjects ? Who can hesitate in believing that there was a much greater
chance of its efficiency and duration when appointed by the pacha himself, than
when elected by his subjects in their present condition ? Who does not
recognise in such an assembly the healthy seeds of a popular government? I
for one should have much more confidence in the utility and duration of the
Parliament of Cairo, than in that of Naples or Madrid; especially as, it is but
candid to confess, Mehemet Ali had further secured a practical term of political
initiation for his future legislators by two capital rules; first, that the basso
Parliamento should only petition and not debate ; and secondly, that the alto
Parliamento should only debate, and not vote !

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The Protestant Reformation, which, in a political point of view, had only
succeeded in dividing England into two parties, and establishing arbitrary power,
had produced far different effects on the continent of Europe. There it had
created a Republican religion : for such was the ecclesiastical polity of Calvin.
The English Protestants, who, flying from the Marian persecution, sought refuge
at Geneva, in the agony of their outraged'loyalty, renounced their old allegiance,
applied to civil polity the religious discipline of their great apostle, and returned
to their native country political republicans. Kings were the enemies of Protestantism, and Protestants naturally became the enemies of monarchy. The
Hebrew history which they studied, as intently as the Christian gospels, furnished
them with a precedent and a model for a religious republic. Judges ruled in
Israel before the royal dynasties of Saul or David. The anti-monarchical spirit
of Protestant Europe was notorious and incontestable as early as the middle
of the sixteenth century. The regicides of Holy Writ are the heroes of the
turbulent tractates of the early missionaries of spiritual democracy: the slayer
of Sisera, or he who stabbed the fat king of Moab in his chamber. Samuel, the
prophet of the Lord, deposed kings : Calvin and Knox were the successors of

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Samuel. The bloody massacre of Saint Bartholomew, occasioned by the promulgation of this dangerous political religionism, aggravated the danger and
determination of its votaries. The press of Europe swarmed with republican
treatises, composed by the ablest writers. Books are great landmarks in the
history of human nature. Now was heard, for the first time, of the paramount
authority of " THE PEOPLE/' This is the era of the introduction into European
politics of that insidious phrase, by virtue of which an active and unprincipled
minority have ever since sought to rule and hoodwink a nation. In 1579,
appeared the famous " Vindicias contra Tyrannos " of Languet, and the revolt
of Holland and the league of Utrecht, which terminated in the establishment of
the Dutch Republic, formed a practical commentary on its virulent and fervent
pages.
The Republican Religion, which revolutionised Holland, triumphed in
Scotland under Knox, and in France long balanced the united influence of the
crown and the tiara. Even as late as 1621, the genius of Richelieu alone prevented France from being formed into a Federal Republic, and from being
divided into circles.

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Such was the spirit of the European movement when the aristocracy of
England, refreshed and renovated by more than half a century of prosperity and
peace, deemed the accession of Charles the First a fitting season for a struggle
to restore the ancient liberties of the nation, and to regain and complete the
constitution of the Plantagenets. For nearly two centuries that constitution
had been suspended, like an old suit of armour, crusted with the blood of
the civil wars, and covered with the dust of theologic logomachies: but the
great spirits of the seventeenth century recognised the suit as of good proof,
and though somewhat antiquated in its style and fashion, possessing all
necessary powers of protection and offence. The history of the age of Charles
the First has been the literary arena of the passions of all parties. The far
vaster range of political experience, which from the great French Revolution
and its consequences, we enjoy than our forefathers, our increased, yet not
too considerable, distance from the passionate period in question, and our
decreased dependence upon its incidents as the once solitary precendents for
all popular movements, the researches of ingenious scholars, and the publication of contemporary memoirs, have all combined to render us more com-

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petent to decide upon the character of the most memorable transactions of
our annals.
Until the meeting of the Long Parliament, the king appears to have had
no party in the nation, and solely to have depended upon his courtiers and his
bishops. There was a general feeling throughout the leading classes of the
country, that the time had arrived when the settlement of the state on a broad
basis of constitutional liberty was indispensable. The aristocracy of England
also was no longer that unlettered class of mere warriors, who, however great
might be their political power, or ardent their love of public liberty, were
necessarily debarred, by their habits and want of education, from practising the
arts of government and legislation. The cultivated intellect of England
required a theatre for its display and exercise; it found this in some degree in
its Parliament, but sought it more decidedly in the administration of the empire.
The time had arrived when a prelate could no longer conduct the affairs of the
realm from his monopoly of learning. The age of royal favourites was about to
be closed for ever. The monarch, though apparently almost a despot, was fast
approaching the simplicity of his executive capacity : it not only might be thien

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obvious to the contemplative, but it was absolutely determined by practical men,
that the administration of the kingdom should soon be conducted by those of the
subjects who were most eminent and distinguished in the great national council.
The two Houses of the first Parliament, summoned by Charles, contained
the flower of his kingdom—men of the highest lineage, the largest estates, the
most distinguished learning, and the most illustrious accomplishments. The
opposition in the House of Commons, led by Eliot, and supported.by the Peers,
succeeded, as early as the third year of Charles's reign, in obtaining the
Petition of Right. But this concession did not satisfy the Parliament; they
wished to dislodge the favourite; to change the ministry as well as establish the
Constitution. Charles recoiled from the novel heresy of not being the master
of his own servant, a heresy soon doomed to become orthodox: he determined
to support his friend, and the King resolved to reign without a Parliament.
It is singular that the King could have contrived to reign ten years without
one, but the truth is, the state of the country, as is admitted and celebrated by
all foreign writers, was of a prosperity so extraordinary, that it was difficult to
excite discontents among the great body of the nation. In this dilemma, the

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leaders of the Opposition among the Commons, Hampden and Pym, but concealing their masterly machinations from the more numerous and moderate
portions of their party, intrigued with the Scotch, and held out to the Presbyterian leaders of that nation the prospect of the English Opposition assisting,
them in their favourite project, the' overthrow of the Church of England in
Scotland. The consequent troubles in Scotland plunged the King in a war,and was the occasion of the summons of the Long Parliament.
The spirit of the King, when he met this famous assembly, was quite
broken. He was ready to make any concession consistent with the maintenance
of a limited monarchy. Experience had taught him that the whole body of the
aristocracy was opposed to him, and we know that Charles was perfectly aware
of the sacrifices which would be demanded of him, and which he was prepared
to grant without resistance. The objects of the king at this time were to obtain
the establishment of a limited monarchy by constitutional concessions, and
then to form a parliamentary administration -from the most eminent of his
previous opponents, in which conduct alone he recognised any security for
a strong government, and the only prevention of further movement.

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The Long Parliament in a few months restored the constitution of the
Plantagenets. It secured the frequent assemblage of Parliaments: it terminated
ibr ever arbitrary taxation: it abolished the Star Chamber and the High
Commission Court. The concessions of Charles the First during the two
sessions of this P arliament, previous to the civil war, were so ample that the
revolution of 1688 added no important feature to our political system.
Faithful to their purpose, the leaders of this famous opposition, not only established our liberties, but impeached the ministers, and this brought about a
result not less anxiously and eagerly sought after than the abolition of Ship
Money : a formal attempt by the King, for which he had been long prepared,
to form a government of the more moderate portion of the parliamentary party.
I cannot believe that the death of the Earl of Bedford could alone have
occasioned the failure of this intended arrangement: it is more probable that
the dissensions which soon broke out in the great body of the Commons had
already covertly appeared. The Parliament, although both Houses, and the
vast majority of the Lower, had been previously opposed to, the King, for we
;must not forget that even Hyde and Falkland were originally members of

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opposition, had now become divided into two parties, the Constitutional
Reformers, and the Root and Branch Reformers : Pym and Hampden headed
the latter. The Constitutional Reformers were alarmed by the attack on the
Church: the Lords threw out the Bill which sought to deprive the Bishops of
their Parliamentary suffrage. This was the first check that the Commons had
received from the Upper House. Pym and Hampden, deserted by the Constitutional Reformers, had thrown themselves into the hands of the Puritans,
and Root and Branch men. Instead of political unions, they appealed to the
city apprentices, and the trained bands; mobs were hired, petitions forged, all
the arts of insurgency practised. The Peers were daunted, the King frightened;
Strafford was executed, the Bishops expelled the House of Lords, the House of
Commons itself rendered independent of the King and its constituents by the
act which made its dissolution consequent on its own pleasure. At length, by
the Remonstrance and the Propositions, the very abrogation of the monarchy
being attempted, the king raised his standard, and so completely had the
unhappy monarch by his conduct placed the Commons in the wrong, that the
very personage who, two years before, had absolutely no party in the nation,

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found himself supported by a considerable majority of his people, and nearly
the whole of the Peerage, while the vote which virtually occasioned the struggle,
and was the trial of strength of the two parties in the House of Commons, was
only carried by a majority of eleven. The success of the royal arms, and the
unexpected strength of the royal party, filled the Commons with consternation.
The moderate members continued to flock to the King. Pym and Hampden,
finding that they were des erted by their aristocratic companions, and that the
Puritans and Root and Branch men were not powerful enough to support them,
made an open and absolute alliance with the Scotch Presbyterians, with whom
they had always had a secret understanding, swallowed the Covenant
which they had before disfavoured, decreed the extermination of the Church
of England, beheaded Laud, called in a Scotch army, and maintained their
cause by a connection offe nsive to their countrymen.
Am I indeed treating of the reign of Charles the First? or is it some
nearer epoch that I am commemorating? Am I writing of the affairs of the
seventeenth or the nineteenth century? There is such a marvellous similarity
between the periods, that, for my part, I find great difficulty in discriminating

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between the two Dromios. In both instances the Church of England is the
great victim, and at both seasons the vast majority of the English people were
warmly and tenderly attached to their establishment. In both cases the
aristocratic leaders of the movement, thought fit to secede from their own party,
while in both cases their more determined or desperate associates compensate
themselves for the desertion by the alliance of revolutionary or anti-national
support. In one instance the Radicals, in the other the Root and Branch men;
in one instance the Dissenters, in the other the Puritans, And in both instances,
when Radicals and Dissenters in the one case, and Puritans and Root and
Branch men in the other, fail in making up with their influence for the loss of
the aristocratic connections of the leaders who had summoned them, we find
the same desperate and treasonable compact, made in one age with the Scotch
Presbyterians, and in the other, with the Irish Papists ; the solemn league and7
covenant so long repudiated, swallowed as the condition in the first instance, and
the Irish Church scheme, once so warmly opposed, gulped down in the other.
The Bishops expelled from the House of Lords, the King defied, then"
imprisoned, and then decapitated, the House of Lords disregarded, and then,.

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formally abolished, voted " a nuisance, and of no use"—you see,;my Lord,
there were Utilitarians even in those days,—behold the great object at length
consummated of concentrating the whole power and authority of the government
in one estate of the realm. The verbal process by which the revolution was
effected, was very simple and very logical, if we only grant the premises; the
schoolmen themselves could not have reasoned with more invincible accuracy.
The House of Commons having first declared "that the people are the origin of
all just power," an axiom to which any person may annex any meaning of his
fancy ; next enunciated that the House of Commons being chosen by the people
and representing them, are the supreme* authority of the nation, and that consequently whatever is declared to be law by the House of Commons, hath the
force of law without the consent of the King or the House of Peers. First,
the constituency of the House of Commons, a small fraction of the nation, is
declared to be the People; their power then becomes invested in their representatives; the majority of those representatives acting by their supreme authority,
then expel from their numbers the minority, who oppose their projects ;'and then,
still acting by their supreme authority, vote the power of the triumphant majority

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perpetual. This is the simple process by which we at length obtain a tolerably
definite idea of what is meant by the phrase "the People," and the easy machinery
by which a band of two or three hundred individuals, obtain and exercise despotic
power over the lives, liberties, and property of a whole nation.
We still remember in this country the tender and happy consequences of
being governed by "the People." We have not forgotten that "the People"
established Courts more infamous than the Star Chamber in every county of
England, with power of fining, sequestrating, imprisoning, and corporally punishing all who opposed, or even murmured against their decrees; that under the
plea of malignancy " the People " avenged their private hatreds, and seized for
their private gain and gratification any estates or property to which they took a
fancy; that " the People" consigned to Bastilles and perpetual imprisonment
all those who refused to answer their illegal inquiries, and bored red-hot irons
through the tongues of the contumacious; that not an appearance of law or
liberty remained in the land; that "the People" enlarged the laws of high
treason, so that they comprehended verbal offences, and even intentions; that
" the People " practised decimation; that " the People " voted trial by Jury a

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breach of parliamentary privilege; that " the People " deprived of authority all
persons of family and distinction who had originally adhered to their party,
because men of blood and breeding would not submit to be their disgraceful and
ignoble tools, and filled every office under them with the scum of the nation;
that the very individuals who had suffered and struggled under the Star Chamber
were visited by " the People " with punishments and imprisonments infinitely
more bloody and more grievous; that "the People" sequestrated nearly one
half of the goods and chattels of the nation, and at least one-half of its rents and
revenues ; that in seven years "the People" raised the taxation of the country
from eight hundred thousand pounds per annum, to seven millions per annum ;
that " the People " invented the Excise, and applied that odious impost even to
provisions and the common necessaries of life; that "the People" became so
barefaced in their vile extortions, that one morning they openly divided three
hundred thousand pounds amongst themselves, and settled an annuity of four
pounds a day on each of their number; that "the People " committed all these
enormities in the teeth of outraged England, by the aid of an anti-national compact with the Scottish Covenanters : and that, finally, the Nation, the insulted
K

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and exhausted Nation, sought refuge from the government of " the People " in
the arms of a military despot.
I- hear much in the present day of the march of intellect, and the diffusion
of knowledge, and the influence of public opinion, and there are those who would
assure us that in these circumstances and qualities, we may safely count upon
finding ample guarantees for, not only the maintenance, but the increase of our
liberties, and very able securities for every species of good government. It will
be as well for us, however, 'to turn aside, if possible, for a moment from the
exciting tumult in which it is the destiny of the present age to flourish, and
calmly condescend to spare a few moments of consideration to the history of that
not less agitated and consequential age, which elapsed, from 1550 to the middle
of the seventeenth century. The Protestant Reformation, and its great political
consequences, especially the formation of the Dutch Republic, had agitated men's
minds in a degree not inferior to the influence exercised over the spirit of the
eighteenth and present centuries by the French Revolution. The nature and
origin of Power were not less severely scrutinized; the object and influence of
Establishments not less sharply canvassed. There was as much public intelli-

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gence, as much public opinion, and as much public spirit in Europe then, as at
the present hour. The exclusive and local character of nations was fast disappearing ; patriotism was fast merging into philanthropy; a cosmopolite spirit
pervaded Christendom : Geneva communicated with Edinburgh or Paris ; there
was a constant spiritual correspondence between Amsterdam and La Rochelle
and London. The political movement in England originated with the aristocracy; it was supported and advanced by the great body of the nation. If the
influence of the press were less considerable than at the present day, though I
much doubt it, and the British Museum, which contains so many thousand
pamphlets of the times of Charles the First, a fraction only of the fugitive
effusions, confirms my scepticism,—Public Opinion had yet another, and more
powerful organ, and was influenced by even a more potent and passionate
medium. If there were ten thousand pamphlets, certainly there were ten
thousand pulpits. There was as much communication in 1640 as there is
likely to be in 1840; if we had no rail-roads, we had men who rode " post
haste;" there were as many committees, there was as complete an organization;
the arts of insurgency reached such a zenith of perfection that the unlicensed

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imagination and unbridled devices of Jacobinical France only imitated, and
never surpassed them; and more important than all, the Government was much
weaker. Yet, although the flame of popular liberty was fed by such various and
vigorous fuel, and although the ranks of the popular party were marshalled, and
led on during the contest by statesmen inferior in station, capacity, and
accomplishment, to none who ever figured in this land, the mighty impulse, like
the most beautiful river of Germany, which, after renovating a country, and
commanding the admiration of a nation, never reaches the ocean, but sinks into
the swamps of Brabant, the mighty impulse achieved only destruction, and the
movement ended in mud. (
The reigns of the latter Stuarts are the most disgraceful in our annals, but
as much from the character of the nation, as the character of those monarchs.
The public spirit was broken, and the public mind corrupted. Good laws are
of little avail without good manners, and unless there be a wholesome state of
mind in the nation to regulate their exercise. Trial by Jury in the time of
Charles the Second was a tyranny as fearful as the Star Chamber; and without
any formal violation of our written constitution, it is probable that the govern-

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ment of the Tudors would have been re-established in England, had not James
the Second alarmed the Protestant spirit of the country, and the aristocracy
seized the opportunity of again establishing our liberties.
The consequences of the famous revolution which raised the Prince of
Orange to the throne of these realms were very important, but as they did not
affect the form or elements of the House of Commons, the remarks which it may
be necessary to make upon that event will more naturally occur to me when I
come to consider the nature of the executive branch of our Constitution, and the
character of the kingly office. The history of England from that period until
1830, is rather political than constitutional, and although extremely interesting
to a statesman, relates to the struggles of rival parties for power instead of the
more inspiring contest between royal prerogative and parliamentary privilege,
and that more noble conflict for their liberties between a nation and a sovereign.
The struggles of parties also, as connected with ministerial responsibility, are
naturally linked with the yet untouched topic of the Crown.
Viewing the Reform Bill of 1830, as the coup d'etat of a party, who having
obtained power, found themselves opposed by all the estates of the realm, and

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supposing that their only object was to establish themselves in power by
conceding a preponderating influence in the constituency to a sectarian minority
in the State favourable to their views and policy, the intended measure is very
intelligible; but dismissing for the moment from our consideration all factious
imputations, it must be admitted that this reform was conceived and prosecuted
in a profound ignorance of the nature of our constitution, to which we may
ascribe all the mischiefs that have occurred, and that threaten us.
That the re-construction of the third estate of the realm was necessary, is
an intelligible proposition; and had it been proved, all that we had to consider
was the mode by which it should be attained. But the Whigs set out with
reforming the representatives of the estate, instead of the estate itself, and the
consequences of this capital blunder pervade the whole of their arrangement. If
the proposition of the necessity had been proved, then we had to consider the
principle on which the Reform should be conducted, as population, fiscal
contribution, or peculiar class. But by reforming the representatives, instead of
the estate, no principle could be adopted, or at least could only partially be
applied. Hence the present system is as anomalous as the late one: communities

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of two or three hundred electors return as many representatives as communities
of fourteen thousand; a man who rents a ten pound house in a town enjoys a
suffrage, a man who lives in a forty pound house out of a town is not an elector.
It might be undeniable, that if the third estate were to be reformed, the principle
of representation without election no longer suited the present state of society :
but why then cling to that part of the ancient scheme which gave a preponderating influence in numbers to the citizens and burgesses because, in fact, they were
not elected, but only nominated ? All this originated in the fallacy of supposing
that the state of our representation in many towns was the consequence of
decay, instead of original intention. Thus whole and important districts of the
country, and considerable classes of the community, are not represented, and
the land which originally formed the third estate, assumes only a secondary
character in its present elements.
Nevertheless, constituted as the third estate now is, and changed as may be
its elements, has it in a political capacity, deviated from its original character ?
The Commons form still only an estate of the realm, a privileged and limited
order of the nation, in numbers a fraction of the mass, and their representative s

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can only be invested with the qualities of their constituents. To maintain that
an estate of the realm is the People, involves a contradiction in terms, for
an estate implies a class of the people. The Commons of England are not the
People, unless we declare that every person who is not a parliamentary constituent,
is without the pale of national definition. If we agree to this, the people of
England consists of three or four hundred thousand persons, divided into almost
equal classes professing the most contrary opinions. The absurdity of such a conclusion is evident. The House of Commons is not the House of the People, and
the members of the House of Commons are not the representatives of the People.
I proceed to consider the constitution and the character of the Upper House
of Parliament. The House of Lords is the most eminent existing example of
representation without election. As an estate of the realm which, from its
imited numbers, can with convenience personally appear and assemble, the
Peers of England do not meet at Westminster by their trustees, or deputies, or
delegates. But this House is nevertheless representative. The House of Lords
represents the Church in the Lord Bishops, the law in the Lord Chancellor, and
often the Lord Chief Justice, the counties in the Lord Lieutenants, the boroughs

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in their noble Recorders. This estate from the character of the property of its
members, is also essentially the representative chamber of the land; and as the
hereditary leaders of the nation, especially of the cultivators of the land, the
genuine and permanent population of England, its peasantry.
In ruder times, when the King desired to call a great council, which
should represent the interests and consult over the welfare of his kingdom, he
summoned the barons or chief subjects of his realm. These great councils,
which were the origin of our Parliaments, and so styled before they assumed a
legislative character, assembled for the administration of justice. They formed
a high court of law whither in time repaired, as I have before described,
deputations of the provincial tribunals, and the local executors of the law. The
Barons originally held their parliamentary privilege by tenure, but the King soon
mingled among them by his writ of summons such individuals as he deemed fit
and competent to assist them in their great office. Such was the origin of
baronies by writ; and peerages by patent were also introduced as early as the
reign of Richard the Second. Gradually, as the country advanced in civilisation,
and the affairs of its population became more complicated, the Sovereign

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delegated portions of his judicial power to appointed and permanent tribunals of
his palace, presided over by his selected councillors, and in time by professional
lawyers. Such was the origin of our great courts of law; of King's Bench, of
Common Pleas, and of Exchequer; but the House of Lords, even when the
formal and present constitution of Parliament occurred, still retained, independent of the legislative functions of their estate, their original character of a
high court of justice, which has descended to their successors, who to this day
form the supreme and efficient court of appeal of the kingdom. It was this
character, indeed, which rendered, in old days, the intermission of Parliaments
so great a grievance. By not assembling the House of Lords, justice was
delayed, and when we read in the reigns of the'Plantagenets of the murmurs of
the nation at the King not calling his Parliament, it was, in fact, the meeting of
the Peers which the nation invoked with such loud complaints.
The House of Lords strictly consists of two estates of the realm ; the Lords
Spiritual and Temporal. Originally, the Lords Spiritual exceeded the Temporal
Peers in number. In the last Parliament that was held before the struggles
between the houses of York and Lancaster, so fatal to our ancient Peerage, only

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fifty-three Temporal Lords appeared in Parliament: the Spiritual Lords, on the
other hand, numbered twenty-one Bishops, and thirty-six mitred Abbots and
Priors. Henry the Seventh could only summon to his first Parliament twentynine temporal Lords, and even in the reign of Henry the Eighth, the
temporal Peers, did not equal the representatives of the Church and the
great ecclesiastical corporations. The dissolution of the monasteries, which
expelled the mitred Abbots and Priors from the Upper House, reduced the
number of the spiritual Peers to twenty-six, five new bishoprics having been
created as a species of representative compensation to the new Church. From
this period the political influence of the Lords Spiritual in the Upper House has
never been of a preponderating character, and although they retained their
ancient privilege as a separate estate, and the precedence to which they were
originally entitled, they have in fact, by blending their votes with their temporal
brethren, contributed to the formation of one estate of the realm, in'which they
have long virtually, although not formally merged.
I think, my Lord, this is not an inconvenient opportunity of considering the
policy of the presence of these right reverend personages in the Upper House of

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Parliament, a policy so unpopular with the anti-constitutional party of this
country. Whenever the factious leaders of the third estate attempt to obtain a
preponderating influence in the constitution for the House in which they sit as
representatives of their order, and to usurp the entire government of the country,
and exercise despotic control over the lives and liberties, the persons and
properties of their fellow-subjects, the attack upon the independence and influence
of the House of Lords is invariably commenced by an assault upon the ecclesiastical elements of its composition. Thus in the time of Charles the First, the
factious leaders of a majority of the representatives of that limited and privileged
order of the nation, called the Commons, succeeded, after repeated efforts, in
expelling the Bishops, or first estate, from the Upper House; and thus certain
persons at the present day, who inherit all the faction of Pym and Hampden,
though none of their genius, being as like to them as Butler's Hudibras is like
to Milton's Satan, have, in a manner at once indecent and unconstitutional, and
which, if I have any knowledge of the laws of my country, subjects them to a
praemunire—soiled the notice book of the proceedings of the next session of the
House of Commons with a vile and vulgar menance of this exalted order.

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The great art in creating an efficient Representative Government is, to
secure its representation of those interests of the country which are at the same
time not only considerable, but in their nature permanent. To bind up with
our form of polity the feelings of vast and influential classes of the nation,
obviously tends to the perpetuity of the State; though the danger of making
sudden and slightly considered additions to the elements of our political estates
need not be enlarged upon, nor the fatal blunder of mistaking an evanescent for
a permanent interest. Independent of all those spiritual considerations, which
hitherto have been held as justly and wisely influencing the elements and
character of the English constitution; dismissing for a moment from our
thoughts that union of Church and State which hitherto has consecrated the
commonwealth of England; granting for an instant, that that religious connexion,
which has so long tempered power, and so often elevated its exercise, should
indeed cease, and that the authority of the Church of England should only be
supported by the affections and voluntary succour of its votaries; I have yet to
learn that the presence in the House of Peers, of an order of individuals, who,
in the independence of their means, I may say the vastness of their possessions,

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are inferior to none, can be enumerated among the less desirable elements of a
Senate. To me it seems that a Bishop of Durham, or of Winchester, affords,
from his position, the probable materials of as efficient a member of the Upper
House as any Earl or Marquis who bears those names.
But when I recall to my recollection the virulent, antipathy of the anticonstitutional writers of the present day, against what they style the Hereditary
Peerage, and the unqualified legislators, whom they pretend must be the
inevitable fconsequences of its institution, I confess that I am somewhat
astonished that their first and fiercest attack should be made on that portion of
the House of Lords whose office is not hereditary, who in general spring from
the humbler classes of the community, and who, from the nature of their
qualification to sit in that august assembly, must necessarily be men distinguished
for their learning, their talents, and their virtues. Of the many popular
elements of the House of Lords, I have always considered that the bench of
Bishops was the most democratic.
I have not concealed my conviction, for I plead only the cause of Truth,
that the Protestant Reformation in England originally tended to the establish.

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ment of arbitrary power, and of that despotism of the Tudors of which Charles
the Firstt was the victim. The Church transferred their allegiance from the
Tiara to the Crown; the people followed the example of their national ecclesiastics. But these were the inevitable consequences of unparalleled events. The
Church is part of our Constitution, and its character has changed in unison with
that Constitution; the clergy in this country, thanks to that Reformation whose
good fruits we have long enjoyed, both political and spiritual, are national; they
are our fellow-subjects, and they have changed with their fellow-countrymen.
Their errors were the errors of their age, and of their nation ; they were no more.
The Bishops who, under James the First, maintained the High Commission
Court, under James the Second were the first champions of our liberties; the
Establishment which, under Laud, persecuted to obtain Conformity, is now
certainly our surest, perhaps our only guarantee of Toleration.
The English Constitution, while it has secured that toleration, absolute and
illimitable, has also consecrated the State; it has proved that religious government and religious liberty are not incompatible.
It is one of the leading
principles of our polity that the religious discipline and future welfare of our

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citizens are even of greater importance than their political and present wellbeing. And although the pious and private munificence of an ancient people
has, in the course of ages, relieved the State from the fiscal burthen of a
dependent Clergy, invested that godly, and learned, and devoted body with a
noble and decorous inheritance, and covered our land with schools and churches,
with sublime temples, and august and unrivalled universities ; the State has,
nevertheless, stepped in as the trustee and guardian of the ministers of our
religion, adopted them as its children, and established their order into an estate
of the kingdom.
The Stuarts were prodigal in the creation of temporal Peers; one hundred
and nineteen met in the Parliament of 1640, but in 1661 the number had
scarcely increased.
The Peers of England led the movement against the
unhappy son of James the First. A Peer was one of the five members whom the
King attempted to seize; but when all those concessions were obtained from
the Sovereign, which would have left the estates, and the nation at large, in the
possession of even greater privileges than we enjoy at this day; when it was
discovered that the monarchy itself was aimed at, and that Reform was fast

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approaching Revolution, the great body of the Peerage, in unison with the great
body of their fellow-subjects, withdrew themselves from the Parliament and
adhered to the King. So that when the Upper House was formally abolished
by the vote of the House of Commons, the customary attendance of Lords was
not more than six or eight. Little more than a quarter of a century after the
restoration of the Stuarts, the. nation, headed by the Peers, expelled them, and
established the security of a Protestant throne.
From the accession of William the Third, to the accession of William the
Fourth, a period of upwards of one hundred and forty years,' the House of Lords
has not only exercised an independent, but a considerable, and, as some, have
held, a preponderating influence, in the government of the country. The
Whigs, under George the First, in pursuance of their plan of reducing the
English monarch to the character of a Venetian Doge, succeeded in carrying
a bill through the Upper House to deprive the King of his prerogative of creating
further Peers, and thus to convert the free and democratic Peerage of England
into an odious oligarchy of exclusive privilege; but the House of Commons,
led by the Tory country gentlemen, rejected the proposition with becoming
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decision. Since that time, and especially during the active reigns of the Third
and Fourth Georges, the royal prerogative has been exercised with a liberality,
which, by some has been warmly, but I think unwisely, stigmatized. The ranks
of our second estate have been periodically strengthened by an accession of some
of the best blood, the greatest wealth, and the most distinguished talent of the
community, and its due influence alike in the legislature, and in national opinion,
has thus been efficiently maintained.
The increased strength of the third estate, in consequence of its recent
reconstruction, having filled the imaginations of certain factious leaders with the
old and disastrous machination of establishing the supremacy of its represenative chamber, and that result not being possible unless the independence of
the Upper House of Parliament is first destroyed, an attack is now made with
equal violence and perseverance upon the hereditary principle of its institution,
as productive of irresponsibility, and thus affording, not only a most injurious,
but an anomalous, feature in the scheme of our legislative and executive
government.
Who has not heard of the fatal and anomalous irresponsibility of the House

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of Lords ? Gf what Whig Journal does it not form the subject of the choice and
cockbrained leading article? Is there a tavern Cleon, from whose foaming lips
its anathema does not flow in rabid sentences of seditious folly? Is there a
plebeian oracle of a metropolitan vestry, who does not warn the Peers of England
with the solemn stolidity of his Delphic utterance ? Nay, the authorized agitator
of the administration itself, is sent upon a provincial tour of treason to open the
minds of the King's lieges on this urgent point of constitutional revelation—the
vagabond and overrated rebel—vomiting his infamous insolence in language
mean as his own soul!
And yet this fatal and anomalous irresponsibility is no more the characteristic of the House of Lords, than of that third estate itself, in whose supremacy
the anti-constitutional writers teach us we are alone to find a security for good
government.
The estate of the Peers is in no greater degree irresponsible than the estate
of the Commons. Both are alike popular classes, that is, sections of the nation'
established for the public and common good, into political orders or estates.
For this reason are hey privileged, and for no other; nor is there any privilege

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of importance which the Lords enjoy which the Commons do not share; though
there are very many, and those too very important privileges, which the
Commons in thecourse of time have acquired, and which they have jealously
monopolized. The Commons, for their own convenience, meet in Parliament
by their representatives ; the Lords, from their limited number, meet personally.
Yet a Peer is allowed to vote by proxy on the same principle that the Commons
are allowed to vote by their proxies or representatives ; it ever being the wish
and intention, and genius of our Constitution, that the three estates shall be as
completely and constantly consulted on all subjects, and their consent to all
laws as perfectly obtained as human wit could devise. This is the real and
original cause cf the Peers voting by proxy, an analogous privilege with that
enjoyed by the Commons; yet in these days of profound constitutional learning
even this vote by proxy is held "an anomaly," and no less a personage than an
exalted member of the Upper House itself, eager to obtain a little vulgar
popularity by falling in with the superficial humours of the day, has been found
anxious to deprive his own order of an ancient and, as I have shown, not a
peculiar privilege.

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A political estate is in its nature complete, and, therefore, whatever may be
the amount of privileges, or the degree of power with which it is invested, it is
necessarily independent. Now all power that is independent must be irresponsible. If the state of the Peers be independent and irresponsible, and undoubtedly and necessarily it is so, to whom is the'estate of the Commons
responsible ? To whom is that privileged order of the kingdom, who at the last
general election, to the amount of three hundred thousand men, voted for the
representatives of their order in Parliament, to whom are they responsible?
What political dependence have they upon the nation at large ? What do they
care for what the unrepresented mass may think of their resolves and conduct ?
Are they amenable for their political behaviour to any public tribunal? Have
they not, if they agree among themselves and return their representatives to that
effect, the power, as far as the assent of their estate is concerned, the power to
deprive all those who are not of their privileged order of their rights and liberties ?
What lawyer can doubt such a right in the Commons, or dispute their
power, if they choose to exercise it ? Have not the majority of their representatives, in fact, often exercised the delegated power of their order to this effect ?

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Why has the House of Commons often been unpopular with the great body of
the nation? Because their conduct opposed its interests or inclinations. Was
the House of Commons dependent on the nation ? No ! They were dependent
on their order, on their privileged constituents, who sent them to their chamber,
and who, in their turn, are responsible to no class whatever. If the question of
responsibility be mooted, what satisfaction or increased security to a nation of
many millions is it, that the privileged order of Commons consists of three
hundred thousand, instead of two hundred thousand, or even one hundred
thousand persons? Is a privileged order of three hundred thousand individuals
represented by their deputies, likely to be more responsible than a privileged
order of three hundred individuals appearing by themselves ? On the contrary,
every one sees and feels in an instant, that, as far as the nation is concerned, the
more limited order, who appear for themselves, and are more in the eye of the
world, are in fact in a moral point of view much more responsible to the general
body of the people, than the more numerous and more obscure class., who shuffle
off that moral responsibility on their representatives.
So much for the anomalous irresponsibility of the House of Lords. You

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will perceive, my Lord, that nothing but the two capital blunders prevalent
among the anti-constitutional writers of the present day, namely, in the first
place confounding the representatives of an estate with that estate itself, and
secondly, supposing that their presumed estate was in fact representative of no
less a body than the nation itself, between whom and the House of Commons
there really exists no privity; I repeat, nothing but these two capital blunders
in our profound political instructors, can account for the perverse absurdities of
their lucubrations, or the conceited complacency with which they develop their
ill-seasoned theories.
If the estate of the Peers be not more irresponsible in the exercise of the
power with which it is invested than the estate of the Commons, so also the
qualification by which the Peers exercise their power is in its nature the same as
the qualification by which the Commons exercise their power. If the institution
of hereditary legislators be absurd, I do not see that that of hereditary electors is
less so. If it be absurd to enact that a man in the most elevated and cultivated
class of the community should be born with a right of becoming, at a legal age,
an English legislator, so is it equally absurd to maintain that a man in one of the

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humbler and less educated classes of the community, should be born with the
right of becoming, at a legal age, the nominator of a legislator. Yet the qualification of a majority of the English Commons is hereditary.
So you see, my Lord, it turns out on a little dispassionate examination,
that the " anomalous " institution of the House of Lords is not quite so irregular,
so flagrantly out of rule, so absolutely alien to the genius of our Constitution, as,
were we to place credit in our profound disquisitionists and reformers, we might
oo hastily imagine.
The Lords, it seems, in a legal point of view, are not a jot more irresponsible
than the other limited, and privileged, and purely conventional order of the
State; in a mere moral point of view, indeed, are more amenable to the influence
of public opinion than their obscurer rivals ; while the qualification both of the
Lords and Commons is, to a great amount, identical, and the Commons hold
and enjoy their privileges by the very same odious principle, which frights the
orators of the Crown and Anchor from their propriety, and stimulates the kennel
orators of Westminster and Marylebone, in the enthusiasm of their rhetoric
slang, to denounce the " absurd and anomalous authority of the Lords;" to

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wit, that very same, that odious hereditary principle, which pervades the whole
frame of our society, which has conduced more than any other principle to the
perpetuity of our state, and which at the present day is so greatly abused, and
so little understood.
But although the exposition into which I have entered of the real principles
and the genuine nature of the English Constitution has destroyed for ever, as
far as reason can influence, and truth prevail, the revolutionary objection which
it is now the fashion to urge against the hereditary principle of the second estate
of this kingdom, I am far from wishing to avoid the abstract discussion of the
fitting elements of a senate, in which our modern anti-constitutional writers, the
gentlemen who admire abstract principles, and would build up their political
fabric on a system of pure science, so freely and frequently indulge. And therefore I will at once admit that if I were called upon to construct a Constitution
a priori for this country, of which a senate, or superior chamber, was to be
a constituent part, I am at a loss to conceive where I could obtain more suitable
materials for its construction than in the body of our hereditary Peerage. So
far from considering that there is anything absurd or objectionable in the

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principle of political inheritance,' as a statesman, who wished to study the
perpetuity of his state, it is the very principle of which I should eagerly avail
myself, and to which I should cling. Assuredly I cannot understand how an
efficient senate is to be secured by merely instituting another elective chamber,
the members of which being the deputies of their constituents, must either be
the. echo of the Lower House, or if returned by a different class, the factious
delegates of an envious and hostile section of the community. Would the
difficulty be removed, and the object obtained, by allowing the members of the
senate to be chosen from the body of the Lower House itself? The trial of
strength then would be elevated from the choice of a Speaker, to the election of
a House of Lords. This would indeed be a struggle! What a prize for an
ambitious minister! What a noble quarry for the falcon glance of a keen
opposition! After the division, after the high blood excited by such an
encounter, we might, I think, retire to our homes, and return to our constituents
at once, and leave the victorious party to record their degrees without the
affectation of discussion, and the mockery of control.
What chance do these wild schemes hold out of an effective senate ? But

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would you then cling to your hereditary legislators ? Why not ? But the very
idea of an hereditary legislator is absurd; who ever heard of an hereditary
physician, or an hereditary surgeon, or an hereditary apothecary ? Such an idea
would be absurd; therefore the idea of an hereditary legislator is absurd. Granted,
if legislators be apothecaries. Before we can decide whether the idea of an
hereditary legislator be absurd, we must first ascertain what is meant by-the
word legislator, and what are the public duties of this personage, which we are
about to make a matter of inheritance to his posterity. If by the word legislator,
we mean one of those original and organising minds who occasionally arise to
frame commonwealths, and to mould the minds of nations, I willingly concede
that it would be very absurd to invest such a character with the necessary power
to fulfil his grand objects, and simultaneously to entail the enjoyment of the
same power on his posterity: I freely admit, that it is not very probable that the
entailed legislator, like his sire, would prove either a Moses or a Minos, a Numa
or a Solon, a Saxon Alfred, or a Russian Peter. But at the same time I am
equally of opinion, that it is just as probable that the legislative descendant of
the great legislator would rival his powers, as that a Moses or a Minos, a Numa

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or a Solon, a Saxon Alfred or a Czar Peter should be returned to Parliament
as their representative, by any body of ten pounders in the kingdom. Such
characters are so rare that we do not count upon their force and impulse in
arranging the economy of a State. If the conduct of public affairs depended
upon the constant presence in the commonwealth of scuh characters, the State
would enjoy no quality of duration. It seems, therefore, that we must be
content to require from our legislators a somewhat more moderate portion
of sagacity and science. And the question then naturally arises, what portion ?
Whether in fact the qualities of a legislator in an ancient, and free, and highly
civilized and experienced State, will not be necessarily found among individuals
of average intelligence and high education ; and whether an order of men, who
from their vast possessions, have not only a great, a palpable, and immediate
interest in the welfare of a country, but by ease, and leisure, and freedom from
anxiety, are encouraged to the humanising pursuits of learning and the liberal
love of arts; an order of men who are born honoured, and taught to respect
themselves by the good fame and glory of their ancestors ; who from the womb
to the grave are trained to loathe and recoil from everything that is mean and

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sordid, and whose honour is a more precious possession than their parks and
palaces; the question is, whether an order of men thus set apart in a state,
men refined, serene, and courteous, learned, brave, travelled, charitable, and
magnificent; do not afford the choicest elements of a senate, especially when
they are distinguished from their fellow-citizens by no civil privileges, and the
supreme power in the State has the capacity of adding to their numbers at his
will, any individuals, however humble and plebeian their origin, whose wisdom
will, in his opinion swell the aggregate capacity of their assembly ?
Political institutions must be judged by their results. For nearly five
centuries the hereditary Peerage, as at present constituted, has formed an active
and powerful branch of our legislature. Five centuries of progressive welfare
are good evidence of the efficient polity of the advancing country. No statesman
can doubt that the peculiar character of the hereditary branch of our legislature
has mainly contributed to the stability of our institutions, and to the order and
prosperous security which that stability has produced. Nor can we forget that
the hereditary principle has at all times secured a senate for this country inferio r
in intelligence to no political assembly on record. If we survey the illustriou s

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history of our Parliament since 1688, whether we consider its career in reference
to the patriotic energy that has at all times distinguished its councils, its unceasing
vigilance, its indefatigable industry, its vast and various knowledge, its
courageous firmness, its comprehensive sympathy with all classes of the community, its prescient and imperial ambition, or the luminous and accomplished
eloquence in which its counsels and resolves have been recommended and
expressed; assuredly the hereditary branch of our legislature need not shrink
from a comparison with its elective rival. I do not think, my Lord, that any one
will be bold enough to assert, or if bold enough to assert, skilful enough to
maintain, that the late Reform, which was to open the doors of the House
of Commons to all the unearthed genius of the country, has indicated as yet any
tendency to render this rivalry on the part of the Peers of England a matter of
greater venture. If, in old times, the hereditary Senate has at least equalled in
capacity the elective chamber, no impartial observer at the present day can for a
moment hesitate in declaring, that not only in the higher accomplishments of
statesmen, in elevation of thought and feeling, in learning and in eloquence, does
the hereditary assembly excel the elective; but, in truth, that for those very

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qualities, for the possession of which at first sight we should be most disposed
to give a House of Commons credit, that mastery of detail and management of
complicated common-places, which we style in this country " business-like
habits," the Peers of England are absolutely more distinguished than the
humbler representatives of the third estate.
But the truth is, my Lord, that the practical good sense of this country has
long ago disposed of the question of the principal of hereditary legislation, even
if its defence merely depended on its abstract propriety. . For, if we examine the
elements of the House of Commons with a little attention, we shall soon discover
that hereditary legislators are not confined to the House of Lords, and that the
inclination of the represented to make representation hereditary, is very obvious
and very natural. The representative of a county is selected from one of the
first families in the shire, and ten years after, the son of this member, a candidate
for the same honour, adduces the very circumstance of his succession to his
father as an increased claim upon the confidence of the constituency. Those who
are versed in elections know that there is no plea so common and so popular.
Such elections prove, that far from holding the principle of hereditary legislation

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absurd, public opinion has decided that the duties of an English legislator are
such, as, on an average of human capacity, may descend from sire to son ; and that
while there is nothing to shock their reason in the circumstance, there is much
at the same time to gratify the feelings and please the associations of an
ancient people, who have made inheritance the pervading principle of their social
polity, who are proud of their old families, and fond of their old laws.
The hereditary character of our Peerage must be considered in relation to the
other qualities of that illustrious body. No one competent to form an opinion
upon public affairs can doubt for an instant that whether the nominal honours of
those insignificant personages, who at this present hour meet in the senatorial
chamber of the Luxembourg, devolve upon their posterity or not, the circumstance
one way or the other, can neither increase nor diminish their public and political
authority. The Peers of France are nonentities, and nonentities they have ever
been, as insignificant before the junior French Revolution, as they are after that
bloody riot. If the hereditary principle could not render the French Peerage
more powerful, it is equally true that the intellectual qualifications of its members,
however^ eminent, were equally unproductive of that result. The Chamber of

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Peers in France since the Restoration has numbered amongst its members the
most illustrious warriors, and the most celebrated diplomatists of the kingdom,
the ablest writers of the day, the most distinguished scientific men, marshals,
ambassadors, editors of newspapers, wits, travellers, authors, mathematicians,
chemists : had it been selected by a Westminster Reviewer himself, the Senate
of France could not have consisted of men more qualified to develop and
demonstrate all " the science of legislation." Why then are they so insignificant?
Formed of all the talent of the country, the Chamber has no authority. What
can be the cause ? The hereditary principle, to be sure; the fatal, the absurd,
the anomalous hereditary principle. The hereditary principle is destroyed! Yes,
a revolution is got up to achieve; among other great objects, the destruction of
the fatal, absurd, and anomalous principle of hereditary legislation in the French
Charter; and the French House of Peers in consequence becomes, if possible,
more odious and more contemptible.
It is not then necessarily the hereditary principle which renders the influence
of our House of Lords so injurious to the commonweal; and it is not then a
collection of all the clever men of a country, under the august title of a Senate,
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which necessarily must be productive of good government. The truth is, a
nation will not allow three hundred men, however ingenious, to make laws for
them, because the sovereign power of the state chooses to appoint that such a
number of its subjects shall possess this privilege, and meet in a room to register
their decrees. The King of England may make Peers, but he cannot make a
House of Lords. The order of men, of whom such an assembly is formed, is
the creation of ages. In the first place, they must really be an estate of the
realm, a class of individuals who from their property and personal influence
alone, form an important section of the whole nation. The laws and customs
of England have compensated its Peers for the loss of their feodal splendour.
A strong current of property and influence from the wide ocean of national
prosperity perpetually flows into our House of Lords. They still form the most
eminent class in the State; and, instead of the position of the Peers, at the
present day, bearing a diminished importance, compared with the attitude of the
remaining classes of the community, as the superficial vulgarly imagine, I shall
be surprised that, if the subject be more profoundly inquired into, if the power
and privileges with which the Constitution has invested him be duly considered,

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and the indirect support which he receives from his alliances with the great
Commons, and the aristocratic classes which have sprung up around him, be not
omitted in the estimate, the influence of a great Peer of the present day, a Duke
of Buccleugh, or a Duke of Devonshire, be ascertained to be much inferior to
that of an Earl of Pembroke in the time of John, or an Earl of Leicester in the
reign of his successor. A House of Lords must consist of men whose influence is
not felt merely in their chamber of Parliament. They must be an order of individuals, whose personal importance crosses us in all the transactions of life, and
pervades the remotest nook and corner of the country, an importance also which
we find to arise as much from the hallowed associations, or even the inveterate
prejudices of society, as from their mere public privileges and constitutional
and territorial importance. Their names, office, and character, and the ennobling achievements of their order, must be blended with our history, and bound
up with our hereditary sentiment. They must be felt and recognised as the not
unworthy descendants or successors of a class that has always taken the lead in
civilisation, and formed the advanced guard in the march of national progress.
Vast property, and the complicated duties which great possessions entail upon

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their owners, the inspiring traditions of a heroic history, the legendary respect of
ages, the fair maintenance in the order itself of that civility of manners, that love
of liberal pursuits and that public spirit which become the leaders of a free
people, and a strong conviction in the nation generally that under the constitution of which this order forms a branch, they have flourished for a longer period,
and in a greater degree, than any existing commonwealth,—such are some of
the elements of which a Senate must be formed, that attempts to cope with the
House of Lords of England.
The English nation has thought that there is a greater certainty of securing
a Senate of this high character, by entailing its functions on the most important
order of its members, than by trusting to the periodical selection of any body of
individuals whatsoever. It has supposed that the chance production of its carefully cultivated aristocracy may offer, on the whole, senatorial elements preferable
to the selected materials of popular choice. It has desired that there should be
one portion of its legislature free from the turbulent and overwhelming passions
that occasionally assail the less guarded structure of its more popular assembly;
and to secure all these great purposes, to contrive at the same time, in establish-

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ing this chamber, its power and its perpetuity, its independence and its ability,
it has not comprehended how a more practical system could be adopted than to
establish the hereditary legislation of a democratic Peerage.
This, my Lord, is, I think, one of those cases in which " the wisdom of our
ancestors " has been conspicuous, and the harmony which throughout our history
has on the whole so remarkably subsisted between our two Houses of Parliament,
and the effective manner in which the machinery of our legislature has consequently operated, prove the sound judgment of the national mind, that has
required and sanctioned a Senate thus constituted. So profound, indeed is, and
ever must be, the reciprocal sympathy between the Peers and Commons of
England, that even after the late factious reconstruction of the third estate, a
majority of the representatives of the English Commons upheld the independence
of our august Senate. I ascribe this sympathy to a cause I have before
indicated, to the principle which is the basis of our social fabric, our civil
equality. It is this great principle which has prevented the nobility of England
from degenerating into a favoured and odious sect; it is this great principle
which has placed the Peers at the head of the People, which has surrounded

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them with a popular aristocracy, and filled the chamber of the third estate with
representatives connected with our senators, not only by sympathy of feeling
and similarity of pursuits, but by the most intimate relations of birth and blood.
Again, my Lord, the question of our hereditary Peerage must be viewed in
reference to the state and system of parties in this country. It results from the
system of parties in this country, that both Houses of Parliament are led and
directed by a very few members, and those the most eminent for talents, and
character, and station, in the respective assemblies. Thus the extreme cases,
which the anti-constitutional writers are ever urging of the legislative function
devolving through the medium of an hereditary institution to individuals incompetent to discharge this high office, never, in fact, practically occur. By ranging
himself under one of the political banners of the State, every legislator avails
himself of the intelligence of his leaders; to guide his judgment and form his
opinion, he has the advantage of the finest talents in the country. Thus an
individual, abstractedly very incompetent may become practically very useful,
and thus even a weak brain may assist in passing a wise law.
Thus have we seen, my Lord, that viewed in reference to the complete

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scheme of our legislature, the hereditary principle of the House of Lords, far
from being " anomalous," is in perfect harmony with the constitution of the other
estate of the realm; that if it were as "anomalous" as it is regular and consistent, far from being " absurd," the application of the principle is extremely
rational; and that, inasmuch as it is not either constitutionally " anomalous," or
abstractedly " absurd," its practical results have been such as might have been
anticipated from an institution suited to the genius of the country, in harmony
with all its political establishments, and founded not only on an intimate
acquaintance with the national character, but a profound knowledge of human
nature in general.
In these observations on the character and history of our two Houses of
Parliament, I have already incidentally traced, or referred to, the character and
history of the monarchy. We have seen the Kings of England, in the reigns of
the Plantagenets, exercising a sovereign power, limited however in its use, by the
privileged estates of the kingdom, who, although they held the right of legislation
in its fullest extent, from the imperfect civilisation of the times, assumed, on the
whole, rather the office of powerful councillors of the Sovereign, than that of

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the administrators of the kingdom. We have seen the same King, in the reigns
of the Tudors, an arbitrary monarch. We have witnessed the same King in the
reigns of the Stuarts, engaged in a continual struggle with the reviving, and at length
preponderating, power of the long dormant and paralysed estates. From the
accession of the Prince of Orange, the character of our history changes. The
old contest between prerogative and privilege, between the power of the Crown
and the liberty of the subject ceases for ever, and the war of parties succeeds to
the struggles of Kings and Parliaments.
The English constitution under William the Third, did not secure greater
power and privileges to our Parliament than it possessed under the reign of
Henry the Fourth; but the Lords and great Commons of England had since
that time become the most civilised and highly cultured body in Europe; men
exceeding the superior classes of all nations in learning, eloquence, and public
spirit, in practical skill, and theoretic wisdom. It is not difficult to comprehend
that such a body of men in absolute and unquestioned possession of the legislature, should no longer be content that the Executive and administrative province
of the constitution, with all its pomp and circumstance, should be monopolised

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by a single individual and his personal retainers. Here, then, commences the
age when the influence of the Court rapidly declined, when ministers were
virtually appointed by the Parliament instead of the Sovereign, and when, by the
institution of the Cabinet, the scheme and policy of the administration devolved
upon a parliamentary committee, and the King was, in fact, excluded from his
own council.
If it be perhaps too strong an expression to say that William the. Third was
called to the throne by the voice of the whole nation, it is certain that the
whole nation ratified the abdication of James the Second. Whig and Tory,
Churchman and Dissenter, had alike required, and alike assisted in, his expulsion.
When the excitement of this great event had a little subsided, when the rights
and liberties of the nation had been secured by its Parliament, the leaders of the
Whigs, including many of the most powerful and ancient families of the kingdom, commenced a favourite scheme of that party, which was to reduce the
King of England to the situation of a Venetian Doge. But William the Third,
like Louis Philippe, was resolved to be his own minister, and it is not very easy
to comprehend how in a perilous and revolutionary period, a sovereign of great

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capacity will consent to be deprived of the benefit of his own sagacity. The
Whigs, therefore, were obliged to postpone until a more favourable opportunity,
the series of measures by which their great result was to be obtained; and for
the present indicated their spleen, by opposing the Sovereign, to whom certainly
that party had originally attracted the attention of the English nation. Bat
William, whose administrative talents were of a high order, succeeded, by his
adroit balance of parties, in keeping the Whigs in check; and throughout his
reign in maintaining his authority.
The reign of Anne, which proved that the reign of a Stuart might at the
same time be glorious, Protestant, and prosperous, completely unsettled the
public mind of England, and made nine-tenths of the people yearn after the
lost dynasty of their native sovereigns. The leaders of both parties were in
secret communication with St. Germains, and one circumstance alone prevented
the son of James the Second from regaining the throne of his ancestors—his
absolute incompetence. The Pretender was an incapable bigot, totally devoid
of that talent, which in some degree had always characterized his family.
. The Hanoverian accession was secured by the bold conduct of the Dukes

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of Somerset and Argyle. These great Whig Peers had the hardihood to attend a
privy council, without being summoned, while the Queen was lying in a state
almost of lethargy, and absolutely forced her Majesty to appoint the Duke of
Shrewsbury Lord Treasurer. This is one of the most dramatic scenes in our
political history: the unexpected arrival of the two Dukes, the Queen's desperate
state, Bolingbroke's baffled hopes, the troops summoned to London, the heralds
kept in waiting with a company of guards to proclaim the new King the moment
the throne was vacant. The Elector of Hanover ascended the throne of England
by the sufferance, rather than the consent, of the nation. Unsupported by the
mass of the people, ignorant of our language, phlegmatic in temperament, George
the First entirely depended upon the Whig Peers, and the Whig Peers resolved
to compensate themselves for the disappointment they had experienced under
William the Third. They at once established the Cabinet on its present basis.
It is curious to trace the kingly office from the era of the Plantagenets, when the
characters of a royal council and a legislative chamber were so blended together
in the House of Lords, that the monarch always presided over his Parliament,
to the moment when the sovereign under the Brunswicks was virtually excluded

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from his own council. Having thus by the establishment of the Cabinet
obtained in a great degree the executive power of the State, the Whig Peers
ventured to propose a measure in order to consolidate and confirm their strength,
which is perhaps unequalled by any of the machinations of a party so remarkable
in all periods of our history for the unscrupulous means with which they satisfy
their lust of power. This measure was the famous Peerage Bill, proposed and
supported in the House of Lords by those very Dukes of Somerset and Argyle,
who had forced a Queen to appoint a prime minister on her death-bed. This
Bill, if passed into a law, would have deprived the King of his prerogative of
making further Peers, and would have occasioned a virtual revolution in our
government, which from that moment would have become oligarchical. George
the First assented to the Bill, and the House of Lords passed it; but the Tory
country gentlemen in the House of Commons, aided on this occasion by some
unusual allies, succeeded in rejecting the measure. The Peerage Bill, my
Lord, made as much noise in its day, as the Reform Bill in our own. There
was as great a "crisis," as vehement a "collision" in 1718, as any we have lately
witnessed stalking about in their lions' skins; and the press teemed then with

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more pamphlets about " the Lords " than even at this hour, when every briefless
barrister smells out that the surest road to a commissionership or other base job,
is to denounce that House of Parliament which will not truckle to a rapacious
and unprincipled, faction. The Whigs in 1718 sought to govern the country
by "swamping " the House of Commons: in 1835 lt 1S t n e House of Lords that
is to be " swamped." In 1718 the coup d'etat was to prevent any further increase
of the Lords; in 1835 the Lords are to be outnumbered. Different tactics to
obtain the same purpose; and the variance to be accounted for by the simple
circumstance that the party which has recourse to these desperate expedients,
is not a national party influenced by any great and avowed principles of public
policy and conduct, but a small knot of great families, who have no other object
but their own aggrandisement, and who seek to gratify it by all possible
means.
Although the House of Commons, supported by a roused and indignant
nation, rejected the Peerage Bill, still the power of the Whig aristocracy, increased
by the Septennial Act, was so considerable that they monopolised the administration of this realm for upwards of half a century. George the Second, indeed,

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struggled for a time against these Venetian magnificoes, but when he found
himself forced to resign his favourite minister, the brilliant Carteret, to the
demands of the Pelhams and their well-organized connections, the King gave up
the effort in despair. It was the clear sense and the strong- spirit of his able
grandson that emancipated this country from the government of " the great
families." The King put himself at the head of the nation; and, encouraged
by the example of a popular monarch in George the Third, and a democratic
minister in Mr. Pitt, the nation elevated to power the Tory, or national party of
England, under whose comprehensive and consistent, vigorous and strictly
democratic system, this island has become the metropolis of a mighty empire, its
Sovereign at the same time the most powerful and its people the most free, and
second to no, existing nation in arts or arms, in internal prosperity, or exterior
splendour.
There is no political subject, my Lord, on which a greater confusion of
ideas exists, and none on which it is more desirable that we should possess very
accurate conceptions, than respecting the nature and character of the two great
political parties in which England, for the last century and a half, has been

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divided—the WHIGS "and the TORIES. The people of England in the reign of
George the First formed a community as distinguished for their public spirit as
any people with which we are acquainted. How happened it then that ninetenths of the nation were the avowed admirers of arbitrary power, of the divine
right of kings, of the doctrine of non-resistance, and of the duties of passive
obedience? How came it that the upholders of this servile creed, instead of
imbibing it from the Court, maintained it in defiance of the Court? How
happened it that the supporters of the Court themselves were the avowed
admirers of the most popular opinions, of the sovereignty of the people, of the
right and duty of resistance, of toleration, and of the cause of civil and religious
liberty? How came it that the upholders of these popular opinions, instead of
adopting them to flatter the bulk of the people, maintained them in defiance of
the people? And, lastly, how came it that while the professors of arbitrary
opinions exhibited on every great occasion an unquestioned and undisguised
love of freedom and their rights, and expelled from the throne the sovereign
who menaced them, the professors of popular opinions, on the other hand,
seized every opportunity of curtailing popular power and abridging popular

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privileges, introduced a Peerage Bill in the House of Lords, carried a Septennial Act in the House of Commons, and finally organized a system of
political corruption throughout the Parliament and the country, from the taint of
which, it is not too much to assert, the national character has never absolutely
recovered ?
The consequences of the Great Rebellion, parliamentary tyranny, and
sectarian fanaticism, had occasioned in due season a strong re-action throughout
the country in favour of the Crown and the Church. Gradually there developed
themselves two sections of the nation respectively hostile to one of these
institutions—sections connected together by no other similarity of feeling or
situation, yet finally co-operating for the purpose of reciprocal assistance in sin
united attack upon the Monarchy and the Establishment: these were a powerful,
party of the Lords and the Non-conformists. A republican feeling united the
haughtiest of the Peers with the lowest of the Puritans; but the republican
model of the House of Russell was Venice; of their plebeian allies, Geneva.
The Peers, to reduce the power of the Crown, now supported by the great
majority of the nation, called in the aid of the Puritans, and to obtain the aid of

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the Puritans attacked the Church : the Puritans, to insure the destruction of the
religious establishment, allied themselves with the Peers in their assault upon the
King, whose office, apart from the ecclesiastical polity, they were inclined to respect,
and even to reverence. The Puritans headed by the Peers formed a small
minority of the nation, but at the same time a party formidable from their
leaders and their organization, for the Non-conformists abounded in the
metropolis, and were chiefly resident in towns. Their cry was, Civil and
Religious Freedom—that is, a doge and no bishops: advocating the liberty of
the subject, the Peers would have established an oligarchy; upholding toleration,
the Puritans aimed at supremacy. This is the origin of the Whig party in our
country.
The mass of the nation still smarting under the sequestrations and imprisonments of parliamentary committees, and loathing the recollection of the fanaticism
and the hypocrisy of the Roundhead apostles of the tub, clung to the national
institutions. The clergy, jealous of the Non-conformists, and fearful of another
deprivation, exaggerated the power and character of the Crown, in which they
recognised their only safeguard. Hence divine right and passive obedience
N

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resounded from our Protestant pulpits, echoed with enthusiasm by a free and
spirited people who acknowledged in these phrases only a determination to
maintain the mild authority of their King and of their Church. This is the
origin of the Tory party in our country.
On the one hand civil and religious liberty; on the other, divine right and
passive obedience; both mere phrases, both the sheer cries of a party, both the.
mystifying pretexts that concealed a pregnant cause. The avowed upholders of
divine rights and passive obedience, headed by the national clergy that promulgated these doctrines, were the first to expel the sovereign who aimed at their
rights and liberties; the avowed advocates of civil and religious freedom, when
they finally obtained power, hazarded a blow at the only foundation of freedom,
the equality of civil rights, " swamped " the House of Commons by the Septennial Act, and nearly concentrated the whole powers of the State in the House of
Lords by the Peerage Bill.
It was the intention of the Whigs to have raised the Prince of Orange to
the throne by the aid of a cabal. By this means the Sovereign would have been
in their power, and they could have realized the object at which they had been

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long aiming. The insurrection of the Tories or the national party against James
frustrated this project: the movement became national, and the settlement,
instead of being factious, was patriotic. The powerful capacity of William I I I .
was not content with the limited authority destined for him: he encouraged the
Tories, he balanced parties, and he maintained his throne with all the artifices of
a practised politician. The reign of Anne, a Stuart, yet strictly Protestant and
eminently prosperous, broke up in a great degree the strong lines of political
demarcation, and occasioned the blending of parties. In spite of the Act of
Settlement, the whole nation was prepared for the restoration of the ancient line;
Whigs and Tories alike corresponded with St. Qermains, and served together in
the same administration at home. So weak was the tie of party in this reign, that
it was not then considered a point of political honour to resign your* post on a
change of administration which substituted a prime minister of different opinions
to.your own, and to those through whose influence you had yourself acceded to
office.
The Whigs secured the Hanoverian succession by a coup d'etat. But when
the nation had recovered from its surprise, the rage of parties increased to a

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degree unprecedented in our history, and that formal and organized division of
public men occurred which has ever since been observed in the world of politics.
The dislike of the Tories to the new dynasty was, if possible, aggravated by the
conviction of the impolicy of recalling the old. The truly Protestant spirit of
England forbade such a recourse. The House of Brunswick was supported by
the great Whig families, the Non-conformists, and what was then for the first
time called " the money interest," the fungus spawn of public loans, who began
to elbow the country-gentlemen, and beat them out of the representation of their
boroughs by the long purses of a Plutocracy. The rest of the nation, that is to
say, nine-tenths of the people of England, formed the Tory party, the landed
proprietors and peasantry of the kingdom, headed by a spirited and popular
Church, and looking to the kingly power in the abstract, though not to the
reigning king, as their only protection from an impending oligarchy. The Whig
party has ever been odious to the English people, and in spite of all their devices
and combinations it may ever be observed, that in the long run, the English
nation declares against them. Even now, after their recent and most comprehensive coup d'etat, they are only maintained in power by the votes of the Irish

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and the Scotch members. The reason of this is, that the Whigs are an antinational party. In order to accomplish their object of establishing an oligarchical
republic, arid of concentrating the government of the state in the hands of a few
great families, the Whigs are compelled to declare war against all those great
national institutions, the power and influence of which, present obstacles to the
fulfilment of their purpose. It is these institutions which make us a nation.
Without our Crown, our Church, our Universities, our great municipal and
commercial Corporations, our Magistracy, and its dependent scheme of provincial
polity, the inhabitants of England, instead of being a nation, would present only
a mass of individuals governed by a metropolis, whence an arbitrary senate would
issue the stern decrees of its harsh and heartless despotism. A class of the
subjects, indeed, might still possess the fruitless privilege of electing its repre
sentatives in Parliament, but without any machinery to foster public spirit and
maintain popular power, the whole land a prey to the most degrading equality,
the equality that levels, not the equality that elevates, we should soon see these
mock representatives the mere nominees of a Praefect, and the very first to tamper
with our privileges and barter away our freedom. In such a state of society, a

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state of society which France has accomplished, and to which the Whigs are
hurrying us, no public avenues to wealth and honour would subsist save through
the government. To that government all the ambition and aspirations, all the
talent and the energy of the subject would be devoted; and from the harsh seat
of the provincial governor, to the vile office of the provincial spy, every place
would be filled by the ablest and most unprincipled of a corrupted people.
The Tory party in.this country is the national party; it is the really democratic party of England, It supports the institutions of the country, because
they have been established for the common good, and because they secure the
equality of civil rights, without which, whatever may be its name, no government
can be free, and based upon which principle, every government, however it may
be styled, is, in fact, a Democracy. The Whig leaders at the commencement of
the last century, men of consummate ability and great experience in affairs, were
not blind to the advantage which might be obtained by enlarging on the apparent
unpopular character of Tory tenets. In the reign of George the First, both parties
in their eagerness had recourse to their old cries, without reflecting that the circumstances of their respective positions had considerably changed; that the advocates

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of enlarged and comprehensive freedom were now -attempting to establish an
oligarchy on the ruins of the national institutions, and that the votaries of divine
right and passive obedience were prepared to rebel against the Sovereign whose
authority, by the original Act of Settlement, they themselves had mainly contributed to establish. However inconsistent might be the practice and the professions of the respective parties, it was obvious that, in the mutual misrepresentations, the Whigs had the advantage. An oligarchy sought to establish itself by
the plea of public freedom; a nation struggled to maintain its rights on the
principles of arbitrary power. This was, indeed, a false position; yet so
clear-sighted was the people of England, and so apt to distinguish their cause
from their pretext, that its inconvenience was for a long time unfelt, and in the
preceding reign the nation had sympathized with the triumph of Sacheverell, and
ridiculed the false pretensions of the Whigs to the advocacy and trusteeship of
the popular cause.
When, however, the Tory party, that is, the English nation, had announced all
hope or wish for the restoration of their native sovereigns; when, in their Protestant
feeling, they have taught themselves to look upon the establishment of the

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Hanoverian succession as indispensable to the maintenance of their liberties, and
had thus authorized and ratified, without redress or appeal, the very political
opinions which they had hitherto opposed, the inconvenience became more
apparent. There are periods when the titles and watchwords of political parties
become obsolete; and when, by adhering to an ancient and accustomed cry,' a
party often appears to profess opinions less popular than it really practises, and
yields a proportionate advantage to its more dexterous competitor. In times of
great political change, and rapid political transition, it will generally be observed
that political parties find it convenient to re-baptize themselves. Thus, in the
present day, Whigs have become Reformers, and Tories Conservatives. In the
early part of the last century, the Tory party required a similar re-organization
to that which it has lately undergone; and as it is in the nature of human affairs
that the individual that is required shall not long be wanting, so in the season of
which I am treating, arose a man remarkable in an illustrious age, who, with the
splendor of an organizing genius, settled the confused and discordant materials
of English faction, and reduced them into a clear and systematic order. This
was Lord Bolingbroke.,

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Gifted with that fiery imagination, the teeming fertility of whose inventive
resources is as necessary to a great statesman or a great general, as to a great
poet, the ablest writer and the most accomplished orator of his age, that rare
union that in a country of free parliaments and a free press, insures to its
possessor the privilege of exercising a constant influence over the mind of his
country, that rare union that has rendered Burke so memorable; blending with
that intuitive knowledge of his race which creative minds alone enjoy, all the
wisdom which can be derived from literature, and a comprehensive experience
of human affairs;—no one was better qualified to be the minister of a free and
powerful nation than Henry St. J o h n ; and Destiny at first appeared to combine
with Nature in the^ elevation of his fortunes. Opposed to the Whigs from
principle, for an oligarchy is hostile to genius, and recoiling from the Tory tenets,
which his unprejudiced and vigorous mind taught him at the same time to dread
and to contemn, Lord Bolingbroke, at the outset of his career, incurred the
common-place imputation of insincerity and inconsistency, because in an age of
unsettled parties with professions contradictory of their conduct, he maintained
that vigilant and meditative independence which is the privilege of an original

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and determined spirit. It is probable that in the earlier years of his career he
meditated over the formation of a new party, that dream of youthful ambition in
a perplexed and discordant age, but destined in English politics to be never more
substantial than a vision. More experienced in political life, he became aware
that he had only to choose between the Whigs and the Tories, and his sagacious
intellect not satisfied with the superficial character of these celebrated divisions,
penetrated their interior and essential qualities, and discovered, in spite of all the
affectation of popular sympathy on one side, and of admiration of arbitrary
power on the other, that this choice was in fact a choice between oligarchy and
democracy. From the moment that Lord Bolingbroke, in becoming a Tory,
embraced the national cause, he devoted himself absolutely to his party: all the
energies of his Protean mind were lavished in their service; and although the
ignoble prudence of the Whig minister restrained him from advocating the cause
of the nation in the senate, it was his inspiring pen that made Walpole tremble
in the recesses of the Treasury, and in a series of writings, unequalled in our
literature for their spirited patriotism, their just and profound views, and the
golden eloquence in which they are expressed, eradicated from Toryism all

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those absurd and odious doctrines which Toryism had adventitiously adopted,
clearly developed its essential and permanent character, discarded jure divino,
demolished passive obedience, threw to the winds the doctrine of non-resistance,
placed the abolition of James and the accession of George on their right basis,
and in the complete re-organization of the public mind, laid the foundation for
the future accession of the Tory party to power, and to that popular and
triumphant career which must ever await the policy of an administration inspired
by the spirit of our free and ancient institutions.
Upwards of a century has elapsed since the Whigs, by a series of coups d'etat^
attempted to transform the English constitution into an oligarchy. George the
Third routed the Whigs; but had their India Bill been more fortunate than their
Peerage Bill, all the energy of that spirited sovereign would have been fruitless.
Stung to the quick by their long and merited exclusion from power, the Whigs
are now playing the same great game which was partially successful at the
commencement of the last century. They have again formed a close and open
alliance with the Dissenters, and again declared war against the national institutions. Instead of " swamping " the Tory House of Commons by a Septennial

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Act, they have moulded it to their use and fancy by a re-construction, which has
secured a preponderating influence to their sectarian allies: instead of restricting
the royal prerogative in the creation" of Peers, they have counselled its prodigal
exercise ; but before they had only to confirm their power in the House of Lords,
now they have to create their power. They boast that they hold the King in
duresse^ and probably their boast is not ill-founded, but let us hope that our
gracious sovereign may take warning from the first of his house that ruled these
realms, and follow the example of George the Third rather than George the
First. The House of Commons remodelled, the House of Lords menaced, the
King unconstitutionally controlled, the Church is next attacked, then the
Corporations, and they do not conceal that the Magistracy is to be the next
victim': and the nation is thus mangled and torn to pieces, its most sacred
feelings outraged, its most important interests destroyed, by a miserable minority
arrogating to themselves the bewildering title of "the People," and achieving all
this misery and misfortune, all this havoc and degradation in the sacred name of
liberty, and under the impudent pretence of advancing the great cause of popular
amelioration, and securing the common good and general happiness. My Lord,
the Whigs invoke ." the people," let us appeal to the nation.

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Mark these friends of " the people " installed in power. What are their great
measures? The Poor Law Bill and the projected disfranchisement of all the
freemen of England. Is this their service to the "• people ? " Are these their
measures of popular amelioration ? Is this their scheme to secure the happiness
and increase the power of " the people ? " Who does not in an instant detect
that "the people" of the Whigs, is that part of the constituency or commons of
England who yield them the advantage of their suffrages? Now, at the last
general election, warm as was the contest, there were not more, I doubt whether
as many, than one hundred andfiftythousand votes polled in favour of the Whigs.
And this, too,,after they had remodelled the third estate with a mere view to the
consolidation of their own interest. So then " the people " of the Whigs is about
one hundred and fifty thousand persons, and of these too the great majority
sectarians, a class necessarily hostile to our constitution, and long excluded by
the nation from the exercise of political power for that very reason. It might
have been very odious, it might have been very illiberal, it might have been very
unwise to exclude the Dissenters from the exercise of political power; but is it
less odious, is it more liberal, is it wiser to carry on the government of the State
by the aid of the Dissenters alone ?

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If the Whigs at this moment be pursuing the same desperate and determined
policy that they prosecuted so vigorously a century back, it will be well for their
rivals to adopt the same cautious yet energetic system of conduct which,
developed at the same period by the genius of a Bolingbroke, led in due season
to the administration of a Pitt. In the conduct of the Tory party at this moment,
it appears to me, that there are three points to the furtherance of which we should
principally apply ourselves : 1st. That the real character and nature of Toryism
should be generally and clearly comprehended : 2ndly. That Toryism should be
divested of all those qualities which are adventitious and not essential, and which
having been produced by that course of circumstances which are constantly
changing, become in time obsolete, inconvenient, and by the dexterous misrepresentation of our opponents even odious : 3rdly. That the efficient organization
of the party should be secured and maintained.
The necessity of the third point has already been anticipated by the party;
but they have blundered in the second, and totally neglected the first.
Toryism, or the policy of the Tories, being the proposed or practised
embodification, as the case may be, of the national will and character, it follows

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that Toryism must occasionally represent and reflect the passions and prejudices
of the nation, as well as its purer energies, and its more enlarged and philosophic
views. In a perilous age of war and revolution, throughout the most terrible
struggle of modern history, the destiny of England was regulated by the Tories.
They carried us through the sharp and flaming ordeal to transcendent triumph
and unparalleled prosperity. A factious and anti-national opposition, who
predicted our discomfiture in every engagement, and exaggerated and extolled
on every occasion the power and pre-eminence of our foe, raised a cry of
corruption against the Tories during this mighty contest, because in the creation
of our colonial empire immense establishments were necessarily raised, the details
of which in the desperate heat of war could not be severely scanned; raised a
cry of enmity to improvement against the Tories during this mighty contest,
because they opposed any examination or remodelling of our ancient institutions
and domestic polity, at a time when all the attention and energies of the nation
and its rulers should be devoted to their foreign enemy, the most terrible for his
power, his resources, his talents, and his activity, which England had ever
encountered : raised a cry of narrow-minded bigotry and hostility to civil and

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religious liberty against the Tories during this mighty contest, because at such a
moment they refused to sanction extensive alterations in the constitution of the
country, and declined the responsibility of entrusting, at a season ill-suited for
experiments, new classes of their fellow-subjects with the exercise of political
power. Corruption, bigotry, hostility to all improvement—these were the false
cries raised by the Whigs against the national party during the immortal struggle
between Toryism and Napoleon. Yet were the Tories advocates of corruption
when they introduced a bill into the House of Commons for the banishment of
all placemen from that assembly, and denounced Walpole ? Were the Tories
hostile to civil and religious liberty when they crushed the Papacy, opposed a
standing army, cherished free elections, upheld short Parliaments? Were the
Tories inimical to national improvement when under Pitt they first applied
philosophy to commerce, and science to finance; when under their auspices
the most severe retrenchment was practised in every department of the public
expenditure ; when a bill for the Commutation of Tithes was not. only planned
but printed; and when nothing but .the violence of the French Revolution
prevented the adoption of a matured scheme of Ecclesiastical Reform, which

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.

193

would not have left our revolutionary oligarchs a single pretext to veil their
present plundering purpose? Why ! the cry of Parliamentary Reform was first
raised by a Tory minister, struggling against the bigoted and corrupt authority of
the Whig oligarchy; and it was not until the united efforts of the sovereign, the
minister, and the nation, succeeded in piercing the serried ranks of the antinational faction, that the Whigs, alarmed at the Tories beginning, by their
acquisitions, to neutralize the only ill-effects of the close borough system,
borrowed the watchword of their patriotic opponents, became friends of " the
People" and Parliamentary Reformers. Corruption, bigotry, hostility to improvement, may be but other names for the just and decent influence of a
vigorous government, a determination to uphold the religious establishment of
the country, and a resolution to oppose the crude and indigested schemes of
adventurous charlatans. However this may be, it is sufficient for me to show
that the qualities popularly associated with these titles, are not peculiar to Toryism,
that they form no essential portion of that national policy, and that when from
the course of circumstances they have been temporarily adopted by the Tories in
power, it has been in deference to the national voice, of which Toryism is the
o

194

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CONSTITUTION.

echo; for we must not forget that the war, and all its concomitant expenditure,
was heartily sanctioned by the English nation, and that that sagacious community, discountenanced with an almost unanimous expression any experimental
tampering with our civil or religious establishments, or the general scheme of
our domestic polity, during the war of the Revolution.
When that war terminated, the alleged advocates of " corruption " pursued
so vigorous a system of retrenchment, that when their rivals entered office,
pledged to such marvels of financial regeneration, they were absolutely baffled
to surpass their misrepresented predecessors; the opposers of "national improvement " reformed our criminal code, revised our currency, remodelled our
commercial system; the enemies of civil and religious freedom relieved the
Dissenters, and emancipated the Papists. Far from being corrupt, far from
cherishing abuses, far from withstanding improvement, and upholding a system
of exclusive bigotry, we know now, and we know it too well, that Toryism had
unwisely weakened the indispensable influence of government, that it indulged
in a dangerous liberality, in a fallacious conciliation, in fantastic empiricism, and
unnecessary concession.

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION

195

But this was not the fault of the Tory leaders ; it was the fault of the party—
of Toryism—of the nation. The triumph of the national party at the peace of
Paris over their anti-English opponents, was so complete, that they fancied, in the
fulness of their pride, that all future competition was impossible, so the Tories
became merciful and condescendingly lenient. Conciliation was the national
motto from the Parliament 'to the Vestry, and Conciliation conducted us in due
time to a Revolution. The supineness of the nation forced the Tory leaders to
yield much of which they disapproved. At length the reconstruction of the
third estate was demanded, and of such a change, the Tory leaders would not
incur the responsibility. The old Whig party took advantage of the dissensions
which it had deeply sown and sedulously watched, and appeared again upon the
public stage to play the old game of a century back, with their mouths full of
the People, Reform, and Liberty, and their portfolio^ bursting with oligarchical
coups d'etat.
The English nation has now recovered its senses, and Toryism has resumed
its old healthy complexion. The social power of a national party can never be
destroyed, but a state trick may terribly curtail its political power. So it is with

196

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CONSTITUTION.

the Tories. I do not think there ever was a period in our history when the
English nation was so intensely Tory in feeling as at the present moment; but
the Reform act has placed the power of the country in the hands of a small body
of persons hostile to the nation, and therefore there is no due proportion
between the social and the political power of the national party.
If, in confirmation of the argument which I have been pursuing, I appeal to
the measures brought forward by Sir Robert Peel and the Cabinet, in which
your Lordship held the Great Seal of England, as evidence that the Tories are
not opposed to measures of political amelioration, I shall perhaps be met with
that famous dilemma of insincerity or apostasy which was urged during the last
general election on the Whig hustings, with an air of irrefutable triumph, which,
had it been better grounded, had been less amusing. I will grant that Sir
Robert Peel and his colleagues had previously resisted the measures which they
then proposed. But, in the interval, the third estate of the realm had been
reconstructed, and a preponderating influence had been given to a small class
who would not support any ministry unprepared to carry such measures. If
once the Tories admitted that it was impossible for them to propose the adoption

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION

197

of these measures they simultaneously admitted that they could never again
exercise power; they conceded to the Whigs a monopoly of power, under the
specious title of a monopoly of Reform ; and the oligarchy against which we had
so long struggled would finally have been established. Was this the duty of Sir
Robert Peel and his colleagues? If they had held it to be such, the nation
would have rejected them for its leaders. The nation, struggling with a sect,
menaced by an insolent minority of its members, recognised the absolute
necessity of such concessions on the part of its leaders, as would deprive this
hostile and privileged minority of every just or plausible ground of opposition to
the national will. The determination of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues to
carry these measures has already shaken the oligarchy to its centre; it has forced
it, only four years after having reconstructed the third estate for its purposes, to
rely upon the treasonable support of a foreign priesthood; and it has prepared the
way for the regeneration of the national character. This great deed therefore,
instead of being an act of insincerity, or apostasy, was conceived in good faith,
and in perfect harmony with the previous policy of the party: it was at the same

198

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CONSTITUTION.

time indispensable, and urged alike by the national voice and the national
interests, and history will record it as the conduct of patriotic wisdom.
I think, my Lord, that I have now shown how unjust are those, and how
liable to error, who form their opinion of Toryism from those accidental qualities
which are inseparable from all political parties that have been long in power, and
have exercised that prolonged authority under circumstances of extreme difficulty
and danger. And it is curious to observe, that so difficult is it to destroy the
original character and eradicate the first principles of human affairs, that those
very members of the Tory party who were loudest in upbraiding the Whig Reform
Act as a democratic measure, were simultaneously, and have ever since been,
urging and prosecuting measures infinitely more democratic than that cunning
oligarchical device. However irresistible may be the social power of the Tory
party, their political power, since 1831, has only been preserved and maintained
by a series of democratic measures of the greatest importance and most comprehensive character. No sooner was the passing of the Whig Reform Act
inevitable, than the Tories introduced a clause into it which added many
thousand members to the estate of the Commons. No sooner was the Whig

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION

199

Reform Act passed, and circumstances had proved that with all their machinations, the oligarchy was not yet secure, than the Whigs, under the pretence of
reforming the corporations, attempted to compensate themselves for the democratic increase of the third estate, through the Chandos clause, by the political
destruction of all the freemen of England; but the Tories again stepped in to
the rescue of the nation from the oligarchy, and now preserved the rights of
eighty thousand members of the third estate. And not content with adding
many thousands to its numbers, and preserving eighty thousand, the Tories, ever
since the passing of the oligarchical Reform Act of the Whigs, have organized
societies throughout the country for the great democratic purpose of increasing
to the utmost possible extent the numbers of the third estate of the realm. The
clause of Lord Chandos, your Lordship's triumphant defence of the freemen of
England, and the last Registration, are three great democratic movements, and
quite in keeping with the original and genuine character of Toryism.
If we take a superficial view of the nature of the English constitution, we
shall perceive that the government of the country is carried on by a king and two
limited orders of his subjects: but if we indulge in a more profound and com-

2oo

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CONSTITUTION

prehensive survey—if we examine not only the political constitution, but the
political condition of the country, we shall in truth discover that the state of our
society is that of a complete democracy, headed by an hereditary chief, the executive
and legislative functions performed by two privileged classes of the community,
but the whole body of the nation entitled, if duly qualified, to participate in
the exercise of those functions, and constantly participating in them.
The basis of English society is Equality. But here let us distinguish : there
are two kinds of equality; there is the equality that levels and destroys, and the
equality that elevates and creates. It is this last, this sublime, this celestial
equality, that animates the laws of England. The principle of the first equality,
base, terrestrial, Gallic, and grovelling, is that no one should be privileged; the
principle of English equality is that every one should be privileged. Thus the
meanest subject of our King is born to great and important privileges; an
Englishman, however humble may be his birth, whether he be doomed to the
plough or destined to the loom, is born to the noblest of all inheritances, the
equality of civil rights; he is born to freedom, he is born to justice, and he
is born to property. There is no station to which he may not aspire; there is no

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201

master whom he is obliged to serve; there is no magistrate who dares imprison
him against the law; and the soil on which he labours must supply him with an
honest and decorous maintenance. These are rights and privileges as valuable
as King, Lords, and Commons; and it is only a nation thus schooled and cradled
in the principles and practice of freedom, which, indeed, could maintain such
institutions. Thus the English in politics are as the old Hebrews in religion, "a
favoured and peculiar people." As Equality is the basis,'so Gradation is the
superstructure; and the English nation is essentially a nation of classes, but not
of castes. Hence that admirable order, which is the characteristic of our society;
for in England every man knows or finds his place; the law has supplied every
man with a position, and nature has a liberal charter to amend the arrangement
of the law. Our equality is the safety valve of tumultuous spirits ; our gradation
the security of the humble and the meek. The latter take refuge in their order;
the former seek relief in emancipating themselves from its rank. English equality
calls upon the subject to aspire; French equality summons him to abase himself.
In England the subject is invited to become an object of admiration or respect;
in France he is warned lest he become an object of envy or of ridicule. The law

202

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CONSTITUTION

of England has invested the subject with equality in order that if entitled to
eminence, he should rise superior to the mass. The law of France has invested
the subject with equality, on condition that he prevent the elevation of his fellow.
English equality blends every man's ambition with the perpetuity of the state;
French equality, which has reduced the subject into a mere individual, has
degraded the state into a mere society. English equality governs the subject by
the united and mingled influences of reason and imagination; French equality
having rejected imagination and aspiring to reason, has in reality, only resolved
itself into a barren fantasy. The constitution of England is founded not only on
a profound knowledge of human nature, but of human nature in England;. the
political scheme of France originates riot only in a profound ignorance of human
nature in general, but of French human nature in particular: thus in England,
however vast and violent may be our revolutions, the Constitution ever becomes
more firm and vigorous, while in France a riot oversets the government, and after
half a century of political experiments, one of the most intellectual of human
races has succeeded in losing every attribute of a nation, and has sought refuge
from anarchy in a despotism without lustre, which contradicts all its theories, and
violates all the principles for which it has ever affected to struggle.

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CONSTITUTION

The English nation, to obtain the convenience of monarchy, have
established a popular throne, and to enjoy the security of aristocracy, have
invested certain orders of their fellow subjects with legislative functions : but
these estates, however highly privileged, are invested with no quality of exclu^
sion; and the Peers and the Commons of England are the trustees of the
nation, not its masters. The country where the legislative and even the
executive office may be constitutionally obtained by every subject of the land,
is a democracy, and a democracy of the noblest character. If neither ancient
ages, nor the more recent experience of our newer time, can supply us with a
parallel instance of a free government, founded on the broadest basis of popular
rights, yet combining with democratic liberty, aristocratic security, and
monarchical convenience; if the refined spirit of Greece, if the great Roman
soul, if the brilliant genius of feodal Italy, alike failed in realizing this great
result, let us cling with increased devotion to the matchless creation of our
ancestors; and honour with still deeper feelings of gratitude and veneration, the
English Constitution. That Constitution, my Lord, established civil equality in
a rude age, and anticipated by centuries, in its beneficent practice, the sublime

204

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CONSTITUTION.

theories of modern philosophy: having made us equal, it has kept us free. If
it have united equality with freedom, so also has it connected freedom with
glory. It has established an empire which combines the durability of Rome
with the adventure of Carthage. It has, at the same time, secured us the most
skilful agriculture, the most extended commerce, the most ingenious manufactures, victorious armies, and invincible fleets. Nor has the intellectual might of
England, under its fostering auspices, been less distinguished than its imperial
spirit, its manly heart, or its national energy. The authors of England have
formed the mind of Europe, and stamped the breathing impression of their
genius on the vigorous character of anew world. Under that Constitution the
•administration of justice has become so pure, that its exercise has realized the
dreams of some Utopian romance. That Constitution has struggled successfully
with the Papacy, and finally, and for the first time, proved the compatibility of
sectarian toleration and national orthodoxy. It has made private ambition
conducive to public welfare, it has baffled the machinations of factions and of
parties, and when those more violent convulsions have arisen, from whose
periodic visitations no human institutions can be exempt, the English Constitu-

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CONSTITUTION

tion have survived the moral earthquake, and outlived the mental hurricane, and
been sedulous that the natural course of our prosperity should only be disturbed,
and not destroyed. Finally, it has secured for every man the career to which
he is adapted, and the reward to which he is entitled; it has summoned your
Lordship to preside over Courts and Parliaments, to maintain law by learning,
and to recommend wisdom by eloquence: and it has secured to me, in common
with every subject of this realm, a right, the enjoyment of which I would not
exchange even for—
" The ermined stole,
The starry breast, and coroneted brow "—

the right of expressing my free thoughts to a free people.

THE

END.

APPENDIX.
r

THE

late Lord Lytton was, as is well known, addicted to the study of the occult
sciences, with results which, in some instances, were rather startling. On one
occasion he cast the horoscope of Lord Beaconsfield, and the paper having been found
after his death, it appears in the "Life, Letters, and Literary Remains " by his son,
which is now in course of publication. The paper is so remarkable and so characteristic of both men that / have ventured to transcribe it here.

G E O ME T R I C

FIGURES.

B. D I S R A E L I .
WILDBAD, September 3, i860.
JUDEX.
A SINGULARLY fortunate figure.
acquisition of coveted objects.

A strongly marked influence towards the

208

APPENDIX.

He would gain largely by marriage in the pecuniary sense, which makes a
crisis in his life. He would have a peaceful hearth, to his own taste, and leaving
him free for ambitious objects.
In honours, he has not only luck, but a felicity far beyond the most favourable prospects that could be reasonably anticipated from his past career, his
present, position, or his personal endowments.
He will leave a higher name than I should say his intellect quite warrants,
or than would now be conjectured. He will certainly have very high honours.
Whether official or in rank, high as compared with his birth or actual achievements.
He has a temperament that finds pleasure in what belongs to social life.
He has not the reserve common to literary men.
He has considerable veneration, and will keep well with Church and State.
Not merely from policy, but from sentiment and instinct. His illnesses will be
few and quick ; but his last illness may be lingering. He is likely to live to old
age—the close of his career much honoured. He will be, to the last, largely
before the public. Much feared by his opponents, but greatly beloved, not only

APPENDIX,

log

by those immediately about him, but by large numbers of persons to whom he is
personally unknown. He will die, whether in or out of office, in an exceptionally
high position, greatly lamented, and surrounded to the end by all the magnificent
planetary influences of a propitious Jupiter.
No figure I have drawn more surprises me than this. It is so completely
opposed to what I myself should have augured, not only from the rest of his
career, but from my knowledge of the man.
He will bequeath a repute out of all proportion to the opinion now entertained of his intellect even by those who think most highly of it.
Greater honours far than he has yet acquired are in store for him. His
enemies, though active, are not persevering. His official friends, though not
ardent, will yet minister to his success.
E. L. B.
The biographer adds:—
"Though specious in theory, nothing can be falser in fact, than the
common saying that all the world is wiser than any man in it, if by this it be
meant that the voice of the multitude is nearer the truth than the judgment of a
o

210

APPENDIX.

sage. The popular estimate of eminent men is, in the majority of cases, the
extravagant offspring of hearsay, which gathers force by repetition. When once
the cry is taken up, the cuckoo-note, as it passes from mouth to mouth, assumes
a sort of collective magnitude. Exaggeration is its necessary aliment. In the
hasty correction of an erroneous belief one extreme is succeeded by another, and
perhaps we may rightly ascribe to this cause the fact that my father's opinion was
in a mean between the earliest and the latest popular estimate of his friend's
character; so that he who asserted the genius of Disraeli when it was depreciated,
was surprised at the glories revealed by his Geomantic Figure. But whatever
may be the truth in this particular, the singularity is the same—that the
geomantic conclusions were not suggested by my father's views, but in glaring
opposition to them.
" The event, which verified his divination, contradicted his judgment."
F. H.

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TrPT^PT-fA^TT is~s nece?sarsecuring
Editor for y
clippings as the inevitable scissors." S T I C K . P H A S T P A S T E for office and household
use. Large bottle, with strong bookbinder's brush,
One Shilling. If your stationer hasn't it, trial bottle
sent direct from Factory by Parcels Post securely packed for
fifteen stamps. Much cheaper and cleaner than gum. No more
messy fingers or messed edges to papers. Keeps good & sweet always
and "sticks-fast." Largely used in Her Majesty's Government
Offices. Beware of evil-smelling and worthless imitations. In
gallon jars 6/6. ST1CKPHAST FACTORY (in same building as
Ye Leadenhalle Presse), 50, Leadenhall Street, London, E.C.
Established nearly a quarter of a century.—Advt.